PROJECT 60: Back To The West

Good news for PROJECT 60 and the land of Dead Man's Hand. My latest couple of painted posses are galloping back to me from professional painter, Matt of Glenbrook Games Painting Service.

As shown above, the two sets - produced by Great Escape Games - are The Family (a group of well-armed, militant religious zealots) and A Fistful of Clints (five different Western characters played by Clint Eastwood).

Next up will probably be The Quick and The Lead, a collection of eight gunfighters, based on the excellent Sam Raimi Western, The Quick and The Dead.

While these are sitting, patiently, in my gamesroom, I'm not yet sure if I'll send them to Matt before Christmas or not.

As to the Judge Dredd miniatures mentioned last time, I continue to snatch up sets I don't already own that I see on eBay for a reasonable price. However, given that Warlord has killed the line off, the prices are already starting to rocket upwards on the secondary market.

I'm looking at this as a more long-term project now, as I really ought to concentrate on one thing at a time. And that one thing is Great Escape Games' excellent Western skirmish game.

Dead Man's Hand remains my primary PROJECT 60 objective on the wargaming front, even though my plans to put together all the buildings I've purchased for the setting have been temporarily scuppered by my misbehaving spine.

I still have just over a year to 'complete' PROJECT 60, and - health-willing - I aim to devote more time to it in 2026. Particularly, the time I'd planned to spend on it THIS year!

Books, Books, As Far As The Eye Can See

The shelving is finished, but the "stocking up" remains a work in progress

The highlight of this week has been the magical appearance of my new bookcase. Paid for by Rachel and assembled by her dad, I absolutely love these new shelves to display my stuff on.

For about a year I've been planning for a new book case, but had only pictured it going half-way up the wall - with room for a framed picture above - but then Rachel and her dad said it would be feasible to build one up to the ceiling.

I'm so glad I followed their suggestion, as I think I was very incredibly optimistic over how much I could squeeze into a half-size bookcase!

What you see above is the current state of affairs, and I've promised everyone that I won't fill every single centimetre with weighty tomes (as this is on the first floor and nobody wants to see it drop through to the ground floor!).

Given my current disability, I am unable to reach the top shelves, so managed to persuade Rachel to help fill-up top (and bring boxes of previously hidden books up from the lounge).

The current make-up of my bookcase is a shelf for Westerns, one for Planet of The Apes, three for Judge Dredd -related products (I still need to get a stand for my old Lawgiver Mk2, which used to sit - in its packaging - in a glass cabinet in my original gamesroom in our old house), a couple for Robert E Howard and Conan books, one for Stephen King, one for Dune books (which is shared with a Star Wars Sith holocron), one for my Fantastic Four merch from the cinema, and then a display of Funko Pops along the top, bookended by cat statues painted to resemble my late parents' two cats: Cookie and Rover.

The cat figures were gifts I got my parents decades ago, when I was still working for the newspaper. There was someone at our head office who had access to a variety of blank statutes that he would then paint to resemble people's cats, based on photographs you supplied him.

I'm glad I finally have somewhere to display the pair properly.

Health-wise, it's been an up-and-down week. After a frustrating phone chat with my GP the other week (my doc didn't know why she was ringing, even though it was her who had asked me to book the call), Rachel and I were directed to a self-referral site for NHS physio.

We filled it in, but then a day or so later I got a call to say I had been rejected and was better off going to the falls clinic.

Through gritted teeth I explained I was already going through the falls clinic procedures and was looking for something to supplement that and, hopefully, develop my strength and stability further.

Later that evening I got a text to say I was now being referred and the following day I got an email containing the phone number to arrange my appointment. So, that's a job for this week.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Conan Digests

When we were readying ourselves to move house half-a-dozen years ago, I was shifting boxes in the 'office' part of my attic-gamesroom and 'discovered' a long concealed bookcase; squirrelled away in the corner, on which was my collection of eight, old Conan The Barbarian digests.

These were pocket-sized, British reprints (in black and white) from the early '80s, of Conan's original stint in the pages of Marvel Comics, each around 50-pages long.

These were my first exposure to both Conan The Barbarian and the works of Robert E Howard, I would have been about 14 or 15 when I picked these up.

I guess I was a comparative latecomer to the exploits of the mighty Cimmerian, having cut my sword-and-sorcery teeth - soon after being introduced to Dungeons & Dragons at the tail-end of the '70s - on Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Harry Turtledove's stories of Gerin The Fox, and then Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, years before I encountered Conan The Barbarian.

In truth, I think, after the comic book digests, my first actual Robert E Howard book was a remaindered copy of The Gods Of Bal-Sagoth, an Ace Science-Fiction collection of non-Conan stories, that I purchased in a discount book store while out shopping with my parents.

Like pretty much everything at that time, my early interest in Howard's work - and Conan - was fuelled by my desire to make everything about my blossoming passion for roleplaying games, and particularly Dungeons & Dragons.

A passion they still serve today.

PROJECT 60: Population Explosion In Town With No Name

My "second wave" of miniatures - for use with the Dead Man's Hand skirmish system - have returned from Matt the painter and, as usual, look fantastic. 

He painted up a Plains Indian warband (pictured above) and a miscellany of gunfighters (including Rooster Cogburn, Butch and Sundance, a woman in a tin bath [for the saloon] and a trio of random shootists).

Most of these are 'official' Great Escape Games figures, with a few off-book, scale-appropriate, acquisitions for good measure.

That means, currently, I have one other faction (the religious zealots of The Family) and a dozen or so civilians waiting in the gamesroom in the 'to be painted" queue.

However, my current 'medical science baffling' physical disability means I am unable to actually get into the narrow and deep gamesroom and sort out a "third wave" to send off to Matt. 

This has brought my progress on this project to a temporary halt, as I don't want to build up a huge backlog of Wild West characters gathering dust, especially as my mind is always wandering across a variety of other genres for roleplaying games (which I'll talk about more in the future).

So, unless, Great Escape Games releases a set of Dead Man's Hand miniatures that I "must have immediately", I think I'll be cooling my jets until I'm physically able to resume sorting and processing my purchases.

Until I'm a bit better, this also means these latest expertly painted miniatures have taken up residence within the games table (in our dining area) - rather than where they should be, in the inaccessible gamesroom. 

Honestly, once science has found a cure for my current condition, I'm going to be spending months sorting out all the stuff I've recently acquired - or rethought - and getting everything where it ought to be.

The Town With No Name Welcomes The Saloon With No Name

The first complete building for my Dead Man's Hand game (the marquee venture of PROJECT 60) now sits in pride of place in my rather crowded games room.

However, I didn't build the "multi-part, two-storey building" from Great Escape Games (purveyors of all things Dead Man's Hand and much more), instead I came across an already built kit on eBay for the same price as the kit.

All it needs now is a lick of paint. 

Of course, I have the other buildings - still unassembled - that I've acquired in recent months, but I reckon this saloon will be a great icebreaker.

Come to think of it, I haven't even conjured up a name for my nascent Frontier town, let alone considered what the saloon will be called. The Gem (as in Deadwood) is too obvious, so I'll have to give the old noggin a good shake and see what comes out.

In the meantime, the two-story building is sitting on my gaming table in the games room, surrounded by clutter that I'm sure I tidied up a few weeks ago, and a family of Border Reivers that I've been too slow about packing up (as my first wave of cowboy figures are off being professionally painted)!

The saloon was incredibly well-packaged by trader The Last Nazgul

The detail and features on this kit are amazing

Can't help but love that the all the levels are detachable, so figures can move in and out

Current visitors to the saloon appear to be Border Reivers!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: I'm Approved By Casually Comics!

I don't often mention new T-shirt purchases - beyond the fact that my family believes I have too many -  but I'm particularly proud of this one that I got back in 2021 (see above), from the first line of merch produced to support my favourite YouTube channel, Casually Comics. 

"Approved By Casually Comics" is a parody of the old Comics Code Authority logo once seen on the covers of mainstream comic books in the wake of the whole Fredric Wertham Seduction of the Innocent nonsense of the 1950s.

The Casually Comics line of branded t-shirts, mugs, glasses, hoodies, stickers etc can be found here.

Hosted by Canadian Sasha Wood, Casually Comics brilliantly balances insight and a deep knowledge of the comic book medium with a wry, self-deprecating, sense of humour and a welcome acknowledgement that all elements of fandom are valid.

In a portfolio of videos ranging from around 10 minutes to half an hour, with a new one dropping every few days, Sasha dives headfirst into old comics as well as new, following her whims more often than worrying about the latest 'hot topic'.

Demonstrating a particular love - which I share - for the more quirky aspects of superhero comics, Sasha compiles wonderful 'playlists' of themed videos on such topics as the many weddings of Lois Lane, the different iterations of Clayface, crossovers etc

TALES FROM THE VAULT: The Flash # 179 - Fact Or Fiction? (May, 1968)

A Silver Age classic, The Flash #179: Fact Or Fiction? from May 1968 is notable for being the first time DC Comics used the idea (although unnamed) of Earth-Prime (or 'our' Earth) as a destination for superheroes.

The Flash - Barry Allen - is having problems with an energy beast, The Nok, that has escaped from the spaceship of an alien beast-hunter (who'd landed on Earth to repair his ship).

The Nok appears to feed on Barry's "speed force" (again, it isn't called that) and ends up pushing The Flash to new velocities, which carry him to an alternate world: 'our' world, a world where his adventures are recorded in the pages of DC Comics and his secret identity is known by every small child!

People mistake him for a party-goer in fancy dress and he realises that the only person who will believe he is who he says he is is DC Comics Editor Julius Schwartz!

This is a wild story, from the mind of Cary Bates, as it had no precedent at the time. The only parallel world Barry (and the DC readers) knew of was Earth-2, where the Golden Age heroes hung out.

The Nok (pictured on the cover above), and the alien hunter, are rather bland Silver Age pulp sci-fi constructs, but the story itself really opened up a Multiverse of possibilities.

And, at the end of the tale, left Julius Schwartz with a working Cosmic Treadmill in his office! I wonder if that was ever revisted?

I picked up this landmark issue on eBay for the surprisingly low-cost of a couple of quid. It was just a random recommendation the site threw up for me and the cover caught my eye, so I Googled the story and couldn't believe this wasn't going for more.

It's not a perfect copy - but the listing made that clear  - but it was still a bargain for such a key story in the history of DC's Multiverse.

The comic  has since been framed and hangs in our lounge, with a selection of other books that are special to me.

It could well be the oldest, original comic I currently own (being only couple of years younger than me!)