Remembering the Very Reverend Nightcrawler

How long has it been since your last confession?

Catching up on some comics last night I read the last two issues of Amazing X-Men, both of which were focussed on Nightcrawler. The first had him, Northstar and Anole fighting Lady Mastermind with a side order of positive body image; the second was an Axis tie-in with a good Mystique trying to stop an evil Nightcrawler killing a priest in Winzeldorf, the town where he was almost lynched in his first appearance.

Both comics placed a big focus on Nightcrawler's faith and that made me think the same thing I always think under those circumstances: I wish they'd kept him as a priest.

See, in the late-90s when Chris Claremont was writing the X-Men comics again he made Nightcrawler a trainee priest (for which I'm sure there's a name but it escapes me). I loved it as an idea but it never really reached its potential which is just 90s comics in a nutshell, isn't it? Anyway, Chuck Austen took over the title and made the whole thing a mind trick played on Nightcrawler by anti-mutant fundamentalists the Church Of Humanity. The Axis issue is, to my knowledge, the first time its been mentioned since.

But imagine what could be done with it now? Priest is about the only profession I can think of that hasn't had a superhero attached to it (though I'm sure there will have been one). It would be a minefield in many ways, matters of faith being a touchy subject these days, and would require a lot of reading or a deep personal understanding of Catholicism on the part of the writer but I think it could be done well by the right creative team.

There's also a part of me, if I'm being perfectly honest, that would love to see Nightcrawler taking Matt Murdoch's confession. 

Random hopes for Star Trek 3 next year

Just before Christmas it was announced that Justin Lin, director of the last five The Fast and the Furious movies, would be taking the directing chair on the next Star Trek film. It should be pointed out here that this film will be released next year, the 50^th anniversary of Star Trek.

Now, I've never in my life watched a Fast and the Furious film and the internet seems divided on whether Lin's appointment is a good thing. Some point to him adding depth to the Furious films and having an admirably diverse cast whilst others worry his selection means Paramount are going to continue making the Star Trek reboot as an action movie series.

The action movie thing is inevitably because after two well-performing movies in that vein Paramount has no impetus to change up the formula. Its the same reason Michael Bay's Transformers movies will continue to be military gun-wank films that sideline the titular giant robots: because after four militaristic gun-wank films made millions for their makers they are not going to risk their money changing tack. Even if Bay leaves the series the films will continue like that because its guaranteed money.

I just think Star Trek deserves better for its half century than its been getting the last couple of years. Doctor Who had a positively decadent 50^th with a TV special, a 12-issue comic series, a docu-drama, a short story anthology and several audio projects dedicated to celebrating the series and proving its relevance a half century after its creation. Star Trek is getting one film and probably a couple of novels.

It all boils down to this: I cannot for the life of me say what Into Darkness was about on a philosophical level. Obviously, Section 31 are being evil but it didn't seem to resonate for any reason other than “This isn't the sort of thing we do in Star Trek!”. There was no discussion being had there. Also, whilst I didn't hate the character Benedict Cumberbatch was playing there didn't seem to be any reason for him to be there other than as a recognisable bad guy from the classic series so some nice references could be made.

And this is Star Trek, damn it! Some things are sacred and the ultimate Humanist fantasy, a fantasy born in an age when the human race was in very real danger of annihilating itself, deserves to spend its 50^th anniversary proving that it still has something to say instead of proving it can be a good two-hour distraction.

So hopefully if this man really did add depth to The Fast and the Furious we can hope.

The Comics Ramble Holiday Hangover

Light week to start off being the comics between Christmas and New Year. This week: the beginning of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Tie-in comic as well as their first Miracleman annual and an issue of Sonic Universe that turned up a week late.

S.H.I.E.L.D. #1

Perfect Bullets

writer: Mark Waid; pencils: Carlos Pacheco; inks: Mariano Taibo w/ Jason Paz; colours; Dono Almara; letters: Joe Caramagna

Interesting experiment this: a tie-in series for a Cinematic Universe project set in the Marvel Universe proper. Nice idea: there are a lot of things the TV series can't do due to expense or legal issues. Here we get to the see the familiar characters playing with all the toys...

… sort of.

The focus here is firmly on Coulson and we get an extended set of flashbacks setting up his past in the Marvel Universe. He's a nerd, basically, who grew up fascinated by the Golden Age superheroes and then entered adulthood as the current superheroes got their start. He knows everything there is to know about the Avengers, the X-Men and the rest and SHIELD uses him to assign those heroes to jobs for them. That's our set-up.

We get a nice flashy bit of business for him to deal with as Asgardian baddies pop up all over the world and he has to sort it out. Cue him flying in to one of the many hotspots with his team, here consisting of Fitz, Simmons and a barely-present May. All-in-all the team doesn't get much chance to shine between the flashbacks and superhero guest stars, the later of which I expect to be the format of the series: the team plus guest stars fight the threat of the week.

Its certainly not an uninteresting set-up and I'm in for issue two, at least, but I feel fans of the series (I'm just barely halfway through Season One) might end up a little disappointed since this isn't really the team and especially the Coulson from the series. Not surprising given the differing circumstances of the two settings. Oddly, I wouldn't say he was the Coulson from Secret Avengers either but that could change considering where the current arc in that title's going.

So fun but probably of more interest to the casual viewer than the committed fan of its parent series.

All-New Miracleman Annual #1

The Priest & The Dragon: The October Incident: 1966

story: Grant Morrison; art: Joe Quesada; colours: Richard Isanove; letters: Chris Eliopoulos

The Miracleman Family: Seriously Miraculous

story: Peter Milligan; art: Mike Allred; colours: Laura Allred; letters; Travis Lanham

I rather missed the boat on Marvel's Miracleman relaunch, mainly because I'd never heard of the property. I got caught up thanks to Movie Bob of The Escapist's videos on the subject and went looking for an in. Granted, annuals aren't often the perfect done-in-one taste tests they used to be in the old days but they do still tend to include a series' A-game. I certainly got the A-game stories but I highly doubt they're a good sample of the series. Both stories are great, don't get me wrong, but...

