GRIDSHOCK 20XX

Truthfully, a lot of times I back a Kickstarter, particularly something like a Zinequest thing, I am vaguely disappointed when it finally arrives. Usually, it isn't that the actually content disappoints particularly (though sometimes it does), but it's just that having the object in my hands fails next to the expectations from all those months ago when I backed it.

Not so with GRIDSHOCK 20XX! 

What's GRIDSHOCK 20XX it's a post-apocalyptic, superhero setting with a 80s future aesthetic. It's a bit anime and manga, a bit Rifts, a bit American and British sci-fi comics of the mid to late 80s. It runs on the superhero game ICONS, but the setting is the real draw.

This is not a review. The author is a friend of mine, and I did some editing and playtesting on it. But if anything, I think that sort of familiarity would have made the final receipt of the books as perfunctory. Not so! Chris Vermeren's layout and design, and the art of Grey Wizard and Steven de Waele, work so well with Paul's vision of the world, that it's like finally seeing it the way it was meant to be.

Plus the printing is high quality, too.

Sure, you could say these perhaps stretch the definition of a zine--but they are not the product of a corporate environment. This wasn't made by committee, but rather it's the product of talented individuals.

Hit Paul up on twitter and see if you can convince him to do a second printing!

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1981 (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 January 22, 1981. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #274: Conway and Ditko/Chiaramonte present "The Exaggerated Death of Ultra Boy." Pulsar Stargrave apparently killing Ultra Boy has only sent him sailing through space where he is picked up by a pirate ship, whose lady captain wears a really ridiculous costume. The amnesiac Jo Nah becomes a member of her crew and her lover. The Legion comes into conflict with these pirates, with only Saturn Girl realizing the identity of Ultra Boy. This is a pretty good issue, but Ditko's art just doesn't seem right for the Legion to me.

Detective Comics #501: Conway and Newton/Adkins deliver a really solid lead story this issue. Busybody Bruce Wayne is concerned when Lucius Fox and Alfred separately receive telegrams from Paris that cause them to drop everything and head out to the airport. Batman follows and discovers someone is trying to kill them. It has something to do with Mademoiselle Marie, the famous French WW2 resistance leader--who both Fox and Alfred worked with at times during the war. Batman confronts his friends, and they tell him to go home. Then a group with guns, led by a dark-haired young woman, breaks in and threatens them. Batman starts taking them out, but Alfred hits from from behind saying he can't let him hurt "Julia." The dark-haired Julia, for her part, levels a gun at Alfred and announces that either he or Fox is Mlle. Marie's murderer--and she plans to execute the killer!

Burkett and Delbo continue the adventures of Batgirl in the backup. Dr. Voodoo is plotting his revenge. He injures her friend who repairs her bike, then strains her relationship with her boyfriend with voodoo. Finally, he attacks her and injects her with a "mystic drug." This really seemed a very Marvel sort of story. Maybe not a great Marvel story, but one of that style. To be continued next issue.

New Adventures of Superboy #16: An Olympic athlete and a Nobel laureate move to Smallville with their son. They secretly hoping to find the source of Superboy's power to empower their merely above average son. Another snoozer from Bates and Schaffenberger, who have done better here before, but not usually. The backup continues the story of the Superboy from one universe teaching the Clark Kent of an earlier era in another universe how to use his powers. I never bought the rationale for Crisis that the DC universe was too complicated, but stories like this undermine my argument.

Sgt. Rock #351: Kanigher and Redondo put Easy in North Africa, where Rock runs afoul of a German commander who things men are like ants. Because Kanigher never met a central metaphor he didn't want to hammer into the ground, the German buries Rock up to his neck and sets his special ants on him. There's a story set during the Boer War that doesn't amount to much. There's a two-page featurette on the Holocaust with art by Joe Kubert, which doesn't sit right with me particularly, at least in part because on its list of people killed in the camps it puts Protestants ahead of Jews and Catholics ahead of Romani--and leaves off a lot of other groups.  The last story is a "Men of Easy Co." feature about a brutal, perhaps even sadistic, soldier name Johnny Doe, who either is killed by his own grenade or shot by Rock, we aren't told. 

