Our Heroic Age

This post first appeared in 2015...

 

Though we played a lot of fantasy games (mostly AD&D) in my middle and high school years--probably more than anything else--our longest campaigns (defined as the same characters in the same setting/situation) were in superhero games. While we'd played with Villains & Vigilantes and with the first editions of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes and Mayfair's DC Heroes, our "Heroic Age" really got started in '86 after the release of the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set.

Our first and longest running team was called the New Champions (taking the name from the L.A. based team of the Bronze Age and the idea of a new iteration from The New Defenders, which had just ended the year before). Our characters were street-level/near street-level characters, some of which were reformed villains. We picked the characters from the pages of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, for the most part, rather than going with well-known characters. I used Paladin, my brother, Puma, and our friend Al, Hobgoblin (the former Jack o' Lantern version). That was the core group of players and characters, but other players and other Bronze and early Modern C-listers joined the New Champions ranks at some point: White Tiger, Madcap, Shroud, and Unicorn, among others I've likely forgotten. The team had a West Coast era (borrowing from West Coast Avengers, which I had a subscription to), as well, and probably at least one "all-new, all different" period--but it was also part of the same continuity.

The second edition of DC Heroes, was probably our last gasp of superhero gaming. The Marvel games had mostly been over the summer and with a crew somewhat different than my usual gaming group, since none of us were able to drive yet and it was tough to get together when we weren't in school. By '89 though, that wasn't the case, so the DC group was largely the same as my Dungeons & Dragons and GURPS crowd. This time, we made up our own characters and our own super-hero universe. Lower key, more "realistic" superheroes were the order of the day. About half of the group (which was never named as a team, really) didn't wear costumes, and the villains were are somewhat quirky, and many of them didn't wear costumes either. I suspect the primary inspiration was the Wild Cards universe, but Thriller, the New Universe, and Doom Patrol might have been in there, too.

We played some 4th edition Champions after that and maybe some GURPS Supers, but neither of them had the ease of use of MSHRPG or DCH so they didn't last long. These two campaigns created some truly memorable characters--or at least memorable sessions.

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1980 (part 2)

My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around January 24, 1980.

Action Comics #506: It turns out the Kryptonian hairy hominid android was a ploy by it's creator to save all of Krypton's children from the coming cataclysm. Now it's threatening to steal all of Earth's children. Superman uses time travel and has Superboy inadvertently destroy it with a James Kirkian paradox. It is locked in on Superman's brainwaves to eliminate him--but it can't harm a child, so it explodes. Pretty clever, Cary Bates!

Adventure Comics #470: More forgettable Starman and Plastic Man adventures. The Plastic Man story by Martin Pasko has villains with construction-related pun names. That's really the only thing I remember about it.

Brave & the Bold #161: Conway and Aparo have Batman and Adam Strange switching places to solve a mystery. In the end, it doesn't amount to much, but it's a clever concept.

Detective Comics #489: You might think ass-kicking Commissioner Gordon was an invention of Frank Miller, but no Kupperberg and Novick have him going into a prison overrun by the inmates to secure the release of hostages and singlehandedly turning the tables on the ringleaders. Alfred gets to beat up some thugs, too, in a solo tale by Rozakis and Delbo. The Atom tries to fix the JLA satellite computer and gets in a fight with subatomic aliens. Batman gets two stories: one has him weirdly dismissive of the supernatural despite all the times he as encountered it--including possibly this very story! In the second, he's on the trail of the Sensei for the death of Kathy Kane. Bronze Tiger makes a (brief) appearance.

Green Lantern #127: This is an action-packed issue, with an all-out assault by the Green Lantern Corps to retake Oa from the Weaponers of Qward. A number of (nameless, never seen before) Lanterns die in the assault, and Jordan only prevails with the unexpected aid of Sinestro. A good issue, but I don't really feel like Staton quite delivers in the way another artist might have.

House of Mystery #279: The most ridiculous (but entertaining) of these three stories is by Barr and Noly Zamora and features con men named Ecks and Wye (get it?) in the Old West, apparently committing murders in a werewolf fashion, then charging the town for anti-werewolf supplies. When Ecks decides to double cross his partner, the twist is revealed--Wye really is a werewolf!

Legion of Super-Heroes #262: This is a sort of Star Trekian tale about an old spacecraft out to entertain it's long-dead captain. Better than the last couple of issues; particularly, the art by James Sherman.

New Adventures of Superboy #4: Superboy foils Astralad's every attempt to reveal his secret identity as nerdy Joe Silver to his classmates and thereby become popular. Then, the boy of steel convinces Joe it was all a dream so he gives up on making his life better by changing the past. I'm not sure Superboy was completely in the right on this one.

Sgt. Rock #339: Much of this issue is a flashback to Rock's participation in an unnamed attack that I assume is meant to be the Dieppe Raid (or its DCU stand-in). Rock definitely gets around a lot in this war.

