Warhammer is a behemoth nowadays. It’s always been big – bigger than the community would care to admit – but now it’s huge. Did you know that Games Workshop provided more for the UK economy last year than the entire fishing industry? Maybe that’s indicative of the rise of veganism or the need for fantasy escapism as the country descends further into the depths of hell, but toy soldiers are more popular than fish – you heard it here first.
As with anything popular, scalpers are targeting new releases, the appropriately-named Leviathan box set was out of stock upon arrival, and people from all walks of life are trying their hand at the game. It’s still a middle-class hobby due to the prohibitive pricing, but Warhammer is a subculture no longer. It’s just culture.
As such, Games Workshop is expanding its products into every viable medium. We’ve gone from the regular tabletop toy soldiers to poseable action figures. Novels have always been a core part of establishing characters and deepening the lore, but there are more now than ever before, focusing on stories as varied as the murder mystery The Strange Demise of Titus Endor, the exploration of a fearsome Ork warlord’s mental health in Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!, or 368 pages of old men (read: ancient robots) bickering in The Infinite and The Divine.
There was a Magic: The Gathering crossover, and that’s before you get to the 40k TV show that Henry Cavill is starring in. That one’s still in early days, but an agreement with Amazon is big business. Fans are hoping for a Cavill Eisenhorn series, but I’m not convinced he’s right for the role. While an Eisenhorn story would be the best translation to the small screen, Cavill has that Primarch build with the cheekbones and biceps. Perhaps he could cameo as a Primaris Lieutenant working across from an Eisenhorn played by Mark Strong or Karl Urban.
All this is to say that Warhammer has grown far beyond the toy soldiers we know and love. But there’s one area it hasn’t capitalised on in recent times: comics. I was pondering why Workshop hadn’t dived into this particular pool when I remembered Warhammer Monthly, a comic series from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s that produced great stories and better characters.
I didn’t read it at the time – it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I got into the hobby with The Lord of the Rings SBG – but I’ve found them since. Last week, while waxing lyrical about the wonders of Mordheim, I was reminded of Ulli and Marquand, the dynamic duo who ventured through the cursed city in search of untold riches. They debuted in Warhammer Monthly, and gained notoriety thanks to their escapades within those pages.
The same could be said of Kal Jerico, the out-of-touch bounty hunter who was rebooted with a more politically correct novel and new miniature a few years ago. His stories haven’t aged as well as others, but the pages he graced are still worth reading. Warhammer Monthly also contained Inquisitorial sagas, some of the best Deathwing illustrations I’ve ever seen, and plenty of fantasy to go alongside all this science fiction. Dragons and Dark Elves were commonplace, all recurring in serialised stories and accompanied by stunning artwork that enhanced the worlds they inhabited.
So why hasn’t Games Workshop brought comics back? Cursed City – the almost-spiritual-successor-of-Mordheim-but-it’s-more-like-Bloodborne-actually boxed game – would be a great starting place, as would Blackstone Fortress. A comic to accompany the Leviathan box set, in addition to the novel, would be a fantastic addition to my bookshelves and, from the perspective of the businesspeople, would be a good avenue to capture a young audience in the blood and guts of blade-on-bug warfare.
Warhammer Monthly was brilliant and remains underrated. Many players forget where their favourite characters came from, and while Jerico and Ulli are not in the big leagues alongside the likes of your Gotreks, Felixes, and Eisenhorns, they’re long overdue a return to their original format. Hell, you could introduce new characters if you didn’t want to dip back into that particular pond.
Warhammer Monthly was a beacon of creativity, it was a place where writers and artists could express themselves freely and bring layer upon layer of depth to the universes we know and love. Henry Cavill talked about wanting to create a Warhammer Cinematic Universe, but it would be far better to add comics into the equation than just a web of films held together by tenuous links and referential cameos. We all saw how the DCEU panned out, after all.
I don’t know if I really want a new Warhammer comic series or just a reprint of the classics. There’s so much heart and soul in the original Warhammer Monthly run, and I can’t help but feel like some of that would be lost in a New Games Workshop rendition. It would be too clean, too child-friendly, and too marketing-driven. I fear it would be another catalogue of toy soldiers rather than art for its own sake. White Dwarf has already gone downhill in the past decade, moving from fun tales and DIY tips to a showcase of the newest products, and I fear Warhammer Monthly would suffer the same fate. I yearn for more Warhammer comics, but maybe it’s best if some things are left in the past.