Hi there Raging Bulleteers, and welcome back to a new edition of JokerFish.

“What’s JokerFish?” I hear you ask. I don’t blame you. Even if you’ve been around these parts for a while you may not remember what JokerFish was. I started this little blog about a year ago when I won a box of comics from DC colorist and friend of the show David Baron. My original intention was to review every book in the box, all dated about November ’09. Well… I reviewed about four books. I was really looking forward to taking a literary stroll across the DC universe, as I was following most of the books at the time, and I was keen to dip a toe into those titles that I’d neglected.

“Bwahaha! So you like to make plans, do you?” laughed Fate (the metaphorical kind, not the one with the PhD and the shiny helmet), as life proceeded to jump up and down all over my intentions. Without giving you a complete dissertation on the Lantern Savage Chronicles, I can tell you that basically my girlfriend moved to New Zealand from Las Vegas last November to live with me, and we’ve since been quite busy with the working and the living together and the blah blah blah. So now you know why there hasn’t been a JokerFish entry on this site since, oh, June 2009, whether that interests you in the slightest or not. Apologies to Sean and Jim and the three other people who were reading!

So, now that I’ve forced some free time into my schedule, I’m left with a minor conundrum. My comic book reading habits have changed significantly since I started writing JokerFish; it’s been hard keeping up with so many books, and a lot of them have stockpiled in my reading stack. So what do I review? Random two year-old issues from books that, in some cases, don’t even exist anymore? Maybe.

While my girl and I have been tripping over our reading piles (she reads mostly Green Lantern, GL Corps and Brightest Day), we’ve still managed to keep up on the other side of the DC universe – the media. We’ve been powering our way through Smallville (we’re up to Season 5!); we’ve been checking out Young Justice; we’ve been watching a bunch of the DC animated DVD movies; we’ve played through Justice League: Heroes and Batman: Brave And The Bold; and we’ve both been saving the world… on DC Universe Online.

I’ve been excited about DC Universe Online since it was first announced back in 2008. I’ve never played an MMO (the closest I ever got was Second Life, which hardly counts), but this was one I could actually see myself paying for on a monthly basis. Gallivanting around the DCU with my favorite DC characters, clashing with their nemeses, hanging out at the Watchtower, laughing at Commissioner Gordon’s mustache – just TRY to keep me away from this game! I couldn’t wait to jump into a league with Sean, Jim and the rest of my US buddies, so that we could–

“Whoa whoa whoa…” came the voice of Fate again (still the philosophical kind, not the one with the doctorate), “sure, we’ll let you fight alongside Batman, Green Lantern and Doctor Fate… but NOT Sean and Jim. Or any other Americans for that matter!”

That’s right, no US servers for us lowly New Zealanders. We have to play on the EU servers, and apparently there’s no crossovers in this universe. Gone were my chances of randomly running into Jim Lee’s Orange Chicken or Gail Simone’s Black Alice. Dashed were my dreams of fighting villainy with Jim’s Bridge-Man, or helping Sean rescue innocent citizens from Jim’s Sonic Serenades.

I decided that I would use this old JokerFish blog to document my bizarre adventures for those US-based players that I would have otherwise fought alongside, and to give those not playing the game a taste of the alternate DC universe they’re missing out on.

And so I began the game’s 14 gigabyte download, and wondered what kind of character I would create…

…and that’s exactly what I’ll tell you, in the next JOKERFISH.

(Also: quick shout out to my girlfriend, Rochelle Savage, for the awesome sketch. She’s the best!)