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If
you've been following the news about Microsoft's reinvention of its mobile presence, Windows Phone 7 Series, chances are you
heard about how the company's developer-friendly emulator...
modified slightly by Dan Ardelean to expose a series of applications and hubs that maybe you
weren't supposed to see yet. Microsoft was quite gracious about it, indicating it basically
expected this would happen and just reminding everyone that these newly discovered apps are far
from complete. With that in mind let's take a look at the unlocked version of the OS, and we'll
spell out for you exactly how you can do the same to see it for yourself.
[Every week, IndieGames.com: The
Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial
indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]
This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC
Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.
The goodies in this edition include a 2D platformer with a clever copy and paste gimmick, a 2D
action game where you attack enemies by commiting suicide, a one-button effort about the
adventures of a fish with a human-like face, and an action RPG where the characters are depicted
as circular dots.
Here's the highlights from the last seven days:
Game Pick:
'Jump, Copy, Paste' (Arvi Teikari, freeware)
"Jump, Copy, Paste is a 2D platformer in which you overcome obstacles by copy and
pasting parts of a level to build new platforms or create a passage through a wall. Parts which
are greyed out cannot be affected by your copy and paste ability, so players need to work around
those areas as they collect all yellow pieces to unlock the exit door."
Game Pick:
'Siromaru' (Abaruzu, commercial indie - demo available)
"Shiromaru is a 2D action game in which you attack enemies by commiting suicide and
causing a chain of explosions. The longer the chain reaction, the more extra life items appear
for you to collect."
Game Pick:
'Tiny and Big' (Black Pants Studio, commercial indie - demo available)
"Tiny and Big tells the story of a thief who had stolen our hero's most valued
possession - a pair of underpants. The game basically is about him trying to chase after Mr. Big
who had escaped to the top of a tall mountain. Armed with a raygun and a grappling hook, you must
cut pillars and solid rock to build yourself platforms to stand or jump on."
Game Pick:
'Fish Face' (Beau Blyth, freeware)
"Fish Face is a one-button arcade game with three levels to play, each taking roughly
five to ten minutes to complete. Here you play as a fish that uses its buoyancy to move in and
out of the water, avoiding walls or enemies that will hurt our aquatic friend on impact."
Game Pick:
'Dragondot' (Nathan McCoy, browser)
"Dragondot is an action RPG in which you play as a dragon that can only claw at its
adversaries at first, but will gain new and improved abilities whenever it gains enough
experience to level up."
Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the
Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:
[Photo by
exothermic] GDC 2010 has come and gone, but
many of the discussions I had with various developers, publishers, attorneys and other great
attendees have actually left me with some curious issues to explore with you here on LGJ.
The first such issue is one that actually relates to the long-known (but always fuzzy) area of the
law that deals with multi-level marketing systems, the more legitimate cousin of what are commonly
known as "pyramid schemes." These are the
slightly more legitimate looking cousin of the Ponzi scheme (most recently in the news because of
Madoff), but nonetheless create a
"business model" doomed to fail. Accordingly, there are statutes in nearly all 50 states and in
many countries barring these types of arrangements.
But why is this relevant to gaming at all? The advent of the referral model picked up by many
social and online games is the potential problem area, and while the model itself may not suffer
the same faults as a traditional pyramid scheme, it could nonetheless violate the laws in that
area. After all, those laws don't contemplate digital goods, which can suffer no scarcity and
basically no cost to product.
Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the
Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games:
[Photo by
exothermic] GDC 2010 has come and gone, but
many of the discussions I had with various developers, publishers, attorneys and other great
attendees have actually left me with some curious issues to explore with you here on LGJ.
The first such issue is one that actually relates to the long-known (but always fuzzy) area of the
law that deals with multi-level marketing systems, the more legitimate cousin of what are commonly
known as "pyramid schemes." These are the
slightly more legitimate looking cousin of the Ponzi scheme (most recently in the news because of
Madoff), but nonetheless create a
"business model" doomed to fail. Accordingly, there are statutes in nearly all 50 states and in
many countries barring these types of arrangements.
