Azurth Adventures Digest Update & A Sample Page

The Azurth Adventures Digest volume one is in layout now. Barring any unforseen snags, it will be out the middle of next month. Contents include: a brief overview of the piratical Motley Isles and random and random tables for generating quirky pirates and pirate captains, details on three NPCs and a monster, thumbnails of some exotic places in the Boundless Sea and a random table of weird encounters, and finally, a short writeup of  Candy Isle adventuring locale.

All of this is enlivened by art by Jeff Call and Jason Sholtis. Anyway, here's a sample page with art by both of them:

Weird Revisited: Lies Your Mummy Told You

This post first appeared on August 13, 2010. It was written for Weird Adventures, but I think it could be useful in any setting...

Far to the west of the City, within the great Stoney Mountains, there are remote places where ancient ruins dot the hardpan, high-desert landscape. Unusual artifacts sometimes come from these ruins, and few are more unusual than the so-called dwarf  mummies.

Dwarf (sometimes pygmy) mummies look just as their name suggests: they are wizened figures little more than a foot tall, in their usual seated pose. Despite having none of the usual signs of life, the mummies are endowed with the magical semblance of life at least, and though they don’t move (usually) they are aware, and interact with their environment.

The susurration of the mummies can be heard by all, if conditions are quiet enough, but only the one “owner” of the mummy will be able to understand their dessicated whispering, which will sound as if spoken directly into their ear, even if they are as much as ten feet away.

The mummies' utterances will fall (either randomly or at the GM’s whim) into the following categories:

01-02: Pained, non sequitur reminiscences, possibly related to their long ago lives. These are related to times far too remote for modern hearers to relate to them in any useful way.
03-04: Cryptic foretellings of the future (anywhere from 1 week to 10 years hence) which will relate to the “owner.”
05-06: An exact and surprising statement about some predicament currently vexing the “owner.” The mummy will not elaborate.
07-08: A cryptic statement which seems to be about some predicament vexing the “owner,” but is in fact just nonsense.
09-10: Veiled Suggestions that someone the “owner” is close to is in fact conspiring against them. This may or may not be true, but the mummy will have details that make it seem so. Details will only be delivered in a way that makes the mummy seem reluctant to talk about the issue.

The longer a person owns a mummy, the more uncritical they will become about its statements. After a week or more in their possession, the owner will react to the mummy as if it has a Charisma of 18. After a month, a failed save will mean the owner acts as if charmed by the mummy in regard to believing everything it says, and treating it as if it is a trusted confidant.

No one knows who the dwarf mummies are, nor their purposes.  Any answers the mummies give in this regard will certainly be lies.

The Games I Play

Despite relatively frequent reports of Gplus's demise, it turns out it still is a pretty good place to here about some Google Hangouts games. Real life stuff and my Hydra efforts don't allow me to play in as many as I might like, but I manage to squeeze them in every now and then.

I am a semi-regular in Jack Shear's Krevborna game. This is sort of 18th-early 19th Century horror fantasy in 5e. Jack expertise in Gothic literature really helps give this sort of era a distinct flavor. My character is (currently) the highest level surviving character in the campaign. He's Tobias Rune, "Scientific Diabolist" (i.e. Warlock). He's looks a bit like a young Terence Stamp here:

Recently, I'v played a couple of sessions of Paul Vermeren's Gridshock playtest. Gridshock began as a re-imaging of the Rifts setting, but very much became its own thing early in concept and has is attached to a system reminiscent of TSR's Marvel Superheroes. It wears its 80s-ness on its sleeve in many ways, (but it's hardly a pastiche of anything) having elements of superheroes, G.I. Joe, and anime about it. My character is a cactus-man alien named "Scorchin'" Ray Alpha.

Art by JP Cokes

I also continue to play in Jason Sholtis's biweekly Bewilderlands with a very funny crew. My character there is the Wampus Country refugee, Horvendile Early.

All of these games are a lot of fun. I look forward to revisiting them in the future.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Seven of Aromater

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Seven of Aromater (1984) 
(Dutch: De Zeven van Aromater) (part 5)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

While Ember struggles in the grip of the tentacles, a battle rages with the Seven fighting the seven followers of the brother of the Eternal Prince who watches the battle in amusement. With the power of the brain coral of Pandarve his to command he controls the battle.

