Guns N' Roses finally launch their highly-anticipated album Chinese Democracy in the US.

Category: Music
Released: Nov 20, 2008
Price: Free

Description:
Snag this app and you'll set your ears to the fast paced rock music and sounds of 95.9 The Rat... from The Jersey Shore! (WRAT-FM) 95.9 The Rat is a real terrestrial radio station, broadcasting over the air, online, and on your iPhone. The Rat features a killer morning show featuring two comedic characters named "Carl and Marty" from 6 'til 10... and then it's huge slabs of Rat Rock from Metallica, Pearl Jam, Jimi Hendrix, Guns n' Roses, Led Zep, Nirvana, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ozzy, STP, Aerosmith, Alice in Chains and tons more... plus some of today's greatest rock too... dished out by people who really love the music. The Rat plays over 40 years worth of kicked up, guitar rock and roll. 95.9 The Rat is always hoppin' with cool contests and giveaways. The Rat's listeners are the best! And their website, www.wrat.com, is a great resource for all things "Rat Radio". Do yourself a favor: Rock with The Rat today! This app works with Edge, 3G and WiFi. If you are interested in an application like this for your radio station, please contact PaulJacobs@jacobsmedia.com or call 248-353-9030 for more information.

Website: http://www.stormyprods.com
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Get it on iTunes: WRAT 95.9

Guitarist Alex Grossi (QUIET RIOT, BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, HOOKERS 'N' BLOW) has joined the revamped ADLER'S APPETITE, the band led by former GUNS N' ROSES drummer Steven Adler.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/5930?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Vegas+bids+to+cash+in+with+plan+for+%2450m+Mob+museumch=World+newsc3=The+Observerc4=US+news%2CWorld+news%2CObserverc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Kevin+Mitchellc7=2008_11_23c8=1122543c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=United+Statesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FUnited+States" width="1" height="1" //divpLas Vegas, the desert city with an insatiable thirst for reinvention, is turning to some old friends to reboot its faltering economy: the Mob./ppBuilding projects have stalled up and down the Strip, unheard of in a town where the sound of explosions on worn-out casino sites was as commonplace as gunfire, when the old constantly made way for the new. Now, as credit and the gambling nerve of the hotel bosses dry up simultaneously, the town invented by Bugsy Siegel in the Forties is going back to its dubious past for inspiration./ppWork has started on a $50m museum that will open in the spring of 2010 celebrating the Mafia's links with the gambling capital of the world. It is an initiative that excites the mayor, Oscar Goodman, but dismays others weary of the city's historical association with organised crime./ppGoodman is more than a mayor. He is a celebrity in a city that lives and dies on fame. He knew Frank Sinatra. He knew John F Kennedy. He knew Marilyn Monroe. This is a town and a civic administration that was as comfortable with the Mob and its attendant guest list as it was with the certainty of another sunny day./ppGoodman told The Observer the project was 'as cool as it gets', dismissing suggestions that it might not be universally popular, given the nature of the Mob's activities./ppThe museum has been the subject of controversy since it was announced in October. 'The Mob museum and media try to romanticise these monsters for money,' wrote a blogger on the Las Vegas Review Journal's website. 'These romantic characters are really just lunatics and degenerates who preyed off society. If Las Vegas wants a museum, build one to commemorate the victims, not the criminals.' There is no denying, though, that exploiting the fascination with gangsters here is a profitable exercise. On a two-and-half-hour, $70 'Mob Tour of Las Vegas' last week, Vinny the guide said that even real-life hoodlums come to have a look. /pp'Three weeks ago,' he said, 'we had Henry Hill, who is in and out of witness protection, and was played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. He was pretty stewed. But he loved it.'/ppGoodman said: 'Nobody's given me an opinion other than they like it. You want a watercolour museum? You want a porcelain museum?' A robust populist who mines his colourful past as a prop in his political shtick, Goodman is in his third and final term, a Democrat approved by eight out of 10 voters in a city that is an unashamed cathedral to capitalism./ppGoodman is no ordinary civic leader. As he is occasionally reminded, over three decades he acted as counsel for some of the country's most notorious mobsters, men who built and ran Las Vegas. His clients included Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal and Anthony 'Tony the Ant' Spilotro, whose barely disguised doppelgangers were portrayed by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in the eerily accurate 1995 movie Casino (in which Goodman had a walk-on part)./ppAnd, no, he did not find his own 'Mob history' an embarrassment. 'What? To defend people, and protect their constitutional rights, and make sure that the government doesn't take advantage of them? You find that offensive? That's the reason we left England. OK?/pp'I don't care whether it is or it isn't [popular]. I care that there are people going in there and spending a lot of money and the city of Las Vegas is getting the fees and the concession money and making a fortune. It's going to be phenomenal. It's going to bring hundreds of thousands of people into our downtown.' /ppIt might be stretching it to say Goodman 'knows where the bodies are buried' in anything other than a metaphorical sense, but he does know how to generate money. And the city that has been his home since he moved to Nevada from Philadelphia in the Sixties as a public defender has rarely needed his entrepreneurial instincts more than now. /ppStatistics released last week make grim reading: visitor numbers are down 10 per cent, year on year, to 2.9 million in September; room rates have been slashed by 21 per cent as tou6rist numbers dwindle; hotel occupancy is 84.3 per cent, down 7 per cent; across Nevada, gambling revenue dropped 5.4 per cent to just over $1bn; and on the Strip the take was a mere $525.5m for the month, down 5.17 per cent./ppThose are numbers of dollars lost by Mr and Mrs Wisconsin at the slot machines, as well as the high-rollers at the baccarat tables. Las Vegas wins because it is full of losers. 'Life is a risk,' said Goodman. 'When I have my drink tonight, I'm risking it may be my last.'/ppThe Mob Museum has been his pet project since he was elected in 1999. He got the idea from an unusual source: the old Post Office down the street from City Hall. It was in that building in 1950 that Senator Estes Kefauver conducted the Nevada leg of his famous inquiry into organised crime, butting up against the intransigence of witnesses unbothered by official scrutiny./pp'We hired the folks who are doing the Spy Museum in Washington DC,' Goodman said. 'When you go in there you're going to be mugged, you're going to be booked, you're going to have your Miranda rights [the 'right to remain silent' legislation] given to you. And who knows if you'll ever get out? Because we're going to have machine-guns there, which will be provided by the FBI.'/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227399527309112300260553996"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Newscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227399527309112300260553996" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, is to arm police with 10,000 Taser stun guns in an escalation of the government's fight against violent crime.

Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Players: 1-18 (2-4 co-op)
Genre: FPS
Price: $59.99
Reviewed On: Xbox 360
ESRB:

__________________________

Overview: It seems like every year, a new call of duty game comes out during the holiday seasons, how does this one stand out from the rest? I really have no idea because I have never played a COD game before, so this year I am jumping in and heading out to see what all the fuzz is about in this bullet packed FPS. (CAUTION: DOES NOT CONTAIN ACTUAL BULLETS!)

Gameplay: There is no denying that WWII games have been done quite too many times, and for gamers that have been keeping up with the franchise this may be a good or bad thing, this is still Call Of Duty in every single way so if you didn't like the old ones, there is a slim chance that you will enjoy this one.
What REALLY sets this one aside from the rest is an extra game option you unlock after beating the game where you are stuck inside a house and an unlimited number of waves of nazy zombies, they can come into your house but they have to break walls and wood that covers windows first. You can re-build any barrier, buy new weapons, and expand your ground, tho when you expand your ground, you also increase the number of gaps that may lay in your home for zombies to come in. The zombies get faster and stronger as the waves go by making your initial guns useless against them, guns that use to kill them with one shot will later take 2, 3, 5, 7 shots to kill them after a few waves go by, tho a head shot will always blow them up, it is alot harder to do so when they are running at you by the bunch. this is a great experience specially with friends, but I do wish they had expanded a bit more in it, there is only one type of zombie and the house is pretty small, also, it is great to have a small group so that team work becomes easier to achieve, but having about ten guys in a house kicking zombie butt would have been cool too.

The flame thrower is a blast to use on enemies.

