Is Power Rangers the new Catwoman?

The Power Rangers movie failed in China, which these days pretty much means it failed full stop. Now, I haven't seen the thing and I'm not likely to until it comes out on DVD, a few months have passed and its on the reduced racks but critical consensus seems to be that I was right and there wasn't much market for a gritty, dark reboot of a brightly coloured nostalgia property from my generation's childhood.

Which is, in a very specific way, a shame because I don't want what happened with Catwoman to happen here.

You see, back when this whole superhero movie boom was just getting started in 2004 there was a Catwoman movie. It wasn't a very good movie quite besides the fact the lead character was basically in no way Selina Kyle. She had feline super powers, for one thing, and for another DC managed to get over their need to put Batman in everything at the worst possible moment. There was also, not long after, an Elektra movie spun off from the not great but not awful Daredevil film. They both bombed, financially and critically, because they were, you guessed, it not good movies. They had pretty poor scripts, minimal budgets and not much pre-existing audience interested in a) a movie about a Batman love interest/villain without Batman in it, or b) a movie about the girlfriend of a superhero people only knew from a pretty average movie two years before. That all seems a pretty logical chain of events, right?

Yeah, so naturally, the Hollywood bean counters decided the problem was that No One Watches Action Movies Starring Women.

And here's the thing: compared to the Avengers there's a lot more diversity going on with the Power Rangers and I mean a lot more. These Power Rangers start out with three actors of colour whilst the Avengers opened with six white actors and only added two black characters at the end of their second movie. Add to that the fact that one of those Rangers of colour is gay and another is not only on the autistic spectrum but uses the phrase “on the spectrum” which is pretty much unheard of in this genre.

Look, a few weeks back an idiot working for Marvel Comics blamed poor comic sales on the fact that “diversity doesn't sell” and I want my Kamala Khan movie, damn it!

Saban is the cheapest entertainment company on Earth. This entire franchise only came about because Saban saw a way to make a superhero TV show without spending money on effects: buy the superhero footage from Japan and add in American actors for all the civilian bits. By all accounts this movie followed the pattern of chronic cheapness with the team only getting their costumes and Zords pretty late in the day to save on CG.

So, should we expect the bean counters to decide the problem here is making people wait for the action? Or making the movie grimdark when there's no ready audience demanding that take on the property? Or just that word of mouth travels faster now and bad movies get found out quicker?

Experience tells me no. Experience tells me that entrenched Hollywood wisdom will find correlation where none exists and declare that “This is why we like having white leads! Put too many ethnic minorities in a thing and people won't watch it!” just as before they said “This is why we don't make the woman the lead! No one wants to watch that!”.

So depressingly familiar... 

Maisie Williams is the Doc... I mean, Wolfsbane

I'm about fifty-fifty on the continued existence of the X-Men movies. On the one hand, Logan was just about as perfect an ending as the franchise could ever ask for. On the other hand, I know that Fox are going to keep making these things until the heat death of the universe so I might as well hope for the best.

Not that hoping for the best is an entirely logical course of action here. Fox do have a strong tendency towards ruining a good thing. Take X-Men: First Class, a great reboot for the franchise until Days Of Future Past came along to reveal that it wasn't a reboot after all and, by the way, every character from First Class who wasn't in the opening trilogy is now dead. Brilliant move, Fox.

So imagine my mix feelings when a New Mutants movie was announced. The original New Mutants are, without a doubt, my favourite X-team ever but you know what other characters I love in this franchise? Storm, who in these films is a characterless cipher. Kitty Pryde, who represents the most criminal waste of Ellen Page ever committed to film even before she gets magic time travel powers from nowhere.

The batting average is not high here.

Still, they've just announced that Maisie Williams will be playing Wolfsbane: a shy Scottish Catholic girl who turns into a wolf and has abandonment issues like you wouldn't believe. It is (potentially) a great role and Williams is a fantastic actress, even if she is a bit wasted in Game Of Thrones just by virtue of being part of such a large ensemble cast. Fox has even made a big thing about how they're only auditioning “ethnically appropriate” actors for Sunspot and Dani Moonstar which, given its both Hollywood and Fox, is something of a minor miracle.

I want to hope here but the simple fact is that we've had Deadpool and Logan in rapid succession and that's more quality than Fox has generally been able to put out in so short a time. Now, either they've learnt that they can make more money out of good films or its a fluke.

Please let them have learnt. If they can learn then maybe Warner Bros can take a stab at it. 

Donald Trump and the Watergate speedrun record

I have spent the last couple of days trying to write a post about the whole James Comey fiasco but things just keep happening. Just as I was sitting down to write this last night I bumbled onto a random Twitter retweeting this precious nugget from Generalissimo Trump:

“James Comey better hope there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

No, Donald, no. Don't mention tapes. Richard Nixon, Donald. Also, if Comey has tapes then it means that whatever he leaks to the press has evidence behind it. That's called corroboration, Donald. Also, you don't know how quotation marks work.

I mean, its fascinating to watch. Like that bit in his statement where Trump declares thart Comey told him he wasn't under investigation in spite of Comey testifying in court under oath on television that investigations were under way. Even if those investigations aren't into Trump specifically they do exist but the orange moron honestly believes that he can just declare himself innocent whilst firing the man investigating him.

Even Nixon, for all this flaws, did not fire the FBI director investigating him. Of course, the difference is that Nixon was not an idiot. He was arrogant and over-confident and bent as a banana but he was no idiot. Trump is an idiot.