Meanwhile, Ember has been lifted off the ground by the tentacles and held tight. Even her now-superhuman strength cannot free her. Then, she remembers the energy she absorbed from the lightning. She releases it:

The Prince commands the Seven to weaken through the power of the brain coral, and his servants gain the upper hand, some rendering the Seven helpless, He commands his servants to finish them. But then:

Ember stands in the doorway. She tells the Prince she has realized that that the Seven and his servants are evenly matched and are the colors of the rainbow. But she and the Prince were affected by the Blood of Pandarve differently. She became white and the Prince black. Her body begins to glow: "Where there is light, darkness disappears!' she says.

She drives the Prince back with her light, but then she falls in to the blood liquid, spent. When she rises:

She looks around for Storm and sees:

TO BE CONTINUED

Now in Color

I've been working on coloring the pregen portraits from Mortzengersturm, mostly to practice for coloring things for the Azurth Adventures Digest, but also just the have them in color. Jeff Call (the original artist) has not seen or approved my coloring job on his images, so blame me!

Here's Minmaximus the Mighty:

And here's Astra, Princess of the Star Folk:

Dungeons of High Camp

Art by Jim Holloway

Over the weekend I was reading Hero A Go-Go by Michael Eury. which chronicles superhero comics' response (and influence on) 1960s camp pop culture. It's a combination that didn't always work well; many of the works perhaps now seem more goofy kitsch, and some are really just unfunny parody or of superheroes. Still, when it works there is a certain charm to a lot of folks, as the revival comics Batman '66 and Wonder Woman '77 indicates.

I wonder why there hasn't been as much of concerted attempt at published camp works in Dungeons & Dragons? Certainly, farcical humor abounds at the gaming table, and a number of comedic adventures have been written (a lot illustrated by Jim Holloway), and there are humorous illustrations in the older AD&D books. But as far as I know their has never been a camp setting or camp-informed setting--unless maybe HackMaster counts? Maybe it's just too difficult a tone to sustain well throughout a written project?

The settings of some OSR-related folks seem to me to have elements of camp without going all-in: Jason Sholtis' Operation Unfathomable, Chris Kutalik's Hill Cantons, some of Jeff Reints stuff, and my own Mortzengersturm. Dungeon Crawl Classics with its "airbrushed wizard van" elements could be taken as camp, but I'm unsure whether that is the intention.

Art by Jim Holloway

Time Gone By

Despite Gygax's admonition about meaningful campaigns and strict time records, the games I've participated in don't show a lot of evidence that anybody is doing this beyond the tactical level. In some ways, I feel like this is a miss opportunity and I enjoy media with a "sweep of history" or strong chronological grounding. It isn't really an issue in drop-in adventuring, but it makes a campaign feel more real to me.

That said, I don't usually pay enough attention to it myself when I'm gamemastering. There are always other things to think about. Sometimes I do, though. In my Weird Adventures campaign, I was able to construct a timeline, not so much from clocking downtime activities but from time references within the adventures, and the length of time they took in-game. Holiday themed games are a help in this (two Yuletimes past in that game).

My current Land of Azurth game is a good bit looser, partial because I want to capture the "time runs different/timelessness" inherent in inspirations like the Oz books. While I typically narrate some passage of time to have occurred between the adventures (we only game once a month), I've also drops hints that time "runs strange in Azurth' so they might spend a longer or shorter subjective time on an adventure than what time has passed for folks back in town. This allows me to have a fairly static status quo at times--or to shake things up. For instance, the party return from one adventure to find an election cycle passed and a new Mayor elected--and a new group of heroes the toast of the town!

How about you? Kept really strict time records or done something interesting with the passage of time in your game?

Some Azurth Adventure Digest Art

The art for the Azurth Adventure Digest is rolling in.

Here's a a group of heroes versus the mummy of the Candy Temple by Jason Sholtis:

And here's the creature from the Prismatic Hole by Jeff Call:

Stay tuned for more!

Wednesday Comics: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

Taking a break from Storm for a week, I want to consider the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, a 60s superhero comic conceived primarily by the great Wally Wood. The series only ran 20 issues in its initial run, but its characters and concepts were appealing enough they there have been several (brief) revivals over the decades.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents combines two popular things in the mid-1960s: spy-fi and Marvel-style superheroics. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stands for The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves (I don't know what that means, either). It's essential SHIELD or UNCLE with more superhero agents. All of them are the product of technology: Dynamo with his thunderbelt, NoMan, the elderly scientist who can transfer his intellect into robotic bodies, and Menthor, a secret traitor with a helmet that gives him mental powers and a more heroic personality.

There enemies are a mostly forgettable cadre of aliens and freedom-threatening organizations: the Warlord, the Subterraneans, S.P.I.D.E.R. They serve their purpose for generating superhero action, particularly rendered in Wally Wood's style.

DC Comics did hardcover archives of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents material when they had the license. These aren't too hard to find, but do require a bit of looking. IDW now owns the license and has put out paperback collections called T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Classics.

And now...Zarak!

Those of you of a certain age may remember the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons toyline line and a certain half-orc assassin by the name of Zarak. I found a nice image of Zarak from 1983's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Characters coloring book that had a bit of a Jack Kirby-esque vibe about it. I believe the artist is actually Jim Mooney.

I thought it would be cool to color and give him a logo:

I might do a few more of the characters in a similar style, if I get the time.

Rifts 1970

Rifts, arriving in 1990, is certainly a product of the 1980s. Could Rifts be scrubbed of its 80s chrome and be translated to another era? Why not? Let me pitch you Rifts 1970.

Now, you might say (but don't, because I will have already said it!): "Isn't Rifts 1970 just Gamma World?" Well, they're both post-apocalyptic games, but Gamma World is right down the middle of post-apocalyptic stuff, whereas Rifts wants to throw a kitchen sink at you: you've got cyberpunk, mecha, magic, Star Wars-style fascism, and the Rifts themselves that can get you pretty much anything else can appear.

In Rifts 1970, the mix is a little different, but there are analogous inspirations. Anime/Manga haven't really made a big impact in the U.S. yet, but there's kaiju films and Astro Boy. Fighting giant monsters would be a bigger thing in Rifts 1970, I think. Mecha would look more like Rog from the Doom Patrol, but the real Glitter Boy replacements might be guys with giant robot friends like Frankenstein Jr.

Cyberpunk hasn't arrived yet either, but computers have and concerns about the possibility of AI. Think Star Trek or Colossus: The Forbin Project. Cyborgs are already around like the Cybermen or the various Robotmen in DC Comics. Probably high tech equipment should be more T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents than Appleseed. This might push things in a bit more of a "superhero" direction, but there is an argument to be made that that's what it always has been.

Magic, of course, works well in either era. A distinctly Ditko-esque Doctor Strange vibe would set Rifts 1970 apart, though.

The Coalition and their not-stormtroopers, the Deadboys, become some other Nazi stand-ins, like HYDRA or any number of villainous comic book organizations or '50s comics alien invaders that were either Nazi or commie substitutes. Of course, Starship Troopers was written in 1959, and we saw how easy it was to paint those guys with a fascist brush in the film adaptation. Maybe the Deadboys can have their powered armor after all?

Weird Revisited: Nautical Fantasy Inspirations

The original version of this post appeared on July 15, 2011. Since then, there have been some fantasy stuff usuable with a nautical campaign--including an upcoming project from Richard Guy:

Taking a look at Driftwood Verses or planning a visit to Swordfish Island? This might help. What follows is pretty much off the top of my head and it sticks to nautical or sea- themed fantasy (so no Horatio Hornblower or Treasure Island here), but I figure it's a backbone to start with.

Classical Literature:
The Odyssey
One Thousand and One Nights. Particularly the Sinbad stories, of course.

Modern Literature:
Alan Cole and Chris Bunch. The Anteros series.
Leigh Brackett. The Sword of Rhiannon, “The Enchantress of Venus,” and “The Moon that Vanished.” These last two are on (or under) the strange gaseous seas of Venus, but I think that only adds to their exotic inspiration value.
Robert E. Howard. Conan stories: “Pool of the Black One,” “Queen of the Black Coast,” and “The Black Stranger.”
William Hope Hodgson. The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" and other nautical horror stories. "The Derelict" and "The Voice in the Night" are probably my favorites.
Ursula K. LeGuin. A Wizard of Earthsea.
Fritz Leiber. From the tales of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser: “Their Mistress, the Sea,” “When the Sea-King’s Away,” “Trapped in the Sea of Stars,” and “The Frost Mostreme.”
C.S. Lewis. The Voyage of the Dawn-Treader.
Abraham Merritt. The Ship of Ishtar.
China Mieville. The Scar.
Tim Powers. On Stranger Tides.
Cherie Priest. Fathom.
Karl Edward Wagner. “In the Wake of Night.” Okay, only a fragment of this exists, but the idea of the story is great.

