Comfort food comics

I think comfort food reading (and viewing and listening) get a bad rap these days. I read this post once about a romance novel where the author decided to “challenge” their readers with a sad ending where one of the protagonists dies. Now that's bullshit, isn't it? Because if someone bought one of those thin romance books with the PG yet somehow lurid cover I flat out guarantee they did not pay for a downer ending.

This isn't to say a challenging read can't be good, more that its good manners to let the audience in on the fact that's what they're getting. Or that if you have to challenge, at least do it in a way that the audience still gets what they paid for. Take Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (the film, we're talking about here) which absolutely eviscerates the sort of romcom it looks like its going to be but in the end Scott and Ramona walk off together having grown up a bit, got over some of their baggage and ready for something like a happy ending.

And sometimes people just want escapism. Is that really so hard to understand? The world is monumentally horrible right now. I live in a country with a political leader who is still in a job only because she keeps fucking up so badly that no one wants to be in No.10 when the consequences come calling; the half of the US that isn't underwater right now is on fire; any day now the Spanish government is going to go all out and hire a necromancer to bring back Franco; and some day historians are going to have to explain how internet manbabies complaining about video game journalism led to a revival of Nazism across the western world.

If someone wants to sit in a bubble bath with a romance novel and enjoy the glow of a predictable yet satisfying happy ending, let 'em.

So, anyway, Sonic The Hedgehog and Transformers comics: my comfort food reading of many years. Both are modern day successors to series of my childhood: Marvel UK's Transformers series (which also ran Marvel New Universe material as back-up strips and thus explains my unnatural desire for a Spitfire and the Troubleshooters revival) and Fleetway's Sonic The Comic, an anthology title of Sonic and other Sega properties. Both these series, of course, died long ago but being licensed properties they've come back in other forms.

At the moment IDW are publishing the Transformers comics and the one that gives me the most joy is Lost Light (formerly Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye) the story of a mission led by Hot Rod to find the mythical creators of the Transformers and “Cyberutopia”. Its funny, often bizarre and has a fantastic cast of characters knocking about the confines of a ship with more than a few secrets of its own. Its not particularly deep and not particularly challenging (unless you're of the conservative persuasion as various characters identify as transgender and/or homoromantic in interesting robot-y ways).

Then there's Sonic. For the last many, many years that license has been held by Archie Comics but following various problems involving a disgruntled ex-writer who wanted his rights back (and depriving me of some of my favourite characters in the process) Archie decided to let the license lapse and now its gone to IDW who plan to start their own series next year.

Of course it'll be different even with longtime Archie scribe Ian Flynn on writing duties. Those beloved side characters I miss will still be absent (no Secret Freedom Fighters, no Julie-Su, etc,. Etc,.) and dollars to donuts the Freedom Fighters of the old TV show probably won't be making the transition either. Sally, maybe, as she comes from other sources but I doubt the rights to Bunnie and Antoine are so clear cut.

I could certainly do with more light, fun series without gritty pretensions. I'm also absolutely in love with Lumberjanes at the moment and tearing my way through collected editions like there's no tomorrow which is ironic considering that series' attitude towards the passage of time. Even with the notoriously angst-dependent DC my favourite series right now are the gorgeously optimistic Bombshells and the stream of consciousness madness of Dark Nights: Metal which acts all gruff and gritty but has Batman riding a velociraptor at one point so how dark can it really be?

I guess I'm just getting too old for the whole business of wanting everything I enjoy to look super serious all the time, especially on the days when all I want is to relax with something warm and familiar. 

Hell In A Cell done right (and so very, very wrong)

[SPOILERS for this past weekend's Hell In A Cell pay-per-view, specifically the two HIAC matches that bookended the event: New Day vs. Usos and Kevin Owens vs. Shane O.Mac]

First of all, the bad: Hell In A Cell should not be a comedy match. As good as it got towards the end when the Usos unleashed the light bondage on Xavier Woods, it started with comedy shtick. There was a gong. There were rainbow-patterned kendo sticks. There were trombones of many colours. It wasn't good. It was a bad fit of performers, really, the New Day as faces just aren't people who should be in this sort of match.

Kevin Owens vs. Shane O'Mac, though: my goodness, that was HIAC done right.

The highlight of the match, obviously, was the whole business of the two men fighting on the top of the cage. Now, I know in my head that after that disaster all those years ago when Undertaker managed to throw Mick Foley through the cage roof and the very real damage that did to Foley that they must stress test that cage to destruction every time they intend to use it for standing on top of purposes. In spire of that, every step those two men took, every time one of them threw the other onto the chainlink, was a heart in my throat moment.

My housemate Matt and I watched it on Monday night and at least once each we both said “We'd know if one of them had died, right?”

It was a hell of a match. I'm still a bit annoyed there wasn't a women's HIAC match this year as I think Charlotte and Natalya could have put on a fantastic one (and also because the DQ finish is my only real criticism of the match they had here) and I was hoping that the trend of every gimmick PPV having both a men's and women's version of the titular match was going to continue.

Mostly I want this to hold true for reasons of feminism and equality but a tiny bit also because I want a second Women's Division Money In The Bank on PPV that gets won by a woman!

[Incidentally, as I write this there are reports Shane had to be rushed to hospital after the match with broken ribs. Unfortunately, every report I've read seems to be reading from a WWE press release that could be set-up for a storyline rather than reality.

Either way: get well soon, Shane, you mad, indestructible bastard.]

Podcast reccs: FistShark Marketing

Someone recently suggested check out the world of podcasts. I like audio drama, was their logic, and there are a lot of cool ones available for free (with an option to support them on Patreon, etc,.). I solicited suggestions from friends and have a list as long as my arm (but further suggestions certainly welcome). Wolf 359 is on the list, obviously, but that seems like a rabbit hole I'm going to want to put some real time into but another friend suggested something a little more digestible and from a talent I was already familiar with.

