Bans are a public relations coup; the more public they are, the more efficacious. People love to see the hammer come down. Unless you look up and see it yourself, o'erhead, you feel safer knowing that the placid, featureless face of this hammer is elsewhere, even for a moment. It is happening all the time, but it's become a source of headlines now for a glutted news edifice, so we "know." That's how we found out about three especially high-profile bans, considered how a just society should corral them, and then made comic about it sort of but not really.

PAX East isn't for a little while yet, but it seemed like some early exposure probably couldn't hurt: here are the select... -ees. The ones we selected! That's what I mean.

Because it's rated M and there's an age gate, we were able to go much farther than we usually can with our project for God of War: Ascension. Lookie, lookie!

I’m playing so many games right now it’s ridiculous. Let me break it down for you:

"New Art" is Gabriel's primary reward structure in games. If that's true - and it is, I just told you - then Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch must surely be the apex of the form.

You grabbed the new Dead Space demo, right? It doesn't cost anything, and you should. Did you?

I sat down to watch King of the Nerds last week fully intending to hate it. In fact the only reason I watched it was because I figured we could get a good comic out of how horrible it was. Boy was I surprised when I actually liked it.

I went over to Arcane Comics for my six month "check-up," filling out trade paperbacks for ongoing lines and interrogating the proprietor as to what I should be reading. He's never steered me wrong yet - Gotham Central, Saga, and Locke & Key have provided me with stalwart, much-needed company lately. I read too fast, and I don't see art, so (as I've discussed) comics aren't usually a good investment. These books have kept going in my head, though - long after I've read them. Easy recommendations, all.

If you would like to be part of that august body, helping to sustain the best show of its kind in the world and meeting a ton of cool people, the information is here.

I would like football or, indeed, any sport, much better if each town did battle with other towns via spirit animals like immortal hawks and great bears. Like, if we made them battle with one another in arenas, and if they got hungry for soul essence or whatever they would just swipe at the gathered throng with a spectral paw. But I feel like this latest season (of the actual game) might represent a turning point.

Hey, do you have a second to fill one of these out? It would really help us a lot.

It was a little over two years ago that we gave you guys one page of our SAND comic idea. We also pitched you The New Kid and Queen of Bells at the same time. We asked you all to vote on your favorite and SAND managed to beat out the New Kid but it was incredibly close. We went on to work with Gary Whitta on an outline for a New Kid movie which we ended up selling to Paramount. They are still sitting on it, but who knows maybe someday it will become a real animated movie. As for SAND we sort of dropped the ball on it and now its been two years and we haven’t made good on our promise to give your more.

Ben absolutely nailed it in his review, by the way. I did not hire him to agree with me, in fact, quite the opposite; but I think we're of one mind on this one.

Sometimes, typically to provide rhetorical fuel, our opinions are conflated with some larger "gamer culture" bugaboo. The reality is that we have no idea what is going on in "gamer culture," it's getting progressively less coherent, I can't make sense of it at all and I have officially stopped trying.

Are you guys ready to see the winners of the 2012 Dickerdoodle contest? If you’re not then you should probably stop reading because that’s what this post is about.