Jamie Wakefield

Did you know we're moving back to Vermont? Movers come tomorrow. The apartment will have paper plates, two computers, a bed and a couch. For four days before we fly home. Internet right now is through what's known as a "hotspot" on Wendy's iPhone, which, through 3G, provides internet access. Since we have exceeded our limit on fast internet bandwidth speed, we're stuck with dial-up like internet access. Hence, very few updates. Quick rambles: We will be home late the 17th. The little dog is starting to show signs of age, his hearing seems gone and the four flights of steps are murder on him. He will be happy to be home to the green green grass of Vermont and four steps to get inside the house. Wendy quit reading "A Dance with Dragons" yesterday. I don't blame her one bit. Shame on you George "Robert Jordan" Martin. (Please sir, in your next book can you stop focusing so much on peeing, torture, whining and food? Thanks.) ...

One of the eternal questions. – Who is better/who would you want to be – Superman or Batman? I would prefer to be Superman. I don’t like to fail. One thing people say is that Batman is more realistic than Superman and today, it occurred to me, that is just not true. How long do you think you would survive dressed as a bat fighting against guys with guns? Realistically you would last about one crime fighting night before being shot. If you survived that and persisted in your efforts and actually made yourself a nuisance, you would be killed. There’s a reason the police travel in pairs and call for backup when faced with superior numbers. “Where’s your detective skills now Bats?” BLAM! It is easier for me to believe that an alien would have powers above those of normal men than it is for me to believe a guy can take out ten gun-wielding mobsters using only boomerangs and martial arts. If given the choice, I would choose to fly, be super strong, and immune to gunfire. In fact, since I hat...

Wouldn’t it be cool if we had Superheroes? No. No it wouldn’t be. Since I sometimes get nauseas from reading too much a few days after each eye surgery, I stocked up on a few things to watch. One of those things was Justice League Unlimited animated clips from YouTube. There are some things that work better in print than they do in animation or films and vice versa of course. One of those things is battles. If Superman is fighting Doomsday in the middle of Metropolis, thousands of people are going to die. The animated JLU illustrates this in almost every episode with the massive destruction of property when two super humans fight. Take a look at this clip of Superman fighting another good guy, Captain Marvel aka Shazam. If I remember correctly, this is a new housing project so no one is actually in those buildings. But in many other episodes, fights like this happen in well populated downtown and there are people inside those buildings. All of those people are dead or maimed for life....

I would pay cash money to see the guys who did this trailer make a movie. http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-who-dc-universe/702050 The game itself is done by the guys who did City of Heroes, which I enjoyed for about six months. I'm pretty sure the game won't look like that trailer, but it makes me want to play it anyway. I think that is the best trailer I have ever seen. Thanks to Chris McMahon for showing the link to me.

For those of you into comics, these past couple of days are for you. Read the post before this one and then make sure to read Mr. Fantastic’s response in the comments section. His comment is better than the blog post, with links to back up his points. Really, really well done. Go read that then come back here. One of my failings is, I don’t create enough of a sense of community by not replying enough to comments. I will work on improving that. Mr. Fantastic, 1) Excellent points on Superman. I do have to disagree on the last part though. I like to read about stiff white bread characters. Superman and Captain America are my two favorite ongoing characters. Well, I haven’t read their comics in years because they have been shite, but when written well, they are my favorites. 2) I think Iron Man was an Alcoholic before Speedy became addicted to heroin, but I might be wrong on that. Your kung-fu is strong, so you’re probably right. 3) Marvelman aka Miracleman is one of my favorite characters...

I have been reading The Authority trades in my spare time. Reading The Authority opens my eyes a lot to what could really be happening in comics, which is, pretty much, anything you can imagine. It’s actually poorly written, but it does stretch the bounds of the imagination. They have a Superhero called Apollo who is, essentially, Superman. He shoots beams from his eyes, can lift buildings, fly in space and swim in lava. He is one of the least powerful member of the team. The villains they face are like nothing the DC universe has ever seen. A man so powerful he can snuff out the sun or stop time forever. There is a hero who can command entire cities to attack whoever he wants, including entire armies, by sucking them inside building walls or bludgeoning them with bricks and mortar. Imagine New York City attacking an invading force of 10,000 soldiers. There is an alien being that needs to be defeated that is essential God, as in, it created the Earth and has returned. It is so large it...

Why doesn't Galactus just get the Infinity Gauntlet and the Cosmic Cube? If I was Galactus, that's what I would do.

You know, I was actually working on a book a few minutes ago, but I had to take a quick break to alert you to this: http://ifanboy.com/podcasts/video/iFanboy_-_Episode__129_-_Miracleman This is a video podcast about Miracleman. My most favoritest comic book character ever. He’s a cheap rip off of Captain Marvel (who the general public will know as Shazam) who is a cheap rip off of Superman. But Alan Moore and his artists took the material to someplace deep, philosophical, brutal, fierce, and magical. They took a completely stupid concept and Alan Moore ran with it. He made it into something logical, believable, and it took your breath away. A host of artists worked on it, some better than others, but in general, the art was a labor of love for these guys and it showed. Because of rights disputes to who owned the character, the issues stopped at 24. The next issue is actually all written and drawn but not colored yet. The creator is fighting for his right to publish it but it’s been tie...