But why is this relevant to gaming at all? The advent of the referral model picked up by many
social and online games is the potential problem area, and while the model itself may not suffer
the same faults as a traditional pyramid scheme, it could nonetheless violate the laws in that
area. After all, those laws don't contemplate digital goods, which can suffer no scarcity and
basically no cost to product.
Mike Zimmerman, founder of the Clergy Letter Project, has a post on HuffPo calling attention to a
situation in a public school district in Connecticut where a new creationist school board member,
Chester Harris, met with science teachers. In the Hartford Courant newspaper article on Harris is
quoted as saying “I sort of got stuck on one thing with [the science teachers], which was
basically the teaching of evolution in the schools and how it...
JVC of Japan is back with a spanking new Everio camera which will go one up on all of its other
rivals – why do we say so? Well, it comes with integrated Bluetooth wireless technology
that allows it to “talk” to other similarly equipped wireless devices. Of course, let
us not get sidetracked by this and focus on what the Everio GZ-HM550 can do as a camcorder first
before moving on to see the capabilities of Bluetooth connectivity. The Everio GZ-HM550 will
sport a 10.6 megapixel CMOS sensor for recording high quality Full HD video and nine megapixel
digital stills, and 32GB of internal flash memory which can be further expanded thanks to an
SD/SDHC memory card slot.
Right, on to the Bluetooth now – it basically allows you to control the camera using
nothing else but a smartphone, while you can also geo-tag your recorded videos as well as snapped
photos through a compatible Bluetooth headset. Needless to say, you will still need to install
the application which it ships with before it is able to pair up with a compatible
Bluetooth-equipped smartphone. Using this software, one can control the camera remotely, letting
you record, zoom and play operations. With a GPS device in tow, it is a snap to record location
data of where movie and still files were recorded. All relevant data stored will be synchronized
with Google Earth when viewing the file on a PC, and you can also take advantage of a
Bluetooth-equipped headset to monitor the recorded sound or for voice recording. Hmmm, sounds
fine and dandy for the rest, but don’t you think a regular remote control would work just
fine for this camcorder if you want to operate it from afar? Guess having the Bluetooth option
allows you to lose the remote without feeling a tinge of regret or panic.
Other hardware specifications include a 10.62 megapixel Back-illuminated CMOS sensor, 1920 x 1080
Full HD video shooting, real nine megapixel digital stills, a KONICA MINOLTA HD LENS with 16x
dynamic zoom without suffering from any degradation of picture quality, an LED light and a flash
for shooting in dark situation, Advanced Image Stabilization and advanced shooting functions. All
that shooting could prove to be painful on your arms, which is why the Everio GZ-HM550 comes with
a redesigned grip belt that works in two ways, as that of a conventional handle-style grip when
both ends are snapped in place, or as a strap when one end of the belt is released. Expect to
pick up the JVC GZ-HM550 Bluetooth-enabled camera for $799.95.
We've seen all sorts of ridiculous claims by performance rights collection societies trying to
demand performance rights for things that clearly were not intended as "performances." There was
the woman stocking shelves in a store who was singing without paying. There was
the owner of a horse stable who played music to her horses. There
was the attempt to say that your mobile phone ringing with a ringtone was a public performance.
Basically, they're willing to claim just about any music playing is a public performance that
requires yet another fee.
Niall.e points us to a legal issue in Europe, where the Irish High Court has asked the European
Court of Justice to weigh in on a claim by the Irish collection society Phonographic Performance
Ireland Ltd (PPI), which is claiming that music
played in hotel rooms for guests requires a performance fee. Yes, you read that right. PPI is
claiming that since the hotel provides radios and televisions in the guest rooms, they need to pay
a performance right fee on the usage of those devices.
