Thinking Out Loud: The Universe of Alan Moore

I was reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century 2009 recently, and there were a few panels of Mina and Orlando waiting to meet Norton, the Prisoner of London and the background displays some highly-militarised Bobbies that looked so familiar that I just knew I'd seen them elsewhere. Now, almost everything in the Century books is a reference to something, so that's not really a huge revelation, but this one twigged something deep in my memory, so I had to go digging. I'd been on a bit of an Alan Moore kick lately, so thankfully I didn't have to go through much to find what I was looking for, a bound edition of Marvel UK's Captain Britain. Without going into a major history of Marvel UK and the stuff they were doing in the 1970s and '80s, whilst many of the stories published are considered to be canonical with the 616 Universe, being a smaller and semi-independent operation, they were able to get away with quite a bit. For example, did you know that in the 616 universe, Great Britain entered a fascist dictatorship for a little bit in the 1980s, where mutants and superheroes were put in concentration camps, but no one other than the victims remember it? 

Not only was that a thing that happened in the pages of Captain Britain, and was the origin of his future wife Meggan, but there were some distinctive Dystopian Militarised Bobbies pushing mutants and other "undesirables" around. Ok, so 1984(ish) and 2009 are a little far apart, and Moore is famous for nothing if not using other people's ideas in new and interesting ways, but it got me thinking how "linked" Moore's work may actually be. A lot can be discounted quickly, like V for Vendetta, Watchmen and even From Hell (in the LXG books, Jack the Ripper is also Mac the Knife), also probably anything that happened in the DCU, although I love the idea of Swamp Thing being part of the Blazing World. Moore got his start in comics writing Doctor Who for Radio Comics, writing adventures for the First Doctor, who also appears in Century 2009, in the same scene as the armoured police, so it's possible that there is a cannonical link there, in the same way the Marvel UK comics from the 1980s are connected to the Transformers comics as well as the broader Marvel 616 continuity. 

Much like my previous, "Crafting the Hellboy Cinematic Universe" article, this isn't so much about solid links across diverse media as it is just taking a look at what the options are and having a bit of a think about it. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series is already awash in crossovers and references to anything and everything that engages Moore's interests (24, Little Britain and Harry Potter being some of the more unexpected ones), so cramming more in there is probably a waste of time, but it's kind of my thing and I can't help myself. I haven't read Lost Girls yet, does that work? I'm pretty sure half of those girls died in LXG, but it may be worth a look. Alan Moore himself appeared as an "Anarchist Wizard" in a Hellblazer comic, so does he exist somewhere, probably in a pub? Man, now I want an Alan Moore mini for my modern horror/urban fantasy/superheroes stuff, that would be cool. Something else I need to hunt down, I guess, so look out for that at some stage.

Superhero Media: Dragon Ball Z - Bojack Unbound

Back on the subject of the nebulous nature of canon in Dragon Ball Z, and with the "Movies" especially, Bojack Unbound is ignored, despite having one of the best cases for being canon. Why? Because there isn't much Goku or Vegeta, of course. Taking place at a martial arts tournament after the Cell Games, Gohan, Krillin, Yamcha, Tien and Piccolo have all turned out to compete, as well as Future Trunks, who, we're told through exposition, has returned after defeating the Androids and Cell in his timeline. Goku is observing from Snake Way with King Kai as the event is set to include alien fighters (most people on DB Earth don't know about Sayains and Namekians) and is taking place on a massive artificial island. As difficult to pin down as time is in DBZ, I'd say no more than a year has past since the defeat of Cell when Bojack Unbound takes place, as Goten is yet to be born and Trunks is still a baby. 

After the opening rounds, Gohan, Trunks, Krillin and a disposable fighter wearing a band-aid are left to take on the guest Alien fighters, only to find that the Bojack Gang have killed the other Aliens are are here to fight Goku. Just who Bojack and his team are is only briefly covered in Bojack Unbound, but other sources list them as the last of the "Hera" race, and a team of pirates and/or raiders who want to destroy planets for unspecified reasons. Despite their lack of personality, the Bojack gang are one of those classic Akira Toyriama designs that means they at least look really cool whilst battling the Z Fighters. Zangya, the sole female member of the gang fights almost exclusively with her legs and feet, hair trailing behind her, which makes he move like no other character I can recall in the entire DB franchise. The fight takes place in a very European looking cityscape, giving the whole enterprise a vague Miyazaki feel as our heroes are beaten up until Gohan gets a pep talk from Dad and goes Ascended Super Sayian again to beat face. 

