Wednesday Comics: DC, June 1982 (week 3)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around March 18, 1982.

Brave & the Bold #187: Boatner and Aparo present a Batman/Metal Men team-up with a continuity deep cut. The Metal Men are being destroyed one by one and Batman tries to protect the remaining ones from harm. He fails at that, but he also discovers they all have lost their memories of a previous member of their group he recalls. Batman asks Doc Magnus about that and learns that the Doctor is responsible for erasing the Metal Men's memories of "Nameless" after their first reconstruction. Magnus rebuilds them and Batman convinces him to give them their memories back.

It turns out Nameless is at the root of the attacks, as is Platinum Man (one of a group of now-destroyed gender-swapped Metal Men). Once their neglect of Nameless is explained as due to Magnus' actions, the vendetta by the snubbed robots halt. Tin and Nameless can resume their relationship and they decide to get "alloyed," but the ceremony comes to a tragic end when a rogue Missile Man attacks them and Nameless sacrifices her existence to save her friends. She dies with the new name Tin had given her: Beautiful.

Legion of Super-Heroes #288: Princess Projectra and Karate Kid are about to be executed by her usurping cousin, but a squad of Legionnaires shows up just in time. Karate Kid and Projectra best her cousin, and Projectra ascends the throne. Meanwhile, the spy squad and Saturn Girl are lost on an icy world after an attempt to infiltrate Khundia--necessitating Saturn Girl returning to her pre-disco outfit. Back at HQ the remaining Legionnaires are trying to figure out what to do.

Green Lantern #153: Wolfman/Mishkin and Cohn and Staton/DeCarlo present the solution to last issues mystery.  Jordan realizes that all beings on M'Brai - the Savages, the Cormm, and the Queln - are part of the same species evolving cyclically: every individual progresses from single-celled organism all the way to Queln and beyond, and then repeats the cycle, without retaining any memory of it. So if the Queln use their devolving ray to get rid of the other factions, their entire race will become extinct. Hal uses a meteor to destroy the satellite and stop the Queln plan. He figures out that the meteor shower is in collision course to the planet, and it could disrupt its entire life cycle. Hal deviates the meteors, succeeding in his mission.

In the backup by Kupperberg and Infantino, Jeryll attempts to stop the invasion on Glirell peacefully as she had been commanded. But when a group of children is killed by the invaders, Glirell's people explode into violence in outrage. Realizing, that this is her burden not her people's, Jeryll stops the suicidal charge of her people and goes on to destroy the invasion fleet. In the aftermath, the Council tells her that she is forgiven, and won't be banished. However, Jyrell bids farewell to her people and leaves voluntarily, feeling she betrayed the peaceful ways of her people. 

House of Mystery #305: The first story by Cavallieri and von Eeden has a derivative artist trapped in a world populated by characters from famous art works after he tries to unleash his potential. "The Rings of Kur-Alet" by Jones and Carillo is tale set in ancient Egypt of time traveling magic rings and a Pharoah and his jealous wife who met their ends using them.

The Jones/Colon "I...Vampire" story takes an odd turn as a cure for cancer is discovered. Also, Vampires across the world begin dying mysteriously with no marks. Bennett tracks into the Egyptian desert. He finds her helpless and dying, where she reveals that the cancer cure has made humans poisonous to vampires! In her weakness she's reverted to the personality he fell in love with, losing her evil. She tells Andrew about the magic rings from the previous story this issue, so they can use them to travel to a time when they are still human and be together. Andrew helps Mary reach the rings, but she betrays him and travels back alone. He travels back in time after her.

Sgt. Rock #365: The main story is another one of those introduce a new character to Easy Company who dies heroically. In this case, it's a kid who makes jigsaw puzzles. It also has the common Sgt. Rock story trait of reviewing how great the recurring members of Easy are.

The other two stories are oddly both science fiction. In the first, by Harris and Mandrake future warriors find out that their ultimate weapon which supposedly allows them to take control of enemy soldiers unleashes their enemies' primitive instincts. In the last story, two operatives who can't get along are united in death on an alien world.

