Superhero Media: M.O.D.O.K. - Season 1

I hadn't heard anything much good about M.O.D.O.K., or anything at all, really before I finally got around to watching it. I'd put it off because the idea of waiting a week between half hour episodes sounded a little tedious. When I discovered that M.O.D.O.K was a Marvel version of Robot Chicken with the voice cast of Ducktales and Patton Oswalt in the lead, I was intrigued, when Mandrill showed up and wasn't even the deepest cut in that episode, I was all-in. The buy-in for M.O.D.O.K. is pretty steep, with the extreme sitcom elements taking over more than the Superhero stuff in most episodes and the character being nothing like any representation in the comics, there is a tonne of stuff to enjoy, even if it's just getting Dewey Duck flashbacks every time Ben Schwartz speaks.

I never really got into Robot Chicken, but I watched the compilations on YouTube, and I feel I appreciate what they were going for, so a Marvel version unafraid to give us versions of Tenpin, The Living Corporation and the Clagmarites is pretty much perfect for me, even if I've never liked MODOK much outside of his appearance in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I'm sure if you're a fan of MODOK, then this series is a little grating, to say the least, but given that I'm specifically the kind of person to love this specific thing, I can't help you there. I'll admit that the more sitcom style elements don't really do it for me, but that said, the episode where MODOK and his wife accidentally time-travel back to the 1990s and see themselves as students was one of the best in the series. And if you can't laugh at a joke about Mandrill's dick, are you even really a Marvel fan at heart?

I get that people don't like M.O.D.O.K., as it's odd and full of stupid jokes and way more clips of MODOK on the toilet than are probably strictly necessary, but I do find it strange that people are so vocally hateful of the series online. I mean, if you don't like it, don't watch it? I had seen nothing about M.O.D.O.K. online and wasn't even aware it was essentially Marvel Robot Chicken until I started watching it, so surely it's not that hard to avoid. Unless, of course, you're someone like me who has to watch, read or play every piece of superhero media they can get their hands on and then write about it on a blog almost no one really reads. Oh god, am I the MODOK? Nah, I have a Master's Degree, two jobs I love, plenty of friends and I own my home, I'm doing alright and don't tie my self-esteem to this blog. I'll watch more M.O.D.O.K. if it happens, I certainly enjoyed the first season enough.

Thinking Out Loud: Why the Encore Matters

Back in 2019, in the wake of Avengers Endgame, I wrote an article called "Why the Endgame Matters" about the cultural impact of the film and why a silly superhero adventure was one of the most important moments in the decade. Like most of the insightful, thoughtful and passionate stuff I write on here, no one read it. My review of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter however, still gets regular hits. Media literacy was already dying before AI folks, AI is just the cowhammer to the skull of an entire generation of readers. Anyway, I went to see Avengers Endgame Encore the day after it dropped (that was a soon as I could get there) and, once again, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. So let's do this again. Whatever it takes. For starters, the "additional content" in the Encore is a series of post-credit scenes that tie into Doomsday (which I'll go over later) and an introduction from Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. There are no AI-replaced actors, or changed lines or anything like that. There's been a bit of cleanup and some ADR, but otherwise, Encore is the film that's been burnt into my soul for seven years and counting. 

Watching Earth's Mightiest Heroes battle Thanos and travel through time again, the main feeling I found myself sitting with (aside from unmitigated glee) was one that I have become increasingly familiar with as I approach my 40th birthday; nostalgia. Given my time spent researching online Far-Right radicalisation, nostalgia is something I tend to wary of in general, so it took me a fair chunk of Encore before it occurred to me that the time I was being whistful for wasn't some mythical time of my childhood when I had an incomplete understanding of the world; it was for less than 10 years ago. I missed 2019. Acutely. The obvious reason behind this feeling was clearly that I miss the MCU films being good, right? No, actually. Though the "Superhero Media" will take a while to come through the backlog, I have enjoyed much of Wave 4 and think that after nearly 20 years, expecting every film to be the same quality is a little silly. Nor was I more than reasonably melancholy to see Chadwick Boseman in his iconic role again; rest in power, king. No, as I sat there positively rapt with joy, I found I wanted to return to a world before COVID. 

Now this isn't just some "the last decade has been shit" rant (though it has), but rather, I believe Avengers Endgame was the last big cultural moment the Global North shared before the pandemic started and that by watching again with all that behind us, not to mention the wars, genocide and climate collapse due to AI ahead of us is a genuinely uplifting experience. And one we can learn from. The tech bros, governments and billionaires they all work for and aspire to be are Thanos. They aren't just winning, they won a long time ago, before most of us were born. We may not be able to pull off a time heist, we may not save the world, but we can sure as hell Avenge it. If this is the end of everything we've known then I want to drag the ones who caused it with us. Whatever it takes. We lost so much during the pandemic because the few didn't want to make less money and it never changed. We don't have super powers but we can vote, march, join unions, write letters, shoplift, engage with the community, punch a cop, bomb a pipeline, delete Facebook, use public transport, help each other. Assemble. We are Groot. 

Superhero Media: Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla

Ok, where to start this one? Spacegodzilla was created when DNA from Godzilla was taken into space by Mothra in a previous film and merged with alien spoors. What? This is Godzilla, this is what you get. Aside from the typical absurdity of science, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is a great outing for the King of the Monsters, playing like a kind of finale for the previous few, even though there is at least one more considered to be in this series to come. Minilla is quarantined on an uninhabited Pacific island by the United Nations' Anti-Godzilla task-force where he can be studied and guarded by the "last Japanese soldier who can't let go of the war" cliche, which I would have though was a little racist, but hey, if the Japanese are doing it I guess it's ok? There are competing plans to use a team of psychics (who exist in the Godzilla universe) to control Godzilla's actions and to use Minilla as bait and kill Godzilla with a high-tech super bullet, but these are put aside as soon as Spacegodzilla turns up and starts destroying cities.

