Can you believe that the last “true” episode of Dusty Plastic HELL took place way back in 2005?! That’s insane! So, by almost completely arbitrary decree, here is — at long last — Dusty Plastic HELL #6. Before you go getting excited (or apologies if you already read it with high hopes that were cruelly dashed), it’s not the continuation of the ancient and unfinished Krang saga. As mentioned previously, I’m probably going to end up reshooting that one with real backgrounds, as using the Batcave for this one truly did save me quite a bit of time. Instead, here’s a comic explaining why future Transformers comics will likely take place in the Batcave and the generic abandoned factory that serves as a generic hideout for Batman’s manifold foes. (Unlike many toy lines that required you to buy playsets for both the heroes’ and the villains’ respective headquarters, the Batcave playset actually includes both — along with Wayne Manor to boot. Much appreciated, Kenner!)

This just in: my laptop just rebooted for no apparent reason, but I didn’t lose any of the above paragraph because WordPress had apparently autosaved my draft. Once again, WordPress gets my recommendation and appreciation for sparing me a great deal of frustration. Accept no imitation(s). Hurray for initially unintentional and then drawn-out rhyming. (more…)

Yep — just a quick little something to tide y’all over until the next update. 🙂 Contrary to what I wrote last time, though, the next update (which may go up as soon as tomorrow or Monday) will likely not be an article, as I’ve gone back to experimenting with some of the more ancient toy comic techniques that I used to employ on the site. See, during one particular break when I worked at the bookstore, I picked up a Batcave playset at Toys ‘R’ Us on clearance for $13 in the hopes of someday using it as a backdrop for Scary-Crayon toy comics, and now — after I spent a couple of hours the other night assembling the blasted thing — that time is almost upon us! Granted, using “real” backdrops isn’t as technically impressive or attractive as the screencap backgrounds I’ve inserted more recently, but doing comics this way should save me quite a bit of time with them… which means I should be able to post more of them! These next two will pretty much be test runs, but then after that it might be time for Krang to finally make his long-awaited return to the site. I actually already photographed that comic with a standard white background, but since then I’ve gotten better with that so I’m not even sure I’d want to keep those shots if I wanted to do it the other way. Anyway, WE SHALL SEE!

Regarding today’s haiku, feel free to post your guesses in the comments — though I don’t imagine anyone will have a hard time with this one. It’s so obvious, especially if you’ve seen the live action film! I really do like the sculpt on this guy… I may have to go back to Dollar Tree and pick up a few more of them for potential painting projects. Speaking of which, do y’all have any action figure customizing and/or painting tips for me? I’ve found information regarding the basics — I’m mostly interested in how cheap I can make things. Frex, I’ve heard that Testors and Tamiya acrylic paints are excellent, but they’re $2.50 per small bottle. Not backbreakingly expensive, mind you, but Michaels own acrylic paints are $0.50 for a bottle two times the size of the smaller ones. So if I could get by with the cheaper stuff, I’d definitely use it! Considering that the T-Rex guys are only a buck each, I may get at least one more of them and some of the Michaels paints and test them out on it. Yeah, I’d be blowing $1.50 (I’d only need like three colors) if it doesn’t work out, but if it turns out okay I can use the same paints on my more involved knockoff Transformers painting projects. 🙂

All for now, then — ’till next time, minna-san!

I know, I know, I always say this — but again, apologies for the lengthy period in between Scary-Crayon updates. I always say this too, but I do have a bunch of planned content for the site, so hopefully I’ll have more content up here in the near future! I still want to get the Shanghai article done at some point, but I’ve also got a planned featurette on “Boy Meets World”, a retrospective concerning this year’s Otakon anime convention, and tons of reviews of knockoff Transformers toys. Seriously on that last one — I went insane last week and spent nearly $80 on the things — so the only way I can even remotely justify that is by using them as review fodder for the site. In fact, although I’ll probably lump multiple figures into the subsequent pieces, the very next SC article will probably focus exclusively on bootleg Megatron. But more about that when the time comes.

Today’s feature is another toy review — this one of Face Flippin’ Fighters Chris Benoit. I hope that it doesn’t net me a bevy of hate mail and angry comments, as I genuinely did enjoy Chris Benoit’s matches and respect him as a performer. I was genuinely (if only momentarily) saddened when I heard the news about his death. But I admit that I was also genuinely amused once I recalled that, in addition to being a gifted wrestler in real life, he was also a psychotic and brutal bastard on television. So let’s not pretend that I’m super sick for some of the comments that I make in this article — if Anthony Hopkins murdered his wife and ate her liver, you know damned well you’d have something sarcastic to say as well. 😛

All for now then, minna-san. See you next time — which will hopefully be sooner than later!

