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Recent Posts

  • The State of the Ghost: First and Second Quarter 2017
  • Summer Break: See you in August!
  • Kickstarter is Live!
  • Kickstarter Launch–and Party!
  • “What the Mine Gives” Updated

Recent Comments

  • J. Ignacio on The Verge 12
  • Parker on Interrogation 08
  • J. Ignacio on Interrogation 08
  • Publisher on What the Mine Gives 09
  • J. Ignacio on What the Mine Gives 09

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See us!

by Parker on December 7, 2016 at 9:57 am
Posted In: Updates

A couple of big things going on here at Vengeful Ghost this week:

Tonight, 7 December 2016! An online hangout with Parker and other Vengeful Ghost fans at 9PM EST. Check out our Facebook feed and Parker’s Twitter for the link a little before 9.

And Saturday, 10 December 2016! Bmore Into Comics Issue #11!! Come see Parker and 17 other Baltimore creators as we take over a local bar for the entire day to sell our stuff, talk about comics and making them, and have a drink or two. This will also be the first place you can buy physical copies of Pay to Win!

Hope we’ll see you soon.

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Tired Tuesday: Working, Playing, Consuming

by Parker on December 6, 2016 at 11:47 am
Posted In: Tuesdays

WORKING: This week involved a lot of commuting down to DC for the day job, which didn’t leave much time for anyone else. I did start tossing around some ideas for Iron Circus Comics’s new anthology Tim’rous Beastie, though, which is pretty exciting. I’m thinking…Home Alone + rats + Baltimore…

And the team was working down to the wire to get tomorrow’s update ready. It’s probably our most intense story so far, and Jabari Weathers‘s art is just *mwah*. If you want to see it now, you can check out our Patreon campaign. And Patrons get a special bonus for this particular story–they get to see this story in color! More on that later.

PLAYING: I’m still playing Elder Scrolls Online, and it’s still fun. It’s also a good excuse to hang out with folks I don’t get to see that often.

I also hopped back on Overwatch for the first time in months last night. Man, why hadn’t I been playing Pharah? She’s tons of fun! You might even say…a blast.

Sorry.

CONSUMING: I’m working on catching up on my single-issue comics right now. I sorted my stack by how many issues I was behind. Three was the most, so I’m tackling those first. Good news! There weren’t that many.

My first target was Detective Comics, which is in the midst of the Victim Syndicate arc. I dig it. I like the Bat-family more than I like the man himself, so spending time with Batwoman and Spoiler is fun for me. I do wish the villain design was little more interesting. The First Victim looks a lot like Mr. Bloom and I’m over creepy-gangly-egg-head dudes with mysterious identities.

Also, David Zavimbe will always be my Batwing.

Okay, that’s enough Big 2 fanboying. What have you been up to this week?

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One More Tuesday: Working, Playing, Consuming

by Parker on November 29, 2016 at 10:00 am
Posted In: Tuesdays

It’s been a few weeks, but let’s get this horse running again. Here’s what I’ve been up to for the last week.

WORKING: The biggest project ahead of me over the last week has been Thanksgiving dinner. My wife and I had her parents up, and a few local friends came over to join us. The day itself was wonderful–I think. I spent most of the time in the kitchen or zoning out with a beer in my hand trying to ignore what was going on the kitchen. As a result of all that kitchen focus, I got almost everything perfect. The mashed potatoes I made were on point, the brussels sprouts weren’t great but at least came out of the oven on time, our guests’ contributions came together… but the turkey. Oh, the turkey.

I had not one, but two thermometers lie to me. The very first time I pulled out the turkey, my stick-in thermometer told me it was done. Immediately after, the pre-packaged pop-up thermometer sprang up. “Great,” I thought. “I’ll get this out, let it rest, and be carving in half an hour!”

But as soon as I got the first drumstick off, I knew I was in trouble. The thigh beneath it was still pink and rubbery. I carved into one breast, hoping it had maybe gotten the better end of the deal, but the tenderloin was still raw too. An emergency reinsertion to the oven did nothing to help, and I ended up serving my guests microwave-finished turkey breast in pitifully small quantities.

They were all gracious as could be, and frankly the loss I feel the greatest is of the leftovers. There could have been some great turkey sandwiches for me this week, but now I’m back to square one and still have to cook if I want to keep this troublesome body fed.

Ah, well.

PLAYING: Video games have been about my speed for the last couple of weeks as I try to dig myself out of a hole, but at least they’ve been good. I’ve dived into Dishonered 2, Rainbow Six: Siege, and Elder Scrolls Online all over the last couple of weeks, and they’ve been good fun.

I’m not very far in Dishonored, but I’m enjoying it greatly. I’ve been challenging myself to play without harming anyone and so far, it’s been going okay. I’ve knocked out a grand total of two people, I think. Of course, this is enabled by a lot of save scumming, but that’s part of the fun of this game for me. Every objective is a puzzle, and I enjoy experimenting with different approaches. So far, nothing I’ve tried has been impossible, which is pretty darn cool.

Siege is a whole other story. It is utterly unforgiving and I have to bring my A-game every time I turn it on. I also really like it. I’ve built a small crew of folks who get on together and though I am probably the worst player in the bunch, it’s a good time. When you sit down with it, it feels a lot like a normal shooter, but if you play it like one you’ll get totaled. It’s strategic, often slow paced, and the wide variety of destructible terrain requires a certain recalibration of instinct. It’s sort of like thinking in portals.

