Warlord Wednesday: Blood Moon

And now, let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"The Quest, Part III: Blood Moon"

Warlord (vol. 1) #18 (February 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: The desert behind them, Morgan and Tara now ride through the jungle, still on their quest to find Deimos--and Joshua. Morgan hopes that the magical crystal he took from Timgad will be helpful in defeating the power of Deimos--though he doesn't know how.

Such thoughts will have to wait, however, as the riders come upon (yet another) orange carnosaur. Morgan's horse gets spooked and throws him, so Tara pulls him up behind her. The hungry dinosaur is close behind.

When they ride into a wide swath of destruction cut into the jungle, the carnosaur inexplicably gives up and turns tail. That's fortunate for our heroes, because Tara's horse steps in a hole, and breaks a leg. Morgan is forced to put the horse out of its misery with his pistol.  So occupied, our heroes don't notice the incredible thing coming up behind them, until it is all but upon them.

They turn to see a red, crater-pocked planetoid--a moon--filling the sky as it travels the path it cut in the jungle. Before the two can react, men on sky-sleds emerge from it, and start firing energy blasts at them. Our heroes manage to destroy a few of the craft, but first Shadow falls, then her owners. Beams from the remaining sleds lift them and carry them into the moon.

They awaken in the presence of the eccentrically dressed Bornaa. He explains that what Morgan took for a moon is actually the cratered, protective shielding of a starship from the planet Alces Shirasi. The crew is all that remains of their billion year-old, interplanetary civilization, destroyed when their sun went supernova. In truth, they are the descendants of those last survivors, who were forced to cross-breed with humans, captured and genetically transmutated for that purpose. Now, they are close to being able to breed with unaltered humanity, and then they will be able spread their civilization and culture throughout Skartaris. Bornaa expects Morgan and Tara to take part in his people's plan.

Morgan declines--and not so politely, as he leaps forward to throttle Bornaa. Our heroes try to flee, but Bornaa manages to trap them in a force field. They lock Morgan in their transmutation machine. "If he insists on acting like a savage beast," Bornaa explains to Tara. "It's only fitting that he look the part as well." Bornaa leads the horrified Tara away, and the machine turns Morgan into a bull-headed creature. As his rational mind slips away, his strength surges and he breaks free.

Meanwhile, Bornaa is putting the moves on Tara with lines like: "I am much higher on the evolutionary scale." Tara plays along only long enough to steal his pistol and blast him. She runs back to save Morgan, and finds him fighting the crew, raging bull style. The voice of his beloved Tara soothes the savage beast and gets him back into the machine so the technician (at gun-point) can return him to normal. The two free Shadow from a nearby cage, then escape on sky-sleds.

An overzealous guard tries to stop their escape, but misses and hits the ship's reactor instead. Morgan and Tara escape, but the starship explodes as they look on from a distance, marking the final end to the Shirasi people.

Things to Notice:

• Tara misquotes Saaba--she says the witch told them they could find Deimos "in a place of eternal shadow," but what she actually said was "a place of half-light, half-shadow."
• Shadow, Tara's dog, is still with the pair.
• The Shirasians may have pioneered that fundamental of United Federation of Planets chronometry--the stardate. 

Where It Comes From:
"Blood moon" is another name for the "hunter's moon" which is the first full moon after the harvest moon (the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox).

The use of a stardate in the Star Trek style, points to this issue's possible inspiration in the original series episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" which features a generation ship that appears to be an asteroid.

It's also possible that the idea that our moon is actually an alien spacecraft was at least part of the inspiration. This is the so-called "Spaceship Moon Theory" proposed by Vasin and Shcherbakov in a 1970 article, and popularized by Don Wilson in the 1975 book Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon.

Grell engages in a bit of a joke with the name of the alien invaders. "Alces Shirasi" is the species and subspecies name of the Shirasi Moose (Alces alces shirasi), the smallest species of moose--native to Morgan's home state of Wyoming. Perhaps this is sly reference to their penchant for human-ungulate mash-ups, or either Grell just thought it sounded cool.

Morgan's quip about being able to do beer commercials in his minotaur form references the famous Schlitz Malt Liquor TV ad campaign, beginning in 1972, that features a black Brahma bull rampaging through any place a Schlitz is opened. Morgan, having been in Skartaris since 1969, would be unaware of this bit of pop culture, but his line is not necessarily an anachronism since Schlitz Malt Liquor had featured a Minoan-esque bull-head on its label since its inception in 1963.

