Superhero Media: The Flash - Season 1

I cannot decide if The Flash is what Arrow is trying to be, or what it should have been from the start. Actually, scratch that, it's obvious to anyone that Arrow has always wanted to be a programme about Batman, but didn't get the rights. In contrast, The Flash is what it wanted to be from the outset; a programme about Barry Allen being The Flash. Unfortunately, Barry comes with his infamous "Rouges", such illustrious names as Captain Cold, Heatwave, Plastique, Professor Zoom and Weather Wizard. Poor Barry must figure out how being able to move almost faster than light can help him beat these terrible foes. Barry may not be quite as smart as people keep saying. What's great about The Flash is that we see Barry using his powers just to help out the people of Central City, getting cats out of trees, helping people across the road, that sort of thing. The kind of thing DCU heroes are known for; how about that old joke about Superman stopping to help someone pick up their dropped groceries? 

Like Arrow, Barry is supported by an ensemble cast, Cisco, Caitlin, Joe West and Dr Wells all know his identity and help him out in a manner that would make Spidey's head spin. This works when the writers decide to expand the team as well, Firestorm becomes a semi-regular, in addition to crossovers with the Arrow and Atom. There is a recurring motif of running, sometimes towards something, at other times away, hinting at a larger meaning behind Barry's powers, the resolution being that Professor Zoom may have created the Flash? It's not clear what the grand scheme is, but hopefully it gets resolved in seasons to come. For those who enjoy the comic references in Arrow, The Flash peppers them a bit quicker and much thicker, from Cisco's naming of villains to the last episode, which drops Rip Hunter, Jay Garrik, The Time Chasers, 52 and Earth Two all in about five minutes. 
 

 

When it comes down to brass tacks, I'd have to say that I prefer The Flash over Arrow, the action is more heroic, the plot is less convoluted and the romance is less in-your-face every episode. Put simply, The Flash is more of a superhero programme, and that's what I tune in for. Barely a single episode goes by without Barry suiting up and saving someone, or beating up a nasty "meta" with a power like exploding, because the Flash lacks the iconic Batman villains that Arrow routinely steals. What I've heard about season two sounds good, I'm sure I'll be checking it out soon. Until then, run Barry, from all your shitty villains.

Ultimate Alliance: Civil War - Part I

With the recent battle between Batman and Superman having left an entire city in ruins, the Superhero Registration Act is primed to be signed into law by Congress. This creates a divide in the superhuman community, with Captain America coming to represent those making a stand against the Act and Iron Man leading those working for it. Some heroes, such as Doctor Strange and Superman, elect not to take a side, staying out of the brutal conflict between friends and colleagues. 

Yes, Little Wars Melbourne approaches again and it's time to prepare for some super-heroic action! This year, I'm capitalising on the big summer movies, especially Captain America: Civil War, with two teams of mixed heroes going toe-to-toe. I'm yet to finalise the teams, but so far the playtests are going well and I may even be ready a little early!

Pro-SRA Deployment 

 

Standard table glamour-shots.

The fight we all paid to see! 

 

The ground shakes as Luke Cage and She-Hulk come to blows! 

 

Iron Man wasn't expecting a ninja strike from the shadows. 

 

She-Hulk brings down Captain America. 

 

 

Cage flees to fight another day. 

I think I have the team balance right at the moment, expanding it to six-hero teams and a couple more play tests should see me right. This time around, there's not so much to prepare, so hopefully I can add some real polish to the game. Excelsior!  

Superhero Media: Arrow - Season 3

Now, finally, in the third season, we can see the nerds that write Arrow really trying to bring out the superheroes. The prevalence of "Oliver Queen is Batman" and love triangle BS is much less and there is more superhero action than ever before. That the villain of the season being Ras'al'Ghul and the League of Shadows is a bit annoying, but taken as a backdrop to the idea of the team coming together, it works in the world that Arrow has built. So who forms this, "league of justice", if i may coin a term? The Arrow of course, and the Flash, Black Canary, Arsenal, Blue Beetle (sorry, the Atom) and Token Black Man, aka John Diggle. Ok, so it's hardly the New Avengers or the Secret Warriors, but at least we're getting a team in a television programme that's better than Heroes. Not that such a thing is beyond the reach of anyone reasonably competent. The cynic in me knows that it's all a lead-in to Champions of Tomorrow, but I'm determined to enjoy it while it lasts. 