The Grant Morrison story is very Grant Morrison, by which I mean its obscure as hell and as closed off as narratives get. Its a short piece from the point-of-view of a priest confronting a Miracleman supporting character recast, for some reason, as the Anti-Christ. Its the sort of thing that feels like a great beginning but according to the behind the scenes notes at the end of the book this is an unused script from the 80s, coupled with Morrison's recent declaration he's swearing off monthly comics means this probably isn't going anywhere.

The real pity of it through is the striking but simple artwork from Joe Quesada which makes me wish the man had more time to be an artist.

The Milligan/Allreds story is again, very emblematic of the creative team: a very solidly and slightly meta romp through the colourful cast of heroes and villains from Mick Anglo's original 1950s stories. There a villain called Young Nastyman, there are dolphins with spears, “Russkie” nuclear tests, death rays and all sorts of other bonkers tropes and ideas. Its actually a pretty cool rejoiner to the dark and violent Miracleman of the 80s Morrison was writing for and the general comicbook industry of the time.

If nothing else the Annual has given me more of an idea of Miracleman/Marvelman's varied history and I'll probably pick up the trades of the new series when they come out.

Sonic Universe #71

The Spark Of Life part one

story: Ian Flynn; script: Aleah Baker; pencils: Tracy Yardley; inks: Jim Amash; colours: Matt Herms; letters: Jack Morelli

You know, I think I'm finally getting used to this new rebooted continuity now its finally starting to explain itself. True, I'm not sure I like Nicole's new origin as much as her old one but we'll see how I feel about it come the end of the arc.

Speaking of the arc, I do so like it when Universe does a Freedom Fighters story, second only in my affections to Knuckles-based stories. Here we have Sally, Tails and Big the Cat chasing after Nicole when she rushes off to answer a distress call from her creator, Doctor Ellidy. The issue is mainly set-up and doesn't really stand up as a very satisfying story on its own but I'm willing to forgive that for the promise of an arc exploring Nicole's development (if her artificial sentience is the “Spark Of Life” of the title) since that was one of my favourite subplots before the Worlds Collide reboot.

The only bum note and a thing that bugs me in general about the post-Worlds Collide status quo, is Big the Cat. I've never really liked the character. It was okay when Team Freedom were the also-rans guarding New Mobotropolis in back-up strips but now he's wandering round the A-plot being a lovable idiot and I greatly dislike lovable idiots, a personal bias, I know.

Still, more than good enough for comfort food which is the main reason I still buy Sonic comics. 

Saturday Teatime #0: An Unearthly Child (pilot and transmitted versions)

I tried to do a Doctor Who marathon last year but circumstances got in the way and I had to abandon it after The Edge Of The Destruction. So let's try this again: An Unearthly Child to the 1996 TV Movie stopping at all stations.

Why am I doing this? Well, I'd bet my view of the modern series would be different if I'd watched the episodes in random order over the course of over half my life. I saw my first Doctor Who story (Planet of the Daleks, as it happens) in 1992 when I was nine and now between BBC DVDs and Loose Cannon reconstructions I finally can do a start-to-finish watchthrough.

As a project this is, of course, inspired and indebted to those who have gone before: Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke's Running Through Corridors (which someday might even reach its second volume), Hannah J. Rothman's Twitter Who (which recently did), Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood's About Time and Philip Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum (recently concluded on his blog Philip Sandifer Writer). I heartily recommend all of them. Much as I love Sandifer's essays its Rothman's approach I intend to imitate. This here is one fan's journey through 697 episodes of Doctor Who, seeing how I experience it as a series rather than as isolated stories.

So let's start. Set co-ordinates: 5:16pm November 23^rd 1963...

AN UNEARTHLY CHILD

1 episode

written by Anthony Coburn and C.E. Webber (uncredited)

Originally transmitted 23^rd November 1963

Firstly, one more piece of housekeeping: I watched the untransmitted pilot version completely by mistake. I was going to skip it and start with the transmitted first episode but those jolly people at 2Entertain had other ideas and included the pilot on the Play All function.

(A quick note about what we mean by “pilot episode” here because it is sort of a fudge. This episode wasn't a proof of concept piece like, say, the hour-long version of Sherlock: A Study In Pink. This was filmed for transmission and remounted due to technical issues. If it had gone off without a hitch it would have been the one and only version of An Unearthly Child. As it is those issues arose and the opportunity was taken to tweak the script and direction for a second shoot. For reasons we'll most likely return to throughout the black-and-white series this was actually easier to do than just re-filming the scenes affected by technical issues.)

On the one hand this mistake enhances the project, while on another compromising it fatally. There are interesting observations to be made on how the second, transmitted version polished the first (and we'll get there) but it also means that my first stop on this project to experience Doctor Who as a linear, evolving text was an episode that doesn't contribute to that evolution. Still, this is where we are and I can no more pretend my reading of An Unearthly Child isn't informed by the pilot than I can pretend it isn't informed by the other twenty-plus years of my fandom.

One of the things seeing the pilot reveals is that from day one the idea of a hostile, untrustworthy Doctor was something the production team knew couldn't last. This is perhaps the greatest shift between the two versions of An Unearthly Child: the Doctor's reaction to Ian and Barbara intruding on his life changes dramatically.

In the pilot the Doctor is hostile from the off: confrontational with Ian and Barbara and outwardly cruel to Susan when we finally enter the TARDIS. He even calls her a “stupid child!”. Given the previous scenes lead us to suppose Susan is locked in a perfectly mundane police box it even seems likely he might hit her. In the final version Hartnell is more whimsical through these scenes. He's condescending, yes, but with an edge of charm and when he tells Ian “You don't understand and I knew that you wouldn't.” it hardly seems malicious, just weary and amused. Oddly, in the pilot, it's clear the Doctor kidnaps Ian and Barbara to prevent their knowledge of the TARDIS from contaminating history whilst the second version has him panic and take off so Susan won't leave him. Wait, hang on...

