Category: Blog

Invincible is Incredible

Last night after my wife fell asleep, I watched the first three episodes of Invincible on Amazon Prime. She indulges my nerdy tendencies, but I don’t want to overwhelm her, either, so I’m judicious with the tv shows and movies I share with her.

I’ll talk about Invincible in a moment, but first I want to give you my bonafides.

I grew up reading comic books. I don’t remember when I first started reading them; I only know it was part of our family routine. When I was four years old, my dad and I would walk to the local restaurant and order some subs or a pizza. While we waited for our meal, we’d go to the corner store and pick up a bottle of soda and a comic book or two.

Comic books were my gateway to reading. My dad would sit down and read that week’s comic book with me. I’d memorize every word and later “read” the comic book to my friends. Very quickly, I learned how to read on my own, and I was on my way!

I’ve read comic books for over 30 years. But after all that I time, I grew tired of them. I was no longer surprised. I was familiar with all the tropes and clichés, and they no longer delighted me as they once had. I finished three decades of reading comic books in 2000 with Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. It was the last series that I felt was truly unique and that I was passionate about. It seemed an excellent way to wrap up my favorite pastime.

Since then, I’ve picked up the odd comic book here and there. I also listen to podcasts or read articles about comic books now and then, but I’m no longer a “reader”. Except for glancing through a couple of pages of Invincible, I’m largely ignorant about the series. While I no longer read comic books, I am a sucker for tv shows and movies based on comic book characters, so of course I was going to watch Invincible.

I loved it.

The animation is fantastic. It’s beautiful. And importantly, the animation hews closely to Cory Walker’s illustrations from the comic book series.

What Invincible gets rights is how superhero comic books feel. The tv show captures the awesomeness of superheroes as well as the epic battles. I felt the impact of every blow. Things felt like they had heft. I think that’s something many animated shows based on comic books get wrong because usually, things feel weightless.

Other animated shows also tend to fail at making their worlds feel like a place where people actually live. They often feel empty with a sprinkling of a population to suggest a town or metropolis. The only animated production that felt lived in was Akira, with its crowds of people and riots. It’s not fair to compare Akira with animated tv shows because that movie had a crazy budget for its time. Even so, Invincible’s world feels inhabited.

But a show like this can’t rest on gorgeous animation. It has to deliver on a great story with compelling characters, and once again, Invincible nails it. I’m not going to go into the plot because I don’t want to spoil your experience. Trust me when I tell you the story is fanatastic, and I wanted to know more about each character. And it doesn’t hurt that the voice talent is spectacular. With a cast that includes J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, and Steven Yeun you could animate the series with stick figures, and it’d still be gripping.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is that Invincible contains adult content. People curse, there’s sexuality (including a foursome with one character who can make duplicates of herself. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert!), and violence, another thing Invincible aces.

The violence is what you’d imagine if godlike beings faced off against each other. Bodies beat to a pulp. People decapitated, or their limbs ripped off. Vehicles thrown, buildings leveled, and satellites hurled from their orbit. While the violence is brutal, it never feels ghoulish, like say what you’d encounter in The Boys tv series. I’m not knocking The Boys; the ultra-violence is the point of the series. The point I’m trying to make is that the violence in Invincible gruesome; it felt believable. The shock value was earned.

I hope the animated series is as long as the comic book series because I’m in the bag for Invincible. I may have to make a trip to my local comic book store and pick up a few issues.

FLESH. HEART. THINKING. STOMACH.

Last night I played Mothership, a sci-fi horror roleplaying game where you and your crew try to survive in the most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space! If you enjoy films like Aliens or Event Horizon then this game is definitely for you.

I first heard about Mothership on the excellent Full Metal RPG podcast. I was intrigued by the idea and purchased the game without hesitation. That was six months ago. Between the press of life and being intimidated by running a horror roles playing game the rule book sat on my shelf. When I received a notification from Meetup that there was an opportunity to play Mothership at Off The Shelf Games I RSVP’d immediately. My buddy Al told me he was itching to try a role playing game so I invited him to join me.

