Wednesday Comics: Wild, Wild West

The 60s spy-fi Western Wild, Wild West has had a couple of comic book adaptations. Gold Key Comics published 7 issues from 1966-69 (the span of tv series). The most recent series was in 1990 from Millennium Comics.

I've never read the Millennium series, but several issues of the Gold Key run are available on the Internet Archive. Check them out.

Shadows on the Hill

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party leaving Rivertown on their way to the Sapphire City and from there Virid Country. In the forests north of Rivertown, they encountered a an injured, cervine centaur-like creature named Tualla. Seeing the Sylvan Elf Shade among them, she asks for the party's help. It seems that something strange occurred in their ritual circle, and eruption of shadow, and the arrival of two umbral drakes.

The party agrees to at least investigate to see if they can help her people. After defeating a shadow-touched living tree, they around at the mound with its circle of standing stones. A fear grips a few of them, and all of them feel the touch of the unnatural, but they proceed.

Within the standing stones, they find a portal of roiling shadow, encircled by skulls--and the two wicked monsters. The mated pair of drakes taunt them, them knock over half the party unconscious with a breath weapon of cold shadow, then toy with them further, allowing the surviving members of the party to escape with their friends.

They rest with Tualla's people and strategize. The Sorcerer Bell recalls that Umbral Drakes are creatures of the Shadow Moon and are susceptible to celestial radiance. The party recalls that the shadow creature that might before was exquisitely susceptible to the energy weapons they carry. They begin to formulate a plan.

Fortified by the bards make (improving their constitutions), Waylon and Shade stealth into the cirlce of stones in an attempt to destroy the skulls around the shadow portal. The other party members spread out around the base of the mound, at the edge of the clearing to make distance attacks--or escape, if necessary.

Waylon and Shade walk right in the midst of the conversing drakes without being spotted, but Waylon's attempt to destroy a skull (a failure) brings their attention. The female attacks them viciously, but the group returns the favor with energy rifles and she only lasts two rounds. She does unleash her breath weapon on the two PCs in the circle, but their boost Constitution pulls them through.

As she dies, she warns her "toothless worm" of a mate that if he doesn't slay these "vermin" her ghost will haunt him forever.

Enraged, the male attacks. Dagmar uses daylight to disperse the shadows so he can no longer hide or travel between them. Kairon slows him to limit his attacks. The others focus their fire. Bell delivers the coup de grace with a chromatic orb.

Weird Revisited: Wild Wild West

Robert Conrad died yesterday at the age of 84. This post from 2015 is a tribute to what I think was his best role...

Wild Wild West was conceived as "James Bond on horseback." That was a just-about perfect genre combo for the 1965, and a damn good one for today. The actual show was even cooler, particularly when it went color; it was the Old West filtered through 60s spy-fi style with Jules Verne science fiction thrown in. It's practically begging for an rpg.

The show's James Bond of the 1870s was James West, Secret Service agent, who rode around in a private train with his partner, gadgeteer and master of disguise Artemus Gordon. Bruce Lansbury, producer of the show, described it thusly (as quoted in Susan Kesler's book):

"Jim's world was one of two-faced villainy, male and female, countless 'Mickey Finns,' and needle-tipped baroque pinkie rings that put him to sleep even as he embraced their dispensers. There were inevitable trap doors, hotel walls that ground their victims to dust or revolved into lush Aubrey Beardsley settings next door, lethal chairs that tossed occupants skyward or alternatively dumped them into dank sewers that subterraneously crisscrossed countless cow towns of the period. And then there was that old Dutch sea captain, leaning in the corner of the swill-hole of a bar, who inexplicably winked at Jim as he entered … Artemus, of course, in one of his thousand disguises."

Some highlights: a super-speed formula made from diamonds; an elaborate house full of traps made by a deranged puppeteer; a ground of assassins masquerading as a circus troupe; and of course, the genius dwarf, Miguelito Loveless.

(No doubt some of you remember the 1999 film of the same name. It's fine, in the way the 1998 Godzilla is fine.)

Anyway, in gaming Wild Wild West, a lot of folks would suggest Steampunk games first--but the Steampunk aesthetic is pretty much missing from the show, despite the superficial similarities in thumbnail description. Any Western rpg (or generic one) would work, I suppose--so long as it would support the Victorian super-science. The Western element is mostly cosmetic, though, Stripped of its trappings, it more resembles The Man from UNCLE at its core than say Wagon Train. I think a Western adaptation of the old James Bond game would be interesting with the spy-fi genre stuff it has built in. GUMSHOE might also be a good way to do it.

Gretel & Hansel

Oz Perkins' Gretel & Hansel is based on the fairy tale, but is a different story in many ways. This blogpost will contain some mild spoilers for the film.

Like most fairy tales, Gretel & Hansel takes place in a vague time period that is not the present or recent past. Also like many fairy tales, the place is vague, though it definitely has a old world feel about it. The film has none of the lush atmosphere often present in fairy tales, however. This isn't Sleepy Hollow or even Company of Wolves. Instead, it has the post-apocalyptic spareness of The Road (though it reminds me more of McCarthy's as yet unfilmed The Outer Dark). It's woods are gray rather than verdant. It's habitations are rundown and depopulated. The only place that looks really lived in is the house of the witch, and well, she's a cannibal.

Gretel and her little brother stumble through this wasteland, accidentally take psychedelic mushrooms, and are eventually bedeviled by a witch or witches--a child, a mother, a crone. Where this version differs from the traditional tale (well, besides all the stuff described above) is that this is Gretel's tale, or the tale of how the Gretel & Hansel duo split. The Witch sees something of herself in Gretel and is looking for an ally. There is no gingerbread house. No trail of breadcrumbs to lead our heroine back home.

Like Perkins' previous horror films it is a bit of a slow burn, so it may seem sluggish if you are looking for more jump-scares. Fans of The VVitch should find a lot to like.

Weird Revisited: Spacehunters

A variety of real life stuff has led to little time to prep the next installment of my Talislanta series. Instead, enjoy this post whose original version was presented in February of 2017.

Luis Royo

Watching The Expanse brought to mind a game I ran in GURPS perhaps decade ago. A "hard" science fiction thing using a lot of stuff from Transhuman Space put giving it more of a Cowboy Bebop spin: a little bit cyberpunk, a little bit 70s action film.

Howard Chaykin

If I ever ran a similar game again, besides using a system besides GURPS, I think I would draw more visually from '80s and 80's sci-fi, borrowing some elements from things like American Flagg! and 80s cyperpunk rpgs. The players' would still be ne'er-do-well, planet-hopping bounty hunters/troubleshooters but with a different skin.

Janet Aulisio

Thunder Bunny!

I new episode of the Bronze Age Book Club podcast dropped yesterday, this one about the Archie Red Circle comic Thunder Bunny #1! Hear it below or on your podcast app of choice.


Listen to "Episode 13: THUNDER BUNNY #1" on Spreaker.

Omniverse: Birds of A Feather

There is a lost city, hidden by the clouds, drifting slowly above the modern world, every bit as silent as the tomb it has become. This was the city of an ancient civilization of winged humanoids, the Bird People. It had existed for eons before the future king of Aquilonia, Conan, came to it some 12,000 years ago. It was called Akah Ma’at, and its people were at war with the bat-winged humanoids of Ur-Xanarrh, something Conan helped them with.

The Hawkmen of Mongo may well be the descendants of an abducted group of Bird People. The cannibalistic hawkmen Travis Morgan encounters in Skartaris are certainly of the same lineage.

It may be that Akah Ma’at meant “Sky Island” and eventually came to mean “Aerie,” because when they clouds recede again, and the city appears in the modern historical record, those are the names it is given in translation. In the 1920s, an airplane because lost in a storm and crashes into the Sky Island. A young boy was the only survivor. He was taken in by the Bird People and would be the costumed hero Red Raven¹.

It is possible that the hero Black Condor (Quality Comics) represents the same individual, since the Black Condor’s origin as related in the comics of being raised by condors in the Gobi seems implausible--and not just because condor's are native to the Americas. Perhaps the Bird People were in the habit of taking in foundlings?

Red Raven eventually had to turn against his adoptive people when their warrior class, under the influence of the Bloodraven Cult of demon-worshippers, sought to make war on the surface world. The ensuing civil war destroyed part of the city and ended with population either fleeing or placing themselves in suspended animation. The city was left in the charge of two android Bi-Beasts who would later encounter the Hulk.

There is some confusion regarding the origins of the Bird People. Accounts suggest that are an offshoot of the Inhumans, but this ignores the prior existence of Akah Ma’at. Rather, there is an Inhuman offshoot people with more avian features. These are the Feitherans, the people of the superhero Northwind, who lived in a hidden city in the Arctic Circle, and also probably the Aerians that live near the South Pole in the Savage Land.

¹Red Raven’s flight costume was made with Cavorite, which may or may not be the same thing as nth metal, but certainly as similar properties.