Dark Reign: Young Avengers

This finished up a while ago and I thought a review was in order.

I’ve followed just about all of the Young Avengers stuff, but this one had me nervous. In true Dark Reign style, we were going to see an all new team of kids, who may not be as nice and wholesome as our first team. Indeed 4 of the 6 were named after villains (Melter, Enchantress, Egghead and executioner) while the other two Coat of Arms is a bit questionable and Big Zero is a neo Nazi.

It was quite a shift but be assured, the original Young Avengers turn up and a big fight, mentoring and rebellion ensue. It was a nice touch of Cornell to have the Young Avengers try and assess and recruit some of the new batch, and indeed the new set’s turn to Osborne was equally predictable when only one of them made the cut.

Cornell’s writing is good and I thing he made the most of having a big set of original characters to play with, although he wasn’t too shabby with the existing avengers or the dark avengers for that matter.

For me the stand out character was the new bacth’s leader, Melter. Cornell builds a great take on the old Marvel trope of powers being more of a curse, and Melter, we discover has killed many people, often by accident, in fact often by comedy accident, with his powers. This makes him not just reluctant but utterly terrified.

My main criticism would be the hint that Big Zero and Egghead are an alternate universe version of Stature and Vision which wasn’t followed up, but with rumours referring to this new team as the Young Masters, we may well see them appear in some shape or form in the future, and I’m interested enough t hope so.

Marvel Knights, Where are they now – Daredevil

Daredevil was the jewel in the Crown of the Marvel Knights launch line-up, arguably the title they’d put the most behind. The had a celebrity writer, Kevin Smith, before his name was tainted with the three crimes, The last few issues of Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil Men Do, the never to be finished Daredevil: Bullseye, which kept Bullseye out of use for anyone else for years and finally Jersey Girl. But no, this was the late 90s and we all still liked Kevin Smith. Art was by Joe Quesada who was head of the Marvel Knights line. This was to re-launch the man without fear, this was guardian Devil. To an extent it worked, but not straight away. Issue 1 treaded an uncomfortable line with decompressed storytelling and action, not really committing to either. However the story developed with Daredevil acting erratically and his life falling to pieces, we had guest appearances from Black Widow and Dr Strange, in short it was a pretty big story. Ultimately Mysterio would prove to be the villain (Although there was a definite supernatural feel for a while) in a story that had a terminal end for both Mysterio and Karen Page.

Overall it was a good first arc, followed up by some pretty strong storylines such as the introduction of Echo. Later Matt was “outed” and this story ran through Matt’s breakdown and eventual arrest. The breakdown story, where he briefly tried becoming the Kingpin to keep crime out of Hells kitchen, was part of a storming run by Brian Michael Bendis, closely followed by the equally good work of Ed Burbaker. I had to drop the title for financial reasons at the end of Devil in Cell block 9 story but overall, while it may have had dips in quality Daredevil has been strong ever since its Marvel Knights re-launch, perhaps one of the only titles to manage this. It has weathered the big events like Secret Invasion, Civil War and Dark Reign by keeping as much as possible to its own stories. This is perhaps its strength.

It is worth noting for Marvel Knights fans, that the two greatest sources for imagery in the Daredevil movie were Frank Miller’s legendary run and Guardian Devil. Daredevil’s continuing success is undoubtedly due to the time it was knighted.

Games That Stole My Life - M.A.X.

Reilly 2040 was probably wondering when I’d get to this, MAX, acronym for Mechanised Assault and Xploration, because MAE wouldn’t have been as good a title.

The Story, aliens come to earth and say “Hey, we bring technology etc, all we want is for you to colonise planets and mine stuff for us” and mankind says “Nah, no thanks” however some of the more unwanted groups, religious nuts, hard-line communists, Nazis, samurais, corporations and many more take the aliens up on this offer and go into space on giant ships. You play a MAX commander, a human brain in a robot body used to control ships in hyperspace where the human body can’t stand the stress. You then command the mechanical vehicles and units to colonise worlds for alien benefactors. Yes, it’s an RTS.

MAX came out in the mid to late 90s when Command and Conquer commanded and conquered all. There was a plethora of RTS games out at the time of varying quality; MAX had some interesting strategic levels. At the time being able to zoom from a worldview to very close up was pretty rare, also the fact that each faction used the same units meant that, upgrades aside, you could roughly judge how soon enemies would reach you. There was also the tactics of land, air and sea combat, with certain units being required to attack air units, and some sea units that could only be attacked by air or certain sea units (Such as submarines).