Superman Family #219: Kupperberg and Mortimer have the Master Jailer show up and put the Girl of Steel in quite a predicament. He uses a device to put her in a sort of phantom state so she can observe, but not interact with the world. Playing clever by using a Supergirl robot only backfires on Kara as it leads to the destruction of the device she needs to change back to normal. In the Bridwell/ Schaffenberger Mr. and Mrs. Superman, Supes is perplexed when the Flying Tiger identity he created last issue, starts committing crimes. Lois comes undercover again as his sidekick "Kitty" to ferret our the perpetrator who turns out to be Funny Face.

Jimm Olsen, star reporter for the Metropolis Eagle, is given the assignment to discover Superman's secret identity. In reality, this is all a dream implanted by Brain Storm to trick Olsen into uncovering Supes' ID when he wakes up. In the O'Flynn/Oksner have Lois meeting another Lois Lane, a blonde fan of hers who runs into trouble when a thief attacks her boss. The characterization may not be quite right (though it isn't bad) but the Teri Hatcher Lois Lane of the '90s is a pretty much exact visual representation of Oksner's version of the character in the early 80s, much more so than the Margot Kidder version.

Warlord #58: I detailed the main story in this issue here. In the Kupperberg and Duursema Arion backup, the three beings representing the balance are mocking Arion and his powers seem as nothing to them, but then it turns out Calculha was still around, just waiting for Arion to show humility. He dismisses the three beings and reveals that Arion was born in the stars from cosmic forces. Then, he sends the sorcerer and his pals on their way back home.

Mythic Exalted

Back n 2001, I heard White Wolf was releasing a fantasy game. I was interested when I heard (I don't remember where) that it was going to have a Sword & Sorcery vibe and was inspired by CAS's Zothique and Tanith Lee' Flat Earth series. Still somewhere near the height of my old school Sword & Sorcery mania in those long-ago days, and impressed with the White Wolf products I had, I was bound to check it out as soon as I could make the purchase. 

I was a bit disappointed with what I found. Tanith Lee's series was namechecked (and the world was flat), as was other intriguing inspirations like the Old Testament, the Ramayana, and Greek myth, but the world failed to deliver anything close to that flavor to me. Some of that was the anime and video game aspects. Another was how the World of Darkness related-framework was implemented.  None of those things were bad, just different than what I had thought I was going to get. Maybe as Grabowski said: "it's not just Ninja Scroll the RPG, it's also a pulp fantasy revival game that happens to have anime parts," but the pulp fantasy elements seemed pretty low in the mix for me.

Mainly, the world of Creation, just didn't seem very flavorful. One of the original writers was of the opinion that the made-up words/names common to fantasy are silly to modern audiences. I've seen later writers support that view. Whether that was true (and whether it remains true post the success of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and The Witcher), I was and am a fantasy fan, and it doesn't reflect my preferences.

Over time, I got over my initial disappoint and came to appreciate Exalted's Creation for what it did do well: providing a sort of fantasy supers in a world with a background conceptual complexity not unlike the other "deep settings" of rpg lore: Tekumel and Glorantha. I recognize the little bits of cool worldbuilding that existed side by side with what I had seen as an unevocative initial conception.

But I still sort of wonder what the setting would have looked like had it leaned heavier or Sword & Sorcery and Sword & Sandals and ancient myth instead of fighting anime, the requisites of White Wolf splat book based line-development, and magitech.

So, I think I may spend a few posts thinking about that.

Gnydrion

Tom Kidd

I finally decided (well, at least decided for the time being) on a name for a previously nameless science fantasy setting I've blogged about a few times over the years. The planet will be named Gnydrion (with a silent "g", I think) inspired by Clark Ashton Smith's original name for Zothique, Gyndron.

Here's a selection of a couple of posts in the setting:

Science Fantasy Hexcrawl Inspirations

Two Towns

And the post where I collated more of them can be found here.