PPI can't honestly believe this is a public performance that deserves a performance right. This is
just a blatant money grab to try to force someone else to pay up. What's next? Auto dealers will
have to pay a performance fee for having radios installed in cars?
In the last few years, there's been a push by some companies to bring back the immensely troubling
"hot news doctrine," that appears to violate everything we know about the First Amendment and
copyright law. Basically, the "hot news doctrine" says that if someone reports on a story, others
are not allowed to report on their reporting for some period of time -- on the theory that it
somehow undermines the incentive to do that original reporting. Last year, we wrote about the
very troubling
implications of allowing the hot news concept to stand. Beyond the free speech implications, it
also has the troubling quality of effectively creating a copyright on facts -- which are quite
clearly not covered by copyright. On top of that, it's not necessary in the slightest. As anyone
who is actually in the online news business knows, getting a scoop gets you traffic -- even if
others report the same thing minutes later. Being first gets you the attention. You don't need to
artificially block others from reporting the news.
Unfortunately, with various publications struggling, some have picked up on the hot news doctrine
as a way to somehow block competition. Tragically, it looks like a court has now adopted the hot
news doctrine in one case. Paul Alan
Levy alerts us to the news that a judge issuing an
injunction against TheFlyOnTheWall.com, a website that would publish summaries of Wall Street
research. The Wall Street firms said this undermined their business model -- and the court agreed.
It passed an injunction saying that TheFlyOnTheWall had to hold off publishing any news about any
Wall Street research report until either 10am (if the report is released early in the morning) or
for two hours after it's released if it comes out during the day.
These totally arbitrary restrictions are highly troubling from a free speech standpoint and seem
effectively random. This seems like yet another case of a company being upset by interference with its business model,
which should be a reason to change the business model -- not run to the courts.
But what's most troubling of all is that now all the publishers who have been salivating over the
hot news doctrine have a legal ruling to point to. Can you imagine how the world would work if you
couldn't blog about or mention a particular piece of news for a few hours because the Associated
Press got to it first? It's hard to see how this could possibly stand up to a First Amendment
analysis, and it's quite troubling that the judge found the way she did.
The extent to which a society is civilized can be assessed from how it treats its disabled members.
In India, not only facilities for disabled to access public buildings etc. are hard to come by from
the executive part of the government, now the Supreme Court is also showing its callous attitude.
Recently it has dismissed a plea from a dyslexic student who just wanted to use a calculator in a
CBSE exam. If this person fails the CBSE exam because he is not allowed to use a calculator, his
fate of not being able to go to college to get higher education (assuming he wants one, and for
whatever it is worth) is basically sealed. Should the CBSE or any other school certification be
about just being able to do arithmetic without the use of a calculator? Is it more important (a) to
be able to do the calculation without a calculator, or (b) to know what calculation needs to be
done along with how to use a tool to do that calculation? A larger question is what should
education be about. It should be about teaching students how to think, solve problems, understand
the world, and be productive for themselves and the society. It should not be about rote
(interestingly, the wikipedia entry mentions India for rote learning) or being able to do double
integrals in their heads.
Casio has been
in the timepiece business for quite a fair number of years already, and most of us would have
fond memories of a digital watch from Casio, although these days it seems to be imported from
China instead of its spiritual home, Japan. Ah well, their range of G-Shock watches are also a
cause to celebrate, since those are some tough devices which can withstand the rigors of an
active lifestyle. This time round, Casio America takes the next step forward in the world of
watches with its latest addition to the Pathfinder collection, otherwise known as the PAG110C-3.
This new Pathfinder will definitely appeal to those who constantly brave the great outdoors, but
it also has a conscience since it is eco-conscious with features such as solar technology and
recycled packaging.
