You are now entering a disconnected ramblings zone.
What a lean week for comics. The only thing I’m particularly excited about is SLEEPER SEASON TWO. (And maybe EX MACHINA, if Gary was able to re-order it). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I’ve decided to limit the number of comics I review in an average week.
After writing eight of what I think of as full-length reviews last week, my inner slouch objected. So for a while, at least, I’ll be cutting back to four or five per week, trying to focus more on titles in transition. By that I mean books that are either significantly better or worse than they’ve been lately, new titles, titles with different creative teams, titles I’ve arbitrarily decided don’t get enough attention, and titles meeting any one of a number of other vaguely defined standards I haven’t thought of yet.
Of course, spending less on American comics means I can justify stocking up on more manga. I’m in the midst of the first volume of PLANETES (liking it lots), may have another volume of IRON WOK JAN! in my file, and can always heed the siren call (“Gero… gero… gero…”) of SGT. FROG Vol. 3. Plus, lots of folks have given me some great recommendations for other titles to try.
Or, I can just go back down to the basement and waste more of my life with BALDUR’S GATE II: THE SHADOWS OF AMN. Honestly, I’ve never been much of a gamer in the traditional sense. I didn’t have much patience for the dice-and-notepads style of Dungeons and Dragons when I was in high school, though the hacking and slashing and zapping and looting always appealed to me. The BG games spare me all that math, though I’m continually impressed with the level of calculus I’ve seen other people employ to achieve maximum gaming satisfaction.
Oh, and on the subject of BG II, I recently had a feline-related problem. While playing along (hack slash zap loot!), one of my cats walked across the keyboard and made the game menus disappear. With no idea how to correct this problem, I turned to the Web, e-mailing technical support and also posting a query to alt.games.baldurs-gate. Within hours, a kind soul at the newsgroup replied with a friendly “hit the ‘h’ key,” leaving off the deserved “you idiot.” Days later, technical support answered the same question by suggesting I upgrade my video card.