Pull list 24/04/13 the "Jupiters Legacy comes out at last" edition

Iron Man 3 comes out tomorrow. I have avoided all teasers, trailers, spoilers, photos, screenshots, you name it! As with Avengers and Amazing Spider-Man last year, I am going in to the cinema tomorrow with a totally clean palette, hoping for an awesome film experience with no preconceptions. It had better be good, I've got the whole day off work for it!

On the comic book front, "Jupiters Legacy" comes out this week. I am excited. That is all. 

Dark Horse

Dragon Age Until We Sleep #2

DC

Before Watchmen Comedian #6
Flash #19
Red Lanterns #19 (Wrath Of The First Lantern Tie-In)

IDW

My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic #6
My Little Pony Micro-Series #3 Rarity

Image

East Of West #2
Jupiters Legacy #1
Lost Vegas #2

Marvel

Deadpool Killustrated #4
Deadpool #8

Indy

Adventure Time #15

Pull list 17/04/13 - the "50% Image" edition

Well, another week, another trip to see what we will or  won't get! Plenty of new titles out this week that we are looking forward too, and it seems that I can officially call myself an Image fan girl now. 7 out of 14 books from one publisher? Eep!

A bit of new Danger Girl to keep MrGiantwoman out of trouble is always good, and hopefully the latest edition to the 'Wrath of the First Lantern" series from DC will mean it is drawing to a close, for the sake of my wallet if nothing else.

DC

Green Lantern New Guardians #19

Fables #128

DYNAMITE

Bionic Man vs Bionic Woman #4

IDW

Colonized #1 Regular Dave Sim Cover - missed from last weeks pull!

Danger Girl Trinity #1 

IMAGE

Five Ghosts Haunting Of Fabian Gray #2

It Girl & The Atomics #9

Mara #4

Miniature Jesus #1 

Revival #9

Thief Of Thieves #13

Todd The Ugliest Kid On Earth #4

MARVEL

Captain Marvel #12

INDEPENDENTS

Adventure Time #15

MrGiantwoman speaks: Dark World (1992)

I think an early sign that a game is going to be fun is when you open the box for the first time and gaze in wonder at all you behold before you. Is it a vast box that when opened reveals a small deck of cards huddling in the corner? Maybe you need a caravan of camels just to transport all of the components because against all logic it will clearly longer fit back in the box it came in? Or perhaps it is just a very well designed box with every component nestled in its own little space. Add in to the above the randomness of buying board games from a car boot sale or charity shop, and you also have the joy of opening a game and not knowing if you will find all of it in the box.

What does any of this have to do with Dark World? Well, recently our regular gaming friends brought over a box that had been purchased a few years before in a field somewhere in the south of England...

We started to set up the game which is a fun endeavour itself. Little doors that open need to be attached to the walls and hinges, then once attached to the walls all slot together and clip to the board and form a pretty sturdy gaming area. It took three of us a while to get this bit right as there is only one way the board fits together! Meanwhile at the other end of the table our friend who for this evening had taken on the guise of KORAK THE COBRAN, was building the castle and placing himself upon the throne. The next few hours we would spend trying to remove him from this lofty seat and claim the legendary MACE OF CHAOS (sadly missing from this copy of the game) thus winning the game.

We all chose the heroes that we would use to attempt this mighty quest, and we were given our starting weapons. Myself - the dwarf (attracted to fine, large helmets and jewelled weapons) - received an axe, the ranger was given a sword, and finally the Barbarian was given a small bit of card found in the box earlier along with some bent pipe cleaner as the cudgel was lost to the same fickle fates as the Mace.

Once the playing field had been assembled and most of the rules had been gone through we set about playing. Since the missing Mace was the randomiser that determined which order the players go in (none of this left of dealer then proceed counter clockwise business here) we used a D6. This interesting touch means that each turn is different, and ensures people are paying attention!

Each turn goes in a fairly traditional manner, each player can make 3 actions (which include combat, moving etc) fighting your way towards the amusingly named DOOMSTEP and onwards up the castle itself. During this time Korak is constantly fighting back with hoards of monsters, assigning magic items to them when they die and directing their movements around the board, even unleashing the terrifying HAUNTER, that we dubbed “Mr Woo” because of the noise we all made when he randomly went across the board, killing everything he touched.

When travelling around you can pick up ever popular Healing potion which can bring you back into the fight again in no time, also there are speed boots which give you a free turn when used, and the fireball grenade, and for the dedicated explorer there are special upgraded golden weapons which give you an extra die in combat. These golden weapons are worthy of note, they are actual physical golden coloured weapons you find in tiny chests that you have to pick up to look inside and replace the weapon in your characters hands. Very rewarding!

Obviously with all these evil minions roaming about the place even the mightiest hero gets knocked out from time to time and sure enough one by one , we all fell. This meant that our character when back to the starting space, and spend a turn healing up at the Fountain of Healing, and you were on your way again. This might sound like a rather minor inconvenience, but as the game progressed we had to travel further and further from the starting area to fight the monsters and to get to the castle, dying became more and more perilous. The Dwarf was hit by the terrifying “Mr Woo” on numerous occasions, and spent a lot of time travelling, and considering you can only move three spaces it took a while. There were secret doors, but I could not roll high enough to use them which resulted in the dwarf mindlessly staring at the wall for a good number of turns, all the while the other characters were shooting past me getting back into the fight. It turns out later that on the starting square there is a teleport, which instantly transports you too the last opened door, which if we knew about sooner would have made the game a bit quicker!