I've been watching Jim Sterling's video game current affairs show The Jimquisition since it was on The Escapist. Hey, remember that website back when it was more than a forum being kept alive by Yahtzee Crowshaw's shows? Yeah, me too, it was before the Nazis decided to make a comeback through the medium of gamer self-entitlement.

Anyway, Jim Sterling alongside Conrad Zimmerman and Paulson Sear (and Caitlin Cooke in earlier episodes) form the staff of FistShark Marketing, the world's most morally bankrupt PR firm. As you can imagine, that claim is up against some pretty stiff competition.

The show is available on iTunes and YouTube and it is hilarious. Each episode has two or three sketches, all improvised by the three actors playing executives of the titular firm. Between them they weave a surreal world of awful products; inexcusable exploitation of a hated co-worker called Craig; the scientific misadventures of company physician Doctor Nightscream as well as “Balthasar and the boys in the basement” who may or may not be Satanists; and Dean Cain.

That was one of the things that sold me on the series: an odd fixation they have with Dean Cain and presenting him in more and more bizarre ways. One episode had him living in the company's basement and bothering the staff because he had a wasp's nest inside his head. Miley Cyrus is also a “client” of the firm and somehow comes off worse.

I am not going to claim everything in the series is in good taste, it most certainly isn't, or that every sketch works because this is improv comedy and sometimes things just don't land. If you're interested in a rollickingly bizarre time I personally recommend the episodes Hello Dolly (featuring a doomed attempt to stop Richard Dawkins tweeting) and Viva Slaatvania (in which the team try to build a Biblical Ark to survive a teambuilding exercise). 

The return of Conner Kent?

Word out of NYCC (what word has managed to escape over the sound of Marvel failing so badly at everything) included a little snippet of James Tynion IV saying that the questions surrounding Conner Kent in the rebirth continuity would be answered in Detective Comics #966.

That's this week.

Okay, so I'm invested in this because Young Justice was a big part of how I became a comics fan. That particular generation of the sidekicks are contain some of my favourite characters in some of my favourite comics. The fact that everyone from that group got completely jobbed in the New 52 is something of a lingering wound and if we're getting a return for anything approaching the proper version of Conner, I am all in.

I mean, with only one issue of A Lonely Place of Living out we've already for Tim's original origin restored and the Tim!Batman from Geoff Johns' Teen Titans has made an appearance as well.

Now, is it likely that the “proper” version of Conner is coming back.

Well, for one thing I don't imagine anyone's terribly attached to the New 52 version and, on a more pragmatic side, Conner is going to be in the third season of Young Justice when it returns so there's a marketing angle. Also, if they have big plans for Tim spinning out of this (and I hope those rumours that he'll be leading the Outsiders are true) then bringing Conner back to be the perfect foil he always was to Tim would be a good move.

After that its just a matter of bringing Bart back from wherever in the timestream he's been hanging out since Flashpoint and then just a little selective amnesia so that Cassie isn't a horrible bad girl parody anymore.

A guy can dream. 

For serious, Marvel...

I don't usually believe in karma but Marvel's NYCC this year is starting to make me wonder. Now, I'm writing this Saturday evening so if I don't mention something obvious here like a Marvel panel causing the venue to spontaneously burn to the ground that's why.

The news started off bad when I read that another of those retailer meet-ups (like the one where a Marvel executive dropped the line about nostalgia selling better than diversity) seemingly devolved into a near-lynching because some old white comicshop owners were angry about (what else...) diversity. That was bad. I thought that was as bad as a major industry/fan expo could possibly go.

And then it got worse.

They announced that they were publishing an all-ages Avengers comic in association with defense contractor and gun manufacturer Northrop Grumman. You read that sentence exactly right, a comic pitched to children sponsored by and advertising a government defense contractor. Apparently this was meant to interest children in STEM careers but, well, you can imagine that the thing people concentrated on was “children's comic sponsored by and advertising an arms dealer a week after a gun massacre”.

How did that get past anyone in management? How was it that in a company owned by one of the most obsessively PR-oriented entertainment corporations in existence a partnership like this was floated for more than a second?

I cannot imagine a single PR professional in this world looking at this idea and not raising concerns.

At this point the only logical conclusion is that the publishing wing of Marvel Entertainment is literally trying to commit suicide. No professional organisation could want this much bad publicity. It has actually reached the point where I was actually surprised when they canned the project given how bloodyminded they've been about sticking to bad decisions the past year or so.

An arms dealer, guys, seriously?

That's the literal baddie in Iron Man 1. 

The elevated estrogen levels of Star Trek: Discovery

An unnatural number of women types, yesterday.

You ever enter a conversation and you get to a stage where you're desperately praying “don't disappoint me, don't disappoint me, don't disappoint me”? Well, I keep having that when Star Trek: Discovery comes up. I swear, 90% of the conversations I have about this show with any guy ends up with “Aren't there are a lot of women in it, though?”

No. No no no no no.

There's five. There's Michael Burnham herself, Captain Phillipa Georgiou, Commander Landry, Cadet Tilly and the ginger flight controller whose name escapes me at the moment. So far only four out of this list have appeared in a single episode together. That's not a lot. Four women in any given episode (so far, in the UK we have episodes one to three). That's not actually a lot, especially considering one of them has so few lines I can't remember her name.

I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's Men-At-Arms where one of the central jokes is that the Watch is being required to recruit “minorities” and they recruit a troll, a dwarf and a werewolf except no one says that Angua is a werewolf until she finally transforms so for more than hundred pages you think the minorities are a troll, a dwarf and a woman and laugh at these male characters who are so uncomfortable about (you think) having a woman in their space.

And then you get to a point in real life where people continuously act like having four women sharing screentime in a given episode of Star Trek is somehow an unnaturally inflated figure.

Spot on, Sir Terry, spot on. 

Comic Reviews

This week the Joker gets his head straight, his ex and her ladyfriend take a holiday to Riverdale, reality TV brings nostalgia to the mutant masses and Kate Bishop has some surprisingly non-sapphic catharsis coming her way.

