f13.net

An interview with John Blakely (http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/interviews/2282-AGDC-07-DC-Comics-MMO-Interview-with-John-Blakely) that uses quite a few words to say not much. They've still got Jim Lee involved, isn't that grand?

Best quote though:


If your interviewer can't spot the mistake, don't let them interview regarding the game.

In short: DC Online still hasn't got anyone else worth talking about involved in the project and they still probably haven't finished their pre-production documentation. Because if they had, they'd be talking about them.

What's the problem with Flash Gordon?

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/3590_4_1.jpg)

Holy Epic Fail, Batman.

Ok. I read it. Dana phoned that article in. Must have been some late-night, boring topic writing. Also, the bits about the studio, it's history and the transition may as well have been written, oh I don't know, 2 years ago. Or 3. Hell, that whole article could have been written two years ago. A wag of the finger for you, WarCry.

Because they mentioned Flash Gordon (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ae/Flash_gordoncomic.jpg/250px-)

when they meant to mention the Flash (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b6/New_flashl.jpg/180px-New_flashl.jpg)

Someone was obviously thinking about the new Flash Gordon series when writing the article.

Good catch on the DC comic series of Flash Gordon, but he's been shopped around a lot - I can also see he's had Marvel series, Gold Key, Charlton and Harvey Comics releases.

Is that Warcry's fault, or SOE's for not having anything to show off after something like 2 years in development? Yeah, it was a lazy article, but I can't help but think that SOE is being uncharacteristically quiet about DC Online. Either they don't have much done or Time Warner is forcing them to hold back until the MUO shows its hand. Perhaps EQII and SWG have burned Blakely badly enough that he doesn't want to talk to anyone until the project is close to release.

As long as they have the theme music from the movie, I'm down. He'll save every one of us you know.

Ahhhhhhhhhh!

Given that it takes Jim Lee a year to draw a single comic book I'm not seeing how he is anything but a liability.

A lot of comic artists from that generation developed a fatal combination of ego and laziness.

For some reason, since DCO and MUO have been announced, I've had this vision of development stalling on both games due to Marvel and DC's inability to actually establish a firm status quo for longer than three months.  I can picture the development teams on the phone each week:  "Ok, so we completely got rid of Mutants as a playable "race".  So anyway, we're working on this one quest that involves the New Avengers and... wait, what?  The team has broken up and they're fighting each other now?  What the hell is Civil War?  Cap is gonna get killed?  We based our whole tutorial around him!" (Imagine similar stuff from DC, but revolving around Identity/Infinite/Final Crisis and 52/Countdown related stuff).

Presumably, they're going to have to go the same route as the X-men Legends/MUA route of having some bizarre mix of comic book, movie, and cartoon continuity.

Flash, I love you!  ... but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!

Allegedly Jack Emmert, who is project lead on MUO, gets involved regularly with the Marvel editorial team to hear what is coming up. Also, they plan to make MUO as a similar-but-not-same world that the 616 universe operates in, so it is allowed to have some differences.

(For non-Marvel nerds, the main Marvel 'dimension' is the 616 universe)

That doesn't help.

Also, who the fuck is Jim Lee?

And is it just me, or does that interview suggest that the reason we should be excited about Lee's involvement is that he played Everquest?

Shit, I once watched Star Wars. I'm still waiting for that multi-million dollar job offer to write and direct a series of genre defining blockbusters with a sweet merchandising deal on the side.

In the meantime, dispatch war rocket Ajax imo. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNf9rEPoc8Q)

MMO's based on comics are not for you.

Earth 616 is the "real" world in the Marvel storyline, with alternative universes having different numbers. I guess the idea is that the game will be set in an alternative universe where they can say things are a little different to the world in the comic books if it suits them.

The best use of the multiple worlds idea in the Marvel books in my humble opinion was in Alan Moore's Captain Britain, when Captain Britain from earth 616 meets Captain Angleterre from Earth 305, Kommandant Englander from Earth 846 and Captain Airstrip-One from Earth 744, among others.

Presumably the game will use a world which is pretty much identical to the world of the comics, except when they want to use the alternate reality excuse to change some detail.

Jim Lee was a popular artist in the mid to late 90s who became very lazy and basically stopped going anything.

He's actually done a fairly steady amount of work since 2003, with year long runs on Batman (the Hush arc) and Superman among other things.  McFarlane on the other hand...

Or Liefeld.

His year-long runs are not monthly though, at least not recently. He's given interviews where he has stated he'll probably never do monthly work again.

He also owns Wildstorm Studios, which was doing some interesting things, but then got bought by DC and then decided to relaunch a lot of the core titles with superstar authors.

Said superstar authors generally didn't bring their A-game to the relaunch, if they bothered to show up at all. Lee looked a little bit stupid (okay, a lot stupid) for trumpeting a relaunch that fizzled badly. No doubt his money from the Wildstorm sale dried his tears, however.

Damn you, Jim Lee!

What I would have given for a Image Universe Online with the old-school original Wildcats, Cyberforce, Gen13 and Stormwatch.  Those were the cool-old days! :)  I find Marvel and DC so boring.

I don't blame him.  From what I can tell, it's fairly time intensive to do interiors for a monthly book, and if you're a well known artist it's far from the most effective way to make money.

Much better to get a cushy job as a creative designer to a MMO where your lunch time sketching can become core design artwork, I'd think.

They just weren't very good. They were pretty... but the stories were mediocre at best.

Also, pining for the old days of Image makes you sound like someone pining for the good old days of punk when Good Charlotte was kicking ass. Old Image books were pretty posters of shitty shitty stories.