Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1985 (week 4)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I read the comics on sale on December 27, 1984.

Action Comics #565: In the first story, Todd and Schaffenberger have crook Desmond Dexter looting the Kryptonian ruin of Wizard City (it's first appearance since 1971) unearthed in Africa for advanced technology to commit his crimes.

The rest of the issue is essentially a teaser for the Ambush Bug limited series. Giffen's art and the style of humor have reached their final form, as Ambush uses Superman, Batman, and finally Wonder Woman as straight men for his gags. It has its moments, but it isn't as funny as the series to come, or perhaps it isn't as funny as the series to come is in my memory! We'll see what the reread holds when I get there.

America vs. the Justice Society #3: The Thomases and Bender/Alcala continue the testimony of the members of the JSA. I can't really see what the committee is getting out of this, and frankly, the reader doesn't get much either unless you're dying to know just how some Golden Age story fits into continuity. It's like Marvel Saga, but just for the JSA and with less effort to retcon things. The only real action this issue is the testimony of the Wizard. He (naturally) says the JSA are Nazi collaborators but then is almost immediately shown to be unreliable. The shadowy figure orchestrating this is shown to be Per Degaton, and he's quite reasonably feedup with how things have gone the past 3 issues. He's going to take matters into his own hands.

Arion Lord of Atlantis #29: Nebres comes onboard as inker. The seclusion of the king is becoming a crisis in the city, and some city leaders are beginning to think Arion should take the throne, a suggestion he doesn't like. These issues are pushed aside when Lady Chian returns to the city. Their reunion is cut short by an attack by escape prisoners led by the jackal-headed S'Net. S'Net captures King D'Tilluh forcing Arion to use his new magic to rescue the king. Still, S'Net manages to escape while Arion battles a sorcerer's apprentice. Following the battle, Arion decides he must find a way to restore the rest of his magic. Meanwhile, Mara believes Wyynde has been killed when a prisoner in a small flier crashes into the window where she had left him sitting. Next issue promises the return of Duursema for a "mini-series within a series."

All-Star Squadron #43: Thomas/Baron and Jones/Collins continue the story from last issue. The All-Stars are saved by the arrival of the Guardian, but Daka and his minions Kung and Sumo escape with Liberty Belle captive. He demands the All-Stars bring the defeated Tsunami and Starman's gravity rod to the Bronx Zoo at midnight for a trade. There's a disagreement between the group about whether to do this or not, which as is typical for the genre devolves to a fight. In the end, Firebrand, Guardian, and Amazing Man make the trade, but Daka is treacherous, driving Sumo and Tsunami to turn against him, and he is defeated.

Detective Comics #548: This issue should be a collectors' item, because I feel like it has got to be the only time Alfred has ever said anyone wanted to "jump [Bruce Wayne's] bones" and it's extra-notable because one of the people he is referring to is his own daughter, Julia! Anyway, a panther has been sighted in Crime Alley. Both Batman and Robin and Vicki Vale and Julia Pennyworth go to investigate. Batman and Robin wind up getting called away to hostage taking at the Egyptian Embassy by a terrorist for hire named Darkwolf and barely making it out before a Darkwolf blows up a floor of the building with a grenade. Meanwhile, Vicki and Julia find both the panther and its owner: Catwoman.

Spanner's Galaxy #4: Spanner and Gadj hope to a station run by the Mollusca, but which also houses a blue-skinned humanoid species, many of whom like in the maintenance underbelly of the station and performer repair work in exchange for the Mollusca allowing their presence. With the law on his trail, Spanner hides out among them and but not before having tell stories to the blue-skinned kids. In escaping, Spanner is forced to fight and defeat the cop Baka, who them becomes determined to learn to the alien Shek himself.

