The N3RDCast
Our weekly discussion on Comic Books (FULL of spoilers!), MMORPGs, gaming, comics, and geekdom in general.
 

Dr. Sexy turns Kwip on to the Tick TV Series, Kwip turns Dr. Sexy on to the anal-rape prevention conditioning of the GoBidet, Dr. Sexy shows us Second Skin, the documentary available on Netflix about MMO players, the hilarious Robots With Feelings, vote for Aliens vs Ninjas vs. Samauri on Zuda, and a listener contest about what HappyJack is doing on vacation. The sound quality’s a bit rough – but just in recording-quality. THERE IS NO OVERLAPPING THIS TIME! And a final EAT ME to Pamela!

I never got to watch The Tick when it aired on Fox, but it doesn’t matter, because like every other great show, Fox cancelled it before it could have the nerve to go and get popular. Just like so many other shows I could name (*cough cough FIREFLY YOU SONSABITCHES! cough*), Fox proves that they are, of course, complete idiots. But check it out on Netflix, you can stream the episodes and they are hilarious (although I don’t understand why they had to change American Maid and Die Fledermaus’ name, but it’s a minor gripe. The characters are still brillianty played and it’s a great show.

And as long as you’re at Netflix, check out Second Skin. I’m always interested in how documentaries portray gamers, and this seems to do a pretty fair job.

If you want the MST3K-type experience, you’ll want to watch this video starting at 7:02 into the show. It does much to redeem the concept of a dancing Spider-Man.

Robots With Feelings is a hilarious website (props to Zach for alerting us to it), so you should go there and be amazed. In particular, the review of Tokyo Gore Police is priceless. On many levels.

Speaking of webcomics, you really need to check out Aliens vs. Ninja vs. Samurai. Also, vote for them. And favorite them. And give them money (and then let us know how you did it so we can give Jorge a dollar just for being so cool)!

If you like a clean backside and wish to train your sphincter to prevent anal rape, then I can’t suggest the GoBidet any stronger. It is truly a marvel of modern engineering in the sphincter flooding realm.

With HappyJack gone for the month, we’ve decided to open yet another one of our wildly successful listener competitions, and this time the Grand Prize is a chance to take over for HappyJack! Exciting, right? Make sure to listen to the show for the details!

Direct download: N3RDCast_20100208.mp3
Category: podcasts -- posted at: 12:01 AM
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This week we discuss Star Trek Online (a LOT – you get to listen as Dr. Sexy plays it, yaay!), Star Trek DS9, and Trek in general; AMC picks up The Walking Dead series, Noah killing the Jews, who’d make an uglier woman, we make you sit through us watching the 5-minute Kick Ass trailer, the WeightWatcher Men, and where are the heroes (besides Cpt. Bludgeon). Comics we discuss this week include: DEADPOOL: MERC WITH A MOUTH #7, MIGHTY AVENGERS #33, G-MAN CAPE CRISIS #5, MUPPET PETER PAN #4, TINY TITANS #24, DARK AVENGERS #13., JOE THE BARBARIAN #1, COWBOY NINJA VIKING #3.

The only real links I have to share with you are these:
Walking Dead going to AMC: http://scifiwire.com/2010/01/amc-wants-to-televise-the.php
Interesting take on webcomic: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/

This show wasn’t recorded early nor on time because of that shitty software Pamela yet again. Have we mentioned do NOT buy it? But hey, at least there’s no overstepping this episode. And the delay meant we got to have Jim and Gravy present in the room as Dr. Sexy does a test drive of Star Trek Online, so that’s good.

Direct download: N3RDCast_20100125.mp3
Category: podcasts -- posted at: 12:01 AM
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Spoilers for Paranormal Activity (discussion ends at 8:45), the reboot of Spidey movies, Kelly Sue writing Sif, Robert Khoo's advice from Webcomics.com, Celtx is THE best script-writing software, Dr. Sexy's webcomics exploration, a HORRIBLE fleshlight alternative, and Jamesons vs Chili. Comics we spoil this week include: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #617, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #22, MUPPET SHOW #1, ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR: THREE WORLD WAR #1, SECRET SIX #17.

I'm not saying Paranormal Activity is a BAD movie. Far from it - the fact it was made for something like $15,000 and turned in a domestic gross of about $108 million alone is enough to put it solidly in the "Awesome" category. And I would have enjoyed the movie had I gone into it expecting another Blair Witch. Instead, some people (cough cough HAPPYJACK cough) told me about how 'scary' it was, and there was all sorts of blabber around the interweb about how it was the scariest movie ever, yadda yadda. There are definitely some good jumpy/tense moments in it, sure - but they get overwhelmed in ridiculousness (to me, the almighty Skeptic Dick) that totally take me out of the atmosphere.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I was mad I didn't get to see Katie Featherston's boobs.

While I'm surprised they're rebooting the Spidey franchise, I've long since given up hope that it would ever be a high-quality comic franchise. It's just too big. Might as well ask for a good Star Trek movie...

It's no secret that we're all in love with the beautiful and talented Kelly Sue, and the fact that she's writing Sif is very, very exciting news. I can't wait to see what she does with the character - she handles strong female characters at least as well as Gail.