Now on to multiplayer, this game supports up to 18 players which is great, you have to constantly watch your back or else you will die easily, I learned this thanks to an awesome death cam that puts you in the eyes of your opponent seconds before your defeat, and sure enough, most of my deaths were caused by enemies whom i did not see mys self, if you learn from the mistakes that the death cam shows you, you will quickly be able to dominate the grounds. The ranking system on Call Of Duty: World At War is great, you level up constantly and get great rewards, from new weapons to perks that you can add to your character to give him more health or make his bullets inflict more damage, after you reach level four you can create your own class to fully be able to customize your character to fit your gameplay style.
The AI can be very dumb at times which takes away from the experience, sometimes I feel like i am just target practicing due to the fact that they just aim at me and wait for me to shoot at them, sometimes you can even stay behind them or follow them for long periods of times before they notice you which is odd because this could have possibly been done on purpose to encourage you to be stealthy in certain areas, but if they did, they need to fix it because even I would notice people when they are running behind me or starring at me with a gun few feet away from me.
Your team mates are no better, you will often see them shooting at walls just because there is an enemy at the other side of it, I once saw a squad member run sideways across an opened door and once the opening was over he started to shoot at the wall, it was quite a late reaction.
Any time you are at your feet (not on a tank or something) your gameplay will most likely consist of the following: walk around, get ambushed, hide behind something, come out to shoot at your enemies and get back in cover once you have taken enough hits, and then go to the next area, this is all good at first but after a while you start to notice this pattern.

The loading times are covered up by a mix between real live footage, and CG content, it always loads up before the introduction is finished and you are free to skip it afterward tho some of them are quite interesting and you may want to watch each at least once.
There is an icon on the bottom left of the screen where the map is located that tells you where to go, this way, you will never get lost which is a great touch, tho not completely necessary due to the fact that this game is very linear, tho this simply further escorts you to your next checkpoint.
Most of the achievements have to be done alone, which is a shame because normally you have the option gain achievements ether solo or with a friend, and who doesn't love to grab a friend and go achievement hunting right?
Aside from the regular gameplay where you run around and shoot there are only two missions that have you doing something differently and they are both short, one of them takes you inside a flame throwing tank that can self-regenerate somehow and while its nice to have a completely new mission and all, this particular one was not all that fun, and then there is the other mission that puts you inside a plane where you will have to shoot down boats and plains, here you can only control and fire turrets and the game will ask you to change position every now and then to shoot at objects on the other side of the plain, this one is actually fun.



Can YOU guess what will happen next?

Graphics: Character models are well made and often go out of their regular behavior to do a scripted one such as opening a gate or killing captured enemies which is rare in games, there is a strange mixture between high res textures and low res ones, the grass for example has an incredibly high resolution texture for what it is, I crouched and zoomed in on it and it was still relatively smooth, yet when I was hiding behind what seemed to be a desk, the texture was low enough for me to see each pixel without having to zoom in on it, I had so walk away from it to figure out what it was.
Another thing that HAS to be pointed out is that the level of detail in the environments is amazing, the jungle is filled with numerous species of plants, and the buildings are filled with chairs, dirty walls, garbage, ect, not to mention that your battlefield is always changing, this keeps the game from getting repetitive too early. The fire effects are also excellent and the reactions from the flames are normally good too, except for the fact that I think there is only one animation for being burned, I once burned two enemies at once and they were mirroring each others movements perfectly.

Sound: The sound in this game is top notch, you hear bullets coming from every direction and hitting the ground or walls near you, solders screaming for their lives and dying, voice overs are good too but the lip sync can use alot of work, while you are in cover you can count on the sound of bullets hitting your cover to see when the enemy is reloading so you can pop out and lay a nice grenade on their feet to keep them warm. Overall the sound in this game is so great it improves the overall experience by a long shot.

Replay Value: The main story can be fully played in co-op and the online mode is great too, that is not even counting the great zombie survival extra that you unlock once you beat the game, tho you don't need to beat the game in order to play it if you have been invited by someone to play it, the regular multiplayer modes also have missions that you can choose to completely ignore or you can face them, this missions are small things like stab someone a certain amount of times and things like that, but one should never look at the teeth of a given horse, if it is there as an extra and is not mandatory then no reason to complain but to appreciate.

Conclusion: The game will last you about 6-10 hours depending on the difficulty level and your personal skill level, it takes 6.5 GB to install this game and it only shaved off about one or two seconds of loading time on my end, so unless you REALLY want to play Call Of Duty: World At War with a silent xbox you are gonna want to play this one from the disk, and its not like you will hear the xbox with all the sounds from guns, grenades, tanks, and people screaming.


This is why stabbing a knife with your stomach is a bad idea.