Super Friends #31: This issue has Black Orchid! And Kryptonite! I honestly don't remember much else, other than the Ramona Fradon art, which I always find charming.

Time Warp #4: Two of these stories are time travel yarns, but not your usual ones. The one by Allikas and Ditko sees scientists deciding to prevent nuclear conflict by offing Einstein (there's an old Frederick Pohl story with the same basic idea, I think), but they can't do it. Instead, they take him back to the 18th Century--where he changes the future by giving Native Americans the atomic bomb! There's also an overly complicated tale by Kashdan and Patricio where a mutated astronaut landing in the future starts infecting the defenseless population with the common cold, so naturally the future-folk go back in time to ensure the astronaut never gets a cold, only to doom their future with a disease the cold would have prevented! 

Unexpected #197: Jockeying over an inheritance leads greedy relatives to ruin in a treasure hunt, a guy euthanizing stray cats for cash runs up against a witch's cat, and a horror writer gets the inside scoop first-hand from a vampire.

Unknown Soldier #238: The Unknown Soldier plays pied piper to get a group of Hitler-loving kids away from a German commander using them for human-shields in a Haney/Ayers tale. In the backup, an Olympic skier puts his skills to use leading his company in North Africa--in ways as ridiculous as you might imagine. It illustrates a common theme in these war books: the American G.I. heroes often prevail due to Yankee ingenuity. Out-of-the-box thinking is more often the key to victory than badassery.

Warlord #32: The first appearance of Shakira. More on it here.

Weird Western Tales #66: In a somewhat offbeat tale by Conway and Ayers, Scalphunter winds up in Pittsburgh, where he is nursed back to health by a single mother. To help the family, he goes to work in the factory besides her and her children, but revolts against the ill-treatment and poor conditions. The woman and her kid refuse to go with him, because it's the only life they've known.

Guns of Middle-earth

The Shire, particularly in the first published version of The Hobbit, has a number of (at the earliest) Victorianisms. I don't see why you couldn't run a sort of 19th Century version of Middle-earth that would make those not be anachronisms, or at least not as much of an anachronism, as we might want to not tie ourselves down to the feel of a specific part of the 19th Century.

The rangers of the North would be like Mountain men or frontier scouts.

Gondor might have the architecture and general vibe of Old Mexico or Spanish California.

And Mordor perhaps becomes some sort of Steampunk industrial nightmare.

Weird Revisited: People of the Feud

This alternate, sci-fi origins of Mind Flayers and Gith-folk first appeared in 2016...

 

There was a colony ship, sent out from Earth or a world very much like it to settle a new world. It's navigators had been genetically modified to take advantage of a new drive system allowing FTL travel. The majority of the colonist were placed into cryogenic suspension for the voyage.

Something went wrong. Inadequate shielding? Purposeful sabotage? No one remembers. The navigators began to mentally breakdown, expose to psychoactive and mutagenic properties of the manifold outside normal spacetime. The ship was stranded stuttering in an out of spacetime.

The navigators began to develop psionic powers and with them certain physical requirements. Boosted quantities of certain neurotransmitters. No synthetic source was available, but there were the stored colonists to feed on.

To help them manage the ship and their food source, the former Navigators awakened a military contingent, a few at the time. They mentally enthralled them and enslaved them. Molding them over generations.

As generations passed under the accelerated mutagenesis of the manifold, both the Navigators--calling themselves the Masters now--and their soldier caste had diverged significantly from their original genotype. The Masters had long ago authorized larger scale awakening of more of the colonists to serve as a more docile slave caste--and cattle.

The Masters grew complacent and removed from human concerns and feelings. They didn't see the revolution coming. A soldier named Gith lead a coalition of the soldiers and the menials against their oppressors they now called Mind Flayers after their manner of feeding.

The former Masters were either killed or used their power to flee into the non-space. The coalition that had brought about their downfall did not long survive. Former menials resented the soldiers as long time collaborators and the soldiers disagreed with the menials attempts to master Mind Flayer psionic disciplines.

When the ship was finally cannibalized and destroyed, two cultures had emerged as firm in their hatred of each other as they were in their former masters.

Ewoks!

I happened to see one of the old Ewoks cartoons on Youtube the other day. It was a pretty good fantasy cartoon of the era. It prompted me to recall than "Endor" is the Quenya name for Middle Earth, which may or may not be relevant.

Anyway, I feel like halflings/hobbits could be replaced with ewoks with very little difficult and bring a slightly different feel to things.

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1980 (part 1)

Continuing my read through of DC Comics output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around January 10, 1980.

Batman #322: Captain Boomerang shows up and pretends to be a real threat. I'm of course, biased by Boomerang's portrayal in the 80s Suicide Squad and later. Still, he doesn't do himself any favors of tying Batman to a giant boomerang as a death trap--a repeat of something he did to the Flash. Catwoman getting a terminal diagnosis from a doctor who neither names the conditions and suggests that some ancient Egyptian herbs (also unnamed) are the cure is also pretty silly.