Batman: White Knight #1

This looks like its going to be an interesting take. I mean, I'm a little iffy about the (apparent) intention to have Joker and Harley as a happy domestic couple down the line (and on the cover) but given some of the plot points introduced here there's a tiny chance it could work. More likely it won't and that'll be problematic but since Harley hasn't appeared yet aside from a flashback cameo, I'll give Sean Murphy time to get there.

So, we have the big idea pitch: Batman is steadily going off the rails with his brutality and the hero/villain dynamic between him and the Joker gets flipped. Its interesting that what Murphy has Batman do in this issue to show how crazy brutal Batman has become is actually not anywhere near as extreme as what some recent movie versions have him do as an ostensible good guy. I'm one of those people who bangs on about how Batman of the comics is a very different, very much more human character than the mainstream version (and, no, the comics are no longer the version mainstream, blame the direct market) and this just throws that into sharp relief. In fact, the story doesn't even portray Bruce in an entirely negative light for the things he does giving his breakdown some sympathetic motivation.

So we have the beginnings of a heroic version of the Joker which even riffs on The LEGO Batman Movie of all things as its starting point. Murphy draws the hell out of every panel, not least of which the big confrontation between Batman and the Joker. What little we see of “Mister Napier” in the first few pages of the issue before we flash back to his origins suggests more of a gentleman consultant to the GCPD which, if true, would be a nice rebuke to Bruce's approach in putting forward the idea that he might have been able to do more as Bruce Wayne (again, more of a criticism of the way the character is in film than how he's been portrayed in comics for decades now).

Anyway, a really promising start but I do worry that the Joker being “cured” is just going to be used as an excuse not to address his past treatment of Harley before they settle into unquestioned domestic bliss.

Harley and Ivy meet Betty and Veronica #1

You know what really cheesed my onions last week? The Suicide Squad issue of Gotham Resistance. They had Stjepan Sejic, a man known for his acclaimed wlw romance series Sunstone, drawing an issue with Harley and Ivy in it somehow written by the only writer on the payroll who still thinks those two girls are straight. That is a wasted opportunity right there.

So now we have a crossover where Harley and Ivy meet another two female characters whose straightness has famously been up for debate. If nothing else, it can't be worse than the time the Punisher turned up in Riverdale.

So the set-up is simple: Mister Lodge has purchased an area of local wetland to develop into “Lodge University” (at least the guys at Archie are getting some useful mileage out of the Trump administration) and Ivy is not happy so she and Harley come out of hiding to try and “persuade” Hiram Lodge not to go through with it. Meanwhile, the Riverdale kids are preparing for a Heroes & Villains costume party Lodge is hosting and that they've been conscripted to help out at.

Betty and Veronica are in full on enemies mode at this stage, by the way, whilst Harley and Ivy are in one of those domestic “we're hiding from the law, that's why there's only one bed” arrangements they fall into from time to time. Its actually nice to see both sides of the crossover being as slice of life as each other, albeit with one side more comfortable with murder. Oh, and Kevin Keller and Sabrina Spellman are besties which is either new or something I didn't know before but I hope they continue to appear in the series.

X-Men Gold #13

I bloody love Mojo as a villain. I love the idea of an interdimensional dictator who is also a reality TV producer who provokes fights with the X-Men for ratings. I love how bizarre it is. I love how it allows the X-books to go in a different political direction from the usual race and sexuality based commentary (which are both good angles but variety is the spice of life and all that). It's always nice to see the awful, capitalistic little scrote and now he's the focus of this era of X-books' first crossover.

This is the X-books' Legacy storyline and, as such, there are references to a bunch of old storylines, “the greatest hits” as Mojo describes them. Funnily enough, on the same page, Logan describes it as trying to kill the X-Men with nostalgia, which... oh dear.

Now, on the one hand there's nothing here that actually annoys me other than the fact we get the briefest Xaviers' baseball game ever. Seriously, guys, those are remembered as the series iconic character piece scenes because they tend to actually feature character work. Here we have the Gold team not even reacting to the fact the Blues turn up with a vampire version of Storm. Aside from that its all good: villain I like, nice set up, even a good bit of progress for Rachel's character arc.

And at no point did it need big visual callbacks to Inferno, Days of Futures Past and The Asgardian Wars. That's just fan service for the sake of fan service or so it seems right now. Hopefully as we get further into this story the choices for callbacks will have some relevance to the characters but for the moment its just a bunch of alternate costumes for longtime fans to get a brief feeling of satisfaction for recognising and nothing else.

Hawkeye #11

Kelly Thompson's version of Kate and Madame Masque is a lot less... sapphic than Fraction and Aja's was. I mean, its still there if you want to look at it and there's even a rare occasion here of a “we're not so dissimilar, you and I” conversation that isn't complete bollocks in this issue that sort of feeds into that but its a lot more of a straight forward hero/villain relationship now.

This issue actually felt like a rather low key conclusion to the storyline that been running, in the background at least, since the first issue if it actually is the end. The business with Kate's father rather suggests we're moving into a new phase of the story as Kate's family issue and family history come to the fore. That said, as quick as Madame Masque#s part in the plot is dispatched it does leave room for some good character progression with Kate and her friends. There's a lot of catharsis for Kate, not just in things she says to her friends and her father but in a couple of good, dynamic fistfights she gets into and there are few characters in comics who need catharsis more than Kate right now.

Plus, next issue there's an All-New Wolverine appearance before we move on to the triumphant return of Hawkguy! So there's that to look forward to. 

Painting with an injured hand

Yesterday I somehow cut the side of my right index finger open. Holding a paintbrush hurts like hell right now and delicate work is just impossible. Obviously, that means the Bretonnians and the Tale Of 1 Warden are on hiatus for a week or two. Bretonnians are the very definition of “delicate work” and I am not screwing this project up for anything. So the question becomes: what can I do while this heals?

Let us apply logic (and analgesics) to the problem. A lot of the early stages of painting a miniature are forgiving of mistakes: basecoating, inks, large areas of drybrushing. I can use this time to get a bunch of models started and finish off the details once my finger's better. I have a whole bunch of Flesh Tearers models that are just basecoated in red spray and one of the benefits of their colour scheme is that a lot of it is just two flat colours.

