Peace Be Upon You!

Vimanarama by Grant Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overlooked at the time of publication in part because everyone was gushing over the contemporaneous We3, I suspect Vimanarama was also a bit too niche and weird for mainstream -- largely American -- comic audiences. A British-Pakistani protagonist? Ancient Sanskrit epics reskinned as Kirbyesque adventures? Flip-flopping between kitchen-sink comedy-drama and apocalyptic battles? It was probably all a bit too difficult for some to parse back in 2005.

I love it. It feels a bit like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with an ordinary British family -- and nothing seems more ordinary and British than the Pakistani family running the corner shop -- thrust into a genre for which they are not prepared, their personal anxieties and preoccupations clashing with the serious business of magic supermen battling in the skies. Which is, of course, not serious at all, because it's all very silly in comparison to real life. Which is sort of the point. Anyway.

It's also funny, but in an understated, laid back way. There are a couple of jokes and smart quips in there, but the humour arises in most part from people acting like people in the face of great adversity. All of the characters feel real, except for the magic supermen, who are stupid and over the top, but again, that's part of the point.

Philip Bond is one of my favourite comic artists anyway, but he and colourist Brian Miller do a great job. Although Bond has a cartoony style, he nonetheless has a talent for capturing ordinariness that other artists cannot match; yes, his people are cartoons, but they are cartoons of real people, which doesn't make as much sense as I thought it did now I'm writing it down. His style can also accommodate the more fantastical subject matter, and his comic timing and storytelling is perfect.

My only criticism of the book is that the last few pages feel a bit rushed and vague, but then I suppose the story isn't really about those characters and what happens to them, so a brief summary and update is good enough. I'm sorry if that is itself vague, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers.

Anyway. Read Vimanarama. It's great.

View all my reviews

(I'm not sure I will continue to post reviews like this; it's a test of Goodreads integration.)

More More Barbarians

Here are some more pictures from Barbarians of the Ruined Earth, which is still coming soon, probably.

Shocking

Short Stuff

While I have been locked inside my house, I have been drawing dwarves for an upcoming Lamentations of the Flame Princess book.

I have been drawing some other things too. More soon.

Happy Mother's Day, Yes?

It's #drawdeathsheadday and it's also Mother's Day, so here's Death's Head and his "mum", Pyra.

Hanging With Mr Cooper

I mean, one of them might be called "Cooper". Maybe.

Like Bob Ross, Except Not

I drew a thing. I hope you like houses and trees and mountains.

This is from something that I think will be properly announced soon.

Terminus Est

Okay then.

As expected, the match against the Norse team, my final game of the season, resulted in a loss. It did not go as badly as I expected, so that's something.

The Purple People Eaters were going into the match with a number of players missing, including vampire star player Gary, and no substitutes. The opposing team was of a much higher team value -- Blood Bowl's rough metric of team quality -- so I was able to recruit a star player -- Wilhelm Chaney, again -- and a wizard.

I used the wizard early, which was probably a mistake as he failed to achieve much and was probably better as a deterrent. Chaney was better; I relied on him less as a playmaker this time and instead used him as a general distraction and nuisance. My opponent deployed resources to keep the werewolf caged, which gave the rest of my team some wiggle room.

Overall the match was much less one-sided than I expected. I lost, of course, but I got a lot of possession, and did pull off a late and risky passing play that led to a touchdown -- and star player points for my vampires! -- so at least it wasn't a total rout.

Final Score: North Laine Nihilists 2 - Purple People Eaters 1

So that's the end of my first ever season of competitive Blood Bowl! I did not achieve my goal of at least one win but I did manage three draws, which isn't too bad. Despite the overall results, I feel that I'm okay at defensive play -- although there's obvious room for improvement -- but I need to get much better at attacking.

My main issue, I think, is my general cautiousness. Blood Bowl is probably about 50% field position and 50% risk management, and I find myself reluctant to push forward and tend more towards avoiding risk entirely. This is a problem and does not lead to successful play. I found that in this last game, when I had little to lose, I was more confident -- or reckless -- in getting my players up the pitch and my game went better as a result.

This is obvious to any coach with half a brain cell but it took me ten games to realise. Sitting behind the halfway line and turtling is a good way to defend -- until the opponent breaks your line -- but going forward and putting multiple players in your opponent's half is what forces them to make decisions, commit their own players, potentially change their plans, and perhaps make mistakes. It's also much more fun.

In terms of the risk management, I think vampires tend towards the unpredictable and unreliable as it is so I probably should lean into that rather than try to avoid it. They are going to cock up anyway so I may as well embrace that rather than letting it stifle me.

Going into Game 10 I wasn't sure if I was going to take the Purple People Eaters into the next season or if I would drop them for another team. I think I will stick with the vampires, because I would still like to get one win with them, and I think I'm getting closer to working out how to do that. Vampires are also great fun to play; I wanted an unpredictable team because I wanted to be surprised as I played, and the bloodsuckers have lived -- ho ho -- up to that expectation.

I have ended the season with a coffer full of gold coins and a changing room full of broken and injured players, so I have some staffing decisions to make, but bring on Season VI!

