Food staring at me…

…too late for begging mercy…

…bye crunchy creature.

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my adventures in intermittent comics blogging. Somehow ruminating on this event always makes me contemplative in a way that other milestones don’t. I think it’s because I can so easily line up my career path with my hobby, since I started comics blogging within the first few weeks of attending college. The combination of being hundreds of kilometres from home, along with a desire to further explore my chosen field and other related arts beyond the classroom, resulted in my initiation into comics blogging in the first place. The two are forever linked in my mind.

Since then I’ve graduated from college, become a professional animator, and returned home for a gig in video games. And yet, strangely, my writing has become progressively worse as my life gets better. I can’t even imagine what my output will look like in another six years, but I’m guessing I’ll have learned how to type in grunts and clicking sounds.

At this point we may as well give up pretending otherwise and just make this a video game blog.

I’ve been playing Virtua Fighter 5 in anticipation of Nagy’s return to Canada. The man is a natural born Virtua Fighter, and only three months of sustained training could possibly allow me to last more than two rounds. Still, for various reasons that I won’t go into, I’ve found myself longing for a 2-D fighter, so I recently picked up King of Fighters 2002.

I’ve always been a novice when it comes to fighting games, so I never really appreciated the differences between franchises or 2-D to 3-D beyond a supreficial level. So I was surprised to discover that as much as I enjoy Virtua Fighter’s complexity and problem solving, there’s nothing quite like delivering a K.O. with a button-mashed flying kick to the face just as an opponent is about to unleash some apocalyptic special move.

Here’s hoping King of Fighters XII, seen in the video above, comes out on consoles. It’s a thing of rare and fragile beauty.

There’s always been something about this David Blaine cat I didn’t like… damn you magic man! He just finished this stunt where he’s supposedly upside down for 60 hours. That in itself isn’t exactly magical to me, but to hear about him having hourly breaks (or more) is wonky to the max!

I did the damned 24 hour famine without so much as a nerds candy, so what’s this guys deal? Why even do it, you rascal?

It’s hard to believe how madly the genius the folks at Capcom are to make this puppy up.

“The premise of our marketing concept for the game was to promote this title like it was 1987, complete with cheesy art and game descriptions (read the back of the box) that had little to do with the actual game.”

Ya gotta love the old game art. Megaman was  my first love for this majestic art form. It use to be great seeing these boxes at the local video store and imagining the digital worlds I would visit on those groovy Welland weekends with my brothers.

Unfortunately, this game is only for download or something on X-box 360 and this package’s more promotional having a cd with images and other cool shit on it. It’s said to look and play just like the old NES variety.

Still…very Piiiimmm’ though

Reading up on Mickey’s hard times led me to my new pastime watching the zany adventures of Farfour the Islamic Fundamentalist Mouse. Sadly, he’s been martyred, so no new adventures for now.

Also worth checking out is Assud the Jew-Eating Rabbit.

I’d be more interested in Western pop music if their videos involved bear fighting, though this certainly comes close.

They were talking about a bear attack on the news a few weeks back. I told J. that that’s how I’d want to go, and my tombstone would read “He died as he lived. Fighting bears.” She pointed out that the first bear I fought would most likely be my last, and therefore the inscription on my tombstone would be misleading, but I’m still not convinced that there’s some kind of minimum requirement for a career in bear-fighting.

Anyone reading this who possesses extensive bear-fighting knowledge is invited to add to this debate in the comments below.

I haven’t read Nagy’s personal blog in a long time, mainly because it seemed he had slowed down due to his professional blogging obligations. I decided to check up on him via a link found in our fighting game discussion and was surprised to see so much material. Nothing like living in isolation thousands of kilometres from home to ramp up the posting.

The first post to greet me was Nagy’s take on Prime Minster Stephen Harper’s visit to the Rose City. I can’t believe that fucker walked into Rose City, spouted off about banning a product used by many in the act of smoking the chron, and walked out again without getting shanked.

Yesterday’s mystery headbanger was none other than Mr. Darwyn Cooke, writer/artist on New Frontier, the revamp of The Spirit, the upcoming Parker adaptations and numerous other funny books. Give ‘er!

I was looking for old metal magazines at the local used bookstore a few months back and not having any luck. It makes sense, considering that most people I know would be unwilling to give up their early issues of Metal Edge. I did find one vintage metal mag, and it came with a special surprise.

Metallion was a metal magazine published out of my own stomping grounds, Southern Ontario. That was interesting in and of itself, but as you can see, the titles for certain columns were decorated with some really pleasing, loose illustration work.

It turns out that the art director for Metallion was one of today’s most prominent comic artists. There was one double page spread in the magazine that was definitely by this particular person, though I wasn’t sure if he had drawn these headers as well. I bumped into him at the Toronto Fan Expo last month and he confirmed that he was responsible for all the art in the magazine.

I’ll post that illustration tomorrow. In the meantime, any guesses as to who it is?