In an earlier article about Judge Dredd Boardgames, I hinted that I had prayed to the eBay Gods to send me a copy of Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter.
Well the Gods answered and now it is in my boardgame collection.
So should I do it? Should I paint these up? Tell me in the comments box below.
I've blogged before about my love of the Starblazer Adventures RPG system which was inspired by the small format single story comic books published by DC Thomson Comics in the 1980s.
Starblazer was never as popular as it's war story cousins Commando and Battle and I know as a kid they were hard to come by in 1980s Bradford. In fact I seem to remember there being one news kiosk in the bus depot that used to carry them in one of those wire racks for birthday cards. Isn't it strange what you remember.
DC Thomson had started publishing collections of these long out of print gems, but after 2 volumes the faith seems to have departed. Not to worry, I have a small collection of these thrill packed little comicbooks and they are still readily available on eBay at very reasonable prices.
In this tale of human humbris, the arrival of the Zephyrus in Vemlin space is interpreted as an invasion and gives rise to an intergalactic war with Earth. The inexplicably named Carstairs is the robotic hero in this odd tale of politics and miltary strategy.
The cover art is reminiscent of the spaceship paintings of Chriss Foss, Peter Elson and Jim Burns which are gloriously immortalised in the Terran Trade Authority Books published by The Hamlyn Group in the late 70s. I remember getting one of these coffee table books as a child and they were like nitromethane for the imagination.
A rollercoaster of a tale which pretty much sums up a standard Starblazer storyline. Heavy on the cliffhangers, bouncing from one near catastrophe to another a breakneck speed. There's no time for an indepth discussion or detailed character motivations, its a swift punch to the jaw and a laser blast from the hip.
The Starblazer Adventures RPG echoes this with it's hilarious random Starblazer Comic Title Generator. Honestly, I could just spend a couple of hours happily rolling up different scenarios an imagining what might appear on the cover.
In this issue we follow the exploits of Hadron Halley (what a zarjaz futuristic name) as he explores the mysterious planet which is home to the even more mysterious Mind Lords.
These cut price Mekon-like maniacal mentalists have subjugated the native population and turned them into puppets dressed like the Oz's Tin man (I kid you not). They hide in the safety of their mushroom shaped city come spaceship and finalise their plans for Solar galactic domination.
Elements of the artwork remind me of Simon Harrison's Bradley the Sprog but in classic fashion DC Thomson never cited who wrote or inked their comic books.
A cheeky subtitle change to "Space role-playing game in pictures" announces that DC Thomson have jumped on the Fighting Fantasy style adventure gamebook in this story of post apocalyptic survival. You are Space Patrolman Svenson . I can't remember ever seeing anything as ambitious as this in comic book form although the Ace of Aces Game Books from Flying Buffalo.
Needless to say the adventure is a pretty ripsnorting affair with Svenson bouncing from one death defying panel to another before ending up in court. I think this deserves a proper playthrough and mapping of the choice tree so I can work out what the hell is going on in this story arc.
It's 1986 and clearly James Cameron's lawyers thought it wasn't worth suing DC Thomson over the title of this issue. This has all the hallmarks of a classic western story where up to no good town officials are lining their pockets with some scheme involving the mine. Enter Marshall Skarr (God, I love these names) who is sent to Glasis V to investigate. He gets straight to the bottom of things and stirs up trouble for the local Judge who programs a Terminator to exterminate Skarr before he really finds out what is going on.
The Judge has done a deal with the Ellon, who basically are starfishmen, and not the cuddly Patrick kind these are more like Zygons. The Terminator gets its second wind and helps rescue Skarr and everyone lives happily ever after. The robot is a pretty cool design and lives up to its description as an unstoppable relentless agent of justice.
The depiction of Eden on the front cover is a bit misleading and clearly someone must have copied a picture of Kurt Russell as once you turn the page he looks more like a Native American Indian tribesman.
This is such a weird story and the sort of techno savagery story you used to get in science fiction back in the 80s. As the story evolves the villains of the piece are introduced, a race of electro vampires that look like a cross between a human and a pteradactyl. Eden encounters various people along the way all of whom seem to have fallen prey to the electro vampires but Eden is a rugged outdoorsman and not to be trifled with.
The electro vampires reminded me of one of the character Worzel from the excelent Lensman anime movie. A highly recommended adaptation of the E.E Doc Smith, Hugo Award nominated Lensman books from the 1950s.
Well from that description Bron sounds like a lot of fun. Starblazer didn't just do Sci-fi with spaceships and aliens, there was a healthy smattering of fantasy and crossover post apocalyptic mad max style adventure too. Bron is one of those sword and sorcery tales set in the ruins of 1980s civilization.
The scent of anachronism is heavy and at one point Bron delves into the subterranean underworld chased by zombies and finds himself on a runaway tube train. This theme runs throughout, the idea that some technology survives, hoarded by the "sorcerors" and technomancers with the knowledge and skill to keep the machines alive and working for their own benefit or that of their overlords.
This is a return to the square jawed smoke me a kipper type hero who roams the spacelanes like a one man A-Team. His calling card, quite literally a card you push into a machine to make a call, reads "If your cause is just, but the odds are too great Use Me". I'm suprised he gets any business at all with approach.
Somone on Wengel IV needs his help, but the first locals he encounters practically ignore him. Fortunately he finds the terminal used to make the call in an abandoned communications centre. Enter the Battletoads style mutants who chase Starhawk through the jungle. Eventually he discovers the secret lab of Hak Galos the owner of Megalos Mining who has hatched a nefarious scheme to mine Trikalak K a banned substance and key ingedient in Quark bombs. Galos clearly has some sort of plan for those quark bombs, but it is never fully fleshed out.
I found a great resource with some fantastic interviews from some of the original artists and writers who worked for DC Thomson back in the day. Check it out at downthetubes.net.
Did you know that it is almost 25 years since Skynet became self aware? I thought I would test whether or not the old girl was still up to snuff.
Play 10 games of Race For The galaxy on my iPad whilst I am walking up in the morning (see I'm already finding reasons why I lose), log all the win scores and then crunch the numbers in excel.
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| The Ultimate Challenge - Race for the Galaxy |
Unlike other CCGs like Magic the Gathering, R4TG has no flavour text on the cards despite the huge potential to do so contained within the theme.
If you are active on Instagram check out @r4tg_2022 which is one person's personal project to add a narrative roleplaying element as he plays the game.
It's 2022 and the COVID-19 debacle rages on. One of the casualties of the Coronavirus pandemic was my old club. The pandemic was a catalyst for division and greatly reduced attendance as fear and panic spread across the membership, it ceased to function in any meaningful way.
This club had been founded on the principles of democracy, every member having an equal say in how the club was run. Unfortunately this led to internal politics when most members just wanted to turn up, play games and have fun. Running that club became a constant battle of personalities, skullduggery and in-fighting. The pandemic was a cover story for usurpers to spread rumour, lies and deceit in private channels in order to facilitate a popular uprising.
Unfortunately, the patient was considered to be unsaveable and the tough decision to pull the plug had to be made. This enabled the membership to ultimately make their own decisions about how they wanted to roleplay going forward. The club was dead, long live the new club.
Running a club is a thankless task and I have played my small part in helping to run numerous roleplaying clubs over the last 30 years. The problems are diverse but mainly revolve around organising games so that everyone has something to play. Clubs evolve organically, expanding and retreating as the winds of fortune blow and the real-life priorities of members compete for their valuable time and energy.
It takes a certain amount of sacrifice to run a club and a management team that can commit to doing what the club needs rather than what they need as a player or a games master for the good of the group.
I have learned a hard lesson in that a club is not a democracy. Democracy empowers people with a voice and a platform upon which to speak their opinions. However, without effective rules, governance and constitutional principles it can easily turn to Anarchy. For a club to thrive it has to have strong leadership and direction, it has to have doers and not talkers, because ideas are ten a penny and talk is cheap. A thriving club is one where everyone is engaged and they want to come to enjoy themselve and not to talk about politics or how they could run things better if only they had a chance.
In a new series of regular posts I write about the movies I watched this week. They could be new or they could be old but I'll watch it and in the interests of keeping these reviews spoiler free I'll white out any neat plot devices or story beats which I find worthy of a follow up in.
When bollywood made its own Terminator movie (Enthiran) you knew that the game was up, CGI had indeed made all things possible whether we wanted it or not. TMR actually self references this in its own script then proceeds to ignore the irony and go ahead and create a new bullet time effect.
Watching the Matrix Resurrections felt, for me, like watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and not in a good way. It looked like the Matrix, and had all the story beats of the Matrix, but ultimately it was a hollow shell of the original. I enjoyed seeing some of my favourite characters return, like The Merovingian, but he was like the movie, a ghost of his former self.
I really hope that the Wachowski's can finally put the franchise to bed with this 4th installment and move on to making new stories. If not we might just see The Matrix 5: Dead Man Walking.
The movie focuses on the crew which influenced Tony Soprano's early life and what made him turn to a life of crime. Ray Liotta does double duty playing the Moltisanti twins, one of which has been imprisoned for murder and become a jail house philosopher and self confessed jazz nut.
