Ciao Bruno
I must confess I have always enjoyed your articles, esp the medieval ones, offering a brief background to the figure done.
Currently there is no ideal historical miniature mag - Mil Mod has very little devoted to figures, Fig International features articles on toys and fantasy figures, and Historical Minaiture often strays to peripheral topics. Sadly Soldatini is only in Italian, but in my mind represents a good balance for content.
As an obsessive compulsive person (which you do understand, I know), I have HM from issue number 1. In fact I have Mil Mod from issue #1. How does one discontinue such a collectoin?
I think Steve Weakley has been doing a great job, but I agree with Pete, more figure articles would be nice, esp when you see the breadth of talent in the hobby. World Expo was amazing - and I always am astounded by the creativity of modellers.
It seems all the magazines have all lagged behind the pace of the hobby - suddenly there are very unconverntional displays, revitalized shadow boxes and new tecniques in painting. Suddenly Kostas is putting reflections on figures, instead of just highlights, Einion is shading in complimentary colours and Ray is using a whole new type of paint for figures. A current journal should be up on these things! In my job, innovation reaches the literature before general application - not vice-versa! I would personally would like to see a few more step by step articles of new and emerging ideas.
Over time, the mag will develop and change, but readers and contributors can steer the content a bit. Cudos to Steve for doing a great job so far, but I hope he does increase the "figure" content a bit. For our part, I would encourage us all to continue to support him, as HM is after all the premier mag for English readres.
Ciao!
Neil