Hobby Goal: Advanced Carpentry

Well, I didn't get all the wood painted on my Sylvaneth arm but that's okay because for once I got distracted by something relevant:

(I had to over-expose the image a little because I was shooting at the last minute in less than ideal conditions).

Yes, when I was production lining the army I got fascinated by the Spite-Revenants and finished them. That's one seventh of the army actually finished, plus I have at least some paint on everything except the Treeman. I admit the paintjob is a little simpler than it could be but just for once this army isn't mean to be an all-singing, all-dancing production number. Still, I like some of the effects, especially the black-washed Stegadon Scale Green of the Spite's flesh.

On the design side, I love how the sculpters used a split in the body to create branches that twist through each other. Its an interesting use of It makes for a slightly frustrating building experience where you have to dry fit again and again to make sure everything is in exactly the right place but the effect is more than worth it.

Moving on, this week's hobby goal:

Hobby Goal #11

Work on the Dryads

I said I was swearing off the “finish X unit” goals because I never finish them but that's not what I'm doing here. Considering the size of the army and that I already have a finished unit, the rest of the goals for the month are going to be me taking a Sylvaneth unit and concentrating on it for the week. Doesn't matter if I finish them, just that I make some progress on the unit.

(Though if by some miracle I did finish the unit that would see the army more than two thirds of the way done, which would be sweet).

Completed Models (2017)

Chaos (Tzeentch): 1

Dwarfs: 5

Flesh Tearers: 6

Genestealer Cults: 5

Renegades & Heretics: 5

Sylvaneth: 5

TOTAL: 27

Learning to live with the Fastlane (result)

Right, its been a week and I figure anyone who wanted to see Fastlane either bought it on pay-per-view or has the WWE Network plus what I want to talk about is all over the internet so I feel safe writing this without a spoiler warning. Regardless, I want to go into the result of Goldberg/Owens so be aware.

Goldberg is Universal Champion and it is baffling. He won it in a main event match that officially ran for 22 seconds after some dicking about from Owens; in his current run with the company he has (according to Adam Blampied, whose job is to know these things) wrestled for exactly 108 seconds in singles matches and hit five moves.

He's fifty years old, which wouldn't necessarily be a problem if not for the fact that he's first “old guard” talent to win the Universal belt. Finn Balor was the inaugural champion, then he was injured and Owens picked it up thanks to interference from Triple H in a way that made it clear he was being anointed as the future of the company and H's new favourite now he and Seth Rollins are on the outs.

Unless they have one hell of a swerve coming, the only match for Goldberg at Wrestlemania that makes sense is Goldberg/Lesnar part three. Two part timers, one of whom is fifty and has yet to prove he can still put in a proper match and the other who just doesn't seem to care all that much about what he's doing anymore.

They're doing this when they could have had Kevin Owens facing Jericho in the main event and now that's going to be a non-title match. Its not even as if Jericho needed the heat from costing Owens the belt, the man has managed to get the audience invested in a scarf, a jacket covered in LED lights and a scarf, I feel certain he doesn't need help selling the fact he's pissed off with Owens.

And Owens... why take the title away from him now and like this? Owens is a fantastic talent who, if treated right, will be with the WWE for years to come. Goldberg is a fifty year old part timer who, let's face it, is pretty likely to drop the title at 'Mania and leave. I mean, it makes a kind of sense for Brock to win after two defeats, as much as him holding the Universal title thrills me even less than Goldberg having it.

Oh, and I'm just as baffled that they ended Charlotte's streak at Fastlane when they had the ref clearly see Sasha interfere in the match. They could have given Bailey a DQ victory and kept the streak intact for 'Mania.

Good grief, this was a weird show. 

Comic Reviews

This week: a lot of praising with faint damnation.

Inhumans vs. X-Men #6

Without wishing to spoil, this was a perfectly fitting end to this era of the X-Men: loud, action packed and dull. To call the final solution a literal plot device is to be generous. I mean, the whole “Endangered Species AGAIN” angle was never a winner and I'm all in favour of it ending but it really did boil down in the end to the characters flipping a switch to shut down a storyline that never worked.

There are a few consequences, of course, and the usual teases but at the end of the day I'm interested in seeing what happens with the X-Men next now they aren't shackled to the crappy status quo of the last couple of years and my interest in the Inhumans has not increased one iota.

Detective Comics #952

League of Shadows part two: The Five Fingers of Death

The core Bat-titles just don't disappoint these days. After last issue introduced Lady Shiva as the ultimate killing machine she always deserved to be, this issue we get to see her in action and get an answer to one of those “Is that thing I remember still canon?” questions that was just going to hover over the arc until it got addressed.

Most of the issue is fight scene, firstly polishing off last issue's cliffhanger and then moving into the big confrontation with Shiva. There's definitely a growing emphasis this arc on Orphan, which I for one wholeheartedly approve of. The more action Cass gets in this series the happier I am, especially now that Steph is off the board for the time being.

Christian Duce slots in to art duties this issue with a much more rounded and fluid style than the series has had up until now. I personally like it, it gives a lot of grace to Shiva's movements but I imagine the transition between styles in the collected edition is going to be downright painful to some.

Mother Panic #4

Broken Things part 1

Am I just being an old man about these Young Animals series?

Mother Panic is definitely my favourite of the Young Animals imprint, mostly because it gets to the point. Now, there are a lot of mysteries set up surrounding what happened to Violet Page as a child and how it affects her, both physically and emotionally, as an adult but the whole plot isn't drowning in obscurity. Take her headquarters: after the dreamlike introduction of the first arc we're presented with it now in more concrete terms. There's also Violet herself, who we get to see another side to as she's interviewed on a late night talk show, peeling back another couple of layers.

This series isn't just oddity for oddity's sake, which has seemed a bit of a problem for Doom Patrol and Shade The Changing Girl.

