Warrior (comics)

Warrior was a British comics anthology that ran for 26 issues between March 1982 and January 1985. It was edited by Dez Skinn and published by his company Quality Communications. It featured early work by comics writer Alan Moore, including V for Vendetta and Marvelman.

Rivalling 2000 AD, Warrior won 17 Eagle Awards during its short run. Because of thorough distribution and its format, it was one of the comic books in the British market that relied little upon distribution through then format-driven specialist shops and expensive subscriptions for its sales base.

History

Skinn, former editorial director of Marvel UK, launched Warrior in an effort to create a similar mix of stories to the one he had previously put together for Marvel's Hulk Weekly, but with greater creative freedom and a measure of creator ownership. The title was recycled from a short-lived reprint series Skinn had once published; he remarked that "Warrior seemed an obvious choice nobody else had picked up on—both times! It fit perfectly as a newsstand logo." He recruited many of the writers and artists he had previously worked with at Marvel, including Steve Moore, John Bolton, Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd, adding established creators like Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons, and emerging young talent such as Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Alan Davis and Steve Dillon.

Warrior

A warrior is a person specializing in combat or warfare, especially within the context of a tribal or clan-based warrior culture society that recognizes a separate warrior class or caste.

Warrior classes in tribal culture

In tribal societies engaging in endemic warfare, warriors often form a caste or class of their own. In feudalism, the vassals essentially form a military or warrior class, even if in actual warfare, peasants may be called to fight as well. In some societies, warfare may be so central that the entire people (or, more often, large parts of the male population) may be considered warriors, for example in the Iron Age Germanic tribes and Indian clans like the Rajputs.

Women as warriors

While the warrior class in tribal societies is typically all-male, there are some exceptions on record where women (typically unmarried, young women) formed part of the warrior class, particularly in pre-modern Japan.

A purported group of fighting women is the legendary Amazons, recorded in Classical Greek mythology. Similarly, the Valkyrie are depicted in Norse mythology, particularly the Icelandic Etta.

War Doctor

The War Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who. He is portrayed by English actor John Hurt. Although he precedes Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in the show's fictional chronology, his first onscreen appearance came eight years after Eccleston's; the War Doctor was retroactively created by showrunner Steven Moffat for productions celebrating the show's 50th anniversary, owing to Moffat's desire to tell the story of the last day of the Last Great Time War in the special after Eccleston declined to appear.

Within the programme's narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, who travels in time and space in his TARDIS, frequently with companions. When the Doctor is critically injured, he can regenerate his body, but in doing so, gains a new physical appearance and with it, a distinct new personality. This plot device has allowed a number of actors to portray different incarnations of the Doctor over the show's long run. The War Doctor, not so named within the episodes in which he appears, is introduced as the incarnation of the Doctor who fought in the Time War of the show's modern-day backstory. He was created as a result of a conscious decision of the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann, to take up arms and become a warrior; in accepting this duty, the War Doctor disowned the title of "Doctor," and after the war's end is viewed with disdain by his subsequent incarnations, who reclaim the title that the character is known by. In the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", however, the Eleventh Doctor played by Matt Smith revises his opinion of this incarnation after revisiting the final moments of the war.

Warrior (arcade game)

Warrior is a 1979 arcade fighting game. It is considered one of the first fighting games, though predated by Sega's Heavyweight Champ, released in 1976.

Developed by Tim Skelly while working at Cinematronics, it was released under the Vectorbeam company name shortly before Cinematronics closed Vectorbeam down; they had purchased the company in 1978. The game featured two dueling knights rendered in monochrome vector graphics and based on crude motion capture techniques. Due to the limitations of the hardware used, the processor could not render the characters and gaming environment at the same time and backgrounds were printed, with the characters projected on the top.

Controls

Originally Skelly planned for a two-player system with each player using two joysticks, one to control the movement of the player and the other controlling the player's weapon. However, financial constraints restricted the cabinet to one stick for each player and a button to switch between character and weapon modes. The sticks were produced in house and installed in cabinets in a way that players found unresponsive and difficult to use.