Its actually fascinating to watch him flailing around like this. He clearly thinks it should be over because he says its over, he's been reported to have been yelling at televisions because the news has the temerity to still be reporting on the situation. Hell, he's even aluded to incriminating tapes without any evidence they exist which just smacks of a guilty conscience.

Of course, whether or not it'll be enough for the Republican party to turn on him because it has to be them. They have the majority, they have to be the ones calling for impeachment and after all the things Trump has said and done that would have sunk another president or another candidate in a heartbeat who knows if this will even be the thing.

I mean, I remember when the “pussy grabbing” tape hit and his entire party turned on him for about a week. Maybe this'll be that, maybe this'll be the end of his presidency.

We can only hope. 

Comic Reviews

This week, my avoidance of Secret Empire reaches comes to its sad conclusion, Lana Lang and Cass Cain have family moments, Luke Skywalker goes on a date with his father's sidekick, and it turns out Storm is black.

Secret Warriors #1

Oh, its a Secret Empire tie-in. I'm doing my best to avoid this mess but events being events, of course Marvel are using it to launch an ongoing series that they set up in their last damn event. I get the feeling I'd actually appreciate this issue more if I had any interest in the event because otherwise this is a pretty bland “getting the team together” issue with a slathering of green Nazis on top. Its not badly written, its reasonably engaging but I have no context for half of it.

I might actually drop this until Secret Empire is over and this series has a chance to tell its own story divorced from larger context and green Nazis.

Superwoman #10

This title has been hovering on the edge of being dropped for a few issues now and I worried that whatever lay in store after Superman Reborn might be the final straw. Surprisingly, Lana losing her powers a couple of issues ago has made me appreciate the series in a whole new way. I never really got the character. Part of the problem is I'm used to so many different versions of Lana but I didn't follow the New 52 Super-books closely enough to be used to this version.

K. Perkins writes the hell out of this issue, a real character study that goes into Lana's strengths and weaknesses as a person. Also, we get a bunch of background for Natasha and John Henry Irons, again characters whose previous incarnations I'm familiar with but whose current selves escape me.

Detective Comics #956

I'm trying to think of something to say about this issue beyond “Kate looks great in a suit and bowtie”. I mean, that's a valid critical opinion but I feel, given how much I've loved the arc, I should come up with something more.

I love Batwing and Azrael as a partnership, the whole science and magic thing really works. Cass continues to be my favourite character of the whole team and her final confrontation with Shiva is a joy to read. I've heard a lot of people complain about how this series “marginalises” Batman himself but so long as it turns out stories like this I'm all for it and Batman can muddle through with his two other ongoing series.

Star Wars: The Screaming Citadel one-shot

The Star Wars/Doctor Aphra crossover I didn't know I wanted until I read this issue. The thing is that once Aphra was out from under Vader's thumb I was so much more interested in seeing her fly solo in a proper EU series with no big famous movie characters getting in the way. After this issue I'm finally convinced that having her interact with the main cast has more mileage in it. Luke and Aphra at the Star Wars equivalent of a high society party is a great hook, not just for how they boune off each other because of how artist Marco Checchetto goes to town on the drawing the guests.

Tonally, this is much more an Aphra story than a Luke story, not just because Gillen is writing and Aphra sets the story in motion but because the gloriously over-the-top setting of the Screaming Citadel itself is much more the sort of place we're used to seeing her in. I like that, I like the mad as you like vision Gillen has for the Star Wars universe and I'm really looking forward to four more issues of Luke bumbling through that side of things.

Black Panther and the Crew #2

To my utter surprise, in spite of having Captain America on the cover this issue had nothing to do with him or the bloody Secret Empire event. Instead, the love letter to Harlem continues as Storm meditates on what the place means to her: her father's birthplace, the place she should have grown up in if her parents hadn't died in Africa. Its actually interesting, after all these years, to see a series address the fact that Storm is black, I know it sounds utterly mad that for all the hundreds and hundreds of X-Men comics I've read, the fact that one of Marvel's oldest and most well-explored black heroes is black has barely come up.

The simple fact is that her being a mutant and all the allegory that entails has sort of eclipsed the fact she's black. This, more than anything else, really convinces me that this series is going to go great places. Hell, even if it doesn't, the team-up of Storm and Misty is more than interesting enough in itself. Hell, I was almost disappointed when T'Challa finally turned up. 

Judge Dredd: not watching this series will be an automatic fail

Its been five years since Dredd undeservedly bombed at the box office. I loved that film. I thought Karl Urban was perfectly cast as Dredd himself, Olivia Thirlby was great as Judge Anderson and Lena Headey proved that even a dystopian nightmare future she is still constitutionally incapable of playing anything other than queens. I could rant on for hours about how great an adaptation that movie was and how it just got Dredd and his world so much better than the Stallone abomination.

But today is about something different, its about this...

… because Judge Dredd is coming to the small screen. I can't say I'm disappointed in this, not just because after two box office failures a third film was unlikely, but because I think a TV series is a better fit for the property. One problem with doing a Dredd movie is that the makers have to hone in on “the” Dredd story they want to tell. Whether they're clever about it like in 2012 and choose to write a typically horrible day in Dredd's life or are incredibly stupid like in 1995 and choose to write a narrative collapse of a narrative most of the audience have no knowledge of, they've still only got one shot. A number of the 2012 production team are involved in this series, by the way.

