Everyone ready to talk about Back to the Future? How about Halo? Maybe Order of the Stick? Good, because all of these things, and more, are on the menu for this week’s just-under-an-hour edition of the Digital Strips Book Club!
If you hadn’t guessed, the BttF/Halo stuff comes in our first segment, now home to a mix of anything and everything. And leading us from quite a bit of video game chatter is, fittingly, a video game tune, courtesy of Benjamin Briggs titled, “Climb My Mountain, This High” (7:53). His remix of a classic Link’s Awakening tune (out now, on the Nintendo 3DS eShop!) is a wonderful example of how masterful some video game music truly is (if you missed the first ten minutes or so of this year’s Nintendo press event at E3, do yourself a favor and track that down soon).
After this interlude, it’s all business. Â Or as business-y as the Digital Strips News Minute can get!
- (10:48) The Least I Could Do Kickstarter = FUNDED!
- (11:48) Will there be a PAX UK?
- (12:18) Penny Arcade’s The New Kid optioned by Paramount (teaming with Gary Whitta)
- (13:10) Kukuburi’s Ramon Perez to illustrate a Jim Henson screenplay, A Tale of Sand
- (14:17) The Oatmeal has it out with hilarity-scraping site FunnyJunk over ownership
That all pretty much speaks for itself, so why not groove on into our third, slam-bang segment with Stray Dogg’s “Break” (15:54).
It’s hard to say much about this, the 2nd of our 86 part series of Book Clubs on the archivally-engorged Order of the Stick. Possibly because there is still going to be plenty of time to talk about it throughout the remainder of this calendar year. Possibly because things get ugly when the topic of comic strip vs. comic book is broached. Regardless, you should listen and then let us know what your thoughts on this divisive, but incredibly popular series are.
Also mentioned on our ride to insanity:
- (31:15) Spacetrawler
- (37:36) PvP
Finally, after the credits have rolled and the music has sounded, tune in to the after show, where I regale Steve with thoughts about my lunch with a former Digital Stripper (hint: His name rhymes with Brandon J. Carr). Burgers topped with fried egg for everyone!
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If you already think Order of the Stick is too wordy and you can’t care at all about the characters as people strictly because they’re drawn a certain way, you are going to be absolutely MISERABLE reading the rest of it. Because half of what happens from that point on involves using even more words to describe how those characters really feel about their lives and their responsibility to be heroes and so on. It’s going to be torturous to listen to you just hate everything about it for the next 8 months.
Plus, the crayons are coming up…I’m sure you’ll hate them most of all.
I think that now that I’ve hit on my biggest issue with this comic (which has nothing to do with the art style or wordiness of the comic) I can put it behind me and focus on other critiques for the remainder of this Book Club.
Also, to be fair, I never said I hate everything about it and I was sure to point out some aspects that I really like, the biggest compliment of which is that I couldn’t stop reading once I’d reached the allotted page count for this edition.
Thanks for listening/writing, I appreciate the response!
With respect, when you say, “That scene would have been emotionally impactful, but they’re just stick figures,” that IS having an issue with the art style, consciously or not. Your feelings on the art are getting in the way of your feelings on the story. But I’ll keep listening, because I’m curious what you’ll think of the rest of the story.
Point well taken. At this point I’m really excited to continue this Book Club and am interested to read your thoughts on both my thoughts and the comic itself. Thanks again for sticking with us!