Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Living Planet (part 2)

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 Living Planet (1986) (part 2)
(Dutch: De Levende Planeet)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Storm asks the diminutive foreman to at least take them to the ground after having "salvaged" their aircraft. After consulting his rule book, the man says he can help them, if they do him a favor in return:

The man also gives them seeds to swallow which will infuse enough oxygen in their blood for them to reach the ground. When they find the egg, the little men will locate them.

They take the gliders down to ride the thermals rising off the molten sea. Unfortunately, Ember gets too close and catches her wing on fire! Storm swoops in close, then Ember jumps:

They're too heavy to fly, so they're forced to land on an isolated rock outcropping. They surmise they'll soon die due to the heat, but then--amazingly--they see ship approaching. To get the crew's attention, Storm summons the power he has as the Anomaly to create a burst of light...

The ship sends out a scout on a winged beast who identifies them as shipwreck survivors. The Salamander pulls in close to pick them up. Once aboard, they are greeted by the Captain. One of his administrative functionaries enquires as to how they plan to pay for their passage. When Storm says they have no money, the Captain offers another solution:

And they happen to have two vacancies!

TO BE CONTINUED

Damselfly!

No stats today, but here's a new piece of art by Dean Kotz with colors and logo by me for my supers thing in the works.

The microverse of Zurrz-Zann is home to a technologically advanced, regimented society. Zurrz-Zann was at peace for many years, until an emerging insectoid intelligence on Earth breached the dimensions and fomented insurrection. Xazandra Zaantarz was a junior law enforcer, sent with her partner to Earth to stop the psychic attack. The two eventually became lovers and a crimefighting partners as Dragonfly and Damselfly. 

When the society of their homeworld took an even greater turn toward authoritarianism, Damselfly chose to stay on Earth and was branded a traitor by her people.

The Cougar [FASERIP]

COUGAR

STATISTICS
F                 IN   (40)
A                 RM  (30)
S                 RM  (30)
E                 IN   (40)
R                 EX (20)
I                  RM  (30)
P                 EX (20) 
Health: 140
Karma: 50

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Diana Rand
Occupation: Hired assassin; heiress
Identity: Known to authorities
Legal Status: Citizen of the U.S. with a criminal record
Place of Birth: Houston, Texas
Marital Status: Widowed
Known Relatives: David Rand (deceased)
Base of Operations: Mobile
Group Affiliation: Masters of Menace

KNOWN POWERS
Hyper Running. Typical
Hyper-Leaping. Typical.
Heightened senses. Incredible sense of sight, hearing, and smell.

Talents: Hunting, Marksman, Martial Arts B, Edged Weapons, Wrestling, Acrobatics, Tumbling, Survival

History:  Diana Rand disappointed her father in not being a son, then disappointed him further with teenage rebellion and the embrace of the counterculture and a hedonistic lifestyle. At least, when she married a European playboy, she married into money. Though the union didn’t last long when her husband and one succession of paramours died in a mysterious auto accident.

Widowed in her early twenties and left with her husband’s sizable debt, she accepted her father’s invitation to return home to their Texas ranch for possible reconciliation. She discovered that he had decided to buck tradition and sponsor her for membership in his exclusive hunting club, the Orion Lodge, which had historically only admitted men. The Lodge was made up of wealthy individuals of European descent who had used the power granted them by colonialism to pillage cultures for medicinals, talismans, and fetishes which would enhance physical prowess, which they used to hunt humans in secret hunts.

David Rand was the current grandmaster of the Lodge. He sought to marry his daughter off for a political alliance. Diana had other ideas. Stealing some of the Lodge's secrets cache, she killed her father, and spent the next few years hunting or being hunted by Lodge members across the globe. In the end, The Lodge was all but destroyed and Diana Rand had a fearsome reputation as the huntress for hire known as the Cougar.

The Sinister Skull Satellite of The Masters of Menace!

art by Chris Malgrain

It's considered essential in super-villain circles to have a suitably forbidding hideout. Here's a cutaway view of the Masters' of Menace lair.

map by Jim Shelley

Weird Revisited: Afterlife During Wartime

This post first appeared in February of 2012. It was intended for the world of Weird Adventures but is usuable anywhere really...

Explorers in the planes beyond have recorded two noumenal realms devoted to the concept of war, though from two different perspectives. One is a shining realm of trumpets sounding the call to glorious battle for a righteous cause. The other is a grim place of endless, grinding war of attrition, leading to an apocalypse they may never come.

