Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

So this is what guys like Joss Whedon do during the Writer's Strike...

Joss Whedon, of Buffy and Firefly fame, along with the lesser Whedon brothers, Zack and Jed, got bored during the recent Writer's Strike. So they wrote a campy B-Movie Musical, staring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day.

NPH plays as Dr. Horrible, an amateur mad scientist, attempting to gain entrance into the Evil League of Evil. He videoblogs his evil schemes, and answers reader mail, you know, the whole blog crawl. Dr. Horrible has no super powers, beyond what he can build himself.

Felicia Day plays Penny, Dr. Horrible's crush, whom he can't get up the nerve to talk to. She volunteers her time to try and convince people to sign a petition to open a new homeless shelter.

Nathan Fillion plays Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible's arch nemesis. Captain Hammer dislocated Dr. Horrible's shoulder in their last showdown. He was born with a full head of hair and the ability to bench press 500 lbs.

The show is being released in three acts on the website I linked to above. The first act was released on Tuesday, act II will be released today, and act III on Saturday. It has a surprisingly high production value for a web released side project. It looks just like any other live action TV show. The writing is campy and somewhat uninspired, but the music is well done. NPH does a good job both acting and singing. Day has a surprisingly good voice too. Fillion seemed a little out of sorts and I'm not sure how much of that was him and how much was the character.

It's pretty funny, and worth the 14 minutes it takes to watch the act. There's also a webcomic about Captain Hammer available here. Joss really went all out on this thing.

The End of an Era.

With Metal Gear Solid 4 looming on the horizon, one of the funniest webcomics out there has closed it's story arc. The Last Days of Foxhound is a Metal Gear Solid inspired webcomic, drawn by Chris Doucette, which focuses on the Foxhound unit of the first Metal Gear Solid game. The art is a little pedestrian, but the humor is top notch. Doucette has a sharp sense for sarcasm, and manages to draw together the most convoluted plotline this side of Chrono Cross in a very hilarious manner.


TLDoF ran for 500 comics, and managed to incorporate each of the bizarre super squads from the MGS series. Foxhound, Dead Cell, and the Cobras all make an appearance, as does the most Magnificent Bastard, Big Boss. Solid Snake is never seen directly, but his presence is felt throughout the story arc.

The premise of the story is the background of the Foxhound unit, a super powered black ops team which works in secret for the government. The storyline covers from when Liquid Snake joins Foxhound, up until the events of MGS1.

While Spider Man would say "With great power comes great responsibility", in this case it's more like "With great power comes great insanity." Each member of Foxhound, while supremely talented, also has a psychotic personality flaw. Liquid Snake is an super soldier, but he suffers from an inferiority complex that would take up several floors of a building to catalog. Vulcan Raven is a shamanistic Inuit giant, who is smug beyond belief. Sniper Wolf is the world's greatest sniper, but she actually develops a crush on each target she's assigned. Decoy Octopus is a world class spy and master of disguise, he's also a trickster worthy of Loki, and a complete coward. Psycho Mantis is the world's strongest telepath, but he's also omnicidal. Revolver Ocelot is a master of subterfuge, and world class marksman, but he's also a pathological liar, and suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.



The interactions of these outlandish personalities tie into the extensive metaplot of Hideo Kojima's grand design, and provide nonstop hilarity. Please, check it out.