But before we get to the main course we’re going to get an anime appetizer in the form of Gotham Knight, a multi-part anime written by some of the major comic talents of our time.

I’ve put up some previous videos for this, but I’m thinking that the comparisons to Hamlet may be taking things a little bit too far. 

I mean even if it were true, is it possible to bring it up without seeming pretentious?

Part of the problem is that Roger Moore was a fairly poor bond. By the mid eighties he had long outstayed his welcome, and was driving the franchise into the ground until it had become a sad parody of itself that was overripe for the kind of parody that launched the Austin Powers series.

Here’s a great video of Moore discussing how little he cares about the character, and it shows off just how far the whole thing had fallen:

Things picked up a bit by the time that GoldenEye came out, but reality was already outpacing the movie gadgets, and generally the Bond series was unable to generate any plots that didn’t have Bond, once again, running from location to location trying to intercept or stop packages as they were being shipped from one location to another.

Ever since the third film the character’s main job was to mess with FedEx, and failing to actually get the package, blow up the destination when he stumbled into it.

The actual spying and such were secondary to the “suave sophistication”, set pieces, and big bangs that the series leaned on when they didn’t have much of an actual plot. Ultimately Pierce Brosnan’s bond succumbed to this overwhelming sameness. The urge to improve the series remained however, and the last classic Bond film, “Die Another Day” became post-modern when the usual ridiculous montage of hot chicks became part of an interpretive dance representing the torture that James was undergoing while he was trapped in a North Korean jail:

But they couldn’t even hold it together for an entire move. After all the sturm und drang, the movie devolved into more of the same old thing once Bond managed to reach Hong Kong and the sexy arms of Halle Berry.

But with a new, leaner and definitely meaner Bond, played by Daniel Craig, Casino Royale, although not complete devoid of the cliches, definitely felt different. Perhaps revitalized by the more brutal nature of international politics in a post-9/11 world, and the success of the Bourne films, it had an actual edge, and gave us a Bond that is both effective and effected. The new film, Quantum of Solace, picks up minutes after the last one, and seems to be attempting to build on what the last one started. According to the interviews, they’ve even avoided the usual globe-trotting in favor of focusing on Bond and his problems. So, the big question they need to answer is, can they keep making Bond more interesting forty years after the film series launched?

The new trailer makes it seem as if the answer may be yes.

Repo gets a full trailer…

I’m still not ready to say that I think this is going to be good.  The music isn’t grabbing me, and the images seemed cramped. But it’s a ballsy, interesting thing, and I applaud them for giving it a try.

Well, now there’s a trailer to look at!

I’m not sure I’m excited yet, but it definitely seems interesting…

This is an in-depth documentary about the life of Bruce Wayne as shown on Gotham Cable News. If anything it’s played almost too straight.

There’s tons of other fun goodies on the site as well, including web sites for Harvey Dent, and Gotham City Rail.

They released 3rd edition of the game back in 2000. This was a major revamp of the system, taking a stand by recreating the game after the muddy depths of the previous had taken the game even farther into muddy realms of arcane rules where only the mightiest nerds might find their way out to fun.

Reading those books back I was struck by how strange it had all become. The game didn’t seem to be about anything. Well… that’s not technically true.: It was still about Dungeons and Dragons. But it was no longer about much else. This was a roleplaying game simulating a roleplaying game.

The game worked, but it didn’t interest me much. The barrier to entry was too high, and it was still vulnerable to the kind of munchkin behavior that turns what is supposed to be a friendly social interaction into a war of rules, and keeps everyone but the hardcore out.  I’d tried it out a few times, but found it to be a fundamentally unsatisfying experience. As a player there was always that vague unease that somehow you had made a mistake when creating you character. That rather than being on the path to godhood you were doomed before you had even started.

All the best tabletop games share one thing in common, that is that their rules are simple, but the gameplay is deep. You discover the complexities of the system by playing the game, not by reading the rules. 3rd edition failed that test, and I stayed away.