Off The Shelf Games is a new store located in El Cajon. The place well lit, neat and tidy, and the staff are very friendly. I met Matthew, who would be running the game, and my fellow players, Jordan and Joe. We very quickly rolled up our characters which as very easy to do because the character sheet is pretty much a flowchart. I played Nathaniel Grimm, a salty teamster. Jordan played Tank, a trigger happy marine. Jordan played Miguel, our android assistant and Al played Professor Sagan, a scientist.

We were traveling through space, each of us in suspended animation tucked away in our cryopods, when were rudely awakened. A chunk of metal had been flung into the cryopod controls and in the vacuum of space we would soon perish. I made my way out of my pod and rescued Sagan, who was quickly running out of air. I then checked the damage and ascertained that we were hosed and pushed myself off to the next room to gather vacc suits while Sagan rescued Tank, who was vomiting in his pod.

We made our way to the ships bridge and received a message: our vessel had been harpooned. We could either stay on the ship and die or join our unknown assailants in a business proposition. I checked our engines and confirmed that we had indeed been harpooned and the damage was fatal. The engines were leaking radiation and could blow at a minute. With no choice we agreed to be boarded.

We traversed an umbilical from our ship to theirs, which we discovered was unmanned and chock full of explosives. We were taken to the planet below and met by a huge android with three faces and 11 starving humans. The android gave us a proposition: go beneath the planet’s surface and rescue a child. Our options were not good do we agreed and quickly descended into the planet’s blowers but not before each of us were horrifically inserted with black box to track our whereabouts and record our every thought.

Form there it was essentially a dungeon crawl. We went from room to room and found humans that were glowing, twitching cyborgs or slowly melting into goo. And like any good dungeon crawl we had to battle these monsters, the only difference is each time our stress levels were notched up, impairing us physically and mentally. And also like any good dungeon crawl we did battle with some big bads and a boss. In this case it was a teleporting robot who was responsible for the melting humans and a biomech dire wolf and our boss fight was with the AI who was responsible for all of it.

The AI also had a proposition: it would infect one of us with a virus that would kill everyone topside. Unimpeded, the AI could then get one with its business of devouring the planet. While the team debated the pros and cons of this proposition I snatched one of Tank’s grenades and lobbed it at the AI’s core, which was already stopped with explosives from a previous team that had failed in a similar mission.

From there we fought our way back to the surface of the planet. Tank tossed grenade after grenade and emptied his sub machine gun at the orbit and the dire wolf and I exhausted my laser cutter on our foes. Miguel injected Tank with stim pack after stim pack and pumped him full of pain meds to keep Tank going. We succeeded but not with out taking a lot of damage and Tank lost an arm.

When we made our way to the planet’s surface we explained we had left the kid below but had killed the AI. Our android benefactor was pleased with that and let us leave the planet with lots of cash.

The game was a blast and very easy to pick up. Matthew did an excellent job moving the game along and revealing horror after horror. We were all impressed with Al. Most people who play a role playing game for the first time are a bit timid because they’re a unfamiliar with the rules and are overwhelmed with the game play. Not Al. He dove in head first and was effectively our team leader. Al had to bow out early and the dynamic off the group changed dramatically and it took us a while to get back to steam.

I’ll definitely join in further adventures if he decides to keep running Motherhship. My only quibbles is that I don’t think a well-lit gaming store is the best environment for Mothership. If you’re going to play a horror role playing game I think you need to be in a dark room with some spooky music playing in the background, maybe something by Cryo Chamber. Also, I would have preferred more role playing and less “my character says this” or “my character does that.” But other than that it was a rollicking good time and I’m glad I finally got to play Mothership.

Mothership Character Sheet

Early Riser

I woke up very early this morning. Unable to fall back to sleep I decided to make myself useful and do some chores around the house. I wanted something quiet and pretty to listen to, specifically Frédéric Chopin‘s “Berceuse in D Flat, Op. 57,” which reminds me of spring rain in Boston. I was too groggy to remember the name of the composer or the song. I settled on Claude Debussy, which was just as wonderful.

I’ve added links to the songs I listened to on Spotify so you can enjoy Debussy as well.