Pull back a second, I'm ignoring half the episode and focussing on the Doctor, which is more than An Unearthly Child ever does so rewind and start again. Re-set the co-ordinates for 5.16pm on Saturday 23^rd November 1963 and see the moment for what it really is:

What we have is 25 minutes of television based on slowly increasing weirdness in which the Doctor is one of the last elements introduced. The title, delivered within a bewilderingly psychedelic effects sequence and to the strains of gloriously weird music, has an implied question mark attached to it. The Doctor, rather the fact that Susan's grandfather is a doctor, gets a mention in Ian's first scene (the episode's third) but even when Hartnell appears his link to the mentioned grandfather is obscure for several minutes.

So absent the Doctor, lacking even that name when he appears, what do we have? The episode is named for Susan, Barbara is the first named character to get a line (the actual first line goes to a random schoolboy who says “Oooh, yes,” in a very camp manner over a girl's shoulder) and Ian seems to rank equal to her as a fellow investigator.

The first element to be introduced is an unexplained police telephone box (free for use of public, officers and cars respond to urgent calls) in the middle of a junkyard, a junkyard whose gates open of their own accord to let the camera in. It's that last detail that makes the junkyard into an uncanny space and lends the police box some mystique once the camera chooses it as a focus. The camera zooms in on the police box doors, blurs and resolves again into a school noticeboard. We go from the uncanny space of inexplicably mysterious police boxes to the mundane world of school sports, house news and camp schoolboys mocking girls in the corridors.

Susan Foreman intrudes on this world: a girl who knows too much about science and too little about the ordinary world. Her very ordinary teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, are suspicious and decide to follow her home. The story makes a point of contrasting Susan with her teachers: whilst Susan dances as if mesmerised by everyday music we get lines that establish Ian as the cool teacher who knows about pop singers and Barbara as the maternal sort who lends books and offers extra tutoring.

So the two ordinary characters follow the uncanny one home, leaving their space and entering hers: the junkyard at 76 Totters Lane. Reasons for Susan's behaviour, or parts of her behaviour, are offered by both teachers: Ian declares she's a genius, Barbara implies parental neglect for Susan's social oddities and they briefly wonder if it all might just be down to that most mundane explanation of teenage strangeness: a boy. Nevertheless, they follow her into the junkyard, into her space and gradually the ordinary world recedes. Strange objects scattered through the junkyard lead to the entrance of the mysterious grandfather and a confrontation that sees Barbara barge straight out of “our” world and into the most uncanny space yet: the TARDIS console room, bigger on the inside than the out.

From a modern perspective you'd be forgiven for assuming the series will continue as this episode sets out: with Susan as the focus. Its a very familiar set-up these days: we have a “special” person and two perceptive but outwardly ordinary people of either gender who fall into her orbit and thus into her adventures. It's a familiar set-up from any number of teen genre shows these days: Buffy The Vampire Slayer in particular. The not-unnatural assumption is that Ian and Barbara will discover Susan's “Unearthly” secret and perform the dual role of sidekicks and emotional support network in her adventures as Willow and Xander do in Buffy, or Chloe and Pete in the early seasons of Smallville.

So who is the mysterious grandfather in this formulation? Taking our two modern examples above he can either be a knowledgeable, guiding figure like Buffy's Rupert Giles or an antagonistic one like Smallville's Lex Luthor. Given the Doctor's behaviour in this episode either option is available.

It can't last, of course. We're years away from the makers of such series making the leap of realising that younger viewers will empathise more with younger leading protagonists so episode title or no episode title Susan is not destined to be our hero. Protagonist rights will settle on Ian as action man before finally resting on the Doctor's shoulders when he becomes the series' single enduring character. Susan's agency will be a sticking point in a lot of the next ten essays but I'm going to make a statement right now:

I don't believe Susan would have worked out better as a boy. The problem isn't that she's female given the praise anyone who does one of these projects reserves for Jacqueline Hill as Barbara. A female character doesn't need to be treated the way the series will treat Susan, especially on Verity Lambert's watch. The problem is that she is young, in particular that she's the Doctor's granddaughter. We'll revisit this theme I'm sure, as all criticism of Susan necessarily focusses on it, but the familial link makes her subordinate in an unavoidable way. With the three other regulars all being older than her and all possessed of a role that makes them socially responsible for her she doesn't have much chance of agency at this stage in the history of storytelling. This would be equally true for Samuel Foreman as it is for Susan Foreman.

With which thought we close out the episode on a desolate plain in an unknown time and place with a sinister shadow creeping across the ground towards that uncanny police box...

Next Episode: 100,000 BC

High Elves Spearmen: them old sculpt blues

The other day I went to GW and purchased a High Elves Battalion since my family had loaded me down with a bunch of Special and Rare choices as Christmas presents but nothing to go in the Core slots. Having built five Spearmen I swear I have never been closer to rage quitting an army before...

Okay, I was aware going in that collecting a High Elves army would be an exercise in frustration but I didn't expect to feel it so early. I expected the flip-the-table moment to come when I tried to paint the white robes (there is no more evil colour) not when I started building the basic troops.

I should probably have anticipated it, though, but I guess I got spoiled. Vampire Counts have a very modern range, almost all of it from the last two editions. High Elves do have a lot of modern kits just not, unfortunately, in their Core choices. Spearmen, Archers and Silver Helms are all positively ancient and I didn't realise how far GW's design philosophy had come until I tried building some.

Why do the Spearmen have separate torso and leg components? Posing them isn't just unnecessary, its impossible. Turn them at the waist and not only will the unit look weird their legs will get in the way of their weapons. The banner is four separate components by itself with some positively tiny connectors. Worst of all, though, are the shields, which are not in any way sculpted to match the arm they theoretically attach to: straight arm, curved shield, pour glue on and pray!

In addition to all this is an instruction manual that tactfully omits to tell you the angle you're meant to put some of the legs on the bases, which was all kinds of fun to work out, let me tell you.

The Archers at least look simple enough, though I foresee issues similar to those shields with their quivers. The Silver Helms, however... ugh, separate tails for horses. I remember those and all the tail-less horses that used to result from them.

