The Hanna-Barbera Superhero Universe

Art by Carlos Mota

I've played superhero rpg campaigns set in the Marvel and DC Universes and even considered one set in the Atlas-Seaboard Universe (that never happened, unfortunately). Recently, though I've given consideration (probably not seriously, though, but as a thought experiment) to a campaign set in the universe of Hanna-Barbera's superhero cartoons.

One notable thing about Hanna-Barbera's supers characters is that when you leave aside the licensed properties (Super Friends, The Fantastic Four) and the completely comedic ones (The Impossibles, Atom Ant), very few of the characters follow traditional superhero conventions. Few are set on modern day Earth or have a stable base of operations and supporting cast. The only one that does (Birdman) is a bit unsual because he's more of a superhuman agent of a governmental organization.

Despite this different in focus and presentation, I think many of them could be adapted to a more traditional superhero mold. Call it "Ultimate Hanna-Barbera," if you will.  Let's run the list:

Art by Alex Ross

Space Ghost: A very superhero-y and well realized character as-is. Perhaps like the Legion of Super-Heroes he is a futuristic character in the same universe. A future Phantom/Batman in the same way Captain Future is kind of a futuristic Doc Savage. The other option would be to make him sort of Green Lantern-like. A space cop assigned to protect earth. Or some combination of the two?

Young Samson: (Also known as Samson & Goliath) A teen with a Captain Marvel schtick who wanders around Route 66 or Incredible Hulk style, getting into adventures, works pretty well as-is. As suppose, it would be better to have him settled down and become more of a Peter Parker.

Shazzan: The cartoon has two kids transport to an Arabian Nights fantasy-land after finding their genie, but they could have just as easily stayed in the modern day. Two teens sharing a genie to fight evil would be an interesting concept.

Mightor: A Stone Age Thor, essentially. There isn't any reason a worthy successor couldn't find the magic club and become Mightor in the modern day. Of course, the character is a bit on the silly side and would probably work best for a Silver Age vibe rather than a Modern Age one.

Herculoids: In a comic book universe, the Herculoids could be sort of Ka-Zar type characters where their Savage Land is a world in another dimension, or they could be treated like a primitive Forever People and have them arrive on Earth to be super-powered fish-out-of-water.

Art by MarioPons

The Galaxy Trio: These teen heroes are probably better candidates for Forever People stand-ins. You can transport them to the modern day and have them be alien heroes stranded on Earth for some reason.

Cosmic Tales

Got a Bronze Age Itch Most Cosmic you need scratched? (And really, who doesn't?) Well, Michael "Aos" Gibbons has launched his new webomic on Tumblr: Cosmic Tales. It's got a bit of Legion of Super-Heroes in a Jim Starlin-with-a-dash-of-Grant Morrison Cosmic Crisis vibe, all given a generous coating of Kirby.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Have a great holiday!

Here's hoping you didn't stay up forlorning waiting for the man with the bag like Clara Bow here:

But you're with your loved ones happily opening presents like Carol Lombard:

Wednesday Comics: Star Light, Star Bright

This week, we conclude our look at the DC holiday anthology Super-Star Holiday Special from 1980:

Super-Star Holiday Special

DC Special Series #21 (Spring 1980). Cover by Jose Luis-Garcia Lopez

Synopsis: The next tale begins in a "realm we only visit in our darkest nightmares." A weird world, particularly on Christmas--the world of DC's horror anthology hosts, brought to us by Bob Rozakis with Romeo Tanghal and Dan Adkins on art.

The horror hosts are gathered for in the House of Secrets, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive and they (surprise) get into an argument about how can tell the best Christmas story: The Witches Three (from The Witching Hour) tell a story of a family saved from a shipwreck in the fog by the light of a star. Cain, caretaker of the House of Mystery, spins the next yarn where a greedy pawnbroker makes a deal with a mysterious stranger for all the goods in his shop for a diamond. The diamond turns into a lump of coal and the stranger is revealed to be Santa Claus. Finally, Destiny steps up to tell a shaggy dog story about a rocket pilot chasing a strange star in the future, only to break the time barrier as his own ship burns up...

Next we go to December 1941 to see if maybe Christmas is easy in Easy Company for Sgt. Rock and his boys. Turns out "no," as revealed in "The Longest Night" by Robert Kanigher with art by Dick Ayers and Romeo Tanghal. Easy is on its way to the Italian town of Santa Maria. When their compass is destroyed by a German, they have to rely on an unusually bright star to guide them. They meet a group of pilgrims with candles led by a nun on the way of to the Shrine of Saint Maria. Rock realizes:

They meet a kid who is living in the bombed out city who doesn't believe in miracles. Long story short, by the end of the story the kid does. Though it takes Easy Company killing a number of Germans and Rock blowing out the shrine's statute of Santa Maria first.

Finally, we head to 2979, where Superboy learns the meaning of the season from the Legion of Super-Heroes in a tale written by Paul Levitz with art by Jose Luis-Garcia Lopez and Dick Giordano. It's Christmas Eve and the Legionnaires are cheerful and celebratory, but Superboy just can't get into it.

Even after being shown various celebrations, Superboy still isn't satisfied, so the Legion heads out in space to find the Christmas star to mollify him. As you would expect by now, a phantom star leads them to a planet where aliens are in dire need of rescue. After do-gooding, they still have time for a little cheer:

The Witch of the Woods

Ursa the Witch, as rendered for a mini by Renee Calvert

My Land of Azurth 5th edition game continued last night. When last we left our heroes, they were preparing to return to the ceremony ring where they believed Ursa the Witch, servant of the Horned One, was turning men into manhounds so they could hunt talking animals in the Enchanted Wood.