After all, having your watch die out on you while you’re in the lush forest in the middle
of nowhere can be quite a frightening thought. So why not throw in some solar panels to make sure
the watch has enough juice to keep going? We wonder whether they will come up with a hybrid
mechanism that relies not only on kinetic energy to keep the timepiece ticking, but a solar panel
as well for another alternative source of renewable energy. The PRG110C-3 will incorporate
Casio’s Tough Solar Technology which increases battery life via the regeneration of
electrical power from sunlight. This will help decrease battery consumption associated with
traditional watches, which in turn assists in cutting down over three billion batteries thrown
away each year by Americans – at least that is what the Environmental Protection Agency
say. Basically, you wil decrease the presence of heavy metals in landfills which cause toxic
contamination to the environment if you pick up this digital watch.
Despite being eco-conscious, this Pathfinder timepiece retains its core features, with the
PAG110C-3 boasting advanced outdoor capabilities such as a digital compass, altimeter, barometer
and thermometer, where all of it are more than capable of meeting the needs of the serious
outdoorsman. You will also be able to enjoy five daily alarms, a stopwatch and world time in 30
cities. Is it raining, or do you have to forge rivers? Fret not – the watch is water
resistant up to 100 meters and low temperature resistant as well. Each Casio PAG110C-3 will
retail for $250 as an exclusive item on Amazon.com.
The more of ACTA that leaks, the worse it seems. KEI has the details on another portion of ACTA
that had not leaked yet, which focuses on setting up new institutions that would manage ACTA after it was implemented.
Basically, it would be an ongoing organization tasked with continuing to update ACTA's rules --
sort of a parallel organization to WIPO, which already exists, but which has recently committed the
mortal sin of actually listening to consumer rights groups. The scary part is that this
group would be allowed to amend ACTA provisions on the fly. And, while this new organization can
"extend invitations" to governments, it's still being debated what non-governmental organizations
will be able to take part. KEI notes that the "USTR has told members of Congress it is their
intention to marginalize the participation by consumer interest organizations in the new forum,"
though does not provide a citation for this point.
Either way, it seems like the goal here is to create an extra-governmental body that effectively
controls copyright law around the globe, with little input from the actual governments or the
people they represent. And, of course, if the folks involved in ACTA negotiations are any
indication of who will be involved in this group, you can assume that they will be strong
supporters of the viewpoint of the legacy industries: that intellectual property law is designed
solely to protect those industry's business models, and not to promote the wider progress of
culture and the economy.
Apple doesn’t like HTC, not one bit. In fact, Apple recently filed a lawsuit against
the Taiwan-based company, alleging that it has infringed 20 iPhone-related patents. This has
already been discussed to death, but it gives us an opportunity to look at some of Apple’s
other forays into the world of lawsuits. It’s terribly exciting.
So yeah, CNET did the hard
work, and I’m merely highling the items that caught my eye.
•
Psystar. This is probably the most famous lawsuit in the past few years. Pretty much a
flawless victory for Apple.
• Nokia.
Oh, Apple on the other end of a lawsuit? Hmm. Nokia says Apple infringed a number of its patents
with the iPhone. Nokia sues Apple which then sues HTC. Mind = blown.
• Microsoft and HP. Oh
dear, it’s a battle royale over user graphical user interfaces. Apple basically got its
teeth kicked in on this one.
Ah, leave it to The Onion to successfully encapsulate the state of the recording industry with a report that is basically as accurate
as most of the reports that come out of the RIAA these days: The Recording Industry Association
of America announced Tuesday that the combined revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal,
and countless independent music labels in 2009 totaled $18. "The music industry is back," RIAA
representative Doug Fowley said. "Not only was Kenny Chesney's Greatest Hits CD purchased at a
Knoxville, TN Borders for $12.99, but we also had two songs downloaded through iTunes, and our
ringtone sales reached three." Fowley added that as long as no one returns or exchanges the CD, the
music industry would continue to be a vital and creative force in American culture.
For all y’all out there who
think that the iPad leaves much to be desired, we’ve got the video for you. This parody,
made as an assignment for a Comm 340
class (I hope they got an A), highlights all that’s lacking in the mythical device.
It doesn’t have a camera,
you can’t use it to make a phone call, and the name itself has spawned countless parodies
— not to mention throwbacks to ‘90s television — that’s basically
this video’s beef with Steve Jobs’s newest shiny, shiny baby.
Check out the video below and let us know in the comments: What changes would you like to see in
the iPad 2.0? Personally, I’m still waiting on Spice 2.0.
It's one of the biggest events of the year for the UK gaming industry. And Olly Murs is here.
Follow it live with Jack Arnott
8.25pm: There are thirteen categories tonight spanning all the genres of gaming,
including an overall best game field which will doubtless draw the most attention. It's worth
checking out Bafta's official website for
more info, but here are the nominees for this main category:
Assassin's Creed 2
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Modern Warfare 2
Fifa 10
Left 4 Dead 2
Uncharted 2
I spoke to Ray Maguire, chair of the Academy video games commitee about how they were judging the
categories tonight. Use of innovation was something he mentioned a few times as being an
important criterion, and he also assured me that the industry expert judging panel had played
each game through to the finish. My money's on Uncharted 2.
8.14pm: Tonight, the Park Lane Hilton sees the great and good from the UK gaming
industry - and Shigeru 'God' Miyamoto - celebrate the past year in gaming.
I've been on the red carpet for about two hours where I've managed to briefly chat to a pretty
random selection of vaguely video game-related celebrities. I'm now in a media suite eating
complimentary peanuts and M&S sandwiches waiting for kick-off. It's basically exactly what I
imagine the Oscars to be like. Tune in from 8.45 for live updates.
If you're lucky, I may even tell you what Edith Bowman's favourite game is.
If you've been
following closely, there are really two sorts of input available to the PlayStation Move. The one that gets the most
love and screen time is the camera-based, 3D meatspace tracking that the PlayStation Eye performs
in conjunction with the fancy colored ball at the end of the PlayStation Move wand, but most of the
actual gameplay we've seen is in truth much more similar to the Wii's MotionPlus than Sony might want to let on. The
MotionPlus and PS Move have very similar configurations of gyroscopes and accelerometers, and
actually use the same software from AiLive (co-creators of MotionPlus) for developing the gesture
recognition that goes into games. We actually got to see the LiveMove 2 development environment in
action, and it's pretty impressive: basically you tell a computer what gesture you want to perform
(like "fist pump," for instance) and then perform a bunch of examples of that movement. LiveMove
then figures out the range of allowable movement, and in playback mode shows you whether you're
hitting the mark. AiLive showed us gestures as complicated as a Graffiti (of Palm OS yore)
handwriting recognition in the air, built with just a few example movements from people back at
their offices. So, this is great news for developers dealing with the significant complication of
all these sensors, but at the same time we can't help but be a little disappointed. LiveMove 2
doesn't even use the PlayStation Eye, and as we mentioned in our hands-on
impressions of PlayStation Move, we could really sense that a lot of our in-game actions were
built from predefined gestures, not us interacting with the 3D environment in any "real" or
physics-based way. It's great tech either way, but hopefully that's something that can be improved
upon by launch or soon after. Check out a demo of LiveMove in action after the break.
This is one for our friends in England. Basically, what this site does is to let anybody sync
weather information as provided by the BBC to an iCalendar format. The idea is to enable people who
are all day and all of the night immersed in their calendar applications check weather data without
having to leave them and go elsewhere in order to get that very same information.
No two farts smell exactly alike, according to this interview with Dr. Lester Gottesman, a
proctologist from St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. The smell has to do with the
amount of absorbed products like methane, which is made by fermentation of what we eat, and that's
what causes the bad smell, basically. As a baby, when you're born, passing through the vagina,
you're infected by the bacteria in your mother's colon, and that's the bacteria you're dealt for
your lifetime. Also, everybody is different in how they'll digest wheat products, milk products,
whatever. And if they are not digested properly there will be a lot of methane produced and a lot
of acid, and that would tend to cause a stinkier bowl movement. Image courtesy Flickr user banjo_d,
via CC...