Movies:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). The original novel might be inspirational, too, but its this films visuals that really capture the imagination.
Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
King Kong (the 1933 and 2005).
The Lost Continent (1968).
Pirates of the Caribbean series.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977).

Animation:
Pirates of Dark Water (1991).
One Piece. Which is also a manga.

Two Maps, One Candy Island

Here's an excerpt from the upcoming Azurth Adventures Digest. This is Jeff Call's map of the Candy Isle with lettering by me:

And here for comparison is the original map I made for the game:

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Seven of Aromater

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Seven of Aromater (1984) 
(Dutch: De Zeven van Aromater) (part 4)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Nomad wakes up on the beach of the Red Tear, the weird low hanging moon, amid the wreckage of the ship. Ember appears from the water. Too heavy to float in her new form and not needing oxygen, she walked across the bottom of the ocean.

The oppressive gravity leaves Nomad unable to move. Ember says she'll come back to get him later and heads off to find Storm. His calls for help bring her back.

Ember scatters the creatures. She decides to pick up Nomad and the Prince and carries them with her. The heavy gravity means the Seven have left an unmistakable trail for her to follow. They pass through storms, but Ember's body absorbs and dissipates the lightning. They cross a desert of glass caused by some unimaginable explosion.

As they near the equator of the Red Tear, the gravity lessens. Nomad is able to walk now, as they approach a structure of rock:

Traveling down a passage, they pass the bones of the beings they assume built this place. The come to a stairway going down. At its bottom is a thick yellow-green fog, a poisonous atmosphere. Entering it nearly kills Nomad and the Prince. They will have to stay while Ember goes on.

After what seems like hours, she gets through the fog and enters a passage with what appear to be dead snakes on the floor.

They aren't dead, and they aren't snakes!

TO BE CONTINUED

If You Go Down in the Woods Today

Yesterday, our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last night...

ROLL CALL: Kully the Bard, Shade the Ranger, Dagmar the Cleric, Kairon the Sorcerer, Waylon the Thief, and Erekose the Fighter!

The riverside village of Lumberton has fallen on hard times. The owners of the local sawmill bought some automatons from a mysterious traveling salesman and now the things are running amok! Day and night, these Iron Woodsmen are clearing the forest and killing anyone that gets in their way.

Our heroes happen upon a desperate discussion between Mayor Bole Wood and his advisors, and succumb to the Mayor's desperate plea for aid (and promise of compensation). Eavesdropping on the conversation, the ranger hears mention of someone or something called "snarts" and is immediately suspicious they aren't getting the full story.

A talk with the alehouse matron, Burl, reveals that Snarts are in fact small, mischievous fey that the townspeople believe have cursed them and made the Iron Woodsmen go crazy. Armed with this knowledge they set out to find the hidden Snart village.

Just outside of town, they find a dilapidated manor inhabited by the wizard Gargam. Gargam is not the most pleasant of wizards or a great conversationalist, but they discover (a) that he hates Snarts, but wishes to use them for some undisclosed magical purpose, and (b) he says they have been captured by the Iron Woodsmen and taken to the mill.

The party heads toward the mill and comes upon an Iron Woodsmen work crew. A battle is joined. and our heroes discover that the Woodsmen are tough opponents--and they explode in steam and shrapnel if they are too heavily damaged. Destroying the 4 automata, but bloodied and battered themselves, the party retreats to town, where they confront the Mayor, who also believes the Snart curse levied due to their extensive clearing of the forest is the cause of their misfortune.

The party resolves to locate the Snarts and set this problem right.

Azurth Adventure Digest

Here's the cover for the upcoming Azurth Adventure Digest (still a couple of months away). Jason Sholtis provides a great rendition of some angry Candy Islanders.

