Power Rangers:- Demon Wars. A Fan fiction project of mine

What follows is a sort of Fake Questions and answers session. I've wanted to clarify a few things about my EPIC Power Rangers Fan fiction for a while now and this seems to be the best way to do it.

If you're interested in reading it Here's a link:- http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-22175/MountainKing+Power+Rangers+Demon+Wars+-+The+Dragon+s+Green+Fire.htm

Now on with the Questions

Q:- Right, so Mountain King is it? What possessed you to write a Power Rangers Crossover

A:- I'm always on the look out for original crossovers, trying my best to produce them. After all there's only so many times you can read the same halloween story. The biggest influence on this one came from Lewis Lovhog and his web based TV show, History of Power Rangers.
I was a big fan as a kid and watching made me track down a few seasons. First online then a couple of boxed sets I found on the cheap. It all sort of spiralled out from there.

Q:- And again you used Dawn?

A:- A lot of Buffy fans had Dawn pegged from the first season she showed up. She was a whiny brat who's character trait seemed to be screaming for her big sister to help. Put frankly she was so one note she never felt like se belonged.
They did try to develop her though and there are a few episodes that really show that. A good one to look at is Potential in season seven. She proves that she has what it takes to fight and even when she's over her head the "Brat" keeps a calm head. At the End of Season Six she picks up a Sword and handles it professionally.
Dawn was an underwritten character and deserved a lot more to do than scream pointlessly and get captured or kidnapped when the script needed it.

Q:- and it has noting to do with the Actress?

A:- Are you blind man? Of course it does!

Q:- Moving on, if Dawn is an under written character, what about the others you've used in PR:-DW?

A:- They are all characters that needed a lot more doing with them. Cassie Fraiser just disappeared, not even a mention in cannon when her adopted mother died. It was like she vanished off the face of the planet, and for all the potential she had that's a shame. She's probably the most evolved person on the planet. She needed to be explored.
Same for Sari, she was nothing more than a plot macguffin. She had potential as a character that never matured. And the less said about Faith's wasted opportunities the better.

Q:- Faith's wasted opportunities? What about the Season 8 comics?

A:- You mean the dedicated character assassination? Not just of Faith but everyone involved. Those comics seem taylor-made to piss long term fans off. I'm serious, every choice the cast makes in this one goes so far against what we know it's not true. Buffy funds the Slayer army with a series of bank robberies and sleeps with an underage girl. Willow is either spending her days with the biggest mistake ever, Kennedy or going back to being and evil witch. Xander starts off dating a Slayer in Training and ends up with the jailbait Dawn (which is not the way things should be, for any number of reasons) Faith just wanders around with Giles, and nothing to do but clean up a mess that's been tacked on to the over all plotline.
Don't even get me started on that mess. It seems without a practical effects budget to worry about the writers went mad, including laser cannons, apocalyptic death scenes and ridiculous monsters for the hell of it. The biggest draw about Buffy was the Gothic monsters in a modern-day setting. Not a comic book universe where you can whip out death rays and giant teenage girls because "it looked cool".

Q:- So, not a fan I take it?

A:- No. Not at all. I'd be the first to admit Buffy, as a series, had it's ups and downs. While seasons Four and Six were not up to the standard set by the others (especially the first three years) the comic is such a massive failure it harms the mythology rather than helps and I'm including the Angel and Spike spin off books in that.

Q:- A lot of people seem to like the comics…

A:- Good for them, they can have their opinion, mine on the other hand is that Early Smallville is better.

Q:- Ouch. So how does Season 8 fit into your story.

A:- It doesn't. In fact the main point of Power Rangers Demon Wars and most of my Buffy stories is to replace Season 8. Undoing the mistakes that annoy me as best I can. I'm not as good a writer as Joss Whedon, but as the season 8 comic was coming out he was working on far too many projects and they ALL suffered because of it.

Q:- All

A:- Well Dollhouse was still-born, resuscitated, bedridden on life-support and then killed just as it was getting heathy. The other comics he was / is working on were / are also seriously flawed. In my opinion.

