Superhero Media: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

The story of William Moulton Marston, his wife Elizabeth, their girlfriend, Olive Byrne, and their collaboration to create Wonder Woman is the stuff of comics legend, but the story is often played for sensation, rather than being allowed to stand on its own. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is one of the most sensitive and accurate retellings of the story, even if it does focus on William Marston more than the other characters and skims over some of the more interesting elements of Golden Age Wonder Woman comics. Having been in a polyamourous relationship for years, it is pretty common to find yourself being gawked at and asked plenty of invasive questions, and that was the 2020s, not the 1930s, but I do find myself wishing that the "sex stuff" wasn't the major focus of the story. Another failing, at least to my eye, of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is that the invention of the polygraph is covered as a side note, and no time is given to Elizabeth Marston's later rebuking of the device as useless for intended purpose. 

Those quibbles aside, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is masterful, a brilliant film that touches on many themes yet still serves as an excellent biography. Perhaps more so than any other creator of the Golden Age, the Martsons and Olive led fascinating lives, through the Great War and being early professors of psychology as the discipline moved from out of philosophy at the academic level, only really Anarchist Wizard Alan Moore can challenge this trio for an exciting life story. Wow, can I please get an Alan Moore biopic? That sounds pretty amazing now that I'm thinking about it. Talk about the "sex stuff" being some of the least interesting parts of the story. As to that same "sex stuff" though, the few minutes of Bondage, Pornography and Submission in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women are much better, healthier and more realistic representations of such than several hours of EL James adaptation can manage. There are better ways to learn about Bondage/S&M/BDSM if you want to know more, but for what this film is, I honestly expected much worse than what I got. There is a moment of triumph when Olive ties Elizabeth up for the first time that eclipses even the creation of the polygraph. 

As a documentary on the history of DC comics and the origins on Wonder Woman, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women leaves much to be desired, but as a piece of history, covering a man and the women he loved, and loved him, and loved each other, it is uniquely wonderful. Something that I struggle with when reading a lot of fiction is I don't see a great deal of alternate relationship models, such as ethical non-monogomy, in some ways it tends to be even less represented than queer relationships; I mean, how many couples in television series don't end up with a child, just for example? The fact that Professor Marston and the Wonder Women didn't get a broad cinema release pretty much anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope for broader representation of alternate relationship models. Amazing how little has changed in that regard in nearly one hundred years. While we're at it, let's bring the bondage, discipline and submission back to Wonder Woman, I'm sure there's plenty of room for it in the next Gal Gadot film. Until then, this film is well worth your time to track down and enjoy.

Thinking Out Loud: The Foreman Paradox

Here's a little Doctor Who fan-theory that I posted on my personal Facebook a couple of years ago.

The character of Susan Foreman causes a lot of friction with fans, as the First Doctor claimed that she was his granddaughter, so is she a Time Lady, human or something else?

If we take the novel Lungbarrow as true (which of course we do), then we know that the Time Lord Houses do not reproduce sexually, they are "woven on genetic looms", rendering every member of that House a 'cousin', eschewing what humans would consider a familial structure of parents and offspring. We also know that not every Gallifreyian is a Time Lord/Lady, as it is a rank attained through the Time Lord Academy, however, most members of the Time Lord Houses are assumed to be put through this education and eventual transformation. The Doctor famously only graduated by a slim margin on his fourth attempt. It is only after their first regeneration that a Time Lord attains the physical state of that rank, as the First Doctor only had one heart, but the Second Doctor had two.

Given her apparent age, and deference to the Doctor, we can assume that Susan has not regenerated, and given that the Doctor placed her in an educational institution, she has either not yet entered the Academy, or was in the process of studying and had not yet graduated. It is possible that Susan is a human the Doctor has "borrowed" and is educating, as he would later attempt again with Ace, but Susan's grasp of 4th dimensional mathematics does imply that she is from Gallifrey.

So where does the grand-parental relationship come into it? Well, for that one, let's turn to the Translation circuits that can be found in the TARDIS and other TTCs (Time Travel Capsules). We know from the Timewyrm series of novels and the Marvel comics (and the new show, I guess, but who cares?) that particularly obscure, ancient or alien languages don't translate well. This may also by why the Doctor, especially the 3rd and 4th, tend to write in English, rather than High or Low Gallifreyian. Here on Earth, we can struggle to translate languages with different constructions; Japanese is particularly difficult to translate into English, for example, because it is so subjective, with the same word having vastly different meanings in different contexts.

Where am I going with this? Well, let's look at Japanese again for a moment; there are more than a few terms of endearment for non-family that use familial terms, aren't there? "Big Brother", "Big Sister" and so on, is how we translate them, but it is the context that matters in the mouths of the Japanese speaker. Well, we know that even Low Gallifreyian is a very complex language (Ace struggles to learn to read it in the New Adventures), and it deals with a malleable 4th dimension, so it is not unreasonable to assume that context, especially for nouns, is important.

