Blaugust Day 3 – More LoL, Wurm, and reading Avengers

For Day 3 of Blaugust, I continue my quest for Silver in League of Legends and I try to figure out where my characters are on the Release server in Wurm. I also read through another Avenger comic and finally got to see Captain America in action.

League of Legends

Well things seem to be progressing the way I want them to now that I'm following along with my gamer to-do list. I moved up from bronze IV to bronze III today. The games were a little bit more difficult today, and I did lose one game of my promotional series but I was able to pull it off by winning the second two games in a row. I'm doing well with my Morgana and my Zyra play, but I'm still needing work on my Xin jungle though I did win a game as him during the streak. I am one game above .500with more Morgana and I'm inching ever closer to .500 on my overall summoner – I'm 13 games below and I've been climbing ever so slowly. I think I might actually make silver this month.

Wurm Online

Things got a little interesting this weekend as I looked to bring over one of my characters from the Release map. I was scattered all over the place and didn't know where I was on the map. Turns out one of my characters – actually my lowest level character was right in the spawn village. Another was down the road from the spawn where her deed used to be. That deed is long gone and someone else has planted their house there. Fortunately I was not locked in the house and was able to get out of their fence.

The place has really been built up and there are roads going all over the place. This was very fortunate as I was able to out run a lava hound and escaped with my life. It didn't help me get away from the giant troll though which unfortunately killed me before the guards showed up to attack it and grab aggro. So essentially I got to spend a bunch of time running my corpse with no gear while trying to avoid the troll as I picked up my stuff. This is very much like the way I remember things to be in EverQuest and I think it's fun, but it can be a pain in the butt. So I picked up my stuff and got back to the spawn village and started to assess what I'm going to need to do to get over to Xanadu. Building a boat is going to take a while – I need wood, I need to create planks out of that wood, I need a saw, I need a hammer, I need nails, a whole bunch of stuff. So I think I might go ahead and build a little shack that I can live in while I get everything prepared. This is not going to be a quick undertaking.

Avengers (1963) Issue #56

Published: September 10, 1968 by Marvel

Writer: Roy Thomas
Artist: John Buscema
Inker: George Klein
Inker: Frank Giacoia
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Editor: Stan Lee

Summary from Comixology: Captain America must re-live the most painful memory from his past: the death of Bucky Barnes. The Avengers team reunites with Cap, and discovers Dr. Doom's time machine.

This issue steps out of the setting built in the previous 2 issues I read (New York fighting the Masters of Evil and Ultrron) and takes the team to Dr. Doom's Castle, and Captain America shows up for the first time in an issue I am reading.

Characters:

The Good: Hawkeye, Goliath (Hank Pym) , Black Panther (T'Challa), The Wasp (Jan), Captain America (Steve Rogers), Bucky Barnes

The Bad: Baron Nemo

They also mentioned The Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, the Red Skull, and Reed Richards

In this issue, the Avengers go on a time travelling journey to witness one of the most important events in Marvel history – the Death of Bucky. It's interesting to be seeing this in comic book form since the Captain America: Winter Soldier movie was such a huge hit not too long ago, but here is one of the issues recounting the events that lead up to that movie.

Using Dr. Doom's chrono-square, Cap, Hawkeye, Goliath, and Black Panther travel back to the fateful day, but rather than just witnessing the tragic events, the hatred that Captain America feels for Zemo (and a little exhaustion by the Wasp) allows the team to reach out from their insubstantial projections to actually fight with the Nazi loving scum. Cap gets a few good punches in on Nemo while the rest of the team beat up on his androids, but in the end, they are unable to effect the outcome…Bucky is killed.

I really liked this issue. The fight scenes were very action oriented and you could see the jumps, kicks, and punches being thrown vividly as the art and lettering combined to highlight the movement, the Whakk!, and the Bok! of each blow. I liked the way they portrayed the insubstantial, almost ghostly, projections of the time travellers as they watched, and Cap agonized, over the fight where Zemo and his androids capture the previous version of Cap and Bucky. You can really see how upset Captain America was that he could do nothing then or now that would save Bucky. I think this issue, more than the previous 2 I read, shows how the characters are feeling – between the style of the lettering and the look on their faces, you can see that these guys are emoting what they are saying, not just mouthing the words. Maybe it's just my closer attention to the visual aspect of the art this time around, but I definitely enjoyed looking at the pictures as much as reading the story. I'm also becoming much more accustomed to the way the dialog flows and how the editorial comments and thought bubbles are depicted.

Definitely one to read if you liked the Winter Soldier movie or any of the Marvel pictures.

You can get this issue on Comixology or read it on Marvel Unlimited (as I did).

Morning Ramble #33 | Blaugust Day 3