How my brain works...

I could have just posted this nice picture I'd never seen before of two beloved, much missed actors, but no. No, I had to have an idea. And not just a joke, either, I've got a plot for this thing. I've been thinking of doing some fan fiction to get the old writing muscles working again and now there's this.

Not sure of all the details yet, just that maybe the Brig wakes up after one of those infamous UNIT Christmas Parties to find his moustache gone and there ensues an epic odyssey to recover the thing.

I have insomnia again...

(Made using picfont,com)

The Comics Ramble Post-Christmas Catch-Up

Always a good time to get some reading done, Christmas, and digital comics make it all the easier as I can just sit in a corner digesting Turkey and pretending to listen to my mother as I read stuff on my laptop. So, a few choice cuts that piled up as I prepared to move and that I finally powered through over the break:

Starfire: a surprisingly good series. Sex-obsessed, of course, because this is Palmiotti and Conner we're talking about but setting up Starfire with a Florida town as her "patch" is a good match. Her relationships with the local sheriff and coast guard captain are absolutely lovely. And Dick Grayson turns up at one point, which at the moment is a sure fire sign of a fun issue.

New Romancer: Promising, mainly since it doesn't pretend Lord Byron wasn't an utter shit at times. At one point he waxes lyrical about how he never met his daughter Ada and Lexy, our modern main character lady, calls him on the fact he straight up abandoned the girl.

Bombshells: Structure is awful (these nine-parters are not coherent stories, they'd be better off naming each chapter individually) but the overall premise is strong and, frankly, it's all design porn made to sell toys so there's a pretty low bar to jump and this sails high above it. I was sold as soon as Batwoman turned up as a masked baseball player who fights crime but if that hadn't worked then Supergirl and Stargirl as Night Witches would certainly have done the trick.

Dark Knight III: The Master Race: bwahahahahahahahahaha!!! Awful yet intriguing. Or, to put it another way: a modern Frank Miller comic.

Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat: Amazing. I love that they've retconned the old '60s Patsy romance comics to be comics that exist in-universe written by her mother about Patsy's teenage hi-jinks. There aren't enough straight-up comedies in comics so this one's very welcome.

Titans Hunt: Dan Abnett tries desperately to sort out the continuity nightmare of the New 52 classic Titans? Curious premise but I'm three issues in and it's grabbing me but that might just be the Doctor Who fan training kicking in to make me love this kind of continuity wrangling. Just about everything Abnett writes featuring Dick Grayson is gold but he's practically shackled to the Finch “kill everything” version of Donna Troy and Lobdell's “no such thing as recovery” Roy Harper.

Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl: This comic is insane and I especially loved the issue that seamlessly switched from guest DJing to magical duel. Beyond that the series has a fantastic spin on the age-old idea of what it means to sell one's soul. 

2016

I feel a real rush of energy coming into the new year. Later this month I'll be moving in with a couple of old friends and, whilst I've enjoyed living on my own the last few years, I must admit I'll be glad of the company. They're very good friends and fellow hobbyists so I look forward to making real progress on some longstanding projects.

So, goals for the year? Goals for the year:

52 Books in 52 Weeks

Between one thing and another I've not had much time to read over the past year. I vaguely remember this sort of challenge being mentioned in a Rooster Teeth Minecraft Let's Play (by Geoff, as I recall). It might be interesting to have a record of what I read over the coming year.

Bretonnians

My once-and-future signature Fantasy army: the brave sons and daughters of chivalry. I bought a job lot of models last year when they made a sudden reappearance on the GW webstore. I want to make this a real production number: unique heraldry on every knight; written background for every unit; conversions for some of the new units from Matthias Eliasson “8^th edition compatible” homebrewed Army Book. Given that our group has started our own post-End Times continuity it seems only right that I get my own (knightly) house in order.

Model Counter

Sudden need to move rather robbed me of impetus for the 100 Model Challenge so let's start afresh and see how many models I can paint in a calendar year.

Writing

Just do it, as they say. More blog posts, write some fan fiction to get back into practice, maybe do NaNoWriMo this year, get back to writing weekly comic reviews. Just write whatever I can, make it a habit. Last year I managed 191 blog posts, let's see if I can top that this year just as a soft target.

Doctor Who Marathon

Third time lucky: watch and review every story from An Unearthly Child to the 1996 TV Movie with a few distractions along the way. Definitely not something I'll finish this year (that would be three stories a week) but if I only do one a week that'll be the black and white era polished off before Christmas.