More 3D Platformer Design: Yooka-Laylee & A Return to A Hat in Time

It’s been a while since my last article on 3D Platformers, one where I looked at the level design of Gears for Breakfast’s wonderful A Hat in Time. Since then, they’ve released two new worlds as downloadable content, “The Arctic Cruise” and “Nyakuza Metro”, and finally been ported to the Switch. I recently decided to replay the game, including the new content, and at more or less the same time, I finally got around to trying Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee (which, for those not in the know, first got note for being a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie series from the Nintendo 64, made by many alumni from those titles). Playing them back to back gave me a lot of thoughts on both, and 3D platformers on the whole, so it seemed like a good time to revisit my last article.

Some Thoughts on X-Men, Both New and Astonishing

In my continuing quest to read old comics that I probably should have read years ago, I recently wrapped up my reading of Grant Morrison’s early-2000s run on New X-Men. This was preceded by my run-though of Joss Whedon’s stretch on Astonishing X-Men, which originally immediately followed Morrison’s work*, and the combined effect left me wanting to talk about them.

*Yeah, I kind of read them backwards, but it wasn’t really that much of a problem.

I don’t want to straight-up compare them and say which one is better, as they’re both fantastic works in their own right, and I love them in very different ways (I’ll try and explain that in a bit). Some comparison between them is inevitable, though.  In any case, the most succinct way I would compare them is: I like the scope of Morrison’s ideas more, but I think Whedon better reached the potential of his ideas.

The best starting place I can think of in this comparison is in characters the two introduced. Actually, both writers introduced numerous of characters; let’s narrow the scope to just the heroes (this discussion will have spoilers for a decade-plus-old set of comics, so fair warning):

Runaways vs. Runaways: Comparing the Newest Run to the Original

I’ve talked about it here before, but I just want to say it outright: Runaways is easily one of my favorite comics of all-time. I might even go as far as to say it’s #1 on my list, if I put more meticulous thought into those sorts of things.

Although, in the interest of full accuracy, series creator Brian K. Vaughn’s run was the part I’m referring to when I speak that highly of it. Joss Whedon’s follow-up story is close enough in quality that I don’t mind much. Everything after Whedon is where it gets rough, which is why I was a little hesitant when Marvel announced they’d be bringing the series back in 2015 under a new writer, Noelle Stevenson. The main series was essentially batting .500 on writers.

And then they announced that the return would be a part of the Battleworlds* stories, and that most of the cast would be unrelated to the original group. Could it recapture that original Runaways charm when it was a bunch of newbies dealing with a Dr. Doom-led Sky High-like institution instead of kids on the lam from supervillain parents? Could the characters recapture the likability of Nico, Victor, and the rest of the group**?

*For those not in the know, this was part of Marvel’s Secret Wars even. Long story short, the Marvel multiverse went through a weird “cosmic reshuffling”-type of event, with the end result being the company gave writers free reign to make stories up using whatever alternate universe characters or settings they could imagine.

**It seems we won’t be getting any more of the original team, either, which is a shame. But even worse is how most of the cast is under-utilized at the moment. Right now, I believe it’s basically just Nico on A-Force in the larger Marvel Universe. Victor showing up as a glorified cameo in the first issue of Nick Spencer’s Ant-Man: Second Chance Man is one of the greatest disappointments I’ve had, and in what is otherwise a great story. Maybe the inevitable next Young Avengers reboot could take some of them on?

I initially didn’t think I’d read it, but good word of mouth and my curiosity led to me picking up the trade paperback. Noelle Stevenson absolutely nails the tone, and even with the new cast, setting, and entire universe, it feels like a natural extension of the original story. There were even times where I forgot as I was reading it that it wasn’t related to the previous Runaways stories. It’s easy to get caught up in Stevenson’s brisk, fun pacing and artist Sanford Greene’s inviting stylized look.

