Stuff We Like This Week: June 12 Edition

Stuff We Like This Week: June 12 Edition

Jun 12

In an effort to combat our occasional…okay, okay, near-constant negativity, we give you a regular feature full of nothing but love — Stuff We Like This Week. Appearing every Friday, SWLTW will recap the things that have set our little nerdly hearts aflame within the past seven days.

Matt: I had an awesome week of comics. Started it off with Jan’s Atomic Heart, a fantastic indie graphic novella about robots and terrorism and betrayal; then read Street Angel (I know, I know, I’m like four years late on that one, but shit, it is so good); and then Air Vol. 1, Letters From Lost Countries, which took me an issue or two to “get” but once I sensed the themes Wilson is working with, I fell and fell hard. She’s brilliant with the language too.

I hope to find time to write more about a few of those books but in case I don’t, they’re all great and you should read them if you haven’t.

Also, I watched the first twenty minutes of Blade Runner. I’M WORKING ON IT.

Jeff: This week, I like things that I haven’t read yet. Or I like supporting webcomics. Either or. I’m eagerly awaiting delivery on Box Brown’s Love Is A Peculiar Type of Thing and Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie’s The Rack: Year One (Mostly). As much as I’m a Big Two die-hard, I’ve spent the last few years falling in love with more and more indie/self-published/webcomics work, even if there aren’t as many explosions or crossover events. Also, Kevin threatened to burn my house down. Either of these tomes is bound to be more soul-embiggening than complaining about the current run of Black Panther.

I also love dolmades this week, but they really aren’t very nerdy.

Sarah: Canadian cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s brilliant, award-winning graphic novel Skim is sort of like My So-Called Life…if Angela Chase had been a Goth, Asian Wiccan with sexual identity issues. Okay, maybe it’s not that much like My So-Called Life, but the way the book conveys teenage tangles of emotions feels the same in the best possible way — what’s complicated is often simple, what’s simple is often hopelessly complicated. We follow 90s-era teen Kimberly Keiko Cameron, aka Skim, as she navigates private school, parental issues, and crushing first love. Her journey feels painfully real, and is beautifully rendered in bold, inky pencils. But I think what I love most is the way Mariko communicates so damn much via the briefest of statements. “My dad signed my cast with an ugly happy face that I am scratching off,” notes Skim, after breaking her arm. “Me = serious issues.” Oh, girl. Angela Chase can totally relate.

Chris: I warned you all last week that the next few weeks would be Ghostbusters-centric. You were warned!

And as warned, this has been a pretty awesome week, Ghostbusters-wise. The only speed bump was that the midnight release party for the video game, the party I have been organizing for the last month, the party that had everything ready to go, ended up canceled because GameStop suits couldn’t figure out a way to make sure one store – THE ONLY STORE IN CANADA HAVING A MIDNIGHT PARTY THAT ELECTRIC PLAYGROUND MIGHT BE COVERING – had extra copies of the game for attendees to buy. Because that’s what people like, is to stay up until midnight and find out that only the people that pre-ordered get a copy, but hey, they almost won a poster. Grrrr.

The rest was pure awesome – the pile of prizes for my conjoined give-aways, via my website and the two other, will-not-be-canceled-because-GameStop-is-not-involved events are piling up. T-shirts, squishee Stay-Pufts, console decals, books, etc. – TONNES! I have bottles of Ghostbusters Slime Green Hand Sanitizer Gel to give-away. Tell me that doesn’t fucking rock.

And, I also got the game early. Yes, that’s right – you don’t have your copy yet, and I’m nearly done. Don’t feel too bad, I don’t have a lot of people to play multiplayer with. I’m doing a review, which I’ll post and share shortly, but suffice to say if you have even a small amount of love for Ghostbusters and video games, the game will make you smile for days. This is a fact – I was grinning right up until today… GameStop! Curses!