All posts by Matt Dykes

Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.

Punks and Pixie Dynamos – Boom Bandits Volume 2 Review

A while back I reviewed a copy of Boom Bandits, and really enjoyed it. I’ve finally picked up the next volume, which was released in November 2022, and it’s an absolutely fantastic continuation of the first story.

The imagery is fantastic. The punk rocker aesthetic is dialed up to eleven and we get even more insight into the world that Bruno Stahl has developed. The story moves at breakneck speed, and the characters are unique and interesting. Characters we met in the first issue return, and we’re introduced to a few new faces as well.

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BBs, Bruises and Ultimate Fun! – Airsoft

History

What is airsoft? I’m asked this quite a lot when I tell people I’m going airsofting over the weekend. I normally describe it as similar to paintball, but better, so much better. The truth is, airsoft has quite a long history that spreads over almost 50 years.

Airsoft originated in Japan in the 1970s when a photographer called Ichiro Nagata came up with the idea of making model guns that shot non-lethal projectiles. The model guns also catered to shooting enthusiasts who found themselves unable to own real firearms due to the strict Japanese gun laws that banned private gun ownership from 1958 onwards. Originally referred to as “soft air” weapons, these guns were named for the type of gas they used to propel the projectiles they fired. Whilst airguns used co2, a high pressure gas, “soft air” guns used a Freon-silicone oil mixture. This was later changed to a propane-silicone oil mixture. Originally designed for target shooting, it wasn’t until the early 1990s when Tokyo Marui developed an electronic gearbox design that allowed for sustained fully automatic firing without the need to refill the gun with gas after a few shots.

Tokyo Marui S&W M59 – the first ever Gas Blowback pistol, released in 1986
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Gramps and Guttersnipes: A Review of Boom Bandits

We’ve all heard the term, OK boomer, used as a pejorative towards someone who is spouting a view that isn’t very progressive. But what would happen if the “boomers” of the world were able to live forever and us young, bloody millennials, were destined to die before the age of 40? This is a world that is explored in the new Indie comic series Boom Bandits.

Written and illustrated by Bruno Stahl, Boom Bandits is a dystopian, cyberpunk, social commentary mash up that takes place in a world after a cult was able to perfect a cure to aging, but it was only available to cult members. From this they built a society built on privilege where people who did not fit into their way of thinking were discarded to the ruins of the old world. These discarded people, labelled Guttersnipes, are made up of free thinking progressives who have no choice but to live in poverty in Scar City.

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One Ping Only: The 30th Anniversary of The Hunt For Red October

The name Tom Clancy is now synonymous with the techno spy thriller and realistic military-based stories. For most younger people it is also synonymous with several video game series including Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell, among many others. Clancy’s early career was in insurance however he used to write novels in his spare time. In 1984 he sold his first novel for $5,000 to a small publishing house in Maryland. That novel was The Hunt For Red October. The book was a huge hit and became a national best seller. The main character, Jack Ryan, went on to appear in 10 novels written by Clancy, and a further 11 novels that were written by other authors. By the end of the 1980s Tom Clancy had become a household name, Alec Baldwin remarked that Clancy’s novels were so popular that he would often look around in business class on a plane to see that 8 out of 10 people were reading a Clancy novel.

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Strange New Worlds: The Most Important New Star Trek Series?

With the announcement on Friday 15th May of the new Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, fans are unsurprisingly in a euphoric state. A lot of fans lauded Anson Mount and Ethan Peck for their portrayals of Captain Pike and Spock in Discovery’s second season and there were campaigns for a Pike series whilst Discovery season 2 was still airing. It looks like CBS have listened to what we want and commissioned this new series and it may be more important than we realise.

Putting aside the ability for it to offer explanations for some of the canonical irregularities that more hardcore fans of Star Trek accused Discovery of there is something way more important that it can do. Captain Christopher Pike is not someone who was just plucked out of thin air for the sophomore season of Discovery, he is quite an important character in the Star Trek mythos.

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Pandemic Picks: The Nice Guys

You will all have favourites out there, favourite actors, favourite directors, favourite writers. It’s natural that you gravitate towards certain people, with actors it’s because you probably identify with him or her more, or just that you like their performances. Directors and writers though are a little different, you don’t like the people themselves necessarily, but you like their style, their techniques, their voice. For me I love Shane Black and will watch anything that he does and for the most part I love everything he has written or directed. What really appeals to me about Shane Black is the way he can switch very quickly and almost effortlessly between hilarious comedy to serious drama. Not only that but he manages to subvert clichés by setting up what looks to be a cliché situation and then turns it completely on its head.

