Wednesday Comics: FF

Between having a plumber doing repairs to 9pm and taking care of the baby, the next installment of Storm didn't get written. Next week!

Today, here's a quick recommendation. I picked up FF (2012 series) by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred after seeing a panel from it on a blog with an intriguing explanation of Pym particles. It's just 16 issues and probably best read in tandem with Fraction's contemporaneous run on Fantastic Four. (I didn't read it that way, but I've heard that play off each other.) It deals with Ant-Man, She-Hulk, Medusa, and popstar Darla Deering agreeing to fill in for the usual FF at the Future Foundation, which is essentially a school for gifted youngsters (including familiar faces Alex Power, Artie, Leech and some new ones). They are only supposed to fill in for 4 minutes while the regular FF goes somewhere  off-world and does something, but plans, of course, go awry. The series has a fair amount of humor and a (mostly) light approach, but there is real danger and character stuff.

It's out in two trades.

It Was Never Pure

Art by Kyle MacArthur

D&D has always been a bit "gonzo." The internet era has pulled out all the stops for gonzo, so things are a bit more heightened, it's true, but if you believe Jeff Reints that "You play Conan, I play Gandalf. We team up to fight Dracula," is an apt description, then don't let the dry, wargamer prose and armchair Medievalism fool you, it's sorta gonzo.

Now, as a guy with a strong appreciation for pulp literature, I like my D&D (most of the time) heavily flavored with the likes of Howard, Smith, Leiber, and Vance. Of course, Saturday Morning cartoons, Bronze Age comics, and 80s barbarian films are in there, too, to one degree or another.

There are people only slightly younger than me for whom computer games and anime are a much bigger deal. There are even those unfortunates who could never get into Leiber or Vance, but read the hell out of some Drizzt novels. There are those for whom Harry Potter was their gateway drug and who think Tolkien is best appreciated as interpreted by Jackson at high frame rate.

My point is, whatever parts you use, D&D is always a Frankenstein bastard of lowbrow things that don't make sense together if you think about them too much. A lot of digital ink has been spilt analyzing the influence of Appendix N and the like, and that's fine, but D&D as written had Hammer horror vampire hunters, Vancian spellcasters, and kung fu film monks. It's a broad enough territory for a lot of structures to be comfortably built on it, and that's a good thing for its continued life.

Olshevsky's Marvel Time

To allow their characters to stay evergreen, both Marvel and DC have established "sliding timelines" so that the present is always today, and modern Heroic Ages of their respective universes are only 10 or 15 (or some less specified number) of years old.

As I've mentioned before, this was not always the case. George Olshevsky's Marvel indices argue that in the early years, Marvel seemed to preceded in real time. Will most are unfazed by this, at least this guy thinks it ruined the Marvel Universe. While I wouldn't go that far, I do think there are certainly tradeoffs. The eternal present comes at the sacrifice of allowing characters to truly grow and inevitably means big changes are impermanent.

Anyway, here are the "Marvel Years" as outlined by Olshevsky. He measures them by years in Peter Parker's life. The actual calendar years are my addition and relate the most likely real-world translation (if your were inclined to do that) based on the time of publication.

YEAR ONE [1960-1961] (PP-HS-SophY):
June*- FF spaceflight.
Sept. - Peter Parker is a junior in high school.
Winter – the FF #1.
(Hank Pym in the Ant-Hill) (The Hulk)
Spring (March-April) – Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man [Aug 62]
intro Thor
debut Ant-Man

YEAR TWO [1961-1962] (PP HS-JunY)
debut Wasp
Intro. Dr. Strange

YEAR THREE [1962-1963](PP HS-SenY):
Sept. – PP is a senior in high school.
Sept. – The Avengers form.
Oct. – The X-Men go public. [Sep 63]
November – Ant-Man becomes Giant Man.
mid-Dec. – The Black Widow first appears.
March – Iron Man fights Hawkeye and Black Widow.
May – Reed and Sue engaged. Johnny and Ben almost meet the Beatles.
June – Hawkeye joins Avengers. PP and JS graduate High School. Quicksilver and SW join the Avengers. Reed and Sue marry. Nick Fury named director of SHIELD.
July – Galactus arrives. Sentinels. Quentin Quire is born.

YEAR FOUR [1963-1964] (PP-CY-1):
Peter Parker’s freshman year of college.
Winter- Captain Mar-Vell arrives.
Feb. - Bobby Drake (Iceman) turns 18.
Late May-early June – 1: Lorna Dane
Summer. Franklin Richards born.

YEAR FIVE [1964-1965] (PP CY-2):
September. The Vision is created. Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne are married.
Late Sept-early Oct – 1: Sunfire
June-July: Hank McCoy goes to work for Brand Corp

YEAR SIX [1965-1966] (PP CY-3):
October – Beast gets furry.
May – GXM#1. The New X-Men

YEAR SIX [1966-1967] (PP CY-4):
Sept – Thunderbird dies.
Jan – Jean Grey replaced by Phoenix.

If Jean Grey was 24 when she is presumed to have died (based on the dates on her tombstone), and she is the same age as Peter Parker, then she must have died around 1968-69.

Get Ready for Operation Unfathomable!

Operation Unfathomable is drawing near! With text and art by Jason Sholtis and layout by Jez Gordon you will want to get in on this when it's available.

It's in the layout proofing stage now, but it shouldn't be too much longer. Here are two sample pages to whet your appetite:

Mondegreen's Mixed Up Magic

In the Land of Azurth, the wizard Mondegreen is infamous among magical practitioners, not because he was powerful (though he was) nor for his output of arcane scrolls (though it was prodigious) but because of his habit of misprinting magical sigils and formulae. He seems to have suffered some sort of malady in this regard, perhaps a curse.

A Mondegreen scroll will not contain the traditional version of the spell it appears to catalog at cursory examination. The subtle errors will either effect some aspect of the spell (50% of the time giving:

1 Advantage to the spell save
2 An increased duration
3 Increased damage (if applicable)
4 Decreased damage (if applicable)
5 A decreased duration
6 Disadvantage to the spell save

The other 50% of the time, it will not work as it should, but rather produce a magical effect from a roll on the Wild Magic Table.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Slayer of Eriban (part 5)

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 Slayer of Eriban (1985) 
(Dutch: De Doder van Eriban) (part 5)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

When Renter and Ember return to the ship, they find Nomad seemingly under assault by a gang. Renter jumps in to help, but Nomad bashes him over the head from behind, knocking him out cold.

It was a ruse. Storm hadn't returned to the ship yet, so Nomad paid the dock ruffians to help him stage a distraction so he could waylay Renter. Wanting to confine the young assassin, Ember and Nomad put him the one place they are sure he can't escape: the regeneration capsule.

Leaving Ember with the ship and Renter, Nomad goes out looking for Storm. He ends up finding him:

Nomad and Storm blame to escape. The prisoner the next cage over tells them the only way out is straight to the barsaman arena.

Meawhile, the boy Tilio happens by the ship. He tells Ember about his success as a chess entrepreneur. He asks Ember to marry him, but she demures. She asks him to watch the ship while she goes looking for her friends.

In the city, she discovers that Storm and Nomad have been taken prisoners as would be assassins. She returns to the ship to find weapons or maybe money to bribe the guards. Instead, she's attacked by Renter. Curious about the contents of the sarcophagus, Trilio released him. Renter chokes her to unconsciousness.

In two weeks, the fanfare sounds, announcing the Holy Barsaman game. The spectators file into the arena past the contestants. Some of the crowd carry miniature chess sets.

In the dungeons, on the eve of their execution, Nomad and Storm waylay a guard, steal the keys and make their escape. Storm still wants to warn the king of the assassination attempt--and enlist his help against Renter. The two steal guard uniforms and with a captured guard as an unwilling guide, they head to the royal box at the arena.

Within the arena, the game has begun:

TO BE CONTINUED

Weird Revisited: New Year's Day

And here's part 2 of a Weird Adventures New Year's yarn from 2012...

Then the weird codger just smiles under his beard and says:

“Take it easy, fella. It’s just a yarn.”

And that’s when you realize you were holding your breath. As you let it out slow, it occurs to you that there’s a murmur of “happy new years” around and somewhere the pop of a champagne cork, and there’s a dame standing close with a creased brow and disappointed pout because you didn’t kiss her at the appointed moment. The moment you just missed ‘cause you were listening to some old man’s story about the end of the world.

You take a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. The strange spell seems to be fading with the old year, but you still have to ask: “So what happened. How’d the world get saved, anyway?”

The old man strokes his beard. “It just so happens that Father Time prepares for this eventuality. He knows that the agents of entropy will try to take advantage of the changing of the year, to try and force a premature end to time. He has a plan...”

The new year is born at the center of a maze--almost a giant puzzle box, really-- outside of time and the material plane. Here the new born year can’t be strangled in its crib before temporal custodianship changes hands. All sorts of nefarious forces send their champions to seize it or kill it, true, but Father Time has his champions, as well. He can choose anyone, but it’s often adventurers that make his list. His temporal champions must brave the challenges of the achronal labyrinth and present Father Time's hourglass sigil to the multidimensional titan that guards the neonate year.

Finishing your second glass of champagne, you say, “Guess the good guys won again, huh? I’d be glad to meet one of those guys that saved the world. I’d by ‘em a drink.”

The old man shrugs and puts on his hat like he’s going to leave. “Well, the thing about that is, none of those brave souls ever remember what they did. The maze is outside of time. Everything that happens there occurs in less than an instant and outside of causality as we know it here. No, I’m afraid none of them has any idea what they accomplished.”

With that he turns to walk for the door. He’s only gone a couple of steps when he stops and half-turns. “Unless, of course, someone tells them.” And then he winks.

“Happy New Year, friend.”