Movie Review - Django Unchained

If you read this blog often enough to know much about me at all, it should require almost no effort to figure out if I liked Django Unchained. If you know me at all, you probably would guess that when Quentin Tarantino makes a western about a black bounty hunter who kills, like, everybody, I would like that movie. And if you did guess that, you would be right.

However, it might come as a surprise that despite enjoying the ever-loving bear crap out of Django Unchained, I have many complaints. If there's a warp in the space-time continuum that makes Quentin Tarantino actually read this review, I hope he can take it with a grain of salt, because I'm about to say some things about the man that might make him not like me very much.

Django Unchained is exceptionally violent. And I love that. I mean, that's a reason to watch all by itself. A guy gets his head caved in with a hammer. A man is shot while carrying a bag of dynamite and explodes. There's so much fake blood that they had to have cases of it shipped in from Mexico (I made that up). And yet, despite all this graphic murder, we were laughing the entire time because the violence was so exceptionally absurd.

For instance, in one scene, a man is shot in the head with a rifle while he is lying on the ground. The blood from the wound flies five feet into the air as if thrown from a paint bucket. Apparently the man was storing gunpowder in his head.

Another time, a woman is shot with a revolver fired by a man standing on the floor above her. She flies away at an angle perpendicular to the shot, lifted off her feet as if shot in the groin with a cannon strategically located in the hallway opposite her. It was like watching a cartoon.

So the violence was just silly, and the movie was almost three hours long. This could have been a 90-minute movie. Two hours, max. But it's Tarantino, and the man just does not know how to edit himself. Seriously, man, cut something. The dialog is not that riveting.

Also, does Samuel L. Jackson have a clause in his contract that says that at some point in the movie, he must be allowed to use profanity that came into vogue in the 1960s? Actually, no, hold on - that part was pretty awesome. Jackson is like the Chik-Fil-A of the f-bomb - he didn't invent it, he just made it awesome.

Now, I want to emphasize that overall, Django Unchained was an absolute blast. It was incredibly fun to watch. I loved most of it. But this is not the Quentin Tarantino that made me a rabid fan with quick wit, tight plots and amazing dialog. This is sloppy and self-indulgent. It's what a great artist makes when there's nobody around to tell him which parts of his art suck.

Django Unchained had dialog to rival True Romance - it just had too much of it. It had some of the mad-cap violence that surprised you in Pulp Fiction - but too often, it was stupid and campy. It had the superb acting you saw in Reservoir Dogs - but like every other movie since Reservoir Dogs, it also had to have a part for Quentin Tarantino, and I'm sorry to let you in on this little secret, boss, but you are a VERY BAD ACTOR.

I referenced True Romance, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs because those are Tarantino's best films. He has been completely unable to re-bottle that lightning (though he came close with Jackie Brown, only that was actually an Elmore Leonard book adapted for screen, so it was kind of a gimme). You see the same things in every one of the movies that he makes these days - too long, crap editing, poor timing, and silly bloodshed.

But this time, it works. Django Unchained still suffers from all the same patented Tarantino flaws, but in this particular instance, it's a hoot. The campy violence is hilarious fun. The dialog (even though it's a bit gassy) is outstanding. The acting (with some notable exceptions) is as good as it ever gets. The plot is fun. And when Django kills everyone and then makes his horse do a moonwalk, you know you've just seen what it looks like when Quentin Tarantino makes a western.

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Board Game Review - Lord of the Rings

If you're a fan of Reiner Knizia's games, then one of two things is true. Either A) you have a well-developed sense of humor, or B) you don't read Drake's Flames. Reiner is my Numero-Uno, go-to guy when I need a game designer to mock, and I know that over the years, I have lost readers who really love the guy.

This review is going to cost me a few more.

Many of my readers may have heard of a trilogy of movies that came out in the first few years of the new millennium titled 'The Lord of the Rings.' Although this sounds like a story about either a circus owner or a fast-food fry chef, it was actually a D&D-inspired knock-off that went on to spawn a whole bunch of video games, card games, board games and people who start sentences with 'methinks.' But before these movies even came out, Reiner Knizia made a game with the same name, and it was a cooperative game where you were all trying to beat the bad guy (named 'Sauron,' because they apparently needed a name that was almost exactly the same name as 'Saruman,' both of which appeared in the same stories and were horribly confused by many people, none of whom were probably readers of this website). You could tell Reiner's game came out before the movies because before the movies, there was a ton of great illustrated art for the Tolkien books, and after the movies, nobody used anything except pictures of Viggo Mortensen.

