Random Ejaculations

The Wire

2009-02-21T10:35:00.000-08:00

On Monday night at 11:00, FX will commence showing all 60 episodes of all five series of The Wire. If you haven't already done so you should check it out. If you have Sky+, go and series link it, now, I'll still be here when you get back...

...done? Cool.

The Wire is ostensibly a crime drama but just as its fellow HBO series, Deadwood, looked like it was a western but was really about society bringing order from chaos, The Wire is really about something else. Its about institutions, about how none of them work the way they should and about the compromises people make to be a part of them. Each season examines a different institution, the first looks at the Baltimore drug trade, whilst obviously focusing on law enforcements institutions as well.

The Wire gives you minimal exposition, many events happen off camera, it has a large ensemble cast and leaves it up to you to work who is who and who is doing what, it doesn't do cliffhangers, it doesn't do big reveals, it doesn't create tension, it doesn't do soap opera or sub-plots. It has no good guys and few bad guys, the characters are about as real as TV allows.

The Wire makes no compromise with its audience. Just as the police who man the surveillance equipment are forced to pay attention and figure it out for themselves, so the audience is forced to do the same.

The term 'great TV' is thrown around to describe brainless entertainment that makes no demands on the viewer. This is what TV is for. TV isn't art.

The Wire isn't great TV. Its a work of art.

It's all downhill from here

2009-02-13T06:29:00.000-08:00

I'm officially half-way through 'The Arts Past & Present'. I've completed 4 of the 7 continiuously assessed assignments, there is an End of Course Assessment as well, and 2 of the 4 coursebooks.

The one I've just finished, 'Tradition & Dissent', covered Plato. animals in poetry, post-Reformation Christianity in England, Gothic architecture, the Irish Republican movement and Shostakovich. It was finished with a 1200 word essay on the built heritage of Ireland.

Whilst the previous assignments have been of similar length, they were split into two halves so this is the longest single assignment of the course so far. I've struggled at times to meet the word count in the shorter ones so I had real concerns about this one but in the end I was over by about 60 words (well within the 10% excess I'm allowed) and I actually found this the easiest one to write so far. I think the experience of the previous assignment has left me with a good idea of what is expected in an essay.

I got it back yesterday with a mark of 72, the first time I haven't improved on the previous assignemt's score suggesting I've plateaued somewhat. To be honest, if I can keep all the remaining scores in the 70's I'll still be pretty pleased but I'm going to try and kick things on with the next one and get into the 80's.

Battle Royal

2009-02-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

Or 'Clusterf@ck at the GW Corral'

In attempt to break up the monotony of Daemons vs. Orcs & Goblins battles we teamed up this week to take on a joint force of Dwarves & Ogres. We assembled a combined 2500 point army only to find our opponents had only put together a 2000 point army. Some quick surgery got our army down to 2000 and we were on our way.

The Ogre player was new to his army and the Dwarf player was new to the game. For our part we were relearning the game and unlearning the rules which had changed from the last time we played. The game was hectic and fast-paced and had to be curtailed at the end of turn 5 as one player had a train to catch.

Having only 2 hero slots available to me with the army list being split I decided to go with more numbers and added a second unit of Bloodletters. I lined myself up against the bulk of the Ogre army and found myself in the unusual position of holding the line and waiting for my opponent to cross the battlefield which he did a little recklessly.

Flamers are considered one of more (over-)powerful parts of the Daemon army list and this was the first game in which I'd really been able to cut loose with them. They destroyed a unit of Ogres early, wiped out half a unit of Dwarves, half another unit of Ogres and did some serious damage to the Ogre Butcher (magic-user) who was finished off by the Goblin bolt thrower. In return the Flamers weren't so much as scratched.

The carnage caused by the Flamers meant two of my Daemon units had little else to do but mop up. The other unit of Daemons got involved in a large battle with an uber unit of hard Dwarves and the Ogre Tyrant (general). Skirting around the edges was Masque. In previous battles she's died after doing very little but this time she proved a major pain in the ass for the opposition as I figured out how to use the model.

We didn't have time to count victory points but it was pretty clear who the winner was. The Ogre Tyrant was largely wasted fighting Goblins and the Dwarves never really got into the battle. Meanwhile my army was barely scratched barring one of the units of Bloodletters and Iain only really lost Goblins.

It was a fun battle if a bit of a mess and it was also very educational.

The Third Battle

2009-02-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

Excuse the lateness of this one but I was down in London all day Wednesday and doing a uni assignment for the rest of the week.

A re-match was had from the previous week so I won't go into great detail. We moved the points up to 1100 which actually turned out to be a pretty awkward number for both of us. I decided after last week that more numbers were needed in my army so I added another 10 Daemonettes and that 3 Flamers and 3 Screamers wasn't enough of either for them to be effective. The Flamers are the only missile weapons in the Daemon army and cost half as much to buy as the Screamers so out were the Screamers and in were 2 more Flamers. The Khorne Herald on a Juggernaut was out and the Daemonette special character, Masque, returned.

We moved onto a full-sized, 6'x4' board. Iain was insistent that hills be placed on both sides and I let him have it as he didn't have one last week for his missile troops. I decided to funnel all my troops on one half of the board to see if it would compress the game or leave me too far away to effectively kill everything. Iain believes he suckered me into thinking he would try and defend the hill opposite.

The first 4 turns were a series of outrageous bad luck for me beginning with the very shooting of the game, wherein 10 Orcs needing a 6 to hit and 4+ to wound with me having a 5+ save, killed two of my Daemonettes. Throughout these 4 turns I made just 2 of my ward saves, including for the Masque who saves on a 3+. The result was my army, and my Daemonettes in particular, was decimated by the time it got across the board. The situation wasn't helped by a single pesky Goblin hero taking advantage of the Hatred rules to force my Bloodletters to chase it for a turn, diverting them from areas where they could do real damage.

I got some of it back in turn 5. What remained of my Daemonettes found itself in combat with a large unit of Orcs, including the Orc general mounted on a boar. Despite being down to just two models and being significantly outnumbered, judicious use of a magic standard meant I won the combat and broke the unit, forcing it to run out of the game.

In the end I just couldn't do enough damage in the 6 turns to overcome the weight of numbers. I think reducing the number of Heralds and introducing more troops with the points I save so I can have more units which in turn will help me spread out across the board more and not be so disadvantaged in depoyment. With Iain having so many extra units he has been able to pick and choose who fights who.

Next week has the possibility of teaming up with my erstwhile nemesis to take on a joint Dwarf & Ogre force with a combined 2500 point army. Going over the 2000 point limit opens up some of the more abusive elements of the Daemon army but sadly I don't have the models to take advantage of it.

The Second Battle

2009-01-28T04:25:00.000-08:00

A reduced group this week as Andrew couldn't make it and Graham got stuck in a seminar leaving just Iain and myself. He had managed to get his Orc & Goblin army glued together and partially painted so battle was joined with my Daemons. Iain is by far the most experienced of our group at Warhammer so I expected a much tougher battle than last weeks. No disrespect intended to Andrew who, I believe, was having his very first stab at the game.

Despite this I wanted to try out my Khorne Juggernaut, which I'd painstakingly glued together, even though it wouldn't make for the most effective build for my army. To make room for it in my army list I dropped the Masque special character and my Battle Standard. The Daemon army needs to march itself across the battlefield as quickly as possible so I expected to be slowed down by expendabe models blocking my march moves by placing themselves within 8'' of my units so I gave my large unit of Bloodletters a standard which allowed them to march anyway.

I also expected the weaker units of Goblins to either respond to charge into combat by either shooting or running away so I gave my unit of Daemonettes a standard that forced whoever they charged to hold and enter battle. The Bloodletters hit hard, so I wanted them in combat with the Orcs, the Daemons hit often, so I wanted them in battle with the Goblins.

Once again I lost both the rolls to determine who began deploying their army first and to choose who went first. Last week, Andrew and myself were able to deploy comfortably on a 3'x4' board. This week we used a 4'x4' board, which is the recommended size for a battle of 1000 points. Even then, Iain struggle to fit all his forces on which consisted of, from memory -

A Troll
A unit of Goblins on Giant Spiders
A large unit of Orcs with hand weapons and shields
Two units of Goblins with bows
One unit of Goblins with hand weapons
A unit of Orcs with bows
A Goblin Shaman
Two Bolt Throwers

Dwarves have no magic and are the kings of anti-magic, which meant taking a wizard against them was a waste of time. This week I wanted to at least see how the magic system worked so upgraded my Slaanesh Herald to a Lvl1 wizard. As it turned out, throughout the entire game we only managed to cast one spell successfully and it had no effect on the game. I suspect magic will become more of a factor as the battles get bigger.

O&G suffer from Animosity, this forces them to roll a D6 for most of their units at the start of each turn. On a 1 the unit can't do anything this turn as they fight and squabble amongst themselves, on a 6 they get a free D6'' move towards the enemy. The Spider-Riders got a 1 in the first turn which held them up. The Troll got itself into cover which slowed down my Daemonettes and Juggernaut. In fact, it would be a feature of the game that everything I had planned for occured but to the wrong unit.

The Bloodletters never got march-blocked whilst almost everything else did. No-one needed to run away from the Daemonettes but they did from the Juggernaut and Bloodletters. A failed charge from the Juggernaut to a unit of Goblins due to them fleeing left it exposed to a charge from the Orcs. It comfortably out-fought the unit but lost combat resolution due to weight of numbers and Daemonic Instability took care of the rest.

The Flamers took two turns to get rid of the Troll when really they should have only taken one. The Bloodletters destroyed a couple of units of Goblins and a Bolt Thrower but couldn't get close enough to get into combat with the Orcs. The Daemonettes were slowed down sufficiently for the Orcs to get into combat with them. Even then and despite being outnumbered two-to-one, the Daemonettes whittled away the Orcs and my General killed his in combat.

The Spider-Riders closed in from one side of the Daemonettes and the Orc archers from the other. I dropped my Screamers in front of the Orcs to slow them down and mean that to get to combat, Iain would have make three Ld rolls. Needing to beat 6 and 7 twice on 2D6, Iain made all three rolls and the game was won on that. The Daemonettes were whittled away and the Bloodletters were too far away to do anything about it.

We didn't calculate the Victory Points but it was agreed a narrow victory went to Iain. He had more models left, although mine being more expensive points-wise that was closer than it looked. He controlled one quarter of the board, we each captured a standard and killed the other's General.

So what did I learn?

Deploying later and more often allowed Iain to create favourable match-ups. When the game started I should have redirected my troops, even if it meant taking longer to get there.

I need more troops against an army with a lot of models. Even though Daemons are as tough as nails you don't get a lot of them and they can only do so much damage each. Another 10 Daemonettes would have been a big help.

Screamers are of limited value in a smaller points game. They are good for hustling the opponent but in a small game I could have replaced them with another 7 Daemonettes.

Or with three more Flamers. Flamers are powerful and 6 would be much better than 3.

I used up a lot of points on Juggernaut and making the Herald a wizard and those points could have been much better used on more models. Though, to be fair, I knew that going in. I used them as much to experiment as for their effectiveness.

Orcs & Goblins seem a competitive army at low points value battles. Their Goblin Fanatics can cause carnage and the Bolt Throwers are cheap and powerful. They are a bit random and things can go wrong for them and I know Iain was concerned about this going in but as it played out their randomness on the whole benefited Iain and this battle and I think it probably would do on average.

At higher points values as the stronger magic, characters and rare units come into play I think O&G would get less and less powerful.

Battle Report

2009-01-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

The first battle is in the books.

Our small group convened at Games Workshop, Newcastle this evening for our inaugral battle. Intentionally a small scale affair to help get to grips with the rules and how our armies work, I took on Andrew's Dwarves with my Daemons of Chaos in a 1000 point battle.

We signed in downstairs and ascended the spiral staircase of Doom to the upper floor gaming room. A cramped and virtually windowless affair with that geek aroma hanging in the air. It did have boards and scenery and we were able to grab the last one available.

My army was largely dictated to me by the models I own. I do have a Bloodletter mounted on a Juggernaut but when coming to assemble it last night I found I would need to file down a section to attach the neck to the body so that was out. The only model I wound up not using was Skulltaker, a Bloodletter special character who is mean in a hand-to-hand challenge but I passed over in favour of a Herald of Khorne.

The army list demanded at least two core units and these went on a unit of 19 Bloodletters led by said Herald of Khorne. The presence of the Herald bestowed Hatred on the unit of Bloodletters and his ability to carry the Battle Standard were what swung it over Skulltaker. The Battle Standard I chose added D3 to combat resolution and I rounded the character off by giving it the Armour of Khorne (for a 3+ save) and a further ability that allowed him to re-roll failed rolls to wound in the first round of combat.

The second core unit went on 9 Daemonettes led by a Herald of Slaanesh who bestowed the Always Strikes First ability on the rest of the unit. I gave the Herald the Siren Song ability which could be used to force an enemy unit to charge into combat. I planned to use it on a unit of missile troops who otherwise would get to fire off a shot each if I charged them. I upgraded one Daemonette to a standard bearer and gave it the Banner of Ecstasy which meant the first break test they were forced to take would be done on their unmodified Leadership. I finished by upgrading one Daemonette to an Alluress which gave it an extra attack.

I was allowed two special choices but only actually own one, three Screamers of Tzeentch to be precise. These are flying discs who deliver a S5 hit each to a unit as they fly over it. They can change direction as they fly to deliver hits to as many units as possible.

My one rare choice went on three Flamers of Tzeentch, the only missile troops available in the army list. They each fire D6 S4 hits up to a range of 18''

Finally, for my general I choose the Daemonette special character, Masque. A relatively cheap option at just 90 points. Masque is fairly weak but her 3+ ward save (essentially an unmodified save against everything) meant she was best placed to be able to survive out of a unit. In fact, she can't join any units. Her special ability allows her to target an enemy unit in each magic phase and force it to lose D3 from either Leadership or Movement for the remainder of the turn. With Dwarves having the highest base Ld of any army in the game I hoped to increase my chances of them failing a Fear test. Every model in my army causing Fear.

I lost the deployment roll and had to begin deploying my army first. I placed my Screamers behind a rock to the right of the table, Masque in the centre with the two core units either side and the Flamers behind the Daemonettes. The plan was to march the Flamers behind them and then move the Daemonettes to one side and allow them to open fire.

Andrew placed 14 missile troops(Thunderers) in a line across the centre, a cannon to his left with some elite combat troops (Longbeards) and a couple of characters in front of them and a Slayer over the other side. He had a unit of Miners which come on the board during the game.

I then also lost the roll to see who chooses who goes first, Andrew deferred to allow me to march into range of his missile troops. My army being almost all close combat I had little choice but to do so.

I started by moving my Screamers the maximum 20'' straight up the board, I had planned to then fly them over the Longbeards and the Thunderers the next turn. I moved all my other troops straight up the board but ran into a little bit of a problem. The Daemonettes wound up right into front of a wooded area. After consulting the rules it turned out moving them through it would be a lot slower than I had thought.

The Dwarves are the kings of anti-magic, especially in small games, so I didn't bother with any so that was the end of my turn.

In moving the Screamers up the board I had taken them into charge range of the Longbeards and Andrew duly charged. The Slayer moved forward and everyone else stood still for the shooting phase. The cannon shot through my Bloodletters, hitting 4 and killing 2. The cannon would normally have made mincemeat of all 4 but Daemons have a ward save of 5+ and I made two of the rolls. Concerned about what the Masque could do, Andrew unloaded with all 14 of his Thunderers against her. He did 4 wounds meaning I would only have roll two 3+ on four dice for her to survive. I got three 1's and my general was dead.

The Screamers are great for moving around the board doing damage, they are cack in close combat. Two of them were killed, the third made its ward save but I was still left to take a break test. After each round of combat, each side totals up its combat resolution total, comprising of the number of wounds they did, +1 if they outnumber the enemy, +1 if they have a standard and/or Battle Standard, +1 for each complete rank after the first to a maximum of 3. They then take a Ld test modified down by how much they lost the combat by. I lost by 5, a Screamers' Ld is 7. that meant I needed to roll a 2 or less on 2D6.

Digressing for a second. Break tests in Warhammer are the deadliest part of the game. Even a tooled up unit of mega-troops can only do so much damage in a round of combat. If a unit breaks and is either caught by a pursuing enemy or runs off the board it is completely destroyed, no matter how powerful it is.

Daemons are a little different, they don't run. Instead, if they fail a break test they lose a wound for each point they fail it by. Screamers have one wound. If I rolled any higher than a 2 the Screamer would be dead. My only consolation was I had rolled an extraordinary number of 1's to this point. I did again. I got the 2 I needed and the Longbeards were stuck in combat with the Screamer.

This set them up for a flank charge from my Bloodletters.

I had to move my Daemonettes sideways to get them out of the way of my Flamers who moved towards the Slayer. The Daemonettes were left off to the left edge of the board away from any action. The Flamers didn't do so well and only managed to take 1 of the Slayer's 2 wounds.

The Thane with the unit Longbeards was forced to challenge my Herald of Khorne to hand-to-hand combat. Having charged I got to hit first, having Hatred I got to re-roll misses, I also re-rolled failed wound rolls and with a Strength of 6 I nullified the Thane's armour save. It was a short fight. The Bloodletters did a little damage, the Screamer even got a kill in before being destrroyed. I won the combat by 5. Even with a Ld of 9 the Dwarves were going to struggle to pass this break test. They didn't and ran off the board and the Bloodletters ran off after them.

This was double-trouble for Andrew who could not then fire his cannon at them in the next turn. He charged his Slayer at the Flamers who elected to stand and shoot and they chargrilled him. I'm not sure Andrew knew they could do this. He tried to bring on the Miners but failed the roll. All his missile fire went on the Flamers and two of them were killed. As I prepared to bring the Bloodletters on the board at the start of my third turn, Andrew decided discretion was the better part of valour and conceded as I'd made it across the board and he had only missile troops left.

So what did I learn?

Be more careful about lining up behind terrain. The Daemonettes were my fastest moving troops but got bogged down in the woods. The cover the terrain gives me is not worth the trade-off.

Big units are good. Daemonic Instabiltity (the name for a Daemons break test) is a problem. A large unit who hits first has a good chance of winning combat, as I found with my Bloodletters. They can also afford to take some casualties as they cross the board.

Keep the Screamers out of charge range. I didn't to get them quite so close to the Longbeards and they wound up being almost completely neutered.

For Andrew I think he took to the board with too few troops and probably should have concentrated his missile troops on the Daemonettes and Bloodletters rather than the Masque. At least that's how I saw it. Andrew may see it differently.

w0-and indeed-0t

2009-01-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

'I've received back my second marked assignment which came in at 65%. An improvement over the previous the assignment's 59% but I'm a lot less confident about the third assignment, which went in on Friday'

I clearly should have more confidence in myself. I've just got assignment three back in which I got 70 for an essay on owls in poetry and 80 for an essay on the Dalai Lama, combining for an overall score of 75.

It would be fair to say I'm pretty pleased with this.

Shout, shout!

2009-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

'Let it all out!'

I'm sure you all recognise Tears for Fears 1985 paean to the benefits of primal scream therapy in which patients are encouraged to reach deep into their emotional core and howl out raw, primal feeling. My favourite line though is the next one...

'These are the things I can do without'

How terribly British. 'Years of hideous sexual abuse as child? I suppose I could do without that'.

Things move apace in uni world. I've received back my second marked assignment which came in at 65%. An improvement over the previous the assignment's 59% but I'm a lot less confident about the third assignment, which went in on Friday. I've moved on from the first term and 'Reputations' onto 'Tradition and Dissent'. I've done Plato, poetry, the Reformation and now Shostakovich. Bit of a mixed bag.

Term 2 of Japanese starts at the end of this month but post-xmas skintedness means I can't afford to pay for it so my flirtation with the language has hit a roadblock.

I received written confirmation of my the award of my 5 credit points from Cambridge Uni and I've sent off a form to get them transferred onto my degree. The weekend before Christmas I attended another course there on Classical depictions of the underworld worth another 5 points.

Tuesday 20th January has been provisionally booked as the date for the first game of Warhammer. It's also George W Bush's last day in office so what better way to send him off than with some mindless violence.

Saw 'The Spirit' today, what a mess. It's mildly entertaining and has Scarlett Johansson in a nazi uniform but the film is all over the place. It seems thrown together and can't decide if it's a comedy or not.

Northern Lights

2008-12-04T05:39:00.000-08:00

The Northern Lights Film Festival is running at the Tyneside Cinema this week. Its remit is to showcase debut films from up and coming talent which makes it right up my street. I like low budget cinema, indie cinema and foreign films. That isn't to say I don't like all the stuff that comes out of the studios, just most of it. This Friday evening the festival is running a double bill of two horror films they're showing but as I'm unable to make that due to work I took them in separately on Tuesday and Wednesday.

First up was Blood Car. Set two weeks into the future where fuel prices have gotten so high only the very wealthy can afford to drive it centres on Archie, a primary school teacher and committed vegan who spends his time working on an engine that runs on wheatgrass which he purchases from a wheatgrass stall ran by Louise. Louise fancies the pants of him but he isn't interested.

Archie accidentally discovers that whilst the engine won't run on wheatgrass it will run on blood, human blood. Driving the car to the wheatgrass stall he attracts the attention of Denise who runs the meat stall opposite and who will do anything to him if it means she gets to ride around in a car. Cue Archie abandoning all he believes in an attempt to keep the car running so he can keep getting laid.

Blood Car is more of a black comedy than a horror but a hugely enjoyable one and you have to admire a film which offs a class full of primary school children, executioner style. The only issue I had with it was why on earth would Archie keep on killing so he can get laid with Denise when he could get it from Louise without killing and Louise is one hot chick. I later found out she's played by Anna Chlumsky who starred opposite Macauly Culkin in My Girl.

Mum and Dad is a British film and very definitely a horror. Lena is a Polish immigrant who works as a cleaner in Heathrow Aiport. One night when she misses the last bus a fellow cleaner offers to let her spend the night at her house. Drugged and bound, Lena is forced into the family by the demented parents of the title where she is intermittantly tortured and set to work sorting out the contents of stolen luggage. I'm unsure if making the central character Polish was an attempt at some kind of commentary or just a shortcut to giving us a character who wouldn't be missed. Mum and Dad is not a pleasant film although very little is shown on camera. Still, its less depressing than an episode of Eastenders.

