Wednesday Comics: Storm: City of the Damned

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: City of the Damned (1982) (part 4)
(Dutch: Stad der Verdoemden)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Kelvin Gosnell

Ember and the other captives beginning the dangerous climb up the outside of the city, They're attacked by one of Gor's lieutenants: a knight on a winged horse. Ember manages the knock the sword from his hand and jump on the horse behind him. She starts to pull of the mask, There is a flash of light and the knight says they will meet again. Then, the empty suit of armor falls apart. Ember now has a steed.

She breaks into the city just in time, because Anor is about to execute the still mind-controlled Storm. Ember snatches up a sword and Anor creates a kind of energy blade. She slices through Ember's sword and has her at her mercy. Ember makes a desperate lunge and knocks Anor to the ground--and she falls on her own sword.

As she dies, Storm is freed from her control. Anor taunts the hero as she dies: Gor's troops now have an imprint of Storm's killer instinct. They will be unstoppable.

As she speaks, Gor's army is indeed advancing through the city. The citizens and the compiter are panicked. Storm tells the computer he can save the city, but only if the the computer agrees to do one thing for him once the enemy is defeated. The computer is worried about what this request might be, but it accepts the condition.

Storm asks for a sword and a time belt. Ember asks Storm where it is they are going. He replies: "Right to the Devil's lair."

TO BE CONTINUED

The Land of the Wooden Gargoyles

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party entering the conical mountain at the edge of the Vale of Vo. A sign warned them that this way led to the Land of the Gargoyles and urged caution, but they began climbing the mountain's great internal stairway anyway.

After a days travel (and a rest) they came to a platform and a balcony overlooking a burning, oilly sea. The balcony was the nesting site of giant vultures of a very disagreeable type:

Trying to sneak past the nest, the party was forced to kill one vulture before they could continue on their way. Next, they were greeted by an affable disembodied head with long hair and a beard. Not conmpletely disembodied, it turned out. The man's body was just stuck (mostly) inside a portable hole. The man gave his name as "7739" (but after finding where he carved it in the ground, the party suspected in was actually "Gell"). He claimed to be an magical inventor from the Land of Azurth. He had made his living putting holes in fancy cheeses and the like, until a mathematical error in the construction of a hole led to catastrophe. He fell into this underworld and became hopelessly stuck in a tangle of holes. He didn't seem much bothered by this. He had devoted his time to the creation of "Huzzahs" for political rallies and flutters for flags and the like. The party was certain he was a lunatic, but Waylon nevertheless purchased a box of three huzzahs for the price of a piece of string.

Continuing their journey, the group came to the end of the stairway and a strange mesa. It looked like a sawdust strewn stage set: the flowers and trees were wooden cutouts, so seemed to be the clouds overhead. The marionette gargoyles that came flying towards them on creaking, hinged wings were more fully formed--and belligerent. After a pitch battle, the party dispatched eleven of them.

There seemed to be no way off the mesa but flying, and a wooden, gargoyle city seemed to lie between them and the next mountain. The party made camp in what they hoped was a secluded spot to heal their wounds and formulate a plan of action.

A Classy Cover I Forgot

In doing covers for Hydra Projects in the Penguin Classics style, I forgot to do any of my own projects. Here are two possibilites for a Weird Adventures cover:

Art by AAmezcua

Art by Adam Moore

Hydra Gets Classy

Working on a mockup for the cover to the upcoming What Ho, Frog Demons!, I got the idea of doing Hydra covers in the style of one of the Penguin Classics design. Here's what I came up with:

art by David Lewis Johnson

Art by Jeremy Duncan

Art by Luka Rejec

And an upcoming project:

Art by Jason Sholtis

Operation Unfathomable: The Last Hours & DCC Conversion

Just hours to go for the Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter and we just unlocked the DCC Conversion by Paul Wolfe!

If you've been waiting until the last minute, this is it!

Wednesday Comics: Prez

No Storm today as I was watching the U.S. Presidential Election return last nights, but I do want to recommend a couple of presidential collections:

Prez is the title of two DC Comics about teenage presidents. The first debuted in his own short-lived title written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jerry Grandenetti in 1973. The series is predicated on the notion of a Constitutional amendment lowering the age for eligibility for office (which may have been inspired by the 1968 film Wild in the Streets). The upshot is a teenager gets elected, and who better than a earnest and idealistic kid from Middle America whose mother even named him “Prez” ‘cause she thought he’d be President one day? 

Finally, because you (or somebody) demanded it, The Prez has been collected. This collection includes the four issues of The Prez's run, an unpublished story from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2, and a continuity-twisting tale from Supergirl #10. Neil Gaiman brought Prez out of comics limbo in Sandman #54 in 1993. This led a sort of follow-up in Vertigo Vision: Prez. Miller and Morrison also used the Prez in Dark Knight Strikes Again #2 and the Multiversity Guidebook. All of these deuterocanonical texts are included, as well.

In 2015, an all-new, all-different Prez is introduced. This is Beth Ross, an Oregon teen who's elected via Twitter in 2036. The series by writer Mark Russell and artist Ben Caldwell. It only lasted 12 issues, but it was fun while it lasted, providing a modern update to the concept.

The Final Countdown

The Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter has a little over two days to go, but Hydra isn't taking our collective foot off the gas. This weekend, we had 3 new stretch goals to sweeten the deal:

$16,000: Jason's original smash blog compilation The Dungeon Dozen
$19,000: Operation Unfathomable Players Guide a mini-comic
$18,000: Dungeon Dozen II Sneak Preview

If you haven't backed, now's the time.