GRIDSHOCK'D!

I had a conversation with my friend Paul Vermeren recently about his 80s-veneered, post-apocalyptic superhero game, GRIDSHOCK 20XX available on drivethru in pdf and in hardcopy from Exalted Funeral. Here's the first part of that conversation:

What's the secret origin of GRIDSHOCK 20XX?

GRIDSHOCK 20XX was born from my then-local gaming group's attempt to return to playing Rifts, a game we had loved as teens, 20+ years after we had left it behind. Though we knew there were things about Rifts that were going to be difficult for us to work with, we still had a lot of enthusiasm for the world and our characters, and we wanted to give it another shot as adults. We eventually ended up replacing the Palladium rules with Fate, and then ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying (when we wanted something Fate-like that could handle all the crazy powers and characters). While we enjoyed it for a while, it eventually fizzled out. Despite all the elements in Rifts that didn't work for us anymore, I felt strongly that there was something worth exploring further. 

For me, the genius of Rifts was that it's a post-apocalyptic game which still seems to include every single thing its creator thinks is cool, sort of like Dungeons & Dragons is a hodgepodge of every variety of fantasy. So, I decided I should try to make my own "spiritual successor" to Rifts. I stumbled at first, but it began to take shape once I realized that rather than starting with the real world as the starting point, I could create a post-apocalyptic setting that included all of the elements I wanted if the world was a superhero setting before everything went wrong. Since the superhero genre already contains elements of every other one, I could include whatever I liked.

As I tinkered with what I was calling GRIDSHOCK, it became less of a Rifts tribute and more of its own unique thing - though the influence of Rifts is pretty clear if you look for it. After several years of tinkering, it dawned on me that I could keep on tinkering forever, so I decided (on the spur of the moment) to publish what I had written as a set of small zine-style booklets, using ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying for the system. Lo and behold, GRIDSHOCK 20XX was born.

As currently conceived, is it in your mind more a "post-apocalyptic superhero setting" or "post-apocalyptic kitchen sink setting?" Essentially, is it more like Rifts where anything goes and it can be played in different ways or is it more focused and aimed as supers?

I've occasionally called GRIDSHOCK 20XX a "post-superhero" setting. It's a superhero world that went terribly wrong in 1986 is very important to understanding its present day, 20XX. Many of the player character templates (called Vectors in the setting) riff on established superhero archetypes. In its current booklet incarnation, it uses a superhero RPG system, because ICONS is relatively light but can handle the full array of powers and characters the setting includes. 

The game can played in many different ways, but the default mode of play in GRIDSHOCK 20XX assumes that you're heroic characters standing up to a villainous status quo. That's not usually the case in the traditional superhero genre. 

If you called the world of GRIDSHOCK 20XX a "kitchen sink" or even "gonzo" setting, I'd say that's probably fair. Those terms are often used to describe Rifts, but while Rifts was apparently a cyberpunk-esque world when its apocalypse happened, GRIDSHOCK 20XX was a comic book superhero world. As a result, I've put a good deal of work into unleashing many of the wilder elements of the superhero genre in ways that I think make for an interesting post-apocalyptic, kitchen sink setting where civilization has been radically reshaped, if not destroyed. 

Are there any particular superhero comics you'd point people to for inspiration?

There's a whole page of inspirations (seinen manga, European comics, British comics, movies, video games, toy lines, cartoons, etcetera that were on my mind in addition to American superhero comics) listed on the back inside cover of the fourth zine, Reference.

But to your question, the "Days of Future Past" storyline from Uncanny X-Men #141-142 is the first exposure I had to the idea of a superhero world gone disastrously wrong - though since it does have all those other influences, GRIDSHOCK 20XX is perhaps not quite as grim. It's still something I would recommend. GRIDSHOCK 20XX also has things in common with "deconstructed" superhero comics like Watchmen or Squadron Supreme, and with "alternate future" stories like Earth X, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, and maybe even "Age of Apocalypse."

Wednesday Comics: DC, June 1982 (week 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 March 11, 1982.

Batman #348: Conway and Colan/Janson are back, and we've returned to the ongoing storyline with the "Batman Family" returning to Wayne Manor. There's an amusing bit where Bruce and Dick lose control of the giant penny while moving it. Anyway, Conway's looking to tie up the Man-Bat story, so the Man-Bat is lurking about, just as Langstrom's wife, Francine, and kid show up to accuse Wayne (somewhat rightly) of not fulfilling his promise to help them. Batman makes the questionable to decision to take Langstrom's little girl with him into the caves where Man-Bat may be hiding to deliver the new antidote (that may be lethal) to him. In the end, it works out, though not until after some serious child endangerment.  Meanwhile, Vicki Vale has told her editor she thinks she might know Batman's identity, and that information gets to Rupert Thorne.

Flash #309: Bates and Infantino/Jensen have Barry and police colleagues forced to attend the birthday party of Willard Wiggins' son, which is a great opportunity for Colonel Computron to attack again. The Flash thwarts the attack, but Computron escapes. Again, we get Basil Nurbin and his wife watching the news and lowkey accusing each other of being Computron, but now a college age daughter is added to the mix. Then, Captain Boomerang shows up, looking to help Wiggins out for giving him his start, but then Computron makes him a better offer.

The Dr. Fate backup continues in the hands of Gerber/Pasko and Giffen/Mahlstedt. Nelson's again seeing visions of doom in the Orb of Fate, so Dr. Fate must investigate, and Inza again isn't happy, which I suppose is realistic, but seems a bit of backsliding from the resolution of the last story.  Fate investigates an Iowa farm and gets blasted by a farmer who is more than he seems. Meanwhile, Inza agrees to have dinner with Vern Copeland, a museum director who's been trying to get in touch with Nelson.

G.I. Combat #242: Perhaps in an effort to modernize the title, Kanigher and Catan introduce the Mercenaries feature. These characters are an American (Gordon), a Brit (Prince), and a German (Horst) who are ex-members of the French Foreign Legion, now become mercenaries. In this first story, they are fighting to defend a democratically elected African leader from a General and his forces trying to take over the government in a civil war. The story reveals their code (they refuse to work for the General who's willing to pay more because they've already got a contract). In the end, they don't get paid at all because they fail to bring the General in alive.

We get two Haunted Tank stories. In the first, they do mail delivery and then take over defense of a hill for a unit already dead when they arrived. They sit down to answer the dead men's letters. In the second, pretty ridiculous story, Jeb is found wandering and raving, and he's put in a psych unit. Still raving, he becomes the leader of the other patients, and leads them in an escape. They head out and rescue Jeb's crew, only then does he come to his senses and recall what the "green umbrella" he's being yelling about is: the camouflage cover of a German installation. In the end, all this nonsense has cured the other psych unit escapees.

Nothing special in the rest of the stories. Allikas and Glanzman/Ayers have a blacksmith getting back at a deserter in the Sino-Japanese War by sabotaging a horseshoe. Kashdan and Ayers have a photographer turn his camera into a smoke bomb to help defeat a German pillbox. The second story from this team has a black cat being good luck for a squad of American G.I.s.

Jonah Hex #61: Jonah and Mei Ling sent by the Warlord to infiltrate the Imperial palace so Jonah can assassinate the Emperor. Mei Ling is smuggled into the seraglio, while Jonah has to sneak in on his own. Unfortunately, after the agent of the Warlord that helped them is captured and tortured by the Emperor's forces, things get tough, and Jonah appears to be likely to get captured.

Saga of the Swamp Thing #2: Photo cover on this one, a still from the movie that opened less than a month before. Swamp Thing and the little girl, Casey, are captured by goons working for Sunderland Corporation. A man with mechanical hands, Grasp, plans to torture Swampy to get the secret of the bio-restorative formula. Somehow, Casey manifests psychic abilities that saves Swamp Thing. They escape and Grasp doesn't survive. 

