Walter The Wobot

One of the things I've recently been finding funny about both pop-culture fandom and the rise of nerd-culture in popularity is how some of us see (or remember) things we really liked in our youth.

The best example I can give from my younger days is when the first 'modern' Batman movie came out staring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson there were loads of people who were suddenly comic fans talking about how Tim Burton had finally given Batman the dark presentation the comics had always had, which was really ONLY true if your entire exposure to Batman at the time was the comics Frank Miller had written.  Fast forward a few years and I see the same thing applied all over the place, my personal favourite example being the unfortunately bad reception the movie Punisher: Warzone received.  That movie was very true to the tone of Punisher comics in the 80s and early 90s, the Punisher himself was incredibly violent and dark but almost everything that happened around him was pretty ridiculous.

But what does this have to do with miniatures I've been painting?

Well, here's the thing, earlier this year Judge Dredd fans like myself got to enjoy the awesome Dredd 3D (by the way you should all go out and buy a copy of Dredd 3D) and almost immediately everyone began spitting on the grave of the 90s Stallone Judge Dredd movie.  First up, let me be perfectly honest as a movie goer and a Judge Dredd fan I did (and still do) think that movie was (and still is) awful, but having said that it gets beat up a lot for things that really weren't wrong.  Case in point; Rob Schneider.  A lot of things in that movie just didn't belong (romantic side-story, ABC Warriors, Dredd not wearing his helmet, etc) but as an ACTUAL fan of Judge Dredd and 2000AD comics I thought Rob Schneider was great.  Most people forget that Judge Dredd is not a dark, gritty view into the future...it's a satire of those exact things, and as such it has certain characters who highlight the ridiculousness of the setting as a whole.

Enter Walter The Wobot.
Walter The Wobot is a robot with a speech impediment that functions as Judge Dredd's valet and provides some comic relief.  Walter frequently tries to do the right thing but it turns out wrong due to either his own ineptitude or the unfairness of the world in which he operates (sound like any movie character we were just talking about?)   I don't know how necessary a miniature of Walter is for gaming Judge Dredd but he's an awesome character and a great fig so I had to paint him up.

Also, it means I didn't technically break my own rule about skipping ahead on new Judge Dredd models.

-Jay