TV is more forgiving. Say this series runs to twelve episodes. What we essentially have is a cop show dialled up to eleven. Dredd (2012) was the story of a drug bust but this show can run the whole gamut of cop show tropes twisted by the nightmare world of the Big Meg.

Not to mention that, budget permitting, there's a whole lot of extra madness that can be drawn on. Mutants, for example, are mentioned in Dredd but never seen (aside from Anderson's mental powers). There are the rare recurring villains of the franchise like Judge Death or serial killer P.J. Maybe. I'd love to see Anderson but there are a bunch of other Judges who could stand to pop up from time to time like Dredd's brother Rico, the undercover Judges of Wally Squad, or Emerald Isle native Joyce.

There's forty years of grubby, violent, squalid genius to be mined here and I'm just glad that its finally going to be mined by a medium with a decent amount of time to devote to the project. 

Another great history fact...

I don't know if it is. I hope it is because this would be the best hook for a historical novel ever.

Apparently, in the seventeenth century, Mexico was absolutely crawling with unemployed mercenary samurai. Imagine it: Auf Wiedersehen, Pet with seventeenth century samurai! That's a fantastic hook, isn't it? 

British Politics and the Dream of Empire

Its a funny thing but one subject you never learn about as a child in this country is the British Empire. You learn about the Vikings, the Romans, the Tudors, the Industrial Revolution (exclusively as if affected England) and then you jump straight forward to the World Wars.

So on the one hand we have a period of our history that politicians love in invoke and yet don't want us to learn about.

That's suspiciously suspicious.

The simple fact is, that like every empire ever, the British Empire was a terrible thing for a lot of people and great thing for a very few. At its height the British Empire covered a quarter of this planet and at some point invaded all but twenty-two of the countries that presently exist. The Empire's sins include, but are not limited to, massacring civilian protesters in India and Ireland; being a vital corner of the slave trade for centuries; starting a war with China because we were buying too much tea; maintaining a vast opium distribution operation in India and China because we were buying too much tea; inventing the concentration camp; suppressing numerous religions in the name of Christian evangelism; sent in a man to oversee relief work for the Irish Famine that somehow made it worse (hint: it has to do with capitalism); resettlement of people that led to the usual consequences; and, setting off nuclear bombs on Australian Aboriginal lands.

And what is the popular image of this era in the British consciousness?

Agatha Christie adaptations: country houses with men in suits and women in modest dresses drinking champagne in the gardens. No talk of where the wealth comes from, no reference to or appearance of colonial subjects (or even any homegrown people of colour who, of course, would not be invented until the 1960s). So in the popular imagination you have a period made basically of parties, conspicuous wealth and no foreigners.

Funny how this country's supposed self-sufficiency back then was such a big part of the Brexit rhetoric last year and no wonder people fell for it so badly. 

(Battlefleet) Gothic Revival

Ships passing in the night, yesterday.

Long story short: I showed a friend my Flesh Tearers and now I'm painting a Battlefleet Gothic force for him.

Long story long...

Yesterday, my friend Tom came over with his Battlefleet Gothic collection which he'd recently recovered from storage. He had decent sized Ork and Imperial Navy fleets with a few Eldar and Chaos ships. Given the rarity value of things, his big plan is to collect a variety of small forces and share them with us for the purposes of games. Over the course of the afternoon I ended up showing him some of the progress I'd made on the Flesh Tearers.

And he liked them. He really liked them, to the extent of asking me to paint any Space Marine ships he acquired in that colour scheme. We agreed on red for the main body of the ships with black on the prow rams, wings and other sticky outy panels.

I've also ordered a couple of... ahem... mildly naughty “not-Battlefleet Gothic models honest, guv” from a Russian company on eBay that, if you squint (not, admittedly, by much) would appear to be a Gladius-class and a Nova-class frigates. I'm waiting for them to arrive before mentioning the name of the company, just so I can be sure of the quality, but they look good enough for the rather low price, especially compared to what the real deal goes for these days.

Being me, of course, I've already named the ships: the Gladius will be Blood Oath and the Nova will be Midnight Approaches. Going to be a lot of violent and/or depressing names in a Flesh Tearers fleet, is my thinking. If I like the models, being escorts, they'll end up in squadrons with their sisters ships Blood Debt, Blood Price, End Of All Hope and Future's End.

By the time they arrive I'll probably have thought up commanding officers and combat histories for them as well, I'm just that kind of player. 

Dwarf Rangers and kiting

I like Let's Plays and one of my favourites is the Side Quest series on the Extra Play channel. For the past year or so Dan Floyd, the voice of Extra Credits, has been playing his way through the Dark Souls trilogy. Its not as educational as most of the other series rhe EC crew put out, at least not since James Portnow stopped giving his designer's perspective early in the series, but its fun to watch Dan die over and over, plus he has a really relaxing voice.

Just me? Okay.

Anyway, his commentary introduced me to an idea that finally allowed me to put one of my favourite Dwarf units to proper use: kiting.

In a video game, you exploit an enemy's programming to make them follow you. You use the tactic to draw members of a horde out one by one or drag enemies into an area where you have an advantage.

On the tabletop, you present your enemy with a target they can't ignore but don't want to deal with. In this case, I set up my Rangers the minimun distance away from a unit of Dark Elves Dreadspears. This unit was holding down the right flank of my opponent's army with most of my power units set up towards his left. This unit was already at the farthest extent of his line and the furthest thing he had from the rest of my army. Chasing my Rangers would mean turning to face away from my army, marching twelve inches out of his way and charging into a hail of crossbow bolts.

