Jar Of Eyeballs

Once again, the holiday for gamers by gamers has begun! If you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, head over to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and read the entire archive. That’s right, EVERYTHING!

Okay, done? Great! So, here are my plans for Wintereenmas. One of my WoW characters is about to enter Outland and I want to celebrate Wintereenmas by kicking ass in Hellfire Ramparts. Also, I hope to get some more work on my upcoming game done so I can finally post an announcement next weekend. So everybody have fun and game on!

If you’re into manga you probably already know this series, and if you don’t, here’s a short introduction. It’s created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, and deals with a supernatural notebook, the “Death Note”. Everything starts when a bored shinigami (god of death) drops his death note into the human world. The death note is an incredibly powerful weapon: when someone’s name is written in it, he will die. The owner also has to visualise his target’s face when writing down his name, so people with the same name won’t be affected. When just the name is written down, he will die of a heart attack, but it’s also possible to write down a cause of death and even manipulate certain events preceding his death.

The notebook is found by Light Yagami, a brilliant student. When he discovers the powers it holds, he comes up with an impressive plan. He will use the death note to massacre criminals and rid the world of evil. By making them all die of a heart attack, he will make it clear their deaths aren’t natural and there’s someone or something behind it all, and thus acquiring a god-like status. It doesn’t take long before criminals start dying and Light starts getting lots of admirers, who call him Kira. Also, he draws the attention of the police, who enlist a mysterious detective only known as L to find him.

Exploiting Light’s arrogance, L quickly traces him down, but he can’t prove he’s behind it all. What follows is a fiendishly complicated game of cat-and-mouse, where both L and Kira try to outsmart each other all the time. L even asks for Light’s help to track down Kira, even though he’s the prime suspect. The plot is as brilliant as it is complicated, and it will require you to re-read every book several times to fully understand it. At some point it seems like Light surrenders, while his true plan becomes clear much later. This was the biggest “WTF?” moment I ever encountered in any book. Kinda makes you wonder what kind of genius it takes to come up with such a story!

A two-part live action movie was made of this, but with a heavily modified storyline. There’s also an anime series wich does follow the original story.

Guess what the mailman brought today: the Ctrl Alt Delete figurines I ordered a while ago! They’re part of a 500-piece limited edition series. If you think it’s geeky to buy this, wait till you hear what I did to make sure I got a set!

Like I said, only 500 of these were made. The author of the comic was nice enough to sell them in two batches. The first batch of 250 pieces went for sale in the morning, but by the time I got home they were sold out. The second batch would be available at 6pm. Pacific time, that is! Since I’m in Europe (Belgium to be more specific), this was 3am for me. I simply had to have these, so I set my alarm clock for 2:55 am and made sure I ordered them the minute they were available. And now, after weeks of waiting, they have finally arrived!

The person on the left is Ethan McMannus, main protagonist of Ctrl Alt Delete. He’s addicted to video games, never thinks before doing something and is a magnet for trouble. Yes, those are sticks of dynamite in the toaster. The “person” on the right is Zeke, a robot Ethan built out of an XBox. Originally, he was simply called the “X-Bot”, later on he was named Ezekiel, wich eventually became Zeke. Like any decent humanoid robot, he’s obsessed with destroying all humans. And robot porn.

As a geek, I love comics. I’m not really a fan of the American superhero comics, though. The stuff I’m into are mostly thrillers, horror and scifi stuff. Besides printed comics, I also follow several web comics. I first discovered web comics about five years ago, and ever since I’ve got a top five I follow. Here they are:

Megatokyo; Without any doubt my favourite one. Also, one of the few webcomics that are drawn in pencil rather than a drawing program. It’s about two friends who go to Japan and are unable to go back home. When it started, it was very focused on video games, but eventually it turned into quite an elaborate storyline. It includes a lot of references to several manga series (although the only one I spotted so far were about Hellsing and Love Hina). And it also has zombies, wich is always a good thing. And a sexy goth girl. Also a good thing.

Ctrl Alt Delete; I own two autographed books of this one. It’s mostly about video games. It has a main storyline about the day to day life of the main characters, with one-day episodes in between from time to time. The author also invented Wintereenmas, a gaming holiday. It started as an in-story joke, but soon spread into the real world.

Penny Arcade; The mother of all webcomics! In fact, it has become much more than a webcomic. The creators, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulic, also started the Penny Arcade Expo, the Child’s Play charity and worked on several video games featuring characters from the comic. And they also had a rather unpleasant confrontation with übermoron Jack Thompson a while ago. Unpleasant for him, that is! It tought him a good lesson: don’t mess with geeks!

Little Gamers; Another gaming comic. It’s full of violence, gore and foul language. Just the way we like it!

Real Life Comics; Although this one isn’t as good as it used to be in my opinion, it’s still a comic I read every day. As the title says, it’s supposed to be about the real life. I said “supposed to be”, because I don’t really think the author has access to a time machine and a space station.

So, what about the rest of you? Any webcomic recommendations?