Yes, yes, starting things and not finishing them is a real problem of mine but progress is progress and if that's all I can do I might as well do it without guilt, mightn't I?

Even then, though, after a while the finger starts to really, really hurt. Its the position I have to hold the brush in.

Now, snips and a plastic scraper... those I seem to be able to hold for longer and there are some building projects I want to get to. I ordered some spare sets of legs to make some Sternguard for my Flesh Tearers (“In the grim darkness of the far future there is no job satisfaction”); I have some Eternal Guard I want to hybridise with spare Sister of Avelorn parts to make Maiden Guard; and I have a conversion kit from Grimskull Miniatures for making an amazing Death Guard Rhino.

Yes, it is the cheekiest third party miniature I have ever purchased but screw it look how pretty!

I could also take baby steps in getting over my fear of painting my Lord of Change and get the all-over blue wash and drybrush stages done. That model legitimately terrifies me. Its gorgeous but so very complicated.

I'm bummed that I have to put the Bretonnians on the back burner but I'd rather pause the project than do it badly. 

The Titans TV show cops out

Have I mentioned I'm looking forward to this Titans TV show? Well, I am. I've always been more fond of that team (and its many other forms like Young Justice) than the Justice League itself. Now, the fact that its being made for a DC-branded streaming service is concerning as I think that whole deal is going to go the way of MMOs that aren't Warcraft sooner or later but that's a different post I'll probably never get around to writing because it would be incredibly boring and pessimistic.

Still, some interesting casting information was released the other day with the announcement that a woman called Lindsey Gort will be playing Police Detective Amy Rohrbach.

In the comics (to be precise, Chuck Dixon's Nightwing run) she was Dick's partner on the Bludhaven PD. Now, the way these things go she might not be that exact character, just look at Felicity Smoak in Arrow. However, I'd like to think they're going to do something with Dick's police career which was one of the eras of the character I most liked. It was an interesting dynamic for the character even if I did wonder why no one on the force seemed to have any questions about the richest man in America's oldest son hanging out in the worst police department in the country.

Well, we'll see. 

Again (Vegas)

Pulse was 16 months ago and it was the worst mass shooting ever, worse than Port Arthur (the Australian mass shooting that led to their current gun control laws). Now this Vegas shooting has been even worse. Last I read 58 people were dead and close to 500 wounded. The guy rented a hotel room, had a stock of ten military grade assault rifles and just opened fire from the window.

He had ten military grade assault weapons. Ten.

Nothing will change because of this. I don't know who originally said it but its been said that Sandy Hook ended the US gun debate. Once it turned out that the Second Amendment could survive the deaths of tiny children in one of the richest states in the union it was over.

Obviously, I'm biased here. I'm English, we had one school shooting massacre and the government was forced by public pressure to pass new gun control laws that greatly restricted (not banned, it must be pointed out) private gun ownership in this country. That one was enough for us.

It wasn't enough for the US government. Nothing ever will be. 

Landmarks of Reading: The Bag Shop Man's Scowl

This sign is a genuine landmark of Reading, Berkshire. Its a work of art. It scowls down at the passerby from the second floor of an abandoned storefront in the nebulous, nameless grey area between Friar Street and Market Place. The boards are covering the windows of a building that has been a gutted wreck for almost ten years.

And, before you ask, that is the proprietor of The Bag Shop. They sell bags and their cash register is a literally a cardboard box under a desk. Prices are not actually negotiable but more decided by the proprietor on the basis of how much he likes you. The last time I bought a bag there he gave me the full disapproving scowl for ten uncomfortable, mildly invasive seconds and then turned to his assistant and said:

“It is the salad man, twenty percent off.”

After which he swept imperiously into the backroom. I have no idea if I got twenty percent off (no actual prices on the bags) but it was a warm, glowing feeling to have the verbal approval of the man whose image had been scowling down at me on my way into town every day for years. 

Pointless Headcanons #1: Dax's Original Job

The other night, a friend and I were talking about plot holes and unresolved threads in Star Trek and something occurred to me about Jadzia Dax. The thing about Dax, you see, is that she is the only dedicated science officer we meet in the 24^th century shows. Voyager doesn't have a science officer, unsurprising given she's not an exploration vessel, and on the Enterprise-D the job is effectively split between Geordi and Data.

The question that occurs is that Dax was assigned to DS9 before Starfleet knew about the wormhole and the strange new worlds on the other side of it. So why does a random Deep Space station in the middle of nowhere need a science officer when the flagship of the fleet doesn't?

So here's my utterly pointless headcanon reason: she's there to supervise the Starfleet relief efforts on Bajor. It isn't something that gets much play after the pilot episode but the main purpose of the Starfleet presence on DS9 is to do everything “short of violating the Prime Directive” to get Bajor up and running again after the Occupation.

Jadzia is there to help with the scientific side of that process like supervising agricultural projects or setting up genetic databases so families separated during the Occupation can reunite. Given that the chief engineering officer is a CPO (O'Brien) and never seems to work on anything not related to the station or its vehicles (runabouts, Defiant, so on) she's probably involved in the logistics side of things: what tech to send where, what Starfleet's industrial replicators should be churning out for the reconstruction effort and so on. 

A Tale of 1 Warden #7: Qualified Failure

I hit a roadblock a week or so back. The yellow that came out so well on the Archers came out patchy and horrible on the knights so I had to go back to the drawing board on one of the major colours for this army. So I haven't got much more done than the Archers I showcased a while back.

Still, I've managed to get a better yellow now and should the sun ever come out again I'll hopefully get some pictures up soon. It won't take me too long to finish the Battalion, though the peasant command groups are proving a little more challenging than I expected.