Here’s Vanessa Hudgens at the closing night ceremony for the 2010 edition
of ShoWest looking as super cute as she always does, and showing off her killer
pair of legs like she always does as well. And to (ahem) top it all off, she’s showing off
her cleavage. Hmmm, did I miss anything? Oh yeah, she’s also blowing kisses at yours truly.
So basically she just entered the race for being my future ex-wife. Enjoy!
If you’re an iPhone OS
developer who has been hard at work on getting an app ready in time for the lainch of the
iPad, now is the time to start
polishing it up if you want Apple to consider it for inclusion for the grand opening of the iPad
section of the App Store. Basically, just log in to iTunes Connect, submit your app, and
you’ll receive feedback on its readiness for the grand opening. We know, it’s
difficult to fully debug an app when you don’t even have the actual hardware that you are
developing for, so our guess is that Apple is running submitted code on actual iPads, and if
things work nicely and the app is up to snuff, you’ll be in. You’ve got until 5:00 PM
PDT on March 27th to submit your apps.
Oh, and in case there was any doubt, yes; the iPad App Store will open the same day that the iPad
goes on sale. April 3rd can’t come fast enough.
Well, that didn't take long. Just earlier this month the Khronos Group unveiled the OpenGL 4.0
specification that brought many long-awaited changed to this open graphics API. On the same day
this industry consortium also released the OpenGL 3.3 specification, which aims to bring back as
much of the OpenGL 4.0 functionality to graphics cards that only support OGL3. OpenGL 4.0 is
designed for graphics cards that are meant for DirectX 11.0, which basically means AMD's Radeon HD
5000 series and NVIDIA's forthcoming GeForce 400 series. OpenGL 3.x on the other-hand is compatible
with DirectX 10.0 grade hardware, such as the Radeon HD 4000 series and GeForce 200 series. For
those with a newer NVIDIA graphics card, you can now run OpenGL 3.3 applications or games as they
have just released a supported driver...
Welcome to the two-hundred and fifty-second in a series of examinations of comic book legends and
whether they are true or false. Click here
for an archive of the previous two hundred and fifty.
Comic Book Legends Revealed is part of the larger Legends Revealed series, where
I look into legends about the worlds of entertainment and sports, which you can check out here, at legendsrevealed.com. I'd especially recommend you check
out this
installment of TV Legends Revealed to find out the story of how Michael J. Fox got "revenge"
on Brandon Tartikoff!
Let's begin!
COMIC LEGEND: Frank Frazetta turned down the opportunity to play
professional baseball to draw comic books.
STATUS: I'm Going With True.
Amazingly enough, the world might have missed out on the artistic talents of Frank Frazetta!
Instead, it is the world of baseball that missed out on the athletic skills of Frank Frazetta!
A few months back, reader Ed wrote in to ask:
I read somewhere, don't remember where or when, that Frank Frazetta turned down a "bonus-baby"
contract to play for the New York Giants baseball team. I think this was from an interview, so
came from his own mouth. I can't find any information about this online. Could it be true, and
would there be any way to verify that the Giants actually offered him a contract, or did he just
have scouts looking at him. This would have been right after WWII.
This story appears to basically be true, although I'm sure there's a little puffery involved.
For instance, on the Frazetta Art Gallery site a few years back, it was said...
Frank did not start playing baseball until he was 15 years old, but within just a few short years
of playing sandlot ball in Brooklyn, he was offered a contract to play center field for the New
York Giants.
That's stretching the truth of the matter a bit, as in the biography section, there is a more
realistic take on the situation...