There is a big focus in Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla on the human G-Force and how they scramble to combat the new threat and the fallout related to the conflict. This is actually really good, as the Kaiju action scenes are brilliant, but the damage and trauma that the human characters suffer, albeit in a PG-ish way, provides a counterpoint and grounds the entire film. Having lost Mechagodzilla, G-Force is fielding a makeshift robot with a crew made up of whoever is still alive and has the correct skill-set, so there is a very Japanese sense of fatalism pervading Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla, though the ending is more hopeful than many Japanese films that follow a similar thread. Whilst Godzilla is the preferable alternative to Spacegodzilla, so far as G-Force and humanity is concerned, the presence of either is a problem to be resolved, once again framing the Kaiju as a force of nature, or walking disaster more so than actual characters. To say that the Kaiju are devoid of any personality, there is a scene with Godzilla on the beach dodging booby traps that really shows off how well a rubber suit can convey emotion, would be false, but it's the humans who really sell the story.

As much as I love the rubber suits and classic Kaiju cinema, films like Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla do run up against the limits of this approach. The "Mosterverse" Legendary films out of the USA, which use CGI of course, can have the Kaiju show a lot more personality and carry the story in their own ways. Trust me, Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla is amazing, one of the best I've seen lately, and I had a ball watching every minute of it, but much like Final Wars, it's not the kind of film I'd be showing someone to get them into Godzilla as a franchise, it's just too... too Godzilla? Like, look at the first few sentences of this article, Spacegodzilla's origin is really silly and the entire film ends with two guys in rubber suits slapping each other, this genre is almost nonsense! However, the "there" that is there is really damn good. It's a story about the human spirit, fatalism and the dangers of unchecked technology. Godzilla is the human potential and all of the dangers inherent within that potential. Godzilla is both the alpha and the omega of development, and understanding that going in is perhaps the secret to enjoying these films beyond the silly fun.

Five Video Game Genre Conventions that need challenging

Regular readers will know that I'm not really a big player of video games. I enjoy them and put some time in on the Switch or PlayStation most weeks, but I don't keep up with new releases, don't follow the culture, and probably couldn't pick between a picture of DOTA and League of Legends. I grew up with Zelda and Mario and Tetris like most of my generation, but as I hit adolescence, my interest tapered off, not because I wasn't interested in Video Games, but Video Games became increasingly less interested in me.

Back in the day (read: My Day, you ungrateful kids), titles like Commander Keen and Day of the Tentacle tried to be fun and innovative; taking risks and trying new directions for the still-emerging Video Game market. With the exceptions of Nintendo and Sega, Video Game software wasn't a market that one could expect to make a great deal of money in, people did it (partially) because they loved it. This view may seem nostalgic in the extreme, but have a look at companies like Midway or Rare back before they hit it big; I'll wager the "CEO" was living off instant ramen and really cheap coffee until Mortal Kombat or Goldeneye hit the shelves for the first time.

These days, Games are big business, which is (typically) a good thing for the industry; developers get the funding to put out some amazing titles and the boundaries are really being pushed as to whether Games can be considered Art or 'read' as 'text' in the same manner as Film and Television (in an academic sense, of course). However, success has always bred imitation, and the Video Games industry is feeling this trend hard at the moment. Take a good hard look at your favourite game and you'll probably find that it "borrows heavily" (or steals directly) from another popular game before it. The problem with this trend is not only the obvious stagnation of experimentation within games development, but also half the games you get to play seem exactly the same.

So, without further ado, here's a shortlist of five common features of Video Games that have shown themselves to be problematic, at least according to me in my grumpy and stagnant corner of the internet. 

1. Time Limits

As with most of the things on this list, I'm not saying that Video Games need to do away with Time Limits entirely, just that it proves to be an unnecessary crutch for poor storytelling. Back in the misty, far-off days of Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System, there were no Continues, no Save Points and only so many 1-UP Mushrooms, so the only reason not to take a painfully long time agonising over every jump was the timer counting down from 300 in the corner of the screen. The original The Prince Of Persia also made good use of this mechanic, docking time from the Game Clock for each death. So it's not a big conceit to admit that a timer on a game can ratchet up the tension and aid in the suspension of disbelief.

However, when every second level (or mission or whatever) throws a timer up on the screen and screams at me to get out of the burning building (or away from the bomb or get to the hostage), the sense of tension is replaced by a sense of irritation. I'm in a freaking burning building, how is my natural intention to do anything but run for my life? In a film or television programme, dramatic tension can be added with music or other, less melodious, background noise; only in 24 and one episode of M*A*S*H can one see a clock up on the screen to increase tension. There are many films where a bomb is counting down to a climax, but it is only in video games, where the player is directly linked to the narrative, that a ticking clock is a common device to keep the protagonist under the pump. If only this technique was not included in almost every game, it wouldn't be so bothersome.

 

2. Boss Fights

Back when games were made with a resplendent 8 bits of graphics, the occasional fight against a fire-breathing turtle was an important signpost of progression amongst dozens of same-looking levels. What is interesting is that, in today's world of Quick Time Events and complex interactive storytelling, at least one Boss Fight can be found in every game. Certainly, a climatic and thematically appropriate battle against a worthy opponent at the end of a game can be satisfactory, but not every game can make this formula work. Think back to Red Faction for a moment, did the boss there really add anything to the game? Shooters are particularly bad at boss fights, a game that has primarily featured goons with a variety of guns and body armour throughout has its tone shattered when the head Mafioso turns up in a walking tank with jets and lasers.

As with my complaint against time limits, it is not the concept of Boss Fights that I find disagreement with, the Metal Gear Solid franchise has always made its Boss Fights engaging and story driven. Instead, it is the seeming necessity of repeated Boss Fights in games where they simply do not fit. Personally I think that because video games have always had Boss Fights, that they continue to do so, gamers expect and accept them as part of the gaming experience, regardless of their suitability in any given game. Once again I point to cinema as a proof that conflict is not the only climax that a story can utilise.

3. Downloadable Content (DLC)

With increasing profits in the Games Industry comes an increased drive to create successful titles and release them to the public. When a highly anticipated game is pushed back due to unforseen circumstances, the furore released is akin to that evoked by the Nuremberg trials. To combat this, many developers leave parts of a game unfinished, making "patches" or even whole levels and characters into little downloadable packets so that people won't call them out for putting the game out a few weeks late. In some ways this is a good thing; games are released in reasonable time and overly long delays are avoided. However, is it just me, or does this seem like a little bit of a cop out? If a game is not finished, why is it being put into stores? It's not like a film is put into the cinema with some of the post-production remaining to be done. Perhaps it is too much to assume that the gaming public could be expected to wait patiently for the whole game to be ready, but honestly, is it that much to ask? Think about it this way, if you wait a little bit longer for a game, you could play it straight away, no patch downloading, no wait to play the bonus missions, just the whole game, in the box.

Of course, it is not merely a lack of completion that causes DLC, there is the ever-present driving force of money to consider. If someone is willing to pay $100 for a game, what are the chances that the same person will pay a few dollars for an extra mission or a new character to play? When a story is continued through extras like this, it evokes in me the same feeling as the "Extended Universe" novels associated with various Television and Film franchises. If someone is so engaged with a text as to pursue every permeation of it, it always seems that the makers of that programme/game/film are right there with an open till. That's my real problem with DLC, I guess, it's a cheap cash-in and unabashedly so; like "Collector's Edition" DVDs and fake Master Swords to hang on the wall.

 

4. Chase Sequences

When playing a game like GTA or Need for Speed, one expects to chase another vehicle down a hazardous road a few times, it's part of the experience of the game and an accepted part of game play. When one is tasked with chasing someone down in a First-Person Shooter however, something feels amiss. Much like Boss Fights and Time Limits, chases have become a common element of most games from Platformers to Shooters. Once again, the odd chase that works within the narrative of the game is fine, but far too often a chase can be used to bridge an obvious gap. If travel needs to take place to link up the various narrative strands of a game, there are more options than a chase, if nothing particularly interesting is going to happen during the journey from A to B, perhaps it doesn't need to be covered. Too often the length of a game is padded out with unnecessary sequences that distract from the story and the chase scene is one of the worst culprits.

5. Push Start to Play

This may be a bit of a petty complaint, but why is the Start Screen different from the Menu Screen? The time and effort of programmers, designers and artists has been wasted on a screen that is seen for seconds at most. What difference would it make to have a game load up straight into the menu? In the worst cases, after pressing Start, more time is spend loading before one can access the menu and actually start playing the damn game. Admittedly, I'm not a programmer, and perhaps there is something important about pressing Start that I'm missing, but it really seems like a convention of games that is only still around because almost every game in history has had it. I understand that sometimes a demo or cut scene is visible before the menu appears, but again, is this really necessary? Also coming into this category are the self-promotional ads that games start up with, Gamers seem far more astute about production than one would expect, so many would know exactly the origin of a new game. The fact that a handful of game creators are becoming as well known as Film Directors (in the right circles) makes the self-promotion seem a little unnecessary.

 

That's all for today, hope you enjoyed the read.

Superhero Media: Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Is Marvel Ultimate Alliance the greatest superhero video game ever made? Well, I think it's great, but you may have a different take. When Doombots and Ultron Drones make a coordinated attack on the SHIELD helicarrier, Nick Fury assembles a team (initially Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor and Wolverine) to fight off the villains, kicking off an adventure that touches some pretty damn obscure corners of the Marvel Universe. In terms of game-play, Marvel Ultimate Alliance can be repetitive and the whole thing is very dated by now, but the story and core concept of the game directly inspired me to start Supers gaming and my SuperSystem Ultimate Alliance project in particular. Although the game doesn't have every character (Hawkeye and Hulk always felt absent to me), the fact that Luke Cage, Deadpool and Black Panther are playable years before they hit culturally is pretty impressive; I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that Marvel Ultimate Alliance was my first introduction to Luke Cage. As was the style at the time, the game is heavily influenced by the Ultimate Marvel comics, with Cap and Thor in their Ultimates costumes, and some story elements having that general kind of vibe.

Throughout the game, the heroes will travel to locations as diverse as the Omega Base, Atlantis, Attilan, Mephisto's Realm and Latveria, really getting around the Marvel universe and embracing some of the sillier elements of the setting. Of course I want to take Ghost Rider to Skrullos to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier to defeat Doctor Doom, who has stolen the powers of Odin. Something the later games would struggle with is adaptation, trying very hard to realise certain comic stories (or even films) in the game narrative; Ultimate Alliance avoids this, coming across more as a "greatest hits" of the Marvel comics. Trip to Asgard? Hell yeah! War in Atlantis? Why not! Murderworld? Yes please! There is a lack of fear in Ultimate Alliance, it revels in the weird and the wonderful, not trying to be overly serious, in the Murderworld level the players fight Clowns, play dodgem cars and play a crane game to unlock Blade as a playable character. It's amazing and every time I play it I look at circus terrain online and consider a small table. My little gaming clique is getting ready for some Reign In Hell at the time of writing, you can bet I'm eyeing off the terrain for a Mephisto's realm scenario at some point.

Suffice to say, Ultimate Alliance is a big inspiration for my own games with miniatures. Not just the "anything goes" ethos, but in that I tend to use teams of 4 heroes. Basically, I played Ultimate Alliance and came away thinking "but what if I could use the Justice League, Hellboy and the Phantom"? And the rest is basically history, the long history of this blog and my never-ending project of collecting, painting and writing games. Four is a good number because you can get a spread, but the game doesn't slow down much, plus tends to be about as many people as I can get involved in a Convention game. I've never got much of a campaign going (yet), so my games have rarely left the city table, but you can bet I want to go to space, Atlantis, Hell and just about anywhere else I can scrounge the terrain for. Marvel Ultimate Alliance is dated as hell and maybe not a great game when all is said and done, but I maintain it's some of the best inspiration going for Superhero tabletop gaming, especially with miniatures. Just be warned, you'll almost certainly be adding Terracotta Warriors, Vikings and Demons to your shopping list of Supers minis.

