Missing In Action : Chuck Norris, Barbarians, Goblins and Ninjas

A post today just to let any who were worried (hi Mum) know that I haven't fallen off The Veil's Edge and that the Astronomican is still functioning out here, albeit as faint and weak as my Web connection.

I'm still languishing at home with my knee firmly rated as combat ineffective for the foreseeable, but I've got a lot of physio to do and I decided being hunched over a cogitator all day was not doing much to aid my recovery. So with a Chuck Norris 'Round House Kick' to my arse, dialed down by several orders of magnitude to prevent a Mass Extinction Event and also leave me some padding; I've taken a short break from the blog.

I am still checking in on the rest of the blogosphere and using this brief hiatus to catch up on a bit of painting, modeling and reading; all seated sporting activities I know, but ones I find I can better get up from every short while to stretch the legs. Writing the blog, as with many PC or console related activities, is like traversing the Warp; minutes go by for you but when you return to the world you find that whole days may have passed.

But what about Ninjas and the rest? Well now I've got you here I ought to make it worth the read and not all about me so; during my downtime I've spent quite a while reminiscing about the early days of the hobby, all this talk of Jokaero and Demiurg *cough* Squats! Has helped, as did this post by Karitas over on his blog Excommunicate Tratoris the other week.

One of the things I miss about those times is that roguish sense of humor, most notably lacking from the pages of White Dwarf these days; I'm talking about comic strips such as Thrud the Barbarian by Carl Critchlow or Gobbledigook by Bil Sedgewick that poked welcome irreverent fun at the hobby reminding us on occasion not to take it all too seriously.

I've just managed to get my hands on a copy of the 1987 Thrud Graffik Novel, a collection of the strips from White Dwarf (sadly before any of the ones that featured Space Marines) and it's brought back some good memories and more than a few laughs.

Luckily all is not lost to the pages of history and that breed of humor, like other things whose absence from the clean, shiny corporate GW of today we sometimes lament; lives on in the hobby blogs like this one guarded by NINJAS!!!

Ahem. Well it's called Ninjabread anyway and it's run by Curis who produces some rib achingly funny comic strips, an archive of which can be found HERE on his site, some of my favourites have been Space Hulk , Dwarf Kings Hold and his pokes at the Ultramarines movie.

Check it out, for those of you, who like me are suffering the Lasguns and Bolters of outrageous fortune at the moment, laughter really can be the best medicine.

Pictures used 'The Emperor of Mankind' Chuck Norris from Missing in Action, 'Death' by Paul Kidby copyright Terry & Lynn Pratchett & Paul Kidby, 'Gobbledigook' by Bil Sedgewick and 'Thrud the Barbarian' by Carl Critchlow copyright respective artists and Games Workshop Limited