Bad Company

I Have Used This Title Before -
Back in December, as a matter of fact.  I referred to one of my most favouritest 2000AD comic strips, and new volume of collected cartoons:  Bad Company - First Casualties.  The story didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, because I'd missed out a strip prefatory to the collection.  Art?

No, Art, no!
(I joked about this in December, so this is plagiarism)

     Anyway, I have just been re-reading the collected Bad Company, which finishes with a conclusion that renders First Casualties comprehensible.  Not really earth-shattering news, but I thought you'd like to be kept informed.  Art?

It would take a long time to explain this.

     - so I won't bother.
     After an unusually short Intro, let us move on.

"The Black Scorpion" (1957)
I am now about 3/4 through this film and it is, a la "The Giant Claw", a film of two halves.  The stop-motion animation of the giant scorpions, spiders and worms is not bad, But!
     The soundtrack overdubs - er - stridulations and roars for the giant scorpions, which in real life have no way of creating such sounds.  In fact, they nicked the sound that the ants in "Them" make.*
     Then we have this.  Art?

Hmmm.

     Once again, Conrad does not believe that scorpions are known for copious drooling, which insertions rather take away from the better stop-motion stuff.  And this scorpion slavers endlessly whenever it attacks - probably ended up dehydrated.
     Then we have the tank battle in the sports stadium.  Art?

Another hmmmm moment

      <sound of hands being rubbed gleefully together> Righto, as mentioned previously, that's an M26 tank, which mounted a 90 mm (or 3.5" for proper measurement) gun.  This gun, using HVAP ammunition, could shoot through 30 cm (or 12") of steel at a range of 100 yards.  And yet here, at 10 yards or so, it can't penetrate the scorpion's chitinous hide?
     "Ah, prehistoric scorpions," I hear you comment.  "Well known as having indefatigable armoured skin, you know."
     To which I would reply "explosive spalling".

Close enough

     This is a phenomenon where kinetic energy is transmitted from an impact site on the outer layer of armour plate, through the armour and to the inner surface, which blows off in enormous high-speed chunks of metallic death.
     So!  The scorpion's skin might not have been penetrated, but it would have had it's giblets turned into soup by spalled armour.
     Of course, I may be overthinking this ...

A Plague On Both Your Houses
Conrad has been reading, with a mixture of amusement, disdain and disbelief, about the Nutella riots in France.
     When I visited - hang on, let me just check that Donald Fagen is still hale and hearty - Phew!  Yes, he is, it was only a sprain, not Norwegian Exploding Bowel Fever - Paris, and asked for a crepe suzette, the vendor assumed that I wanted it slathered in Nutella.

Know thine enemy

     "Non!" replied your horrified scribe, opting instead for sugar and lemon juice, which is as it should be.
     I understand that this unseemly Continental squabbling began because the nasty brown goo was discounted, which is not good enough.  You would have to pay me to eat it.  Nutella and the M8's deserve each other.**

The Rabid Weasel***
Conrad has - confession time - been binging, rather, on Netflix, and is currently into Episode 5 of "The Defenders", which has enough explosions, fist-fights and gun battles to see off any other program in search of an audience.
     However!  This is nothing about that.  Instead it is about a 2016 film, "The Siege of Jadotville", which deals with a siege - you may have gathered that already - at the town of Jadotville in the Congo in 1961.  Art?

The book that became the film

     A company of Irish UN troops, all 158 of them, were surrounded and then assaulted by, oh, at least 3,000 enemy.
     For six days.  The Irish garrison only surrendered because they'd run out of ammunition and food, and - you know, under siege and cut off and surrounded - weren't going to get any more.  The opposition, an unsavoury collection, suffered something like 1,500 casualties.
     So!  There you have the source of the title: the Irish army, small but very dangerous.


*  Booh!
**  Yes, this is Current Affairs, which we don't normally bother with.  However - the sheer horror of spreadable excrement in a jar took precedence.
***  This is a compliment.  Weasels are our friends.