MAX seems to have been created initially as a turn based strategy game, which was then tweaked to work as a real time game, sort of. The game still requires turns to be taken, but in simultaneous mode everyone takes their turn at the same time, giving a real time feel. However this feature is what made MAX so addictive for me.

See, confession time, I’m not really that good at RTS games. I like them, but I’m not good at them. I loose track of things, get confused and have a habit of lumping all my units together in untidy charges. MAX offered me something more interesting, it had a multi-player mode called “Hot Seat Game” In this, each player took ether turn in sequence, but on one computer, so you could invite 3 friends round and spend hours playing MAX turn by turn. Better yet, if you weren’t good at RTS, you could play yourself. This is what sank time in for me. Huge 4 way battles with me running all players. Sounds dull but I enjoy it so much I still play it under emulation. Because it's not real time it allows me to drop the game at a seconds notice and react to my life’s responsibilities. MAX, you are great. You still steal my life though.

Good Crossovers

I recently posted about war of kings, and I’d like to take a specific point form this. That point is how to run an event, specifically crossovers.

Marvel has been picking up some bad habits of late, namely the multi-title crossover, where the crossover runs through alternate issues of different titles. It can be done well, such as, in my opinion, The Hands of the mandarin crossover between Iron Man, War Machine and Force Works in the 90s. The titles were pretty closely linked and we had guest appearances quite often (And indeed at one point War Machine finished his story and put in a call to Force Works to take over), second Iron man was part of Force Works anyway and the issues were written so the Iron Man issues were Iron man Centred, War machine focused more on War Machine and so on, they all told the story and all featured the others, but it meant you weren’t picking up an issue of Force Works and wondering why War Machine was so prominent. Similarly, while I wasn’t keen the Peter David penned X-Factor/She Hulk crossover was annoying but at least the She-Hunk issues were mostly she-hulk.

Anyway, I digress. I generally hate this sort of crossover, it adds another title that I don’t want to buy, (Utopia X) or it pulls characters from their interesting ongoing plot to a pointless crossover (Magnum opus).

Marvel has managed to occasionally pull some really good crossovers. This is because to me, good crossovers are more like tie-ins. Take War of Kings (Although both Annihilation events showed the same restraint) so, on the face of it, you have what should be a tie in nightmare, 5 issue Limited series, with the Darkhawk/Ascension tie ins, the Kingbreaker prelude and tie ins from Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova. However, restraint was shown. Nova focused more on the Nova Corps battling the criminal imperial guard we saw assembled in Kingbreaker, however you didn’t need kingbreaker to let you know the status quo, Nova handled that. Similarly the Guardians of the Galaxy are involved with trying to stop the war, helping Liandra reach Shi-Ar space and stopping the spread of the tear, but this is contained perfectly in their own title. The best example is Ascension, where several things that tie in elsewhere happen, but none require the reading of ascension to understand. Why did Darkhawk assassinate Liandra? Read ascension for the why, but it has no real bearing on the War of Kings plot. Why is Blastaar suddenly in possession of the cosmic rod, again in Ascension, but it’s not a vital plot point.

This has not been contained to just the cosmic stuff though. The Initiative recently invaded the 42 prison facility which was taken over by Blastaar in GotG. All you needed to be told was the prison had fallen and needed to be taken back.

Finally we see this seep through to what is fast becoming one of the more bloated events this year Dark Reign. In thunderbolts we see Nick Fury gunned down, only at the end for fixer to reveal he was an LMD. There is an aside saying “For more see Secret Warriors” and sure enough we do, in secret warriors we find out that the escape was partially orchestrated by the secret warriors, and indeed that the LMD was piloted by Phobos, son of Ares. This leads to some resolution between Ares and Nick Fury which may have bearing on Ares actions in Dark Reign – The List: Secret Warriors, where he secures fury’s escape from avengers tower. This I like, you can follow extra plot threads if you like, but your reading experience isn’t ruined if you don’t follow up. Of course, marketing don’t like that because it doesn’t directly force someone to buy another comic, but I wonder, does this method generate more readers in the long run, will curiosity draw in readers where forcing turns them of?

Deadliest Warrior

I was alerted to this show in an episode of “You Have been watching” and in Charlie brooker’s Accompanying Article. I was intrigued and despite the poor reviews thought I’d have a look.

The format is this, take two warriors from history, compare their skills and weapons and then put them into a simulation to see who would win in a fight. Bravo bought this and so I was spared trying to find “other” sources. In fact, the only episode bravo didn’t show was the final abandonment of good taste with the IRA and the Taliban in a 5 on 5 fight. No, I’m serious, that was the last episode.

