DaddyTips.com

Captain Ultimate Halloween Spooktacular (Comics)

We’ve written before about Captain Ultimate, a kid-friendly comic written by Joey Esposito and Benjamin Bailey, with art by Boykoesh, colors by Ed Ryzowski, lettering and production by Adam O. Pruett, published by Monkeybrain Comics. Guess what? They’re already up to issue #4, and it’s a Halloween Spooktacular!

According to the official Captain Ultimate blog, issue #4 features “an evil punk rock band, Shakespeare, hot rods, and, of course, buckets and buckets of candy.” The band is called The Pumpkills, which is Spooktacularly awesome. As someone who played in a band many moons ago (click this link to listen to me playing at CBGBs but not when the kids are around because there’s probably some cussing), I was psyched to see music, especially a band who finishes their show by shouting “We hate you! Goodnight!”, feature prominently in the story. And yes, they even quote Shakespeare, something many Marvel Comics writers have done often over the years, beginning with Stan the Man Lee himself. (Spider-Man in particular seems to inspire quite a bit of Shakespeare espousing, but that’s a tale for another time, True Believer.)

As a tremendous cheapskate, I’m very psyched to tell you that Captain Ultimate #4 is only 99 cents over at Comixology. 99 cents! That’s change from your digital dollar.

Still not convinced? Here are some preview pages from Captain Ultimate #4, generously provided to us by the authors.

Captain Ultimate #4 is listed as being appropriate for ages 9 and up. That sounds about right to us, although there is a letter from a parent on this issue’s Ulti-Mail page saying that he shares the comic with his offspring, ages 3 and 5.  As always, use your own judgment about what level of entertainment your kids will tolerate.

Personally we think Captain Ultimate is a good one for the young’uns. The art alone is a huge draw… no pun intended. (Seriously, that was an accident.) The story in issue #4 is good clean fun, with barely anything one would call violence, and not a drop of blood gets spilled. There may be some injured candy, but to say anything more would be a spoiler.

With so many entertainment options vying for your wallet, we think it’s important to support independent publishers and creators. Don’t get us wrong. Spider-Man is awesome. We’re 1000% ready for the new Thor movie. We’ve seen every episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at least three times. The Avengers movie… we might have watched it 15 times so far. And we will watch it again. But it’s important to make room for other stuff as well. After all, Spider-Man was once the new hero on the block.

Buy Captain Ultimate #4 at Comixology

More info at the Captain Ultimate Blog:

Captain Ultimate #4 On Sale Now! | Captain Ultimate

Playstation Halloween Sale (DaddyDeals)

Lots of horror video games, and also games that kindasorta are related to Halloween (Plants Vs. Zombies, for example) are being sold at “frighteningly good discounts” during the upcoming Playstation Halloween Sale. (That’s what they said at IGN, and who are we to question?) Some prices are cheaper for Playstation Plus Members. Some games might even be free for Plus members. It’s a big list. IGN has it. Go on. Check it out. Don’t be afraid.

Hotline Miami Free During PlayStation’s Halloween Sale – IGN.

Ouya Football Game Raises Eyebrows With Kickstarter Campaign (And Why This Matters To Parents)

Ouya is an attempt to create an alternative gaming console. By “alternative” I don’t mean REM back in the day, I mean “a gaming console that isn’t an XBox 360/One, Wii/Wii U or PS1/2/3/4.” It’s unclear whether or not the thing will succeed, but the folks at Ouya seem to have cash because they’re offering some kind of matching funds to developers who can raise a certain amount of cash via Kickstarter.

One of these developers, MogoTXT, is causing consternation amongst the console cognoscenti, according to a story post at IGN. (Note: all of our information in this post is from the linked IGN article below. That’s our source. We’re not going to go into all of the details because they did all the work so you should go there and read their story if you want to know all the stuff.)

The game Gridiron Thunder (video below) raised sufficient ducats to get more ducats from Ouya, but they had very few backers, and many of the backers seem to have names remarkably similar to each other, as well as to MogoTXT CEO Andrew Won. In other words, some suspect… foul play.

Another intriguing wrinkle: how is MogoTXT planning to release a football (as in NFL) game without having permission to use the images of real players? Maybe they aren’t planning to use images of real players? We don’t know. In general, video sports gamers prefer to play games featuring their favorite superstars, or at least real dudes. I thought the license for this was sold exclusively to the good folks at EA, which they use to make a little game called Madden NFL.

