Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch, E10+)
I choose to believe the subtitle "Wonder" refers to this being first 2D Mario game in ages that actually has some fucking imagination to it. Now let's see how Nintendo runs it into the ground!
Mario Wonder's unique selling point is the game's version of Stars, Wonder Seeds, alter the level in weird and wacky ways when picked up. Because apparently Nintendo decided if people are going to keep making hallucinogenic mushroom jokes, they're just going to own it. It can make Piranha Plants sing and dance or Bullet Bills put on an aerobatics show with multicolored smoke and all, it can turn your character into a wall-climbing slime navigating some kind of sun machine or a Goomba that has to avoid other enemies in the level, or it can change gravity so you're running on the back wall of the level, or many more possibilities. It's by far a livelier and more creative experience than New Super Mario Bros. Wii U, where literally the only thing I remember about that game is the level that looked like a Van Gogh painting.
I also like that Bowser's master plan is to fuse with a castle and amass all this reality-warping power just to put on a rock concert. Let him have it, I say.
This is even the first Mario game since 64 that I 100%ed, though I admit I was ready to snap my Switch in half towards the end of the final bonus level, the Badge Marathon. The whole thing is a series of little challenges where you're equipped with badges that make you automatically run or jump or something, and you have to clear three of them between checkpoints. I'd be pulling off the first two without a hitch to get back to the point I hadn't figured out yet, die, and have to trudge through the first two again. And for the last round, you have to clear four challenges without a checkpoint, and in the last challenge you're invisible. Holy shit!
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Joe the Barbarian (Written by Grant Morrison, Illustrated by Sean Murphy, et. al.)
The next several months are going to be heavy with Grant Morrison comics I read for the Deltarune project, and I've already talked about the books in-depth in that. I'll try not to repeat myself too much, but some retreading is going to be unavoidable.
Joe the Barbarian was very likely inspired by Morrison's own childhood and relationship with his father, as Grant's father was also a soldier who was absent through Morrison's youth. Grant's writing career also started when he received a typewriter from his father with the note "The world is waiting to hear from you" attached to it, and a letter from his father is a vital part of Joe's story. Except Walter was kicked out of the house for having an affair and could still be visited, while Joseph Sr. was killed in action and is gone forever. But maybe not quite.
Like many of Morrison's books Joe the Barbarian explores the relationship between the higher and lower realities, but not through self-aware metanarrative like Animal Man or Flex Mentallo. You can look at it as the standard hero's journey, call to action, death and resurrection, elixir of knowledge and all that. But it's also a story about stories in general, how the real world shapes the dream world, and how we rely on fantasy to guide us in the real world. Your dreams may not literally lead you to a critical item that will save what's left of your family, but their purpose is still to steer you in the right direction.
I want to talk more about it and how Joe coming to peace with his father's death is reflected in the fate of the Iron Kingdom, but I truly do not want to spoil the ending.
And as a nice bonus, I like Sean Murphy's art a lot more than Frank Quitley's.
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We3 (Written by Grant Morrison, Illustrated by Frank Quitely et. al.)
Yeah, have I mentioned that I do not like Frank Quitely's artwork? Because I do not like Frank Quitely's artwork.
Maybe it'd be more appropriate to say I don't like his linework, all wobbly and inconsistent like he's inking with a vibrating pen, as his structure is fine. I could tolerate it in Flex Mentallo because the book was slow-paced and dialogue driven, while We3 would be trying would be horrify me with a scene of soldiers being gruesomely slaughtered by sentient WMDs and all I could think was "GOD I do not like Frank Quitely's artwork!"
And at the very end of the book, Frank Quitely's artwork left me confused as to whether the experiments left the surviving pets brain damaged, as suggested by the dialogue, or if the dog's wall-eyed stare was just more of Quitely's wonky linework.
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