Barnestorming #0.213- The Kickstarter Carnival, God of Blades, Morrison's JLA Hot

Your son's iPhone playlist sounds a lot like one my own son would put together. Superheros, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Thomas is about right. Throw some They Might Be Giants on there, and that's it.

I can't read the article yet (NHS blocked at work), but I keep feeling that in a world without BGG, Kickstarter might be a really awesome thing for board games. But it's always used for some combination of worker placement and deck-building, or for some goofy crap like the Kingdom of Loathing card game. I have less a problem using it for reprints of established games, but even then I'd prefer to not have to pay up front, like a P500 system. That's really the crux for me. I'm not paying now for a game that I may not get for a year. I'm so glad I didn't back the Glory to Rome reprint. I was able to trade for the old ugly version, and it turns out it's the SAME GAME.

Porter is *so bad*. I've got those JLA books, and somehow they literally look worse every single time I look at them.

The last story, "World War III", is worth reading, but the best one is "JLA: Earth 2", featuring Frank Quitely on art. I know some people don't like Quitely (I think you're included), but it's hard to deny that Morrison does a *lot* of his best writing when Quitely's around. At the very least, the clarity and simplicity of Quitely's drawing and layouts contrasts *drastically* with Howard Porter.

I've read pretty close to zero Eurocomics; picked up a few Moebius comics (Arzach & Airtight Garage) a few months ago but haven't gotten around to reading them. Read some of the Dungeon books, I guess, and random other so-so Eurocomics, and Persepolis; whatever was in Raw magazine; oh, and the VERY well-regarded Fires by Mattoti and It Was the War of the Trenches by Tardi, neither of which I was even that impressed by (other than the art, which is amazing in both cases). Not that into Tintin, even: the clear-line guys like Herge, George McManus, and Joost Swarte, their art looks pretty until I start reading it, and then the mechanically precise coldness of the style really detaches me from the reading experience. I have read one really, really great Eurocomic, though: EPILEPTIC. Easily a top 5 autobio comic, which is saying something. And the art, wow, COMPLETELY unique style for comics.

Okay, maybe I haven't read close to zero Eurocomics, I think I've read a bunch. But only one that impressed me. So I agree with your assessment...but there must be some great untranslated stuff.

The Morrison JLA is frustrating. With a good editor and a great artist, that could have been a legendary comic run. As it stands, it's a mixed bag, though still better than most JLA comics, especially everything from the last ten years. Cool ideas, but hampered by choppy writing and crappy artwork. Porter had a few good panels here and there, but usually gets things wrong. Weird anatomies, strange poses, absurdly large eyes and crazy facial expressions. But then I've seen better artists also struggle to get Morrison's ideas on the page, so I think that some blame can be laid at Grant's feet. And despite his reverence for the legendary JLA/JSA/Seven Soldiers teamup from JLA #100-102, Morrison frankly bungled his own JLA/JSA team-up.

Barnes, did you read the standalone Earth-2 story by Morrison and Quitely from around the time of the JLA run? That was definitely better than the regular JLA issues of the Morrison run. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the JSA and everything to do with the evil alternate reality JLA known as the Crime Syndicate.

My criteria for kickstarter is this: my subjective opinion of if this is a genre/game/project that would be produced any other way. If no, I will consider kickstarting. Note that it's not whether it will get enough kickstarts to be produced, but rather if the market has shown that it will bear a game of this type. Take the spiritual successor to the PC game Total Annihilation that got kickstarted---the market has made it perfectly clear that it is a niche (slow, macro strategic RTS) that will not be filled by normal publishers. So I kickstarted it. Anything else, though, and I don't bother. I've only done 2. None of them are boardgames.

WRT Kickstarter: the only Kickstarter object I've been actually excited about is Up Front, and even there I'll probably avoid backing because Kickstarter + Valley Games terrifies me.

Yeah, Porter is so freaking bad. After reading those books, it was so refreshing to get back to Simonson- all clear, square panels except when he breaks out to do a cool graphic design trick for emphasis. He's really at an intersection between Kirby and Steranko in some ways, and that really clean, on-the-level style blows away that god damned 1990s Dutch angle thing. I'm fairly sure Porter didn't take basic anatomy drawing classes at any time, and I'm not sure he's ever actually seen a live woman. His artwork is so disorienting, for lack of a better term, and it really shows how bad art can actually make a story hard to follow.

