E3 started today, but with so many of the videogame companies withdrawn from E3, the media circus that used to be E3 is really just a shadow of it's former self; even E-for-All, the $60 version of E3 had a poor turn out last year. So, just where are all the companies headed these days to show off their games to gamers?

Next week is the San Diego Comic Con, which is entirely sold out. With nearly a quarter million people in attendance, there's bound to be some games at the show, and with so many properties crossing over from comics to big and little screens, the likelyhood of having a comics-based game is high.

A month from now is the GenCon in Milwaukee. GenCon is the premiere geeky game convention in North America; focusing on all types of gaming, and in recent years has seen an increasing number of companies showing off their latest fantasy video games.

In August is PAX in Seattle, which one can consider to be the large-scale evolution of a LAN party turned convention, complete with famous speakers, rock concerts and a huge expo floor.

In October is Blizzard's own BlizzCon, which is their own convention to promote Blizzard titles (while charging $100 for admission and a wicked goodie bag).

Companies that have pulled out from E3 include Activision Blizzard, NCSoft, Her Interactive, id Software, Atlus and Foundation 9. Glancing through the Comic Con Exhibitor's list, I see Activision Blizzard there, as well as NCSoft, all of which leads me to suspect that their target is the mass market, not the games industry. In a way, this evolution away from the industry-only events make sense; competing against other media heavyweights only expends energy that could be focused elsewhere, and with most gamers looking online for reviews before they buy, there's little need to hype through the magazines anymore.

I'm definitely a Whedonite, but I think that even non Whedon fans will enjoy the interview he did on Gawker: Here's a quick excerpt:

Q. I love that your fiercest ass-kickers are always girls. Buffy, Willow, Anya, River Tam, and I'm kind of assuming that Eliza Dushku's character in Dollhouse is going to be the main force to be reckoned with. Yet we're in the middle of a summer of action blockbusters and only one of them, Wanted, even involves a powerful woman. Is there some reason that we can have a woman or a girl be the main action hero on TV but not in movies?

A. Movies are from the Devil. Also, it's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.

When I left Blizzard in '03, Blizzard North had done quite a bit of pre-production work on Diablo III, as well as some protoyping on the 3d-game engine. Today at the Blizzard Invitational in Paris, they announced the release of Diablo III. Since much of the work we had done on Diablo III was concept and prototype work, seeing the development they've done over the last 5 years was very interesting; while some of the concepts we were developing definitely looks like it made it through to the version of the game they displayed, some of the design choices they appear to have made seem counter to the decisions the original Diablo team members would have made had they remained on development of the title -- the most apparent change that I can point to is the appearance of "floating numbers" as seen in the gameplay video -- this was a feature that Blizzard Irvine continually "suggested" during development on Diablo II, which Blizzard North refused to implement -- with development now located within Irvine, the decision to add floating numbers to the game isn't one which surprises me.

One of the design choices which again shows Blizzard Irvine's hand in the changes made is the re-appearance of the Barbarian character class -- the original design documents for Diablo III included a set of all new character classes, with no reappearance of old character classes (our reasons for this was simple -- since we were enhancing and improving the skill system, we didn't want to try and adapt old skills into a new system -- we'd rather create all new skills for the new character classes. The return of the Barbarian class feels like a change that was made after development of the title was moved to Irvine 3 years ago.

One of the reasons why the Barbarian return shocks me so much is that I always felt that the Barbarian character class was the most broken of the classes in Diablo II. The Barbarian's ability to Leap, for instance gave him advantage over other classes which had to walk around the barrier -- it is the showcasing of this skill in the video (during which a bridge crumbles away, leaving no way to cross the gap) which makes me wonder if they have an alternate way for other characters to cross the gap or if all the characters have Leap now.

Of course, going 3D means that a lot of the things that were hard to do with sprites (such as actual armor looks being reflected on the character) is much easier using polygons and textures, as well as real 3d lighting. The use of a physics engine (Havoc, according to the game specs) is also a nice touch.

While I have more or less given up on the PC as a gaming platform, I'm glad to see that Blizzard is still committed to releasing titles that aren't first-person shooters; such a shame that we won't be seeing this title on the shelves for another year or two at the earliest.

Much to the amusement of everyone around me, I actually wanted to see Speed Racer, even after Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a of 35. I was never a fan of the original cartoon, as I was a bit too young to have ever seen the series in the United States. Unlike Transformers, this childhood cartoon making the transition to live-action keeps much of the source material intact, almost to the detriment of the movie; the antics of Spritle and Chim-Chim will delight young children, but will not be appreciated by adults. Much of this movie is computer generated, and the colors are super saturated, to give the film a quality that is vaguely reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The racing in the movie feels like a Super Mario Cart track -- the one known as Rainbow Road, in which there are physics-defying elements to the course. I found myself entertained by the film, and bedazzled by the art direction; but this film is not for everyone. Speed Racer is solidly a children's film and will likely not appeal to those past the age of 12. The major problem of Speed Racer, and probably the major criticism of most film critics is simply that it is too juvenile.

Speed Racer definitely lacks the more sophisticated humor that makes children's films entertaining for adults. Speed Racer is definitely a film that is not to be taken seriously at all, but to be enjoyed just for the pure eye candy.

Go Speed Racer Go Music Video

On This American Life, Astronauts talk about their work when they're not in space, and John Hodgman talks about being recognized, in an excerpt from his recent talk in Los Angeles. Also on the show, a person who changes lottery payments into lumpsums from annuities, a Western explorer, and an undocumented college student.