Sun Devils #9: Conway and Jurgens/Mitchell finally reveal the traitor they have been teasing. Rik is rescued by Scylla, having welded himself into a piece of wreckage and surviving off the air in his suit until he was saved. Anomie is assumed captured, until she hails them from another ship, requesting they open the docking bay. Everyone but Rik assumes this means she is the traitor; it's just too convenient and unlikely. Rik won't hear it, though, and forces the others at gunpoint to let her in. And of course, she is the traitor. Their Centauran military liaison is killed, Scylla is gravely injured, and everyone else is taken captive for the Sauroids. And the badguys have the neutronium. Meanwhile, a Centauran general plans to not warn Earth of an impending Crustate attack, hoping the attack will wake up Earth leadership and bring them into the war.

Tales of the Legion #321: An unusually violent cover graces this unusually gritty first chapter in a 3-parter by Levitz/Newell and Jurgens/Kesel. While searching for the lost Legionnaires, Dawnstar is attacked with primitive weapons and brought down planet where she can't communicate with anyone. The tribe that found her thinks she's an animal and intends to eat her, but their theocratic rulers show up and free her, only one of them thinks she's a demon. Meanwhile, Brainiac is looking for her and also crashes and is attacked as technology doesn't beyond a certain point doesn't tend to work on this world. He's rescued by a strange and erratic man who he believes his suffering from a psychotic disorder (and to be fair, Brainy has some experience with that). All and all, it's almost more of a Star Trek episode than the usual Legion story.

V #2: The art looks much more DeZuniga than Infantino this issue as some of the resistance discovers a small town that is collaborating with the Visitors: they got special crystals to make their desert land productive and advanced medical treatment in exchange for giving the Visitors the mineral waters of the nearby springs. They have the Resistance team in the town jail as a Visitor craft arrives.

World's Finest Comics #312: Cavalieri and Woch/Alcala have the Network reveal motivation for criminality to record exec they kidnapped: their studio was stiffed on payment for the videos they made! Meanwhile, Batman is dealing with the weirdness of the White Noise dimension. Somehow, though Superman is able to pull him out. Batman enlists Lilane Stern in a sting to capture the Network, but they get captured instead. Meanwhile, Superman has determined the White Noise is sustained and generated by the RTV (Rock TV) satellite signal. Batman rallies, Superman jams the signal, and the Network is defeated. In addition to the topical RTV (MTV was only around 3 years-old at this point), this issues dialog has several references to pop music lyrics.

The Bottled Setting

I may have never played an rpg with one, but I've long seen the appeal of the "bottled setting": a locale that could be the size of a small city or as big as solar system (or more) but is in some way cut off from the outside. It might also be "managed" in some way, having traits established by who or whatever did the bottling, Kandor from the Superman mythos is probably the most famous of such settings, but it shows up in rpg settings like Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha in addition to numerous places in fiction.

The inhabitants of a bottled setting may or may not know they are bottled. If discovering that fact or discovering the why or how of it is the main focus of the setting, you're may well be looking at a Mystery Terrarium. Really, though, all that stuff can just be background for a setting with any other sort of focus where the boundaries just happen to be hard stops rather than the place where things get fuzzy.

What's the appeal of this sort of setting? Well, for one, it can be used to disguise the true nature of the setting. The universe might actually be science fictional, but the "bottle" marks the boundary within which you can run a traditional fantasy campaign, if you want. Crossing the boundary can then mark a major turning point in a campaign, like potentially to a whole other sort of game. 

The other thing is a that a bottle need not be impassable. Krishna in de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sort of a bottle wherein people from a technologically advanced, spacefaring civilization can play at pseudo-Medieval Sword & Planet heroes. Portal fantasies, in general, are not necessarily bottles but could easily be (particularly the sort involving a person somehow getting sucked into an MMORPG world). That allows players to play characters much more like themselves but still get involved in fantasy action.

In the end, though, I suppose the creative constraint it applies makes for an interesting challenge and heightens the potential for player engagement with setting mysteries. Vast traditional settings are great but there's nothing like having the players hit a wall they didn't expect to be there or have hints dropped that things aren't what they seem to get them engaged.

A Highly Derivative Space Opera Setting, Briefly Described

I thought it would be fun to do the Space Opera in the style of presentation of the Known World (later Mystara) in Isle of Dread: A highly derivate, briefly described setting that was easy to understand but vague to allow the DM freedom to make it their own. I didn't have time to come up with a map, but here are the large political entities.

