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Batman: Arkham Knight
In this game for Xbox One, PC and PS4, Batman must battle the Scarecrow, Penguin, Two-Face and Harley Quinn. The game features Rocksteady’s newly designed Batmobile, which is drivable for the first time in these games. The game is set to be released June 2.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Created by Sony, the game is compatible with the PS4 and allows users to be scientists trapped in the rapture. It has no exact release date yet.
Margaret Keane’s life and artwork is so extraordinary that she is the focus of the Tim Burton film Big Eyes. The rich and famous had to have an original Keane painting on their walls. Burton, the director of Big Eyes, had a Keane portrait done of his girlfriend, actress Lisa Marie. Keane paintings of most celebrities are a good likeness of them, but the one of Michael Jackson with huge tearful eyes on the pop star’s celebrity paintings are not what Keane is known for. Millions of people around the world are more familiar with Keane paintings of big-eyed children. These paintings became internationally famous, and you didn’t have to be rich to own one. Priced for the average person, there were Keane postcards and prints that could be purchased at local stores. This brilliant marketing strategy was due to Keane’s husband, Walter.
Why did the world fall in love with paintings of sad-looking, big-eyed children in the 1960s? Miss Keane stated that the appeal of the paintings was that many people, including herself, wondered why the world was so evil and searched for answers. The eyes of the children reflected this confusion and yearning for peace the artist felt.
The popularity of big-eyed paintings produced imitators and influenced the artwork in cartoons and comic books. For example, the big-eyed Powerpuff Girls had a teacher named Miss Keane, which was, of course, an acknowledgment of Margaret Keane’s paintings.
Keane painted big-eyed children of every race and color, and her paintings of African-American females are eye-catching. One painting, titled Black Lavender, features a playful, big-eyed little Black girl in a lavender sweater. The Black girl in Sunday Best is the opposite. An angelic, serious-looking Black girl sits in a wooden chair. The child’s dress is a colorful mix of bright orange and red polka dots and stripes. It’s her most elegant dress, so she’s wearing it to church. One painting of an African or African-American woman titled Afro-Keane simply looks beautiful. That the painting of the Black woman is titled Afro-Keane is amusing since, in the 1960s and beyond, young Blacks sprayed a product called Afro Sheen on their hair before combing. The Afro-Keane painting captures the dignity and beauty of its Black subject, and the deep-brown skin color is realistic-looking.
Read more from Demetrius Sherman at blackgirlsnerds.com
Most superheroes were geeks before gaining their unearthly abilities. There are certainly more than 10 that can be listed below. For example, the X-Men’s Beast is a nerd, but, in a fight, he isn’t. Among the criteria for this list is that nerdiness must help in the fight of villains. These characters use their nerdiness to build their costumes, build tech, or they have nerdy powers in general.
Prodigy (Marvel)
David Alleyne is a member of the Young Avengers. He has the power to mimic the knowledge of any person he meets. He also can retain that knowledge forever.
Brainiac 5 (DC Comics)
Querl Dox is related to the Superman villain of the same name, but he is a good guy. Dox is a member of the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st century. He is really smart. He has a 12th-level intellect, which makes him one of the smartest people in DC Comics.
There are a number of good things that Jonathan Hickman accomplishes with this last “Avengers” book, but the Reed Richards version of the “Art of War” strategies as he transcribes them to Valeria is among the best portrayals of the character that Hickman has done. It’s an innovative way of doing the typical comic book voice-over, but giving it more purpose than an internal dialogue. It’s interesting to see the different ways that Reed and Victor Von Doom interpret Valeria’s message and so far I’m a fan of Reed’s version of “not losing.”
This book also does a great job of incorporating so many characters and motivations into it without feeling too busy. Steve’s frustration and resentment of the Illuminati is still tangible. We see for the first time how the War Machine Drone program works, basically with Rhodes stretching himself to unhealthy levels. The battle scenes are done extremely well too, having Captain Britain, T’Challa and The Hulk dismantling the drones at a break-neck pace.
