The amazing Mega Man fan art by Kiniku reminded me of two things: 1. How much I love Mega Man character designs. 2. How much I love Chibi-style characters.

The Mega Man games are a weird thing for me. It's one of those game series that I have tried so hard to LOVE but that I just cannot get into. The character designs are consistently awesome and the overall artistic style in the games is beautiful. But the basic game design doesn't work for me. My main issue with them is that I HATE how you can only shoot your gun in one direction. It'd be okay if the overall game design was built with some level of respect to this limitation... but the games consistently do the opposite; positioning various enemies in ways that are intentionally a few degrees above or below your shooting range. In fact, the entire Mega Man world is built around annoying design choices whose sole intention is to make things punishingly harder. You know what I'm talking about! Stuff like disappearing platforms whose patterns you have to memorize. Or, what about that ridiculous series of huge lasers that shoot at you during the second half of Mega Man 2's Flash Man stage!? I love hard games... but stuff like that was enough to make me quit on the series.

But... I so, so want to love those games...

Oh well, I can just STARE at the beautiful characters and enjoy them for their beautiful designs!

I'm also a big fan of Chibi-style art. For those that haven't heard of "Chibi", the word is slang in Japanese for a short person. It is also a term for cute, fat miniature versions of characters. The first time I recall seeing something in this style was when I was in Japan and discovered the Super Deformed Gundam toys on my first visit to Japan (that was in 1990). My adolescent brain went crazy for that stuff!

The Chibi-style Mega Man designs of the PSP Mega Man game (Powered Up) is a lovely take on the Mega Man characters... but I don't think it works from a gameplay stand point. When you see those big-headed characters walking around in a Polygon rendered game, it reminds you of how awkward it'd be for such a big-headed character to move around. It also gives Mega Man's gun a very weird angle from which to shoot.

Since I'm not into playing the game, though, the design choice is a lovely reason for me to salivate over cute reinterpretations of Mega Man's already beautiful designs. Keep in mind that Powered Up is an OLD PSP game (it came out in 2006)... but I feel the look still feels refreshing. That recent Kiniku's art (and my old buddy's mention of Powered Up) just reminded me of how much I loved the look!

This past Saturday, Humanoids Publisher Fabrice Giger had the entire  Humanoids US team over for a pleasant evening of food amongst friends  and family. It was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting both  Bruno (a long-time Editor with Les Humanoides Associes) and Ladronn.

As a fan of Ladronn's work, it was wonderful to have a conversation  with him about his career and to see his original pages in person.

What immediately impressed me was the small scale at which Ladronn  was doing the FINAL INCAL pages. Ladronn is known for the immense detail  he puts into every panel of his pages. Yet, his original art pages are  only about 10% larger than a standard European comic album page. Looking  at the pages up close, it was unfathomable how Ladronn balances detail  and clarity, particularly at such a small scale.

Ladronn also showed us the meticulate wire-frame computer models he  created of various rooms and spacecraft included in the FINAL INCAL.  He'd often uses the models as reference for his final illustrations; but  the models themselves were fully realized in both detail and  proportion. Many of them were recreations of Moebius' original designs  from previous books in the series. Ladronn was painstakingly faithful to  Moebius' original designs... but he'd often have to design portions of  the ships/rooms that were never shown in the comic.

I also had a nice conversation with him about his fondly remembered  run on Marvel's Cable with Joe Casey. He mentioned that the first sample  pages he sent to Marvel prior to getting hired had a very strong  Moebius-influence. Marvel wasn't interested. The second time around, he  decided to give his art a more Kirby aesthetic and finally got some  attention from the Marvel editorial team.

Ladronn cringes a bit when he looks at the Cable art (I think he's  crazy!). Beyond the Kirby influence, there was a lot of inspiration from  Steranko (particularly in the AGENT 18: NEMESIS CONTRACT story). He  said the guest-appearance of Black Panther and Klaw in issue #54 was a  birthday gift from Casey. Casey had earlier asked Ladronn what were some  of his favorite Marvel heroes and villains. Ladronn told him Black  Panther and Klaw. On his birthday, Casey sent him the script for issue  #54. Apparently, the Editorial stuff did not want Casey and Ladronn to  have Black Panther appear in the Cable comic... but Casey fought long  and hard to make it happen.

Overall, a very lovely evening with the entire Humanoids team and the amazing Ladronn!

METAL GEAR SOLID 4? Pass. HALO 3? Pass. CASTLE CRASHERS? Argh... but (hesitantly) pass. SCOTT PILGRIM? NOOO!!! Why oh why, gaming gods, must you make me suffer, so!? That pretty much sums up my feelings about the SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD video game that debuts on PSN today.

I'm a long time Scott Pilgrim fan. I've been buying the comic since it's debut. But I wouldn't call myself a Scott Pilgrim fanatic. The ideas are all there... but it's light-hearted free-form approach to both the narrative and artwork make it an introduction to a great concept that is executed in the reader's imagination. The rules of the world are elusive. The artworks often feels rushed. But BEHIND it all there is something fresh, exciting, and brilliant.

I'm a bit shocked and pleasantly surprised that many talented people saw BEYOND the comic. As such, we're soon to be blessed with both an ambitious film and beat-em-up video game.

Fans of Paul Robertson's INSANE sprite animations (that includes TEQUILA's Gobi) DREAM of seeing his unfiltered imagination utilized in a sprite-based videogame. The fandom for Anamanaguchi's chiptune music is just as strong. So the pairing of the two artists on a Scott Pilgrim game should be like Peanut Butter & Jelly!

