Superhero Media: Supernatural - Season 3

If you're only looking at watching some Supernatural for gaming inspiration, Season 3 is a great place to jump on, even with little-to-no prior knowledge of what's happening. If you go that route, Sam and Dean are brothers, they hunt monsters, their dad is dead and Dean has a year to live after making a deal with a Crossroads Demon. Also, Season 2 ended with a literal gate to Hell being opened, so there's that too. The very first episode has the brothers and Bobby battling none other than the Seven Deadly Sins, which seems straight out of a "New 52" Hellblazer comic, and I fucking love it. I'm shopping for Heroclix Deadly Sins in the other tab right now, but I'm not loving my options, I'm wanting something more like the SHAZAM film. Anyway, Season 3 of Supernatural introduces more recurring characters, has a narrative through-line and starts to work in some more jokes, so is easily the best run around so far. Also, the heroes lose in the end, Dean is dragged to hell and the day is lost; few programmes have the balls to close a season like that. 

New characters include occasional allies like Ruby, a former witch turned demon who wants Sam to lead the army of evil, antagonists like Lilith, leader of another evil faction and Bela, a woman who deals in supernatural artifacts on the black market. Not only do these new characters add some much-needed gender balance to Supernatural, but having more recurring cast members makes the world feel more "real". Some other guest stars come back, like Luther, who ends his arc on a vampire-powered suicide run, and the Ghost Facers, who defeat a serial-killing ghost with the power of homosexual love. Season 3 is probably the model for Supernatural going forward, at least in terms of tone, as there is more comedy and the end of the world seems to always be around the corner. I like this trend, as I'm inclined towards taking all of this less seriously than most, especially once demons, diabolical deals and destiny start making regular appearances in the script. 

The recurrence of the Hell-hounds chasing people who have reached the end of their contracts with the Crossroads Demons makes for a great motif, with the sound department having a field day sneaking barks and growls into the background whenever Dean contemplates his fate. Again, I really love that all of the Brothers' desperate efforts don't pay off and Dean gets dragged to hell, making for a chilling ending and a great cliffhanger leading into Season 4. I'll admit most of Seasons 1 and 2 were closer to a nostalgia trip for me, I actually got a lot out of Season 3, and now am more keen for the next season and the adventures that await. As mentioned above, there is plenty of great gaming fodder in this season of Supernatural, from the Deadly Sins and Hell-hounds to television ghost hunters and black market cursed object dealers; many of these could walk straight into your games with minimal adjustment. Aside from that, Supernatural is still a great watch if you're into that "WB" style action/soap/sci-fi hybrid.

Melee of Champions - 5

Got lucky and picked up a few more figs for this side-project. Really need to get on it as I may be running a game in a couple of weeks. 

The Immortal Iron Fist and Hawkeye, both heroes I really wanted from this range. Disney Infinity. 

Nova (Sam Alexander) and The Lone Ranger, happy to have him without the terrible Johnny Depp Tonto. Disney Infinity. 

Superhero Media: Robocop (1987)

What a bloody classic! Even more than thirty years later, no other attempt at the same concept has come even close, not even the official sequels or the remake. In the decaying and crime-ridden Detroit of the 1990s, the Metropolitan Police have been privatised by Omni Consumer Products, a corporation more interested in securing massive military contracts than fighting crime. Officer Murphy is one of many unlucky officers transferred to the worst precinct in the city, in the hope he will be killed and be able to be used by OCP for a secret project. It's not long before Murphy is tangling with Clarence Boddicker (a brilliant Kurtwood Smith, of all actors), the most dangerous man in Old Detroit, and soon comes off second-best to several shotguns. Murphy's brain survives, after a fashion, and OCP combines a lifetime of police experience and the latest in cutting-edge robotics to create the ultimate crime-fighting machine; Robocop. 