So after an unintentional Scary-Crayon hiatus (sorry!), here’s our review of Transformers. I went to see the film on opening day and started writing the middle paragraphs on the fourth, but then I took a break from it and when I came back I just didn’t really feel like saying a whole lot more about this crappy film even though I could’ve gone on for at least four or five more paragraphs. I honestly don’t see how people are going back to see it second and third times (well, aside from the lowered expectations and/or idiots explanation), because the more I think about it the less sense it makes and the angrier it makes me. This really is one of those films that you’d have to turn off your brain (or just not have one) to enjoy, but since I’m pretty much incapable of that I despised it thoroughly.

I suppose the movie fares a little better if one doesn’t think of it as a Transformers film or doesn’t approach it from that angle, as it’s probably a little less offensive if you think of it as a mindless summer action flick. But I came to see Autobots and Decepticons and Optimus Prime and Megatron, goddamnit, and the little of them that I got was just insulting. I wasn’t really bothered by their movie appearances — though I naturally prefer the G1 (or even Armada and Energon, in certain cases) designs — it was more the bullshit “story” that didn’t even focus on the Transformers that irked me. Certain scenes felt like they were written purely for the sake of working in some puerile UPN-quality joke (“You eyein’ my piece, 50-cent?!”) that wouldn’t be funny even with canned laughter playing along with it. But I’ve said enough about that.

Anyway, after I finished watching the movie I picked up the Shockblast Unleashed volume of Transformers: Energon from the Walmart $5 bin in order to get something resembling a Transformers fix from the day’s events. It’s potentially even more confusing and less interesting than the movie itself — it’s basically Autobots and Decepticons running around corners and throwing out an endless progression of technobabble while combining with each other ad nauseam as events become increasingly more complex — but it does prioritize the Transformers’ exploits above any largely unrelated crap happening on Earth. It’s no G1, though.

So if there’s anything positive to be said about the movie, it’s that it’s (yes, both of those are grammatically correct) ushered in an influx of new Transformers merchandise and the reemergence of products related to the older franchises. I found this at Dollar Tree the other day — and while it’s arguably a bit overpriced for a single Chupa-Chups lollipop (I imagine you can get a whole bag of ’em for like $2), at least now I can clip Megatron to one of my belt loops or something for bonus points at various conventions. I haven’t been quite as interested in the actual movie merch, but the upcoming Target-exclusive G1 redecos of the movie figures may warrant a look. The Fast Action Battlers seem like huge wastes of shelf space, though — unless you were buying for like 2-year-olds who probably shouldn’t have watched Bay’s Transformers anyway, it just doesn’t make sense to get them when the cooler deluxe versions cost the same price. I guess I could see one going with them over the characters that only have voyager counterparts, though.

Seeya next time, minna-san. 🙂

P.S. Don’t miss the Prime/Megatron CSS rollover in the article!

It took me a while, but the discussion and review of the toys that I picked up while in Shanghai is finally online. Enjoy! And if you know anything more about any of the products or series mentioned in the article (frex, if you’re familiar with “Air Gear”, know where to find cheap Kamen Rider figures online, watched tons of Ultraman in your youth, etc.), do feel free to share. Also feel free to share any camera techniques you have! I tried a little something different for this one — shooting against a white felt background and upping the camera’s exposure to +1.7 EV (bright!) — so let me know if you’re experienced with shooting figures for toy comics or eBay auctions and have any helpful suggestions.

I think I more/less said everything that I wanted to say in the article, but I didn’t go into great detail concerning the prices of toys in Shanghai compared to those in the United States. You can do some comparisons for yourself by looking at the included Toys ‘R’ Us advertisement, but note that (for example) the 20th anniversary Optimus Prime is ¥698 after the Star Card discount. Normally it’s ¥828, making the toy roughly $90 on sale and $110 at regular price. Compare that to here, where even on Hasbro.com you can get Optimus for $69.99 — and you can find him for significantly less than that on eBay. Just pointing out that, in many cases, I didn’t find the assumption that everything is cheaper in China to be true. Yes, bootleg shit was cheaper — much cheaper — but bootleg shit is pretty cheap everywhere. As far as the real deal stuff goes, though, products in China were largely more expensive.

All for now — hopefully I’ll have another feature for you (which may or may not be the lengthier discussion of my experiences in Shanghai; we’ll see) before we’re too far into July. Given my present rate of posting, though, I’d be shocked if I got something up before the end of June. 🙁 Anyway, ja!

Indeed — with today’s Hot Flash, the official number of Hot Flashes finally comes to 100. For those of you who’ve been wondering what happened to me these past couple of weeks, I was away on a short trip overseas to Shanghai, China, which will likely be the focus of several Scary-Crayon features in the coming weeks. Today’s comic provides a sampling of my adventures on Nanjing Road, which I read was the definitive place to visit for shopping in Shanghai. I had no idea how far “shopping” went, however, as — in addition to the numerous people trying to sell me bootleg Rolex watches, Louis Vuitton handbags, Nike sneakers, and pirated DVDs — I was approached by roughly fifty people (you read that right, 5-0) trying to entice me into hidden massage parlors/brothels. I have the surprised “wtf” thought here because that was my reaction to the first encounter (and all such subsequent encounters, really, but still), but the “little hole” dude was actually the very last guy I met on Nanjing Road. In fact, when I angrily informed him that I was in the process of trying to hail a cab and get the hell away from that street, he showed me the proper place to stand in order to attract their attention and wished me a good night. Weird.

Anyway, the sex merchants all followed more or less the same script: first they’d offer a massage and, failing that, they’d proceed to push sex. They didn’t lower their voices or imply that their offer was anything but on the up-and-up in the least. When I met the “little hole” man, I was standing on a street corner with a pedestrian woman standing directly to my left (the merchant was on the right), and I looked right over at her when he said it and jerked a thumb in his direction as if to say, “Can you believe this dude?!” Seeing as how she just kind of smiled and nodded, I don’t think she understood him at all, which could be why the brothel spokespeople don’t feel the need to whisper when soliciting foreigners. You can say whatever you want when nobody understands what you’re saying!

What was even more amazing than the frankness and sheer number of the people who approached me, though, was their persistence. Sharpie Wes and the brothel merchant look pretty stationary because I’m lazy with the comics, but keep in mind that we were moving the entire time — these people would pretty much run up to me and walk with me until I finally convinced them that I had no interest in entering their hidden dens of corruption through my consistent and repeated refusals. But should it really have been so difficult for them to believe that a person would be uninterested in having sex with some random woman in a hidden location in a country where said person can’t even order a soda at McDonald’s because he can’t freaking read the menu?

I mean, all of the merchants seemed to be under the impression that foreigners will buy anything if the price is low enough, whether they want it or not (and admittedly I did buy several things I did not want while on Nanjing Road, though less because of the low prices than because in some cases buying something seemed like the only way to get people to LEAVE ME THE BLOODY HELL ALONE), but buying sex just isn’t the same buying as a bootleg Spider-Man 3 DVD. And while I can’t imagine ever buying sex ever, let alone under the circumstances of Nanjing Road, I suppose that they wouldn’t have been so bloody persistent and attacked in such hordes if all travelers were as unreceptive as myself. That thought both frightens and disgusts me.

Anyway, all for now — see you next time. 🙂

P.S. Is there anything about the trip that you’d be particularly interested in reading about in article format? Perhaps a more thorough discussion of my day on Nanjing Road? A roundup of all of the toys that I was able to procure? Or something else? Do let us know.

Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #99 is more a humorous re-imagining of events than an actual occurrence — I did receive two calls (last night and tonight) from the same person looking for Bruce, but the caller was fairly polite and I didn’t do the Batman thing. Still, these wrong numbers to my cell are getting ridiculous. In the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten not only the aforementioned calls, but also several calls from folks speaking in Spanish and even one call from a local Michaels store (apparently another local Michaels has the same number, but a different area code)! If I really were Batman and this were the ’60s, Commissioner Gordon and Gotham City would be fucked because I would totally unplug the Batphone. The Bat-Signal is much better because it makes no noise.

And, as noted, we also have a short story for you — an allegorical tale entitled “Mold Country”. Like most of the stories on the site, it’s an older piece that I was unable to get published in a paying rag, but I still think that it’s a worthwhile (if rather brief) read. Enjoy!

In other news, this weekend saw the airing of the absolute worst Doctor Who episode of all time. It was truly abysmal.

