Creepiness is a craft. Like candle making. Or rock tumbling.

Probably more like candle making. Few people in comic books have been dipping wicks into hot wax over and over again for as long and as well as Mike Mignola. Mignola, best known for his creation Hellboy, has this sparse creepiness to his writing. Mix that in a pot with his encyclopedia knowledge of folklore and some caramelized onions and YUM. You just got yourself some fine comic books there.

Everything tastes good with caramelized onions.

Creepiness isn’t in the details. It’s in the gaps of the story you let your subconscious fill in. The trick to executing it well is to include these gaps while telling enough story to keep things satisfying.

B.P.R.D does that trick. You should invite it to perform at your cousin’s bar mitzvah, that’s how well it does that trick.

I feel it’s important to draw a distinction between creepiness and horror right now. As a card carrying ‘fraidy cat, I don’t really do horror. Yet I am tickled light-red by creepiness. So let me clear things up:

• Horror is finding half a worm in your apple.
• Creepiness is hearing “No! Don’t do it!” coming out of your apple.

Welp, just made myself scared of apples.

B.P.R.D 1947 #4 takes place during the title year when the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense was just starting out. Tales of B.P.R.D.’s history are always fun for me. While the bureau’s present holds a epic, fate of the world mentality, its continuity continues to grow outside what my brain is willing to grapple with. These stories in the past, before Hellboy started cracking skulls for them, have lower stakes but a higher feeling of threat. Since they are in the past they are also able to weave in and out of continuity with little effort, which I consider a boon.

Also, since the protagonists in the past are all plain old, everyday, Ma n’ Pa human beings they are a lot weaker than B.P.R.D’s current super powered, highly trained line up. This gives each action scene a sense of peril that is often lacking in comic books.

I’ve jumped in and out of the B.P.R.D series a few times before, and never found a problem understanding a story when I entered it midway. I feel the same way about this issue, which is my sly way of saying new readers need not be worried. The issue tells a full story of a rescue mission within the larger story of an ongoing investigation. Following the internal plot while understanding the external one should pose no problem.

And that internal plot is weeeeird. It’s a strange retelling of a man’s capture by vampire sisters as a fable of being lost at sea is handled. That is a mouthful, and probably not enticing on paper. Yet it’s handled slickly thanks to Mignola’s plotting and Gabriel Ba’s drafting.

It seems the major criteria of drawing a book for Mignola is to produce stylistically identical art as him. Ba’s work could pass as Mignola if not for his greater attention to the flow of panels. The line art sometimes seems timid but its coloring by Dave Stewart adds an appeal which would be lacking.

B.P.R.D. Will probably always live under the shadow of it’s parental comic Hellboy, but I consider it the stronger of the two. If your stack of comics is lacking creepiness, though I doubt it doesn’t at least skeeve people out, consider picking up B.P.R.D.

Karma Star is best described as a card game. Well… actually… yeah, OK, I’m going to stick with that, but this game looks nothing like Spider Solitaire. Karma Star looks bizarre.

It’s weird. It’s conceptual. It’s really freaking fun.

Love, Health, or Money? Choose wisely! (the answer is money)

The words “card” and “dice” are never used in Karma Star but the game’s mechanics work in fashions not unlike drawing hands of the former and rolling handfuls of the later. There could easily be a home version of this game in toy aisles next to Apples to Apples. It parallels that well.

Presentation for this “card game” goes the extra mile. Karma Star is essential a game of numbers and strategy. This would be serviceable on its own but also be hard to care about. Yet, polishing up the front end display adds a philosophical depth to everything you do in the game. It is a master stroke.

The concept of the Karma Star is offbeat but simple. Each player (human or computer) is in charge of a life. The goal is to have the best life of all the players. Life is valued by points and the points are earned through a quick game of Risk styled dice combat.

Combat is done through stats. Stats are quality of life characteristics such as “Mind”, “Heath”, and “Family”. The higher you get stats’ numbers the easier is will be to win and defend against the other players. The results of these battles, just like every event that occurs during the game, is depicted as something which happens during your life. For instance, if you were using your “Financial” stat against that of another player and won, the screen might say “large inheritance received from long lost relative”. These messages also change in style during the game as the life each player controls grows older. Since there are only eight rounds in a game, you grow old fast.

You boosted your Love stats so you wrote a love poem. I can't explain that bird though.

Strategy comes into play when you have to pick a stat to upgrade. Do you strengthen your strongest offensive stat? Or do you try to make your weaker stats more difficult for your opponents to score on? What feels like a simple game at first turns into a more complex, rewarding game after some play-through’s.

You’ll be playing it tons of times too since a game rarely lasts more than a couple minutes (those eight rounds go fast). This makes it perfect for an iPhone game: easy to jump into and quick to satisfy.

If I had a complaint about Karma Star it would be the game is too easy to master. Once you have honed your strategy the computer players pose no challenge. There are achievements you can earn by reaching certain criteria which might keep you busy for a bit once you’ve reached this point of the game, but I’d rather have more challenging opponents.

But, maybe I am supposed to find those on my own, since the game has multiple player options.

If a solid, quick, board game styled App for your iPhone sounds like it might be up your alley, stuff that alley with Karma Star. Wait. Did I just make a double entendre by accident?

-3 Mind stats for me.

