Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around May 21, 1981. This weeks entries will be a bit abbreviated as our internet's out and I'm doing this via my cellphone, but here goes:

Legion of Super-Heroes #278: Grimbor is threatening to crush Earth's atmosphere with his cosmic chains and the Legion has only one hour to stop him. In this issue, they aren't doing so great a job as he appears to outthink them at every turn. Reflecto shows up to save Shrinking Violet from drowning, and the team has to fight him, well--just because. And he beats them too. The story ends with several of the Legionnaires other taken out or captured by Grimbor.

New Adventures of Superboy #20: Bates and Schaffenberger have Superboy kidnapped by aliens who wish to add them to their collection and use a sort of mind control to keep him from leaving, but Superboy ultimately does and ends their coercive ways after saving them from an invasion. In the backup, a lost (and younger) Superboy winds up on a planet under a red sun and befriends some slug-like natives.

Sgt. Rock #355: Easy Company meets a group of 3 black WWI vets who stayed in France after the war, but are eager to to defend their adopted home with Sgt. Rock and his crew. They take to the bazooka well, but one of him winds up giving his life in this new war.

Kelley and Veitch present a story of a French professor in a runaway balloon who manages to strike a blow against the Germans and escape alive. Kim DeMulder gives us a sci-fi story of scientists testing a weapon on presumed subhuman creatures only to fine the creatures have similar designs on them. The "Men of Easy" feature is about a chess fan that likens war to chess, until Rock shows him the infantry aren't pawns.

Super Friends #46: This is a whole Green Fury-centric issue. We get her origin and the Justice League helps her battle a wicked shaman (grandson of the one who foretold her powers at birth) in the Amazon. Who knew Fire got so much "screen time" before the post-Legends Justice League?

Superman Family #209: Supergirl is welcomed in New York, while as Linda she is praised for her acting in the soap opera--and she gets a date with a guy who seems to prefer her to Supergirl. He may prefer baseball to her, though, but at least that gives her time to intervene in the mysterious violence breaking out at the game. Somehow, sports announcer Fred Fox is behind it, but the story's continued.

In the Mr. and Mrs. Superman feature, George Taylor (their old boss at the Daily Star) claims to have discovered Superman's secret ID, but he's killed by mobsters before he can reveal it, giving Clark a chance to doctor the evidence and catch Taylor's killers. In "The Private Life of Clark Kent" Clark thwarts a city bus hijacker secretly so a brave bus driver gets credit. In the  Conway/Oksner/Colletta Lois Lane story, Lois has to get rough with some mobsters who are threatening a family in witness relocation. Finally, Jimmy Olsen and his date find a diamond ring in a theater which involves them with drug dealers operating out of a novelty toy company.

Unexpected #213: Barr and von Eedon/Smith conclude the Johnny Peril story. Johnny manages to give the police the slip and seeks out his psychic friend from the previous story to help him get to the bottom of the mystery. He's able to full the would-be thieves from last issue with a smoke bomb and his friend posing as the mysterious woman into leading him to her. The woman is indeed the woman in the painting, cursed with immortality. She wants to die, but needs a dagger in the possession of the man that hired Peril to do so. The police arrive and try to convince Peril that the woman is crazy while his psychic friend urges him to give her the dagger. Ultimately, Johnny does so, and the woman stabs herself and ages to dust before their eyes.

Kashdan and Florese have a guy visiting a warlock to get a new appearance and identity so he can fake his death to escape liability for faulty school construction he did, but when his wife is accused of murdering him, he tries to get his identity back to save her. In the end, he and the warlock come to ruin as you would expect. In the last story by Kashdan and Mandrake, an anthropologist uncovers a fanged human skull--that bites him! The next day the the skull looks entirely human, but then the murders start. The professor has been turned into a werewolf by a prehistoric werewolf skull bite!

Unknown Soldier #254: Haney and Ayers/Tlaloc have the Soldier taking a junk down the Yang-Tze smuggling guns to help the Chinese against the Japanese invaders. They haven't reckoned on river pirates led by a beautiful captain, Lady Jade. Once the Soldier is captured, he appears to be falling for her charms, but he's still got a mission to complete.

Micheline and Simonson greatly revise Captain Fear and put the Carib pirate captain in the middle of some intrigue that connects the War of Austrian Succession with Japan.  In Dateline: Frontline by Burkett and Estrada, Wayne Clifford risks a lot to sneak into Bataan right before the Japanese overwhelm the U.S. forces.

Warlord #48:  Good issue. Read more about it here. The backup switches to Claw the Unconquered by Harris and Yeates. Claw's demon hand offends him, so he cut it off, only to have it crawl back and reattach itself. He complains to the Lords of Light, so they give him a magic sword and shield, and say "go forth and conquer, you big whiner." So, he rides out and into a battle where he befriends a warrior woman who's mail shirt suggests she fears not for the safety of her underboob, and meets the leader of the demonic horde--who has one human hand! 

A second backup from Thomas and Colon/DeZuniga introduces Arak, Son of Thunder. Arak is a Native America who has somehow come to Dark Ages Europe. In this story, he encounters a woman who is the "goddess" of an ancient temple. When viking raiders try to sacrifice her to some monster which hides in a drove of amber, Arak rescues her. A rather Conan-ish story to introduce Arak to the world.

An Old New Universe: A Comics Counterfactual

In another comic book counterfactual, I want to take a look at what might have been if Marvel's New Universe had been created in period where the Silver Age of comics was becoming the Bronze. Why? Well, I feel like there's a kernel of a good idea in some of the New Universe stuff but it's not always a good fit for the "world outside your window" concept. Just imagine...

Nightmask: A young adult gets the power to enter dreams through the actions of a villain that killed his parents. The high concept pitch for this is Spider-Man meets the 70s Sandman. Steve Ditko would be the ideal artist, but maybe Starlin takes over as it moves into the 70s.

Star Brand: Blue collar guy becomes a powerful superhero. Works well enough in a more standard superhero context. He'd need a different costume, though.