Ignoring them meant having a unit with great weapons and crossbows attacking his right flank as my Warriors and Irondrakes moved in on his left.

I also had my Organ Gun positioned to take advantage of a failed charge or the complete massacre of my Rangers (who do not have a particularly long history of surviving contact with the enemy).

As it happens, terrible dice rolling on both our parts meant the tactic worked better than it had right to. I kept losing combat and he kept pursuing me exactly one inch short which meant three consecutive turns of stopping just shy of overrunning my Rangers and getting an Orgun Gun in the flank for his troubles.

Its essentially a psychological tactics so I'm going to have to work on making sure the bait is sufficiently annoying in future but I think I finally have a line on how scouting units are meant to be deployed.

Mrs. May, please shut the hell up!

Now, I've mentioned before that I think Brexit is a stupid idea fueled by xenophobia and an irrational belief that this country's best days were the ones when everything was rationed and unexploded bombs were an everyday inconvenience. That said, I bow to the fact that this is reality and it is going to happen and so I'd rather like for the negotiations to go well so we don't end up being completely ruined by the price of this nationalist stupidity. Frankly, I'm too old for dystopia. I have no leather jackets and I can't drive.

So this is why Theresa May (our prime minister, not the pornstar) has to shut the hell up.

So far in these negotiations she has threatened to keep anti-terror intelligence to ourselves, effectively saying we would collaborate with ISIS if we didn't get our own way; threatened to go to war with Spain over Gibraltar; declared in our press (that European leaders are perfectly able to read) that she would be “difficult” at the negotiating table; and, most recently, she has claimed that the EU are seeking to influence our general election.

Ignoring for the moment the fact that this idea seems to be the best window we'll ever get into May and Trump's phone sex fantasies (“They're all rigging the system against me!” “Oh God, me too, Orange Daddy!”) the question is: does this woman actually understand the concept of negotiation? Has it entered her tiny conservative mind that maybe, if we want to get concessions from the massively richer and more powerful union we're negotiating with, that we might want to be nice to them for a while?

I mean, what is the plan here? At this point I strongly suspect the Tories just plan to get together a week before the two year deadline, light some candles, draw a pentagram on the floor, form a circle and pray to the spirit of Winston Churchill to save them.

Either that or tell the public that they totally did get a deal but Nigel Farage ate the signed paperwork.

Comic Reviews

This week the Guardians Of The Galaxy get all-new, the push to include Watchmen in the DCU continues to be less terrible than I assumed; I try out a couple of new series; Maria Hill gets high; Nightwing gets nostalgic; Nadia Pym gets romantic (but in a totally subtextual way); and, we say goodbye to Carrie Fisher once again.

All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #1

Gerry Duggan and Aaron Kuder certainly hit the ground running. After a very slow end to Bendis run (with, I admit, one hell of a final issue), the new team takes the Guardians back into space where they belong. Most of the issue is a fun little heist with plenty of cool ersonality moments for each of the Guardians and then off to meet their buyer and kick off the plot for the rest of the arc.

Some time seems to have passed between the end of Bendis' run and this. For one thing, Drax seems to have developed pacifism and Rocket keeps mentioning some assassins that came after gim recently (in his own title?). Still, most questions the issue raises do seem to be on their way to answers some time in the immediate future, which is a refreshing change of pace.

Batman #22

You known in spite of myself I am actually enjoying this arc. I remain as hardheartedly cynical about the whole Watchmen in the DCU thing as ever but this is actually fun to read.

Hell, more than fun, this arc is actually pretty interesting from a form point of view. The two Batman issues and (by the looks of this issue's cliffhanger) the two Flash issues actually seem to be telling distinct halves of the story. Oh, Bruce and Barry are together all the time, its not like they're pursuing their own plots by themselves, but the Batman creative team has one set of prioirities for where they want to take Bruce and the Flash creative team have another set of priorities for Barry. What I was afraid was going to be a month long road block in the two series seems to have thought out to be a sastisfying part of both ongoing stories.

Plus we get the return of the Flashpoint Batman, for my money the best idea that event had.

Jean Grey #1

A slow start. The whole deal here is Jean needs some “me” time, grabs Pickles the mini-Nightcrawler and goes for breakfast in Japan. The rest is a whole lot of internal monologue to get us used to Jean as a solo protagonist and a run-in with eternal jobbers the Wrecking Crew.

Its nice. Its small and quiet and feels a bit too much like filler for a first issue to be throwing at you but I can't deny that its fun to read and I have a better handle on this version of Jean as a person than I did before.

Jessica Jones #8

In spite of the fact that this issue might peripherally involve “Captain America is a Nazi” plot threads, I must admit I liked it. I have missed reading Bendis' take on Maria Hill. Actually, now I think about it, didn't he create Maria Hill in New Avengers? Having her interact with Jessica Jones whilst stoned on painkillers is the icing on the cake. Even better, we get to see some more stoned people (somewhat more recreationally than Maria) having a lovely little conversation about who's going to take over the world: mutants or spider-people.

We also get another look into the back alley sort of world Jessica inhabits as she visits a woman called Raindrop, who looks like Katy Manning and seems to be an agent for hired killers. Sadly, not much happens on the family front in this issue but what does is a glorious one panel cameo by Luke that I just can't spoil.

Black Bolt #1

I wasn't going to pick this up but then I saw the name Saladin Ahmed on the cover, though I can't rightly say where I know the name from. I'm glad I did pick it up, though, because this is really bloody good.

