As a fan of Ashley Wood's fine art and comics (remember my Automatic Kafka post?), I'm pretty excited about the beautiful Bertie combat bot that he's doing with Klim at Bigshot Toyworks. It's truly a work of art... and it'll be priced as one. Rumor has it this piece will be selling for somewhere between $200-$300.

Generally toys of that price are out of my price range. I'll have to make an exception with this one!

MORE UPDATES CAN BE SEEN ON ASHLEY WOOD'S BLOG (CLICK HERE).

By the way, my favorite McFarlane figure is the Hellspawn figure based on Ashley Wood's cover (the original Mandarin Spawn is a close second!).

I admire how ambitious Trent Reznor's been with the freedoms of internet downloads. First he produced and released Saul Williams Niggy Tardust, now he's released a Nine Inch Nails instrumental album called "Ghosts".

You can download the first 9 tracks free. If you like what you hear, you can download the remainder of the album (a total of 36 tracks) for just $5. The download is VERRRY SLOOOW. Nonetheless it's a very nice package. In addition to the songs, you get a huge library of beautiful images, a pdf Album, and tons of promotional banners and logos that you can post to the web.

I'm not the hugest NIN fan, but really like what I've heard from the free 9 tracks that I downloaded. Ambient, sad, crisp... all the things that make a NIN production work EXCEPT Reznor's voice. And I don't mind that... it makes you appreciate how the music breathes. It's beautiful stuff... even though NIN is kind of known for their Goth/Electronica sound, this really fits nicely alongside my favorite Hip Hop Producers like DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, and El-P. It's all very beautiful, introspective, and sad.

I like the free stuff, so I'm definitely going to spend the extra $5 for the entire album.

YOU CAN FIND THE FREE DOWNLOAD HERE (JUST CLICK ON ORDER)

No More Heroes. On the Nintendo Wii. By Grasshopper Studios (same guys that made Capcom's Killer 7 Game).

What'd I think? HOT DAMN.

This game brings me back to when I was a little kid playing games like Final Fight and Strider in the Arcades. Those games ruined me.

In 1990, Capcom beat-em-up games dripped with style. You could feel a familiarity in design to stuff you'd see in American films... but they stylistically made a very strange turn that brought a wackiness that exuded a superior sense of Japanese cool. When I had enough quarters to play either game, I felt "cool" while playing. Half the time I had no clue what buttons to push or where I had to go. In fact, I ended up dying in an absurdly short amount of time (HEY, I WAS 12 YEARS OLD). But it didn't matter. Because in those 30 seconds of playing, I felt like the baddest motherfucker to ever live.

Maybe it says something about me sexually, but I loved being the lean and mean guys like Strider Hiryu or Final Fight's Guy. There was something so cool about a dude with a nimble, almost feminine frame, that could beat the living shit out of hyper-steroid monstrosities. So, time and again, I'd get some quarters and play on.

When I play "No More Heroes" I get a wild adrenaline rush that brings me back to my days playing those classic Capcom Beat-Em-Ups. It's like they took everything that induced that panicked fever I experienced as a 12 year old and allowed it to aged like Scotch alcohol to complement the more jaded tastes of the 29 year old me. The nice thing is the aging occurs with full awareness of what has happened in those 25+ years. You have bits of Punk rock, Westernized otaku culture, drugs, sexuality, Tarantino, Grand Theft Auto, Lucha Libre (YES!) and a bunch of other things to build upon and reinterpret through that super-cool Japanese designer lens that I once believed in.

The total package is more than the sum of it's parts. There are definite flaws like the dated graphics and uninteresting overworld... but the game cleverly wears it's problems on it's sleeve making them a quirky complement to the overall experience.

The action-based gameplay gives you a very visceral experience with the Wii controls. Integrating motion controls to finish off opponents is very satisfying. It's reasonably deep and keeps you coming back for more by steadily introducing new environments, enemies, and wrestling moves.

The mini-game jobs you're given are a bit stupid but I liked the way they are all based around basic Wii motion controls. It also gives you a much deserved rest from the frantic battles.

The way I see it is: the battles are hot sex. The stuff in between are the cigarette breaks. If Wii games are wallets, "No More Heroes" the one that has "one bad mother fucker" written across the top.

We just got some previews of the Italian version of Lucha Libre #1. It's pretty cool seeing Jerry's design and Bill's art translated in Italian.

We ain't stopping 'til we have Lucha Libre comics in Chinese! ;-)