As to this coming month's challenge, to be completed alongside the remaining models from the Battalion, I'm going to keep it simple. The challenge is a unit of infantry or cavalry and I'm going to pick cavalry. In fact, I'm going to paint a second unit of Knights Of The Realm. This one won't take so long, hopefully, as I now have the methods for painting horses pretty much down and this unit will be painted in the simpler colour scheme of the Duke of Gisoreux (red and black, very simple colours to lay down). 

The Big #1: Marvel Legacy

Yesterday's manic ranting about Klingon foreheads and anachronistic holograms was probably triggered by the fact this very issue was sitting in my read pile for the afternoon. Marvel Legacy is, by design, fan wank. Its the event born of that executive who stated to a retailers meeting that nostalgia, not diversity, was the major selling point of comics.

[Insert well-worn, frothing rant about how that's obviously true in a medium that makes no moves towards accessibility to new readers here, I'm too tired to go over that again.]

And the fact is I'm quite looking forward to this. I fear it, as well. Recent issues of Mighty Thor have out and out stated that Jane Foster is going to die soon, which in and of itself is probably not a bad thing. The character has had terminal cancer for some time and given how she's been written in this run I don't think the character would see dying as Thor having saved so many lives at the expense of her own as a “bad death”. If she does out actively bettering the world, well, that's an ending I can get behind.

Simiarly, I do want the real Tony Stark back in some capacity. I love Riri Williams but I miss the dynamic the two had before Tony's Civil War II-induced coma and their Generations issue certainly foreshadowed how good it would be to have them interacting again now Riri has some proper hero time under belt.

Still, I fear...

I fear the fan wank aspect; I fear the collapse of all the interesting new characters that have taken up legacies over the last couple of years, especially in light of how quickly Unstoppable Wasp was cancelled; I fear the further shrinking of the medium in service to fandom-friendly nostalgia over even fractional innovation (because, let's face it, a healthy medium would have been able to introduce Nadia, Riri, Miles, Kamala, Amadeus!Hulk and all those others in their own identities instead of hand-me-downs).

Anyway, that's enough self-indulgent self-analysis. What was the first issue like?

Well, mostly it was bite-sized trailers for the tie-in series which is par for the course for event series first issues these days. Its really just a question of which ones interest me. There does seem to be a thread that actually sets up this series involving Starbrand and one of the many Ghost Riders, neither of which are characters I'm terribly interested in. There's also some business with a Celestial, again not a part of the Marvel Universe I've ever been that keen on.

There's a lot of good art but the many, many different art teams working on this issue just makes it feel even more like a collection of teaser trailers than it already did. The Fantastic Four-related teases are the most interested to me and I hope this means that Perlmutter has been forced to take his head out of his arse by Disney and we're getting a new FF comic sometime soon.

There's also some business with Odin, the Phoenix and some pre-historic Avengers that holds some promise as well as a short scene in which Norman Osborn retreats in shame from Doctor Strange's shrubbery.

Its bitty and sets up a lot of questions that will probably not be addressed in this series itself. Again, basically the format that these event series take nowadays but I find it tests my patience a bit more every year.

Still, a pleasing lack of Nazis so I'm inclined to give this one a chance. 

Two ways to be wrong about Star Trek: Discovery

I loved the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery (which is what British Netflix has right now, I believe more was made instantly available in the US) and I have so many thoughts that its taking me a whole to hammer them into something publishable even by my low, low standards.

(I mean, what was yesterday's post even about?)

That having been said, there's something I want to pick apart on its own because it has wider implications. Be warned, we're getting into “people are wrong on the internet” territory so enjoy me screaming into the void.

There are two ways in which people in comment sections are getting angry about Discovery. The first, and most obvious, is the anger that Star Trek has gone all SJW and is pandering to liberals with its casting of not one but two women of colour as the U.S.S. Shenzhou (take note, Star Wars, there are more women in the world than white ones with brown hair) as if the series hasn't been a utopian liberal power fantasy since 1966.

Now that's just dicks being dicks, this is the world we live in now. The right wing have become so immune to subtext that they can look at the original Star Trek with its female black officer (an engineering officer, no less), two Jewish leads, Russian and Japanese characters, constant civil rights allegories and end of episode homilies about the message of the week and still think “This is on our side, there's guns!”.

So that's how people who aren't that engaged with Star Trek are being Wrong On The Internet. But what about people who are engaged with Star Trek? Is there a way for them to be Wrong On The Internet?

Why, yes there is, I'm glad you asked.

For the dedicated Star Trek fan who wants to be Wrong On The Internet there is the very simple method of obsessing over the ways in which Discovery “breaks” the continuity of the overall franchise. The main point that seems to keep coming up (and I've only read a couple of comment threads, I'm not dedicated enough to this post to put myself through that) is the use of the holographic communicator.

You see, in previous canon the holographic communicator was invented during Deep Space Nine and quickly forgotten because the production team realised it just looked like two people standing in a room together because that was exactly what it was. So, in a way, its a bit odd to see the technology in use over a century previous in the canon.

Except, here's the thing, the future isn't what it used to be. I am writing this post on a laptop smaller, thinner and with a higher definition screen than the one that sat on the desk of Captain Janeway's ridiculously spacious ready room. My phone has so many more functions than the Starfleet communicators that inspired it that I don't even know most of them.

So the 2250s now have interstellar full 3D holographic communicators for calling up Thomas Cromwell and the Klingons are not just guys in yellow face and reflective green shirts, they've even moved beyond the whole “smushed Mars Bar on the forehead” look to a more complicated full-face prosthetic. Your mileage may vary on how effective the design is (personally, I like the facial look but I'm not too sold on the ribbed battle corsets) but hating them because they contradict the canon explanation from Enterprise about how the Klingons started off with crests and then lost them and then got them back in time for the movies is, to be frank, rather nitpicky.

Maybe its just because my favourite show is Doctor Who, where the canon's made up and the plot points don't matter, but I've always been more interested in the details of the individual story than the overarching continuity.

