This iconic comic book (which is not in my collection) came out right when I was born! The cover date says November but Marvel always put a future date on their covers to make them seem newer longer. Marvel Unlimited has it marked as Sept 1, 1974 but for comics published previous to the digital age they seem content to just be accurate as to the month, they all say Sept 1 or May 1 or whatever. Did it come out on September 11, 1974? It doesn't really matter at all, but it would be cool to think the (more or less) first appearance of Wolverine coincided with my birthday. 

The Hulk and Wolverine have been two of my favourite characters for much of the intervening 40+ years.

A friend of mine asked me on Twitter a while back, how do I define strength? In the context of, you know, how this pandemic and all the things is wearing us down at varying rates and in different ways. I didn't think hard about it, I just answered off the top of my head:

"Like the Hulk or Wolverine: strong, angry and incapable of being hurt."

(It being Twitter I couldn't go back and edit my answer because as a writer it irks me that I answered a question about defining strength using the word 'strong' lol- I should've said Big or Muscley.) 

Anyways, this answer kind of stayed with me for a while, since I wonder if it revealed a little more about me than I really wanted to reveal. But it's instructive too, as a place to move forward from. 

Here's a comic I do have in my collection, another iconic cover featuring my favourite characters, that came out, as David Hartwell's famous quote would have it, during my golden age of comics. (Hartwell said the golden age of science fiction is 12, and that works for so many things):

Hulk and Wolverine once again have occasion to engage in fisticuffs. Wolverine was most annoyed with Hulk because Hulk accidentally caused one of the X-Men's Blackbird engines to fall off. While the X-Men were flying in it! So, fight fight fight. It's really awesome! (Hulk is grey and smart here because reasons.) Wolverine has what I think is an interesting insight:

He goes on to say "It makes him tougher, stronger, harder to hurt." Obviously cancer doesn't work like that in real life, but it's a good reminder for stunted boys like me that there is nothing aspirational about the Hulk (let's ignore Endgame for this discussion though!). Wolverine struggles here with his own nature, at first proud of himself for not losing his cool, but then he most definitely loses his cool. Fight fight fight!

Eventually they realize they are being silly and go their own ways, promising to not do it again at least until the next time.

As I go my own way, I realize I am looking for something better to use as a guide, as a definition of strength. Or maybe even more importantly, recognizing the limitations of using "strength" as one's core image of self-sufficiency.

And to be sure, I've always tried to have an expansive and open heart. Generosity of spirit. It's hard to do that in practice if one holds onto anger as a sort of armour against being hurt. But I have found that lowering one's guard can open up worlds.

I don't like to use memes too much, but this one gets the chef's kiss treatment from me:

Specifically Gojira has been my balm, my source of meditative rumination. A new definition of strength, or better yet, just guiding words whether one is strong or not: 

I embrace the world

 I thought I would play more solo board games than I have been. What with the pandemic and all the time on my hands. But no, I can't recall the last time I pulled out one of my many, many games to play solo. Mostly that's a factor directly attributable to Ahsoka- I don't really sleep through the night anymore and I go to bed abominably early because of that.

Not every game is readily solo-able, but more and more these days it's something a new game needs to feature in order to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Beautiful art, quality components, innovative gameplay and, increasingly, an engaging solo mode. Beyond just playing a dummy player, although I don't mind doing that in some worker placement games where both "players" can sort of do their own thing, follow emergent strategies, just so I can see what will happen. It wasn't uncommon for me to play Euphoria or Rajas of the Ganges that way, even after a 12-hour shift at work:

Some games are strictly solo- including one I have called Nemo's War. I keep meaning to bust it out, but I find there's a sort of equation that comes into play:

Friction of setup > desire to play= no thanks, maybe tomorrow

This applies to multi-player games too, of course. But the friction is that much higher when it's just me. Things that help to decrease friction- fun factor is the biggest, but ease of setup is also high. Some gamers invest in Gametrayz which are custom trays made to facilitate setup. I see the appeal, even if I can't quite justify the cost. Pallas and I are both wild about Euphoria but our copy doesn't even have any kind of insert at all, everything is in little baggies, and sometimes that just makes me say "Not today, sorry." Not always though. 

I do like the free Print N Plays you can find, the top photo in this post is one of the better ones I've found so far- Utopia Engine. All you need is the printout, a pencil and some regular six-sided dice.

 Mars! That's it, that's the tweet. 

Update: I'm sure everyone has seen the by now but this is so cool, it never gets old no matter how many robots are roaming around over there:

 I finished a short story today that I've been working on for a couple of weeks- I found a call for submissions for an anthology that sounds really cool. Feels good to finish my first work of 2021. That's about all I can say about it, though. I could be convinced to share the details of the anthology with you but leave it to you to find me. I am not hiding!

And I have a story over here on Stymie, called FVSF. Enjoy! Have a good weekend!

 I never got a chance to play it, but a boardgame called Sarah's Vision came out a few years ago now that incorporated Jenga-like blocks in the game in what sounded like an interesting way. The whole game just sounded interesting, even the fact that the company that published it is an insurance company, and if I recall its design came about as the result of a team-building exercise within that company? A friend of mine who got the game (a German version of it, or possibly French) told me the story. Wish I had tried it out. The game supplies its own blocks, plastic and smaller than Jenga blocks. Adding story elements to the tension of a Jenga tower is brilliant. Who doesn't have Jenga lying around? 

A random thing to bring up on a cold Tuesday morning, but only because I saw mention of a horror RPG that also uses Jenga blocks which sounds really fascinating. I'm more of a boardgames than a role-player, though I do want to get way more into RPGs eventually (Pallas has been learning to DM and we have played a D&D game with her, we just need to do more). So this game is called Dread and even without knowing anything about the story itself, just the fact that it incorporates that stress of pulling a block from the tower, hoping it won't topple.... like why didn't I think of that?

Here's another one, called Star-Crossed, about forbidden romance and star-crossed lovers, who really really want to, but really really can't. 

I love the creativity in this whole realm of game design, whether boardgames or tabletop role playing games. Video games too but I am no expert in those. I mainly just play Clash of Clans and Super Smash Bros, games which reward button mashing more than skill. There are very interesting games now that incorporate journaling that I wish I had the time to really delve into. And dominoes are being used in new and interesting ways as well. There's a new game called Renature that I really want to try.

 Two Kickstarter posts in a row... I know! Don't worry, this is not going to be an all-Kickstarter hype blog, there are plenty of those out there (or at least I assume so lol) but a project just launched that I love for a couple of reasons. First, here's the project:

   

 Beautiful, yeah? I backed the first two volumes, Feyland and Underworld. Then I won the third volume the other day on Twitter from Cawood Publishing! In an era of my life in which I am, um, being a little more austere with my discretionary purchases, that felt really great. While giving my address to them I discovered there is an Edmonton connection with the publisher Andrew Cawood, which I thought was very cool. He moved to Edmonton from South Africa, went to high school here, got into Dungeons and Dragons here, now he's in Vancouver. 

 These books are gorgeous, full-colour illustrations on every page. Even if you're not an RPG person, these are just great books to flip through and admire the art and read the lore.  Oh and the illustrator? What initially drew me to the first volume, Monsters of Feyland, was seeing Travis Hanson post about it on Instagram. Travis Hanson has been one of my favourite artists for a lot of years now- our house is pretty much a Travis Hanson art gallery, we have several of his prints hanging on ourn walls as well as a piece of original art which is amazing. You might remember I interviewed him for this blog many years ago! Oh and then I got to meet him at SDCC in 2010... how is that over a decade ago, wow. Anyways, he's been busy the whole time since then, he's gotta be one of the hardest working artists in the biz. And definitely one of the best. 

Original art! Three of my favourite things- bear, dwarf, axe!