This feels like the platonic idea of the concept of a spiritual successor. Stevenson does a great job of recapturing the youthful energy and rebellious spirit of the original with a similarly memorable cast, all while pushing her premise in unique ways. In fact, it feels like in every way that Stevenson could zig the way the original did, she zagged. Whereas the original Runaways were united in their home life, these ones are bound together by the other major setting for young-adult-based fiction, school. Where the originals were tightly bound and close together, this one is immediately split, with members staying behind or splitting up. Where the original group had treachery below the surface, this one makes it obvious right away.

The best distinction, though, comes with the choice of antagonist. The new version eschews the original’s kids vs. parents aesthetic not just by setting the conflict in a school, but by then making Valeria von Doom, Dr. Doom’s supergenius six-year-old, the acting headmaster and foil to the team. The villains are all just like the heroes, going through their own growth parallel to the heroes.

There are some differences between the two, and in the end, the original is still the best. Stevenson resists the short-hand of making the new team correspond directly to the old team, which is admirable and makes for a more interesting lead, but also means that she needs to set up even more characters*, as well as the much-stranger alternate universe the story takes place in. None of the characters quite get the focus the original sextet (or their later add-ons), and although they are still just as fun to watch bounce off each other, it still doesn’t feel like enough. Most of this can be blamed on the constraints of the larger event it took place in; the new team got four issues to the original’s eighteen (before its renewal). The new series needs one whole issue of setting everything up before it can get to the shocking twist in the second that forces the team in motion, something the original series could pull right away since it was on a fundamentally more recognizable Earth.

*There is some short-hand involved in Stevenson’s characterizations: all of the characters are versions of existing Marvel characters. But given that the main cast is a dozen-strong, that’s definitely understandable.

And really, that’s probably the greatest tragedy of the new series. I know I complained earlier about how the original Runaways would probably never get another series, but this team’s universe literally doesn’t exist anymore. Their story wrapped up (on a “the adventure continues!” sort of note, so sort of open-ended), but it felt like an amazing appetizer to a meal that won’t ever be arriving. There’s a great imaginativeness at play here that I wish could have been explored more, and I hope that Marvel can one day find some way to bring it back (although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that). All the same, I’ll take the brief brilliance in Volume 4 here over the drawn-out-but-wildly-inconsistent (at best) volume 3.

What Does Runaways Do Better Than Young Avengers?

I’ve been going through the backlog of comics I’ve been meaning to read lately, and I’ve hit a wealth of good stories in the process. So far, they’ve all been pretty great, but some have definitely been better than others. So, in my never ending quest to pick apart the things I like and figure out why I like them, I’m going to try and do that with two of the stories I’ve been reading.

Runaways and Young Avengers are thankfully two of the easiest comics to compare. The pair share a lot of themes-a group of superpowered teenagers brought together to combat the ills of the older generations-and even crossed over a few times. And as a heads up here, when I talk about the Young Avengers, I’m talking about the original run, written by Allan Heinberg in 2005 (I’m still working through Kieron Gillen’s 2013 run, which I may write about later).

In either case, upon finishing the first volume of Young Avengers, I was left feeling…a little empty, I suppose. It was a fine run, don’t get me wrong. But seeing it crossed-over with Runaways had me hoping that it was as good as the latter series, while it was…not quite. I would actually say that it was about on par with the crossover issues, which I had always found to be a little weaker than the main Runaways stories. Which made me wonder: where did Runaways go right, that took it from “pretty good” to “one of my favorite things that I’ve read”?

The Contrasting Cases of Guardians of the Galaxy and John Carter

Over the course of Christmas Day, I was watching movies with my family. And by some chance, we decided to cover a double feature of two recent science fiction blockbusters, namely Guardian of the Galaxy and John Carter. I had seen both before (in fact, I wrote my thoughts about Guardians here), but watching them back-to-back gave me a reason to compare and contrast the two.

Obviously, the two films enjoyed vastly different levels of success. While Guardians just became the highest grossing film of the year, John Carter barely made back its budget, likely ending any chance at a franchise. What exactly caused such a

Well, there probably isn’t one simple answer. Or rather, there is: Guardians is just a better victory overall. But that’s not too helpful unless we break it down into the minutiae. And while there are several reasons that Guardians is better, I’d like to focus specifically on one specific storytelling aspect.