CLICK HERE for interview with Scott Pilgrim creator/cartoonist Bryan O'Malley and director Edgar Wright regarding the videogame.

Here's an interesting 40-second clip of Genndy Tartakovsky's SYM-BIONIC TITAN animated series. The series will debut on the Cartoon Network September 2010. With Genndy's great success creating hit animation shows including DEXTER'S LAB, POWERPUFF GIRLS, and SAMURAI JACK, there's sure to be high expectations for the project.

On the one hand, I am very excited by the concept. As a fan of Japanese Mecha, I am in full support of a US-developed Super Robot show! I am also a big fan of Tartakovsky's angular illustration style.

On the other hand, this show seems to be taking some conventional choices that hide the more radical stylings that Tartakovsky's animations are known for. The Titan robot's animations are based on computer renders. This gives the show a 3D feel that is not typically associated with Tartakovsky's previous shows.

I love the robot design. I just hope some of that Genndy Tartakovsky "style" is better showcased when the show debuts in September.

One of the things I picked up at SDCC this year was the complete trade paperback run of Grant Morrison's NEW X-MEN. I had initially read the first 5 issues and bits and pieces in the first 1/3 of Morrision's memorable run on Marvel's most popular comic series during the initial release from 2001 to 2004. The constantly changing artists led me to giving up on following the series with the intention of reading it in TPBs. Six years later, I still hadn't read it. It was due time to change that!

I've never been a devoted X-men fan. I like the concept and characters but found its immense cast of characters intimidating to delve into. I remember picking up Jim Lee's first issue of the X-men (the one with that really cool gatefold cover) as a young teenager and loved the art. During my college years, I read the early Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne issues in the affordable black & white Essential collections Marvel puts out of their older books. Beyond that, I'd irregularly buy and read a random issue of X-men, every time concluding it just wasn't my thing.

I thought what Byrne and Claremont did on the book was brilliant... but something felt lost once Byrne left the series. Without Byrne, Claremont's stories felt a bit too preachy and his large cast of characters and labyrinthine plots were overwhelming. Unlike many X-men fans, I also got really annoyed with the Kitty Pryde character.

I'm a big Grant Morrison fan. I've picked up all his Vertigo books and pretty much all the books he's done at Marvel and DC AFTER X-men. X-men was a big hole that, I guess, was so large (we're talking over 40 issues of material!) that I was having a very hard time delving into it.

Now that I have, I wish I read them sooner!

Morrison builds upon and concludes many of the concepts introduced into the X-men universe in clever ways that bring new life to the concept. One of the biggest plot points (the one dealing with Xorn's true nature) did not work for me. But the rest of them were ambitious and refreshing. When reading the entire run over the span of a couple of weeks, the theme of evolution becomes very clear. At its core, X-men is a fantasy about the evolution of humanity... so it's a natural theme to the overarching story. My favorites include:

1. Sentinels (robots built by humans to kill mutants) being programmed to autonomously evolve by replicating themselves using whatever materials they could find around. Sentinels self-replicating with crazy materials like army tanks was cool. Sentinels getting smart enough to replicate themselves as nanotech mutant viruses was even cooler.

2. Suggesting that Wolverine's codename of Weapon X, was the roman numeral for 10. Wolverine was the tenth iteration of some super-secret soldier experiment. They were now up to a Weapon 15! Fantomex as Weapon 13 was pretty cool. I also thought it was nifty to suggest that Captain America was Weapon 2.

3. Thinking that humans would react to their potential extinction by evolving in a manner that humans know best: using tools. Knowing that mutants were naturally superior to human beings, a cult of human beings called the U-Men decide to kill mutants and graft their mutant parts to their own bodies. It's like plastic surgery; only instead of implanting fake boobs, they'd replace their eyeballs with mutant eyeballs that can shoot laser blasts.

4. Having different established mutant characters evolve over several stages. If mutants often discover their powers as an adolescent, wouldn't it be possible for them to evolve at various stages of their lifetime? Morrison claims this is the explanation for Jean Grey's occasional Phoenix powers. He also evolves Beast into an even more animalistic form (one that demands he use a litter box to poop in!) and introduces White Queen Emma Frost, with the ability transform her skin to a nearly impenetrable diamond form.

The only thing that could have made this comic better is a regular monthly artist. Quitely would have been great (but we all know if he was to do the entire run, he'd STILL be doing art for the series!). I also really liked what Igor Kordey was doing (even though most of the X-men fans at the time HATED what he was doing). A strongly recommended read for any fans of superhero comics.

I decided to play VIEWTIFUL JOE again. I've had the Gamecube version since it's release, but have not beaten the game.  I'm hoping to FINALLY beat it! The game was released 7 years ago (really!?)... but it still looks great. Stylized graphics, particularly tasteful approaches to it, tend to age well. VIEWTIFUL JOE is proof of that.

I'm still a bit confused as to the overall visual tone of the game. The main character's hero design is clearly inspired by Japanese Super Sentai characters (the best known version of this in the US are the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). By contrast, in human form, the main character looks like a Limp Bizkit reject. Also, the villains have a bit of a metal/punk/rock vibe to them.So, who's the intended audience? The American audience that appreciate the odd rock vibe of the game have very little awareness of the Super Sentai design. At the same time, Japanese fans with an appreciation of Sentai may not enjoy the American influences.

Despite all that, it's an interesting experiment. It's fun to play and has a great quirky style... now I've just got to find some time to actually beat the game!