DP7: Another easy one. A little bit X-Men, a little bit Doom Patrol.

Kickers, Inc.: This title says Jack Kirby to me. Sort of if The Challengers of the Unknown were football pros. They need to fight monsters. Like, a lot of them. Probably still only gets a short run before cancellation.

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters: Jenny (called "Spitfire" due to her notorious temper) and her friends are a group of smart, prankster college students, who are forced to get serious when her inventor father is nearly killed by the bad buys. Donning his experimental suit of powered armor, Jenny (with the help of her friends) decides to bring them to justice. Its female lead and assemble cast would be an attempt to branch out beyond standard superheroics.

Justice: A knight from another dimension. The concept already pretty much fits the era, though the execution would be different. The name isn't great though.

Mark Hazzard: Merc: A bit less Commando and a bit more Sgt. Fury, Hazzard would be a "mercenary" like the A-Team, where he only takes on virtuous jobs. 

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1981 (wk 2 pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around May 21, 1981.

Action Comics #522: A nutty professor with a life long love of Baum's Oz builds his own ticktock man. The robot helpfully tries to keep his absent-minded master by on time, but that leads to the creation of a time tornado, as these things do. Superman has to stop him, naturally. 

Speaking of nutty professors, in the Atom backup by Rozakis and Saviuk, Dr. Hyatt has built a device that can steal and store the energy of a hurricane, which he plans to send back to 1931 to hurricane season. When the Calculator shows up to still it, the Atom gets thrown into the time vortex too.

Adventure Comics #484: At this point, Wolfman is pretty much asking fans to come up with most visual details of this book. In addition to coming up with heroes and villains, he now asks for fans to decorate Chris's families new home and dress Chris's and Vicki's school peers. This leads to things like the really ugly costume on the Bounty Hunter in the first story here, and the weird design on his companion, The Pupil, who looks like a giant eyeball in a mortarboard hat. Of course, the Dial H kids defeat these clowns. There's a running gag with a grumpy homeless guy continuing to be in the way of the ongoing conflict, which pays off in the second story when he develops broadcast depression super-powers (thanks to a radioactive exposure in the first), and becomes a pied-piper leading the townsfolk to suicide attempts. Again the Dial H kids save the day. It seems an odd story for a kids' book, but hey, it was the 80s when you could play depression, homelessness, and attempted suicide in a light way.

Brave & the Bold #177: Barr and Aparo team Batman up with another detective, Elongated Man. When members of the charitable Hangman Club are being murdered, the two Leaguers are on the case, but the murderous Hangman seems to stay one step ahead, even hanging the Batman using Elongated Man as a noose and rope at one point, which is sort of gross. Anyway, the two ultimately realize the Hangman is actually killing the Club members to cover his real goal: killing his own wife. I like the way the issue shows the detective chops of both protagonists.

Detective Comics #505: Little Angela Lupus is dying of leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant from her brother, Anthony Lupus. The problem is Lupus has disappeared. What Batman knows that the Lupus family doesn't is that Anthony was a werewolf, and after their first encounter, he may be dead. Turns out Batman may be wrong about that last part, as there seems to be an Anthony Lupus doing illegal hunting in Alaska. Batman manages to track down Lupus who is still a werewolf and capture him. Batman assures Lupus he can find a cure for his condition. Conway and Newton provide a sequel to the story in Batman #255 (1974). 

In the Batgirl backup by Burkett and Delbo, Batgirl is on the trail of hunchback killer who has terrorizing women all over Gotham. Batgirl plays lure to get the hunchback to attack, but in the struggle she drops the knockout gas pellet she was going to use to subdue him, and they both get knocked out.

House of Mystery #295: In the I...Vampire story we learn the secret origin of Bennett's elderly side kick Mishkin, who started hunting vampires with him as a boy after his mother was turned. Sutton's art is nice on this one. It's downhill after this story. The next story is about alien's targeting earthling by selling them fancy new cars in only red or blue. I don't get it. 

Then, Post and Henson deliver the typical cautionary tale about a kid who removes a mysterious woman's turban on a dare and is horrified by the monstrous face he sees on the back of her head. The last story by Jones and Craig is a bit "Living Doll" from the Twilight Zone and "Amelia" from Trilogy of Terror. Harry is trying to marry Isadora or her money, but her daughter Lilah sees through him, and eventually locks him in the attic with a Zulu fetish doll he wouldn't let her buy.

Green Lantern #143: The "backdoor pilot" for an Omega Men series continues. Hal spends most of the issue strapped down with his ring warding off attempts by the forces of the Citadel to take it away. Meanwhile, Carol (and the reader) get to here a number of monologues from Auron. The value/importance Wolfman puts on this character eludes me, other than he winds up being the deus ex machina to secure GL's, Carol's, and the Omega Men's escape.

Sutton and Rodriguez/Mahlstedt continue the Adam Strange backup. Strange returns to Rann only to find that Sardath and the Rannian people blame him for Alanna's death. A detail on her lifeless, crystalline form, reveals that it's a trick. Hoping she's still alive he heads out for a rematch with Alva Xar.

World's Finest #270: My brother and I had this issue as kids so I have fond memories of it. In the Superman/Batman story by Conway and Buckler, Metallo has busted out of Superman Island and now has a Black Hole as a power source. Once the heroes track him down, Metallo uses the intense gravitation to take out Superman, but Batman smashes his control board, and Metallo gets sucked into his own Black Hole. 

In the Haney and von Eeden/Smith Green Arrow story, Count Vertigo is back and uses his vertiginous powers to force Green Arrow to acquire the crown of Vlatava. GA does so, and Vertigo smashes it with a sledgehammer! To be continued. In the Hawkman/Hawkgirl story by Rozakis and Saviuk/Rodriguez, Hawkman has been cured but a Thanagarian invasion fleet is leaving the planet, headed for Earth, and Hawkgirl has got to deal with the Shadow Thief before she can do anything about it.