It's pretty easy to dismiss Robocop if you've never seen it, it looks like a dumb film, and the name doesn't help. If you know your film history however, one name attached to the film will get you excited, the film's director, Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven is a master of satire, with a particular eye for American Corporate Fascism, and Robocop is a masterwork of both. From the advertisements placed throughout the film, the juxtaposition of the working class and corporate elite and stupid ideas like gentrification fixing poverty, that, somehow, we're still living with today. Seriously, Regan and Thatcher really fucked the world up, and we're still paying for it. Stop voting conservative already. Anyway, operating outside of his programming, Robocop is soon hunting down every member of Clarence's gang that killed him, and the evil executives at OCP are looking to destroy him and get their other project ED-209 in the field so that they can sell it to the military. This all culminates in a bloodbath in an abandoned chemical factory and a brilliant villain death in the OCP boardroom. 

I've seen some recent criticism that Robocop is a little too forgiving of American Corpocracy and Police Militarisation, but I've always felt that that was simply another layer of Verhoeven's satire, getting the American audience to cheer for their own oppressors; it's certainly Verhoeven's style. That said, Robocop has become something of a cult hero in Detroit, with attempts to put up a statue of him in the poorer areas, but I guess if the only cultural contributions the city has made post-Motown are Robocop and Eminem, you're options are limited. I hope by the time this article gets through the backlog, I finally have a decent 28mm Robocop for Ultimate Alliance games, but, just in case, if you know of a good one, even a 3D print, please let me know. I do have a converted Star Wars miniature, but he's a tad on the small side, especially next to some of my repainted Heroclix. If you, somehow, have never seen the original Robocop, check it out as soon as you can, either the original or the Special Edition, the story doesn't change that much, it's mostly differing levels of violence.

Ultimate Alliance: China - Part II

A longstanding colony of the waning British Empire, Hong Kong often found itself between two worlds, culturally, politically and also in terms of its people. MI-13 had been concerned with the mystical aspects of the Chinese mainland, as well as the growing number of giant monster, or "Kaiju", attacks on nearby Japan, but lacked the resources to implement any permanent defense network against such threats. When the Japanese started to fight back against their own Kaiju with the Super Sentai Teams and Ultraman Project, Hong Kong science and military personnel began work on their own version, drawing as much from the American "Six Million Dollar Man" as much as the Japanese programmes and code-named Project: Inframan. Due to budget constraints, the project never came to fruition and by 1974 was shelved and all-but-forgotten. In 1975, however, Hong Kong was rocked by the attack of Dragon Mother and her Monster Legion and Science Officer Rayma became Inframan to defend his homeland.

After the Monster Legion was defeated, it was found, as suspected, that Rayma could not be separated from the Inframan parts, and though the stoic young man took it in stride, the loss of his old life was a grave one. For several years, Inframan was experimentally deployed at part of the Hong Kong Police, but as the machine parts of his body wore down, they became less controllable and several incidents of property damage and injury of suspects resulted in the trial being terminated permanently. With nothing to do and no reliable way to be repaired back to full function, Rayma reluctantly agreed to be "switched off" for the foreseeable future, until such a time as Inframan was needed or he could be returned to being human. Decades past, and Inframan was eventually forgotten, left to collect dust in a government laboratory and often considered a myth or hoax by those who had never seen him in action. 

When the 2019 Hong Kong Riots started, Black Bat, aka Cassandra Cain, former Batgirl and member of Batman Incorporated, immediately took a stand against the totalitarian actions of the government, working from the shadows to aid the protesters and harry police. As the situation worsened and Chinese troops massed on the border, Black Bat reached out to the broader superhero community, but received no aid from her peers wanting to avoid aggravating the Great Ten and creating an international incident. However, Black Bat had one vital ally that, according to most of the world, didn't exist; Oracle. With almost unparalleled hacking skill, Oracle dove into the secret history of Hong Kong's superhumans, quickly finding the story of Inframan and the resting place of Science Officer Rayma, still in suspended animation and long forgotten.

Breaking in to a secure, but abandoned, facility was no struggle for the daughter of Cain and former Batgirl, but even after following Oracle's instructions to reactivate Inframan, the real work had only just begun. Having been "sleeping" since the 1980s, Rayma was disorientated and unwilling to believe that it was now well into the 21st century, let alone that Hong Kong was Chinese territory and troops had started moving in. When Rayma saw the riots for himself, and the accompanying youth movement for Independence and a free Hong Kong, he quickly made up his mind on what to do with his new lease on life. Out of date, somewhat broken and lost in a world not his own, Super Inframan had returned to defend Hong Kong once more.