Sanity Loss at 24 Frames a Second

In my post last week on the dread anarchists of the world of the City, I mentioned that certain strange cartoons might serve as some sort of awakening to mindwarping alien influences. 

One of the classic cartoons I had in mind when I wrote that was "Bimbo's Initiation," a 1931 Fleischer Studios  "Talkartoon."  It tells the story of Bimbo's unfortunate fall down a manhole, and subsequent encounter with an underground secret society--with a strong interest in corporal punishment--bent on recruiting him.  I had wanted to include the above picture in that post, but at the time, I couldn't think of the name of the cartoon! In the intervening time, not only did I eventually recall it, but I managed to found it online:



Other cartoons of the era that are no doubt symptomatic of chaos god-thing intrusion into our plane (in the most entertaining way) are "Russian Rhapsody" (1944), "Porky in Wackyland" (1938) and its color almost- doppelgänger "Dough for the Do-Do" (1949), to name only a few.

Wednesday on Monday

This past weekend I got DC's Wednesday Comics oversized (over 17' tall and 11' wide) hardcover. Wednesday Comics was a 12 issue weekly series published in broadsheet format to harken back to the Sunday newspaper comics section. It was an anthology with serialized stories featuring the usual suspects (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman), but also some lesser lights (Adam Strange, Metamorpho, and Kamandi). Of interest to the matter of this blog, at least a few of the strips veer more into non-superhero fanatastic genres.

Probably my favorite is Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook. They keep Jack Kirby's basic post-apocalyptic boy-meets-Planet of the Apes premise, but reinterprete its aesthetic in a Hal Foster's Prince Valiant-ish vein. The result is the most classic comic strip styled peice of the collection, and simply gorgeous.

The other definitively non-supers strip is Paul Pope's Strange Adventures, featuring (aptly) Adam Strange. For those who may be unfamiliar with Strange, he's sort of a John Carter-ish planetary romance character with more of a Buck Rogers aesthetic. Pope plays up the weird--and the absurd. Check out this wonderful peice of dialogue:

"...Why, they resemble nothing less than the mandrillus sphynx monkey of the family cercocpithecidae...Only huge, blue-furred, and operating strange flying machines. The sight would be patently absurd if it wasn't so horrible!"

Indeed. Pope's art is a perfect match for his out-there story:

There are other good strips: Gaiman and Allred's sixties-homage Metamorpho story, Bullock and Heuck's demon-fighting Deadman, and the time travel Flash story makes good use of the format.  But there are also several that just don't quite come together--like the Batman and Superman stories, and the Metal Men strip.

The other drawback is the height of the collection itself--at nearly a foot and a half, its too tall for most shelves, at least upright.

Open All Night

Philmon's is an all-night diner in the City's downtown wich is a meeting place for adventurer-types. As such, it's seen its share of unusual late-night visitors. Here are a few possibilities:

1. Well-known loanshark Arman "The Brain" Rothwald looks none too happy--and neither do his two out-sized friends. Someone owes him dough and hasn't kicked it back, and The Brain's outsized friends tend to resent that sort of thing.

2. A beautiful, dark-haired dame in a blood red evening-dress walks by and everybody takes notice. There's a whiff of brimstone as she passes.

3. A police prowl car creeps by outside the window. There's no one inside.

4. Two dirty hobogoblins try take a seat, but are tossed out by the staff. One shakes his fist and warns that the King in Tatters is coming to deal with all you swells.

5. A torch-singer is trying to look inconspicuous as she seems to be waiting for someone. The cloth-wrapped parcel sitting on the counter next to her may have just moved.

6. Professor Wickenwyre, a prominent inventor recognizable from the papers, sits nervously at a booth with two strangely-accented bruisers in trench-coats and fedoras.

7. A wizened hermit from the Far East, proclaims loudly that he is looking for the student to whom he is fated to teach all his secrets. The signs say he is to meet that student tonight.

8. A pale, blank-expressioned little girl carrying a teddy bear walks up and silently holds out a black envelope.

9. The well-known moll of a murderous gangster talks in whispers with a known newshound, only the moll's corpse was pulled from the Eldritch five days ago.

10. A shabby, Vaudevillian ventriloquist and his dummy have an argument that gets increasingly heated--until the ventriloquist lies stabbed and bleeding, and the dummy is nowhere to be seen.

11. A Hilly-billy giantess (8ft. tall) in a gingham dress sits crying, a battered suitcase hugged tightly to her.

12. A disheveled tough guy with nervous, darting eyes, holds his right hand in his left, like he's protecting it. He keeps whispering conspiratorially into an large, antique ring he's wearing.