United Federation of Worlds: A multiple species union of planet governments organized to promote peace, justice, and mutual prosperity. 

The Imperium: The largest revival to the Federation is a fascist and oppressive human-supremacist state. It boasts a powerful military, including a large army of clone soldiers. 

Kurgon Horde: Once a group of factionalized, spacefaring humanoid raiders, a new Emperor has emerged among them, claiming the mantle of the mythic First Emperor and forging the disparate tribes into a single nation. Once merely a menace to border settlements of the Federation and the Imperium, the Kurgons now pose a more significant threat.

Outlaw Expanse: A lawless region of spaces, kept so due to its function as a buffer zone, but also due to the bribes paid by its Syndicate crimelords. The region has a whole is a melting pot of various species, the some of the crime syndicates are single species in nature. Illegal commodities in other regions of the galaxy such as slaves, certain addictive drugs, and some cybernetics are available here.

Corporate Zone: Another border region whose only government is large, economic powers. The Corporates are constantly engaged in small-scale conflict and espionage as they jockey for power against one another. Their R&D facilities, with no fear of government regulation or oversight, turn out exotic weaponry and dubious consumer goods that sometimes find their way into other regions via the black market. There are rumored to be an unusual number of Precursor ruins in the Zone, some of which contain biotechnologies that the Corporations have been able to exploit.

Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1985 (week 3)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at comics that were published on November 20, 1984.

Who's Who #1: Following in the footsteps of 1983's Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and serving as the record of the multiverse that would soon be ended by Crisis, Who's Who was the creation of editor Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Robert Greenberger. What I was unaware of when I picked this issue up in 1984, but seems only natural in retrospect, is how much the Who's Who covers the recent DC Universe. There are references to the deeper history of course, but there is a strong recency bias in the choice of entries and their scope. For instance, this issue gives us a number of characters that debuted in the era I've been revisiting: Aegeus from Wonder Woman, Alley-Kat-Abra from Captain Carrot, the All-Star Squadron and Amazing Man, Ambush Bug, Amethyst, Arak, Arion, a two-page spread for Atari Force, the "Sword of..." version of the Atom, the retconned version of the Atomic Knight from DC Comics Presents, and Auron of the Omega Men. Only one of the featured characters (Anthro) hasn't appeared between 1980-1984.

Batman and the Outsiders #19: Barr/Aparo present a Christmas issue, though only because it is clearly shown to take place during the Christmas season. Most of the issue is taken up with a fight between Geo-Force and Superman, which is not as one-sided as one might expect. No sooner have Geo-Force and Halo decided to just be friends, than Brion gets a call from Denise who we saw attempt suicide previously. He rushes to get her medical attention, and she reveals to him the sexual harassment by her professor that led to this. Geo-Force flies off to kill the professor, and Halo goes to Batman for help. Batman calls Superman to intercept Geo-Force while he takes care of something else. 

Using his power to increase gravity, Geo-Force is able to weaken Superman enough to hurt him. (Barr asserts the by this point outdated explanation that it is Krypton's higher gravity that, at least in part, gives Supes his strength.) In the end, though, Superman is just handling Geo-Force with kid gloves. He tires of that and smacks him down.

In the end, Batman shows up with testimony from other women, added to Denise's voice, it's enough to (they hope) end the professor's career. The heroes go home for Christmas.

Blue Devil #10: Mishkin/Cohn and Chen/Martin have Blue Devil having to defend Wayne Tarrant from harpies after he angers the goddess Athena by resuming his schtick from his teen heart-throb pop singer days of performing as Theseus. I fill like this must be an oblique reference to something in pop culture, but I don't know what. Otherwise, it's pretty random. Since Greek goddesses are in the mix, Wonder Woman guest stars. Only 10 issues under his belt, and Dan Cassidy is already teaming up with the big leagues with Superman a few issues ago and Wonder Woman here. There were house ads for this issue, for some reason, but the art there was by Colon. Wonder why he didn't draw the actual story?