Superhero Media: Dragon Ball Z The World's Strongest

Ok, so I don't really follow all of the big developments across the DBZ fandom, so I never realised that DBZ Kai had a partially different voice cast until I watched my new DVD of The World's Strongest from the Dragon Ball Z Remastered Movie Collection. I don't want to be one of those fans who says that the version they knew first is better, but the original English voices for Doctors Wheelo and Kochin were far more memorable than the new ones, which are just kind of bland and generically sinister. I was genuinely disappointed to find this, as The World's Strongest is one of my favourite DBZ films, and some of the first DBZ I really saw, renting the DVD when I couldn't see the episodes of a morning like my friends. As such, I had quite an odd idea of what DBZ was for a little while, but that's a story for another time. The brilliant, yet deranged, Doctor Wheelo almost died, but his brain was preserved and now he seeks the world's strongest fighter to be his new body. His information being out of date, however, he kidnaps Master Roshi and Goku and friends have to come to the rescue. 

Doctors Wheelo and Kochin live in a wonderfully Giger-esque fortress in the mountain wilderness, filled with impossibly-large open spaces, traps, towers and even mist somehow. For the terrain fanatics that read my blog, The World's Strongest may well be worth checking out for the aesthetic alone; I certainly wish I had the skills with plaster and resin to pull something like this off on the table top. The World's Strongest, much like Tree of Might and Lord Slug, the next two films in the series, are most definitely not in the DBZ canon, as Goku has access to the Kaio Ken and Spirit Bomb techniques, but can't turn Super Sayian as yet. This "extra-narrative" nature means that many fans tend to pass the movies over or have an outright hostility towards them, which I find more puzzling than anything. Yes, I'm one of those weird DBZ fans who enjoys the filler and thinks Goku is boring, but I can't understand why having more DBZ content can be a bad thing, especially when the lack of restrictions allow the stories and fights to do things the series can't; for example, having the gang fight a brain in a robot body in the ruins of a cyclopean fortress. 

As I've mentioned before, Doctor Wheelo is one of my favourite DBZ villains. Partially because "brain is a jar" is always a great trope, but also because cyborgs are great villains. Yeah, forget Lapis, Lazuli and Doctor Gero, the original cyborg monsters to battle Goku are Kishime, Ebifurya and Doctor Wheelo. Probably worth mentioning that there's a musical number in The World's Strongest, sung by Gohan about Piccolo, it's pretty strange and breaks the tone, but is all of two minutes long if you're really that put off by it. Man, I need to start making these articles on the DBZ movies a bit shorter, I always run out of stuff to say other than "Hey Jasco, where's that DBZ minis game you promised?", you bet I'd buy a Wheelo as soon as I could, he's just such a cool looking bad guy. Well, until the glorious day I can get more 28mm Dragon Ball characters, I guess I'll just dream about teaming Doctor Wheelo up with The Brain and Helsingard for some kind of villainous "brains trust".

From the Archives - 6

Man, I have a lot of these things, and I really need to start making more stat cards so that I can get more Ultimate Alliance games going.

Carnage: Not a character I like all that much, but hastily painted up for a game set in Arkham Aslyum with plenty of Tamyia Clear Red. Heroclix. 

Scarface and Ventriloquist: Another one for the Arkham game, I went through a period of collecting every Batman villain I could get my hands on for some reason I don't remember. Heroclix. 

Arnim Zola: More for Weird World War II games, this classic Nazi villain is really not a great model, so a friend made me a better one I'm yet to paint. Heroclix. 
 

Mad Hatter: I think I must have been preparing for a "No Man's Land" game at some point? Using the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game (Mongoose) rules? I should get back to that idea. This mini is a good source of cheap 28mm top hats if you find yourself needing them. Heroclix. 

Black Mask: Ok, yes, I have to run that "No Man's Land" campaign at some point, given how many of these things I have. Heroclix. 

Killer Shrike: This one I know I did as part of my old 40k project as one of my generic "Daemons". Back in the day, the opponent of a 40K Daemonhunters army could take a unit of daemons, so I was planning to furnish a group of "Tech Villains", ala Secret War. Heroclix. 

