Boing Boing brings word that the Library of America is offering a slip-cased, two-volume set of Lynd Ward’s Depression-era woodcut novels, edited by Art Spiegelman. The whole set is $70, but is a total steal at Amazon for over $30 as of now (for pre-orders).

I have a couple of the books collected in this series, and I can attest that they are stunning and excellent. I have been waiting for years for a collection like this, to see the images on fine paper and in a lovingly curated collection. Perhaps there’s something more “authentic” about seeing Depression-era stories told on the cheap, used, newsprinty-paper copies I have, but honestly, Ward’s work deserves the premium treatment.

These works were really influential for a lot of comic book artists (including Spiegelman, I’m guessing), and to me while I was first getting into my studies of visual storytelling and design. I had been counting the years until this material goes into the public domain (in a good long time), hoping that I’d be able to put together my own collection sometime, but I’m very happy that much more qualified people beat me to it years in advance.

Mostly dull. Leads me to question whether the first one was actually as clever and self-aware as I had thought it was. Don’t bother.

An introductory note: I forgot to post this several months ago, then I found it again. I guess I’ll post it now, even though it’s pretty late to be posting roundups from 2000–2009. Whatever.

I thought about doing a “best games of 2009 list,” but I realize I didn’t really play that many games this year that actually came out this year. So, instead, I’m going to take advantage of the end of the decade to reach further back. I can’t remember whether we do “Top 10″ lists around here or whether they’re more like “Top n” lists, where n = however many we think we’re going to need to include. I’m not sure I can think of 10 games that I thought were way better than everybody else seemed to think from the last decade, so here you get a list of arbitrary length, peppered with games from the last several years that I mostly wanted to rant about. Enjoy!

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They nailed precisely half of the equation that made this one of the best comics ever: the juvenile playfulness. Too bad the other half—the humorously, painfully familiar emotional realism—couldn’t fit in a Hollywood movie. Good soundtrack, though, and definitely recommended if you enjoy seeing people burst into spare change when killed.

Tony has already regaled you with the tale of our adventure to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and his review—as with most things Tony says—is spot on. In some ways, as we discussed after the film, it would have been better not to have the comic so fresh in your head, because you find yourself waiting for jokes or looking for characters. That said, the film stands on its own, with plenty of quips and situations that are more “inspired by” the comic than ripped directly from the page. The casting is pretty much spot on for the most part, though it’s also worth noting that in many ways Michael Cera’s portrays a fundamentally different Scott Pilgrim than the protagonist of the comics (he lacks the manic energy of the latter). As a long-time fan of director Edgar Wright’s work, though, I maintain that the man is three-for-three in feature filmdom. At the same time, though, I found myself thinking about halfway through that I couldn’t wait until somebody inevitably adapts the series to a television show so we can see all the parts that got left out.

Due to unexpected good fortune your protagonists were able to see a sneak preview of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on Tuesday, here’s what Tony thought:

One sentence summary for folks who haven’t read the comics: Canadian slacker/rocker Scott Pilgrim falls for Ramona Flowers but discovers he must defeat the league of Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes if he is to date her.  (Maybe you’d like to watch the trailer.)

Is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World a good movie and/or a good adaptation of a comic? I have a hard time thinking about the movie without dissecting the choices Edgar Wright makes in adapting the six volume graphic novel series to a 2 hour movie. I knew going into it that the movie would have to make some tricky choices about pacing and cutting scenes and characters. The graphic novels chronicling the ups and downs of a year in Scott Pilgrim’s life work fine as discrete chapters but would probably feel awkward as movie. So the movie takes place over a few weeks (time passes oddly in Toronto) with Ramona’s exes coming at Scott fast and furiously. The backstories of Ramona’s exes are heavily condensed or basically not explored at all in some cases. Scott’s relationship with his drummer and girlfriend Kim Pine, a source of ongoing tension and slow reveal in the comic, is more or less gone in the movie.  A variety of secondary characters are omitted or make only token appearances (we never see The Clash at Demonhead’s cyborg drummer in action for example.) Also worth noting: the movie was completed before Bryan Lee O’Malley finished the sixth book in the series, so though they clearly knew how he was planning to end the series it won’t be exactly the same. Balancing out for the adjustments to characters (and some plot points) fans of the comic will be happy to see a surprising number of scenes recreated shot for shot with the original dialogue in place.

So after you finish obsessing on all the little adjustments and tweaks to the plot and characters how is it at a movie? Pretty good I’d say. Consistently funny and amusing with great visuals it was fun the whole way through. The music of Scott’s Band Sex Bob-omb (provided by Beck) adds a lot to the experience that obviously wasn’t there in the comics, and works as a great example of how adapting a comic means you can do a lot more than just filming it shot for shot. The actors were all fine and the degree to which they looked like their comic counterparts is uncanny in places. Overall Scott Pilgrim vs. The World does a great job of faithful adapting much of the source material while also being fun and creative.

Reading other reviews of the movie which criticize the surreal elements of the story suggest to me that unsurprisingly the people who wouldn’t have enjoyed the comic wouldn’t enjoy the movie. I particularly like how one critic derided the movie as un-appealing to anyone who didn’t grow up with Nintendo (or as I call them, super old people.)

I liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and I hope you will too.

If Splinter Cell had knocked up Mass Effect after the prom, Alpha Protocol would be their baby. Mind you, this is before those series grew up into more games they are today—we’re talking 2005′s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the first Mass Effect, circa 2007. That’s only an insult, though, if you wouldn’t love to go back and play those all over again for the first time, awkwardness and all.