Conqueror of the Barren Earth #2: Cohn and Randall chronicle Jinal's essential captivity among Zhengla Koraz and his army of conquest. He wants to make her his consort, but she's not into that and keeps trying to kill him and escape, so he makes her his slave. Eventually, she appears to warm to him and willing becomes his lover. At the end of the issue, the amassed armies of the Harshashan array against the Conqueror, and Jinal knows her friend must be leading them.

Green Lantern #186: Wein and Gibbons begin where last issue left off. Eclipso has the solar-powered jet, and is attacking Ferris Aircraft with his "murder moon." He kidnaps Bruce Gordon, demanding he reveal the secrets of the jet's power systems to him. Stewart comes to the rescue as Green Lantern while Jordan can only watch with ring envy. The Predator gets in the game, too, though he is less effective against the villain. Ultimately, Eclipso is killed by the deadly ray from his own satellite, and Rich brings the solar jet in safely, but at the cost of his own life, as he dies from a heart attack.

In the aftermath, Carol finds a love letter and a rose from the Predator in her office.

Infinity, Inc. #12: The Thomases and Newton/Burgard have the team go public in the wake of their victory. They hold a press conference where they wind up revealing their secret identities on TV. The Harlequin crashes the event to tease the group, but they are unable to catch her.

Legion of Super-Heroes #8: Levitz and Lightle/Mahlstedt keep all the plates spinning as the Lost Legionnaires fight to prevent a Controller from manufacturing another Sun-Eater, while other Legionnaires and the Science Police mop up the remaining members of the Legion of Super-Villains. 

Back on Earth, Cosmic Boy reveals to Night Girl that he's thinking about stepping down from active Legion membership. The trainees are enjoying some time on the beach, when someone shoots Laurel Kent and manages to actually make her bleed.

New Talent Showcase #15: The editorial this issue reveals that they are done with the publications from their talent search, so now the participants can no longer be considered "new", and the title will be rebranded as just Talent Showcase.

We've got fewer superhero features this issue than in the more recent ones. The cover belongs to the one supers feature, though, a team from Davila, Texas, called the Desperados by Dennis Yee, assisted by Barbara Kesel and Malcolm Jones. It's very much in keeping with the indie spirit of the time and reminds of things like other, regional supers teams like Southern Knights. The Chinese American cowboy leader is a bit of a unique innovation, though, and the heroes taking on anti-immigrant bigots is topical still today.

Bjørn Ousland opens the issue with a sci-fi story with art that I would characterize as "talented amateur." Ousland will go one to to work in comics through 1990, but mostly in Europe, a few more shorts for DC aside. This story concerns a couple of agents trying to defend alien species from poachers. Timmons and Scarborough/Blevins tell a whimsical tale of impoverished Leprechauns plotting to steal gold from Fort Knox. 

Sgt. Rock #398: Despite being marred by a hokey frame sequence, Kanigher and Redondo deliver an unusual story of the sort of things kid's ought to be reading in the dwindling war books. Zack, a bazooka man for Easy, loses his arm in a German attack. Shipped stateside, his recovery his hampered by his anger at his fate and self-pity. He discovers neighborhood kids helping black marketeer steal gasoline. Once he realizes his war is continuing just on a different front, he faces off with the black marketeer and wins the day.

Saga of Swamp Thing #34: Moore and Bissette/Totleben deliver something other than cheap entertainment for 10-year-olds. Faced with the knowledge that Matt will likely never wake up from the coma Arcane left him in, Abbie and Swamp Thing are free to confess their love for each other. Unable to share traditional physical intimacy with them being different biological kingdoms, Swamp Thing grows a psychedelic tuber, which Abbie consumes to share his consciousness. 

Warlord #90: I reviewed this issue here.

Another Year in Gaming

Our gaming group spent our last get together of 2025 having dinner together at a local restaurant, as is our tradition. In addition to the current regular crew (Andrea, Bob, Gina, Kathy, and Tug), and spouses and kids, we also got a guest appearance from Eric, one of the original Azurth players. It's always good to get the group together since we mostly play online since the pandemic (something we'd like to change in 2026).

