Warhammer Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

By Paul Barnett, Creative Director, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Disclaimer: I don't hit Comic-Con until late Thursday so this is written on the plane journey as an attempt to give you something to read that has a vague 'comic' relevance.

I had a strange dream last night as I danced with Morpheus one last time prior to my journey to Comic-Con. It was about the English city of Norwich and fire. My family live in England in Norwich; it’s a fine city. Clean, quiet, charming and cozy. It’s also the city where I have seen more buildings burning than anywhere else.

Paul Barnett, Creative Director for WAR

I watched an empty house burn down on a hill. It was an epic movie moment, like the back lot burning they did for Gone with the Wind, all licks of fire and vibrant colours, nature and the elements at their finest, chewing into the internal human instinct, the same one that makes you all look out of a window when a big storm hits.  I came across a lumber yard that also went up in pungent aromatic smoke. You smelt it before you saw it and it lingered in the air, the clothes and - I swear - in the tarmac roads. And I did my best to offer support when the Norwich Library burnt to the ground taking with it countless, priceless books. They fought that fire for days before it finally gorged itself on so many words and phrases that the fire developed pan dimensional awareness and flew to the stars as cosmic steam, leaving behind the carcass of the old library, picked clean, bare and naked for all too see.

I was a little confused about dreaming about Norwich and fire, but all was well back home so it had to be something else, something bothering me.

So a thought hit me this morning as a tried to poke my eye out with my breakfast spoon. Somehow it feels wrong and bad that I am flying out on Thursday. After all surely the true believers go on Wednesday. Perhaps my commitment is not as strong as it once was or maybe I am trying to help make the game back at Mythic HQ.

I was troubled enough with this idea that I had to go back to memory lane to see what I cold recall about my comic past. I discovered a few things...

I have a disproportionate love for the 2000AD magazine. A weekly that ran multiple stories, all about seven pages in length and all in black and white (well apart from the centre splash page which was in colour and belonged to the mighty Judge Dredd. I read that comic with a vengeance, drinking in the bold/subversive/challenging/philosophical and crazy ideas of Mills, Wagner and Grant and enjoying the drawing clarity / comedy / challenge and craziness of the likes of Bolland, Gibbons, Esquerra, Kennedy, Smith, Belardinelli, O’Neil and McMahon.

It’s where I encountered such cool thinking as Strontim Dog, a tale about a social set of human mutant outcasts that became galaxy wide bounty hunters; Judge Dredd with his facist/hero/social commentary/future sight and comedy; Nemensis the Warlock, a mind bending tale about a well, a space warlock and unbelievably cool, (if you want to better understand Warhammer 40K you will take no harm in reading Nemesis the Warlock); Flesh, the cleverest time travel story about men and dinosaurs I ever encountered; and Slaine, a story that reinvented barbarians and gave you a different look to the archetype dominated by Conan.

From 2000AD I sprang to a monthly called Warrior. It was short lived, crazy, experimental, bonkers and rock and roll. Warrior was a love child mega comic put together by Dez Skin and featured all you would ever need. Young writers like Alan Moore and passionate artists like Steve Dillon featured, European strips ran introducing me to new ways of telling stories, new stories arrived (hello V for Vendetta!) and old stories where reinvented (hello Miracle Man!). Gary Leech drew the most beautiful artwork and nothing every really hit home like the covers. Warrior was a folly, a madness; it was travelling at the speed of light, breaking boundaries and then crashed and burned. The fall of Warrior ended up being played out in public, the letters page became riveting reading, as first the editor and later the writers and artists started to chime in. Warrior was a moment, a movement, an experience, one that got better with age. Warrior was any rock and roll super group. It was Creme. It was glorious.

For the faithful that followed Warrior it is was a great loss when it folded up, taking with it the half finished stories and putting us in limbo. I mean imagine following V for Vendetta, seven pages a month and then the story just stopping. No ending, no wrap up. Nothing. Same with Miracle Man; we got a strange, killer dimensional dog appearing and then POOF, nothing.

