Sunday, April 25, 2010

Map 6 of 26: Mission Abort!

Originally I planned to post a map that would showcase a bit of gaming nostalgia from years past. Unfortunately, this map is taking a ton of time to clean up and finish. So hopefully that "classic" map I promised will be up for viewing in the next few weeks. In the meantime I give you a map designed by a "psychotic moron".

Back on 04/03/2010, I was discussing my personal opinions of the character selection (or the lack thereof) from Brave & the Bold on a thread title "**SPOILER ALERT** Brave and the Bold" over at HCRealms. I broke the set figures down on a rating scale from 1 thru 5 where generally 3 thru 5 are positive categories and only one category is overtly negative. Here's a quote from that thread.

"1- Characters or concepts I dislike so much that if I had a time machine I'd go back in time and kill the creator's parents (Remakes or New ****)
020 – Damian Wayne
042 – Robin
045 - The Wizard Shazam (I won't forgive DC for messing up the Marvel Family)"

In a 04/11/2010 thread titled "Disgusted" created by HCRealms member mjts , mjts ranted:

"Some moron actually said that there were three characters in this set he disliked so much that if he had a time machine he would go back and kill the parents of the creators. I am not sure if he was talking about the creators of the sculpts, the dials or the comic book characters, but what was more surprising to me was that this psychotic was not immediately banned." http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=273843

Now OK, I'll give you that my category label is a little extreme but I intensely hate the concept of Damien Wayne. For the people out there that like this character. I'm glad they got two versions of him.

However, Batman has been known for his willpower for years. Knock him unconscious and try to take off the cowl... blam!... you're electrocuted. The man carries anti-shark repellant in his utility belt. That's prepared. This guy even carries around a piece of kryptonite just in case his buddy goes loco. That's even more prepared. He's slept with a billion women for seventy years and never conceived a child. Cripes, Hugh Hefner couldn't even do that.

Yet somehow Talia got a hold of some Bat-seed. Are you telling me there isn't some Bat-defertilization spray in that tool belt? You've got to be kidding me.

So it got me thinking, in the vast tapestry of comics, how could Batman stop this? Clearly he'd use the Atom to shrink down and stop the conception or maybe since he's a billionaire pay someone to shrink down and permanently set up shop in his sack who leaps into action in the event of an unexpected release. I like the idea of Batman joining forces with Rip Hunter and the Atom to go back in time to get inside Talia and stop Damien Wayne from being conceived. Once there, they're surprised to find hordes of League Elite and Man-Bat Assassins guarding her eggs. So with that fight in mind, a new map was born.


Now of course this map isn't exclusively Talia, so we can use it to stop any of the ridiculous offspring comicbookdom has forced on us over the years. From Connor Hawke to Hulkling no contrived legacy character is safe.

Before anyone asks... yes, this is an indoor map. This map was difficult for me as it was the first time I had to hand design all the shading effects. No one on the various RPG map sites had ever designed the necessary uterine shadows needed to create the internal area of this map. This map also has a ton of blocking terrain to help define where the "cavern" walls would be.

The debate has also finally been won; giant sperm flow is hindering terrain. Late last night, a fellow judge and I were discussing the merits of making sperm flow water terrain but in the end I felt at that scale the sperm would be too large to be wet. Also before any microbiologists reading this jump down my throat, I understand that the sperm, eggs and background are way out of scale to each other. However I needed to get all three elements in the map and feel the scale offense is nowhere near as bad as some of the scale liberties mainstream companies have taken on their maps such as the giant computers on that bank map.

Anyway, thanks for reading this moron's psychotic ramblings and I'll see you in a few weeks.

6 comments:

  1. [He's slept with a billion women for seventy years and never conceived a child.]

    In the graphic novel Son of the Demon, Ra's successfully enlists Batman's aid in defeating a rogue assassin and warlord, Qayin (a variation on the spelling of Cain), who has murdered Ra's' then-wife Melisande (Talia's mother). During this storyline, Batman marries Talia and she becomes pregnant. Batman is nearly killed protecting Talia from the assassin's agents. In the end, Talia ends her relationship with Batman, unwilling to put him in danger. She claims to have miscarried and the marriage is dissolved. The child is eventually born and left at an orphanage (eventually taking the name Ibn al Xu'ffasch). The only identification provided is Talia's jewel-encrusted necklace, which once belonged to Talia's mother.

    Know your material. (And the shark-repellant reference - being from the TV show - is hardly "canon.)

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  2. Yes, because a TV show is less real than a comic book.

    :rolleyes:

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  3. And yet you don't address the "never conceived a child" issue.

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  4. That TV show isnt canon. Roll your eyes all you want.

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  5. Hey Mike! I was checking out my blog statistics and looking at the sources from which I received incoming traffic.

    I so glad you decided to post your rebuttal on this obscure forum (http://hohforum.hallofheroesllc.com/index.php?topic=304.0) instead of rebuttalling me on HCRealms. Had you rebuttalled me there, it wouldn't have caused any increased traffic to the site. But thankfully since you posted your rebuttal to this above linked forum, I got an overwhelming 7 more hits than I would have.

    Awesome, dude! Thanks for the free advertising!

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  6. Actually, Michael, Son of the Demon was specifically declared non-canon by the Editor at the time, Dennis O'Neil. It wasn't until Morrison's Batman and Son arc that Bruce and Talia's child entered "proper" continuity, with a new name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_the_Demon

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