Flip-flopping

2008-11-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

Although between our gaming group we owned both the and 1st and 2nd editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle the first I really played was the 3rd. It was the only edition not be a boxed set and was a culmulation of what Games Workshop had been working towards with their wargames. It was fairly complicated, even having rules for baggage trains, and lent itself to battles of attrition which could get pretty turgid. It was accompanied by 'Ravening Hordes' which contained all of the official army lists needed to play the game.

The 4th edition was the first to be released after GW's change of direction and it marked a change in philosophy in more ways than one. It was designed to be played straight out of the box, containing dice, templates, markers and a handful of basic High Elf and Goblin models. The extra stuff came with a corresponding increase in price as it went for £40 and whilst it was good value if you were planning on playing High Elves or Goblins it was very expensive if you weren't. Adding to the expense each army now had its own individual book that you needed if you wanted to play it. If you only planned on ever playing the one army then it was actually better value than Ravening Hordes but it did mean you were flying somewhat blind when it came to knowing what your opponent could do. Kind of like playing a CCG where the only cards you know are the ones in your deck.

The game was also streamlined, significantly. The rules were simplified and the game was now deisgned to be played over just 4 turns. Hand to hand combat became deadly as units were now far more likely to break from combat and in most cases then had a 50/50 chance of being wiped out, even by an inferior foe. It also became much easier for an inferior unit to hit its opponent.

Possibly the worst changes though, came with the new army releases. First up were the Wood Elves. Whilst elves were an established Warhammer race this new flavour didn't quite fit. Sporting crazy and cheese-mongous special units and presented with a heavily fae inspired bent they seemed oddly out of place with what had previously been established as the Warhammer setting.

The toad-like Slann were an army available in earlier editions of Warhammer and were intimately tied to the setting. They even made a brief appearance in W40K: Rogue Trader. They never really took off though and were rebranded for 4th ed as the Lizardmen. Dinosaur-esque humanoids they drained all of the character out of the Slann army and, were presented with Aztec accoutrements which just seemed weird and anachronistic.

Worse was to come though, much worse.

When the continent of the Old World was fleshed out for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Bretonnia was presented as a dark country where a decadent and increasingly chaos-infected noble minority ruled over a vast peasant underclass. When turned into an army for 4th ed WFB they were transformed in Arthurian knights, worshipping the Holy Grail and venerating the Lady In the Lake. They could not have been more out of place than Jesse Owens in a Klan rally. They were also ber-roken.

As you would expect they were based around cavalry units but as had been already demonstrated, especially by the Empire, cavalry in Warhammer was naff. To account for this and to make than effective army the Bretonnians were given a bunch of special rules and in true Games Workshop style they went from one extreme to another. By the time 5th ed came out with £10 mark up in price and a bunch of plastic Bretonnians and Lizardmen I needed little excuse not to bother.

In the intervening decade Games Workshop has continued to add armies to its 40K line but the lessons of the 4th ed armies seem to have been learned. Strictly speaking there has only been one 'new' WFB army in the last 10 years, the Ogre Kingdoms and it fits beautifully into the setting. It also was a very intriguing army to play. An army where even the most basic unit would consist of models that would be specialist troops in any other army. Always likely to have fewer models on the table than any it faces it provides a unique tactical challenge. The remaining new additions to the line are evolutions of previous armies. Two of them having been split and expanded into five.

Prior to the introduction of the Wood Elves, the Undead were probably the most anachronistic and out of place army in Warhammer. They had no real point and didn't really do a whole lot and no-one was ever quite sure what they were doing there. Now they are the Tomb Kings and the Vampire Counts. The Tomb Kings are a long lost civilisation approximate with ancient Egypt whose obsession with eternal life was twisted by the necromancer Nagash and brought about the end of their civilisation. They're primarily a control army whose skeletons bog down the opponents best troops while their special units do the damage. They have a theme, a point, a strategy and fit with the game.

The Vampire Counts get the rest of the Undead menagerie, the ghouls, zombies and, unsurprisingly, vampires. I've not read their army book so can't comment on how they will play but from reading the Tomb Kings book they seemed linked by Nagash.

Tomb Kings and Ogre Kingdoms were the two armies that appealed to me when I decided to get back into the game. Having only the finances to build towards one army I leaned first one way, then another, then back again. Ogre Kingdoms would mean fewer models to paint but skeletons would be easier to paint. The Ogres were a unique challenge but I like the idea of playing an army which is always in the fight.

I was, as our American cousins would say, a flip-flopper.

With d-day approaching when I would be forced to make a decision I sat down with the army books, looked at putting together sample 1000 point armies for each and then compared them to what models were cheaply available. Both armies have a 'Battalion' available. A box of plastic miniatures which form the core of an army and are relatively cheap. From using them to base the sample army on it quickly became clear one army was a complete non-starter.

A unit in Warhammer must take a Panic test if it loses a quarter of its models in one go. The Ogre Kingdoms Battalion gave you models in units of 4. You do the math. To increase the unit size to 5 would mean buying four more models. Then their general and wizard(-equivalent) models weigh in at £20 each. Finally you could only just scrape the most basic of armies under the 1000 limit.

So, my decision was clear, I would play Tomb Kings.

The came the spanner in the works.

My army, back in the day, was Chaos. Though initially inspired by the works of Michael Moorcroft, Chaos evolved into a true Warhammer original and one of the defining motifs of the line. In 3rd ed they were almost completely unplayable. I still have not-so-fond memories of my Beastmen unit with its movement rate of 1/3. That's right, a third! Along with everything else they were streamlined for 4th ed. Now they were homogonised, cookie-cutter and completely without the character that had made them so compelling. They were also close to useless. Their base models were so expensive you could barely field a competitive army with them. Whilst their stats would seem to justify their expense they were nowhere near as effective in the field as their numbers would indicate making them a lot like the Space Marine army.

For the latest edition of Warhammer they have been split into three. Beastmen, Chaos Warriors and Daemons. Three distinct armies with three different strategies for play. The cost of their troops has been reduced (the Bloodthirster by a whopping 350 points), things like Daemonic Gifts have given them back a lot of their flavour and the models are very nice. They don't have Battalions though, making them more expensive than Tomb Kings.

What the Daemon army does have though is a lot of variety. With daemons of all four Chaos gods available you can field anything from a fast moving, hard hitting Slaanesh based army to a magic based Tzeentch army to a tough and belligerent Nurgle army. With me likely to be able to build my army faster than my prospective opponent this variation swung it for me. Judicious use of ebay got me 10 Bloodletters, 10 Daemonettes, 3 Flamers and the Khorne and Slaanesh characters for a little over £40 giving me the basis of an army. I've since learned that the lesser Daemon units can be taken as special units in the Beastmen army meaning if and when GW get round to doing a Battalion for them I can easily build a Beastmen army and the daemon models double up for 40K as well.

I'm well on my way.

Games Workshop and Me

2008-11-09T15:24:00.000-08:00

Fighting Fantasy was my marajuana, my gateway drug. Island of the Lizard King to be precise.

I would have been either 8 or 9 and attending Richardson Dees first school in Wallsend. They had a book club magazine that they passed round and the aforementioned IotLK really caught my eye. The cover had a lizardman holding a leash containing a panther at the other end, it looked like one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. What I didn't know was that it was a gamebook, I didn't even know what a gamebook was.

I've always been an avid reader, I finished the school's reading programme a year early and in the year or so I was living in Wallsend barely a day would go by without me going to the library. I was able to pick up all the previous FF books, except for the sci-fi one, that would have to wait til I spent a summer in East Lothian and found a copy in the library there. I also discovered the Way of the Dragon series where you were a ninja, tres cool, the Thetan Chronicles series where you played the brother of Theseus, also tres cool, and best of all, the Lone Wolf series. They just blew me away.

I also got ahold of copies of Tunnels & Trolls and Dragon Warriors and discovered the world of roleplaying. Didn't have anyone to roleplay with though. A change of school and a year or so older and a group of us were playing AD&D which I had *ahem* borrowed from the library. Then came the motherload.

Games Workshop

Shelves and shelves of board games, roleplaying games and something new on me, wargames. It was like geek heaven. There are still some games which even now have an evocative hold on me just from seeing them on the shelves of GW 20+ years ago. The Green and Pleasant Land supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Chainsaw Warrior, the Cyberpunk box set, Blood Bowl.

And Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

A friend of mine bought the hardback book when it came out, I leant it off him and just devoured it. It was the first rpg that I loved to read as a book in its own right rather than just as a game. Rather than the vague high fantasy that typified AD&D, WFRP was grounded in a fantasy version of 16th century Europe. It had a much more cohesive religious and magic system, urban settings, the PC's started out life decidely unheroic and there was no clear division between good and evil. It spoke to me in a way AD&D never did and The Enemy Within is my all time favourite pre-published campaign.

Not long after there was Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. Ostensibly a wargame, a sci-fi companion to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, it was written as if it were a roleplaying game. A gothic masterpiece owing a lot to Nemesis the Warlock (not that I realised at the time though I was reading 2000AD) looking back it probably killed my enjoyment of things like Star Wars which seemed hollow and sentimental in comparison.

GW at this time was for me a high watermark of creativity in the industry and I still own copies of WFRP, Rogue Trader, The Enemy Within, Realms of Chaos and I think somewhere I may even have a copy of 3rd ed WFB. One thing I didn't get to do anywhere near as much of as I'd have liked was wargame. I couldn't afford the figures, I couldn't paint the ones I had and I didn't anywhere to play.

When high school ended and our gaming group went its separate ways it put a temporary end all my gaming. A couple of years later with some disposable income and itch to start again I went back to GW. Things had changed in the interim. A management buyout had turned the shop into an outlet for in-house games only. White Dwarf had become a puff piece for the product and anything that wouldn't sell any miniatures was purged from the line. WFB and 40K were given makeovers to aim them at a younger audience, the systems were simplified (albeit far more playable) and the armies bland and cookie cutter.

I lasted about three years until, a little belatedly, girls and clubbing became my priority. Still, all my gaming to this day came from return to GW and to Warhammer and whilst it wasn't the same product I had loved as a child I did still enjoy playing it.

Recently, a comment from a friend that he probably still had some old GW product in his parents loft awakened a dull flame, a vague desire to return to some GW. Never the cheapest game to play the prices had begun to spiral as I stopped playing for a second time when GW had switched away from lead figures and lacking the time to commit to assembling and painting an army I didn't want to go back to their wargames. They still did Blood Bowl though. I loved Blood Bowl. Interest was solicited, a league assembled, a copy of the game purchased, teams acquired. On the verge of our first Blood Bowl games I'm very much looking forward to it.

But from the moment I bought the game there's been this voice, nagging away in the back of my conscious, telling me that it wouldn't end here. I did the mature thing and ignored it. I didn't have the time to devote to anything more and the game wasn't what I remembered as a child. But....

Spending some time on the GW site whilst reading the Blood Bowl PDF's it seems they've addressed most of the issues I had. The metal models are expensive but there's far more choice of cheap plastic models than there was. I found out one of my co-workers is a former GW manager and an expert painter and modeller who is happy to paint some stuff for a small fee. I don't even shudder at the thought of painting my own stuff anymore.

So, today I admitted defeat. I am going to give GW another go, most likely with WFB. I'll let you know how it goes.

Universally Challenged

2008-10-19T02:52:00.000-07:00

Konichiwa, genki desu ka.

I finished Making Sense of the Arts just before I went on holiday last week by submitting another essay on Burma. This one about the reasons behind the arrest and detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. The last week of the course coincided with the first week of my main course, The Arts Past and Present and I missed the second week through being on holiday so when I attended the first of six, two hour tutorials on Thursday I hadn't even looked at it. Fortunately the first week turned out just to be a prep week, half of which I'd already done by doing the previous course so I only needed to read through parts of the course companion. The second week and the tutorial covered Cleopatra (coming at ya!).

The first chunk of the course is entitled 'Reputations'. Seven historical figures and their reputations are examined, each one the vehicle for introducing one the seven disciplines covered by the humanities. Cleopatra introduces Classical Studies and began by looking at how she has been continually reinvented in the 20th/21st century to suit our sensibilities before looking at how she has been presented by Roman historians and the problems of studying ancient historical sources.

Each character study is intended to take up one week. For Cleo there was 16 minute dvd on her to watch and then about 20 pages of the book to work through, which took about an hour, plus the tutorial (which was at Northumbria Uni). Having caught up I began the third week yesterday, a study of Christopher Marlowe and his play, Faustus. Again, there are about 20 pages of the book to read through and a tutorial on Thursday. The first few pages deal with Marlowe himself before the book asks you to read Faustus. All of it.

Now it isn't an especially long play but nor is it any easy read, needing constant references to the notes to understand half of it. Flicking forward the book then breaks down each act for further study. I've already spent as much time on this section as I did on Cleopatra and I'm only at the end of Act 1.

I also began Japanese lessons the day before I went to Rhodes. I've missed the second lesson due to being away but I've got some of the handouts to study before I go back. Japanese is 12 two hour lessons at the Ridley building at Newcastle Uni with a similar amount of homework each week from the set coursebook, Japanese for Busy People. I found out yesterday that there's a language centre at the Old Library building across the road from Ridley with resources for learning Japanese so I may check that out before the next lesson.

I've got until the end of the month to finish my two science courses and I may have to selectively leave some things out and focus on the parts the questions are on. Because I'm only doing these out of my own interest and they won't go towards my degree I can go back over the few bits I've missed after the course ends.

Greetings to my fans in....

2008-10-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

....where the hell am I?

Of course, I'm in Rhodes. Pefkos, to be precise. Yes, Ben is on his first ever beach holiday!

Pefkos is a small village on the east coast of Rhodes a little over halfway down, it used to be a fishing village and a refuge for the residents of Lindos (on which more later) when the tourist season started but over the last ten years it has taken off as a resort in its own right. The steep, rocky hills around the bay protect it from the wind and act as a sun trap giving Pefkos a reputation as the sunniest place on the island. Its geared entirely towards the British, I'm told there are some Scandavians as well but I'm yet to encounter any. It's all self-catering apartments with no all-inclusives and no hotels. There are a lot of bars and restaurants but little in the way of nightlife, which is fine by me and the beach is no more than a fifteen walk from pretty much anywhere in Pefkos. There are beggars all over the streets in Pefkos and they're more than happy to walk right up to your restaurant table and sit patiently to be thrown a scrap of meat whilst looking incredibly cute. It was a weird experience seeing cats as wild animals rather than pets and they were everywhere.

The holiday has been pretty much the perfect balance between relaxing and doing stuff. I'm not a person who can lie on a beach or by a pool for a week and I was a little apprehensive before going that I'd be bored but there's been plenty to do. In fact, there's one or two things I'm going to leave behind that I never got the chance to do. Over the summer, Rhodes suffered an earthquake of 6.3 on the Richtor Scale, fires that covered 40km and unseasonal heavy rains, all of which I believe portended my arrival.

We flew out last Wednesday evening and with the time difference factored in it was about three in the morning on Thursday before we got to bed. The introductory talk from the rep was at 11:00 on Thursday and we spent the afternoon by the pool, the early evening wandering around Pefkos and then finished with meal. On the Friday we hit the beach for the first time, we were told by the rep that if we wanted a sunbed we'd need to down there by ten. That may be true at the height of summer but when we got there at ten it was dead. On the evening we visited Rhodes Town, the capital and the only city on the island.

Rhodes is ethnically Greek and was part of what we would consider as 'Ancient Greece' back in the day, it fell under the control of the Romans then after the collapse of the western half of the empire it seamlessly passed into the hands of the Byzantines, it was given to the Knights of St John after the Crusades, was taken by the Ottoman Turks for a few hundred years then in the first half of the twentieth century it fell under the control of the Italians, Germans and British successively before becoming part of modern Greece in 1948.

The island shows evidence of all it's masters and in most spectacularly in Rhodes Town, the Knights of St John whose massive city walls still stand, enclosing the Old Town with its cobbled streets and mix of old buildings from the Ancient Greeks through to the Turks. It's a beautiful part of the island, especially at night, the only problem is all the museums are closed by that time and I never got the chance to go back during the day. Even more disappointing, when I got to the harbour I found the Colossus was no longer there, apparantly it was destroyed in an earthquake over 2200 years ago! Who knew?!

On the Saturday we went back to the beach and hired a small motor boat to ride up and down the coast in tha afternoon. On the Sunday we took a glass bottomed boat (they make the rocking world go round) up to Lindos. We envisaged it as a leisurely cruise with time to take in some marine life but as we were sailing upwind into some heavy winds it was more like a very wet rollercoaster ride. Some people declined to make the return journey though there was a toddler on board who loved every minute. The return journey was much more pleasant and were able to take in some sights and weigh anchor for a swim whereupon the pilot starting playing the score from Jaws which was surprisingly disconcerting. The eastern coastline is pretty much all rocky hills and cliff faces coming down to the sea and sailing back along them with clear blue skies above and the open sea to the other side I got the urge to raise a crew and sail off in search of the Golden Fleece.

Lindos is the second most popular destination on the island after Rhodes Town. It sits between two bays. To the north is Lindos Bay, the larger of the two and the one we arrived at, to the south is St Paul's Bay which is almost entirely enclosed by rocks. Between is a large outcrop of rocks atop which is the Lindian Akropolis which was our primary reason for visiting. The village of Lindos sits in the lee of the rock housing the Akropolis and due to its narrowl, winding and quite vertical streets it allows no motorised vehicles in it. Faced with a very steep walk up to the Akropolis I thought to myself 'What would Jesus do?' and rode a donkey all the way to the top. I felt a little bad for the donkey on some of the steeper parts though I'm assured they're more than capable of the climb and very well looked after.

The Knights fortified the Akropolis with walls and a few buildings when they took control of the island and its these which are primarily left standing. The temple to Athena Lindios was partially reconstructed in the early twentieth century and a partially ruined Byzantine church still stands on the grounds. There are some artist depictions of what the Akropolis would have looked like and when you stand in front of where it would have been, matching the drawings to the ruins it must have been a spectacular sight two thousand years ago.

We walked down and across to St Paul's Bay after that, passing the amphitheare in the way. St Paul's Bay is host to St Paul's Church, a small, white chapel built to commerorate the time antiquity's greatest penpal stopped there on his third mission to the Gentiles. The church is the second most popular foreign wedding destination for Brits after Las Vegas and I can see why as the building and its backdrop are both beautiful. We couldn't actually go in the church when we were there because, naturally, there was a wedding on. This one looked like a local one Greek one. We finished off Sunday by having dinner in a rooftop restaurant on the coast so we could watch the sunset. We got some photographs of it that look like cheesy postcards.

On Monday we took a trip to Symi, another of the dodecanese islands (for those of you who made your D&D non-weapon proficiency roll you'll know how many islands that is). Symi Town is built almost vertically from its bay up in the hillsides, it has a ship building harbour which legend has it was the place the Argo was built. During WWII, Symi changed hands six times and was the place where the allies finally achieved victory in this part of the world. For those of you who get irritated with American re-writes of history, plans to make a movie of the American's capturing Symi were shelved after great protest from the British veterans who actually did take the island back.

Symi's traditional industry is sponge diving and we attended a talk by one of the last sponge divers on the island who took us through the history of sponge diving in Symi, the different types of sponges and their properties and which sponges to avoid buying (the yellow ones). Leaving Symi Town we sailed down the island to the Monastery of St Michael in Panormitis. Throughout the holiday there was a subtle military presence (though not in Pefkos) but in Panormitis it was far from subtle. Small boats with big guns were anchored in the harbour and troops with assault rifles were sitting in cafes. We bought some biscuits from the monastery's bakery which tasted a bit like rusks and visited the church and musuem. Having seen some Byzantine churches already by this point there wasn't much new there.

Monday was a long day, we had to be up a little after six and didn't get back until after seven in the evening and there was a lot of travelling. Be warned if you ever plan on making this trip.

On Tuesday we took a tour around the south of the island. Of all the occupiers of Rhodes only the Knights of St John and the Italians tried to control the whole island and this was most obvious in the sparsely populated south with it's Italian administrative, military and storage buildings dotted around the landscape. The Knights built thirty castles around the island of which twelve still stand and we stopped at the partially ruined remains of one which houses the church of St George. The area is famous for its honey and we passed many beehives on the way. One of its local delicacies is nuts dipped in honey and covered in sesame seeds. After gorging myself on free samples I bought a couple of bags from a roadside stall and if I can manage to keep my hands off them I'll bring a bag to the next games night. They are gorgeous.

From there it was off to the southern tip of the island where the Med and Aegean meet. A sandbank splits the two seas though it periodically becomes submerged. Usually the Med is calm and clear and the Aegean is choppy and rough but both seas were pretty calm when we were there (though the Med was definitely the more pleasant to swim in).

Overnight on the Tuesday was the most spectacular electrical storm. The lightning was coming so thick and fast that the (very loud) thunder was almost continuous. If these sorts of storm are common to the region I can see why Zeus is the main god of the local pantheon. By the morning the storm had ended but it did leave the sky overcast. We'd left the last day open so we could relax and Joanne was gutted she couldn't try and get a tan. Every other day was mainly clear blue skies with temperatures at the top end of the mid-twenties and a nice cool breeze which was perfect for me. The coach home wasn't until 22:55 and we had the room til 22:00 so it was like having a full extra day.

Clearly I'm not in Pefkos anymore. I started this post on Wednesday and only just got it finished today. Not a place to go to if you want to party all week but that aside, highly recommended.

Ghost Hardware

2008-09-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

As I stated a few posts below I've decided to hold off blogging about my comic book projects until I have something concrete. I'm possibly still being a little premature as the current project is an anthology of three stories of which Ghost Hardware is only one. That said I'm confident if the project doesn't come off this will still see the light of day somewhere as myself and the artist, Texas' own Mr Matt Shults, are having a blast doing it. It's being done in six-page segments of which the first is now complete. To the left is the completed and lettered first page, it may have a title added but this is essentially it.

Show me the hypocrisy

2008-09-10T07:41:00.000-07:00

This blog post is brought to you with limited commercial interruptions.

If you're a follower of football you may have noticed that last week Manchester City were bought out by a consortium of Middle Eastern oil barons (you're paying for this at the pumps people). With a combined fortune said to be in the region of £550 billion the new owners immediately began flexing their financial muscles on transfer deadline day by meeting the valuations placed on Dimitar Berbatov and Robinho by their clubs, each in excess of £30 million.

Berbatov has been chased by Manchester United for over a year and the bid from City was enough to finally persuade their neat neighbours to meet Tottenham's valuation of the player. When interviewed after signing for the Red Devils, Berbatov stated there was no chance of him ever signing for City as he wasn't 'in it for the money'.

