Comic-Book Heroes & Villains Night

A night devoted to everyone's favourite caped crusaders and helmeted hoodlums where we asked people to nominate their favourite Heroes and Villains, then tell us why they thought they should be honoured by being included in our all-new Hall of Heroes or Vault of Villains.

Competition was fierce as only five places were available in each with everyone voting for the eventual winners. The results were surprising, with no sign of Batman, Superman or Spiderman and with some very unusual suggestions.

The Hall of Heroes

1. THOR (12 Votes)

"Enough Talk!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He fires lightning bolts.

2. He has an awesome hammer that returns to his hand.

3. There's a large Viking stood behind me who looks like he might kill me if I don't vote him in.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He's mythical.

Weapons/Powers: Thor's hammer, Mjolnir

Who is he?:

A Marvel Superhero created by Stan Lee based on the Thor of Norse mythology. Thor's Father Odin decides his son needs to be taught humility and so places Thor (without memories of godhood) into the body of a partially disabled medical student, Donald Blake.

Thor's arch enemy is his step-brother Loki, who returns to Earth repeatedly to try to destroy him.

2. REID FLEMING - World's Toughest Milkman (11 Votes)

"Why don't you shut up?"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He's a working class hero.

2. He likes 'sticking it to the Man'

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. None

Weapons/Powers: Milk Truck

Who is he?:

Reid Fleming was a comic strip drawn by David Boswell in the late 1970s. Reid is not a superhero, he's just a regular guy who has to deal with grouchy managers, angry customers and mad dogs, all without once missing his favourite TV show. Reid has what today we might call 'anger management issues' and on the very first page of his comic he beats someone up for making fun of his Milk Truck, drinks a bottle of whiskey and pours milk into someone's fish tank.

His irascible manner, refusal to do anything he is told and ability to talk his way out of any situation with his boss, Mr. O'Clock, makes Reid a hero of an entirely different sort!

3. The TICK (8 Votes)

"Not in the face!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. Spoooooon!

2. He has a sidekick named Arthur.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. None

Weapons/Powers: He's nigh-indestructible with super-strength (and very very stupid)

Who is he?:

The Tick began life in 1986 as a newsletter mascot for a chain of comic stores in the Boston area. He is an absurdist spoof on comic-book superheroes and span off into a comic book series in 1988 before gaining mainstream popularity through an animated TV series on Fox in 1994.

He protects a city called 'The City' and travels about by running and jumping over rooftops, causing damage to the rooftops as he goes. He is well-intentioned, friendly, good-natured, high-spirited and prone to quipping odd remarks and 'inspirational' speeches filled with bizarre metaphors. He is also know for his nonsensical battle cry, "Spooooooon!", which he decided upon one day while eating breakfast.

4. DAREDEVIL (8 Votes)

"Bullseye!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. I dare you to call him disabled.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. Ben Affleck

2. Spent too much time 'angsting'

3. He's a lawyer

Weapons/Powers: Billy Club, Heightened Senses

Who is he?:

Another Marvel Superhero in our list, also created by Stan Lee. Matt Murdock is blinded by a radioactive substance that falls from an oncoming vehicle. Despite not being able to see anymore, the radioactive exposure heightens his remaining senses beyond normal human ability (yes, that old chestnut!) 

5. WOLVERINE - (8 Votes)

"As Mark Twain said... I forget what the hell Twain said, but I ain't dead."

Reasons why they should go in:

1. 'Cos he's such a badass.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He's a weapon who can't think for himself.

2. Adamantium is named after Adam Ant

Weapons/Powers: Regeneration/Adamantium skeleton.

Who is he?:

The third Marvel Comics superhero in our Hall of Fame, Wolverine is James Howlett, born in the 1880s and commonly known as Logan. Wolverine has a special healing ability which not only allows him to recover from virtually any wound, disease or toxin but which also slows down his ageing process, enabling him to live beyond the normal human life span. His powerful healing factor enabled the supersoldier programme Weapon X to bond the near indestructible alloy adamantium to his skeleton and claws without killing him.

Wolverine was typical of the many tough anti-authority anti-heroes that emerged in American popular culture after the Vietnam War. His willingness to use deadly force and his brooding nature became standard characteristics for comic-book anti-heroes by the end of the 1980s and as a result the character became the clear favourite for fans of the increasingly popular X-Men franchise.

Also-rans:

Howard the Duck:

1. He's a Duck

2. Ran for President

3. Master of quack-fu

4. Officially a non-person

5. Classic Film

Hit Girl

1. Violent

2. Violet

3. The Banana Splits

Too Much Coffee Man

1. He has a coffee cup for a head

2. His sidekick is called Espresso Boy

3. He loves coffee... and loves doing as little as possible

---------------------

The Vault of Villains

1. MAGNETO (15 Votes)

"You must be Wolverine. That remarkable metal doesn't run through your entire body, does it?"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He is Quickfire's Father.

2. He can control Wolverine's body.

3. Even when working with others he has his own agenda.

4. He's Polish.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

None

Weapons/Powers: The ability to control metal

Who is he?:

Another Marvel character, the arch nemesis of Charles Xavier of the X-Men. Max Eisenhardt is a powerful mutant with the ability to generate and control magnetism. He was born some time in the 1920s to a middle-class German Jewish family whose father, Jakob Eisenhardt was a highly decorated World War I veteran. Surviving hardship and discrimination during the Nazi rise to power Magneto later becomes determined to keep such atrocities from happening to mutant-kind.

He gathers a group of angry and disenfranchised mutants, including his own son and daughter Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch and forms the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Side note: Darth Vader Vs Magneto

Magneto: So that life support suit keeps you alive does it? Not any more.

2. ROB (12 Votes)

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He's Evil.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He's never actually appeared in a comic and isn't fictional.

Weapons/Powers: Ability to drink vodka which looks like shampoo.

Who is he?:

Er, we're not quite sure how this happened, but I think due to a massive administrative error we might have accidentally voted Rob into the second slot in our Vault of Villains.

3. The RIDDLER (11 Votes)

"Riddle me this, riddle me that, who's afraid of the big, black bat?"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. Can a bad guy have more fun?

2. His name's 'Edward Nigma', E. Nigma "geddit!"

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. Green Lycra

Weapons/Powers: Possesses extreme ingenuity in decoding and formulating puzzles of all kinds.

Who is he?:

Our first representative from the D.C. canon, the Riddler is a regular supervillain in the Batman franchise. He is obsessed with riddles, puzzles and word games. He delights in forewarning both Batman and the police of his capers by sending them complex clues. With this obsessive-compulsion (in one strip he tried to refrain from leaving a riddle but failed), the Riddler's crimes are flamboyant and ostentatious.

Unlike most of the other prominent members of Batman's rogues gallery, the Riddler is not a psychopathic murderer; rather he is a malignant narcissist with an ego that rivals or may even surpass that of the Joker. He commits crimes in order to flaunt his intellectual superiority and a large portion of his crimes are non-violent in nature.

4. DR. DOOM (10 Votes)

"Aaaaaah!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. Doom!

2. Kneelegporedoom!?

3. DOOM!!!

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

None

Weapons/Powers: A master of Scientology

Who is he?:

Dr. Victor Von Doom is a remote viewer who specialises in predicting utter crap. In 1983 he was called into learning Remote Viewing technique under Ingo Swan. Many of his readings were unsatisfactory. In 1989 he started a private company to teach the technique to the public sector. He currently still owns the world.

Due to being the eldest direct descendant of Chivalry Hawkins, Dr. Doom is the current ruler of Latveria and the result of an indiscretion involving a Latverian Witch named Rita and Elvis Presley. Victor studied the dark arts of Dianetics and learned all he could about Scientology. His younger sister died at the age of 6 from severe brain haemorrhaging as the result of a massive head trauma from a donkey punch delivered by Brian Peppers.

