Sunday, September 26, 2010

In Praise Of Roebeast




This is Roebeast, and his blog, Roebeast's Magical House of Sunshine, can be found easily enough here on Blogspot:

http://roebeast.blogspot.com/

I sing his praises today, because he is apparently one of the three other people than myself who bought Fantasy Modeling when it first came out.

FM was a fantastic magazine, born of the early 1980s, the success of Starlog magazine, and the fantasy gaming craze that grew into what us old grognards of today think of as simply "gaming and gamers."

It was devoted largely to miniature modeling and painting, but had articles about modelbuilding, kitbashing, gaming, wargaming, and so much more. It was a glorious thing, to those of us who lived way the hell and gone out in the boonies, back in the day, back before cell phones and web connections made nothing very distant at all.

It only lasted four issues. I mourned the hell out of it when it folded. I'd subscribed for the coming year; they sorrowfully sent me a check for the balance of my money (and an offer to invest it in a subscription to Starlog.)

Today, though, we live in a very different world, a world where if I want Leonard Nimoy's music album on CD, I can order it on Amazon (or Ebay, if I want the original vinyl.) Today, NOTHING seems like it's very hard to get. The internet is a place where if ANYONE EVER GAVE A SHIT ABOUT IT, there's a site... or a blog... or a retrospective... or a photo gallery... or, in many cases, the thing itself, available for download for a reasonable fee, or free.

But not Fantasy Modeling. It was just too obscure. Too few people had bought it, read it. All the copies ever printed were trashed, or lost, or made into mouse bedding somewhere out there. I searched, I hunted. But the only "Fantasy Modeling" my google-fu ever returned were exotic dance studios and nude clubs in various cities across the nation.

Not that this was a bad thing, but it weren't what I were lookin' for.

But then, casting his mighty shadow across the dawning Web, came Roebeast, modeling tools in one great hand, mouse in the other. He took a break from his many vocations, including blogging, comics work, modeling, gaming, and (if his picture is any indication), killing zombies with sledgehammers.

And he dug into his pile of old and beloved periodicals, and took the time to digitally preserve a grand and glorious thing for the benefit of us all.

Check his link, above, if you still don't get what I'm talking about. His comics and model work is quite worthwhile, too.

Thanks, RB. When's issue four going up?

1 comment:

  1. It was actually killing vampires with a chaos blade but that's a story for another day. Or you can get the movie Dead At The Box Office for my cameo undead slayfest.

    I'm chuffed to hear how much you dig FM Lord O'Bedlam, they were a true inspiration to me and continue to inspire new ideas. I'll try to get the remaining issues up soon.

    Now what about that Ron Jeremy figure?

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