Wednesday Comics: The Superheroes of the Atlas Pre-Silver Age

In 1953, Martin Goodman the publisher of Interstate Publishing Group (sometimes known as Marvel, and generally referred to as Atlas these days, after the distributor whose mark appears on the cover) noted the success of the Adventures of Superman TV show and figured there might again be a market for superheroes.

Goodman publishing's Timely Comics' flagship heroes--Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and Human Torch--had been popular in the War years, but were all gone by 1950.  In Young Men #24 (1953), they can roaring back.

"The Return of the Human Torch" with art by Russ Heath picks up following the events of his last adventure in 1949. The Human Torch, after a 4 year absence, busts up on the hideout of the crime boss that sprayed him with a Soviet chemical that dosed his fire, and buried him in the desert. Luck for the the Torch, this desert part of the desert would be the site of a atomic test. Resurrected by the bomb, he was more powerful than ever.

He goes looking for Toro who disappeared in Korea. Flying right over, he finds Toro has been brainwashed and is fighting for the commies! Torch defeats him and brings him home to turn him over to doctors to fix him:

The team is back together!

In "Back from the Dead" with art by John Romita, we find the Red Skull has given up his allegiance to Hitler's regime, and is now the head of an international crime syndicate with ties to (you guessed it) "the Reds." Meanwhile, at the Lee School, Professor Steve Rogers tells his student the history of Captain America, but most of the kids think he's just a myth. Bucky (who seems weirdly to have not aged, assuming its the same kid) gets in a fight with the Cap-deniers. Bucky wants Cap back, but Rogers isn't convinced. Then, they hear on the radio that the Red Skull has returned and taken the UN hostage!

Captain America and Bucky are reborn! And the Red Skull is soon defeated...for now.

Bill Everett brings us "Sub-Mariner." Cargo ships keep sinking myteriously near the same small island. An investigation determines the wrecks have been stripped to the bulkhead. Police woman Betty Dean realizes she knows Sub-Mariner and calls up Admiral Saybrook to see if he can get in touch with Namor at the South Pole.

Four days later, Namor shows up at Betty's apartment in a suit. He agrees to look into the strange piracy. He discovers the ships are being sank and looted by robots. Robots he later learns are from Venus. The though Earthmen were weak, but they didn't reckon on Sub-Mariner. He roughs them and saves the day.

And just like that, the greatest Timely heroes are back in action!

Omniverse Vision

No android would cry over these two newly released Omniverse posts from the lost G+ about the Vision!

"Obscured Vision" looks at the weirdness around the origin of the second Vision, and reveals a conspiracy! "Obscured Vision (Reprise)" looks back to the Golden Age Vision, and his ties to the Red Planet.

"I Faced A Tyrannoclops!"

Last year, I posted about an Atomic Age riff on Operation Unfathomable. It was a good enough idea to get a second post--with new art, with illustration by Nik Poliwko.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: Vandaahl the Destroyer (part 2, review)

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: Vandaahl the Destroyer (1987) (part 2)
(Dutch: Vandaahl de Verderver)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

When last we left our heroes, so kids on the water planet had just released a conqueror from another universe from what was supposed to be his eternal prison. One of his first acts is to zap Ember.

Back in his home universe, scientists inform the Lord Judge than sentenced him, that Vandaahl the Destroyer might well be alive, having slipped through a wormhole instead of being killed in a black hole. They decide the only decent thing to do is retrieve him, rather than let him lay waste to other words.

Vandaahl has already started by laying waste to the tree settlement, though he allowed the people, including Storm  and friends, some time to escape first.

With Vandaahl on the loose, Storm decides they must warn the people of Pandarve. To help him get off world, the Water-Planet people summon dolphin-like creatures that tell them of a waterspout leading off planet.

The vessel the people of the Water-Planet give them isn't made for long space voyages, though. Luckily, they run across a large trading vessel before their supplies run. They're able to get a ride.

TO BE CONTINUED

Madness in Castle Machina

Our 5e Land of Azurth came continued last night, with a new player: the daughter of two or regulars. Her character, Bellmorae the Dragonkin Sorcerer, joins the party after their visit to the benevolent Frog Temple. The party means to find out how this dark future came to be, and thinks that The Clockwork Princess, if she still is in the castle, may be able to give them the answers they need.

Find the castle isn't difficult. He tends me be crab-walking a wobbly orbit around the ruins of Rivertown. Getting in his a little bit more difficult. They fly up to the courtyard and find the palace doors replaced with an industrial metal one with a mechanical face (that looks something like the Princess) at its center. The face's eyes scan each party member who approaches and demands a pass code. When it scans Dagmar, it declares her a "maker" and allows her to reset the pass code. Inside, the party finds the entry area and throne room replaced with the gigantic gears that power the legs.

Down one hall is a furnace and engine room. Automata shovel coal into a magically warded boiler, where eyes like a void in the white-hot flame watch them. A voice from the fire claims to a prince that was drawn into this cold world and trapped here, asks or demands they free him. The party does not.

Elsewhere they find the elevator shaft empty and blocked 3 floors up. In the turret around the stairwell, 3 scruffy,  gray gnome-like creatures behave like lunatics in an asylum. The party initially plans to avoid them, but with no other exits is forced to engage them in conversation. The think the creatures are perhaps the debased descendants of the gnomes that worked for the Princess in years past.

The madness of the gnomes prohibits meaningful dialogue. Waylon attempts to charm the one they appears to be their leader. The spell fails, and the enraged creature attacks. The party makes short work of the six of them, though they all managed to deliver nonsensical last words as they die. They have nothing of value in their possession.

The party climbs the spiral stair, slowly becoming aware of a curious and unsettling background hum or droning...

Weird Revisited: Over There

The original version of the post appeared in 2015. I still like this idea, just haven't got around to using it in any way.

Take the fairyland across the border of Lud-in-the-Mist or A Fall of Stardust. In between it and the "real world" there is a wall or barrier-- let's say an "Anti-Alien Protection Rampart" in official terminology. Instead of England on the real world side there's East Berlin and the GDR or some subtle Eastern Bloc stand-in. Drüben, indeed.

While "Workers of the World, Unite Against the Faerie!" would be interesting enough, recasting the fairy presence with some Zone phenomena-like details out of Roadside Picnic and a bit of the seductiveness of the Festival from Singularity Sky: "Entertain us and we will give you want you want." Faerie should be weird and horrifying but also weird and wondrous--in a horrific way, naturally. Miracles, wonders, and abominations.

Of course, the authorities don't want anybody having interaction with the faerie, much less smuggling in their reality-warping, magical tech--and maybe they have a point. But if PCs did the smart thing they wouldn't be adventurers, would they?

Heroic Headshots!

I've been busy with real-life stuff, projects have been backburnered for a bit now, but looking back over art done for the Armchair Planet Who's Who I've posted to the blog before makes me eager to get back to it. Just take a look at these team headshots done by Agus Calcagno:

Branded as anomalies--beings who were dangerous simply because they were outside their proper timestream--they were imprisoned in an extra-temporal prison. They escaped and now survive as crosstime soldiers of fortune... The Tempus Fugitives!

They are the source of our legends of fairies, trolls, and goblins, but the truth is they are a genetically altered subspecies of humanity with incredible powers. They are the Abhumans, and they have remained hidden...until now!