Commissioner Gordon: Battle for the Cowl

Commissioner Gordon: Battle for the Cowl
Gordon and some of the GCPD deal with riots because there’s no batman to sort things out. The art is quite nice and Gordon versus Mr Freeze has Freeze using his freeze ray solve all his problems (as usual). Bit on the average side here, Freeze is a bit too super for a good GCPD book.

New Avengers #51

New Avengers #51

Well Dr. Strange is having a bit of a magical mentor moment setting up supernatural things to come. Great dialogue as the issue of Spiderman’s identity and the new avengers is resolved and more than one plot is set up. I'm really quite enjoying this and becoming fond of Bendis's writing, I loved the Jessica Jones and Spiderman conversation.

RPG Review: All Flesh Must Be Eaten (Revised Edition)

All Flesh Must Be Eaten
The Zombie Suvival Roleplaying Game - Revised Edition

All Flesh Must Be Eaten (AFMBE) is a Zombie Survival Roleplaying Game. It has a great range of options for bother zombie creation and characters. The system is simple but can be made more complicated for those who want more combat related stuff.

Characters are built with points based on what they are; Norm, Survivor and Inspired. Norms are your bog standard person of the street, Survivor’s are tougher with more points and the inspired a like norms but have some points to spend on mystic stuff. I don’t think you really need the Inspired for your good old fashioned Dawn of the Dead style game, but they give you options for some supernatural stuff. Dice rolling is taken down to one mechanic roll a d10 add your skill to the roll if your get a 9 or above you succeed. Modifiers are added to show difficultly and penalties are added when taking more than one action. So if you’re dodging more than 4 zombies and fighting you're brainmeat.

Building your zombie is the most fun section for GMs. What does it eat, how fast and how does it move, where do little zombies come from and how smart are they. Most importantly you can choose your zombie’s weak spot (if it has one); I personally have to go with the classic headshot. At the end of the process it’s gauged how dangerous your zombie is to players.

Deadworlds are the sample campaign settings given to you in 4 or so pages. They give you what happened to cause the dead to rise and your sample zombie for that setting. Detailed is to what extent humans have dealt with things and a nice bit of fiction to give a flavour for that setting.

There is also at the back a conversion guide and rules for the game in D20 modern. Nice that it is added but unnecessary. The layout is clear and easy to read. The art translates well as black, white and shapes of gray. The book itself is a nice hard back slight smaller than most RPG books and a bit lighter (a big plus).

On the whole All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a solid survival zombie game. It could do with more ideas for defences and the like for players (but I hear the player’s handbook is more or less that). With just this and the suggested reading of the Zombie Survival Guide a good campaign of a Zombie Apocalypse could be run quite successfully.

Groom Lake #1

Groom Lake #1
Aliens, robots and secret agencys with some humour thrown in. The art is quite grim and something you expect to see in a horror title. I'm not sure if the humour works yet, I'll give the next issue a go before giving up on this new IDW title.

Invincible #60

Invincible #60
A "big event" in one issue with a bog load of guest characters (most of which I had no idea were in the Invincible universe). A returning villain and loads of alternate evil versions of Invincible, an easy on the brain premise. Art is nicely consistent and the dialogue remains high-quality, Invincible remains enjoyable even with a big event.

Dark Avengers #3

Dark Avengers #3
The Dark Avengers fight Dr. Doom's battles for him as Morgana Le Fay has him helpless. A large section of the issue has a dialogue between Norman Osborn and the Sentry about their psychosis (nothing interesting has been done with psycho Bob in quite some time, it's good to see some movement). The monster on villain slugfest that takes up the rest of the issue is nice and brutal.

Fall of Cthulhu : Apocalypse #4

Fall of Cthulhu : Apocalypse #4
Pretty much the end of three story arcs for Fall of Cthulhu and a worthy end at that. Fall of Cthulhu is a modern take on the Cthulhu Mythos, it's good enough to make the worst bits of the dreamlands cool. Unjust deserts are served and some things are revealed about the Harlot. Pick up the trades for the full story.