While I was at Berkeley, there were two great comic book stores in the area -- Comics and Comix down on Telegraph, and Comic Relief on University. In my later years, these comic book stores became more dangerous once I started working, as I had income, and I might pass them on the way home, or from my comings and goings on the BART.

My interest during that period was not in mainstream American comics at the time, but rather the ever increasing popularity of manga during this time period -- Nausicaa, after many years on hiatus had begun releasing the last issues, both Ranma and Maisson Ikokku releasing monthly in a format more similar to single-issue American comics. At Comic Relief, the area devoted to manga was minuscule, amounting to about a shelf, and consisted of Ranma, Maisson, and Antartic Press' comics, and Robotech. At Comics and Comix, the fare wasn't a whole lot better, but they did have a rack for back issues, which made their manga section about 5 times larger than Comic Relief's. Comics and Comix also had an incredible two bookcases devoted to Sandman and DC/Vertigo material in the back corner of the store, which rivaled the amount of space for mainstream Marvel and DC titles. More out of curiousity than anything else, I flipped through the Sandman offerings, the contents within which didn't impress me as much as the cool covers on the books. The covers of Sandman are the work of artist Dave McKean, when I heard that he was doing a limited edition Tarot set, I bought one. I remember at the time thinking that for $50, it was a rather expensive item, but if I was disappointed I could always resell it.

This limited edition was a print run of 5000, and I remember already realizing at the time that limited editions weren't all that limited at all, but that it did mean that if I saw this at any comic shop, I should pick it up, as it meant that at most, any shop would only have a few of these.

Apparently, there were many fans of Dave McKean (more than 5000), and the first edition of the Tarot set sold out quickly enough that the aftermarket price was almost twice what I paid for it. I held onto it, more as an art fan than a Tarot practitioner, and felt fortunate that I managed to find a set before they became absurdly expensive.

Six years later, in 2001, DC/Vertigo re-issued the Tarot set, although this time with a different box, and a different book cover, and at $30 about $20 cheaper. I picked this one up as well, intending to sell my original and just keep the reprint to play with; but sadly, I never had time to open it, much less play with it.

Of course, here we are in 2008, and DC/Vertigo has just announced that they'll be reprinting the Vertigo Tarot set again, in honor of the 20th Anniversary of Sandman. It's $10 more than the version offered in 2001, but it includes a velvet-like bag, and gold foil stamping denoting the 20th Anniversary of Sandman. Despite this being the third printing, I expect these to disappear quickly, and as their release in November coincides with the holiday shopping season, and I expect these to be gone very quickly, as it seems that no matter how many they print, demand always surpasses supply.

Elsewhere.org has a full scans of all the Vertigo Tarot cards, and many of the Major Arcana are characters from the DC/Vertigo imprint, such as Death from Sandman and Tim Hunter from Books of Magic as the Magician.

While I'm not a major fan of licensed goods, I must admit that some of the items coming out of DC/Vertigo these days (such as The Sandman and Death bookends are pretty cool.

For more information: Improv Everywhere

The Sushi Pack isn't a special bento box or a special order at your local Japanese eatery, but rather a new animated series by CBS and American Greetings. At a mere two inches tall, these five crime-fighting pieces of sushi fight against the Legion of Low Tide. The initial treatment for this series was written by Tom Ruegger and Nicholas Hollander, the writers/producers of "Animaniacs," "Tiny Toon Adventures," and "Pinky and the Brain.

Here's how they stand on the really popular issues:
Barack Obama
John McCain
Hillary Clinton

Obama is the only candidate who is thinking about Technology, but McCain is the only one who is thinking about the U.S. Space Program, and Hillary is busy thinking about strengthening the middle class.

And while all of that is important, those aren't the real issues I'm worried about. I want to know how they feel about issues such as nanotechnology, which only 29.1 percent of Americans find morally acceptable, or what the President will do if we are attacked by alien visitors. Can John McCain fly a F-16 Eagle like President Whitmore did in '96? Will Hillary be strong enough to lead us amongst the stars toward the Twelve Colonies in a reversal of President Roslin's actions despite her chamalla addiction? Will Obama's plans be enough to save us from a comet headed for earth? Can Obama keep Evil at bay by recruiting Corben Dallas as President Lindberg did in '97?, or will he call upon the services of Jack Bauer as President Palmer did in 2002? What are the candidate's policies on mutants, and how do they stand on the Mutant Registration Act? How do we know that John McCain isn't a blue-skinned shapeshifter in disguise as Senator Kelly was?

McCain reminds me all too much of the dethroned Emperor Palpatine who had to be ousted from power in 1983 in a coup d'etat by Lord Vader and a band of insurgents led by his son. But ultimately, I'm opposed to whoever wants to continue funding Skynet.

The other day, one of the Gold Box specials on Amazon was the Complete Series Set of Angel on DVD. Looking at the picture on the product page, you might think that this is a big box, after all, even 30 DVDs in Thinpak packaging is a good 7 or 8 inches long.

Actually, the whole thing is about the size of a small stack of CDs, and features one of the best designed packages I've ever seen for a DVD set. The top flips up, and one of the sides of the box folds down to reveal the booklet and season-by-season sets of the DVDs.

I'm told that the 40-disc Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Collector's Set is similarly designed.