I put it to you that "Grandfather" is a mis-translation of Gallifreyian into English, likely of a term of familial endearment made from a younger "cousin" to an elder one in a family structure totally alien to our own. A better translation would likely be "Respected and Learned elder member of this House" (possibly used ironically in the case of the Doctor), which doesn't have an equivalent in English, as our familial language is based on groups assembled for the generation of children. Oh, yeah, children don't exist on Gallifrey, the inhabitants are loomed as young adults. So when Susan calls the Doctor "grandfather", that is the TARDIS translation circuits doing their best to put her actual words into something the humans around her can understand.

Superhero Media: The Avengers (1998)

Based on a long-running British television series, which has enjoyed more than one incarnation, The Avengers follows the adventures of Mister Steed and Missus Peel as they battle the menace of August DeWinter. Quite a few years ago, in 2012, many YouTube film reviewers latched onto The Avengers as a quick source of content, as the Marvel Studios version was due soon and provided handy clickbait. I quite enjoyed many of these videos, as they were predominantly American in origin, and there were many laughs to be had in the lack of understanding of the, very British, humour of The Avengers. Cries of "Is the joke that they're polite?" were met by my friends and I chuckling; "No, the joke is that they're British." And that's the trick to The Avengers, if there can be considered to be one, if you can't buy into the, very British, absurdities and behaviors, you'll never enjoy the film, as it's full to the brim of a bowler hat of the very same. So if jokes about tolerable additives to tea (lemon and honey, please mother) or umbrella etiquette aren't for you, maybe give this one a miss. 

For me, a viewer of The New Avengers, Adam Adamant Lives! and The Prisoner, The Avengers does it for me very nicely thank you very much. It's honestly not as good as the classic programmes, but much easier to come by and watch when I need a quick fix. Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman perform admirably in the lead roles, but it is Sean Connery, yes, Sean fucking Connery, as August DeWinter, the camp, scenery-chewing evil mastermind, who steals the show. Seriously, Connery may be a somewhat "limited" actor in some respects, but he does what he does well, and his style lends itself well to the "No Sex Please, We're British" jokes and double ententes straight out of Are You Being Served?, I guess it's the great British pantomime tradition? Whilst I'm on a British cultural binge, the soundtrack features music from Skuggs, of Madness fame, and whilst it's not his best work, I'll take my Ska where I can get it. Fun fact, "Steed" and "Peel" were the PA callsigns for security at Coles Supermarkets when I worked there, that's how embedded The Avengers is in British/Colonial culture. 

Like, The Avengers is kind of up there with Doctor Who with certain generations, even enjoying an extended run in Germany under the title "With Umbrella, Charm and Top Hat", which I think we can all agree, is a better name for the series. In all fairness, The Avengers is not the best version of itself, that would probably be the original television series, but it does get the general idea across and is all done in 90 minutes if you happen to be, just as example, showing your girlfriend because she didn't believe what you were describing was actually real. That was a fun night. She did not care for it. If you want to broaden your concept of what a super-spy organisation can be beyond the SHIELD model, then The Avengers is a good place to start, with plenty of gadgets, fun henchmen (played by Eddie Izzard!) and a bonkers plot to ransom the world with a weather control device. Crooked Dice and a few other miniature makers do Steed and Peel models, so I may have to grab a set to go with my Archer and Lana and 3rd Doctor and Sarah Jane.

The Pitch: Super Smash Brothers

I was watching the new Jumanji films recently, the ones with The Rock and Karen Gillian, and an idea hit me. The framework of "we got sucked into a video game" isn't wholly original, having been used at least as far back as the original Battletoads and Tron, but it is oddly underused in a world where video games are a massive industry and trying to adapt them to film is a constant challenge. Way back in my "Nintendo Movies" article, sometime in 2022 if I'm not mistaken, rather than pitch specific films, I more generally discussed the idea of Nintendo multimedia and what that could potentially look like. This time around, though, I have something more akin to The Pitch which I haven't done for a while, based on, of all Nintendo series, Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Brothers

Trapped in a world they didn't create, four friends have to work together to harness the powers of their favourite Nintendo characters to escape and save the universe.

The Idea

Ok, we're not pretending that this is anything other than doing Tron or Jumanji -Welcome to the Jungle with the expansive Smash Bros. roster, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun or clever. Get celebrity actors to do the voice of various characters, Sigourney Weaver as Samus, Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu, Cary Elwes as Marth, that kind of thing. Put some proven writers on the job, this isn't Citizen Kane or anything, workmen will do. The story involves four young people, probably in high school, getting trapped in a video game, how isn't super important, and the game turns out to run essentially along the lines of World of Light and/or Shadow Emissary. Why not just make a film out of Shadow Emissary, because that's what people will be asking for anyway? Well, because that's not how the industry works and I don't think we can sell a franchise film with no dialogue.