Superhero Media: Captain America - The Winter Solider

I was honestly a little disappointed with Wave 2, but then I hit The Winter Soldier. This is probably the first MCU film that I tend to say is a damn good film on it's own, even taken as a stand-alone, it's just that well constructed. After the events of The Avengers, Steve Rogers is working for SHIELD, taking down international criminals like Batroc the Leaper and leading a strike-team that includes Black Widow and Crossbones. When I explained to my girlfriend who Batroc was, she didn't believe me until I pulled out my Marvel Universe Encyclopedia and showed her that his main skill was leaping. Good stuff. Things start to unravel, however, when Nick Fury is killed and framed for war profiteering, only Cap can clear his name, but who can he trust if SHIELD is compromised? And who is the Winter Soldier? People who don't like the MCU films often make the criticism that all of them are "the same", meaning that they follow a similar formula, which is somewhat fair, but I like to remind them that as early as Wave 2 there was a conspiracy spy-hunt film about global surveillance and American hegemony. Fancy that. 

The Captain America series of MCU films is really the gold standard as far as I'm concerned; the characters, setting and tone work well, with the added Avengers films, Cap's journey is satisfying and concludes beautifully. The Winter Soldier is tense, fast-paced and shockingly grounded for a film in which Captain America takes on Hydra with his best pal Falcon. There's even a version of Arnim Zola on a computer screen, sure he's there to provide exposition, but the sequence is fun and he gets to revisit his "I am Swiss" line from The First Avenger. Initially, I felt that the return of Bucky Barnes as the Winter Solider was a bit quick, but it really works with Civil War and Infinity War, so it's hard to fault here, especially as Sebastian Stan does a great job of showing emotion through movement, with little dialogue. The costume looks great too, especially the bionic arm, which clearly a lot of though has been put into. Much as I tend to decry the "grim and gritty" approach, the more grounded Captain America of The Winter Soldier works well, and allows the more fantastic elements, like Falcon and Zola, to sit where they should and fit into the fabric of the world presented. 

Perhaps best of all, The Winter Soldier also works as a character piece, with Cap making his journey into the modern world (the notepad scene is inspired), trying to rebuild his life and even considering dating again, though he's a bit too old fashioned for the analyst with the septum piercing. Black Widow gets some personality, revealing that she reflects back on people, rather than having a genuine personality, which makes sense, as Tony Stark sees her as a sex object, Nick Fury sees her as an asset, Clint Barton sees her as a partner and Cap can't get a read on her. This too, gets paid off in later films, where Natasha finding her identity is pretty much her through-line, culminating in Endgame. Man, what a great series. Now I want to skip straight to Civil War. I'll leave this one off early to go watch more films. Enjoy your night and watch more Captain America.

Superhero Movies that Never Happened

Making films is never a sure thing, no matter how big the studio and property, and plenty of great ideas never make it to screens. Superheroes, particularly Superman, have had more of this than most and some of the abandoned projects have become legendary in their own rights. Should I ever find access to parallel worlds, I will make sure to find realities where these films were made and review them here, especially if they're really good or really bad. Anyway, here's a quick look at some of these "Could Have Beens", you can find more online if you're particularly keen on any of them.

Superman Lives

Fun fact, Nic Gage played Superman in Teen Titans GO! To The Movies because of how notorious this project became when Kevin Smith started doing comedy lectures. I personally think it would have been worth watching, even to see the iconoclastic Cage take on a very 1990s Man of Steel. With a Kevin Smith script it would have at least been unique, even with the infamous "giant robot spider" sequence. Just how connected Superman Lives would have been to the Donner films is debatable, but I imagine we'd be referring to it as a "soft reboot" if the film had existed. For the record, I like Cage as an actor, despite the many poor films he has been in, and I'd watch him play Superman quite happily. Maybe Earth 2 somewhere down the line?

 
Batman Meets Godzilla

Adam West, Burt Ward and Godzilla? Yes this almost happened, and the fact that it didn't is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of superhero film-making. Here's how this madness happens; it's the 1970s, Batman is doing killer numbers in syndication and Godzilla is enjoying his second boom, so some Japanese film executives reach out to their American counterparts and try to get a joint venture going. I have no doubt that the finished product would have been extremely silly and played for comedy, but I'm also certain it would have been amazing. The intended plot was to have Batman and Robin traveling to Japan to help the authorities deal with yet another Godzilla attack and at least one of their villains would have been involved. Sadly, the whole project was deemed too expensive and it never happened, but I'll live the rest of my life dreaming of what could have been.