Q:- Nice cover

A:- Thanks

Q:- So this is all about sticking it to the Season 8 comics and giving the underdogs a chance to shine. I get that, but what's with the episode format thing?

A:- It's sort of a challenge I've set myself. This is supposed to be a sort of "Missing series" for Power Rangers. Like all PR series it's going to have arc plots and over all storylines. The only difference it I'm the only one at the helm instead of a team of script writers and studio executives getting in the way.

Q:- Isn't one of your problems with the comic the fact that they went silly without a visual effects budget.

A:- Yes it is, but don't forget this is Power Rangers, not Buffy. It's supposed to be this hyper active over blown extravaganza. In Power Rangers your supposed to have giants stomping cities.

Q:- Is that why your doing Fan Art for it?

A:- Sort of I want some sort of visual reference, to help me as much as anyone.

Q:- Who's Marcus and will we get to see him in your art?

A:- Marcus is a stab in the dark. An Original Character based on mashing a few others together and seeing what I get out of it. Most notably a younger version of Marcus Cole, from Babylon 5, went into him. I created him because writing a Dawn based story that overwrites season 8 means giving her a romance. She's the right age and it something she needs if she's going to develop as a person.
Dawn needs a relationship, she's too powerful otherwise, almost inhumanly so. It adds a dimension and I couldn't pull another Ranger into it without the whole thing becoming fan service. Besides I've been able to flesh out the mythos with him. Giving him a connection to A'Zores has driven a point home that's going to be important later.
Also yes, I will be doing something with him, art wise, but not yet. I want the Rangers finished first.

Q:- Before we go any spoilers you want to get off your chest?

A:- Ohh lots, Well I've already told everyone there's not going to be a Pink Ranger. Mostly because its an all girl Ranger team, but there's also the problem with putting too many crossovers into the mix. Speaking of the upcoming Red Ranger will be a boy, the token male as it were. The others are going to have to get used to him and his own interesting back story. Shall we say he has a history with Faith and Dawn knows more about it than even she does.
Also there's the White Power Coin to remember, that's going to play an important part much later on.
On the other side there's the Warlord. He's not going to take these constant defeats lightly and his arrival is going to really shake things up!
What else…, Buffy will be making and appearance before the end, bringing her own ideas. So will a few others from the Buffy-verse, muddying the waters for all they are worth.
But before all that we have to deal with Faith and a little thing that's been hanging over her head since the beginning.
Best of all those spoilers don't give ANYTHING away.

Q:- Don't give anything away, are you sure?

A:- Not a thing. After what I've got planned those aren't even blips on the radar.

Q:- So you're just teasing us. Just how many more episodes are there going to be to fit that all in.

A:- It's fluid I think theres about thirty in total at the moment. I've just added two more to give a bit more depth to a few things but I might be able to cut back elsewhere, but you never know.
When I say strap in for a ride, I mean it!

AHHHHHHHHHH

God, good god in heaven they did it. I had thought it was a joke, no seriously, I never expected them to actually make it.

I am of course talking about Smurfs, the movie, in 3D no less...

This is so wrong I want to throw up

Dune The film

And again I reply to a video review from one of the team over at TGWTG, still no one reads this and I need a place to vent!

Lindsay Ellis, otherwise known as the nostalgia chick, has posted a review of Dune. Reviewing Dune is sort of like clubbing a starving seal to death with a frozen, week old, dead fish. You know it stinks from a mile away, but you can't help but be drawn to the spectacle. David Lynch is very good at directing his own works. Seriously, go and watch the disturbing Blue Velvet if you don't believe me. It's beautifully strange, with moments that range between pure madness and terribly serene. On the other hand Dune, train wreck that it is, is unique in sci-fi.

Every scene is unique, and not because of bad pacing but from it's own goals. Never before (and not until Farscape) had a science fiction universe been so richly portrayed. The imagery and vision behind it required just the sort of madman that David Lynch is. Even the clunky acting and stilted dialogue (the latter unavoidable, but I'll get to that) can't detract from the fact there is still nothing like Dune out there.