Through his teens, he continued drawing and painting, however he began to slack off due to his
discovery of girls and baseball. In school he set several high school records, and eventually
caught the attention of a scout for the New York Giants professional baseball team. Frank was
offered a position on their farm squad with a good prospect of moving up to the major league
within a season, but he turned them down. " I was involved with a girl at the time," Frazetta
says a little sorrowfully. "And going down to Texas and sweating it out in the minors for a year
didn't seem very appealing. You have to remember that at that time athletes weren't making the
money they do today. They bussed you back and forth and it was just a big disgusting hassle. I
remember that traveling to another state seemed like going to the end of the world, so I told
them, maybe next year. Time went by and before I knew it I was too old. It was just my way of
letting time make the decision for me. If I have any regrets it's that I didn't turn pro. If I
was in my twenties and had it to do over - today, at today's salaries - you better bet I'd do it.
"
And yeah, that's basically the "rub" of the story - while yes, Frazetta most likely WAS offered a
baseball contract (he was a very skilled baseball player in high school)...
what a "baseball contract" was in 1946 is very different than what you would think of a baseball
contract today.
In 1946, the New York Giants had a whopping SEVENTEEN minor league baseball affiliates!
They were all over the country, in cities big and small!
Minneapolis
Danville
Trenton
Manchester
Hickory
Springfield
Anderson
Oshkosh
Jacksonville
Bristol
Jersey City
Erie
Peekskill
St. Cloud
San Francisco
Fort Smith
Richmond Colts
With that many affiliates, the amount of players who were offered "professional baseball
contracts" was a lot higher than it it is now (not to mention the fact that pro ballplayers were
chosen almost entirely from white people at the time) and with that many affiliates, your average
player was not exactly making a lot of money.
And while Frazetta was a great physical specimen...
there was no guarantee that he would actually make the majors (he wasn't a prospect along the
level of, say, a Whitey Ford - just to name a major prospect signed around the same time).
And even if he were to buck the odds and MAKE the majors, even THEN he would not be guaranteed a
hefty salary!
So when you add in very little upfront money and a lot of travel, all with the promise of MAYBE
making the Majors, it was not exactly a great job offer if you had steady work at the time.
And comic books in the late 1940s/early 1950s had a lot more definitive work for a guy like
Frazetta, so it's not surprising at all to see him choose drawing comics over playing minor
league baseball. So, coupled with the many accounts of his baseball acumen from the people who
knew him as a youth, plus the fact that Frazetta has consistently told the story over the years
(with just the specifics moving a bit as time goes by), I'm willing to say that yes, Frazetta
did, indeed, turn down a professional baseball job to draw comics.
And from his perspective at the time, it surely seemed to pay off...
By the end of the decade and the beginning of the next, Frazetta was all over comics...
And when comics stopped paying, Frazetta moved on to comic strips, and then to book covers, which
is where his real worldwide fame began, as his science fiction and fantasy paintings are famous
the world over.
And it all could have gone very differently if he had said yes to baseball as a teen.
Thanks to Ed for the question!
COMIC LEGEND: A black and white EC Comics reprint uncovered a decades-old
X-rated prank.
STATUS: True
Late last year I did a Comic Book
Legends Revealed installment on how an issue of X-Men, when reprinted in black and white for
Marvel's Essentials format, had some slight nudity where nudity was never meant to be shown
(inker Terry Austin added some female anatomy for the sake of definition - it was intended to be
covered up when the book was colored).
Well, a similar situation occurred in 1979 when Russ Cochran did the EC Archives Edition of Tales
From the Crypt, with black and white reprints of the original series.
Here's a page from Tales From the Crypt #29....
Here's a panel from the issue...
Nothing weird, right?
Well, here's that same panel in black and white (you can click to enlarge it a bit more)...
And here is a detail of that panel....
Of course, in this instance, it was an intentional joke by original artist Joe Orlando that was
intended to be colored over so that it would never be visible.
