Avengers/Assembled!

Not much painting lately; work, some personal writing and a looming essay deadline have all curtailed that to an extent, in one way or another.

On the plus-side, I have been doing a ton of reading (not an issue with painting as I mainly read at night and don't choose to paint then unless an army deadline looms large). In particular I have been on a real Avengers kick. I guess this is due to a number of influences, too many to list probably, but it has been enjoyable, and started with a chance sale purchase a few weeks ago.

While picking up my monthly comics, I saw Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II hardcover on sale, at an astonishing price, so on a whim and being a fan (on and off) of the Avengers for many years, I picked it up. And I am glad I did. The story revisited a classic era of the Avengers I enjoyed in my teens when I got to read a friend's run of Avengers comics (thanks Pete!). That led me to pick up the earlier volume, and also to crack open Assembled! This great little book is an unauthorised collection of essays by many contributors, all of whom are Avengers fans and give reflections and critical opinion on the Avengers comics through the years, some of its key stories, characters and events. It has reignited my desire to revisit some more classic stories that I grew up with (and not just the repositioned versions of A:EMH I & I).

Avengers has always probably been one my favourite comic books. Not in that I would read it when i didn't enjoy it, in fact I have stayed away when I haven't enjoyed the work of a particular writer. But it is a title (these days a group of titles) I always revisit. Any Avengers fans who haven't tried Assembled! yet may find it adds a different perspective to the journey of Marvel's Mightiest Heroes.

Welcome

This latest 'welcome' goes out to Dags, whose own blog Dags Planet (here) I follow. Dags paints some tremendous stuff and it is well worth a look. Thanks to Dags - and anyone - who has taken the time to Follow or read Pulp Citizen; much appreciated.

Working On...

I picked up a parcel at the Post Office depot today; inside were some minis, some cards and a book. And among those minis these:

Giant Hadron is a 'Direct Only' item from the Pulp Monsters web store; there will soon be more Direct Only items to add to this. He comes with a plain 80mm base (far right of picture), but I'll be using a Fenris base (far left) with self-made inserted texture in order to match the giant Reaper ape I painted a while back. The Captain Hadron and Mini Hadron are included to give a sense of scale. I am hoping to crack into this project in the next few days. The Challenge grows anew!

Ancible Article - Vanity Fayre (Issue 7)

Okay, it looks as though I am a published writer outside of the environs of my blogs (and a letter in Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool comic)!

Issue 7 of the Ancible, a tabletop gaming magazine, features an original article by me; titled 'Vanity Fayre' you will have to read it to find out what it is about. But don't worry - the Ancible is free to download - just follow this link here.

Pretty exciting stuff for this would-be writer. :)

And Now For Something Else...

Just to let you know, I have started another gaming and minis blog, basically for everything I do that isn't Pulp City-centric.

The blog is entitled the Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer and can be found here. Please feel free to check it out.

Some crossover may occur, but I think it will be mostly different stuff and no specifically Pulp City minis will be featured. In the months ahead I plan to tackle minis from a number of ranges and genres.

Lady Cyburn

If Cyburn has a PHD in trouble seeking, that would surely make her more in line with the rest of the big brains on the team. She doesn't. She is a natural warmonger, and that dates back to the times she was just a 100% flesh teenager. Her abilities to cause trouble had been significantly raised with all those shiny new things.
Her service in Heavy Metal is more to her liking than serving her time in jail, but once the 5 year contract is done, who knows where Cyburn will sign up?

Lady Cyburn was added to the ranks of Heavy Metal along with Captain Hadron, and was a mini I liked straight from the off (due to its recognisable influence from WildCATS' Ladytron), but after putting a couple of colours on the mini it joined the back of my WiP queue.

It wasn't until I painted C.O.R.E. in fairly short order that I thought to make a slight change to how I was doing the metallic surfaces and so the rest of the mini followed fairly quickly thereafter. please forgive the photographs - not my best as they came out pretty dark. I like to think the mini looks better up close than it does in these photographs, and I was pretty happy with the way the flesh tones turned out, which may not be too apparent from these images.

In game terms Lady Cyburn is very much a 'blaster', and so adds flexibility to Heavy metal since many of the Team are brawler or brawler-support types.

Mini Update

Just putting the finishing touches to Lady Cyburn, the first Pulp City mini I will finish this year - leaving 6 more to paint to complete the entire range. With 5 of those 6 having varying amounts of painting completed already, hopefully I will have some more minis to photograph next week.

Tabletop Gaming News - Editor's Choice Awards

Just a quick note that the recently released Pulp City Guide placed second in these voted-for (by TGN members and the 'award jury') awards. That is excellent for a product only available for a few weeks prior to voting.

Full story is here (it is the seventh listed category: Rules or Expansion).

December Painting Summary/Painting Challenge In Review

Click image for bigger version

Okay not a bad month. I didn't achieve my ultimate goal, but in comparison to the rest of the year a good month: I painted as many minis for the Challenge in December as I did in February and April, my joint second-best months until then.

I knew from November that goal was unlikely, but I carried on and this is what I painted or finished in December:
- Skyline
- C.O.R.E. and Access Points
- Le Murtiple (3 minis)
- Virgo

I basically managed half of my target for the month, but the target was roughly 2 months worth of work. In total through the year I painted 51 mostly unique paint-jobs, or just over 4 per month, resulting in 67 unique models painted, and 72 painted Pulp City minis overall.

So where to now with the Challenge? Well I am going to persist. So that is just another month of painting, right? Wrong.

I ordered Giant Hadron a few days ago, at 120 mm tall the biggest Pulp City mini by far. Such a big mini is going to require far more work than a 30-35 mm tall mini of course. So a month to finish that alone maybe. Add in that I hope we see another release of around 5 minis in the first couple of months of the year, then I am going to extend the Challenge to myself to the end of March. Game on.