I Wanna Play Batman!

Yes, there are quite a few people who play role-playing games as adults (and no I don't mean strapping on a plastic stethoscope and playing "doctor").

As witness the boys (and several girls) who get together for these sorts of games in the comic book Knights of the Dinner Table. Mostly they play a modification of Dungeons and Dragons known as Hackmaster (a real game based on D&D with a license to do so!), but occasionally they take a break and use other game systems. The central group that lends its name to the comic book usually play a Wild West version of the game called Cattlepunk, while the players you see here from the Black Hands group play a superhero game. In this game, you can either make up your own superhero or play an established character from a comic book or movie.

Naturally this leads to people thinking, "Hey, I'll play the coolest one with the unbeatable powers!" But as anyone who plays these games knows, the GM (GameMaster) is always right, and if he chooses to modify things, he can. You want to play Batman? Fine. But I'm going to take away all the stuff that makes his crime fighting so effective, like his money to start...:) But as Kick-Ass's alter ego Dave discusses with his friends in the movie of the same name, what is Batman without his money? A brawler with a gas-guzzling car.

I love how the artist, who reminds me of Matt Groening in so many ways, draws "the boys" gathered around the table, most of them in costume. The only one who doesn't is Stevil Van Hostile, who as you can tell from his name, is a bastard who always plays a bastard. The art itself doesn't change much (like Groening's, at least in the early days). It's the story that really gets you laughing.

Good Girls Wear Chain Mail Bikinis

Ah, Red Sonja. A character that has fueled the dreams of more than one fanboy since her inception. Many were the cries of disappointment when the deal fell through to make Rose McGowan into the flame-haired she-devil.

Considering her origins (Goddess grants her extraordinary fighting ability after she is gang raped and loses her entire family to a band of barbarians), her choice of clothing (if you can call it that) was always a bit odd, to say the least. This excerpt, from the more recent incarnation by Dynamite Comics in 2003, puts the rationale for this decision in a nutshell. Rather like the couple that join the Hotzone Club in ARMY@LOVE and have sex in the middle of a firefight, then get surprised by an insurgent soldier who can only stand and stare at the girl.

If you look closely at the costume of Red Sonja as she has traveled through the years, you will notice odd changes. Her very first appearances were much more modest, with at least some nod to covering herself against at least some blows. Then they stuck her in the bikini and all hell broke loose - her popularity rose dramatically. She had a return to some semblance of modesty in the '80's, although her outfit still looked like something she'd wear to bed rather than to a battle. In the new millenium she has discarded her previous trappings and wanders the lands in her bikini once again.

Ah, but look closely even then! Different artists have the job of rendering her adventures, and all of them have their own way of dressing her. Some will give her the chain mail she is always famous for wearing. Some will give her scale mail, interlinked scales over some kind of mesh underneath. Some will give her linked mail, small disks sewn together with lots of space in between. Some artists will even switch up in the middle of the same story, making the attentive person say "Hang on a minute, how many of these bikinis does she have?"

But if that same person looks closer still, he will notice that some artists draw her with something obvious underneath the metal, while others will try to make it appear that she's naked and that a strong breeze will knock her bikini flap aside and, as the saying goes, "Let them see Christmas." Needless to say, the famous "gratuitous booty shot" is VERY common.

She has been described as the original bad girl, the female who every man lusts after but no one can get close to without getting seriously hurt or even killed. The dream of the pasty-faced fanboys, naturally, is to be the ultimate alpha male who does manage to win her love by defeating her in single combat.

Love her or hate her, Red Sonja still draws the eye and the heart. Me personally, I want Robert Rodriguez to get off his butt and get the ball rolling again on that movie he promised two years ago.