And ESO is the first MMO I’ve ever tried to get into. I’m reaching a tipping point with it. The solo game is pretty good, but if I wanted to play a solo Elder Scrolls game, I’d go back and start yet another Skyrim run. I need to start engaging with the most MMO-ey parts of the game, like dungeons and guilds and PvP, but I haven’t quite made the plunge. Do you play?

CONSUMING: I finally finished Person of Interest. Holy cow. It had a real and true ending, which is something I feel like a lot of the television I watch can’t really say. The entire fifth season, which was short, was devoted to wrapping the whole thing up. Though I’m not a huge fan of how super-sciency it got at the end there (recombinant superflu on the first try? Really?), there are a bunch of parts of the show that are still burrowing their way around my brain like prairie dogs.

It’s the first show I’ve considered writing fan fic for. I don’t think I will, but I might read some. The characters in the background matter to me, and I want to know more about them. Control, for one. The red-headed operative who got that compressed arc in the last few episodes, too–I found his transformation from introduction to climax really intriguing, and I want to see it unpacked a little bit.

I think part of my desire for more is that, although the show itself got some strong closure, only a very few characters were given a real strong sendoff in that last season. Death, with notable exceptions, came quickly and unexpectedly. There was not time to linger. Again, with one major exception, there was no slo-mo, no haunting music. There was just a bang, and then someone was dead. Good guys and bad guys both. I think it was on theme for the show, and I admire the choice, but it makes me want more.

Anyway, that’s my story. What’s yours?

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Voting Tuesday: Working, Playing, Consuming

by Parker on November 8, 2016 at 10:00 am
Posted In: Tuesdays

WORKING: The last week has involved a whole bunch of my “day” job, working in medical education. I’ve gotten to have pancreatitis, a herniated disk, and an abusive relationship with my pregnant teenage girlfriend. Not all at the same time. Probably the most rewarding part of the week was this weekend, working with first year medical students at Johns Hopkins on discussing difficult topics and paying attention to patient language. I also heard about a presentation one of my supervisors is going to give regarding implicit bias, which is exciting and important.

On the Vengeful Ghost side, I’ve been formatting “Pay to Win” for publication (the cover’s up now and page 1 goes up tomorrow!) and drafting Project NYC. I also got a pretty detailed outline on Project Makalu, which is very exciting. Next for that is a page-by-page breakdown, and then I’ll be ready to start the actual script.

PLAYING: Commuting and work has been my big focus this week, and I’m bummed I missed a session of my good friend’s “Necessary Evil” Savage Worlds campaign. It’s a sandboxy supervillains game, set in Star City after a brutal alien invasion has killed all superheroes–but left the villains around. I play a sort-of Black Ant knockoff made up of a cloud of nanites. I call him “Two Bit.”

I did get a whole game of Civilization VI in over the weekend, though, and that was a good time. Pedro II’s Brazil may have been small, but we fought off Spain and Germany to eventually overwhelm the entire world with our exported culture. Now I’ve started a run through as Gorgo of the Spartans–we’ll see how that goes.

CONSUMING: Now that I’ve finished Red Mars, my next goal book is Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. I talked about it a bit a month or two ago in the newsletter, but I fell off the train. Now I’m back at it, and it’s just as terrifying as it was then. It’s got me thinking about a fundamental problem of historical reporting on intelligence operations, and I’m trying to read Legacy in its light. Namely, successes are rarely declassified. Of course, we hear about spectacular wartime successes like Operation Mincemeat, but other, subtler and longer-lasting intelligence successes must remain secret. If revealed, they challenge their own successes and threaten the potential of future operations. It makes me wonder if Legacy‘s grim picture of CIA incompetence might be the result of a bit of selection bias…

And a dear friend and I watched the first episode of Cleverman. It’s still too early for me to judge the series as a whole, but I’ll be watching Episode 2. Something I found interesting about the pilot: it was comfortable setting its protagonists up to be pretty unlikeable. A pair of half-brothers seem to be the heroes, but one of them is a human trafficker directly responsible for the death of a child, and the other is a populist politician comfortable with causing his brother serious injury. It’ll be interesting to see how they’re presented going forward.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention the election. Let’s keep it that way, at least until this evening. What have you been up to the last week?

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#VGGiveaway #1: The Coriolis Effect

by Parker on November 1, 2016 at 10:02 am
Posted In: Updates

“The Coriolis Effect” is almost done! The final page goes up tomorrow (pssst…it’s already available over at our Patreon page), so we’re celebrating by giving away a prize package!

Do you want a free digital copy of “The Coriolis Effect” to put on your phone so you can show it to strangers on airplanes? How about a free, signed copy of the limited edition ashcan? Huh? You wish the pot were sweeter?

How about a print from “The Coriolis Effect” artist Kendra Wells? Check it: something like this could be yours!


How, you ask? I’ve got you covered.

The full rules are here, but here’s the rundown: From now until we announce the end of the window sometime around 8 November, just do one or more of these things: Pledge to support us on Patreon; subscribe to our newsletter; like us on Facebook; like one of our Facebook posts that is labeled with #vggiveaway; vote in a poll we host; and/or Retweet one of Parker’s #vggiveaway Tweets.

Already done some of those things? Great! You’re entered! Keep going! Multiple entries are encouraged, and no purchase is necessary to win–all entries are treated exactly the same.

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