Dungeon is definitely one of the more accessible- and fun- Eurocomics that I've read at least. There is a kind of remoteness to most of that material, and that may be what is sort of tough to get around. I have a lot of Euro stuff I want to look at, but in reading it I sort of get fatigued by it quickly. I do like it, but it's almost strictly because of the illustration and design. Seriously, the Bilal stuff is SO FREAKING GOOD. I've got The Hunting Party on my pile too, and it's sort of a political thriller with no SF/Fantasy elements. I'm curious to see how it turns out in terms of writing. Thorgal is another one I have, it looks just fucking incredible but I hope it isn't a chore to read.

Maybe that's what it is though, the Eurocomics usually aren't fun, and then there's that thing where certain cultural things get lost in translation...maybe Spider-Man doesn't translate well into French because of all the very Noo Yawk stuff about it, I don't know.

BTW, DuckTales was mentioned last week, and that damn song has been stuck in my head ever since. "Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg". I'm sorry in advance.

Also, with all my talk about Plastic Man in the last Barnestorming thread: is that Jack Cole art for the carnival barker?

You get a No-Prize!

Great article, Barnes, about kickstarter. Like the carnival idea. Myself, haven't backed a single kickstarter game but I have to admit I did buy two, three through regular channels: Omen, Alien Frontiers and one other thing. Thing is, I can't back something untried, untested, unverified... as you said in your response to a question about P500, that is a different beast and GMT has a great reputation and enormous commitment. But anybody else? Who really knows? Maybe I'm conservative, but to my mind anyone who has made it onto the publishing scene with a kickstarter hit, should promptly abandon kickstarter and build a regular business model after that, to go 'legit'.

Kickstarter is like American Idol or X-factor - there's talent there, but nothing all that great ever really comes out of it.

Anyhow, have some GG, I mean realm coins... aw fuck it!

P500 is very different. GMT isn't saying "we need your money to make this game, and if you give us more we'll give you some gewgaws." They're saying "we want to see if you GMT fans are interested in this product so that we can determine if it's worth investing our capital in to make it." It's a way to gauge the market and see if a product is financially viable, and to prevent from making 2000 copies of a game about the 1823 Battle of Podunkistan that wind up going onto clearance. A smaller company like GMT can only weather so many failed product debacles, and I think one of the reasons that they've remained successful is using P500 to make games that their fans in particular want to buy. That and the one-two-three punch of Twilight Struggle, C&C:A, and Dominant Species.;-)

That's a smart observation, comparing Kickstarter to American Idol and other "you decide" kinds of shows...it's another step in the Internet democratization of EVERYTHING. I don't know about you, but the idea of THE PEOPLE deciding what gets made kind of makes me sick. I _like_ for companies to build reputations and to establish trust. I like that I have a certain degree of confidence in a game that Zev picks up, I like that FFG has a reputation for doing the kinds of things that they do and it's build on, at this point, a decade and a half of work.

Not on stretch goals, promises, and hucksterism.

The demo for RE6 was absolutely terrible. What a huge amount of work to make such a subpar product.

Just rewatched Iron Man 2 and was surprisingly entertained by it and Scarlett JOhanssenn in particulat.

She's usually pretty...entertaining. I don't think she really fit into the role in Iron Man 2, but she was much better in Avengers.

I didn't even look at the demo for RE6...the reports from Chick and some other folks are that it's just a sprawling mess, filled with repetition and me-too nips from Uncharted games and Michael Bay movies. It sounds like Capcom is trying to please a couple of different audiences with the game, none of whom are actually RE fans. It's almost bizarre how roundly they dismiss what fans of the franchise have consistently asked for out of it, yet Revelations on the 3DS was a huge success critically and commercially that was TOTALLY old school RE- as in, it could be RE 3.5.

I read today that they're trumpeting 4.5 million units shipped (that's not "sold"), so they'll spin it as a success no matter how badly it tanks. It probably won't, people will buy it anyway. Which sucks, because that means RE7 will be even further away from where the games ought to be.