Robinho was chased all summer by Chelsea who refused to meet Real Madrid's valuation of the player, even when City matched it. Thus, Robinho became a Manchester City player last Monday, a move which has been met with incredulity and claims that Robinho is either insane, greedy or both. The assumption being that Robinho could only have chosen to join Manchester City for the money. The most recent accusations have come from Robinho's compatriot (by birth at least) and erstwhile Chelsea team mate, Deco.

Excuse me if I gag on the stench of hypocrisy.

Manchester United and Chelsea's recent domination of the game has been founded on being the two richest clubs in the country*. If Manchester United didn't have the spending power they possess they would not have had the success they've enjoyed and Berbatov wouldn't even be considering joining them. Chelsea are the Manchester City of five years ago and for any of their players to criticise another player for turning them down to join a club willing to spend more money is the height of pot-calling-kettle-black-ness.

Personally I say more power to Manchester City. United and Chelsea set the rules of the game with their purchase power and I'm more than happy for anyone to try and beat them at their own game.

* This is the usually the point where people try and argue that Ferguson's success at Man U has been built on a successful youth policy. It is true that in 1996-7 Ferguson introduced Beckham, Scholes and Gary Neville into the team where they went on to join Ryan Giggs as key players for Manchester United. Since that time though no player has come through the Manchester United youth system and established himself as a key first team player. The current squad contains two squad players in Darren Fletcher and John O'Shea and one first-teamer in Wes Brown who is only playing because of the injuries to Gary Neville. Meanwhile the key players in the Manchester United squad currently include -

Wayne Rooney (£27 million)
Dimitar Berbatov (£30 million)
Carlos Tevez (£20 million)
Rio Ferdinand (£30 million)
Michael Carrick (£18 million)
Owen Hargreaves (£15 million)
Nani (£17 million)
Anderson (£18 million)

Which is £175 million on just eight players. Nemanja Vidic and Cristiano Ronaldo at a combined £19.25 million look like bargain basement signings in comparison.

Hella Busy

2008-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

I hate the word 'hella'. It reminds me of really irritating Californians like Gwen Stefani and everyone on The Hills.

I hate The Hills, I mean like really, really hate, wish-an-earthquake-would-destroy-everyone-on-the-show kind of hate.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I'm hella busy. In a lazy kinda way.

The second of my three assignments for Making Sense of the Arts was handed in Monday. This one was about why Burma hasn't achieved a democracy yet. My first draft went something along the lines of -

'Brutally repressive military regime'

But I padded it out a bit before I handed it in. Remembered to reference it this time so got an 'achieved' in all eight Learning Outcome areas. I need to have done half of the next chapter, on the Turner Prize, I think, and started to look at the End of Course Assessments by next Tuesday evening.

Longtime readers will remember I had planned to burn through the two science courses and pick up MSotA in August but the tutorial plan scuppered that and they've been on the backburner. Started Life in the Oceans again today and covered off coral seas and polar seas.

I've just received a preview copy of Marvel's '1985' #4 a few hours ago, less than a day before it hits the stands so there's little chance of getting a review up in time.

I've got a couple of books of a religious bent I need to get through before next weekend before I had off to Cambridge University for a weekend of studying the early Christian Church.

Comic book-wise its the perennial two steps forwards, two steps back. Old projects stalling, new projects starting. When I have anything substantial I'll let you know.

Been watching 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace', just got one episode of it left. For those who don't know its a spoof of really bad, low budget horror television. Its good but not as good as it should be. It hamstrings itself by falling between two stools. Whilst ostensibly deriving its humour clever obersvation of its target (a la Spinal Tap or Alan Partridge) it can't help but slip in more traditional jokes which ruin the effect. It would have been much better served dropping them and just presenting itself as a straight TV programme. Bits of it are truly inspired and the soundtrack is worth the price of admission alone. Not just the music, which is fantastic 80's synth-horror, but the voices occasionally losing sync or not matching what the actors are saying is genius. The graphics on the opening credits and the break for commercial are great too.

Also been watching Carnivale. Its sloooooow. And its weird. I can tell its weird because its got the dwarf from Twin Peaks in it. Jury still out on this one.

Reading this crap... War Heroes #1

2008-07-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

Sneaky peak.

*Spoilers*

War Heroes is a 6 issue mini-series written by Mark (ULTIMATES, WANTED) Miller, drawn by Tony (EX MACHINA) Harris and published through Image. This is a review of issue 1 which arrives this Wednesday/Thursday (depending where you are).

As indicated by Bryan Hitch on the cover of issue 1, War Heroes sees Mark Millar use the ideas he would have used in volume 3 of Ultimates had the first two volumes not taken so long to complete.

War Heroes seems to have a contemporary setting, opening with mention of the stumbling War on Terror currently engaged in by the US government. It opens with a Muslim cab driver blowing up Capitol Hill enabling the US to gain popular support for an invasion of Iran. Things go badly and further attacks on American soil coupled with a failing economy turn popular opinion against the government. Faced with a chronic lack of new conscripts and unwilling to admit defeat in the Middle East they play the ace card, superpowers. A half a million soldiers given a variety of pills which each bestow their own individual superpower. Strength pills, speed pills, night vision pills, wide awake pills.

The bulk of the first eight pages of War Heroes are pure exposition setting up the premise, mainly through the device of a third-person narrative. Once its established we move towards what presumable is the set-up of the plot. We're introduced to a war hero on a brief home visit though the important character seems to be his brother who announces he is dropping plans to play football in college to sign up for the army. We jump through a handful of other characters throughout the US with plans to enlist who seem to linked together in what one of them mentions is a superpowered scam.

As you can probably tell, issue 1 of War Heroes serves purely to set up the premise of the series, Millar being a popular enough writer at the moment that he doesn't need to give the audience any more than that to entice them to keep buying it. Though there's nothing explicitly stated, I get the feeling that there is more to the terrorist attacks on US soil than meets the eye. No explanation is ever given as to where the superpower providing pills originate from and there's no indication as to whether superheroes and villains exist independently of the super soldiers. I've no idea if it'll even be an issue in the rest of the series or just the vehicle that allows the story to be told. There's the occasional 'fuck' uttered in the dialogue which I assume means the title will carry a mature readers tag but there's nothing else in issue 1 which would warrant it and the cursing could easily have been dropped with no impact on the story. I'm assuming, though, that as the series goes on we'll get some more adult content which explains the decision to go for a mature readers tag.

The version I read hadn't been coloured yet so its difficult to know exactly what the comic will look like. Anyone who has read Ex Machina will have a good idea of what to expect from Harris as he doesn't depart from his usual style. It's interesting to read this just after the first Starman HC to see just how far Harris has come since then, as well as his art style his page composition is top notch. Its a rare page in War Heroes that has more than four panels and many have less giving the story a 'big' feel that I imagine will lend itself to some action packed later issues.

Its virtually impossible to rate War Heroes at this point when all we've had is the set-up. It certainly starts interestingly enough and I trust Millar and Harris enough that I'm on board for all six issues. The biggest disappointment I have at this point is that this isn't Ultimates 3. Because it has to start from scratch there are no Captain America's, Thor's or Iron Man's and no 26 issues of back story for us to grab our attention and draw us into the story. Instead it has to create a raft of entirely new characters (one of whom is even compared to Captain America by another of the characters) making the story that bit less engaging than if it had been Ultimates 3.

Reading this crap.... Miracleman, part 1

2008-07-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

A note on names. I'm going with Miracleman in this review because that's the name of the comics I'm reading.

*Spoilers*

I'm only actually going to get round to reviewing issue 1 in this part of the review. The rest of it is an attempt to place the story in its context as well as explain why you can't go out and buy it.

Miracleman has his birth in the legal dispute between National Comics and Fawcett. The former felt that the latter's comic book character, Captain Marvel, was derivative of their own Superman character and infringed on their copyright. At the peak of his popularity, Captain Marvel and his family of titles were shifting in excess of a million copies a week in the US. As the superhero boom ended and with sales falling, Fawcett finally decided to settle out of court with National Comics and agreed to cease publication of Captain Marvel in 1952.

The decision had a knock-on effect for publisher L. Miller & Son in the UK. American comics were not allowed to be imported to the UK so Miller had done quite well issuing black & white reprints of the Captain Marvel family of titles. No more Captain Marvel meant no more reprints. Derived of a significant source of income, Miller began to cast around for ideas for a replacement. They turned to writer and artist, Mick Anglo, who suggested replacing the Marvel family with another set of characters who were just different enough to avoid litigation.

Out went Captain Marvel and in came Marvelman. Instead of Billy Batson being given the magic word 'Shazam' by a wizard, Mick Moran was given the word 'Kimota' by an atomic scientist. Captain Marvel Junior was replaced by Dicky Dauntless who became Young Marvelman by saying the word 'Marvelman' and Mary Marvel switched sex and became Johnny Bates who turned into Kid Marvel when he also said the word 'Marvelman'. For a decade they had Captain Marvel-esque adventures against approximations of the Big Red Cheese's rogues gallery but the decision to allow American imports of comic books into the UK in 1959 spelt the death knell for the titles which ceased publication in 1963. And that was that.

Kind of.

As an avid reader of those comics as a child in the 1950's, Alan Moore had mentioned in an interview that he would like to have the opportunity to write the character. Moore had seen an old Marvelman annual in a second hand shop which led him to muse of a middle-aged Micky Moran, wandering the streets with vague recollections of his superhero days and trying desperately to remember the secret word that gave him his power.

Dez Skinn had been editor of Marvel UK where he had instituted a policy of using up and coming British talent to produce original product for the UK market. Unhappy with Marvel's stance on creative rights, he left in 1981 to launch his own monthly comic, Warrior, with many of the talent he had used at Marvel but giving them much more freedom and a share in their creations. Wanting a superhero strip in the comic, Skinn, aware of Moore's comments, hired him to write an all new Marvelman strip with Garry Leach on art. Moore was also chosen by artist David Lloyd to work with him on a strip he'd been asked to do for Warrior by Skinn and when Warrior launched in 1982 it featured two, Moore-penned, seminal comic strips, Marvelman and V for Vendetta. In fact it's fascinating to compare the two strips (and I may well do in a future post).

The final episode of Marvelman in Warrior was published in 1984 with the story still unfinished. The release of a Marvelman special had brought Warrior publisher, Quality Comics, into conflict with Marvel Comics who felt the title infringed on their trademark. By episode 8 of Marvelman, Leach had been replaced as series artist by Alan Davis (who assumed Leach's share of the rights) and he and Moore had a falling out at this time over whether they would allow Marvel to reprint their run on Captain Britain for the American market (guess which one didn't want to).

Warrior itself only lasted another year amid falling sales and late work from artists. Bound by his creative control agreements, Skinn couldn't bring in fill-in artists. Skinn began to look to the American market to pick up reprints of Marvelman but the name again proved a stumbling block. After having problems launching their own Captain Marvel title in the 1970's, DC didn't want to touch another title with Marvel in the name. Marvel EiC, Jim Shooter, felt any comic named Marvelman would have to be a flagship title for the line and the type of story Marvelman was telling most certainly did not fit the bill (ironically, rumour currently has it that if Neil Gaiman is ever able to claim the rights back Marvel will continue the series with it's original title).

It eventually found a home at Eclipse Comics who began reprinting several newly-coloured episodes at a time in US comic book format. Unwilling to get into a legal wrangle with Marvel they changed all references of 'Marvel' to 'Miracle' (though one or two 'Marvel's' slipped through the net in the reprints). After the Warrior material ran out six issues in, Moore returned to the title to pick up where he had left off with artists Chuck (Austen) Beckum, Rick Veitch and John Totleben, completing his run in issue 16 and handing over the writing reins and his share of the property to Neil Gaiman.

Gaiman, with artist Mark Buckingham, continued Miracleman up to issue 24 but with issue 25 completed bar the colouring, Eclipse went bust in 1994, a victim of the crashing comic book market and 25 never saw print. In 1996, Eclipse's creative assets were purchased by Spawn creator, Todd MacFarlane, who was mainly interested in securing the rights to Miracleman and introducing him into the Spawn-iverse (as that a word? It is now). Although MacFarlane now owned Eclipse's share of the property, Gaiman still had his and the two were not on the best of terms. Back in 1993, Gaiman had written issue 9 of Spawn for Todd and introduced the characters of Medieval Spawn, Angela and Cogliostro. Gaiman claimed he had created them on the understanding he would retain creative ownership of them. The Todd-meister reneged on the deal, pointing to copyright notices in the Spawn comics that proved they were work for hire.

In 2002 the case came to court and Gaiman won, he was awarded 50% ownership of the characters he'd created and the relevant back-royalties, but no decision was taken over who owned Miracleman. Then it got even more complicated. Skinn claimed that in the deal that sold Miracleman to Eclipse, the rights to the character would revert back to the original creators if the comic went a certain amount of time without being published, which would leave Todd with no claim on the character and the rights back in the hands of Gaiman, Buckingham, Leach (who had been given them back by Davis when Davis left the title) and Skinn.

Or did it.

Original series creator, Mick Anglo, claimed that Skinn had never actually purchased the rights to Marvelman from him. Meaning that Skinn could never have shared them with Moore and Leach or sold them to Eclipse which in turn meant MacFarlane could never have purchased them. Skinn had come to an agreement with Anglo to pay him royalties for any reprints of the original strip but it's unclear whether he purchased rights. Given that it was an obscure character intended for circulation an obscure periodical it's likely he felt that it wouldn't have been worth the bother.

A further spanner. Anglo produced Marvelman as work for hire for L. Miller & Son meaning that if Skinn didn't acquire the rights then they would probably still hold them. The problem is they ceased publication in 1996 and were sold to Alan Class Ltd, who published b&w comic book reprints, and nobody knows whether the rights to Marvelman were included in the sale. There's even been the suggestion that if Miller did retain the rights that they would be in the public domain now, meaning we could all do our own Miracleman comic (but not Marvelman, unless you wanted to go to court).

Ultimately the decision over the rights is likely to boil down to who can defend them in a court of law, meaning either Gaiman or MacFarlane remain the most likely destination. More likely still is that the issue will never be resolved and we'll never see the completion of the story.

So, issue 1. The first Eclipse reprint opens with a further reprint of an original, 1950's, Miracleman story (partially rewritten by Skinn) wherein the Science Gestapo, frustrated by their failed attempts to take over the world in 1981, travel back to 1956 where their superior technology will allow them easily achieve their goal. Naturally, they are defeated by the Miracleman family. Given what Moore went on to do with 1963 and Supreme I actually thought this was a Moore pastiche when I was reading it and it does a good job of introducing the series as well as being a lot of fun.

The first three episodes of Moore and Leach's run on Warrior follow. As Moore had imagined, Mick Moran is now a man in his early forties, a freelance journalist, married with no children and living a pretty mundane life. But when he sleeps he dreams of being Miracleman and in particular of a disaster where it all went wrong. He is haunted by his dreams and the magic word which remains tantalisingly out of reach. Sent off on an assignment at the opening of a nuclear power station, Moran is caught in the middle of vast plutonium theft by armed robbers planning to sell it on to terrorist organisations. A chance look at the word 'atomic' stencilled on a door window and seen from behind brings his magic word back to his memory and Miracleman is reborn.

With his memory now returned along with his powers, Miracleman is able to recall what happened to him and his two super-powered friends in their final mission in 1964 and how he came to lose his memory. His wife, whilst confronted by the reality of Miracleman, has a hard time coming to terms with his four-coloured knockabout adventures in the 1950's or why no-one's ever heard of him.

An image of Miracleman flying away from the power plant brings him to the attention of Johnny Bates, Kid Miracleman, who has since become a successful businessman. Bates arranges a meeting with Moran in which he explains how he survived their final mission at the cost of his own powers.

Moran quickly realises that it's not Johnny Bates he's talking to but KM and deduces that KM never turned himself back into Bates after their final mission and has been a living god ever since, freed from human concerns or morality. Confronting him with this, KM turns on him, determined to remove Miracleman from the picture and resume life as the only superhuman on the planet. Issue 1 ends with KM about to attack Moran.

I'll leave a longer analysis of what Moore does with Miracleman as I come to the end of his run but just taking issue 1. There is an ever present and quite extensive third-person narrative that runs right through this which coupled with the relatively short length of the original Warrior episodes (about 8 pages each) and the more compressed storytelling style of the time, moves issue 1 along at quite a pace. Typical of Moore there are no thought bubbles, something still quite in vogue at the time.

Leach's art is excellent and brilliantly evokes the mood of the book, capturing the dull day-to-day world of Moran and lending tremendous power to Miracleman and KM by contrast. I would loved to have seen it in its original black & white where I have the feeling it would be even more effective. Issue 1 closes with a two-page history of Miracleman by Skinn.

Reading this crap.... Scott Pilgrim

2008-07-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

SCOTT PILGRIM
23 YEARS OLD
RATING: AWESOME

*Spoilers*

Scott Pilgrim is written and drawn by Bryan Lee O'Malley and is published by Oni Press. So far there have been four of a planned six volumes printed and this is a review of the first two, 'Scott Pilgrim' s Precious Little Life' and 'Scott Pilgrim Versus the World'.
The covers to each volume are very manga-esque with clean lines and dynamic poses. Inside the book though the artwork is much scratchier and much more reminiscent of typical American indie stuff though the actual style of artwork remains the same. This fusion of American indie with manga pretty much sums up the entire book.

Scott Pilgrim lives in Toronto, he's 23 years old, has an older brother and a younger sister, he's between jobs, he lives with his room-mate, Wallace, they share a bed, Wallace is gay, Scott isn't, they just can't afford another bed. He's just begun dating a 17 year old Chinese student called Knives Chau, he plays bass in a band called Sex Bom-omb, his ex-girlfriend plays drums.

One night, whilst dreaming of crawling through a desert, a girl rollerskates past him. Afterwards he can't get her out of his head and becomes obsessed by her, dreaming of her again. His dream girl turns out not to be quite so dreamy when he sees her in real life, delivering a parcel. He meets her again at a party but freezes when he approaches her. Discovering she's the Toronto delivery girl for Amazon.ca he orders a CD just so he can meet her again and he convinces her to go on date with him.

So far, so indie.

Ramona Flowers (for that is her name) reveals that she actually travels through a subspace highway that cuts through Scott's head and allows her to make her deliveries quicker, that is why Scott dreams of her. Their date doesn't go well but ends quite well and she agrees to keep seeing him. Scott receives an e-mail from Matthew Patel explaining that they must fight but he doesn't really read it and just deletes it. A handwritten letter follows from Patel after he receives no reply. Scott isn't interested in what he's selling and again disposes of it without reading it.

Sex Bom-omb get a gig in a local club but take the stage to a comatose crowd who have been literally knocked out by the previous bands music. Barring the mention of the subspace highways, which is pretty much forgotten about as soon as it's mentioned, the weirdness starts here. First, mildly, with the previous band and then ramped up to 10 with the appearance of Matt Patel. Matt explains that he is the first of Ramona's seven evil ex-boyfriends who Scott must defeat if he wants to date her. There ensues a fight scene straight out of a video game. As things begin to go badly for Matt he calls up what appear to be a team of evil flying cheerleaders to help him but it still isn't enough. Defeated, Matt disappears, leaving behind some coins in true video game style ($2.10 to be precise).

With the fusion of the two story styles established by the end of volume 1 there's much more mingling in volume 2 where we get a fight between Ramona and the newly dumped Knives, Scott takes down the second of the League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends (who drops some more coins and a mithril skateboard with power-ups which Scott can't use because he never took the skateboard proficiency) and a flashback to 16 year old Scott wherein he gets his first girlfriend, forms his first band and takes down the rival high school.

Scott Pilgrim is certainly a unique read. There've been plenty of genre-mashing stories before but never like this. I suppose it's a testament to O'Malley that the fusion never seems weird or out of place. There's quite a large supporting cast and O'Malley does an excellent job of giving them distinct personalities. He uses panel composition with a simple but highly effective art style to really get over the emotion of the story. The scene where Scott dumps Knives moments after she tells him she loves him, with the two of them being pushed further and further apart, is particularly strong.

Whilst never changing the style of art, O'Malley switches between quite straight-forward renderings of his characters and their world to quite highly stylised scenes very reminiscent of manga. There are very few captions in Scott Pilgrim and what there are are entirely expositional, everything in the story is revealed solely by what the characters say and do. There are moments where the characters seem to show an awareness of being in a comic book. At one point Scott tells Ramona he'll save a certain conversation for a later volume. When people ask him to explain something that has happened he tells them to 'read the book'.

Scott Pilgrim is a quirky and enjoyable read, if you have the opportunity I'd suggest trying it out (and if anyone wants the first two volumes I have 'as new' copies for sale at a reasonable price) but I wouldn't go as far as to say its essential reading. There's currently a movie adaptation of Scott Pilgrim in development with Edgar Wright (of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead fame) attached to write and direct it. IMBD has a 2009 release for it.

Reading this crap.... Starman

2008-07-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

Let all the children boogie.

*Spoilers*

Earlier this year DC released the first of what will be six hardbacks collecting James Robinson's entire six-year run on Starman. This one collects issues 0-16 and includes Robinson's afterword's from the first two issues as well as quite a lengthy afterword at the end of book written earlier this year. Tony Harris is the regular series artist and it also features fill-in work by the likes of Chris Sprouse, Stuart Immonen and Tommy Lee Edwards making it somewhat of a breeding ground for future stars. For both writer and artist, Starman was their first run on an ongoing series.

The Starman character dates all the way back to the Golden Age of comics. Ted Knight, astronomer and scientist, creates the Gravity Rod (later Cosmic Rod/Staff) which allows him to fly and manipulate energy. Starman was cancelled in the late-forties as the superhero boom turned into a bust. The mantle was passed on to various other characters from the seventies onwards before Robinson rebooted the concept.

Starman 0 begins with Ted Knight's eldest son, David, weilding the Cosmic Rod and wearing the red and green spandex. Ted has two sons, David who idolises his father, and Jack, who has a difficult relationship with his father and brother. Jack runs a collectable memorabilia shop and wants nothing to do with the superhero life.

David's stint as Starman is an extremely short lived one (as in a couple of pages) as he is killed by the son of Mist, a member of the original Starman's rogues gallery. Mist is orchestrating a vast crimewave in Opal City (the fictional abode of Starman). Jack originally decides to leave Opal City for his own safety but reluctantly takes up the Cosmic Rod to save his father, killing his brother's killer and ending the Mist's reign of terror.

