It’s Bob Naismith Challenge Time on the Oldhammer Community. Painters the world over are working on pieces from the grandmaster’s extensive back catalogue of gems, to be judged by the Lord Bob Almighty himself. Bob was so prolific in the 1980s (and still is today) that my shortlist of entries was 38 ideas, and one mini that bubbled to the surface was the Traitor General.

The Traitor General is the central antagonist in 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper strip – a treacherous military commander being hunted by the eponymous Rogue Trooper.

The Citadel Miniature is a great likeness of the comic art, burnt face and all. Bob’s sculpted him with a blinded swollen eye, permanent snarl from soft tissue damage to the lips, and the ultimate signaller of evil – a bald head.

I have modified the miniature – filing away the original scupted detail of the burnt scalp, which I feared would look like a hairpiece rather than damaged skin.

The miniature came courtesy of Jason Fulford, who’s already painted a copy and has been a great help pointing me at reference material and inspiration for the colours. A lot of Citadel’s 2000AD range never appeared painted in the official publications, and the comics were in black and white so colour choices took some research. Thanks, Jason!

There’s still loads of time to get your own entry into the competition, just head over to the Oldhammer Community for full details.

But this one miniature isn’t my complete entry to the competition. Coming soon… more Naismithery!

British comics lost an icon this week with the death of Carlos Ezquerra – the creative genius behind Judge Dredd and Johnny Alpha. Carlos’s character designs and universes underpin a lot of subsequent science fiction – including Warhammer 40,000.  Two years before Games Workshop gave birth to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, they were dabbling with science fiction miniatures such as this trio of Strontium Dog characters.

Left to right: Wulf Sternhammer, Johnny Alpha, Gronk.

I’ve been painting this triumverate of bounty hunters with an eye on Warlord Games’ new Strontium Dog game.  Excitingly they can also be shoehorned into modern Necromunda with the recent bounty hunter rules.

The miniatures are from Citadel’s 2000AD range produced for the 1985 Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game.  Though technically Johnny Alpha and Judge Dredd inhabit separate universes, they have crossed over several times for reasons of awesome.

Johnny Alpha and Judge Dredd, Judgement Day, 2000AD #799.

The Rogue Trader universe borrows a lot of its overall look from Carlos Ezquerra’s artwork.  The amount of time and artwork the Rogue Trader rulebook spends on the (non-Chaotic) random mutations tables is testament to Strontium Dog’s influence.  There’s a lot of Strontium Dog wargear that pops up in the forty-first millennium too, such as gravchutes, stasis grenades and electro-mauls.

But wait – there’s more…

The Rogue Trader Mystery

There was a mystery for almost thirty years about the miniature that appears in a single murky black-and-white photograph on page 11 of the Rogue Trader rulebook.

The mystery figure, top left corner.

The figure never made it into production, appearing only in this photo.  Only in 2013 did details of the figure emerge thanks to Steve Casey’s Eldritch Epistles – it was a one of several Judge Dredd figures that had been converted and cast up in-house to playtest the upcoming Rogue Trader rules before actual miniatures had been made.

It was released a couple of years later by Wargames Foundry, so people like me and Rochie can paint and play with our own copies of this odd curio.

Inquisitor Ezquerra and Johnny Alpha.

I plumped for white and papal purple to spin the figure as an Imperial Inquisitor.  (It was tempting to paint him in green and yellow trousers, as if it’s Johnny improvising a disguise as an Imperial Inquisitor.)  He’s so wee. being from 1985 when sculptors tended to 25mm scale, that I built up his base to help him keep some sense of imposing Imperial authority over the rest of the Imperium’s servants.

More vintage Crimson Fists coming soon!