Shin Godzilla Vs Evangelion 

As the director of both Shin Godzilla and Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hideaki Anno is clearly slightly mad in the best way, so, of course, he's trying to get a crossover off the ground. Now, it's probably unfair for me to say that this idea won't get made now in 2020, but I'm taking a guess that no studio is going to want to take on something simultaneously so expensive and so weird. If we're lucky we'll get a Manga and maybe a Netflix Anime in a few years time. Still, body-horror Kaiju meets mother-issues mecha sounds like a very interesting film, if not a particularly popular one.


Superman Returns Sequel

As I've discussed previously, I really like Superman Returns and would rate it as one of the best Superman films to date. Sadly, no one else really enjoyed it and the sequel was scrapped during pre-production. And it would have been great too! Superman fights Brainiac, and has to fight his son, who has gone rogue and is destroying the planet with his emerging superpowers. It's about loss, family and responsibility, with Superman having to put the safety and needs of others above those of himself and his loved ones. Yes, it turns out Bryan Singer is a garbage person, but I would have loved this film and be defending it online against people who probably didn't get what it was going for. Hey, at least we could have a Superman villain in a film who wasn't Luthor or Zod.

Superhero Media: Irredeemable

Written by Mark Waid, famous for epic stories in the DC Universe, Irredeemable does one of the better jobs of answering that eternal fanboy question, "what if Superman turned evil?" Rather than a single inciting incident, like in Injustice, the "Superman" of Irredeemable, Pultonian, is worn down over years to the point where he breaks. The other superheroes of the world, The Paradigm, struggle to save as many people as they can from the rampage of a mad god, as they're picked off one by one. The first few trades of Irredeemable performed really well, even garnering Esiner Award nominations, but as it continued, the fans dropped away and it finished with something of a whimper. Rather than continuing on as a kind of superhero "survival-horror", Irredeemable soon morphs into a Kirby-esque space opera before finally becoming a story of hope in the face of the inevitable. Whilst I can see why many fans drifted away with the tone change, I quite like that a thoroughly "Iron Age" concept like "Evil Superman", ends with a Silver Age message of hope and saving the planet one last time. 

 

Yes, Irredeemable is not the great "Evil Superman" story that people are, for some reason, still demanding, but is more a collection of ideas about superheroes that Mark Waid has had over the years and needed to get down somewhere. Probably the most recurring concept, which may be the closest thing to a thesis of the story, is "it only takes one mistake to condemn you", which not only happens to Plutonian, but other characters, like Qubit and Survivor. The answer seems to be that it is the degree of mistake and what one does to makes amends that matters, but Plutonian isn't human and has grown up being abused and feared, so he reacts badly and makes the situation worse and worse. I need to mention that there is a companion series to Irredeemable, entitled Incorruptible, which follows one of Plutonian's villains, Max Damage on his journey to becoming a hero. The two series set up a confrontation between Plutonian and Damage that never happens, the actual finale being more esoteric and less violent. If you really wanted something closer to Injustice, Irredeemable is not what you're looking for. 

What I like best about Irredeemable are the characters, which, in a pleasant twist, aren't merely takes on existing heroes in the DC and Marvel pantheons. Gilgamos is an immortal, winged man with superhuman strength and endurance, married to Bette Noir, a gunslinger with magical ammunition. Survivor wields energy and Volt controls electricity, fairly generic, but not lifted whole-cloth from anywhere. Kaidan is a Japanese woman who uses her family's curse to summon ghostly warriors to fight on her behalf and Qubit can make any machine into any other machine, using "teleportals" most often and being a pacifist for most of the piece. It is the characters that tend to draw me back to Irredeemable, rather than the narrative, though I'm more forgiving of the flaws than most, Qubit and Modeus (the Lex Luthor stand-in) especially, as their journey of needing to work together, but doing so for their own reasons, is probably one of the more interesting "Good Guy/Bad Guy teaming-up through necessity" stories I've read in comics. I feel Irredeemable is better than many give it credit for, but I do think it's imperfect and not something everyone will enjoy.