The Archive

Commando Drinkathon:  The Less Than Negative crew gets stupid with the cheesiest/greatest movie in Arnold's armory.

Saturday- June 27th: "Come on Bennett. Let off some steam" The LTN crew is going to tackle the Commando drinking game featuring the star of all stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Our dossier of the toughest black ops drinkers include Phil who has been trained the wino style and has extensive catalog of whiskey experience. He also single handedly rescued beer from a hot LZ in New Orleans while fighting off swarms of homeless NVA.  Our next operative is Rob who excels at tech and sports knowledge. Give this guy a six pack of Rolling Rock, a spool of chicken wire, a 1st gen iPod, and a lvl 100 Dwarf, he breech any defense. Our last specialist is a master at digging and getting hit with a shovel. Cody creates a tapestry of typos in articles when fueled by cheap whiskey and White Castle sliders.

Synchronize your watches:  8:00pm Central

Where?:  Our UStream Channel

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Actraiser:  "They won't carry this guy off the field on a stretcher, they'll carry him off in a sponge."

Traditionally most gamers fall into about three different groups. The first are your hardcore simulation players. These guys can tell you why it’s reasonable to buy a $400 dollar flight stick or show off their racing chair in front of a triple display setup. The second are your hardcore sports fanatics. You’ve probably met these people as they are probably the only fuckers to ever own a multitap so their can yell racial slurs at each other playing Fifa and the latest Madden. Then you have everyone else. In an attempt to make a sports game appeal to everyone else, Mutant League Football was created. It wasn’t the first to bridge the gap, but it was the first at being able to run into a landmine during a play, bribe the ref, or kill the entire opposing team.

Copperhead:  Sometimes I just want my sci-fi simple and western.

One of the best series out is also one of the most unassuming. If you judge a book by its cover, and you have to sometime by their very nature, Copperhead doesn't stand out amongst the shock inducing cover art that fans are used to. This is by no means a bad thing, but what makes it different also makes it a must read. The cover art is clean and direct compared to the blood splattered, gory, team ensembles, or scantily clad women that we are used to in our weekly releases. Copperhead may be an unassuming title, but it is full of solid writing, pacing, art, and world building that comes together to create something much better without relying on obvious gimmicks.

The Amazing Spider-Man:  After years of shitting on Parker, a ray of light hits the current arc.

Anyone who has been a fan of Spider-Man has been through some rough times. You have the awful confusing mess of the Clone Saga, Sins Past where it was revealed Gwen Stacy had love children with the Green Goblin, and the rotten cherry on top with One More Day where in an effort to retcon Spider-Man’s history, Peter Parker makes a deal with the devil to save the life of Aunt May who should have decades ago in exchange of forgetting he’s married to supermodel Mary Jane. All in that horrible afterbirth, Dan Slott has been slugging away at Spider-Man with brute force. He gave us some good arcs like American Son, the Gauntlet, and Spider Island. Now with the latest reboot, Slott is injecting something Peter Parker has never faced before. Common sense.

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Robocop vs Terminator:  Robocop vs Terminator: If twelve year olds had an illustrated argument

While I still love slap bracelets, Pogs, and Hypercolor shirts, the 90's was fucking ridiculous. Comics were getting pretty crazy too with the crazy collector's covers and an endless supply of first issues that never amounted to anything. While Image Comics was starting to boom and the mega X-Men events overshadowed everything, Dark Horse Comics was quietly sitting in corner churning out licensed comics like Aliens and Predator. One of those gems was Robocop vs Terminator who was written by the critically acclaimed and eventually insane Frank Miller. Such an epic concept could only be drawn by Walt Simonson who did the impossible and made Thor suck less. It was if the stars aligned and put a supremely talented duo to take a severely retarded idea and make it awesome. What we have is the most beautiful train wreck carefully crafted that could ever come from a comic where a cyborg cops punches the shit out of assassin robots.

Blame!

Tsutomu Nihei

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who hits the wall. You start out strong, watching Akira from someone's recommendation. Then you watch Ghost in the Shell. Someone points to Berzerk and then you find yourself vegetating on Dragonball Z fight scenes. You start to examine your life through Evangelion and publicly praise Studio Ghibli's works. You are running full speed when you finally hit it, wondering what the fuck you are doing with your life giving a shit about a stupid high pitched schoolgirl with even dumber problems. But every once in a while, I manage to find some so unique that sets me running again. Enter Blame! which is one of the most unique not only in manga and cyberpunk, but in science fiction all together.

Batman (NES):  If I had to wall jump everywhere, I would probably kill the Joker too.

Batman still stands as one of the best games for the NES in so many ways, but it sure as hell isn't for sticking close to the Tim Burton film or using a lot of reference from the comics. Looking at a ton of other comic book games for the system (Wolverine, Silver Surfer, X-Men), that's probably a good thing. In this version of Batman, he fucking loves guns, bounces off of walls to get around, and opts for industrial factories rather than the streets of Gotham. Despite all of this that might irk purists, it's still really good. Even if you took out Batman, it would still stand up as one of the best action platformers made for the system.

...and other things.

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Now I need to get Arma.

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Tin Cup American Whiskey

Good and cheap is hard to come by these days when purchasing a sipping whiskey. Tincup American Whiskey (technically bourbon) falls into both of these necessary categories, and at around $25 for a 750ml bottle, Tincup is a game changer. Gone are the days of compromising on taste and price for a decent whiskey that you can sip straight out of the bottle. Jim Beam, I’m looking right at you old friend.

Starflight:  A journey into roach engineers, strip mining, and space racists.

The ISS Longinus was prepped for its mission of exploring the vast universe while Captain Bossman looked over the personnel files of his brave crew. Stu was going to take his role as Science officer with the android Robocab in control of navigation. Roach, our insect-like Velox engineer, was in charge of cargo and trying to keep the ship in one piece when we inevitably piss off a fleet of warships. Wizliz took the role of our Thrynn comm officer. This reptilian officer will ensure that the elegant languages of the vast cultures of the universe will get translated to mongoloid. This is not Wizliz's fault. It's just that Bossman thinks Class 3 shields and multiple weapon systems on the Longinus are cooler than adequate crew training. Last we have the talking plant Greenpea of the peaceful Elowan race who will serve as the medical officer. It's Greenpeas's job to patch us all up when we fuck up a landing or if crew members get hurt when a fleet of eight murderous Mechan ships decide that our luxury of breathing is being revoked. It is up to the brave affirmative action crew of the Longinus to explore this universe and ultimately save all known life from the cause of the mysterious solar flares that are wiping out vast systems. The brave crew does a heroic job of fucking this up royally.

One of the most tripped out videos ever made.

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Prophet:  "A man emerges, finally awake from the long sleep of the hyperpod."

You may remember Prophet from the “extreme” 90's when chromium covers pushed sales and putting pockets on characters was the comic trend of the time. Image comics was the biggest at the time pushing their comics with a style over substance mentality. If you read Youngblood, it was one of the worst offenders where you have horribly trademarked Liefield art mixed with stories that make SuperPro look like fucking Shakespeare. Somehow, out of that pile of dogshit came Prophet which told the story of a genetically modified soldier that liked shortswords and pockets. It was just as bad and only lasted about twenty issues which should have been forgotten by time. It wasn't. In probably the best and strangest revap ever, writer Brandon Graham and artist Simon Roy hacked away at Prophet making it unrecognizable. What we are left with is a comic that feels more epic than Star Wars, more bizarre than any classic Doctor Who episode, and more of a Heavy Metal issue regular than anything that Image Comics is comfortable with.