The idea of Jack as the reluctant hero is the central theme of this book. Against his better judgement he continues on as Opal City's protector in the wake of his victory over Mist and rarely an issue goes by without some reference from Jack about how he isn't really a hero. I suppose that in its original format as a monthly serial it would be necessary to establish this every issue but reading the first seventeen issues in one go it becomes a bit tiresome and repetitive and makes Jack come across as a bit whiny, especially as he clearly is a hero.

In his afterword at the back of the book, Robinson discusses his intentions with the series. Seeking to marry a traditional superhero tale to a more well-written, intelligent and realistic form. Something he feels was present in the works of the likes of Frank Miller, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison but by 1995 is something that he feels have become divorced from each other. Superheroes one one side and 'Vertigo-style' titles on the other. Jack Knight is the realisation of this vision for Robinson. He eschews the traditional superhero costume, is unsure of himself and defines himself more by his love of collectable memorabilia than by fighting crime.

Robinson is a writer who is never happy using five words where twenty will do and at times the book verges on being more of an illustrated story than a comic book. We get constant narration, freely switching between the first- and third-person. We get distracted from fight scenes as Robinson drowns them with captions that have nothing to do with the action at hand. He mines Starman's continuity well, bringing in many old characters, villains and past versions of the character.

Robinson cites Grant Morrison as his favourite comic book writer and in particular mentions Morrison's run on Doom Patrol as a favourite of his. This came as no surprise to me as the book Starman constantly reminded me of as I was reading it was Doom Patrol. Each subverts the traditional idea of superheroism, each is a recepticle for authors interests and ideas and Tony Harris' art is very reminiscent of Richard Case's. There's an issue involving a Hawaiian shirt containing a portal to heaven which is pure Doom Patrol.

Whilst Morrison uses his interests to construct his stories around (Brotherhood of Dada, When Rabbit Howls etc), Robinson takes the more Tarantino-esque route of having his characters talk about them so we get conversations on things like old films, which is the best Sondheim musical and who was the best big screen Philip Marlow. He also projects his own love of memorabilia onto Jack, his internal monologue is filled with lists of the stuff. The effect is pretty self-indulgent and combined with his overuse of captions, Starman often reads like Robinson is showing off rather than trying to tell a story.

Harris' art is a million miles away from where it is now on Ex Machina and is pretty ugly when the book starts out (though I don't think inker Wade Von Grawbadger's heavy black lines coupled with the black pages help). Robinson mentions in his afterword both he and Harris felt like the art his its stride with issue 5 but it isn't until about issue 12 that I can see a real improvement.

I'm undecided on whether to pick up volume 2. There was nothing in Starman that I haven't seen done much better though it was a reasonably enjoyable read. Given that the entire run stretches to 81 issues of which this book only has the first 17 then I'm prepared to accept that the book will improve as the creators find their feet so I may well give it another chance.

It started with a dame

2008-07-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

It always starts with a dame.

A New Wardrobe

2008-07-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

I've had this blog for about a year now and I've decided its time for a change so here is Random Ejaculations v 2.0. Black is out, brown and cream are in, the sidebar has moved across the page and I'd like to welcome on board Calvin & Hobbes. Enjoy.

An Interesting Dichotomy

2008-07-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

Last weeks TMA marked the end of the poetry section of Making Sense of the Arts and I'm now into the history part of the course. The intention is to teach some of the basics of historical research via a case study of Burma/Myanmar (henceforth referred to as Burma for ease of typing, no political statement is implied) and in particular Aung San Suu Kyi. As I'm sure you're all aware due to coverage in the media over the last twelve months, Burma is currently in the grip of a totalitarian military regime which swept to power in the coup of 1962. This type of thing is a depressing familiar sight in post-colonial nations as they try and forge their future. In 1990, after two years of turmoil following General Ne Win's decision to retire, democratic elections were held in which Suu Kyi's NLD (National League for Democracy) took a whopping 392 of the 485 seats available. In response, the ruling military staged another coup and retained power.

Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1989 and has been under continuous house arrest since 2000. During this time she has become a symbol for freedom on the international stage, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991 and has received over sixty other international awards including the American 'Presidential Medal of Freedom'. The international community has roundly condemned the regime in Burma and America has led the way in issuing declarations and enforcing sanctions in attempt to remove the oppressive and decidedly undemocratic military junta.

As I've indicated on a forum I frequent, I'm currently reading my way through 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein, the first hundred or so pages of which deal with three other post-colonial powers who has fell victim to military coups, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Unlike in Burma, whose attempts at self-government were crippled by the artificial grouping of many differing ethnic minorities under a single artificial state (Ne Win was in fact invited into power initially to help control this), these three Latin America countries were doing quite well for themselves. Whilst still very much 'developing' their mixed economies (along the lines of the pre-Thatcher British economy) were doing quite well. The coups when they came were far more brutal than anything which occurred in Burma with Chile's, General Augusto Pinochet becoming notorious for his 'stadium massacres'.

So, you would naturally expect these outrageous and devastating overthrows of democratically elected governments by brutal totalitarian military regimes to be condemned equally if not more so than the coup in Burma by America. Naturally, you'd be wrong.

In fact the exact opposite is true. The American government was both fully supportive and actually complicit in all three Latin American coups through it's shady overseas operations division, the CIA.

The question is why? Why was what happened in Burma so bad and what happened in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay so good?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is cash.

Burma is a country rich in natural resources and was royally raped for them by the colonial powers whilst it was under British occupation. When Ne Win took power he closed the country off completely and nationalised all its resources.

The Latin American countries were mixed economies that allowed overseas investment in certain areas but not others, regulated foreign corporations and protected prices and industries. All three coups instituted the most laissez-faire of free market economies, practically giving away the nationalised industries and removing all regulation for overseas companies.

It's become fashionable in recent years to ascribe sinister economic motives to actions taken by the current Bush administration but in fact all he's been doing is following in the grand tradition of American foreign policy. Growing up in the tail end of the Cold War I was always led to believe that communist countries were built on government propaganda whereas the West was built on freedom of speech and expression and that this was one of the main reasons why we were better than them, why they were the Evil Empire. In fact, as I've gotten older I've come to believe that the main difference is that we were just much better at propaganda.

Not for us the Comical Ali's telling us how great the war is going, instead we're denied images of soldiers returning from the Middle East in body bags. The British didn't build their empire on rapacious greed and a lust for power, we were bringing civilisation and modernisation to backward countries. The American Shadow-Empire is even more subtle and its greed is wrapped up in terms of 'freedom' and 'democracy'.

Right at the beginning of the history section of my workbook, in the second activity, I was asked to write a definition of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. In the discussion that followed the books author said this -

'Actually, I found the dictionary quite useful, for I realised that sometimes I have assumed that 'freedom' and 'democracy' were interchangeable - that they had almost the same meaning.'

From which I can only assume one of three things -

The author is an idiot
The author thinks I'm an idiot
Propaganda works

And the results are in

2008-07-09T06:19:00.000-07:00

Handed in my first Tutor Marked Assigment on Monday and got the feedback yesterday. The Arts course has two TMA's but they're not actually graded, they need to be completed before you're allowed to do the End of Course Assessment, though, and it's that the course will be marked.

The TMA was an analysis of a haiku. I had a nightmare of a time fitting some of the answers into the word count and had to omit some things I'd really like to have included. It was marked against eight 'Learning Outcomes' of which I got 'achieved' in six of them, 'achieved throughout' for one (selecting relevent evidence) and one 'not quite achieved' for foolishly omitting page number references, a mistake I certainly won't be making again. Overall the feedback was that it was a 'perceptive analysis of the poem'.

It's peanut-butter jelly time!

2008-07-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the tardiness of my recent posts, things have been a little hectic. After going straight from work to London last Monday to see Wanted and then getting the overnight coach back, all without sleep it left me wasted for a couple days. Then I was back at work on Thursday night and off to Manchester U first thing Monday morning for a Classics school to complement my degree which I only got back from late last night. More on that later.

Whilst vegetating last week I finally caught up with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and what a monumental disappointment it was. I'm not sure if it could have been any worse if they'd tried.

Rewatched Spider-Man 2 for the first time since I saw it a cinema. It remains the best superhero adaptation and a perfect example of how you can capture the spirit of a comic without being slave to its continuity.

I also saw Blue Harvest, the Family Guy retelling of Star Wars which was a very pleasent surprise. Favourite line -

Leia/Lois - Aren't you a little fat to be a stormtrooper?

Luke/Chris - Well stay here and rot you stuck up bitch.

There's been some interest in Kid Night from a small publisher but they are a few obstacles to overcome before things start getting anywhere. I should have a story up on Zuda over the coming months too so stay tuned.

I had hoped to spend July concentrating on the two science short courses so I could get them in by the earlier date before moving onto the humanities course but my tutor has had me fly through the Poetry section of the course and my first assignment is due in on Tuesday. I haven't started it yet but I shouldn't have any problems getting it done (and no, Andrew, I haven't forgotten that I said I'd post some of my assignment questions up on Omnihedron, I should have them up over the next few days). The problem is that it means neglecting the science courses. I may not now get both donw by the end of July.

It doesn't help that I frickin' hate poetry. I've tried to like it, I really have, but I've never been able to get into it. I've been studying Full Moon and Little Frieda and its garbage, even knowing how to read I still think its garbage. Check it our for yourself -

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket

And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed

'Warm wreaths of breath' my arse. What a load of pretentious crap. Fortunately my assigment is on haiku which because it's structure is pretty much set in stone in advance it can concentrate on giving you something to think about.

Did three full days of study this week on Ostia, ancient ideas on medicine and the erotic poetry of Ovid (far more interesting than you might think) amongst others. Most of it in a cramped lecture theatre which seemed to have had a Sleep spell cast on it. Despite that it was an immensely rewarding experience.

Ultimania Running Wild!

2008-06-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

The relative succes of 1998's Blade movie adaptation opened the door for Marvel to have some of their major superhero franchises to the big screen. The first to make it was the X-Men, released in 2000 it presented Marvel with a great opportunity to capitalise on renewed interest in their line of books but this in turn presented them with a problem. The main franchise titles had thousands of books released over a period of close to forty years giving them an almost impenetrable continuity for the new reader. When DC was presented with a similar problem in the early eighties they choose to reboot their entitre universe, Marvel's solution was to create a brand new universe of reinvented titles, called the Ultimate Universe.

Up and coming writers, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar were chosen to lay the foundations of the new line. First out of the blocks was Ultimate Spider-Man in 2000 which would go on to set a record for longest single run by anyone creative team on a Marvel title. Artist, Mark Bagley, left for DC last year but Bendis remains as the writer on the book with no signs of slowing down. Mark Millar kicked off the initial story arc on Ultimate X-Men a year later before handing the reigns over to a succession of writers and followed up with probably the high point of the line, reimagining the Avengers with artist Bryan Hitch on The Ultimates. Both writers launched Ultimate Fantastic Four before handing over the Warren Ellis (though Millar would later return for a short run).

The Ultimate line started each superheroes continuity from scratch whilst updating it for a 21st century audience. Much tighter editorial control was maintained, the power levels of some of the more extreme characters was scaled back and the focus on things like magic, parallel universes, character rebirths, extra-dimensional beings and alien races was reduced.

The project was a smash hit, launching the Joe Quesada/Bill Jemas era at Marvel with a bang. The regular Marvel Universe (now usually known as '616' due to a throwaway line in an issue of Captain Britain by Alan Moore back in the eighties) had been in the doldrums for close to twenty years, living in the shadow of the runaway success of the X-books. A late-nineties attempt to try and reclaim their former glory by bringing in Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld to relaunch them was a flop and for a while it seemed like the Ultimate Universe may well supplant 616 entirely.

The last two years have seen a pretty dramatic role reversal as 616 has made a comeback in a big way, ironically enough led by the very same writers who launched the Ultimate Universe. Brian Bendis' work on the Avengers has seen it supplant a rapidly fading X-Men as the company's major franchise and 2006's, Mark Millar-written Civil War has not only been the biggest selling title from any of the big two in the last fifteen years but it also served to push 616 back to the centre of attention in a way it hasn't since maybe all the way back to Stan and Jack (and Steve) in the sixties.

UXM and UFF have meandered through a succession of writers and never really took off, under a new creative team the Ultimates has devolved in sub-Avengers garbage and whilst USM is still doing quite well the events of Civil War and One More Day have seen the original webhead claim back the spotlight from his Ultimate counterpart in dramatic fashion. Meanwhile all the periphal titles, mini-series and one-shots that flooded the market in the early years of this decade have all but disappeared from the shelves.

Whilst all this has been going on superhero adaptations have continued to be released at a rate of knots. DC got into the action with new movie versions of Superman and Batman and even non-superhero titles began to get the big screen treatment, most notably Sin City, Hellboy and 300. With a seemingly non-stop pot of gold available, Marvel took the decision in 2005 to produce some of their own movies in-house and last couple of months have seen the first fruits of the project born with the releases of Iron Man and Hulk.

By deciding to produce as many of their movie adaptations as they can in-house it has allowed Marvel to create a continuity between that the standalone franchises made by the major studios can't have and this has brought the whole thing back to the start in one big ironic circle. The Ultimate line, designed to capitalise on the movies has itself become the movies at the same time as the comic books are dying a death.

The use of Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, he and Stark putting together the Avengers Initiaitve and perhaps most importantly of all, the super soldier serum all mark the overall continuity of these films as being derived from the Ultimate line. That isn't to say each film doesn't contain elements of their 616 versions (and in the case of the Hulk, the TV series as well) but the overall universe being presented to us is very defintely that of the Ultimates.

Week 4

2008-06-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

Slowest week yet. I completed week 5 of LitO by finishing the session about fish but that's all I got done. I'm off Monday through Thursday this week but Monday and Tuesday are going to have to have some Bayuhc time devoted to them as its been completely neglected this past month due to my studies and we're due to play on Tuesday. I joined Newcastle Uni library this past week so I may well be camped out there on Wednesday and/or Thursday.

Week 3

2008-06-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

I got through the chapters on fats and carbohydrates on UHN this past week, comprising week 3 of that course. If you need to know what a polyunsaturate, trans-fat or a omega-3 is or why a low carb diet is a bad idea and why a high cholesterol diet isn't actually that bad for you then I'm your man. I've also managed a little under half of week 5 of LitO so I'm still a little ahead of myself. The addition of MSotA though means I'm now doing in excess of a full-time degree in my spare time. I had my first telephone tutorial course for that this week but I've gotten virtually nothing done of week 1. I'm not too concerned about that as I'll have plenty of time to do it once July ends and I'm finished the two science courses. I'm also becoming aware that I'll probably need to take some time for revision as well as making start one some of the questions.

Gone Baby Gone

2008-06-09T00:24:00.001-07:00

Back in 1997, Ben Affleck shared a Best Screenwriter Oscar with his childhood friend, Matt Damon, for their screenplay to Good Will Hunting. The film kickstarted Affleck's career as a Hollywood star with roles in films like Armageddon and Pearl Harbour. The latter was somewhat of a flop and was followed up by such monumental turkeys as Jersey Girl and Gigli. With his career seemingly descending into the toilet, Affleck returned back to the typewriter to adapt Dennis Lehane's novel, 'Gone Baby Gone', which also marks his directorial debut.

Set in Affleck's home state of Massachusetts, Gone Baby Gone opens with a media frenzy following the disappearance of three year old Amanda McCready. The child's aunt hires two private detectives who specialise in finding missing persons to help find the child and the film follows one of them, Patrick Kenzie, played by Affleck's younger brother, Casey.

Gone Baby Gone is a film of moral grey areas and difficult decisions, where good people do bad things and bad people do good things, it has some twists and turns and culminates in a moral dilema for Kenzie. At times it veers close to being standard Hollywood thriller fare but Affleck always manages to quickly rein it in, delivering an effective and atmospheric modern noir. All the cast give excellent performances, Amy Ryan received an Oscar nomination for her perfomance as Amanda's less than perfect mother, but the real star is Ben Affleck who has reinvented himself as a highly talented filmmaker whilst laying to rest any suggestion he rode Damon's coat tails to success in Good Will Hunting.

In many ways, Gone Baby Gone is Affleck's love letter to his home state. The Boston accent is on full display and the film frequently lingers over the communities and scenery that Affleck grew up with. It's UK release has been held off for eight months in the wake of the disappearence of Madeleine McCann but the wait has been well worth it. Highly recommended.

0 for 2

2008-05-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

Or 'curse you Waterstones!'

Once again I've fallen victim to the 3 for 2 offer like Bute hurling himself off the Argo at the sound of the sirens. You know how it goes, you wander into the shop, there's nothing you really want and besides, you've already got a dozen books lined up at home you want to read. But then you see a book that looks a little interesting, not all that interesting and certainly not interesting enough to pay £8.99 for it but it does have the yellow sticker on it. It's 3 for 2. If I can find two other books that are also a little interesting and have the yellow sticker on them I'll actually be saving money, I'd be stupid not to. So, despite going in with no intention to buy anything I leave with three books I never really wanted in the first place.

'The Undercover Economist' by Tim Harford, 'Young Stalin'* by Simon Sebag Montefiore and 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein thy names are Peisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepeia!

*To make matters worse, this book has stolen the title of a series of humourous one-page strips about the life of the young Josef Stalin that I one day had planned to write.

Week 2

2008-05-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

Week 2 is in the books and as predicted it was a slow one. I finished off what I had left of week 3 of LitO then did all bar one question of week 4, covering the effects of winds and currents on life in the ocean. However I managed not one bit of UHN, leaving me stuck on week 3. Next week things kick into overdrive as I start Making Sense of the Arts. I've already had a pre-course phone tutorial leaving me with some prep work for the first proper one on Tuesday. My finger is hovering over the hold button of my life.

FreakAngels

2008-05-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

As requested -

FREAKANGELS is a free, weekly, ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield.

http://www.freakangels.com/

Week 1

2008-05-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

A couple of days late, I know, but here it is.

I completed sections 3 and 4 UHN and most of section 3 of LitO, covering off such subjects as proteins, nutritional deficiency, the seasons and light in the oceans. This covers week 3 of UHN and most of week 3 of LitO. There was a very definite increase in workload, especially in UHN where the chapter on proteins was as much as any two of the previous three sections combined. Though I'm still well ahead I didn't complete a full weeks work on both courses, which is what I was aiming at and I may struggle to do so again this week as I don't have a lot of spare time. I also found it more difficult to start each course again after the initial rush of work though once I was into it I was fine.

Love Film?

2008-05-20T07:30:00.001-07:00

As much as the next man I suppose.

I don't watch a lot of films a home, most of the ones I really want to see I catch at the cinema but when I won a months free trial to Love Film from that McDonalds Monopoly promotion I decided there'd be no harm in signing up and using my free month to catch up on some things I've missed.

As things have turned out it's been brilliant and I'll likely keep the membership for a few months yet. Not for films, like I say I don't watch a lot of those at home, but for TV. Back in the technological dark ages before the creation of Sky+ there were a fair few TV programmes I wanted to watch but never got round to because they conflicted with when I was free to view them. Some series I'd catch the occasional episode of, others I'd miss entirely but with Love Film I've been able to catch up on all of them.

To date and amongst others I've seen the second series of Spaced, the second series of Extras, the second series of I'm Alan Partridge, the first two series of American Dad, the first four series of Peep Show and That Peter Kay Thing as well as documentaries like The Corporation and Outfoxed. All for a miniscule fraction of the price of buying them, even cheaply online, and, almost as good, no additional clutter in the house!

Brilliant!

Making Sense of the Arts

2008-05-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

The course materials arrived today for the third and final course I'm doing this summer, 'Making Sense of the Arts'. This is an 'openings' course, designed to ease me into the studying the arts at degree level though it can count as 10 points towards my final degree. The materials include a study book, a dvd and three resource books as well as an OU branded bag to carry the materials in. Unlike the science short courses, which have only and end of course assessment, there are two assessment's during the course and one at the end. Only the final assessment counts toward my result but at least one of the other two must be completed for me to pass the course. The course is split up into three sections, poetry, history and art history and I can choose to do the final assessment from one of those three sections.

The course is due to being on 1st June and last for twenty weeks with the final date for submission in October, meaning it should run straight on into the first main degree module I'm doing. Unlike the science short courses, which have limited tutorial support via internet and a mini-call centre, it looks as if I'll be assigned a specific tutor who I'll have regular telephone tutorials with. This coupled with the increased number assessments means it looks like this course will be a lot closer to actual degree studying than the science courses.

I'm supposed to make a study plan in week 1 of the course after my first tutorial and self-assessment of my experiences with the course does play a part in my final grade. Because of this I don't plan on starting the course early and I'll use the rest of this month to do as much of the sciences courses as I can.

Week 0

2008-05-16T17:03:00.001-07:00

Both science short courses officially start tomorrow (although strictly speaking as I type this it is already 'tomorrow') so I'm counting any work I've done up until this point as being 'week 0'. For LitO I've worked through the first three chapters in the study book and the first two programmes on the dvd, covering the evolution of life in the oceans, the classifications of fauna, oceanic topography, tides and tidal marine life. For UHN I've done the first two study periods in the study book covering 'what is nutrition', how we monitor what people eat, the human digestive system and its way of transporting energy around the body, macro- and micronutrients and why we eat what we eat. Consulting my study calendars I find that I've completed the first two weeks of LitO and the first week of UHN for the July submission date before I've officially started giving me 3 weeks of the 20 weeks in advance, yay me!

That said, I've spent a week on this and come out with three weeks work and I certainly haven't taken the recommended 30 hours this should have taken. This leads me to one of two conclusions -

The cup is half full - As a flat time recommendation is given then the OU must pitch at the slower end of the learning scale. I'm a quicker learner than that so don't need to spend the full ten hours per week.

The cup is half empty - I haven't done enough to ensure the information I've taken will stick.

Being an optimistic kinda guy I'm gonna go with box number 1 until proved otherwise.

I'm finding LitO to be slightly more challenging than UHN but also a little more interesting (to this point). LitO is a little easier to use though as the structure seems to be to work through a chapter before finishing with a programme on the dvd and working on that. UHN constantly refers you to the course book which leads to a lot of flipping back and forth as you read a page or three of the course book then return to the study book to work through what you've learned. In many ways the study book takes the role of the teacher and the course book the role of the materials.

Understanding Human Nutrition

2008-05-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

The materials came yesterday for the second science short course I'm doing, 'Understanding Human Nutrition'. Like LitO, it consisted of a course book with the same name as the course, a study guide and two end of course assessments but instead of dvd's it has a study book to refer to. Like LitO it also provided a CD-ROM and a math skills booklet.

