Now, this is exciting news. Indie publisher, Archaia Studios Press is back. They’ve been on hiatus for quite a few months now due to some restructuring, but they now have books available on the shelves. It happened all rather quickly, but now you can pick up a collection of the web-comic Gunnerkrigg Court, the Mouse Guard role playing game, based on David Petersen’s popular creation, or the not as bad as it sounds Devil’s Panties. I’m relieved ASP has returned. Hopefully Titanium Rain, Miranda Mercury and a few other MIA titles will pick up where they left off soon. Official press release below.
The long-awaited release of several key titles from Archaia is over. Tom Siddell’s GUNNERKRIGG COURT: ORIENTATION, Jennie Breeden’s THE DEVIL’S PANTIES VOL. 2, and the MOUSE GUARD ROLEPLAYING GAME hit stores Wed, Jan 7. Make sure your store got them in and spread the word.
“I am very excited for these titles to have made the shelves,” glowed Mark Smylie, Publisher of Archaia. “We’ve been lucky to work closely with our creators who always give us their best. Thanks to Tom, Jennie, David and all of their fans for their patience. But we believe the wait was worth it. The books look beautiful. And who wouldn’t want to play a mouse in an RPG?”
Mark continued: “As for our other titles…we’ll soon be releasing the rest of our publishing schedule. Archaia is coming back in a big way with new and exciting projects, as well as our critically acclaimed titles. Yes, including Artesia.”
GUNNERKRIGG COURT: ORIENTATION (Creator: Tom Siddell, ISBN: 1-932386-34-3, Diamond Order Code: FEB083463, $26.95, 296-page hardcover, all ages). Antimony Carver is a precocious and preternaturally self-possessed girl starting her first year at gloomy Gunnerkrigg Court, a very British boarding school that has robots running around alongside body-snatching demons, forest gods, and the odd mythical creature. The opening volume in the series follows Antimony through her orientation year: the people she meets, the strange things that happen, and the things she causes to happen as she and her new friend, Kat, unravel the mysteries of the Court and deal with the everyday adventures of growing up.
THE DEVIL’S PANTIES, VOLUME 2 (Creator: Jennie Breeden, ISBN: 1-932386-36-X, Diamond Order Code: FEB083471, $19.95, 296-page hardcover, black-and-white, Mature Readers). The Devil’s Panties is NOT in fact, satanic porn. It is actually an autobiographical online comic strip about a girl in flame boots who works at a comic shop and occasionally hangs out with a pirate. Follow Jen as she goes kilt hunting at conventions with her leaf blower and discovers sparkly butterfly toys that no child should play with. When her boyfriend has LAN parties in their garage, she hits the clubs.
MOUSE GUARD ROLE-PLAYING GAME (Designer: Luke Crane, Writers: Luke Crane and David Petersen, Illustrator: David Petersen, ISBN-13: 978-1-932386-88-2, Diamond Order Code: JUN083656, $29.95, 240-page 8 x 8 hardcover roleplaying game core rulebook). Join the Mouse Guard and defend the Mouse Territories against predators and dangers, in this roleplaying game for the Mouse Guard comic book series! The game is intended for all levels of game-playing experience by award-winning game designer Luke Crane and is based on a simplified version of his Burning Wheel rules system. Includes art and extensive background material on the Mouse Territories specially prepared by Mouse Guard creator David Petersen. Ages 10+ (Mild mouse-on-mouse violence.)
Be on the lookout for MOUSE GUARD: FALL 1152 LIMITED EDITION BLACK-AND-WHITE HARDCOVER to hit the shelves in February.
As always, all Archaia titles are available worldwide at finer comic book shops, bookstores, amazon.com, the Archaia Store at Indie Press Revolution.
He’s an interesting guy, this Grevioux. Creator of the Underworld film franchise the actor/writer/stuntman has also recently written New Warriors for Marvel.
Local (to me, anyway) Aussie publisher, Gestalt Comics are having a sale on their original graphic novels. It includes their entire range of unique books. Admittedly its only 3 books but they’re pretty different, and a bargain, as they start at only $10!
Peter Tomasi was an editor at DC Comics for years until jumping across to the other side of the table as writer on such series as Nightwing and now, The Outsiders, which will be a team without Batman guiding them, now that he’s dead-maybe.
I’ve just reviewed Radical’s new series, Shrapnel, as well as BOOM!’s new, but delayed, series Hexed over at Extra Sequential. I’ve gotta say it was a wildly different reading experience for both of these debut issues. 
I picked up That Salty Air from Comic-Con six months ago and finally got around to reading it. It’s a unique book about Hugh a fisherman facing the harsh reality of life, seemingly encapsulated by the ocean. A haunting tale, it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed it’s quiet pace and profound themes. Considering it’s the debut book from Tim Sievert who wrote, drew and lettered it, it makes it even more impressive.
I know this game has been out for a few months now, but I only just finished it, after purchasing it as an early Christmas present for myself. The first Gears of War, along with the zombie killing spree that was Dead Rising really showed what the fairly new XBOX 360 was capable of. Both of those games raised the bar and when we got Bioshock, Halo 3 and Rainbow Six Vegas the bar stayed there.
From the outset it was obvious that this sequel was emphasising the war in the title. Cut scenes with more depth, a few new characters, nice weapons like the flamethrower. All these elements give the game a larger scope than the first one, which just followed Delta Squad, but didn’t give any screen time to the bigger events at play. Here, we have meetings with other squads, more cities and civilians and just more of a blockbuster feel. The graphics are the same as the first one, ie, brilliant. The only minor glitch was the annoying error that meant I went unnoticed a few times when crawling on the floor, asking for my teammates to revive me, but thanks to frequent checkpoints it wasn’t as frustrating as it could’ve been.
I’ve bought every Newsboys live release from the VHS Step Up To The Microphone tour from a decade ago. I don’t buy every new album of theirs. Only delirious holds that honour for me, but Newsboys are a truly great band, and one of Australia’s most successful exports. Probably somewhere up with Hugh Jackman and The Wiggles. Newboys are one of the world’s longest lasting Christian bands. Of course, that label isn’t the best, as labels never are, but that’s the business of “Christian” music for you. Newsboys are a great band. They’re not a worship band, just a band that anyone can tap their toes to, with funky betas and quotable lyrics.
I’ve come to realise that over the last 18 months, but the last year in particular, I was very busy. In a good way. Going to bed two hours later than my usual time, but being creatively busy, means that I’m surprisingly not tired. Because of my constant writing for Sight, Broken Frontier, this little blog, and now 
A couple of great documentaries I’ve seen this week are The King of Kong and The Kid Stays in The Picture. The King of Kong follows two Donkey Kong champions as they try to top one another’s (extremely) high scores. It’s remarkable the passion people can have, and there’s a handful of gamers world wide who have the high levels of focus and manual dexterity to ocnquer these old-school arcade games. The mind games seem exaggerated, but the difficulty of Kong, etc don’t. Games these days seem like a walk in the park. Apart from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, naturally. Despite what the blurbs say, Kong is not hilarious. It’s funny in a quirky way like The Office (UK version) is due to the differing personalities of the two competitors, but also how stereotypical the gaming geeks really are . If you like King of Kong, you’ll love Trekkies, which is an older doco about Star Trek fans. That film makes me laugh till I cry every time I see it.
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