Someone should have burned that script. 👿

But first, Crayon Poetry Corner #14! I actually wrote this a really long time ago and completely forgot about it — I think I was planning to accompany it with a voice recording. Anyway, I was about to post another poem when I stumbled upon it instead, so I figured I’d get this thing up. Seeing as how the poem was partly inspired by Frogger, the image to the right of the poem is taken from the SNES version. Yep.

That said, the star of today’s update is this in-depth review of the MS-DOS versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I and II. Much like the PC port of Street Fighter II that we reviewed a year ago, these computer incarnations manage to be inexplicably different from the original versions in marked ways. I’m admittedly a bit fond of some of the graphical modifications to the first game (the Turtles look interesting and Shredder looks great, but I don’t like what they did to April at all), but the changes to the gameplay of both titles are pretty hard to overlook. You’ll read more about it in the actual article, but I will continue to argue that TMNT I is impossible to beat without cheating until someone out there proves me wrong. So get to it!

So in case you’re up for taking the challenge or simply giving these games a try, here is a helpful tutorial on Abandonia for configuring DOSBox and getting games up and running. I personally recommend using a frontend like D-Fend to simplify the process, though.

That said, in case you’ve got absolutely no desire to play these broken games, here are some YouTube recordings that I made of the final battles and ending sequences. I’ve been going crazy with YT as of late. 🙂

Aaaand while we’re at it, here are a few more videos that I posted to YouTube of the movie game. Two are boss battles with the Generals (one each); the other is an extended battle with the Shredder and his clones, which is what happens if you don’t target the genuine article. It’s too bad the Turtles don’t gain EXP or coins for every defeated enemy — that battle would be solid gold for leveling up and making money.

All for now, then. Seeya next time, minna-san! 😛

Sorry about the lack of updates as of late (this is getting to be a pretty common way of beginning these entries, isn’t it?), but we’ve finally got something new for you: The Lost Lunches: Volume One! As noted in the article, the lack of official Random Lunch articles on the site doesn’t mean that I haven’t been making and photographing them — so today’s piece takes us back to 2004 for a look at five (well, four, but one is a two-in-one) of the culinary experiments that got “lost” as I got distracted and worked on other things for Scary-Crayon. But now — at long last — these forgotten dishes have been recovered for your viewing pleasure!

After looking at some of these, though, you may wish they’d stayed lost.

I don’t even know what to say about the latest episode of Doctor Who’s Series 3. Wait, yes I do. FUCKING TERRIBLE. In addition to the incredibly superfluous pig people, we have the introduction of the incredible evolved Dalek… the Human Dalek. No, really. Almost everything that made the Dalek awesome had to do with that adorable casing — from the odd decorative spheres to the croaking robotic voice to the freaking plunger arm — and yet one of the writers had the brilliant idea of having the Daleks merge with humans and “evolve” into a humanoid form with none of these iconic features. Seriously. It’s just ridiculous.

Now, I’m hoping that this Human Dalek is killed off in the second episode of the two-parter and that the Daleks decide not to pursue this new evolutionary route — and realistically speaking, something like that has to happen, since I doubt that the writers would utterly fuck up the best villains that the series has to offer — but even flirting with this kind of ruin borders on blasphemy. It doesn’t even make sense. Why would a thing built like a tank suddenly want to take on a more humanoid form? (And it’s not as if these are the fragile Daleks of old that were unable to climb stairs and could easily be beaten into submission by mobs — these things have force fields and can fly!) Dalek Sec points out that whereas Daleks are nearly extinct, human beings have survived throughout the ages. It’s not because of the humanoid shape that the humans have endured, though — it’s because the Daleks keep fucking up and getting nearly destroyed by the Doctor! Yet every time they face him, they let him live. Daleks keep losing because of their own negligence and stupidity. Which they have only compounded by taking on humanoid form. Argh. 🙁

So I had to write an emergency haiku to express my disappointment.

With all of the hubbub about Virginia Tech shooter Seung-hui Cho‘s violent writings, I figured I’d post a short piece of my own that garnered a similar reaction from someone who read it when I was a student. Now, this wasn’t for an assignment, but rather a short piece I wrote in my spare time and submitted to the Morse College writing tutor. Students were encouraged to submit up to three short pieces — whether for classes or our own outside writing — to her for further discussion during a scheduled meeting. Session times were chosen by signing our names in empty timeslots on the schedule on her door; students would leave the work to be critiqued in an adjacent folder. Afterwards, usually that evening or the next day, the writing tutor would e-mail us to confirm the meeting times.