It works in exactly the same way as LitO, I have a choice of end dates, one in July and one in October and depending which date I choose will determine which assessment I do.

Oh What A Night

2008-05-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

I can't let today pass without remarking on what I truly splendid time I had yesterday evening. It began with at Fat Buddha in Durham, with their menu of Asian fusion food, and it was truly sumptious. Not the cheapest place to eat, though far from the most expensive either, but if you find yourself out that way I would highly recommend it. From there it was a short walk to the Durham Gala to see Daniel Kitson who did a near two-hour set without an intermission and was hilarious from start to finish. His refusal to do any TV work means he's nowhere near as well known as he should be but I urge you to take the time to check him out.

Life in the Oceans

2008-05-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

Received my first batch of course materials yesterday. These are for the science short course 'Life in the Oceans: Exploring Our Blue Planet' and consist of a coursebook with the same name, a dvd set comprised primarily of the BBC documentary series 'Blue Planet', a study guide and a pair of End of Course Assessments. The course doesn't start until 17th May, which is when the tutorial support becomes available, and the course website opens on 13th May. Having had a look through the materials though I can't see any reason why I wouldn't be able to make a start now and get ahead.

The course has two end dates, one at the end of July and one at the end of October, and a different paper for each date. The study guide suggests that completing in time for the earlier date should take 10 hours a week of study and the latter date should take 3-4 hours a week. Which one I go for is entirely up to me and I don't need to inform the OU which one I'm choosing. I'll be doing another science short course at the same time and I'll be starting the humanities openings course on 1st June so I want to do as much as I can of at least one of the science short courses by the end of this month.

One Step Closer to Manhood

2008-04-22T07:18:00.001-07:00

Today I completed the rite of passage known as learning to drive. That is all.

Letting Go Is Hard to Do

2008-04-15T04:42:00.001-07:00

We first met in Forbidden Planet sometime in the late 1990's. Her, on the shelf with her fancy hardback cover and mysterious oriental appeal. Though I was short of cash I simply had to have her. She was coy at first revealing only her mechanics and some basic setting information but as time went on I got to know her better. After the hollow and shallow relationship I'd previously had with the WoD Clanbooks her depth and detail was a revelation. Her splatbooks were on a whole different level to her rivals, though she had her fair share of duds. She wasn't perfect, she was probably too easy in the early part of the relationship. To be fair she realised this and tried to correct it but overcompensated and went too far the other way. Her relationship with her older CCG sister meant she inherited too much meta-plot and factions.

We had a long courtship, it was a good few years before we consumated the relationship. It was a mixed experience with some highs and some lows and in the end it didn't last very long. We courted again a few times over the next few years but we never took it any further and in the end I gave up on her and her kind and we permanently separated when she was sent into exile in the loft.

A few days ago, another couple of suitors decided they'd like to try her out. I've had no use for her for a long time and I can make some money back on my investment but I'm finding letting go hard to do. All her stuff from her flirtation with the popular D20 boy I'd happily give away but that magic, early stuff from the honeymoon part of the relationship I'm finding I have a strong sentimental attachment to. The beautiful presentation of her first Shadowlands book, the depth and detail of her first boxed set. All still tug on my heart strings.

Letting go is hard to do.

Hero of the Beach

2008-04-08T02:42:00.000-07:00

So, I'm reading through this weeks funnybooks when an ad takes my eye. It's a full page ad rendered in the style of a comic strip and in it, a buff, handsome young man has taken his ladyfriend for a day out at the beach. As is often the case with these types, the man is not the sharpest knife in the draw, possessing a positively puny IQ of a mere 98. The well-educated beach bully spots the man and his ladyfriend and, well, I'm sure you can tell what's coming. The bully kicks sand in the man's face before humiliating him with his knowledge of astrophysics and making off with his girl. The story does have a happy ending, though. Upon returning home, the man discovers the existence of a correspondence course designed to exercise the brain, he signs up, works dilligantly, earns a degree and returns to the beach with his jacked-up IQ and brain bursting at the seams with knowledge. He humiliates the beach bully with his new-found intellect and steals back his girl, fickle witch that she is.

So I'm reading this and thinking to myself 'I'm a handsome, buff young man with a weak intellect weighing just 98 IQ, I could benefit from this correspondence course and get chicks'. So I looked into things a little further and today signed up to start a self-improvement correspondence course with the Open University. Stay tuned for updates on my studies.

El Orfanato

2008-03-24T10:39:00.000-07:00

I live within comfortable driving distance of five multiplex cinemas with close to 70 screens between them. Only one of them is showing The Orphanage, presumably due to it being a Spanish language film. On the other hand, all five of them are currently showing Meet the Spartans, a film which is in broad moron. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

The Orphanage is being billed as being 'from the team who brought you Pan's Labyrinth' though it's directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, his feature length debut, rather than Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro is probably more famous in this country for directing Hollywood fluff like Hellboy and Blade II. Del Toro does get a producers credit and you could easily mistake the film for one of his. Del Toro's Spanish language films are a world away from his Hollywood movies (and I can't recommend Pan's Labyrinth highly enough, The Devil's Backbone is almost as good). They take a sort of old-fashioned approach to horror which isn't surprising considering he cites Dunsany, Machen, Clark Ashton Smith, Borges and Lovecraft as his main influences (all bar Borges were also massive influences on Bayuhc).

Laura was an orphan who spent some time at an orphanage before being adopted. She returns to the now abandoned orphanage with her husband, Carlos and son, Simon, with plans to turn it into a home for children with special needs. Simon is a lonely boy with two imaginary friends, Walter and Pepe, and when he moves to the orphanage he gains six new ones. Simon invites one of them, a boy called Tomas, to come and play with him in the orphanage. At a party to welcome the special needs children to their new home, Simon offers to show Laura, Tomas' house. Laura refuses as she's too busy and an argument ensues. Laura leaves Simon in his room. Later in the day she is accosted by a boy in a mask and locked in the bathroom. After she's freed, she can no longer find Simon. Months pass and Laura becomes gradually more convinced that Tomas is real and he has taken Simon.

The Orphanage is no Pan's Labyrinth but it is still a good film in it's own right. It's a low key film with a low body count, underplayed horror that relies on building tension and atmosphere rather than shocks and when it does decide to shock the audience they're usually unexpected and (judging by the reaction of the audience) highly effective.

In many ways, The Orphanage is a simple haunted house tale in it's structure and it could easily be adapted for an American audience. In fact, given it's success I'm certain it will be remade, though likely with elaborate and choreographed death scenes, flashy cinematography, signposted scares, 'freaky' j-horror style imagery and spooky sound effects of the kind that make most modern horror movies bland and soulless and which will drain the life out of the film.

Diary of the Dead

2008-03-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

The fifth in the trilogy.

After the relative box office disappoinment of the studio produced, Land of the Dead, George A Romero returns to his indie roots with Diary of the Dead. DotD utilises the same technique used in Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, that of constructing the narrative from video footage shot by people who experienced in the event, though it differs in two important ways. The first is that it isn't presented as random, found footage. The film makers intentionally shoot, edit and then upload the movie. This removes one level of suspension of disbelief that Cloverfield certainly requires.

The offer difference is that DotD, like all the previous Romero zombie movies, has a layer of social commentary. In this case it's intrinsically linked to why one of the central characters decides to film everything. At two points in the film one of the characters says, 'if it didn't happen on camera then it didn't happen'. The point Romero is making goes a little deeper than this, thankfully. In a society where only what is recorded is relevant then manipulation of this information is effectively manipulation of reality and like the good old fashioned lefty that he is, Romero turns his attention to government spin.

If social commentary isn't your thing then Romero still serves up plenty of zombie-carnage. He still possesses far more wit and imagination than all his pale imitators and the movie stands up solely as a horror. It kicks off with some university students filming a crap horror movie in the Pennsylvanian woods for their film course, mirroring Romero's own shooting of Night of the Living Dead. Romero doesn't miss the opportunity to poke fun at crap horror movies and there's a nice mirroring scene at the beginning and end. Unfortunately, Romero takes it a little too far and casts the type of crap actors who normally populate those films and the acting is definitely a weak point.

I'm pretty sure that this'll be one of those films that you'll already have made your mind up about seeing long before reading any reviews. Either you dig Romero zombie flicks or you don't. I do and I dug this. The film contains a nice little Easter egg for horror fans, the newsreader voiceovers in the film are provided by Wes Craven, Stephen King, Simon Pegg, Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo Del Toro.

It would be remiss of me to conclude a cinema review without mentioning a crap trailer. This time it's 'One Missed Call'. It's The Ring, with mobile phones!!! In fact, it was East Asian horror remake hour as there was one for 'The Eye' as well. The original of which was pretty good.

Concentrated Awesome

2008-03-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

Despite being the only attendee of CottageCon II not to have to go to work the next day, I am, naturally, the last person to blog about it. Not only was this my first CottageCon, it was also my first opportunity to roleplay with Matt, Ian and Nigel (and conversely, their first experience of roleplaying with me). I was particularly impressed with Nigel's prodigous note-taking and I eagerly await the release of The CottageCon Diaries.

The initial plan had been to kick things off on the Friday evening with a game of Arkham Horror but the relatively late arrival of some of us coupled with the knackeredness of most of us led to it being cancelled. Things got kicked-off proper with a game of Exalted. Fuelled by back-to-back episodes of 'American Chopper' and Andrew's (the GM) policy of never knowingly understating anything, the game was an epic, OTT, descent into tragedy and madness. WW's hilariously inappropriately named 'storyteller system' was discarded in favour of just five attributes and ten Aspects, the latter of which could be invoked for an effect by spending one of 10 starting Essence points or compelled to create a negative (but story enhancing effect) thereby regaining a point of Essence.

The session was an unqualified success though I have qualms over more long-term usage of the system. The Aspects were often too vague and unbalanced, the use of Perfect Defenses could have led to some hideously drawn-out PC combat and the general meshing of story and task resolution mechanics is ugly and inefficient. In many ways it reminded me of the issues I had with Cold City but as with that game, the players and GM were easily capable of rising above any potential problems, though the one-off nature of the session definitely helped.

Saturday evening was Call of Cthulhu. I'm a big fan of the setting and the literature though I could count on the fingers of one-hand how many times I've played CoC (and I'd still have most of them left over). In many ways the first Bayuhc session was a tribute to CoC. The advantages of a one-off session were utilised to allow us to create characters far more in keeping with the actual literature rather than the vaguely defined 'Investigators' of the RPG.

This session had it's strengths and weaknesses (or wins and learns if you want to get all corporate-speak on the matter). The set-up by the GM, both in terms of prep work and setting up the scenario, were inspired and indeed, inspiring. The problems came mainly from the system and it's requirement to make rolls to find clues, this was compounded by the fact that we had to a player created non-investigative characters. The descent into internecine conflict at the culmulation of the Exalted session had convinced the GM to remove similar elements from his own game which turned out to be a mistake as it removed a whole layer of potential from the game. One of the players had created a con-artist who had targeted my character to persuade him to sign up for a dubious business deal. A verbal agreement to sign on the Monday morning could have led to an entirely different dynamic in our relationship as the conman strived desperately to keep me alive. That that didn't happen was more our fault than the GM's though and it highlighted the other 'learn' of CoC, that the players should have been much more proactive than we were and made much more of an attempt to interact with the scenario.

I hope I don't give the impression that I didn't enjoy CoC, nothing could be further from the truth. I certainly did take away from the table things I could have done better and should we convene again for a game of CoC I expect to attain a whole new level of awesome.

Sunday was devoted to a session of Pulsars & Privateers married to the Primetime Advenures system. P&P was a former campaign that G1 used to run and was being brought back due to popular demand. Barring a con scenario that two of the players had played in last year, it was the group's first experience of PTA. The system certainly has a different way of doing things which took a little bit of time for us to get a handle on. The system is predicated on a series of conflicts which I often found to be unnecessary and in fact, the GM quickly announced that if our scene didn't require a conflict then it didn't have to have one. This loosened a straight-jacket which the system had lightly affixed to the table and our gradual understanding of how to use the system meant we had built up quite a bit of momentum by the end.

A further problem with the conflict resolution arose due to the GM awarding himself a little over half of the Budget for the episode than he should have and not giving himself his free card in the first two conflicts. This led to a number of conflicts which were practically uncontested rendering the resolution mechanic even more redundant and prevening the currency of the game from being fully utilised as players were reluctant to spend Fanmail they didn't need to use to win. A correction to this in episode 2, the spotlight being shined on a PC for the first time and our increasing understanding of the system have me eagerly awaiting the next session.

Knitting together all of this roleplaying goodness was the thoroughly great craic and company of the other six. I could have easily have gone through the whole weekend without ever needing to go to sleep.

Intergalactic Planetary

2008-02-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

Planetary intergalactic.

Caught up with Cloverfield a week late due to being confined in the house recently. I don't see the need to go into any details about the film, I'm sure anyone reading this already has a fair idea what its about. The verdict? Technically, its superb but the characters and their story is one-dimensional. The film is either unwilling or incapable of giving them any depth so ultimately, I just didn't care about them. In Sean of the Dead, time and care is spent making Sean likeable and sympathetic so when he embarks on his ill-fated quest to reach the pub and winds up being repsonsible for killing most of his friends, we're on board and rooting for him. When Rob decides to cross Manhattan to save Beth he just comes across as a monumentally self-absorbed cock.

All the film's attempts to scare fall flat, again, because I didn't care if any of the characters lived or died. The film is also about 20 minutes too long. That might seem like a strange thing to say about a film with an 85 minute running time but because the story and characterisation is so light, once you get past the the film's technical qualities, there's really nothing much more to it. I'm sure no studio would allow a major blockbuster to be released with a 65 minute running time and the makers of Cloverfield would have had little choice but to pad it out.

Before the film there was a trailer for a thriller called Untraceable which looked just god-awful.

I saw this weeks big cinematic release, Juno, last week. 16-year old Juno gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption to a yuppie couple who can't conceive. I can't decide if its a mainstream film with indie sensibilities or an indie film made with an eye for mainstream crossover. Either way, its breezy and enjoyable. It has plenty of snappy teenage dialogue of the kind you only ever hear in films or on TV and the performances, from the chick from Hard Candy, the kid from Superbad, J Jonah Jameson, Teen Wolf Too and particularly Jennifer Garner, are good.

Juno has come under criticism for the casual way in which it potrays teenage pregnancy but there really isn't anything to get worked up about. The film is so light that I'm not even sure exactly what its message is supposed to be.

Of the two films I'd say that Juno is better but Cloverfield is more 'must-see'.

Podtastic

2008-01-16T12:32:00.000-08:00

Or the day the music died.

I'm sure that like most other people, I haven't felt like I've really aged since about the age of 20. Every now and then though, something happens that really drives home how old you are. I've recently experienced one of these revelations.

I've gradually stopped paying attention to new musical releases. I couldn't tell you who the kids are listening to these days. Emo is a running joke to people of my age. I haven't been to a gig in about six years. This said, I still listened to a lot of music, mainly on my ipod when I'm out and about and especially when I'm at the gym in a desperate attempt to distract me from the crushing tedium of running for 20 minutes on the treadmill.

I'm a fan of political satire. More 4 have been showing The Daily Show for the last couple of years which is as close as mainstream American comedy has gotten to political satire. Resident Brit on the show is John Oliver and when I noticed he and former comedy partner, Andy Zaltzman, were starting a new podcast for the Times I immediately subscribed to it via itunes. It took a few weeks before it dawned on me that I could download them onto my ipod. From there I quickly realised that listening to an episode of The Bugle was far more effective than music at distracting me from the tedium of the gym.

So I looked for some other podcasts. As things stand I've added comic-book creator interview podcast, Wordballon, MMA website Sherdog.com's radio show, Beatdown and TV-shy comedian Daniel Kitson's podcasts.

Music, which once played such a massive part in my life in my early-twenties, has become almost a sideshow now I'm in my early-thirties.

Reading this crap... LoEG: The Black Dossier

2007-12-09T11:06:00.000-08:00

Slight Spoilers.

Having already burned his bridges with Marvel, Alan Moore quit working for DC in the late-eighties in acrimonious circumstances and, resolved to only work on creator-owned projects, faded from mainstream comics for a few years. In the early-nineties, when six big-name artists (and Jim Valentino) left Marvel to publish their own titles under the Image banner, Moore moved back into the mainstream to work on their titles, as well as releasing his own mini-series with Image, an affectionate take on Marvel's silver-age, called 1963. Later, Jim Lee, arguably the biggest-name of the original Image founders, offered to let Moore release an entire line of creator-owned works under Lee's WildStorm imprint, thus, America's Best Comics was born.

Probably the highest profile title to come out of the line was 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', mainly because there was an extremely crap movie released that was based on it. The LoEG was illustrated by longtime Moore collaborator, Kev O'Neill, and featured a collection of 19th century literary figures teaming up in two mini-series set in the 1890's. The first saw them take on Fu Manchu, the second saw them repel the Martian invasion from Welles' 'War of the Worlds'.

The LoEG consisted of Mina Murray (Harker), from Dracula, Allan Quatermain, from King Solomon's Mines, Dr Jekyll and his alter-ego, Mr Hyde, the Invisible Man and Captain Nemo. Both series were filled with 19th century literary references, some obvious, like Sherlock Holmes, others less so, like The Pearl, an erotic magazine published in 1879.

Whilst WildStorm was releasing Moore's line of ABC titles, Jim Lee sold the imprint to DC, and Moore found himself reluctantly back in their employ. He finished his stint on all the other ABC titles and allowed WildStorm to continue releasing them with new creative teams, but took LoEG with him. His final obligation to WildStorm was to release an original, LoEG graphic novel, set in the 1950's and called 'The Black Dossier'.

As with it's predecessors, The Black Dossier is filled with literary references, but because it casts it's net much wider, and more importantly, much more recently, it ran into issues of copyright. DC ran it by it's lawyers who passed it with a few changes but DC decided that it still was too risky to release in Britain, rumour has it that the decision was a final 'up-yours' from DC to Moore.

All of which meant that when the book was released last month it was nowhere to be found in any of my local bookshops or Amazon.co.uk. But, by the wonders of modern technology and the so-called 'grey market' it has created, I was able to procure a copy at such reasonable price that, even after paying international shipping, it still came in at under cover price. Huzzah!

As I've already stated, The Black Dossier moves the action from the original mini-series, to 1958 to be precise. Whilst the mini-series existed in a literary version of Victorian Britain, the greater scope of TBD allows Moore and O'Neill to open up an entire alternative history. The half-fey Queen Gloriana rules England in place of Elizabeth I, post-war Britain is a hinted at Orwellian nightmare. Of the original group, only Mina and Quartermain remain. As was always suggested, Mina is a vampire and, thus, hasn't aged. The elderly Quartermain is now a young man though, we discover why as the story progresses.

It opens with Mina allowing herself to be seduced by a British secret agent known as 'Jimmy'. He's never referred to by the name of the character he clearly is, Bond, James Bond. For good reason too, Bond here is a thoroughly nasty piece of work and a mysoginist to boot. Using Jimmy to get into the HQ of the British Secret Service, Mina and Quartermain steal the eponymous 'Black Dossier'. Whilst escaping from London and heading, eventually, to Scotland, both Mina and Quartermain read the Dossier, which contains a history of the various incarnations of the League, beginning with Prospero's original organisation, formed at the behest of Gloriana, through Gulliver's team, to Mina's from the original mini-series to the second team formed by Mina in the early part of the twentieth century through until she and Quartermain abscond to America at the end of WWII after they are tipped off by an unnamed Churchill as to what the secret service have planned for post-war Britain.

The Dossier is comprised of excerpts from books, plays and comic strips and as Mina and Quartermain read it, so do we, the reader. The Dossier itself comprises about half the graphic novel and contains, amongst other things, an unfinished Shakespear play about Queen Gloriana, the history of the immortal, sex-changing Orlando, told in the style of a 1950's comic serial, a beat novel based on the exploits of Mina and Quartermain in fifties America, an unpublished sequel to 'The Life and Adventures of Fanny Hill', filled with so much old-fashioned innuendo that without the accompanying illustrations, I'd've struggled to grasp some of it. Fanny uses a device that 'invigorates tired skin', it was only after some research that I discovered that this is how vibrators used to be marketed before they became socially acceptable.

Possibly my favourite part of the Dossier is a Jeeves & Wooster short story, in which Bertie Wooster finds himself, unwittingly and uncomprehendingly in a Lovecraft story. Believing Yuggoth to be a town in Massachusetts and 'Great Cool Lulu' to be an Indian chief who spends all of his time asleep on a reservation called Riley.

The final few pages are presented to use in glorious 3D, specs are provided, as Mina and Quartermain return to the Blazing World and Prospero tells us the true meaning of the story.

TBD is loaded with so many literary and televisual references, the displayed corpses of Bill & Ben will live long in the memory, that it's virtual impossible to spot them all, unless you are as well-read as Moore himself. Off the top of my head (and there'll be many I won't remember) there is Billy Bunter, Roy of the Rovers, Bulldog Drummond, The 39 Steps, Flight to Mars, Scoop, 1984, Quatermass and the Pit, Coronation Street, Bash Street Kids, Dan Dare, Hi-De-Hi, The Prisoner, The Shape of Things to Come, Animal Farm, The Day of the Triffids, Carry On Cabby, the Elric novels by Michael Moorcock, Arthur Atkinson (of 'where's me washboard?' fame), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Spartacus, Vathek, Don Quixote, Raffles, The Great Dictator, Slaughterhouse 5, The Avengers (the TV show, not the comic), Sooty & Sweep, Muffin the Mule, the monkeys from the PG Tips adverts, Doctor Who, The Phantom of the Opera, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Metropolis, Billy the Fish, On the Road, The Naked Lunch, Batman, the Flash and Mary Poppins.

There'll be at least four times as many references that I've missed.

Whilst you don't have to pick up every reference, TBD is definitely a book you'll get more out of if you pick up on the major ones and understand the skill involved in constructing story told in as diverse a set of styles as Shakespeare, Lovecraft and Kerouac.

Overall, two thumbs up, highly recommended.

Bury me where my Batarang lands

2007-11-17T15:02:00.000-08:00

Over on a message board I post on, there's currently a democratic vote to find the best/greatest superhero character. Although I can't say I read his titles (apart from at the moment when Grant Morrison is on one) my vote will be for Batman all the way until enough forum geeks decide they are too cool to admit liking Batman. Batman is not just the greatest superhero, he is also one of the great literary creations and, arguably, the greatest of the twentieth century.

