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Careful with Soul Calibur 3, as if you delete or modify the save data on your memory card while there's an SC3 save on it, it corrupts the save, making it unusable.

US PS2s can be found here and there for buttons if you look (although with the dollar in the toilet, they're pretty cheap to import), and it might be worth considering getting one if you're a fan of RPGs and licenced titles based on anime properties, as quite a few don't get a PAL conversion.

Otherwise, your best bet is to sell them on and scour rental outlets' pre-owned sales bins for the PAL versions.  Out of curiosity, what were the games?

I thought the last season was poor, but improved a bit towards the end without ever totally losing the "shouting + running = drama (= win)" formula.  the fishy bloke spells out the whole character dynamic like the viewers are morons - we aren't.  We just want to be entertained in a vaguely sci-fi-ish manner.  Then it gets into "Captain Jack has teh ghey with Spike" and I realised I was watching no more than a fanfic script brought to expensive paid-for-by-the-licencepayer life, complete with juvenile dialogue, exposition that could be used to club a cat to death, and some really dated dance music - when was the last time the sound dude was off his tits in a nightclub?  Not in the last five years, I'll wager.

It's all harmless enough, though.  I just wish the bar was set a bit higher for sci-fi on telly.

Gmail was playing up on me today when opened in Internet Explorer, but ran fine in Firefox and Opera.  Maybe it's a problem with the browser?

I'm not sure about the whole 'no jumping-on point' thing - Marvel have extensive Story So Far recaps in all their books on page 1, and have for several years now - I assume because most of their output is written for the growing trade reprint market rather than individual issues.  Worth checking out are Captain America, The Initiative, She-Hulk, Runaways (if and when they ever decide to put an issue out), and Ennis' Punisher - although Ennis leaves the title in a couple of months and there's no-one working for Marvel who can come close, so god knows what the book will be like then.  There's always Matt Fraction's Punisher: War Journal, but it's a bit naff, as it tries to be the Marvel Knights series that Ennis did years ago, but without the same ear for dialogue or irony (which I freely admit amounts to several variations of "Oh no, I - who have killed with bullets - have been killed *by* bullets!").

It's been mentioned above, but I'm not as furious as a great many are about Spidey's 'Brand New Day' thing - though you'd have to be a certified mental patient to be as angry as some of the fans are - but it does come across as immensely dickless storytelling to just push the reset button when the franchise is written into a corner by a writing pool clearly out of ideas, but unwilling to step aside for younger hands who'd chew off a nut to get the opportunity to work on Marvel's flagship character.  The post-reset books have been okay so far, but not a patch on Ultimate Spidey, or the self-contained Spider-Man Adventures - which kind of backs up my belief that the main spidey writers and editors - rather than the characters - have run out of steam.

Let the small press feeding frenzy commence!

D'oh!  That should be 'crutch', not 'cruth'.

"I like beer but I don't draw pint glasses everywhere."

That's where you're going wrong, then.  Garth Ennis has drinking in everything he writes sooner or later(1) and his career's in the stratosphere.





(1) usually as a cruth for manly men to have a heart-to-heart without looking like nancy-boy guardian-reading fairies.

The Constantine movie is alright - if you've never read any of the better Hellblazers.  I imagine if you were a fan of the comics you might be a bit upset, but I was never that huge a fan and thought the film was an alright (but not scary) fantasy film.
Nothing exceptional, but nothing exceptionally bad, either.

HiEx?  What's that?

"Uh, as a participant in that contest (being put on by Shadowline, who publish through Image) it's hardly a means to come up with a new superhero simply because they're "hard up for new ideas". Shadowline's taking a chance and doing a writers contest. Because nobody does writer contests, only artist contests."

A throwaway comment, not a searing indictment of the company or the industry in general, good sir - or, as a famous murderer would say "Banter, Martin.  Harmless banter."  I did mention that the company doesn't retain copyright, all the same, which sort of implies that if they're using the competition as a means to aquire new IPs, they've not really thought the idea through.
I have the suspicion that anyone submitting a pitch with an actual story - as opposed to lengthy description of the character's superpowers - might be in with a better-than-average chance, so I wouldn't rule yourself out until you see the list of finalists.

The characters in Watchmen were based on existing comicbook heroes (like Blue Beetle and the Question) that had been recently bought up by DC Comics when Moore was putting Watchmen together.  V was a Guy Fawkes analogue - an anti-establishment folk hero.

All the good potential names are already copyrighted by comics companies, so it's quite hard coming up with new properties anyway.  One American comics company is so stuck they're actually running a competition to create a superhero that's open to anyone and everyone - they've already lined up one of their professional artists to draw three issues of it, which they intend to publish mere months after the competition winner is announced.  The artist and writer retain copyright ownership of their creation, too.
Desperate times, desperate measures...

The Boys
Punisher
Captain America
Blue Beetle
Invincible
The Initiative
X FactorI used to buy Astonishing X-Men, but it's going on forever now.  'Treading water' is almost a compliment.

I deny it.  Justice League Unlimited beats it hands down - although I admit JLU never had a flashing coyote or female leads with camel toe.
JLU did manage to finish without screwing its audience on a never-resolved cliffhanger, though.  Bob was Megabyte all along?  Whaaaaaaat?

Big Dave
Maniac 5
Battlestar Galactica 1978
Buck Rogers in the 21st Century
Millenium (TV)
Predator 2
Tokusatsu
Dan Abnett
Dan Jurgens
Manga that reads from left to right