So Reiner's game, being a Reiner game, used the basic theme of the Tolkien books, developed a couple ideas, then threw it out and made the game essentially a math exercise. Then he went back through and slapped thematic elements onto a game that was really just an exercise in managing your hand of cards, so that when he was done, the game looked very nice (because it did not have any pictures of Viggo Mortensen) and was not very much fun to play.

This is essentially how Reiner Knizia designs a game. He analyzes it from every angle, ponders it while he is sitting on the toilet, then designs a game that will show off his brilliance at mathematics while penalizing everyone who does not like math as much as he does. In some games (such as Atlanteon), this is reinforced by a preponderance of math and a complete void where the fun should be. In some games (like Maginor), the math is minimal and the game is actually entertaining. Lord of the Rings falls on a spectrum between these two examples, by being light on math and also not really that bad.

When I play a game and really like it, the phrase, 'not really that bad' will only be used if I am discussing the quality of fried catfish you can get in Vancouver. I am given to hyperbole. Therefore, I want to emphasize that when I describe Lord of the Rings as 'not really that bad,' I actually cannot imagine a reason you should play it, simply because there are so many games that are so much better. I can think of a half-dozen cooperative board games off the top of my head that are all much more fun than Reiner's game. But in all fairness, this was also designed almost 15 years ago, and lots of people have made awesome stuff since then.

You play Lord of the Rings by holding a hand of cards and making your way through various unpleasant encounters you would find in the books. The cards you hold can be played to help you move forward on various tracks, by playing matching symbols. Want to fight the goblins in Moria? Play a card with a picture of an axe on it, and you may be able to pick up a blue shield token. Want to hide from Shelob? Play a card with a picture of a tree on it, and you may be able to get a round token with a picture of a sun on it. Because trees and suns are pretty much what comes to mind when I think of giant man-eating spiders.

Most of the game is a breeze. You'll go through, almost laughing at how easy you have it and how lovely it is to beat the game. Then you get to the last part and Sauron actually pops out with his big-boy britches and lays down an ass-kicking, and then Pippin (who is currently carrying the ring, because the hobbits take turns) gets eaten by the red eye and the game comes to an abrupt end.

So, to be clear, I didn't much care for Reiner's take on Lord of the Rings, either with this game that blatantly ignores any elements of the story in order to make a game that is about as interesting as building a good spreadsheet, or with the other one that was designed for kids and was utterly retarded. However, I also know that many people really enjoyed this game, probably because they were Reiner fans who liked Lord of the Rings and math. If you are one of those people who likes Reiner, Lord of the Rings and math, and you have read this far, you almost certainly have a well-developed sense of humor. That, or you're just waiting to get to the comments section so you can insult my genetic heritage.

Summary

2-5 players (because someone can be Fatty)

Pros:
Uses some of the amazing illustrations created before the movies
Not very hard to play at all

Cons:
Uses mechanics that are essentially just matching symbols on cards
Not very fun to play at all

Noble Knight Games doesn't sponsor me any more, but they still have some awesome deals on out-of-print games. Like this one, which they have for what amounts to crazy cheap because it is used:
FORSOOTH METHINKS WELL MET

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TV Show Review - Orphan Black

For the sake of establishing a baseline, here are some shows I do not like:

Doctor Who (any incarnation)
Being Human (British or American)
Torchwood

And here are some shows I DO like:

Jekyll
Sherlock (the one with Benedict Cumberpatch)
Luther

If you're a savvy TV nerd like myself, you might notice that all these shows have one thing in common - BBC America. Or, if you're in England, just BBC, because if you were in England watching BBC America, you would get all the commercials for diabetes testing kits and car warranties. Basically, I am aware of lots of what BBC America puts out, and tend to dismiss it unless it really catches my eye, because British people make some weird-ass television (only they call it 'tellie').

So when I first heard about Orphan Black, and someone told me it was about a girl who sees another girl commit suicide, only the two girls are identical (as in, played by the same actress), and then the one girl decides to impersonate the other girl, I was definitely ambivalent. I nodded and smiled and made a tiny mental Post-It note to check it out, but then the glue dried on the back of the note and it fell into the recycle bin where I keep the names of salad dressings I don't want to try. By the time I realized it might be worth checking out, three episodes had aired.

