Warhammer 40k Fluff Discussion XVII: Call Necrosius, The Old Thread Is Dead!

[LeSwordfish]

One interesting barometer for "mainstream" is about what gets advertised. The Boys, for instance, is nowhere near as famous as some of these other things we've been discussing, but there's a great big poster for it on the bus stop outside my house. That'll be an interesting Litmus test for the Eisenhorn TV series (which, by the sounds of things, is something they're genuinely trying for broader success with) - is it going to be plastered over the side of buses like The Man In The High Castle was?

I'll repeat that I think Ravenor's an easier sell than Eisenhorn, but honestly I don't think either is too radical for a viewing public. Essentially, it's Bond vs Cthulhu: even novices to the universe will be able to pick up what a "psyker" and what a "daemon" are. The Warhammer universes are pretty dense*, but the advantage of Abnett's writing is that you can get a lot of the important feel from it with a world that's no denser than, say, His Dark Materials, The Man in the High Castle, or The Expanse, none of which are top-tier megafamous but would represent a massive step up from "some people know what a space marine is".

*in every sense of the word, badum tish