5. DARTH VADER (9 Votes)

"Luke, I am your Father."

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He's Luke's Dad.

2. He can use 'the force' and not get an ASBO

3. Only way to get sci-fi included in this list.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He gave us Luke.

2. NOOOOOO! (Angry at the sky)

Weapons/Powers: The Force, Lightsabre

Who is he?:

Okay, so we're not quite sure what he's doing in a list of 'COMIC-BOOK' heroes either, but he has certainly appeared in comic-book adaptations of the Star Wars saga. As a Villain, he is certainly up there with Dr. Doom, Magneto and Rob. 

Also-rans:

Judge Dredd:

1. An anti-hero but also a Villain, a violent oppressor.

2. He's a British creation

Edward Cullen:

1. Worst Vampire, Ever!

2. Ruined Vampires for all time.

3. He sparkles.

Galactus:

1. He can wear purple and blue and get away with it.

2. He has power cosmic

3. He has to destroy planets to survive

Starbase Leicester’s Top 5 Retro Games

We recently held our first Retro Games Night (oh, the arguments about what qualifies as Retro!) and I hope we do this again because I re-discovered a lot of great games which I’d forgotten about. It’s staggering to think that I’ve been playing video games for over 25 years! I can remember playing Chuckie Egg on a BBC Micro in the computer room when I was supposed to be doing my computer homework. Whenever the teacher came in everyone would hit ‘reset’, but if you were too slow you’d get thrown out for “misusing the computers”. I never did pass that computer exam, thus saving me from a lifetime of misery working in IT.

5:  Asteroids (Atari 1979)

I didn’t play this much at the time since in 1979 I hadn’t even seen a computer, let alone dreamed of ever owning one, but Arcade Games were around. Unfortunately the places they were in were places that a nine year old me wasn’t allowed to go.

This was one of the first games to use ‘vectors’ instead of sprites, which meant it had a very smooth and slick gameplay. What I love about it is the simplicity. It’s such a pure gaming experience. Your ship floats around the screen and spins gracefully, spitting out white dots at the asteroids floating around you. You are in a sort of dance with them, constantly dodging the inevitable collision. There’s only one ending; your ship hits something and explodes. The only unlockable is the next screen, with more rocks to avoid and in the end it’s all about that hi-score table. - Garak

4:  Descent II (Interplay 1996)

An FPS game with two distinct differences; 1, you piloted a space ship and 2, because of this you could move in all directions, and possibly end up flying upside-down.

The plot: Well ok being a sequel means the plot made no sense unless you'd played the first or at least heard of it, but essentially you're a mercenary being employed by a huge ore mining company to investigate (or descend into) several mines where the robots have gone, well, mad.

I'd played the demo of this, so wanted to play the full game. My word it was hard, especially when the robots start firing flash missiles at you (think flash bang grenades with out the bang and missiles not grenades). One of the best bits was the use of a small help bot, which could help you detect weapons, health, keys and the like and an annoying thief bot that'd run up to you, snatch any current weapon you had and promptly run off, making you chase it to get your stuff back.

There was a sequel to this which was more of the same, but it involved a bit of surface fighting as well. - Jake Cobb

3: UFO: Enemy Unknown (MicroProse 1994)

UFO is just one of those 'retro' games like Elite or Doom which everyone bangs on about as being one of the greatest games - but it's a title well deserved. The game is very simple really; build a base, run it, look for UFOs, then either shoot them down or wait for them to land and go to the crash site.

All the combat is turn based so it's a lot like playing a game of Space Hulk or something, but if you're the sort of person who likes to take your time with things, plan out your pieces on the board, decided what equipment to take, this is the game for you. It’s more like chess than a full blown shooter, but chess where your opponent can use mind control on your pieces and make them lob grenades inside your drop-ship!

The clever part is that as you go through the game and find stuff you can research the alien tech and start using it for yourself. You also start to find out where the aliens are coming from, what each race’s function within the alien society is and most importantly what each of their weaknesses in combat are. (My particular favourite being the very tough huge beasts which it turns out have highly flammable fur.)

If you don't perform well enough at combating the invasion in the various countries who are funding you (you're sort of like Torchwood & UNIT all in one) they will gradually cut their funding and you will struggle to pay to keep your operation running. Some countries might even go over to the alien’s side and you agents will find bases which you can then go on a mission to capture.

Conversely the aliens can attack your base, which can happen when your main combat forces are out on a mission, leaving you with whoever and whatever you left behind to defend it - so if you gave all the good weapons to your team and sent them off on a mission, you end up having to defend your base with 5 wounded men with pistols and stun-rods.

The thing this game has, and the reason people are still playing it now, is really excellent gameplay. You control everything from how much ammo you have to where you build your base and success or failure is all down to you! It feels like you have total control and though I’m sure a lot of people who hate these sort of resource management games would rather just play a basic ‘shoot-em-up’, the success or failure of each mission really can come down to what standard of troops you have (Rookies tend to panic when they see a 7 foot green alien for the first time) what weapons you’ve researched and whether you remembered to pack the electroflares. - Garak

2: Final Fantasy VIII (Square 1999)

It was the 'first' game to get me into consoles and I started off watching instead of playing. I lived in a rented house that had three of the four people living there that were interested in the game. It was played in the lounge instead of watching TV, whilst people smoked and drank lots and lots of coke. (We also used to inadvertantly play “guess which coke can I’ve put my cigarette out in?" which is why now I always dent the can that i've been drinking from, when i finish it.)

So Final Fantasy 8 is the epitome of my retro fixations. It still plays bloody brilliantly, spurned on by the epic storyline. The graphics were a huge step forward from the blocky figures that adorned Final Fantasy 7 and the FMVs still look as good now as they did then. I payed £8.00 for it from the PSN store (as a download) and it's not surprising that some people pay in excess of £20.00 for a physical copy of this game. - Kaltak

1: Steel Battalion (Capcom 2003)

I've overheard many a conversation and read many articles about 'real gamers' in the past few weeks. These range from a few words about the “stupid fadish wii” to how “we’re sick of party games.” These ‘real gamers’ love intense action, incredible graphics, immersive multiplayer and the thrill of pwning some noob. They buy the latest kit and the latest, most expensive 'collectors' games. 

Yet few have ever played - or owned - Steel Battalion.

Steel Battalion is one of the few experience games. The kind of game that should be number 1 on any 'games to play before you die' lists. Created by Capcom for the original Xbox, Steel Battalion is similar to another old classic -  Mech Warrior. Except for a few crucial differences.

First, Mech Warrior didn't retail at £200. Second, Mech Warrior was rubbish, and lastly you never had to assemble the controller for Mech Warrior. 

Behold Steel Battalion's controller. It was a work of art. A colossus. A real gamers pad where you'd play on your widescreen telly, 5.1 booming behind a control desk. The ultimate in immersive gaming. 

It was a hard game - there was a long start-up procedure to follow, the VTs (vartical tanks - mechs) were difficult to get to grips with but it was utterly rewarding as you played through fulfilling missions. The online play was a laugh too. 

Inevitably, any comment on the game always comes back to the controls. They came in 4 parts, the pedals to control acceleration and righting, the central pad for radio and readout, the gears (which you actually have to be pretty strong to get 'in') and the two joysticks - one for targeting and one for movement. The control pad came with an Allan key and cables to connect them up.

The difficulty was in the controls mixed with the unforgiving combat. The VT's torso operates independently of the legs, so you can be walking north and shooting south. The HUD of your mech would have a camera for this which you have to use to target the enemy with a vast array of weapons, customisable before the mission. From thumping railguns to spritely missiles; Dolby made the difference - in some cases a pop behind your left ear would be the only indication that a prowling marine unit was pummelling you with RPGs.

Every button did something. From the radio controls to call for backup or to berate your friends in online-multiplayer to the eject button - encased to prevent you from doing it by accident. If you were about to die, and you didn't eject, the game would start over from mission 1. This game spanks all other 'real gamers' games in terms of difficulty, but that was part of its job - why should a game that costs £200 be easy? Mastering it was the most fulfilling gaming moment I ever had.

Play it before you die because there will be nothing else like it again; truly 'retro' for that reason alone. (Oh yeah, and it is the only game to date where I had to read the manual - just to turn the VerticalTank on - the switch had to be set in the right way before you fired the three point ignition!) - Blane

Also worth checking out:

Rez (United Game Artists 2001) This ‘Cyberpunk’ inspired game combined gorgeous graphics with a thumping soundtrack, imagine if Kandinsky had directed Tron and then got Underworld to write the music. - Kaltak

Hard Drivin’ (Atari 1988) This hit the arcades just when I was learning to drive and I swear it helped me with my clutch control! Based on a proper driving simulator it was the first game to have force feedback steering, a gearshift and a clutch. It was very difficult to even make 1 lap without crashing, even landing off a ramp too quickly would wreck the car. - Garak

Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998) The highly underrated tale of lost life as you take control of Manny Calavera to solve generally annoying puzzles, and collect many obscure and pointless objects. Initially you are employed by the Department of Death to help souls that recently shuffled the mortal coil travel to the Ninth Underworld as their final resting place. But, as tends to be with Lucas Arts, there are other things afoot. It has an excellent film noir feel to it, and has the Lucas Arts humour running throughout, although jokes are sometimes more subtle than the humour in Monkey Island, for example. - Kendorage

Eastercon 2010 Report

This year's Eastercon, the 61st British National Science-Fiction Convention (aka Odyssey 2010), was held at Heathrow in London. It was my first proper science-fiction convention, apart from a few GenCons (now sadly demised) which were basically just gaming events.

Eastercon can trace its roots right back to 1948 and since then different groups have bid to run it each year. This means it moves around quite a lot, with one venue sometimes becoming a favourite for a few years before the whole thing changes. The advantage of this system is that if one team does a good job organising it they are more likely to win the bid for other years, and vice versa.

The first problem for me was that, due to the not inconsiderable expense of going to one of these things, I was going on my own; nobody I knew was willing to shell out the £200 plus for a ticket and accommodation. I have occasionally gone to GenCon on my own, but haven't really minded as the nature of games means that you quickly meet up with people, or groups of people, who you like and get along with. I also know a few people in the gaming community, especially a few of the London clubs, but for some reason at Eastercon this didn't happen and I was faced with a whole new gang of strangers.

I have often wondered what type of people go to Science-Fiction conventions and so watched and listened to a few groups in the various activities with interest. It seemed like most of them were exactly the kind of stereotype you would expect. In fact, if you were to draw a Venn diagram and add the sets 'Overweight' 'Male' 'White' 'Bearded' and 'I.T. Professional', you would find about 85% of the attendees right in the middle, with the other 10% in four out of five of these categories. (ie. Overweight, Female, White, I.T. Professionals.)

The programme for the 5 day event wasn't as limited as this demographic might suggest though. Topics as wide ranging as 'World-building', 'Towel Origami', 'Writing Video Games' and (most controversially) 'Rope Bondage' were all on the list of events. In fact, for me this illustrated the other main problem for the con; there was just too damn much going on. At any one time there were anything up to eight events running simultaneously throughout the hotel and the venue's layout was such that most of it happened in function rooms tucked away down narrow corridors where you would never find them if you didn't know they were there. To give you some idea of just how much was going on at once, even though there were in excess of 1,300 people attending you never saw more than about 50 at a time, the others presumably being hidden away in hundreds of tiny rooms. (Er, actually that's what a hotel is right?) Just finding an event was exhausting, pushing through groups of people up or down stairs, so that after about half a day I felt too worn out to care whether I wanted to miss 'Information Decay' in order to see 'the Physics of Weapons' and simply retired to the games room (where I was happiest.)

The hotel, the Radisson Edwardian, being right next door to Heathrow airport, was extraordinarily 'posh'. I did feel more than a little out of place simply walking through the wood-panelled hallways and along marbled corridors. This place felt 'expensive' and under normal circumstances I think I would have been skilfully intercepted about 20 metres from the entrance and politely but firmly thrown back out onto the street. 

The events themselves were not entirely what I expected. Most of the ones I attended involved a panel of 4 or 5 "experts" talking on the subject on the programme unscripted for a few minutes before interrupting each other and inviting comments from the audience. This gave most of the panels a sort of conversational feel, with no real direction in mind. Occasional prompts from the moderator would pull the discussion back on track but all too often it seemed like we weren't really doing much more than exchanging information between audience and panel, rather than listening to the experts tell us what they knew. With the time limit for each of these being set to 55 minutes, there didn't seem to be an awful lot of time for any in-depth analysis either and so most of the time I came away no more knowledgeable on the subject than when I had gone in.

One notable exception was the panel on '2000ad and its Influence'. This was originally to have featured the 2000ad artist Carlos Ezquerra, but sadly due to family health problems he was not able to attend the Convention and so SF author Alastair Reynolds was drafted in as a last minute replacement. The other two members of the panel were David Bishop, who edited the comic during the 2nd half of the 90s and into the 'eponymous' millennium and the writer Mike Carey who had worked on 2000ad among other comics.

This event was much improved for the fact that the panel talked at length without any intervention from the audience and we learned a great deal of insight on the comic, from the early days of Carlos' work on Dredd and his falling out with the editor, the Judge Dredd movie, the lawsuit with the makers of Hardware and right up to the passing of 'that date'. Because there were just three members on the panel, two of whom actually had first hand knowledge of working on 2000ad, I felt that I was hearing something really insightful that I would not have heard anywhere else. When the panel did eventually open up the discussion to questions from the audience, they were good questions which I wanted to know the answers to, possibly because I plucked up the courage to ask a couple myself! (I am hopefully going to turn the notes I took during this discussion into an article on the subject, watch this space.)

The other high-point of the whole weekend for me was the screening of the new Doctor Who. At 6pm a huge crowd of about 600 people packed into the big hall where a screen and sound system had been set up in preparation for the big event. As we sat gazing at a muted 'wipeout' the anticipation mounted and when the titles for the new series finally rolled a huge cheer went up! The sensation of watching the episode was amplified as every gag got a big laugh and you could feel that the crowd had a lot of affection and good-will towards the new Doctor. The feeling grew through the episode and when it got to the part where all the previous Doctors are shown in sequence, with Matt Smith bursting through the image of David Tennant and advising the aliens to "Run!" the levels of enthusiasm were practically hysterical (well, hysterical for British people at least). I overheard a few remarks after the screening was over and every one of them was positive.

By Sunday I had pretty much had my fill of sf geekery and was feeling more lost than ever among the large groups of strange I.T. Professionals (or perhaps I mean the strange groups of large I.T. Professionals). I had singularly failed to make friends with anyone and was still wandering around on my own not really sure what I was doing there. I also felt as though I had 'missed out' on a lot of stuff simply because I hadn't physically been able to be in 3 or 4 locations simultaneously (maybe Quantum Computing for Beginners could have helped me learn to superimpose my quantum states.) I hadn't attended the Masquerade Ball as I hadn't prepared a costume and anyway, didn't fancy standing in the corner pretending to look interested in a pot-plant (Lieutenant Barclay style.)

I think had the whole convention been a bit smaller, with less going on and fewer, longer, events focused on one or two things, it would have been easier to cope with. As it was, it felt like attending 7 conventions at once. Too much breadth and not enough depth seemed to be the problem for me.

Next years Eastercon is already being planned and will be in Birmingham, which is doable as a day-trip from Leicester or perhaps an overnight stay for a weekend, which will hopefully make it a little bit more affordable for my SBL buddies. There's also Redemption '11 which will be in Coventry and not too far for a little away mission.