Admittedly, Alpha Protocol has a visual style that looked outdated before the game even hit shelves, combat that feels clunky if you’re using anything but a pistol, boss fights that are literally impossible if you don’t build your character properly (I did, fortunately, entirely by accident), and a convoluted plot of secret agencies and double-double-crosses so numerous that not even the writers can keep track of what your character already knows, deflating some of their intended “A-HA!” moments. Still, sneaking around and punching bad guys in the throat is pretty fun, the dialog system is arguably an improvement upon Mass Effect‘s, and the game keeps track of more of your choices (adjusting plot and dialog accordingly!) than any other game I’ve seen. All in all, I’m sad it won’t be getting a sequel, but I’m glad I got it for only forty bucks.

The new series from David Simon (The Wire) is good stuff for people looking for something out there in TV with some actual meat on the bone. If you’re expecting “The Wire: New Orleans Edition” (as Dick Wolf would have titled it) you’ll be a bit disappointed. The Wire was an exploration of crime, corruption, the nature of life in an American city, and the institutions we ally ourselves with (be they the police, unions, gangs, schools, etc.), Treme is almost a love story about New Orleans and music.

Set three month after Katrina you can be sure Simon will include plenty of swipes at FEMA and Bush-era politicians, but Treme seeks to tell a story not of institutional failures, but of the lives of several musicians living in the New Orleans neighborhood of Treme. Given that most of the major character are musicians, music unsurprisingly plays a major role in Treme, and even a musically illiterate person such as myself can enjoy what they offer the viewer. In some ways Treme lacks some of the punch of the Wire, whereas Simon burned with a love/hate relationship with Baltimore, it almost feels like he might not be much more than a New Orleans fanboy. On the other hand, I find some of the of the storytelling is much richer and more interesting. Many of the stories focus on the lives of the characters and their families, a motif that was pretty lacking in The Wire except for examples of failed families. I also enjoy that the over arching story is still interesting without the tension and conflict of the active case from each season of The Wire.

So, I’d watch anything David Simon puts his name on, but I’d recommend Treme as being more accessible and closer to The Wire than his other post-Wire piece: Generation Kill.

The Old West! Or at least the end of the old west! (1911 according to back of the game box.) Dan had me really worried when he said there was a car is the opening cut scene, but rest assured that it was an appropriately old timey car and not the Honda Civic I envisioned. Also as far as I can tell you don’t ever have to chance to steal said car.

Red Dead Redemption is lots of fun. I went right from playing the GTA4 DLC “Ballad of Gay Tony” into starting this so it was hard for me not to feel at first that this was basically GTA4 with a better cover system, and you know, horseys instead of cars. As I started putting several hours into RRD, it quickly grew on me. My first reaction was how weird it was that a game set in a desolate, sparsely populated dessert, could feel so rich and engrossing compared to Rockstar’s previous metropolis based games. There is just a ton to do: strangers to help out, animals to hunt, bounties to collect, poker to play, bandit hideouts to decimate, and of course the story missions. The variety of experiences and different ways situations can play out results in some unique experiences; friends I talked to who’d only played the first hour of the game described experiences and adventures I had yet to encounter hours into it. Every night I played the game would leave me with a story about some act of virtual heroism, botched rescue mission, or case of mistaken identity that resulted in a gunfight (some of the sheriffs are dressed rather nondescriptly.) The story is surprisingly better than Rockstar’s previous fare: John Marston’s tale of vengeance (or “Redemption”) is good by video game standards with the details revealed very slowly over the course of many conversations. Your first mission does a good job of setting up the rest of the story. Whereas previous Rockstar main characters have either been silent protagonists, unredeeming psychopaths, or just unbelievable, Marston’s bloody path of murder seems to work a lot better. Part of this may be the setting (murder being slightly more acceptable in the old West than on the streets of New York), the other part of it may be that Marston simply seems more than willing to admit his many faults and misdeeds (compared to GTA4′s Nico Bellic who will murder 50 cops on his way to having tea with a Russian Mafia widow to talk about the plight of immigrants.) I even like how Marston seems to rather quickly get frustrated with the assorted creeps and losers he must run errands for to advance the story whereas previous protagonists seemed willing to commit acts of terrorism on behalf of people they just met before stopping to consider their intentions.

Red Dead Redemption is fun, though it is far from free of faults. Penny Arcade’s Tycho is spot on with the failures of the multiplayer in terms of how empty the multiplayer world feels and that one quickly runs out of things to do. Other will critique how much time you spend riding horses from place to place. This is certainly true, I’m about 20 hours in and you ride horses a lot in the old west. The scenery and music do make for an ok experience (this game does landscapes, skies, and sunsets like no other game), plus there are “random encounter” style interaction with wild animals and various people in need of help (or out to get you) that one can either engage in, or just keep riding.

So far Red Dead Redemption is a great game, and a strong contender for game of the year. We should ride horses together sometime, particularly now that the co-op mission pack (Free!) was released on yesterday.

In our continued charge of giving you the most up to date news on the availability of Hoverboards we thought it important to share with you this video of a working Hoverboard created by French artist Nils Guadagnin. The device uses an electromagnetic system (in the board and the pedestal it is on) combined with a laser system for stabilization.

HOVERBOARD – NILS GUADAGNIN from nils guadagnin on Vimeo.