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Stepping Through the Wormhole: 25 Years of Stargate: The Complete Franchise

Because it became clear very early on into this project that an article covering the entire Stargate Franchise would be far too long I broke it down into four parts. But I also wanted to present the full article in all it’s glory as well so here it is. What you might consider the Deluxe Edition. I hope you all enjoy it.

UNLOCKING THE GATE – THE ORIGINAL FEATURE FILM

In October of 1994, Stargate hit the cinema screens and became a surprise hit. Critics were not kind to the Roland Emmerich-directed epic adventure, but it struck a chord with audiences with it’s stunning photography and intriguing story. It launched a franchise that has become one of the most popular Science Fiction franchises of all time. A franchise that consists of: 3 films, 3 live action series, 1 animated series and, most recently, a 10 part mini-sode series. Not to mention the various games and books that were released. But we will get to all that in time; first we need to go back to the beginning, to where it all started….The 1994 feature film.

I should probably preface this part of the article with a small statement; it may seem like I am being harsh against the feature film but that is only because of everything that came after. The film started it all and without it we wouldn’t have got SG1 or anything else, however, for me the film just doesn’t hold up in comparison to the series.

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Pandemic Picks: Future Man

It’s funny how you find new shows to watch, for example with Future Man I found it purely by accident. I put a photo up onto a Facebook group for The Expanse, the photo was of my Amazon recommendations and I was pointing out that Amazon was recommending that I watch The Expanse again. See my previous Pandemic Pick on The Expanse for reasons why I would happily watch the whole series again. However, by pure chance the cursor was actually highlighting this other show called Future Man, and several people on the group mentioned how much they enjoyed that show. So, I thought I’d give it a shot.

I’ll pre-warn you, just like I was, the show is definitely for adult only audiences. Produced by Seth Rogan and Even Goldberg the series tells the story of Josh Futturman, a twentysomething janitor who lives with his parents. He is a hardcore gamer and addicted to a game called Biotic Wars, when he completes the game he is recruited by two freedom fighters from the future, Tiger and Wolf, to help them defeat the Biotics. Does it sound a little familiar? The Last Starfighter anyone? Well the show knows that it’s ripping off it’s concept from the eighties film because it makes a joke about it immediately. The series is littered with references to various Sci-Fi films including a lot of time travel films including The Terminator and Back to the Future to name two. The font that is used for the on screen text is the same one that is used in the Terminator series.

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Pandemic Picks: The Martian

Ridley Scott was shot into the mainstream with his 1979 Sci-Fi thriller Alien, he cemented his position as a visionary director of Science Fiction with 1982’s Blade Runner and then he moved onto other genres. In 2012 he returned to Sci-Fi with the mediocre Prometheus, audiences felt like he had lost his touch when it came to Sci-Fi. Thankfully he proved everyone wrong with the exceptional 2015 Sci-Fi drama The Martian.

Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Andy Weir, The Martian follows astronaut Mark Watney as he tries to survive alone on Mars after he is accidentally left behind when his fellow astronauts perform an emergency evacuation of the planet during a storm. The film has a lot of elements to it that make it such a wonderful film, the acting is superb and the characters themselves are deep and believable. The realism in the film is interesting because everything feels like it is something that not only could exist, but will exist in 2035. The realism is due to the fact that the filmmakers consulted NASA in the elements of space travel and Mars.

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A Modern American Classic: The 25th Anniversary of Heat

It’s rare that films come along that are recognized as an instant classic, but 25 years ago the Michael Mann written and directed crime epic Heat did just that. Heat was not just any crime thriller; it was an intricate story that wove interconnected plots together like a fine suit with a realism that is rare in crime cinema. Not only that, it was one of the most meticulous and detailed films not only in the crime genre itself but in all of cinema history.

It is not widely known but Heat was actually based on a true story that happened in Chicago in the early 1960s. Neil McCauley was a real career criminal who had been in and out of prison throughout his entire adult life. The pursuit of McCauley was led by Chicago Detective Chuck Adamson, who would later serve as the inspiration for the character of Vincent Hanna. Adamson and McCauley did sit down and have coffee like in the movie and on 25th March 1964 McCauley was chased down during the execution of a robbery and gunned down by Adamson. When Michael Mann was introduced to Adamson by a mutual friend, a man by the name of Nate Grossman, the McCauley story captured Mann’s imagination. He put a lot of the real events into the story that would eventually become Heat.

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