The Best of 2014

...Otherwise known as a lazy holiday post with no new material. Here's a selection of posts that you guys liked (based loosely on number of comments and G+ pluses) and posts that I liked. Sometimes they coincide; sometimes not. I stirred away mostly from Strange Stars art posts, though, to focus more on the text content. (A Strange Stars note, since I mentioned it: after holiday delays, the book is in the hands of the last proofreaders, with hopes of submitting the pdf very soon.)

So without further ado, here they my picks:

"Strange Stars Covered": 2014 was the year Strange Stars moved forward. Lester B. Portly's retro-cover designs with Eric Quigley's art made this post garner the most pluses of the year.
"Old Soldier": The lives and wars of Hannibal Tecumseh Early in the Strange Stars.
"In the Days of the Archaic Oikumene": Strange days, indeed. One of the "picture and description" posts that I did a lot in the early days with Weird Adventures, but this is the only one this year.

Moving away from Strange Stars, my current  "Oz by way of Dunsany and Smith" 5e setting, The Land of Azurth, got a number of posts:

"Witches of Ix": My most popular Azurth post, and I think one of my best.
"Azurthite Bestiary": Manhounds: This beastie was elevated above the others by Jeremy Duncan's great art.

Sometimes, my best (and most popular) posts are unrelated to my current setting obsession:

"Ruritanian Rogues": suggested picaresque adventure in faux Europe. People liked it. Jeremy Duncan has picked up the ball and really run with it.
"Baroque Space": I've made Spelljammer weird before, but this post gives it an age of sail and filigreed plate armor spacesuit weirdness.. More posts to come in this series, but this was the first.
"The Finer Points of Inner Planar Adventuring": Are the elemental planes boring? Not if you do something interesting with them.
"A Traveller's Life": Inspired by the Dumarest saga by E.C. Tubb, ideas about how you could run an interesting sci-fi game without FTL and limited to relativistic speeds.

Wednesday Comics: European Fantasy

I've done several posts on American fantasy comics, but haven't really touched on fantasy comics from across the Atlantic--with the exception of Thorgal. There's a good reason for this: Most of them are in French not English. There are some, though, that have gotten official English translations.  Here's a sampling:

Crusade
A somewhat gritty historical fantasy about a fictitious Crusade to reclaim Jerusalem that's manipulated by a demonic plot. The first 3 volumes (of 6) has been republished in English (even for Kindle) by Cinebook, but they are expurgated versions, removing some nudity.

Lanfeust of Troy
A longrunning series with several spinoffs and an rpg tie-in, the main series tells the story of Lanfeust and his companions on the planet Troy, a world of magic. Drawn in a bit of  a cartoony style, the Troy series has a fair amount of humor and a little bit of cheesecake.

Only the first two volumes of the first series are officially available in English from a South African publisher.

Millennium
In 1000 AD, a relic trafficker and his companions combat monsters and solve a mystery. Humanoids (the French and English publisher) says it's like Name of the Rose meets The X-Files, which I think is pretty reasonable. It's available in digital but a nice collected edition is coming from Humanoids in February.

Roxanna & the Quest for the Time Bird (La Quête de l'oiseau du temps)
From 80s (so out of print), a sword & sorcery-ish yarn about a young woman, Roxanna (Pelisse, in French) sent by a witch (her mother) to prevent to resurrection of an evil god. It's got great art by Régis Loisel. It was published by NBM in English in 3 volumes.

History, Real and Otherwise

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of this blog. it started all right here. I don't know that anyone has been reading that long, but how ever long you've been coming here: thanks for reading.

I've done a number of setting riffs related to alternate history over the years. In case you missed them or just forgot about them, here's the list:

"Alien Underground": In a 1981 other than our own, Centralia, Pennsylvania was where the world became aware of monsters underground. An alternate history, modern day, conspiracy dungeoncrawl.

"The Weird Frontier": Put Gygax's whole civilization versus strange wilderness theme back where he got it: the American frontier. A Colonial era, points of light fantasy.

"Gods, Heroes & Super-Science": What if the Greek myths were real? And by real, I mean tales of Bronze Age humans having contact with Kirby-esque science fantasy, Chariots of the Gods-style. This one got a number of posts. A Greek mythology science fantasy for Mutant Future.

"The Muvian-American War": In the aftermath of the Spanish American War, a more arcane threat looms. An alternate history, early 20th century, Guns & Sorcery setting.

Pulp Space: The War of the Worlds was only the beginning. By the 1930s, occultism and alien science have taken the empires of Earth to other planets--carrying their volatile politics with them.This one got multiple posts, too, but it started here. A science fantasy, alternate Spelljammer.

The Hanna-Barbera Superhero Universe

Art by Carlos Mota

I've played superhero rpg campaigns set in the Marvel and DC Universes and even considered one set in the Atlas-Seaboard Universe (that never happened, unfortunately). Recently, though I've given consideration (probably not seriously, though, but as a thought experiment) to a campaign set in the universe of Hanna-Barbera's superhero cartoons.

One notable thing about Hanna-Barbera's supers characters is that when you leave aside the licensed properties (Super Friends, The Fantastic Four) and the completely comedic ones (The Impossibles, Atom Ant), very few of the characters follow traditional superhero conventions. Few are set on modern day Earth or have a stable base of operations and supporting cast. The only one that does (Birdman) is a bit unsual because he's more of a superhuman agent of a governmental organization.

Despite this different in focus and presentation, I think many of them could be adapted to a more traditional superhero mold. Call it "Ultimate Hanna-Barbera," if you will.  Let's run the list:

Art by Alex Ross

Space Ghost: A very superhero-y and well realized character as-is. Perhaps like the Legion of Super-Heroes he is a futuristic character in the same universe. A future Phantom/Batman in the same way Captain Future is kind of a futuristic Doc Savage. The other option would be to make him sort of Green Lantern-like. A space cop assigned to protect earth. Or some combination of the two?

Young Samson: (Also known as Samson & Goliath) A teen with a Captain Marvel schtick who wanders around Route 66 or Incredible Hulk style, getting into adventures, works pretty well as-is. As suppose, it would be better to have him settled down and become more of a Peter Parker.

Shazzan: The cartoon has two kids transport to an Arabian Nights fantasy-land after finding their genie, but they could have just as easily stayed in the modern day. Two teens sharing a genie to fight evil would be an interesting concept.

Mightor: A Stone Age Thor, essentially. There isn't any reason a worthy successor couldn't find the magic club and become Mightor in the modern day. Of course, the character is a bit on the silly side and would probably work best for a Silver Age vibe rather than a Modern Age one.

Herculoids: In a comic book universe, the Herculoids could be sort of Ka-Zar type characters where their Savage Land is a world in another dimension, or they could be treated like a primitive Forever People and have them arrive on Earth to be super-powered fish-out-of-water.

Art by MarioPons

The Galaxy Trio: These teen heroes are probably better candidates for Forever People stand-ins. You can transport them to the modern day and have them be alien heroes stranded on Earth for some reason.

Cosmic Tales

Got a Bronze Age Itch Most Cosmic you need scratched? (And really, who doesn't?) Well, Michael "Aos" Gibbons has launched his new webomic on Tumblr: Cosmic Tales. It's got a bit of Legion of Super-Heroes in a Jim Starlin-with-a-dash-of-Grant Morrison Cosmic Crisis vibe, all given a generous coating of Kirby.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Have a great holiday!

Here's hoping you didn't stay up forlorning waiting for the man with the bag like Clara Bow here:

But you're with your loved ones happily opening presents like Carol Lombard:

Wednesday Comics: Star Light, Star Bright

This week, we conclude our look at the DC holiday anthology Super-Star Holiday Special from 1980:

Super-Star Holiday Special

DC Special Series #21 (Spring 1980). Cover by Jose Luis-Garcia Lopez

Synopsis: The next tale begins in a "realm we only visit in our darkest nightmares." A weird world, particularly on Christmas--the world of DC's horror anthology hosts, brought to us by Bob Rozakis with Romeo Tanghal and Dan Adkins on art.

The horror hosts are gathered for in the House of Secrets, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive and they (surprise) get into an argument about how can tell the best Christmas story: The Witches Three (from The Witching Hour) tell a story of a family saved from a shipwreck in the fog by the light of a star. Cain, caretaker of the House of Mystery, spins the next yarn where a greedy pawnbroker makes a deal with a mysterious stranger for all the goods in his shop for a diamond. The diamond turns into a lump of coal and the stranger is revealed to be Santa Claus. Finally, Destiny steps up to tell a shaggy dog story about a rocket pilot chasing a strange star in the future, only to break the time barrier as his own ship burns up...

Next we go to December 1941 to see if maybe Christmas is easy in Easy Company for Sgt. Rock and his boys. Turns out "no," as revealed in "The Longest Night" by Robert Kanigher with art by Dick Ayers and Romeo Tanghal. Easy is on its way to the Italian town of Santa Maria. When their compass is destroyed by a German, they have to rely on an unusually bright star to guide them. They meet a group of pilgrims with candles led by a nun on the way of to the Shrine of Saint Maria. Rock realizes:

They meet a kid who is living in the bombed out city who doesn't believe in miracles. Long story short, by the end of the story the kid does. Though it takes Easy Company killing a number of Germans and Rock blowing out the shrine's statute of Santa Maria first.

Finally, we head to 2979, where Superboy learns the meaning of the season from the Legion of Super-Heroes in a tale written by Paul Levitz with art by Jose Luis-Garcia Lopez and Dick Giordano. It's Christmas Eve and the Legionnaires are cheerful and celebratory, but Superboy just can't get into it.

Even after being shown various celebrations, Superboy still isn't satisfied, so the Legion heads out in space to find the Christmas star to mollify him. As you would expect by now, a phantom star leads them to a planet where aliens are in dire need of rescue. After do-gooding, they still have time for a little cheer: