The Female of the Species

There's no more certain way to drive certain segments of Warhammer 40,000 fandom into frothing rage than to mention female Space Marines. For some reason -- and you'll see people jumping backwards through hoops to provide in-universe justifications -- female Space Marines are Not Okay.

Well, they are fine by me.

In part that's because I try not to be a sexist bigot, but in part it's because of this painting:

(Image by John Richardson -- not the comedian, probably -- and borrowed from the Commodore Format Archive.)

The maniacs who go all wobbly at the idea of a female Space Marine are also the sorts of people who would never accept this image as evidence, not least because it's a few steps removed from canon -- it's an image illustrating a review of a computer game adaptation of a board game based on 40K -- but it was enough for me.

I can see at least one female Space Marine in there, probably two, and twenty-five years of all-male imagery from Games Workshop isn't going to erase that from my mind.

Rumour has it there is a major redesign on the way for GW's iconic Space Marines; the miniatures will get bigger, and the armour will be more ornate. That's all fine, but wouldn't it be nice if some of the models had female features?