As you may have noticed, the website has had some changes. Most notably the homepage displays the latest page of each comics in order of latest publication.

The plan is that each comic will get their own updating schedule. Similarly each comic’s own page will have a more personalized look to it.

Lastly the comics are now in subdomains.

More things are on the way, so just keep an eye out.

The Hobbit trailer has been making it’s rounds around the internet for a while now and like the Lord of The Rings it looks pretty interesting and entertaining.

But at the same time I can’t help but feel a bit bummed. When LOTR hit the big screen it was supposed to usher in a new era of movies based on fantasy fiction. To a degree this was true. But there was a glaring ‘flaw’ with books converted to movies after LOTR.

Namely they were all children’s stories. Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Golden Compass, Spiderwick Chronicles, and a bunch of others I’ve probably forgotten.

These aren’t bad movies, but if Hollywood is so insistend on not creating original stories and converting books why not grab a few gems that would do quite well as big budget adventure movies. So here’s a list of of fantasy stories that would probably do quite well in the cinemas if done well:

Dragonlance Chronicles

This has adventure written all over in heeps. With a lot of interesting and identifyable characters, this series of books would be quite awesome as a movie. Or three movies, since Hollywood likes milking.

For those of you that don’t know. The world of Krynn used to know Gods until they got a bit annoyed and decided to smash a big city with a meteor. Leaving the world without clerics or sane religion for about 300 years. Untill a barbarian woman shows up in an Inn (it starts in an inn like it should) with a bluecrystal staff, said to hold the power of the gods. What follows is an adventure involving undead, dragons, death knight, regular knights, gnomes, dwarves, elves, and one very adorable Kender. (look it up)

Magic Kingdom For Sale: Sold

This is a slightly lesser known book by Terry Brooks, but it’s all kinds of fun. A mildly depressed man (after the death of his wife) finds an ad for a Magic Kingdom. He decides to buy it and becomes it’s king. Assisted by a not so great wizard, a butler turned into a dog and a few other interesting characters he has to find out the secret of the Kingdom of Landover.

Face it, that premise alone makes it worthwhile. It even has that thing Hollywood prefers, a link to the real world in the form of the main protagonist. This movie would go a long way really.

Forgotten Realms

Admittedly I haven’t read a lot of these books, I tried reading one of the Dark Elf saga books but I was in a weird mood. However, there’s bound to be a wealth of stories that would make excellent material for movies.

Gotrek and Felix

These are two unlikely allies that have a multitude of adventures. Felix is a bard that once pledged that he would write a song about the heroic death of Gotrek. The result is that he now has to follow Gotrek everywhere in order to witness said heroic death. That premise alone is enough for a fun movie and there’s a lot of stories to draw from.

Artemis Fowl

Technically this stars a kid, however this kid doesn’t annoy me and is in fact a genius. The stories themselves lend to proper movies quite well. So hollywood ought to get on this one since the Harry Potter tree is empty now.

Basically a genius level IQ boy inherits the fortunes of his parents and manages to find that fairy creatures exist.

Wheel of Time

Okay so this behemoth would require the team of Game of Thrones to make anything wortwhile. At 11+ books and a season per book, that’s a lot of seasons to get through. Would be totally worth it though. This series has a lot going for it in terms of high fantasy, intrigue and many other cool stuff.

In closing Hollywood needs to get off their asses and either start making more original work, or draw from books that are in fact interesting and cool.

How about you? What books would you prefer to be made into movies since they don’t do original work?

Though I haven’t had a lot of time to play given the recent hectic events called Christmas I did start playing Star Wars: The Old Republic when it came out.

I absolutely love this game and I’m far more invested in my character than I was in WoW.

Now I should note this is all very subjective and opinionated. To me WoW had lost it’s luster and SW:ToR brought me new and entertaining things. But a lot of things present in SW:ToR have made me more annoyed with WoW in general.

Now this is an annoyance that has slowly grown and SW:ToR just drove it home more. Let’s elaborate before I get to the point.

According to sources WoW earned 1 billion in profit last year. Let’s write that number out just so there’s no confusion.

$ 1.000.000.000 That’s 3 sets of 3 zeries. Also known as a lot of money.

This was just one year. WoW has been active for 6 years now. Given how fast their subscribers grew and remained fairly stable. It’s safe to assume they’ve made about 3 billion in profit on the game.

My beef with this is that to me this is not reflected in the actual game itself. If we look at it’s direct competitor, which launched roughly the same time, EverQuest 2 the difference is very obvious. For one thing EQ2 has housing, secondly there’s a lot of stuff you can put in your house. Most just decorative stuff like bookcases, books, chairs, fishtanks, etc. A few have a function but more are purely for decoration.

A team of designers and developers implemented these objects into the game. EQ2 hasn’t even had over 1 million subscribers. Yet apparently there’s devs with time to make amusing decorative things.

Meanwhile WoW has only recently introduced the ability to dress the way you want. A feature EQ2, LOTRO and others have had for years. Why only recently? It was actually announced shortly after the news broke that WoW lost a million subscribers. Before that the devs claimed they weren’t going to add it because it didn’t add anything to the game.

Make no mistake, I enjoyed WoW when it launched, I enjoyed it for quite some time. But then it just kinda stagnated. Bosses were recycled models, it was constantly the next big bad out to destroy our world, and I was still only a visitor to the world. I had no established presence in the form of a house or even a guild house.

Meanwhile in SW:ToR I get  a spaceship which doubles as my house and storage. This ship can then take me wherever I need and on top of that I have choices in missions. It’s not just a job with a set reward. I can choose to kill the mission giver or extort him or take an alternate approach to the actual job.

Of course my hope is that more and interesting things will keep getting added in the future and that the game doesn’t grow stale like WoW did.

Oh before I go I also read that Gears of War a Triple A game cost around 10 million to make. So that’s a lot of Triple A games that can be made with the money made by WoW. But no one seems to know exactly where all this money is going.

For the past one and a half year I’ve been working for myself building websites for clients. However this resulted in a rather flaky income meaning I couldn’t dedicate stable time to this website. As such I’ve recently started a part-time job building websites for another company. This will give me a more stable income while I can work on this site and other projects.

However since I just started there’s a bit of a learning curve to get to know their systems and methods of working, meaning there’s a bit more time put into that until it stabilizes into a regular part-time job.

Instead of promising flaky updates I’m going to do the following. Until the new year Cult Of Bob is officially on vacation.

Then once the new year hits I’ll be back with consistent updates and with luck new content for your viewing pleasure.

Until then enjoy the holidays and try to blow something up or summon an elder god or two.*

* remember kids, safety first. Always stay inside the protective sigil or wear an asbestos suit near fire.

A few weeks ago the new series seasons kicked off with a bunch of new series so here are my quick reviews and opinions on the series.

Grimm

I only watched the first episode of this series. None of the characters appealed and the plot was kinda sketchy. The idea is cute, but with the main character being so bland and uninteresting my motivation to watch isn’t there. So I’m skipping this one.

Once Upon A Time

This series is in a weird position for me. The concept is interesting, the production value and acting are solid. But the series takes itself a tiny bit too seriously. The result is a complete lack of humor. So while I’m kinda interested in seeing how the series goes, it feels like a chore to get through the series.

Terra Nova

I love this series. It fills the gap the cancellation of Stargate Atlantis left behind (SGU was fun, but a bit too much drama). It’s family friendly with a working community and a family that doesn’t constantly try to stab each other in the back. Also it has dinosaurs and timetravel, how can anyone not like DINOSAURS and TIMETRAVEL?

Nikita

Technically this series went into it’s second series. I quit halfway through the first season because it turned into this semi soap opera type thing where people sat around moping about feeling unloved. Season 2 kicks off with heavy ordnance and some reorganization of the cast into different roles. Making for a more entertaining show.

Other series I enjoy which have been running for a while are Chuck, Community and Big Bang Theory.

I still have to catch up to Fringe and Walking Dead, only so much time in a day.