I sat this weekend and watched those three episodes, and then the fourth that updated while I was watching the other three, and this show is freaking AWESOME!

Before I get all into this, let me explain why I don't like Doctor Who or Torchwood. It comes down to internal consistency. I saw one episode of Doctor Who where this girl gets on a space jet-ski and flies between planets without a space suit. I've seen other episodes where people lose weight by making their fat cells turn into sentient creatures or they keep aliens as slaves, but the aliens can only talk through their little Pokeball and then they get mad and kill people. Torchwood is just as bad. These shows are silly and nonsensical. They do not make sense from one episode to the next. I want the damned things to allow me to suspend some disbelief without simply gathering my disbelief in a tattered sweatshirt and drowning it in the pool.

Oh, and I didn't like Being Human because it was wicked boring.

So far, Orphan Black makes sense, and is not the least bit boring. People get shot. One girl got stabbed with a sharp length of rebar. There's sex, too, and not making-out-in-bed-with-strategically-positioned-sheets sex, but bare-ass-naked-on-the-kitchen-counter sex. Only it's BBC America, so you only get to see butt crack. No nipples or promised land. But they do cuss a lot.

And the plot is twisted and excellent. See, the two girls look identical because they are clones. I'm not going to spill more than that, except to say that there is a huge cover-up and conspiracy and assassins and cops and villains and at least one exceptionally gay British man. Suffice to say that every week, a little of the mystery is revealed, and it leads to more mystery. And people don't just drop everything to pursue the mystery - they have boyfriends and siblings and kids and husbands, and life doesn't go on hiatus just because some wackadoo with a sniper rifle is offing people from the shrubbery.

While the mysteries in Orphan Black are far from revealed at this point, I can also say that so far, the show makes sense. We haven't seen any elements that demand that I lobotomize myself with a claw hammer if I want to suspend my disbelief (which is not true of Doctor Who). Everything seems to have an explanation, and one that makes sense beyond just a rubber mask and a time-traveling phone booth. I don't know what all the explanations are, but so far, I trust that I will know when the time is right.

Now, it may just be that my tastes run a little more toward American entertainment, but I have some serious issues with some of the acting. The main character, played by Tatiana Maslany, is thoroughly convincing, but if this were American TV, she would definitely be more conventionally pretty (although she does have a rockin' body, as evidenced by the multiple times she removes her clothing). The brother is super-duper-gay, and plays it farther over the top than any gay man I have ever known. The abusive ex-boyfriend is a stereotype of a human being. The partner, Art, seems to have two faces, one for being angry and the other for pretending people in general don't make him want to commit multiple homicides.

But I can overlook a few spots of rough acting, especially because the lead is amazing. She's played half-a-dozen different people at this point in the show, often with two or three in the same scene, and her accent is surprisingly good, considering she's American and then British and then German. One scene has her playing an American woman who is doing a bad job of impersonating a British girl, and it's shockingly good.

And the story is dynamite. It's engrossing and thrilling, with twists and turns and gut-wrenching revelations. Considering I'm only four episodes in, that's a lot of twisting and turning, so I can't wait to see what happens next, and maybe get some answers. Like, what is the fish brand? Who sent the angry angel? Could the boyfriend be any more obnoxious? Wait, I don't actually want the answer to the last one. I just want him to stop being obnoxious.

Orphan Black does have a few elements I could do without, like the boyfriend or the campy acting. But the story is so great, and the lead actress is doing such an amazing job, that I can easily overlook all the imperfections in this very entertaining show. If you like your science fiction with a side of conspiracy theory and a heaping dose of This Makes Sense, you should check out Orphan Black.

You can see more about the show here:
http://www.bbcamerica.com/orphan-black/

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Deckbuilding Game Review - Arctic Scavengers

Remember right after Dominion came out, and there were no other deckbuilding games in the whole wide world, and everybody was like, 'holy cow, can you believe how cool this game is?' That was before Thunderstone and Nightfall and Rune Age and Eminent Domain and Marvel and DC and all those other deckbuilding games that came out because deckbuilding is actually a pretty awesome game mechanic. And so when Arctic Scavengers came out, and was pretty much the second deckbuilding game in the whole wide world, the comparisons to Dominion were inevitable. If you were holding the license to Dominion (the way Rio Grande was), Arctic Scavengers was the upstart game that was going to break your chokehold on the gaming market.