If nothing else I am now determined that this Battalion will constitute all the Core troops for the army (possible exception for some Lothern Seas Guard if I buy an Island Of Blood set) as there's enough frustration waiting for me when I come to paint this army. 

2015

I don't know why but 2015 feels to me like a year for getting around to things long delayed. Maybe its because I associate the date with Back to the Future Part II, maybe its because I spent most of last year either panicking about my precarious housing situation or in mourning for the women who practically raised me but this year I feel like getting things done.

I know this isn't something that can be controlled but I want to work through my writers' block. I feel like the act of writing, of creating in general, is the best outlet I have. It hasn't been a happy year and I need to pour that into something. I want to do more on this blog, experiment with format and content, maybe post some short fiction.

On a related note I want to re-learn how to draw. The skills have atrophied over the years but I used to be pretty good at sketch art. I might even get some use out of that DeviantArt account that so far exists only to allow me to switch off the adult content filter and read Sunstone.

I actually started this as a comic blog, incidentally, so committing to weekly comic reviews might not be a bad idea.

I want to learn to cook, which is about as traditional as these not-resolutions get (I feel “resolution” as a word is so bound up in failure I don't want to use it) as a concession to a general improvement in my physical health. As for my mental health...

I've been a bit of a shut-in the last few months, which I needed, don't get me wrong. Thing is that can become habit too quickly so I intend to accept any invitation I can: social events, day trips, even just trying to make time to go to the pub with friends when its offered.

Also on that note I've committed to two Warhammer campaigns: a 40k campaign run by my friend Dave starting February and a Fantasy campaign run by Matt starting (probably) March by which time we hope The End Times will be over and we'll have a solid setting to write background in. This brings us to me getting some projects up and running I've been meaning to get to for a while:

On the Fantasy side I'll be doing my long-delayed High Elves/Tomb Kings alliance (trust me, I have an idea for how this will work but we'll get there when I have some models finished). Meanwhile, for 40k I'm planning a quick and dirty Ork army to re-learn the system, which I haven't played since 5^th edition, followed by a more considered resurrection of my Lost And The Damned based on the Imperial Armour 13 Renegades & Heretics list. These are all armies I've wanted to do for years and even have a lot of the models for thanks to my whole family deciding to give me GW stuff for Christmas.

If I have some spare time left over I might even do some Flesh Tearers, not an army I have immediate use for (too many Imperial players in this campaign already) but one I have wanted since virtually the day I got into Warhammer. 

Supply, demand and Bretonnia

So a couple of days ago, completely out of nowhere, the long-missing resin Bretonnia kits just reappeared on Game Workshop's webstore: Grail Knights, Questing Knights, Grail Reliqueae, Field Trebuchet, Battle Pilgrims, the Battle Standard Bearer and the Bretonnian Lord with a lance and Harry Hill's collar. We're still missing Mounted Yeomen (which is no great loss) and the Questing Vow Lord that looks like Sean Connery (which is) but they were never made in Finecast so that's not surprising.

By the time I got to the store the next morning to order some of the things, with the clear intention of ordering the lot, all that was still in stock were the Grail Knights and the Battle Standard Bearer. Harry Hill is now back in stock (so the “temporarily out of stock” tag seems legit) and you bet I'm ordering it today.

This is not the first time, even this month, that GW has been surprised by demand. The second End Times book came out last weekend, it had sold out on pre-orders within twelve hours and even a really big GW store like Reading could only get five copies on release day. Now a bunch of old models from a very minor army with the oldest and most out-dated army book still in service get a new pressing and sell out in a day. So I guess what I'm saying is this:

Can we please, internet, end this idiotic comment meme about how “No one plays Fantasy so why does GW support it?”, a comment exclusively written by idiots for idiots.

First of damn all, we have two separate examples of GW being surprised by demand for Fantasy products. I can understand why they would have under-produced on Bretonnia resins for all the reasons I just listed but The End Times: Glottkin was designed as a marquee product so that actually surprises me.

Now, I'm under no delusions of why the Bretonnia resins were resurrected and why they sold out so rapidly: Bretonnia is a huge part of Glottkin. They just got an enormous marketing push with a load of really cool visuals and background and the models were pressed to capitalise on that.

And they still sold out.

I guess I am just sort of gloating at gamers on the internet (one extremely irritating individual in particular) who keep insisting my favourite army is getting the chop. Proof has just been delivered that if given the product the fanbase will buy the product in enough numbers to not only justify but exhaust a production run based on a huge marketing push. Now imagine what could be achieved by replacing those resin kits with more highly-detailed multi-part plastics?

So yes, internet, people play Fantasy but they need different forms of encouragement than 40k players, who tend to be younger and more prone to switching between armies than Fantasy players. Once GW engages Fantasy players they'll lay down the cash. The End Times has been engaging (and creating) Fantasy players like nothing I've seen since Storm Of Chaos. I admit, of course, that it isn't as big a seller as 40k but the idea that GW has an entire product line they pour real cash into to zero profit is an insane claim given its usually voiced by the paranoid and delusional individuals who cry foul at the very idea that a corporate entity might have to make money to support out hobby. 

GW Reading "Create a Space Marine Chapter" competition

Games Workshop Reading's store birthday is coming up on 1^st November and they're running a few events on the day, one of which is the good old Create A Space Marine Chapter competition. Simple idea: come up with a colour scheme, paint a Marine, write up a bit of background and present all it on the day. I'm not normally one for in-store competitions and the like but it occurred to me that this one could serve a nice little purpose for me.

You see, back in Third Edition when I started in the hobby I had a Chaos Space Marine army, a fallen Sanguinary chapter called the Blades Of Sanguinius. They looked, I will be frank, bloody terrible because I was nineteen, had no idea how to paint and had no patience. They wore pale red armour (Blood Red right over white undercoat, oh the days before base paints...) with Midnight Blue trim and not much else. They were technically Tzeentchian except I couldn't afford the metal models for the daemons and back then you couldn't give generic Chaos Marines the Mark of Tzeentch because it automatically turned them into Thousand Sons.