The planned contents of the digest are: Random tables for generating Motley Pirates and pirate captains, random weird encounters in the Boundless Sea, thumbnail descriptions of a handful of interesting islands, a few NPC write-ups, and the Candy Isle adventure locale. Internal art and cartography will mostly be Jeff Call, who did Mortzengersturm. It will be available in pdf and print at 5.5 x 7.75" size.

Here's part of the Candy Island Temple as rendered by Jeff

Valerian

Luc Besson's new film Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets is based on the French comic book series Valérian et Laureline by by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières (The film seems largely drawn from the sixth story in the series, Ambassador of Shadows). It's good source material for Besson, has the exotic locales of the comic and multitude of aliens give plenty of opportunity for him to engage in the in the stunning visuals that have been part of his previous science fiction efforts.

Valerian and Laureline are special agents of the Federation, with a bantering, unresolved sexual tension thing going. After acquiring a cute and valuable alien organism, the Mul Converter, to the massive, multi-species space station Alpha, to save it from a mysterious threat. All is not as it seems, and Alpha's Commander has secret plans of his own. Our heroes make their way through the alien locales of the station to solve the mystery and save everybody.

The plot is perfunctory, its drama is simplistic, and the characters are thin, but the sort of science fiction films Besson makes have never particularly focused on those things. The Fifth Element had an breeziness about some of the core dramatic elements, but did a lot with action, humor, and a Heavy Metal visual sensibility. Valerian may not become a the cult classic it has, but would make a good double feature with it.

In rpg terms, the visuals in Besson's film will likely give plenty of fodder with sci-fi gaming. Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets: The Art of the Film, is worth picking up for that purpose, even if you don't like the film.

Wednesday Comics: The Seven of Aromater

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Seven of Aromater (1984) 
(Dutch: De Zeven van Aromater) (part 3)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Ember and Nomad watch from hiding as the Prince's steamship launches a smaller boat with the Seven or Aromater aboard. As they head toward the waterspout beneath the red, Ember realizes in horror what they plan.

She breaks from hiding to try to reach Storm. She is quickly captured and the former Storm, now the Seventh, ignores her cries. The ship sails on:

The Prince has Ember and Nomad in changes. He plans to keep them alive until the the survivors of the Seven return from the Red Tear with the Brain Coral. Until then, his ship will circle the waterspout and wait.

Ember and Nomad don't plan to be idle. They have hidden the remainder of the potion that converted Storm into a monster. Ember drinks it quickly and:

With enhanced strength and resistance to harm, Ember makes short work of the sailors. She and Nomad take over the ship. Ember isn't mindless like Storm and the others, she guides the ship toward the waterspout! The ship rides through the Storm--and is ultimately smashed!

TO BE CONTINUED

3 Pitches, 4 Colors 3: Agents of A.X.E.

This is the third in a series of posts with brief campaign pitches for superhero games. This one is written by Jason Sholtis of  The Dungeon Dozen:

(based on a rejected proposal found in a briefcase left on the subway by Steve Ditko
in 1968...)

Dateline 1999: Thirty years after the total victory of the hippie counterculture,
a unilaterally disarmed America watches helplessly as nation after nation falls before an unstoppable blitzkrieg of super soldiers, futuristic war machines and weapons from newly independent Transylvania.

Shocking the world in a live press conference, President Tom Hayden unveils the existence of the Agents of A.X.E., secret defenders of America. These highly trained super-operatives, each a paragon of American virtue, are entrusted with the use of super-devices derived from the technology of an alien civilization (details still classified) such as the Gauntlets of Potential, the Girdle of Density, and the Eye of Mastery.  

Moments later, the secret headquarters of the National Institute of Xenostudies beneath
Mt. Shasta falls to a sudden strike by Transylvanian stormtroopers, the scientists and leaders
who created A.X.E. all either dead or missing. If only the Agents had been there to help instead of
a Washington dog and pony show! How can you Agents ever forgive yourselves?

There is only one way: Defend America from the Transylvanian menace until they have to peel the Girdle of Density from your cold, dead midsection.

Style/influence: In a nutshell, THUNDER Agents vs. MARS Patrol written by Pat Mills in the 80's as reactionary silver age satire but drawn by Wally Wood and Steve Ditko in their prime, so it looks cool. Old school in tone, emphasizing all-out super-hero war on beach head America, so there will be black humor, super mayhem, and super death. But fear not, when Captain Density perishes, sidekick girl is there to pick up the girdle.