5 wasn't terrible, it had some good points and I appreciated that they wanted to move the series forward. But come on, how do you follow up 4 anyway? It's the best console game ever made. The irony is tha it was a perfect mix of action and survial horror...something the folks working on the series now just can't seem to get right.

Yahoo News, the world's leading source for thought provoking and important news, even had a headline item about how bad the game is, apparently.

I have done a P500/pre-order/kickstarter very rarely, as I am too skeptical about final quality (more of game than components). I like to read proper independent reviews before spending money on a game. Only reprints/english editions/etc have gotten my money.

The only thing that seems like it was a push was Mice and Mystics. No reviews, just hype. However as it was designed by someone in my position, a gamer with 2 young girls, it seemed like a very natural fit for my family.

What happens when GMT (or some other big name publisher) gives permission for its designers to go through Kickstarter to generate orders?

Kickstarter is merely an agency of communication. What counts are the people on either end of the deal.

S.

A good article and a position on Kickstarter I totally agree with. One of the things that bugs me about Kickstarter projects are the pledging tiers. I have checked out a few board game projects on Kickstarter and while doing so, I look at what I can afford and then I look at what I can't afford, and the feeling creeps over me that whatever I end up getting is going to be a "lesser" version of the game in some fashion. I want the same damn game as everyone else. Probably completely irrational, but there you go.

And I am risk averse by nature, so sinking my money into something unproven just isn't me. I have jumped onto a couple of GMT P500 trains, but only for reprints of existing games that people have already rated highly, e.g. Manoeuvre, Twilight Struggle. Actually, I've just remembered that I also went on the P500 for Space Empires 4X, but I ended up selling it as soon as it arrived, because while I was waiting for my copy to arrive, people in the U.S. were already playing and reviewing it and it turned out it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

[EDIT 1]Oh, and Mice and Mystics - I would have preordered this sight unseen, but postage was as much as the game itself, so I'll wait for it to meander it's way into distribution here before I pick it up. I'm ok with waiting for things.

[EDIT 2]So in summary, I haven't backed anything on Kickstarter to date, and it's highly unlikely that I will feel compelled to do so in the future. If the game's good enough, it will reach distribution channels eventually (see my previous comment about being ok with waiting for things).

You guys should watch the Giant Bomb Quick Look video of Resident Evil 6. It is atrocious

I don't know... I guess I agree that the stories aren't that great, but maybe it's just different sensibilities. What I find appealing is the sense of otherworldliness, this delicious weirdness as if you're looking at another dimension that is quite different from our own. Yeah, remoteness is a good word. You're in the twilight zone now, enjoy your ride. Sure you can have well crafted, clever stories in funny books but in the end on the fundamental level it's still juvenile trash. It is pure escapism with pretty much no value for a mature mind. Just like American comics or any funny books for that matter. I mean how many comic books can you name as a literary masterpieces? Comic books that couldn't be actually written down as books so art and the nature of the medium must be inherent to it's quality. From the ones I've read I would say Maus, maybe Watchmen, and maybe Black Hole. If any others come to mind please share.

If you like Hunting Party get the Beast Trilogy as well. It deals with Yugoslav wars, but has plenty of SF elements. Shit, get all he's books just for the art, this guy is fucking unreal. Thorgal is a really good viking fantasy/SF romp. Individual books are usually self contained stories though there is an over arching plot so it's better to read them in order. I'm sure you will like it. If you do check out Chninkel as well by the same pair (might not be available in English though, I'm surprised Thorgal is).

I don't have much to add to Barnes' article. I've yet to back any Kickstarter games and don't foresee myself doing so anytime in the future either. I did pick up the new Glory to Rome at my FLGS and was kind of underwhelmed. I actually like the old artwork, in that the colors are easier to pick out at a glance . I can't believe it took those chuckleheads a fucking year for a reprint. They were starting to verge on Mayday territory as far as train wrecks go. And only a moron would send them money again in the future.

But that was a train wreck from a timeframe standpoint, with some minor QA issues. It is only a matter of time before some creator gets his shit back from China and its totally screwed up to the point where they have to start over.

