Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1980 (wk 1, pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of July 10, 1980. 

Batman #328: Wolfman takes over as writer, and his first story is a nice little mystery, marred only by the fact that it's a pretty obvious one. A killer taunts Batman with a video where he confesses his guilt. The problem is, he's already been tried and found not guilty, so there's no way he could be touched legally. Batman vows to bring him to justice somehow by discovering why he committed the murder in the first place and how he got away with it. Meanwhile, the killer is wooing Harvey Dent's ex, and the man he murdered was supposedly the killer of Dent's former assistant. Already, I'm suspicious about the killer's identity. When a frantic visit to Two-Face's former plastic surgeon leads to the killer committing another murder in anger...well, his identity is certain. And we've still got a part two to go! The backup story teams Wolfman with Newton, and reveals something of Gordon's early days on the police force and a little bit about the origins of the batcave (that it was part of an old subway line). Both of these things will be rendered "noncanon" post-Crisis.

DC Comics Presents #26: Wolfman and Starlin give us a team-up of Green Lantern and Superman. This is interesting because we get two DC big guns, which is rare for this title. Jordan responds to a distress call from another green lantern, but it's a trap by a rather second rate Starlin cosmic baddie (something like a b-grade Eon in design). The creature steals Jordan's form, but then Superman shows up and defeats it, though he needs Hal's help to deal with some Kryptonite. Still, Superman is pretty dismissive of the power of the creature and the Green Lanterns. He calls Jordan's ring a "little green trinket." Starlin's art here is not up to his usual standards and his round-faced Superman is off-model, but it's not a bad story--though the New Teen Titans preview that follows by Wolfman and Perez really outshines it in terms of visual storytelling and interest. It's really just a tease, though.

The backup of is "What Ever Happened to...Sargon the Sorcerer." It reminds me of the "continuity clean-up" stories Roy Thomas did in Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight, undoing things done by other creators or otherwise reseting a character. It does explain Sargon's recentish appearances as a baddie, but it feels like it was written just for that purpose.

Flash #290: As is not uncommon with these Bates/Heck stories, the reveal of why Fiona Webb, Barry Allen's neighbor, thinks he is trying to kill her is both sort of convoluted and not as interesting as the setup. It seems Webb saw a mob hit and has under gone some extreme form of witness protection courtesy of King Faraday, where her memories of her previous life as Beverly Lewis were suppressed. Not suppressed enough, apparently, because the guy she testified against looked like Barry Allen, so when a master of disguise hitman named Saber-Tooth (no relation) comes after her, she attributes the danger to Allen. This story does have an interesting bit where Flash as to enter a computer to make its circuits print out the punch card on Beverly Lewis because the computer has (as apparently have all in U.S. law enforcement) been programmed not to release that info. 

The backup story by Conway and Perez/Smith continues Firestorm's origin and recent history. There's not much to it beyond the recap.

Ghosts #93: I feel like this title is declining in quality, but maybe its just in a temporary slump. It probably doesn't help that a couple of the stories feel like reprints due to using Golden Age artists Charles Nicholas and Jack Sparling on the stories. Both of these stories were written by Carl Wessler, whose work also dates back to the Golden Age. The first is about a boy and his ghostly grandfather teaming up to use a toy train and sympathetic magic to save his father from death on a sabotaged train track. The second is about a sadistic prisoner guard who takes a job at an old mental asylum only to find all the patients are ghosts. Only marginally better is the David Allikas/Tom Mandrake story about a fraternity hazing incident leading to a death and a plan to make the instigator of that death confess by means of a fake ghost ploy that turns out not to be fake! Wessler is back a third time with Henson for "The Flaming Phantoms of Frightmare Alley." The story is a confusing and ultimately pointless tale of a reporter that falls in love with a ghost then becomes a ghost himself in a car crash and the bystander that relates the story. It in no way lives up to its title.

G.I. Combat #222: We have the usual 3 Haunted Tank stories from Kanigher and Glanzman. "For Sale: 1 Tank Crew" sees our heroes at the mercy of black marketeers in occupied France who in the end have a change of heart. "God of Steel" has Bedouin raiders trying to use the tank and crew to take out a fort--which they are happy to oblige with when they find out its occupied by Germans. "Cold Meat--Hot War" has the Haunted Tank improbably plunging into the sewers after been blocked in by Drachenzähne and German artillery. Kanigher is always inventive and Glanzman's art is on point, but I'm just not much of a Haunted Tank fan. 

The other stories are a bit better, though none are really outstanding. "Angels--of Death" by Jan Laurie and Alfredo Falugi has a group of Pacific Theater nurses pitching in to launch a torpedo on a beleaguered sub. Boltinoff and Catan shift the action to Korea and have a group of Marines allowing themselves to get frozen in a river so they can use the ice as cover for a surprise attack. Despite the unlikely premise it's probably the best story of the issue. Control coldly sends a couple of trapeze artists on a suicide mission in the O.S.S. installment "Death is an Old Friend" by Kanigher and Cruz.

