COMICS!!! Weekly stuff i am excited for!

So I wanted to share with the world the comics I'm getting every week and what I'm excited for and/or have been enjoying. I am currently reading and extensive list but I'm always up for suggestions! 

All-New Wolverine #12

Civil War 2 #5

Civil War 2 choosing sides #6

Civil War 2 X-Men #4

Extraordinary X-Men Annual #1

Green Lanterns #7

Guardians of the galaxy #12

Harley Quinn #4

I Hate Fairyland #9

Power man and Iron Fist #8

Mighty Thor #11

Vision #11

Uncanny X-Men #13

It's a big week! Lots of good stuff and several I am excited to read! The next chapter in the current Marvel event Civil War 2 #5 comes out! The sides have been chosen and it's all lead up to this moment! It's Captain Marvel vs. Iron Man (two of my favorite characters). 

I'm also excited for Vision #11. Vision has been a great story from issue one. The tone is very much small town thriller and the twist and turns of the story have been surprising. It's unfortunate that they are ending the run but it's one I would go back to again.

What kind of things are you reading? What are you excited for? Or maybe have a suggestion for a new comic? Comment below!

The Big Return!

At last I break my silence! It has been almost a year since my last post and what a year it has been! Amy and I had a little girl and she's amazing! Watching her grow this past year has been so awesome! But I've felt like it is time to give this some effort again! I'm developing a schedule to try and stay on top of it.  All I know are various things I want to cover every week. For example I want to talk about my pull list every week with a follow up for a pick of the week. Also working on a Twitch schedule as well and will post videos on the blog and on my YouTube page. I'm brainstorming other ideas as well including possible collaboration with friends of mine. But the goal is to come back and improve. I'm not a professional writer, nor am I a professional streamer but I want to share my experiences and opinions with the world! Maybe this will lead me somewhere. Maybe it will be just for fun. Definitely both! But either way I'm back! And I'm bringing the maximum effort!
 

It's Coming... International TableTop Day 2015!

We are huge fans of playing games and we love sharing it with the world! Starting last year, we started celebrating this wonderful day in April called International TableTop Day! This year, TableTop Day is April 11th and we've been spending some time this week to get some plans together and get some practice with some of our favorite board, card and dice games. 

We love tabletop games because it reels us back in together and takes us away from those beautiful TV, computer and phone screens we tend to spend a lot of time with. :) It allows us to think strategically or just plan have a lot of real-life fun. We've gathered quite a collection over the past few years, but of course, each of us have our favorites and we'd like to share these with you! In no particular order:

Jerry's Picks: The games I have been enjoying lately really fall into two different categories, cooperative games and games set in a fantasy theme. Fantasy games have always peaked my interest and I have come to love co-op games because I get to team up with Amy instead of playing against her, just like life, it's us vs. the game! 

1. Mice and Mystics

This game is one of our newest games! The players play as a group of adventurers who are turned into mice and have to try and save the kingdom! It is an involved game but has such a rich story that is integrated into the game-play it's hard not to get addicted and want to play the next chapter in the tale! Once again strategy is key to finishing the quest at hand or lose a game that may take 2 hours to play.

2. Forbidden Island

Our first co-op game we ever played! It's exploring an island to try and collect all the treasures before the island sinks into the abyss dragging the explorers down with it! The game has great re-play ability and is easy to teach to new players. Even losing to the game is enjoyable (which will happen). With easy setup and simple rules it's perfect for tabletop day! 

3. Carcassonne

Imagine being a French architect and getting to design a countryside with monasteries, giant castles, rolling fields, and dangerous roads. Carcassonne is a tile laying game where players build a French countryside in a race for points to see who has the best tactics! It does not sound as exciting as it really is. A simple game to teach and play, but full of change and strategy! 

4. Munchkin

Munchkin is a great fantasy style game without all the complicated rules, boards, figures, and in depth story. It's a card game that lets you equip your munchkin with funny and sarcastic equipment, kick down a door in a dungeon, fight a monster and collect treasure! Players are competing to reach level ten to win but can help each other out, for a price of course. The downside to this game, for us anyway, is that it requires at least 3 people to play. 

5. Pandemic 

Another excellent co-op game! Players are fighting to save the world from 4 diseases, which are running rampant across the continents! Each player has a different job that will help aid in the saving of the world! Setup is a little more complicated then Forbidden Island but game-play is almost as easy. 

Amy's Picks: It's clear from my list that I love card games. Haha. I like games that I can pack up and take with us and light-hearted games that are going to make me laugh. 

1. Smash Up

Smash Up is really one of the funnest games I've ever played. It's called a "shuffle-building" card game where you pick 2 factions of sci-fi/horror/fantasy characters and blend them together to create a super team to play against the other players. We have 5 different expansions of this game (including the Big Geeky Box) and the more crazy faction combos the better.
Dinosaur-Pirates will always be my favorite. 

2. Ticket To Ride

I love this game because it's a great gateway game. We've played this game with our families and it is always a hit. Ticket to Ride is a travel game where you try to cover as many train-routes to build up as many points as you can. It's not as portable as some other games and you need some space to play, but watching people who thought this would be a boring game, end up having a lot of fun and asking to play it again and again each time and improving their strategy each time, is amazing.

3. Hive Carbon

Jerry and I often play games on our own and finding some great two-player games can be hard.  We recently bought Hive this past Fall to give it a try and it's been a great addition to our collection. Hive is a tile game, and mildly reminds me of playing dominos, but with a little more strategy. I'm really looking forward to playing this game outside over the Spring/Summer because the tiles are heavy enough they won't fly away like can happen with a card game. 

4. Fluxx

Fluxx is a great compact game to throw in my bag to bring just about anywhere. It's a card game where the rules constantly change. We have Star Fluxx, Pirate Fluxx, Monty Python Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx and Holiday Fluxx. I love Fluxx because it's just a light-hearted game that anybody can play, but is so easy to really strategize and win big. Holiday Fluxx is a fun game for the winter holidays and a little easier (No Creepers) for the family to pick up on. 

5. Cards Against Humanity

No offense (well... some offense), but if you haven't heard about this game yet, go out and freakin' buy it. This game will change the way you look at people to see just how horrible they really are.  CAH is a card game where you try to win over the Card Czar with the craziest, dirtiest answer! It's definitely not a family game, though we have played it with certain over-18-year-old family members, and it is the most hilarious game ever. FYI: It's not for the faint of heart. Enjoy! ;) 

We hope you enjoyed our lists and hope that you are planning to try some fun games this April 11th for International TableTop Day! If you think you don't have anyone to play, click here to find some TableTop Day events in your area. Join the community of gamers by using the #tabletopday on whatever social media you use and share the games you play! 

Let us know in the comments what some of your favorite games are! Do you have any games you like to play as a "gateway" game for new players?

Big News!

Hello, Hello!

Amy here! Jerry and I wanted to take a moment to announce that Lockpicks and Longboxes will soon be getting some more new content very soon. We are looking to expand the information we share with you all with some reviews and chats about some of our favorite topics: Comics, Tabletop Games, Video Games and all other things nerdy!  So keep an eye out for some fun new updates and let us know if there is anything you'd like to see.

And be sure to check out The Pull List link above to check out our updated list of the comics we are currently reading. Feel free to share any good books you've been reading that you think we should check out!

Lastly, there is one more big change coming to the team here at Lockpicks and Longboxes.... Team Rapone is adding their newest superhero in September! Big changes are afoot and we are running toward them head on! We can't wait to share more with you all soon!

The voices of a generation

Hello to the world! It has been a while since I have written anything, too long really, and I’m feeling its time to rectify that situation. I hope everyone had a great holiday season and got lots of cool nerdy stuff! But that is not today’s topic. Entertainment is what our lives have become all about. Video games, cable TV, Netflix, movies, and other distractions now cloud up our short lives with interesting stories, life lessons, or just for the hell of it. But there is one medium that used to dominate the lives of American culture. Back before television families would gather around a large electric box and listen to stories, comedies, news and other programs that were entertaining and informative. Radio today is a lot different then back then. 

            

Today the focus of radio has become limited to music and information. Scanning the radio dial now tends to yield the same results, either music of some style or another, news, sports, and commercials. What happened to the interesting stories? Radio has become a lost art when it comes to entertainment that isn’t music or ridiculous talk. Radio entertainment began in the late 1880’s but really didn’t peak in America until the 1930s and ended around the 1960s. Great programming was developed during this time period for everyone in the household on an array of topics. One of the most famous classic radio broadcasts was the Orson Welles production of War of the Worlds. This drama is just fantastic and is so famous because of the panic that it caused. The first part of the story is mock news broadcasts describing an attack on earth from Martians. Unless people listened to the beginning they had no idea it was a fake broadcast causing the public to panic. 

(To listen to the broadcast click the image above!)