Thinking Out Loud: Public Image Unlimited

Launched at the height of the Speculator Boom, Image comics, a creator-owned alternative to the big boys Marvel and DC, set out to be a unique and fresh voice in the comics industry. Famously, they did so with a lack of quality control, lawsuit generating disagreements and a great many missed deadlines, but despite a rough start and nearly collapsing several times, Image is still around today and is considered a purveyor of quality product. As well as producing the wildly-successful The Walking Dead and Invincible series, Image has become a home for smaller works like Empowered and Madman as well. Just what is and isn't part of the Image "universe" can be tricky to discern, as they don't have separate divisions like DC with Veritgo, but much like Marvel, quite a bit happens in the main Universe. If you've taken my advice and read Invincible, for example, during the "Invincible War" story, we see Youngblood, Spawn, Madman, Cyberforce and more fighting to save the Earth.

Actually, it goes beyond that, because an evil version of Invincible jokes that he thought Cyberforce broke up, a reference to the fact that the comic was canceled mid-run and had an excuse retconned in later. It's interesting, because back in the '90s, in order to have the appearance of having an actual continuity, Image comics did their own take on the New Gods that was pretty poorly received and way overblown to the point that they hired Alan Moore to write the wrap-up that buried the damn thing forever. No really. But, like the greats they strove to be, all that nonsense happened in the broader continuity still. I've been reading the series Local Man, about a former '90s heyday character being disgraced and having to move back to his tiny home town; it does a great job of capturing the mood of classic Image, whilst playing like a riff on Fraction Hawkeye combined with the early seasons of Smallville. In one part Jack, the protagonist, tells a priest about the time he met god during a massive crossover event and he was massive golden robot. That event happened in the comics, but Jack wasn't there as he was invented for Local Man.

What's the point of mentioning all this? Well, the willingness of Image to acknowledge and even celebrate their awkward adolescence, combined with Frew comics having unbroken continuity since Thor knows when has kind of got me thinking about my own work and the stuff I've jettisoned Vs what I kept. I've often said that I'll never bother posting my Dragon Ball Z fan-fiction, and I still probably won't, as it's really badly written, but maybe I can have those characters return in some way. Hell, I posted that Danton stuff as an exercise in preservation, but who's to say that having a Tri-Colour Dynamo or humanoid Badger wouldn't be fun in a game sometime? I mean, I love that Spider-Man had a Spider Buggy and an antagonist called "Turner D. Century", so why not embrace the times that what I did was a little cringy and silly? I never really delete old documents or throw out old notebooks (seriously, I found hand-written 3rd Edition 40k army lists the other day), so maybe some of my abandoned ideas have some merit I'm missing out on or have just ignored? Let's find out.

Superhero Media: Loki - Season 1

Ok, I'm starting to get a little worried over here. Now again, I'm writing this in August 2021, a few days before Shiang Shi and The Ten Rings drops and months away from Spider-Man No Way Home, but it looks pretty much like we're getting an MCU Multiverse. Now, I'm not against a superhero multiverse in concept, my own Equalisers setting has characters like Ulysses and The Champions of the Omniverse, but I'm very wary of how it will play out in a major film release and ongoing series. You see, the MCU is excellent as a separate entity from the comics precisely because it's a stripped-down version of classic stories, without all the baggage of continuity and keeping track; which I also love, but get why that's a barrier to comics for many. Once a multiverse is opened up, the fans have to start tracking a lot more content to make sense of things and that wonderful simplicity will be lost. My hope is that this trend is only for "Wave 4" and doesn't represent a permanent change for the MCU, excepting, of course, What If? and any potential Exiles project.

All that aside, I really enjoyed Loki, especially as it is a cleverly-written series with a strong cast and a director with a clear vision. As a fan of Marvel obscura, seeing the TVA realised on-screen is wonderful, even if they're stripped of a lot of the more fantastic elements from the comics. Spending more time with the character of Loki is great, as he is able to shift from campy-yet-sinister foil to a more rounded and human individual driven by their history of trauma. The scenes in which Loki and Sylvie discuss their histories, where they diverge and where they're the same, almost play like a form of therapy, and is one of the best representations I've seen in fiction of the notion of going over the possible alternate paths of our own lives. I think that's the real appeal of Loki, that very-human tendency to look at ourselves and wonder what might have been. What is the version of me who became a teacher or took that sommelier course doing now? I mean, both are probably drinking, but you know what I mean.

I think the Disney+ Marvel programmes are really demonstrating what I've been saying for years about the Netflix Marvel programmes, in that they're too long and really should be cut down to a handful of episodes. Loki, as well as Wandavision, is strong because it plays more like an episodic film than a television series that is stretched to a particular length and padded out to meet a contract. One thing I will say is that the power behind the Time Keepers is clearly Immortus, not Kang. Seriously people, he's even wearing the Immortus costume (minus the hat), not to mention that it's Immortus, not Kang, who is traditionally linked with the Time Keepers. I am certainly enjoying all these deep-cuts of Marvel lore, but, again, I hope we're not heading towards a live-action Avengers Forever or anything like that. Though Marvel Studios should 100% get a Rick Jones happening in the MCU as soon as possible. Loki, despite my trepidation, is an amazing series with a hell of a lot of potential, and I'm excited to see where it goes in the future, so long as it doesn't mean that the MCU becomes an extended series of references to past media, as that's just kind of sad for the studio who brought us Black Panther, Civil War and Endgame.

Thinking Out Loud: Major League

Hey gang, just wanted to take a minute to talk about something that has been bothering me a little lately; people know that Yamcha isn't a loser right? Like, Yamcha actually has it pretty good, in the grand scheme of things. I think Dragon Ball Z Abridged kind of perpetuated the idea into a meme, but even back when the Funimation dub was being broadcast on television, I remember fans talking about how much Yamcha sucked, and hey, I was probably one of them. Now that I'm way older and have actually watched pretty much all Dragon Ball audio visual media that's ever been made (not all that keen to start Heroes and can't get Xenoverse to play properly on my Switch), I kind of realise that Yamcha is a pretty lucky guy for the most part and has never really been represented as a loser in a sense beyond being one of the weaker members of the Z Fighters.