War for the Planet of the Apes

It's five years after a brief and unease truce between humans and apes in Northern California led to war.  The latest films is at turns The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Great Escape rather than a war film unless the title is more clever than it appears and references a war where the apes or not the primary combats--and gives a sly hint to its outcome.

Andy Serkis is again great as Caesar, and so are the other motion-capture actors. The special effects have gotten so good the apes don't really seen CGI at all, other than of course they are. Steve Zahn sort of steals the show here is the new character "Bad Ape" adding a bit of tastefully done levity to otherwise fairly grim precedings. Woody Harrelson is playing crazy, as usual, in the flavor of Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.

If you liked the previous installments in the current trilogy, you'll like this one. If you haven't seen any of this current series, you should start with Rise.

One thing I've noticed, when the first film came out it was widely commented that it was essentially a reworking/re-imaging of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. This is sort of true and viewed from that perspective Dawn and War are then a two part reworking of Battle for the Planet of the Apes. (Dawn, particularly has a lot of specific scene parallels to Battle.)

3 Pitches, 4 Colors 2: Days of Dr. Nightmare

This is the second in a series of posts with brief campaign pitches for superhero games. This one is written by Michael "Aos" Gibbons of  The Metal Earth and Cosmic Tales:

The world lies at the feet of Dr. Nightmare and has for these 30 years. The lands he rules strain under the burden of his mad and sadistic ambition; those he does not struggle in vain to remain free, or exist now only as mutant infested wastelands, scorched by Zero-Bombs and stinking with the taint of gene-gas.

But the weed of hope grows in the garden of despair. A few individuals, scattered across the globe, locked in disparate lives, have begun to experience lucid waking-dreams of another, better world, where they were heroes. All of them know, even if they refuse to face it, that something has gone wrong with time, and only they can fix it- and at the cost of everything they know.

They are the Awakened, and Dr. Nightmare can taste their dreams.

Inspirations: Days of Future Past, Age Of Apocalyse, Uncanny X-Men in general. 

3 Pitches 4-Colors 1: OMEGA TEAM!

This is the first in a series of posts with brief campaign pitches for superhero games. The others to follow are written by some other gaming bloggers you might know...

All of the world, individuals with anomalous and fantastic powers are increasing in number: mutants or victims of strange accidents, these individuals are feared and ostracized. A secret organization located beneath a governmental office building has need of these so-called freaks. The voice of Control describes the coming threat: The work of a brilliant Dr. Rankin has clearly indicated the danger. The ever-increasing number of “freaks,” extraterrestrial contacts, and weird phenomena, can be plotted on a curve showing inexorable progress nothing less that the destruction of humankind as we know it, if it’s trajectory is not altered. A team of special individuals--freaks--can bend this curve. They are the last line of defense: the Omega Team!

Style: Silver Age veneer on Modern Age construction; like Arnold Drake writing Grant Morrison’s  Doom Patrol, or maybe Steve Gerber writing Drake’s Doom Patrol.
Inspirations: Doom Patrol, Challengers of the Unknown, Atlas-era  monsters/horror, Xombi, Thriller, Outer Limits, X-Men.

Wednesday Comics: Nocturnals: Sinister Path

I backed the Kickstarter for Dan Brereton's latest Nocturnals graphic novel, Sinster Path. The Kindle/Comixology versions are available now, and the hardcover should soon be available to the nonbacker public.

If you're not familiar with horror/pulp/superhero mashup The Nocturnals, you might want to read this post first.  If you are, then you know Brereton presents his tough guy underworld where super-science and magic exist in a matter of fact way, without a lot of explanation. Sinister Path continues this tradition, so no one evidences any surprise when Doc Horror and his crew head into the mansion of a deceased judge to get the files of dirt he kept on various underworld and government figures and encounter supernatural menaces. All in a days work for a werewolf/mob enforcer/scientist from a parallel dimension!

If that makes the Nocturnals sound like camp, it is not. The tone is serious for the most part, and Brereton makes his unusual concept work. His moody and lurid art probably helps.

Sinster Path could be read as a standalone, but it's probably, but best to start a little earlier so you know the relationships. It's fairly open-ended, promising more to come.