In addition to our continuing Land of Azurth 5e campaign, we tried Beyond the Wall for 3 sessions. Compared to last year, there were fewer diversions to other games, as I was trying to keep momentum going with Azurth. With the "off-week group" of strictly online gamers, I gave HârnMaster a go, as well as They Came From Beyond the Grave!

In 2026, I hope to give the new Planet of the Apes game a try, and whose knows, maybe do something crazy like start a new, long running campaign, though perhaps not 11 years and counting, like Azurth. We'll see. 

Whatever happens, I'm glad to be in this hobby with these folks.

Mysteries of Tatooine

In discussing this recent Youtube video arguing Star Wars (1977) suggests a setting without FTL communication, my brother and I gradually drifted over to considering some minor mysteries regarding the desert planet Tattooine. The central question is: "what exactly is Tattooine's place in the galactic civilization?" Luke tells us: "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from," but is that just the restless teenager in him talking?

Canonically, Tattooine is a sparsely populated world located on the Outer Rim, though Wookieepedia suggests the whole concept of an "Outer Rim" doesn't appear in the films until the sequel trilogy. This perhaps implies it is on the edge of civilization, but it's possible that it only means the edge of Imperial (and Republican before that) control. "Sparsely populated" seems reasonable given what we see in the films and the fact it's an entire planet, particularly when we consider this is a relative sparseness compared to the more urbanized, populous worlds.

There are, however, at least two details in Star Wars arguing against Tattooine as some sort of wilderness frontier. These have to do with the Jawas and Mos Eisley spaceport.

Used Droid Salesmen

The Jawas are scavengers, and they've got a big crawler full of junk that roams the desert and picks up "gently used" droids to refurbish (a bit) and sell to farmers and rural settlements. If Tattooine is sparsely populated and droids are so expensive relative to local incomes that people have to buy the pre-owned ones Jawas sell, then where exactly do all the droids come from that the Jawas scavenge?

It's possible the demand for used droids has to do with where droids come from which makes new ones scarce. Another possibility is that droids were traditionally priced beyond the reach of rural folk of modest means, but the end of the Clone Wars lead to something of a switch back to consumer focused production in the galaxy's industry over wartime production and restored supply chains, so that the wealthy inner worlders were able to finally get that new droid they'd wanted, leading to an abundance of older models on the market, analogous to the situation with cars in the U.S. after World War II. These older models would naturally wind up in the hands of dealers like the Jawas. 

Still, unless what happened to Threepio and Artoo is just an accident, it looks like they are roaming the desert picking up droids, rather than just waiting for their shipment at Mos Eisley. I think it's at least possible that the desert not infrequently turns up excess droids--and I have an idea as to why.

Scum and Villainy

Obi-Wan says of Mos Eisley: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." This is from a guy who knows the Emperor is a Sith Lord and was made to fight in an arena on Genosis! In the Old West idiom frontier towns are often stereotypically lawless, but I don't think Tombstone or Dodge City would deserve a description like that. Also, Tombstone and Dodge City had reasons why they were boomtooms that drew the riffraff (silver mines and the cattle trails, respectively). 

Obi-Wan's description and the vibe of Mos Eisley in general suggests a pirate town like Port Royal, Jamaica ("the wickedest city on Earth.") Such towns would appear in places the law hasn't effectively reached, but close to very busy and lucrative trade routes. You wouldn't get a crime lord like Jabba rich enough to have a palace and sponsor speeder races without crime being lucrative.

Back to the Jawas and their scavenging: If pirates are often taking ships and hiding the evidence or just discarding the refuse, in the desert, well there would wind up being stuff for the Jawas to "salvage."

Tattooine On Viewscreen

I think the evidence from the movies point to Tattooine as at the edge of imperial jurisdiction, but in a well-traveled zone between the Empire and other, civilized regions controlled by other interstellar powers.  It's nature as a desert world means it is less desirable for heavy colonization, but its location ensures the thriving pirate boomtown of Mos Eisley, and the existence of power strongmen benefiting from that crime.

Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1985 (week 2)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I read the comics released the week of December 13, 1985. 