As much as I prefer Gohan as a protagonist, Bojack Unbound is not a great film, with the few good ideas it has not getting time to breathe. Had this been a short arc in the main DBZ series between the Cell Games and the Celestial Tournament Sagas, it could have been much more interesting, with a new status quo not having yet settled and Gohan deciding what his destiny was to be. on a personal note, I always prefer Gohan in the purple "Piccolo" Gi, as the colour contrast makes him stand out more as his own character. There's really nothing in Bojack Unbound that renders it non-canoncial (Trunks could have got a new sword pretty easily, it has been broken and repaired before), but it will never be accepted as such because, again, it centres Gohan, sidelines Goku and Vegeta and doesn't feature characters that the core fanboys really care about. Still, there are a lot of good ideas in Bojack Unbound, and writing it off feels like a waste, I know if I ever run a DB themed game, there will be some of this in there for sure.

Miniatures Finished: Beasts of No Nation

It can be a lot of fun to paint some non-human miniatures sometimes, as there are fewer limits on what can and can't be done. Superheroes have plenty of monstrous villains, so finishing one off occasionally is a fun way to break up a bigger painting run.

Rocksteady: I finished Beebop years ago, so taking so long to get to his partner is almost a little embarrassing. I went for a colour scheme similar to the old toy, but a little more muted. Heroclix 

Leatherhead: I got this for free when we were cleaning out the old store and thought it would make a good version of the classic TMNT baddie for those gaming in the 32-35mm Batman/Crisis Protocol scale. he has since been converted into a 54mm mutant for Inquisitor. Privateer Press 

Copperhead: Having painted plenty of orange and green over the years, this figure came together really fast. When chipping away at the lead mountain, I've found these "easy wins" are a great way to stay motivated. Heroclix  

 

Etrigan: I was going to be clever and put this section entirely in rhyming verse, but I'm tired right now, so you miss out. Heroclix 

Serpieror: I've had this for years, from back in the days when I played the Pokemon TCG, actually and only just got around to painting it. I used to use these Pokemon as various Squigs in Gorkamorka, now they get to play with my superheroes. Toy 

Lobo: The main man! I had a Heroclix Lobo, but he was smaller than a lot of my other characters, so I hunted around and found this version, which is much better. Knight Models 

Superhero Media: Thor Ragnarok

Thor Ragnarok is my favourite Marvel Cinematic Universe film. That doesn't mean I think it's the best MCU film, or the one people should start with or anything like that; just that when I want to watch a film I really love, this is the first MCU one I reach for. Having left Earth to search the cosmos for the Infinity Stones at the end of Age of Ultron, Thor finds himself in Muspelheim, confronting Surtur and despite that set-up, we immediately learn that this film will be different as Thor slips into Vaudeville comedy and Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song" cranks up. After returning to Asgard, getting a glimpse into an alternate world were Matt Damon was in the MCU, and revealing that Loki has supplanted Odin, we're off to Midguard for one of the best cameos in film history. The scenes in the Sanctum Sanctorum show off what two great actors, one classically trained and the other naturally comedic, can do to make an exposition scene truly engaging. Then, Antony Hopkins bows out of the MCU and all Hella breaks loose. 

Before we know it, the Shakespearean drama of the previous Thor films is left behind and a gorgeous, technicolor, Jack Kirby inspired world is laid before us and suddenly the franchise is an action space comedy. I understand that some fans are becoming dismissive of the quotable and mimetic nature of MCU films, but I always find that complaining about something being fun is kind of weird thing to do. Like, if Korg shouting "Piss off, ghost!" doesn't at least get a chuckle out of you, why are you watching films about characters originally written for five cent children's funny books? Yes, I also quite enjoy Planet Hulk, but I don't think it would really translate well to a live-action film, and the version of some of those concepts seen here are entertaining enough, especially Korg and Miek. Throw in a soundtrack by Mark "Devo" Mothersbaugh and you have a fun, colourful, engaging film that makes the best of a great cast and a director who is doing some of the best high-concept comedy work happening at the moment. 

I mean, Thor was the also-ran series of the MCU for years, never really making money or being broadly loved in the way other character vehicles were, so it was broadly assumed that after Endgame, the brand would fade away. However, not only was Ragnarok a major unexpected hit, but it was so much fun for the cast and crew that not only are Thor and Loki sticking around, but there is a new run of Thor films starting up with Love and Thunder, and I cannot wait. This is the strength of the "Cinematic Universe" model that we're still learning about, that characters can stick around and do more stuff even once their series are over, or actors can even change here and there. Thor Ragnarok is a hell of a fun film, no doubt, but being so fun for all involved that the major players decided that they want to do more is pretty much unheard of. For me, Ragnarok is also the start of what I consider the MCU "Golden Age", with a run of several films all being great in their own right, as we'll discover soon.

Miniatures Finished: EDF XIII

I still have a little Kaiju stuff to work through, though without an event to run the game at anytime soon, I'm mostly just painting to break up other gaming projects.

