New blog post? What’s this? Yes, indeed, Homebr00ders your blog post is here. With that in mind, we’re trying to restructure the site somewhat—both in terms of function and aesthetic—in a way that will also encourage us to post more frequently. I know it may seem like not much has changed over the past…eight months, but rest assured that new wallpapers DO exist, along with advertising ideas and several new comics –including one story arch—on the way. Also, somewhere down the line I think I might do an “art refresh”. You know, one of those self-improvement things. So the bottom line is that these things do exist, that there is progress behind the scenes but it just hasn’t been put up yet. Now I’m not one to point a finger at those responsible, but if I were, let’s say for the sake of argument, the webmaster/Andrew I think I might hypothetically be feeling somewhat guilty for not upholding my part of Homebr00d…hypothetically of course. He’s all like “blah blah blah I have to work so I can pay rent and eat and blah blah blah stop waking me up at three in the morning to update the site”. Excuses.

Secondly, we were able to take a look at the recent site stats and we’re very impressed with the amount of traffic coming in. Granted people don’t seem to stay very long on the site (just long enough to read the comic and the occasional blog post), but that’s basically all we want. We want people to come in, view the weekly comic and then stick around if they choose or continue on through the vastness that is the internet. Apparently we have readers from a number of different countries (From the U.S. to Israel to China) and so we would like to send a nice warm welcome to them.

Third, Scott sat us down and, in the spirit of self-improvement mentioned above, gave us some useful creative criticisms. As a webcomic we’re still in the relatively fetal stage of development so we were destined to grind through really choppy art and some hit and miss jokes, but hopefully the comic is evolving. We know what needs to be generally improved, but if you—as readers—have specific creative criticisms we’d love to hear them so send them over at (armand@homebr00d.com or aaron@homebr00d.com).

So far it’s been an awesome summer for movies and I’ve also been able to catch up on a lot of games, books and comics I started during the year but didn’t finish–quite literally stacks of games and comics accumulated over the last few months. I just recently finished Neil Gaiman’s American Gods—an excellent novel with an original concept, definitely delivered what I expected and I highly recommend it—and I’m on the final pages of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.

In terms of comics I’m now reading Marvel’s Civil War—and by that I mean I’m reading about four different Civil War trade paperbacks encompassing most of the saga—and yet I can’t help but feel a little cheated. It seems all too familiar that Marvel released another ‘Marvel Universe-defining summer event’ that greedily spans several titles. I like the plot of Civil War, but it’s frustrating that Marvel is trying to push profits by almost forcing you to dish out money for three or four trade paper backs dealing with the same fucking issue (reminiscent of the House of M and Secret Invasion). Granted DC also has its ‘summer events’—comic industry equivalents of “summer blockbusters”—but they tend to limit the narrative to one graphic storyline, not several titles (ex. Infinite Crisis, Identity Crisis, 52, etc). Because Marvel makes such a big deal about their events and tries to incorporate every conceivable Marvel character, when you boil down the story there’s not much there because it’s been so badly diluted. We’ll see if J. Michael Straczynski’s Spiderman: One More Day will make up for the company’s greedy capitalist missteps.

So…Batman: The Dark Knight? Two words: Holy. Shit. Chris Nolan is a filmmaking genius. Not only was he able to effectively revive a franchise that Joel Shoemaker nearly destroyed, but he’s raised the film making bar in general. Apart from the intricate and semiotically dense plot of the Dark Knight, the shots and general aesthetic Nolan pulled off were incredible. Furthermore, Heath Ledger inarguably portrayed the definitive Joker by channeling the very essence of the twisted sociopath. Oscar worthy? Hell yes. Ledger so fully embodied the Joker that the character seemed more real, more material, than the actor behind the costume and makeup. The Dark Knight, without a doubt, is the film to see this year. Nolan has thrown down the gauntlet, challenged the Hollywood studio system’s integrity and artistic commitment, and has bitch-slapped both John Favro and Brian Singer with this masterpiece. I’m not sure exactly how Nolan would top this with a third film but I would be excited if tried and I would also completely understand if he didn’t.

On a final note, the San Diego Comic Con was privy to both the Nite Owl’s ship as well as the first Wolverine: Origins trailer, available here http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/xmen-origins-wolverine/leaked-comic-con-footage. San Diego’s ComicCon definitely puts our Toronto FanExpo to shame. Oh well, at least we still get Alex Ross, Dan Didio, Wes Craven, Laura Vandervoort (super hot Supergirl from Smallville) and BSG’s two Adamas. So go check out that trailer, it looks pretty damn good from what I saw (although I think the video was cut short). Hopefully they’ll do some flashbacks to Logan’s pre-20th Century childhood—as they have Troye Sivan playing “Young Logan”—and not completely centre on the Weapon X program. Not too sure about Ryan Reynolds pulling off Deadpool and the cast looks possibly a little too stacked in terms of characters (Wolverine, Sabertooth, Gambit, Silver Fox, Beak, the Blob, Scott Summers, etc), triggering painful memories of X-Men 3—where they jammed in every possible mutant in the Marvel universe bracketed with little more than a three second introduction.

Anyways, that’s all for now, come back soon. We update the comic every Tuesday now and Andrew has promised to post a blog update within the next few days predicting, what he foresees as, the next big game industry crash not seen since the 1980s.

–Adam

P.S. here is a taste of one of the new wallpapers coming (only a cropped section):