Now, normally I like this sort of thing, historical warriors and study of tactics and weapons intrigues me and the vs. element was a nice hook. Shame this largely fails on the first part.

The problem stems from this being a Spike TV production, so it is designed to entertain first and if you learn anything on the way they unreservedly apologise. Each show has two experst from each warrior demonstrating up to 5 signature weapons in combat. Not a bad idea, my first gripe is that it is all about the weapons, armour is sometimes covered and tactics are hinted at, but you don’t get the impression that aspects like training and tactics are even considered (Something which we even got on Showdown: Air combat).

Next is the weapons tests themselves, each weapon is pared with an equivelant from the other warrior and compared, in this they are remarkably incosistant, surely to accurately compare weapons they should eb tested in similar circumstances, and sometimes they are, usually on ballistics gel torsos, but other times we have tests on wooden targets, or skulls, or pigs vs ballistics gel, in short, trials obviously designed to show each weapon in its best light, but it irks my inner scientist. Second on the weapon test is that this could have provided some interesting history in how these weapons were adopted, origins and some general historical info (Such as how various pieces of asian weaponary is adapted from farm equipment for example). This is glossed over with a preference to seing a weapon in action and shouting “AWESOME!” it gets particularly tedious in contest such as Mafia vs. Yakuza and Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz, seeing what a halbeard or a Maori shark toothed club can do is actually vaguely interesting, but a gun, we know what that does, puts a hole in a person.

Finally its the experts themselves, and this is a criticism of the show rather than the people, who I’m sure are perfectly nice. They’re encouraged to smack talk each other through the show and it just makes the whole enterprise childish and tedious, yes the whoel series is pub argument territory anyway, but the “Oh yeah, well we can totally beat that” element just makes all the experts look petulant. The best experts were the two ex-Spetsnaz, who tolerated the bravado of the green beret equivalent with what looked like tired boredom. The closest they actually got to smack talk was when one finally caved and quietly murmered that he felt that the Green Beret training was a little too soft. This playground jibing is tedious when its enthusiasts, such as in Pirate vs Knight, but it gets somewhat uncomfortable in contests like Gladiator vs Apache, where the Apache was represented by an actual apache, yes, they’re an existing culture of people, while the Gladiator was covered by enthusiasts, the whole “My hobby is better than yoru culture” thing just didn’t sit right at all.

I’ll try not to extend this rant too far when I mention that Shaka Zulu never stood a chance in the battle against William Wallace since the version of Wallace used was the fictional one from Braveheart.

I know I’m dumb, I was warned, repeatedly. But I still expected better. Don’t know why, but I did. And you know what else, I watched it all, all of it. Why? I don’t know. Self Loathing perhaps.

On the forums they put forward suggestions for season 2. Mine are as follows:

Glasgow Ned Vs. Manchester Scally

A 5 on 5 bout obviously, who is the most irritating and possibly harmful small time criminal? The ned weapons could include kitchen knife, empty glass Irn-bru bottle, half brick and a plank of wood. The smack talk would be worth the admission price alone.

Chartered Accountant Vs. Estate Agent

Who would win in a fight to the death. I’d just like to see it happen.

Or better yet, lets leave what vestiges of reality we have behind

Klingon Warrior Vs. Peacekeeper Commando

Can the wild warrior spirit of the Klingons beat the Cold military organisation of the peacekeepers?

Spartan from Halo Vs. Space Marine from warhammer 40k

Both are genetically engineered armoured super soldiers, but will Spartan discipline beat the rabid faith of the marines?

And finally

Starfleet “Redshirt” Security Vs Imperial Storm trooper

One is good at dying, one can’t kill a fricking ewok, will the redshirt not die or will the storm trooper hit something.

Joking aside, I think this would suit the absurdity of the series, get some people dressed up as ficional warriors, do tests on weapons (Assisted by special effects) and do a mock battle.

I think that might be a distinctly watchable show

War of Kings

Marvel’s other cosmic event has finally wrapped up (Ok I finally got out to buy comics) anyway it’s been quite a surprise, namely because its two run up titles (X-Men kingbreaker and Darkhawk) were a little lacklustre.

The story is of course about a second Kree/Shi-Ar war, only this time the Kree are lead by the Inhumans and their king Black Bolt, while the Shi-Ar are lead by Cyclops’s other other other brother, Vulcan. Also involved are the newly formed Nova Corps, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Darkhawk (or should I say Razor)

This was actually quite different to the Annihilation events, in that the tie ins told other aspects of the story leaving the main effectively a self contained story regarding the progress of the war as seen by Crystal from the Kree side and Gladiator from the Shi-Ar. The tie ins were of the good sort where they added to the story if you read Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ascension, but didn’t detract from it if you didn’t, so Nova was really more about Rich’s battle with the out of control Worldmind/Ego and Guardians was half about their efforts to end the war diplomatically (With fun and disastrous results) and half about trying to avert the ultimate end to the war.