But is this just because its familiar? The art style and even the way the credits are arranged on the page have a very 1990s feel. Don't get me wrong, in every aspect of writing and production this is definitely superior to the comics I grew up with but I can't deny there's a certain comfort zone feeling to reading this series.

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #5

I love the different flavour this series brings to Marvel's version of Star Wars. Okay, its a continuation of what was going on in Gillen's Darth Vader series but now Aphra is completely cut off from important canon characters who have to develop a certain way there's a lot more scope to explore the dirty side of the universe. Plus, Rogue One has come out now so the idea of Aphra isn't a million miles removed from the sort of characters we saw there.

I admit, I'm not that fussed about her relationship with her dad. It might be the whole hook of this first arc but I'm more interested in seeing which way Aphra and her band of merry bastards will jump in any given situation, especially the droids. Just imagining Triple Zero's dialogue in C-3PO's voice is a perverse pleasure all its own.

Jessica Jones #6

Well, someone's getting good at structure again. This has been a well-paced six issue arc, a nice little mystery with a satisfying conclusion that hasn't tried my patience at all. Issue 1 was big on in medias res and laying out a bunch of different plots that pretty much all came together here for a big finale. There's a bunch of other stuff to tie up, not least the status of Jessica's marriage, but those plots haven't been left to fester, they've all seen positive growth on an issue by issue basis.

Maybe its because this series and this character are Bendis' own baby that he pulls out the stops for it and avoids the kind of roadblocking filler that sometimes makes his ongoings a chore to read but it absolutely works and I hope this runs a damn long time. 

GW: complex solutions to simple, unrelated problems

(This post deals with the rumoured conclusion of Games Workshop's Gathering Storm storyline and speculates on where that rumoured conclusion might lead. Whether the rumour is accurate or not I do not know but, please, treat this as spoilers and proceed accordingly).

A few days back, Lady Atia reported on her blog War Of Sigmar a short extract apparently from the conclusion of Gathering Storm III: Rise Of The Primarch:

“The Gathering Storm is over.

“We saw Cadia burn, a Craftworld shattered, and we followed Eldar and Saint into the nightmare. We saw a Primarch rise again, and we went to hell itself to reach Terra.

“The Gathering Storm is over.

“Old Night is once again upon us. the gods fight against each other and laugh. But we won't give up without a fight either. We will muster. A new Great Crusade must begin. For Terra, and for the Emperor!”

Okay, so this here's a rant that's been building for a long time.

See, a problem I think Games Workshop has is that it keeps addressing the wrong problems. They killed off my beloved Fantasy because it wasn't selling. Their solution was to destroy the world they'd spent decades building in order to create a new setting out of mangled Norse mythology that had golden Space Marines in it, retooling what units and ideas they could and discarding others including basically the entire continuity, almost every established character and every setting they'd ever created.

Why this was the first instinct to a sales problem in a game that had seen massive per unit price rises in an edition that simultaneously incentivized taking forty man or larger block units is anyone's guess.

And now they're blowing shit up again. They blew up Fenris, they blew up Cadia and by the looks of things the whole galaxy is about to get a bad case of warp storm. Also, as with Age Of Sigmar, it looks like there's going to be shift of emphasis away from the ordinary footslogging human level to the level of warring gods.

The problem with 40k, as so many people claim loudly on forums and comment threads, is that it does not advance. Now, I can understand the complaint and once you'd lived through a couple of editions the fact that every few years you buy yet another Codex for your favourite army for which you get incrementally higher production values, one or two new units, a slight points rebalancing and exactly the same background with a polishing rewrite does get a bit frustrating.

But has it occurred to anyone that maybe just blowing up whole settings is probably not a sustainable way to grow the story?

I mean, they've chopped Fenris and Cadia. So much of the unique character of the Space Wolves comes from living on that ice-covered, pre-feudal hellhole. Similarly, Cadians are the go to, bog standard Guardsmen in their fiction and now they're a finite resource in the universe.

Cadia and Fenris are both planets with unique characters within the universe, with aspects many writers have used to craft brilliant stories. Blowing them up was good for a moment of shock value, even if going for the same shock value twice is a pretty dumb mistake professional writers should know better than, but it doesn't subsequently offer anything new for the Space Wolves or the Cadian Shock Troops to do. It turns the Space Wolves into yet another chapter who lost their homeworld except that most chapters with that background usually didn't have such a strong and developed investment in their origins as the Space Wolves do (everything from their psyker training to the board games they play are established to have a strong connection to Fenris). Meanwhile, every Cadian regiment in the galaxy is just the Tanith First & Only without the Scottish nationalism and we've already had thirteen novels and a short story collection featuring those guys (and please, please release The Warmaster soon, Black Library), nevermind the fact that a couple decades further down the timeline they'll just all be dead or charging out of the trenches on their grav-zimmers.

This isn't plot progression, this is empty spectacle seemingly building to the creation of a Horus Heresy-esque status quo with a new Old Night and a new Great Crusade.

Well, okay, but there are warp storms everywhere already and its not like the Imperium is short on crusades left, right and centre. Mainly right, ultra far right (fascism joke). Its not actually much of a change and how screwing over the Cadians and Space Wolves (the latter, at least being a really, really popular faction) was useful in setting it up is questionable at best.

Its just massive overcompensation. Instead of actually taking a look at the dozens and dozens of potential plot hooks they've been dangling for the end of the 41^st millennium in their Codex timelines and using those to drive the plot forward one army at a time they just decide to make a big noise blowing up perfectly useful planets for show and trying to make the setting more like The Horus Heresy because that system is massively popular with high-spending players.

Oh, well, its not as if I paid much attention when they destroyed the Warhammer World, is it?