Battle Scene #100

I believe this will be appearing in print at some point, but I'm not sure when or where. I'll update the post when I know.

So... Much... Head

Be aware, this is a nerdy post, even by my standards.

By my count, there are at least four versions of Death's Head running around the Marvel Universe. This matters to no one but me and about three other people, but it's keeping me awake at night, so let's go for a deep dive into some obscure continuity!

(Just to be clear, I'm not cataloguing every version of the character; rather I'm trying to work out how many versions of him are active in the 616 reality.)

• Original Death's Head
  The character that was introduced back in 1987, then bounced through various licensed comics, his own series, crossovers, and many cameos. He is supposed to be destroyed, assimilated, and replaced by Death's Head II -- see below -- in 2020, but a combination of Marvel's sliding timeline and DH's own time-jumping antics means that the 2020 of 1992 is now the alternate Earth-8140 and Original DH is safe from replacement. Probably.


• Death's Head II
  Originally the original in a new body. He's also a time-and-dimension hopper and is active in the current Marvel Universe, at one point in 2008 working for Pete Wisdom's MI13 against Dracula. Yup. Since DHII has the personality of the original -- sort of -- I'll count him.


• Big Death's Head
  This version appeared in S.W.O.R.D. in 2009 and is somewhere near the beginning of his career. He is Transformer-sized but hasn't yet picked up the "freelance peace-keeping agent" tic, suggesting that this appearance is from before his travels into the Transformers universe in Transformers (UK) #113 in 1987.
  
  Big Death's Head also appears in Iron Man (v5) in 2013. He is wearing his blue outfit, which confuses matters as he gets that after being shrunk, destroyed, and rebuilt, but it's written by Kieron Gillen, who also wrote S.W.O.R.D. so I'm going to assume it's supposed to be the same version.
  
  There is an argument that this one should be called Original Death's Head because it's the youngest non-flashback version of the character, but that kind of thinking makes my head hurt.


• Avenging Death's Head
  In Avenging Spider-Man #17 in 2013, the Time Variance Authority contracts Death's Head to deal with disruptions to the timeline. DH is human-sized and is wearing his blue outfit, which puts this appearance somewhere between his 1988 solo series and the present. His employment with the TVA suggests that from DH's perspective, this appearance is from around Fantastic Four (v1) #338 in 1990, but I admit that's speculation.
  
  
  
  Anyway, Spider-Man punches his head off, but the TVA summons DH again, from a few seconds earlier in his personal timeline. This time -- ho ho -- things go better, and DH walks off into the sunset.
  
  Given the TVA's involvement I don't think this is Original Death's Head, but rather a timeline-diverged version of the character. Or it is ODH, but at some point he goes back and rejoins his own timeline. For the purposes of how many Death's Heads there are in the current 616 continuity, I'm not sure it matters.
  
  Then it gets timey-wimey. We have seen in Death's Head (v1) #10 that beheading is at most an inconvenience to DH, which is confirmed by an easily-missed bonus panel on the "next issue" page of the Spider-Man comic, so it appears there are two versions of this version of DH active!

I reckon that makes four, maybe five, at a stretch six, versions of the same character active in the 616 Marvel Universe, a situation that looks like an excellent premise for a team-up story. One day Marvel will let me write Death's Head Team-Up and I will write that story, but it is not this day.

But we are not finished yet! For the sake of completeness, because if I were reading this post I would probably ask about them:

• Death's Head 3.0
  I read the series in 2006 but I have no real idea how this character connects to the original. I'm not sure anyone does. He's some sort of off-shoot of DHII but there was a suggestion at the end of the story that he was a precursor to Original Death's Head but that was Earth-6216 but then a bunch of unconnected but identical drone versions appeared in an Earth-616 Hulk story and I think we'd all be better off forgetting DH 3.0.


• Death's Head 4.0
  
  
  This unit appears in Death's Head (v2) in 2019 as an intended replacement for Original Death's Head, but is superseded by Vee and -- spoilers! -- destroyed by ODH.


• Death's Head 5.0/V/"Vee"
  
  
  Also introduced in Death's Head (v2), Vee is supposed -- like DHII -- to replace Original Death's Head but develops his own personality and hangs around with the Young Avengers instead. Unlike DHII there's no continuity or transfer of consciousness between him and the original, so I'm happy to consider this a different character with a similar name.
  
  (In the final pages of Death's Head (v2) Vee opens a door into what looks like a cupboard and behind the door is what looks like an inactive Original Death's Head, but then in the next panel we see ODH active and well elsewhere, so I don't know what that bit is about.)


• Darkhawk Death's Head
  
  
  This fellow appears in Infinity Countdown: Darkhawk in 2018 and I think he's supposed to be Original Death's Head but he looks weird as heck. The version in S.W.O.R.D. also looked off-model but at least he was a robot; I'm not sure what is going on with this more biological-looking version. I will assume he's ODH until confirmed otherwise.

Should further versions of Death's Head pop up -- which is a strong possibility given the way the character bounces about -- I will update this post, but I think four -- or more! -- concurrent versions of the same character is more than enough to be getting on with, yes?