Day: April 17, 2016

Catching up with comics!

It’s Sunday evening, so what better way to spend the time than to catch up with some comics? Having fallen in love with the TV series, I’ve been reading more Flash comics of late – I’m really enjoying the New 52 stuff, I have to say! But I also spent this afternoon with another incredible Aquaman tale! Let’s catch up…

Flash 4: Reverse picks up the story of the folks Flash saved from the Speed Force last time around. Turns out they’ve been dying, and Flash thinks it might have something to do with Kid Flash, prompting a mad dash across the globe as he tries to catch up with the teen. However, when the two eventually manage to talk, Flash realises his powers don’t come from the Speed Force. After further investigation, he thinks Dr Elias might be responsible. He puts Iris under police protection and goes to confront Elias, but finds out that it is in fact Reverse-Flash – none other than Daniel West! Daniel has been killing speedsters in an attempt to harvest their powers, so that he can travel back in time to kill his and Iris’ abusive father. Flash manages to save the day and Daniel is back in Iron Heights, where Iris tells him their father prompted her to become who she is today.

It’s a pretty involved story that sees a lot of character development that I really liked. Barry and Patty move in together, which was lovely, and Iris seems incredibly jealous. Speaking of Iris, Flash hides her connection to the Speed Force using a suit similar to his own, which made me convinced we’d be seeing her as Impulse, though nothing yet has happened along those lines. I actually really dislike the character of Iris West, much preferring Patty Spivot as the girl for Barry. Aw, yeah!

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Time for some more #Flash I think! #DCComics #New52

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Volume 5 was pretty great, I have to say! It starts with a story featuring Green Lantern, who is becoming another clear favourite character of mine! I’m actually holding off starting to read any of the Lantern stories for fear I’d need to buy a dozen other books. Anyway! The main story from this book, History Lessons, follows Flash as he thwarts a jewellery store robbery but stumbles onto a serial killer graveyard. Turns out to be that of the Broome Hill Butcher, who Flash believes may have been behind his mother’s murder. There are a few twists and turns as Flash delves into the past, both of the Gem Cities and also his own. Turns out the ghost of Ulysses Sutter, a prospector from the Midwest back in the day, has been murdering the descendants of his killer, Marshall Fletcher – the founder of the Gem Cities! And guess who’s a living descendant? Yep, Barry Allen. The book ends with the cryptic meeting between Barry’s father and Captain Frye, where Frye tells Henry that Barry can never find out who murdered Nora Allen…

This was a great story – while I loved the last book, which had a lot of inter-character development, this one deepened that somehow, particularly as we got to see some more of Barry’s relationship with his surrogate father, Captain Frye. The ghost/possession thing, which I’m not normally a fan of, was also really cool here, and seeing more of the history of the Gem Cities was also great. Generally, a great pair of books!

From my all-time favourite superhero to another favourite – Aquaman! Following the Throne of Atlantis crossover event (covered here!), Arthur is now fulfilling his duties as the King of Atlantis, though not all of his subjects are happy with this. Murk, still loyal to Orm, plots with Arthur’s half-sister Tula to help break Orm from Belle Reve, though the plot is only partially successful, as Atlantis is invaded by the Scavenger’s army of submarines just as the first king of Atlantis, Atlan, is revealed to be still alive (somewhat) and leads the penal colony of Xebel in an attack on the sunken city. Aquaman manages to lead an attack against Atlan, with the aid of Mera (so happy to see them reunited!) and resume the throne. The story The story ends with Nereus, the leader of Xebel, allying with Orm for an attack against Aquaman.

This book is tremendous! The story is so wide-ranging and intricate that I’m not even attempting to provide a summary, because I couldn’t possibly do it justice. You just have to read it and enjoy it for yourself – and trust me, you certainly will enjoy it! The artwork is incredible, with several double-page spreads of truly gorgeous art. We get a truly tremendous sense of history and scale here – this is the sort of comic book story that reminds me why I love the medium so damn much.