Eventually we made it to the throne room and fought the vile Korak, and were victorious! The Barbarian as the first to claim the space where the Mace of Chaos should have been thus ended the game, but alas the noble helmet loving dwarf had the most points overall and won the game. This is in no small part down to the fact that I spent a good portion of the end game staring at a wall, trying to find a secret door, while the Ranger and the Barbarian burnt through their accumulated points fighting the final defensive hoard. After we got it back in the box, it struck me. This game was like a B-Movie, it was a really good evening of playing, and we all had a lot of fun playing it, but it was missing the polish and the flare of other games of its type. Not as flamboyant as the Dark Tower, or as well rounded as Hero Quest, but if you happen across this little gem out in the wild you can do a lot worse than spending a couple of hours playing this!

El_Gringo (aka MrGiantwoman)

Pull list 10/04/13 - the 'sub-ten books' edition

Finally, getting to have a quiet week! I am not sure how the reaction is going to be when I go in to get the books this week, as it will be the first time seeing the shop owner(s) since cancelling all the orders, but only time will tell. 

I don't expect we will get Star Wars, as they still don't have issue #2 for us, but the others are regulars or ones ordered from Previews, so here's hoping!

DC

Star Wars (Dark Horse) #4

Batman Lil Gotham

Green Lantern Corps #19  (Wrath Of The First Lantern Tie-In)

Threshold #4

IDW

Rocketeer Hollywood Horror #3 

Image

Saga #12

Marvel

Wolverine Vol 5 #2 Regular Alan Davis Cover

Secret Service #6

Independents

Adventure Time Fionna & Cake #4 

Pull list

I made a big decision last week. I talked it over with MrGiantwoman, and we agreed that it was for the best for our future. I'm not talking about coming off all my medication (although I have done that recently too), I'm talking about cancelling our entire pull list with our local comic shop. The entire thing, some 50+ titles per month. This was obviously a massive choice for us to make, given that the shop is a mere fifteen minute walk from my work, and they have been good enough to us in the past to let us have books on credit the week before pay day, all three staff from the shop came to my 30th birthday party last year, and we recently went to London Super Comic Con with the two shop owners. So why did we do it?!

Part of it is to do with money. Everyone is tightening their belts again this year, the cost of living has gone up again and there is no sign of a payrise on the horizon for many of us, so spending the crazy amount we were on books just wasn't feasible in the long term. Plus we are still paying off our trip to NYCC last year and trying to work out how we can get back to the States to see all our awesome friends out there again, sooner rather than later.

It wasn't just that though. For me it was an emotional l decision. I get very stressed and anxious about the littlest things, which affects my health. New comic book day is supposed to be fun, and time to chat to your friends, discuss what each of you is picking up, post pictures online of your haul, and have a good time reading the new issues. 

But it isn't for us any more. 

Every week I would get an impending sense of dread as my lunch break approached, wondering which books we would be missing this week. You may have noticed that I tend to post my pull list online prior to visiting the shop each Wednesday. I actually started doing that to save myself printing off copy of my list to take with me every week, as I have to meticulously check off each book to make sure we have it. It was okay though, because every week there would be two or more books in our box that we neither asked for nor had ever expressed an interest in... Oh no wait, it's the other one. The one where that doesn't make it okay, it makes it worse. The last three books they missed from our list were Mind The Gap, Deadpool and Flash. If you've met (or know) MrGiantwoman and I, you will know why this is an major issue. Add that to the fact that we have been going to this shop for over two years, and you may start to see why I stopped looking forward to the trip.

I am going to absolve myself of blame for the missed books too, as every month we would leaf through the latest issue of Previews borrowing it at closing time on a Wednesday or Thursday, then dropping it back in before they opened the next day so that no-one would miss out on taking a look, along with a list of all the title we would like in addition to those we already have. Only last month they decided that if we wanted to look at it we would have to buy a copy. Fair enough, they are a business, they need to make money. Would have been nice if they had told us before they sold all their copies though, so we could not make a list for June, this not including the fact that they called me at work to demand their copy back. The one I hadn't borrowed...

I don't want this to turn in to a list of complaints about a shop that won't be able to respond (they are all technophobes after all) but the other main issue I had was their organisation. I am a creature of habit. Every Wednesday I leave my office at the same time, take the same amount of time to walk to the lcs, and every week - without fail -  they will not have pulled my books for me. They have a book of orders you see, and we are pages 63 - 66 in the book. The lady that pulls the books doesn't make it past page 43-ish by 2:15pm on a Wednesday. Even if I phone ahead and remind her that I'll be in at 2:15pm. Sigh.

If I am going to spend £200+ in a shop each and every month I at least want them to show me a modicum of respect as a customer, and to make a bit of an effort to get my order right, and ready when I want it. Maybe I was spoiled by visiting the wonderful Tor Comics on Long Island, but the sense of community in that store, and the solid organisational core they had, was something to behold. Bearing in mind the relationship we thought we had with the two owners (they offered me a job recently), the fact that neither have been in touch to ask about our cancellation speaks volumes to me.

So, for the future (we will still take our books up to May due to their ordering process), who knows. After a recent visit to Orbital comics in London we might try their subscription service, if not it might be the corporate giant that is Forbidden Planet. We aren't going to go without our comic book, we just need a way of getting them into our desperate little mitts...