The IGN story states that Gridiron Thunder is the second game to reach the funding mark required to receive extra moneys from Ouya. The other is Elementary, My Dear Holmes!, which sounds much more fun: “A point-and-click adventure game starring legendary sidekick John Watson on an epic quest to prove that Sherlock Holmes is just a jerk.”

By the way, Sherlock Holmes? Public domain. No rights issues there. Just saying.

Why are we writing about this? One, kids play video games. Two, Kickstarter is a real thing. By that I mean crowd-funding is a way to get the money to make a professional quality video game, as well as movies, watches, and who knows what else. Your kids are going to be asking you about Kickstarter. They may already have asked you about it. It behooves you to put crowd-funding on your parental digital radar. Yes, it’s one more thing to think about/learn about/be annoyed with. (What, the Facebook, the Twitter and the Snapchat weren’t enough? Now I have to learn about the Kickstarter too? Oy vey.) At least with this one, your kids could potentially find the money from people other than you to turn their great idea into a reality. That would be awesome.

That’s why I care if a Kickstarter campaign turns out to be skeezy. I would prefer that it NOT be skeezy. There will always be a certain percentage of skeeziness with anything involving the Interwebs. But the less skeeze the better.

Suspicious Ouya Game Kickstarter Campaign Raises Eyebrows via IGN

President of Nintendo Actually Says “Meh”

More Presidents of major gaming companies should say “meh” when describing their competitors products. It would be amusing.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2013/08/28/nintendo-president-on-ps4-xbox-one-launch-lineups-meh?&

Captain Ultimate, New All Ages Comic

We’ve mentioned Joey Esposito here before (actually, we’ve even met him in person — nice guy). Joey is the comics editor at IGN, and also writes comics himself. His latest is Captain Ultimate, a really fun all-ages book published by MonkeyBrain Comics. Joey wrote it with fellow IGNer Benjamin Bailey. The amazing art is by Boykoesh, with eye-catching colors by Ed Ryzowski. Adam Pruett is the letterer. (Hey, Stan Lee always mentioned the letterers back in the day. Artie Simek, represent!)

Here’s the cover:

Looks like fun, right? It is. Read on for more info. Read more »

IGN Commenter Speaks Truth About The Avengers

I finally have a few minutes to pull out my Geek Gold Card and catch up with all of the San Diego Comic Con news. At first I thought the biggest tidbit was the title for Avengers 2 — Avengers: Age of Ultron. (Insert little nerdy noise here.) Turns out much more was revealed about the many upcoming Marvel superhero movies, plus the announcement that Superman and Batman will do a project together. (I like phrasing it that way because it sounds like I think they’re real people. You know, like The Muppets.)

Personally I prefer The Avengers. Have I mentioned that lately?

Anyway, in this IGN story about footage from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the comments section is briefly hijacked by someone who thinks that the Nolan Batman flicks are more awesome than The Avengers movie. We disagree with this statement. A lot. Enough that we could say mean things. But since it’s not nice to be mean, let us instead share a polite portion from this post:

They are ALL good movies, however Avengers did what superhero movies needed to do. That is all. I win.

That is indeed all. Well, not really. The above was followed someone stating that “the avengers might be one of the most overrated movies of all time, despite the fact I like it, people just give it way too much undeserved adulation“, which itself led to, “Nolan’s batman films are the most overrated comic book movies of all time. Begins actually felt like a comic book. things slowly started to trickle down hill with the dark knight until we received the all over the place plot of The dark knight rises.” (Note: all comments pasted as is, spelling/capitalization/grammar missteps included.) Eventually the thread gets back to what’s really important, which is that there are a lot more superhero movies on the horizon and how awesome that is.

Personally I’m more excited about the upcoming Marvel movies than I am those from the Distinguished Competition. Part of this is because I’m more of a Marvel fan to begin with. (Not that I dislike DC; I love the Justice League cartoon and yack about it so often that even my fellow Geek Gold Card members tune me out when I get going.) Other reasons include:

(a) There are more Marvel movies on the way, and the main goal here is to have as many superhero movies as possible. Preferably one per week.
(b)  Out of the recently released superhero movies, those from Marvel (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man) have been better than those from DC (Green Lantern, The Dark Knight Rises, and even Man Of Steel, although I liked it fine).

The Avengers, of course, is the best of the bunch. Well, the best as of now. Because there’s lots more to come. And that, in the words of Martha Stewart, is a good thing.

Comic-Con: Captain America Honors San Diego with Winter Soldier Footage – IGN