You know, every time I discuss the Third Edition Chaos Marine book I end up wondering why I have such immense nostalgia for it. I remember Chaos Lieutenants fondly, I liked that the rules actually allowed you to give your Chaos Lord a greasy sidekick.

Anyway, the thing with the Blades Of Sanguinius is I never really gave any thought to what they looked like as loyalists (except that they were red, being a Sanguinary chapter) so that's my pitch: design and enter the loyal Blades. I've got a good starting point in that they'll be mostly red, probably, and I've plenty of Death Company bits to make the model visually interesting. I just have to be careful not to make the colour scheme over-busy, which is the temptation and the trap of these things.

DC film slate 2016 - 2020 announced

Okay, big thing that happened the other day not involving the clinically mental (then again...) is that Warner Bros. announced the basic shape of their film slate going forward to 2020. There's other stuff on there and they insist further solo Batman and Superman films (and Batman and Superman films?) will also be added to the docket in time but the big news is we finally have a roadmap for the DC Cinematic Universe.

So, what do we have?

Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Franchise we already knew about but the Suicide Squad movie totally crept up on me, don't know about anyone else. Its actually a pretty clever choice for universe-building purposes since a team of villains is by definition a team-up of characters from different franchises. This is especially good since DC has a horrible history of foregrounding bad guys in their films to the detriment of the heroes' development (i.e. every Batman movie since Burton) so sticking a bunch of them in a movie, developing them there and trusting the audience to remember them when, say, Ocean Master turns up in Aquaman might be an interesting solution to this problem.

After that there's Justice League, again as previously announced, but there in bright red is the big one: Wonder Woman and I only have this to say:

Please, DC, don't fuck this up. You are dangerously addicted to caution so please, for the love of God, unlearn the lessons of a lifetime, take a risk and make this movie as mad as it deserves to be! You are in the unique position of having the most established, most recognisable superheroine in existence so let that carry the concept and just make a good film. I do not want to be sitting through another Catwoman three years from now.

Moving on, The Flash and Aquaman. This Flash will not the be the TV Flash, not unnaturally as I imagine synching up the filming schedules for this and his two Justice League appearances would be a nightmare. Aquaman is Jason Momoa and I am very much looking forward to that.

Justice League 2... nothing to really say about that. Shazam I am excited about if for no other reason than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is confirmed as Black Adam (I imagine they'll call him Teth Adam for some reason). I just hope they remember to have a sense of humour about the property because I'd love to see a fun DC movie and I really, really don't think you can make a grim, dreary Billy Batson. Oh, wait, they did for the New 52 didn't they?

Then there's a Green Lantern film, most likely a reboot because nine years between films is a bit insurmountable even if Ryan Reynolds would still be interested at that stage. Someone somewhere (The Escapist's Moviebob, I think) floated the idea that the easiest way to distance a new Green Lantern from the failed one would be to go with John Stewart, both visually and in personality. That's pure speculation but it might be an interesting angle and the Justice League cartoon certainly means the character is known, perhaps the most recognisable successor hero in the Justice League stable.

And finally a Cyborg movie. Huh. I think this is going to be DC's Guardians of the Galaxy analogue, just with a little more caution but that's DC movies all over. It isn't that Cyborg is without cache, Teen Titans was a big cartoon and they appear to be using the New 52 make-up of the League with Cyborg taking J'onn's place so he'll be far from unknown to the audience. He's always been a “team” character, though. This isn't to say it can't work, it might even be liberating for the film makers to handle a character whose canon doesn't include any real limits on what he can do on his own. There are no Lois Lanes or Daily Planets here to be included as per spec, they can get really creative here. Part of me worries, though, that this might be on the slate just so all the individual Leaguers get “their” movie rather than as a risky yet creative opportunity.

Time will tell, it usually does. 

I cannot begin to process this crap...

The internet makes it hard to believe. Theist or secular humanist, and I've been both, belief in essential goodness lies at the core of it all, be it the goodness of an exterior deity or the belief that we as humans have it within ourselves to assume total moral responsibility for our actions. Hell, regardless of how I feel about God on any given day I want to believe the latter idea.

And the internet makes it so hard some days.

Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist video gamer blogger, has been receiving threats of murder and rape for some time now. The Escapist yesterday reported that she'd cancelled a speaking engagement at Utah State University following someone claiming to be a student threatening “the deadliest school shooting in American history”. Due to Utah's gun control laws allowing concealed carry permits the local police were unable to search for or confiscate weapons at the event and she cancelled the engagement.

The story itself is bad enough but then you get to the comment section and...

Some commenters accuse her of cowardice for this, accusing her of not believing in her cause enough to get ahead with her engagement. Her cause is feminist criticism of tropes in video games. There are causes worth dying for, worth risking the lives of others for, THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

Some accuse her of trying to create a gun control debate, having cited the police inability to stop people bringing guns to her talk as her reason for cancellation. I... I just don't know where to begin on that one. Its hard to be pro-gun when you're British because the number of firearms in this country that aren't either a) “working weapons” for pest control on farms or b) outright illegal is minuscule. Still, even in this country the phrase “school shooting” is one with a long and tragic history but, significantly, one that pales in comparison to the history of these horrific, genuinely evil crimes in the US.

Some have accused her of sending the threats herself to heighten her profile. Whilst I can't prove this one way or another given the history of other threats and harassment (she had to move out her home because of them) I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Then there's the whole #GamerGate mess that this sort of ties into... in some ways... and I don't have the damn energy to recap that shitstorm. I'll just say that in this specific instance no one had made a clear link between the threat and GamerGate but the vast majority of comments reference the issue.

I'm not naive, right? It isn't somehow unreasonable to believe that the response to this story should just be outright condemnation of the threat, is it? Whether a person believes the threat came from a random nutcase, a nutcase who affiliates himself with (note language, please) #GamerGate's politics, Sarkeesian herself or is in the nature of a particularly sick joke... whoever you place blame with the proper reaction is “This is sick and should not be.”.

Right? Because that really isn't the sentiment I'm getting from far too many quarters on this thing.

TheEscapist article and, if you insist, its comment thread. 

