Xeno-File: Ythnat

Art by Jason Sholtis

The ythnat evolved from omnivorous, beaked homeotherms. They are smaller than most known sophonts being around 1 meter tall on average. They are not above using their size and appearance to ingratiate themselves or at least appear non-threatening to others. It would be a mistake to underestimate them, however. They are "first among equals" in the Interstellar Compact by their own admission. In actuality, the o'omkaro and the hna-hunkpa are essentially client civilizations.

It has been opined that the ythnat have no laws, only obligations. Compared to human cultures, they certainly rely on complicated webs of patronage, referent power, and custom, more so than codified law. The contract, however, is always sarcosanct. The planetary political structure of the ythnat is prone to change to a dizzying degree, but the powerful merchant princes and syndicates effectively control the planetary economy and that of the entire Compact. 

The Retro-Reviews Continue!

This is your periodic reminder that Jason Sholtis and I are still watching old TV shows free on streaming and blogging about them on the Flashback Universe blog. This week was the Western  Have Gun – Will Travel (1957). The week before was the trucker drama Movin' On (1974).

Wednesday Comics: Fourth World Omnibus vol 2

Recently DC released The Fourth World Omnibus vol 2. This 1336 page, backbreaking tome is the companion to the equally voluminous volume 1. That volume covered most of Kirby's work on the Fourth World mythos. This volume picks up with the continuation of the characters in concepts by other hands: Gerber's Mister Miracle, Conway's New Gods revival, the Great Darkness Saga in Legion of Super-Heroes, and Kirby's return with Super Powers, and a lot of other stuff. A lot of it is, well, not that great but some things (like the Great Darkness Saga and the Justice League two-parter on Apokolips) are, and others are at least interesting.

Here's the full contents:  Mister Miracle #19-25; The New Gods #12-19; Adventure Comics #459-460; The Brave and the Bold #112, #128, and #138; DC Comics Presents #12; First Issue Special #13; Justice League of America #183-185; Legion of Super-Heroes #290-294; Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #3; Secret Society of Super-Villains #1-5; Super Powers #1-5; Super Powers (vol. 2) #1-6; Super Powers (vol. 3) #1-4; Super Powers Collection #13-23; Super-Team Family #15; and stories from DC Special Series #10 and Legion of Super-Heroes #287.

I'm not a thick omnibus reader myself, but I do like to see these handsome volumes sitting on my shelf while I read digital.

The Shreev Comes to Thono Inn

Our Gnydrion game in Grok?! continued last Sunday. The party:

• Antor Hogus (Paul) - Vagabond. Reckless.
• Jerfus Grek (Jason) - A vagabond as well, but more measured.
• Nortin Tauss (Aaron) - Dabbler in the arcane. This time, he dabbles!
• Yzma Vekna (Andrea) - Scruffy teamster with a blunderbuss and a willingness to use it.

With the alleged Wol Zunderbast defeated, the party has to come up with a way to keep him restrained until the Shreev arrives. They come up with a plan of "harsh swaddling" with bedsheets, but the assassin almost breaks free, and they have to subdue him again. Just when they think they have it figured out, the concierge arrives, concerned with the noise.

The concierge summons the owner, Gris Samber, who takes position of the restrained assassin and has his men lock him in a closet. The group isn't happy about this, but they don't have a way out (though Antor certainly contemplates stunning his way out). They do insist that Yzma be allowed to stand guard, and Samber agrees.

While they wait, Jerfus contrives to get a look at Zunderbast's room. His attempts to drive off the guard set there by Samber with odious habits backfires and instead wins him a friend--unfortunately not friendly enough to allow him in the room unobserved.

At last, Shreev Molok and Var Nee arrive. They group follows them to the closet--which when opened appears empty! It's only a trick, and Zunderbast drops from the ceiling and makes a break for the door. Yzma shoots him in the leg, halting his escape.

For their efforts, the Shreev allows them to keep Zunderbast's full purse and to stay another night at the resort on the Compulsor's account.

Wednesday Comics: DC, June 1982 (week 4)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, we look at the comics hitting the newsstand on March 24, 1983.

Green Arrow #2: Barr and von Eeden/Giordano catchup with Green Arrow trying to uncover the identity of the person who wants to kill the again-wealthy Oliver Queen. He has a lot of suspects, given very few of Abigail Horton's would-be heirs are happy that Ollie inherited instead of them. When Ollie makes himself a target, Ted Horton, Jr. takes the bait and tries to kill him. Green Arrow pursues him, but he's unable to stop Count Vertigo from killing Ted before he can be interrogated. I had this issue as a kid, but I didn't remember much about it other than the distinctive cover.

Action Comics #544: Lex Luthor and Brainiac get their cool new 80s looks that will be short-lived in the comics, but indelibly stamped on the memories of fans of a certain age (like me) thanks to their use in the Garcia-Lopez drawn marketing art used in the DC Heroes rpg, their appearance in plastic in the Kenner Super-Powers toyline, and their use in Crisis. What this issue reveals is that they were part of an attempt to revitalize these villains.

The first story is by Bates and Swan and introduces Luthor's powered armor, designed by Perez. It's revealed that there is a world, Luxor, where Luthor retreats when getting beaten by Superman time and time again is too much for him where he is hailed as a hero, and he has a wife and child. Luthor begins to reform and has a change to give up his vendetta against Superman and live a happy life, but he ruins it because he just can't let it go. His last attempt on Superman's life leads to the destruction of Luxor and the death of his family. It's a nice story and would be even better with a modern approach to characterization and more pages.

The second is by Wolfman and Kane and introduces Hannigan's new Brainiac design. In a story perhaps inspired by Star Trek: The Motion Picture or 2001, Brianiac's consciousness is expanded by becoming disembodied then re-assembled in the advanced computer core of an alien prison planet. Reborn in a new body, the villain believes he has seen the Master Programmer, the divine force behind the universe's creation. This story is really all setup, and Kane's art not only may not be the best for the subject matter but also isn't his best in any case.

Arion Lord of Atlantis #8: Continuing from last issue, Arion and his allies attack Atlantis. Garn isn't up to facing Arion magically now and his imperious ways have led to mismanagement by his disgruntled army commander, so his troops aren't up to the task of defending his conquest. With Garn sent running, Arion is acclaimed as a hero and liberator--which may present difficulties for the king and his heir on their way back to their kingdom.

All-Star Squadron #22: Thomas and Ordway/Machlan continue the fight with the Ultra-Humanite, Cyclotron, and Deathbolt from last issue. Ultra is trying to gather artifacts for some reason, and now he also wants to transplant his brain into Robot-Man's body. We get Ultra's background and also some more on the origins of "Thor's hammer" used by the villain a few issues back and now in Ultra's possession.

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #16: This issue gets a lot of jokes from references to the career of Steven Spielberg and E.T. in particular, which had been released the year before.  Screeching Tire (a villain like a tire-based Big Wheel or War Wheel) is coming after Steven Spielbird-dog for revenge. Ultimately the two work it out and the guy comes on board for one of his films.

Detective Comics #527: Because comic writers can't leave well enough alone, Man-Bat is back, this time so Moench can take a whack at him. Conway cured him to shuffle him off stage exactly a year ago in issue 348 after Pasko sort of ushered him off stage back in '81. Anyway, Langstrom forgets to take his cure because he's so busy, reverts to Man-Bat form, heads to the Batcave and winds up kidnapping Jason Todd who insists on calling Bruce his "new Dad" when Bruce is Batman, in contrived way. Not Moench's best, but this is only his 2nd Batman issue. Art in this one is by Day and Marcos.

There's a Green Arrow backup by Cavalieri and Cullins/Marcos. It introduces the typical for comics "just past the sell date" cultural trend-based character, Ozone, a graffiti artist and super-villain, who employs super-high pressure aerosol cans in his crimes. He accidentally takes an aerosol can loaded with botulinus poison. Green Arrow tries to capture Ozone during a robbery at a men's magazine office but instead gets thrown through a window 30 stories above the ground by a high-pressure can.

Jonah Hex #73: Fleisher is joined this issue by García-López, and it looks great. After a double-cross during an attempted ambush, Hex winds up in double casts. After some crazy wheelchair rides and other improbable events, he still manages to bring in the bounties.  

There's a El Diablo backup by Cohn and Ayers/Rodriguez, but honestly, I can't recall what happened other than-- ghostly vengeance!

New Adventures of Superboy #42: A jerky classmate of Clark's gets super-powers from a meteor and becomes the costumed villain, Dyna-Mind. As is typical with these Superboy stories, he gets the upper hand this issue. Also, Clark manages to damage his burgeoning relationship with the girl he asked out last issue.

In the Dial H backup by Bridwell and Bender/McLaughlin, a super-villain working with the Master pretends to be the devil and agrees to help an old crank in his crusade against immoral pop culture in exchange for old coot's soul. I assume this prank is just for the lolz of the Master because it makes no sense. Anyway, this involves attacking a comics store where Chris and Vicki and friends are doing some cosplay. Chris and Vicki dial up heroic IDs based on their friends' cosplay (X-Rayder and Lavender Skywriter) leading the Master to deduce they draw their identities from the minds of people nearby.