To be honest, if we're talking about inconsistencies with the Klingons never mind their foreheads because somewhere between the original series and The Next Generations the entire species carries out some sort of personality swap with the Romulans. In the original series you'd never, ever turn your back on a Klingon but the Romulans had an honour code that could be relied upon even if it wasn't terribly nice. Fast forward eighty-odd years and suddenly Romulans are the sneakiest, most backstabby dicks in the entire Alpha Quadrant whereas Klingon honour is at least culturally consistent even if individual dickery persists (looking at you, the House of Duras).

And its just sad, guys. Its the sort of argument that stereotype nerds in bad comedy sketches make and perhaps that's why I react so strongly against it. 

Bill Clinton's Sean Spicer impression...

To be frank, its a bit situational and I don't know how well it'll play in a club environment because, let's face it, those props are not portable.

Sorry, Mister President, but it needs workshoping. 

The proper application of Dwarf Rangers

It has taken me a while to work out what on Earth you're meant to do with Dwarf Rangers. I've had a dozen or so games now with my Dwarfs, mainly against Matt's Skaven, and I think I have finally worked these guys out.

The basic deal of these fellows is that they're a Scouting unit with crossbows, great weapons, throwing axes and heavy armour with shields as an option. Up until now I've been using them as a Death Or Glory Suicide Squad and it turns out that was a terrible idea. For the most part I've been setting them up using Scout the minimum twelve inches away from the scariest things my opponent has (usually Rat Ogres or similar monstrous infantry) and hope to get in a first turn volley of crossbow fire in before being charged.

For the most part this tactic ended in death. Mine, to be specific.

On Sunday, again against Matt's Skaven, I tried something different for no better reason than there was already a 16 model Thunderer unit staring down the Rat Ogres. More by luck than judgement I discovered what Rangers are for: creating an exclusion zone.

I set them up roughly at the centre of the battlefield with a piece of impassable terrain protecting their left flank. To their right was empty space but, crucially, it was empty space that my Dwarf Lord and his Ironbreakers were going to be moving up into in the very near shortly. The presence of the Ironbreakers provided me some protection from being charged by Matt's larger and more powerful units who would have had to weigh charging against the possibility that they'd be countercharged by the scariest infantry unit in my army.

Meanwhile, the crossbows were in short range and whittling down one of Matt's infantry blocks until something more valuable, such as his Doomwheel, came into my arc of sight.

Once my Ironbreakers and Warriors had caught up with the Rangers, the Rangers became a supporting unit to them effectively returning the favour and being the scary unit Matt didn't want in his flank if he made a badly judged charge against the larger rank and file units.

There's a lot more synergy between Dwarf units than I thought there was and I'm looking forward to exploring these mechanics a little more deeply. 

New Star Trek Today!

Today the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery drops on Netflix and I am so damn ready for it. I have done my best to keep myself spoiler free. I know the point at which the series is set, I know some of the casting details and I've seen the new Klingon designs. I know nothing else.

Its been too long. I loved Star Trek Beyond, felt it was a return to form for the franchise after two pretty empty action movies, but this is a series that belongs on the small screen. There are too many messages, too many issues in the world to be dealt with one at a time once every couple of years especially as ineptly as the non-Simon Pegg written films did. That's what I think is important about Star Trek, especially now, that it is science fiction's conscience in the mainstream space.

There are things I'd like to see, of course. I'd like to see some sort of LGBTQ+ storyline not end in epic tragedy (a real failing of the series up to now, Sulu's reboot family notwithstanding). I'd like to see the series do more with the exploration aspect without getting bogged down in endless prequels concerning established races.

I'd like to see less concern with continuity than Enterprise felt was necessary. I'm not a fan of slavish continuity for its own sake, it tends to bog down stories far more than it allows for interesting explorations of established characters and races.

I mean, The Next Generation and original cast movies basically flipped the characterisations of the Klingons and Romulans and now we accept that Klingons are honourable if dicky whilst the Romulans are completely untrustworthy. Go back and watch The Original Series: you'd never turn your back on one of those Klingons whilst the Romulans had their own sense of honour that could be relied on.

So, if these strangely Orc-like Klingons turn out to not be very much like Klingons as I understand them... I won't mind if it makes for better stories.

Just so long as we don't have to sit through a multi-episode story arc explaining how their foreheads have changed shape.

A Tale of 1 Warden #6: The Horse Barrier

Chipping away at the peasant units in my Battalion I was starting to feel confident with the bright colours and basic methods I want to tie these first few units together so I decided to finally tackle the Knights of the Realm. I'd even found the White Dwarf with the best horse painting tutorial GW ever published (May 2013, the 8^th edition High Elves release, and it uses the modern paint system if you ever want to track a copy down).

Now, I only have myself to blame for my current fatigue. I have eight knights, the tutorial has eight methods and I forgot just how difficult the horse bit of the Bretonnia Knights models were to paint.

This is how one reaches what I have come to call The Horse Barrier.

There was this facetious comment that did the rounds back when Age Of Sigmar was about to launch about why Fantasy was meant to die: “No one likes painting horses.” Its an extremely over-simplified, sarcastic and downright odd belief but I am starting to sympathise.

Now, I don't usually mind painting horses but Bretonnian warhorses are amongst the most user-unfriendly models in the Warhammer canon. The way the legs are moulded into the barding, not always distinctively, means you're constantly trying to reach your brush through the middle of the model at odd angles.

Oh, and the one I was painting as a light bay went a bit wrong and now I have an orange horse and no motivation to fix it. I just want to move on. Sir Donald that knight will be or whatever medieval French equivalent I can find.

Moaning aside I know there's an element of Half Finished Model Syndrome going on. Right now the models look dispiritingly awful because I've spent several sessions over the better part of a week getting only the smallest element of the model done and the rest is undercoat. They look terrible but once I have some more of the model done, like the big block colours of the barding and knight's tabards, it'll look better even if the horses aren't up to much.

The yellow on the Archers isn't actually that consistent but once its part of a complete model with other colours around it the eye is a lot more forgiving. 