The best part about this story is that a few years after the collection came out , someone
noticed the prank and informed Bill Gaines, who then wrote to Orlando to "complain" about the
prank (Gaines was a noted prankster himself, so it's highly unlikely that he actually cared,
almost certainly he was writing to acknowledge the decades-old prank).
And Orlando replied to him feigning outrage at the suggestion.
The great Bhob Stewart featured the prank on his great web site here. Stewart has a copy of Orlando's full
letter to Gaines (written on DC Comics stationery) at that above link. It's a great read - well
worth reading. Heck, Stewart's whole site, Potzrebie, is a great read as a whole and well worth
reading.
COMIC LEGEND: Dreadknight was originally going to be the mysterious
Masters of Evil member in Amazing Spider-Man #283.
STATUS: I'm Going With False
In the other
week's Comic Book Legends Revealed, I discussed how Tom DeFalco was planning to introduce a
brand-new Spider-Man villain during his run on Amazing Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #283, but
since he left the book soon after, he brought the character to his run on Thor.
Well, apparently there is some matter of debate over whether that was the ORIGINAL intent for
that character in #283.
Readers Omar Karindu and trajan23 both wrote (respectively)...
The rumor I always heard was that the MoE-to-be was supposed to be Dreadknight.
Dreadknight was listed as a Master of Evil in the Marvel Handbook a few months before the Under
Siege story began, and I think Roger Stern said somewhere that he wanted the evil Black Knight's
successor in there somewhere.
and
The Marvel Appendix also goes with the Dreadknight as the intended MoE-to-be as well.
As to the first point, here is the page from the Handbook...
The mystery member of the Masters of Evil in Amazing Spider-Man I#283 was almost certainly
supposed to be the Dreadknight, who was from Europe, was a good match-up for the Black Knight,
and had been named as a member of the Masters of Evil in the Official Handbook of the Marvel
Universe Deluxe Edition #4. However, Tom DeFalco decided to make it his newly-created villain the
Mongoose instead. He was also intending to set up the Mongoose as a Spider-Man villain, but wound
up establishing him in Thor after his abrupt departure from the Spider-Man titles.
Well, awhile back, someone asked Roger Stern about Amazing #283 on his web forum, and he
replied:
No, Tom DeFalco wrote AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #283. The last issue of ASM that I scripted was #250.
However, Tom and I coordinated events between AVENGERS and ASM so that the Absorbing Man and
Titania bounced back and forth between the comics and stayed consistent.
(Believe it or not, there was a time when this was common.)
I believe that Tom and Ron Frenz intended the mystery villain to be a new Spider-Man foe. But
they ran into editorial problems and left the book shortly after that issue. I believe they later
used the mystery villain during their run on THOR, but I don't remember who he was.
So it sure seems that the Mongoose was always intended to be the mystery character, as Stern does
not even hint at anyone other than a new Spider-Man villain being the character in #283.
I think it's clear enough that I'm willing to go with a "false" here!
Thanks to Omar Karindu and trajan23 for the suggestion and thanks to Roger Stern for the info
(and Dicky El for asking Roger the question)!
Be sure to check out the Unofficial Index to the Marvel Universe, while you're at it! It's a
great site!
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[Every week, 
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Casio has been
in the timepiece business for quite a fair number of years already, and most of us would have
fond memories of a digital watch from Casio, although these days it seems to be imported from
China instead of its spiritual home, Japan. Ah well, their range of G-Shock watches are also a
cause to celebrate, since those are some tough devices which can withstand the rigors of an
active lifestyle. This time round, Casio America takes the next step forward in the world of
watches with its latest addition to the Pathfinder collection, otherwise known as the PAG110C-3.
This new Pathfinder will definitely appeal to those who constantly brave the great outdoors, but
it also has a conscience since it is eco-conscious with features such as solar technology and
recycled packaging.
Recommandations
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