Just a reminder that my and Jim "Flashback Universe" Shelley's rewatch and commentary on the 60s TV show Wild Wild West continues over on Jim's blog.
Browsing the new comics listing on Comixology yesterday, I saw a few things I'd recommend from back in my comics reading youth.
This prestige format series by Howard Chaykin was subtitled "Blood and Iron" for the trade, and now nice hardcover collection. It grounded these venerable Quality Comics characters in the the complicated historical era of World War II. Where the square-jawed nonentity of the Golden Age is reimagined as Janos Prohaska, a Polish former Communist. Only the first issue is out now (though the collection is), but it's only 1.99, so it's not that expensive to see if you like it.
I had a subscription to this title (it later changed it's name to Avengers Spotlight so it would be alphabetically near the other Avengers titles) for a short time for some reason back in the day. I don't remember anything about this particular issue, and I'm sure it's pretty forgettable. But I'm also sure they don't make them like this anymore and it's got art by Jackson Guice and Mark Bright. So if like me you dig comics that era, there are worse things to drop $1.99 on.
Here's an idea: Take a D&D (mostly 2e) setting and combine it with a non-D&D rpg also published by TSR. Here are a few:
Spelljammer XXVc (Spelljammer + Buck Rogers XXVc)
Buck Rogers is thrown into suspended animation and awakens in a world where magic is ascendant, and Earth is an occupied territory. This winds up being a bit like Shadowrun with rockets (XXVc already had a hint of cyberpunk to it), but the difference is genetic engineering and other high-tech feats would actually be accomplished via magic.
Another Spelljammer combo: Add the Buck Rogers Adventure Game for a pulpier approach.
All Alone in the Night (Ravenloft + Metamorphosis Alpha)
When the generation ship Warden left earth, the monsters went with it, and Dracula takes his real estate schemes to the stars! Like The Starlost, you would need isolated habitats, but here they would be ruled by various horrors. Vampire Hunter D could also be an influence here.
Another Ravenloft option: Mix in Gangbusters with the monsters as mob bosses.
Washington Irving notes the folk-belief that the spiritual guardians of buried treasure could take on the form of animals, such as toads. “Wild vines entangled the trees, and flaunted in their faces; brambles and briers caught their clothes as they passes; the garter snake glided across their path; the spotted toad hopped and waddled before them; and the restless cat-bird mewed at them from every thicket. Had Wolfert Webber [a man in search of treasure, but who was unschooled in folk-magic] been deeply read in romantic legend, he might have fancied himself entering upon forbidden enchanted ground; or that these were some of the guardians set to keep watch upon buried treasure.” Diedrich Knickerbocker (pseud.), “The Adventures of the Black Fisherman,” Tales of a Traveller (1825), 2: 356.