Real life continues to be incredibly busy so I’m glad that I can take some time to talk about hobby stuff with you. I’m lucky in that my job typically isn’t especially busy and so it doesn’t take a lot out of me during the week, which lets me apply my energy elsewhere. The last couple of weeks have not been like that and each day, I’m busy from the start to the end of the workday and feel like I’ve barely put a dent in everything that needs to be done. My hope is that things finally start to settle down and I get a handle on everything that I need to work on but we’ll see if that actually happens or not. I know that work has left me pretty dead by the end of the day and so it feels like quite a few things have had to take a backseat lately, which is not a great feeling for me anyway.
Fortunately, I was still able to finish the last objective marker for Fallout this week which was mostly enjoyable to work on. One of the things that has been interesting is that while I’ve owned these objective markers for at least 4-5 years now, I chipped away at them very slowly and saved the ones I thought would be hardest for last. Working on this one felt pretty easy for me which made me realize that I’ve gotten quite a bit better as a painter over the last few years and haven’t always noticed the improvement. That is nice to see and what keeps me painting.
Truthfully, this mini has a few things that I wish could be even better but I didn’t want to put too much time into it since I don’t use these as much as I should in games as it is. The water bottle is certainly not as smooth as a display project would be, though the sculpt is hard to work with. I also had trouble getting a nice chipping effect on the missile launcher because it is rounded so that part is a bit of a letdown as well. The rest looks pretty strong though and I love the file cabinet, in particular. Here’s a look at the final objective marker from every angle.
The one thing I will say is that I love how Fallout has a lot of drab stuff and then there are pops of color here and there across the wasteland. This objective marker really embodies that and the water dispenser really attracts the eye and makes the whole thing visually interesting when it could be all grey and green, otherwise.
Since this is the last objective marker, I decided to give all of them a spin on the turntable with a funky tune as the background music. I’ll embed it here for those of you not on Instagram, that might enjoy seeing it.
I’ve been in a “let’s get some stuff done mode” the past couple of weeks and since I’m still feeling that way, I’ll keep on painting up stuff that has been sitting around for a while. Usually, this is the stuff that’s hardest to find motivation for but that hasn’t been the case of late so I’ll keep following my current enthusiasm for getting older stuff done until I get bored and feel like I need to mix things up.
While my reading time has been lessened because of work being busy, I have been reading Conan: The Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard and enjoyed the roughly first half of it so far. I’ve been debating whether it is worth writing up an article with some of my thoughts on the stories I read and possibly even discussing my dormant Conan wargaming idea as well. If that is something some of you are interested in, I’ll see if I can find the time to do so once I’ve finished reading the book.
Funnily enough, I also have read two issues of Conan comics fairly recently that were really good and so I thought I’d briefly mention them too. The Savage Sword of Conan Issue 16 has a prequel to an upcoming Conan “event” that involves the return of Thulsa Doom, which hopefully will be really good. This Conan story is interesting because it shows Conan’s youth and development from the eyes of a fellow Cimmerian. This Cimmerian wants to be as great of a warrior of Conan and you might even think that one of Conan’s kinsfolk could at least compete with him, but that isn’t what happens here. The different perspective helps you appreciate Conan in a new light and there are some decent battles here that would be pretty easy to recreate on the tabletop. Its basically undead vs. Cimmerians which is a good combo.
Next up is Conan the Barbarian Issue 32 which is a one-shot story that really delivered everything I love about the character. Conan is healing from a previous battle that was pretty grueling and he is approached by a woman who seems to be a priestess. She promises him enormous riches to help her cross a desert to her village. Interestingly, she only wants Conan to do it and not a group of people who happen to overhear which is a potential sign that things won’t go according to plan.
True to form, the ending does not go the way that Conan and likely, the reader expects. The woman has a more interesting backstory than you expect and the ending has some emotion to it, which is not always something you see from a Conan story. The fantastic artwork from Diabolical Doug Braithwaite is excellent and there are several panels I had to stop and take in. I don’t know that this story would make for a great wargaming scenario but there are several panels that make you want to create Conan’s world at the same time.
On a more somber note, I’d like to close by discussing the passing of Patrick Stewart. I’m not a huge Star Trek fan so I have never watched him as Jean-Luc Picard, which I know is a role he is beloved for. However, I am a big X-Men fan and so hearing of his passing hit me hard this week. Patrick Stewart was always entertaining when interviewed. He is intelligent, funny, and engaging to listen to. That is to say nothing of his acting talent, which was extraordinary.
But also, Patrick Steward embodied everything about Charles Xavier and played that character so well. I think the X-Men movies, by and large, are pretty underrated, even by myself. There were I believe six of the “mainline” movies and four of the six are really good movies. Only two are stinkers and both of them are just mediocre. They’re not awful, but they aren’t nearly as good as the rest either. The anchor of the X-Men movies is Patrick Stewart because he is just an inherently good man. Professor X is essentially a mutant Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi (maybe a bit more violent, but you know what I mean) and that is really hard to make interesting and likable in fiction. Of course, some comic books have Charles Xavier making terrible decisions or letting ego trip him up, because the writers need to create drama and fresh problems for the X-Men, but by and large, Charles Xavier is everything we should hope to be in life. When I think of that character, I immediately think of Patrick Stewart, one of the few men who manages to make being bald look cool, for example. Of course, I’m not saying Patrick Steward was like MLK off-screen, but seeing a man who played that role so well, who has now left us, is certainly deflating in these troubled times.
My bold prediction is that there will come a day, possibly sooner than we think, where X-Men will be relaunched now that Disney owns it and the movies we know have run their course. I think whoever reboots X-Men will have an incredibly tall task finding someone who can embody the goodness and intelligence of Professor X, the way Stewart did. Its also very possible that you might hear people my age or older saying things like, “Patrick Stewart will always be Charles Xavier to me, because he did it so well.” That makes his loss this week all the more keen but it is also a fitting tribute to the man who brought the noble character to life on screen for us.
