Wednesday Comics: Mike Grell

TwoMorrows just released a new retrospective on the creator of Warlord, Sable, and so many others, titled Mike Grell: Life Is Drawing Without An Eraser. The hardcover clocks in at 178 pages (full color) and is of course full of Grell art from his start on Brenda Starr, through his work for the Big Two and creator owned work.

There are chapters on all of his major works (the Legion, Warlord, Sable, Green Arrow, Shaman's Tears, and Starslayer) and own his work on the Tarzan newspaper strip and James Bond graphic novels. Interspersed are mostly reprint but still interesting interviews with Grell or collaborators. There's also a checklist of Grell's work in comics.

The hardcover has an additional gallery section in the back that the paperback lacks. This has several more Warlord images.

Weird Revisted: Clowns in the Clouds

This post first appeared in December 2012. I have sorted wanted to use these guys in the Land of Azurth, but haven't done so yet.

There is, they say, a wandering, cloud island, that is home to clowns. These are no mere performers but the thing the mummers ape, fey and changeable beings not of this world.

Where the cloud island passes in it's maundering way, the clowns come down among normal folk, dropping from the sky under motley umbrellas, or sliding down shafts of light. They put on carnivals, perform farces, and throw out candies. After they have gone, people are sometimes found missing, particularly children.

Sometimes when the island passes, the clowns don't come down but instead drop candies of preternatural flavors and small items imbued with magic: a hand mirror, a short sword, a jar of skin cream, a pack of gum. There are rumors that these come in trade--or are perhaps stolen--from the Moon. There are tales spun of daring thieves sneaking on to the cloud island to rob the clowns' treasure stores, but as far as is known, these are just stories.

Other tales purport to come from people who have visited the cloud island and returned. These seldom mention  treasure stores, but do describe colorful tents scattered among cyclopean stone ruins (that may predate the clowns) and the rare tree, strewn with mists and carnival lights. The anarchic clowns careen between merriment and slumber. No clown ever seems to die, no matter what sort of violence is done to them. 

Sometimes, for reasons unknown, a clown falls from the island. These strange,sad creatures become wandering tramps, losing much of their magic and too often turning drink.

One Weird Encounter After Another

This is a page from Mercer Meyer's Little Monster's You-Can-Make-It Book from 1978. I figure it would make a decent one of those "drop die tables" all the kids were going on about a few years ago. Or you could just roll 2 4-sided die for X and Y coordinates.

You are on your own for statting most of these beings, But Mayer's books do reveal that the Yalapappas eats paper (including, I'm sure, pages from spell books and scrolls) and the trollusk is a collector of stamps. I always thought it would make a good halfling reskin, but he is a bit goblinish in appearance.

Cactoid [5e Race]

I figure a desert world under a blood-red sun should have a cactoid race. This is based on the Cactacae from the Mieville's Bas-Lag novels as presented in Dragon #352.

Cactoid Traits
Ability Score Increase. A Cactoid's Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Alignment. Cactoid tend to be lawful and neutral.
Size. Cactoid are medium.
Speed. Base walking speed is 30 feet.
Powerful Build. Cactoids count as one size larger when determining carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Plant Hardiness. Cactoids have advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance against poison damage
Tough Hide. Cactoids have a natural +1 bonus to their Armor Class.
Spines. The spines covering a cactoid's body allow them to do an 1d4 points piercing damage while grappling.
Languages. Cactoids speak Common and their own language.

Futura [ICONS]

Art by Agus Calcagno

FUTURA

Abilities:
Prowess: 8
Coordination: 7
Strength: 7
Intellect: 6
Awareness: 6
Willpower: 7

Determination: 1
Stamina: 14

Specialties: Linguistics, Martial Arts, Medicine, Science

Qualities:
The Hope of Humanity's Future
In A Time Not Her Own
Raised by Robots

Powers:
Aging, Damage. and Disease Resistance: 6
Flight: 7
Super-Speed: 3

History
In a possibly alternate future, a war among superhumans devastated the Earth and destroyed most of civilization. So massive were the energies unleashed, the Earth itself was damaged to the core and threatened to break apart.

Some time after the war, perhaps as long as a millennium, intelligent robots lived in a massive, enclosed city known as Eden-One. They had been the caretakers of the last humans they knew to exist, and now sought to preserve human history and knowledge. One of these robots, a bio-specialist named Maia-1A457, engineered a human embryo with superhuman attributes from stored genetic material. The infant was gestated in an artificial womb. Maia-1A457 named the girl Futura, because she hoped the child would provide a future for humanity.

Futura was raised by the robots, not knowing she wasn't one of them until late in her childhood. In adolescence, she ventured outside Eden-One with the reluctant acquiescence of her robot caretakers and encountered post-human beings and aliens, making some friends among them. Most of her time, however, was spent in training and education so that one day she could make a trip to the past and prevent her catastrophic future from ever occurring.

When she reached young adulthood, she asked for her final examinations and proved to Maia-1A457 and the others she was ready for her mission. Using an ancient time machine, she journeyed back to 20th Century San Francisco. Soon after her arrival, she rescued four young people from a mutant monster that had inadvertently been transported to the past with her. The four (Dean Hunt, Zelda Dunkel, “Crunch” Samson, and Cynthia Vandaveer) offered her a room in the house they were living in, and inspired by her story, changed the name of their band to The Tomorrows.

Futura assumed the identity of Eve Hope, and got a job at a record store to better observe the culture and way of life of the humans of the era. In her true identity, she became famous as she battled threats to peace and freedom, always staying vigilant for signs of the coming future she hopes to prevent.

See Futura's FASERIP stats here.

Art by Anna Liisa Jones

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Living Planet (part 6)

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 5)
(Dutch: De Levende Planeet)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

It turns out Alice has not arrived from Wonderland, but is instead a projection of Mother Pandarve, an avatar of the living planet itself. She shows Storm that she could appear as a devil--or as Marilyn Monroe. In surprising show of jealousy, Ember nixes that idea.

"Alice" wants to show Storm something, so she leads him and Ember away, much to the chagrin of her "unfaithful servant" the Theocrat. She takes them to an elevator to travel to her core, and she reveals what she wants from them:

It seems that Pandarve's prime intellect has been busy for a long time with a mathematical problem, and the Theocrat has used the oppurtunity to cease power for himself. He hasn't released the Egg of Pandarve from her subconscious with should grow into her progency, satellite worlds. It that's not done, her mind will splinter. Due to the unusual energy around him, only Storm can do the job:

Of course, there are nightmare monsters down there, too. "Alice" gives Storm a weapon:

Storm and Ember land in open land under a red sky, near a forest--not exactly what one would expect at the center of a planet. But then, there are the nightmare creatures Pandarve mentioned..

TO BE CONTINUED

Weird Revisited: Different Dark Suns

I thought this classic post from 2014 would be a good compliment to yesterdays....

Dark Sun is an evocative setting as is, but there's nothing wrong with a little variety. Maybe there are two great tastes that taste great together? Try these:

Art by Kevin O'Neill

Dark Sun, Red Sands
Killraven (and the War of the Worlds tv shows, and perhaps The Tripods series of novels by John Christopher) posits a world where the Martians from Wells's novel return and succeed in their conquest. The Masters would no doubt turn their vast, cool, and unsympathetic intellects toward areoforming Earth in the image of their homeworld. Desertification and cooling, accomplished by casting dust into the sky (making the sun appear darker and redder).  Over time, the Masters became decadent and lost the ability to produce much of their technology. They amused themselves with bloodsports and petty intrigues. The mutants and monsters they had bred for various purposes escaped into the wilds. Earth becomes almost Mars, and almost Mars becomes Athas, or something pretty close.

Art by Frank Frazetta

Dark Red Sun
Two ideologies fought a centuries long war, unleashing weapons they destroyed their world's environment, mutated its creatures, and cast both civilizations back to a more primitive state.Perhaps these competing tribes were called the Kohms and Yangs, but certainly the victors in their struggle flew a red flag (as ERB had it, in the original version of the book that became The Moon Maid). In any case, their former differences don't matter as much anymore in a harsh world where human and inhuman is a bigger distinction. Sometimes, though, the desert tribes still give the ancient war cry: "Wolverines!" though none remember what it might mean.

Art by Ken Kelly

Dark Western Sun
This riff is to BraveStarr what McKinney's Carcosa might be to Masters of the Universe. When galactic civilization tore itself apart in civil war, many frontier worlds, left on their on, backslide into primitivism. The strange, psionic races of Darksun left their reservations and remote hiding places and turned human habitation into settlements isolated by wilderness, where the only law comes from the barrel of a gun.