Jonah Hex #41: Again Fleischer's story has a TV Western morality play feel. Hex brings in the Jody Randolph gang and they're to wait in jail for the arrival of "Hanging Harrow" the local judge. The judge turns out to be a woman who feels she has to be stern in the enforcement of the law to prove yourself qualified for her position. Her real challenge at this point, though, is from her son Rodney who is smitten with a saloon girl, Vanessa. Ostensibly to get money for diamond earrings, Vanessa enlists Rodney in a plan to free the Randolph Gang for $10,000, but it's a set-up: Vanessa is actually the girl of Jody Randolph. Rodney accidentally kills a deputy in the jailbreak and so is forced to stay with the gang even when the truth is revealed. Hex shows up to kill the Randolph gang and apprehend Vanessa and Rodney. Judge Harrow presides over their trial, showing her usual lack of mercy even for her son. Hex rides out of town as Vanessa and Rodney swing from the gallows. Ayers is inked by De Zuniga here so that its hard to see much Ayers in it.

In the Scalphunter backup, man who tried to kill Scalphunter last issue is revealed to be a college professor interested in excavating a burial mound or "ghost hill" as Scalphunter calls it. His assistants proved unscrupulous and tried to kill him once they found valuable grave goods. Scalphunter is none too happy with the mound excavation, but helps the professor stop the thieves--but perhaps ultimately they are slain by the ghosts of the mound, as the ending is ambiguous. Conway's story here feels padded as last issue turns out largely to be filler.

Dark Sun: The Gray

Cosmology is really on comes up and references to certain monsters or magic in the original Dark Sun campaign setting, but in the second edition supplement Defilers and Preservers the "planes" called the Gray and the Black are established. The Black mainly serves a backstory purpose or to be a place for monsters to be from. It's similar to the Plane of Shadow/Shadowfell, a concept I've felt to be of limited utility in most settings, Dark Sun included. 

The Gray is a different story. It at once solves one potential problem with the Great Wheel: there are too many afterlifes. It also provides a thematically appropriate underworld for the this particular setting.

The Gray is described as a "dreary, endless space" or "ashen haze." In conception it's not unlike Hades or Sheol. Like the River Lethe of Greek myth, the Gray steals memory and identity, but in this case the environment leeches it from them. Eventually their spiritual being becomes one with the gloom.

The only thing I don't like about the Gray as described is that I don't think it should be featureless. More interesting to me, would be if it mirrored in most respects the desert landscape of Athas, except perhaps more desolate. It would be doubted with ruins of dead cities and the tombs and monuments to long dead potentates who thought they could carry their riches into the afterlife--and perhaps, in a way they did, for all the good it did them.

Of course it should be possible (though not easy) to visit the Gray, like visiting the Underworld in Greek mythology. The souls of the dead are probably not dangerous for the most part to visitors, but the the ghosts that could pass between the Gray and the mortal realm might well be.

Dark Sun: The Desiccated Sea

Here I'm going to break a bit more with Dark Sun as published than I have in my previous posts. I'm afraid I don't really like the Sea of Silt. I know realism doesn't really have much of a place in a fantasy setting about sorcerer-kings and dragons, but it isn't very realistic. Also, I think it robs the setting of a bit of it's desert feel because it gives kind of an "out." Travel across the Sea of Silt is more difficult that ocean-going travel, true, but it provides some of the same type of adventuring opportunities. This could be a feature, but I see it as a bit of a bug.

Instead of the Sea of Silt, I'd just like to have a dried up sea. A harsh, saltpan basin dotted with a few shallow, hypersaline lakes where only bacteria can dwell, and tall mesas that were once islands. In other words, something like the Mediterranean would have been during the Messinian salinity crisis of the Miocene.

It would be an incredibly harsh environment, potentially. If the Sea of Silt had anything like the depth of the Mediterranean basin the pressure at the bottom would be something like 1.5 times that of "sea level" above it, and the temperatures might soar to 170 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer according to some models.

Given that salt is a quasi-element in D&D lore you would loose the Silt Sea creatures, but you could replace them with bizarre creatures of the the Quasi-elemental Plane of Salt if you wanted. You can still have giants on the islands if you wish (in an inversion of the tendency to insular dwarfism), but you can also have isolated city states in Planetary Romance fashion.

If one wanted commerce across the expanse, that would still be possible, but likely it would be via flight. If not that, land-sailing across the saltpan. It wouldn't be the most pleasant way to travel, but it could be done (if one avoided the summer months assuming temperatures as mentioned above, but we don't have to assume temperatures so high, either).