How it works

The gimmick of this whole concept is, of course, getting a cast of popular characters together to bounce jokes around and have cool fights, the plot is almost secondary, with the players needing to get from A to B through a series of iconic Nintendo locations and beat the final boss, who may be Gaalem or Light or whoever, maybe someone new? Given that the Smash series has a massive roster now, there should probably be some kind of "character randomisation" problem going on preventing the "players" from picking their mains and letting us rotate through more characters. For example, having a scene where someone is stuck as Jigglypuff and learns how to do the instant-KO, or wobbling with the Ice Climbers or complains about Hero being broken are the kind of little things that should probably go in there for fans, but not be major plot-points.

In the finale, of course, the issue is fixed and the players get their mains and work together to win out, go home and we have a sequel tease. Again, nothing complicated, as much of the entertainment and humor comes from things like seeing Warrior and Megaman have to team up to take down King Dedede or something like that. In fact, some kind of World of Light system where the players have to unlock characters by defeating them could be good if not overdone. Naturally, in the end, the players mains are characters that predominantly feature in the Smash Bros series, rather than being popular in their own right, like Captain Falcon and the Ice Climbers, mostly because you kind of want to keep your powder dry on IPs like Zelda and Metroid, giving the lesser-knowns time to shine.

Just for Fun

Now, if it were me in charge of all this, I'd be working close with Nintendo and planning for the film to be released at a very specific time. Much like the 1990s 'classic' The Wizard, our Smash Bros film will be the global reveal for the next game. I'm seeing this take the shape of being a new character available in the final battle that has never been in a Smash game before, and then a full trailer post-credits like at the end of No Way Home. Of course, that's a huge ask and may not happen, but I figure if we're already talking about making a big-budget Smash Bros film, then why not shoot for the moon? The character should be Dixie Kong as well, because I said so.

Superhero Media: Hellboy (2019)

I'm assuming at this point that no one needs me to tell them that the 2019 Hellboy reboot is a bad film. The script is poor, the CGI is somehow worse than the previous films, the sound mixing is so bad I couldn't make out the dialogue half the time, and it tries way too hard to set up a franchise. However, if Hellboy was just a bad film hijacking the goodwill of two previous films with the same characters to try and launch a cinematic universe, that would, like The Mummy, be the end of the story. Like many "bad" films I cover on this blog, Hellboy has enough in it to make it a worthwhile watch, even if the overall effect is a negative one. For the wargamer, superhero or otherwise, there is plenty of great stuff, from a WWII sequence featuring Lobster Johnson and British Wizards, through to Hellboy and Ben Damiyo (in wereleopard form) taking on a Celtic Troll with pig features. Modern incarnations of the Knights of the Round table are always pretty fun, probably one of the parts of Hellsing I enjoyed most, and Hellboy has them mounting up to hunt giants with electrified lances. Awesome. 

Seriously, the Great Hunt segment is pretty brilliant and over far too quickly when all is said and done, I'll certainly be running with that idea at some point, possibly for a display game. I've said before that superheroes need to fight more giant foes more in cinema, and whilst the poor CGI makes the fight hard to follow, I'll take what I can get. Also vampire Luchidoro. He's not there for long, but that's another cool idea to use somewhere else. And there lies the major issue with the script of Hellboy, it never sits still long enough to enjoy the clever moments that are there. David Harbor is fine in the role, but almost everything I know about the character is drawn from prior knowledge, rather than being informed by the film, as it should be. There is plenty or lore about Hellboy and the villain, Morgan le Fey, revealed in extended exposition sequences, but I never really learn who they are, in contrast to what. It's just bad film-making and is a real shame in the light of having had two excellent Hellboy films previously. 

Another point of contention that I, personally, have with Hellboy is that it has an "R" rating, but fails to do anything interesting with those expanded limits. Swearing and drinking more certainly grounds Hellboy, but the added violence is mostly grotesque, especially a sequence in the third act which seems more ripped from Attack on Titan than the Dark Horse comics. There are plenty of aspects of the comics present, but without having a solid tone or bothering to explain who Hellboy and the BPRD are, and their roles, it's just a series of Easter Eggs for a franchise that will never arrive. What Hellboy reminds me of most is an odd combination of Catwoman and The Mummy. The Dark Universe connection is obvious, with a failed Cinematic Universe effort filled with references to films that will never happen. The connection to Catwoman, however, is that Hellboy is just pretty bad, and even the good ideas in it may be lost if we don't dig through it and use them somewhere else. So throw a horseback giant hunt, vampire wrestler or ghost Pulp Hero into your next game[s], at least it should be more fun than this film.