Super Friends #43: Bridwell and Tanghal follow-up the evolved clone of the Overlord with an even more evolved clone, Futurio-XX (times 10). Futurio manages to capture a number of the Super Friends but Green Fury helps get them out. Ultimately Futurio-XX gives up pretty easy because he's smart enough to realize Overlord plans to betray him and not give him the bride he promised.

The Pasko/Staton Plastic Man strip that used to be in adventure turns up here as a backup. The punny villain here is Lou Kwashus aka Chatterbox, a talk DJ with mob ties. I really can't say anymore about that.

Unexpected #209: Wessler and Tanghal open things up with a "curse mummy's treasure" tale that sees the treasure seeker decay to dust as the mummy steals his life. Next is a Timewarp story by Drake and Duursema about indigenous Mesoamericans who are fooled into thinking arriving conquistadors are gods, but then kill benevolent aliens who arrive afterwards, having become mistrustful of "Gods from the Sun." The Witching Hour story by Kashdan and Rodriquez is notable for the youngest witch, Cynthia, being a character in the story (not just the narrator) and also for all the sexy poses Rodriquez draws her in while she's narrating. Her boyfriend, a would-be puzzlemaker, gets swindled by the owner of a large company, but she gets revenge by trapping him in a puzzle. 

The Barr/Sparling Johnny Peril story has Johnny on the run from the "geeks" as he calls them, that were working in the factory from last issue. Johnny makes it to the front porch of an old friend. He finds the parents of the girl he met last issue (who turned out to be another "geek") are also hiding in the house with his friend with the geeks surrounding them. Luckily, some of Johnny's friends from previous issues arrive. They escape the house and head out to storm the factory. The Master of the Star-Gems takes a moment to gloat to Peril before disappearing.

Warlord #44:  Read more about it here. The OMAC backup by Mishkin/Cohn and LaRocque/Colletta has OMAC trying to navigate the new peace now that he's helped IC&C defeat the Verner Brothers. It's interesting in that I have no idea where they are going with the story.

In Limbo

"Outside the ordered universe that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity..."

- Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath

Slaad call their birthplace the "Spawning Stone," but that protoplasmic, protean god-mass looks nothing like any Material stone. This is perhaps a reference to its relative immutability. Its purpose is set, and in a conceptual realm, that is a notable solidity. 

Some believe all slaad to merely be local projections or metastases of the spawning stones. Despite their ability to hold conversations and pursue agendas, they are also thought to lack true sentience or consciousness. 

Entropy and Madness are the gods of the slaad. They are aspects of Limbo itself, perhaps, stimuli acting upon the spawning stone in some manner. They care nothing for the worship of the slaad, perhaps because they know that worship to be mere only behavioral loops without meaning--or perhaps because it is simply beneath their notice.

Weird Revisited: Weird Cosmoses

Recent discussion on Discord had me thinking about this to works, which I first posted on back in 2015. 

My Baroque Space setting draws inspiration from a number of different sources. Here are two I've come across recently that are well worth checking out for rpg inspiration:

I got Brass Sun: The Wheel of Worlds for Christmas 2014. Edginton and Culbard bring us a science fantasy (originally appearing in 2000AD) set in a world that's essentially a giant orrery. It's brass sun starts to die and a young girl has to go on a quest across the worlds to find the key to restart it.

Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle is an alternate history hard science fiction novel--though the science is the science of Aristotle! A thousand years after Alexander, the super-powers of Greece and the Middle Kingdom of China are in a protracted war. A scientist from the Delian League commands a daring expedition to fly a spacecraft built from a piece of the Moon through the crystal spheres to get the ultimate weapon, a piece of the elemental fire of the Sun, to defeat the Taoists once and for all.

Excerpts from A Company Training Manual

Imagine if you could just think of any object you wanted and have it just appear? Incredibly, the properties of this exospace allows for just that. It's an incredible, near infinite resource for all humankind. You can be proud that you are an integral part of our extraction team. You do the hard work, so everyone can benefit.

But to do that work safely, there are a number of rules you need to follow. Unnecessary accidents don't just hurt the people involved, they hurt the Company and the entire industry! Keep these safety steps in mind. A lot depends on it!