Once a thriving port, now a dead city on the cliffs

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1980 (wk 2, pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around June 26, 1980.

Legion of Super-Heroes #267: Conway and Janes continue the evil genie storyline. We find out that the genies left Earth to conquer the space long ago but were defeated by the Guardians and placed in bottles. Bouncing Boy realizes he couldn't make the genie return to the bottle before with his wish because the bottle had been destroyed, and genie's are super-literal. Armed with a new bottle, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel (splitting gives her more wishes) trap the jinn between two wishes he rather not fulfill and trap him in the bottle. The backup story is written by Kupperberg and has rare Legion art by Steve Ditko.

Mystery in Space #111: This revival of a series last published in 1966 is presumably a replacement for Timewarp. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these stories were slated to appear there and just got moved over. The contents are a mixed bag. Brown and Spiegle lead off with an EC-ish tale about murderous aliens who initially appear friendly. The ending gag has the last survivor of the diplomatic envoy trying to warn earth but because he sends the message "collect" it gets rejected. Also good (and EC reminiscent) is a wordless story by Brown and Aparo about a disguised diplomat hiding out among the conquering alien forces. Less good are the stories that remind me of subpar Warren stuff: a story about a time traveling robot and primitive humans, and a gag story about a time traveler getting an overdue tax bill. Then there's a goofy yarn by Barr and Ditko about a ridiculed scholar who steals a time machine to prove "the truth behind fairy tales" only to wind up accidentally manufacturing that truth with his futuristic technology.

New Adventures of Superboy #9: Last issue's mysteries come down to Phantom Zone criminals who are trying to ruin Superboy's life by driving him away from everyone he loves. Ma and Pa Kent manage to break free from the amnesia and hatch a desperate plan to let Superboy know they remember him. It's a weird comic by modern standards because there is never a confrontation between hero and villains.

Sgt. Rock #344: In the main story, Rock and a group of nameless joes are captured and stripped by a group of Germans looking to use their uniforms to infiltrate Easy Company. Only Rock survives and has to make it through the snowy wilderness in his underwear to warn his men. Kanigher and Redondo get creative with these plots, I'll give them that. The four short, uncredited, backup stories in this issue are all bad. 

Super Friends #36: Either Bridwell or Fradon must have been a fan of the Coneheads sketch on Saturday Night Live, because Warhead, the villain of this issue, looks just like one of them. Plastic Man and Woozy also guest star. Most of the issue is Plastic Man causing trouble for the Super Friends. The Wonder Twins backup I actually liked better than the main story. It has art by Tanghal and Colletta and features an astrally projecting. evolved saurian alien inadvertently causing panic by animating dinosaur fossils in a museum.

Unexpected #202: The cover is great, and the first story here has got to be the most disturbing tale I've read in one of these DC horror titles so far. Uslan and Henson present a murderous Easter Bunny out turn the tables on kids by dipping them in chocolate and biting their heads off! The other stories are a giant step down. Palmer and Landgraf/Orlando have a guy selling his soul...to an angel. The angel just thinks its funny to have the guy amuse he's obligated himself to the other side all his life and only reveals the true when the guy is on his death bed. Murders in a national park turn out to be committed by, well, all the animals working together in a silly Day of the Animals riff by Seeger and Geroche. 

Unknown Soldier #243: Haney and Ayers pit the "Immortal G.I." against the Vole, a Nazi spymaster who looks a lot like Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The story involves a secret bomb test in Scotland, a fake Loch Ness monster, a capture to deliver false information to the Germans, and a whole lot of changes of location that don't necessarily add up to much. The "Dateline: Frontline" backup written by Burkett with Tothian art by Ric Estrada is okay. The other backup has a Navy frogman battling a giant octopus. The art looks like it could be from a much older comic, but it's by Randall and Janes, so it just looks that way.

Untold Legend of Batman #3: I can't decide if Wein and Aparo's ending here is daring or hokey. But really, why choose? It's both! The mysterious foe out to get Batman is none other than....Bruce Wayne! It seems a blow to the head causes Batman to develop temporary multiple personalities. Or something. Anyway, no visits to a neurologist or long-term therapy necessary as a fight with Robin dressed up in Thomas Wayne's Bat Man costume party outfit cures him. Despite the hard to swallow ending, it's still a good series for a definitive, Bronze Age origin of Batman and his family. There's a map of the Batcave and schematics of bat equipment in the back.

Warlord #37: Read more about it here. It also has an OMAC backup where Starlin continues (and does a bit of retconning) of Kirby's series.

Weird Revisited: Chances Are Walter Velez Has Illustrated Your Game

The original version of this post appeared in 2016, but it's still true today...

Sure, it's the Frazettas and Fabians, or Blanches and Buscemas--or even Elmores and Caldwells whose art fueled most of our gaming imaginations, but at least for my game, the works of George Velez hit a bit closer to what the reality is at the table.