DC Comics Presents #20: This story by O'Neil isn't really much of a team-up. Green Arrow pursues a oil tycoon, Bo Force, who's looking to get an exotic energy rich flood emerging from a geyser, and Superman just shows up to save the day in the end. The art by Garcia-Lopez looks good though!

Flash #284: I got to give it to Cary Bates. I have never been much of a Flash fan, and I would have not pegged this era to the place I'd get turned on to it...and well, I haven't exactly, but it's better than I expected! Last issue ended with Zoom and the Flash heading unstoppably into the distance past in the time bubble, but Flash jumps out, preferring to take his changes than spend eternity with Zoom. He winds up in a domain ruled by the Lord of Limbo, but other prisoners help him make his escape. The issue is very specific in its 1980 setting, and implies Barry Allen is "about 30" years old, and that he's been the Flash for about 10 years. Heck's art gives it a Marvel vibe, but the lack of direct confrontation between hero and villain feels un-Marvel.

G.I. Combat #219: Despite my previous griping about the Haunted Tank strip, the first story here by Kanigher and Glanzman is pretty good. Jeb plans to shoot it out with one of those honorable German officers whose path he's crossed twice before across different fronts of the war and two continents. A passing American patrol picks off the officer, before we get to see who would come out the victor. It's followed by a goofy but amusing O.S.S. story where an assassin uses trick shoes to take out his target. The other stories are typical war stuff.

Ghosts #87: The horror titles are lackluster this month. This one has a distasteful tale involving a freakshow that was likely inspired by Browning's Freaks. The other stories are merely forgettable.

Jonah Hex #35: Fleisher reveals an important part of Jonah's backstory, telling us why he quit the Confederate Army (due the the Emancipation Proclamation). Just about everything that could go wrong for him does so after that point, and his hunted as a traitor by his former allies and countrymen. There's some amusing stuff at the beginning with Hex taking down a group of outlaws.

Justice League of America #177: Conway and Dillin are mostly doing set-up here in that classic "each hero gets their own story" sort of JLA way. The reveal at end gives us the return of Martian Manhunter, who hadn't appeared since '77 and hadn't appeared in JLA since 1974.

Secrets of Haunted House #23: This issues "highlight" is a story by Wessler and Frank Redondo about a man saving his grandkids from fire ants. I recognize invasive fire ants were more of a "hot" (heh) topic in the '70s, but c'mon, Destiny! Is there nothing better in that weighty tome of yours?

Superman #346: Lois investigates a crooked game show and discovers Amos Fortune (a villain I only knew from the Who's Who) behind it. He uses his "Murphy Machine" to cause people to have bad luck. Unusual premise by Conway but still a bland story.

Weird War Tales #86: Two World War II yarns, one with a giant monster, and the other by Zilber and Sparling with a Twilight Zone-esque premise: a young soldier can make anyone disappear by willing it. Nothing special.

Wonder Woman #266: Continuing that story of Diana's time with NASA. It's okay. It's got another installment of the Wonder Girl story, too.

World's Finest Comics #262: The lead story here by O'Neil and Staton, where Superman and Batman battle a one-shot villain called the Pi-Meson Man, is probably the weakest--but at least it doesn't have an old lady with gravity control powers as a villain like the finale of the Green Arrow/Black Canary story. This time around, the old woman does look like an old woman, thanks to Tanghal and Colletta. The Aquaman story by Rozakis and Newton leaves me with a couple of questions: How does Aquaman's computer work underwater? And, does this story which mentions Barbara Gordon as a Congresswoman take place prior to the stories from the last couple of months mentioning she lost re-election? The Hawkman story by DeMatteis and Landgraf also references some recent DC events. I'd forgotten what it was like to have comics that came out on a consistent enough schedule they could actually have a shared universe! The last story, a Captain Marvel tale by Bridwell and Newton, gives backstory to the wizard Shazam, which I was unaware of. Fun stuff, if nothing groundbreaking.

Chicken, Fried

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the party prepared to confront the chicken mutant who was in the reactor room of the Gander chicken plant. They were uncertain what these strange suits were they found or the "radiometers" so they went back to consult the computer. It explained, but the explanations weren't of much help. It did elucidate why their keycards could open the door: you had to have a priority keycard of some color. 

Waylon went back and looted the bodies of chicken mutants they had killed to find a keycard. With a stack, they were able to find one that worked and entered the reactor room. 

The reactor room was really loud, so they were able to get the jump on the mutant. Even impaired in their movements in the bulk radiation suits, they made short work of him. It turned out to be a good thing, too, as he was apparently trying to cause a meltdown, according to the computer.

The party let the only surviving chicken mutant leave with his life and some money. He didn't seem happy, but he did it. Then, they negotiated a deal for the citizenry of Falgo which got them jobs in the factory in exchange for food. How the simple folk of Falgo were going to adapt to working in a mechanized factory the party left to the people and the computer to figure out.

With that good deed behind them, they were once again on the road to the Virid Country.