In some ways, companies like them are rediscovering what GMT did when they first started P500. Back then, the charge to ship times were closing in on one year in a few cases. They caught some grief for it, and over time tightened things up.

They've gotten it down to nearly charging just before shipping, which is close enough to me. And some don't realize that while a lot of stuff is P500 with them, they are doing a fair number of reprints on core titles like Twilight Struggle - and that is done with non P500 cash.

Could list for ages, but not listing Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth on your shortlist makes me think you need to read a *lot* more comics. To my mind that is *the* literary masterpiece of comics, and it couldn't remotely be "written down as a book". Start with that.

Oh, I really like the new GTR...it's very chic, modern, and tasteful. OK, maybe not the Third Reich cover, but damn, it looks good. But yeah, a fucking year. And all those "aww shucks" messages from the company were really kind of infuriating. And then the game showing up at retail discounters for 30% off retail MONTHS before some folks got their games is just insulting.

You're right, it is only a matter of time before a high-profile board game project with a lot of backers runs into a major production issue or QA blunder. It's not an "if", a "when". Even FFG has had to deal with problems like those warping Tide of Iron boards and other fumbles.

P500 just is not the same as Kickstarter. GMT is not asking you to fund their products. They're seeing if you want to buy them in the first place.

Lucky, those are great points about the Eurocomics...that alien-ness is one of the big draws. There is a very distinct and different style to, say, French SF. The problem is that it's almost completely in the visuals, with some half-baked ideas floating around in the story.

The artwork is just so damn good, it's worth reading this stuff just for the visuals.

I think I have six Thorgal books, I may hit them after I finish up with Simonson's Thor. Keep that Viking thing rollin'.

Barnes, did you know that Ken B has had a shrink-wrapped copy of RE4 in his house for years now and has never played it? He's an IDIOT.

Yeah, RE5 was ok, it felt like a poor man's RE4 but was fun at times.

I dare you to try the demo for RE6. The China (Jake) campaign is such a sell out to try and rope in Call of Duty players, it's disgusting. Even Leon's campaign is dumb cuz they've gone away from Romero's zombie model (remember that RE4 and RE5 aren't actually zombies) and are now jumping on the new Western culture medium for zombies from new Dawn of the Dead, 28 days later, etc. They all leap and move fast and such. Oh, and for the first time in any RE game, you can move AND shoot (you know, like Gears and Call of Duty).

There is no survival nor horror about it. Awful. Although I hear Operation Raccoon City is worse.

That's just foolishness...I remember him mentioning that rather shamefully some time ago.

I just really do not have the patience for mediocre or half-assed games at all anymore...even with Borderlands 2, it was fine and it pretty much carries on the good things rom the first one, but overall it's pretty shockingly dull. So I'm trading it tuesday toward Dishonored and XCOM.

I guess reviewing games does that to you...you play so many mediocre games as assignments/tasks that you kind of never want to do it in your free time again.

Lucky, I read the first Thorgal book today- I liked it quite a lot. Definitely some Zelazny in there, I didn't expect the SF elements. Or the dwarves with the big cone hats. Art is STUPID good.

Seeing a bunch of great movies makes you not able to stand Michael Bay movies too. I don't think it's a bad thing that you can't enjoy RE6 and stuff.

But at the same time, I think playing a ton of games MIGHT make you overvalue uniqueness and unable to recognize a great game that doesn't necessarily reinvent the wheel.

Like, let's say Dishonoured ends up looking and feeling a bunch like Bioshock, that doesn't mean it might not be a great great game

Go on then. I never claimed to be an expert. As I said the shortlist is from what I've read and it isn't all that much. Well I've read a lot what was available in Polish when I was a kid. So yeah a lot of French/Belgian comics and Polish ones obviously. Nowadays not so much. I try to read every now and then but I hate serialized stories in any media so comics are pretty much the lowest priority most of the time. Reading Morrison's Doom Patrol now. Certainly a quality entertainment but not more than that.

@Michael Barnes
I noticed you praise some clever phone game for being a psychedelic fantasy. Check out Arzach by Moebius. Way better than Incal in my opinion.