Neo-gothic and post modern architecture. Impossibly realised ships and hideous navigators are all included to flesh out the over all impression. The goal of this film, as with all of Lynch's work, is to immerse the viewer in the world created and if you can spare the effort to accept that its not that bad.

Now on to what galls me the most, her views on the Spice. it isn't a Macguffin. That's reserved for things like the money in Psycho. It gets the plot moving and provides a goal for a few characters but can be completely forgotten in the overall plot. The Spice is a vital art of the film. First of all it is the main reason Arakis is so important, second it is what helps bond the Fremin with the Worms, making them desert survivalists. It's what the whole story revolves around. A macguffin has no bearing on the plot, Spice is the whole point of the movie and the book.

Right here we get to the main problem with the film. The book is a text medium, is designed to be read, not watched. Your supposed to have time to understand and absorb what is presented to you. More importantly it takes longer to read because there is more to it. Instead of forcing a viewer to watch it in a couple of hours you can spend days reading a book. The reader can put the book down, have a cup of tea and let things settle in. They can re-read paragraphs and ponder their meaning. Most importantly there is more room to develop characters. As I alluded to earlier a great deal of dialogue was forced simply to cover up massive plot holes generated by chucking whole chapters of the book into the bin. A lot of plot points and plot holes were addressed if you took the time to read the novel and it's sequels.

Concepts that were glossed over (Paul Atreides existence as the second coming or "the voice of God" Muad'Dib) actually make sense if you read the books. Lynch knew this and that what was behind the Alan Smithee moniker.

A bit of back story Ellis missed was just why Lynch agreed to direct this film. Originally the studio snapped up the rights to produce the film without a director or script. Panicking that they had the rights to an award wining book but nothing else they approached a popular art director of the time (Lynch having won praise for his work in The Elephant man and Eraserhead as an art film producer/director) to do the award winning novel justice. Lynch agreed, but only if he could produce Blue Velvet. That's right the whole reason he was attached to Dune was so that he could get the budget required to make Blue Velvet.

After spending untold millions on Dune Lynch ran out of money. He was trying to produce a true and honest adaptation (making the film five or six hours according to some reports) but the studio simply could not afford to pay for something that long. Whole acts were simply thrown away before they were filmed and in the end of the day the studio released the film without Lynch signing off on it. Incomplete, half edited and ridiculously over budget. Lynch is still not happy with the results today and even after being given the go ahead for a directors cut years ago deliberately removed his name from the production.

So why does it have such a cult following. Like a train crash, or a horribly disfiguring incident with a wood-chipper and a cement mixer it's morbid curiosity. You can't help but love the honest failure that is Dune. Everything that could go wrong did on a project that was doomed from the start. It should never have been made, the novels are far to complex to be condensed into a film, or even a series of films

Lord of the Rings, perhaps the best conversion from novel trilogy to film franchise, cut whole characters from the plot. Chapters of character development was either removed or cut and paste elsewhere for pacing and because of this it succeeded where most failed.

Still Dune is entertaining, simply because it is so bad. It's flaws make it great. Like the Rocky Horror Picture Show if it was perfect it wouldn't be as entertaining. This is a film you should watch with your mates and a few drinks. Doing a serious review of this isn't worth it. When fans, like myself, quote it it's out of celebration of it's bad dialogue.

And with that I end this. "Long live the fighters!"

Imaination

Alright As you probably know I spend a lot of my time watching online reviewers. I love the amount of effort, planning and work these guys put in to it. For some people, like Spoony (AKA Noah Antwiler) and the Nostalgia Critic (Doug Walker) it's their jobs. week in and week out they produce these things. Some are funny, some are thoughtful but most of all they are honest creative endeavours.

I enjoy their work immensely, so much so that every so often I try my own take and if you look hard enough you'll even find my prototype video here. The thing is among these people there is James Rolf, AKA the Angry Video Game Nerd and I occasionally watch his video's too. On monday he posted this and it reminded me of something. I've always been able to remember my first nightmare, and much like his it's inspired my creativity. Mostly through writing opposed to his video out put but it's on the same wavelength.