Talking of missing the point

Now there's a lot to say about how the original X-Men movie set the stage for modern Marvel movies and how it compares to Disney's largely literal translations of characters from panel to screen, both for and against either approach. It was a good film that wasn't afraid to make changes to the source material so that it could be a good film whilst remaining a relatively faithful X-Men story so I'm willing to believe that this poster...

… was the work of a marketing executive who didn't understand what they were writing about. I mean, really:

TRUST A FEW. FEAR THE REST.

That's actually a really, really sinister message to apply to the X-Men, isn't it? And I say this because unlike most forms of racism portrayed in the X-Men franchise this is one I've seen in horrible action. The racism (and other expressions of prejudice) that underpin X-Men comics are, not unnaturally, ones rooted in the civil rights history of the US: the imagery of lynchings, segregation and the epic legal fight over interracial marriage. Its a specific cultural history of horrific organised violence and legislative support for oppressors.

Racism in the UK has a different, and in some ways more insidious, history. We've had racial violence and race-related murders, certainly, but nothing as organised or widespread as the lynchings. As bad as our far right has been and as repugnant as its organised members are there's been nothing as large or as active as the Ku Klux Klan. Segregation existed in parts of the British Empire but was never a legal principal in the UK itself. Interracial marriage has never been illegal here, though it has been subject to considerable social prejudices for centuries.

And that's our racial history in a nutshell: social prejudice. Skin colour, amongst other things like accent and religion, were used in the social construct of an imperial power to divide the world into us (the “rightful” rulers) and them (the ruled). I'm not kidding about accents, by the way, just look at any number of Empire-era films, TV and radio shows. You'll get your heroes speaking in a generic, received pronunciation accent, comedic but sympathetic supporting players speaking in regional British accents with foreign accents reserved for complete idiots and villains (sometimes both at the same time).

The long and the short of it is that British racism is usually a weird extension of class-ism. The thing is that someone's class can change based on their circumstances and so in some cases particular people are allowed out of the “them” category to become part of the “us”.

And here is where my personal experience comes in because I grew up in a time and a place where there was a lot of prejudice for groups (homosexuals and immigrants of East Asian descent in the main) but where huge exceptions were made to those prejudices for the ones your family knew. Your parents might be fine with that one gay man down the street but the rest of them? Perverts, probably paedophiles. The Indian guy who ran the corner shop? Good, honest working class guy but the others? Scroungers living off our taxes.

The sentiment there really was “Trust a few, fear the rest”, which confused me as a child and disgusts me as an adult and to see it reiterated in this poster is really shocking. Especially given that the film itself takes pains to demonstrate how justified Magneto's perspective is through the concentration camp scenes and in Senator Kelly's attempts to enact exactly the sort of identity registration that was the first step towards those camps.

The point I'm trying to make here? I don't know, probably that Bill Hicks was right and people who work in advertising and marketing just don't have souls, I guess.

Bad movies vs. almost good movies

You know something? I'm starting to think that a terrible movies are in some ways preferable to almost good ones just because when a film is an utterly misbegotten trainwreck that was never going to work it was at least not disappointing. I'm so tired of disappointing, of your Man Of Steels and your Amazing Spider-Mans.

Okay, examples, trainwreck first. M. Night Shayamalan's The Last Airbender was never going to be a good movie and I'm not even bashing Shayamalan here. He picked an unwinnable battle, there's no two ways about it. Any given criticism of the film as made, in retrospect, provokes little more reaction from me than “Well, duh.”.

I really mean that. I hate the film with a fiery passion but there are so few practical ways in which it could be improved given the restrictions of its production. The film is too short to cover the whole first season's plot, yes, but it was targeted at children so there were limits to how long it could be. The characters are anaemic compared to the TV versions but again we hit the runtime problem and the fact Avatar tended to slip character development as b-plots in larger stories. Its stupid that Earthbenders POWs find a quarry inescapable but the sea-platform from the show would have a huge expense in an already pricey movie. The “racebending” of Aang and the Fire Nation characters was dumb since Hollywood is hardly hurting for actors of Asian (especially Japanese) descent but some racebending was inevitable as there's just not a huge base of teenage Inuit actors to cast Sokka and Katara from.

I'm not saying this makes The Last Airbender better, it remains a bloody awful movie: its still too short; the characters are still pale imitations of the originals (Sokka especially), the quarry scene is idiotic and very easily read as racist; and whitewashing every character who wasn't a villain... how does someone even make a decision that idiotic?

Still, that it couldn't work is oddly comforting. I wasn't cheated out of a good Last Airbender film because no such film could exist, which brings us to the other side of the coin: the almost acceptable, the almost good. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: David Lynch's Dune.

Now, admittedly, this isn't a film that often gets called “almost good”. In general I've found opinions divide into two camps: you've either read Frank Herbert's Dune and think this movie misses every point going or you haven't read the original novel and find a 1980s sci-fi movie of varying levels of acceptable. I'm in camp number one, I love Herbert's work and I think Lynch took a great cast and a great design team and butchered the damn thing. Princess Irulan is reduced to a voiceover at the beginning, a walk on at the end and basically nothing else whilst in the book she's a fantastically important character and her eventual meeting with Paul should have so much more weight than it does.

But, my God, is the film beautiful. I think in terms of writing, the 2000 miniseries was a million miles ahead of Lynch but the theoretical perfect, Platonic Dune adaptation, in my opinion, is the 2000 writing team working for Lynch's designers.

The same actually goes for Man Of Steel, my recent favourite punching bag, which has absolutely fantastic visual design, great fight sequences and gorgeously shot set pieces. What it doesn't have is a screenplay that has any sense of who Superman is and what he's for; the tone is all over the place; Clark Kent has no discernible character arc which left me more invested in Jor-El and Guardian; David Goyer was having a Green Lantern day instead of a Blade II day when he wrote the dialogue; and the film seems to think its theme is interrogating our fear of outsiders but never gives anyone any reason to trust Clark. However, most every moment of physical direction is damn near perfect aside from that washed out colour palette DC films contracted during the Dark Knight trilogy and now seems incurable.