In the Red Tornado story by Conway and Delbo, Reddy takes on Robot Killer a luddite with a homemade (but snappy) costume. Finally, in "Our Son, the Monster" by Bridwell and Newton, Captain Marvel has to help the son of a neighbor who has been transformed into a chubby green creature, by aliens' misguided efforts to reward him with good-looks.

It was enjoyable to revisit this issue, and I think that it's one of the better issues I've read of the title since I started this review.

Weird Revisted: Spectacular Losers

The original version of this Weird Adventures post appeared in May of 2011... 

For every adventurer that achieves fame and fortune there are a dozen who have short careers and die pointless or bizarre (or sometimes both) deaths in cramped spaces underground. The successful ones get celebrated at Munsen’s Museum. The losers have their own shrine on the boardwalk of Lapin Isle: Jago’s Museum of Death in the Depths. Here’s a sampling of the stories to be found there:

“Sweet Tooth” Artie Gaff: Lost his life in a macabre freak accident after a roll of the hard candies he habitually carried became tainted with a droplet from an ooze he and his party had defeated earlier.  The "sugar slime" that grew from the remainder of the candies required the action of the Exterminators to stop it.

Nellie Eastpenny: Supposedly crushed under the boot of a giant. It has been of little solace to her grieving family that scientists have since proven that a giant of that size is an impossible violation of physical law.

Smiling Dave Delgroot: Contracted a peculiar wasting disease from a plague-carrying undead creature. His facial features were the first thing to go.

Janice Doppelkin: Was executed for her crimes. The jury at her trial was unanimous in their verdict of guilt, but divided as to whether her crime was better termed “double murder” or “murder/suicide.” After three days on a delve, Miss Doppel returned to find her man en flagrante with a duplicate of herself, apparently created after she looked into a magic mirror on the first day of the expedition.

Wilbert Vrockmorton: Died more indirectly from delving than most of his fellow unfortunates in the museum. After a successful expedition, Vrockmorton was drinking with his fellows at a City saloon. A challenge from Zanoni (born Theron Astley) lead to his consumption of a bottle of wine brought up from the underground. Upon downing a glass, Vrockmorton disappeared--whether by disintegration or some sort of teleportation no one could say.  Occasionally, a magic item turns up in the hands of various dealers in the City: A glass eye called the Eye of Vrockmorton--said to impart protection against inebriation if carried.

Augie "the Mace" Munce: Decapitated by the bite of a monstrous humanoid, probably a troll--a creature Munce had turned his back on after presuming its defeat.  In certain adventuring quarters, the verb "to munce" is used to refer to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1981 (wk 1 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around May 7, 1981.

Justice League of America #193: This continues the Red Tornardo/T.O. Morrow story from the previous issue. Morrow can't seem to replicate Reddy, so he's going to take him apart to figure out why. Aquaman plays Batman and busts through a window to save him, but Morrow takes him out easily. The JLA attacks Morrow as a group, but the Tornado Tyrant has been unleashed and defeats them all but (Conway creation, I'm sure that's no accident) Firestorm. Firestorm meets the relatively small Tornado Champion and hears its origin and by extension the origin of Red Tornado. I have no idea if there are any retcons here as this is the version I know from Who's Who. Anyway, Firestorm helps the Champion reintegrate with the Tyrant with Firestorm's help so they can revive Red Tornado, even though that means the Champion will again lose his memory/identity.  Firestorm is now the only one that knows Reddy's true origin story. 

Then there is an All-Star Squadron preview by Thomas and Buckler/Ordway. This is basically set-up but pretty interesting. It's December 6, 1941, and FDR is trying to get in touch with the JSA, but they're all off doing other stuff--and running into villains that they don't know but who know them, implying they are time displaced. Degaton is at the root of all this, and Pearl Harbor is about to occur without the heroes to help. This is a solid issue, I would have no doubt read and re-read as a kid.

New Teen Titans #10: Terminator is back and HIVE wants him to steal stuff from Project: Promethium, which Terminator does, but he plans to auction off to the highest bidder. A lot of the issue is taken up by "slice of life" character stuff with the Titans before Terminator's machinations draw them in. In the end, HIVE betrays the would-be bidders, Terminator betrays HIVE, and the Titans trick Terminator who thought he had killed them in his demonstration of a "Promethium bomb." The competency of the creative team is clear, but this story feels like treading water between better stuff, though clearly since this is the second issue with it, Wolfman is more enamored of Promethium as a MacGuffin than I am. Also, this title has a bit of a 80s cartoon feel in that HIVE and Terminator have been such recurrent villains over this first year.

Secrets of Haunted House #39: Another lackluster issue, though a couple of stories here are just odd. In the Seegar/Patricio opener, a woman (named Taaro of all things) finds an injured man in an alley and brings him back to her place and kind of lets him move in. She shows him her wall full of memorabilia: photos from her modeling career, the cast she recently had removed and the crutch she used. Ignore the weirdness of this wall, because this is essentially a Chekov's gun moment. Romance doesn't bud, but the guy does kill her rival for a commercial gig-- 'cause he's a vampire. Then he gets jealous of her and a guy that offers he a job. He reveals he's a vampire and menaces her, but she stabs him through the heart with the handy crutch. 

The last story is by Drake and "Magpie-o" (Magpayo). A man escapes from psychiatric hospital and abducts his daughter (presumably) for a trip to Mexico. He encounters a reclusive but locally famous silver artist called Caballo, who wears something like Aztec get-up and long gloves all the time. The guy thinks all of this doesn't add up. He hears about Xotoka, a god who had a silver touch, and he reads about a ritual in an old book he took from Caballo's. He performs the ritual, and receives a burn on his forehead, but now everything he touches becomes silver. One afternoon, he returns to the hotel and his daughter is gone. He races to Caballo's for a show down, convinced the artist is trying to protect the secret of the ritual, but it turns out Caballo doesn't have that power--he's just a murderer that dips people in silver--including the man's daughter!

The Mister E story by Rozakis and Spiegle has E in Boston dealing with two dogs that work for witches. And this is ill-conceived yarn has a second part.

Superman #362: Lana and Lois both fall ill from a mysterious illness, which causes a great deal of distress for Superman, who realizes its the same illness that killed Jonathan and Martha Kent. A lot of the issue is consumed by that flashback, which is maybe new here, I don't know. It's continued next issue.

The backup is an "In-Between Years" story by Rozakis and Schaffenberger. Clark arrives at college in Metropolis only to find the campus on alert due to a bomb threat by Vietnam protestors. I figured this was going to be some criminal ploy blaming the protestors, but nope they are indeed responsible. However, a group of criminals does try to fake bomb scares after the real bombers are apprehended, but they are stopped by Superboy.

Weird War Tales #102: I'm surprised the Comics Code let DeMatteis and Carillo get away with this Creature Commandos story with a bunch of brainwashed kids shot up with some sort of super-soldier formula by the Nazis. The creatures (as is common in this strip) show the most humanity, viewing the children, however murderous, as more victims of callous science--not unlike themselves. In the end, the kids turn on their creator just before the unstableness of their condition kills them. 

The other stories aren't as strong, but two-thirds are okay. In the Fleisher/Zamora story a G.I. gets the ability to predict another soldiers death by seeing their dog tags glow, and winds up trading out dog tags with his buddy to save his friend's life. In a best-forgotten tale by Kashdan and Celardo a genii fulfills the wish of an ambitious officer to to lead an army of fierce soldiers, so the genii shrinks the guy to the size of an ant so he can command ants. The last story by Mishkin/Cohn and von Eeden/Ordway is a bit like The Last Starfighter (3 years away) where a kid playing a video game frees an alien people and is honored by them.

Wonder Woman #282: This is probably the best installment of this Etrigan team-up arc, but I still don't like Delbo's rendition of the Demon. Conway's script actually handles him pretty well, though. Anyway, the Demon and Wonder Woman escape the Netherworld and manage to bring Etta Candy home. Wonder Woman realizes Diana's and Etta's landlord--ex-Senator Abernathy is the one that set them up as potential sacrifices. When confronted, he admits it and says he was being blackmailed by Oscar Pound of Delphi. Wonder Woman again infiltrates Delphi only to find the Demon is already there and has fallen under the control of Klarion. Before she handles that, Diana has got to deal with Pound who has been turned into a Minotaur as Klarion's cruel way of fulfilling his promise to make him walk again. Etrigan refuses to kill Wonder Woman who he calls his friend and breaks free of Klarion's control. He seems to destroy Klarion but tells Wonder Woman that such a creature can't truly die. Pound is human again, but also unable to walk. They leave him for the police.

In the Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton/Mitchell, our hero is trying to find the Joker by looking for the source of his Joker venom tracing precursor chemicals. She comes up empty until she gets an idea. She heads back to Wayne Manor, which she hasn't visited for years, and the Batcave. Which makes we wonder why she as the heir doesn't do something with it? Aren't the taxes on the place killing her? Anyway, we cut to the Joker who sees a report of a sighting of Batman, swinging through Gotham. The Joker is overjoyed: he didn't want the Batman dead until he kills him. The last caption tells us that the Joker thinks the Batman is back, and we readers think it's the Huntress in disguise, but we are both wrong.

The Spider's Web

 Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the part heading out for Subazurth, and then to journey through its subterranean highways to the the mysterious domed city of Yai. Along the way to the road, they learn a bit about the history of the local kingdom of Subazurth: How the deposed Rorquar the Gnome King was an enemy of Queen Desire but his son, Gheode, the current king is her ally. The the "gnomes" of this area are Earth faeborn, mostly with a crystalline appearance. 

In Subazurth they are met by Captain Malachite:

He has prepared a cover story for them as "fungus hunters" and has a giant pillbug drawn wagon to give them. He also providers a star-shaped compass that will allow them to navigate to the northern Noxia border. 

They head out beneath Virid to the Virid-Noxia border. The route is pretty easy going. The road has paving stones and the way is lit by phosphorescent fungi on most of the walls. Passing through one outpost, though, they are stopped by a salty veteran of the Subazurth Rangers who tells them the passage is closed for some distance ahead due to a monster infestation. He welcomes them to stay a week or so while he hires a group of adventurers to clear the way.

The party responds that even though they are humble fungus hunters, they will give it a shot. The ranger agrees to let them try. Half a day in, they pass an alcove for a waystation that is full of spider webs. They roll on, but remain vigilante overnight in the next alcove. Dagmar things she sees something at the edge of the light, but by the time she summons Shade, whatever it might have been is gone.

The next day, they again head out, only to be attacked by the breath weapon of some sort of dragon-spider hybrid. It gives the party quite a time, and Kully goes down, but they are able to slay the creature in the end, and take it's head to present to the ranger. They also, of course, search its lair and recover its meager treasure.

Modest reward for their efforts acquired, they again head northeast

Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuted on the Paramount+ streaming platform this past week. For anyone that hasn't heard of it, it follows the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike and his crew on the Enterprise--the group we saw in the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage."

Pike and Spock played important roles in Discovery season 2, so in a way this is a spinoff of that show. A such, we unfortunately, don't get a retro-aesthetic like the Mirror Universe two-parter on Enterprise or even a straight modernization of the TOS aesthetic like Abrams' Star Trek, but rather something that moves Discovery looks in a modernization of TOS direction. The uniforms here, though, are much better than the one's shown for the Enterprise in Discovery S2, being something like a combination of elements of the Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Beyond uniforms.

Anson Mounts' Pike isn't like Jeffery Hunter's but then we only saw Hunter play him pre-The Cage. Those events no doubt impacted him, but the biggest thing Mounts' Pike is dealing with is the aftermath of Discovery. It's a minor spoiler, but Pike is now aware of the fate that awaits him where he ends up in the sad condition we see him in in "The Menagerie." Mount isn't playing another version of Kirk here, which is good.

Ethan Peck's Spock is likewise good, but doesn't quite nail the Nimoy vibe in the way Quinto does. However, "The Cage" pilot was before Nimoy and the writers really made Spock the character we know, so that's okay. The other "recast" characters (Number One, Nurse Chapel, Dr. Mbenga, April) didn't have so much development in the serious previously that a new actor seems like a change. Indeed, all of these actors are good in their roles. Young Uhura likewise seems reasonable to me or that character.

That does bring up one of the (minor) problems with the series for me. In their eagerness to throw in character callbacks, they aren't really respecting continuity. Mbenga appears to be Chief Medical Officer here, yet he is at most second in command to Dr. McCoy by the time of TOS. Maybe McCoy got brought in an outranked him, but that would explain why he looks pretty much the same age as here as he does in TOS with seven years supposedly separating the shows. Indeed, the actor in TOS is a decade younger than the one that played him in SNW.

Also, Uhura stellar communication's officer (at least as far as the "extended universe" of the novels and comics tell us) is one her first cruise here here, but has only made it to lieutenant 7 years later? Maybe that's possible, but it just feels like they didn't think it through.

Those fannish quibbles aside, I like the show. I like the episodic nature of it, which moves it back in the direction of older Trek after the very serial Discovery and Picard. I like that we're getting an Andorian on the ship, if the trailer is accurate. I'm hoping will get more tie-ins to older Trek lore than Discovery's over-arcing plot allowed.

New Terra

New Terra is uncannily like humanity's world of origin in terms of size and atmospheric composition. Even the native plant and animal life proved mostly compatible with the biochemistry of organisms from Old Earth. It made an ideal new home for the refugees from across the stars.

The technology that allowed humankind to make the journey in great arks has now been lost. Humans may have left the Earth behind, but they could not flee the worst parts of their nature. Wars for territory began soon after their arrival and in them much knowledge was lost.

Something like two centuries have passed since that time. An international governing body was formed to ensure peace, and it did so for a time. Corruption and entanglements on other worlds led an economic depression. The previous government was ousted by popular vote in favor of the New Earth Order party under it's charismatic leader, Hastor Trask. 

New Earth Order blamed most of New Terra's woes on undue influence of aliens, and has proscribed the travel of nonhumans on Earth, while pursuing a military build-up and expansion of New Terran hegemony into the Belt and beyond.

Wednesday Comics: DC Comics, August 1981 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! I'm a couple of days later than my usual Wednesday post, but I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  May 7, 1981. 

Batman #338: Conway/Thomas and Novick/McLaughlin put Batman up against a villain whose a master athlete with various sports-theme gimmicks. No, it's not the Sportsmaster (he's on Earth-2). This guy hates sports and is killing sports stars and journalists. It turns out he had a dad who really pushed him into sports as a kid, but not just in the usual way. He injected him with his own sort of super-athlete serum. His mom, reasonably viewing this as child abuse whisked the kid away, but the damage was done. The Sportsman is a super-athlete, but his achievements were tainted by him knowing they were chemically induced and the enhancements caused him to develop fatal cancer. This adds up to a workman-like Batman tale, with a one appearance (I assume) villain.

The Conway/Newton Robin backup solves the murder mystery in the big top, and I guess it's a twist I didn't see coming, but then I also stopped carrying about this story a couple of installments ago.

DC Comics Presents #36: Because someone demanded it (maybe) Levitz circles back to wrapped up the story of Starman which was abandoned with the switch in Adventure Comics months ago. This time he's got a more suitable artist perhaps in the form of Starlin. Starlin's Mongul comes along to be the heavy. Some time has apparently passed since we last saw Starman because now he's gotten the throne that previously belonged to his sister (who didn't know she was his sister) upon her death. Mongul assassinated her and then married Starman's lady love Merria because he knows the wearer of the crown of Throneworld has access to a planet destroying super-weapon and an empire. Starman teams up with Superman to put a stop to all this. Interestingly, the story doesn't end with the "rightful king" being restored, but rather the dissolution of the empire and Starman destroying the doomsday device his ancestors had used to coerce obedience.

Flash #300: This special oversized issue, mostly is an excuse for Bates and Infantino to recap the origins of the Flash, Kid Flash, his Rogues, and even his friend Elongated Man. Absent this filler, though the core story isn't bad. The bandaged guy in a hospital bed we've seen over a couple of issues who was named Barry Allen, turns up to be the Barry Allen. He's visited by a new psychiatrist that looks a lot like his father due to Infantino's art, but anyway the doctor is trying to convince Allen that the Flash is a delusion and that the accident with the chemicals left him horrible scared and paralyzed instead of making him a superhero. Allen is convinced this is a villainous plot (he's right) but the villains play a pretty convincing game until right up to the end, when the Flash turns the tables and exposes Abra Kadabra as the mastermind. The reveal makes the story seem "smaller" than its anniversary issue page count would warrant, but it's well-crafted one of the puzzle sort.

Ghosts #103: The lead story here is one of the best so far this year. A group of kids in a hospital unit sneak into the the room of one of their peers to perform a séance to determine the cause of the kid's mysterious coma that has the doctors baffled. It turns out the boy's spirit is considering leaving his body as he lost his mother in the accident that put him in the hospital and is now an orphan. He even tries to draw away the spirit of another little girl to come with him. The group holds strong and convinces the boy not to leave life yet. In the morning, he miraculously awakens from the coma and the kids are found sleeping in a circle around his bed. Levitz's kid dialogue here is occasionally schmaltzy in a Twilight Zone sort of way, but Spiegle draws kids well and really makes it work.

It's downhill from there. Allikas and Gonzales give us an EC-esque potboiler about the ghost of a murdered man getting revenge on the crook how murdered him who attempts now to rob the dead man's grave in search of a value ring. Snyder and Gonzales supply a take that would have perhaps been better suited to one of DC's short lived "gothic romance" titles of the 70s, where an elderly woman gets to be reunited in death with her departed husband after showing her psychiatrists that ghosts do exist.

G.I. Combat #232: Kanigher's and Glanzman's first Haunted Tank story has Jeb replaced by a lookalike German assassin sent to kill Patton. It turns out Patton can see the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart, too, who warns him off-screen. The second story has the crew taking a castle back from the Germans, and being forced to resort to Medieval weaponry after the tank lands in the moat. Whether war comics are made better by this sort of "high concept" stuff is difficult to say. I do like G.I. Robot! On the other hand, I think the more grounded Sgt. Rock is generally better than the Haunted Tank.

The O.S.S. story introduced Kana, a ninja working for the U.S. In this first story he gets to kill the commander that had his parents executed as American collaborators and also faces some prejudice from the American troops he's fighting alongside. In an "Underwater War" segment, a frogman must stop the German's from salvaging the experimental "laser gun" from a sunken submarine. Apparently in the DCU the term "laser" existed well before 1957. Drake's and Vicatan's "Battling Bard of Co. B" has a Shakespeare professor turned G.I. has it's ostensible hero, but I can see how his constantly quotation and grammarian ways would have irritated guys just trying to stay alive and fight a war, so I can have too much sympathy for him. He does save the day in the end. 

Jonah Hex #52: Mei Ling is about to give birth and Hex has to go into town to get a comforter he has secretly purchased for her bed. There's a young wannabe gunslinger there looking to make a name for himself by outgoing the famous bounty hunter. Hex ignores the guy's attempts to goad him by calling him a "coward" but it rankles him because his abusive father did the same thing. When he sees the gunslinger strike a kid, Hex gives him the fight he was looking for, though he doesn't have his six shooters. In the end, the gunslinger is going to Boot Hill, and Hex carries his dirtied, but otherwise okay comforter home to his wife and new child. While these stories aren't much considered today, the comics market being so focused on superheroes, I feel like Fleisher and the artists consistently deliver solid work, pretty much on a the level of sophistication 70s tv primetime Western--which isn't my attempt to damn with faint praise; remember comics in this era were aimed at kids.

The Bat Lash story is actually a follow-up to the tale from a few months back that I thought was a one off. Bat Lash tracks down the woman who stole the deed to the "social club" that he won in the card game. He discovers she's after the club for a stash of Confederate gold. When he tries to confront her and get the deed the "soiled doves" of the social club come to her defense.

Mothership Adventure Inspiration from the Pulps

The varied worlds appearing in the short fiction of science fiction magazines in the 30s through the 50s have a lot to offer any of the recent sci-fi horror games. Few of these stories are actually horror, but elements of them can easily be viewed through a horror lens. Here are few examples:

"Immortals of Mercury" (1932) by Clark Ashton Smith. Explorers on a tidally locked Mercury have to deal with resentful indigenous people, one a known, primitive, group, and another an advanced subterranean species that would like to wipe humanity off the planet. In many ways, this story is in large part of dungeon-crawl, but the basic set-up could be played all kinds of ways.

"Salvage in Space" (1933) by Jack Williamson. This one is reminiscent of Alien. A down-on-his-luck asteroid prospector finds a derelict ship floating in the Belt and attempts to salvage it. The ship is loaded with jewels, but also taxidermied alien monsters. The crew have all apparently been killed by violence, but the bodies are gone. It turns out the ship had carried an expedition to the Titania, the moon of Uranus, which is covered with "unearthly forests sheltering strange and monstrous life." The miner must discover what happened and find a way to survive the danger still stalking the ship. 

"Parasite Planet" (1935) by Stanley Weinbaum. Weinbaum's Venus is probably the most "ready to be used for horror" setting that isn't already already a horror setting in science fiction. This is how it's described in this story:

A thousand different species, but all the same in one respect; each of them was all appetite. In common with most Venusian beings, they had a multiplicity of both legs and mouths; in fact some of them were little more than blobs of skin split into dozens of hungry mouths, and crawling on a hundred spidery legs. 

All life on Venus is more or less parasitic. Even the plants that draw their nourishment directly from soil and air have also the ability to absorb and digest—and, often enough, to trap—animal food. So fierce is the competition on that humid strip of land between the fire and the ice that one who has never seen it must fail even to imagine it.

Humans have to wear full body suits with respirators least mold spores get into their bodies. And if all that isn't enough it's terrifically hot and humid. "Prospectors" come to Venus to get rich acquiring native plant life with pharmaceutical value.

"Love Among the Robots" (1946) by Emmett McDowell. As the title suggests, this story is light in the way it plays out, but absent the "meet cute" there's an isolated asteroid mining operations with a small human crew testing learning and adapting robots, where the robots begin to gain a bit too much freewill. If it can't be gotten under control, the company will nuke the asteroid.

Adventuring on Mongo

 

I've often thought that Mongo would be a good setting (or at least good close inspiration) for a D&D setting. Ditch Flash Gordon and visitors from Earth, and (for maximum ease), replace comic derived cultures with analogous D&D "races"/cultures: So the Magic Men of Azura's subterranean kingdom become drow, and maybe the half-orc gets reskinned as Lion Men.

That could certainly work, but this guy went an adapted the most recent Flash Gordon rpg to 5e, so if you want to play in the "real thing" you can.

Wednesday Comics: DC, July 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around April 23, 1981. 

Detective Comics #504: Conway and Newton present "The Joker's Rumpus Room Revenge." The Joker has escaped from prison and has gotten a number of deadly toys from a toymaker to set a trap for Batman. The Dark Knight predictably, overcomes the Joker's machinations. 

The backup is a Tales of Gotham City story by Kupperberg and Delbo/Giella where Gordon finds out the son of an old friend is actually a dirty cop. I like that this story goes against the mold, because a stern talking to by Gordon doesn't turn the kid around, instead he tries to run out on Gordon and dies of his own incompetence.

New Adventures of Superboy #19: Bates and Schaffenberger reveal that, before adopting Kal-El, the Kents took in a juvenile delinquent, Cory Renwald, and attempted to reformed him into a model citizen. They never knew if they succeeded, but years later, Renwald and 2 Soviet agents cross paths with Clark and Jonathan on a camping trip--and Renwald shoots them both with a poison dart. All is not as it seems, of course, as Cory is revealed to be a U.S. agent in deep cover pretending to work for the Russians. He switched out the darts so Jonathan was only sleeping. Superboy nabs the spies. The Kents find out they did right with the kid in the end. The Rozakis/Calnan Superbaby backup is Easter themed and features young Clark naively thwarting jewel thieves at a Easter egg hunt.

Sgt. Rock #354: Kanigher and Redondo give the first Sgt. Rock story I've read with a hint of the supernatural. Something is stalking both U.S. and German troops as both sides try to get to a noble in an isolated castle. Was he a werewolf? We never find out. The next story is a grotty, post-apocalyptic yarn by Tim Truman where the last human is killed by a mutant sniper leaving the earth to the robot soldiers and the mutants. 

There's an uncredited short about the introduction of the flamethrower, then Kanigher and Mandrake serve up a short about the merciless tick of the watch and death in the trenches of World War I. In another uncredited story, a G.I. in Vietnam loses his life and his Stones tape to the VC as he writes a letter to his mother. The "Men of Easy" feature has Tag-A-Long Thomas learning the value of sticking close to Rock.

Super Friends #46: The team the Justice League up with the Global Guardians to free villains captured by the mysterious Conqueror continues. When that's done they confront the Conqueror himself and defeat him with the help of Dr. Mist.

The Seraph backup by Oksner has the Israeli hero taking on the ghost of a Roman soldier at the site of Masada.

Superman Family #208: Harris gives the title a shake-up by having Linda quit the New Athens Experimental School after getting insulted by her boss and head of to New York City to become a soap opera actress. Supergirl precedes her to New York to establish her presence so as not to have them both arriving at the same time. She foils an Middle Eastern coded terrorist. Bridwell and Schaffenberger have Clark and Lois on a plane to Europe that gets hijacked to Zrfff by the Mr. Mxyztplk of Earth-Two. The imp lets it slip he can't stand anything that reminds him of Superman, so Supes causes images of himself to appear everywhere and drive Mxyztplk crazy until he sends everyone home.

In the Private Life of Clark Kent story, we find out Edge is a big fan of a 50s sci-fi show and was a collector of memorabilia as a kid (and also that he anglicized his name and is probably Jewish). Edge tries to by a branded clock he never got in his childhood, but an old childhood friend (and rival) tries to steal it. In a another somewhat humorous Lois Lane story by Conway and Oksner, Lois stumbles upon what she thinks is "another Abscam" but it turns out to be an FBI sting against some Middle Eastern types, that Lois almost spoils. Conway and Tuska have Jimmy stumbling unto an actual story when he tries to impress Edge's niece and her college friends after she denigrates his skills as a reporter.

Unexpected #211: Barr and von Eedon/Breeding start a new Johnny Peril storyline where Johnny returns to his office and finds a mysterious woman going through his mail, who pretty much disappears before his eyes. He's hired to guard a necklace called The Angel's Smile--and he sees a painting of a 19th century actress that's the spitting image of the woman he saw earlier. That night thieves with a knockout gas try to steal the necklace, but Johnny is ready. What he isn't ready for his the reappearance of the woman, who steals the necklace and his gun, shoots the guy who hired him, then disappears.

The other stories this issue are less interesting. Wessler and Sparling/Colletta have a Southern fried crime boss failing to keep a promise to Death to not kill anyone. Drake and Mortimer/DeMulder have a son run afoul of a real stickler of a funeral home owner who refuses to bury the man's parents side by side because his mother committed suicide, so the father rises from the grave to get revenge. Finally, Kashdan and Nicholas/Colletta give us the well worn trope of a spaceship crew being used as lab rats by advanced aliens.

Green Lantern #142: Wolfman's and Staton's Omega Men introduction continues. Jordan and Ferris are captured by the Omega Men, which gives Kalista time to provide the secret origin of the Omega Men. Their escape from the Citadel was secured by the sacrifice of Lambien, a god-like energy being. They made it to Earth with the Citadel on their heels. Jordan convinces them to let him help, just as the Citadel attacks.

In the Adam Strange backup by Sutton and Rodriquez, Strange escapes his ice cage in the city of Kryys and saves Alanna. When he once again refuses to unite with Alva Xar, the dictator from the past turns Alanna into crystal and shatters her, then sends and enraged Strange back to Earth with an Anti-Zeta-Beam. It's a shame these backups have never been collected, so as I know.

Warlord #47:  Read more about it here. The OMAC backup has our hero saving the city of Marseille from a runaway giant protozoa. I'm not even completely sure why that's happening to be honest, and I think this arc his finished, so I have no desire to refresh myself on earlier installments.

Zephyrus to the Rescue

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the party trying to find a way to free Queen Desira of Virid from the influence of the shadow man. They have no magic with which to uncharm her and it doesn't seem reason alone will do it. Not wanting to fight the shadow man and his magic-using victim, the party retreats to the castle to seek the advice of Glafko.

Glafko is not particularly helpful, offering to write a strongly worded missive to his Queen making the party's points forcefully. Just as they are about to return to the garden folly and resort to violence, Glafko suggests the crystal winged horse Zephyrus might be helpful. He has freed her from magical influence before. The majordomo summons the crystal horse and he agrees to help.

Back in the garden, the shadow man isn't pleased when he sees Zephyrus, but contact with horse does the trick and Desira falls unconscious. Then, the fight breaks out with Erekose whipping out the ray pistol he got from the future, and blasting the shadow several times. Kully forces the shadow to retreat further with dissonant whispers, but that may not have been the best move, because then he's hidden in the deeper shadows of the garden.

Black tentacles erupt from the ground and grab Waylon and Erekose. Dagmar casts a light spell and reveals the shadow, and Shade puts two magic arrows in him. The shadow disappears. It's unclear whether he is dead or he just fled, but they can't find him anywhere and the tentacles are gone.

They return to the palace and find the Queen is still sleeping. They establish a watch, using Celestie (Waylon's owl familiar) as a window guard. 

During the night, Desira awakens and summons the party via Celestie. She appears to be her normal self again (as much as they can determine that). She listens to what they have to say with interest, particularly when she shows them the Triumph of the Wizard of Azurth volume. She tells them she believes the book to possibly be connected the the Pleasure Dome of Yai--or at least she believes that is where they are likely to find out about it.

To make her point, she has Zephyrus bring out a device. 

And produces a thin black box and puts it in the machine. He makes images of a play where actors appear to be portraying them appear! Desira says she got this from a demon who said it was from Yai and called it a "bootleg." The party is intrigued, to say the least.

The party stays the night and samples the local cuisine in at the Silver Unicorn Inn. In the morning, Desira sees them off, offering to take them to the entrance to Subazurth so they can pass through the kingdom of her friend Prince Gheode, ruler of the earth elemental fae (kobolds or gnomes they are called), which she believes will ultimately be the safest way to the Noxian northern border.

The Belt

The Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Marva and Wanaxar is the remnant of an ancient, inhabited world shattered in some cataclysm. The nature of calamity is unknown, though an encounter with contraterrene matter is a possibility.

The mineral wealth of the asteroid belt has drawn prospectors from all over the System and the fragmentary remains of the progenitor planet's civilization have drawn scientists and researchers. Despite these visitors, the Belt remains a relatively lawless frontier. Zerene, the largest of the worldlets in the Belt, is famed as the raucous port of pirates and smugglers.

Art by Jordu Schell

A particularly rapacious group of outlaws are the mysterious Gith. A species of folk seemingly native to the Belt, these marauders are fearsome in appearance: skeletally thin, with parchment yellow skin, and emaciated, corpse-like faces. The Gith. seemingly materialize from nowhere, gutting ships and taking no prisoners, then vanish--sometimes while still in the scopes of pursuers.

There are rumors of a related group of beings, the so-called adepts of asteroids, who tend to remain hidden. They are less aggressive, but not much more friendly to outsiders.

It has been suggested that the Gith races are the descendants of the people of the lost progenitor world, but the iconography of large-craniumed, tentacle-mouthed beings found in the ruins on some asteroids is puzzling, if that's true.

Pulp Inspirations: Uranus from Captain Future

Uranus figures prominently in the Captain Future story The Magician of Mars published in 1941. Here are some details on Hamilton's version of Uranus, which is not at all scientifically accurate, but very useful for gaming inspiration. Quotes are provided from the issue of the pulp magazine.

Geography

• Mountains are Uranus's best known feature.
• Mystery Mountains: "And there is one colossal range in the northern hemisphere, called the Mystery Mountains, which have an altitude of at least twenty miles and possibly much more."
• "The Mystery Mountains’ eternally cloud-wrapped upper heights have never been explored. It is believed that strange creatures inhabit those lofty hidden heights, since occasionally men have found grotesque bodies floating down the North River that flows from those mountains toward the Polar Sea."
• Meteor Peak: "In the wilds south of Losor is the remarkable mountain called Meteor Peak. It is not a natural mountain like the other peaks of Uranus, but is in fact a huge meteor which fell there in times past and half -buried itself in the ground. Because of its unique metallic nature the meteor did not shatter, and still rises from the wilds as a great, dome-like mass of metal. It has sometimes been used as a quarry for certain metals, but that has now been prohibited."
• Valley of Voices: "...in the Valley of Voices, sheets of a talc-like material exuded from the cliffs seem to have the power of recording in some way any sound vibrations which fall upon them. These queer talc-sheets, whenever the wind strikes them, give forth all the sounds they have “recorded.” The result is that in the Valley of Voices one can still clearly hear sounds and human voices which are echoing after thousands of years."
• Endless River: "It was a foaming river that roared ceaselessly around the planet in the titanic canyon it had eroded for itself, its current being the result of tidal pull of the four moons."
• Shining Sea: "It is a sea whose waters are so impregnated with radioactive material from deposits in its bed that it glows at night like a great lake of light. The Uranian city of Lulanee is built on the shores of the Shining Sea, and is considered by inter- planetary travelers to possess one of the most beautiful settings of any city in the System."
• The Great Caves: "Beneath the surface of the planet is a natural wonder almost as great as the mountains, the great caves of Uranus. The interior of the planet is honeycombed by a labyrinth of caverns unmatched anywhere else in the System...Men have explored some of the upper caverns. There is a tiny amount of light in them, emitted from the radioactive minerals in which Uranus is rich. And there is a whole range of life-forms that exist in the caverns and never emerge into the sunlight."

Lifeforms

• Floating Flowers: "Perhaps the most distinctive plant-life of Uranus are its Floating Flowers — flowers that drift in the air by means of sacs into which pure hydrogen is exuded, and whose trailing air-roots supply them with water and nutrition from the air."
• "The animal life of Uranus is abundant, and comprises many of the most ferocious carnivores in the System."
• Cliff Apes: "are the most dreaded, being not really apes but huge bear-like animals whose six limbs are adapted for clambering over the sheer precipices."
• Cloud Cats: "haunt the cloud-wrapped up- per heights of the peaks, and stalk their prey in the eternal mists."
• Thunder-hawk: "has vast wings which can shadow a whole village and can carry off huge beasts in its claws."
• Harpies: "Their human-like appearance is mere accident, and they are in no way as intelligent as the Qualus, the famous winged men of north Saturn."
• Uranians: "have yellow skins, dark hair, and small, dark eyes." 
• "they are perhaps the most conservative and tradition-ridden people in all the nine worlds. They revere custom, and practice a suave courtesy that most people find rather wearying."
• "they are perhaps the most skilled miners in the System, due to their long acquairitance with the underground labyrinth of their world."
• People of Darkness: "humans of a primitive kind who dwell in the caves and are known as the People of Darkness. They are presumed to be descendants of Uranian stock who ages ago went down into the caves and developed eyesight capable of seeing well there. These People of Dark- ness never appear on the surface. Intense light dazzles them."