International Women's Day: Be Bold For Change

Today is International Women's Day, an event that is probably more necessary now than at any other point in my lifetime.

(Oh, and just to forestall the usual bullshit: there is an International Men's Day, it is on November 19^th every single year and if you cared about serious discussion of issues peculiar to men instead of using the idea as a gotcha at the mean feminists, perhaps you'd have taken the five seconds necessary to Google it and not need me to tell you).

I mean, where to start? Pay disparity is a hardy perennial, of course, and the theme for last year's IWD Pledge For Parity campaign; the Global Gag Rule was reinstated, putting the lives of potentially tens of thousands of women at risk; last year's US election will be keeping Gender Studies academics in textbook material for decades; and, for reasons beyond sane comprehension, the revelation that Emma Watson has breasts and can still call herself a feminist has shocked the civilised world.

I was raised by women. My dad was around but he had to travel a lot for work: he was an engineer, it was the aftermath of Thatcher's Recession and the only job he could get meant a massive car journey to the next county over so the raising of me, the actual teaching of me to be a person, mainly fell to my mother and two grandmothers. I love my dad and we get on great now but the simple fact is that a lot of who I am came from those women.

Both of my grandmothers have passed on but I think about them a lot: one solid and practical, the other rather more flighty and jovial. I couldn't begin to list the lessons they taught me, the ways they helped me become the person I am.

So there's a reason I take women's issues seriously. I've known a lot of men who don't and I've often wondered what their lives must have been like to be like to think like that. Yes, these are usually the sort of men I shouted at in that parenthetical who think its unfair for women to have a day and not men even though it isn't and we do.

Fuckers, is the technical term, or misogynists if you're being polite, which I very rarely feel the need for these days (thank the paternal grandmother for that one, my mother's mother was very much the one for proper manners in all situations).

This year's IWD campaign is simply about being bold, about providing the leadership you can in the space you occupy. Whether the person doing it is in a position of power or getting involved in some project at the local level, its an act of rebellion and empowerment to create whatever change you can on whatever scale you can.

Because we just saw the largest co-ordinated protest march in history by women on every continent over a single issue. Feminism, like every liberal philosophy and movement, has some tough years ahead and I know, as a white man, I am speaking from a position of enormous privilege and being mildly queer doesn't take that away. We literally live in a world where even admitting on tape to sexual assault doesn't stop a man being elected President of the United States. I can't imagine a world where Donald Trump could have said that shit about grabbing my genitals and it be okay.

And that's why today is necessary, possibly more necessary than its been in a long time, but to quote the immortal words of Norman Stanley Fletcher: “Don't let the bastards grind you down.” 

Completed Model: Chaos Sorcerer Lord

Yes, I've decided to keep score. It feels good, its content and it appeals to a deep part of me that likes making lists. Going through my hobby posts from the last two months tells me that this is the twenty-second model I've completed this year and that's a nice feeling, so anyway...

Angrelthir, Lord Herald of the Last Banetower

The first finished model for my Tzeentch Chaos army: the plastic Sorcerer Lord. I wanted to try a few things with this model, some of them worked, some of them didn't.

The flesh method worked. Its a base of Rakarth Flesh shaded with Carroburg Crimson and drybrushed Changeling Pink. Its not a method I think I'll use on the other “human” units and characters but it might bear keeping in mind for when I start painting up Tzaangor (the blue flesh GW uses on their exemplar models would look too much like the blue cloth I'm going to use to tie the human units together).

I painted the base in a method I saw on a WarhammerTV painting tutorial (for the Balefire Realmgate, incidentally). I like how the stone came out with a Karak Stone drybrush and now I have a new way of doing “mountain” bases for my Dwarf units. Also, it turns out that Steel Legion Drab comes out pretty well on a Mechanicus Standard Grey base which was a surprising solution to a problem I've been having since I started doing base rims in Steel Legion: it doesn't cover over black or brown very well.

Always nice when you solve a problem by accident.

The bright silver armour, however, just doesn't work. It isn't terrible here, the gold breaks up the brightness, but I imagine if I painted the Warriors' armour like this outlined by a Thousand Sons Blue cape it will lack contrast. Right now I'm thinking Kantor Blue armour, as I've used for the shoulder guards and such on the Kairic Acolytes, but we'll see how I feel when I get there.

Models Completed (2017)

Chaos (Tzeentch): 1

Dwarfs: 5

Flesh Tearers: 6

Genestealer Cults: 5

Renegades & Heretics: 5

TOTAL: 22

Why Logan works and Batman v. Superman didn't

(NO SPOILERS HERE. I'll probably put up a review at the end of the week but this is just a short, general terms discussion of things that are absolutely clear from the trailers and advertising).

Logan is a good film. Actually, its a bloody excellent film but the problem is that what makes it work is basically impossible to copy. Its not the 18 rating (in the US, over here it passed as a 15), though it certainly helps that Wolverine can finally use his claws on people as well as props.

No, what makes this film work is that Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have been playing these characters for nearly twenty years. Watching these two living in a Mexican shack as broken old men has an emotional resonance that just telling Ben Affleck not to shave and trying to pass him off as an older Batman couldn't hope to.

This is actually a pretty big problem for DC: they keep trying to deconstruct things they never properly constructed in the first place. They tried to do the big blow out fight between Batman and Superman with a Batman we've never met before and a Superman we barely know; they've commissioned a Nightwing movie without doing any work on the idea of what Robin is so we can't appreciate what it is in this world for Dick to have moved on from the role; we were expected to care about Wonder Woman over a year before we got her origin story.

Not that I think DC are the only ones scheming away trying to work out how to make their own Logan. You can bet your arse that some misguided soul at Sony is trying to wrestle Spider-Man: Reign into a pitch document, an idea that might just have worked if Tobey Maguire was still in the role but there's not enough make-up on Earth to turn Tom Holland into Old Man Peter Parker so we'd end up with yet another live action Spider-Man.

So let's... not, okay? Let's allow a unique film based on unique circumstances no one could have planned to remain the singular little gem it is and move on to good ideas.

Please?

Hobby Goal: Woodworking

This week I'm going to try to get the big production line stages finished on the Sylvaneth Wargrove. What I'll be aiming to finish are the largest block areas of colour common between most or all of the models in roughly this order:

1) The light interior wood, basically the joints and moving parts of the Treelord and Kurnoth Hunters using Rakarth Flesh, a Seraphim Sepia wash and an Ushabti Bone drybrush.

2) The hard exterior wood on all the models using Dryad Bark with a drybrush of the new Sylvaneth Bark dry compound where necessary. The Dryads will be based entirely like this, incidentally.

3) The remaining wood elements, such as weapon hafts and branches, in Mournfang Brown, washed Agrax Earthshade and tidied with another layer of Mournfang.

They're simple methods and all ones I've used for wood in the past so there's no trial and error here, just reliable methods I can be confident in. I might not get as far as finishing all the Mournfang wood but I feel confident I can at least get pretty far into the Dryad Bark stage. 

Sylvaneth Month #1: The Village Green Preservation Society

Assembled and undercoated, this is my 1,000 points Matched Play list: a Branchwraith (my general), 20 Dryads (as one or two units, I'm not sure), 5 Tree-Revenants, 3 Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Scythes, 5 Spite-Revenants and a Treelord. That's just shy of a thousand points.

I have to admit, the fact that a complete mid-size army weighs in at thirty-five models feels reassuringly achievable. Anyone I play will gladly tell you that I like my hordes of disposable minions and that I can turn any army into a horde army but when you're starting virtually from scratch a low model count is a blessing. Given my record with such things I'm not going to say anything to tempt fate like “Oh, I can probably get this done by the end of the month” but I should have something vaguely presentable in a couple of weeks, especially given that there are enough common colours I can probably production line a lot of the army.

Its not particularly optimised, as far as I can tell, its just based on what I had to hand and what I had a yen to paint. I absolutely wanted some of both Revenant units and the moment I saw the scythes I knew that was what my Hunters would be armed with.

I also had a little money left in my “Getting Started” budget so I also picked up my favourite AoS miniature: the Fyreslayers Auric Runemaster which did take me slightly over budget but I really like the model. That and I found a cheap copy of the Legends Of The Age Of Sigmar omnibus in the Oxfam Shop so that's my research material dealt with.

Hopefully I'll have some painting progress to report soon. 

Weekly Comic Reviews

This week Amerikate gets one step closer to canon, Bane develops the depth people always accused him of, a giant red Tyrannosaurus Rex loses on coolness points to a bowtie, my monstrous case of event fatigue worsens, and Nightwing proves why he really deserves that movie DC are going to royally fuck up.

America #1

Pa' Fuera, Pa' La Calle

I am not too clear on what's going on here, I suspect I missed a short story or something along the way because this just feels like something that had set-up somewhere else. Either that or wasting over a third of the issue on an Ultimates mini-adventure was a huge pacing mistake.

Anyway, the idea here is that America Chavez is going to university. Mad as balls sci-fi university with a holographic teacher and a Department of Radical Women & Intergalactic Indigenous Peoples. Also, Prodigy turns up, probably the last Young Avenger I expected to turn up anywhere let alone here, if I'm honest. The first Young Avenger I expected to turn up, Kate Bishop, dutifully does and if the creative teams aren't planning a crossover between their two titles somewhere down the line they're insane, these two are the best besties Marvel has right now.

Definitely a promising beginning but I hope we get to see a lot more of America on her own adventures and a lot less of her as leader of the Ultimates. I also hope there's more to Gabby Rivera's plans for Lisa the paramedic than we see in this issue. I'm an old romantic at heart, sue me.

Batman #18

I Am Bane part three

Good grief, but I love the core Bat-titles right now. Tom King has an excellent sense of structure, he knows better than so many other authors working right now how to structure a single issue as not just an actual chapter but as a singular experience. Not to mention that I really have to give kudos to David Finch and Danny Miki, who absolutely kill on the pages that present us with parallel takes on the origins of Bane and Batman.

As this storyline has built we've been given what so many Batman/Bane stories have lacked: a real sense of the two titanic wills that clash when these two men face each other. After all these years I'm finally starting to see what people like about Bane as a villain (as opposed to an anti-hero, which Gail Simone convinced me of years ago in Secret Six).

And, of course, King's take on Catwoman continues to impress and I really hope she gets her own series again sometime soon.

Unstoppable Wasp #3

In a series of strong, memorable characters designs, Nadia's latest girl genius recruit Lashayla is perhaps the strongest yet. Black lady Eleventh Doctor might not sound like much of a pitch but the end result is fantastic and her interest in teleportation as a science has a wonderful little origin. Also, for a moment it seems the writing is building her dad up to be an absolute ogre and then the whole thing gets turned on its head.

Jarvis continues to work well as Nadia's straight man and we finally get an appearance by Nadia's sort-of stepmother Janet “Your Mama's Wasp” Van Dyne, who has been conspicuously absent from the series given how important she was to Nadia's introduction in All-New All-Different Avengers. There are more recruitments and attempted recruitments, a bit of Devil Dinosaur, Nadia's reunion with what I will continue to refer to as her ex-girlfriend until canon tells me otherwise (and probably not even then), and the return of a villain I honestly thought I'd imagined because no one else remembered her.

Not that the issue is without disappointment. I did not expect to be saying this, even after enjoying their dynamic so much last issue, but I wish Nadia and Moon Girl's meeting was more than a bookselling crossover. Who knows, maybe somewhere down the line they'll team up again. Still, the book's supporting cast is rounding out nicely with original creations who have strong enough character designs that they shouldn't fall into the mire of “Which one were you again?” that a lot of large civilian casts in superhero comics tend to fall into after a while.

Totally Awesome Hulk #1.MU

Its a bad sign when I'm three issues behind on an event series and the tie-ins are still providing me with perfectly functional entertainment. I may be looking a gift horse in the mouth here but that's not how its meant to work. I've read literally only the first issue of Monsters Unleashed, feel little pull to catch up on the series itself and yet the random #1.MU one-shots are more than enough for me. I liked the All-New X-Men, Avengers and All-New Wolverine ones and the Champions issue is quite high on the to do list even if I missed it on release week so I'm not reviewing it here.

Hell, this issue alone gives me something to rant about because Ty Templeton, artist on the main feature, uses a change in art style the way a change in art style is meant to be used: to serve the bloody story. Okay, most times when art changes its because of an emergency situation but sometimes its intentional and if it were handled this well even half the time it would be a lot less intrusive. The art style changes at a specific point to make a specific point.

There's also a Maddy Cho and Lady Hellbender back-up story that's a good little character study even if the pay-off leans more towards “please read the main series, James” than seems rational at this point. All in all, I think I'll probably remember this event for the fun done-in-one issues like this taking characters I love and setting them up against Kaiju and classic comic monsters rather than... whatever is actually going on in the main series that I'll maybe get around to at some point.

Also, is South Korean hero White Fox a new character or something dug up from the Marvel vaults? I like her design even if her character doesn't deviate much from the standard template super spy. Well, I just read the triumphant comeback of Lady Hellbender, maybe White Fox will turn up again some day.

Nightwing #16

Nightwing Must Die part one

Funny how nostalgia works. On the one hand, the days of Grant Morrison writing Dick and Damian as Batman and Robin in their flying Batmobile don't feel that long ago. Then again those days were a decade and three massive line-wide shake-ups ago. I might as well admit to myself that “DickBats”, as those days are affectionately known, are long enough ago that DC can get away with doing a reunion story that trades on nostalgia for that run right down to a cameo by the flying Batmobile.

And damn me if this issue isn't an absolute manifesto for the movie DC could (and, inevitably, won't) make out of this property. We see Dick having fun as Nightwing, beating down on some z-list armour car robbers and not only loving every minute but acknowledging that he's loving every minute. The central dramatic tensions of the issue comes from his relationship with his ex-supervillain girlfriend and from Damian's insecurities about which of them will carry on the Batman legacy some day.

Hell, there's even a nod to Dick's past relationship with Starfire, a couple of lines that could have been a whole story in and of itself, a story I would have loved to read.

And in an insane coincidence, it seems that this series might even be about to show the world how to do the terrible, grimdark 90s villain I was afraid would come along to spoil the movie. Funny how these things turn out. 

A silly Pokemon roleplay idea

Yes, get in the fucking bag, Nebby!

(Spoilers for Pokemon Sun ahead, serious end of plot spoilers)

What if Lillie became a trainer down the line? What if she moved to Kanto with her convalescent (and quite probably necessarily amnesiac) mother?

Maybe that would make a cool roleplay run idea: to replay the series from Kanto to Kalos as Lillie on her own Pokemon journey. You'd have to use the Gen 1 remakes since the originals don't feature a female player character but upgrading to colour sprites can hardly be termed a hardship, unless you're my co-worker Dan who swears Pokemon Yellow is the best in the series and still totally holds up.

Still, whether as Lillie or a character of my own creation, the idea of playing the games in order appeals to me. I played the original game when it came out but after that I jumped all around the series after intervals of years. In fact, I've never played the Gen 2 and 5 games. I also have a naughty copy of the fan game Pokemon Uranium on my laptop just waiting for me to give it a try (another recommendation from Dan the Pokemaniac).

Just spitballing ideas here, really. I mean, aside from Gen 5 I do have all the games lying around and the only ones I've ever completed were Red and X. Might be interesting to create a character, Ash style, who would travel the different regions on a quest to become the best there ever was.

Maybe even have a rule (again, just an idea and rather based on the anime's approach) to never have the same Pokemon on your team in two different regions. I don't see this trainer having their own version of Pikachu, if only for the fact that other the internet informs me the only Pokemon to appear in every game are Zubat, Golduck, Magnemite and their evolutions. Pikachu, to my surprise, actually skips Gen 5.

If nothing else, completing X and getting as far as I have in Sun has made me appreciate that these games have pretty decent plots and I'd rather like to explore the evolution of the series the way more dedicated fans than me have: in order, from the start, with progressively cuter starters and progressively more insane final forms. 

March is Sylvaneth Month!

Okay, so Dwarf Month was a wash. I went in with no plan and made little actual progress. This month, though, I have both a plan and an aim in mind.

"Why can't they just buy me a bloody rake?"

After a lot of consideration I've decided that the best way to ease myself back into social gaming is to kludge together an Age Of Sigmar army out of existing models. The simplicity of the system was never a selling point to me before but now it might actually serve a purpose. I love classic Fantasy and they'll tear my 8^th edition rulebook from my cold dead hands but the sort of long, complex game I can enjoy with my closest friends is perhaps a bit long and involved for playing against near strangers in a store environment.

And I just can't be doing with the convoluted mess that is 40k. Not yet, anyway. Once I'm in the groove and confident the Flesh Tearers will have their day but, for the moment, I feel like a soft learning curve.

Now, I have a couple of Fantasy armies that have Battletomes (I want to avoid the “get you by” battlescrolls and their silliness) but ultimately only two AoS factions really attract me: Sylvaneth and Fyreslayers. Of course, I have no Fyreslayers models but I do have a Wood Elves army.

So, step one: what do I have available to me and what is it worth in Matched Play terms?

I have twenty Dryads (240pts and one of my compulsory Battleline units), a Treeman (a 260pts Treelord in the new money) and a plastic Branchwych (100pts) I bought but never got around to building. That's 600 points right off the bat, no purchase necessary.

Next steps are to dig out those models and work out what I need to make a 1,000 points Matched Play list. Also, to have a quick examine of the army rules and background just to give myself a grounding in what these models do and what they're meant to be in the new continuity.

Revenge of the Return of the Phone Scam

I am the last person to be mean to someone when they're doing their job. I know that sometimes at work you have to say no to people, you have to give them bad news, you have to be less than co-operative because of company policy and so on. I understand these things because I've had to work under those conditions and I know that the last thing you need when your hands are tied is some dick who yelling at you because they think that's how to get you to risk your job to get them what they want.

So I make an effort to understand when people's hands are tied, that sometimes doing a job means doing things you might not want to.

Then there are cold calling scams. Thanks to the wonderful resource that is who-called-me.co.uk I can generally know with some certainty whether an unknown number is a scam or not and so I take out my many frustrations on them.

I started off small time just asking questions they couldn't answer like when the accident I never had was, what the registration number of the car I don't own is, what bank or phone company they're representing and waiting for them to give up.

Then I got a bit bored with reason and started having fun. Once I had confirmation a number was a scam I'd answer pretending to be the police, pretending to be a hairdresser, answer entirely in German swear words (which include “Kevin”, for some reason).

Yesterday, I just gave up. I cued up a Youtube video of screaming and just put my phone next to the speaker. According to my phone, the cold caller listened to thirty-eight seconds of screaming before hanging up.

You might call this petty and it is but I don't get to be cruel to the deserving that often. 

Hey, President Trump, you need a safe space?

Donald Jodocus Trump, sensitive little snowflake that he is, will be skipping this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Apparently the last time a sitting president did this was Ronald Reagan, who had the convenient excuse of having just been shot which Trump, of course, has not.

Take a moment to manage your disappointment and we'll continue.

This follows Politico reporting that Trump campaign aides had to make sure he received a constant stream of media praising him to stop him taking to Twitter and lashing out. This follows the New York Times, CNN, BuzzFeed, Politico and the BBC being locked out of a White House press gaggle. This follows Trump going through with his plan to continue holding rallies like some two-bit dictator that, hilariously, drew about a third of the crowd he managed at the same location six months earlier.

There is one thing I will say in his defence, though, or perhaps in defence of his speech writers: what could he say in his keynote speech? The speech is, traditionally, a chance for the president to send themselves up but where would Trump even start?

He's employing Nazis; he's cost the US taxpayer almost as much through his weekends off as Obama cost on holidays in a year; he's fed a deal of that money into his Mar-A-Lago resort which he calls “The Winter White House”; he signed an executive order that threw the entire immigration and customs system into chaos; he didn't consult with any of the agencies that would have to enforce that EO before signing it into law, hence the chaos; he's stripped trans kids of legal protections; he outed the officer who carries the nuclear codes by letting someone take a selfie with the guy; he carried out a sensitive phone conversation with North Korea in a restaurant; he keeps being caught on camera seemingly forgetting the presence of his wife; he's been indicted in the past for fraud, rape and paedophilia; he praised Frederick Douglass as if he were still alive; managed to release a statement on Holocaust Memorial Day that didn't mention the Jewish people; he keeps banging on about how big the crowds were for his inauguration including in a speech at the CIA's memorial to dead agents; there's the possibility that he has a sex tape sitting in a draw in the Kremlin; he's in a Twitter war with Saturday Night Live; he's also at war with his own intelligence agencies; he threatened a court saying he'd see them in court right after they beat him in court; he doesn't know the difference between national debt and deficit; he doesn't know the difference between refugees and illegal immigrants; he managed a record low approval rating; NASA and national parks staff have gone rogue on Twitter in protest at his policies; Teen Vogue and the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary troll him constantly; his plan to deal with ISIS in the first thirty days of his administration magically failed to appear; his VP believes you can torture people until they're heterosexual; he lifted the main slogan of his inauguration speech from 1930s isolationists and Nazi-appeasers; “cheeto-faced shitgibbon” has almost become his official nickname at this point, even being used by Senator Daylin Leach at one point; he invented a terrorist attack in Sweden to the astonishment of Swedes everywhere; oh, and let's not forget the Bowling Green Massacre now we mention that one; he has several times questioned the right of judges to interpret the law; once jokingly suggested the assassination of Hilary Clinton to protect the Second Amendment; there were co-ordinated protest marches against him on every continent including the penguin one, the largest protest in history, by the way; he persists in stating that millions of ballots were cast for Clinton illegally because undermining faith in democracy is always fun; he still wants to build a wall that, last I checked, was estimated to cost $25 billion with no clear way of paying for it and certainly no way of making Mexico do it; his press secretary keeps tweeting the White House wi-fi password; he threatened a chain store for dropping his daughter's jewellery line; oh, and once again, he employs literal Nazis.

That list of five hundred plus words just off the top of my head and only resorting to Google to fact check details. This man is beyond satire at this point, let alone self-satire. 

Hobby Goal: Social Gaming

I want to get back into social gaming. At the moment I have a small circle of friends I play Fantasy against and I love them but we don't have a chance to play as often as I'd like. Plus, going to a gaming club will be good for the whole meeting new people thing.

So, my goal for the week is to examine my options, not just in terms of where to game (local GW or local club?) but what game to break myself in with.

Fantasy is my favourite game and absolutely the one I'm most confident playing but who knows how receptive any club will be to playing an “OldHammer” edition?

Then there's 40k, which frankly terrifies me. In spite of years and years of everyone telling me its the easier system to learn I just can't wrap my head around the pages and pages of special rules and exceptions and fifty seven varieties of power weapon... too much damn rules flicking. Plus, I don't really have a functional army though it wouldn't take me long to get something up and running in the Flesh Tearers line. Still, the complexity of the ruleset (I really, really do find Fantasy easier, I'm not kidding) puts me off using it get back into social gaming.

Third option, of course, is to bootstrap one of my existing Fantasy armies into an AoS-compatible state. One of the big selling points people keep pitching to me is the simplicity of the ruleset which might be a good thing considering I'm doing this mainly to meet people. If I go that route my only real thought is that I'd much prefer to play one of the factions with a Battletome as I don't want to stumble into one of those horribly embarrassing rules the “get you by” battle scrolls tended towards like comparing moustaches, pretending to converse with your models, miming riding a horse and so on.

Yeah, of the many ways in which that wasn't one of Games Workshop's finest hours that was... one of them.

That proviso doesn't limit too much as I could probably kludge together something useable for Clan Pestilens, Flesh-Eater Courts, Bonesplitterz or Sylvaneth with the minimum of fuss or additional outlay in models if I go that route.

On a more practical note for the coming week, I have to admit that even after declaring February “Dwarf Month” I haven't made overmuch progress on that front. Still, I've nearly got the Rangers done and I have my small horde of Ironbreakers and Irondrakes sat to one side of my table waiting to go through the mass production process (and, in the case of the Irondrakes, a rather nice bronze method a friend showed me). So whatever progress I can make on that front is welcome until I find a new theme for March on Wednesday. 

A Nightwing movie, eh?

The big news is that Lego Batman director Chris McKay has been brought on board to direct this thing. That's a good sign, that fact they've picked a man who just had a big hit with a Batman-themed comedy to help a DCEU Batman spin-off gives me hope that we might get a film about Nightwing and not Batman-lite.

Because the thing about Nightwing is, despite the dark and brooding costume, that he's fun Batman. He's driven by his parents' deaths just as Batman is but he's actually managed to process his trauma and build a life outside the war on crime. Yes, some of that life is decidedly unconventional like the fact his best friends are a team composed of the other first generation kid sidekicks but... actually, that's not a bad place to start.

There's a fantastic issue of Nightwing where he's moving into a new apartment (in Peter J. Tomasi's run, I think) and the other Titans are just there helping him move. The Justice League don't do that sort of thing for each other. When the League meet up out of costume its either business or a really important event meant to promote bonding but the Titans just meet up to hang out randomly.

So, yeah, Nightwing is the Batman who has fun with his life: he hands out with his friends who are all superheroes, he leaps of tall buildings and survives instead of falling and dying like any normal person would, he grew up driving the Batmobile! That's fun!

Unfortunately, a large segment of fandom who have an outsized influence on the way DC thinks about their adaptations. There are a lot of people who are wrong and think Dick Grayson is too silly a character, that the whole Robin legacy is a terrible perversion of the Batman concept and must be expunged. Its a contingent of fandom that got a lot of unfortunate traction out of the whole mess that was the Batman and Robin movie.

So I'm kind of worried that instead of the fun-loving and emotionally healthy character I just spent a couple paragraphs describing what we'll get will be closer to this... 

Weekly Comic Reviews

Detective Comics #951

League of Shadows part one: Unleashed

Lady Shiva is definitely the main event here. I've always associated her more with Tim and Cass, her being something of a coming of age test for the first and the supposed mother of the other (did they ever resolve that?) and its nice to see her used as the merciless badass I always thought she could be. The last I remember her turning up, Tim beat her using food poisoning which is a fantastic Tim move but doesn't do much for Shiva's credibility. Poor booking, frankly.

What is good booking is bringing back one of Tim's big villains because it gives me hope that he'll be coming back to the main action sometime soon. Tim is “my” Robin and Tim/Steph is one of the only ships in existence I have any sort of strong feelings about.

Also, as the situation in this issue spirals out of control you can just see the Tim-shaped hole in the team. No one is made to look incompetent or sloppy but you can see the lack of a multi-track mind as the League makes its moves and the team falls straight into the trap.

There's also a lovely moment of Batwoman wondering how much social contact Cass is getting now Steph is off the team. One of the things I like about this series is that it takes seriously the psychological problems of the Bats. I've always hated the stasis that DC insists on for the Gotham characters' trauma and its nice to see someone addressing it.

Infamous Iron Man #5

No, Victor, your mum!

No, but serious, though, this issue is all about Victor Von Doom's relationship with his mother. Its something that's underpinned his character for donkey's years. Last issue I rather assumed she'd been brought back to life in some Fantastic Four story I missed (I've always been rather patchy in following that series) but it turns out this was a big, massive revelation that went over my head!

This is the problem of coming back from the dead being a genre trope.

In typical Bendis fashion the confrontation between Doom and Momma Doom is related through two separate conversations about it: one between Ben Grimm and Maria Hill and the other between Doom and his love interest Doctor Perera.

It feel really weird writing “Doom and his love interest”. If nothing else it shows this series has novelty going for it. Okay, and being one of Bendis' better paced series of recent years as, in spite of being mostly people talking about people talking, this was actually a pretty satisfying single issue.

Spider-Gwen #17

Sitting in a Tree part 4

Is it just me or Spider-Gwen a title made out of pure joy? I mean, crossing over with Bendis' Spider-Man is rather slowing the pace of things but Jason Latour really crams in the fun. You've got Miles and Gwen meeting Ms. Marvel, who is a little matchmaker and it is so sweet! I don't think I really need to recommend this issue beyond that, frankly.