13. In the street outside, a procession of ten or so showgirls in full costume bop along glassy-eyed behind a satyr blowing a crazy tune on a set of bone pipes.

14. A natty stage magician in tux and tails takes a seat. He's amnestic..and he has a fist-sized hole in the center of his chest to--elsewhere. There's no blood, but tendrils of smoke rise from it, and raspy, malevolent whispers can be heard from within the darkness.

15. An ugly and dwarfish professor-type walks in carrying a large jar full of a yellowish liquid and dragon-like animal. He asks if anyone has seen "M'Gurk."

16. For a minute and a half, a static-y, but intelligible, firebrand sermon from a radio evangelist can be heard. There is no radio.

17. A blonde in a khaki explorers outfit, carrying an over-sized rifle, sticks her head in the door and asks (out of breath) if anyone's got fifty-foot of rope.

18. A police detective named Faulke, flanked by five uniforms, comes in and arrests someone.

19. A veiled, exotically dressed woman and her stern, bearded and turban protector ask for directions to an infamous opium den.

20. An imp in a tux, spats, and monocle appears in mid-air with an audible "pop" and issues a challenge in a supercilious tone.

We Can be Happy Underground...in Cappadocia

There are real dungeons in Turkey.  Or at least, there are the sort of underground environments gamers would call "dungeons"--over 200 underground cities, containing a minimum of two levels, known to exist in the Eastern Anatolian region of Cappadocia. 

The cities have had a series of residents, apparently, but the delving got started with the Phrygians (they of the Smurfish caps) in the Bronze Age.  They were later expanded by persecuted Christians hiding out from the Romans.

The largest of the cities is Derinkuyu ("Deep Well") which has 11 levels, extending to a depth of 85 m.  The city covers an area of 4 sq. km and was able to house 20,000.  Here's a cross sectional map in true old school style (with bonus indecipherable writing in the ancient tongue known as German):

The other prominent site is Kaymakli.  It's smaller, and differs in structure from Denrinkuyu.  It's tunnels are narrower, lower, and have a steeper incline.  The overall layout is more labyrinthine--with a number of deadend tunnels--possibly to confound intruders.  It has seven levels, though only four are now open. 

In preparing this post, I found an article from Dragon #201 by Allen Varney on these cities on his website. He gives some great description from actually visiting there.

Acolytes of Misrule

"Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."

- H.P. Lovecraft, "Call of Cthulhu"

Almost as feared by the denizens of the City as the Reds, are the Anarchists. Before the War, they were probably even more feared. Yet the Anarchists are even less understood, if possible. Few have guessed at the true motives of the forces behind the mad bombers of popular imagination.

"Anarchist" is actually a term used for a wide variety of groups. Some are largely peaceable groups, philosophically opposed government. Others are absurdist or surrealist artists dedicated to breaking down authority in a variety of ways. The ones that get the most sensationalistic media are terrorists attempting to destabilize governments by destroying the populous' faith in said government's ability to protect them. All of these groups are fertile recruiting grounds for the most insidious and dangerous faction.

The truth is that anarchist philosophy and action are secretly promoted and supported by extraplanar forces. Anarchists claim communion with beings of raw chaos, crippled and lobotomized by the irruption of crude matter and banal casuality into their realm. These ultimately formless beings, are often portrayed (or disguised) in anarchist works as vaguely unsettling frog-like creatures, or sometimes seemingly innocuous cartoon characters of various sorts. These beings want nothing so much as to destroy the irritant that is the Prime Material Plane.

Why would any intelligent person choose to serve these nihilistic creatures? First, since the chaos null-gods have no concept of time, their victory may be temporally remote enough for anarchists to enjoy the benefits of their service for quite some time. Second, a lot of anarchists have been driven utterly insane by their brushes with their master's alien minds.

Part of this madness may be caused by the alien code called aklo, which is learned by all anarchists during their initiation into the secret doctrine. Aklo allows them to decode the messages from their fellows and from their null-gods--often found in nonsensical graffiti, banal but odd posted signs, and surrealist/absurdist comic strips. The mental restructuring it causes is also the source of the ability of advanced adepts to manipulate magical energies with frightening power.

Anarchist initiates and potential recruits may serve or aid anarchist masterminds in their various schemes, which are often ill-conceived and needless complicated, but always promote fear and sow discord. Masterminds are a diverse lot (their masters place no premium on conformity, after all)--some appear as scientists others masquerade as normal criminals, while still others dress and act like sorcerers out of old legends.

Anarchism is more popular in Ealderde, particularly in the east, but Anarchists have been known to effect outrageous accents, regardless of their true origins.

Symbol: A featureless black flag, or a stylized eye.

Special Benefits: The induction into true anarchism is the learning of aklo--which allows interpretation of anarchist messages and communication with the chaotic null-gods (Aklo can't be learned without becoming an adherent of the chaos beings, attempts to do so will lead to conversion). More advanced followers may develop boons, which are magical powers which often take on an unwholesome or disturbing manifestation. Anarchist magic-users essentially become something like 3e sorcerers--they don't require memorization or spell components. However, every spell casts requires the caster to make a saving throw, with every failure resulting in some sort of physical manifestation (a skin lesion, tic, change in color of one eye, etc.). Every two failed saving throws in a row deal 1d4 points of damage. One of these manifestations will "heal" for every 24 hours without magic use. Any game effects of the manifestations are at DM discretion.

Warlord Wednesday: Citadel of Death

After a week off, let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"The Quest, Part 2: Citadel of Death"

Warlord (vol. 1) #17 (January 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: Morgan and Tara cross "500 kilometers of trackless, blistering, desert waste" in their search for their infant son, Joshua, kidnapped by Deimos, the "devil priest." Morgan is worrying about what will happen if they don't get water soon, when serendipitously, Tara sights a city in the distance.

Arriving at the city, they find it deserted. When Tara sees a golden statue of giant, grasping hand, she realizes that they've stumbled into Timgad, The Citadel of the Sorcerer Kings. She remembers the legends that tell of the city so evil that "the vultures shunned it." A city from a forgotten age before man, when Skartaris was a place of wizard, ogres, and elves, divided into warring city-states.

Paralleling Morgan and Tara's explorations of the city, we see Ogir Falconeye, a sorcerer, arrive at the city of Timgad in the sorcerous past Tara described. He's on a mission to acquire power. To that end, he sneaks into the palace, and steals a small cask radiating a mystical light. Before he can escape with his booty, he hears someone approach and has to run--which results in him falling through a trapdoor into a pit. Though he's dazed after the fall, he senses something in the darkness around him...

In the present, Morgan and Tara find water, but are set upon by leonine (or perhaps baboonoid?) humanoids. The beasts are too many, and Morgan and Tara are forced to flee, unknowingly following the path taken by Ogir ages past. A pounce from a creature, sends Morgan through the same trapdoor and into the darkness below. Above, Tara fights on against worsening odds.

In the pit, the glow of the small cask dropped by Ogir attracts Morgan's attention. Using the cask as a torch, Morgan tries to find a way out of the pit. Instead, he comes across a skeleton he can't know is that of Ogir inside a mystical symbol drawn on the floor. Morgan guesses that whoever he was, he drew the circle to protect himself, preferring to starve than fall prey to whatever dwelled in the pit.

Morgan continues to search for a way out, but when he hears a wet, slithering sound behind him, he realizes that something still dwells there. He soon finds himself facing a tendriled, ameboid creature, unfazed by his sword.

Morgan runs back to the mystic symbol, and finds it still holds the creature at bay. Examining the cask, he notices the glyphs on it match some of those inscribed in the symbol around him. He opens the box and finds an emerald fragment complementing the one hanging on a chain around the neck of the skeleton. On a hunch, he puts the two fragments together. There's a blast of searing radiance from the gem, and the creature is burnt to nothing, but Morgan is unharmed.

He resumes his frantic search for an exit, and soon finds a stairway. Morgan bursts through a doorway, and finds Tara still holding her own against the beasts. Holding the gem aloft, he again uses its magical radiance, this time to send the beasts running.

He and Tara are free to contine on their quest, now with a powerful artifact that may be of use against Deimos.

Things to Notice:

• This is the first glimpse we get of Skartaris's "Wizard World" past.
• Despite everything he's seen is Skartaris, Morgan seems to find the former existence of elves and goblins difficult to believe.
• The Hellfire Gem is named in a caption, but the story's characters never learn it.

Where It Comes From:
Timgad is the name of a North African city founded by the Roman Emperor Trajan circa 100 AD. It was finally abandoned after being sacked by the Berbers in the 7th Century, and was swallowed over the centuries that followed by the encroaching Sahara. It had been forgotten by history until it was excavated in 1881.

The name "Ogir" perhaps derives from "Ogier the Dane" a legendary character from the French chanson de geste, or it may have just been suggested by the word "ogre." Except for his red skin, Ogir Falconeye's appearance is informed by traditional portrayals of elves (Santa's elves, Keebler elves, Marvel's Elf with a Gun), pre-Tolkien influence.