A special mention goes to Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini, who does a great turn as a teenage Tony Soprano. I also loved the expert portrayal of Silvio Dante by James Magaro. He manages to recreate some of the physicality of Stephen Van Zant which resonated with me.
This was a genuinely interesting tale set inthe 1960s and early 70s at the height mob and is interwoven with the story of the civil rights movement and the Newark riots of 1967.
This was a genuinely engrossing story of youthful potential corrupted by the failings in the adults and "the life" that swirls around him.
I've read Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" Trilogy which details the massive undertaking that terraforming will be and so was surprised to see people walking around without vac suits. The location looked like a NASA briefing and I half expected the cast to stumble upon some half buried mars rover at any moment. Clearly the location scouts had done their homework and this went some way to helping me suspend my disbelief regarding the whole terraforming thing. I was so glad when they revealed the reason and understood why this hadn't happened earlier as it becomes a huge plot point for the whole story going forward.
The cast were great. It's nice to see Johnny Lee Miller on screen again and Brooklyn Prince, the young actress who played Remmy, was fantastic. Sofia Boutella did a great job in a tough role, enough to have me tracking down a copy of Prisoners of the Ghostland. Ismael Cruz Cordova made a very convincing and mysterious bad guy and it will be interesting to see how he manages in the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show..
However, what an absolutely depressing tale. It reminded me of Z for Zacariah which I also found beautiful to look at but utterly depressing. The pacing was slow and drawn out, probably intentional, as the plot unfolds at a snails pace. The tragedy in the tale largely happens off camera giving you this anoying sense of uncertainty about what is actually going on and the the story seems to be going nowhere until the final twenty minutes or so.
I'm not saying that every sci-fi movie needs to be an action epic but this was just too slow for my liking.
There are so many cool ideas running through the movie which more than make up for the ones that fall flat on their face. Big Market in particular is a cornucopia of visuals and plot hooks with a few Besson easter eggs thrown in there. The trans dimensional nature of the whole setting is something genuinely fresh and new. I loved the magnetic chaser balls, the strange alien kid "Da", the gun which splits its barrel. The pearls are cool and I especially love the dying soul wave idea which could be a great plot hook for any RPG. Give me more please.
There is an outside chance that we will see a sequel at some point in the future (according to Luc Besson) as this was very well received by fans and despite it not being a commercial success Besson does have the ability to make a great film.
In the meantime try to find the 2007 anime series Time Jam: Valerian and Laureline which in my humble opinion is well worth a watch if you enjoy a good space opera.
Whilst the movie undoubtedly reverberates with echoes of the past, it breaths new life into the franchise with new characters and new possibilities. The story revolves around the central figure of Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), a wannabe scientist as she uncovers the truth about her Grandfather's past following his sudden death. Her down at heel family are evicted and move to Summerville, Illinois to attend to the estate of a man they barely knew in the hope that this will lead to a change in their fortunes.
It's a story of self belief and adventure and very much reminds me of another classic, The Goonies, in that the heroes are misfits and social failures who are just trying to get to the bottom of a mystery. In a world gone mad we need stories like this to take our minds off what is going on outside our own windows.
The cast and director deliver a nigh perfect blend of action, adventure, humour, tension and pathos with every story beat. A complete antidote to 2016's unfunny, synical, confused and pathetic reboot. Jason Reitman gets what Ghostbusters is about. It's not a comedy, it's a spooky adventure with comedic moments and not a contest in who can get the biggest laugh or the wittiest punchline. It's not about slapstick, fart gags or puking. There's a story, a plot, real jeopardy for the characters and not just an assortment of gag sequences which when stretched out together fill out the runtime.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (there's a good reason why they chose that title) is also an homage to legendary comic actor and writer Harold Ramis. In his portrayal as The Ghost Farmer, Bob Gunton treats his memory with respect and reverance, a perfect way to honour a comedy legend. The Ghostbusters family are almost fully reunited (with the noted exception of Rick Moranis) with Annie Potts reprising her role as Janine Melnitz and Sigourney Weaver returning in a post credits sequence with Bill Murray.
Paul Rudd does a fantastic job as does Carrie Coon as the "responsible adults" and the unwitting new Gatekeeper and Keymaster of Zuul. The return of Gozer as the supernatural vilain of the piece adds the motif of unfinished business and adds an extra layer of backstory with the wonderful if brief role of Ivo Shandor (J K Simmons). Noticeably no-one gets slimed in this movie and there is no rerpise for Slimer, instead we get a new character called muncher who looks like a blue tardigrade. If there is a criticism to be had of this movie it is the lack of ghosts. Something I hope they will rectify in the near future with whatever is trying to escape the failing containment unit in the dilapidated firehouse.
I am so glad that they made this movie and gave the fans what they wanted, a real ghostbusters movie.