________________________________________

Overall Score:
.:Great Game!:.

p style="text-align: center;"a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126591/fc2-guns_qjgenth.jpg?922341" rel="lightbox[article126591]" title="Far 20Cry 202 20Fortune 27s 20Pack 20DLC 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126591/fc2-guns.jpg 3F922341 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px;" alt="Far Cry 2 Fortune's Pack DLC - Image 1" title="Far Cry 2 Fortune's Pack DLC - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126591/fc2-guns_qjgenth.jpg?922341" align="" border="0"/aa href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126591/fc2-vehicles_qjgenth.jpg?064285" rel="lightbox[article126591]" title="Far 20Cry 202 20Fortune 27s 20Pack 20DLC 20- 20Image 202 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126591/fc2-vehicles.jpg 3F064285 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" alt="Far Cry 2 Fortune's Pack DLC - Image 2" title="Far Cry 2 Fortune's Pack DLC - Image 2" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126591/fc2-vehicles_qjgenth.jpg?064285" align="" border="0"/abr/pbrYou really do learn something new everyday. Take this announcement for some new span style="font-style: italic;"Far Cry 2/span (a href="http://ps3.qj.net/category/Far-Cry-2/cid/4656" title="Far Cry 2"PS3/a, a href="http://xbox360.qj.net/category/Far-Cry-2/cid/4657" title="Far Cry 2"Xbox 360/a, PC) DLC for example. This DLC batch includes a silenced shotgun, something that I thought only existed in movies. I looked into it a bit, and apparently, it does. Wow.brbrAnyway, let's talk about Fortune's Pack DLC. Apart from the silenced shotgun, it also includes two other new weapons for the solo campaign: a sawed-off shotgun and a crossbow. There are also two new vehicles in the form of the Unimog and the Quad.brbrFans of the multiplayer mode will be getting four new competitive maps: Cheap Labor, Last Resort, Lake Smear, and Fort Fury. The new weapons and vehicles for the single-player mode will also be available in multiplayer.brbrThe Fortune's Pack DLC will be available on Xbox Live Marketplace and a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/playstation-store/10699" id="tag" title="Online store for the PS"PlayStation Store/a before the end of November. Price has been set for 800 a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/microsoft-points/567" id="tag" title="XBL Currency"Microsoft Points/a / US 9.99.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related articles:/spanbrullia href="http://www.qj.net/Far-Cry-2-goes-platinum/pg/49/aid/126106"span title="Far Cry 2 goes platinum" style="font-style: italic;"Far Cry 2 goes platinum/span/a/li/ulbrBuy: [Far Cry 2 (a rel="nofollow" title="Buy Far Cry 2 for PS3" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001ASJIRC/quickjumpnetw-20"PS3/a), (a rel="nofollow" title="Buy Far Cry 2 for Xbox 360" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001ASJIRM/quickjumpnetw-20"Xbox 360/a)]brbrimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/ps3/~4/f6egFQPAuU0" height="1" width="1"/

div style='clear:left;'img style="float:left;padding-right:5px;" src="http://www.faz.net/m/{91D6BCB8-85CD-41C2-A9B9-B8F7226DBC29}File2.jpg" width=111 height=151 border=0 /Fünfzehn Jahre haben sie geschwiegen. Von Guns 'n' Roses, für kurze Zeit einmal die beste Rockband der Welt, ist seither nur noch Axl Rose übriggeblieben. Jetzt kommt das neue Album „Chinese Democracy“. Tobias Rüther hat sich auf die Suche nach dem Refrain begeben.div style="margin: 5px 0 5px 0; border-top:1px solid #7A89CC; font: 10px arial; color: #7A89CC; clear: both;" a href="http://www.faz.net/s/homepage.html" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"FAZ.NET - Homepage/a a href="http://www.faz.net/politik" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Politik/a a href="http://www.faz.net/gesellschaft" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Gesellschaft/a a href="http://www.faz.net/wirtschaft" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Wirtschaft/a a href="http://www.faz.net/finanzmarkt" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Finanzmarkt/a a href="http://www.faz.net/sport" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Sport/a a href="http://www.faz.net/feuilleton" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Feuilleton/a a href="http://www.faz.net/reise" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Reise/a a href="http://www.faz.net/wissen" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Wissen/a a href="http://www.faz.net/auto" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Auto/a a href="http://www.faz.net/computer" style="font-size: 10px; color: #7A89CC; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" | Computer/a /div /div

http://www.avclub.com/content/featur...terman_reviews

Guest reviewer Chuck Klosterman is the author of five books, including Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota and the new novel Downtown Owl. There is no one in the world more qualified to review the exhaustingly anticipated new Guns N' Roses album than he is.