For one thing, Ahmed sidesteps the problems of having a silent protagonist in a comic by bringing back narrative captions. Now, I know most comic writers have given up on the third person narration these days and I understand why. Usually they're clunky and just devolve into the writer describing things we can damn well see in the art. “He leaps across the room!”, gee, thanks Claremont, I'd have never guessed if you hadn't written it down on a drawing of the guy leaping across the room. Still Ahmed writes some damn lyrical prose in those little boxes that do a lot to set the tone of the story. Artist Christian Ahmed also shows some real range here, handling both lines and colour he's able to shift between a dreamlike style for moments when Black Bolt is alone and wandering and a more solid, clearly deliniated style for when he's interacting with other people.

Between this and Royals, I am in real danger of beginning to care about the Inhumans as a group.

Bane: Conquest #1

The other new title for the week is this, which I bought because the recent I Am Bane arc in Batman made me interested in the “ruthless, unstoppable destroyer” side of the character for the first time ever. Honestly, before this the only writer who could make me care about Bane was Gail Simone and she had a radically different take on the character. Plus its Chuck Dixon, the ultimate Batman writer, returning to DC! How could I miss out on that? I have to admit: the way Bane talks to himself gives me all sorts of nostalgia for '90s comics and Dixon's Batman and Robin runs in particular.

Dixon goes all in on the idea of Bane as a sort of darker Batman with him roughing up gun runners headed into Gotham Bay alongside a small team of sidekicks/goons. I'm not to sure why or how Bane is operating out of Gotham or if this even refers at all back to I Am Bane but I do like the basic concept. Dixon actually has Bane operating as a detective, albeit a rather heavy handed one. I'm hoping to see a lot more of Bane's team in the course of this year long run, I really want to see what their stories are, if only because I think it will liven the series.

Nightwing #20

I wish we had more chance to see the Robins as brothers. This arc has been great for getting Dick and Damian back together and Tim Seeley does a lovely line in sibling banter for them. The Morrison-era Batman comics with these two as Batman and Robin will always be personal favourites of mine and its nice to see that they're relationship hasn't been totally forgotten.

Unstoppable Wasp #5

This issue is about Nadia saving her girlfriend's life and no power on Earth will take that intrepretation away from me! Its also the first mission for Nadia's team of young lady scientists: finding a way to get the little bomb out of Ying's head, all the time with Jarvis moaning about how much mess they all make as they brainstorm well into the night. There is an absolutely glorious splash page of the brainstorming session itself so full of detail and character for the whole cast. I love this series so much.

Star Wars: Poe Dameron #14

This isn't at all subtle: this is Marvel's wake for Carrie Fisher. I don't know if it started off that way and they made some edits in the light of her passing but this issue is absolutely a goodbye to Fisher. Poe delivers a eulogy for one of his pilots lost in the previous arc alongside General Leia Organa and the rest of the issue is spent on thoughts of mortality before Poe and Leia have a heart to heart that absolutely smacks of Charles Soule writing the sort of scene that we will, sadly, never get to see the actors deliver.

Unless such a scene was filmed for The Last Jedi, this series will be the last and only word on the relationship between General Leia and Poe Dameron. If it is, then it works and we EU nerds have a genuinely moving issue to point to when we claim that Poe is all but Leia's adopted son.

Leia final scene in the issue, though obviously not the last we'll be seeing of her in these comics, is quiet and moving and a more heartfelt goodbye than anything I think the film can deliver through editing scenes that were never meant to be an ending into a conclusion for the character. I might be wrong bit if I'm not then we'll always have this. 

Marvel, are you kidding me with this?

Fair warning for those who want to follow this train wreck by paying for it: SPOILERS for Secret Empire #1 and the identity of Marvel's latest unimaginably stupid choice to turn into a Nazi. Find out after the dots.

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IT'S THE SCARLET WITCH!

A Romani woman, a practicing Wiccan, who for years believed her father to be Jewish, who has a gay son.

That Scarlet Witch.

She's now working for Hydra. As is Thor (the dude one) because what you really want to do with one of your tentpole characters is explicitly ally them with the sort of fascist movement that co-opts their imagery in the real world for their own disgustingly eugenic purposes. That's not going to encourage the very worst of humanity to feel that a multinational publishing company is “on their side”, is it?

What is wrong with these people? 

In the grim darkness of June 16th

This image, the next issue teaser from this weekend's White Dwarf, has been doing the rounds of the rumour sites and, just like that, we have a date.

And I have a deadline.

Presumably the White Dwarf will be released the Friday before pre-orders go up, though given they're going with the “free ruleset” system they did with Age Of Sigmar it could just as likely be the day before the rules pamplets arrive in store.

So I have just shy of seven weeks to whip this Flesh Tearers army into shape. I have a Librarian, a Tactical Squad and two Dreadnoughts (one Contemptor, one Death Company). If points costs don't change too drastically, that's just north of five hundred points.

So, wants and needs.

For definite I need Death Company. No Blood Angels army, let alone a Flesh Tearers army, should take to the field without Death Company. Given the shooting rules published on Warhammer Community, a unit or two of Devastators wouldn't be too bad of an idea, either.

I feel there should be Scouts, what with the Flesh Tearers' recruitment needs, and I absolutely want to have a Baal Predator outfitted with all the flamers now that templates are a thing of the past.