But I never got an e-mail. When I e-mailed her to see if she’d gotten my writing and seen my amendment to the schedule, there was no response. Furthermore, from that point on, anytime I saw her on campus, she would literally hide behind objects, bend over to tie her shoe, immediately begin talking to anyone nearby — anything to avoid speaking to or even making eye contact with me. I suspect that she contributed to the multiple accusations and suspicions that were leveled against me as well.

And now, many years later, I bring you one of the short pieces from that writing packet! Granted, it’s not the most frightening of the two pieces I submitted to the writing tutor — the other excerpt, which was much more horrific and about two pages longer, involved vampires slashing open the leg of a mental patient and bleeding him dry, such that the corpse was left shriveled and greenish in color — but it’s the only one I’ve been able to locate. So here, for your reading pleasure, is The Sinister Pelican (Flight of the Dread Fowl). Around the time that I wrote this, I was having recurring nightmares (which I didn’t mind, as my nightmares tend to be far more interesting than my standard dreams) involving three or four rather spooky characters, so I’d planned to write up brief descriptions of the characters and their exploits in a numbered format. This was going to be the start of the section concerning the Sinister Pelican, but after the writing tutor never contacted me again I hesitated to finish it for fear that it would become among the “evidence” used against me if I were ever arrested or caught up in a formal investigation of the ridiculous claims. With the residential college dean condemning me for playing violent video games and actually telephoning the parents of students whom I’d known before arriving on the campus to inquire about my violent tendencies, I wouldn’t have put it past them.

I don’t even see what’s so horrifying about it, personally.

Anyway, I could go off on a rant about how this latest shooting will likely result in the persecution and/or censorship of a lot of creative folks who may not exactly be Joe Normal or produce material that Standards and Practices would approve, but I’ll stop for now. I’ve been sifting through some of my backlogged content, so I hope to have lengthier fare for you next time! Until then, try not to be too dickish to your fellow humans.

I was hoping to post a new poem for you today, but I decided to postpone it for the time being because I couldn’t seem to come up with more than two verses. I still wanted to have something up to commemorate FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, though, so here is A Crayon Haiku #64!

Speaking of poems, I found some older ones that I wrote that will also be making appearances on the site in the near future. STAY TUNED.

I am going to use the mayo to make some egg salad tonight.

Hey all — hope that your Easter or respective spring holiday is going (or went!) well. If you don’t celebrate anything (right there with ya!), I hope that everything is going well with you. Enjoying the weather? It freaking snowed here this weekend. Not much, but still.

OKAY! No Easter-themed pieces today (if that upsets you, you can always reread our scary Easter cards article and view the old Easter card Hot Flash), but we do have another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game review for you! Whereas last time we took a look at the most recent TMNT title (which, by the way, is on sale at Circuit City this week for $18) , this time we return to 1991 to check out the little known PC gem that was TMNT: Manhattan Missions. Like, cowabunga, dudes! 😆

Anyway, this is a review that, at least in some respects, has literally been in the making for over nine years — ever since I’ve been able to play it in an appropriate environment, I’ve been taking screencaps of the game, some of which appear here — so I hope that you enjoy it. But more than that, I hope that you decide to give the game a try! As a game that I’ve played since my elementary school days, I really do think it’s worth at least one runthrough. It’s so keen that I even made a couple of anigifs using sprites from it way back when. 🙂

Hum, this one’s kinda gory. Also, speaking of Turtles games and moving pictures, I’ve posted a few videos of the new movie TMNT game in action on YouTube. For your viewing pleasure, I have embedded them below!

This one is a full runthrough of the first Nightwatcher level in the game. It’s sorta become my new Solitaire. And yep, Raph is fighting with spatulas.

A brief video featuring Leonardo jumping through an area and taking on some Purple Dragons. For the most part, the fighting really is this simple.

The “boss” fight against the Shredder. That sure was quick…!

And speaking of YouTube videos, TMNT fans and those of y’all who recall how bloody frustrating the first NES title was might want to check out this video. It’s flipping amazing… I watched in awe.

All for now, then. Until next time, minna-san!

