Adventures in Loot! Month two: Villains!

Well, it's that time of month again! Lootcrate is on the prowl and have delivered a fresh box off wonders onto my doorstep and into my heart. I found last month's crate to be extremely agreeable, with plenty of fun stuff (and one magnificent t-shirt! That I've worn since and is incredibly comfortable) but also a fair bit of filler that I'm still shrugging over. Although I think I need to apologise to MLG just a little, because their armband was utterly fantastic at keeping my PICC line in place and not flapping around when I went out. So good job and thank you guys! But that was last month, this is this month, so let's crack it open and see what's inside!

First of all, I am utterly enamoured with this box. I don't know if they're all the same and it's printed on, I think it must be for the amount of work it would require otherwise, but I love the markered on style and every joke on there hits the mark. I especially love the Killing Joke homage on the camera. You have to give these guys respect when even their boxes are tiny little works of joyful artwork.

And then we come to the contents, and I can tell you already that I love that t-shirt. I can't even see it all, but that design made me smile like the Joker when I saw it and I cannot wait to wear it. The rest also looks fairly tantalising under there, mind...

Here we go! The main design in all it's glory. My friend and I debated endlessly about this t-shirt, speculating it was either going to be Loki, Ledger Joker or the big daddy of them all - Darth vader. I have to admit I'm surprised it's not Darth, considering the high comic focus of the rest of the box (spoiler!) but I'm very happy with this. It's a great compromise between the big two, a really fun design and both villains really blend into each other into an intriguing concept. My only complaint is that the t-shirt itself isn't of as good a quality as the previous one in the Transform box, the material feels thinner and it just doesn't feel as robust. Then again, it's by no means poorly made - In fact, this was the quality I was expecting from the Transform t-shirt, and that one bowled me over, so I figure last month was just special. 

But the good times with clothing don't stop there! Marvel seems determined to kit me out for my trip back to the ward tomorrow, as there's these wonderful Deadpool socks! I don't really have much to say about these, other than I love them and this is the kind of thing I invested in Lootcrate for. Great, geeky merch that I never knew I wanted to own, but now I do own them want the whole world to know I own.

A gaggle of assorted bits and pieces, including this months badge, which I'm hoping will act as the mirror of next months badge, two fantastic trinkets in the Bowser fridge magnet and the Darth Vader keyring. Bowser has joined my Batman and Kano magnets in the part of the fridge I seem to be cultivating for geeky nonsense.

And a documentary from DC, which I'm very much looking forward to watching back on the ward. Again, hopefully we might see it's sister in a crate next month! Speaking of DC, their other contribution to the crate is perhaps the only thing in it that really misses for me.

I'm not really into Harley Quinn or the Ledger mouther Joker that's spawned since The Dark Knight so these don't do anything for me, but they're still nice pieces of art in their own right. If anybody feels like they want to give them a good home, give me a shout!

Then we pull out the pre-advertised star of the show, the Lootcrate exclusive issue of Rocket Racoon. It's a lovely cover indeed, and the comic itself is a lot of fun. I love Skottie Young's art and his style really fits Rocket and Groot. Not sure it hooked me in enough to get the next issue, also kind of thought the swear words censored by various symbols was a little distracting - But then it was nice to see a comic that could be enjoyed by a younger audience so I'm glad they didn't go all out on the language. Besides, how can you dislike a comic that has such great sound effects? 

FRAGBABOOM indeed! 

Heck, even when you get to the very last item, this is a box that just keeps on giving! 

I really can't fail to love this one. The items and the box art really enforce the Villains theme and give it a great touch of personality. If I was to be picky I'd say that a comic about Rocket, that doesn't really feature a big villain as focus, perhaps wasn't the best choice - But then again, it was very savvy marketing and I'm not complaining. One could also make the case it's a little too comic book focused, but that doesn't bother me one bit. Besides, if there's a genre that's defined by its villains it's comic books - Most of the classic, memorable and well developed icons of evil rise up from their pages and I have no problem with them being paid homage too here. This crate has been utterly fantastic, though, and I can only hope next months Heroes themed one matches up! 