My perfect, Platonic Superman movie? Well, one that looks like that but has some damn sense of identity, to be perfectly honest.

Now, academically there's real value in looking at how these various pieces fail at their goals but from the point of view of an £11 ticket and an hour's walk to the cinema there's more to resent than with something I was dragged to thinking it couldn't work.

And, of course, with straight-up terrible sometimes history is kind and we get kitsch acts of insanity like Night of the Lepus, a horror movie about giant bunnies menacing the American mid-west. That's a film that could never, ever work to the point that I actually know people who dismissed seeing it as a fever dream or the consequence of accidental opiate exposure (well, they say “accidental”). Point is you can laugh at bad. Sure, with The Last Airbender my feelings were more akin to detached horror than amusement at what had been done to the source material but it wasn't the continuous cycle of becoming invested in the visuals and the action but being drawn out by the dialogue and narrative I felt with Man Of Steel. 

7th edition, 1st impressions

On Saturday my gaming group turned out to watch a little experiment: our first game of Warhammer 40,000 seventh edition. The players for our little drama were Matt's Lost And The Damned (Black Legion primary detachment, Imperial Guard allies) and Tom dusting off his Valhallan-themed Imperial Guard for their first outing since the second edition. I was on hand to hold the book, look up rules and read out the Tactical Objectives as they were rolled (which, being me, I rather enjoyed). Dave and Ian drank Irn Bru and ate pasties.

In most regards seventh edition is a warmed over version of sixth, which could be a very pertinent criticism if I was of a mood since it replaced sixth after only two years. I didn't play much sixth, only a few small scale test games in the store on release weekend, but I didn't hate it. I liked a lot of the improvements but I didn't feel it went far enough.

Now GW has obviously decided its time to go far enough.

Tactical Objectives are the big thing. In this game we used a scenario special rule (which I now cannot find) where the number of Tactical Objectives decreased each turn: six on turn one, five on turn two and so on. The D66 table is nicely varied with the first eighteen all being some variant on “Hold Objective X” and the other eighteen vary wildly from things like killing an enemy character, destroying a unit, destroying a building or even manifesting a psychic power. Its random, either the roll of a dice or picking a card, and a lot of people seem to hate that.

I don't. I love it. Best thing to happen to the game since I've been playing.

Random is good because random was what the game was missing. What Matt describes as “that 40k feeling” is the sense that the game is moving forward not because of your actions or your opponent's but because of pure mathematics. This is a side effect of the game having largely uniform movement rates, no arc of sight issues and the almost-universal possession of ranged attacks. Introducing random charge lengths was a good step but, as I said before, was not nearly enough.

This is enough. This is great. The Tactical Objectives system forced both our players to change their plan at short notice and the Victory Points score was 11-13 with Tom taking the win. At several points Tom, who grabbed some objective markers early on, was forced to choose between keeping a solid defence on those markers or making a risky dash for one of the other rolled objectives.

I really want to try this out which means getting back to working out exactly what Orks I have lying around.

In other notes vehicle damage is more forgiving, unless you have AP1 or 2 and score a penetrating hit the vehicle won't be outright destroyed so Hull Points work rather more as they were intended last edition.

I like the Look Out, Sir! rolls for characters and that the definition includes sergeants. This game saw Matt's Chaos Lord flinging Cultists in the way of lasbolts as he stamped towards Tom's Infantry Platoon. The Guard kept up a hail of frantic fire using the Front Rank, Fire! Back Rank, Fire! order which eventually brought down the Chaos Lord just as he was entering charge range.

Medals all round. Can't wait to try this out for myself.

Getting my chivalric hopes up again

“While I yet draw breath, the lands bequeathed unto me

Shall remain untainted by evil.

Be they foul orcs, giants or mountain drakes

My foes shall fear my armies and my blade alike.

It is my sacred oath to lead wars of errantry and crusade

And to honour the duties of the King.

My love of the Lady shall be as a beacon, inspiring and bright

Even when darkness spreads its wings o'er the land.

All this I shall uphold as I become one with Bretonnia

Lest I join with her in death alone.”

- The King's Vow

That was presented as the final part of a two-page history of Bretonnia's King Louen Leoncoeur by Phil Kelly's in his Codex: Apocrypha article in this week. Its a well-written piece but what strikes me is how much of it is new, or at least new to me. All or any of this could be background from the fifth edition or earlier given a modern spin but even if it is this is what I take from it:

Two pages of a very short magazine targeted at advertising Games Workshop products was spend on advertising Bretonnia, an army with a two editions old army book and massive gaps in its model range. I'm not saying next week or even next month is going to see a new Warhammer Armies: Bretonnia, if for no other reason than I don't think there'll be a standalone army book until after The End Times wraps but I do think this means something.

Now you could say that this snippet of background took no time or effort for GW to produce. You would also be wrong. They paid Phil Kelly his wages for whatever time it took to write and edit this piece, they spent money printing it and used up 5.8% of their magazine on it. Small effort is still effort and there are probably better things one of your lead game designers and background writers could be doing of an afternoon than banging out two pages of fluff for an army you haven't supported in a decade and don't even offer a full range of miniatures for anymore. Something like, oh, banging out two pages of background to remind people this range exists because there are plans.

I'm not usually one to accuse GW of being completely mercenary but I do accept that as a relatively small company in a niche, luxury industry most of their activities are based in savvy marketing. You see, unlike far too many hobbyists on the internet I understand that if I want GW to continue making products they have to make enough money to stay in business. It is baffling how many hobbyists don't understand the very, very simple economics of this equation.

Ugh...

But, anyway, between this article and the huge amount of ink The End Times: Nagash spend entirely upending Bretonnia's status quo right after the Wood Elves army book spent a huge amount of its timeline introducing a Bretonnian civil war. People will read this, they'll be interested, they'll go to the GW webstore and find...

… well, a tragically out of date army book, a complete lack of knightly characters to lead their armies and models for only five of the ten units in the tragically out of date army book. They'll see that and they'll ask: where my 8^th edition book at?

I can only hope. 