The core concept around the character is so strong that it can survive almost any interpretation and still be recognisibly Batman. The character and his mythology have undergone countless reinventions to suit the time, in some cases being at the cutting edge of them. From straightfoward costumed crime-fighter, to day-glo sci-fi, to worlds greatest detective, to dark and brooding vigilante, to supergenius. From camp caped-crusader, to gothic rubber fetish, to neo-realistic and from Gotham, to Victorian London, to wartime Berlin, to the near future. Batman has fitted equally comfortable into them all. He crossed all media with great success and, along with Superman, is one of only two superheroes to legitimitely claim to have become a cultural icon.

Batman should be a legendary fictional figure along the lines of a King Arthur, Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes but the demands of the comic-book industry means he has to sustain a couple of monthly titles and with them comes something none of the others had to deal with, a continuity! Batman is a legend, he doesn't suit continuity, it's not a coincidence that the only 'great', modern Batman story to come from the pages of an ongoing title was Frank Miller's reboot, Year One, an entirely out-of-continuity, stand-alone story.

As DC moves into the final year of it's gargantuan series of Crisis-related crossovers there are rumours surfacing that DC have plans to kill off Batman next year. Or, more precisely, Bruce Wayne. From a continuity viewpoint, this would seem like commercial suicide, but once you grasp that Batman is a legend who needs no continuity then it all makes perfect sense. All great characters die, it's needed to bring their cycle to a close. The knowledge that Robin Hood eventually dies hasn't stopped countless films, books and TV progammes based on him being released and the death of Bruce Wayne won't mean the end of the stories about him.

Of course, the death of Bruce Wayne doesn't mean the end of Batman, there'll naturally be another one, DC aren't that stupid, but the end of Bruce Wayne's cycle is long overdue.

It's a results business

2007-11-17T14:48:00.000-08:00

It's an oft-quoted mantra in football management that the job is 'a results business', meaning that ultimately a manager will keep or lose his job based on how many games he wins. On the face it of it it's an entirely reasonable but assumption but I've always been of the belief that a board should identify the best man for the job and stick with him, even when things go bad. Equally, if the man in possesion of the hotseat isn't the best man for the job then he should be gotten rid of even if he's doing well.

We've seen the absurdity of the 'results business' in action tonight. It's generally accepted that failure to qualify for Euro 2008 will see Steve McLaren sacked as England manager whilst qualification will see him keep his job though until at least the next World Cup. As a result of this, Steve McLaren's future was decided by the result of a match that he wasn't even involved in. Victory for Russia in Isreal would see England out and McLaren sacked. Vistory for Israel would leave England needing only a point at home to Croatia to qualify and probably keep McLaren in a job.

Regardless of how the match against Croatia goes, the FA need make a decsion on whether McLaren is the right man for the job. If he isn't, he should go regardless, if he is he should stay even if we lose to Croatia. Why determine the country's immediate footballing future on the outcome of a match we weren't even involved in? It's just barmy

Stardust

2007-11-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

Slight spoilers.

What better way to waste a tedious November evening than with a trifling whimsy. Stardust is adapted from the illustrated novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess and it centres on Tristan Thorne, who, in attempt to woo stuck-up Siena Miller, pledges to hunt down and return a fallen star to her. It starts off brilliantly, like a Victorian, Gothic fairy tale, but from the time Tristan finds the star (in the form of Claire Danes) it begins to lose it's way, almost coming off the rails completely when Robert De Niro's transvetite lightning pirate is introduced.

I haven't read the book it's based on but I understand it's quite a dark and adult tale whereas the director, Matthew Vaughn, went for more of an adventure aimed at a younger audience, describing his pitch as 'Princess Bride meets Midnight Run'. It may well be that I'm not the target audience for that type of film but it did lead to a film that promised much and delivered only some.

Being a largely British production you get to do the usual 'spot the actor' bit. Peter O'Toole is excellent as the King of Stormhold and it was good to see Adam Buxton and the bloke from the Barclaycard advert among his chorus of dead sons.

Sicko

2007-11-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

The cinematic hat-trick is completed with Sicko, by noted propagandist, demagogue, rabble rouser and pinko communist, Michael Moore. I have to make a confession here, on a recent Facebook Conservative/Liberal test I scored 'as liberal as Michael Moore' so my review may biased.

Moore is a polarising figure, frequently accused of manipulating, misresprenting and distorting the facts to further his own agenda. What Moore actually does is use the language of the right to present the agenda of the left. This is his real crime, Moore takes his political enemies on at their own game and alienates people on both sides of the spectrum as a result.

In Sicko, Moore shines his pinko torch onto America's healthcare system. For those who don't know, America doesn't have state supplied, free healthcare. Instead you need insurance and you need to insurance companies to authorise your claim. Unlike it's predecessor, Farenheit 911, which set a blistering pace it couldn't keep up, Sicko is a slow burner. It starts with case studies of people without health insurance, then case studies of those with it but who still get no help. Moore exposes (that may be a little strong as it wasn't exactly a secret to begin with) how the health insurance companies are run, as purely 'for profit' organisations who reward staff for declining claims.

Moore then turns his attention to the healthcare system of three other countries, Canada, France and the UK. His potrayal of the NHS has attracted some controversy in this country. Moore presents a seemingly perfect health system and, if you read your newspapers, you'll know the NHS is at deaths door. Propaganda aside, this is still missing Moore's point, which is that if we take ill in this country we can go see a doctor or go to hospital and be treated for our illness. We may need to wait a while sometimes, we may have to £6.65 for out prescriptions, but we still get treatment. Many Americans don't even have that.

For the final act, Moore takes four volunteer fire fighters, who suffered serious illness after helping out in the aftermath of 911 but who have received no medical or financial aid because they weren't government workers, to Guantanamo Bay as Moore has discovered inmates there receive free medical treatment. After being refused entry, they land in Cuba proper and are directed to the nearest hospital where they are given full diagnosis and treatment. The combination of the overwhelming gratitude of the fighters, coupled with their anger at their own country for abandoning them is powerful and genuinely moving.

The lasting impression that comes from the movie is that, when it comes to healthcare, if you're poor and live in America you'd may as well be living in a third word country. In fact, the only people who benefit from a complete private healthcare system are those who already have money. Next time you hear a politician or businessman tell you that the NHS needs to be gotten rid of, ask youtself just for who's benefit is this.

Moore makes a side comment about student loans which I found enlightening. If a student comes out of college or universtiy deeply in debt, then he or she will take any job they can get and any amount of crap whilst at that job. Student loans keep the educated people in line.

Eastern Promises

2007-11-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Slight spoilers.

Part two of my cinematic trilogy is complete after I saw 'Eastern Promises' today. Reuniting David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen after they first collaborated on 'A History of Violence'. Eastern Promises is set in London and focuses on a migrant Russian organised crime family. The film opens with the execution of a Chechnyan gangster followed by a 14 year-old Russian sex slave dying whilst giving birth. These two incidents then drive the remainder of the plot. Eastern Promises is one of those rare films which draws you into it's characters, you barely notice the plot, absorbed as you are by each of the major players, their personalities and the choices they make. Mortensen and Vincent Cassell, in particular, are superb, you'd never guess that neither man was actually Russian.

Despite being a far less gory and gratuitous film, Eastern Promises carries an 18 certificate to 30DoN's 15. The violence when it does occur, though, is brutal and uncomfortable. Cronenberg brings the unpleasantness of violence vividly to life and I'm assuming this is why the BBFC felt it appropriate to give it an 18.

Eastern Promises is the best film I've seen at the cinema for some time. I know it probably won't stop any of you, but if you're going to the cinema anytime soon and thinking of seeing Stardust, 30DoN or Elizabeth:TGA, see this instead.

30 Days of Night

2007-11-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

Slight spoilers.

Just got back from what promises to be the first of a cinematic hat-trick over the coming days. 30 Days of Night is a horror film based on a comic of the same name from 2002, also named Spike TV's Comic Book of the Year 2007, proof that these days, a comic doesn't exist until it's been made into a movie.

The film is set in the town of Burrow, the northern-most town in Alaska and 80 miles from anywhere else. When the sun sets to kick off a month without daylight a group of vampires decide to move in and turn the place into an all you can eat buffet.

30DoN, as only I'm calling it, has two major things going for it. The first is the title, wonderfully evocative it practically sells the film on it's own. The second, as Ric Flair's peroxide locks can attest, snow is a wonderful canvas for blood.

On the downside and like many modern horror movies, 30DoN too frequently mistakes shocks for scares and signposts almost all of them. There are lots of fast edits, quick close-ups and sudden noises. Only once does the film allow itself to breathe and present the horror of the situation to the audience. This occurs close to the start of the film as the vampires slaughter most of the townsfolk whilst the camera hovers over the carnage at mid-range.

There's also no real sense of the passage of time in the movie. The whole thing feels as if it is taking place over one night to the extent that on the occasions a caption appears to let us know time has moved on, we're left wondering what exactly has happened in the meantime as all the characters are in the same places, doing the same things and looking exactly the same. Not once does one of them comment on how much time is supposed to have passed. For something which is supposed to the foundation of the film, it's a pretty major oversight.

Despite spraying around more claret than the forehead of the aforementioned Slic Ric, and given some extremely graphic close-ups of severed heads and limbs, 30DoN is only a 15. I would hazard that even as recent as 5 years ago this would have been an 18. Proof we're becoming a society desensitised to violence or a one mature enough to understand the difference between movies and real life. I'm going with the latter.

All in all, 30DoN is a superior modern horror movie. It's a good-looking movie, competently made although not in the least bit scary.

30DoN represents what is the motherload for a modern comic book, the small-press, cheaply produced, creator-owned story that becomes a blockbuster movie. Long after the craze for superhero flicks has died down, comic books will continue to act as a breeding ground for Hollywood as their ability to be produced cheaply and easily with minimal editorial interference makes them an endless supply of fully-realised ideas.

Amongst the trailers for 30DoN was one for a film called 'Shrooms'. For those who grew up on the right side of the tracks, 'shrooms is short for mushrooms, or to be more precise, magic muchrooms. The films seems to be aiming to be a j-horror Blair Witch Project on hallucinogenic drugs and besides looking terrible, Shrooms is possibly the worst title for a movie in the history of everything.

As bad as Shrooms looked it wasn't a patch on Hitman. Based on the computer game of the same name, Hitman looked like it had been made by a bunch of retarded monkeys given a typewriter and a camcorder.

Bits 'n' Pieces

2007-10-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

Despite almost being dq'd due to a voting scandal in Round 1, Caio Oliveira (who provided the artwork for the fight-scene sequential for LCP) topped the voting in Round 2 of Comic Book Resources 'Comic Book Idol'. As usual, I'm ahead of the curve. This week the challenge is to provide a few 'Invincible' sequentials based on a plot provided by series writer, Robert Kirkman, and judged by series artist, Ryan Ottley.

I'm on the verge of becoming a hack. I have an as-yet-unsigned contract in my inbox from a fledgeling comic book company. It'd be fair to say that I'm not planning on giving up the day job (actually, I am, but not because of this) but it'd be nice to get comics published and make a small amount of money rather than lose a small amount of money. Stay tuned for further developments.

Publication of Kid Night has stalled slightly as I wait for Anna to free up and provide a cover, though that shouldn't be much longer. My pathetic Photoshop-fu isn't helping either as I try and do the design work for it.

The Sci-Fi Channel recently launched a Flash Gordon TV series. Whatever you do, don't watch it. It just may be the worst television programme ever ever ever.

Normal Service is Resumed

2007-10-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

As I've ran out of things to say about LCP, I feel the time has come to move this blog back to it's original purpose. A common thread on message boards I haunt is the 'favourite books' thread. I normally just rack off a few books from the top of my head and leave it at that but I've decided to kickstart my blog with a rundown of my favourite books. So, in no particular order and likely to change within hours of me writing this, here they are -

American Tabloid by James Ellroy

Ellroy had previously exposed the seedy underbelly of America with four loosely connected detective novels, set in the 1950's. Two of them, The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential were later made into films, the latter far superior to the former and neither a patch on their source material.

American Tabloid covers a five-years period from 1958 to 1963 and switches the focus from local to national law enforcement, following three men and their involvement in the election and then assassination of JFK. Seamlessly blending fact and fiction so you can't tell where one ends and the other begins, Ellroy documents the end of America's innocence with the hardest of hard-boiled styles.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Faulkner uses the tropes of the gothic genre to shine a light and comment on the post-Civil War South. Here, it's the once-great-family fallen into decay and ruin. The book is split into four parts and the first three are told from the point of view of one of the family's three brothers. They utilise a stream-of-consciousness that brilliantly gets into each man's head as well as challenging the reader to construct the events of the tale themselves.

Now regarded as one of the greatest novels in the history of American Literature and a key factor in the decision to award Faulkner the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Eco uses the device of the detective novel to explore religion, monasticism, philosophy and the nature of comedy amongst a hundred other things. A book of immense depth and intelligence, both deep and whimsical, The Name of the Rose works on every level. No matter who you are you'll get something out of this book.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The thinking man's Da Vinci Code.

Three friends decide to fabricate and 'expose' the ultimate conspiracy theory, only to find it's all true. Like the other book by Eco on this list, this is a book of staggering depth and intelligence but it reads like a genre novel.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Gibson reinvents sci-fi and invents cyberpunk. Centring on computer hacker, Henry Case and set in an inderminate future of corportations, computers and bio-technology. Easily one of the most influential novels ever written, both within and without the medium.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Chandler raises the internal monologue to an artform and, like all great American authors, presents social criticism disguised a genre fiction. As you'd expect, there's crime, corruption and a dame involved but all take a back seat to Chandler's superlative narrative style.

Vurt by Jeff Noon

Like the original Star Wars movie, Vurt is about one man's epic quest to find and then knob his sister. Vurt is cyberpunk on acid and a Clockwork Orange for the techno generation. Vurt was Noon's debut novel and he's never been anywhere near this good again.

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

Burroughs drops a nuclear hand grenade into the late 1950's literature scene. Don't pick this book up if you're looking for a coherent plot or narrative. Naked Lunch is a collection of loosely-linked vignette's that examines and vicously satirises American society through a collection of extreme and grotesque characters. Filled with junk and more ejaculating cocks than any ten porn movies combined, like any self-respecting revolutionary novel, this was banned on release.

VALIS by Philip K Dick

Dick documents his descent into insanity and takes us along for the ride, chucking in Gnosticism, theology, philosophy and pop culture along the way. Semi-autobiographical and proof that genre fiction can be great literature.

I'll probably do another list when I remember all the other great books I've read.

Is this thing on?

2007-10-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

On the off-chance that people who don't know me read this blog, no, I'm not dead. The last few weeks have largely been spent writing so I haven't had anything new to say. I'm, waiting on the final two pages of Kid Night from Anna, she goes back to University this week so she's had other things to sort out. Once they're in I'll be sending them off to be lettered and after that I can pretty much go ahead and publish it.

I've finished a forty-page script for the follow up story to Kid Night over the weekend, I'll probably split it into two separate issues. It's not a direct sequal to Kid Night as he doesn't appear in it at all so I'll probably release that as the 'Kid Night Special' and then pick up from Issue 1 with this series, which currently has the working title of 'Shade'. Time and money issues mean that for the time being at least, the series will need to be in grey scale. Kid Night itself is only 12 pages long but I can't combine it with another story, which I would like, because I'd need to pay as if the whole comic was in colour, which isn't cheap.

Issue 1 of 'Mekano: Number One!', is half-written, I plan on finishing it this week and sending it off to the artist. We've tentatively agreed on a bi-monthly schedule for this one to begin with so I hope this will give me the time to get ahead of myself by a few issues.

The actual writing of LCP is on the backburner at the moment whilst we playest the game. I can see myself continually rewriting it as we go along so I'm just leaving it for the time being. It also has the advantage of freeing up writing time for other projects.

One thing which has suffered quite badly since I began to devote so much time to writing is my fighting. My fitness has dropped markedly over the last few months to the extent that I was tapped last night by one of my peers for the first time in over 18 months. I consider that to be 'rock bottom' so I'm going to make a conscious effort to get myself back into some sort of shape from now on.

Mekano: Number One!

2007-09-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks my creativity has been severely curtailed by an infection in my mouth. The offending tooth is now out and the infection is slowly clearing and today, my creativity returned with a vengeance. I mapped out the first part of the follow up to Kid Night and scripted the first three pages and started on a new project which has been on the back burner since just before I took ill. It's called Mekano: Number One! and it's a totally different beast to Kid Night, a much lighter piece aimed at a slightly younger audience. I've scripted the first five pages and I'm in the process of plotting out the rest of the story.

The strips for LCP are coming in as well, my current thinking is to use one or two pages from each in the book to illustrate the different styles of superhero comic and then collect each of the full stories into a one-off, anthology comic, also called LCP, which'll complement the main rulebook.

A Later Page from Kid Night

2007-09-08T01:35:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Anna.

FFUSA Page 3 Pencil Rough

2007-09-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Greg Woronchak.

Playtest

2007-09-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

LCP had its first real playtest today, my group went through the character creation system and gave their feedback and thoughts on it. Above everything else, it really clarified to me just how much the game is my vision of roleplaying, how much I'm selling my style of gaming. I already knew going in that this was the case, the validation that my style worked that I got from successfully running Bayuhc was a major factor in my decision to write LCP. I don't think I appreciated just how much I'm going to have to try and put it over in the book, though.

It was good to get the game out of the vacuum it had occupied since I started writing it and onto the gaming table. There's a couple of minor changes I'll be making off the back of it and a couple of other things for me to ponder on. I'm still to nail down the 'momentum' combat mechanic, some people have given some suggestions over on Collective Endeavour which I'm going to think over when I'm off the painkillers and anti-biotics I'm drugged up with at the moment

FFUSA Page 2 Pencil Rough

2007-09-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Greg Woronchak.

Kid Night Page 1

2007-09-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to Anna.

AE Page 2 Pencil Rough

2007-08-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Cristian Aluas

FFUSA Splash Pencil Rough

2007-08-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

This is the pencil roughs of the first page of the Freedom Force USA story. Thanks to Greg Woronchak.

Kid Night Character Design

2007-08-29T14:22:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Anna Wieszczyk.

Kid Night

2007-08-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

Turned in a script for a story called 'Kid Night', this evening. It's the first I've done that's not aping an established style of superhero comic and as a result I feel a certain sense of achievement over it. It's only going to be about 8 to 10 pages long, I've left the artist a certain amount of latitude over the panel count, but to go from the germ of an idea on Sunday, inspired by a single page of sequentials the artist sent me, to a sketched-out story last night, to a completed story tonight is a very satisfying feeling.

AE Page 1 Rough

2007-08-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

Just got the pencils roughs of the first page of the American Eagle story from Cristian.

Strange Destination

2007-08-27T02:29:00.000-07:00

I've accidentally become a comic-book writer and, man, is it hard work. After producing that single-page fight scene for the book, I decided that using sequential pages was a good way of illustrating other parts of the book too. I threw out the call for a couple of artists and the response was overwhelming, a lot of them weren't all that great but an equal number of them were talented people willing to work for next to nothing up front just to get something published. My initial idea for a few sequential pages very quickly snowballed as each new artist contacted me.

Over the past week and a bit, I've turned in two five page scripts for a Golden Age and a Silver Age-style story. I've just finished another, which'll be part one of an ongoing story done in widescreen. I'm about to start a ten-page script about what happens to sidekicks who don't graduate to being fully fledged superheroes (and which I'm thinking will be better suited to a webcomic) and I've got an on-going manga-style superhero story I'm about to start on too. Then there's about half a dozen other artists I've agreed to work with when my schedule frees up.

Weird.

Lettered

2007-08-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Jaymes Reed.

Silver Age Character Sketches

2007-08-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

Just got these preliminary character sketches for Space Titan, Judo Gal, Gilgamesh and the Technouso. They're just penciled so you may have to look closely to make them out. They're for a DC Silver Age story which'll be used in the book to illustrate that style, much like the American Eagle (who'll also be in the story) will be used to illustrate Golden Age style. I've turned in a five-page script for that story and a five-page script for this one. There's also a few others I have in the early stages of development. I didn't intend this when I started putting these little stories together but it's looking increasingly likely that I'll actually be able to release at least one issue of 'Liberty Comics Presents...', the comic. Big thank you to Greg Woronchak.

Coloured

2007-08-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Marcos Miranda

American Eagle, Finished Version.

2007-08-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks again to Cristian.

First Draft American Eagle

2007-08-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is the first draft character design of the aforementioned, American Eagle, whose exploits will help illustrate Golden Age storytelling. I'm gonna remove the shield because it's a bit too Captain America but other than that, this is what he'll look like. Big thank you to Cristian Aluas.

I'm Still Here

2007-08-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks my posting has slowed almost to a crawl. Not because I haven't been working, rather because I have. The book has about 20 pages written, I'm almost done with the Golden Age stuff, I'm in the midst of putting together a couple of Golden Age-style, sequential pages to illustrate the things I've talked about so look out for the debut of American Eagle over the coming weeks. I should hopefully have the the piece of art below coloured, captioned and logo-ed sometime this week too.

More Art

2007-08-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Rich Woodall for this faux comic book cover, introducing the Infinity Crew as well as advertising a Behemoth story. It'll be sent off soon to plastered with Stan Lee-style advertising copy.

Finished Page

2007-08-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

Got the finished page from Caio today. I'm going to send it off to be lettered soon.

Things Move Apace

2007-08-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

It's been less than a month since I decided to start this project and things have moved along quite quickly. The basics of the rules are in place, there are some things that haven't been covered and they do need some pretty extensive playtesting, especially to nail down how the point flow mechanic will work. I've got one group about to start playtesting the rules and I should hopefully start with my usual group when they return from GenCon. Through the wonders of modern technology I've hooked up with a few talented artists to provide some art for the book, you've seen stuff from one of them already. I've a professional letterer on board who's considerably reduced his usual page rate for me. Peter Coogan has given me permission to steal from his definitive study of the superhero genre as well as taking an interest in the project.

Perhaps most importantly, I've actually begun writing the book. Scribus has been replaced by Page Plus which I'm finding much easier to use. Big thanks to Neil, without whom this book would be handwritten and stapled together. I can't write any of the rules chapters yet so I've immersed myself in the Golden Age to write the section on how to run games in that style. No man should have to read this many Golden Age comics in such a short space of time.

I've always had the drive and motivation to do this project but I'm still surprised at how close it's actually come to being a reality. I'm taking a few moments just to sit back and take it all in.

Page Layout

2007-08-05T02:00:00.001-07:00

Got the initial scratch layouts for the page yesterday. Thanks again to Caio.