Amethyst #3: Mishkin/Cohn and Estrada/Tanghal pick up where last issue left off. Aquamarine returns to his islands to find the revolution fomented by Fire Jade in full swing. His imperious attitude gets him killed by a rebel with a magic sword provided by Jade. Amethyst travels to the isles and first fights in a rage but then slows down and discovers that the rebels kind of have a point about their treatment under Aquamarine and are only being duped by Fire Jade. The rebel leader teams with her to take Fire Jade down, which happens surprisingly easily, so I don't think we are truly done with her.

Fire Jade's defeat is real enough, however, so that Prince Topaz ensorcelled by her to romance then kill  Lady Turquoise, is freed from the spell, finding he is truly in love with Turquoise.

Arak Son of Thunder #42: Arak follows in the footsteps of Gilgamesh in a quest into the Underworld to get Satyricus and Valda back. Angelica says she will restore them to the land of living if Arak will retrieve the herb of immortality

Arak has to battle Scoropion People guardians and resist the charms of Siduri, only to find the river has dried up and the herb is gone. Blind Utnapishtim overs him the last seed of the plant. Arak refuses to take the seed as he doesn't want Angelica to have eternal life. It was a test, and Arak passed, so the old man opens a portal to Kur where his friends are.

Batman #381: Moench and Hoberg/Alcala bring this phase of the Night-Slayer/Nocturna arc to a close. Night-Slayer is still dressed as Batman and committing crimes. Robin and Nocturna are swinging through the city at night looking for him or Bruce but can't find either. Mayor Hill has convinced himself that Batman really as committing the crimes to taunt him regarding his attempt to frame the cape crusader. When Bruce finally makes his appearance, he's set a plan in motion that traps the Night-Slayer, revealing him for an imposter, and as reveals Hill's misdeeds. Night-Slayer escapes, but Hill is on his way to jail. As a bonus, he also makes the socialworker think Natalia Knight is still working with the Night-Slayer, so Bruce gets custody back, even though they are now friendly with Nocturna. As a coda, Bruce visits the blind woman with the crush on Batman who tried to reveal Anton Knight's imposture, and the implication is that he spends the night with her!

Flash #343: Finally, Bates and Infantino/McLaughlin reveal just what made Cecile Horton dislike the Flash so. It turns out her father was a cop killed by Goldface back in the two-parter in 1982. Flash tries to convince her that Goldface lied about giving Flash a warning to get out of town before he killed, but for some reason Cecile doesn't believe him. Probably because we wouldn't have enough plot for the issue if she did. She goes to Goldface in prison, and he lies, of course, and she believes him, but then he kidnaps her in a jailbreak. The Flash comes to the rescue, but not before a gloating Goldface reveals that he did lie. Cecile feels awful for wrongly blaming the hero than has saved her life twice now.

G.I. Combat #275: The Monitor makes another appearance (or at least his satellite does) in the Haunted Tank story, apparently surveilling the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart in the void. Most of the story is about Stuart's Raiders on a mission to escort of defecting German tank commander to the Allied lines, but it turns out to be a trick, and the crew must battle the enemy inside their own tank.

There are three nonseries stories set in World War II, two of them by written by Kashdan. In one, the lone survivor of a mission in the Pacific Theater merely to distract enemy from the real objective, refuses a medal in disillusionment and anger. In another, a German commander betrays his side and frees U.S. prisoners of war in the name of stopping the destruction of a Belgian church he considers a work of art. In the sole story penned by Wessler, a U.S. squad sweeping for mines, tricks the German who set them into getting blown up by his own handiwork.

In the Bravos of Vietnam feature by Kanigher and Trinidad, Bravo 7-3 disguises themselves as peasants working the rice paddies to lure the Viet Cong into a trap.

Jemm, Son of Saturn #7: The Red Saturnian Jogarr must have been convinced by his talk with Superman last issue, because he arrives on Earth just in time to help Jemm defeat Grayol, a Koolar with a sort of cybernetic control over the ship the Prince and his friends stole from the White Saturnians. Meanwhile, Synn becomes aware of the existence of Jogarr's people and prepares to destroy them, while Tull is still out to get Jemm.

