Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Epic Begins: Warlord Wednesday!

The new ongoing series and my recent post on DC Comic's Warlord, have led to my decision to revisit creator Mike Grell's run on the original series.  So at least from now until issue 71 (or until I get tired of it), I'm going to be looking at the Lost World of the Warlord, issue by issue.

First up,  of course, is the try-out before the series started...


"Land of Fear"
1st Issue Special #8 (November 1975)

Written and Illustrated by Mike Grell

Synopsis:
Colonel Travis Morgan, USAF, is forced to ditch his plane after taking fire during a spy mission over the Soviet Union. Expecting to come down in the arctic, he's surprised to find himself in a lush jungle. Finding a woman, Tara, in combat with a dinosaur he rushes to her aid. No sooner have they overcome that danger, then they are captured by soldiers and taken to the city of Thera. Morgan quickly earns the enmity of the high priest, Deimos, though use of his pistol convinces the rest of the Theran court that he's a god. While guests of the Theran king, Morgan pieces together the remarkable truth of his situation--he's in the hollow earth! Ultimately, treachery by Deimos leads Morgan and Tara to flee Thera.

Things to Notice:
  • The story begins on a specific date: June 16, 1969. Though time is strange in Skartaris, stories will often give reference to the passage of "real time" on earth--something very different from most comic series. This also dates Morgan, allowing us, as more information is given, to construct a timeline of his life.
  • Morgan has a .38 special in this issue and only 12 rounds of ammo, all of which he uses here.
  • The women of Thera seem go in for the colorful, raccoon-patch, eye shadow which is also styled by some female members of the disco-era Legion of Super-Heroes, Marionette of the Micronauts, and Dazzzler, among others.
Where It Comes From:
The portrayal of the hollow earth in both fiction and purported fact has a rich history going back to Sir Edmund Haley (of comet fame) and possibly before. The primary inspiration for Grell’s version seems to be Pellucidar, a savage land debuting in At the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs, serialized (as “The Inner World”) over 4 issues in All-Story beginning on April 4, 1914. A novel version was published in 1922, and in 1976 there was a move adaptation with Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, and bond-girl-to-be Caroline Munro.

In the introduction to the collection Savage Empire (1991), Grell cites the Burroughs influence on Warlord and calls the Pellucidar series "the best of the [Earth's core] genre."  In a later interview, he seems to downplay this influence, emphasizing instead Jules Vernes' Journey to the Center of the Earth, and The Smokey God by Willis George Emerson.  Certainly a case could be made for the primacy of these works in Skartaris' conception.  Verne's work has prehistoric survivors in his underground world, while Emerson's novel has a central sun (the titular Smokey God).

Still, Burroughs' work has those similarities to Skartaris, too.  It also shares one feature not found in any other "hollow earth" fiction with which I'm aware: time is strange there.  The odd timelessness of Skartaris is also found in Pellucidar--despite neither ever giving a good explanation as to why things should be that way.

An interesting parallel to Burroughs, though probably not a direct reference, is this issue's title.  Burroughs' sixth novel of Pellucidar is called Land of Terror.

One thing clearly does come from Verne, and that's the name of The Warlord's hollow world.  In Journey to the Center of the Earth, "Scartaris" is a mountain whose shadow marks the entrance to the center of the earth in the crater of Snæfellsjökull.

The dinosaur gracing the cover and appearing in the issue is identified as a deinonychus, which is a species related to the velociraptor family.  Unlike its depiction in this issue, deinonychus apparently had feathers.

The character of Travis Morgan got his first name from Grell's nephew, and his surname from the privateer and rum bottle spokesmodel, Henry Morgan.  Morgan got the facial hair that Grell himself had at the time, and also Grell's experiences in the air force.

Grell has said that the appearance of Tara was inspired by Raquel Welch.  Presumably he was thinking of her in One Million Years B.C.  The name "Tara" was a popular one in the United States in the 70s, probably due to the enduring popularity of the film version of Gone With The Wind.  In this context, the name Tara derives from the Hill of Tara in Ireland. The hill is also known as Teamhair na Rí (“The Hill of Kings”) because of its association with ancient kingship rituals. Tara also means "shining" in Sanskrit and is the name of a Hindu goddess.

Grell tells us he got "Deimos" from the name of Mars' smaller moon, the larger being Phobos.  These names derive from Greek mythology where Deimos ("dread") and Phobos ("fear") are sons of Ares.  Again, the title of the issue seems to have unintended connections.

The name of the city where Deimos is high priest, Thera, is also Greek in origin.  Thera is part of what is now the Santorini Archipelago and the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history.  This eruption, some 3600 years ago, led to the decline of Minoan civilization, and popular theory holds that this event may be the ultimate source of the Atlantis legend.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Something Wicked: The Drow

"The tiers and dungeons of Erelhei-Cinlu reek of debauchery and decadence...Unspeakable things transpire where the evil and jaded creatures seek pleasure, pain, excitement, or arcane knowledge, and sometimes these seekers find they are victims."

- Gary Gygax, Vault of the Drow

Like regular elves, drow provoke ambivalence in the collecitve gamer heart. Thanks mostly to R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt do'Urden books, and an enduring viusal appeal (at least the drow females), they have a prominent place in tabletop and computer rpgs. On the other hand, charges of implicit racism and sexism, and general blacklash against overexposure, fan flames in many a message board thread.

Having never read a Drizzt novel (and never intending to, honestly), my appreciation of the drow comes mainly from the AD&D D and Q modules that dealt with them. There, they were exotic and powerful adversaries. Then came Unearthed Arcana, which gave us drow as a (somewhat overpowered) player character race. Players always like more options--particularly "cool" ones--but there the seeds were sown for over-familiarity and the contempt which usually follows.

So in trying to do a little re-imagining of the drow for my current campaign world, I wanted to chart a course between the purely villainous drow of the early D&D modules, and the posing, voluptuous viragos and emo-Elric wannabes of today. Since I've conceived the world's "high elves" as posthuman, glam anarcho-capitalists, and the "gray elves" as alien beings partaking of the melancholic sense of "passing" found in Tolkien's elves and Yag-kosha in Howard's "Tower of the Elephant," it seems proper to me that the dark elves should have pulp roots growing though Lovecraft's K'n-yan, and Clark Ashton Smithian decadence, which break the surface in the vicinity of Hellraiser, along the Left Hand Path, posted with fuzzy LaVey philosophy.

"Do what thou wilt" shall be the whole of Drow law, I think.


"free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy...all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."

- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Like all the aethyr, the elves of the world of Arn, the drau, or "drow," are beings aligned to extraplanar chaos. Unlike the other elves, who are general beneficent, and aligned to the extraplanar power of "good," drow have chosen the path of egotism without concern for concepts like morality, and have aligned themselves with "evil."

These philosophical differences long ago caused a schism among the elves, and led to the drow being driven underground. There, they nurse their ancient enmities and plan for a chance at revenge.  They past the time until that day in strange pleasures--byzantine intrigues, arcane drugs, elaborate assassinations, and baroque orgies. 

The primary goddess of the drow is Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders. Like all demons, Lolth seeks the destruction of all matter and form, the dissolution of the multiverse, and a return to a state of pure chaos--but she wishes to enjoy every sensation and fulfill every other desire prior to that end. She offers her faithful the same reward, and finds her chosen people enthusiastic followers.

There are legends that hold that Lolth was once an elven sorceress in a time before there were drow. In the pursuit of knowledge and experience beyond what she could find on this plane, Lolth trafficked with demons from the Abyss. Tricked by a demon lord and cast into the abyssal depths, Lolth was forced to live through a myriad of lives, deaths, and physical forms, experiencing all the inhuman horrors and pleasures that fiendish minds older than the earth can conceive. After lifetimes, she arrived at the realm of the demon lord, who she thanked--and then slew. At that moment, a new demon queen was born.

Drow are often as ambitious as their goddess. Implicit in her teachings is the opportunity for any drow to ascend and claim her power for their own.

Lolth sits at the center of her demonweb and waits, nourishing herself on the partially dissolved souls of those who have challenged her before.

Friday, February 5, 2010

A Fist Full of Fantasy

Looking for some weekend reading? In no particular order, here are five fantastic (in both senses of the word) stories well worth seeking out:

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" by Fritz Leiber
"How the lack of money leads to a lack of love, even among sworn comrades." When Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are the sworn comrades in question, what happens next certainly isn't dull. Mouser goes to work for an unusual extortionist, and Fafhrd gets religion! A clever, colorful, and genuinely funny tale. One of Leiber's best tales of the twain--and that's high praise, indeed.
Find it in: Swords Against Death: The Adventures of Fafhrd & Gray Mouser Book 2



"Worms of the Earth" by Robert E. Howard
Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts, wants revenge against the hated Roman invaders, and he's willing to bargain with an ancient, inhuman enemy to get it. This is one of Howard's best stories--combining action and horror, in one effective package.
Find it in: Bran Mak Morn: The Last King


"Queen of the Martian Catacombs" by Leigh Brackett
This was technically science fiction when it was written, but advancing knowledge of the solar system has rendered Brackett's pulp view quaint. Too bad for us in the real world. Eric John Stark, Brackett's hard-boiled, outlaw hero, is an earth-man raised by primitives on Mercury like an interplanetary Tarzan. Stark is forced to cut a deal with authorities to infiltrate and disrupt a plot by Martian desert tribesmen and criminal elements to ferment a rebellion against the Terran colonial powers. In the process, Stark will uncover a startling secret, surviving from ancient Mars.
Find it in: expanded form as the novel, The Secret of Sinharat.


"Undertow" by Karl Edward Wagner
This story features Kane, Wagner's version of the Biblical first murderer, cursed by a mad god to wander a sword & sorcery pre-history, knowing only violence. Kane's often more of anti-hero--a trait this story well illustrates. A ship's captain falls for a beautiful woman kept by a powerful sorcerer, and at her urging, hatches a dangerous plot to free her. But all is not what it seems. The sorcerer is Kane, and this whole drama of doomed love, manipulation, and death, may have played out before.
Find it in: The Midnight Sun: The Complete Stories of Kane, or Night Winds (both unfortunately out of print--and probably pricey).


"The Seven Geases" by Clark Ashton Smith
In fabled Hyperborea, Ralibar Vooz, high magistrate of Commoriom, is having one seriously bad day. He has magical compulsions, seven in all, laid upon him by a succession of ever more dire supernatural entities. All the while, Smith will "wow" you with his ceaseless invention, ironic humor, and lush prose.
Find it in: The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith or here--for free--on the Eldritch Dark website.


Find and enjoy!