Now that I consider it, it was the team-up episodes of Arrow that most interested me this season. Maybe it's the Marvel fan in me, wanting to see a shared universe of characters, coming together to fight a foe to powerful for any one of them to overcome individually. It's just a shame that said foe is occasionally Captain Boomerang. I mean, say what you like about the over-proliferation of Spider-man in film and television, but at least the villains are iconic and have many a point of difference between them. No one is likely to confuse Doctor Octopus with The Lizard, though the two do share the idea of science twisted to serve nefarious ends. Many of The Arrow's foes are so similar to each other, and to him, that they blur, and here, a few months after having watch the programme, I'm struggling to remember any of them other than Merlyn, Captain Boomerang and The Daemon's Head. 
 

Given the advent of the Netflix Marvel series, I feel that some of the initial shine has come off Arrow. With the limits of American network television, Arrow only has so much room to grow. There will come a point where there isn't a big enough audience for how "comic bookish" the programme has gotten, and I just hope there's a satisfying ending when that moment comes. Arrow is morphing into something that it hasn't really been yet, the first real representation of a comic book hero in prime-time, live action since Adam West's Batman. I wish them luck. But I still want Ollie in a Robin Hood hat with boxing glove arrows. 

Miniatures Finished: Neighbors and Science!

Steady progress has resumed and, with Little Wars Melbourne 2016 on the way, plans are in motion, but more on that later. 

 Totoro, X-Ray (another U-Foe), Atomic Robo and Jack o' Lantern. 

 Lantern and X-Ray are both Clix from one of the better eras of sculpting, as such, I've only had to do a little inking work and touch-ups. 

 Atomic Robo is a 3D print, very expensive and of reasonable quality as a wargames miniature. I'm not sold on the printing process as of yet, I still prefer polystyrene and whitemetal. Totoro is a toy and another "celebrity civilian", he'll be standing at the bus stop or monorail station during display games. 

 

Supehero Media: Jessica Jones

Thanks to the backlog of these articles (that never quite seems to go away), I have actually been able to watch Jessica Jones a second time before writing this. I'm glad I did, because I really found a lot more to enjoy the second time around. My first impression of the programme was that it is very bleak, even with their powers, the characters struggle to function in day to day life. Even the villain of the piece, a brilliantly slimy Purple Man, is revealed to be emotionally fragile and naive in many ways. Where the characters in Agents of SHIELD or Daredevil use their calling to bypass their trepidation, in Jessica Jones they are galvanized to action only when apathy and decision paralysis are no long options to be explored. As the "zoom-in" to the streets of MCU New York continues, Jessica Jones is as about as close as we're likely to go without the Morlocks or D-Man showing up. If you haven't checked it out yet, use your free Netflix trial to watch it, take a day off, then watch it again. 

It is, however, the strength of uniqueness of Jessica Jones that is also its greatest weakness. It feels disjointed from the rest of the MCU, the appearance of Night Nurse and references to the Battle of New York are about as far as the writers go, and it's not quite enough. I was really hoping that the last episode would end with a man in a sharp suit with a white cane knocking on Jessica's door, as an echoing of Nick Fury's appearance after the credits in Iron Man, signalling bigger things to come. Fans of the comic may cringe, but I really want to see Jessica lining up alongside Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist to battle the Kingpin's army of supervillains as they descend on Hell's Kitchen. 

While I'm on the subject, Jessica Jones is not Alias, or even The Pulse, it's something new and different, so don't expect the characters and places to be the same as the comics. I know that should be obvious by now, but for some reason, I keep hearing people complain about it. The Netflix Marvel programmes are adding a new dimension to the MCU and I can't wait to see more of this, as I write, it's about two and a half weeks until season two of Daredevil and the ride begins again. Will Jessica or Luke make an appearance? Maybe, but I doubt it. Somehow, I'm losing that "fanboy" motivation to just see these characters and gaining a new desire to see these versions, hopefully Jessica returns soon and brings all Hell's Kitchen with her. 
 