You're in Poland? Had no idea. Yeah, might be harder to find Jimmy Corrigan, I have no clue, and I'm not sure in general what American comics get translated or imported over there. And if you hate serialized stories...comics probably aren't the best medium for you. Certainly Jimmy Corrigan has some serious strangeness due to being serialized...it isn't until 80-ish pages in to the story that he seemed to have realized that he was actually writing a full-length graphic novel.

Doom Patrol is pretty much a celebration of and justification for the idea of escapist and "juvenile trash"; I think of it mainly as a comic for people who loved superhero comics as a kid and are still in love with the idea, as I have yet to hear a reaction to it from a superhero skeptic. Morrison very much believes in the value of escapism for escapism's sake, and as someone who spends a lot of time on a website devoted specifically to board games about pretending to be a wizard or alien, I'm inclined to agree.

I'm from Poland but in the UK for last 8 yrs, so I shouldn't have trouble getting it. As for serialized media I don't mind long story that requires splitting into chunks, but it has to have a beginning and an end, not go on and on milking the idea dry. The trouble with super hero franchises is that the reader is required to be familiar with the world to get them most out of them. Like in the Doom Patrol I'm reading. What the hell was Gene-Bomb? I can imagine and fill in the blanks, but it would be nice to just know. Who the hell is Red Jack and what was the point of his story? Mind I'm on issue 27 now so maybe he'll still come back. Who is that entity that merges with two people to become Rebis? Anyway you get the idea. I guess being American means that you kind of pick it up when you grow up. Sure I know Bats, Superman, Spidey but ask me to list more than 3 X-men and my mind goes blank. If you don't know the origins, motivations, goals of the character then it's kind of like watching a soap opera.

I don't mind escapism, as you point out it's a board game site. I just think that something that is pure escapism can't really be considered a masterpiece, however well crafted it is.

I'll tell you what I think about Doom Patrol when I'm done so far it's pretty good but it seems like it's still mostly exposition. I like the surreal style though sometimes it gets a bit silly (maybe that's the point). The Quiz? What was he thinking? Any superpower you didn't think of? How about beating the author over the head with a massive carrot, or suffocating the entire human race with a particularly noxious fart after 10 pints of lager and a double helping of Vindaloo. Are these superpowers you didn't think of? Crazy-Jane is cool though, clever concept and well executed.

I have been re-reading my Morrison Doom Patrol issues again lately. I finished #52 a while ago. It's strange, but I'm enjoying these later issues more than any previous time I read them. I think it's because I'm getting a lot more of the references, and I'm taking the time to slow down a little and absorb the stories buried beneath the weird surface. However, I also feel like I'm seeing Morrison straining at the limits of his intense creativity. He has been repeating himself in this run, with certain kinds of ideas and visuals. Null values, like Mister Nobody and Agent None and the repudiation of the powers of the Quiz. And weird dudes with gothic architecture for heads. Aside from the very special origin story at the start of issue #50, I still feel like this series already hit its peak just before the space alien storyline. That said, I actually enjoyed the space alien storyline this time around, just not as much as everything before that point.

None of this is knowledge that *anyone* had before the beginning of Morrison's story, so you know no less than anyone else. I do mostly agree with you about most superhero comics requiring prior knowledge of the characters to get the most out of, but also that most of the BEST ones are self-contained.

That is *definitely* the point. It's definitely possible you just won't like it, though. Barnes and I are both super-crazy about Doom Patrol, and I do go around recommending it to people all the time, but I admit it requires a specific taste, and only *one* of my friends actually read past the initial part...once he did, though, it became his favorite comic ever. If just reading nutty, silly stories is not enough, though, then it might help to pay extra attention to the friendship between Robotman and Crazy Jane, as that's the essential emotional arc of the series.

Anyway, for real, if you want a non-escapist comic masterpiece, pick up Jimmy Corrigan. Chris Ware actually has a brand-new book, "Building Stories", out *this week* which LOOKS incredible, is definitely worth buying (I have not looked forward to a book more in a decade), and may well be better than Jimmy Corrigan (the excerpts I've read from his NEXT book show me that it will definitely be better), but since I haven't read it yet I'm going to stick with recommending Jimmy Corrigan. The story is slight, the execution is ASTOUNDING.