It is eleven oh one p.m. I am composing this in my head and cannot sleep. Beside me, Wendy is blissfully oblivious, sleeping deeply as is her gift. The new lights above my head are dimmed to almost nothingness. It is wonderful. Serene. Wendy thinks of all the right details. It is nine a.m. the previous morning. Wendy is reading on her iPhone next to me and I know I should get up. I have a lot to do in the next few hours. I slumber as long as my body lets me then take a cold shower and start work. Seven hours from now I will be asleep on a plane in a haze and Wendy will be softly crying in the seat next to me. I will be unaware of this fact until she tells me four hours later. It is eleven oh seven Middlebury time. I have been awake for twenty-two hours. I get up and can’t find my glasses but must compose this note. Wait. I have a spare pair in my computer bag. It is ten-thirty a.m. I have put away the dishes, closed and shuttered all the windows, taken the trash downstairs, weighed the...

"Never compromise. Not even in the face of armageddon." - Rorshack. I have always tried to live my life by this standard, and yet, it is impossible and unrealistic. Nice thought though. sigh I have found the Watchmen movie - moving, emotional, wonderful, terrrible, awful and fantastic. I don't understand the choices the director made in making the movie ultra violent, sleek, super-heroic and... something it is not. I found parts of it beautiful though. The entire sequence of Jon turning into Dr Manhatten was... stunning. Beautiful. Perfectly translated. Dan being impotent without his costume was also a perfect translation of the comic. Other parts fell short for me. The change to the ending was... a mistake. It made no sense to me. The original Alan Moore ending made more sense. The sleek, skin tight costumes made no sense. Rorshack both worked and was a change. It's very late. I wish I could sleep.

I haven't finished it yet, so excuse me for my premature ejacu-reaction, but it doesn't feel right to me. There are problems and the first that strikes me is not that important, but the one I just watched, so, yay, you get to hear about that first. Rorshack is in prison. He is threatened in the food line by a large man with a shank who wants to add Rorshack's "autograph" to his shank. Rorshack kicks his ass and badly burns him with hot fryer fat and then proclaims to everyone watching - "You don't understand. You think I'm locked up here with you. You're wrong. You're locked up here with me!" Sorry, bad directing. This should have been a tight shot of Rorshack's face screaming this line as security restrains him. They should have shown other terrified prisoners. They should have shown that Rorshack was a danger to them. They should have shown that Rorshack was special, dangerous, intense, mad and someone to be feared. What they showed...

As promised – all the topics I said I would cover. And I have more, like answering comments, but that will have to be later. Maybe. Don’t want to crit everyone with a wall of text again… Why pistons = thrusting by Wendy. Wendy and I are sitting at the terrace of (translated from the Spanish) “The Ancient King of the Wines.” Oddly enough, I am having a coffee. A tattooed man parks his motorcycle on the sidewalk in front of us, briefly steps inside and then comes back out five minutes later. He is about fifty and looks the part of a man who beat up his step-dad at sixteen, hopped on his bike and never looked back. “That’s a Harley.” “How can you tell?” “Um, 1. Look at that guy, and 2. The sound. Harleys' only have two cylinders. They use an ancient design that creates a loud, distinctive sound. While other manufacturers try to improve their design, making them more quiet and fuel efficient, Harley is more concerned with their unique sound." Wendy knows pretty much everything ab...

I finished the last of the Twilight books and was pleased that I had read them. While not stunning works of fiction, I do have to say they held my attention and I read them every free chance I had. I think one of the reasons I liked them so much was because it was more than a Buffy clone but more like reading Vampires/Werewolves/ and Superheroes. Especially the last book of the series. The final showdown was like Legion of Super-Heroes VS Legion of Super-Villains. With horse sized wolves thrown in for good measure. That sounds cool just typing it. Now I have the intern (Diana) addicted as well. Unlike Wendy and I, she actually loved the first book. I consider the first book something you have to suffer through (like braces) in order to get the set-up for the next three books which I thought well worth it. She’s on book three already. As for my writing, I continue to send out query letters to agents. Last week I got my first hit with an agent asking to see a partial. If she likes the pa...

So we saw Iron man last week. And like the rest of the world, we liked it. It has some great lines, some great acting and I never get sick of looking at Gwyneth Paltro. There were a number of times when we belly laughed. Hard. It was good stuff, but really, am I telling you something you don’t know? Two days ago we watched X-Men then last night we watched X-Men II. These remain for me the best Superhero movies in my humble opinion. The reasons may surprise you. 1. I’m very old. Which means that I actually lived and read the classic Claremont X-Men that the movies are “mostly” based on. 2. No Origins. Bang, right to the action. 3. Lots of action. 4. Almost perfect casting. Let’s review the movies that rock for Superhero films. Spiderman – Origin story. Batman Begins – Origin story. Ironman – Origin story. Hulk – Origin story. Ha ha, of course I’m kidding, Hulk wasn’t a movie that rocked, that movie blew pink chunks! Which brings us to our movies that sucked ass – Hul...

All in one 24 hour period. Geeking out. My private boards have been quiet lately. They used to be used mainly for talking about whatever game it was we were playing. Organizing dungeon crawls, explaining the reasons why you want to start with a hundred wisdom when making a new character in Asheron’s Call, debating what we were going to do about Blood, why Thanes are the best class ever and everyone should make one, no no, why Paladins are the best class and if everyone made one we could do epic content solo, god damn it I’m sick of gaming and can’t wait for WOW to come out so we can all game together again. Ah, good times, good times. Geek times. The boards have been quiet lately as many of us have moved on to other things, like Spain or sailing around the world or having a child or going back to college or doing a triple tour of duty in Iraq. Sure, some people still play WoW and those discussions are cool, but not like the old days of a dozen posts a day discussing ad infinitum the d...