It was years before those stories reappeared, years before we found out how they ended.

And yet I look back on it and realize that Dickens was right, it was the best and worse of times. Comics are my rock and roll, those magazines my bands and the periods I recall fondly are the classic albums that my rock and roll bands recorded.

I am as passionate, dedicated and vocal about them as my dad has ever been about his Pink Floyd albums.

I also got swept up in the graphic novel thing, I mean, it started well and at first I didn't even know it was happening. I was buying monthly one shot comics, the musical equivalent of singles. And then along came a concept album. Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns are as important as Sergeant Pepper. Concept comics, ones that would challenge and change everything. In my small world The Dark Knight Returns is the greatest comic of all time about a standard series character, and The Watchmen is the greatest stand alone comic ever written.

These were great. And then I got crazy, just like the sixties and the music scene. A 'movement' happened and… you know what? It didn't live up to the billing. Oh sure we got some great work, Year One, Born Again, Swamp Thing and our own acid house period with Arkum Asylum. But between all those greats we got a boat load of dross. I know, I ended up having shelves of it at home. Thousands of so called graphic novels just like my dad got fooled into buying a shed load of so called 'prog rock'.

And just like him I came to a moment. A critical moment. I had too many comics, not enough room and needed to move on.

My solution was as follows, I decided I would create a 'time box', one cardboard box that I would fill with things for my boy Callum. He was 3 at the time and I wanted to have a box he could open when he was 15. I wanted the box to be full of the best, the cream of my collection. The things that would matter. And by setting a limit of one small box I forced my hand. I threw in the obvious, my individual issues of Watchmen, Dark Knight, my Elekra Lives Again. I threw in the challenges and then I put in my curious. It's where my Warrior comics ended up, though I also included the complete V for Vendetta. No need to torture him for years like I was. I bought collected stories from 2000AD and then sealed it up and put it in the attic. It’s still there, waiting for him to turn 15.

The rest, the countless rest, was more of a problem. Comics were going through this slump, the crazy times had arrived, Wildcats and its ilk was clogging the channels, cover variants were destroying retail, the speculation bubble had well and truly burst and the market was having the hangover that the previous ten year rock and roll frenzy had fuelled.

But I still had a kick ass collection. It was still mighty, yes some dross was in there but I had thousands of graphic novels. So I did the only thing I cold think of. I went for a walk. And blow me down in the answer didn't find me.

A friend of mine had run a comics shop, he started it at the height of the 1980's comic boom and tried hard until it imploded. He ended up without a shop, without comics and getting a dull job. I bumped into him in town and after talking about life and where he worked I found my answer. I went home and bundled all my graphic novels into the back of my red car and took three trips to drop them for him. He had talked to his boss and got the go ahead to take my graphic novels and add them to the new library they were about to open. The new library, sprung form the steaming carcass of the old one was to be progressive. It would offer DVD's, internet access and all manner of more niche books.

And as of that day it would have a section of graphic novels. All my old ones. My books were donated to the library and thus started the graphic novel collection. Soon after, the books were on shelves and blow me down if they didn't prove popular. It seemed fitting to me that they got a new lease on life, got to be recycled and re-read.  Letting them go, allowing the removal of dust covers, not worrying about the edges getting scuffed, being ok with a big library sticker on the cover, watching people just drink them up. Over time the graphic novel section swelled, new ones arrived and my collection was dwarfed by the additions. It may not have replaced the books that got burnt, it may not have been the stuff I sealed in my box, but that’s ok. You see like any addict… I had duplicates. They still got all the good stuff.

So as I recalled these memories I thought to myself, it will be okay. Thursday is fine. I already walked a while on the road, and my boy has a box of joy to look forward to. You just need to be tolerant that you’re getting another blog post that’s not actually from Comicon...yet.

(Editor's Note: You can read all of Paul's Comic Con blogs by clicking here!)