These three books have been really great, and I can’t wait to get round to reading more DC superhero comics. However, my blog turns 2 next week (can you believe?!) and I’ve got some research to do for that… it’s another theme week incoming, one that I hope you’ll all enjoy as much as me!

Stay tuned for awesome!!

Hobby Progress: week 15

Fifteen weeks in, and my laziness has returned! I’ve been pretty organised with my time over the last week, unfortunately that time-management didn’t make much room for painting! As a result, I have a pretty short blog for this week’s progress…

Hobby Progress 14

First of all, the Treeman Ancient is now finished, and looks absolutely beautiful, even if I do say so myself. He’s since been primed black, and stands proudly among a whole host of other things that have also been primed black but are awaiting further work. I absolutely love this model, however, and have been pondering getting a second, though I think I’m going to get this one sorted properly first. Super fun to put together, though – and as I said, it looks incredible!

Hobby Progress 14

I suppose these chaps do look a little misleading for being featured in this blog, as I’ve not really done that much work on them. They’re some of the Ogres/Ogors that I’ve been painting off-and-on for over a year now, and this week has seen me paint… their beards. Don’t get me wrong, I have like twelve of them on the go, so it’s still something of a decent undertaking. But yeah… One day I’m going to have an army of these guys – but that day will not be any day soon!

Hobby Progress 14

Let me take you back to January, for a moment, when I first assembled three of these Electro-Priests. I don’t honestly know why I didn’t assemble all five, but then it isn’t the first time I’ve done this. At any rate, I have been slowly working on the three, which had been primed in white roughly around the time my local GW store had a “Paint it White” event, for which I painted some White Scars. The Priests took a back seat, therefore, and I returned to them this week really for a bit of respite from weeks and weeks of painting Space Marines.

Unfortunately, the white primer had gone on really very grainy, and in painting their robes with Screaming Skull, it became really noticeable. I’ve persevered, but in doing the gold I became really annoyed with how chalky the primer coat is. Yesterday, therefore, I built up the remaining two and primed them black, and so far have done the skin and robes, as you can see. I do think that Chaos Black spray is just superb and wins over the white, even though I want to do the robes really light, so I guess it’ll just be multiple layers to get the tone right! In the picture above, both white-primed and black-primed Priests have had three coats of Screaming Skull on their robes, and I don’t really think there’s a lot of difference between the two. The skin I’ve painted in Eshin Grey, and have shaded it on the white-primed trio with Nuln Oil. In the lore, Electro-Priests are so consumed by the power of the Omnissiah they kinda burn up from the inside, and it has long been my plan to paint them with charcoal-grey skin to signify this process. The scarring I want to do in a lighter grey, and I’m currently undecided over whether to paint the details in red or green, hence the flash of green you can see on one of them.

I really love these models, the level of detailing is superb and, while some of them are a bitch to assemble, they look fantastic so are well worth it. Given how disappointed I am with the white primer, I’m currently weighing up whether I want to get another box, but I think that’ll also have to wait for the moment.

And finally, while we’re on the subject of building…

Hobby Progress 14

I assembled this chap this very day! I picked up some Lizardmen the other week and haven’t done anything with them up to this point, but had been pondering whether I want to get the Start Collecting box, given its insane value, but have so far resisted. I have to say, while I love the Lizardmen, the models are fairly old now, and the mouldlines are just awful, particularly on the torso of this one, which looks like the mould had slipped or something. Hence, for now, he is very much alone as I can’t face putting any more together right now! That said, I do still have two resin Lizardmen sort-of built up from my previous attempt at them…

At any rate, that’s pretty much all I’ve done this week. Work has been ridiculous, but I’ve also been trying to get on with my degree work, so haven’t had much time, as already stated, to get a lot of painting done. I have some time off in the coming week, however, so I hope that I might be able to get some more done by next week – in particular, I want to actually get some more models finished and off the work space (read: dining table) rather than having them scattered around all the time.

Until then, here’s an instagram post I shared yesterday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Space Marine; a selection of those that are pretty much complete!