Just finished the Morrison run on Doom Patrol. It gets really good again, around issue #54 when Rebis gets the spotlight and goes to the moon. From there, most of the remaining issues are one frantic storyline that wraps up many loose threads. Thrills, drama, death, and destruction, but it's Morrison on top of his game, reigning in the weirdness enough so that readers get a decent story. At point, there is an absolutely chilling new version of the origin of the Doom Patrol, as told by the Chief. That big story wraps up at issue #62, leaving just one more issue to wrap up a major loose end. Issue #63 is bewildering at times, toying with the reader's sense of fictional reality, but ends on a very satisfying note.

For those of you reading the trades, you are probably missing out on one minor easter egg. I like to read old letter pages, not just to discover what other fans of the day thought, but to look for famous names. People who weren't famous back when they wrote a letter to a comic book, but later became famous. Anyway, the last several issues of the Morrison Doom Patrol run each had a letter in the letter page section from the same woman... Rachel Pollack, the writer who would take over Doom Patrol after Morrison left. Unfortunately, when she did start writing Doom Patrol, she was channeling the most nonsensical elements of the Morrison run, without any grounding in cool ideas. She apparently just figured that she could make up any surreal crap and that would be good enough. She was wrong.

One other realization that I had while reading these final Doom Patrol issues: Hellboy is a sane version of the Morrison Doom Patrol. Hellboy and Cliff Steele obviously have very similar personalities. Liz Sherman is Crazy Jane. No, Liz doesn't have all the multiple personalities or wild powers, but she has lived in institutions out of fear of losing control of her power. And at least two of the Crazy Jane personalities wielded fiery powers. Professor Broome is the Chief, though without the rampant amorality. And Abe Sapien is a bit eerie like Rebis, detached, logical, and yet intuitive. And of the overall mission is a bit similar, though of course the BPRD is more focused on the supernatural.

First of all, SPOILERS, Shellhead, jeez!

Great observation about Hellboy & BPRD being comparable to Doom Patrol; the main writer (along with Mignola) of BPRD actually wrote a run on Doom Patrol a few years back, so I highly doubt that it's a coincidence.

Glad you came around to the last dozen issues not being the low point you remembered. To my mind, the sex/devil story is the second low point of the series (along with the space war), but everything after that outside of the Kirby homage issue is absolutely the tops, for me. If you didn't cry at some point during the last issue, you're a stronger man than I. There are some things that bug me *SPOILERS*...I feel like Morrison chickened out in a major way in that last issue, and the entire final big storyline you described suffers from one of Morrison's classic flaws, which is that he LOVES to introduce an omnipotent villain, demonstrate their omnipotence, and then backpedal like crazy with some disappointing justification so that the heroes can actually defeat him. He does this in about every superhero comic he's written.

Good article on Kickstarter. I've backed Zombicide, but I was really dreading the customs bill (150$, because of shipping to Europe). Thankfully customs have trouble categorising kickstarter projects, so I came out with no customs as I backed a project and did not buy a game. Nonetheless I will be reluctant in the future, because shipping will almost always kill it for me. I agree that Kickstarter games run the danger of being underdeveloped, but nonetheless I like the principle of crowdfunding. If this however leads to more and more established companies doing their financing via Kickstarter that's a development in the wrong direction.

I also wanted to chime in on the comics debate. I think you guys may miss out on a lot of good stuff. If you've read boring comics, it might be due to the relatively strict format of the European comics: you will always have 48 pages to fill, if your story only is worth 30 pages, you need come up with stuff to fill. But that's definitely not a necessary element of these comics. :)

