Us Loser City folk sometimes take trips outside the city limits, so this week we’re rounding up some of the places you might have seen Loser City citizens.
The big news is that Shea Hennum made his debut over at Paste with a review of Scott McCloud’s new work The Sculptor, which Shea really didn’t like. More specifically, Shea kicked off his review with this statement on these kinds of latter day works by “greats” in general:
“The Sculptor, like Frank Miller’s Holy Terror, Neal Adam’s Batman: Odyssey, and Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell Volume 2: Man-Machine Interface, is a comic that exists because its author is too well-regarded to be said “No” to.”
Unsurprisingly (if you follow comics internet), Shea’s piece and comments made by Zainab Akhtar of Comics & Cola led to an Emperor’s New Clothes situation where both Shea and Zainab were dismissed for not immediately accepting a new McCloud work into “the canon.” In Shea’s case, the dismissal came with the bonus of being put up against words from other Legendary Creator Neil Gaiman while Zainab’s disinterest in the work altogether after viewing its frankly horrible cover was viewed as unbelievable.
Seriously, look at this garbage.
We are of course very excited to see Shea make his national publication debut, but also disappointed that comics continues to be such a sad industry that this whole kerfuffle seems to have in part led to Zainab Akhtar stating she is now limiting her comics writing output due to the awful comments hurled her way on a daily basis.
In better, brighter news, Shea also conducted an interview with Curt Pires at This is Infamous, where he talks to Pires about his new series Mayday, and also mentions Loser City’s Morgan Davis in a discussion about the way Image really isn’t all that different from the Big Two in regards to sensibility. It’s a good read, check it out.
Over at The Plog, the blog iteration of hot shit Austin collective and zine Raw Paw, Loser City newcomer Lars Russell penned a short story called “Blueberries,” in which he waxes poetic about the brain fruit and asks:
“Is there any doubt Blues has the color of blueberries? Of difficult decisions and sacrifice? That eternal, nebular, blushing blue that grows in the stem of your brain, and the more and wilder the better?”
Meanwhile, Jake Muncy continues his domination of the AV Club’s games section, with two pieces this week. First up was a review of The Unfinished Swan, a gorgeous new game that has you drawing out your own landscapes and wielding brushes as “weapons.” Jake thinks the game is a huge step forward for games that ask you to create within them:
“Games are constrained in a fundamental way: Nothing exists that the developer didn’t make. This isn’t a problem, per se, but it is a challenge for a game that seeks to give the player a real sense of agency or artistry. Your choices are always constrained, and it’s always clear that this is the developer’s toy box—not yours. The painting in Swan’s first chapter provides an ingenious compromise in favor of player creativity. By offering you a free-form ability to shape the environment, the developers carved out a space for expression within the constraints of a linear, story-driven puzzle game, where each path is designed to take you to a single place.”
And speaking of paths in games, Jake also wrote on fast travel in open world games, specifically his love for the sailing in WindWaker, which was criticized at the time but now seems more fitting when compared to games like GTA V, which also force you to travel the old, long way:
“Maybe Wind Waker’s boating has benefited from the mass inflation of game worlds since its release in 2002. Trekking across its ocean is not nearly as time-consuming and tedious as traversing the humongous worlds of modern games like Grand Theft Auto V. Even in the bigger fare, though, I get a good deal of joy out of just getting from place to place. At its best, open-world travel is rewarding in itself, and I avoid fast travel as much as I can. The ability to teleport around is nice, especially for games with dozens of hours of activities, but it never fails to pull me out of the world. I’m not much of a hiker in real life, but in games, that exploration helps to get me steeped in the atmosphere.”
But of course the best news was that Kayleigh Hughes and Dylan Garsee got complimented on their looks by the Go Fug Yourself girls:
@KayleighQueue @dylangarsee I think you both look great!
— Heather & Jessica (@fuggirls) February 6, 2015
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