Wild stores of the future or alternate universes were very common when it came to old time radio. It is really the best part of radio shows when the listener can picture how they think things looked and acted out in their imagination. Some of the best programs to me are the science fiction shows. X Minus One is a great example of science fiction on radio. The stories that were broadcast were written out of the two most popular science fiction magazines of the time. Each episode is a stand-alone story usually with a twist or something unexpected happening before the end.  One of the best parts of X Minus One is how the stories are produced and just listening can cause the panic, fear or other emotion the story wants you to feel. 

(To listen to the broadcast stories click the image above!)

A third drama I want to mention is a program called Suspense. Suspense is a lot like X Minus One in which each show is a self-contained story but Suspense is really not as science fiction based and the people who star in the show tended to be more famous for the time period. Suspense was also on for a long time with its first show airing in 1942 and its last airing in 1962. The show covered more horror and thriller elements with some of the shows scripts being written based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.

 (To listen to the broadcast stories click the image above!)

Radio dramas of the day were not all serious drama programs. Detective shows are also a favorite of mine. Listening to a normal person find clues and figure out the cases can be such a thrill with many of them putting singing and humor into the writing of the show. One of my all time favorite detective shows is called Yours Truly…Johnny Dollar. Johnny Dollar is and insurance investigator based out of Hartford CT. He is hired by various insurance companies to investigate different insurance claims. It sounds boring but it really isn’t. Obviously there is always something just not right about what happens in each case. The show really gets good once Bob Bailey takes over as the lead character and Jack Johnstone becomes the writer. The show went from a half hour program to a fifteen-minute program where one story can take up to 5 episodes to complete making them better overall. 

(To listen to the broadcast stories click the image above!)

Another fantastic police/detective show was based on real stories from the Los Angeles police department. Dragnet was a radio show that ran from 1949 to 1957, almost in tandem with the TV show. Its main character remains that same in both iterations of the show being both the lead character and narrator.  It also starts the same way the TV show does with the briefing before going into the story and the signature music. It was also nice to hear the dedication at the end of every episode for a police offer that was killed in the line of duty.

(To listen to the broadcast stories click the image above!) 

But radio back then had more then just drama programs to listen too. Like TV today there were a lot of different comedy programs on the various stations of the radio dial. The Jack Benny Program is a personal favorite of mine. Jack Benny was a radio and later TV star. The program features Jack along with several other friends talking about various events and essentially picking on the flaws of the programs front-runner. The jokes tend to be quick jabs at Jack as he plays his character (a cheap fellow who wants to spend as little as money possible but gloats about dating movie stars). What’s great for me is the feeling that everyone on the program is having a good time while broadcasting with jack and company making comments that were clearly not scripted. 

(To listen to the broadcast stories click the image above!)  

As with Jack Benny, a lot of radio shows and stars ended up moving to television after radio started to decline. Lucille Ball’s character from I Love Lucy was actually developed from a radio show called My Favorite Husband. In this program Liz Cooper gets into various situations with a best friend, usually to the dismay of her husband George played by Richard Denning. The show has a similar feel to I Love Lucy with more verbal comedy then slap stick visual comedy for obvious reasons. 

(To listen to the broadcast stories click the image above!)

Radio is not what is used to be and the stories from the past can be corny but fantastic. The programs allow the listener to imagine what is happening in the story almost interacting with them better then TV. Modern radio does not accomplish this. An argument could be said that the story telling of radio has not gone away but actually jumped mediums. There are a lot of podcasts that also provide entertainment beyond interviews and music. Podcasts are a great medium for this type of entertainment but they do not and will not reach the same amount of popularity as the classic radio show of the past. Thankfully these classic radio shows are preserved in several different places. On satellite radio there is an entire channel dedicated to them. But websites like Archive.org have created a digital library where these show can still be enjoyed. Each picture above links to archive.org and the specific show I have discussed. Feel free to explore the website more and find some other great stuff on this digital library. What do you think? Did anyone find or know of a show that they enjoy? Are there any podcasts that do a similar style or storytelling? Let me know! 

The Evil Within?

So the original idea we had for this public headspace was to talk about some of our favorite nerdy topics. But the name of the blog (Long boxes) was really a focus on our passion for comic books and as of now, for some reason, I haven’t covered this topic at all! I figured I could talk not just about the stories that we are currently reading but giving my opinions and views on different characters there current direction and if and how I personally view them.

To kick off this new series our subject is a complex character that tends to do more evil then good. Venom is an alien being that requires a host to survive otherwise it cannot hold its own structure. It has had several hosts but since its conception it has been inherently evil. Over the past couple of years the character has been through some changes for the better but deep down it will always be a monster out of control.

Origin:

The initial concept of the alien suit was just that. In December of 1984 Marvel was running a series called Secret Wars that had some of the Marvel Universes greatest heroes and villains’ teleported to an alien planet to fight to the death! During this story Spider-Man’s uniform gets destroyed and while fighting finds a mysterious black liquid that covers his body and protects him. This is the first we see of the alien symbiotic suit known as Venom. It was given a personality in Amazing Spider-Man issue # 299 when it tried to permanently bond to spider-man only to be separated from him and encounter its first real long-term host, a man named Eddy Brock.

Venom was angry and felt abandoned upon being separated. This combined with Eddy Brock’s hatred for spider-man fueled the duo into a constant state of trying to kill spider-man or Venom trying to reattach itself to its original host.  Eddy and the suite worked together often but overall Eddy made sure he had primary control while Venom gave Eddy the powers of Spider-Man and then some. In time the alien would have to move on and its next string of hosts was more of a tool for the alien suite instead of the suit being a tool for the host. The next notable host was a man named Mac Gargan.

Between Eddy and Mac was a long span of time and stories including the spawning of a “son” and a “grandson”. But Mac was the worst/best host for the character. A villain in his own rite Mac was not as strong willed as Eddy was and it did not take long for Venom to totally take control. This iteration of the character was not cunning like before but was brutish and more monster then anything else. It was always drawn as a vile creature capable of anything including dismemberment and the consumption of people.

Venom's current host is a man named Flash Thompson. He was a high school bully who picked on Peter Parker when they were young. He joined the army and lost his legs in battle. Years later after a long time of feeling defeated Flash volunteered to take part in the government program that tried to control Venom and use it as a weapon. Flash and venom soon bonded and through the use of sedatives became codependent. Now they no longer work for the government but fight crime as a hero with aggressive means. But while Flash has dominant control with the help of the drugs there is always the voice of Venom trying to take control.

The analysis:

Now that a simplified background of Venom's story has been introduced lets get into the concepts that I take from this character. Venom itself is considered to be the suit/alien life form and not the host it is attached too. The relationship between each host really defines the character. Venom is really the rage monster that can be generated within people's emotions. As the character and host get more aggressive the suit gets bigger to intimidate whom ever it is against. This is similar to a person’s perception of anger and rage where as aggression increases so does the idea of intimidation before violence might occur. The concept of the character is that it feeds off of the host’s adrenaline so it would make sense that anger is the best source of food.

Each host that the alien bonded with dealt with the anger in a different way. Probably the most productive host that Venom had was Eddy Brock. While his motives were evil and generally the duo was out for destruction he was able to channel the rage into a desired direction. Similar to being angry and instead of just getting mad taking that anger and putting it towards a project or a cause that would fix the source of the anger. All the traps and tricks were the result of a motivated individual who was angry and tried to do something about it, granted it was to kill Spider-man but we will just ignore that fact. The same is true in our universe when people protest low wages or the demolition of nature or even the desire to be treated fairly.

Mac is a prime example of taking rage and anger and letting it consume you. There was little to no control between Mac and Venom until drugs were introduced. Mac accomplished very little (in my opinion) when he was bonded with the alien. The two really spent most of there time as a weapon owned by Norman Osborn. Never having his own direction the alien drove the two killing and consuming anything they were aimed at. Anger in the real world has a similar effect when it is allowed to consume and win. Really all that anger leads to is violence while accomplishing nothing at all but destruction and hurt.

While Flash uses Venom to be a hero, he does not really work with Venom because the drugs keep it sedated. But this still applies to how people deal with anger. The drugs suppress the anger so that Flash can do what he needs to do but its really like taking the anger and hiding it or “pushing it down”. Like hiding this emotion eventually Venom will take control and cause chaos like with previous hosts. Anger when not addressed will build and eventually show itself when there is no more room left. There have been several times Flash has lost control even with the drugs and other heroes have had to step in and help him regain control.

Overall Venom is more complicated then just an evil alien out to kill Spider-Man. To me he is a symbol of different ways to control anger and the hosts have all contributed in different ways. I am going to say I am not a psychologist or therapist and have had no training in the field what so ever.  Venom is one of my all time favorite comic book characters and nothing more. This is only my opinion that I wanted to share with the world. I also do not own the rights to the character and the images; Marvel Comics created and owns all the characters in this post. What did everybody think? Do you agree with how I’m interpreting the character? Do you have any other opinions?

-JR