Mike Deodato comes in for this book and the art is so on point. His action scenes really shine, especially the characterizations and the individual fight scenes, especially between Captain Marvel and The Hulk. He does a really great job with scale and action set pieces.
Source: William Evans at Blacknerdproblems.com
In 1998, two underground Brooklyn emcees postponed their individual projects to collaborate on a full-length album, and the result was “Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star.” Around the same time, another artist transferred from Pennsylvania State University to a cell in prison where he wrote verses behind bars in what would become “Revolutionary, Volume 1.” I can remember the first verse I heard from Jean Grae, the first track I heard from Brother Ali, and the exact song that made me give Atmosphere a chance after five recommendations from Pandora prematurely thumbed down. They all began with skeptical resistance, followed by a raised eyebrow after the third or fourth bar, followed by “What’d you say their name is again?”
I can also remember the first webcomic I browsed online. It came in an email with a single link, with a subject heading that read “Read.” It sat in my inbox for three sunsets, which is an eternity for someone who keeps their inbox cleaner than hospital rooms. Leaving an email for three days says I care nothing of the message it brings, and that it only remains un-deleted in sheer respect to the sender. A good friend had sent it, so before the sun set on the fourth day, I begrudgingly clicked the link, raised an eyebrow at the third or fourth panel, and replied, “Where’d you say you found this again?”
We previously covered the comedy of hip-hop and classic gaming, and now the genre teaches a new lesson in creative art: some of the most incredible works are the secrets you are least likely to hear or read. In comics, those secrets come from the fire inside an artist that burns hot enough to draw in their living room or basement, without promise of compensation, because they have a story to tell. It means hosting a website and sharing a piece of you to the world for free because any scrutiny is less damaging than keeping that story to yourself. It comes from a garage at 2 a.m. It does not originate at DC or Marvel. With an increasing readership, new Eisner award categories, and the comic industry’s growing fan base, recognition for noteworthy webcomics are on the rise as popular sites like XKCD and The Oatmeal are being joined by long-form online stories.
If a webcomic creator survives the long hours of unrecognized dedication for long enough they might find a home with a larger publisher to lend them credibility, but it will never be the publishing company that gave them their talent of storytelling; they will only monetize it best.
Read more from Jordan Calhoun at blacknerdproblems.com
Captain America (Marvel Comics)
Capt. America is an over-exaggerated parkour practitioner. It is possible to mimic his actions with a lot training in boxing and parkour.
Black Panther (Marvel Comics)
Like Iron man and Batman, Black Panther has wealth. Like Capt. America he is a martial artist and parkour practitioner. Any fighter in the real world willing to learn non-Asian fighting styles can be Black Panther.
It’s easy to tell a movie is based on a comic book when people are flying around and wearing spandex, but comics aren’t all about superheroes. The art form encompasses many different genres, and many movies have been adapted that don’t advertise their comic roots. A perfect example is the new movie 2 Guns, which looks like your typical action movie until you read the fine print. Here are comic book movies you might not have known were comic book movies.
30 Days of Night
Released in 2007, starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George and Danny Huston, this horror movie about an Alaskan town where vampires attack during a prolonged polar night started as an unproduced film script. It took a detour when it was adapted into a three-issue comic book miniseries in 2002. The comic was so successful that it led to the feature film.
Writer, director, and producer Roy Belfrey is at the helm of what’s being called “The Scariest African-American Film… Ever!” titled Matthew 18. Being a nitpicky pessimist for a moment, why can’t it just be the scariest horror film or thriller ever? What makes it the scariest African-American film ever? Aren’t perceptions of what’s scary and what isn’t subjective? You can’t make these blanket, click-bait statements without some thoughtful commentary with your potential audience. Especially considering I haven’t discovered an overflow of colloquiums on African-American horror films. But effectively enough, I suppose the line does capture attention. Here’s the breakdown:
Michelle Jamieson is too smart for faith. She has been raised in the tired traditions of her deeply religious family and is ready to expand her independent thought and stand in her logical, free will. When the opportunity arises for her to separate from her Washington, D.C., home and her Bible-thumping parents, she takes a scholarship for her sought-after medical program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Eager to base her beliefs in the proof of science and develop her life decisions on the tangible experience of medicine — where every effect has a root cause and miracles come in the form of prescription slips — she wisps across the country to find her path, her truth. But what she finds supersedes her natural existence – making her mortality vulnerable to the spiritual realm she so comfortably doubted. Michelle stays in a Minneapolis mansion, a family property dating back many generations. She begins to encounter strange and unexplainable occurrences. As she is forced to investigate, what she uncovers is a world of family secrets and unspeakable evils that God himself may not save her from. In whose name will she cry out now?