My favourite Elf

There are a few models I really regret not picking up when I had the chance and, thankfully, eBay exists so for the most part I've been able to track them down quite cheaply. One that eluded me until last week was a particular High Elves Mage that I always loved but missed the boat on and finally I've found one for cheap:

(Incidentally, yes, I do have the other arm but he fell apart in transit and I need to acid bath him).

It would probably be easier to explain what I love about this model using a properly painted example so here's the version from (I think) an old Army Book:

Now, I'm no metal snob. White metal was a horrible material that hated undercoat, chipped like crazy and somehow hated glue more than it hated paint so the models would just periodically collapse. HOWEVER, for a while in the early-2000s GW used the material to produce some of the best character models they'd ever put out.

Which is where our elf here comes in. He was one of a set of Mages that came out for the seventh edition and I adore the little guy. He might not be the most dynamic model but I feel that works. He's not floating in the air or throwing out fireballs, in fact he's posed more like an Empire Engineer than a typical wizard which is awfully fitting. Elves are the most magical race in the game, naturally, and to them magic isn't a floaty, wibbly mystery its science. This guy is holding a crystal ball as if it were a scientific device because, to him, it is. His clothing is arranged in enough layers that a two tone colour scheme will still look visually interesting but not so many layers that it looks too hard to paint.

He also looks mildly offended, probably unintentionally but that's so very High Elf, isn't it? 

Comic Reviews

This I didn't have much time to read, didn't have strong or interesting enough opinions on what I did manage to get through and so mainly I just bitch about crossovers.

Nightwing #29

Gotham Resistance part 2

And once again we have a crossover acting as a huge roadbump to a series' ongoing narrative. Last issue we saw Nightwing and Huntress about to bang away only for Dick's estranged girlfriend to see them through the window just as she about to see if they still had a future. Also, she was wearing rocket boots because comics. This issue its a Metal crossover that continues a story from Teen Titans with the next installment in Suicide Squad... good grief.

Here's the thing, writing this I had to flick back to the credits to check this was the regular writer and, yeah, its still Tim Seeley but something just feels off about the characterisation. It just strikes me as very telling that Seeley doesn't seem to be able to close the gap between Dick as he has written him for the last couple of years and the Dick that needs to exist for plot reasons of this crossover. Its exactly what I was complaining about with the Secret Empire crossovers at Marvel (sans fascism, that's a whole other Nightwing series, apparently): the regular plot is just getting roadblocked as yet another crossover demands that the actual point of the series be put on hold for a few months.

And I like Metal, just to be clear, I'm really keen to see where it goes but so far the main series seemed more than able to tell the story without interrupting two series I was otherwise enjoying and boldfacedly demanding of me that I give Suicide Squad a try while I'm at it.

Batman: The Red Death one-shot

The cover offers me the Flash by way of Batman by way of Judge Death and, even better, its an additional one-off purchase that doesn't railroad an ongoing series. See this, DC, this is a lot more palatable to me as a consumer.

Its a decent done-in-one. Its main job is to give context to one of the evil Batmen introduced at the end of the main series' last issue but it also gives more information on the Dark Multiverse and how it works than we had before. Interestingly, the Dark Multiverse world the Red Death comes from takes a lot of design cues from Frank Miller's Batman work which is either a nice little nod or a very, very harsh judgement on how his vision of Batman relates to the way DC wants to portray the character now.

Still and all, its a bit slight, that's the nature of one-shots like this. I'll pick up the next one and see if there's a continuing thread through them or if they're all just going to be origin one-shots. If there's an ongoing story I'll stick around, if its just a series of comics where the only plot is “here's how Batman went wrong” then I'll probably just keep to the main story.

U.S.Avengers #10

Same As The Old Boss

This is a big aftermath issue for all the Secret Empire stuff which, oddly, I actually understood because this was the one series I could absolutely not do without during that whole mess since Al Ewing absolutely refused to play along with the “and then everyone lost and lost and lost” narrative Nick Spencer was mandating.

Its mainly future set-up, these issues always are, but Ewing always delivers the fun exposition and here we have Sunspot (I will never call him Citizen V) having a sit down meeting with Not Steve Bannon Honest Guv about the future of SHIELD and the U.S.Avengers that goes pretty much exactly as you'd expect a conversation between a Trump advisor would go with an immigrant leading a team of immigrants. Like everything about this series it is not subtle and very welcome for it.

There are also developments with Toni Ho, by far my favourite character, which I hope are followed through on. I adore the character and watching her cycle through different phases of identity and self-image on this team has been fascinating (and probably something other writers should be taking note of, to be frank).

I'm in the process of cutting down my pull list and this series is front and centre of the ones that absolutely will not get dropped. 

Comics: exploring a more varied diet

It happens every couple of years, this sudden urge to shake up my reading. Recently I've been expanding my pull list beyond my go to superhero series with stuff like Lumberjanes, Bombshells, Mech Cadet Yu and Rat Queens, all series I'm really enjoying for how different they are. Its not even that I'm burnt out on superheroes. Right now DC's in the best place its been creatively in about a decade and Marvel, recent Nazi missteps aside, has some good stuff going on that I hope Legacy isn't going to ruin.

Still, I feel the need to explore a bit so I went into town with a small budget and scoured the shelves of Waterstones and Oxfam Music (strangely, of the two Oxfam stores, the one that displays comics donations) for anything that looked interesting.

I ended up with a decent enough haul that will keep me busy for a couple of weeks.

To start with, Mendoza the Jew: Boxing, Manliness and Nationalism: a graphic history by Ronald Schechter and Liz Clarke. I have to admit, I did not expect to find a graphic novel with an Oxford University Press logo on the back cover. I love historical graphic novels and a biography of an eighteenth century British Jewish boxer is certainly not something I'd ever have thought to look up on my own.

A Contract With God claims to be the first graphic novel and given its written and drawn by Will Eisner I can well believe it. Again, a historical based at least somewhat on the author's own life. I'm always leery about foundational works, they tend to age worse than people give them credit for, but I'm more than willing to give it a shot.

100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call is the first in Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso classic Vertigo crime series, which is one of those classics I've never got around to. I love Azarello's Wonder Woman and every time I've encountered Risso's... shall we call it “aggressively grotty” style I've been impressed. Plus, Oxfam only wanted £2.99 for it so how bad can it be?

Another classic I've never read, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an autobiography of a woman who grew up in Iran during some pretty scary times. It is also something I once promised a friend I would read and review and, decade late or not, I do want to keep to my promises.

The back cover blurb of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's Monstress: Awakening promises me both art deco beauty and steampunk horror plus a quick flick through tells me the art is absolutely gorgeous. I know practically nothing about this series, only that I love the aesthetic and the protagonist Maika Halfwolf is looking for answers about her past so I'm very much looking forward to this one.

Finally there's Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl?, the first book in the series that brought Brian Michael Bendis to prominence. I liked the recent Powers revival at Marvel but got burnt out on it because I feel like I was missing a lot of necessary context on the main characters so it might well be worth my while.

Opinions to follow at a later date...

A Tale of 1 Warden #5: Overdue Showcasin'

Yesterday, all of a surprise, the sun came out. My house is truly the worst place to take photographs. It is literally aligned against the passage of the sun so even the garden doesn't get good enough light half the time (nevermind British weather) and I cannot wait for that light tent to arrive.

Anyway, the first completed models for my Bretonnians: half a unit of Peasant Archers! The rest of the Battalion is in various states ranging from half-finished to barely started but I'm still very much enjoying the project. So, precious, precious photographic evidence:

These were a lot of fun to paint and quite easy once I'd broken down in my head what was hard leather, what was cloth I wanted to be brown and what was cloth I wanted to paint in grubby heraldic colours. Originally the halved yellow and red was going to be the colours of a random knight champion but I like the contrast so much they're going to be the colours of my general's family (and of the Errants and Realm Knights of his household, just to make my life easier).

I was surprised by how well the yellow came out, actually, which I put down more to the Zandri Dust undercoat than any actual skill on my part. Between these and some Skinks I've been painting on the side using Macragge Blue undercoat I finally feel sold on using different coloured sprays.

As to the rest of the Battalion: the remaining Archer are about half done; the Men-At-Arms are just getting started with just some flesh tones filled; and, the Knights are taking a while to start because I'm painting each horse a different colour, partly as a colour test but mostly because since I'm painting them in uniform heraldry I want something to make the models looks more like individuals.

With eleven days of Month One to go I doubt I'll get everything all the way done but I'm making progress I'm more than happy with. 

Hal Jordan and the Bruce Wayne Problem

Its hard to remember after over a decade of Damian Wayne but there was a time when Bruce was a pretty minor figure in Batman comics. That sounds mad to say but its honestly the truth, Grant Morrison even called it out in his first issue of Batman when he has Alfred calmly inform Bruce that he's doing the gravelly Batman voice all the time now. In the 90s and early-2000s it seemed that Bruce was Batman 24/7. That was also the time when the whole “Batman is the real personality, Bruce Wayne is the mask” psychology was really prevalent.

Then Morrison came along with an explicit agenda to resurrect the “hairy-chest love God” Bruce Wayne (and yes, those were his words at the time) and thankfully it stuck. Even though the character has been “killed off” twice since then Bruce as a person outside the suit has remained a very important element of the Batman comics. Bruce's time as an amnesiac while Jim Gordon was Batman springs to mind as a prime example. You'd never have seen such an extended examination of Bruce as a person back when I started reading comics.

So what does this have to with Hal Jordan?

Well, in last week's issue of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps Hal experienced a vision or a visitation of his father during a tense and stressful moment. During the scene, Hal's father says this:

“... you can't lose sight of the ground […] you can't go all out, all the time. Be Green Lantern but don't forget to be Hal Jordan.”

Reading that it struck me how divorced Hal is from his Earthly roots, even from the personality of Hal Jordan, when he's in uniform. Perhaps its an effect of the mask, he's really the only Earth Lantern who's still portrayed as having a secret identity. John and Guy haven't worn masks in years (may never have done under present continuity) and both have public identities to the point that not long ago Guy was having trouble getting teaching gigs because of the risk his other job represented to the kids. Kyle still wears a mask but, let's face it, Kyle's heart is too firmly pinned to his sleeve to be anything other than Kyle Rayner at all times.

There's also the fact that Hal has a life back home that he's actively in the business of ignoring. John, Guy and Kyle don't. At this point none of them have Earth-based supporting casts or careers (is John even still an architect?). Hal has his brother's family back home at the very least and some day they're going to cycle back to him and Carol Ferris being a thing because there's decades of narrative gravity pulling him back to that relationship.

As much as I've always preferred the space-based side of the GL mythos there's is something inextricably Earthy about Hal. He's John Wayne in space and that does mean he sometimes has to go back to the good old US of A every now and again otherwise it just doesn't feel right.

Also, I do feel he sorts of needs an ill-advised love interest in his life and no one on Mogo is dumb enough to volunteer at this point. 

Brexit 40,000

On the second page of the Death Guard Codex background section there is a Brexit joke. You see, it turns out that before they were reunited with their Primarch the original Death Guard, the Dusk Raiders, “were drawn from the rugged gene-stock of Albia, a Terran empire that long resisted reunification.”.

So the Death Guard, an army of chronically depressed unimaginative footsloggers who worship decay and despair, are British and even twenty-eight thousand years in the future the British people are stubbornly resistant to political unification with the rest of the world. Even when the cause of unification is led by a literal god trying to drag the human race out of an apocalyptic dark age we're still desperately protecting the pound.

I love it. Not only because I'm one of those tiresome Remoaner people but because its nice to see 40k getting some of its grim(dark) humour back. One of the biggest spiritual ancestors of the Imperium is Judge Dredd, another property that a lot of people tend to forget is meant to be funny.

As I've said before, one of my minor favourite background details of 40k is that Nurgle Daemons like fighting alongside Noise Marines because they like dancing to the screeching discordant sounds.