The end was spectacular, Black Bolt and Vulcan fight on a giant bomb, which eventually explodes tearing a huge hole in space, exactly as Adam warlock predicted. Warlock manages to stop its expansion but the cost is that he becomes his evil future self, The Magus, and at the cost of Phlya and Gamera, although I doubt they will stay dead.

We now have an interesting state of affairs to the cosmic marvel universe, namely there is an empire in chaos and a dirty great rip in space, Darkhawk is on the run as while under control of the Razor personality in his armour and the Nova Corps are back to severely reduced numbers (A nice touch is that all the new Novas are in trainee uniforms similar to rich’s old “Kid Nova” suit)

Overall it was good, well written with good art and really had the impression of a large scale galactic conflict. Tie ins were, as said before good but unintrusive and overall this was a good event, if lacking the “Galaxy is doomed” feel of the previous two, also a good example of how to run event tie-ins. Mainstream Marvel take note.

I had my fears about what spinoff we would get from this event; I feared it would be a Starjammers in the universal rule of no area of marvel must be without X-Men of some description, although Ch’od is brilliant. I’d have been happy with an Imperial Guard title or Inhumans, or a Darkhawk one. Instead we’re getting Realm of Kings.

Yes, from war of Kings comes Realm of kings, stuff is coming through the big space hole, and it looks like evil avengers. Fortunately we’re getting a couple of decent looking LS from it, Inhumans and Imperial guard. Not really happy about blundering into another event, but at least I don’t have another ongoing to pick up.

High Speed Rail

Recently Network Rail proposed a plan to build a new High speed line from scratch; it would be 200+mph, travel from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London via Birmingham and have a Journey time of around 2hrs 30 mins. Now, I think this is a fantastic idea, think about it, that is faster than flying. Some will say that the flight to London is under an hour, however neither Glasgow, Prestwick or Edinburgh airports are in the city centres, and factoring in check in times and all the interminable waiting that airlines seem to want you to do, and your City Centre to City Centre time is closer to 3-4 Hours flying. This link would be on a train in Glasgow, and 2.5 hrs later you’re in the centre of London. It’s cleaner than flying or driving, ok so electric trains are only as clean as the power station available, but it’s better than burning aviation fuel or diesel and way more sustainable. In fact not much of this project doesn’t make sense.

However I’m sceptical if it will ever get built. Its price tag is around the £34 billion. It’s a shame that the government won’t commit to such a high spend, considering the millions it will quite readily spend for motorway enhancements and a 3^rd runway at Heathrow which seems to be wanted only by BAA and airlines. This is not all this project has stacking up against it. I can see the air travel lobby being pretty vocal in its objections to this project, after all, if it is faster than flying, and if the tickets aren’t extortionate, then it will take passengers from domestic flights, environmentally this is a good thing but airlines tend not to see loss of custom that way. It may also be scrapped by an incoming Tory government, which looks most likely. The Tories have generally shown a dislike for public transport (“This is the age of the Car”) and anything north of Birmingham. Until recently I would have said that the Scottish government would at least fund its side but after the scrapping of GARL I’m not so sure. Finally it is possible that the city of London may try to derail this project (Pardon my pun)

There was an article about a year or so ago, suggesting that regeneration doesn’t work and that we should all move to the south east. It was interpreted as a sign of fear from London that it may be loosing its importance to business. Back in the day you had to have a major office in London; it was how you did business. Problem is that London is expensive, and now many businesses are moving the bulk of their operations to regenerated areas like Manchester and Newcastle and leaving a shadow presence in London (Usually a few desks rented in a building) as modern transport and communications means that the city is only a few hours away. 2.5 hours from the central belt of Scotland to London would further erode any necessity to actually be based there. Hell, we could probably remove the second home allowance for many Scottish MPs because 2.5 hours is a commutable distance. Not an ideal one but definitely an option.

Of course, for everywhere else this is a great thing. And this is who should be getting behind the project, Local governments and big business should all welcome the chance to move away from the capitol, it means lower rents for business, and more interest for abandoned industrial towns. It means reduced overcrowding in the south and hopefully removing the need to build on flood plains. Basically, spend the 36bn, do it properly (No bloody PFI) have reasonable fares and this could be a massive boon to the whole UK.