Not sure if you've read any of Chuck's books, but they are awesome. He's my favorite author, a huge G n' R fan and he gave the album a 1700 word review. Really interesting stuff and an insight into the humorous, intelligent quality of his writing. :cool:

pIci: du rock avec le nouvel album des Guns#8217;n Roses, de grosses cylindreacute;es avec le salon Moto Leacute;gende et du foot avec le PSG et Creacute;teil./ppa href=http://www.ouifm.fr/ouicast/pod/http://ns300170.ovh.net/podcast/JDP20081122.mp3File Download (0:00 min / 5.1 MB)/a

Spinner.com has posted 10 photos from inside the booklet for GUNS N' ROSES' long-awaited new album, Chinese Democracy.

Normalement prévu pour ce mois-ci, Hired Guns : The Jagged Edge nous revient via cet extrait où il est question de dénicher un cafard dans une case. Et il y a pas à dire mais mais ils y mettent les moyens !(...)img width='1' height='1' src='http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/808/f/413797/s/26bab42/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2_fr.html?title=Vidéo : Hired Guns : The Jagged Edgelink=http://www.jeuxvideo.com/extraits-videos-jeux/0000/00001263/hired-guns-the-jagged-edge-les-mercenaires-debarquent-en-force.htm" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/partagez.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark_fr.cfm?title=Vidéo : Hired Guns : The Jagged Edgelink=http://www.jeuxvideo.com/extraits-videos-jeux/0000/00001263/hired-guns-the-jagged-edge-les-mercenaires-debarquent-en-force.htm" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/24192796775/u/89/f/413797/c/808/s/40610626/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/24192796775/u/89/f/413797/c/808/s/40610626/a2.img" border="0"//a

LOS ANGELES Le nouvel album de Guns N'Roses, qui sort enfin dans le commerce ce week-end, va devoir prouver que cet ancien groupe phare du hard-rock n'a rien perdu de son attrait, malgré les 12 ans d'attente ...

a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Democracy#Delays"Chinese Democracy/a, the sixth studio album by Guns N’ Roses, is being released this Sunday, after over a decade of delays. Chuck Klosterman a href="http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/chuck_klosterman_reviews"liked it/a. John Pareles from the New York Times a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/arts/music/23pare.html?_r=3pagewanted=1hp"did not/a. You can decide for yourself by listening to it a href="http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses"here/a. Or you can pick it up this Sunday at Best Buy. But make sure you collect your a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc9S2shf_wKwjH11jMbO9iJGbjlAD94J1EH00"free Dr Pepper/a. br / a href="http://www.metafilter.com/75879/If-you-play-the-CD-backwards-on-your-PC-it-installs-Duke-Nukem-Forever"Previously/a and a href="http://www.metafilter.com/70286/Still-no-similar-offers-for-actual-democracy-in-China"previously/a.

On Sunday, Guns 'N' Roses fans finally get to collect earnings on Dr Pepper's bet that the tumultuous band would never finish Chinese Democracy -- for 24 hours. After that, the freebies revert to huge traffic for the soft-drink manufacturer's servers.

"We never thought this day would come," Dr Pepper's vice president of marketing Tony Jacobs told Variety, speaking no doubt of November 23, which also happens to be Chinese Democracy's release date. "But now that it's here, all we can say is: The Dr Pepper's on us."

Clever.

Dr Pepper's marketing stunt may be over as soon as it starts, but the band already offered its blessing back in March on its website. And Guns 'N' Roses wasn't even in on it. So it says.

After the hype settles, what matters is how Chinese Democracy tastes, not Dr Pepper. Axl Rose played the waiting game. Did he win it?

Photo: GNR @ MySpace

• Dr Pepper to Make Good on Chinese Democracy Stunt
• Dr Pepper Bets Against Chinese Democracy
• Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy Launches on MySpace
• Lawyer: Guns N' Roses Uploader to Walk
• Guns N' Roses Leaker's Fate Rests in the Band's Hands
• FBI Visits Leaker of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy
• Blog Leaks Tracks From Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy

Dean Goodman of Reuters reports: GUNS N' ROSES fans in China will have to go underground to get their hands on a copy of the band's first album in 17 years, Chinese Democracy, which will be released worldwide on Sunday, November 23.

Two long-awaited mini-series come to an end! Can you stand the suspense from not knowing what they are? If not, read on!

Air #4 by G. Willow Wilson (writer), M. K. Perker (artist), Chris Chuckry (colorist), and Jared K. Fletcher (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC/Vertigo.

