Weekly Recap - July 31st, 2010

Intro/Random:
After she became obsessed with the iPhone app "Pocket God" I have introduced my daughter to The Sims. That should keep her busy for a while. (Actually, she got bored with The Sims - too many things to figure out - but she loves Pocket God)

Cleared cached, turned off hardware acceleration, video still choppy on my computer. I believe the problem is "my computer is old" which is harder to fix.

Comics I Read This Week:
Thor Mighty Avenger #2 - Really loving the artwork on this book by Chris Samnee, and the all-ages, new-reader approach to Thor by Langridge is interesting.

Comics Retailing Thoughts of the Week:
Scott Pilgrim Vol 6 sold out in its first week, but Oni and Diamond managed to get it back in print before we sold out at the store... which is not how things usually go with books that sell out fast. Kudos to them for making sure the books are available for sale at the peak of movie interest.

Wish it was common. Because now probably isn't the best time for Thor Volume 1 by Straczynski to be out of print... and it's been out of print for at least a month. And kind of surprised Irredeemable Volume 1 has been out of print this long, too.

Interesting article on the closing of Rocketship. Alex seems very sanguine about the whole thing. If Rogues Gallery ever closes, my exit interview will be insane and no doubt profane.

Comics News:
Talking comics retail with Brandon from Austin Books, Eric from Tribe and the LEOG guys... this was a lot of fun to record, hopefully it's fun to listen to.

Stabbing at increasingly crowded Comicon Hall H. Had to happen eventually.

That said, I'm glad to see Comicon has been going so well for many of my friends, and particularly happy for Rob Guillory and John Layman who are clearly the king and queen of this year's Con. If you discount Oni, Edgar Wright and Bryan Lee O'Malley, who clearly win at Comicon-ing thanks to Scott Pilgrim.

Also out of San Diego, the news that Dwayne McDuffie is helming an animated adaptation of All-Star Superman is spectacularly awesome news.

Alright, Ryan Reynolds... you had me at saying the oath for the little kid. I guess you can be Green Lantern.

Aaannd it looks like I won't be going to Comicon next year, either. Or possibly ever again. It's not that I couldn't get a retailer pass, it's that if it's going to be this crowded, I'm out.

Gaming:
I had to prep and run two D&D games (Chaos Scar and Eberron) this week. Not much Transformers getting played this week... although I did make time for a little single-player Decepticon and a co-op Autobot game.

TV/Movies:
I thought it'd be the Chuck panel, but it turns out this is the panel I'm most sad I missed at Comicon. And clearly, my Comicon interest is actually mostly TV-related.

Watched one of the Cougar Town reruns on the DVR. Alan Sepinwall was right. Against all odds, this show (with the *horrible* name and premise) turned into a really funny comedy about midseason.

Speaking of Sepinwall, here's his interview of Donald Glover & Danny Pudi of Community outside San Diego Comicon.

New episode of LOUIE had Matthew Broderick as a guest star, and he was great. But the opening bit with Louie dealing with a heckler was one of the foulest, funniest, cringe-worthy comedy I've seen outside of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

OK, now I've seen the Thor trailer and... damn. Skepticism gone. That was a pretty damn good trailer.

Other Links:
I love this Bollywood-themed video for The Guild. Maybe even more than "Do You Want To Date My Avatar?"

What we have here is some weapons-grade crazy, folks.

Funniest thing I've seen on the Internet in weeks.