So yes, Yamcha is not the most powerful fighter in a series about fighting, pretty much being left behind since losing his fight to Tien at the World Tournament in Dragon Ball, but in terms of strength and skill, he's still ahead of every person on the planet that's not an alien, cyborg or one of his friends. Dragon Ball Earth is pretty sparsely populated compared to our reality, but Yamcha is stronger than a couple of billion people at least, including some real powerhouses like Ox King and Tao Pi Pi. A lot of people focus on the fact that Bulma and Yamcha break up at the start of DBZ, but that means they were together for like ten years, so hardly a failed relationship by any measure; sometimes people grow apart you know? Not being able to achieve his dream of being a champion martial artist, what does Yamcha do? He goes and gets a bunch of high-paying jobs. No, really, it barely gets covered in the series, but Yamcha has been a professional Baseball Player, a Male Model and a Bodyguard; dude has had a pretty sweet life.

Although I'm a big fan of the character, I have to admit that, in many ways, Tien is a bigger "loser" than Yamcha ever was. Tien keeps chasing the power and skill of fighters like Goku, even though he can never get there, forsaking everything else in his life to chase a dream he can't reach. Meanwhile, Yamcha is getting cheered on by thousands of fans as a star pitcher or jetting around the world to do fashion shoots. Damn son. Not bad for a dirty kid who robbed people in the desert to get by in his teens. I think the reason I'm liking Yamcha more as I get older is the very reason that many fans malign him; he doesn't need to be the best. Yamcha has been the hero in the past, helping defeat Pilaf, King Piccolo and the Saibermen, but he's outclassed against a lot of foes, so he does other things to fill the days now, but hey, if you need help, he'll be there. Yamcha is fine, he's doing his own thing, and that's pretty cool. Wolf Fang Fist-bump buddy.

Superhero Media: Joker

I don't know if I just happen to be stubborn, or if it's something held over from my degree in Film Studies, but I almost never fail to finish watching a film, even if it's utter dross like I'm Not There or it takes me a few goes like Jonah Hexx. If I'm watching a film, even if I'm not enjoying it, I tend to finish it, usually putting anything else off that I can until it's done. Following on from that, and apologies if this gets too personal, there are only two films I have stopped watching to have sex instead. Not that I don't enjoy sex or didn't want to have it with the person in question or anything, I just typically wait until the film is finished. One film I stopped watching in such a way was the dull Australian horror film Daybreakers, and the other was Joker. I've since watched Joker uninterrupted to give it the best chance I could, but I still just couldn't make myself care about it. And I feel kind of bad saying that, because a lot of people love this film and Joaquin Phoenix is amazing in the lead, but when you get down to it, Joker just really isn't about anything.

A lot happens in Joker, but I'm left baffled as to why any of it is happening, and much of it doesn't seem to mean anything. There are themes of a broken mental health system, but they're undercut by the setting of the film in the 1980s. Setting the film in the '80s seems to want to be about something, but Joker is shot and dressed like it's the 1970s because it wants to look like Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. The film strongly apes Taxi Driver, but there doesn't really seem to be a reason for that beyond borrowing some of the little gloss that Scorsese has left after the past decade of mediocrity and complaining. The soundtrack is bafflelingly tone-deaf, especially the inclusion of a Garry Glitter track, which, again, is from the wrong decade entirely. What, was "Psycho Killer" too obvious? Separating Joker from the Batman mythology is potentially interesting, but they wuss out on that too and Bruce FUCKING Wayne is in this film because we can't do anything in the DCU without reminding the audience that Batman exists. Hey, want to see the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne again? No? Too bad, because that's happening again.

I think I'd be less down on Joker if it had just been an uninteresting film that came and went and didn't occupy space in my brain. But because it has a solid lead performance, some quotable lines and the illusion of depth, I'll be bothered by people telling me that "actually, Joker is the greatest and most relevant superhero movie of all time" and I may roll my eyes so hard they actually eject from the sockets. Joker has nothing to say, but the words it uses, to belabor the metaphor, are flowery and sound educated, so people listen and start to believe. There, Joker is the film equivalent of Jordan Peterson, I solved it. No wonder internet Nazis love it so much. Do yourself a favour and watch King of Comedy instead, it's actually interesting. Want to watch a good film about a descent into madness, how about Eraserhead, Manhunter or The Lighthouse instead? Broaden your horizons, try something new, get away from Joker and the Joker in general, life is too short to keep going around on this monorail of diminishing returns, insisting that opinions you held when you were fourteen are still valid. It's not good, and I'm tired of pretending it is.

Thinking Out Loud: Inhale the State

Is Nindendo's Kirby an anti-capitalist icon? Well, no. I mean, it makes no sense that he would be, or that Sakurai and Hal have spent decades making entry-level games for children that indoctrinate them into agrarian Anarchism, but it's kind of hard to shake the idea once you see it. I covered this a little back in my Kirby Planet Robobot article, but I wanted to explore the idea more as it's just a bit of fun and very much in my wheelhouse. When not battling elder gods and manifestations of esoteric concepts, Kirby tends to find himself taking on petty dictators, mostly royalty or would-be conquerors, like King Dedede or Queen Sectonia. Now, there is more than one way to resist feudalism, but I don't see Kirby building industry and using economic power to force a governmental change to a capitalist model, so when he returns to a rural and naturalist existence, I'm thinking of the movements that inspired Bakunin more than anything.

As Kirby is, quite deliberately, something of a blank slate, we can never really know what he is thinking, beyond "I'm hungry", so any motivation to his actions has to be discerned in who he takes action against. In the original Kirby's Dream Land, King Dedede, an absolute monarch, has horded all of the food, and we have to assume the proletariat of Dream Land are left to starve whilst the King gorges himself. They work, he eats. Comrade Kirby defeats the King and redistributes the food while the credits roll. Of course, people will point out, not all of Kirby's enemies are royalty, there's Nightmare, Marx and Dark Matter, who are essentially eldritch gods, and, of course, Star Dream. Let's start with the godlings, who, aside from Marx (and that's just kind of an unfortunate coincidence on the name, really) are certainly not strictly Capitalist antagonists, but the extreme-Left does tend to be anti-religion, or at least anti-organised religion, so what's more radical than killing the gods? Outside of Kirby Right Back At Ya!, there is no demonstrated religion in Dream Land, though there is magic, so I wouldn't really assume anything more than a basic pantheism for most inhabitants. Trees have faces after all.

And Star Dream? Well, as I've said in regards to Planet Robobot before, I think it is one of the most blatantly anti-capitalist video games available, especially to children. Star Dream's plan is to monetise the entire universe so that it can control all wealth and capital, a universal monopoly controlled by one entity. If that's not capitalism as reductio ad absurdam, I don't know what is. What I didn't mention about Planet Robobot is that Susie, and later Star Dream itself, are modifying the landscapes and inhabitants of Dream Land in order to make them more "productive". Even King Dedede and Meta Knight are modified to be more efficient workers, losing their, for lack of a better word, "humanity" in the process. Susie offers Kirby several chances to join the corporation, which feature indoctrinating songs and propaganda, but as Kirby refuses (or perhaps simply fails to understand what is happening), Susie becomes increasingly frustrated and eventually decides to discard Kirby, as he won't fit into her profit-making machine. I'll say it again, I don't believe the Kirby games are anti-capitalist propaganda of any kind, but they can be read with that lens and I think doing so is an interesting thought experiment if you enjoy that kind of thing.

Superhero Media: Kirby Planet Robobot

First up, Kirby Planet Robobot is the most blatantly anti-capitalist video game I have ever played. Yes, I've never played Disco Elysium or Cookie Clicker, but the Kirby series is published by Hal and Nintendo and is aimed primarily at children. Suffice to say I wasn't expecting it when the reveal came that the antagonists of Planet Robobot were an evil corporation working for a supercomputer/elder god looking to control the universe through capitalism. Even the character of Suzie, who helps Kirby out towards the end of the game, isn't looking to stop Star Dream, but to control it for herself to make more money than she is now. But I'm getting ahead of myself, the game begins when a massive machine descends on Pop Star and starts to industrialise the landscape. Of course, Kirby was sleeping when it all went down, but now that he's awake, a lot of robots are about to be eaten. Kirby Planet Robobot is considered one of the best games in the Kirby series, and it's pretty easy to see why, as it's a hell of a lot of fun, even before you get to the parts where Kirby dons goggles and a leather helmet and starts piloting a mech with his face on it.

If I had one complaint, it's that Planet Robobot is a little brief, I finished the main game in a couple of days, but that's par for the course with Kirby games these days, sadly. As much as these games are made for younger players, I really feel there needs to be something like a New Game Plus mode or an extra world or two after the main story, rather than the additional mini-games which tend to be pretty mixed in terms of quality. Like many Kirby games, the ultimate boss of the adventure, Star Dream, has a Lovecraftian bent to it, despite looking like it just walked out of a Disney film, being a giant supercomputer that is intent on turning the entire universe into product that it can buy and sell for profit, growth-based capitalism taken to an absurd final extent. Opposing Star Dream, and Haltzmann and Suzie before him, the more feudalistic Meta Knight and King Dedede are overcome and incorporated into the machine (literally and figuratively) quite easily, whilst Kirby remains stubbornly agrarian, possibly even anarchistic in the face of corporate colonialism and cannot be stopped.

Now, I don't for a minute think that Masahiro Sakurai was intending Planet Robobot to be an entry-level treatise on Agrarian Anarchism as a reaction against Free Market Capitalism, but it's really hard to not read the game in those terms. Seeing the pastoral beauty of Dream Land overrun by sharp metal and hard edges is pretty shocking to a longtime fan like me, evoking Shiver Star from Kirby 64 as the poor Waddle-dees become more and more mechanical as the game progresses. In many ways, Planet Robobot feels like a sequel to Kirby 64, with locations like Shiver Star being a possible previous stop for Star Dream and even the game-play feeling like a natural development of what came before. If you've never played a Kirby game, Planet Robobot is a great effort, being a hell of a lot of fun and featuring probably the best Kirby cinematics outside of a Smash Bros game. Sadly, it's hard to get your hands on, as most people aren't moving on their beloved copies and it's been long out of print. Actually, on that, why are Kirby games so hard to get your hands on? If they popped up in the eShop, I'd be grabbing everything I can get and covering them here at some stage.

Force S5 - Part IV

So now that we understand the core concepts of Force S5, let's break down the Turn Sequence and how Combat is resolved.

As discussed before, play in Force S5 proceeds by placing a die (D6) in a bag or container for each member of a force, ideally dice of different colours but similar sizes to prevent cheating. Remove a die from the container, the player who's team the corresponds to nominates a model, rolls D3, then the model may perform that many Actions. After those actions are resolved, draw another die and continue play until all the dice have been drawn. Pretty standard across several games on the market, with the usual caveats of not being able to activate the same model twice or pass an Action. Pull a die, roll D3, perform that many Actions with a nominated model. Easy.

The Actions a model can perform are discussed below. Unless otherwise noted, a model may perform an Action any amount of times, so yes, if you roll 3 on your D3, you can Shoot three times. Actions are declared one at a time, so you can see how one resolves before deciding on the next. Remember, Force S5 is a silly game meant to be fun, so always err on the side of what will be more enjoyable for all players involved. 

Move - The model is moved in any direction 3"
Shoot - Make a Ranged Attack against an eligible target
Fight - Make a Melee Attack against an eligible target
Charge - Make a Move action that ends in base contact with an enemy Model
Hunker - When within 1" of a terrain feature, Shift Up Defense Dice
Dodge - Shift Up the model's Defense Dice
Focus - Shift Up the model's Attack Dice
Power - Use a Power
Interact - This is a catch-all Action used to claiming Objectives and interacting with terrain

As you can see, no ideas there that are going to light the Miniature Wargames world on fire, just pretty basic concepts that have been around a lot. Next, let's break down what all the terms introduced above mean;

Movement: Models are intended to be moving in short, sharp bursts, not making huge dashes across open fields, so it's recommended that you don't clutter a table with lots of ladders and climbable walls. To help smooth this out, Movement is the one action that can be "chained", so a player may declare multiple Moves before making them and measure up ladders and over barricades. For the purposes of Force S5, a model may cross obstacles that are shorter than them.

Ranged Attacks: The specifics of making an attack and dealing damage will be covered later, but for now, to make a legal Ranged Attack a model must have Line of Sight to the target. Force S5 uses "True Line of Sight", so a model must be able to "see" part of its target to make a Ranged Attack. It will be covered again later, but in Force S5, Ranged weapons have no maximum distance, they can shoot across the table.

Melee Attacks: To be eligible to make a Melee Attack, a model must be in base-to-base contact with its target. All Melee Weapons can only be used in base-to-base contact unless otherwise stated.

Charge: When making a Move action, a model may not get within 1" of an enemy model. It is only by making the Charge action that they may enter base-to-base contact. Unlike other miniatures games, performing a Charge action does not grant a "free" Melee action, you must have enough actions left.

Hunker: Being behind something solid isn't enough to avoid incoming fire in Force S5, you must make a choice to dig in. A model can only make a Hunker action when within 1" of a terrain piece, and may not make an action after doing a Hunker. Whilst Hunkered, a model's Defense is Shifted Up. Hunker lasts until the model makes a Move or Charge action. Hunker may not be stacked and does not combine with Dodge.

Dodge: Sometimes things don't go to plan and a model can be caught in the open, looking down the barrel of a gun. A Dodge Action Shifts Up a Model's Defense, but only for the next Attack (ranged or Melee) directed at it. Dodge lasts until the model makes a Move or Charge action. Dodge may not be stacked and does not combine with Hunker.

Focus: A model making a Focus action Shifts Up the dice on its next Attack (Melee or Ranged). Focus may not be stacked and cannot be used in subsequent turns, it must be used on the next Action.

Power: Some models will have powers, I'm still writing that part though. Use this Action to use a Power.

Interact: Use this action to claim Objectives, operate computer panels, open and close doors, etc.

Ok, so this one just became about rules sorry, not much room left for some background to the setting. To make up for that, the next entry will just be fun fluff and me messing around with UFO and conspiracy tropes, deal?

Superhero Media: Transmetropolitan

Run down the street like a motherfucker! Warren Ellis' seminal work for the DC Vertigo Imprint, Transmetropolitan is a political, cyberpunk, anarchic, drug-fulled, journalistic rampage in comic book form. Starring Spider Jerusalem, the mutant offspring of Hunter S. Thompson and Woodward and Burnstien; a freelance journalist working for a major city newspaper, speaking truth to power and cramming as many drugs into his body as he can manage. Assisting him are Yelana, his assistant, and Channon, a bodyguard and former stripper. After covering the American election, Spider and his "Filthy Assistants" find themselves entangled in a Presidential conspiracy of murder, corruption and genocide. When it came out, Transmetropolitan was wild, transgressive and radical, a call to arms against the powers that be. As much as I love the story, and think that it's brilliantly written, reading it again in 2021, far more radical myself than I was when I first discovered Spider Jerusalem, the whole thing is a bit of a let down.

Now, holding older media to current standards is always fraught, though not necessarily wrong, and from what I currently know of Warren Ellis, I certainly wouldn't accuse him of being a reactionary apologist, or anti-trans or racist, but I feel there are legitimate criticisms of Transmetropolitan that are not really being covered. So before I get into the negative, I really want to say that I have loved Transmetropolitan, and highly recommend it for anyone trying to get into comics but doesn't fancy superheroes. The story is strong, it has a lot to say and the characters are brilliant, it well deserves your time and much of the praise it gets. 10/10 Would read again. However... there are things. Thinks like the Transients being pretty hard to read as anything other than an allegory for Queer persons, particularly Genderqueer persons, and they're really not well represented. Again, I don't think this is some deliberate bigotry on Ellis's part, but as Fred Christ is the only Transient character with much panel time, and is a sex predator and con-artist, it doesn't read well as an allegory.

The primary antagonist of the series, President Gary Callaghan, is also baffling, as he's a sexually stunted sociopath who wants to rule so that he can make people suffer, which is fine, that sounds pretty accurate to me. What's odd is that Callaghan is a Democrat. Now, being an Anarchist, I really don't feel allegiance to any political party, especially one based in a country in which I don't live, but just what is the criticism being leveled at the Democratic party? Callaghan is a sex pest, so is it about Clinton? He looks a lot like Jimmy Carter, but nothing he does is reminiscent of anything Carter is typically criticised for, so any attempt at commentary is muddled. Despite the fact Callaghan and his opposite number, The Beast, are both horrible people seeking power for power's sake, there is not criticism in Transmetropolitan of the system that facilitates them, putting the blame for all governmental ills on the one person. There's also a weird sub-plot on child prostitution that goes nowhere that I personally find so jarring that I skip it in my re-reads these days.

Transmetropolitan is flawed, perhaps deeply so, but it remains a high watermark in comics as a political and socially conscious medium. If the lack of any POC or Queer characters is the kind of thing to turn you off, I really can't blame you, but it may be worth pushing through that to read this series. Some of the choices and stances are baffling, but the stream-of-consciousness style of Spider's columns are endlessly charming and engrossing. The world presented is an utterly unique blend of hyper-realism, cyberpunk and trans-humanism, but at the same time, feels completely familiar. There are many theses worth of content in Transmetropolitan to be parsed out for those willing to dive in, be it in the form of literary analysis, criticisms through Queer or Feminist lenses, or even just discussing how much Royce is amazing and deserves his own mini-series. Across ten trades, Transmetropolitan is pretty strong, keeping the same artist and writer in a manner most of these series don't manage. There's always talk of a television or film adaptation in the works, and whilst I would like to see that, I just hope it's more like The Boys, in that it gets updated and some of the worse elements polished away.

A Tribute to Artie Simek

If you're a fan of Silver Age comics, then there's a decent chance that you've seen the work of Artie Simek, a prolific Letterer for both Marvel and DC in the 1950s and '60s. Not the most celebrated member of the famous Marvel Bullpen, you don't really hear Simek get mentioned in the same breath as Lee and Kirby, or even Ditko or Sterenko, but odds are, if you own a Marvel comic from the 1960s (real or reprint), Simek worked on it. For those who don't know, Lettering was the job in which someone had to write all the letters on every page of a comic before typesetting was advanced enough to handle the speed and precision that comics needed. Seriously, look at a page of just about any comic from the era and imagine having to hand print every single letter, often quickly because of the time pressure to get issues out, then imagine doing work, often uncredited, on almost every issue of Marvel Comics.