The Halls of Valor or the Fields of Glory is the name given to the after-life for the heroic warrior dead of several pagan faiths. Its trappings are pre-modern, though never in history did swords and spears so gleam, or armor so shine. The warriors revel all night in feasting halls and walk out at dawn (strangely hangover free) to do battle with representatives arriving from places of evil and chaos (or at least the representations of such beings). Occasionally (if that word has much meaning in a timeless place) tourneys are held, and the warriors pit themselves against each other. While dire wounds are suffered, they heal quickly and wound and pain are forgotten in the face of glory.

There have been some warriors of the Oecumenical faith, or even soldiers from modern times, who fell in battle and were taken to Halls of Valor in some sort of cosmic error. Some warm to the place after a while, but others seek a way out by appeal to the pagan gods who rule there. Sometimes, angels try to recruit such misplaced warriors to serve in the Heavenly Hosts. This is considered by the eikone Management a tidy solution to the problem of a misplaced soul.

The other realm is a place of blood-red skies, where clouds of ash are buffeted by winds thick with the smell of death. This is the Plains of Armageddon, the Eternal Battlefield. Here, the souls of warriors damned by their actions in war are conscripted as soon as they arrive into the army of one faction or another. Weapons are supplied by agents of the Hell Syndicate or the demon lords of the Pits; They use the armies here as proxies for their own agendas. Warriors from infinite worlds and all of history do battle in bleak and blasted landscapes where no one is truly trustworthy and most hands are actively raised against every other.

Some of the damned delight in bloodlust and slaughter and give themselves over fully to their not entirely metaphorical demons. Others seek desperately to escape and sign faustian deals to return the the Material world as diabolic thralls. Others are lucky enough to make contact with the agents.of Heaven and make other deals for a chance at working off the stain on their souls.

Cosmic Knight [FASERIP]

art by Dean Kotz

COSMIC KNIGHT

STATISTICS
F                 RM   (30)
A                 RM  (30)
S                 RM  (30)
E                 IN   (40)
R                 EX (20)
I                  RM   (30)
P                 IN (40) 
Health: 130
Karma: 90

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Raymond "Ray" Logan
Occupation: Former astronaut, aerospace executive
Identity: Secret
Legal Status: Citizen of the U.S. with no criminal record
Place of Birth: Riverside, Iowa
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Base of Operations: Costa del Mar, California
Group Affiliation: Knights of the Cosmos; Super-Sentinels

KNOWN POWERS
Body Armor. Provides him with Incredible protection against all physical, radiation, and heat- and cold-attacks. He can survive indefinitely in the vacuum of space.
Enhanced Senses. He can detect radiation from all across the electromagnetic spectrum, including heat and radio. He can detect life signs, including specific individual with Incredible ability. he is able to see in normal darkness without penalty. He has Excellent sense of taste and smell.
Flight. Unearthly speed in the vacuum of space and Monstrous speeds in an atmosphere. he is able to create spacewarps allowing shortcuts for travel over interstellar distances.
Regeneration. His armor has a self-repair capability that provided him with Good Regeneration.
Universal Translator. Can translate any language it heard for at least 6 consecutive turns with Monstrous ability. Once it had learned that language, it could store the information in his memory banks, allowing him to speak and understand it at will.
Force Blast. Monstrous intensity
Force Field. Monstrous rank energy sheath, 1 area.
Energy Solidification. Monstrous ability to create and shape solidified energy. Power stunts include:

• Containers of Monstrous material strength
• Carrying Monstrous Loads
• Acting as a limb of Monstrous Strength

Phasing. Excellent rank.

History: Ray Logan was an astronaut whose experiment spacecraft malfunction on re-entry. Burning alive, Logan was transported from the doomed vehicle at the moment just before death by the Cosmic Archons. Even their great powers could not restore his ravaged body, but they were able to transmit his consciousness into a robotic form. The Archons had selected Logan to be one of their intergalactic group of fighters for justice, the Cosmic Knights.

Logan returned to earth with the ability to transform his Cosmic Knight form into something more close resembling his former biologic body, but he is keenly aware of his loss of humanity even as he works to protect earth from menaces from here and from the universe beyond.

Underground Comics is Here!

The wait is over! You can now purchase Underground Comics #1 at IndyPlanet in print and digital. Comixology digital is on the way if you prefer that format. (If you missed my previous talk about UC, check out this post.)

It's 36 pages by some great DIY rpg illustrators. Here are the preview pages that will (eventually) be on the IndyPlanet page: