Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Labyrinth of Death

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 Labyrinth of Death (1983) 
(Dutch: Het Doolhof van de Dood) (part 1)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Storm, Nomad, Rann, and the would-be  pirate crew are on their way to Rann's home asteroid. The crew are none too happy as they're looking for plunder. A mutiny is in the offing.

The mutineers attempt to kill Storm by ramming a timber into the cabin while Storm, Rann, and Nomad are inside. The cabin's smashed but Storm manages to dive out of the way. Still, Storm's knocked out and the leader of the mutineers get's the drop on him.

Nomad is forced to surrender. Soon, Storm and his friends are being marooned on a tiny asteroid:

Storm discovers large eggs in the nest of some sort of bird. They don't have to wait long to see the mother:

Meanwhile, Theocrat Marduk is still trying to find the Anomaly (Storm)  but his technicians can't get a fix. He demands his unwilling bride-to-be Ember be brought to him so she can give a description of the Anomaly to help them. Ember, however, has escaped with the help of a woman with a hidden face. She leads Ember into the cities sewers.

Back on the asteroid, Storm hits the bird in the head and Rann wraps his sash around its eyes, trying to escape the darkness the bird flies--and our heroes ride it all the way to Rann's home.

Rann is reunited with his daughter and the poor space bird is sent on its way. Storm on his a few days to rescue Ember before the wedding to Marduk. Rann relates he knows of a quick way to reach Pandarve's surface: The Devil's Ride. Storm and Nomad take that ride:

TO BE CONTINUED

Again, the Giants!: Sanctum of the Stone Giant Space God

This is the second in a series of posts riffing of the giant theme of the classic Against the Giants:

Hightlights include:

1. The kirbytech festooned inner chamber of the helf-sleeping stone god--and his powerful telepathic signal.

2. Stone Giant partisans and the PCs with only the vaguest notion of what this alien conflict is about.

3. Weird wandering creatures escaped from some sort of ship collection.

Mortzengersturm's Got Cover

These is the final (hopefully) front and back cover designs for Mortzengersturm, the Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak. If all goes as planned, the print edition will debut at North Texas RPG Con in June. The pdf will be available sometime before from rpgnow/driverthrurpg. Though this hasn't be finalized yet, I expect the pdf will have a little bit of exclusive content not in the print version (because their aren't space constraints).

More to come!

Again, the Giants!: Wedding of the Hill Giant Chief

This is the first in a series (maybe) of posts inspired by the classic Against the Giants:

Highlights include:

1. Hill-billy Hill Giant father-in-law keeping the groom under lock and key so there's no cold feet!
2. Monstrous would-be Mother-in-Law!
3. Battle-hardened bridesmaids at a bachelorette party bash!
4. The Ettin moonshiner cooking up his "Catoblepas Kick" for the festivities.
5. And of course, the clan's prize pigs!

A Weird Alien on the Planet of the Apes

"THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD" 

Player Characters:
Jeff Call as Brock Irving
Lester B. Portly as Eddy Woodward
Jason Sholtis as Francis La Cava

Nonplayer Characters:
Ted Cassidy as Eezaya

Synopsis: Irving, Woodward, and La Cava set out to investigate the site of a fallen meteor and find an alien monster with the power to turn men to stone!

Commentary: The alien is this adventure first appeared in Perseus Against Monsters (Perseo l'invincibile) (1963)--which also goes by a bunch of other names. The creature bears something of a resemblance to the alien in an episode of Space:1999, "The Dragon's Domain," but I can't conclusively say they are the same one.

This creatures eye blast was sort of petrifying but turned bodies to hardened ash, sort of like this:

The PCs spent a lot of time trying to think of a creative way to defeat the monster, but it proved to be fairly susceptible to bullets, ultimately.

I used this theremin music to represent the monster's alien call. It's petrifying eye blast made a sound like the Martian heat ray sound effect from Pal's War of the Worlds. (You can hear it here. eventually).

Wednesday Comics: New Image Fantasy

Image Comics has been on a roll of late. Case(s) in point: Two relatively new fantasy collections you might want to check out.

I mentioned 8House, the science fantasy series of series by Brandon Graham and various collaborators before. 8House seems to have stalled, but the first storyline, Arclight, with art by Marian Churchland, finished as its on series and has been collected in a trade. Arclight is set on a desert world where blood is the source of magic. A queen is this world is trapped in a root-like body while an alien masquerades as her. The queen's served by one androgynous knight (the titular Arclight) while other knights unknowingly serve the pretender.

There was a bit of a gap between issues, so I was a little uncertain of how everything shook out in the end, but all the more reason to give the trade a read!

A Land Called Tarot is a hardcover by Gael Bertrand. The story is wordless, so I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but it is gorgeous. The art reminds me of Akira Toriyama and Miyazaki, but the whole production has kind of a Moebius vibe. Here's a sample:

A Blurry Picture of my Haul of Dubious Treasures from GaryCon

What we've got here is: Journey to the Cloud Castle, All The Worlds' Monsters Vol. 2, DM's Book of Nasty Tricks Misfits and Magic, The Hole Delver's Catalog, Dragons of Weng T'Sen, Amazon Mutual Wants You! Vol. 1, and The Trouble with Friends.

Why these particular items? It would be ahrd to say, though some of them had the requisite amount of old school kitsch or nostalgia from seeing ads in Dragon. I did buy a couple of newer things but this was the weird stuff.