Look, I'm not going to make this a piece about how early comics staff were exploited, we all know that, and Simek passed away in 1975, so getting mad at people who are mostly dead for doing what was standard in the industry at the time, even if it was grossly unfair, because it's kind of pointless at the end of the day. Instead, let's just take some time to appreciate a man who contributed so much to a medium we love. As well as lettering probably hundreds of classic comics, including most of the Lee/Kirby run of Fantastic Four, Simek is the guy who did most of the large sound effect balloons and had a hand in designing the famous Banner Titles on the covers of comics, including Fantastic Four and Marvel Two-In-One. In many ways, Simek contributed to the iconic look of many Marvel comics as much as Kirby, Ditko and the bullpen of artists churning out 12 cent funny books back in the day.

So do I have a broader point with all this? Yes and no. I think it's important to cover the lesser-known people who worked on comics back in the days when the medium was coming together and building the foundations that would eventually lead to them dominating the world of entertainment. Lettering is something that you probably don't consider all that much when reading an old comic, and whilst we can't retroactively make things better for Simek and those like him, appreciating the work that they did a little more is worthwhile. Lettering must have been a crummy job, hunched over a desk in his bedroom in Queens, but Simek was evidently a really jovial and friendly guy, working right up to the end bringing to live a form of entertainment that was considered juvenile and disposable right up until well into my own lifetime, but that people loved and internalised to a degree that has brought it into the fore half a century later. Damn impressive if you ask me.

Superhero Media: Tron Evolution

Well this particular piece of Tron media took me a while, but that's only because Tron Evolution is a terrible game and I kept putting it down in disgust. I know I don't normally review gameplay and design when I look at Video Games here, focusing instead upon narrative and character, but Tron Evolution was so clunky and poor to play that it really was my main take away from my experience. Set on what I can best describe as the Tron version of "The Night of the Long Knives", when Clu makes a grab for power, starts slaughtering the Isos and attempts to kill Flynn. Now, as far as stories for a Tron video game go, that's a pretty solid pitch, add to that the presence of Olivia Wilde and Bruce Boxleitner in voice roles and the game had real potential to be something great. But there is just this cascade of poor choices discernible behind Tron Evolution that sucks any joy out of the finished product. For starters, the protagonist is 'The Monitor', a security program with no dialogue and no personality.

Why aren't I playing as Tron? Seriously, you have Boxleitner in the recording booth and I'm fighting Clu for most of the game, why isn't Tron the protagonist? It really wouldn't have been more than a narrative and dialogue change, so why am I 'The Monitor', who, spoiler alert for a PS3 game, dies at the end of the game, when Clu being captured and turned into Rinzler would have had more impact? Secondly, clearly a great deal of effort has gone into depicting the landscapes and buildings of the Grid, but you never really get to explore it, instead using parkour to get from one fight to the next and only really seeing anything interesting in background. Sections where you get to drive a Lightcycle or Light Tank are interesting, but the controls are wonky and the sections are, again, very linear. Hell, there's not even a light-cycle battle at any stage, which is just a waste of the setting and history of the franchise. Seeing the events that lead to Tron Legacy played out is great, but without any real engagement with the setting, it doesn't feel grounded and any impact is lost.

I know Tron is a weird franchise to want more and better versions of, but as we've discussed here previously, I think there's a great deal to be found within what's there. Tron is antifascist, it's anti-corporate, it's Dionysian and it's radical in a way few family films, especially those made by Disney, tend to be. The narrative is heroic, though in terms of talent, not destiny, with Flynn's intellect and skills at video games being what enables him to defeat Master Control. It's odd that one of the best film series about video games doesn't have a whole series of video game tie-ins, as it's an immediate excuse to get around ludonarrative dissonance, has an iconic look and a banging soundtrack by Daft Punk. Oh yeah, Tron Evolution doesn't use the Daft Punk music, but some odd sound-alike version which is pretty terrible, again, what an odd choice given what was available. Hopefully there is more for Tron, Clu and Flynn in the future, hopefully better than this and hopefully not too far away.

Playing Marvel United

Well I'm way behind on getting to this one, but I finally got a chance to play Marvel United, a board game series that I probably would have collected pretty hard if I hadn't found Unmatched. Thankfully, I have a gaming friend with poor impulse control who works for a rival FLGS, and he seems to have plenty for us to mess around with. For those that don't know, Marvel United is a cooperative board game featuring almost every Marvel superhero you can probably think of. The minis are "SD" or chibi style and different enemies change up how the game flows.

So, of course, for the first game, I picked the best Avenger, Hawkeye (Clint Barton) as Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) wasn't available and there isn't a heroic version of Doctor Doom currently available.

See, they're pretty cute, right? I'm not sure I'd want to paint an entire set in that cartoony style, and some look better than others, but that's definitely Clint Barton. I probably would have liked a more Fraction/Aja version in tracksuit pants and a bandaged face, but I won't be mistaking him for anyone else.

Our first game was against Ultron, who kicked our butts, but that may have been my fault, as I didn't know how the game worked and kept saying "this looks bad" and calling everyone "bro". But the great thing about games like Marvel United though, is that we can reset and get going again quickly.

This time, I decided to play Jessica Jones, who looks pretty naff really, but I guess that'll happen when you don't really have a costume. We did better that game, against Onslaught of all people, narrowly losing on the last couple of card flips, which tends to happen with these kind of games.

For the final round, against Loki, I played as Blade, with the rest of the team being Squirrel Girl, Howard the Duck and Shadowcat, which turned out to be a pretty brutal combination, except poor Kitty, and we mopped up the God of Mischief in short order. Marvel United is a lot of fun, though I probably prefer other co-op games like the D&D series, Sentinels of the Multiverse or Pandemic. The minis are cute, but not really usable for other games, unlike my Unmatched characters. If you wanted a fun collection and a game to play with friends that scratches your obscure Marvel character itch (there's Alpha Flight!), then this is probably the game for you.