Two years ago I had this idea for what I really wanted in an RPG screen. We spent a chunk of R&D budget determining whether it was a thing that we could actually make, and it turns out we can. So we are!

The project is 97% funded as of this writing. The molds have been tooled, and the manufacturer is waiting on us. When our Kickstarter closes we will tell them how many to make. This is going to fulfill very quickly¹.

We’ll be including PDF templates for the half-sheets, to help you align whatever information you want on the drop-ins you print, and we’ll be including some Planet Mercenary drop-ins as well. Oh, and we’ll include an adventure, “Size Might Matter,” which will debut at Gen-Con.

If this is a thing you want, you should act soon. The Kickstarter only runs for 17 more days, because our manufacturer really does need to get started.

¹ The Planet Mercenary Kickstarter is going to be fulfilled at around the same time as this one, because it’s off to the printer now. By the end of July we’ll have gotten everybody their physical products for all this stuff. 

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Alien: Covenant is not the feel-good hit movie of the summer. It’s powerful, and beautiful, and horrifying, and bleak, and thoughtful, and none of those things guarantee that it will be fun.

There was some fun, of course. I liked (in a sinking feeling sort of way) how they tied 2012’s Prometheus and 1979’s Alien together, explaining a few things that have always been puzzlers for me. Prometheus left me with more questions than answers. This movie left me wondering why Prometheus wasn’t just two movies in a row… until I remembered that in 2012 the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still a gamble.

I really enjoyed Fassbender and Waterston’s performances. Waterston seemed especially perfect, since she can shine with stoic confidence AND exude primal terror¹, and sometimes switch between the two while the camera dares us to try an not believe it’s real.

Fassbender was no slouch, of course. I’d say more, but describing how perfectly an actor does a particular thing is not always appropriate when the reader might not yet know that said thing is even a thing².

I loved the scope and scale of things in the film. This shot worked really well for me: human people for scale, really big things next to them, and something even bigger in the distance. And my eyes can’t find the seams between reality and rendering. We’ve come a long way in 38 years.

Alien: Covenant doesn’t cross my Threshold of Awesome, because my rankings are based on “fun.” It wasn’t disappointing, either. If you like the Alien franchise, this is a movie that is probably also something you’ll enjoy.

¹ I first saw Waterston in Fantastic Beasts, where even at her most heroic she seemed trodden upon. In Alien: Covenant, however, we see a dynamic range that makes her a worthy heir to Sigourney Weaver.

² If you watch the trailers closely you’ll pretty quickly figure out what’s coming next during the film, and which character(s) will be standing  too close to whatever is coming once it arrives. And that’s still no excuse for me to post spoilers. 

This Kickstarter of ours is a quick one¹. It closes on Friday, so if you want the Game Chief’s Deluxe RPG “Handbrain” Screen, you should pledge today. Or tomorrow. But don’t wait until Thursday, because by then you may have become distracted by other things, and then it will be Saturday…

I’ll be posting a photo tutorial later today explaining how to use some simple hobby paint tools land techniques to make the ABS plastic screen look like it’s made of rusty wrought iron.

¹ The project had to fit between a couple of other things: the earliest date at which we could, in good conscience, launch another Kickstarter, and the last possible date at which we can give the manufacturer numbers for the run, and still ship stuff in July². 

² Why July? Because August is full, and September is full, and October is aghast at how ragged we are after our slog through August and September, and November is like “are you ready for the holiday stuff yet?”

In this post I’ll explain in detail how you too can turn your fancy Deluxe Game Chief’s “Handbrain” Screen from slick, dry-erase-compatible ABS plastic to a battered, rusty piece of equipment that has seen better centuries.

A Disclaimer Meant to Give You Hope

Sandra did all the modding work shown here, and she is a beginner. I explained the processes and provided tools, but she is the one who applied all the paint. This was her second experience with spray paint, and her first experience with glazing and dry-brushing, so while the results are perhaps a bit less polished than if I’d done the work, they’re easily within the reach of somebody who is new to hobby painting.

