Any alternate history undergoes an almost immediate pass/fail grading as I initially look at it.  In The Manhattan Projects, proudly stamped on the deceptively simple cover reads, “What if the research and development department created to produce the first atomic bomb was a front for a series of other, more unusual, programs? What if the union of a generation's brightest minds was not a signal for optimism, but foreboding? What if everything . . . went wrong?”

All comic nerds know that unique happiness of being proven wrong when you initially don’t like something, only to find yourself suddenly absorbed in it.  The Manhattan Projects isn’t one of those books.  No, no my friends.  Instead, it is a delightfully demented stroke of self-perpetuating madness.  The story flows without losing pace even in the flashback scenes, something I’ve found to be rare.  The cast paints a wild scene depicting mad scientists in a perfect, undiluted form and is without a doubt what snagged me.

Let me preface this by saying that I did not spend the extra money to see Avatar in 3D. Sorry, but I just don’t feel that I need glasses to appreciate a movie. If, however, you disagree and feel that I haven’t truly “experienced” this movie until I’ve seen it in 3D, and, therefore, I am not in a position to write an informed review of it, I would be more than happy to sit down with you and discuss Avatar’s failings with something large, heavy, and blunt.

I’m utterly unsure as to what I expected from Avatar. It’s hard for a movie to be over-hyped when the hype is all about how over-hyped it is. (Did you follow that?) Still, I think I went in excited. I came out a little angry.

Several weeks ago game maker Konami decided to jump on the Zombie bandwagon by creating a downloadable arcade game for PS3 and 360 called Zombie Apocalypse. The most I can say for their choice is that I respect them for not making a game called Vampire Apocalypse, which, if we go by the standard set by all recent Vampire media, would be a game in which you are a fourteen-year-old girl who has to fend off the endless advances of two-hundred-year-old pedophile vampires. When looked at from this perspective, Konami really hit it out of the park with the choice of Zombies. Still, the game they actually decided to place on the market has some serious flaws.

As with all downloadable arcade games, you won’t get any plot from Z.A. Instead, you’ll get level after level of hoards of Zombies, which quite literally come up from the ground in an attempt to rip you apart. Also, you won’t find any tutorial to tell you how to play, so stick with it for about 15-30 minutes until you figure out how not to die like a bitch. The other serious drawback to this game is in the glitches, which seem to frequent it. Beware losing lives to falling through the ground.

If, however, you truly want to have a lot of fun playing this game, you can follow these simple instructions and have a really great night.

It would give me indescribable happiness to learn that the readers of this article had any notion whatsoever about what I am about to discuss. Granted, I’m banking on a few people to read enough Marvel comics to get the gist of it, but I’d like to start off by giving just a little background before committing any reader to lengthy diatribes of intense geekdom.

Within Marvel Comics, there are two universes which have coexisted (peacefully) since the year 2000. The original is now called the 616 universe and is what most people are directly, or indirectly, aware of. The 616 series consists of Spider-Man, The X-Men, Iron Man, and The Avengers; they have existed continuously since their conception decades ago. In an effort to draw a larger audience in 2000, Marvel launched several classics books in an entirely new universe called the Ultimate. This isn’t entirely unheard of for Marvel, as they tried a 2099 series, a 1603 series, and Universe X. Still, the Ultimate line did remarkably well, particularly the Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man comics. All of the recent comic movies that you have seen are generally considered to be based on the storylines of 616; however, several events and even direct excerpts of dialogue have been lifted from the Ultimate.

There is a careful balance that all marketing strategists must perform in terms of building up their product (in the case of this review, I’m referring to a movie), so that people will see it and not over-hype it to the point where people feel seriously let down. Many movies suffer from the latter, must notably in my mind, being the abysmal Spider-Man 3, which had great publicity, trailers, and billboards all leading one to believe that you might get some kind of product which wouldn’t leave you wanting to ingest battery acid, whilst simultaneously throwing yourself onto a burning pyre. Still, I digress. Somewhere amongst my ramblings, I meant to say that the ad campaign for the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats was tastefully done, as was the movie.

I’ve known about this film for almost eight months preceding its release in theatres this past Friday. I’m not completely sure how I discovered it; the details are lost amongst the twisted wreckage of my fractured memory (and psyche!), but I’ve been looking forward to the film since then. The cast line-up is exceptional, featuring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges. This alone should tell you something, given that Kevin Spacey for one, doesn’t do films that he doesn’t like; his tastes being fairly decent [with the exception of Superman (go kill yourself, Bryan Singer)], I was pretty damn excited about this. Still, you should be aware that this movie is not going to win an Academy Award. It isn’t mind blowing, and it isn’t earth shaking. This is exactly my point, really.