How Cards Made Me a Better Wargamer

Bit of a departure from strictly Superhero-related subject matter here, but it's been on my mind a bit lately. Plus, I will talk mainly about Supers card games, so I guess there's a bit of a link there. Last year (2015), I decided to play the Retro Dragonball Z Collectible Card Game a little more often than I had been. I'd picked up the game again a few years previous when I came across some cards and a coworker revealed that there was a thriving online community and plenty of the game I'd missed out on. Within about eight months, I went from "I wanna build a Gohan deck" to "Freestyle Trunks Sword Beats with Roshi Sensei" (yeah, jargon for outsiders, but you get my point). It wasn't a replacement for games like Secrets of the Third Reich, SuperSystem and Empire of the Dead, but it was another outlet to get my "gaming" fix through and something I was ok with spending money on. 

My RetroDBZ Trunks Sword deck in all it's glory.

Another, more personal, development I undertook last year was to attempt to do things better than I had been. Stuff like work, relationships and study were obvious, but I also chose not to ignore my hobbies. I've never been much of a tournament player, but I figured I could put more than the minimal effort into my gaming than I had been. Consequently, I've only dropped one or two SOTR games in the past year. The point wasn't to become more cutthroat, but to put a little more thought into every game. One of the most interesting factors of a card game is the deck, drawing cards, deciding how many of each card to run and working with what you draw, not what you wanted to draw. A term in the Magic the Gathering community that can be a bit loaded is "Mana-screwed", it basically means that you "would have won" if you'd drawn the right cards. Well duh. I totally would have won that game of Trivial Pursuit if I had known the answers. Good deckbuilding means being able to get the cards you need into you hand when you need them, or, if you can't do that, making the most of what you do have. 

 Sentinels of the Multiverse Card Game, cooperative and a good way to learn to work with a deck. Also Superheroes, so you can't go wrong.

To paraphrase Walter Kovacs, "No compromise, no surrender", even if defeat looks inevitable, I make my opponent pay for every bloody inch of ground. You'd be surprised how often an opponent that thinks they've won already makes a big enough mistake that you can get back in the game. I learned that from card playing because, when I was losing badly, I figured "hey, the game will only be another ten minutes of my life, why not play it out?", occasionally I won and most of the time, I had fun. If getting into a CCG hardcore is not your thing, try the Pokemon TCG Online, it's free and a bit of fun, or maybe try something the the DCU Deckbuilding Game or Sentinels of the Multiverse Card Game; each is different, but uses some of the same skills I've discussed here. Who knows, you may have some fun and sharpen your skills at the same time? 

Superhero Media: Black Widow - Homecoming

This comic sucks. First of all, I'm really annoyed that I'm yet to read a Black Widow comic that's any good. Sure, there are plenty of good comics featuring Widow, but where are all the ones she's starring in? I'm sure there must be some, Widow is a character with so much potential and depth to add to stories; just look at what has been done with her in the MCU Captain America films. In comics like Secret War or even some Daredevil, Widow is smart, capable and subtle, very subtle, because she's a spy and is trained to operate in deep cover without being caught. In Homecoming, she's a raving, man-hating loon who is capable of about as much subtly as a brick through a window. 

In my bachelor's study of Literature and Film, I did a reasonable amount of work on feminist and gender theories, so I like to think that I have an ok understanding about how women should be written and what are the bad "strong woman" cliches. I'm going to have to delve back into some of the theory, because I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed a writing parallel to the "Virgin/Whore" complex along the lines of the "Victim-in-waiting/Man-eating murderess" complex. In this comic, Widow routinely tortures, maims and cripples male opponents like she's trying to be Jack Bauer and completely forgotten that she's been an Avenger for years, off and on. That would be passable on it's own, but every second line out of her mouth is some diatribe about men being scum. Yes, Widow is trained to manipulate men, but she's not the "Red Spy" that tricked Hawkeye into fighting Iron Man back in the '60s, she's the Avenger who tried to point out to Clint that he was letting his nob do the thinking in the 2010s. Oh, and apparently, Nick Fury isn't a mastermind who recognises Widow's true talent, he just has a magic aftershave that controls her like a dog. 
 

Despite trying to be a truly feminist comic, Homecoming is clearly written by a man (Richard K. Morgan), who thinks that, to be a feminist, a woman must be a manipulative, man-hating bitch, which is a damn misogynistic point of view. This clearly isn't the Widow that operated undercover in Latveria for months without being spotted in Secret Wars, or who struggled with maternal yearnings in Guardian Devil, because she was a complex character who was defined by more than her gender and sexuality, operating on emotions (because woman are all emotional, right?) and lucking through fights. Give this one a miss.