Baba Yaga's hut (Dreamblade) and Goemon (Ultraman).

Detail on Goemon, sorry about the picture alignment, I forgot that I can't rotate them after uploading. These old Japanese kits have some great detail, even if they can be a little wonky.

More terrain, this time Dropzone Commander pieces to represent the more technologically developed areas of the Earth.

Baba Yaga represents the "Soviet" faction of my setting making dark pacts to keep the fight going. I'm not sure how that will play out in games, but I don't need to figure that out just yet.

In contrast, the advanced "Japanese" human faction has reverse-engineered alien technology to even up the fight. This enables me to have giant robots and retro tanks fighting giant monsters, depending on where I set the game.

Superhero Media: X-Men Origins Wolverine

Unlike X-Men The Last Stand, I really can't say very much positive about X-Men Origins Wolverine, other than it would bring us Deadpool eventually, but I remember when this film came out, and boy, is that a story. For those who don't remember, or just didn't care about superhero films at the time, Origins Wolverine was a massive hit, making a crazy amount of money and getting a follow-up announced before the theatre run was finished. Hell, a certain kind of Action Film buff, the kind that still won't shut up about Avatar, ate up Origins Wolverine, buying deluxe Blu-Rays and Special Editions in amazing quantities. Other than the aforementioned Avatar, the only films I can think of that are as bland as Origins Wolverine but sold as well are the Michael Bay Transformers outings. What does this have to do with the film as a piece of Superhero Media? Well, this is kind of barely a superhero film, and I think that's worth taking a look at. 

Some in the (surprisingly large) Superhero Miniature Gaming "community" question why I consider things like Transformers, Dragon Ball and Kaiju as part of the superhero genre, when, strictly speaking, they're not. Well, it's because considering them as part of the genre makes for interesting thought fodder. Considering the destruction wrought by a superhero fight through the lens of Shin Godzilla, for example brings up different elements than only taking Age of Ultron into account will. Now let's flip that, and consider why Origins Wolverine is barely a superhero film in any way that counts. The film is a by-the-numbers b-grade action film more in the vein of Commando than anything else, with a handful of elements cribbed from the comics and mashed into place so that they bare little resemblance to their starting points. Hell, they let Will.i.am play John Wraith, who thought that would be a good idea? Basically, Wolverine, the only character most people cared about, murders his way through a list of celebrity death matches with a threadbare plot hanging off. It's not shocking that Origins Wolverine was bad, it's shocking that it was a massive hit in spite of how bad it was. 

Probably the biggest problem I have personally with Origins Wolverine is that it received such a backlash from fans that the planned Origins Magneto was canceled and we got First Class instead, which chickened out on what would have been at least a conceptually interesting film. Look it's easy to say that Wolverine can't carry a whole film, but Logan proved that to not be true. It's easy to say that the opening credits sequence should have been the entire film, but that kind of thing is typically composited by contractors rather than the director or writers. What we're left with is a not very good film that made enough money for the studio that we ended up with another decade's worth of X-Men films, for good or ill. For all my Australian readers, you really should watch Origins Wolverine again, just to see, of all people, Asher Keddie as one of the Weapon X scientists in a few scenes, doing a passable American accent. It made re-watching this just about worth it for me and broke up the slog.

Drokk the Law!! - Part VII

Friday night at the Nunawading Wargames Association means Judge Dredd Miniatures Game! For something that I wasn't really considering as having legs, we're starting to get a few games in a night and some favourite gangs are solidifying. I finally got to run my mate Andrew through a game (yes, there's two Andrews and they're both "Andrew W" so it's not helpful sorry) and let's just say it was a lot more dynamic than the teaching game last meeting.

Andrew (the new player) chose my Street Gang to take on Sam's Apes in what turned out to be a real slog of a game. I don't mean that in a bad way, just that it was one of those games were some models seemed to have supernatural luck in not getting killed. The street gang dominated the early game thanks to lucky shots with the Missile Launcher taking out three of the four Gorillas in quick order; with only one ape with Spit Gun left, things looked bad for Sam.

Then, however, things turned. With his last ape on top of a building in the centre of the table, Sam started picking off some Punks with surprisingly accurate shooting, leaving Andrew the task of having to throw his gangers at the damn dirty ape for the remainder of the game.

The game ended at turn six (turn limits are something we're working on adding to missions and six seems like a good number) with the last Ape still on the table somehow, but the game clearly went to the Street Gang, even if they couldn't close the deal.