So Rio Grande did what any sensible big business does when threatened by a small business - they bought the competition and then sat on it. For years you couldn't find Arctic Scavengers anywhere, because Rio Grande wouldn't let it see the light of day. And in the meantime, while Rio Grande said, 'no, you will not compete with Dominion!', Thunderstone and Nightfall and Rune Age and Eminent Domain and Marvel and DC and all those other deckbuilders came out, because deckbuilding is an awesome mechanic and Rio Grande couldn't afford to buy every single one of those games just to stick them in the corner.

Finally, after years of sitting on a game that wasn't making them any money, Rio Grande decided it might be time to just print the damned thing. The deckbuilding bubble was burst. Dominion's heyday is good and gone. So with all the wind blown out of the deckbuilding sails, Rio Grande quietly slipped Arctic Scavengers out the door and into the public.

And it's still awesome! Arctic Scavengers is far more fun than Dominion, and I really like Dominion. It's got interaction and violence, a variety of strategies to win the game, tough decisions and an actual theme. This is not some ludicrous slapped-on theme that doesn't make any sense. This theme works great. In fact, the theme in Arctic Scavengers works better than the theme for just about any other deckbuilding game you could play.

The story is that a global ice age acts as an apocalyptic event, and now humankind is competing for resources in a big way. You're each a tribe of survivors trying to build a bigger tribe of survivors, and so you hire people to join your tribe, you search for tools, and you fight the other tribes for the best resources. Just about any action you could take in the game can be described in real-world terms that make sense.

For example, let's say you want to hire some people from a nearby settlement, but you also want to send out a search team for meds, and you just heard that a neighboring tribe is gearing up to go grab something big. You don't know what that big something might be, but damned if you're going to stand around and let them have it without a fight. So you go out into your tribe to see who is available, but you can only round up a scavenger, a brawler and a couple tired-ass refugees. So you throw a shovel to one refugee and tell him to head out to the ruined city and see what he can dig up, you tell the scavenger to go hunt some grub he can use to entice another scavenger into your tribe, and you tell the brawler and the refugee to go lay in wait and see what those other people are so excited about.

That sounds like a normal thing that could happen, right? I mean, assuming the world was covered in snow and people were killing each other for food. I didn't have to use game terms to describe what happens - but the game plays exactly how I described it. You pull five cards and get a scavenger, a brawler, a shovel and two refugees. You send one refugee to dig in the junkyard. You use the scavenger to hunt, which nets you another scavenger. You assign the brawler and the last refugee to fight, even though the refugee has no fight score, because he can at least break ties.

This is what I mean when I say that every game thing could be explained with a real explanation. Sure, it's got abstractions, but Arctic Scavengers doesn't just start with an idea and then make it a card game. It starts with a theme and then makes a game that fits the theme perfectly. Some games force a theme to make the deckbuilding work - I love Nightfall, but the theme is just ludicrous. For Arctic Scavengers, though, the deckbuilding is the only mechanic that would have made the theme work this well.

But let's say you already know all this, because you bought Arctic Scavengers before, when it was just one guy putting out a game. You already know how well the theme works. You know that this is as perfect a marriage between theme and mechanic as you're likely to ever see in a deckbuilder. And you don't see why you should run out and buy the same game all over again. There is, however, a damned good reason you should.

When the designer of Arctic Scavengers first came up with his idea for the game, he had an expansion in mind. It would have leaders and buildings and more tribe members to recruit, and generally make the game better. But then Rio Grande bought the game, and they bought the expansion at the same time, and it sat forgotten in a dusty corner until Rio Grande finally decided to put it on the market.

Well, when they finally decided to pull off the dusty cover and publish this sucker, they went ahead and threw the expansion in the box. The leaders and buildings and extra tribe members are all in the same package with the regular game, and now that you have everything, there's no reason to play with just the basics. The expansion stuff is so damned good that it's worth owning two copies of the game just to have this good stuff.

The leaders are your avatar in the game. They don't actually do stuff, exactly - they don't hunt or fight or look for supplies. Instead they grant some cool ability that can modify how the game works for you. The ranger teaches otherwise useless refugees to hunt, so that they will be good for something. The cannibal makes those useless refugees into something useful, but rather than sending them to hunt, he just cooks them into burgers.

The buildings are a little limited - I would have loved more - but the ones you get can do a lot of cool things. Mostly they store stuff for later turns, and I have achieved some exceptional mileage out of the pharmacy, especially when my deck had too many medkits because I was trying to entice the pharmers gang to join my group.

Playing Arctic Scavengers the way it used to be, before this box came out, was very fun. Better than Dominion, if a little less replay-friendly. But with the expansion material you get with the new reprint, Arctic Scavengers is a really awesome game. I wouldn't consider playing it without the leaders and gangs and buildings. It's thematically perfect, easy to learn, and incredibly difficult to play exactly right every time. I can't encourage you enough to pick up a copy of the new version. It's better than Thunderstone and Nightfall and Rune Age and Eminent Domain and Marvel and DC and all those other deckbuilding games that came out because deckbuilding is actually a pretty awesome game mechanic.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Theme matches mechanics
Exceptionally well-tested and fine-tuned
A masterful mix of long-term strategy and short-term clever plays
My favorite deckbuilding game

Cons:
I like the art better in the old one (except for the Field Crew)
Not as much replay value as you might see in other deckbuilders

I am amazed at how good the prices are at Coolstuff. At this price, there is no good reason not to own a copy of Arctic Scavengers.
http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/165504

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Card Game Review - Guildhall

Some day I'm going to write an article about the psychology of board games. And one thing that I'm definitely going to discuss is whether size matters when we're talking about the box (I encourage all of you to quote that out of context). If you put your game into a bigger box, does it make it more valuable? For many gamers, that's a definite yes.

For instance, Guildhall is basically three or four decks of cards and a handful of cardboard tokens. This could have come in a fairly small box. Yet it comes in a bigger box than some other games I own that have a lot less in the box, and I have to wonder if that's so that the game looks like it should cost more than it does.

But then, it doesn't seem like this is a straight money grab, because you can get Guildhall from Coolstuff for like 20 bucks. And this is way more than 20 bucks worth of game - as soon as we finished, we checked the clock to see if we had time for one more. And then the wife and I concocted plans to shanghai our kids into playing. It's a damned fun game, and a hell of a deal at 20 bones.

But it doesn't look like it should be. Seriously, it's all cards, and not even a lot of cards. Dominion - now that is a lot of cards. Nightfall - lots of cards. Guildhall - not really that many cards. Yet a game of Guildhall will take longer and potentially be a lot more engrossing than either Dominion or Nightfall, and for less money. This is a deeper game than Dominion or Nightfall, with some great strategy, and there's no way that the size of the box tells you if it's any good.

So you're reading this far, and we're starting the fifth paragraph, and you're like, 'OK, Drake, so it's fun, but what the hell is it?' And you're right, I have taken far too long to get to the point. I should probably have opened with a description, so that we don't wind up going into the sixth paragraph without me actually telling you what Guildhall is all about, and then being forced to end a sentence clause in a preposition.

Guildhall is (in theory) a game about building a guild that employs all the different people in town into organized groups. Guildhall is (in practice) a game about making sets of different cards and exploiting the abilities on those cards for maximum gain. The theme is mostly superfluous, but the game is still a hell of a lot of fun.

For instance, say you've been able to put two dancers and two weavers into your guildhall. You're trying to make sets of five of each. So you play another dancer from your hand, and she lets you draw two cards and play again. And then you draw a weaver you can use, so you play that, and because you've already got two weavers, you can put two cards right into your guildhall and then pick up one card. So you play two assassins into the guildhall, holding a third for next turn, and pick up a dancer so that next turn you can do the whole thing again, and this time kill somebody.

That was kind of a convoluted example, but it's also pretty typical. You're trying to build your groups until you have five of a kind, which you can then trade in for victory points. There's no one strategy that's guaranteed to win you the game - in one game, I went straight-up Jack the Ripper to keep my opponents in check, another player was just sending his farmers to work, and yet another kept swapping cards between us so that she could complete her sets.

If you love games with a lot of theme, and you like to be able to hear the swords getting stuck in ribcages, you're going to hate Guildhall. Or, rather, if that's the only kind of game you like, you'll hate Guildhall, because I love games with swords to the ribs, and I think Guildhall is a hoot. If you like card games with matching elements, if you like strategies that have to be adaptable, if you like holding a bunch of cards and seeing the killer move come alive in front of you, you really ought to just dig up a 20 and buy Guildhall. If you need an added incentive, the box is very large.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Clever, accessible card game
Lots of different winning strategies
Smart play with difficult decisions

Cons:
Theme is not all that useful
Not sure why the box is this big

When you click this link, you'll be saying, 'wow! It really is just 20 bucks' and then I'll be saying, 'see? Told you! Buy one!' and then you'll be saying, 'Hell yes I will buy one!'
http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/183480

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Board Game Review in Song Form - Zoneplex

Picture yourself in a pyramid temple
with triangle rooms you build on the fly.
Randomly place some rooms in the Zoneplex
and then move your monk to the eye.