Air is still keeping me interested without really dazzling me, but it’s getting to the point where I may have to drop it. Usually I give books six issues to grab hold, and although I admire a lot about Air, there’s a lot that’s not working too. Blythe’s conversation with the masked priest who she thinks is Zayn works well, because we get some good insight into her character and what’s going on in the book. The transition to Mexico City and the new players in the game is awkwardly handled, though, and as the conspiracy grows quickly, it ironically becomes less interesting. I’m not sure if it’s a case of too much, too soon, because we’ve come very far from the weird premise of the first issue, but I also understand that doling out information in a work of serialized fiction is a delicate balance - too little and people lose interest; too much and it become overload. Air is veering toward overload, and it does seem like Wilson needs to slow down just a bit. There’s hardly enough time to process what’s going on, when suddenly we’re shifting continents and plot points and then, just as suddenly, there’s a weird flying machine on the last page. As much as the premise is intriguing, it feels like Wilson is desperate to cram too much plot into each issue.

Perker’s art has some problems, too. His figure drawing is fine, but too often he skimps on the backgrounds, giving the book a strange “nowhere” look. The text says we’re in Mexico City, but nothing about it feels like Mexico City (of course, I haven’t been to Mexico City, but there’s no sense of any place about the pages in Mexico) Perker certainly can do better - Cairo had a real sense of the city and the mysterious tunnels and passages under it - but perhaps the rush of a monthly book is not a good fit for him. Part of the weirdness of the book is that it takes place in “no place” - on bland airplanes - but that sense of unreality that comes from being on a plane shouldn’t extend to actual locations. It’s frustrating, because the first few pages, when Blythe is hallucinating about the winged serpent, work well and feature outdoor scenes that have a strong sense of place.

This is one of those comics that I really want to like. Four issues in, there’s a lot to enjoy about it. But I still have to think about dropping it, and we’ll see where the next two issues go.

Sales figures for the last two issues (#2 and #3, September and October): 8,777 (#2; rank: 194) and 10,061 (#3; rank: 195). That’s weird. A fairly big jump in orders from one issue to the next.

Ambush Bug: Year None #4 (of 6) by Keith Giffen (plotter/penciller), Robert Loren Fleming (scripter), Al Milgrom (inker), Tom Smith (colorist), and Pat Brosseau (letterer). $2.99, 23 pgs, FC, DC.

As usual with this comic, there’s nothing really here except tons of gags that are really funny if you know a little about DC comics (and your enjoyment of them increases the more you know) and are perhaps mildly amusing if you don’t know anything about DC. In this issue, Giffen rips Dan DiDio mercilessly, which is hilarious but sad when you realize how spot-on it is and how DiDio apparently doesn’t care. And I find it the height of irony that facing the page on which Ambush Bug says, “I guess I’m going to have to get used to a kindler, gentler DC Universe,” we get this ad:

Giffen obviously sees the idiocy of DC - why doesn’t DiDio?

Again, this is very funny if you’ve read DC, but probably less so if you haven’t. I like it, but it makes me sad, too.

Sales figures for the last two issues (#2 and #3, August and September): 14,627 (#2; rank: 135) and 13,477 (#3; rank: 150). As I’ve written before, this seems pretty good for an obscure character with no big names on the book. The Giffen factor?

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #4 (of 5) by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Ronda Pattison (colorist), and Jeff Powell (letterer). Back-up story by Joshua and Jonathan Ross (story/artists), Brian Clevinger (scripter), and Jeff Powell (letterer). $2.95, 27 pgs (22 for the main story, 5 for the back-up), FC, Red 5 Comics.

Atomic Robo sails merrily along, with the penultimate issue revealing some things (like who’s behind the big Nazi scheme) and, of course, featuring plenty of fighting. There’s not much I can say about it, because it’s just pure, unadulterated, comics joy. Clevinger continues to write wise cracks that flow easily from the action, Wegener continues to draw wonderfully, and it’s all hurtling toward a big-time conclusion. People who complain about all comics being gloomy are obviously not reading Atomic Robo. Maybe they should.

Sales figures for the last two issues (#2 and #3, September and October): 4,925 (#2; rank: 246) and 4,906 (#3; rank: 284). I guess that’s fine - it’s holding steady.

Bad Planet #6 (of 6) by Thomas Jane (writer), Steve Niles (writer), James Daly III (penciller), Tim Bradstreet (inker), Grant Goleash (colorist), and Jason Hanley (letterer). $2.99, 24 pgs, FC, Image/Raw Studios.

Shockingly enough, the final issue of Bad Planet showed up in stores on Wednesday. Bad Planet, you’ll recall, was supposed to be a 12-issue series, but it’s been truncated to six, although the ending leaves the possibility of a sequel wide open. It’s a shame this was so delayed, because it’s a fun, goofy comic full of 1950s-science fiction wackiness, from the deathspiders that have greatly reduced the Earth’s population to the solution to humanity’s problem, which goes back to Nikola Tesla (doesn’t it always?). Daly does a fine job with the art, and although the story makes little sense on a macro level and I can forgive that, the fact that we cut away from important events (like Veronica’s flight to Washington) is weird and halts the momentum of the book. At his blog, Tim Bradstreet explains some of the reasons for the hiatus, and now that it’s “done,” maybe people will discover this book in trade. I can’t really say it’s a great comic, but the creators go hell-for-leather magnificently to bring us this wild tale, and that’s something we should all respect.

Sales figures for the last two issues (#4 and #5, November 2007 and April): 4,575 (#4; rank: 252) and 4,467 (#5; rank: 259). The delay hasn’t hurt this comic, as it has one below!

City of Dust #2 (of 5) by Steve Niles (writer), Zid (artist), Garrie Gastonny (artist), Brandon Chng (artist), Buddy Jiang (colorist), Leos Ng (colorist), Sixth Creation (colorist), and Chris Eliopoulos (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Radical Comics.

Radical was nice enough to send me this in the mail, so I get to read two Steve Niles books this week! Whoo-hoo!

I mentioned that the first issue of this had a couple of problems: it was too derivative, and the art was too murky. The art is a bit brighter in this issue, and just that small change makes this a better issue to read. The art (split between a few different people, although the styles are all similar) isn’t great, but the brighter tones of the book help the storytelling, at least. So there’s that.

Niles continues to tell a story of a dystopian future where imagination is a crime, and with the set-up out of the way, he can concentrate on what made the first issue interesting: the actual murder of some guy and the book that Philip Khrome found under the body. Khrome is, of course, under suspicion by the thought police (GBI, they’re called in the book) because he looked at the book, and he’s interrogated by the head dude, Agent Morgan. Niles does two interesting things with this comic: Khrome continues to be a “the system is right” kind of guy, which is far more interesting than someone who rebels instantly because he’s persecuted by said system. I still see a spiritual awakening for Khrome down the line, where he realizes that he’s been wrong all these years and people just need to read, damn it! Maybe that will happen, maybe it won’t. For now, it’s interesting to see Khrome trying to solve the crime without worrying about bringing down the system. The other thing Niles does is set up Morgan as Khrome’s nemesis and then subvert our expectations. It’s nicely done, and lets us know that things are not what they seem. Plus, Niles reveals the bad guys, and although they’re nothing special, it’s interesting how he ties them into the main theme of the comic.

This issue fleshes out the character of Khrome a bit more, gets us into the crime a bit more, and isn’t difficult to read because the art is too dark. Niles, who seems to have problems with endings, doesn’t have any problems with beginnings, and he’s set up an interesting murder mystery. There’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned murder mystery!

Sales figures for issue #1 (October): 8,981 (rank: 209). I have to think that’s pretty good.

Dynamo 5 #18 by Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud A. Asrar (artist), Marcio Takara (artist), Ron Riley (colorist), and Charles Pritchett (letterer). Back-up story by Jay Faerber (writer), Joe Eisma (artist), Paul Little (colorist), and Charles Pritchett (letterer). $3.50, 27 pgs (20 for the main story, 6 for the back-up), FC, Image.

Over in Jay Faerber’s neck of the woods, Dynamo 5 gets a guest artist (Asrar draws only three pages) and a back-up story, but keeps trucking along. Scrap’s replacement team gets into a fight with a group of super-villains and doesn’t fare very well (as you can see from the cover). As usual, it’s simple kick-ass superheroing and supervillaining, but Faerber is able to do that so well that it feels fresh. Even the twist at the end, which comes from Superhero 101 class, hits us like a punch in the gut. It’s very hard to describe how good Faerber’s two ongoings for Image are (although Noble Causes is ending, it’s still around for now), because not every issue stands out as truly superb. There are stellar moments, but even those don’t show up all the time. If I wrote about the plot - supervillains collects other supervillains who match up well against the new Dynamo 5, said supervillains attack, said supervillains beat up Dynamo 5, something surprising happens at the end - you might think, “That’s the scenario of every superhero comic I’ve ever read!” Well, true, but as always, it’s in the execution. Faerber adds so many small touches that make this fun to read, like Timothy Lipinski going all gooey when he gets his people-killing armor back. Okay, that’s not really fun, but it’s something a slightly psychotic super-villain would do.

I’m not sure what’s up with the back-up story. It’s the tale of a private investigator who sets someone up, and it’s a clever little story, but I don’t know if Faerber is going to start a new series with the P. I. (who, interestingly enough, isn’t named, although the title of the story is “Dodge’s Bullets,” indicating that Dodge is either his first or last name). Either way, it’s a fun short story.

As Brian noted, prices for regular Marvel books (”regular” meaning 22 pages of story with no “extra” material) are going up to $3.99. Faerber himself stopped by to explain why Dynamo 5 is $3.50. Considering it’s as good, if not better, than any other superhero comic you can buy, isn’t it time you stopped hoping that Marvel will come to its senses with regard to pricing and checked this out instead?

Sales figures for the last two issues (#16 and #17, September and October): 5,014 (#16; rank: 241) and 4,792 (#17; rank: 287). I guess that’s fine - the drop is odd, but not huge.

Ex Machina #39 by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Tony Harris (penciller), Jim Clark (inker), JD Mettler (colorist), and Jared K. Fletcher (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, DC/WildStorm.

The frustrating thing about Ex Machina is that Vaughan is ending it with issue #50, but now we’re going to have to wait two years for that to arrive. I look forward to every issue, even weaker ones like this one, and now that Vaughan has hinted about where the book is going (he may have done this in interviews prior to this, but I don’t read interviews, so this is the first time within the comic he’s hinted about the book’s direction), I’m really looking forward to the end. But I have to wait so damned long!!!!!

As I wrote above, this is a weaker issue, mainly because Monica is such a dull “villain” to the point where she’s not one at all, really. Vaughan’s biggest weakness with this book is feeling that he has to put costumed weirdos in it, even if the book doesn’t necessarily warrant it, and building story arcs around them. Monica’s story could have been told in two issues, tops, but it was stretched out a bit, and that weakened it. Still, Kremlin’s a-doings and the way Vaughan turns the book toward the future help mitigate that a bit. I’m fascinated to see the rest of the series.

Sales figures for the last two issues (#37 and #38, June and September): 14,921 (#37; rank: 131) and 14,973 (#38; rank: 137). Holding virtually steady. Those who buy it are invested, man!

Ghost Rider #29 by Jason Aaron (writer), Tan Eng Huat (artist), José Villarrubia (colorist), and Joe Caramagna (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Marvel.

I said I wasn’t going to buy this anymore because last issue was $3.99 with a lousy recap of Danny Ketch’s career as Ghost Rider as the “extra” material. Well, I calmed down and decided to buy this, because I have been enjoying Aaron’s run on the title. Unfortunately, I might drop it anyway.

It’s not that this is bad. Aaron is writing a slam-bang action comic, and Huat’s art continues to look better than it has in the past. But it’s not as flat-out insane as Aaron’s first arc, when we had killer nurses and haunted highways and cannibals. It’s a fairly standard superhero comic, and although Aaron does it well, it doesn’t give me any reason to keep coming back. I suppose if I was more invested in the Ghost Rider mythos, it would be more powerful, but I’m not, so the actual story and writing have to be dazzling, and for the past few issues, they haven’t been. It’s certainly keen to see Danny and Johnny throw down, but beyond that, I don’t get the same sense of danger that I get, for instance, with Dynamo 5 and its big fight. It’s just two really powerful dudes smashing each other, and that’s tough to make interesting.

The end of the issue promises “more Ghost Riders,” as we learned last issue that there are several wandering the Earth. It will come out in December, which means the following month I usually think about culling titles. I doubt if this will make the cut. I miss the craziness of the first arc, which was truly and wildly awesome. Oh well.

Sales figures for the last two issues (#27 and 28, September and October): 23,402 (#27; rank: 105) and 26,993 (#28; rank: 102). A slight boost with the 4-dollar issue that I ranted about. I guess I suck.

Moon Knight #24 by Mike Benson (writer), Mark Texeira (artist), Javier Saltares (layouts), Dan Brown (colorist), and Joe Caramagna (letterer). $2.99, 22 pgs, FC, Marvel.

I like how the past two issues have featured Bullseye on the cover, even though the first time Bullseye shows up in this arc is on the last page of this issue. I guess he’s just so freakin’ cool that Suydam had to put him on two consecutive covers!

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