What I learned today: Despite her best attempts, Amy Sedaris will always look hot to me.

Adaptation, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Incredibles. Those are my three favorite movies.

Peter David, Kurt Busiek, and Mark Waid. Those are my three favorite comic book writers.

Now, I will never deny that a Royal Tenenbaums miniseries written by Peter David might just be the coolest thing ever. Nor will I ever rag on the idea of Kurt Busiek putting his pen to a work of fiction inspired by Adaptation. But when you focus the beam of pure, unbridled joy for all things super heroes which emits from Mark Waid’s heavenly face towards a new ongoing series for The Incredibles, I’m gonna pee my pants a little. I wasn’t even wearing pants. I put them on so I could do the appropriate response. Then I promptly took them back off. Because of said response.

I was a little worried this title would break the family of super heros up to do their own solo adventures, or maybe just feel too much like a team-book. Thankfully, Waid is writing them as a family first and The Incredibles second. Also thankfully, the plot feels very much like the movie.

The plot focus on a mentioned-off-hand-so-it-must-have-happened continuity of an alien virus. The virus has now infected Jack-Jack despite the rest of the family’s apparent immunity. This use of a plot point which occurred before the events of the film helps the world the Incredibles family inhabits appear bigger and more active.

Now it is time to nit-pick, which is my right as a super fan of The Incredibles and as a jerk with a blog.

To start with: I’m still worried.

There is something about this issue, either how the plot is structured or all the new characters tossed into these 22 pages, that suggests maybe Waid is trying to write this title for kids. The Incredibles IS part of BOOM!’s kids line of comics, so that is perfectly understandable. Regardless, I’m scared the dude’s trying to be something he’s not. Or something he always was.

Waid’s writing has never been bloody, gruesome, or in any way “not for kids”. It’s writing like his which the industry needs more of because of its accessibility and richness. It’s writing like his which will bring in new readers and keep comic book fandom from becoming another clubhouse which will die once its finite number of members does. The idea of Waid trying to write in a manner which does not come naturally for him has me worried.

Also, the art is iffy at best. Ramanda Kamarga handles the day to day stuff of the family decently, but the second super powers come into the mix the pages start to look very second rate. Sometimes the action displayed in the panels felt unnatural. I would have to look twice just to be sure I understood what had occurred. I like Kamarga’s style for this title, but I want it to be consistently as good as it is on the first two pages.

I love Mark Waid. I love The Incredibles. This title is a natural for me. I was excited while reading it and I’m excited for the next issue. I’m willing to accompany it through some growing pains and if you are too I’m sure Waid won’t let us down.

What I learned today: Buying a dozen donuts is an impromptu decision you’ll regret for days. It’s the most economical mistake.

Fresh off of some fantastic Wipeout HD playing I saw iSR on the iTunes App Store and thought “That looks like Wipeout for the iPhone. I want to have that!”

Ladies. Gentlemen. iSR is not Wipeout. Despite the large number of positive reviews and a lengthy period of front page time in the App Store, iSR is not even decent.

Looks like Wipeout, huh?

No. This game is garbage. Garbage out of a butt.

Now, I sorta/kinda/maybe subscribe to the reviewing philosophy of “it is better to support the good stuff than rag on the bad stuff.” After all, there are tons of iPhone games out there and you don’t need a schmuck like me to say “Hey, you see this game you don’t have? Keep that up.” It’d be a better use of both our time if I instead I said something alone the lines of “Yo dog, Eliss is off the hook.”

Because I talk like that.

But iSR is such a prominent feature on the App Store that I feel like I need to be the dude to point and shout “Hey, the Emperor is not wearing any clothes!” So I will tell you about how terrible this awful game is and how I can see its junk.

iSR is incredibly misleading with the Wipeout look and presentation. This is not even a racing game, since you are all alone on the track. Maybe your character got up real early to beat the rush.

You have the choice between three miserable tracks. What follows next is an time trial on an ugly, badly rendered Tron-inspired obstacle course. Tilting the iPhone moves your ship along the x and y axis of the screen (this is important to mention because it is the ENTIRETY of iSR’s game play). Then you do your best to avoid obstacles while hitting speed boosts. Then blissfully the game is over and you can move past the denial stage of grief.

Despite the outright lie of appearing to be a Wipeout styled game, iSR could have been saved if so much of it wasn’t clearly phoned in.

1. The vehicle has no weight to it. It zips around your screen like a neon bumblebee.
2. Everything about the game past the main menu is ugly.
3. When you hit an obstacle, the iPhone doesn’t buzz or make any sort of noise like I keep expecting it to. There’s no sort of response that has been standard in video games since Pong.
4. Furthermore, hitting an obstacle has no ramifications other that a slight slow down of your vehicle. So there’s no good need for you to play. You could get up for a drink and leave your iPhone on that table and it’d do pretty well all on its own.

I guess you could be proud of iSR’s success. I mean, you remember when it was just a freshly installed baby app. Now it’s finishing its tracks all by itself. Like a big boy!

Yet you can’t be proud. You can never feel anything but rage towards this awful, waste of space child– I mean App.

I don’t even do numeric scores but iSR gets a zero out of a jillion.

What I learned today: It’s depressing when I feel like I get a better video game shopping experience at Best Buy than I do at Game Stop.

Tags: iPhone, iSR, Racing