The Weird Solar System of "Life on Other Worlds"

"Life on Other Worlds" was a feature that appeared periodically in Planet Comics in the 1940s. Most were drawn by Murphy Anderson, but the writer is unknown. I am not completely sold on the sometimes promulgated "Planes as Planets" idea in regard to D&D's Outer Planes, chiefly because I think it sometimes sells planes and planets a bit short on weirdness, for some reason. Reading some of these "Life on Other Worlds" segments and thinking about them as planes as caused me to rethink that position.

Take Saturn, for instance:

Mercury is more conventional, but still:

Encounters In A Martian Bar Before the Gunfight Started

Art by Jeff Call

01 A jovial human trader eager to unload a large, glowing jar containing squirming creatures he claims are Mercurian dayside salamanders.

02 A shaggy, spider-eyed Europan smuggler waits nervously for her contact.

03 Four pygmy-like “mushroom men," fungoid sophonts from the caverns of Vesta. They are deep in their reproductive cycle and close proximity gives a 10% chance per minute of exposure inhaling their spores.

04 A Venusian reptoid lowlander with jaundiced eyes from chronic hssoska abuse and an itchy trigger-claw.

05 Two scarred, old spacers in shabby flight suits.  They're of human stock mutated by exposure to unshielded, outlawed rocket drives.

07 A cloud of shimmering lights, strangely ignored by most patrons, dances around twin pale, green-skinned chaunteuses. It's  actually an energy being from the Transneptunian Beyond.

08 An aging, alcoholic former televideo star (and low level Imperial spy) with 1-2 hangers-ons.

09 A Venusian Wooly who just lost a Martian chess game to a young farm-hand who doesn't know any better.

10 A Martian Dune Walker shaman on his way to a ritual at a nearby Old Martian ruin, with a bag of 2d6 hallucinogenic, dried erg-beetles. He dreams of driving all off-worlders from Mars.

Dungeons of High Camp Revisited

Art by Jim Holloway

This is an update to a post from 2017, originally conceived as I was reading Hero A Go-Go by Michael Eury. That book chronicles superhero comics' response (and influence on) 1960s camp pop culture. It's a combination that didn't always work well; many of the works now seem more goofy kitsch perhaps, and some are really just unfunny parody of superheroes. Still, when it works there is a certain charm to a lot of folks, as the revival comics Batman '66 and Wonder Woman '77 indicate.

I wonder why there hasn't been as much of a concerted attempt at published camp works for Dungeons & Dragons? Certainly, farcical humor abounds at the gaming table, and a number of comedic adventures have been written (a lot illustrated by Jim Holloway), in fact a couple of my Hydra colleagues have been taken to task for humorous elements in their work. There are, of course, humorous illustrations in the older AD&D books. But as far as I know, there has never been a camp setting or camp-informed setting--unless maybe HackMaster counts? Maybe it's just too difficult an approach to sustain well throughout a written project?

I should back up a bit here and define what I mean by "camp," since it's not a term with a universal, clear definition. What I mean in this case, is not the farce or cheese, but a sort of knowing amusement. An "engaged irony." As Isherwood would have it: "you’re not making fun of it; you’re making fun out of it." The "it" in our case being elfgames.

The settings of some OSR-related folks seem to me to have elements of camp without going all-in: Jason Sholtis' Operation Unfathomable, Chris Kutalik's Hill Cantons, some of Jeff Reints stuff, and my own Mortzengersturm. Dungeon Crawl Classics with its "airbrushed wizard van" elements could be taken as camp, but I'm unsure whether that is the intention.

Art by Jim Holloway

Armchair Planet Who's Who

I haven't posted an update on this in a while. The project is still on-going, it's just been moving slower of late due to real life stuff for both myself and my collaborator. Here's another piece of art for it, though: another look at Futura by Julian Shaw.

Wednesday Comics: Some Things I Read

Moving as left me no time for reading Storm, so his adventures will have to wait a little longer. Instead, here's the rundown on some stuff I read recently:

Spider-Man: Life Story 1: The 60s
Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley begin the story of Peter Parker's life as Spider-Man, if it hadn't been untethered from the era in which it was written and proceeded in real time. As readers of my Omiverse essays have likely guessed, this is the sort of thing I like. The first issue didn't wow me, but it was competent, and I'm on board. There are hints that it may develop into a fairly different Marvel Universe along the lines of the differences to the DC universe seen in the similar DC New Frontiers or maybe even as variant as Batman & Superman: Generations. We'll see.

Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt #2
I mentioned issue #1 of this here. I admit after the clever first issue, I expected issue #2 would start getting down to brass-tacks superheroics of dealing with the "evil" (we assume) Not-Ozymandias-But-Peter-Cannon of the alternate Earth, but nope, Gillen chooses to go full Morrison, with characters entering (and breaking) the nine panel grid like it was  a magic circle. I want to say it was a bit too clever for its own good, but maybe its because I was expecting it to do what it did. Regardless, they have on board for next issue.

Just Another Omniverse Monday

Gameroom in Progress.

I spent most of my weekend packing books and assembling a new gaming table, so all I've got for you today is two new previously only available on Google Plus Omniverse posts.

These delve into the lesser known periods: the secret vigilante past of the future Commissioner Gordon of Gotham and the heroes who combated the monster surge of the 1950s, the Monster Hunters.

Maps of Inner Space

I posted these maps/diagrams from Marvel's Micronauts before, but it has been a few years. They're always good for a gander...

Here's the Homeworld of the Micronauts:

And here's the insides of their ship, Endeavor.