Superhero Media: The Venture Bros. - Season 4

You know The Venture Bros. has you hooked partway through the fourth season when, Sergeant Hatred, a reformed villain and recovering pedophile, is the emotional centre of an episode. By the time the season closes, with Brock running against the clock to prevent the death of his surrogate family, The Venture Bros. is no longer just clever and funny, it's somehow one of the best series on television. No, really. The same progamme, the same episode, that features a wonderfully gross running gag about what a sex move called a "Rusty Venture" is, brings together the core cast in a way that would define the next few seasons, and is genuinely heartwarming as mutated fly-women vomit acid on everyone. The first episode of season four is a time-jumping soft reboot in which the cast are reshuffled into new roles whilst a group of Nazis are trying to get Doc to extract Hitler's DNA from a dog and clone them a baby Hitler. If any of that throws you off, then how did you even get this far? 

For those handful of tragic nerds that read my blog, season four of The Venture Bros. gets the deep lore going with a look back at the formation of The Guild of Calamitous Intent, as well as expanding the origins of several characters, slowly peeling back some of the layers of mystery that exist in the setting. However, by far the best decision Doc Hammer and Christopher McCulloch made with this season was increasing the role of Shore Leave, a one-joke character of cringy gay stereotypes that is somehow the funniest person in every scene he's in; even if his only line is "Sphinx!" Part of it is the vocal talent of Doc Hammer pushing into almost offensive territory, only to loop back to pastiche and that many of the "worst" lines are delivered whilst the character is blowing away ranks of goons. Interviews with the writers tend to indicate that a lot of the script is improvised, and watching some of the ensemble scenes, I can believe it, but it really works because McCulloch and Hammer are so in-sync creatively that everything fits together, even the conversations about how "sad" a stripper's breasts are. 

Are you watching this series yet? Seriously, get on it, the DVDs are pretty affordable and it pops up on AppleTV every now and then. I'm starting to lose track of how many friends I've induced into The Venture Bros. fandom by slipping it on at the end of a Movie Night or as a party was winding down, even when I jumped in mid-season and spent the next hour explaining to drunk people why Captain Sunshine's butler was asking Hank to smear lube on his thighs and buttocks. In many ways, The Venture Bros. is the victim of timing, being a little too early for the streaming boom and too late for 1990s late-night cult animation. Trust me, if the programme was on Netflix and tagged in suggestions for people watching Rick and Morty, it would be huge. So until such time as The Venture Bros. gets the love it deserves, get those DVDs, block out a weekend and take a journey into the ever strange, sometimes repulsive, but always compelling world of Hank and Dean. There are no apologies for being what it is or how good it is, so it's only fitting that the last words of this season are "Fuck you!"

Drokk the Law!! - Part VI

Battles in the nightmare undercity continue! Wait, that's Necromunda, we're playing Judge Dredd, whoops. Apologies in advance about the number and quality of pictures in this entry (or lack thereof, rather), I very cleverly forgot my phone and had to rely on other people to take some shots. Speaking of other people, Andy and I finally got someone else playing, Pitor, who took the helm of my Street Gang against Andy's Street Gang.

You know something I've come to notice happening a lot when I teach miniature wargames, skirmish games particularly? People learning the game seem really risk-adverse, hugging cover and popping off shots with a low likelihood of success, rather than pushing up the table and actually getting to grips with the rules. As an experienced and, if I may say so, pretty damn good, player of this kind of game, I can find this lack of willingness to really engage with the game pretty frustrating. Although the hobby is my livelihood and has been a lifeline more than once, I am well aware that wargaming just isn't important in the grand scheme of things. There is more to the hobby than many think, but it's nothing more or less important than any other hobby.

Teaching games are really important to the hobby, they help us grow communities and share our favouite rules, and I have spent a lot of my life teaching games at various events and club meetings, as well as just at work. But it can be frustrating as people durdle around and drag things out longer than is probably necessary to get to grips with the rules. I remember a demo game of Necromunda taking all day because no one would risk breaking cover, so it was all 6+ shots than rarely did any damage. Anyway, I also finally got to play my Lone Vigilante!

In a quick game against the Apes (played by Sam), Bubba Feet dodged around the table and got a few shots off before he was surrounded and bought down with Spit Gun fire. The only major change I feel I need to make for Feet is giving him a melee weapon instead of Grenades, but otherwise it played basically exactly as I suspected. It's challenging having such a lack of activation priority, which is great for me as I'm pretty good at this style of game to begin with. In fact, I think this was the first game I actually lost since coming back to play Judge Dredd after so many years.

Superhero Media: Dragon Ball Z - The Fall of Men

Something I'm really big on eradicating in the educational settings in which I work is "assumed knowledge; basically anything that no one mentions because "everybody knows that". I've seen really good teachers and support staff leave students behind because they assumed that foundational knowledge would be universal across national, cultural and generational boundaries. I mention this because I see a lot of discussion around the Dragon Ball Z fan-film, The Fall of Men but almost none of it mentions something my education makes me painfully aware of; that being, this is a demo reel. You see, when you want to break into the film industry, one of the best ways to do it is to make your own short film and submit it to studios and production companies to show off what you can do. The Fall of Men is pretty much just a DBZ version of this phenomenon, and that's ok. 

Despite the credit it tends to get in the DB fandom, I'm still not sold on the idea of a live action adaptation of the franchise being visually interesting to watch. Though The Fall of Men looks nice, in a drab, washed-out, Christopher Nolan-esque kind of way, the Ki blasts are still awkward to see and only a handful of actors can pull off the "screaming up your power" sequences without looking ridiculous. The slick, Hollywood redesign of Cell has a sleek and predatory look, but making Cell less of a dark reflection of Goku makes the character less interesting to me, personally. Framing the story as being posthumously narrated by Vegeta as a farewell to his son is a little twist I quite like, even if it's obvious this was done due to the limited cast and budget. Perhaps critiquing the narrative of The Fall of Men is a little unfair, given it's nature as an effects demo reel, but I work with what I know. 

Look, as much care and attention go into these fan-films, and as much as they can be beloved by the fandom, I'm still not convinced on the idea of a live-action DBZ adaptation. Perhaps if the same Japanese studio that did Ace Attorney were to take a shot, but, for me, the visual style just does not translate well. All that said, if you're stuck in the house and have a half hour to kill, there are worse things to watch than The Fall of Men. At the very least, the passion and work that went into the project are something worth appreciating on their own merits.

800 Posts?! What am I doing with my life?

Seriously though, I love doing this and am very grateful that people read it. I don't even care that not that many people read it, because I just enjoy writing it and having a place to get my thoughts down. So let's look back over the last 100 entries visually.

Here's something you probably haven't seen from my collection;

Thanks for reading, back to normal next week.