It’s not quite what it sounds like though. It’s not a revamp of a bunch of romance comics. Nope the angle they’re going for is an all ladies creative team! And I restate it’s not a pack of “romance” comics. They’re going to be doing standard Marvel stories with all the characters we know and love.

I think this is a way cool idea. Highlight that there are lots of awesomely talented ladies in comics! Let it be a little more common knowledge that it’s not completely a sausage fest in comics. Another thing that makes this cool is that the ladies are branded with “indie”, is nothing wrong with that, but it does tend to draw a different crowd. (feel like Seinfeld all of a sudden) My one beef with this is the brand “GIRL COMICS”. It seems they could have picked a name that didn’t sound like repackaged romance comics. I would love to be proved wrong, and that this is a huge success and draws in more readers, although I wish the name wasn’t so cheesy.

Thanks to iFanboy and The Beat for the heads up.

Is the world too bight and cheery? Is all this “good” getting your down? Well you need a little more “evil” in your life. Then for starters you should check out the Evil Diva comic.

Well guess I can’t fool you. This comic is really a lighthearted look at the hijinks and challenges faced by Diva Beezle as she tries to balance being born a devil with a unique desire to be good.

Her world is populated with Devils and Angels, but don’t let the halos lull you into a false sense of security … not all things are as they seem. But you probably saw that coming. So while the over all concept is not exceedingly new, so what separates this comic from the others. The answer is style.

The artist, Brinson Thieme, is really excellent and makes the characters accessible. Her style has a wonderfully “animation” look. The thoughtful layout and excellent use of colors really make each page a joy to read. She also gives the panels a lot of life that makes them a fresh breeze of awesome. The images to tell as much of the story as the text does. And don’t let the copious amounts of “cute” or the color pink dissuade you from reading, There is an equally good story and even more than that really love-able characters, I have a soft spot in my silicon heart for Michelle.

The FAQ didn’t clearly state who the lead writer is, but I suspect it’s Peter Menotti, who is the originator of the characters. Nevertheless the writing works really well and like all good writing should I brings out the character qualities that make the visuals really sing.

I always look forward to getting in front of my screen on Mondays in no small part because I know the Evil Diva team will have brought me something to make me smile, even if it’s just the vote incentive. So all together, excellent visuals and smart writing and you got yer-self a great comic!

But you don’t need to take my word for it. (Yes gleefully stolen from Reading Rainbow)

- edit 11/24/2009 -
I e-mailed the creative team of Evil Diva, and they clarified how the writing gets done.

Story writing for ED is a joint effort between Pete, Brinson and myself [Joe Cashman]. We meet at our favorite burger joint before each issue to hash out new story ideas, then I write the first script draft. We meet again after that to discuss refinements, then I revise the script and turn it over to Brinson who storyboards everything out, then draws up the final pages, editing the dialogue if necessary as she goes.

Thank you for the info Joe.

This is one more reason why I love the web as a medium for comics. We can actually interact with the people who make them *directly*!

*note* There is cartoonish violence, and gore towards the end of the video.

Thanks to @hawkster on twitter for the link.

Ah yes, I knew I saved my My Little Pony collection from childhood for a reason. Weekend project! http://bit.ly/FWphp (via @nippys)

The link is kinda awesome. It is a very interesting gallery of modified My Little Ponies. You have to see it to know the awesome.

Here’s a few of my faves.

*WARNING* This is pretty graphic in parts, aka blood spurting and obscure means of death. Not really for the squeamish.

A One man band rendition of the theme from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Part of an artistic initiative to remind us that we all share this one little marble.

A tribute to the man that made our action movie trailers so friggin’ awesome. “In a world …” need I say more?

The first screen of the new Xbox Live

If you’re an Xbox user you have probably got your grubby little paws on the new look of the Xbox Live. So in the hands of a fairly new initiate into the Xbox world … is it good?

I joined the Xbox legions around October or so of 2007, mostly due to the awesome that is COD4: MW (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare). Since then I’ve been quite impressed with the system, although I find the shadow rendering … a little odd at times. That aside I quickly learned the Xbox live interface aka the Blades. These worked quite well for most things. They have more than serviced the needs of their users for getting the features of the system where gamers wanted or at least learned to know where they were.