Name Change

2007-08-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

This blog has long since ceased to be my random ejaculations about all things geekery that come to mind and is now totally dedicated to my thoughts on LCP so its probably past time I changed it to reflect that. When the project stops consuming my spare time and allows space for other things I'll probably return to randomly ejaculating but for now this blog is now 'Liberty Comics Presents...'.

Character Designs

2007-08-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

I've decided that the best way to showcase what I mean by the different types of combat there are in superhero comics is to have a single-page fight scene printed a few times with different dialogue each time so I've blown most of my art budget getting one (that's me not going to Pizza Hut this month). I got the character design sketches today for the two combatants, I hope I don't have to point them out to you. I've had to post them as big they are here because some of the detail is lost on the smaller size, even as big as this there's still some loss of quality. Thanks to Caio Oliveira for taking my extremely sketchy ideas and making something of them.

Regeneration and Health Levels

2007-08-02T12:21:00.001-07:00

One character I haven't been able to point cost as of yet is Wolverine. He's quite straight-forward with the exception of his healing factor. Its a difficult power to stat because as of yet I've no actual health mechanic. On the off chance anyone can remember that many posts back, I've already decided on health levels. I'm in favour of keeping it simple so I think one point of damage should equal one health level. If I keep the health levels low, say 5, then a blow from a character with L2 superstrength would be devastating to a character with 'normal human' toughness. To be fair this is realistic and I'll probably discuss that when discussing how to run a more 'realistic' game but that aside it isn't exactly in genre. The alternative is to give each character enough levels to survice a few lusty blows, say 20. This is a short-cut to horrendously attritional dice rolling.

The former is clearly the lesser of two evils and with the in-game point spend/flow mechanic should work out quite well. Characters with a lot of points can use them to minimise their chances of either being hit or taking damage, the main ways to get lots of points are save them from character creation or good roleplaying. Weaker starting characters can compete on a more even playing field with their more powerful peers (which is entirely in-genre) and the best way to win a fight is thru good role-playing.

So, we'll say 6 health levels each with -1 dice pool penalties after losing 2 and 4, 6 is unconscious. One level is automatically healed at the end of each fight and points can be spent to heal more. When the point cost for healing is set, that should in turn reveal the point cost for regerenation as a power.

Definitive First Draft Points Cost - Part 3

2007-08-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've come to deal with psychic powers and I find that the rules are already there for them. Take two of the most common ones for example, telekinesis and telepathy. Telekinesis is the ability to move objects from a distance, at normal human strength its a nominal power and so costs 5 points. To increase the strength of the telekinesis simply requires the purchase of strength at that level, 2 for exceptional, 6 for L1 etc. In comic books telekinesis also has a bunch of other uses like lifting the character themselves to allow flight, shooting telekinetic bolts and building telekinetic force fields. The points costs for all these powers have already been established.

Take Jean Grey for example. She has TK at L1 strength, shoots TK bolts at L1 strength, builds TK force fields at L1 strength and levitates herself and others. She pays 5 for the base TK + 6 for L1 strength + 6 for L1 strength ranged attack + 6 for L1 force field + 10 for levitation (normally this would be a cheaper version of flight but the fact she can levitate others balances this out. In total her TK costs her 33 points.

Telepathy is another that has a bunch of other uses in comics, its almost a catch-all power for most types of mind powers. At its basic its reading surface thoughts, that's a nominal power and would cost 5 points. If you want to take it up to reading deeper thoughts and telepathic communication then that's a full power and costs 10. You can then build up from there, the ability to locate someone telepathically would cost another 2 points, implanting false memories another 5 and so on. Equally, a character with telepathy could spend points in-game to achieve this additional effects instead of buying them at character creation.

Professor X has used his telepathy to control other people, this is actually mind control and a separate power altogether so costs 10 points (and probably isn't the type of power a hero should be taking). Empathy would also be costed according to degree, sensing emotions at 2, influencing them at 5 and implanting them at 10.

Definitive First Draft Points Cost - Part 2

2007-07-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

Hyper-agility costs 8 points for a character with superpowers and 6 points for a character without. Hyper-agility can also be taken specifically for ranged attacks at a cost of 2 points less. The player must specify what the ranged weapon is and it must be specific (rifle, bow, knives etc). Likewise it can be taken in specific, non-combat areas (such as acrobatics) for a flat cost of 4 points.

Fully trained hand-to-hand combat costs 8 points for a character with superpowers and 6 for a character without. A character can become hyper-trained for an additional 8 points, this adds a further die to the characters pool in hand-to-hand combat and is considered a superpower.

Fully trained in a ranged weapon costs 6 points for a character with superpowers and 4 for a character without. The player must specify a weapon to be fully trained in and it must be specific.

Hyper-intelligence has two point scores. The full-on hyper-intelligence possessed by the likes of Reed Richards and Hank Pym costs 4 points. Hyper-intelligence in a specific area costs 2 points, this would cover the likes of Tony Stark whose genius is limited to a particular field. In either case the power works as a facility for the creation of other objects (though it can be brought to bear in a conflict situation). It also counts as a superpower. Characters with full hyper-intelligence can buy almost any superpower they like at character creation on the grounds they have created a machine that replicates it, in these circumstances they will always have that machine available. During the game, the character can create further machines using hyper-intelligence. The points costs for these will be dicussed later.

If a character has an item that can replicate many superpowers, such as Iron Man's armour or Green Lantern's power ring, the player must first purchase a level between one to three for it. Level 1 costs no points and means the character can never create an in-game effect whose strength or toughness exceeds 'normal human'. Level 2 costs 4 points and means the character can never create an in-game effect whose strength or toughness exceeds 'L1'. Level 3 costs 8 points and means the character can create effects involving strength or toughness all the way to 'L3'. If the item is universal (i.e. can replicate almost any effect, such as GL's power ring), the player must pay another 4 points for the item. The points cost for using in-game powers with the item will be discussed later. The player can also purchase powers at character creation that the item always has and cost no in-game points to use. These are also not subject to the strength and toughness restrictions placed on the item by its level.

If a player would like his powers to be magical in nature he has two choices -

Number 1, he purchases powers at character creation as normal and uses them as normal. Their magical origin is only flavour.

Number 2, he purchases the ability to cast magic for a cost of 4 points. He then picks a level between one and three for his magic which works in exactly the same way as items. Any powers he then purchases as superpowers at character creation are always available to the character. Further magical effects can be purchased in-game by spending points. The point cost for these will be discussed later.

Points costs can be adjusted up or down slightly if the way the character uses them is clearly weaker or stronger than intended.

Still lots more to come.

Definitive First Draft Points Cost - Part 1

2007-07-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

I've a good idea of where I want to go with points costs for powers now. I'm going to keep the scale for strength and toughness I initailly decided but I've decided agaisnt making the 12-point cost of L2 the measuring stick. I think its a little bit more powerful than the average power so I'm going to drop the base number to 10. This is how it pans out at the moment

1 - This is for powers that are little more than flavour and will rarely have an effect on the game.

2 - This is for nominal powers that have some effect, like Wolverine's enhanced senses. Also, this will be the cost of powers that are starting point for other powers to be built onto them but have only a nominal effect themselves. For example, the ability to increase size and mass would be here. The main mechanical effect is in the increase to strength and toughness which would have to be paid for separately.

5 - A nominal power that has a clear and advantageous effect, such as Spiderman's spidey sense. Other powers can also be built onto these as in the above example. This would cover Reed Richards elasticity, which is effective at this level in its own right but requires supertoughness to be bought as well. Superspeed will probably be here too as for its full effectiveness other powers would need to be added to it. Flash's ability to vibrate his molecules to phase through solid objects would require the purchase of intagibility.

10 - The basic point cost for an effective superpower that requires nothing to be added to it. This would include things like intangibility, invisibility and flight.

These represent guidelines. They should be adjusted if necessary to account for unique variations on powers some characters have. Storm, for example, can manipulate the wind to allow her to fly, this only works in environments where she can create wind (so to speak). This is a clear weakness of her use of flight and may warrant a 1 or 2 point reduction in the cost. On the other hand, Storm can use this power to move other people. This is a strength of her use of flight and may warrant a 1 or 2 increase in cost.

The cost of strength and toughness is -

Weak - 0

Normal - 0

Exceptional - 2

Level 1 - 6

Level 2 - 12

Level 3 - 20

These costs are not culmulative and will form the base costs for every power or item that either does damage or protects from it. If a character takes L1 - 3 in either strength or toughness but it only covers certain circumstances then he does not pay the full cost. If its a broad catergory then it costs two-thirds (rounded up) and its a very specific catergory then it costs one-third (rounded up). If a character has already paid to increase his strength or toughness and takes a further power that gives him an increase in certain circumstances then the points he has already paid are deducted from the final cost.

For example, Braniac 5 has a personal force field that gives him the equivalent of L2 toughness, this costs him 12 points. Reed Richards elastic body is almost impervious to thrown weapons and bullets, it gives the equivalent of L2 toughness against them. However he is still vulnerable to blows from H2H, energy attack and extremes of temperature. This is a broad catergory of protection so costs him 8 points (two-thirds of the normal cost of L2 toughness). Captain America has a shield that protects him against bullets and projectile weapons at the equivalent of L2. This is a broad catergory so costs him 8 points. However, he has already paid 2 points for exceptional toughness, these are deducted for a total cost of 6.

If a character takes a power that allows him to make a ranged attack then the strength of the attack determines the cost. He pays the equivalent cost for strength at the same level, the narrow focus of the power is balanced by its ability to be delivered from range. For example, Green Lantern's power ring allows him to fire energy blasts equivalent to L1 strength, this costs him 6 points.

I reiterate, the points costs of these powers can be adjusted up or down slightly if they are clearly more or less powerful than the norm.

After Further Reflection

2007-07-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

Having some time to reflect in between blows to the head I'm coming to the conclusion that hyper-agility and fully trained should not cost the 12 points that L2 strength and toughness do. If they did then that would mean Daredevil would struggle to fit all his powers within 30 despite being among the weaker heroes. My concern is that if they're too cheap them someone will inevitably mini-max by combining superstrength and toughness with hyper-agility and fully trained to create a combat monster. Whilst that can be worked around, it's a little more complicated in a genre built on combat.

I'm thinking that hyper-agility and fully trained should be 8 each. Without meaning to complicate things any more than they have to be, I'm thinking of a reduction in the cost if the character has no superpowers, say 6 instead.

Spider-man then has L1 strength and toughness for a combined cost of 12 points and hyper-agility costing 8. Then he has webshooters which are like a very restricted form of flight so are charged at a third of the cost of flight, 4 points. Spidey sometimes uses his webshooters to create a club he can throw at people, he has the option of buying that here so he always has it or paying for each use in-game with points Finally he has his spider-sense which is probably the hardest to cost, it could be argued that its a nominal power (costing 2 points) or a useful power (costing 5). I'm leaning toward the latter for a total of 29 points meaning Spidey can't pay for his webfluid clubs at character creation without them being very weak. He'll have to spend points in-game if he wants to use that.

Strictly speaking Daredevil does have superpowers but all they really do is balance out his weakness of being blind. Personally I don't consider him to superhuman any more than Batman or Captain America, if it came to a debate then the rule in LCP is to throw it open to a vote with all the players, given that I'm the only person here then my vote carries the day. So, Daredevil has hyper-agility and fully trained for a total of 12 points. He is fully trained in the use of a billy club as a ranged weapon, the cost here depends on the damage and is 4 + the cost of buying strength at that level (note this is different from buying a superpower which is used as a ranged attack where the cost is just the cost of the strength, those instances do not give extra dice to hit like fully trained does), Daredevil's billy clubs do normal strength damage so just cost the base 4. Finally there are his heightened sense which are just a nominal power costing 2 points and his radar sense, another nominal power so another 2 points. Daredevil costs a total of 20 points.

Captain America has exceptional strength and toughness, hyper-agility and fully trained for a total of 16 points. He has a shield that gives him L2 toughness against kinetic attacks, this is a broad catergory so costs two thirds of the normal cost of L2 toughness. L2 tougness normally costs 12 points so the shield costs 8 but Cap has already spent 2 points on exceptional toughness so these points are deducted too for a total of 6. Cap also is fully trained when he throws his shield, he takes this as exceptional strength damage at a cost of 6 points minus the 2 he has already spent on exceptional strength for a total of 4. This deduction is only allowable because the shield is a thrown weapon and therefore dependent on Cap's strength, had it been a gun then he'd wouldn't get the deduction. Cap costs 26 points.

Batman deserves a post of his own.

It's important to state that this 30 point limit is for a mid-range superhero. Someone like Superman would require far more points than 30 to be created and set against that you can see the vast amount of points carry-over someone like Cap would have into a campaign where you could play Superman.

What Do Points Make?

2007-07-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some thinking today around assigning points values to powers. I think the best way to go about this is to nail down a point cost for one thing and then judge everything from that, cross-checking for consistency at regular intervels. I think strength and toughness are the best candidates for the role. They'll likely have the widest range of all the powers and are amongst the most common. The first question to resolve before anything is should strength and toughness have equivalent point costs? Are they equally effetive in the game? Given the way they play off each other I would say they are so that's my starting point with these. I already know that they points cost will increase exponentially is the levels increase, I just need to figure out to what degree.

Keeping the point cost for powers low is appealing because it makes character creation very straightforward. On the other hand it lacks flexibility and makes low-range powers relatively expensive. Although its more awkward to use I think a wider range of point cost distribution is probably the best way to go. All characters get 'normal human' strength and toughness for free. They can reduce it to 'weak' if they like for no point gain. To increase will cost points. My initial thoughts are to make 'exceptional' 2 points, L1 6 points, L2 12 points and L3 20 points.

I'd like the average starting character to be able to take L2 strength and toughness with a little bit to spare as this character-type is pretty much a default one in superhero comics. That means 24 points (though there's an argument for giving a slight point discount for taking the two together) as an absolute minimum and I'd probably say at least 30.

All other powers need to be judged against this 30 point pool. If we take the Fantastic Four as an example, Ben Grimm has spent 24 points at character creation on his powers. He is a pilot too so it could be argued that he has spent points on that but I'm going to leave that out for this example. Reed Richards has hyper-intelligence, an elastic body which gives him L2 toughness against kinetic attacks and various funky gadgets. Sue Storm has invisibility and force fields which allow her levitate herself and others and can be used offensively and defensively. Jonny Storm can turn into flame, he can fly, shoot fireballs and heat things up/burn things.

Reed's funky gadgets are MacGuffin's. He can pay points at character creation to purchase them or he can spend points during the game to purchase them. Hyper-intelligence is a pre-requisite for this type of MacGuffin. So we'll say Reed spends 10 points on hyper-intelligence and no points on his gadgets, preferring to leave that part to game play. Then there is his elasticity, this isn't an overly useful power though it does have some uses so we'll set that at 5 points. He has normal toughness but wants L2 toughness against kinetic attacks, early thoughts are that a borad catergory should cost two thirds the total cost of the power, L2 toughness costs 12 points so that means Reed would need to spend 8. That gives him a total spend of 23, one less than Ben but the pressure on his in-game points will be much greater.

Invisibility is a difficult one to score as can be awesome or practically useless dependent on the situation. I'm going to say somewhere in the book that if a player takes certain powers the GM should ensure they get to use them so we'll have to cost this at its more useful end. So, is invisibility more or less useful than L2 strength? I'm tempted to say its about the same so we'll charge Sue 12 points for it. I think flight is is probably a little less useful but I'm going to point at 12 anyway so discourage people from taking it because its cheap, else we'll have a LoSH situation going on. Levitation is clearly less useful than flight, I would put that around 6 points but Sue can levitate others so I'm going to bump that up to 8. We'll say her force fields provide L2 toughness, unlike Ben she has to turn them on for them to protect her but she can also protect others as well so this balances out in my mind and she spends 12 points on this. She can trap people within them and use them as an offensive weapon so there's clearly an extra spend here too though the fact she has to give them her full concentration counts in her favour. If she picks her force damage at 'exceptional' human then that costs points and I'll let the others balance out. That gives Sue a spend of 34, more than 30. Sue would have to look to reduce something, probably the toughness of her force fields from L2 to L1. This would drop her spend to 28.

Johnny can fly so that's 12 points right off the bat. He can shoot fireballs so he needs to buy a strength for their damage, we'll say L1. L1 strength costs 6 points, Johnny can only use it in specific circumstances but he can also use them at range so that balances out. He can turn his whole body into flame which is a fairly average power, so like Reed's elastic body I'm going to charge him 5 points. Johnny's power can also be used like a MacGuffin, he hypnotised the Impossible Man by flying in an ever-decreasing circle in one early issue of the FF. This will be treat like a MacGuffin and will cost Johnny points in-game (and be subject to the style of game played). That puts Johnny at 23, the same as Reed and one less than Ben.

It's clear that there are going to be a lot of judgement calls that have to made during character creation. From that exercise alone there are some clear guidelines emerging (subject to playtesting) and it's these that will form the crux of the character creation system. I'm still undecided as to whether hyper-agility and fully trained combat should be more, less or equal to the base 12 points.

What is a Role-playing Game - First Draft

2007-07-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

Role-playing games are a largely abstract form of interactive, communal storytelling. They require at least two people to play and traditionally, all bar one of them take on the role of a particular character in the story. They are generally referred to as players and the characters they play are referred to as Player-Characters, or PC's for short. The players define their characters personality and determine their actions throughout the course of the game. There are almost as many names for the role of the other person in the group as there are role-playing games but for the purposes of Liberty Comics Presents... I'm going to use the generic term Games Master, or GM for short. The job of the GM is traditionally to bring the story for the players to play through, to set them challenges and obstacles for them to overcome and to take on the role of every character in the game not played by a player, these are generally known as Non-Player Characters or NPC's for short.

Role-playing games have rules, sometimes called mechanics. They set the parameters on what can be achieved in the game, determine if a PC or NPC succeeds at a certain task when there is some doubt and settle disputes as to the path the story takes. Some games rigidly enforce their rules, demanding they be adhered to in all circumstances. Others encourage their gamers to adapt the rules to fit their style of play. Liberty Comics Presents... falls firmly in the latter catergory. The point at which the rules cease to work for you is the point at which they should be changed.

There is a tremendous amount of wiggle-room within the GM/Player model. In some games the GM is almost like a God, the final word on all things to do with the game with the power to do as he pleases. This is commonly known as GM fiat. Liberty Comics Presents... is intended as a game of communal storytelling between the players and the GM. Though the GM is the final word on what can be achieved in the game he is not given this kind of absolute power, instead he must compete with the players for control of the story. Libery Comics Presents... uses a points system to allow the players to compete with the GM for storytelling rights. Points flow backward and forwards between the players and the GM as they are used to try and gain control of the narrative.

Some games all but do away with the GM role altogether. In these games everybody is responsible for the creation and direction of the story. In Liberty Comics Presents... the GM is still ultimately responsible for the story but players are allowed greater freedom to contribute to the narrative than usual. They can describe the actions of NPC's as well as their own character as part of their narration, fill in the blanks in a scene laid out by the GM and interject ideas to the story even in scenes which don't involve their characters. Liberty Comics Presents... is ultimately about recreating comic book storytelling at the gaming table and the players are encouraged to be pro-active participants in the storytelling.

Introduction - First Draft

2007-07-29T03:42:00.000-07:00

Ever since I can remember I always wanted to be a superhero. That isn’t strictly speaking true, no more than any other young boy does but I’ve always loved superhero comic books and like most comic book fans I’m a frustrated writer at heart. I’ve got a head filled with my own heroes, villains, stories and worlds, a treasure trove of cool ideas, at least to me anyway, just waiting to see the light of day.

I’ve been role-player for as long as I’ve been reading comic books. Like many role-players I’m a frustrated games designer at heart. Few games ever survive long without being ravaged unrecognisably by house rules and the bizarre whims of the gaming group. Given my love of comic books, it naturally wasn’t long before I gravitated towards superhero RPG’s. I’ve played a lot of them in my time, some good, some bad, all of them served as an outlet for my frustrated ideas.

Most superhero RPG’s place the emphasis on the game, only wearing the trappings of the superhero genre and abandoning entirely the storytelling elements that make the genre so great. Some games tie themselves to a specific setting, or pitch their mechanics to a specific style of superheroes. The book you’re reading initially sprang from my desire to play a game that promoted the storytelling over the rules. The best comic books are filled with freewheeling imagination from writers and artists who continually push their boundaries in the cause of an entertaining story and completely free from the artificial constraints most RPG’s rigidly enforce on their players.

Liberty Comics Presents… is intended to be as much an exercise in collaborative storytelling as it is an RPG. It still has rules and mechanics but they are designed to allow you and your group to tell any kind of superhero story. They are designed solely to allow control of the storytelling to flow around the table as well to provide a balance to the game. The rules are not God, the minute they stop you playing the type of game you want to play is the minute you should change them or downright ignore them. In some cases, the onus is put on you to invent parts of the rules.

You don’t need to be as big a fan of superheroes as I am to get anything out of this game. That you’ve bothered to even read as far as this means you must have some desire to play a supers game. Whatever it is you want to do with your campaign, whether you want recreate Stan & Jack’s silver age or do a grim and gritty story of superheroes in the French Revolution, you should find that you can do it with this book. So dredge up all those ideas that’ve been kicking around in your brain since you were a kid, take a copy of this book and make all those cool comic books you always knew you were capable of.

Multiple Attacks

2007-07-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Pretty much a staple of the rpg since it began is the concept of mulitple attacks, whereby as a character becomes more proficient in combat he is able to take more than one action in a combat round. Daredevil is a highly trained martial artist with the reflexes of an Olympic gymnast. The Hulk is a nerdy scientist who transforms into a mass of muscle. Surely Daredevil would be able to unleash two or three blows for each one of the Hulk's? Well, he probably could but I still don't feel the need for multiple attacks because the rules already cater for this. Daredevil receives a pool of six dice to Hulk's two. This makes him three times as likely to hit the Hulk as the Hulk is to hit him. This is because of Daredevil's combat training and exceptional reflxes. Therefore, this combat training and superior reflexes, to all intents and purposes, give Daredevil three attacks to the Hulk's one.

Ranged combat is a little different. Hawkeye and Green Arrow could both accurately fire two or more arrows in the time it takes a normal person to fire one. As things stand their greater skill with a bow gives them a greater chance of hitting their opponent than their opponent has of hitting them. In that respect it works very much like H2H combat whereby they effectively get more shots with a bow than their opponent due to their greater dice pools. But what if their opponent isn't firing back? What if they want to strike multiple targets in the same round?