Leaving the bard and the ranger (the player's were absent this session) to guard the still-ailing druid, Lailogan, the group returned to the Spouting Spring and then to the abandoned hermit's hut near by. Investigating it (like they hadn't done when they first passed), they found the door to be magically locked and noticed it to be unusually clean on the inside--and their was a spot under a wooden table Kairon the Warlock detected as magical.

After much dithering and some failed attempts to get in, the group finally got inside and discovered an invisible box of some sort. They were reluctant to try too hard to get it open when they couldn't see what they were dealing with, but they suspected (erroneously, it turns out) they it held the musical device they knew the witch had. They took it back to the druid's cabin for safe keeping and set up and ambush around the hut, thinking the witch would come there for the box.

At nightfall, they heard the music wafting up from the ceremonial ring and knew they were wrong. They headed toward the ring; there was now animal sounds coming from it. They hid beside the trail, and manged to get the drop on three manhounds. Erekosse the fighter fell pray to a number of bad rolls, but Waylon the frox thief more than took up the slack. Kairon took shots from cover, and Dagmar the Cleric delivered some coups de grace. They manhounds returned to human form when near death. They saved one to interrogate and tied him to a tree.

Ursa the Witch o' the Woods by Richard Svenssen

They made their way stealthily to the ring, where they found the witch. She was talking to the shadow of a horned man that flickered against the great oak, despite the fact their was no one there casting it. They also saw the music device:

They wasted no time, and their first attacks are really successful. They blast her from a distance and she reels from the assault. Still, she isn't down yet and her counter-attack puts the two spellcasters to sleep. Then she steps to the side and seem's to dissipate like mist. The party looks around the ring and finds six indentical robes that must belong to the manhounds. They detect magic on the phonograph and find that only thecylinder is magical.

The shadow watches them a bit then slides off the tree into the night sky, and its dark laugh is carried away on the wind.

The group confiscats the phonograph and the wax cylinder. They scoop up the naked former manhounds as they come wandering back to the ring, looking like drunks recovering from a binge. They quickly give up their cabal of libertine gourmands and tell how they paid the witch to transform them for the hunt. The one the group left tied to the tree has had his throat slit, though, and the boat and the hunchback henchman holding their clothes and waiting for their return is gone. Ursa has made good her escape.

The group takes the captured malefactors back to Rivertown to claim their reward and again be lauded by Mayor Gladhand. They also kept the invisible chest that turned out to be the gold the gourmands were paying Ursa.

Get it Started

Just in time for the holidays, my longtime blogging compadre, Tim Shorts, over at Gothridge Manor has released Starter Adventures in pdf on Drivethru/Rpgnow and pdf or print-on-demand on Lulu. This is what Tim says about it:

Starter Adventures is where you learn to fight, steal, cast spells and heal.  You'll have to use your wits to figure out puzzles.  Use a sword to murderize goblins.  And crumble the undead beneath the power of your god.
It's time to grab a weapon, memorize a spell and strap on some armor.  This is going to be fun.
Starter Adventures is targeted toward introduing a new player into RPGs.  Inside are four short adventures for each of the four main classes, a tavern to hangout in, and a full-fledged adventure when they've got enough blood encrusted on their blades. 

I have not had a chance to give it a good reading myself (being business with usual holiday prep and striving to get Strange Stars done), but I have been a reader of The Manor and a Patreon supporter of Tim's and he does good stuff, so pick it up to stuff your own stocking with.

Baroque Space: Among the Asteroids

I may do a more robust drop dice and random table thing for this that might be fairly applicable to weird islands, but for now here are some asteroid encounters for this setting.

1. A dwarf planet inhabited by naked, acephalous dwarfs. They are primitive of speech and manner and cannot be understood, nor do they understand any Earth language, though they do comprehend Enochian, the language of the angels. They zealously guard a crashed starship and their shamans perform crude rituals before it, including (perhaps) human sacrifice.

2. What appears to a solid asteroid at a distance, is only a loosely held pile of gravel, rocks, and sand. Any ship landing will likely sink to the core and become trapped. Debris from previous, unfortunate landings is buried within.

3. A peanut-shaped asteroid with a vertiginous, tumbling spin and the giant, vitrified skeleton of an angel embedded in the surface of one end. The crystalline bones would fetch a handsome price, if they could be mined.

4. A small world with great mounds at either end like giant anthills. Dome-headed, dwarfish creatures less than two feet tall dressed in skins and brandishing cudgels and spears swarm angrily from each if any vessel should land. The creatures from either mound are roughly identical, save that those from one are orange and the other purple. They will attempt to overwhelm any intruders they find and drag them back inside their respective mounds.

6. A rocky, desert world where lives a wretched hermit. He is along but for one-eyed, whimpering things he calls his "dear companions." Perhaps he has been driven made by his isolation, but his rants will frequently return to a great treasure who's location he alone knows.

7. A jagged. ice-streaked asteroid with a faintly luminous, ice gynosphinx, much larger than the sphinx of Egypt, in a gorge between peaks. There is rumored to be a great antediluvian treasure horde buried beneath it, but no one has found it. The sphinx emits a vibration that causes the space armor to thrum ominously, driving some mad who are exposed to it for too long.