From Cover to Cover: Waylander.

So, it's come to this. Last month it was distribution, this time it's technical difficulties. The blog for The Fountain Society is all nicely written up and ready to go, bar a few images and touches of editing, the problem? It's also currently trapped on a laptop that's deader than dead. Unfortunately there's not much I can do about that this month, but hopefully with everything crossed I'll be able to pull it out of the electronic limbo it's stuck in and present it to you here. What I will say is the book surprised me, given the authors pedigree in the horror genre it wasn't what I expected at all. As for anything beyond that, next month. I promise.

That left me in a bit of a predicament this month. I could either let the segment lie, which I'm reluctant to do as it's one of my few staples and I have to be honest, ideas aren't exactly coming hard and fast lay around the hospital ward. Rewrite The Fountain Society blog, which I was also reluctant to do until I've at least tried to summon it from my old hard drive. Or move on to the next title. I've decided to go for that option, and this month I'm covering a book suggested to me by Alan. To try and note even the majority of Alan's prolific career as a writer and editor would probably take me more time than giving my impressions on the book itself, but he's most recently been involved as one of the architects of Revolutionary War, a comic re-introducing the Marvel UK heroes to a whole new era, and also a comic documenting the history of the first World War through the eyes of those in the trenches with artist Lalit Kumar Sharma. I urge you to go check them out, as he's a keen professional and more importantly, just one of the friendliest people you could hope to meet.

Waylander is a fantasy novel written by Daid Gemmell and first published in 1986. The King of the Drenai is dead and their Kingdom under siege by the ruthless and overly ambitious vagrians. With defeat looming on all sides, all hope seems to rest on Dardalion, a man of peace turned into an avatar of war, and the Waylander. A man haunted by his past, who hopes that one, last desperate good deed can not only save the Drenai people, but also allow himself to finally forgive himself the sins of a tainted past. 

You know, Waylander is just a breath of fresh air. It really is. There are absolutely no quirks to this book, no complex lore, politics or heraldry to grasp and very little subtext lying below the surface. This is a world of two great armies pitched against each other, where the deeds of a few brave men can turn the tide of history and you always, always bet on the man with the least to live for and the quickest weapon. I'm being in no way disparaging when I say any of this, I think it's fantastic! It reminds me of Conan and the old Black Library Warhammer books, where great heroes rise and monsters are cleaved through and men live and die by their own follies. 

That's not to say this isn't a world handled with care. The backdrop that David Gemmel builds isn't as meticulously crafted as perhaps Tolkien, George R. R. Martin or even our friend from last month Philip Pullman would bring together but it more than does the job. He creates a world that is easy to settle into with stakes that are easy to understand, and then invests you into those stakes through the characters he introduces. Be it through a matter of personal honour and forgiveness or some higher calling as one man, in one tiny regiment standing against insurmountable odds.  At the end of the day Waylander presents a power struggle, and it would be easy to fall into the line of thought that we root for one side because one is good and one is evil. But as the story progresses we see that men are men, the most noble and heroic are just as capable of terrible things as those who have lived lives devoted to petty evil are of great deeds. We only care more for the one side because we see their story more clearly. 

I think this attitude towards the nature of good and evil serves the book well. There are characters in the book who interpret the conflict as something of a battle between light and dark, and I think if the reader wants to take that away from the text they're perfectly welcome too, but for me there seemed to be a little more bubbling under the surface. It wasn't obvious, or pushed into the face of the reader, but the overarching theme of the book seemed to be that the spirit of man was capable of anything given the right catalyst, or perhaps it is simply destiny that drives a man who has been a wretch all his life to end it in the most honourable way possible. 