Omega Men #24: The primary draw of this fill-in story is the art of O'Neill, which certainly brings a different feel to the book. The script by Wolfman about the leaders of the Omega Men being tested to the limit in an underground city of Okaara is perfunctory. There's a backup too, a reprint by Wolfman/Gold and Morrow from Witching Hour #13 (1971), which the editorial here suggests the first appearance of the proto-Psions. 

Star Trek #11: Barr and Sutton/Villagran continue their Mirror Universe saga. Before Enterprise self-destructs at the orders of Mirror-Kirk, Scotty and Saavik manage to separate the saucer section from the warp drive. Meanwhile, Spock is revived and wins a psychic duel with his Mirror counterpart. With some hand-wavey rejiggering of the Tantalus field, Kirk disables Excelsior and captures his doppelganger. Scotty and Saavik repair Excelsior and modify the transwarp engines to travel into Mirror Space. Kirk plans to stop the Empire's invasion, disobeying Starfleet's orders. 

Superman #404: The first story is a silly tale by Boldman and Saviuk/Kesel. Superman is fighting criminals in Metropolis wearing the cape and cowl of Batman. Exposure to an accidental blast from a magical syrinx makes Superman grow small horns that he has to disguise as he searches for now stolen syrinx.

The second story by Rozakis and Schaffenberger is sort of holiday themed, as Perry White enlists Superman at Christmastime to prove to a doubting Canadian boy that the hero does exist, but Superman keeps getting delayed by emergencies.

Tales of the Teen Titans #51: Wolfman and Buckler/Smith again have Titans dealing with the fallout of Terra's betrayal. Aided by Lilith, the group thwarts a gang of gun-runners in the service of President Marlo, the leader of an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Jericho's mother stole military secrets on the strength of the neighboring nation of Kyran, and Marlo hires Cheshire to get Adeline Wilson and the information he has so he can plan an invasion. In the re-introduction of Chesire, we get a lot of reference to the mysterious "he" who is the father of her child and former Titan. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and Interpol tell Nightwing they want the Wilsons for questioning. When Nightwing tells Changeling, who's already suspicious of Jericho thanks to his parentage, attacks him and tries to arrest him. Jericho, anxious to pursue his mother's kidnapper, defeats Gar and escapes. Meanwhile, S.T.A.R. scientists discover an alien spaceship and its pilot frozen in the Alaskan ice.

Differentiating Science Fantasy

Often science fantasy as operationalizes in rpgs is just some flavor of rpg fantasy with ray guns or robots, or "ancient technology" as the default explanation for something strange. (In fact, high tech "science" often  becomes the extraordinary thing in a setting full of magic but completely conventional in its portrayal of magic.) There isn't anything wrong with that, but science fantasy fiction points the way to making the genre feel different from a fantasy setting that just also has some lost tech.

More Psychic than Spellcraft

The magical effects (when they aren't technology mimicking magic) often tend to resemble psychic powers instead of spells or rituals.

Non-Medieval Society

In C.S. Friedman Coldfire series, the owners of a bookshop who are the victim of an attack by the magical agents of a dark lord of sorts have to worry the authorities will think they committed insurance fraud. There's no reason a science fantasy setting has to limit itself to mixing science fiction and the (pseudo-)Medieval. Elements of any era could be fair game, depending on the setting.

Device Dependent

In science fantasy, more magical effects are going to be the use of a device or chemical rather than a spell. A Polymorph effect, for instance, can still exist, but it would be from a transformation machine or "atavism ray" or the like. A variant on this is when a classical magic item turns out to be a technological device, like when Travis Morgan's putting a bullet into Deimos' crystal ball and we see circuitry inside.

Subtle Reminders 

Little details that point to the nature of the setting often help set the mood. Post-apocalypses (fantasy and otherwise) tend to excel at this. King's Dark Tower stories have a witch writing a note on an old Citgo receipt pad, for instance, but having an old device put to a new purpose is a device that works in science fantasy too.