Dark Reign Files

Dark Reign Files
Another one of these list books, telling you who all the Z-list villains are and what the big guys are up to. Wow there are some stupid ones in here, check out the living cauldron guy, Diamondhead or Man-Bull for a laugh. Nothing interesting or worthwhile.

Invincible #59

Not related to the plot at large this issue deals with a new villain who really wants to be a hero. The villain has a reasonable enough motivation and the support of his family. To be honest this is all just a bit of a breather before more stuff with Omni-Man or Invincible and the invincible race of moustaches gets going.

Battle for the Cowl #1

Battle for the Cowl #1
Battle for the Cowl so far is a shuffling around of the Bat Family and a reminder of who is connected to the Bat Family. Nothing new in most of Arkam being out and about. We have also have had a batman imposter before. The writing is average and it remains to be seen if this will pay off. At least it's comprehensible.

Green Lantern Corps #34

Green Lantern Corps #34
Some good character development for Kyle and crew, in particular Sodam Yat has a great scene with his mother. The slugfest from last issue resolves. I think the art is getting better. Roll on Blackest Night.

House of Mystery #11

House of Mystery #11

House of Mystery has been something I’ve been following since it started up again, with it’s structure is short spooky story told by usually a guest of the house and a over arching plot covering the people who cannot leave the house. The house is in some “Other” place, is huge and has a Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” feel about it. The short story this issue is kind of lifeless, while the over arching plot introduces properly a new character.

Deadpool #8

Deadpool #8
Up until now this run on Deadpool has been light and funny, but the dialogue in this issue seems flat. The premise is good Deadpool versus the Norman Osborne of dark reign and as a result the new thunderbolts team. Lets hope things pick up in this crossover.

RPG Review: Star Wars Saga Edition

I like the Star Wars universe and have somewhat of a tolerance for the prequels, so with that in mind here is my review of the most recent attempt at a RPG system for Star Wars. First a small bit of background to when this book came out. This edition was written during the time that dungeons and dragons 4th ed was being written and 3.5 materials were still being released. As such after a reading you feel the best bits of both editions were fed into this project.

There 5 basic classes to choose from when making up a character, noble, scoundrel, scout, soldier and of course Jedi. All are blank slates with you choosing feats and talents tailored for each class (much like powers in 4th edition). Multiclassing seems to be encouraged. Prestige classes are well thought out and no more powerful than the basic classes. Skill ranks have been removed to be replaced with a number of skills you’re either trained with or not. All use of the mystical force is reduced down to taking a feat for powers and one skill Use the Force. So as a summary

The background material is well researched and rounded. I would have liked more on individual planets and the eras as they are where your adventures are mostly taking place but the descriptions of NPCs from the movies and other material makes up for this.

The layout and presentation of this book is top notch. The cover is a lovely print of Darth Vader in gold on black. The interior art is the best of old editions, movies photos and some nice original art.

I will be reading the campaign setting books for this edition as they seem the most extra materials. In particular the “Knights of the Old Republic” campaign setting seems like fun. My only complaint is not keeping on the wound point system from the previous edition, but that can easily be played around with. All in all a good way to play everything from your disgraced Jedi to demented droid to nefarious bounty hunter.

Solomon Grundy #1

Solomon Grundy #1

Solomon Grundy and Alan Scott are convict and keeper, trying to solve how Solomon was first killed in 7 days or his soul will be lost forever. Nice little 7 issue run here with a mystery from turn of the century Gotham and some good looking slugfests to come. I'm fond of all the characters that are included and I'm sure there's much more to come. It all has the feel of sympathy hulk story, with a dash of swampthing.

Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?

Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?
The lives of normal people in Gotham go on while Batman may be dead. Nice to see some of the bat family's support characters getting some love. Too soon to see if the Battle for the Cowl stuff will be any good, but I see Bruce Wayne back in time for the hype for the next film.