Drokk the Law!! - Part XIII

Although it's been a while since our last game, big things have been happening in Mega City One! Due to work and life changes, I'm painting less for my job, so have freed up space for other projects, but sadly, Andy and I will likely only have a chance to game a handful of times a year. Not the best outcome, but at least I have time to prepare between each game and improve things in leaps instead of small steps. I don't know if we'll ever get a real campaign going at this rate, but at least I'll have enough gangs and terrain before too long to demo the game elsewhere and maybe attract enough players for a small campaign, if I'm lucky enough.

First up I got a new gaming mat specifically for Judge Dredd; 

It's from the Gaming Arena in Melbourne and they do great mats if you're in the market locally. Clearly designed for Marvel Crisis Protocol, it's 3x3' and similar to one I already have for Nocturnal, but I prefer the more basic layout. I have my eyes on some Brutal Cities buildings but they only do short print runs currently and I'm a little strapped for cash, so other things I have lying around will have to do for now. I'll probably come up with a plaza piece or similar to cover the park, which annoyingly looked a lot smaller on the website. 

As I indicated previously, I also got to work on some Scrawl markers for the Scrawl War scenario, one of my personal favourites in the book. I started with some spare Rendara bases, painted them with a few layers of grey to give the impression of concrete, then used White Out Tape to give me a surface to work on with Posca pens. 

I'm not much of an artist, but I think these turned out ok. I chose Red and Blue for easy visual pickup and "Xsoha" are a recurrent low-level criminal gang from Batman comics and I went with "Ma-Ma" from the Karl Urban film on the reverse. I think the blue I used isn't great though and I may do another set at some stage, but these will do for a few games at least. 

Despite saying here that I was going to work on my Gangsters, I ended up finishing my Demonic Cabal instead, oh well. Although I don't see myself playing the Cabal all that often, it's visually interesting on the table and it can be fun to pull off the Ritual, but really isn't my play-style for these kinds of games. 

I say they're finished, but I'll probably need to make a few more cultists for a campaign, these were made with Stargrave Crew and spare Necromunda Cawdor parts along with other assorted bits. The Entities are D&D miniatures and a converted Warcry Harpy; similarly, I would like to replace the Minor Pact (the little one) with something more in-line with the two bigger versions. For now though, it's more than adequate and I can get a few games in. I have a few other things on the painting and building table and it's only a couple of weeks until my next game with Andy, so expect to see more soon.

Superhero Media: Green Lantern Emerald Knights

Released to tie in with the live-action Green Lantern film, Green Lantern Emerald Knights is an anthology of shorter stories involving the Green Lantern Corps, framed with a new recruit Arisia learning the history of the great Lanterns before her. Adapted from many comics over the history of both the character and the Corps, Emerald Knights changes much in the adaptation, losing quite a lot of the nuance that made the originals great. After watching Emerald Knights, I found I had to pull out my copy of The DC Universe by Alan Moore and thumb through some of the stories again. I've long felt that the Green Lantern Corps offer a great wide spectrum (pardon the pun) for telling interesting stories, which may be why Moore was drawn to the characters as well, with a literal universe of tales waiting to be told. I find it a real shame that it always seems to be the same few stories told over and over, the text diminishing with auxiliary performance. 

To me, what makes "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" or "Tygers" great is that they are isolated narratives that form part of the larger setting without directly informing everything that comes after. The initial twist that Mogo is a planet, rather than a human-sized alien, is fun, it makes the story memorable; but as Mogo turns up again and again, it becomes part of the background and the unique nature of the character is lost. The Lovecraftian, Faustian story of "Tygers" is so great because it drifts far from the Silver Age Science Fantasy typical of the comics, being a story unlike any other. Emerald Knights disposes of the demonic visions, replacing the fantastic antagonists with a pre-Red Lantern Corps Atrocitus, for much more mundane results. And there lies the rub, Emerald Knights especially, but also the broader Platinum Age Green Lantern storytelling, wants to tie every part of lore that the fans enjoy into the next event comic. 

Again, the apocalyptic ramblings of a monster predicting the final end of the Green Lantern Corps in "Tygers" is so great because it is sweeping, mythical and will never be here; once "War of Light" tries to tie it all together, the magic is lost. For all that Emerald Knights tries to be a great introduction to the broader lore of the Corps, the neutering of the classic stories means that any potential fan is better off just chasing down the comics and reading those stories. As mentioned above, The DC Universe by Alan Moore is a good buy, especially if you have the version without the post-2000s stories, but there are also collections of the stories that deal with the Corps rather than specific members. I really hope I never have to sit through a live-action adaptation of "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" that has been stretched from a four-page filler story into a feature film, because I could see that happening.