It was the first night in my own room, I have no idea how old I was at the time, I was so exited. I had a bed rather than a crib, I could stretch, throw myself about, roll, jump and do whatever I wanted. Naturally I conked out before five minutes passed by. The dream was absolutely uninspired, at the start, I just dreamed that the room was bigger. A lot bigger, like the walls had retreated away from me. The half light from the street outside my window cast orange shadows across the room and I began to see things moving in them. Dark terrible things clawing their way out of some unimaginable black void. Gargoyles warped and twisted out of the walls like monstrous cracks in the wall.

There I was, nothing but a blanket between me and stone faced minions of hell. I ran, I ran out of my room and into the hall but it wasn't my house anymore. I could still see the familiar familiar bookshelves and the stairs, but they had moved. Like a jigsaw puzzle that had been put together wrong. The imps and daemons came closer, pouring into existence like a disease. Their shadows in the half light withering paper and ageing it like the passing of aeons.

My parents room was gone, the only hope was to escape, but before I could one of the shadows touched me... and I woke up.

Needless to say I didn't get any more sleep that night.

It wasn't as impressive as Rolf's dragon, but it had a hell of an impact on me. I've grown to love that sort of imagery, the stuff that goes beyond what CGI can do and talks directly to your imagination, tapping into that primal thought deep within you. Not locked on the other side of the screen or imaginary pixels dancing to some program running across a hard drive. There always is and always will be something more physical about books and their connection to the reader.

Why Final Fantasy X SUCKS! My point of view!

I have to agree with the great and wise Spoony One that Final Fantasy X is god awful Final fantasy X PT1

After hearing how great seven and eight were I was always a little bitter that my friends never got them so I could experience the games first hand. I'm not a gamer, in fact these days I hardly ever pick up a game controller. I'm either reading, watching or listening to something else. I simply don't have time to play.

Take right now for instance; while I'm writing this I'm also watching classic episodes Star Trek Next Generation. In a while I might switch to the original series and try to finish a chapter of Fan Fiction, or load up BBC's iPlayer and watch whatever episode of Doctor Who has been repeated recently. I'm multi tasking, using my mind not to it's fullest potential but using it.

Paying computer games you're forced to spend all your time focussed on this one thing that is all too soon dull boring and pointless. You're just going over the same old routine, select and apply an action. It costs hundreds of pounds for a console these days, between £30 and £40 for the game, which denies you the plot unless you jump through certain hoops. There is none of the convenience of a book, which you can read any where without worrying that the batteries are running out. Games that force feed me my imagination always handcuff me from options.

There are all sorts of names for developments in games; "None linear game play", "AI scripting", "alternate endings" are all ideas that try to pretend their giving you an option. The fact is you don't. There are no options, decisions, goals or objectives that you can achieve that haven't been programmed. You have no choice but to jump the hoops offered.

Fiction is much more honest about it, knowing that the inter action isn't pushing buttons but conveying ideas. More importantly an episode of Star Trek doesn't force you to spend hours doing exactly the same thing over and over again until you hope for death. If even to change the monotony. This is just the start of my problems with Final Fantasy X.

If I wanted a story I'd read a book. If I wanted a story as predictably mindless as this one, with acting that could peel paint at fifty paces and cause sever internal haemorrhaging, I'd watch an Enterprise marathon. The story is rubbish, the plot twists predictable and the only character you could possibly like is hideously underused. Tidus is a whiny pathetic moron who's feminine Tokyo-pop features belong on the bottom of someone's shoe rather than anything else. I want to root for the hero, not jump into the screen and beat them half to death with a clue stick!

Playing the game is worse than annoying. You spend all your time "level grinding", fighting the same monsters over and over again to gain experience. After about four hours of grinding you can finally play the damn game, defeating the super powerful bosses and progressively harder monsters. Twenty minutes of game play layer the bosses are too powerful and monsters almost as strong. You're stuck, dying every time you turn around. The solution? Another four hours of grinding against another level of monsters. I'm not kidding, the only thing that makes it seem longer is the cut scenes.

