The Slizer Project - Part IV

When I stared on this, I thought it would probably take three articles of reasonable size, not what's now looking to be five somewhat longer ones. Now we're getting to the part of the story I really remember better, not only because I was a teen when I was thinking it up, but also because it started to occur to me how far the story had come since it started. A group of friends traveling through time, having adventures, had now become an interstellar war over the control of alien super weapons. Yes, it's juvenile, but I was juvenile, literally and figuratively, at the time. To this day, I still like when stories progress to a point far beyond where they started, when such progression makes sense each step, but leads to a journey of wide scope. Think Dragon Ball going from an adventure to find some mystic orbs to a multiversal battle for survival. Anyway, on to the next step.

The story continues, our heroes having been victorious against the Razors, but only barely, the decision to introduce four more Slizer units is made; Millennium, Blaster, Spark and Flare. The shadowy alien forces backing the project put more of their own in the larger and more "powerful" units, shuffling Calvin's friends around to lower places in the hierarchy. This causes friction in the team and with 12 Slizer units in the field, the humans find themselves most often under alien command and split up across multiple deployments. Meanwhile, a rival concern in The Century offers a new weapon to the Slizer team, a new and more powerful biomech; the Toa. Yeah, look, at this stage, Bionicle was a thing and I was trying to fold that story into my own and it never really worked. Basically, it was a set up for a tournament arc (can you tell I was watching Dragon Ball Z at the time too?) where the Slizers faced their opposite number in the Toa. It wasn't the best idea, but it led into the next arc, where things really kick off.

During the fight with the Toa, Calvin and the Jungle Slizer disappear. The green Toa is found defeated and mutilated, but there is no trace of what happened. For a while, the team is looking to recover their missing teammate, or rather, Calvin's friends are looking for him, while the aliens want to recover the Jungle Slizer before it falls into the wrong hands. The leader of one faction of the aliens, called "Mantis" by the humans because they can't pronounce his clicking name, pilot of the Millennium Slizer, was badly injured in the battle with the Toa and whilst he recovers, he becomes more antagonistic as time goes on and there is a major fracture in the Slizer team, with the human members even being kept from their Slizers unless a mission is happening. This starts to cause problems when a revolt of workers living in The Century begins to get violent and the various factions that fund the Slizer operation start to disagree over how to handle it, with one faction even leaving and taking the Ice Slizer with them. The stage is set for a possible civil conflict with our human protagonists caught in the middle. Meanwhile, rumors of something like the Jungle Slizer being spotted in conflict zones begin to circulate.

Superhero Media: Mister Miracle by Tom King

I feel it's worth mentioning that this Mister Miracle series is technically an "Elseworlds" book, because I didn't figure that out until the last issue myself. Is that a spoiler? I hardly do these reviews in a timely manner, so for all I know there will have been four Mister Miracle films released that follow this plot by the time this gets through the backlog. Covering a brutal war between New Genesis and Apokolips, Mister Miracale features such epic highlights as drunk Skeets, Darksied eating carrots and Batman killing babies. In a more metaphorical sense, the series is about PTSD and the healing nature of positive relationships that ground us to reality. The very human moments of the series are among the strongest, especially contrasted with the brutal and high-concept warfare on display in other sections. Moments where Scott Free and Barda are lounging on the couch, watching nothing in particular on television and reflecting on their brutal upbringing under Granny Goodness are perhaps the most grounded I've ever seen superheroes and the trauma which drives them.

In Ultimate Fantastic Four, there is a storyline in which the civilisation of Halcyon is at war with the forces of the Resurgence led by Thanos. It's basically an update on the Jack Kirby "4th World" stories from which Mister Miracle and Darksied emerged, and is one of my favourite versions of that "Chariots of the Gods" take on a war in heaven myth; until I read Mister Miracle that is. One of the factors that makes the Grecco-Roman Olympian myths so enduring is that the gods are all about the human emotions writ large, being as wrathful, lustful and jealous as humanity, but with the power to act on all these impulses with impunity. Mister Miracle takes this concept of divinity and runs with it to the extreme when it comes to the New Gods, with Scott and Barda in particular driven to extreme acts of violence by their, very 'human', desire to be done with their abusive families and just live their own lives. Towards the end of the book, there is an extended sequence where one of the couple is at home, looking after their son and the other is engaging in bloody hand-to-hand combat on Apokolips.

There is an interesting art style happening in Mister Miracle, with digital blends and blurs over seemingly random panels, representing Scott's trauma disconnecting him from reality. As an experienced Trauma Psychotherapist, I found a lot of value in this technique, as it reflected both my study and the experiences discussed by my clients to do with their own trauma. Some of the reviews of Mister Miracle that I've read are put off by the visualisation of the protagonist's internailsed trauma, which I can understand, but it is, essentially, the main point of the story, and if the reader is unable to engage with the motif, then much of the story is lost. Can I also just say that this is probably the best appearance of Darksied that I've read? Not just because Darksied eating carrots and cream cheese is an amazing image, but because he his used minimally, doesn't engage in much of the fighting and is just a malevolent force, rather than a big bad to punch. Evidently, a lot of fans hate Tom King's run on Batman, but if he does more work in the vein of Mister Miracle, I'll be sure to track it down.

Miniatuers Finished: The KLF

A friend of mine printed these models, and, as I was already working on some Doctor Who stuff, I couldn't resist grabbing a couple. Naturally, I had to call them the Kaled Liberation Front, or, The KLF. 

If you get the joke, you get the joke, if not, think of them as low-tech Daleks from a regressive splinter faction. 

Superhero Media: She-Hulk by Dan Slott

When I think of the best runs of Marvel comics in history, the Dan Slott She-Hulk is right up the top of my list, usually only a little behind Brubaker Captain America and Lee/Kirby Avengers. Losing her job with the New York DA thanks to too much partying, Jennifer "She-Hulk" Walters is recruited by the firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway to practice 'Superhuman Law'. What follows is an enjoyable mix of superhero action and legal drama, showing a side of the Marvel Universe that isn't often seen, but serves to ground all of the cosmic gods, animal-themed villains and assorted costumed nonsense. Just to give you a taste, there is a scene where Shulkie sites precedents including "Plunder v Plunder" and "The People v Thanos", among others. Add to that speedster-couriers, shape-shifting process-servers and Awesome Andy, the intern, and the fantastic blends perfectly with the more mundane legal setting. Of course, there's still plenty of Shulkie smash in the series and lots of guest stars, particularly from the Avengers and the broader Hulk series.

Much like previous comic series I've covered, like X-Factor and Captain America, the poorer bits of She-Hulk are those that are required to interact with the crossover storylines, like Civil War and World War Hulk. This being a She-Hulk story, however, that's just more fodder for the jokes and stories involving lawyers, especially with Jennifer promoting the Superhero Registration Act and doing a lot of the paperwork to get other heroes signed up; in fact, her tie-in issue has almost no punching, which is kind of refreshing for that particular event. There's quite a lot of justifying various "plot holes" in She-Hulk's history in this run, but the sense of fun and playfulness in which it is done just adds to the enjoyment. The concept that a superhero would be sick of their fans pointing out the gaps in their "continuity" is utterly hilarious to me, especially as Marvel Comics are published and widely read in the Marvel universe. No, really.

Stu Westin's (a supporting character in this series) view on comics, continuity and fandom, shown above, is one of the best moments in She-Hulk, and something I pull out pretty often when my more rabid friends get into a nerdy argument. There is a sheer joy to She-Hulk that I just love in comics and is rare in the better-selling Marvel and DC books, this series is unafraid to be fun and silly when it needs to be, embracing the nonsense of earlier Shulkie stories and the twisted continuity and giving the reader a damn good story on top of that. With all of two omnibus volumes (or four trades), She-Hulk is something you should probably own, as it's great and not all that long or tied in to too many other stories. Plus, more people really need to know about Awesome Andy and the Silver Sufer's love of '80s power rock ballads. Grab these books and read about Spider-Man suing Jonah Jameson for defamation, Two-Gun Kid enforcing Bail Bonds and a legal library filled with longboxes, it's a great corner of the Marvel Universe that not enough have seen.

From The Archives - 22

And now, the epic conclusion of "In the Lair of the Mutants", starring Kill Team Aesir. A solo-play Kill Team '18 game I ran years ago.

https://ludusbellorum.blogspot.com/2020/07/in-lair-of-mutants-part-iii.html

Probably not the most exciting thing to read many years after the fact, but I'm trying to get all my stuff linking back to here.

Superhero Media: Wandavision

If you're Marvel Studios, what do you do after releasing one of the most successful films of all time, leaving an impact on popular culture so large people are still talking about it and having your longitudinal plans scuppered by a global Pandemic not seen for 100 years? Well, you put together a television series that is somehow true to tone, explores deeper content than you ever have before and encapsulates the global mood brought upon by that same pandemic. Fuck Marvel Studios knows their shit. After the events of Endgame, Wanda finds herself living in a, literally, sitcom-perfect small New Jersey town with Vision and they move through the decades of broadcast television, even raising a family; but something is off. The first half of Wandavision, inspired by David Lynch and possessing an altogether stranger and darker tone than many Marvel Studios productions, is something to behold, and whilst I can understand the disappointment some felt that the programme reverted to standard MCU fare by the end, I still believe the complete product to be excellent.

Marvel Studios are easily the best in the business when it comes to fan management, which Wandavision handily demonstrates at both ends of the fandom spectrum. Quite a few fans picked Agnes as Agatha Harkness before the first episode aired, but rather than scramble and make a last-minute change, Marvel trusted in the strength of their narrative and delivered a compelling antagonist that people really responded to. The YouTube 'response and speculation' industry found clues in Wandavision for everything from Squadron Supreme to the High Evolutionary, but the studio kept to their guns of keeping the MCU oddly grounded for a setting which includes magic, aliens and robots. That is, at least, as things stood at the time; staring down the barrel of Avengers Doomsday certainly puts things in a different light. 

Look, I'm a comics fan, I'm all for alternate timelines and multiverses. Even my "Equalisers" setting has a multiverse and evil-universe doppelgangers, so I'm not against the concept. But. I don't think the MCU has been improved by moving out of the one reality, sorry, but I really don't. Remember, the MCU is the simplified, accessible version of the comics stories, like the old Ultimate Universe, so adding in all that extra crap has only alienated the broader audience that don't read the comics. As much as I kind of want to see characters like Maestro, the Council of Reeds and Ravage grace the big screen, I'm perfectly happy to continue as things are for quite a wile longer yet. Especially if we're going to get programming of the caliber of Wandavision. Though I couldn't get the phrase "Monica Rambeau, leader of the Nextwave squad, lies all the time" out of my head while watching.

Miniatures Finished: Daleks

A little "circut-breaker" painting project, I'd had these Warlord Games Daleks undercoated for ages before finally getting them done. I used a spray of Tamyia Aluminum and GW Contrast paints to get the bulk of the work done, only using traditional paints for the finer details.

Except for the lack of variation, this is a nice kit and even painting the bumps wasn't too bad with a sharp brush and Contrast paint. You may have seen these back in an old AAR, because I tend to jump them up the publishing order of the blog.