If you can get these in the US, which I would say are my long-term favourites (mixture of serious and funny comics):
- Blueberry -> one of the great stories of the wild west, on par with any Sergio Leone movie.
- Corto Maltese
- Spirou & Fantasio, Gaston, Marsupilami -> S&F is a long-term series, most notably drawn by Franquin, who also invented Gaston and the Marsupilami. They are adventure stories in the tradition of Tintin, but with more action and more fantasy elements.
- Lanfeust of Troy, Troll of Troy -> hugely succesful comic universe in Europe. Clever sword & sorcery fantasy.
- Valerian & Laureline -> classic sci-fi series about Valerian, 'Spatio-Temporal Agent', former 11th century French farm girl, Laureline.
- Donjon, Donjon Monsters, but also Trondheim's earlier work The spiffy adventures of McConey -> awesome dry humour.
- Lucky Luke and more recently Blue Boys -> Lucky Luke is a well-researched classic, which have introduced kids to Billy the Kid, Jesse James, the cousins of the famous Dalton brothers, but also to Indian wars, Wells Fargo, bounty hunters, the telegraph. The Blue Boys is a Franco-Belgian comic about the American Civil War.
- Asterix, when Goscinny was still alive
- Blake and Mortimer -> another great example of ligne claire. Strange sci-fi. Another similar one is Yoko Tsuno.

Just to name a few. :)

I'll agree that many of the Euro comics are heavy on art but somewhat weak on story. Keep reading Bilal though. I love all of his work. Well, with the exception of the movie Immortel which he wrote and directed and is based on his comics. I wanted to like it, but Sci-fi that's too heavy on CGI (ala Casshern ) just falls flat for me. Anyway, the weak story in Euro's is not always the case. Look at Blacksad, or most of Moebius' work.

Schlupp beat me to the punch in naming a bunch of Euro comic gems, but I'll still add a few that I've enjoyed off the top of my head:

Thorgal- Amazing viking sci-fi epic.

Korrigans- Celtic/Breton mythology with what's probably some of the best art I've ever seen in the medium.

Sky Doll- Pretty good sexually charged (but not ridiculously so) sci-fi

The Mercenary- One of the most gorgeous comics you'll ever see. A sci-fi epic that seems to be high fantasy painted entirely in oils. Absolutely stunning.

Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of London- Yep. Holmes vs. vampires in gaslit London

Mr. Hyde Vs. Frankenstein- exactly as the name suggests.

Bouncer (jodorowsky) another great western comic

The Ancient- Moby Dick meets Call of Cthulhu

Hombre- Post apocalyptic survival comic

Gipsy- The adventures of a long haul trucker in post apocalyptic Siberia.

XIII- Great political/spy thriller. Fans of 100 Bullets will love this.

Great points about Kickstarter. I completely agree that taking an experienced publisher and game developer (and sometimes even a professional graphic artist) is often a recipe for mediocrity, if not disaster. I'm all for democracy and maker culture and DIY, but professional editors are good at what they do, and de-professionalizing the production process of games will produce a flood of really meh games.

Look at other fields: The explosion of blogs has been great for some of us (like people who love FAT) but it has been brutal for established brands like the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I hope that the Kickstarter trend doesn't fatally weaken too many of the companies already making great, polished, playtested games.

Even if the whole market grows and Kickstarter doesn't financially undercut established publishers, I also think there can be a real issue that with so many games coming out every year, the sense of common gaming experiences gets way, way, way diluted. Five or ten years ago, you could love or criticize the things that FF was putting out, but at least there was a real sense of community built around those 5-10 games (and flamewars on BGG). Same with the euros. Now, everyone has played Dominion and ... what else? Who has even heard of all the stuff that got nominated for the big prizes this year? And we need a flood of Kickstarter games on top of all that?

Grumble, grumble. Now get those kids off my lawn.

Huh, now that's a great point about Kickstarter weakening the strong- and industry leading- brands. I sort of hinted around that, but thanks for putting that in very direct terms.

You're right on the money with the comments about dilution...we were already at a deluge point with more games coming out than any reasonable person could expect to play in a year...and now Kickstarter is multiplying that. How can you have a Dominion-scale success in terms of uptake and familiarity when you're looking at games going out to only 500 backers, and then there's 25 other Kickstarters on the way?

Thanks for the lists, Shlupp & Jay...some really awesome-sounding stuff to check out. I _really_ like Thorgal.

While I agree with both of you two, there is something I wanted to point out regarding the Kumbaya Effect, as I am now calling it; this sense of community that surrounds a company or game. Michael said (just now) that "there are so many games that no person can possibly play them all in a year". But consider this: nobody is supposed to.

