Maschinen-Mensch have just announced the next expansion pack for Curious Expedition 2, called The Shores of Taishi, taking us into the realm of the East-Asian influenced islands of the Celestial Shores.

This DLC contains some of my favourite art for CE2, particularly the new Peacock tribe and their village. Other features include a recruitable red panda, a range of new enemies, such as the Ushi Oni and Dangkang, the animal shelter of the Tanuki, and a host of new items, trophies and locations.

Check out the trailer here, and add it to your Steam wishlist here. The Shores of Taishi is released for PC on May 19th, and soon after for consoles.

If you have any awareness of the comics world at all then you'll know that George Pérez has died, aged just 67, and after an illness about which he was very open, and seen out with an incredible spirit of generosity and grace. By all accounts, this was his character anyway, and he was hugely loved and admired throughout his almost 50 years as an artist.

I mark his passing because he was principal artist on one of my favourite comics from the early 80s, The New Teen Titans (co-created with writer Marv Wolfman). My relationship with superhero comics lasted only a few years - from about 1980 to maybe the mid-80s, and The New Teen Titans was the one comic I made sure to seek out every issue, and is pretty much the only run of superhero comics I still have in my collection today (including many of its offshoots and rarities).

I was totally absorbed in those stories - Brother Blood, Deathstroke, Terra, the Brotherhood of Evil, Trigon, the Vigilante, the runaways - just some that have stayed with me after decades. I carried on with the Teen Titans after George left - but it was never the same and my interest quickly petered out (though I did go back and collect the original 1960s Teen Titans run with the also-fabulous Nick Cardy, and I was very happy when José Luis García-Lopez made a guest appearance on art chores of The New Teen Titans too).

But the work and style of George Pérez is forever impressed into my brain from those early-80s formative years of comics reading, in the same way many of the classic 2000AD artists are, Joe Colquhoun from Battle, or the best of the contributors to Warrior. His work went way beyond the Teen Titans - including memorable runs on Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wonder Woman, which I also encountered to a much lesser degree.

So thank you George for the joy and inspiration you added to a very happy period in my own life. It's sad he's gone, but what a fantastic legacy - I'll be digging out some of my old comics for a re-read.