Even if the opponent isn't firing back then I'm still not in favour of multiple attacks. If they want to make more of the shot then they have other options, such as spending points to increase the damage. If they want to hit more than one opponent then that's a little different. The simplest solution is to force them to pay for the extra hits with points.

I envisage the point flow around the table as being the crux on which the game is built. There should always be opportunities for the players to spend their points in a wide variety of ways. This in turn feeds the GM who uses the points back against the players to screw them or take control of the story. This in turn feeds the players...you get the drift. Whenever somebody wants to acheive something that they're realistically capable of but which is beyond what the mechanics allow then the default should always be to spend points.

Kid Liberty

2007-07-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

Sidekicks are almost as old as the superhero genre themselves. Robin the Boy Wonder was introduced as Batman's sidekick in Detective Comics 38, only a year after Batman himself. The character was wildly successful and soon no self-respecting superhero was seen without one. The sidekick took the role of the reader in the comic book in two important ways. First, he was a sounding board for the main character to explain the plot to and he would ask questions that the reader would be asking themselves. Dr Watson performed the same role in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes would explain the plot and how he had deduced it to Watson and by extension, to the reader as well. Doing this allowed comic books to move away from the exposition heavy dialogue that characterised the early golden age books and made it easier to keep the reader confused til the end. Sidekicks also gave the young male demograph that comprised a significant part of the readership, a character that they could identify with.

Nowadays, comic books have refined more efficient ways of communicating with the reader and the demograph has largely grown-up to a much more adult one. Sidekicks are less likely to be found with a modern superhero but they remain an integral part of the genre.

There are several ways in which sidekicks can utilised in LCP. The most straightforward is just to allow a player to be the sidekick of another. This is especially effective if there are only two players. A player could also play his own sidekick as side character (so to speak) but I think a much better way to do it is to allow another player to play the sidekick. This way means the sidekick is much more indepenent, imagine the Green Lantern player playing Speedy and you'll get what I mean. The logical extension of this is to have each player with a sidekick played by another one of the players. This has the potential to add another layer to the game though it can equally turn into distracting mess.

Conflicted

2007-07-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

So Hawkeye shoots a net-arrow to entangle his opponent. Or a villain sets his mooks on the heroes to give him enough time to escape. In each occasion both sides want a different outcome, they are in conflict over how to narrate the story. This calls for *CONFLICT RESOLUTION*. I've devoted so much time to task resolution in combat that you wouldn't think I want LCP to be a story game.

When a conflict arises, all interested parties pull together a dice pool which they'll use to compete for the right to narrate the outcome. Conflict resolution is the only occasion in LCP when I want there to be opposed dice rolling. A pool is accumulated thus -

All parties automatically get one dice.

Then they can present any skills or superpowers that they feel are relevant to the situation. Hyper-agility and hyper-intelligence are considered as superpowers for this part of the formula. The GM then decides if the skill or superpower is 'completely relevant', 'partially relevant' or 'not relevant'. Three dice are added to the pool for the former, one die is added for 'partially' and none are added for the latter. So if a player is being shot by one of Hawkeye's net-arrows and he states his character will dodge by flying out of the way the GM is well within his rights to say that flying in this instance provides no additional benefit than dodging normally, so no dice are added to the pool. The GM can also declare a power or skill to be 'not relevent' if he believes it duplicates or provides no additional benefit to a skill or power already stated.

If strength is referenced against toughness then dice are added or subtracted to the pool depending on the difference in the respective levels. This is calculated on a one-for-one basis. This supercedes the use of either superstrength or supertoughness in the above part of the formula and only applies to the attacking character. So if a hero declares he will be smashing a villains teleporting machine as part of his narration then his (L1) strength is measured against the machines (L2) toughness. It is one lower so the player has one die subtracted from his pool. The villain would not also gain a die as he is the defender.

Each player (or NPC) then brings any other things which are relevant to the outcome. These can be almost anything. The villains mooks who are trying to hold up the players would be added here for example. The same decision as to the relevancy of the item is taken here as with superpowers and the same number of dice are added as per that part of the formula. So if the GM decides the mooks are a minor distraction to the players and likely to be despatched with little effort then the villain will only get one die. If they pose a major barrier that will take a little longer to overcome then he can award three dice.

Finally, points are spent. This is the wildcard in the formula and the bit that needs serious playtesting to balance it. The most straightforward use of points is for the purchase of additional dice though I'm sure between myself and the playtesters we can get a lot more creative than that. Storydice is a term that could apply here.

An example of building a dice pool for conflict resultion. Hawkeye is shooting a net arrow at Wolverine -

Hawkeye declares he is using hyper-agility and 'fully trained' in the use of the bow. Wolverine is using his claws to attempt to slice the net as it reaches him.

The GM first decides that Hawkeye's hyper-agility and 'fully trained' are 'completely relevant' and awards three dice for each. Add the automatic die each player gets and Hawkeye's pool is 7.

The GM then has a decsion to make with Wolverine. If he decides Wolverine's use of his claws is fully relevant then he has to then decide if its a simple use of a superpower or if it's referencing strength against toughness. In this example I would say its just a simple use of a superpower as there is no question that Wolverine's claws would slice through a net. If the GM decides its 'partially relevant' then he simply awards one die. If he thinks Wolverine cannot do this then he gives no dice. For this example we'll say the GM feels its 'completely revelant'. Wolverine gets three dice for this and adding his automatic one he has a pool of 4.

As no mechanic has been finalised for spending points in conflict then neither player has spent any in this example.

Leaving up to the GM the decision as to how relevant something is has potential for abuse. I'll be stressing in the book that LCP is intended as a game of collaberative storytelling and isn't designed to create adversarial tension between the players and the GM but if the player and the GM absolutely cannot agree on how relevant something should be then the rule is to refer it to the rest of the table before it becomes an issue. Even putting it to a vote if necessary.

After dice pools have been accumulated then its time to roll. All parties roll their dice, most sixes wins. If its a tie or nobody has any sixes then its most fives, then fours, then threes and so on. If its a tie all the way down to one then the pools are rerolled.

If there's more than two people involved in the conflict then a player is out the moment he is beaten at a certain level. So if three players roll their pools, two of them get one 6 and the third gets none then he is out at that point. Even if he has more 5's than the other two these aren't taken into account. If the other two players tie then he does not get to reroll.

Hawkeye - A Case Study

2007-07-24T12:01:00.001-07:00

Bringing together some early thoughts on ranged combat.

Hawkeye's attributes are all 'normal human' barring agility which is at hyper (debatable for 616 Hawkeye). It's also debatable whether he'd be 'fully trained' in combat but for this example we'll say he is. Should he also be considered 'fully trained' in combat when it comes to firing a bow? The 'fully trained' catergory was conceived purely for hand-to-hand combat and whilst characters like Daredevil and Batman do utilise thrown objects to a high degree of skill I think it deserves a separate entry. Unlike with hand-to-hand combat, the 'fully trained' version of a ranged weapon requires you pick a type of weapon to go with it. Daredevil will be 'fully trained' when it comes to throwing a billy club, Hawkeye is 'fully trained' when firing a bow. So coming full circle, yes, Hawkeye is considered 'fully trained' but it's a separate skill that needs to be purchased separately and functions differently from the hand-to-hand version.

Daredevil will have to pay the same for his skill with billy clubs as Hawkeye will for shooting a bow, considering that Hawkeye can do so much more with a bow than Daredevil can do with a billy club this doesn't seem fair at first glance. It's balanced out by the fact that if Hawkeye takes 'fully trained' with a bow and leaves it at that then all he can do is shoot a bow, for the freaky-deaky arrows he has to buy them as a superpower.

So, we have Hawkeye with 'normal human' in all his attributes except agility which is hyper-, he's 'fully trained' in combat and with a bow and he has trick arrows purchased as a superpower. I've already gone over hand-to-hand combat with Wolverine and Daredevil so I'll skip that and go onto ranged combat. Every character has a dice pool for ranged combat, it's calculated thus -

1+ 2 if the character has hyper-agility+ 3 if the character is 'fully trained' in the weapon he is using.

If any of the dice come up as '6' then its considered a 'hit that does damage' and damage is applied as normal. If none come up as a '6' and any come up as a '1' then it is considered a miss.

Dice can be subtracted from the pool as thus -

-1 if the target has hyper-agility, is aware of the incoming attack and is able to attempt to dodge it. -x if the character has a relevant superpower. If the base pool is reduced to less than 1 the attacker can only attempt to hit with the expenditure of a point and he can never raise his dice pool above 1 in this way.

So, Hawkeye shoots his bow at Wolverine. Hawkeye's dicepool is 6. This is calculated as (base 1 + 2 for hyper-agility +3 for fully trained in bows) - (Wolverine has no hyper-agility or relevant superpowers so this is 0). If Clint rolls a '6' on any of his dice he hits.

When Hawkeye bought his arrows at character gen he would have to have specified a strength rating for them and paid the points accordingly. Let's say his 'base' arrow was bought at 'exceptional human'*, this is compared to Wolverine's toughness which also exceptional. As a result, a hit from one of Hawkeye's arrows does 2 damage to Wolverine.

What of his other arrows? Taking some common ones as examples -

High explosive - this would also have to be bought with a damage rating** and an area effect. Missing with this arrow could have serious consequences.

Acid - This would also have to be bought with a damage rating** and if Hawkeye wanted the acid to continue delivering damage in subsequent rounds then points would have to be spent on this.

Net - This doesn't do any damage, it's merely designed to entangle. This is a conflict rather than an attack so an entirely different mechanic is needed. This is conflict resolution and that's the next post (it'll also explain the '-x' thing from earlier). Clint is also probably able to fire mutliple arrows in single round, this is also the subject of a future post.

* Only necessary if the strength is greater than a normal arrow. No need to pay anything if it's the same or less.

** Only necessary if the strength is greater than the strength of the base arrow. No need to pay anything if it is the same or less.

Bullets! My Only Weakness

2007-07-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

Many comic book characters have weaknesses, the most famous being Superman's aversion to the rainbow chunks of his home planet. Weaknesses served as a particular plot device back in the golden age of superheroes, because stories were so compressed it was difficult to put a powerful character in any danger. Any foes or perilous situations were easily overcome in the space of just two or three panels. By giving a character a weakness it helped create the illusion that a hero was in danger. The golden age Green Lantern was immune to attacks by any metals and barely a story would go by without him being smacked upside the head with a baseball bat or a glass bottle. The silver age Green Lantern's power ring didn't work on anything yellow and, you guessed it, barely a story would go by without him encountering something yellow. Despite being told by Abin Sur that the ring didn't work on anything yellow and despite encountering yellow perils in almost every adventure, Hal Jordan always seemed surprised when his ring didn't work. Wonder Woman was rendered helpless if her bracelets were tied together, but only if a man did it (ahem). One character who didn't have a weakness was the golden age Spectre; in fact, I reckon The Spectre could give God a free hit and still take him out without breaking sweat.

As comic book stories became longer and more periodical in nature it was no longer necessary to present such simple weaknesses to create the illusion of danger. In some cases they were done away with altogether, in others they became a little more sophisticated. Ben Grimm struggled to come to terms with being a monster, Tony Stark and Captain Britain became alcoholics, Daredevil was blind, Wolverine was susceptible to bezerker rages and Bruce Banner and the Hulk were each others weakness.

Stripped to it's basic level a weakness has no real functional impact so strictly speaking needs no mechanic to deal with it. If your character is more powerful during months with 30 days then so be it, you don't need a mechanic for that. That said, weaknesses are so ingrained in the fabric of the superhero genre it would be fun to include them somehow. At the minute I'm favouring allowing the GM to dip into his pool of points that is accumulating towards a GM Fiat Point and use them to trigger a character's weakness. Of course by doing so the GM makes it harder to acquire a GMFP, as with everything in LCP I'm trying to acheive a kind of balance wherein the players and GM always have to balance the long term pain against the short term gain as they compete for control of the story. Additionally, a player can activate his own weakness if he chooses and if it's in a situation that clearly places him at a disadvantage then he is awarded points. Short term pain for long term gain.

Magic, Psychics and MacGuffin's

2007-07-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

The basics are almost done. I have a strong idea of how I want the game to play out and the outline of the book mapped in my head and I'm now taking tentative steps into the next stage. I've started messing around with Scribus as possible software for the publishing the book. It took me a while to figure out how to actually put words on the page, I can see progress here being slooow. I'm thinking about points values for attributes and powers. Every kind of attack that does damage can be abstracted down to simple mechanic, it possesses a damage rating equivalent to one of the six levels of strength and is referenced against the target's toughness. There is no functional difference between a punch, gun, arrow, fireball or telekinetic bolt. I'm debating whether buying a power means you get all the possible uses of the power for one price or if they should be purchased separately. I'm favouring the former as I think its more representative of how a comic book works, superheroes are regularly pulling out groovy new tricks with their powers. It'll make judging the point cost a little tough though. As well as giving it's wielder the power to move an object with their mind, telekinesis can be used as a physical attack and as a force field (or at least in comic books it can). The point cost for telekinesis will have to bear all this in mind and have 12 possible combinations of strength and toughness. If they were made available separately though then a player could customise exactly what his character could do. Doing it this way also adds the possibility of the player paying a point cost to acquire the power at a later point in the game.

Psychic powers and magic have their own problems. A pyschic attack bypasses physical toughness, making it extremely powerful. Throw in things like mind-control and it can very rapidly get out of hand. I'm thinking of forcing a player who wants to take psychic powers to first buy a level of 'pyschic ability'. In and of itself this does nothing, instead it sets the parameters for how powerful the characters psychic abilities will be. Say for arguments sake that it's set at three levels and a player buys it at level 1, any pyschic power he then takes will only be at level 1. So, telepathy will only allow the reading of surface thoughts, telekinesis will only allow objects to be manipulated up to 'normal human' strength, the same for telekinetic attacks and any force field would be set at the equivalent of 'normal toughness'.

At level 2, telepathy will now allow the probing of deeper and hidden thoughts. Telekinesis will allow the manipulation of objects up to 'level 1' superhuman strength, attacks and force fields will work in the same way. At level 3, telepathy is at Professor X levels. Telekinesis goes all the way to level 3 superhuman strength and toughness.

Just as a physical character with L3 strength and toughness is only allowable at the highest starting point levels, so will be a character with L3 psychic abilites. Pyschic defenses will likely have to be purchased as a superpower. For a character who has already purchased a level of psychic ability, pyschic defences will work along the lines of all other psychic powers. For a character who has not, a good explanation will have to be given as to why the character has them. Magneto's helmet is a good example of this.

Magic can work in different ways. The simplest is that powers can be purchased in the normal way and are attributed to 'magic'. Replicating a Dr Strange character is whole different proposition. I'm tempted just to ignore it altogether but my mission statement is to create a game that recreates superhero comic books and I'd be remiss if I didn't include rules for it. This type of magic is almost impossible to provide for at character gen stage. Like with psychic powers, allowing a character to buy a level of magic at character creation which sets the parameters of what can be achieved seems a good way to start. Superpowers could then also be bought a character gen which are freely available to the character in-game as magical effects. To utilise magic that isn't covered by the character's pre-bought powers would then require the expenditure of points. As well as going into the GM Fiat pool, these points can also accumulate to do other things specifically aimed at the magic user and not restricted to use only by the GM.

This model can also be applied to superheroes like Green Lantern and his funky magic ring of many (green) things. A level is purchased at character gen which sets the parameters of what can be acheived. Other powers can be purchased as part of the ring which are then freely available in-game. Every other effect has to be purchased in game using the players points pool which then go into both the GM Fiat pool and the F*ck Green Lantern Later In the Game pool.

Golden Age

2007-07-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

I plan on devoting a chapter of LCP to discussing different styles within the superhero genre and how to adapt them to a rpg. The three main areas I'm going to discuss could best be classified as 'golden age', 'silver age' and what I'm going to term 'modern'. The golden age age of superheroes undoubtedly begins in 1938 with the publication of the first Superman story in Action Comics #1. Its end is a little more difficult to pin down, being more of a gradual decline than a sudden stop. Personally, I would place it in 1951 when All Star Comics dropped the Justice Society of America from its pages and became All Star Westerns. Running stories in the silver and post-silver ages is pretty straightforward, running golden age stories is more problematic, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that the material isn't exactly easy to get a hold of. Marvel and DC have both made vast swathes of their silver age output available in cheap b&w, doorstep-sized reprints. With a couple of exceptions though, their golden age stuff is available in expensive, full colour, hardcover reprints, most of which retail at over £30. I've a couple I've picked up cheap from ebay as well as some cheaper tbp's but that's all. Second is the type of story published then. From my admittedly slight knowledge of the era (in comparison to the others), golden age comic books tended to be anthologies consisting of many shorter stories. The adventures were quick and simple with little substance. This doesn't translate well to the gaming table. Modern-style stories in a 1940's setting would probably work better, taking the trappings of golden age comcis and giving them a more updated sensibility. I'll still discuss how to run a true golden age-style adventure but I'll most likely add that too.

Spending Points

2007-07-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Some quick ideas around spending points -

Increasing dice pools in combat, natch.

Doing one level of damage to a character you couldn't otherwise hurt. The cost here will culmulative with how many levels of toughness you have to go up. For example, a character with normal strength cannot normally hurt a character with Level 1 toughness and above. He could spend one point to do a level of damage to somebody with L1T, two points for somebody with L2T and three for somebody with L3T.

When competing to narrate the outcome of conflict. The temptation here is to do a one-for-one kind of deal along the lines of Fanmail in PTA. The problem with that is, if players are coming to the table with starting points pools based on many points they didn't spend at character creation then it'll be a big advantage to create characters will minimal spend.

To fight on past 'unconscious'.

The question of character progression hasn't been addressed yet. It probably deserves it's own entry but it's relevant here. Superheroes tend to be created fully-formed so the concept of starting at a low power-level and building up doesn't apply. That said, some characters do become more powerful over time. Sue Storm acquired her force field creation powers, Jean Grey acquired telepathy, Superman acquired a veritable smorgasboard of funky powers over the course of the 1940's.

If there is to be this kind of progression then it would seem logical to do it through points spend. It's generally weaker characters that need to be beefed up to compete that are made more powerful and this would be reflected in the game as the weaker starting characters will have the larger point pools. For the character to be allowed to progress I think there needs to be some guidelines laid down -

If the character is clearly too weak for the campaign

If it naturally fits the character and doesn't unbalance him

If the player really wants it, has a good explanation as to how it happens and isn't doing it just to powergame

In terms of cost it would seem most sensible just to translate the points cost of superpowers at character gen across for character progression.

Superattributes

2007-07-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

So far there are four attributes; strength, toughness, agility and intelligence. The last two have only two levels, either 'normal' or 'hyper'. The hyper level is as much a superpower as an attribute though and probably should be classed as such. Agility is still referenced for combat even at the normal level but as of yet I can find no mechanical use for normal intelligence, it could easily be removed altogether as an attribute. Superstrength and toughness through Levels 1-3 is also a superpower more than an attribute. The only two attribute increases available are to raise strength or toughness to 'exceptional', everything else is a superpower. The point cost for any level of superstrength/tougness can be set without it needing to be culmulative with the lower levels, therefore a player can move his character directly to Level 2 without considering exceptional. This view dramatically simplifies attributes and I'm all in favour of simplifying mechanics.

Minimaximan

2007-07-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Powergamer is the term given to players whose primary aim in an rpg is to manipulate the mechanics in such a way as to have the most powerful character possible. His polar opposite is the storygamer, for whom the story takes precedence over all. Whilst the powergamer will make decisions which are nonsensical from a character point of view, the storygamer will willingly hamstring himself if he feels it makes for a more interesting story. In reality, most players are part-power and part-storygamer though the labels do have some merit.

LCP is intended as a 'storygame'. It is intended to replicate the types of stories told in superhero comics and will only work if everyone 'buys in' to that vision. There is a certain amount of trust implicit in the players that they will do this without a mechanical incentive. That said, it still needs to be anticipated that some players will powergame and to try and enforce the story elements via the mechanics. Point rewards for good roleplaying or putting their character at a disadvantage to enhance the story is an obvious incentive.

One area that stands out as ripe for some abuse from the primitive mechanics I've laid out is the Level 3 superstrength/toughness with hyperagility and fully trained combat skills. An easy way to prevent it is to make it prohibitively expensive. Level 3 superstrength and toughness is incredibly powerful anyway so probably should only be available in campaigns set at the highest power levels. I'm considering making it so expensive that only the highest point pools for character generation will allow it. Strength and invulnerability that high rarely goes hand-in-hand with hyperagility and combat training in comic books anyway. It's generally the less powerful heroes who bother to try and train themselves for a fight. For that reason, I'm considering imposing an additional point cost over and above the individual costs for anyone who wants to combine either hyperagility and/or fully trained combat skills with Level 3 strength and/or toughness.

So You Wanna Be the Bad Guy

2007-07-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

If my past experience of gaming groups is anything to go by it's enivitable that sooner or later someone is going to want to play a supervillain. When you strip it right down to it's most functional level, the main difference between superheroes and supervillains is that the former are reactive and the latter are proactive. If no-one in Gotham ever committed crime there'd be no need for Bruce Wayne to don a batsuit. If mutants and humans lived in peace and harmony and there were no bad mutants getting in the way then there'd be no need for the X-Men (though there may still be for a Xavier Institute).

This dynamic between the superheroes and the supervillains is naturally replicated at the gaming table with the GM and the players. At it's most basic level it is the job of the GM to provide conflict for the players to overcome. The GM naturally fills the role of the supervillain. If you were to allow the players to play the supervillains then the role is reversed and it would be the players coming up with conflict for the GM to react to. Whilst it can be done it isn't an ideal state of affairs.

In recent years, Wanted, by Mark Millar and JG Jones, has successfully managed to tell a story in which the protagonists are supervillains. Put upon Wesley Gibson discovers his father was a supervillain called The Killer. When The Killer is himself killed, Wesley inherits his mantle and discovers that the world is ran by a secret conspiracy of supervillains. Wanted works because despite being a baddie in his actions, Wesley's story takes a very tradtional heroic path. In fact it's very much Luke Skywalkers in the original Star Wars movie. Wesley is taken from his normal life into a life of adventure wherein he goes up against most of the other supervillains in the book in an attempt to discover what happened to his father. You could very easily retell Wanted with Wesley as a superhero instead of a supervillain.

If you absolutely want to play a supervillain campaign I suggest you do what Wanted does and make the protagonists superheroes in all but morality.