Exhibit A. See that? That's a pudgy wizard running from a dragon that looks like it doesn't have a whole lot of hit points.

This is all the PCs trying to parley with the leader of the NPCs at once.

The fight didn't go exactly how you planned? Quelle surprise.

Hassled by annoying little people? It's been known to happen.

Dark Sun: The Lion of Urik

Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk...

- The Epic of Gilgamesh

I am Hamanu, King of the World, King of the

Mountains and the Plains, King of Urik, for whom

the roaring winds and the all-mighty sun have decreed

a destiny of heroism...

- Dark Sun Campaign Setting (1991)

Urik's name was no doubt inspired by the ancient Mesopotamian city-state of Uruk. It's Sorcerer-King Hamanu likely got his name and love of law and order from the Babylonian king Hammurabi, but I think his character is a bit more analogous to the Sumerian, mythic hero Gilgamesh. 

Hamanu is the most heroic of the Sorcerer-Kings. Not in the modern sense of being a noble or a fighter for good, though. He is neither. Rather, he is a hero more ancient sense: a doer of mighty deeds. While the Dark Sun campaign setting perhaps intended Hamanu more as a brilliant tactician and military strategist rather than a man of arms, I feel likely he's much more interesting (and differentiated from the other Sorcerer-Kings) if he is a mighty-thewed warrior, imbued with magical might. I envision him something like the titular Exalted of the any edition of the Exalted rpg, or perhaps Solomon David from Kill Six Billion Demons:

A side issue (but an important worldbuilding one, I think): Hamanu's banner. We are told in multiple places that Hamanu's (i.e. Urik's) troops care a "lion banner." The novel The Crimson Legion once describes it as a "lion that walks like a man," but nowhere where else gets this specific. The novel later has Hamanu assuming or projecting a monstrous, leonine form. 

This would suggest Athas, a world with beetle-like draft animals and reptile-bird mounts, has mundane lions. To be fair, Athas has mundane humans, so it's not impossible. It's also possible lions died out back before the cataclysmic times that changed the world from some more typical fantasy setting to its current state and exist now only as semi-mythical heraldic beasts. That's not a bad explanation, but I prefer my Athas to never have been a standard fantasy world, favoring a more Planetary Romance environment. I assume "lion" is a translation--like "Barsoomian lion" is sometimes used for "banth" in Burroughs's Mars series. In fact, I say just choose your favorite depiction of a banth and that's your Athasian lion.

Dark Sun: Tumult in Tyr

In the Dark Sun campaign setting, the city-state of Tyr is presented as on the brink of some drastic change. The Sorcerer-King Kalak has confiscated the slaves of the nobles to build his ziggurat, is taxing the people unmercifully to pay for it, and is neglecting his trade obligations to neighboring states. Kalak's reasons for doing this and the results of his actions for for his city play out in the novel The Verdant Passage and in the module Freedom.

In canon, revolution comes to Tyr as Kalak tries to bootstrap himself into dragonhood, and he's thwarted and killed. These events are reflected in the descriptions of Tyr in the revised campaign setting and the 4e Dark Sun setting book.

There are a few other interesting tidbits regarding Tyr. It has the only iron mines in the region. It has a Senate made up of the city nobles that are marginalized and at odds with Kalak's templar bureaucracy. Kalak keeps the still-living, severed heads of former allies Sacha and Wyan around to advise him, and they live on blood. (There is some discrepancy about who Sacha and Wyan are/were. Verdant Passage has Kalak claim they were chieftains that helped him conquered Tyr, and Sacha is presented as the progenitor of the Mericles noble house. In both later novels and rpg material, they are fellow "champions of Rajaat" killed by the dragon.)

Metaplot aside, resolving "Tyr as powder keg" too quickly in the line feels like a misstep to me. I would drag this out, let PCs get involved with the interplay of the factions. Even if they have no desire to become revolutionaries, there's a lot of interesting gameplay that could be wrung from this, whether the players approach it like Yojimbo or just work to avoid it.

I would ditch the name "the Senate" (too much Roman association) but keep the oligarchy as a faction, maybe remaining it the Council or Supreme Council (which the chief governmental body of Carthage was called) or even "The Mighty Ones" (the literal translation of the council advising Phoenician kings).

I love Kalak's plan to jumpstart himself into a dragon, so that has to stay. I also think the severed head advisors are a great touch. I would borrow a bit from Clark Ashton Smith's "The Empire of the Necromancers" and say that Sacha and Wyan (I would change those names, too) were sorcerers and colleagues of Kalak who all came together to the village of Tyr, which at that time was in a small, marshy, wetland amid the ruins of a more ancient city. The three built the city, perhaps with undead labor, but eventually Kalak betrayed and killed the other two.