The badly rendered, pointless, droning cut scenes that make you want to take a knife to your own wrists. Yes the cities and landscapes look good, but I don't care, we have holidays and paintings for that. I want to PLAY THE FUCKING GAME! Not watch someone with the brains of a common garden slug fart around trying to attract a witless fluttering and suicidal fool.

Yep, not only do I loath Tidus but Yuna has all the intelligence and personality of a maniacally depressive lemming. Her great quest across the world is to defeat the monster from Cloverfield by holding a seance. I wish, I truly wish that was a joke. It's not. for more than a thousand years this magically powered future have thought the only weapon was prayer. Just don't get me started on the rest of the mess with the characters. I'll leave that to grand master Spoony.

What I won't leave to him, even though he's hit upon it already, is Blitzball. You see for this game you have to, in order to get money and points, play in Blitzball tournaments. A made up game that is sort of like water polo, lacrosse, football and the bastardisation of reality. The game is played in a giant ball of water where, without breathing apparatus, you swim around for fifteen minuets at a time. Trying to score a goal in a net half an inch bigger than the ball. First, as pointed out, you cannot throw, kick, punch in water. Physics won't allow it, it's a simple act of compression. Second, WHO IN THE NAME OF THE GOOD FUCKING LORD WANTS TO PLAY SPORTS WHEN THEY PLUG IN A FANTASY GAME. Seriously, why the hell would you want to play sports, let alone the worst badly managed mangled excuse for a sport you have here? Why is it mangled? Because of point three of course. A sport that is a hideous mishmash of Football and Lacrosse should not, under any circumstances, be turn based! We should play it as a managerial game, where the player picks tactics before the match starts and watch the play through. Instead it is turn based, where whoever has the ball has a turn and what your players do depends on the settings you pick mid match! You have to pick, because the default settings are useless.

It's been years since I've played this game and I'm raging just remembering it. The real problem is just how much an impact the Final Fantasy series has had on gaming. Maybe it's wrong to lay the blame at it's feet, Zelda and several other game series are to blame too but in the end this is the game that sealed this opinion for me. A game is a game, a story is a story. Pong, for instance, is a game. It's a challenge between two players, the console is only the medium. Like a deck of cards or cricket stumps. The outcome is down to you and who you're playing against. Games like Space Invaders are played against yourself, your own highscore a target to beat. That's game play, that's entertaining, best of all you can kill the sound and play music over it. You don't need to arse around with save points or struggle for hours skilling up just to die on your way back home.

Final Fantasy X was a massive disappointment to me and it coloured my view on RPGs and modern consoles forever. I gave XII a chance and while the burns weren't as deep they still hurt. I'm not even going to entertain the idea of playing the new XIII. Even though Blitzball is gone and the characters are getting a little better the core problem I have outlined here has not changed and no matter what I keep coming back to this point

These games aren't games. They are sub-par, cliché riddled, poor stories masquerading as interactive cartoons that actively prevent you from enjoying the plot by forcing you complete pointless and suffocating tasks in a vain excuse to make the exorbitant fee required feel justified.

To those of you that like and enjoy Final Fantasy go an buy a book, I don't care if it's an I-can-read book with a few big words and a lot of pictures. Spark your imagination, put those controllers down and revel in what inspires you. Love life, shove a play list on your iPod and go for a walk. Go to the pub and utterly fail to chat up a woman. Watch Star Trek. Do something other than waste hours, days even weeks of your life farting around this pointless series of games.

Childhood memories. The Muppets

You know the good thing about You Tube, occasionally you can find the old memories. You know those old TV shows you only half remember and no one's bothered to realise them on DVD yet? Or if they only had it out for a short while and now can't get hold of it without paying though the nose.

Now, elsewhere, I have talked about how I remember watching Battlestar Galactica as a child and how it influenced my mind and sparked my love of Science Fiction. I've also talked, again elsewhere, about how I first caught a glimpse of an episode of Transformers and it made me seek out the classic show. To the point where I now collect them and enjoy the characters. What I've never touched upon is my first TV memory.