A few weeks ago the 4th edition of D&D was released. The new system still the three beast with three books that it has always been; Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. But it’s been revised and streamlined. This is a simpler, smarter game. One that seems to have more roads to fun than it does to ruin.

Having now had a chance to play the game as both the Game Master and the Player, it’s clearly not totally “fixed”. But in the end that seems to be broken in the right way. In a world filled with computers that handle everything seamlessly, it’s fun to still have a game where you can gather around a table with a bunch of your friends, make a bunch of mistakes, screw up the rules and still have fun. It’s a game where even when it’s going wrong it feels like there’s always another opportunity to try out a new strategy, or pull victory out of the toothy, acid-spewing jaws of defeat.

In the last three and a half years he has built “Doctor Who,” “Torchwood” and another spinoff, “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” into Britain’s most successful homegrown drama franchise. Mr. Davies recently announced that he would step down as executive producer and head writer of “Doctor Who” at the end of 2009, in order to pursue other projects (he won’t say what they are). But at a time when young audiences are fleeing television for the Internet and other hipper media, “Davies has made family television cool again,” in the words of The Guardian.

I’ve talked about the character here before, and I will soon again.

Sometimes it can just be an object:

We now have full confirmation of the upcoming panel at Comic-Con in San Diego, Friday, July 25, 7:15 p.m.

On the panel will be: Trace Beaulieu, Paul Chaplin, Frank Conniff, Bill Corbett, Joel Hodgson, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy, Bridget Nelson, Mike Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl and J. Elvis Weinstein. Wow.

The moderator will be Patton Oswalt.

Wow.  I think it’s going to be awesome, and I’m going to do everything I possibly can to be there. I really can’t relax.

If you haven’t been keeping up with what they’ve all been up to lately, riff wise, here’s the preview for the latest offering from Cinematic Titanic:

Most of what I read were the Marvel stuff he was going in the mid-seventies. Books like The Eternals, and his amazingly weird Captain America series.

As I grew up I started to realize how much my own mind had been “blown open” by those Kirby comics of my youth. Ultimately I got a chance to meet and interview the man himself back in 1992, getting to discover in person just how much enthusiasm he could still project, and how excited he was about new possibilities, even when he was in his seventies.

But one thing I had never had a chance to experience were the comics that were supposed to be his magnum opus, a series of interconnected comics called the “Fourth World” that laid out a tale of the “New Gods”, and their battle against Darkseid, the lord of Apokalypse.  They’d come and gone by the time I’d gotten into comics, and I only managed to get my hands on some of them in the early nineties when the New Gods comics were reprinted.

The remaining books went uncollected for years, showing up in bits and pieces in occasional reprints, but it was only last year that DC undertook a definitive reprinting of the saga. It’s a gorgeous edition, with a new printing process that seems to capture the magic of the old newsprint without its frailty.

Yes, the plots can be corny, and the dialog often almost defines wooden. But at the same time Kirby manages to transcend all of the cliches that he revels in with the sheer amount of power in his art, and creativity in his ideas.  That is, after all, his super-power.

This new edition seems to have opened a place in the greater culture for the appreciation of Jack Kirby to start to flourish. Part of that is an entire generation of nerds, like myself, who have constantly reminded people how awesome he is. Another part is the heavy influence that the Kirby canon had on other superhero projects, and the penetration of comics in general into the mainstream culture..

But there’s a special feeling that comes with seeing the Fourth World Omnibus reviewed in the New York Times, by notable nerd John Hodgman. It’s as if the final walls have come crumbling down.

In one moment, Highfather of New Genesis turns to one of the young boys in his care. “Esak,” he asks, “what is it that makes the very young — so very wise?”

“Tee hee!!” Esak replies. “It’s our defense, Highfather — against the very old!!”

This is probably the only passage in the English language containing the words “tee hee” that has actually moved me.

It’s good stuff, and well worth the read.