This tutorial is long, but the actual process goes very quickly, and most of the time you spend on the project will be spent waiting for things to dry between steps.

Let’s go!

Modding Your Handbrain

Supplies & Tools

You will need the following:

• The Handbrain Screen (or anything else that will take spray paint, and that needs to look rusty)
• Two large pieces of cardboard (work surfaces)
• Paper towels
• Letter or A4 paper, folded or cut in half.
• Scissors
• CA glue (“Superglue”)
• Sandpaper or a sanding sponge
• Ultra-flat black spray paint (Rustoleum® Camoflage Black is my favorite)
• Testors Dullcote spray lacquer
• P3® hobby paints: “Bloodstone” and “Pig Iron”
• Two paint brushes—one for the rust wash, and one for dry-brushing.
•  Water for thinning paint and rinsing brushes
• Q-tips (not shown in photo)
• Something to mix paint on (not shown in photo. Sandra used a paper plate.)

With the exception of the paint, brushes, and sanding sponge, everything here is probably already in your house. If not, the total cost of these supplies is between $20 and $30, unless you go all-in on fancy brushes, which we did not.

The P3 paints are available from your friendly local game store, and from lots of online shops as well. Each bottle costs about $4. Any metallic acrylic hobby paint can be used in place of the Pig Iron, but I have not found an acceptable “rust wash” substitute for Bloodstone.

Phase 1: Surface Prep

In which we add a little of our own texture to the surface, and get it ready for paint.

1. Sand the corners of the screen
2. If you’re feeling really plucky, take the scissors and score some “battle damage” in places.
3. Wipe it down with a damp paper towel, and then wipe it dry. This is the only critical step here. The sanding and scoring is just for show.

Phase 2: Patch and Customize

Superglue + paper = welded metal patch

1.  Cut paper patches for the eight holes in the corners of the screen.
2. DO ALL GLUE THINGS ON DISPOSABLE CARDBOARD WORK SURFACE. Because superglue is forever.
3. Carefully, drop-by-drop, create a bead of superglue around the hole.
4. Lay a paper patch over the hole. It will wick up the glue and change color.
5. Using a Q-tip, flatten the paper. As necessary, add another drop of superglue, and spread that with the Q-tip.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for the remaining 3 corners on this face.
7. Wait for the glue to dry. It will dry faster in humid environments because superglue does not “dry,” it “cures” by bonding with water. (This, incidentally, is why you don’t wash wet superglue from your body using water. Wipe it off with a dry paper towel. The driest you can find, but be quick…)
8. Flip the screen over, and repeat steps 3-7 for the four corner holes on the back.
9. Feeling plucky? Cut some more paper into cool shapes, and glue those down. By now you’ll feel pretty confident in your process. Sandra did!

Phase 3: Spray Paint!

If you’ve spray-painted things before this whole section will seem like too many words. 

1. Find a good place, like and outdoor place, to paint. Use your cardboard to prevent painting things that should remain unpainted.
2. Stand the screen on its base, and insert a sheet of paper to mask the inside surface of the screen.
3. Apply spray paint to the front of the screen and the back of the base (but not the back of the screen) according to the instructions on the can
4. Wait for it to dry. Ten to twenty minutes, unless you over-sprayed and made puddles. The ultra-flat finish paint is only shiny when it’s still wet, so you don’t need to touch the surface to check for dryness.
5. Flip screen in stand. Paint the back of it (now that it’s at an angle which is easy to get at.)
6. Again, the waiting.
7. Remove the screen from the stand. See the bit that was masked by the base? Very lightly spray that part, front and back.
8. More waiting.
9. Ready for Phase 4!

Phase 4: Getting Rusty

Thanks to quirks in the formulation of P3 Bloodstone, this step is like magic. It looks terrible, and then suddenly it looks perfect.