My lovingly converted Vanguard Squad, of course, is top priority and they do need something to ride around in. I'm not sold on the look nor the utility of a Rhino (oh, wow, an motorised storm bolter, be still my beating heart) so I'm torn between either a Land Raider Redeemer or splitting the unit in two and running them in a pair of Razorbacks. Ultimately, I think, it'll come down to what I can secure cheaply on eBay.

Time to get the red spray out... 

I may have to read Wuthering Heights now

I've never given it much thought but this quote has been doing the rounds of Tumblr recently...

… and I absolutely have to memorise it because it is so good. There's more than one person, mainly family, who deserve to have this deployed at them without explanation. 

May is 40k Month!

Is this cheating? Can I cheat at a completely self-imposed and self-defined way of motivating my own hobby? Don't care, doing it.

With GW's recent commendable desire to tell us things about 8^th edition, I feel myself really motivated to get things in shape for the brave new world of movement values and armour save modifiers. First and foremost that means continuing to work on my Flesh Tearers, my training wheels army for 8^th, but also maybe plugging away at some other things I have lying around like my Genestealer Cult and Mechanicus.

My main aim is to have a useable Flesh Tearers force for 8^th edition launch day in June. I have about five hundred points' worth painted with a Librarian, a Tactical Squad and two Dreadnoughts (I do so love my Dreadnoughts). The problem, of course, is I don't know what a “proper” army is going to look like come June: the points system is changing and there are going to be a huge selection of Force Organisation Charts to choose from.

So my idea is this: I shall build to a theme and that theme is speed. This has the dual use of both being true to the spirit of this faction and giving me a chance to paint some Space Marine miniatures I haven't before: Bikers, Land Speeders, Baal-Pattern Predators and, of course, my beloved converted Vanguard Squad who will be getting a suitably awesome tramsport vehicle as soon as I decide whether I want a cheap Rhino for them or to splash out on a Land Raider for them.

I also, more for myself than anything else, need to get some background written for this army. I prefer my background to evolve with play but I want a few details to go in with: unit names, a character for my Captain and a mission for this strike force to be on.

Being the Flesh Tearers, their mission is likely to be Gabriel Seth pointing in a direction and saying “Go that way. Kill things.” but I think I can do a little better than that. 

Showcase: Flesh Tearers Vanguard kitbash

Before I undercoat them, I just wanted to post some pictures of my Flesh Tearers Vanguard made with the Horus Heresy Mark IV armour set and a big old pile of spare melee weapons. I didn't have much of a plan going in, I just slapped things together however they best seemed to fit but I'm quite pleased with the results:

Okay, I'm not too sure what the chap with the power sword is meant to be doing. Exhorting his brothers to advance, perhaps? Regardless, I think they'll look fantastic as a unit (or two, depending on my needs), though that's probably more down to Maximus armour looking amazing than any of my input.

I also slapped together this little fellow out of spares...

… and some day he'll act as a colour test to see if I can apply the Angels Of Redemption colour scheme to power armour, which is a bit more complicated to halve than than Cataphractii Terminator plate that was my first experiment. 

On the imminence of Ultramarines

The rumour mill has started spitting out specifics for the 8^th edition starter set. Obviously, this is just a rumour so get your salt out but the reported contents are as follows:

Death Guard

Chaos Lord

Terminators

Plague Marines

Blight Drone(s?)

Ultramarines

Captain

Librarian

2x Tactical Squads

Assault Squad

Devastator Squad

Price point is rumour to be £80 and its pretty good value even if I doubt that the Blight Drone or Drones will be the full size of the Forge World ones (though they will be a damn sight easier to build...). I'm certainly setting aside some money for one on the strength of the Death Guard alone, an army I have wanted for years but find the Forge World versions unbuildable.

The Ultramarines, though...

Now, its not like I dislike Ultramarines, I'm actually rather fond of them and Know No Fear remains my favourite Horus Heresy novel. The problem I have, assuming like the Dark Angels in Dark Vengeance they have embossed heraldry, I don't think its a good idea to have them in the starter set. Or, rather, I don't think its a good idea to have both armies in a starter set be a specific sub-faction rather than generic models.

Take Assault On Black Reach, still my favourite 40k starter set and where are my multi-part plastic Deffkotpas, GW? In that set you had generic Space Marines usable for any sub-faction of vanilla Space Marines, Dark Angels and Blood Angels, plus Orks that you could use as the foundation for any build of Ork army you wished. Even Dark Vengeance, with its very specifically Dark Angels Space Marines, had a completely generic Chaos Marine force and where are my multi-part plastic Cultists and Chosen, GW?

This set gives us two specific sub-factions: Plague Marines and Ultramarines. Having one or both armies be generic was genuinely a usability issue, it provided the player with an economic start to numerous armies. My Dark Vengeance Chaos Marines were Night Lords, my Black Reach Orks were Freebooterz and the Space Marines they came with were, at various times by the grace of brown Dettol, Exorcists, Black Templars and Guardians of the Covenant.

Unless I'm wrong about embossed heraldry, I will have Ultramarines who only be Ultramarines which is one sub-faction amongst dozens in the Space Marine background. Still, I might have a use for them since my Mechanicus come from Ultramar and if not there's always eBay. 

Comic Reviews

Have I been sent anything with Nazis in it this week? What is wrong with the world that this is even a concern for me?

Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider #1

Okay, old favourite character being relaunched by Nazis Are Cool-era Marvel. Deep breaths... deep breaths... open the comic... and...

Well, okay, so first thing we learn is Ben got his new costume by mugging a cosplayer and, of course, this all spins out of his recent heel turn as the Jackal in The Clone Conspiracy so this is hardly the Scarlet Spider I remember from the not-exactly-good old days. Peter David is doing his best, poor chap, but I honestly wonder if this thing is salvagable. Ben's USP back in the day was that he'd been dealt a truly crappy hand but the old Parker morals still guided him. I knew I wasn't going to get the old Daily Grind Coffee Shop crew back in this series but I had hoped Ben might be a bit more “himself” than he was as the Jackal.

What David chooses to focus on is the internal struggle between the two versions of Ben: the Scarlet Spider and the Jackal, with both turning up as delusions from time to time to get on Ben's nerves. Most of the issue is that, basically, with a little side trip to tease the fact that Kaine knows Ben's still alive and is pissed.

I'm in for the second issue but if that doesn't absolutely grab me, well, I get to save some money. Still, at least he's not a Nazi.

Infamous Iron Man #7

Well, shucks, if this wasn't the perfect example of why I still read Bendis' comics after all these years. Whether you like his very conversational, talky style or not, you have to admit that Bendis just gets how to write the relationships between characters.

The first half of this issue is a big fight, starting with a huge meeting of villains that Doom breaks up in order to lay the smackdown on just about every costumed villain in New York which segues into an after-the-fact post mortem of events. The other half of the issue is a gorgeously atmospheric conversation between Doom and Ben Grimm that Alex Maleev and Matt Hollingsworth draw the absolute hell out of: close-ups, deep shadows, the perfect level of detail to every facial expression. You couldn't direct actors this perfectly in a million years, its the sort of scene the sequential art form was made for. Bendis goes deep into the decades of feelings and emotions (both as people and characters) that inform how these two characters interact and then, with a fantastic cliffhanger, he promises to top it next issue.

And not a Nazi in sight.

Detective Comics #955

Dear James Tynion IV, stop making me ship things, your humble servant, James.

Seriously, that ballet dancer that yelled at Cass in #950 found Cass after she got slashed up by Lady Shiva and nursed her back to health. And she read Cass children's stories as she slept. Its too cute. Then Cass went and cut her way through about a million ninjas. Which was not as cute but was equally awesome. This is mostly a big fight issue with everyone aside from Cass captured and most of them naked, too.

Also, what is it with comic writers hating people called Ullysses right now? First that Inhuman who started Civil War II and now this Colony dickhead with who makes chemical weapons and steals Tim's costume?

Mother Panic #6

I really like how this arc is filling us in on Violet's home life at the same time as deepening the weirdness that surrounds her operation. For instance, in this issue we get some closure on the whole business of those funny rats Violet's mother was talking to and it just serves to make it all stranger. That aside, there's a great scene of a woman Violet us dating reacting to the violence of Violet's life in an interesting an complex way, not so much scared of the fact Vi can be violent (she even admits it was probably justified) but of the way Violet looks as she hit the guy. Its a more complex treatment, brief as it is, than most fiction usually allows for.

Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat #17

And so it ends, my favourite series in the stands.

Its a self-consciously light weight little epilogue to the series as Patsy finally gets her royalties from her mother's books and takes her friends on a shopping spree. Everyone gets to do their bit: Tom and Ian are cute, Jubilee gets to do cool vampire things (and wear her classic costume!) and there's one last set of silly villains for Patsy to be unreasonably nice to. I'm going to miss this series and I hope writer Kate Leth and artist Brittney L. Williams have more work lined up because both have made such a huge impression on me over the course of the series.

This really just is the most adorable series.

Mighty Thor #18

Always good to see Quentin Quire knocking around, especially as it manages to act as a little bit of a Wolverine & The X-Men reunion with him, Kid Gladiator, Warbird and even Krakoa turning up. I've actually really enjoyed this arc with Thor and the Shi'Ar gods getting into a bit of barny and having Jason Aaron return to some of his old X-Men characters is a delightful little bonus.

Honestly, Quire is the main attraction of this issue, the narcissistic little puke gets a wonderful line in selfish prattle that completely flips the tone of the whole arc so far. Plus, that's always a fun personality to pit against someone as serious as Thor. 

8th edition shooting: I have an issue

There is an issue I have always had with 40k stat lines and the ranged weapon rules Warhammer Community put up yesterday are basically the perfect illustration of it:

You see, I have basically no problem with any of that. I like how the lascannon is balanced to do a lot of damage to a single target (read: vehicles and their many, many wounds), I like how the flamer hits automatically on a random number of hits, I like the -3 armour save modifier on the heavy weapon.

The only sticking point for me is the boltgun and its complete lack of armour save modifier.

Now, a boltgun is basically a grenade launcher held by a man so big and strong that said grenade launcher has the same relative weight and utility as a rifle would to a normal human being. It fires huge bullets that embed in their target and explode.

And it doesn't affect the target's armour value purely because boltguns the most common “basic” weapons in the game. If you gave this gun an AP value under this particular system that would be hugely unbalancing to low armour factions like Imperial Guard and Orks.

Basically, because of how common they are, Space Marines kind of break the “realism” that game stats are meant to describe. Their basic guns should be incredibly devastating to armour, including Space Marine power armour, but it can't do that if the game is to have any hope of working. So I'm here ackowledging that these rules look well considered and balanced but I don't really think they describe the thing they're meant to.

