GEEK BEAT: Gadgets, geeks, the good stuff (oh my)

January 11, 2010 by Jorge Labrador 

The Consumer Electronic Show promoted all these gizmos and toys that the future has in store last week.

Things like surround sound headphones, 3D TVs, sit-down race car seats and flight cockpits and massive multiplayer online worlds – online LEGO worlds, to be precise, are just a tiny plot on the flashy world of entertainment that awaits us.

(Yeah, they ask that you capitalize the letters in “LEGO,” and refrain from using it as a noun. I don’t get it either, but I do know that I loved my legos… d’oh!)

As a technophile, I’m always dazzled by these technological achievements and what they do to create a fully immersive experience. Even if I do look like a dork wearing 3D glasses over my own corrective lenses, the technology is another step toward helping take my mind off this world and putting myself in another one for a little while.

Every advancement made by this pricey tech further breaks down the barrier between the real world and countless fictional worlds.

Today’s blockbusters cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. If movies like “Avatar,” a film with beautiful art direction and new technology up the wazoo, are to become the norm for films of the future, we can probably expect that number to approach the billions in coming decades.

What happens when we demand that all our entertainment is an “Avatar?”

How can anything less than the best compete with the combined forces of the engineers making all this new tech, the mega-rich studios financing it and superstar casts and crews that sell the tickets?

A little while ago I had to remind myself that just because something is relatively low-tech does not mean it is less valid than the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Sometimes the lo-fi approach feels more raw and real than anything in 3D and surround sound.

Before I come in or after leaving the Yell office on Wednesdays, I like to stop off at Alternate Reality Comics across the street and spend a few minutes browsing, probably leaving with a few of the week’s comic releases or some collection I’d missed out on earlier.

Funnybooks are about as far away from “Avatar” and Hollywood blockbusters as you can get and I can’t get enough of them.

I’ll admit,  I’m most amped up about titles like “Blackest Night” and “Siege” – these are comic blockbusters and either could be the “Avatar” of the comics scene lately. But more than any other visual medium, comics provide a method for a single creator or a small team to tell their stories. There are some creators from this very university’s community that we’ve mentioned in the past that have done some awesome things with the medium.

“Drunk” is a comic anthology that’s as “Vegas” as it gets. It is, after all, a collection of stories revolving around booze, many of which play out like those tall tales about a wild night out – just don’t expect every one of these stories to be free of somber notes.

A film like “The Hangover” gets all the fame, but “Drunk” is actually by real Las Vegans, many of which are students or faculty at UNLV.

We mentioned the local comics imprint Pop Goes the Icon in The Rebel Yell last year, when it’s creator (former UNLV and The Rebel Yell alumnus PJ Perez) released his superhero comic, “The Utopian,” in print for the first time.

Not content to rest on that accomplishment, Perez and other local creators are putting out a comic anthology in February called “Omega Comics Presents,” while pages of “The Utopian” continues to come out every Wednesday online and another print issue is due this Wednesday.

The beauty of these stories is that they can be told without the latest and greatest in technology and anyone can pick them up or tell their own. Why aren’t you writing or drawing right now?

If your interest is even slightly piqued, you should give one of these or any other indie or local comic a try. Immersion in these stories doesn’t need for 3D glasses, a high-def TV or virtual LEGO™ brand plastic building bricks.

And if you’re a comics creator from UNLV, post a comment on our site or shoot me an email, so I can feature your work in a future column.

Coming up in two weeks: a local museum with balls of steel.