{"id":12078,"date":"2014-07-07T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T00:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=12078"},"modified":"2014-06-30T11:28:37","modified_gmt":"2014-06-30T11:28:37","slug":"bravoman-volume-1-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/07\/bravoman-volume-1-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Bravoman Volume 1 (Book)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BRAVO1\"<\/a>It\u2019s \u201cNutty Namco Week\u201d here at GamerDad, where we\u2019ll take a look at new books and games featuring odd Namco characters!\u00a0 First up is Bravoman!\u00a0 Bravoman is a classic arcade game by Namco, makers of Pac-Man.\u00a0 The Bravoman arcade game was released in Japan only, but it did get ported to the US by way of the TurboGrafix-16 game console (and Wii Virtual Console).\u00a0 It\u2019s a 2-D platformer beat \u2018em up featuring a super hero who can stretch his arms and limbs to punch and kick bad guys.\u00a0 The game is meant to be a silly parody of super heroes and video games.\u00a0 While Bravoman has made cameo appearances in other Namco titles, he would\u2019ve faded into obscurity had it not been for Shifty Look.\u00a0 Shifty Look is an online web comics site who has recently published strips featuring obscure Namco game characters.\u00a0 Bravoman is probably their most successful and long-running series, and has spawned into a high quality web cartoon (featuring prolific cartoon voice actors like Rob Paulsen), and even a tablet game (that one\u2019s not so good).\u00a0 And now you can buy a hardcover book with the first 100 or so strips from the Bravoman web comic!\u00a0 Click here to take a closer look!<\/p>\n

First of all, the book is a pretty high quality hardcover piece of reading material.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a closer look at the front cover:<\/p>\n

\"BRAVO1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first part of the book has a foreword and intro by some of the folks at Shifty Look.\u00a0 I was very impressed that they really did their research on filling readers in on the history of Bravoman, spin-offs, cameo appearances, and other details.\u00a0 Of course, they could\u2019ve saved some time and just called me instead of doing all that research.\u00a0 I liked classic and obscure Namco characters before it was cool.\u00a0 Yeah, I know, I\u2019m such a hipster.\u00a0 Anyway, here\u2019s a look at the foreword and intro pages:<\/p>\n

\"BRAVO2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The majority of the book is dedicated to the web comic, with a strip on each page.\u00a0 What\u2019s really cool is that on nearly every page are behind the scenes comments and quips from the artists and editors, as well as preliminary sketches.\u00a0 I\u2019d almost say this book could be considered educational, especially for folks aspiring to make their own web comics someday.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a look at one of the pages:<\/p>\n

\"BRAVO3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was a kid, I used to read all the Garfield books.\u00a0 You know, the ones that were rectangular shaped?\u00a0 (Jim Davis actually pioneered that unique shape of book).\u00a0 Anyway, I wish Jim Davis would\u2019ve used the format that this Bravoman book has, with insights and quips of his own on every page.\u00a0 I would\u2019ve loved that.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the last few pages feature concept art and sketches.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a sample:<\/p>\n

\"BRAVO4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And they also have promotional art posters featuring different styles from various artists.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one of my favorite pages of that:<\/p>\n

\"BRAVO5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally are some ads.\u00a0 I put this page in here so I can talk about them.\u00a0 They advertise the Bravoman game for tablets, which plays like one of those continuously running games.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it\u2019s really awful.\u00a0 Sorry Shifty Look, I love the Bravoman web comic and animated series, but not the game.\u00a0 As a game reviewer, I have to be perfectly honest and call it as I see it.<\/p>\n

The other ad is for the Shifty Look site and web comics.\u00a0 I really need to get in the habit of going to the site and reading it.\u00a0 They have comics featuring all sorts of cool Namco characters I like, including Valkyrie, Katamari Damacy, and even Klonoa!\u00a0 Unfortunately, I\u2019m so used to reading comic strips in books and newspapers (yeah I know, I\u2019m old fashioned).\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019m glad they made a Bravoman book!<\/p>\n

\"BRAVO6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s all that\u2019s in Bravoman Volume 1.\u00a0 I hope they make more volumes!\u00a0 It\u2019s fairly family friendly, with only a few slightly off-color gags and cartoony violence.\u00a0 I guess the only problem I have with the Bravoman comic and cartoon is that they rely too much on fourth wall gags.\u00a0 But I wanted to buy the book anyway to show my support for Shifty Look, since the web comics and cartoons are free.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t know how they make any money off of this.\u00a0 But you can show your support, too, by buying the book and it\u2019s really easy.\u00a0 Just click on the Amazon.com link on the GamerDad.com site, and then search for the Bravoman book.\u00a0 It\u2019s a reasonable price (around 15 bucks) for such a high quality, color hardcover book.\u00a0 Next time we\u2019ll take a look at another one of their books, featuring Wonder Momo!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s \u201cNutty Namco Week\u201d here at GamerDad, where we\u2019ll take a look at new books and games featuring odd Namco characters!\u00a0 First up is Bravoman!\u00a0 Bravoman is a classic arcade game by Namco, makers of Pac-Man.\u00a0 The Bravoman arcade game was released in Japan only, but it did get ported to the US by way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12081,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078\/revisions\/12081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}