Next up, Sam and Andy decided to see how the Ape Gang fared against the Justice Department. As the Judges still best represent the idea of an "elite" gang in the game, with some of the best armour, weapons and mostly being made up of Heroes. I was playing Dragon Ball Super Fusion World with Andrew, so didn't catch much of the game, but I got filled in later. The Judges pulled out a win thanks to being able to arrest the Apes and having close combat weapons. In Judge Dredd, each model has access to the "Fists and Feet" close combat weapon if they're not equipped with anything else, which can deal damage, but actually boost your opponent's armour.

Unlike Necromunda, Judge Dredd lacks a cheap melee weapon option, so starting teams, like ones we've been playing with, can't tend to afford every piece of equipment you may want them to have. In an ongoing campaign, this seems like something players would remedy, especially as money cannot be kept between games, you have to spend or lose credits as they come in.

The final game was between Andrew playing my Renegade Robots (now painted and with a few list tweaks) and me finally getting to try out my Mobster list, which has been built for a few months now. Andrew won as most of my plays didn't work out and I was lacking any real ability to punch through the armour of the robots, but the variety of the Gangsters is something I want to come back to as the possibilities for list building are pretty tempting. For now, I simply don't have much free time to write gangs, so we'll see how we go the next few meetings.

Superhero Media: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Relax Rami and MCU fanboys, I'm not going to be defending this one too hard, as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is genuinely quite bad, though not because it's lazy or doesn't have anything going for it. In fact, there are a number of elements and choices in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 that are pretty great, in of themselves. The whole thing still doesn't come together in any meaningful way, so it's probably a good thing that the series ended here, though a Sinister Six film may have been fun. In this version, Spider-Man has the whole superhero thing pretty much down, being popular with the people of New York and even having a good working relationship with the NYPD, the Daily Bugle "Wall-Crawling Menace" stuff is there in the background but not a focus. As much as I love some J Jonah Jameson, the Rami films did that very well, and a lot, so having a popular Spider-Man is a nice point of difference, and makes for some good scenes. When Peter puts on the suit again in the epilogue and takes over from the small child standing up to Rhino; that's a damn good scene. 

Look, I was born in 1986 and started reading Spider-Man shortly thereafter, so I have never lived in a world where Gwen Stacey wasn't dead (until Ghost Widow came along, but that's a different story). Simply put, I have waited my entire life to see Gwen die on the big screen, so that moment in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was really great for me the first time out, even if the film wasn't the best. What drags the film down is the continuing Richard Parker story elements from the first The Amazing Spider-Man, which don't add much to the story and almost seem to be from a different genre. Like, when did Richard have the time and money to build a secret science lair in an abandoned subway station, if he had to go to Norman Osbourne for funding to genetically engineer super spiders? Given that Spider-Man is supposed to be the first superhero in the setting, I'm not sure how many "Lair" contractors would have been readily available. 

Jamie Foxx's Electro is generally considered one of the weaker points of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and he doesn't add much to the plot, but I do like the character in of himself. Sure, the picked-on and downtrodden Max Dillon is a bit much, but once he's powered-up, it makes for a very visually interesting fight in Times Square. Hell, I don't even mind Electro's dubstep inspired theme music, which a lot of people still seem to complain about for some reason? I said in my reviews of the Rami Spider-Man films that I probably wouldn't be going back to them anytime soon, for the Amazing films however, I may come back sooner, as I really enjoyed seeing them again this time around. Yes, they're not as good as the MCU films or Into the Spider-Verse, but sometimes you want a hamburger instead of stake tartar, you know? I hope these films aren't forgotten, as there is a lot to enjoy here, even if they aren't the best the character has seen. 

Miniatures Finished: Cosmic Girls

Strictly speaking, the title should be "Cosmic Women", but I wanted to go for the song reference. You should know what I'm about by now.

Monica Rambeau: AKA Photon, Captain Marvel and many other names, of course I had to do Monica in her Nextwave outfit. Monica Rambeau, leader of the Nextwave squad, lies all the time. Heroclix

Hawkgirl: As a fan of the Justice League animates series, I had to get around to painting a Hawkgirl at some stage, going for colours from that programme, of course. Heroclix

Ursa: One day, I'll get my hands on the Zod, Ursa and Non from Superman II, but until then, this version, reminiscent of Last Son of Krypton, will do nicely. Heroclix

Starfire: I'm still wavering on how many of the Teen Titans I'll be collecting and painting, but I felt that having a Nightwing necessitated a Starfire. Heroclix

Captain Marvel and Boots: I was looking for a miniature of Carol Danvers in her Captain Marvel costume when I found this version with bomber jacket and "Rosie the Riveter" pose and just had to have it. As it so happened, I also had a "spare" cat from Reaper, so Boots got to join in on the fun too. Heroclix 

Jewel: I'm not sure that I'd ever really have any in-game use for Jessica Jones' superhero identity, but I kept this figure from a job-lot and it was pretty fun to paint after doing a lot of dark colours on a commission job. Heroclix