So last week I picked up a $10 512MB flash drive for moving files from the old desktop to the laptop from time to time. The first trial of the new toy involved me moving a bunch of my old writing over to here, and upon perusing those old folders I figured I’d post another of my old short stories to Scary-Crayon. This one, “The Native and the Foreigner”, seems like it might have been part of a longer work if I hadn’t apparently gotten distracted, but it still makes for sort of interesting reading (I think). Enjoy!

In other news, you might have noticed that I’ve modified the little WordPress blurb at the bottom of the blog’s sidebar. I’ll likely end up removing it altogether in subsequent updates, since I’m planning to move all of the information about WordPress to the footer (where the copyright tag is located) and the “What is Scary-Crayon” page, but yeah. Kudos to Theron Parlin and the WordPress 1.5 Classic template for starting me off way back when, but since then the site has been altered so heavily — mostly as a result of my having read the necessary portions of the WordPress Codex and modifying the code to more accurately mimic the standing SC layout — that the standing credit doesn’t really seem appropriate. In fact, if I remember correctly (and it’s quite likely that I don’t), the code that I borrowed from Parlin’s Minima Plus theme is located on this page, which makes it a little less than original. Not to discredit Parlin or anything, as he’s responsible for some awesome themes. 🙂

At any rate, I intend to add a section to the about/site info page pretty soon that lists the WP plugins in use on Scary-Crayon, as the info might be helpful to people who wish to replicate some of the features on the site. The rollover effects and random images are my own doing via css hover declarations and the insertion of php’s random number function in specific places in the html code (it’s quite simple, really), but I needed a bit of help to keep the blog category from showing on the main page and to generate the page navigation links at the bottom of the article archive listings. Those features are achieved via the use of Rich Hamilton‘s Category Visibility plugin and Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan‘s WP-PageNavi 2.10 plugin, though in the latter case I did a good amount of tweaking to get it to behave in the slightly different way that I wanted. As such, I have dubbed the version active on this site 2.10w. 😉 I’m also using Matt Read’s Custom Query String plugin to make it so that different numbers of posts appear on different pages of the site (more on the category archive pages; fewer in the blog). We’ve also got a new addition today in Scott Reilly’s Hide or Cut Post Text plugin, which works kind of like the LJ-cut feature and which I’ve used to relegate this text to the post page itself (which you will have seen if you’re coming in from the blog index). And I was recently using the Search Hilite plugin to give the search terms that nifty purple highlight, but for the time being I’ve disabled it because I’m not sure that I like it all that much.

We’re also now using WordPress 2.1.3. And — from this point forward, I think, unless there are any significant objections — I think I’m going to start writing in 15px text instead of 14px text. It’s not terribly noticeable at all, but the change partly has to do with my decision to start using a more streamlined stylesheet for the articles from now on. See before, the entire site used the same stylesheet, which meant that the stylesheet called for the articles still contained all of the junk I needed to define the sidebar and article blurb rules on the main page. With all of that being controlled by my WordPress-specific stylesheet now, though, I figured I might as well excise a bunch of that stuff from the articles stylesheet… but seeing as how I can’t remember precisely what I did and didn’t use in the old ones, I figured I’d just make a new stylesheet and add/replace excisions as I need them.

And finally, a question: what other kinds of things would you be interested in knowing about Scary-Crayon for the updated site info page? I’m thinking that in addition to some info on the more technical aspects of the WP side, I’ll also have a bit more info about me, a section reiterating the story of how SC got its name, submission guidelines (!), and possibly some other stuff. As always, I am open to suggestions.

All for now, then. Ja ne, minna-san.

So, following my haiku “review” of TMNT and extended comments here in the blog, here is a fairly lengthy review of the PC version of the game based on the movie. I don’t have a lot to add, as I’ve included just about everything that I wanted to say in the actual review — but yeah, read that. And if you’re interested in giving the game a try, you can download the PC demo from Ubisoft’s game site! The page is admittedly pretty confusing to navigate (I never did find that interactive comic book thing it mentioned, unless they meant to suggest that the entire site is the comic), but there should be a button towards the lower right-hand corner that will let you grab the demo. It’s got an eight-minute time-limit (which is kind of silly, seeing as how you can get fairly far into the level and would only need an additional minute or three to complete it altogether), but I guess Ubisoft did that to trick players into thinking that the level is longer and thereby conceal the overall brevity of the game. Shame on you, Ubisoft.