Phenomenon

It wasn't that, but I still love that sketch. It's that one song I have stuck in my head at the most in opportune moments.

Mahnahmahah

Still not that, but I have to share my neuroses sometimes.

Back to the point, my first TV memory was watching Sesame Street. I'm not too proud to admit it and it played a big part in my mental landscape. You see as well as the above something I haven't talked about is my love of puppets. If you know me away from computers you know that along with videos, books and an ungodly amount of cast plastic I have a lot of cuddly toys. I can't throw my voice or stitch worth a damn, but I have a load of hand puppets.

I worry more than a few of my friends and colleagues when I turn up to meetings with dirty, bedraggled hand puppets that look inquisitively around. Hundreds of these "people" loiter around my house. Rascal, the crafty ol' Fox that's afraid of Bat's and his wife Vicky Vixen, but nothing else. The twin polar bears, Artos and Gwinny, that got lost in a snowstorm (true story!) and hate the cold. The Irish SAS Cat, Patrick O'Pheline (don't ask, seriously, that one confuses even me). Torquil, the old hedgehog that's spikes have curled up and enjoys hibernation so much he does it all year, unless there's a ham sandwich near by.

That's just a few, I haven't scratched the surface. Needless to say they are all individuals and great fun to live with. When they turn up things around here take a turn for the mad. Torquil was the first and they sort of exploded from there, but why?

When I first watched Sesame Street I loved the Muppets, from Groucho the Grouch to Count Von Count. I laughed and loved the show, cheering when ever Big Bird ambled on the scene. They weren't puppets or lumps of felt, they were people on the screen, each with nuances and personalities people to this day remember. Moving on, as I grew up I found The Muppet Show hilarious, jokes that were so obvious and built up through the whole episode had a pay off and the delivery would always be fantastic. No matter how obvious or predictable the joke. Again the Characters jumped out of the screen and became memorable. Fraggle Rock, another example, was just fantastic Children's TV that even I over look sometimes but deserves all the praise it can get.

As part of our cultural heritage Jim Henson's creations were fantastic. Then he went on to make shows like The Storyteller (with no less than the fantastic voice of John Hurt as the narrator) and films of epic genius like Dark Crystal. Even after his death in 1990 Henson's company continued to just be frankly awesome.

All of these are made with puppets, complex, extravagant and beautiful puppets. They aren't for just children, the jokes are clean but great whatever age you are. There are some things you should never grow too old for. I'm glad to say I've rediscovered the awesomeness that this represents and before I go back to watch my Farscape DVD's I want everyone who stumbles across this to remember not how mad I am but how great this guy was.

Now what got me on this rant was simple. Over here in England calling someone a Muppet has become an insult. Like saying your an idiot, quite frankly I think this has to stop. We need to, how do you put it, "Take it back" Muppet isn't an insult. It's a battle cry for originality, creativity and glorious creations.

Animal

AniMal

ANIMAL!

Ps

who can remember the Muppet show without this.

Darth Vader's Psychic hotline

This is funny, have a look. Trust me

http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/darth_vaders_psychic/

Try listing all the references. I just love the B5 stuff, most people forget that show these days!

The Imaginartium of Doctor Parnassus

When I was very much younger I had a VHS video tape. It was of Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 on the same tape. I'm telling you this because on that tape there was a trailer for a film called The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. To my shame I haven't been able to find a copy of this film but I love the trailer, it's so lovably insane. When you realise it was co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, the Python responsible for Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and directing the Python film Quest for the Holy Grail you know it's insane

This guy is the most insane director in Hollywood and most of the time is films are so crazy that people don't know what to make of him. Honestly, he makes Tim Burton look stable.

This is leading up to my thoughts of a new film from the Pythons lead animator:- The Imaginartium of Doctor Parnassus. Here's the trailer

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5702544/14942419

Yes this is the last film Heath Ledger worked on before his death, he had only filmed about half of it but they found a way around this. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrel stepped in and took over the role in different parts. In other words the shear acting power of this move could eclipse the sun!

