Wednesday Comics: Prez

No Storm today as I was watching the U.S. Presidential Election return last nights, but I do want to recommend a couple of presidential collections:

Prez is the title of two DC Comics about teenage presidents. The first debuted in his own short-lived title written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jerry Grandenetti in 1973. The series is predicated on the notion of a Constitutional amendment lowering the age for eligibility for office (which may have been inspired by the 1968 film Wild in the Streets). The upshot is a teenager gets elected, and who better than a earnest and idealistic kid from Middle America whose mother even named him “Prez” ‘cause she thought he’d be President one day? 

Finally, because you (or somebody) demanded it, The Prez has been collected. This collection includes the four issues of The Prez's run, an unpublished story from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2, and a continuity-twisting tale from Supergirl #10. Neil Gaiman brought Prez out of comics limbo in Sandman #54 in 1993. This led a sort of follow-up in Vertigo Vision: Prez. Miller and Morrison also used the Prez in Dark Knight Strikes Again #2 and the Multiversity Guidebook. All of these deuterocanonical texts are included, as well.

In 2015, an all-new, all-different Prez is introduced. This is Beth Ross, an Oregon teen who's elected via Twitter in 2036. The series by writer Mark Russell and artist Ben Caldwell. It only lasted 12 issues, but it was fun while it lasted, providing a modern update to the concept.

The Final Countdown

The Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter has a little over two days to go, but Hydra isn't taking our collective foot off the gas. This weekend, we had 3 new stretch goals to sweeten the deal:

$16,000: Jason's original smash blog compilation The Dungeon Dozen
$19,000: Operation Unfathomable Players Guide a mini-comic
$18,000: Dungeon Dozen II Sneak Preview

If you haven't backed, now's the time.

The Sometimes Dubious Bounty of the Vats

In the Age of Space Exploration, nourishment for space voyages is provided by application of scientific principles. As the natural process of putrefaction on the Earth and the other worlds leads to the spontaneous generation of vermin, the alchemist may utilize this same process to create more pleasing and usual forms of life in the generation vats of a vessel.

The vital energies of the sun are capture and channeled to the vats where they inseminate the matrix of ship wastes and alchemical mucilage--often informally called slime. By calibration of temperature, matrix composition, and other factures, any natural animal may be grown. Food generation must be started weeks before it is needed, else only the lowliest sorts of creatures may be generated. Some researchers have experimented with various means to speed up the process, but this increases the rate of errors, discussed below. A similar process can be used to grow Homonculi for menial tasks, though only the largest of ships would carry enough matrix to do so, or to feed the extra mouths created afterward. The Turk do not create Homonculi at all, citing some pious objection, but exclusively employ automata.

Improperly prepared mucilage or exposure to some stray cosmic influence or energy, sometime creates dangerous, ill-formed masses or cancers: slimes, puddings, and oozes, are they variously named based on the identifiable properties. For example, the Black, Gray, or Leaden Pudding shows Saturnine influence and character.

Doctor Strange

First a warning: There maybe be some mild spoilers for the latest installment in the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" in what follows.

I have to admit, that as excited I was that there was going to be a Doctor Strange movie when it was first announced, I have not had much enthusiasm passed on the teasers and early trailers. Some of the that might have been me just tiring of Marvel's house style, but for whatever reason, I was underwhelmed.

The actual film wound up being better than I had expected. The design aesthetic of Marvel's films when it comes to the really fantastic non-superhero elements (Asgard in particular, but also some parts of Guardians of the Galaxy) has always left me cold. Also, the relentless desire to de-mystify or over-rationalize all the magical elements of the Marvel Universe works passably with some things (like the Darkhold on Agents of SHIELD) but hollowed out the grandeur of Kirby's sci-fi Norse mythology from Thor.

Happily, Doctor Strange is not particularly de-mystified. (The Ancient One offers an explanation of magic similar to one of the options Kenneth Hite provided Rough Magicks.) In fact, they really play up the (unintended presumably) psychedelia of the Ditko-era stories, though they convert it to a more filmic approach. There are resonances with both 2001 and Afronosky's The Fountain.

How the magic is employed winds up being a bit like a combination of The Matrix, Inception, and previous superhero films. I like how they moved away from strictly super-powers, and you could see how they were reaching for Ditko and perhaps Starlin with some of it. The spells as mostly sputtering sparks drawn in the air didn't quite suit me, though I don't have a ready alternative in mind. It all worked passably.

The plot is a means to an end. The similarities to Inception and The Matrix at times made its mere adequacy more evident, but when you're a vehicle for elaboration of a shared universe, you don't have to shoulder so much weight yourself, I suppose. All the cast does a pretty good job with what they are given. Tilda Swinton, despite expressly being "Celtic," does the movements, stances, and cryptic comments of the "Asian Master" almost as much as Joel Grey in Remo Williams without the obivous yellowface, so I'm not sure not casting an non-Asian actor as the Ancient One really allowed us to avert all those stereotypes. Still, I liked her protrayal.

The Marvel fan in me exulted to see the Dread Dormammu (Though I was underwhelmed by his dread "we didn't think about this very much" CGI-ness. He was of the ilk of Parallax in the Green Lantern film or "The Absorbing Man" in Ang Lee's Hulk). Further fannishness: Instead of having Mikkelsen's baddie be named for a mook that worked for Baron Mordo in the comic, why not have him be Kaluu, the Ancient One's rival?

Christmas Comes Early

In line with the Christmas decorations already up in many a retail establishment, Action Lab has released the Christmas comic Northstars Vol 1: Welcome to Snowville on Comixology. it will be out in hardcopy later this month, I believe. This kids comic (something of an homage to those TV Christmas Specials and Harvey Comics of yore) is written by my friend, sometime collaborator, and fellow rpger, Jim Shelley and his daughter, Haigen. Art is supplied by the very talented Anna Liisa Jones who I would love to have do something for the Land of Azurth one day.

Here's one of the character designs:

Wednesday Comics: Storm: City of the Damned

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: City of the Damned (1982) (part 3)
(Dutch: Stad der Verdoemden)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Kelvin Gosnell

When last we left our heroes, the computer guiding the city makes a request of Storm: Strange energy barriers have appeared in places across the city without warning. People can cross into the areas behind them but not back out. Thousands of people have been lost in these sectors. The computer believes only someone like Storm--a fighter, a survivor--can sole this crisis.

Storm isn't interested. He doesn't like the computer's interference.

Ember urges him not to be so rash. He should take some time to think it over. She believes there is something strange happening here.

Storm finds it ironic that she is suggesting anyone be careful. He also thinks her curiosity can get them killed. He does agree to sleep on it, though.

Storm finds a strange woman in his room. She says her name is Anor. She is a product of those genetic experiments to develop psychic powers: A successful experiment.

Her powers are strong enough to overcome Storm. She reports back to her unseen master.

The next morning Ember finds Storm missing from his quarters. She finds him in Terminal One walking arm in arm with Anor. She informs Ember Storm has decided to stay permanently in the city. Ember is confused. She offers Storm his sword he had left behind. Storm says he doesn't need it anymore.

Bewildered and angry, Ember storms off and comes upon one of the energy barriers. Passing through, she finds herself in a place of darkness where brutish guys with Medieval weapons attack her. She drives them off, only to be attacked again by a towering dark knight whose sword drops bubbles or eggs with tiny reptiles inside:

She's rescued by people who live in the maintenance tunnels. They too passed through the barrier at one point to be stuck in this world of shadow. When a barrier goes up, the people are enslaved and forced to work demolishing building for scrap. Most of the metal is used to make weapons of war to outfit an army. The leader of this army is a man named Gor, a product of experiments that gave him to power to dominate men's minds. When the experimenters tried to destroy him, he teleported into the underworld beneath the city.

Those able to control others develop red eyes. Ember remembers the woman with Storm had read eyes. She must be controlling him!

Ember has to rescue him. If she can't go through the barrier, she'll go around. She throws a mace through a window and prepares to climb the outside of the city.

TO BE CONTINUED

Voyage to the Sun

The Demiurge, the creator of the Cosmos, convalesces within the Sun. His rest is not to be disturbed on order of the Heavenly Powers. Even in repose, the orb of pure creative energy formed around him is a source of life for the entire Cosmos; a source of the animating substance azoth as well as mundane heat and light.

The energy spontaneously generates lifeforms, in shapes, perhaps, from the dreams of the Demiurge. Angels flit about, recording the birth of ever creature, and assuring nothing dangerous escapes, though solar flares sometimes eject such beings beyond their reach.

Their activities are directed by the Oyarses Och. It may be that Och is mere avatar of the Demiurge. Certainly she is able to tap into the mind of that being. Och sometimes speaks with visitors, mostly warning them away, for fallen beings like humans were never intended to look upon the resting creator or walk in the splendor of the solar halls.

This doesn't stop them from trying. Swift and specially-hulled sunrakers set out from Mercury to catch what plumes of azoth they can. Such cargo brings a high price on other worlds.