Thor be a lady (Thor #1)

First impression: I love the new logo. I also like the design of the new Thor's costume because it really is just a mildly feminised version of the gentleman Thor's recent clothes. She has a metal breastplate (no laughing at the back there!) and that's about it. Most surprisingly? The areas of bare skin on the lady Thor are the same areas that were bare skin on the male version. No cleavage, no bare legs, no thong, no swimsuit: just the same bare arms and lower face. Hell, this costume might actually be more practical because it does include solid body armour over the chest and neck and a buckler over her offhand. When was the last time you saw a female “version” of a male hero whose costumed offered better physical protection?

Hell of a lot better than this one, certainly...

As to what the new Thor is like as a character... your guess is as good as mine. She appears in the last two pages to pick up the hammer and we get a full-page reveal of that new costume I just enthused about for a whole paragraph. I've tried not to spoiler myself here because I wanted a surprise but on the evidence of the issue I don't know who she is (unless she's Freyja, which is sort of implied at one stage).

This isn't to say the issue didn't interest me. Male Thor in his fallen form is interesting and the mystery of why he suddenly isn't worthy hasn't been addressed yet except to say that Odin and the Warriors Three can't lift the hammer either. There's also a coming power struggle between the All-Mothers and the recently returned Odin as they issue conflicting orders to their subjects.

Hopefully issue two will tell us who this new Thor is, either in the sense of her literal identity or just some mission statement of “I believe this and its why I got this cool hammer”.

I do sort of hope its Freyja, though, especially after how Odin treated her as a subordinate in this issue. Gender swapping heroes like this is ultimately about lending extra weight (read: marketing power) to female characters in a traditionally male space. As much as recent retcons courtesy of Keiron Gillen claim sexuality isn't an issue amongst Asgardians we can't get around the fact that gender is otherwise Odin's treatment of Freyja and Sif's entire character arc make no sense. Given all that I can see the worth in Freyja turning her rejection, which I'll bet the rest of Asgard reinforces now the “true king” has returned, into a singleminded drive to prove her worthiness through the most direct route available: proving it to Odin using the only incontrovertible test divinely mandated by Odin. 

Oh, sanding bases, my old enemy

So today I built the eight Knights Errant I intend to finish by the end of the month and this thought occurred:

I don't think any Warhammer hobbyist likes every part of the hobby. Some, my friend Dan for instance, find painting the models time-consuming and boring. Another friend of mine dislikes building rank and file models, again because of the time-consuming aspect. Commenters on rumour sites hate every single aspect of the hobby but that's their own bizarre psychosis and I'm happy to leave them to it.

Me? Sanding bases. I hate that there's this stage that no matter where I put it gets in the way of me finishing the damn model. I tend to sand the bases before spraying them black (always black, I hate white undercoat) because waiting a day for the PVA to cure before painting them is slightly preferable to doing it after finishing the paint job because then they can gather dust that affects the varnish's finish.

Luckily, this is a small gripe compared to the other possibilities. I like building the models, especially if I can add some little touches of extra personality to them with my extensive collection of spare parts. I actually really, really enjoy painting models now that I've got the basic skills down.

I may not love painting so much after trying to finish a whole lance of Knights Errant to my preferred standard but we'll see where we are once its done. 

Forge World announces the Lost and the Damned

So Forge World have announced that they'll be bringing a new Imperial Armour book to Warhammerfest (aka Not Games Day 2014) and it'll be called War Machines Of The Lost And The Damned.

First off its nice to see Forge World doing something other than Horus Heresy for a change. Fair enough, its a cash cow and I don't blame them for milking it but there are more things in this damn hobby than yet another bloody set of variant Space Marine armour marks.

Second, given the nostalgia kick GW have been on recently with doing a unified Undead army and revisiting Storm Of Chaos I can hope that maybe we might see an old school Lost And The Damned army list in this one. The Siege of Vraks lists were nice but, given the nature of the books, very specific. I'd love to be able to take my old Lost And The Damned army out for a game. Well, I'd like an excuse to re-do the army since I am frankly ashamed of the laughable efforts I was willing to call a finished paint job when I was nineteen.

Don't get me wrong, the old LatD list swung wildly between unplayably bad and horrendously broken but there were some great ideas in there. In particular, I liked that you could take up to three Chaos Space Marine Aspiring Champions as an HQ choice and attach them individually to mortal units. Also, random units of Chaos Hounds and Spawn.

Mutants were hilarious in the shooting phase: up to thirty rapid firing weapons with the Gets Hot special rule. There were games where I blew up more of my own troops than my opponent. Heehee.

As I say, this is all nostalgic wishlisting but GW has recently started looking at some of the odd ideas they once considered unworkable and thought “That could be fun to bring back!”. 

Hobby goals for October 2014

Setting out a few “things to do” for my hobby table over the next month, just some general goals and whatnot. Summer's over so my overwhelming lizardlike lethargy is gone and I can knuckle down and get some stuff done.

Goal 1: Finish a complete unit from scratch

Your general getting back on the horse sort of project. Just finishing something, anything, is a real kick after you've been out of the hobby for a while. Not sure what it'll be, I'll pop into GW this afternoon and see what jumps out at me.

Goal 2: Play a game

Again, not something I've had a chance to do recently as our group's usual host has been busy moving house. He's all set-up now so hopefully we can get back to our campaign.

Goal 3: Work out how many Space Orks I own

My friend Dan is just getting back into the hobby but he wants to play 40k. I haven't played 40k in years (I think my last game was the week 6^th edition was released) but I did have an Ork army once upon a time that I'm pretty sure I never sold or gave away to anyone so I'm going to see if I can find enough models to have a decent game with. If nothing else the Unbound Army concept will help me if the results turn out to be... unusual.

Goal 4: Write a piece of short fiction

I like writing background and I have some new characters appearing in our campaign that I'd like to workshop a little. I mentioned them in the Bite Size Chunks post on Monday: a group of young journeyman wizards working for the Empire's intelligence service and I really need to work out who they are and how they operate because the group wants them involved in next year's campaign because they like the idea.