Disney buy LucasFilm

Breaking News! The Quantum Geek is now covering Breaking News! As it breaks and everything!

So, looks like Disney has now bought LucasFilm. And they plan on making more films. As expected, Star Wars fans around the world (as personified by the majority of people on my Facebook news feed) are a bit up in arms.

This seems to be the major concern.

'Course, I can understand the concern. I won't go into detail, needless to say you'll be seeing the arguments posted up a lot over the next few days. But in an effort to stem the endless tide of nerd rage, here's a few more positive thoughts...

1.) We've already seen the exact same flood of rage when Disney bought out Marvel. The effect on the comics? Virtually none that I can see. We also got access to Disney funding for Marvel Studios, which resulted in the Avengers movie.

2.) Speaking of said movie, it was written by Joss Whedon. If Whedon had written the Star Wars prequels, I'm fairly certain they'd have been a lot better, amiright? There's another rather famous fanboy film maker with something of a history with Disney (through Miramax, admittedly), by the name of Kevin Smith.

3.) This way I might actually see the $@%£ing live-action TV series before I die.

4.) I know it's a bit trendy to play Spit on Lucas, but for a while now he's pretty much been the only one to consistently balls up what the rest of the world thinks of as Star Wars. Lucas gave us Anakin Skywalker, Watto (a "Toydarian") and [expletive deleted] Jar Jar Binks. Other people working the IP? They gave us Mara Jade, Prince Xizor, and Darth Revan.

So yeah. I'm not without my own reservations here, I'll admit it. But even if the glass is half empty, it doesn't need to be a glass of Rancor piss.

Sony 007 Text-Based Adventure

So, anyone else old enough to remember the old text-based adventure games of old? I actually missed their heyday, as by the time I picked up and Amiga they'd pretty much been replaced by good old Point-and-Click games (and now that I've typed that, I've got a serious hankering to go play one. Maybe Flight of the Amazon Queen...)

As Dr Cooper says, they run on the most powerful graphics card of all; Imagination.

But if you've a powerful hankering for some nostalgia, or perhaps just want to kill some time before the evening showing of Skyfall (I saw it last night, but most of the Quantum Geek team are off tonight), this might be just the thing for you.

Turns out, Sony have commissioned their own text-based adventure, which can be found here, to tie into the release of Skyfall and their new Xperia. Best of luck, agent...

Iron Man 3 Trailer

So, lets see; looks to be a bit of the old Extremis, the Mandarin, and... Iron Patriot, actually. Somehow I doubt Norman Osbourne'll be showing up, though. More's the pity...

Anybody else really wish Marvel could get the rights to Spiderman and X-Men back? Plus Ghost Rider and all the rest, but mostly Spiderman and X-Men...

More books!

So, following on from Monday's post, I figured I'd point out a few more coming this way.

Death: Deluxe Edition
    by Neil Gaiman

Okay, confession time: despite being a big fan of Gaiman, and of comics, I've never actually read Sandman. Which I'm fairly certain is going to be one of those things I end up crucifying myself for when I finally do. I have, however, read Death: The High Cost of Living, after I found it in a local library years back and realised Tori Amos did the foreword. I always was a whore for Tori Amos.

The book rocked. Death is, strangely enough, a completely adorable character and right up there with Pratchett's much-loved personification of the end. This one collects that graphic novel, along with The Time of Your Life. And I rather expect that half will rock too.

Pariah
    by Dan Abnett

So, Abnett's Pariah is at long last up for pre-order. I've always been a fan of Games Workshop's gothic sci-fi Warhammer 40,000 setting, having played the games as a kid. Hardly ever get to play them any more (despite having had some serious Necromunda cravings of late), but I do pick up the occasional novel.

Frankly, they can vary a bit in quality. But as a rule, Abnett is definitely one of the better writers under the Black Library label, and his Eisenhorn trilogy is my favorite 40k series by a large margin. Granted I wasn't quite so enamoured of its follow up, The Ravenor trilogy, but it was still good fun. And now, at long last, it seems we'll be getting the third trilogy, Eisenhorn and Ravenor going toe to toe as seen through the eyes of Alizebeth Bequin.

Yep, I'm looking forward to this one...

Firefly Book!

Ten years since Firefly. S'hard to believe, isn't it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd still bludgeon those damnable Fox execs with their own shoes as if the trauma had only happened yesterday...

Fortunately, there's a new book to help ease the horrid, horrid pain, and you can read a great in-depth look at it over at Wired.com.

So until next time, keep calm, stay shiny, and bludgeon a fox exec with his own shoes.