PROJECT 60: Settlers Are Arriving and The Town Is Growing

My first collection of painted gunfighters for Dead Man's Hand

PROJECT 60 - and particularly my plans for the Wild West skirmish game, Dead Man's Hand - is really gaining momentum now.

Today, I received back my first batch of painted miniatures from my painter, Matt. You can get a taste of what they were like unpainted here and check out the pictures in this post to see what an amazing transformation Matt's skill with a brush has brought to them.

They are posed outside my latest building acquisition: a completed and painted MDF Western blacksmiths (with stable), a great purchase from eBay.

This will sit nicely with my nameless saloon, and the other buildings I have yet to build myself (those that came in the Dead Man's Hand Redux starter set and a couple of others I was unable to resist).

I'm pretty certain I already have enough buildings to create a small town, suitable for play.

I just need to boost up my number of miniature gunfighters - and innocent civilians - and (once again) tidy up the games room, so I can display all this material and do it justice.

Luckily, I am already assembling a second wave of miniatures to dispatch to Matt as soon as possible, but there are so many lovely 28mm Western miniatures out there that it's easy to keep getting distracted.

In the front we have Cullen Bohannon, Jonah Hex, Timmy The Flea, and The Man With No Name 

Beside The Man With No Name, we have Django (complete with coffin) and General Custer

Beyond this fantastic development, I've also been tinkering in the garden room, rebasing some old Western miniatures in my collection with the flatter Great Escape Games bases instead of the chunky Games Workshop ones that were my default setting more many decades.

A quartet of characters in the process of being rebased

I also need to summon up the courage to start assembling a couple of gangs from the multipart gunfighters that came in the Dead Man's Hand starter box.

I have ideas for themes: one based upon my own Hole-In-The-Head Gang, led by Timmy The Flea, and another based upon the main characters of The High Chaparral TV show.

I'm just slightly reticent because of my stroke-addled lack of manual dexterity and the minuteness of the parts for the figures.

Comic Book Collecting Isn't Just A Hobby, It's A Lifestyle

Latest comic book mail call: a pair of vintage issues of The Mighty Marvel Western

A combination of factors has necessitated constant revisions to my monthly comic book pull-list at Paradox Comics in Poole in recent years.

Not only do I find shelf space increasingly limited (despite dedicating most of the wall space in our office to my comic book collection, coupled with numerous short boxes under the bed and stacks of "to be read" books), but the cost of a single, new, comic book continues to rise while my pool of disposable income shrinks.

Yet while my list of new titles contracts, I can't help myself but seek out vintage back issues, either to fill holes in my collection or latch onto new (to me) titles that I decide I want to collect.

The latest arrival in this category is a pair of 1970's The Mighty Marvel Western (which, in turn, reprinted tales from the '50s and '60s), creating a fresh category on my list of titles to look out for.

There are 46 issues in that title, so that's going to take some work to fill up. But the joy is in the hunt.

Other comic book runs I'm gradually tracking down include Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu (which I'm nearly there on); Blue Devil (I'm only a handful issues away from finishing the original run of this title); and Jonah Hex (which I have a long way to go on).

Jonah Hex #40, from 1980: one of my recent acquisitions

While I collected the modern Jonah Hex run as they were published (well, at least, until he got zapped forward in time - again - to contemporary Gotham City) and the gorgeous Joe Lansdale and Tim Truman horror mini-series from the '90s, I'm currently on the hunt for the Bronze Age books.

I'm aiming for the first volume of Jonah Hex, the 92 issues published between 1977 and 1985, with the idea that I'll then look further back in time and try to collect his appearances in All-Star Western and Weird Western Tales (1972 - 1977).

Ultimately, I can see my pull-list of new titles shrinking down to, primarily:

• Superman Family books, 
• Fantastic Four titles, 
• and Titan's Robert E Howard books (currently Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword of Conan magazine, and my top comic of the year so far Solomon Kane)

Hopefully, there'll be a bit of wiggle-room to still embrace the Justice Society and Justice League, Green Lantern and Daredevil. I'd like to also be able to squeeze some Archie in there too.

Sadly, top indie publisher Mad Cave's excellent books aren't getting distributed over here at the moment (because of the collapse of Diamond), which makes it easier to drop those titles and the first wave of EC horror books are coming to an end soon, so that'll make a convenient point to jump off.

Even though I've loved those books.

This month's Summer of Superman Special

PROJECT 60: Work on Dead Man's Hand Has Begun!

Work on my Dead Man's Hand skirmish game has begun.

I have dispatched a number of miniatures to be professionally painted, including a gang of Law Men, some Legends of The West (including The Man with No Name and Jonah Hex), and a selection of appropriate Wargames Illustrated's Giants In Miniature figures (including Django and his coffin, General Custer, and several American Civil War characters).

Oh, and there's a 3D printed figure - from Minijenix - included that's going to be Timmy The Flea, the leader of my homemade outlaw collective, The Hole-in-The-Head Gang.

To that end, I have plans to build six or so other miniatures from the plastic parts that that came in the Dead Man's Hand starter box. I suspect these will take time and a lot of trial and error.

That also means I shall - eventually - be getting round to building and painting the plastic buildings .

It's been years (decades?) since I painted anything, and that was mainly drybrushing scenery pieces (walls, rocks etc).

So, I'll need to invest in some relevant paints and brush up (pun intended) on simple painting techniques for wooden buildings.

Great Escape Games has this introductory video that I shall be watching on repeat until it sinks in.

This later part of the project will come to fruition when the weather gets better and I'm able to spend extended periods of time in our garden room (which has been designated the "craft room") and I can superglue fiddly bits of plastic and my fingers together and splash paint around with merry abandon.

True Grit (2010)

When her father is gunned down by one of his hired hands, headstrong 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hawkeye's Hailee Steinfeld) hires one-eyed, hard-drinking US Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track down the errant Tom Chaney (Jonah Hex's Josh Brolin) who has fled into the wilderness of Indian country.

On the way, they discover that Chaney is also being sought by Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) and reluctantly they team-up in pursuit of the murderer and the gang of outlaws he is running with.

True Grit is the Coen brothers' retelling of the 1968 Charles Portis novel that also served as inspiration for one of John Wayne's most famous westerns.

This is a gritty (excuse the pun), unromantic view of the old west in all its magnificence, from epic, sweeping landscapes to fast, confused, violent conflicts and men driven by greed and a strange sense of honour.

Speckled with authentic-sounding dialogue and heavily accented delivery, this probably isn't a period piece for the casual viewer, but for those of us that love westerns this is one of those gems that sadly doesn't come along as often as we'd like.

Steinfeld is brilliant in the pivotal role of obstreperous Mattie, arguing with everyone and always threatening to contact her lawyer, while Damon and Bridges present two very different interpretations of classic American western archetypes (the U.S. Marshal and the Texas Ranger), with both having their moments to shine.

Cogburn - as we know from John Wayne's take on the character - is a larger-than-life and slightly unpleasant persona and Bridges delivers in spades, with the Coens' script allowing him to talk the talk for the majority of the movie, as he becomes increasingly drunk and unreliable, before he has a chance to show that he can walk the walk as well.

A classic tale of vengeance and retribution, the script and the setting also deliver on the verisimilitude, with the viewer only being yanked out of the moment by a number of close-up two-shots during Rooster's final ride with Mattie which, unfortunately, look as though they were greenscreened - even if they weren't.

Otherwise, the cinematography is flawless and the film is compelling viewing that pulls you in from the opening monologue through to its touching conclusion.

A truly magnificent movie, True Grit belongs in the DVD library of anyone who considers themselves a fan of America's old west.

Jonah Hex (2010)

To be fair the much maligned Jonah Hex doesn't start off too badly, but this sense of bon hommie fails to last through the opening animated credits when it becomes obvious that some idiot (almost certainly in a suit) decided that because Hex is a comic book character he must have a superpower!

Clearly no-one of any import in this production has actually read a Jonah Hex story or else they wouldn't have given him the mystical power to "bring the dead back to life" or screwed-up the movie's first, proper, Western gunfight with horse-mounted Gatling guns.

The handiwork of the daft suit(s) shows itself again when, clearly loving the 'hugely successful' Van Helsing, they felt it necessary to equip Hex with a range of bizarre, steampunky weaponry (because it also worked so well in Will Smith's Wild Wild West). 

The mystical element of the film is totally misguided, adding absolutely nothing more than further Sturm und Drang to obfuscate the fact that the film has little, or no, story - several flashback scenes are repeated to pad the film out and it still only runs to 78 minutes.

Like some mind-numbing Italian horror, much of Jonah Hex comes across as a series of random scenes thrown together at high speed, where the titular character (Josh Brolin) is moving from one place to another, with little explanation as to how this advances the main plot... until Hex finally confronts his arch-nemesis, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich).

Megan Fox is in there as well, but her character - Lilah the soiled dove, supposed a love interest for Hex - is about as redundant as the lead character's newly acquired paranormal abilities.

Lilah's main purpose is to serve as a hostage and could easily have just been a stranger Turnbull had plucked from the street.

And there's some poppycock about Turnbull building a nonsensical superweapon, but, like pretty much everything here, it amounts to very little in the greater scheme of things.

Even taking the comic book source material out of the equation, Jonah Hex fails to engage as a fantastical western - The Adventures Of Brisco County Jnr, with Bruce Campbell, did it first, and way better, and on a TV budget.

Everyone associated with this mess of a film should be thoroughly ashamed of what they have produced, especially given what a classy, solid Western comic Jonah Hex was at this time.

It wouldn't have taken much brainpower to have just translated one of those storylines to the big screen.

But the "Hollywood suits" always think they know better!