I cannot envision myself ever playing another deckbuilder. There's simply no need for it in my life. Same with CCGs, CMGs, or anything with a C in the front of its acronym. But there are sad sacks of shit content to spend their kids' futures away trying to get the latest foil Crudmuffingous Dragonoid or whatever, and God bless 'em. What the Kickstarter effect does is expand availability of games (be they wheat or chaff) so that it becomes more likely that people will have access to games that interest them.

I wish there was a Kickstarter Editor-At-Large that could be hired onto these projects. Maybe some of us should hire ourselves out as such. But that would go a long, long way toward fixing part of what the problem is with Kickstarter, what might be the single largest problem, in fact: quality.

For every Alien Frontiers there's 50 piles of steaming cat vomit, and if we can make sure that only quality games come out, even if they don't interest everyone, those that are interested in the particular type/style/theme will get access to them, and that's a great thing.

I do really like Kickstarter for the reason Pete states. There are a ton of almost cookie cutter games. And anything with a Gamesalute/Springboard tag is an immediate turn-off.

But there are some pretty crazy ideas that just might work. I pledged for a game called Damage Control. This is the kind of stuff Stronghold and Zev would pick up. Now that Zev is doing much more infrequent crazy stuff like Ascending Empires, those have to go somewhere.

As to Gamesalute. Wow. They charge a lot for their services. On the plus side, they take care of production and art and shipping. But not so much for content. So it is going to be a line of always-shipped, slightly pricey and underdeveloped games. But even scarier is that there seems to be a really tiny circle of folks that crosses over between them, Dice Hate Me, and some of the Dice Tower crew and maybe Indie Boards and Cards. Clique-watching at Gencon was pretty interesting.

The tiny circle aspect doesn't bother me, until money starts changing hands. It is reminding me of the incestuous nature of large swaths of videogame journalism.

Heh...it ain't nowhere near the scale of that, though. Thar's real money in them hills. Somewhere, I can't find it and it's not been offered to me at least.

I mean, yeah, it's cool that there's all these ideas out there or whatever, but my point is...what's the point? I'm over playing 100 mediocre games a year to get to that one game that I want to keep forever. I'm not really interested in playing a game just to see what it's like anymore. I want to play THE BEST. Kickstarter, Gamesalute,etc....these are not ways to get to THE BEST. They're ways to get to the maybe pretty good, the truly crap, and the WTF. Unless we're talking about things from people that are already known and doing good work, like Clowdus.

I dunno, I just think if I pushed this button sitting here on my desk that could make Kickstarter and the whole crowdfunding thing disappear...we'd never miss it.

The whole thing is one or two high profile disasters or Mayday-class frauds away from crashing out anyway.

Oh, Korrigan...just read that...DAMN the art is nice. All moonlight and firelight. It's very Froud.

Basically echoing others, but the dilution of the hobby is one of my biggest concerns with kickstarter. However, this was something that I felt was happening prior to kickstarter, but has now been amplified.

We have a common bond here because growing up we had the same reference of games. If I said 'Thumb of God' or 'Toad! Toad! Toad!' or discussed Russia vs Germany's first turn of A&A, we all know what I'm talking about and had experience with it. Kinda like the Konami code.

Now, the selection is too vast and getting larger. I fear a lot of commonality and 'culture' may be lost.

It reminds me of when I was growing up as a military brat. No matter where I moved I could instantly pick out those who were also into The Ramones, Dead Kennedy's, Clash etc. It was a quick way to plug back into 'my scene'. Truthfully, it may still be like that, but I know with my old high school buddies, it's not. We live all over now and though we grew up listening to the same bands, we still listen to the same genre, but not the same bands. Too many bands and it's only by chance that we get into the same ones. It's good for being exposed to new things, but the conversation isn't as deep.

Rambling now, but I feel that here the past year or two. Too many games. We aren't all playing the same ones, so the comments on reviews and such aren't as deep as they once were. I've mentioned it before but Ravenloft felt like the last high point where the whole site was involved in multiple, long threads.