Dragons

Yay!

We've not had a theme for a while, so here is one, and as the title says, we are on about Dragons today.

     Do not, however, imagine that this is going to be a stroll through the works of Anne McCaffrey (the Mills & Boon of sci-fi) or anything to do with "Etragon" ("Rich Mummy and Daddy got my book published").

     Oh no.

     Let us, as an Intro, cast an eye over a couple of Dragons, namely the Light and Medium.  Art?

                    Light                                               Medium

     These particular vehicles were adapted from the hulls of obsolete Vickers tanks, and were intended to be the "prime mover", as they call it, for artillery pieces.  They served in the armies of Perfidious Albion pre- and into the first years of the Second Unpleasantness, by which time they had been replaced by wheeled tractors, especially as very few Dragons made it back after Dunkirk.

     The idea of a tracked, armoured vehicle such as the above is that it provides mobile protection for the crew - dragon scales and rolled homogenous plate being kind of linked artistically - whilst being able to accompany tanks when they decide to go cross-country.

The Dragon: also handy in urban traffic

     I remember seeing an article in the 'Airfix' magazine about these vehicles, which had a ton of photographs that simply aren't available on teh interwebz.

     Anyway, onwards and upwards!

This Is SO Appropriate!

I am currently re-reading "Invincible" in trade paperback form, which is a blast, as I'd forgotten most of the details about Mark Grayson and his superhero alter-ego.  It's kind of a superhero soap-opera, except with lashings of gore and violence, and the odd hidden visual gag.

     Anyway.  It's also published by Image Comics, who have a few other titles on the shelves, including one that features this chap -

The Savage Dragon!

     No, those are not foam prosthetics glued onto him, them's his arms, with which he can rip a bus in two - hey, he boasted about it, not me!  "Savage Dragon" is highly regarded in comic circles, since it's only ever been written and drawn by the creator, Erik Larsen, and has been running for decades.  He's doing something right.

     Ol' Sav also appeared in an issue of 'Invincible'.  Art?

No!  No, the photo's not sideways - er - they're all falling through space.  Yeah.  Falling.

 

"Dragon Man"

I bet you're thinking along the lines of the post above, about a man who gets bitten by a radioactive Komodo dragon, and dies gets really ill gets a bit poorly gets all the proportionate powers of a gizzard lizard -

     Not a bit of it!  No, instead let Art go to work, as he has finished sucking the plutonium out of that fuel rod.  Art!

     That guy with the furry face fuzz is "Dragon Man", and he could equip a couple of infantry battalions with the contents of the museum you see behind him.  Weapons and equipment from the Second Unpleasantness onward.  Note the ordnance on his jeep: it might not be functional but it looks imposing enough that no traffic warden would dare issue it a ticket.  Also, were you to drive it along the streets of Perfidious Albion, you would find the S.A.S. and armed police and tanks and atom bombs in your way.

Do not get into an argument with this guy.

     Considering the title of today's blog, it would be both a howling coincidence and an hilarious irony if he possessed one of the following items -

The Dragon M47 Anti-Tank Missile
As created and innovated by those ingenious purveyors of things that go BANG, the South Canadians.  Art?

                  The deadly bit                                 The sweating mule
This was a rather unusually-designed ATGW (Aunt Talia's Got Worms Anti-Tank Guided Weapon).  Look at the missile above: the very end is a separate rocket motor that "pops" the rest of the missile out of the barrel and out to a safe distance from the operator.  The other rocket motors then fire in pairs, to both accelerate the missile and impart spin, helping to keep it stabilised - that's what all those little holes are, rocket exhausts.  Whilst this is going on an infra-red flare in the base burns away, allowing the operator to track it; this is needed as he's guiding it in by a wire that unspools from the rocket body.

"Eat hot leaden death you Commie swine!"*

     According to that rather dubious source Wiki, the Dragon wasn't that popular with the operators, as it was heavy - SHEER IDLENESS I SAY!  - and the "Pop" when launched would alert an alert enemy. 
     MORE IDLENESS I SAY!  This thing has a range of 1,000 yards; who's going to hear a far distant muted "Pop" on the modern battlefield when there are scads of other, louder and lots more dangerous noises out there?
     SHEE - but I repeat myself.

"Out Of The Mouth Of The Dragon" By Mark Geston
This is a sci-fi novel in that subgenre known as "The Dying Earth", where the Earth is, frankly, not in too good a state.  Art?

The edition I read

     It is set in a very, very far future, where everything is failing and fading, prefatory to one last great battle that will, one way or another, bring civilisation to an end.  As you may have gathered, it is not a novel that evokes happy smiling people or endings.  I would recommend you read it when feeling depressed, as you will come out of it feeling that, by comparison, you are dwelling in a bed of roses.
     SPOILER: there are no dragons.

CAUTION!  Can be chilly in winter.

Dragon's Teeth
Sorry, more military hoo-ha (or is it hooh-hah?).**  These are a variety of fortification, usually planted in very large numbers, and designed to bar progress to armoured vehicles, or at least make it very awkward indeed.  Art!

ART!

<sound of atomic-powered Tazer charging up>

 

     We shall draw a veil o'er what happened - put some cream on it, Art, and get that picture up -

Thus

     As you can see, trying to drive your tank between or over these was problematic, which was the whole idea.  Mind you, if the enemy has paratroops, you're a bit stuffed.

Let's All Laugh At The Ancient Computer

Okay, meet another Dragon, the mighty Dragon 32, which came out in 1982, or Prehistoric times in the world of computers.  Art?

GASP! in wonder at 32 whole kilobytes of RAM!

     It sold for a couple of years before more capable competitors put it out of business.  The screens tended to be in either garish green or a gothic black and white, not being especially high-definition.  Art?

Garish, like I sais.

     So, a definitely extinct dragon.  If you want one nowadays, and there is no guessing the peculiarity of folks, you will have to pay at least £350 for it, which is ironically twice what it originally cost.


Finally -
There was something called "Dragonball Z", but it was crap, so we're ignoring it.

*  Yes, I KNOW it's actually all steel and plastic.  Poetic licence.
**  Definitely not poobah, nor even Pooh Bear.