Roll up on September 19, 2008 and the Xbox world changes, at least in appearance. At E3 the Xbox crew had announced and shown off the demo of how the new interface will live and work. They also showed off the new avatar system, which was quickly dubbed the “Mee Toos”. While the audience seems rather divided over the addition of the Mee er Avatars this new interface seems to be a move in the right direction for living room integration.

Which is not to say the the Blades weren’t any good. They were actually quite fine. But the Xbox Live service has grown well beyond what it was originally. The addition of the media center and video store features really began to push the interface making it a long click cycle to get to where you were wanting to be, sometimes. Also when you got deep enough into a menu the context of the blades was all but gone and getting back up to where the blades were for system navigation was quite a ways back to the “surface”. That said those well versed in the system can probably navigate it with their eyes closed.

Now enter the glorious new shiny sparkly thing that is the Xbox Live dashboard. For those of you who are using Windows in its media center mode the look and feel will be very familiar. The new layout is very fluid but with a left hand anchor. Scrolling up or down brings the next menu item, it will also take you instantly out of almost any menu back up to the main menu. Scrolling left or right will move you deeper into or out of the selected menu. Once you select an item it still seems like a few too many clicks to get it to actually play or what ever you are trying to accomplish.

The Avatar issue is mostly the biggest gripe that people are going to level against the new Xbox Live system. And they’d mostly right. The avatars are fairly useless, at least now, if Xbox team really does something cool with them that’d be interesting … but I don’t really see that happening any time soon. Although I think they could salvage some of this by making the existing gamer pics like the stickers in Little Big Planet. Then you could decorate a blank shirt and sorta keep some of the gamer cred you’ve developed over your time on Xbox live. All this negativity aside, the avatars are kinda fun, and I got mine is look rather like me. I do wish there was a little more direct interaction between the controller and the avatar, but I’ve probably been spoiled by the joy that is Little Big Planet.

If all this flashy wiz bang is a little too much for you grizzled veterans who cut your teeth on the original Xbox well fear not if you hit the “x” button in the middle of your controller a screen pops up that look alot like your old blade system, although it has also been cleaned up and streamlined a little as well.

This brings me to my favorite new feature of the new Xbox system the integration of the Netflix Watch Instantly service. It is in a word … *A-W-E-S-O-M-E*. I also recently subscribed to the Netflix service, which is also worth its weight in gold. This is such an awesome convergence of awesome that its too much awesome for my mind … have I mentioned that it’s awesome?

There is a down side to it. It is only the watch instantly movies, while not a deal killer, the selection of films on the Watch Instantly is smaller than their dvd selection. But it is an excellent supplement for those times you need a quick fix of a B or D grade film experience. Another major cool point is that there are quite a few cool TV shows on the Watch Instantly service, which helps bolster the lack luster selection of movies. The selection is getting better as Netflix works out better deals with the studios.

I almost forgot about the new Party system.  This takes the group voice chat to a new level, and then some. There are few things as annoying as trying to get a cohesive group of people together and staying together from fame to game. In almost all cases you end up with someone left out or having trouble connecting to the game chat or any number of odd glitches in the system. But the new party system really makes a good effort at alleviating some of this pain. Through the Xbox Live you can setup a persistent group of up to seven players. Your party can be separate from the in game voice chat, or it can join in with everyone else. This keeps the annoying douchebag players out of your headset, a very blessed thing. You can also get very granular with your control over who is in or out of the party, it can be any friend can join or invite only. The part that makes this pretty awesome is that you can also focus your party so the more squad focused game modes are more fun. All in all it’s a much more refined system with greater capacity and power.

So the new Xbox is pretty cool, is it all that everyone hoped for? Not likely, but it is so much of what I wanted I find it hard to say much bad about it. The new streamlined interface and integrated NetFlix support are serious wins. The party system is a much welcomed addition, and the Avatars are very middling. So over all I’d say it’s an B+ to A experience depending on how you feel about NetFlix. I say it’s a solid A!

*Note* To those outside of the United States … your Netflix mileage may vary.

Gallery! The gamer tags have been removed to protect the privacy of the affected parties.