Pete Abrams, the creator of Sluggy Freelance, has been stretching his artistic muscles a bit for the last two weeks.

Normally, Sluggy's format is the all-too-common "four panels with a punch line." That one shortcoming is made up for in numerous ways: the punch lines are often hilarious, the characters are all very well developed, and more important than anything else: the "environment" of the story is always changing.

Primary characters die. Good guys become bad guys, and vice versa (or both, in the case of Aylee). Other characters move away. Story arches often last for weeks or even months, and when they're done the effects of those stories are permanent, as they should be.

Still, it's always been a "strip", as I said. Four panels and a punch line.

Two weeks ago, Pete decided to temporarily abandon the old format. Since then the strip has been "double size" with irregular panel shapes, and some very classy artwork where appropriate. He's also integrating music into the stories, with the lyrics from different songs supporting the storyline (like they do in movies, but it takes a bit more imgination since you have to play the song "in your head").

On the 23rd, Pete borrowed Sandman's "Death" character, although what's going on there wasn't (or hasn't been yet) fully explained.

With the dark turn Sluggy has taken lately, I'm eager to see what's going to happen with some of the main characters. Oasis has been a repeating question mark in the story line for a long time: she was even on the cover of one of the books. Zoe has been one of the key characters almost from the beginning. I wouldn't bother trying to guess where he's going with this, but it looks like one of them is being written out in a big way, since Oasis is trying very hard to kill Zoe. See what I mean by "dark"? (Zoe actually needs to be written back in, as she's been "away" since Torg and Riff went to an alternate "microverse" for awhile... but that's beside the point.)

Wow, it's really hard to explain this comic to anybody who isn't already a reader! (I guess the best stuff is always a little difficult to explain. ;-)

Yes... it's Yet Another Moview Review!

Friday night I watched Jackie Chan's The Legend of Drunken Master. I loved it! In my opinion, this is the best movie Jackie was ever in.

I thought Greg (who knows more about movies than anybody else I know) gave it a bad review, so I'd been putting it off for awhile. However, it turns out that there are two "Drunken Master" films starring Jackie Chan, as Greg said in his comments.

This Drunken Master was originally called "Jui Kuen II", or "Drunken Master II" (in fact it has a whole bunch of other titles, which makes for a little confusion if you're looking for reviews on the net). They re-released this 1994 film in the U.S. in 2000.

The fight scenes are incredible, the plot is interesting, the characters are well developed. What can I say? I'm a Jackie Chan fan, and I think this is his best movie (though there are a number of close runners-up). The movie is dubbed, but they did a great job with it and I think Jackie actually did his own voice-over. Besides... I like dubbed flicks, even those with really bad dubbing.