Justice League of America #1

The Extremists part one

I've never really connected with the New 52 version of the Justice League but this team, with its mission statement of being a more human and inspiring League rather than gods swooping in to the rescue, certainly appeals to me. With the Rebirth one-shot and its prequels doing the heavy lifting on establishing the characters, this first issue hits the ground running with a bunch of vignettes showing Batman's League working solo in pairs before an interdimensional invasion kicks off.

I have to admit, as silly and dated as his “coded” alien swearing is, I am rather glad to have the old Lobo back. He's over the top and silly but he's part of my childhood and I am rather fond of the main man. I'm also interested in Killer Frost, who is a character I don't know much about. In fact, I'm mainly aware of her because of the version in the Flash TV show who is so very different from this one it barely makes sense to think of them as the same character.

There are plenty of interesting conflicts and alliances between characters like Ryan Choi and Killer Frost both being scientists, Black Canary's clear mentoring role for newbie The Ray and so on but the one that interests me the most is that Vixen will absolutely be taking none of Batman's shit. As she says at one point, there's never been a Justice League Batman didn't end up fighting so I'm hoping that at some point she and Bruce come into conflict and she ends up leading the League.

Just a theory.

My resistance to Netflix is at an end

Its time to bow to the inevitable: there is too much stuff on Netflix I want to watch. They've got that Voltron reboot by the Legend Of Korra folks; Stranger Things; Orange Is The New Black; and, it takes them forever to put their Marvel series out on DVD. The thing that finally broke me, though?

Yes, the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 revival is coming to Netflix in April. A decades later revival of a low budget comedy mocking even lower budget movies is what has inspired me to join the digital revolution and sign up for a streaming service.

That's just so me, isn't it?

(Maybe they'll finally do Night Of The Lepus this time round. Seriously, look it up, there are couple of uploads of the full movie on Youtube. Its a horror movie about giant rabbits featuring DeForest Kelley, it is both terrible and brilliant and by repute the original MST3K always had it on the docket but never got around to it. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.)

I'm also looking forward to seeing what the new cast are like, mainly because I don't know their work very well. I know Patton Oswalt (playing the gloriously named TV's Son Of TV's Frank) from Agents Of S.H.I.EL.D. but new captive Jonah Ray is a complete mystery to me. Hell, I may be the only passingly heterosexual man on the internet not familiar with Felicia Day's work outside of that Buffy character she played for a few episodes.

(Although, looking at her IMDB I have discovered there's a Chew animated series coming out next year where she's voicing Amelia Mintz. Something else to look forward to...)

So, classic format, new cast, new terrible movies and this Voltron thing to tide me over until they arrive. Fun times. 

The Lure of the Familiar (and Easy To Paint)

I'm enjoying painting my Kairic Acolytes and I look forward to diving into the Lord Of Change but I do feel the need for something more familiar. New models have a lot to recommend them: they're novel and interesting by default, its enormous fun to experiment with colour schemes and techniques, and there's the promise at the end of it of adding a new dynamic to your army.

Problem is that all that discovery and experimentation is a bit time-consuming. You're constantly finding little details you didn't notice before and sometimes the colour scheme doesn't work out and you have to go back to the drawing board. Fun, definitely, but after a while I know I get an urge to paint something simpler and more familiar.

Hence, me picking up some Chaos Warriors. Not only are they among my favourite kits of all time they're also very user-friendly in terms of painting. Plus, I definitely want at least one unit of them in the Tzeentch army so its also a functional purchase. I'll be building them basically straight out of the box aside from slapping a resin Tzeentchian banner on the standard bearer and, if I can find it, a head from the Chaos Marine upgrade sprue on the champion for extra flavour.

Beyond that the initial plan is to give them Thousand Sons Blue armour and Screamer Pink cloaks with pretty standard colours elsewhere. Quick and simple, I get to finish a key unit for the army whilst I chip away at the Acolytes and test out a few more techniques army-unifying before I head onto the daunting task of the Lord Of Change.

Simple plan, doomed to failure. 

Wonder Woman's astonishing movie villain revealed!

(Fair warning, this post discusses the recent announcement-ish of the villain for the Wonder Woman movie.

If you want to remain entirely unspoiled, turn away now.)

Its bloody Ares.

Let's be clear: as unimpressed as I am by the very obvious, very dull choice of villain I am still interested in this movie. There are plenty of good ideas: putting Wonder Woman in the ultimate “man's folly” of the First World War; having a Suffragette Etta Candy; filming in something approaching colour... these are all things that interest me. However...

Setting aside the questionable taste of having a comicbook God Of War turn up in very real human tragedy of the Trenches (and likely being somehow responsible), isn't it just a bit obvious? A bit generic?

I mean, I get that there isn't a deep bench here. Wonder Woman's rogues gallery is a mess... as is her supporting cast... and her status quo... look, every creative team for 75+ years has felt the need to reinvent the wheel to the extent that the big Rebirth hook for her title is Greg Rucka hyperventilating into a paper bag trying to rationalise it all. And honestly? That gave me hope for this film.

You see, there's no Wonder Woman equivalent of The Dark Knight Returns or The Death Of Superman. No story that DC fandom has obsessively made the basis for the character.

Wonder Woman, funnily enough considering her real world origins, is not tied down to any one dominant interpretation and that was born out when they decided to shift her origins back a World War and play with the idea of her meeting the Suffragettes.

And then they decide Ares will be the villain. The God Of War versus the warrior princess...

… yeah. It is a pretty standard go to for the genre. Again, I get that there isn't a deep bench here. Doctor Psycho and Egg-Fu are all kinds of problematic; guys like Angle Man and the Cavalier are a bit low rent; and, otherwise, its mainly just more classical gods.

But still, isn't Cheetah meant to be the iconic villain these days? Circe's there if you want a supernatural threat; Veronica Cale offers a lot of interesting angles; and, Giganta offers interesting visuals.

But, no, Ares.

Ugh...