Its not a huge issue because I'm used to it and the accompanying issue that the difference between a normal human's base stat of 3 and a Space Marine's base stat of 4 is so much bigger a representative difference than it is in Fantasy. Still, I had hoped that maybe this version of the game would take the clean break of totally invalidating all previous rules in one go and maybe the shift the stats a bit. At this point, the only way to do that after what we've seen would be to make Guardsmen pathetic and I really don't want that to happen.

Anyway, for the most part I'm still cautiously optimistic and I've been having a lot of fun making Flesh Tearers Vanguard which, hopefully, I'll have some pics of in the next couple days. 

A little light statistical analysis

Yesterday, Warhammer Community published a post outlining how stat lines would work in 8^th edition. Now, I generally don't take much interest in the nitty gritty of mechanics and so-called “Math-Hammer”. I'm a bit number blind, to be honest, and pretty much anything I buy for an army is based simply on wanting the shiny thing rather than having any idea what it does (which explains how many random plastic Horus Heresy Marines I have).

Still, there are some changes that interest me. As well as some general case explanations, GW posted up four example stat lines for people to look at.

So we have the humble post-human Space Marine. Most obviously they and everyone else has gained a Movement stat. I am very, very happy about this. No more rules flicking to remind myself how a given Unit Type moves, now I just have the stat. Important to note that the Tactical Marine has Movement 6...

… whilst the Terminator has Movement 5, borrowing the Age Of Sigmar mechanic where heavier armour reduces base movement. Good change. Terminators now have two wounds, as well, which adds some extra value to heavy infantry.

Initiative is a thing of the past and To Hit rolls for both range and close combat are at set values, though wounding still uses an opposing values system as before (though whether the same system as before is left unspecified). Long story short: there's only one damn logs table now, halle-freaking-lujah!

Another major change to stats is that none of them are capped at 10 anymore, which means...

… that if power fists still work the same way, this Dreadnought is Strength 12. Whether that's how it'll work or not, I'm just rubbing my hands in glee at the idea that Dreads will now have eight wounds. Oh, so very yes! Dreadnoughts, as I may have mentioned, are my favourite thing in the entire 40k universe bar none but they've always sort of been more decorative than functional.

So, all good news? Well, I have some questions and they mostly revolve around...

… Roboute Guilliman, a living demi-god in a system with no upper stat cap, having physical statistics of six and only one more wound than a Dreadnought. Everything else on that profile is as godly as they can resonably make it but as a physical presence he doesn't seem anywhere near as durable as he should.

So, issues, but the original post has done its job of assuring me that the new system will at least be based in something I understand so I won't have to relearn everything and that this isn't as big a departure as AoS was.

Current mood on this? Cautious optimism, I'd say. 

We need more liberals like Keith Olbermann

I've been watching a lot of Keith Olbermann's series The Resistence and The Closer on GQ's Youtube channel. He's a very angry man who yells facts at his audience and does so in a well-researched, properly sourced and well-written way.

He's not trying to be a nice liberal. He's not trying to be soft and non-confrontational. He's not interested in pulling punches in the name of fairness. He's on the attack because he views the country he lives in and believes in as being at risk. He's passionate about what he's talking about. He's well aware that the right has its Alex Joneses and Bill O'Reillys (well... not so much them anymore, but you get what I mean) and those people, disgusting as they are, speak with certainty and passion and don't feel a need to beg to be heard.

They just shout and we on the left need to learn to shout louder, shout more eloquently and shout truer things than the opposition.

I say this as a British lefty who has spent his entire adult life watching this country's supposedly left wing party sell out its principles to become Tory Lite and what other left wing movements in this country still exist become progressively more interested in eating their own young than actually getting things done.

We need to actually start standing up for ourselves and be fully prepared to tell our opponents when they are being racist and sexist and xenophobic and homophobic and transphobic and privileged.

Because this is why they win. While we simper and try to understand the racists and homophobes and make them feel safe and valid for some fucking reason, they go on being loud and comfortingly certain for their voters.

Paint along with Duncan: an experiment

Whilst watching some of WarhammerTV's Tip Of The Day videos, something occurred to me: I never actually learnt how to paint. When I first got into this hobby I got some basic tips from a friend about watering my paints and basing my colours (usually in brown, this was before base paints were a thing, I am old) but aside from that most of what I learnt was from written guides in White Dwarf.

The thing is, I am terrible at learning through reading, at least when it comes to practical things. The most recent set of painting guides have helped me a bit more since they have stage-by-stage pictures but even then the fact that what they call “layering” takes in about five different techniques is an issue, as is the fact that static pictures can't show you how to work the paint onto the miniature, just the effect you're meant to end up with.

So, over the next week or so, I am going to try to paint a miniature by following one of Duncan Rhodes' step-by-step videos. My chosen victim for this experiment?

My Lord Of Change. I bought this model the day it was released and after building it I just sort of got intimidated and he's been sitting on the side of my computer desk as a paperweight ever since. Not the most auspicious position for a master of fate, I'm sure you'll agree.

So, what am I hoping to learn? Well, I've never used these paper pallets before (I still use one of those bumpy plastic ones) and hopefully I'll get a smoother result out of it. I'm hoping to learn more patience with the “two thin coats” approach, as well as better watering my paints as I've never had a proper demonstration of how much water you're meant to use. My highlighting could definitely use a lot of work, which it looks like I'll be able to practice with the feathers.

This is thevideo I'll be using and, with luck, I'll be posting progress every couple of days.