Geekin' Podcast and Blog

Hey Geeks and Geekettes! Welcome to the last day of Weird West Week! (cue the sad "awwwww"s) Today we'll be covering video games, music, and awesome groups all Weird West themed! Let's git 'er duuuuuuuun! (Sorry, I got caught up in the moment. Larry The Cable guy, please don't sue me.) Borderlands Borderlands 2 Platform: PS3/XBox/PC I'm lumping these two together, but I highly suggest you play both; though they're entirely playable as separate games. If BraveStarr and Mad Max had a love child, that love child had a comic book based on him, and then the comic book came to life and started using steroids, it would be Borderlands. This is an amazing, over-the-top, crazy-fun FPS. NOT CHILD APPROPRIATE. Lots of blood. Lots of gore. Lots of vulgar humor and sexual innuendos. Both games are must-haves. The first one introduces you to the world of Pandora, where you play a Vault Hunter, looking for the mythic Vault supposedly full of treasure. Then Borderlands...

Welcome Geeks and Geekettes to another day of Weird West Week! The style of the Weird Western lends itself well to many different outlets. We've already discussed tv, cartoons, movies, books, comic books... but to really amerce yourself in the world of the Weird Western, you have to experience it yourself. And the best way to do that is through RPGs. RolePlaying Games. If you don't know or have never been involved in a RPG, I suggest looking into the history of games like Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and Pathfinder. While those games are in a medieval setting, they're wonderful introductory into the world of RolePlaying Games, and arguably have the most resources available to first-timers and beginners. Below are a list of RPGs set in the world of the Weird West. Check 'em out, play through 'em, and if you have any favorites that aren't listed here, PLEASE leave a comment and let us know what Weird Western RPG YOU love most. http://www.wildwestexodus.com/ Wild...

Serenity Serenity is the "sequel" to the tv show Firefly. Directed by show creator Joss Whedon (his first feature film, as he went on to direct The Avengers) the movie is set a few months into the future from where the show leaves off. Some crew members have moved off the ship to permanent locations, but other than that it's business as usual aboard Serenity; Firefly-class small cargo spaceship. Captain Malcolm Reynolds leads the crew on jobs both legal, and less so. The movie gives us a nice ending to the story; closure for those of us so attached to our TV show that ended far too soon. Even still, the movie stands alone and it a great addition to any sci-fi and weird west collection. Highly recommended, one of my all-time favorite movies. High Plans Invaders High Plains Invaders casts the former Spike of "Buffy" and "Angel" as Sam Danville, a guilt-ridden outlaw who arrives in a small Old West town to b...

Welcome back, Geeks and Geekettes! It's WEIRD WEST WEEK at the Geekin' blog! Today on Weird West Week we'll be focusing on Weird Western themed TV Shows, including a few cartoons. (Cartoons! Yesssss!) BraveStarr This tv show ranks up there with ThunderCats, SilverHawks, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Visionnaires, and other great classic 80s cartoons. Set in the distant future on a planet called New Texas... Well, I'll let the BraveStarr theme song speak for itself. With his partner, Thirty-Thirty - a "techno horse", last of the Equestroids and armed with his gun "Sara-Jane", BraveStarr kept New Texas safe from the outlaw Tex-Hex and his gang. As with most 80s cartoons, BraveStarr could get a little hokey at times, but they always ended with a message of morality, much like He-Man did. This cartoon had a huge impact on me as a small child, and I'm happy to share it with my children today. Galaxy Rangers Here's the ext...

Welcome Geeks and Geekettes to Weird West Week! Because of my rabid love of comic books, I think we'll start there. Some of these series I've read, some I haven't. I'll do small reviews for the ones I have read/am reading, and at least synopsis on the rest. Jonah Hex Jonah's gone through few changes over the last decade. Civil War vet turned mercenary, Jonah Hex is rough, gruff, and crude. He's a tell-it-like-it-is, no frills, meats and potatoes kinda guy. He's also one of the best shootists in the West. In a genius move by DC, they brought Hex into the New 52 in a comic called All-Star Western. If you haven't picked it up, you need to. Hex has gone through the early history of Gotham City and worked with ancestors of the Wayne and Arkham family. Even did a stint with a time-traveling Booster Gold to much hilarity had by all but Jonah, of course. Currently thrown into present times and having caught the attention of Batman himself, Jonah has proved to b...

Howdy, Geeks and Geekettes! It's time for the next installment of Weird Western Week here at Geekin'! Today we'll be focusing on books. We have a special guest submitting some reviews for us, and we're ecstatic to have him contributing. Be sure to check out Dan Schwent's blogs over at http://dangerousdansbookblog.blogspot.com and http://www.shelfinflicted.com First and foremost, I have to give a shout out to the first ever Now on to the reviews!! The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree Deadman's Road Blood Riders Fistful of Feet The Buntline Special/Weird West Tales Series The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree by S.A. Hunt My rating: 4 of 5 stars When Ross Brigham returns from a stint in the army, his life is a shambles. His wife has left him and his father, Hugo Award-winner Ed Brigham is dead with Ross tapped to finish his last novel in his western-fantasy series, the Fire and Fiddle. But what will Ross do when he finds out his father has b...

First, let's define "Weird West". From Wikipedia: Weird West is a literary sub-genre that combines elements of the Western with another literary genre, usually horror, occult, or fantasy. DC's Weird Western Tales appeared in the early 1970s and the Weird Western was further popularized by Joe R. Lansdale who "is best known for his tales of the 'weird west,' a genre mixing splatterpunk with alternate history Western almost entirely defined by the author in the early nineties. His work reads a little like the sort of folklore in which Mark Twain dabbled (or the Gothic in which Flannery O'Connor was involved), but with zombies and gore." Examples of these cross-genres include Deadlands (Western/horror),[1] The Wild Wild West and its later film adaptation (Western/steampunk), Jonah Hex (Western/superhero), BraveStarr (Western/science fiction) and many others. I have to single out a couple of examples here. The Wiki page mentioned BraveStarr, a tv sho...