• Check your gear. Your sigil-guarded environmental suit and your tether are your literal lifeline. Make sure all functions are in the green. Remind your crewmembers to do the same!
• Use the buddy system. Stay in communication with your assigned buddy on the standard channel the entire time you are in the outside. Make sure to perform reciprocal environmental suit integrity checks at the beginning and end of every shift.
• Remember your mental focus training. The local exospace is psychomorphic--that means it changes in response to the thoughts and feelings of intelligent minds. Since that's the very property we're trying to extract, we can't have our ground crew getting in the way of our value-creation team. Let them do the wishing, and you just handle the pickup! [remove for next edition of manual. See cost-benefit analysis report of mental focus training. The in-development mental grounding app, designed to be triggered by vital signs fluctuation or physiologic signs of distraction has a planned rollout by Q3. ]
• Keep your cool. Despite your training, one of your idle thoughts or the daydream of one of your team members can create unwanted alterations in the nearby space. These changes can be distracting, sometimes even frightening. Ignore them and get the job done!
• Don't feed the animals. You've no doubt heard the rumors of native lifeforms. We're still trying to verify those claims. If anything should anything try to communicate with you, notify your supervisor immediately. In no circumstance should you respond to questions or exchange anything with them, including information.

Follow these rules and any updates provided by your crew chief, and you'll get home safe with a big bonus!

Wednesday Comics: DC, April 1981 (wk 2 pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around January 22, 1981.

Action Comics #518: I feel like it's been a while since we had a "good" issue of this title (and I'm trying to judge by the standards of the era), and Conway and Swan fail to deliver one here. A big claw comes out of the sky and steals a dam. Superman is contacted by an alien prince, Karmault, who explains that his people's telekinetic powers have been waning, so they need technical know-how they never needed before. Karmault states he merely wishes to meet with scientist and acquire knowledge, but his brother Farlung stole the bridge and plans to keep taking stuff. When Superman confronts Farlung, it turns out Karmault has played them both, setting Farlung up to steal stuff as a distraction while Karmault siphons the knowledge of Earth scientists. Superman sets them both straight. 

The Aquaman backup continues the DeMatteis/Heck storyline. We learn that Ocean-Master was working with the (maybe?) Greek gods, Amphirite and Poseidon. Meanwhile, Aquaman is trying to puzzle out how Orm got his hands on advanced Atlantean tech when Poseidon shows up. Poseidon proves to be Aquaman's superior in commanding fish, and Aquaman is pummeled to unconsciousness by their onslaught. Poseidon saves him from being killed, though, explaining to Cal that he is Aquaman's father.

Adventure Comics #480: More stories of heroes (and villains) submitted by the readers in Dial "H" for Hero. Chris and Vicki become Mr. Mystical and Molecular Maiden to help out the alien Sphinx in the first story and become Star Flare and Hypno Girl to take on the pirate Thunder Axe in the second. In the third story, it takes two sets of heroes, Solar Flare and Midnight Wisp and Strato-Girl and the Wrangler, to stop the Battering Ram at the circus. All of these are written by Wolfman with art by Infantino. Wolfman's writing is notable for the vicious retorts Vicki gives an annoying classmate. The character submission form is printed in the back of this issue, and it's surprising blatant marketing research.

Brave & the Bold #173: Conway and Aparo team the Dark Knight with a Guardian of the Universe and Green Lantern. The Guardian shows up in Gotham and tells Batman that there is an imposter within the Guardians. He follows Batman through some routine crimefighting before Batman agrees to go with him to find Hal Jordan. Jordan doesn't remember that he's a Green Lantern. It turns out the culprit and imposter is Sinestro. The three take off to Maltus to try to find a way to stop him. This is an unusually cosmic Brave & the Bold. I miss this Bronze Age Batman that would deal with this sort of stuff without being all grumpy about it and acting like it was a waste of his time when he could be stopping street crime in Gotham.

The Nemesis backup by Burkett and Spiegle has the vigilante in England, on the trail of a chess grandmaster, Noel Chesteron, who's on The Council. For some reason, Chesterton is trying to kidnap Sir Robert Greene, a Knight of the Garter. Utlimately, Nemesis fails and finds himself facing an officer of Scotland Yard who thinks he was in with the kidnappers.