As always, comments are encouraged and appreciated. 🙂

…how difficult it was for me to get those columns on the front page to line up in both Firefox and IE7. Making matters worse, I have a strong feeling that they look completely broken in IE6. 🙁

At any rate, you can now summon the Foot Clan to search the text of the article blurbs for you! Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Yeah, it’s not much, but here’s a bit of filler to tide you over until the next update: A Crayon Haiku #62 and A Crayon Haiku #63. The first of these is a reference to “Desertion of the Dinobots” from season 2 of the original Transformers cartoon, but the picture itself was taken while Grimlock was drying after I applied some clear nail polish to his hip joints. Good stuff.

As for the second, I’ll doubtless have a Hot Flash (or whatever I decide to call the comics following #100; do feel free to weigh in on that) or two about the new TMNT movie, but — for the moment — suffice it to say that I was kind of disappointed with it. I mean, I wasn’t expecting Welles’ The Trial, but given all of the OMGZ BEST TURTLES MOVIE EVER type fan reviews, I was expecting it to at least live up to that descriptor. It totally doesn’t. It comes nowhere near the level of the first movie. For all of its preachiness about family and brotherly love, it fails to actually illustrate these concepts in a manner even remotely on par with the many great moments of the first film. (For a look at some of those moments, see our 2004 Father’s Day tribute to Splinter.) And while after seeing the movie I’d determined that it was at least better than TMNT II, my re-watching of those earlier flicks yesterday has forced me to recant that statement.

Yes, this new movie looked better and had a slightly more serious tone than the early films, but those films are easily superior in terms of plot, direction, and characterization — particularly where the villains are concerned. TMNT II is definitely inferior to the first movie, but it still introduced Tokka and Rahzar and Super Shredder (who’s really just Shredder mutated, but still) and gave them enough characterization for them to be memorable characters. By comparison, Karai and the stone generals in the new film were barely even mentioned by name, such that if I didn’t already know who they were I’d be reduced to calling them “that Foot chick” and “those rock dudes”. And whereas the first two films had decent enough (if simple) storylines and direction that, at the very least, wasn’t distracting, TMNT 2007 felt rushed and made little sense at times. (Why the heck did Leo have such a problem with the Nightwatcher, seeing as how he was pretty much doing the same thing they did when they battled the Foot and defeated the Shredder? How did these giant monsters show up in NYC without anyone noticing? Since when was April a badass ninja skilled enough to go toe to toe with freaking Karai? Would a mask-wearing mutant turtle really criticize his brother for “dressing up like it’s Halloween?” I could go on.) I don’t think it was a terrible movie, and TMNT fans will want to check it out for the fantastic battle between Leo and Raph, but I found the flick on the whole to be highly unsatisfying. Animation aside, it was only slightly better than one of the ho-hum filler episodes from the 2K3 cartoon series. 🙁

And finally, regarding the site’s ongoing redesign, here’s a question concerning the search: how do you feel about the highlighted words? Like, if you enter a search query, the page outputs with your terms highlighted (I liked purple, though it’s possible for me to change the color). Search terms are also highlighted for visitors coming in from engines like Google and Yahoo. Admittedly, I’m not sure how I feel about it — on the one hand, it could be helpful to people, but on the other hand (at least in my case), I find highlighted words to be kind of annoying when I visit a page, since I’d typically just use the “Find” dialogue to locate them myself. And seeing as how readers would still have to do this if the search brought them to an article (because those lie outside of the WordPress database and therefore outside the scope of the Search Hilite plugin), the highlighting wouldn’t necessarily be all that helpful anyway.

Speaking of searches, I’m planning to add a search box to the category content pages as well. Owing to the point above, it wouldn’t let you search the fulltext of articles, but you would be able to search the blurbs. However, this could be even more useful for locating relevant articles. For example, if you search for “Donatello”, you won’t get all of the pieces in which I simply mention his name, but you’ll get the ones in which he features prominently enough to warrant a mention in the blurb. So yeah, that’s on the horizon too.

And eventually there will be new articles!

I just made a few updates to the sidebar. They’ve thrown the alignment off on the main page, but as I’ll likely be adding more links and perhaps other stuff to the sidebar and the main and content pages in the near future, I’m not in a terrible hurry to get that taken care of. I mean, the columns are misaligned (and necessarily so) on all of the category archive pages.

And I guess my question at the end of the previous post kind of got overshadowed by the “insults” and death threats and whatnot, so feel free to post a response here regarding the nominal state of Dusty Plastic HELL comics in the near future. All for now — ja!