Dr. Sexy is an evil, evil man for ever showing us this. And now so am I for doing the same to you (uh, NSFW warning). I threw up in my mouth. Not a little, a LOT.

The tale of Chili and Jamesons trying to co-exist is a hilarious one, but unfortunately one that didn't get recorded. I think you should go bother Mumblepuss to make him recount the story.

We can't say enough good things about Celtx (and is it "sell-tex?" Or maybe "kel-tex?" "selltzzz?"). If you write any sort of scripts, you owe it to yourself to check it out. The best thing is that it's FREE and incredibly easy to use! Robert Khoo has finally posted his first article to the subscription-based Webcomics.com, and it's a little depressing. Basically, if you're not making $35k/year in ad revenue, he has no advice for you. In fact, you don't even exist on his radar. I'm not saying he's a bad person or anything, but that's gotta be incredibly disheartening for about 99.99% of the readers of that site. I do love that someone finally had the balls to actually use hard numbers (and even more interested in the comments thread, where more realistic reader numbers are posted). It's long been a point of speculation for many of us what kind of numbers most webcomics are bringing in, so it's fascinating to actually get a solid feed on those. But I'm not sure that his first article should have been, "Hi, I'm Robert Khoo, and I have no advice for most of you paying for advice." I hope that in subsequent articles he touches on things like how to set up a booth at cons or something that can be useful to ANY webcomic, regardless of reader numbers.

Speaking of webcomics, Dr. Sexy has a new zombie-themed one for us, "Zombie Roomie." If you like zombies, you might want to take a read.

That goddamned lag bug shows up again, really obnoxiously this time, at about the 26 minute mark. I tried to edit it out as best I could, but it still sounds like I'm stepping all over Dr. Sexy and HappyJack. I promise I'm not really that rude to them.

Ok, of COURSE I am... But not usually during recording.

Direct download: N3RDCast_20100118.mp3
Category: podcasts -- posted at: 12:49 AM
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This week we discuss: Issue 12 of Love and Capes, webcomics.com going behind a paywall, n3rdfight - DJ Coffman vs. Scott Kurtz, negativity in Twitter, clearing out your office, crafts for old comics, chicken wings in the turkey frier, terrible shows on MTV, Brad Guigar is everywhere, Movie talk: Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, and Mirrors. Comics we discuss this week include: DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #897, DOOM PATROL #6, SUICIDE SQUAD #67.

It was a real thrill to see our ugly mugs on the cover of Issue #12 of Love & Capes (the Love cover - Mark in the tux). You should pick it up so you can see how clearly Thom Zahler gets Rusty's creepiness. He seems to have me confused with Steve, but that's okay, there's a lot of other people I could be confused with that would make me cry.

I think we're all in agreement that Brad Guigar is a heck of a nice guy and that his site, Webcomics.com, is a fantastic resource for webcomics creators and is absolutely worth $30/month to get that resource. Unfortunately, how he handled that conversion to a paying site (and subequent comments from Scott Kurtz) didn't serve his/their reputation very well.

And speaking of Kurtz - it's no small secret that he and DJ Coffman have been in a long-standing feud dating back to the Platinum Studios debacle. We took DJ's side in that fight, but this latest round has really gotten out of control. If you're curious about the Yirmuman podcast we were talking about, you can go to DJ's site and listen, it's the 2nd podcast there.

So if you have any ideas about what to do with old comics, we'd love to hear them. Drop us an email or call our voice line at 717-72FUCK-U(717-726-8252).

The wings turned out pretty good. Still not perfect, but I'll keep tinkering. Better yet, I didn't make quite the same mess like last time.
Direct download: N3RDCast_20100111.mp3
Category: podcasts -- posted at: 12:01 AM
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This week’s show we get started on planning for Pittsburgh, and we discuss the publishing and distributing aspect of comics. Diamond has a ridiculous monopoly on the market, and someone needs to come up with an alternative. Obviously, that’s us. We also discuss exploding Punisher junk.

Pittsburgh is rapidly approaching. While we’re excited, we’ve also got a lot of work ahead of us to get everyone on board for the awesome jam piece if it’s going to surpass last year’s awesomeness.

It’s absurd to think that Diamond gets away with being a monopoloy because the DOJ has no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to comic books, but whoever wrote the Diamond Wiki article seems to believe so (and didn’t do a very good job withcitations).

I don’t think Diamond is an evil empire or anything like that. They’re obviously a business, trying to make the most money possible. But there has to be a better way for smaller indy publishers to get distributed. And it might just be by donkey…

Printing costs alone seem to be rising – is it really more expensive now to print a comic than it was ten years ago? Can corners be cut somewhere to get costs under control without having to rely upon huge order numbers?

There’s got to be a solution. Preferably one that involves us getting wealthy…

In completely unrelated news, that Punisher figure is just ridickulous. Seriously. I want that sooooo bad…

Well, never mind, I bought it. Let’s see if eBay fucks me over… I hope not. That thing on top of my desk will increase my genius by multitudes!

Direct download: N3RDCast_20100104.mp3
Category: podcasts -- posted at: 12:01 AM
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