Green Lantern #139: Green Lantern has been split into a good and evil parts by Eclipso. The villain leaves evil GL to take care of the good one. The evil lantern has red power, so Green Lantern figures he's vulnerable to purple and uses that to defeat him. Green Lantern manages to fight his way into Eclipso's "murder moon" where the villain plans to use solar power to free himself from Gordon once and for all and achieve greater power. GL has messed with his computer though, and Gordon asserts control again. Meanwhile, someone is forcing Carol Ferris to plant bombs at Ferris Aircraft.

In the Adam Strange backup by Laurie Sutton and Rodriquez, Strange is returned to Rann by the zeta-beam, but separated from Alanna. Searching for her, Strange encounters a queen of the Mer-People. The mer-folk need help dealing with a warlike machine, which Strange surmises is some sort of ancient weapon of war. Tracing it back to it's origin, the two explore an old military installation and encounter a robot who seems to be protecting it. This sort of planetary romance stuff is exactly what Adam Strange should be doing.

House of Mystery #291: Two vampire stories this month. DeMatteis and Sutton continue Andrew Bennett's adventures in I...Vampire. Bennett is trying to take down Emil Veldt, a vampire using heroin-addicted labor to unload his shipments of illicit drugs. It turns out Veldt is also a heroin addict, as he has been feeding his workers. Heedlessly running into the sunlight to get his fix, he's killed. DeMatteis and Ayers present another vampire story about a vampire on a derelict sailing ship getting on to a new vessel to feed. One sailor opposes and ultimately kills him, but is turned into a vampire himself, and the cycle begins anew. 

The authors of the last two stories need to be reminded this is a horror title. Barr and Tanghal/DeMulder present a "humorous" short about an unscrupulous lawyer looking to swindle Cain out of the oil rights to the land under the House of Mystery. Cain transports the guy to the age of dinosaurs so he can get the fossil fuels while they're fresh. The last story by Gill and Zamora tells the tale of an author who throws away his dedication to the noble and decent in life to write tales of depravity and immorality--and gets successful doing it. Then, he commits suicide when he feels like he's gone to far, and his previous wholesome work gets respect after his death. 

Unknown Soldier #250: This is a special issue with the sort of craziness only Bob Haney could bring to it. The Unknown Soldier appears to have turned traitor! He and Hitler are inseparable in their bromance and every step of the way an all-star group of U.S. troops and allies are out to kill the turncoat. We get assassination attempts by Mademoiselle Marie, the Haunted Tank crew, the Losers, and finally Sgt. Rock and Easy Company. I guess Haney ran out of pages so he couldn't include the Viking Commando? Maybe he wanted to keep it "realistic?" Of course, it's all very silly, but Haney makes it work. It turns out, naturally, that the Soldier is only pretending to join the Nazis so he can get his hands on their frightening new bioweapon and destroy it. 

The Retro Expanse

The Expanse had its finale on Amazon Prime this week. Its rocket-propelled space battles, intrasolar system conflict, and relative paucity of AI, cyber-, or bio- tech got me thinking about science fiction of the Golden Age and the pulps. I think you could fairly easily transplant much of the conflict and setting of the series to a setting with gleaming-hulled rockets, habitable planets beyond Earth, and 50s haircuts. That last one is optional.

There are different approaches to take, of course. You could go full Captain Future with every celestial body in the system with enough gravity to be spheroid having native human life, or something more like the work of Stanley Weinbaum where the other worlds are not so hospitable to humans and the life there is alien. I think a Weinbaum approach would fit well with the protomolecule and ring gate stuff, but that material is less interesting to me that the human-colonized solar system conflict. My approach would be something along the lines of Asimov's Lucky Starr juveniles or some 50s work of Poul Anderson:  a view of the planets that proved to inaccurate, but was plausible (if optimistic) at the time the stories were written.

So the settled inner worlds would include Earth, Mars, and Venus. Venus would be a water world, perhaps with artificial islands or undersea cities. Mercury would likely research stations or the like, controlled by the UN on Earth. Unlike in The Expanse, Mars and Venus would likely have native life, though probably not intelligent life.

The Belt would be much like in the show, though in keeping with pulp conventions, pirates would be more common. The Outer moons might be a bit more hospitable (perhaps a lot more depending on how pulp you want to get) so the Outers as a whole group might be a bit better off than in The Expanse.

What does this add? Well, it certainly adds a new aesthetic. And of course, since this becomes alternate history, so you've got the potential for it to go in a very different direction from similar core conceits and concepts.