Now I don't often go to the cinema. It's a lot of effort and money for something I'm going see on DVD a few months later anyway. I'll still, on occasion, go out of my way to see a few films. Transformers 2 was one and so was Star Trek. This is only the third film I KNOW I have to see. Hell, everyone has to see this film.

Revolution of the Mask, Issues One and Two

Don't worry if you haven't heard of this comic. It's produced by a small independent company called Brainscan studios (www.brainscanstudios.com) in the US and only available over here online. I came across it because the writer is also a comic book reviewer on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, a fantastically funny site that is also the reason I've not been updating my fan fiction as much as I would like.

The writer, Lewis Lovhaug, is a fantastic reviewer and you can pretty much guarantee he knows more about comics than you do. He's an expert on them, simple as that, and this isn't his first excursion into the world of writing. So, as you may guess, I was looking forward to reading the first two issues.

Well now that I've read both and I can sum them up in two words:- Decidedly average. Not bad, not brilliant. Just average.

I don't know what I was expecting, as much I wanted to be amazed at how awesome it could have been I was always a little uneasy with the preview pages. They were all bland and minimalist, in both art and scripting but I acknowledged that with each issue being 23 pages long some corners would have to be cut. Otherwise that sort of length is just too much work.

The first thing I'm going to do is point out the art. When your going for a minimalist look you need a clean style that makes an impact and this has one.

Personally I'd like a little more to the backgrounds, there is a bit in there already but it's so little you can't help but reckon it's trying to make a point. Drawing attention to itself more than subtle statement background art really should.

I would also like something a bit more abstract or artistic. There's not quite enough to make it feel real. So make a statement with the art instead , making it leap out of the pile. There are more than a few hints that the artist knows what he's doing with shading and light, if they would just use it a bit more.

Both of these are personal points and aren't necessary important to the enjoyment of the comics, but I'd still like a little more substance behind the pencil work.

The difficulty, I'm sorry to say, is the writing. Well first the story is obviously inspired by both V for Vendetta and The Dark Knight Strikes Again. There are other examples. but those two should give you the right impression. If you're not familiar with them think Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four meets comic book characters. We've seen it all before, right down to the average man on the street joining up with the heroes and learning all about them.

Now an exceptional writer can take this sort of fairly bland premise and make it interesting. In all fairness there is quite bit left to the story so there is more than enough time to that. My problem here is in that 23 pages per issue I mentioned earlier.

That means we're 46 pages in and there is nothing I couldn't figure out or deduce from the 8 preview pages. Yes the characters are a little more than the usual two dimensional fare and little bits 'n' pieces have the taint of interesting ideas, but nothing grabs you like it should. A few nice moments come from a handful of in jokes and references scattered across the work, but they are few and far between and are almost there in spite of the story.

The biggest problem though comes in the second issue and it is one I've come across in my own work. Size of cast. A small, tightly knit, cast of characters gives you more time to explore and flesh each one of them out. That means more empathy from the reader. Here we have a massive cast that just appears out of nowhere. Each one's look inspired by other, main stream, heroes. Where did they come from? Who are they? Do any of them have special powers? These are questions that are just going to get in the way of developing the people we should care about. In a self contained story the less characters the better. Supporting roles follow the same rule, less is often more.

Another thing is it's a little too preachy. A good story needs a moral, a lesson to teach. It gives the story direction, a heart and can hold it all together, but that's not what a story's all about. It's also about people. People we care about, people we are made to care about. Here we have a message, but we're sort of missing the caring about people side of things.

So, the first two issues don't live up to their potential. With luck, and my faith in the writer, it may pick up and there are hints of something bigger on the horizon, but for now leave it be. Don't get me wrong it's not bad, I don't regret buying it... I would just like to enjoy it a little more. Maybe that will come in future issues and I'll be getting them as well, mostly to support the writer and independent comics in general.

If you want to support the writer and his work, have a look at his blog:- http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/

PS His Web-Comic, Lightbringer, is however much better. Give it a read

Causing mental PAIN

Still some how better than Episode 1: