DwarfCast 172 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #12 DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 21st August 2024, 11:35 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes “Clifford the Big Bastard of a Dog” With apologies for the delay, it’s finally time to get back on the rack! Our Smegazine odyssey reaches February 1993, a very interesting time in Red Dwarf history, as the magazine’s news page documents. In this episode, we uncover the origins of Entangled, some foreshadowing of The Promised Land and the first ever use of the smeg hammer. Other super relevant and definitely on-topic discussion points include the Bottom Exposed documentary, various 1990s adventure game shows, and the state of the Hitchhikers franchise after Douglas Adams’s death. Oh, and the results of a caption competition from two years ago. We may not be fast… We recommend having the magazine in front of you as you listen, and you can find scans over at archive.org or Stasis Leak. DwarfCast 172 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #12 (105 MB) Show notes Returning the shout-out, even though we recorded this months before his shout-out to us, Stuart Millard on Scavengers G&TV covers Cyberzone Terrible news – turns out the photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s arses was photoshopped after all Bryan Lewis Saunders’s Drugs project
Re Caption Competition; ‘Still Working’ was the slogan of a toothpaste advert also referenced in the Nick Hancock/Steve Punt/Hugh Dennis sitcom You, Me and Him
My strategy for the caption competitions was to sarcastically emulate whatever the previous Smegazine competition winner had done, but the satire’s less effective when even I can’t remember the reference.
Cover – Excellent, but skutter doesn’t sound like ugly, so ruined by a shit pun. Jake Bullet – well I can’t remember what happened in the last two so fuck knows what this is. News from the Dwarf – Writing scripts at the last minute and then rewriting, in VI? Surely not. Danny EP and a show called The Big Crunch. The boys were much better at ideas than final products, weren’t they? Ed Bye interview – I’ve been meaning to rewatch The Detectives for years. Really should get around to it. Very interesting to see Ed was involved in the writing of Bottom! Caption competition – what’s the opposite of ‘worth the wait’ again? Evolution – Bloody hell, Pete and Legion predicted there. Rimmer as a silent film was a really good gag. Other than Talkie being obvious, that was pretty decent I thought. Androids – have they seriously expanded this to a full page? Fun Page – ok, pretty funny answers this time. Purple Alert – meh Holly-grams – Neil Green is a barrel of laughs, isn’t he? Interesting that Grant Naylor claim to have invented gimp as a word. The Skutters – that was absolutely lovely. Lots of fun to read and extra points for the baby skutter pulling a rubber duck on wheels. Mostly Harmless – a largely negative review that ends with “definitely worth reading”. Right. Not that I trust anyone who rates So Long and Thanks for All the Fish so low anyway.
– I loved the Androids panel where Brook reminds himself of helpful exposition and thinks to make it alliterate, it’s like an Alan Moore pastiche of bad old comics. So at least there’s been something. – I think I understand where reader Neil Green is getting confused. He hasn’t seen Parallel Universe, so thinks there’s only one form of reality divergence going on, and it’s restricted to conscious branching decisions in one’s own life. To be fair to the arrogant ignoramus, that strip was overly continuity-heavy for the time. – Not having seen Holoship, or only the once, I used to think that blurry screencap they use in the holograms feature and other issues was some weird Skutter shot. – I really haven’t enjoyed Mostly Harmless the couple of times I’ve gone through the books (or the second Dirk Gently book). But I appreciated SLATFATF a lot more as an adult than as a teen, so maybe I’ll come around to the grim divorce album one day. – The Sadvertisement reminds me of when my Nana cleaned my brother’s DIY crayon-printed T-shirt and scrubbed off his nature scene, or “that mess” as she called it to his crying face. – I uploaded the Smegazine strips by series in .cbr image archives a few years ago, and the links still work (G&T forum thread “Smegazine strips collected”), but even checking the contents list would spoil the Smegazine Rack.
– I loved the Androids panel where Brook reminds himself of helpful exposition and thinks to make it alliterate, it’s like an Alan Moore pastiche of bad old comics. So at least there’s been something. Although I suppose it’s just the same gag as “your ex-husband Gary, my business rival?” Androids remains unredeemed.
I’m afraid the John and Yoko pic is photoshopped. Check it on Discogs for the real one (album is Unfinished Musics No. 1). I’ve never enjoyed Mostly Harmless. I like the sandwich maker stuff but the rest is such an utterly joyless slog. I just tend to finish after the fourth book these days. I read them all straight through first time and noticed the jarring change in tone immediately. Forgot to comment on Sadvertisement. Mostly because I couldn’t read it. Actually too visually stimulating for me, it hurt my head to read the fucking thing. Just realised what the Skutters strip really reminded me of – Rupert the Bear comics I read as a kid. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much. Loved the ‘outtakes’.
The best gag I could think of for the Clint Eastwood themed cover of issue 12 is “The Good, the Bob and the Ugly…”. Not sure if that is better or worse but it at least shows some effort! My favourite Smegazine art is definitely the kind that turns them into cartoon characters as I feel it fits the tone better than the ultra-realistic styles we’ve seen elsewhere. Side note, if anyone wants any original Smegazine art for themselves then Roger Langridge, the artist on ‘Evolution’, still has pretty much all of the original pages from this strip (minus the one I sold on to Dave recently) in his portfolio if you find him at a comic con. I think I paid about £75 for it? ‘The Detectives’ has aged pretty well, however – being a mid-nineties comedy show – it’s a minefield for references to celebrities who are, shall we say, less revered in 2024 than they were in 1994. I’m thinking specifically of a scene where Briggs and Louis are concerned about being accidentally tranquillised whilst dressed as animals because they, quote, “wouldn’t want to wake up being fondled by Rolf Harris”.
If there is a particularly Dwarf-adjacent episode of The Detectives, it could make for a good DwarfCast.
If there is a particularly Dwarf-adjacent episode of The Detectives, it could make for a good DwarfCast.
The Skut, the Bad, and the Ugly? Unless Skut is some horrendous slur in Czechia or something, that’s what I’d have gone for.
Hearing the talk about how anything from Red Dwarf fandom prior to Series VI seems impossibly distant and exotic made me feel very old, given that I watched the first showing of “The End” go out as a kid… Something I noticed in the Jake Bullet story, which I actually remembered from when I originally read this in 1993 – the White Witch on the second page is clearly based around a photograph of Joan Sims’s face. Not sure if that’s a reference to anything. Carry On Screaming, maybe? I think a big influence on the Sadvertisment is very very early Mad Magazine. They did lots of parodies of various 1950s shite in a similarly visually-overloaded way, with at least three baffling background jokes in each panel, objects morphing into other things over the course of the story like that boom mic, etc… For an actual photo of Robert Powell looking alarmingly young, check out The Anorak Zone’s rundown of Doomwatch for a screengrab of him in the episode “The Plastic Eaters”. He reminds me of a late 70s / early 80s pre-fame Jarvis Cocker, but dressed more as he was in the 90s, and ten years ahead of schedule (and a further 15 or so years before people would be bothered). The previous Smegazine podcast’s comments about the photo from “Terrorform” putting younger buyers off reminded me of the time I wanted to buy the June 1988 issue of Your Sinclair. I walked in confidently, only to find it had a garish photo of a Page 3 model dressed in a leopard skin bikini, snarling and holding up a whip. I bought Sinclair User that month instead.
The best gag I could think of for the Clint Eastwood themed cover of issue 12 is “The Good, the Bob and the Ugly…” Why are they referencing a Clint Eastwood film anyway when the skutters are meant to be John Wayne fans? The best I’ve come up with is ‘Rusty Cog-turn’. The artwork on the cover is brilliant though. I particularly like the bootlace tie on one of the skutters. It’s been a while since I’ve read the Hitchhiker’s books but I’ve always liked Mostly Harmless. Lots of good stuff in it like Colin the robot, Ford throwing himself out of windows, the Agrajag bit, the two Trillians. I couldn’t get into the radio adaptations of the later novels though. I remember the Tertiary Phase had some clunky expository dialogue and weirdly cheesy music, and William Franklyn as The Guide wasn’t a patch on Peter Jones. Hilarious outtakes.
The caption could have been “Captain Jake Skutter” as a blatant reference to Wayne’s character Capt. Jake Cutter from The Comancheros. Or “The Skutters,” as a reference to The Searchers.
The suggestion that the second Polymorph found friendship with the Skutters is so damned sweet. It’s even using their dressing up clothes so as not to show off by shapeshifting. I‘m going to cry.
A fun issue and a fun Dwarfcast to go along with it! And you even released it on my birthday, which was nice. The Ed Bye interview and ‘Evolution’ were definitely the highlights in this issue. – ‘Evolution’ shows how they keep getting better at emulating the TV show with these comics, given it pre-empted the plots of like 4 episodes. I wasn’t a fan of Lister immediately chatting up the pig woman though, and I was surprised they didn’t go for the obvious gags like “they say all men are pigs, so I thought we’d be the perfect match” or “stop treating me like a piece of meat”. Also just look at Lister’s face, he’s borderline psychotic: If they’d had more pages they could have maybe done something interesting contrasting her and Cat as 2 hyper evolved versions of animals with different outlooks on life? Or she could have become more active with her “wait until all pigkind are as intelligent as her” motivation and gone rogue with the E-Accelerator, turning all of the ship’s pork supplies into a community of pig people? After all, unlike with Frankenstein there are no currently living pigs on Red Dwarf, so porcine sapiens is literally never going to happen on its own. – Why did they say “The Good, The Bad, and The Skutter” on the cover when in the mag itself the story is called “The Skutters – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”? Plus if they’ve already chosen to use an Eastwood Dollars trilogy title, “For a Few Skutters More” surely scans better. – I liked Steve Lyons’ attempts to reconcile all of the hologram lore. It kind of reminds of me of some of the discussions that have happened in the “Unanswered Questions” forum thread. – This is not the first time this has come up here, but I am a committed And Another Thing… apologist. It wasn’t Douglas Adams’ style nor was it on the same quality level as him, but it was a consistently enjoyable read and it gave me greatly desired closure on the story and characters that I thought I would never get, after Mostly Harmless had that seemingly deliberately shite ending. Eoin Colfer definitely leaned too much on guide entries and fan service, but he had a good grip on the characters in my opinion. (Also his resolution to Mostly Harmless’s ending felt a lot less cheap and saccharine than what Dirk Maggs went for with the Quintissential Phase, and it even included a rationalisation for the Quintissential Phase’s ending.) And for those who hated it, at least it was just a one-off. Other than it eventually getting a radio adaptation, they didn’t just keep milking Hitchhiker’s for more and more sequels, like they did with James Bond post-Fleming. They haven’t even tried to strike any deals to include AAT with the other 5 books in new print editions of the series.
Finally finished this Dwarfcast today. A great look at an issue that I found a bit uneven overall, but still enjoyed for the high points. The Jake Bullet strip is OK but would definitely benefit from a few more pages per issue. Writing episodic short stories for anthology comics is a real skill, especially when you’ve only got a few pages to play with (see 2000AD for lots of good examples), but this isn’t tightly written or dense enough to be really enjoyable month to month. It’s like watching an episode of Red Dwarf in two-minute chunks, each a week apart. The news page continues to be a great time capsule for this period. Like Ian I also picked up on the “age limit” of 16, and was intrigued by the mention of The Big Crunch. I also thought the insights into a return for Duane Dibbley were interesting, and make it clear what an instant hit the character was back then. Also, the talk of late scripts/uncertain casting for Series VI make me feel it was a miracle that the sixth series turned out as well as it did if things were in such a disorganised state at this point. The Ed Bye interview was a real highlight, lots of intriguing nuggets there. And another highlight was “Evolution”, which feels like a perfect Red Dwarf comic in that it nails the characters, makes use of very Dwarfy ideas – as mentioned, shades of the time wand from Pete, the evolution stuff from Entangled, the hardlight hologram stuff from Legion onwards and also Promised Land (replacing the H with an S is an interesting possibility) – but also does things that only comics can do in terms of the TV show’s budget and capabilities. I love the art too. (Just one note on Evolution that I don’t think was picked up in the Dwarfcast commentary – as well as turning Rimmer black and white and silent, I think the device also had the effect of turning him two-dimensional and translucent, like a flat projection on a screen rather than a 3D hologram. At one point he mentions being part of the wall as though he’s projected on it, and you can see through him to the background in a way that you can’t when he’s coloured green earlier on.) The Cyberzone feature was a fun bit of nostalgia (I watched Cyberzone at the time) but feels like it’s most notable for the “this would never happen nowadays” factor (especially stuff like making jokes about interfering with girl guides). Also, like Danny, I also thought of the kids show version Virtually Impossible that came a year or two later, which did a similar idea but slightly better. Androids was the usual energetic drivel. I don’t love it but don’t hate it either. And the same goes for the Fun Page, which gets away with the waste of page space this time thanks to Rimmer’s spot the difference comments being genuinely amusing. What wasn’t genuinely amusing was the Purple Alert feature, an unfunny recycling of gags that I basically skimmed by the end. Holly-Grams is what it is, and the Skutters strip was ok but felt like a reasonable idea that could have been executed better as a traditional comic – I don’t think the Rupert The Bear illustrated-story narrative style really added anything to it. And I though the Do Not Touch feature was quite an interesting way of reconciling all the ideas around holograms so far. And the Sadvertisement was a fun subversion but didn’t really come to anything. (I don’t have any real insights on this artist as I’m not that familiar with his work.) Just one final comment, about the easy questions for the competition (and similarly easy questions on TV phone-ins etc.*) – I think these are used to avoid these competitions falling foul of lottery/gambling rules. If there is an element of skill – even if the questions are a piece of piss – then it becomes a contest based on ability, rather than just a random draw that would make it more like a lottery. [* My favourite ever example is from an old episode of Movies, Games & Videos: “Ice Hockey is played on grass – is this true or false?”]
Also, a Dwarfcast commentary on The Detectives would be brilliant. I loved it at the time and have fond memories of watching it, the cup final episode “Hostage” particularly.
https://youtu.be/YQZ6SXAiFEA?si=HImEo5dk7uktoY_y I don’t hate And Another Thing… or Mostly Harmless, but prefer the latter. I will agree that AAT and the second Dirk Gently show why Thor shouldn’t be more than a bit player though.
That’s a pretty fair and even-handed video overall, but I was baffled by the notion that And Another Thing… is bad for “undoing” a happy ending that was tacked onto an adaptation of Mostly Harmless and wasn’t written by Douglas Adams. And the notion that Mostly Harmless has a happier ending than And Another Thing… on its own – because it puts Arthur out of his misery – is even more baffling (especially in the context of the Quintissential and Hexagonal Phases bringing back Marvin, a character who is basically begging for death for 4 straight books, yet this decision doesn’t draw criticism). I guess a lot of people were upset that AAT didn’t have an overtly happy ending, but if anything I saw this as a point of humility – that Eoin Colfer didn’t feel it was his place to give Adams’ story a definitively happy ending (which is not a concern that Dirk Maggs has I guess). Plus, Douglas did say “I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note” not “I would love to finish Hitchhiker with an unambiguously happy ending that gives Arthur everything he ever wanted and even brings dead characters back to life”. I think either approach is valid (in theory, anyway – I’m learning I may be in a minority for thinking that the Quintissential Phase’s ending is straight up bad), but it’s weird to give Maggs’ liberties a free pass while giving Colfer’s the third degree. AAT’s ending may not be happy, but it’s objectively more upbeat because it still contains a semblance of hope, unlike MH. I can’t really argue with anyone who simply objects to AAT on principle, that no new Hitchhiker’s Guide stories should be written by anyone other than Douglas Adams. But it’s disingenuous to make the slippery slope argument in 2023, when nearly 14 years had passed and the series was still firmly camped at the top of the slope, showing no willingness to go further down it. Also, sorry to say, but if I’m watching a video essay and the author takes an aside moment to criticise Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, my respect for them as a media analyst instantly goes down by at least 50%. That’s just the way it is.
Yeah, The Last Jedi dig raised my hackles too, and he clearly has a very overtly emotional attachment to the Quintessential ending. It is true that Dirk Maggs did consult with Adams before his death, but that’s true of the movie too, and I don’t give that special consideration because of it. Overall though, I do feel Arthur does deserve to end up back with Fenchurch though. Honestly my main issue with AAT is it is clear that while Adams was a science and tech guy who did creative writing, Colfer is a creative type who likes tech (he was an English teacher before Artemis Fowl). There just are not enough sublime theoretical observations and concepts in it, instead focusing on developing characters and arcs thst do not really need it. Again, Wowbagger is funny as a concept, not a man.
I agree about preferring an Arthur/Fenchurch reunion ending for sure. The Hexagonal ending is no question my favourite ending to the overall Hitchhiker’s story. I think if Adams had ended Mostly Harmless happily, and Colfer had undone that and gone with the same ending to AAT, then I would fully agree with Rico’s position. But as it stands, AAT ended more happily than MH, and Hexagonal ended equally happily to Quintissential, so…. what’s the problem? No Artemis Harm, no Artemis Foul, right? (At least for this one aspect anyway.)
I happened to come across the scriptbook for the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases in a charity shop a few weeks ago (it was £3.50, I looked it up just now and the cheapest one I can find online is £45 so… that was a good purchase), and Maggs surmises the new ending to Mostly Harmless as “Here is a less disturbing closure if you choose to listen to it, or the resolution of the tale as Douglas left it is still there to stop at if you’d rather not.”
I really should get around to listening to Hexagonal. I must admit I am skeptical of them recasting Marvin, since the character was not even needed there. Personally I would rather have gotten The Salmon of Doubt on radio as was mooted. Now, if we talking bad film adaptations, Artemis Fowl is a fair bit worse than H2G2 2005, as little as I care for the latter.
The length between Dwarfcasts and the opening Jake Bullet strip have combined to remind me of a thing that used to right wind me up in the 80s/90s: Buying a Smegazine/Sonic the Comics/He-Man/Hero Turtles etc. mid-story. I get the idea of want to drive returning customers, but it was always infuriating to join the mid-point of a story with no context for what has come before (and no way of finding an old copy), and ending on a cliff-hanger that you’d invariably forget to buy the follow-up for. – I’ve started to secretly enjoy the overall crapness of Androids (similar to how I used to find Drunken Bakers a waste of space in Viz until one day the bleakness of it suddenly clicked and I started loving it), but I still think it’s such an odd strip for a readership that mostly won’t have seen Series II or be familiar with the initial reference point. I was confused as fuck about it as a child until the ’94 repeat run, and even after that I still didn’t really ‘get it’. But I’m old now, so fuck you, children! This is MY bit! – Red Any Good Books Lately is crap. Filler at best, self-indulgent at worst, an excuse for Steve Lyons to fill (most of) a page of of a Red Dwarf magazine that I’ve ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶l̶o̶a̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶P̶D̶F̶ ̶c̶o̶p̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ paid £1.50 for with something that has nothing to do with Red Dwarf. Obviously, I wouldn’t mind if it was something I liked, so while I understand there’s probably some level of crossover appeal for sci-fi fans, I’m more interested in the comedy side of things. Come on lads, Bottom is out on VHS at this point, review that! AND it has a Dwarf connection! I think what I’m saying is, if G&T ever spin off into Doctor Who or Hitchhikers podcasts, I’ll probably shuffle along quietly, but if you do a hot twelve on The Young Ones or a complete run of Blackadders, Dwarf-related of otherwise, sign me the fuck up!
while I understand there’s probably some level of crossover appeal for sci-fi fans, I’m more interested in the comedy side of things. A valid observation about the genre leaning generally, but a new Douglas Adams sci-fi comedy book is about the most Red Dwarf non-Red Dwarf thing they could cover.
Speaking of other comedies with Red Dwarf connections, we’re going to be recording one of our occasional non-Dwarf commentaries tomorrow, and it’s Bottom. Give us your Bottom waffles!
I was listening to the radio one day when to my horror I heard what I thought was a science fiction rip-off of Red Dwarf. When something happened to make me laugh I reached for the phone to call my lawyer.
Speaking of other comedies with Red Dwarf connections, we’re going to be recording one of our occasional non-Dwarf commentaries tomorrow, and it’s Bottom. Give us your Bottom waffles! Would a Dave-Dwarf style revival of Bottom have been any good? Some of Ade’s comments in the wake of Rik’s passing suggest that the dynamic just wasn’t there in the same way any more when they tried to write a follow-up, but I feel like it could have worked.
Obviously, I wouldn’t mind if it was something I liked, so while I understand there’s probably some level of crossover appeal for sci-fi fans, I’m more interested in the comedy side of things. But… Hitchhikers is a comedy, first and foremost.
Adams did the comedy, Doug did the sci-fi. Then their writing partnership split up, so the last few books were written by a Dougless Adams.
But… Hitchhikers is a comedy, first and foremost. Yeah, but it’s shit. (Alright then – “I’m generally more interested in 30-minute long episodes of certain British television sitcoms of the 80s and 90 than I am in some of the other stuff that Red Dwarf might passingly be classed as, even if Dwarf did have novels by this point.”)
Yeah, but it’s shit.(Alright then – “I’m generally more interested in 30-minute long episodes of certain British television sitcoms of the 80s and 90 than I am in some of the other stuff that Red Dwarf might passingly be classed as, even if Dwarf did have novels by this point.”) I mean it’s fine if Hitchhiker’s doesn’t interest you or you think it’s shit (I mean I don’t feel fine about it but I guess it’s allowed), but your complaint was that it’s outright poor decision making for the Smegazine to cover it at all, when in reality H2G2 is one of the most obvious non-Red Dwarf properties they could cover. Hitchhiker’s was a BBC sci-fi comedy series that got adapted into non-BBC books, Red Dwarf is a BBC sci-fi comedy series that got adapted into non-BBC books. Not to mention that IWCD was “Hitchhiker’s as fuck” (The Guardian, 1989). The fan crossover is huge, it just makes sense. Especially considering the remit of the “Red Any Good Books Lately” feature is just books anyway, Mostly Harmless is easily the least contrived subject up to this point, and has a good chance of keeping that position. Even if the Smegazine didn’t have a semi regular feature about books, it would have still made sense to acknowledge new Hitchhiker’s Guide content. It’s like if the Smegazine had continued into the 00s, and they had dedicated a page to review Hyperdrive, I might personally gloss over it, but I wouldn’t think it was a misjudgement by the editor.
This reminds me of the time Doctor Who Magazine had a small news item about Red Dwarf returning for Series X, and someone sent in a letter of complaint, only to be rewarded with a free Red Dwarf DVD.
Yeah, but it’s shit. (Alright then – “I’m generally more interested in 30-minute long episodes of certain British television sitcoms of the 80s and 90 than I am in some of the other stuff that Red Dwarf might passingly be classed as, even if Dwarf did have novels by this point.”) I mean, fair enough, I was just a bit baffled by the tone of your post which reads very much like Hitchhikers isn’t a comedy.
This reminds me of the time Doctor Who Magazine had a small news item about Red Dwarf returning for Series X, and someone sent in a letter of complaint, only to be rewarded with a free Red Dwarf DVD. I nominate the inevitable Hitchhikers Dwarfcast episode to be called The Captain Bollocks Special.
I nominate the inevitable Hitchhikers Dwarfcast episode to be called The Captain Bollocks Special. It’s either that or a banning, I’ve not made my mind up yet
Here’s the scathing review of the first issue of the Smegazine in Starburst, as mentioned on the Holly-Grams page in issue 11 (Warbodog was right, it’s in Starburst 165):
Well, at least they’re spot on about Red Dwarf the TV show, which famously went downhill after series III (we’re all aware of the original-18 ‘bubble’ era) and essentially consists of thirty minutes of quick-fire lavatorial humour.
Well, at least they’re spot on about Red Dwarf the TV show, which famously went downhill after series III Mind you, that did also seem to be the consensus among Smegazine readers. What were these early nineties cunts thinking?
Country of origin: United Kingdom Original language: English No. of episodes: 6 Running time: 31-36 minutes Original release Network: BBC2 Release: 5 January – 9 February 1981 Those extra one to four minutes must have really alienated you.
This reminds me of the time Doctor Who Magazine had a small news item about Red Dwarf returning for Series X, and someone sent in a letter of complaint, only to be rewarded with a free Red Dwarf DVD. Quit bragging Ian…
Certainly my favourite fantasy show. I was most disappointed to put on the latest Fantasy fan-boy favourite and for it not to have a single dwarf in it. Mind you, Chris must have been tickled to be deemed “anything but blobby”.
I think it is quite representative of the sneeriness that Red Dwarf got at that time, even in its imperial phase. I guess that happened to a lot of geek things that became big and popular, but it always seemed quite mean-spirited to me.