New Teen Titans #20: Kid Flash writes a letter to his parents, filling them in recent events in the lives of himself and his friends: a new super-villain calling himself the Disruptor attacks members of the team; the Titans throw a surprise birthday party for Cyborg; and Kid Flash himself is captured by the Disruptor and his demanding father, a forgotten Batman villain, "Brains" Beldon. The Titans run to the rescue, but the Disruptor keeps disrupting their powers until he is defeated by Raven's soul-self. The "day in the life" framing Wolfman and Perez chose for this issue works well and gives the Titans more depth and personality than was typical of supers comics of this era, outside of the X-Men.

Superman #372: This is a crazy one from Bates and Swan. Scientist Mason Strath threatens to destroy the world with a sphere of anti-matter if Superman doesn't go back in time and save his kids from drowning in a "tidal wave." Superman takes him back in time to prove the past can't be changed, but he discovers that the kids were just robots! It turns out his work has made Strath radioactive, and the government removed the kids to protect them and replaced them with robots. When the robots got washed out to see in the tidal wave, they just figured they'd let Strath think they died. Superman creates suits to protect the kids from the radiation and reunites father and kids. Also, he stops the anti-matter that slipped Strath's control.

Rozakis and Kane bring back "Superman 2021." Jimmy Olsen's grandchildren are kidnapped by two extortionists, so old man Jimmy improvises a new secret signal to call Superman III for help. It's amusing how "futuristic" the 2021 clothes look.

13th Age: The Strangling Sea

 

Last night we had our first actual session of 13th Age (after a character creation session). I was running the adventure The Strangling Sea. The setup for the adventure is based on the character's relationships and some random rolls, so we were perhaps a little slower getting started that normal (of course the biggest delay is always the pre-game chitchat), but it ran pretty smooth after that being a D&D derivative.

The party was sent by a wizardly patron connected with the Archmage to find a missing artificer. Their only clue was a friend of his in a distance town. This necessitated a travel montage, which is one of 13th Age's dfferences from other sorts of D&D, which asks the player's to essential describe what happened in a round-robin description of incidents. There seems to be a bit of reticence here in the players' parts, surprising since all of them have run games before and two have published works. Likely, it was just being put on the spot.

After the travel we got to the only combat of the adventure. A battle with some thugs in service of the Diabolist:

The player's triumphed, though without the escalation die, it might have been a close thing. 

Imagining the Hyborian Age

 The map of Conan's world by Katrin Dirim I shared the other day was interesting not just because her her artistic style (though that's great), but because of the way she chose to depict the Hyborian Age costume and material culture. The prevailing style, since the Frazetta covers have been a vague "barbaric fantasy," which each artist working their own variation on the theme.

Howard's stories, by contrast, tend to be much more "historical" in their depiction of these things--though they aren't really consistent in their historical era. Different locales in Conan's world seem to come from different points in history: there are High Medieval tales ("Hour of the Dragon", "A Witch Shall Be Born"), Golden Age of Piracy stories ("Black Stranger"), stories that seem to be set in the ancient world ("God in the Bowl"), and even stories that like ahistorical periods of a Medieval version of the 18th Century ("Beyond the Black River").

I think Dirm's idea to narrow this range a bit to make it make more sense is a good one. On Reddit, she says she capped the level of armor at roughly the early middle ages, and mixed in elements from as far back as the Bronze Age to keep the atmosphere.

I think this fits well with the more "ancient world" interpretation Mark Schultz does in volume 1 of the Wandering Star/Del Rey collection:

Some of the slight re-shifts of the names would be fairly simple. Iranistan becomes the Persian Empire (take you pick which one), and Turan instead of being a stand-in for the Ottoman Turks, are maybe the Parthians? Aquilonia and Nemedian could be recast as somewhat Carolingian Frank:

Though I have seen portrayals (and there is some support for it) that Aquilonia could be Roman!

The Age of Sail stuff in Zingara and the Barachan Isles would require the most change, but there have been pirates as long as there have been boats, so it's possible.