Sugar-Coated Brain Death

Kick. Splode. Blog.

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Location: California, United States

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Mecha vs. Kaiju

Do you like pen-and-paper RPGs?

Do you like giant monsters?

Do you like mecha? (that would be giant robot-style suits of battle armor a la Voltron to you gaijin in the audience)

If you answered yes to any of the above questions (and if you didn't, what the heck are you doing here?), you owe it to yourself to check out my pal John's Mecha vs. Kaiju; a setting for Green Ronin's True20 RPG. MvK was one of just four such settings selected by Green Ronin for inclusion in the True20 core rulebook.

So check it out, will ya? If you don't, the terrorists giant monsters win.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Here Goes Nothing...

Hello and welcome. The 'No Smoking' light has been turned off, but please do keep your tray tables in the upright position. This is my first crack at this 'blogging' thing all the cool kids are on about, so there's bound to be some turbulence.

The title of this here parcel of virtual space has its origins in a conversation I had with a pal of mine, CW of Ambushblog fame, in which I opined that a cable channel featuring nothing but fight scenes from Sentai shows and eurotrance music videos would instantly be the...Best. TV. Channel. Evar.

CW reacted like any even remotely sane person would when confronted with such a brain-scarring vision -- with abject horror and poisonous contempt.

"That would be great," was his deadpan reply. "You could call it Sugar-Coated Brain Death."

Well, nobody is going to front me the $$$ to start my own network anytime soon, but SCBD is just too cool a name to let lie around unclaimed, unloved, and otherwise neglected. So I have decided to repurpose it as the online platform for my pop-culture blather. Most of this blather will concern my thoughts about comic books, though I'll also touch on what I'm currently digging (or not digging, as the case may be) in TV, movies, and (occasionally) music as well.

Here at SCBD, the focus will be on fun. Let other online fora worry about the incessant raising or lowering of various bars or whether to push comics, comix, manga, etc. forward, backward, sideways, or headlong into the whirling blades of the nearest woodchipper. Let other bloggers post their 10,000 word dissections of the latest issue of MISANTHROPIC ALTCOMIX CAVALCADE.

This blog will focus on the types of comics that bring me joy. Specifically the sort of comics that feature liberal doses of shooting, kicking, and things blowing up. Some of this violence will be perpetrated by folks wearing capes and/or colorful outfits, some of it won't.

This isn't to say that I'll always be a ray of sunshine into your otherwise dreary online lives, or that I'll tie myself in knots trying to put a positive spin on even the most exerable work that crosses my path.

It's also not to say that you'll never see me praise a non-supers/action-type book either. For example, I'm a big fan of Tom Beland's True Story, Swear To God -- and that has yet to feature so much as a car chase...though one can always hope, I suppose.

But, in general: Kicking, shooting, samurai swords, giant robots, laser blasts, and lots of stuff exploding = My definition of good, All-American, comics entertainment. To paraphrase the not always good, never All-American Warren Ellis -- that is What I Want.

There is, in my not so humble opinion, a lot of really enjoyable work being done in the comics field these days. I look forward to discussing it here.