Judging from the synopsis and suspending my pessimism for a moment, I hope to see a film that’s intriguing as well as complicated. I hope to see Michelle have a layered arc and not some gimmicky, linear mortality tale. Please? Horror is too rich of an artistic space to see opportunities wasted. I’m not enthused by this trailer. But I am hoping to be proven wrong.
Source: graveyardshiftsisters.com
Gail Simone’s magnum opus returns to shelves this week in the form of a brand new volume. Needless to say, expectations are huge as Simone’s original series won a lot of people over due to her excellent characterization and her ability to provide these villain characters with sympathetic backgrounds that made them seem almost heroic. The team frequently saw new members join as old members either died horribly, quit through means of betrayal, or both. With a team populated by villains, this shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, but somehow Simone always managed to shock audiences with every turn of events.
Because DC doesn’t like us to have nice things, sadly the new series isn’t a continuation but a fresh start. Issue 1 see’s Catman, who originally had a very prominent role in the first incarnation of the series, is front and center of this issue as we find out what this New 52 (at what point do we stop calling it new?) incarnation of Catman is capable of. Unfortunately the pacing of this book makes it hard for readers to get a closer examination of the characters outside of Catman. Although characters do make minuscule first impressions, it fails in comparison to the attention given to Catman. Admittingly, this is a good first issue, but it may leave little to be desired by hardcore fans of the series as it left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. While some of these characters are new to this series, plus the modifications made to the returning characters, the core of what Secret Six was can definitely be could definitely be felt, and fans of the previous volume should be willing to give this iteration a fair shot.
Source: Tajaye Williams at blacknerdproblems.com
Oh Square Enix, what have you done?
For years and years, Final Fantasy fans have been hoping and praying for a full-fleshed, updated, super high-end Final Fantasy 7 game for the next gen systems. It didn’t happen on the PS3, so like with Kingdom Hearts 3 expectations arose for it to finally happen on the PS4.
Whether you like Final Fantasy 7 or think it’s the most overrated of all the Final Fantasies, there’s one thing you can’t deny, it’s popularity. Final Fantasy 7 has transcended its original single-game format and has had movies and a prequel game expanding on its lore.
So here we are in 2014 with Square Enix hyped up about a Final Fantasy 7 announcement for the PS4! Could it be what fans have been clamoring for all these years? No, the answer is no. Instead of an HD remake with new everything, what fans get is a port of the game for the PS4. If you don’t know what that means, I’ll explain. Instead of HD graphics and high-definition they’re instead re-releasing the original game on the PS4, which they’ve already done for PC and for the PS3 on the Playstation Network.
There’s already been a lot of backlash for this, so instead of adding to it, I’m going to go a different route with this.
The fact of the matter is that Square Enix fans want to feel like they are appreciated and loved. A remake of Final Fantasy 7 would have solidified that fact. Giving the fans something they’ve asked for would put Square Enix back on that pedestal they used to be on. The recent Final Fantasy games haven’t been able to capture the magic that the old ones used to bring. That sense of “Wow this game is the best game of all time!” hasn’t been said for the recent Final Fantasies, and I think fans are trying to relive the Square Enix of old.
Maybe I’m wrong in my assumptions, but I’m speaking from my personal point of view on the whole situation. Final Fantasy 7 isn’t my favorite Final Fantasy but would I throw my money at Square Enix for a full-on HD remake? I’ll answer my question with another question. Is Rock Lee the realest ninja out there?
Someday, we might get that remake that other fans and I have asked for, but, sadly, today is not that day.
Source: William Young at blacknerdproblems.com