Weird War Tales #124: So here we are at the final issue. The Creature Commandos and G.I. Robot (he's mentioned in the text though very hard to actually see in the panels) appear (barely) in a one-page story where they are court martialed for showing too much humanity and sentenced to death by General (Paul) Levitz. They're put into a modified V2 aimed at Hitler. Instead, the missile becomes erratic and heads off into outer space. This will be the last appearance of the Pre-Crisis version of these characters. It's hard to read this as anything but Kanigher expressing some displeasure with editorial. Whether it was resentment over cancellation or being mandated to write a story to tie it all up, I don't know.

The cover story is typical Kanigher Weird War fare about a struggle being carried out between combatants resurrected across the ages. The other two stories written by Robin Snyder (who also answers the letter column in this issue) are war tales but not at all weird and seem like inventory stories.

World's Finest Comics #292: Moench's last issue as writer teams him up with Jerome Moore and Frank Giacola on art. Superman and Batman appear on a radio talk show (Susan LaSalle, The Siren) and say some not really very well-thought-out things about crime before we're spared their weird musings by some guy calling in an anthrax threat. The two have to work together to discover the bomb and the crook, though the whole time it feels like something Superman's powers would have easily dealt with solo in his own book.

In interesting aside: General Zod appears in a flashback as Superman is talking about Krypton, but his he looks like General Zod from Superman II instead of how Earth-One General Zod is usually portrayed.

Talislanta Final Edition

The 6th edition of the Talislanta game and setting (being billed as the final edition) by Everything Epic released in pdf to crowdfunding backers last week. I haven't gotten a chance to review the books in depth yet, but being as Talislanta is a setting that I'm quite fond of I couldn't wait to share some initial thoughts.

One of the main questions for me regarding this edition was going to be how updated was it going to be? I mean this is several different ways. Most (or at least several) editions have advanced the timeline and altered some of the cultures or the political climate. For example, the Arduans became Aeirads and "evolved" in a more human direction in 3e (as I recall), and at some point, the Quan Empire was overthrown by their soldiers, the Kang. 

It looks like this edition has again updated the timeline, changing the political picture and bringing in some of the cultures/species which had appeared in the spinoff setting Midnight Realm--though I'm unsure if there's in "in world" reason given for this last part.

The other, large question of updating was in terms of modernization. The desires and expectations of gamers are different in 2024 than they were in 1987 and even in 2006. The art and presentation in the new edition is largely in keeping with modern gaming which is both more heroic in its depiction of the characters and sexied up at times as well. This will not afford you the chance to play a Marukan dung-merchant, if such was ever your desire.

Given Talislanta's age and source material there were aspects that would be problematic in the current era. Their approach to this is varied, one might even say haphazard. Some things have been removed; others were tweaked in an attempt to ameliorate the more problematic elements. Others appear to have been left as they have always been. I guess this could be viewed as the middle road, which I guess was the way to go, I'm just not sure how they chose what got changed and what didn't.

System-wise, this is just another tweaking of the system Tal has had since the beginning, which is fine, because I think it's a pretty good one.  I have read in places that there is a need for some errata, but that's sort of to be expected.

Anyway, look for more posts on this as I get to read more. Maybe I'll continue my survey of Talislanta across editions and some point.

Descent in the Outer Dark

When Janus stopped being just an orbital mechanics curiosity and became a genuine anomaly by broadcasting a signal, a flurry of probes was quickly launched, and Earth waited for the report. Janus was revealed not to be a moon at all. It was an alien artifact. 

It took some time to find out what sort of artifact. Even now, none of the experts are completely sure. Its creators and purpose remain obscure. What humanity learned was there was reward inside: the strange but sometimes useful artifacts of an unimaginably advanced civilization. And then there was something else. Death. It comes in hundreds of ways, at the hands of bizarre traps or random environmental shifts, but also at the hands of murderous alien beings or animals that reside inside the structure.

The Company runs the station serving Janus. Security is provided by a multinational group, but it was expedient to let a corporation run the actual operations. Plausible deniability. Contractors recruited from the desperate masses of a climate stressed and economically depressed Earth sign up to be minimally trained, fitted into battered, armored environmental suites and sent into the alien labyrinth inside, hoping to steal crumbs from the table of strange gods and get out of their realm alive. The statistics aren't good, but the stories of the few that survive to retire rich keep the volunteers coming.