1. Closely consider this picture of wet paint.
2. The upper puddle is P3 Bloodstone with a little water in it. The lower puddle is water with a little P3 Bloodstone in it. You’ll be using the lower puddle. 
3. Get your brush sopping wet in the watery Bloodstone puddle. Generously apply that to the Handbrain. You’ll need several brushloads to get the job done.
4. Keep going until the whole front face is wet, and you’ve got decent puddles hugging the details of the screen (including the details you made with paper and superglue.)
5. Wait for it to dry. While you wait, look at these two pictures:

6. Feeling better about the mess? Keep waiting for it to dry. You’ll know it’s dry when you begin wondering where this rusty piece of metal came from.
7. Repeat steps 3-5 on the back of the screen, complete with more waiting. Also, do the stand now.

This is what the back of Sandra’s screen looked like in bright light. That’s ABS plastic, superglue, and paint. No slabs of iron were oxidized in the making of this photo.

Phase 5: Shiny Metal Shows Through

In which you learn to drybrush, and possibly get frustrated about having ruined the whole thing, but that’s normal because there’s a learning curve.

1. Read this aloud: “Learning to drybrush will take a few minutes, and even if I already know how to do it on miniatures, drybrushing something big and flat may prove different.”
2. Look at this picture (click to enlarge). It is from Sandra’s first-ever drybrushing, and it has awesome bits, and some mistakes.
3. Realize that by showing you our mistakes, we’re giving you permission to make a whole bunch of your own. Relax…
4. Get a little paint on your big brush.
5. With a rapid, back-and-forth motion, paint the paper. You’re getting all the wet paint off the brush, and getting air between the bristles. Keep going until no more paint blotches appear.
6. Pick up the stand (not the screen) and with that same motion, brush against the “grain” of the screen, your strokes moving at 90° to any raised edges or details. You’ll know you’re doing it right when the edges look shiny, but the flat areas have very little metallic sheen to them.
7. When the shine no longer appears as you brush it is time to reload your brush. Repeat steps 4-5.
8. Aren’t you glad you practiced on the small piece? Feeling confident? Good.
9. Pick up the screen, and drybrush it until you’ve made all the edges shine from the wear-and-tear that shaves oxidized metal away, and polishes what’s underneath.

Here’s what Sandra’s looks like without the paper mask in place. The grey is naked ABS plastic. The rusty metal is not actually metal. Neat, huh?

Phase 6: Make It Durable

Because you want to play with it, not just put it up on a shelf for display, right?

1. Return to your spray-painting place. It needs to be ventilated well, because this paint is pretty smelly.
2. If you removed it the paper from the screen, put it back in now.
3. Lightly spray the screen and its base with Testor’s Dullcote spray lacquer.
4. Make sure to spray the part where the base covers the screen.
5. Let it dry.

Testors Dullcote is my absolute favorite protective finish for models like this. It drys to leave a very flat, matte finish. Reflected light won’t be obscuring the paint job you worked so hard on. It shows off your work, while protecting the model from ordinary wear-and-tear. I like it so much I’ll totally shill for it, as evidenced by the linked text. I’ve used other matte finishes, but none are as purely non-reflective as Testor’s.

Summary

I often refer to this process in a way that omits all the persnickety details: “base coat, wash, drybrush, done.” For folks familiar with the hobby, that’s enough to get the point across.

This process works quite well on 28mm miniatures. Often I’ll start by doing the rusty look, and then add colors to the parts of the mini that are not supposed to be weathered metal. Sometimes I’ll forget that the model isn’t actually finished, and it’ll stay in the rusty metal state for several years. Yes, Cygnar Lancer warjack, I’m looking at you. As is everyone else…

It’s not the only way to get this look, and it’s not even necessarily the best way, but after lots of experimentation, it strikes the right balance between “easy” and “the right look,” at least for me.

Today is the last day you can back this project.

Our Game Chief Screen Kickstarter has funded, and manufacturing will begin sometime early next week. We will make more than we need to fulfill orders, but we might not have the opportunity to make more of these. Running the molding machinery costs around $12k regardless of the size of the run¹, and these are a niche product. We cannot promise that they’ll always be in inventory.

We will ship what’s left of our inventory to GenCon Indy in August, where a great many of the shoppers in this particular niche hang out. It is entirely possible that by the end of that show these quirky, silly, incredibly useful² tools will be forever sold out.

Act now! Like, RIGHT NOW.

¹ Financial note: In 2015 and 2016 we invested roughly $22k in R&D and mold-making. This project isn’t actually paying any of that money back yet. That’s okay, because you’ll be getting your stuff, and we’re happy to have made a cool thing, but the financial prospects for making more of these are stark. Like, Ned Stark.

² Also, incredibly customizable.

The Game Chief’s Handbrain Kickstarter is closed now. Thank you for backing it! If you missed it, and are now kicking yourself (likely in lieu of kicking us for not getting the word to you sooner) please stop kicking things¹. In a few days we’ll post instructions for anyone who wishes to pre-order screens, but who missed the project.

Hopefully the auto-posting of this alert will be timely (the project closed at 11:30 am Mountain Time.) We’re at the movies right now, devices muted and stowed, enjoying a matinee showing of Wonder Woman².

¹ That sentence was written completely innocently, with zero intent to make a “kick” pun on Kickstarter. This note exists purely to alert you to the fact that we know the pun is there, but it wasn’t deliberate. Sometimes these things just happen.

² My review will appear later today, as will my review for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

Wonder Woman was pretty much a perfect movie.

I loved it, Sandra loved it, and we’re both extremely happy that it is a thing  that exists in this timeline.

Does it redeem the clumsy, colorless DC movie franchise? Well, if my ticket purchases for those other movies (the ones with with the altruistic alien, the disturbed rich guy, and the clown-guy’s psychiatrist) helped fund Wonder Woman I have exactly zero regrets, and would spend that time and money again. Twice more, even. But I’m glad I don’t have too, because now I still have that time and money, and can go see Wonder Woman again.

Wonder Woman clears my Threshold of Awesome, and while it doesn’t quite edge GoTG2 out of the top slot, it comes really close. It’s not as if these things matter. I get to live on the timeline where I can enjoy both of them.

On Monday, June 12th of the year 2000 the very first Schlock Mercenary strip appeared on the web.

Yesterday, Monday, June 12th of the year 2017 marked the seventeenth anniversary of that start date—seventeen years of uninterrupted¹ daily² updates here at schlockmercenary.com.

That I am now in my eighteenth year of doing this stands as evidence of ongoing good fortune. I’ve enjoyed seventeen full years without any sort of debilitating injury or crisis preventing me from working for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I’ve gotten sick and been injured, of course, but I keep getting better with sufficient time to spare.

At some point this streak will end. That point lies in the mists of a hopefully-distant future, and is not today.

Today I am making comics.

(Just as soon as I finish this blog post.)

If you would like to celebrate the beginning of Schlock Mercenary’s eighteenth year, you might consider sharing the strip with a friend. But whatever you do, don’t send them back to the very beginning. That would be cruel. Start here, with Book 12.  Which, by serendipitous convenience³, is the most recent of the Schlock Mercenary stories to appear in print.

How long will Schlock Mercenary continue to run? The over-arching story is in its final act, and will draw to a close soon, probably  in Book 19. But on the day following that big finish there will be another update, and another one the day after that. Those will launch a new story, featuring some characters you know, and a universe you think you know, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is a satisfactory conclusion coming up, and you can enjoy it secure in the knowledge that it won’t end the delivery of daily strips here at schlockmercenary.com.

¹ There have been service interruptions, of course. Like that time the data center’s UPS failed, and a fire destroyed part of the facility. But Schlock Mercenary has updated every day, and with a bit of back-up hosting has never been unavailable for more than a few hours at a time.

² That’s 6,210 strips. Yes, the image files are backed up in more than one place. 

³ A friend who also happens to be flush with the good fortune of a spot of discretionary income, might purchase that book as a gift. Shared links are lovely, but a thing made out of colorful paper is a thing that will be remembered. 

The trailers for The Mummy suggested that it was going to be a supernatural horror film retreading ground that Universal Studios has already covered several times. There was no hint that the movie would have any joy in it. 

To my delight, there was a lot of joy¹. While not as outright campy as 1999’s The Mummy², it definitely leaned in that direction. Yes, there are jump-scares and spooky bits, but there’s also lots of witty banter, and a healthy dose of dark comedy. I had a pretty good time. My 16yo daughter really liked it too.

Fans of the 1999 film may be pleased to note that a prop from that film³ has a featured cameo in this one, suggesting that perhaps Rick, Evelyn, and Alex O’Connell share this universe with Jenny Halsey, Nick Morton, and Dr. Henry Jekyll (along with the rest of Universal’s DARK UNIVERSE stable of monsters and mortals.) It’s not explicitly declared, but there’s nothing explicitly ruling it out.

The Mummy (2017) doesn’t clear my Threshold of Awesome, but it was a lot of fun. It entered my list at #6 for the year, which is not too shabby for June.

¹Recent experiences with misleading trailers invite comparison: Suicide Squad‘s trailer promised campy fun, but the movie was bleak. The Mummy’s trailer promised horror, and the movie was horror plus dark comedy. I prefer having my expectations set low.

² I’m sitting down to watch 1999’s The Mummy right now, while I ink. It’s like an old friend. A really old friend, who tracks sand everywhere, and doesn’t like my cat.

³ If you must know, it was the big gold book with the fancy star-shaped key. You’d think I’d know the name of my friend’s favorite book, but no, I do not. 

Transformers: The Last Knight was a waste of some pretty cool robot fight choreography, and an absolute squandering of Anthony Hopkins and Isabela Moner.

This doesn’t surprise me, given the track record of this less-than-meets-the-eye cinematic franchise, but I was still disappointed.

The plot is far too convoluted for a straightforward McGuffin match-up¹. There were three times more speaking-role characters than the average audience member (myself included) is likely to have emotional space to care about. Making the film longer (2 hours 28 minutes) doesn’t solve the problem. It means we’ll all be tired, exhaustedly awaiting the end of the movie about 38 minutes before it shows up.

“Leave them wanting more” does not mean “leave them wanting more of their day back when they leave the theater.”

Fortunately, the actors all turned in solid performances, especially Isabela Moner, who was one of the very best things about the film. Sadly,  she’s completely absent for Act II, but when she does return in Act III she masterfully acts far above the hackneyed plotonium the writers deployed to work her into the climactic battle.

My biggest complaint lies with the mythos. Tying the Transformers into Arthurian legend may have seemed cool and clever at some point, but it fell completely flat for me². Stanley Tucci played Merlin quite well in the prologue, doing an outstanding job with “drunken charlatan thrust into the wrong movie” but the humor said to me “this is going to be bleak, so let’s loosen you up with some laughs. Here, have an inebriated wizard!”

I said earlier that the robot fight choreography was good. It was! Bumblebee’s entrance was pretty epic, and although I couldn’t always keep track of which Transformer was which, I was able to see what they were doing, and on several occasions they did cool things. Somebody told Michael Bay to hold the camera steady, I suppose.

Transformers: The Last Knight is the first film this year to cross my Threshold of Disappointment. I feel bad for the many people responsible for the good parts of this movie, because they deserve to have those parts show up in a less disappointing film³.

¹ “McGuffin match-up” is what I call it when the characters have to find multiple important plot-thingies (‘McGuffins’) and put them into the hands of the right people in time to save the day.  
² “Secret history” stories often fall flat for me, usually when they take great moments in human history and tell me it was actually or when they take human atrocities and tell me the terrible people were all vampires. Actual heroes and villains from history need to remain human. That’s how actual humans learn to be heroes.
³ I also feel bad for the boy who, as the crowds were exiting the theater, was telling everyone within earshot that this movie was awesome. To my long-time-parent ears his tone suggested that his opinion of the film’s awesomeness was actually kind of shaky, but he couldn’t bear the thought of not having seen a good movie. Nobody jumped in to validate him, but neither did anyone smack him down. I guess we all chose the kindness of silence, tacitly agreeing to let him find his own way through dawning disappointment.

If you backed the Planet Mercenary role playing game on Kickstarter, your rewards (books, cards, dice, tokens, etc) are on their way. Many of you have already gotten packages, but many more of you are waiting on things that are still stacked at the Hypernode Media shipping center awaiting their turn in the “shipping and handling” portion of this process.

It’s a complex process, and Sandra is running it brilliantly. A decade ago we ran things like this with the help of an ad-hoc team of volunteers.

These days we have a warehouse¹ and a press-ganged team of minors². The biggest limiting factor is that we’re shipping in the summer, and the warehouse is not air-conditioned. Shipping days begin at 8am, and end by noon, just before the team begins dripping sweat onto the merchandise.

My role in this is pretty simple: stay out of the way, and make comics. I’m leaving for four weeks of travel on July 26th, and must fill the buffer with at least five weeks of comics by that time, so while Sandra and her crew endure the heat and heavy lifting, I’m enjoying the A/C and my collection of art supplies³.

It is not fair, and I do feel a bit guilty about it, but it’s the only way through.

On that note, today is Friday, and I need to create an entire week of comics between now and late Saturday night, so it’s time for me to go to work…

¹ The warehouse costs almost twice as much per month as our first house did. Running a business is expensive.
² It’s not entirely comprised of minors, and everybody is paid at least minimum wage, with all of the accompanying paperwork. Again, running a business is expensive. 
³ Sometimes I draw on the couch in front of the TV, enhancing that air-conditioned, seated feeling of guilt. 

I am quite glad to have a Spider-Man movie that doesn’t tell us the Uncle Ben story. Spider-Man: Homecoming clears my Threshold of Awesome, and comes in at #5 for me for the year.

This film does what the best YA books do—it gives us a story in which young people are the focus (right down to the various tropes whereby grown-ups can’t or won’t help out) without depending on that focus for appeal. Young people and old people alike will enjoy the movie not because of the young cast, but because of how the characters drive a great story.

Is it the best Spider-Man movie we’ve ever had? I don’t know. The first two Spidey films of this century are still close to my heart, and Captain America: Civil War remains my favorite concentrated dose of Spidey, probably because of the wide variety of opponents and the delightful back-and-forth banter.

I’m absolutely not dissing Spider-Man: Homecoming, however. Like I said, it clears my Threshold of Awesome.

On Saturday I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes back-to-back. I enjoyed both of those movies quite a bit more now than I did when I first saw them, and the refresher course made War for the Planet of the Apes much more enjoyable. I hadn’t realized just how much character continuity we have among the community of apes before. That alone helps the story along a lot.

This film is best considered as part III of a trilogy, and that entire trilogy functions as a prequel to 1968’s Oscar-nominated Planet of the Apes. Or rather, as a prequel to a potential remake, which we don’t actually need but will almost certainly get (I’m giving the 2001 film a wide miss. It doesn’t seem to fit here.)

I’m amazed at how Caesar, Luca, Rocket, Maurice and the other apes have crossed the Uncanny Valley and become real-world people to my eyes. The actors behind the motion-capture did fine work, and the animators are obviously sorcerers who have made some sort of dark pact with an eldritch god of cinema.

War for the Planet of the Apes doesn’t quite clear my Threshold of Awesome, but it’s a very near miss.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is easily the least enjoyable film I’ve seen this year. It started off pretty well, and then our main characters took the screen and the movie began to plummet through my ratings, landing squarely at the bottom long before the final credits rolled.

At least two people walked out of the showing early and did not return. Perhaps they could no longer stand the embarrassment of continuing to watch the movie, or maybe they stepped out to use the restroom, and found that the smell of disinfectant was such a refreshing change they prolonged their excretory lounging by an hour.

Harsh? Yes, that’s pretty harsh. The movie earned it.

I really wanted to enjoy this movie. I was prepared to ignore major failings in order to get an awesome space opera fix. I brought my extra-strength suspenders of disbelief, and tried to pretend I didn’t care about character motivation, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. I found myself actually cringing in my seat, physically curling up in a sort of full-body wince, over and over, right up until the last scene, which was one of the worst of the film.

Here is a quick list of the movie’s top failings:

• Infodumps! And not just maid-and-butler dialog, either. There were scenes that played out like a bored kindergarten teacher reading a Wikipedia article to a room full of robots.
• Dane HeHaan¹, who played Valerian, sounded like he was doing a Keanu Reeves imitation, except he left out all the emotion.
• Cara Delevingne², the actress who played Laureline, totally convinced me that Laureline was an android.
• Half of the film’s dialog was throwaway lines like “bring thrusters up to full” or “scanning for DNA now.”
• The romantic arc was obviously written by somebody who has never been in love, but who has heard lots of nice things about it, and maybe read a saucy book once.

There were some things that the film did well, of course:

• The special effects were nice.
• It was projected in an establishment that serves popcorn.
• It was about the right length for a movie.
• The colors were vibrant, and were on the screen instead of in my lap.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets deserves top billing in a future season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was only slightly less painful to watch than Cry Wilderness or Starcrash. It clears my Threshold of Disappointment³, obviously, and does so with such aplomb that I almost feel like apologizing to Transformers: The Last Knight.

¹ Dane Dehaan is a fine actor. I can only surmise that the director very vehemently demanded the most wooden performance possible.
² Cara Delevingne was one of the best things about Suicide Squad. Again, it’s my theory that Besson⁴ required her to pretend to be a replicant with poor social camouflage, and trouper that she is, she nailed the performance.
³ Some people will love this film, and will be quite angry at how disappointed I am with it. It’s important to realize that our reactions to art are mostly due to what we bring with us. The art only activates what’s already in our heads and hearts. I really wish I had a bag full of “You’ll love Valerian” with me in the theater, but I did not.
⁴ I have loved some of Besson’s other work, particularly The Fifth Element, which is still one of my all-time favorite films. 

On Wednesday, July 26th, I fly out of Salt Lake City for a series of events. On Monday, August 21st, I fly back into Salt Lake City and then hook a ride back to my house.

My house, my bed, my 4-monitor PC, my lit-from-four-sides drawing table, my kitchen, my food, okay yeah my kids, my couch, my TV…

Four weeks.

FOUR WEEKS.

I’m not looking forward to this. Sure, I’m totally looking forward to the events themselves, but concatenating them in this way is throttling the joyful anticipation a bit.

The events in question? WXR 2017 on a cruise ship near something called “Europe,” WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, and GenCon Indy in Indianapolis. I get a few days of rest between each event, and that rest is theoretically enhanced by me being not on airplanes to and from my house. Also, it’s more cost-effective.

During this time it is possible that I’ll drop of the internet and forget to do things like review movies (which I won’t be seeing anyway, I guess) and participate in social media stuff.

Fortunately, the thing most people expect from me—a steady, daily supply of Schlock Mercenary—will continue for the duration of my trip. As of this writing I’m 42 days ahead, and the server’s queue of comics has been populated to the point that it can (and will!) automatically deliver comics each day without any help from me.

If you’re coming to WXR 2017, WorldCon 75, or GenCon Indy, and you happen to meet me, you now know why I look like a piece of lost meat-luggage that is three weeks past its sell-by date.

Look, I could totally go outside, but right now I’m enjoying the view of my notebook’s screen while I listen to something that is neither engine noise nor other human beings.

I’m in Heidelberg, Germany. It’s 5:30pm, and by this time tomorrow I’ll be on a plane bound for Helsinki. Behind me lie three nifty castle tours, and lots of walking. I won’t trouble you with the travelogue beyond a few bullets:

• There’s a mural in Neuschwanstein castle that looks like a Disney matte painting. Chronology suggests that Walt Disney took some pictures when he visited.
• The stairway trail up to Hohenzollern castle means business.
• Trains are way better than buses because they have wi-fi.

Obviously we got off the ship okay. That seems like forever ago, but I guess it was just Saturday. I’ve lost track. WorldCon is my next big thing, and by this time next week I should be in Indianapolis bracing for GenCon Indy. And after that? HOME.

Home is my favorite.

The Dark Tower took a little while deciding what kind of movie it wanted to be, but I enjoyed it. It’s not my favorite Idris Elba movie, and it’s not my favorite Stephen King movie, and it doesn’t clear my Threshold of Awesome, but I enjoyed it.

I don’t have much emotional attachment to the novels, so the film’s departures from the text didn’t bug me. I did have a burning desire to get out of my hotel room to see a movie, so that may have artificially inflated the film’s joy factor a bit.

The weakest aspect of the film surrounded the parts that were the coolest to watch: when the Gunslinger is doing supernaturally awesome things with his .45 revolvers it’s just eye candy. There’s no emotional connection between him and the viewer. The stakes are high, but it’s difficult to really care. Had I cared more, the film would have been more enjoyable. Probably not Threshold of Awesome enjoyable, but still better.

I’m at GenCon Indy this week!

You can find me at Booth #1549 with Sandra Tayler, Jim Zub, and Tracy Hickman.

Planet Mercenary at GenCon!

We’ve got stacks of Planet Mercenary materials*, including the core book, the Game Chief’s screen, the Mayhem Deck, sets of RiPP tokens and dice,  and Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries.

We’ll also have the Game Chief’s Handbrain game screen*, a high-quality ABS plastic product that you simply must come and see.

Panels Where You Can Find Me Talking

Sounds enticing, yes? Here’s my panel schedule:

THURSDAY

• 6pm, Congress 1 — Reading (Howard reads his writing to you)
• 7pm, Capital 1 — How to Find Your Voice (panel discussion)

FRIDAY

• 6pm, Chamber — Writing Excuses records live

SATURDAY

• 12pm – 2pm, ICC Ballroom Main Stage — THE GAMERS: LIVE – ATTACK OF THE MUTANTS FROM PLANET X (I don’t actually know what I’m doing on stage, but I’m going to be doing my best at it.)
• 3pm, Capital 1 — Writers Cage Fight

(*Note: If you’re a Planet Mercenary backer and/or a Handbrain backer, your merchandise is shipping now, so we can’t do convention pickups for you.) 

I spent 27 days on the road, and didn’t even power my PC up until the day after I got back. This means that 1) it’s 28 days later, and 2) I’m glad it’s not the movie kind of 28 days later.

I have a full month of stories to tell. Some of them are hilarious, some are triumphant, and a few are really complainy and kvetchy. None of them are being told here, however, because I’m tired. I will, however, provide a few titles:

• Low Clearance But We Made It… Twice
• The Palace is Boring Now That I Know It’s a Replacement
• I See You Wrapped it in Bacon
• “You Are Spy”: the Tale of the Writer and the Submarine
• There Must Be a Ley Line Here
• I Bet Walt Took Pictures
• Oh BarCon, Where Art Thou?
• I Promised Myself I Wouldn’t Do This
• Maybe I’ll Let Somebody Else Say It For Me
• Oh Laundry, Where Art Thou?
• Rabidly, Ravenously Committing to a Joke
• Who Cares I Bet The Moon Will Do This Again Eventually

Should we meet in person, I might share one of these stories with you. Where appropriate, I might relate one of these stories while I’m on a panel at Salt Lake Comic Con.

Now, however, I need to go make up some stories and draw pictures for them. It’s been four weeks since I got any actual work done.