This brings me onto one of the most intriguing concepts in the book, the Source. The Source is something of a mix of the Force and a conventional Christian God. It is supposedly all around us, guiding our movements, and even shows true, tangible power through Dardalion at points, but unlike the more physical presence of the Force it is more intangible. More like the Christian faith's God, much of the time the characters simply have to trust that it is there and will guide them. It's interesting because it adds a whole new dynamic to events, does Waylander pass his trials due to luck, coincidence and the unpredictable nature of mankind? Or does the Source make fools, heroes and martyrs of us all? Subtly moving the pieces and tweaking alignments and behaviour to serve it's grander purpose, in which Waylander and the Dranei war are only a small part. These are questions left to the reader, and indeed the characters themselves. Giving the Source just enough power to be mystical, but leaving it to be ambiguous enough to wonder if it's really all that they say it is. 

If I were to pick up one flaw in the book, it's that some of the dialogue is very stilted, especially early on. The first interactions between Danyal and Waylander, and even carrying over to other conversations between Dardalion, Waylander and Danyal later on just seemed stiff and wooden. I'm not sure if I got used to it or if the flow between characters just got better the more familiar and conversational they became with each other, but I found it tough going at first. I was also left wanting more from the epilogue. Everything was wrapped up nicely enough, but it just felt like the entire thing was more of a 'By the way, this is what happened in the next thirty or so years after the conflict!' than an actual capstone on immediate events. Like those little text boxes at the end of films that tell you what happened to the characters after their crazy adventures - And you learn that most of them died in really zany ways you wouldn't have minded seeing on screen. It's a minor niggle, and perhaps the sequels do more to delve into what happened next, I'll find out when I get to them but either way it's irrelevant for this book. 

Overall, Waylander is a top draw fantasy adventure about men hacking other men to pieces in the name of honour, and I loved it. It really cheered me up and pulled me through the last couple of days on the ward, and managed to settle me back into reading quite nicely. Minor niggles prevent me from slapping a full five Monkeys on it, but it is more than worth your time and if I gave half monkeys, I would certainly hand it one. As it is, I don't cut monkeys in half. That's just cruel and unusual. 

Four out of five Monkeys in a Hat. 

Next month... I'd like to tell you The Fountain Society, but if that falls through I think I might pull out The Stars My Destination instead. We'll see. 

The Gene of an Idea.

This week has been a rough one. Indeed, the past two weeks have been rough in general. After making a surprise return to hospital, I've since suffered a rather brutal dental proceedure, a scary turn for the worst invoving an infected IV line, three changes of anti-biotics and technical difficulties that for the time being have brought my laptop to its knees. My laptop that happened to contain the freshly finished draft of my Cover to Cover blog of The Fountain Society.

So yes, in all this hasn't been a fun ride and unsurprisingly this page has suffered. Ideas are flowing like dry mud and the energy to write them up just hasn't been there. I suppose a break wouldn't be the worst thing in the world considering everything I laid out above, but it seems a shame to let this fall by the wayside when I managed to keep on top of it the last six weeks I was in here, and also there's the future to consider. If I let it drop now, when do I pick it back up? When I'm out? When I'm fully recovered? No, I don't want to present myself with the excuse to fall into laziness once I get home, and with that in mind a stroke of inspiration hit me the other day.

While I've been in here I've been picking up copies of Warhammer Visions from the newsagents downstairs. For those who don't know, it's a new coffee table style magazine that is packed from cover to cover with pretty pictures of Games Workshop products. I wouldn't usually touch it, I'm out of the Warhammer game and the magazine itself is as expensive as the figures, but I'm in hospital. I get bored. It breaks the day up. Inside last month's issue they ran a feature on a Tyranid army painted in gloss black with yellow highlights. It was so simple but so gorgeous. I'd never seen solid black Nids before, which is baffling when you consider the entire army is just the alien from Alien wearing various different exoskeletons. But it looked so right, so blindingly obvious, that I knew I had to try it.

I knew I had some genestealers from an old Space Hulk set lying around at home, so when I was on day release yesterday I dug them out. I was kind of dismayed to see I'd already put most of them together, and teenage me had made an utter mess of most of them, but I did find a good couple to experiment on. I knew I couldn't really start yesterday, being the victim of Count Cannula and all, but I also knew I wanted to make sure that when I was ready - I was going to do this. So I undercoated him.

And now he lives with me in the hospital, and everytime I'm feeling low, out of energy or like I'll never recover and this will never end, I can look over and be reminded that when I do get out - I have stuff to do. I have a life to live. And even though it doesn't always seem it now, there's more to life than these four walls and the people within them. One day I'll be out and painting. I'll be out and writing. I'll be out, getting on with my life and pursuing the things I love and care about like everyone else. It's funny what can motivate us, what can inspire us and I already expect most of the nurses to see my little friend and make faces at him, wonder what kind of stupid things I'm into and why I'd bring such a horrible thing onto the ward. But for me, he's important, and as long as I remember what he represents, the world can go swing.

Plus, y'know, he does kinda brighten up the place in his own way...

Always backing the wrong horse...

So, technical difficulties have put the brakes on the blog I wanted to post today (and yes, it was the Fountain Society blog. Seems my opinion and that book just aren't meant to be!) so I decided to go a little introspective and discuss a feeling that started to wash over me a few years ago. Somehow, I almost always seem to feel like I wind up backing the wrong horse. Not in the literal sense, mind. I don't gamble and know so little about sport I'm surprised I know which ball goes with which sport, and which sports don't have balls to begin with, but in the pop culture sense.

Now I'm pretty sure this feeling is just a big old pile of nonsense that my brain invented to account for the times where I've felt very much outside the groove. Afterall, I love the Marvel movies and who doesn't? But even then I loved the Edward Norton Hulk movie much more than some of the other, more beloved ones (indeed, I've seen Incredible Hulk torn to shreds and taken for granted as a terrible movie so many times it makes me sad) and while I enjoy The Avengers, I still think it's weaker than the standalone movies that led up too it.

This extends out to television and even ridiculous things like collectibles too. I thought Being Human handled it's complete cast change superbly and I was super invested in seeing where they were going with it. Turns out where they were going was nowhere as it was cancelled shortly after. When I was collecting the DC figurine collection, there was always some level of... I don't want to call it despair, but fatigue that it seemed to live in the shadow of its older brother the Marvel one. True at the end there was only a twenty figurine difference, but it always seemed as though the fanbase was a little more involved and enthusiastic on the other side of the fence.

And I think that's what it comes down too. The perception that the things I like simply aren't as popular as or successful as I feel they should be. Even Doctor Who, which dominates the Earth right now, leaves me cringing because I much prefer the Moffat/Smith era over any other modern era and yet we seem to be in the midst of a backlash at the moment. Not only the usual RTD and David Tennant lovefests, but accusations of sexism and poor writing techniques that, most of the time, RTD actively revelled in. If one more person claims that Moffat is a poorer writer because uses deus ex machinas as a crutch when Davies essentially ended a whole storyline with the 'I do believe in fairies!' sequence from Peter Pan turning the Doctor into space Jesus... I may have to start slapping people.

So, what is there to be done about this niggling little irrational feeling in the back of my head? Is it just a greater symptom of nerd culture, always being on the outside track while the rest of the world enjoys their long running soap operas and all dominating football broadcasts? Well, maybe. But maybe it's also about adjustment of expectation and focusing more on the things you personally love about something than what other people hate about it.

Sure it would've been nice to have more Being Human, but what we got was still some of the best British genre television I've ever seen. Yes the Marvel collection may have been more popular, but I still have over one hundred fantastic figurines and a lot of fond memories from getting them! As for Moffat's Who, four words - Day of the Doctor. And everything that surrounded it.

It seems the universe is also giving me something of a helping hand. You may recall my surprise at In The Flesh getting a second series (something I still haven't managed to catch due to my lengthy hospital stays) and further than this, Utopia is back too! Two highly interesting, really clever sci-fi series that I thought were gone after the first round and there they are, both continuing on. Add to that the recent news that Pacific Rim is lined up for a sequel and I'm a happy bunny. Sure, it'll never hit the giddy heights of Transformers money, but if it did, if it compromised to be that popular, it wouldn't be what I loved. And that's what's important, the things I love may never set the world on fire and they may be killed in their prime, but at least they were bloody excellent while they lasted!