Bright-colored monsters of pink, blue and green
manifest out of your head.
Team up with allies to take down the fears
and you'll win.

Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.
Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.
Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.

Floating in space, the pyramid temple
where luck rules the day and logic has died.
The pieces are nice but the story is trippy.
The designers were obviously high.

Talented artists created the game
and drew some exceptional art.
Too bad that Zoneplex makes no sense at all
and isn't fun.

Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.
Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.
Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.

Picture yourself playing some other game.
Zoneplex is strange and leaves too much to the die.
Production is solid but the game is just crazy.
It was made but I just don't know why.

Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.
Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.
Warrior monks fight space fears in Zoneplex.

(with sincere apologies to Lennon and McCartney)

Summary

Players: 3-5 people who have been ingesting hallucinogens

Pros:
Nice pieces
Cool art

Cons:
Luck is more important than playing well
Incoherent and bizarre

If you need an intellectually shallow way to play through your buzz while you mow down a bag of Doritos and listen to Pink Floyd, you can get Zoneplex through Game Salute:
http://shop.gamesalute.com/products/zoneplex

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Comic Book Review - Planetoid

I love a good sci-fi comic, especially if there are no over-sexed dames in skin-tight leotards who can shoot fire from their nipples. Science fiction is such a great genre for comic books, because it's difficult to describe some of the crazy stuff you see in standard written fiction. Planetoid sounded cool because it was a sci-fi book from Image, which makes it kind of a double-whammy of sweetness. Sure, Image published Youngblood, but they also do Walking Dead, so they still beat Marvel and DC.

Planetoid is a five-issue miniseries about a bad-ass SOB who crash-lands on a planet that has been strip-mined into a wastebasket. The surface of the planet is either toxic sludge or metal scrap, except for the big flat area where a few hundred people make their home. This planet is insanely hostile, because there's an alien group in the area that really hates the squatters. Never mind the fact that most of the survivors would kind of like to leave, the aliens want to harvest them, lobotomize them and turn them into slaves.

This is a dark book, and Silas, the hero of the book, is a dark hero with a dark past. The art itself is not that dark. Well, not literally. Like, you can see it just fine. But the evil aliens are twisted, the robots are efficiently brutal, the surface of the planet is barren and disgusting, and the food is just plain nasty. Oh, and there's this killer magnetic field that makes it so you can't leave orbit. It's just unkind.

Speaking of the art (which I did when I said it wasn't all that dark), it's perfect. The artist and the writer are the same guy, which means that the dude knew exactly what he wanted Silas to look like, and just how tall to make the snake robot, and how the froggy aliens would stand up. Plus it's marvelously detailed - where many comic artists would shortcut out backgrounds when they can get away with it, Planetoid spares no effort in showing us every scene in rich color and brilliant detail.

The story, by comparison, is a little stark. It feels rushed, like it could have been twenty issues and it got crammed into five. It's still a remarkable story, and I completely enjoyed it, and you can get the whole thing for nine bucks on Comixology and be happy you did. But it could have been developed into a much longer series, and I would have loved every issue. It's great fun to know how it ended (it just finished up a few days ago), but I wouldn't have minded getting to know all the people better. From the tough warrior chick to the blue alien, the old hermit to the loyal lizard sidekick, the cast in Planetoid is individual and entertaining - but they seem like you just get a taste of how cool they might be before the book is over.

Not that I'm complaining, really. Too many comics get cut before they can finish the whole run, and so I'm delighted that I was able to read the whole story of Planetoid and it never got the axe. It's fun to look at and fun to read, a cool tale of defiance and redemption and bravery and loyalty. It can be hard to find a good science fiction comic that will feel believable, since most seem to feel obligated to include stupid time travel or stupid spandex or stupid raccoon-headed aliens who smoke cigars. Planetoid is a blast, and even if it does leave me wanting more when I know it's over, I enjoyed it immensely.

You can find Planetoid at your local comics store, or if you're like me, Comixology:

http://www.comixology.com/Planetoid/comics-series/8055

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