Consistency

While in many situations "science vs. magic" in a fantastic context would just be cosmetic, it's important to keep in mind the different origins and make sure the details match. For instance, orcs that are embodied spirits of evil ought to operate differently in any number of ways compared to orcs who are a transplanted, anthrophagous alien species or orcs that are bioengineered servitors.

Moon Melee

Our Land of Azurth 5e campaign continued last Sunday with the party concluding their brief trip to the Moon. The Bright Goddess of the Thrice Thousand had granted their request for one of the "tears of Azulina" (celestial sapphires, some of which were allegedly used by the Wizard to grow the Sapphire City of Azurth), but they would have to get it from the Faceless Collector who the Bright Goddess had just given it to.

The Collector agreed to hand it over, but only if the party bested him, and his servitor in combat. The party agreed and the match began. The servitor proved to be a hulking robot with a sword and machine gun army, though this was not a fight to the death. The Collector had psionic powers and a golden scimitar.

The party one out in the end, likely due to their superior numbers, but Erekose and Waylon took quite a bruising. 

True to his word, the Collector handed over the sapphire. The party was guided out of the goddess' gardens and back to their ship. The return flight was mercifully uneventful.

The gnomic technicians in the service of Viola, the Clockwork Princess of Yanth, put their science to work and blasted the petrified princesses with the sapphire's radiation. The stone around them crumbled and beneath they were their normal selves.

As soon as she was able, Viola said: "I've just determined a way we can defeat the wizard."

Wednesday Comics: DC, March 1985 (week 1)

My mission: to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics that were at newsstands in the week of December 6, 1984. 

The "Meanwhile..." column in these issues discusses upcoming limited series. A Frank Miller Batman story, and a pitch by Alan Moore originally involving the Charlton characters, which Giordano declined to let be used, so instead it will use new characters.

Vigilante 15: Cullins is on pencils this issue with Maygar/Kesel inks. Wolfman is trying to put distance between the position of Vigilante and the more bloodthirsty vigilante Electrocutioner, so we get the story of a circus clown who resorts to bankrobbery to pay his wife's medical bills. The sympathy his case generates gets him acquitted, which Chase (and Vigilante) thinks is justice done, but the Electrocutioner sees him as another criminal let loose be a corrupt system and goes after him. Vigilante and the other circus performers intervene to save the clown's life.

Funny Stuff Stocking Stuffer #1: Funny Stuff was a DC funny animal comic that ran from 1944-1954, at which point it became Dodo and Frog and went another 3 years. In this special, Engel and Tiefenbacher (with some additional scripting from Kupperberg) bring back a number of these characters (including Frog and Dodo) is a story involving the Ground Hog trying to usurp Christmas for his own. Thanks to the Captain Carrot series, some of these characters had been retconned on to Earth-C, so I guess that's where this story takes place.

Superman: The Secret Years #2: Another Frank Miller cover. Rozakis and Swan/Schaffenberger continue the story of Clark's college years in Metropolis. In the wake of Ducky's accident, Clark is having nightmares about that as well as his parents' deaths. As Superboy, he investigates the Bermuda Triangle and discovers a space-warp that leads to an island where people lost in plane and ship accidents have created a peaceful existence, and don't want to go back to their former homes. Clark Kent meets and begins dating Lori Lemaris, and gets a new roommate and friend in the former of Billy Cramer. Ultimately, Clark reveals his secret identity to him. 

Atari Force #15: Baron and Barreto have Scanner One land on a planetoid and find themselves beset by a swarm of tenacious and tough insectoid creatures that impair the ship. They must resort to sending Babe out of on a mission to get them free. Meanwhile, Morphea discovers that Blackjak has some remnant of something evil within his head. 

In the backup by Helfer and Chen, we get a solo Pakrat story. On a job to steal some diamonds, he just may have met his match in a female Markian thief.

DC Comics Presents #79: To alien gamblers duplicate Superman so that one duplicate can be Clark Kent and one can be Superman at a time to wager on the outcome. It takes the Supermen/Clarks a bit to figure out what's going on, but then they play good cop/bad cop (with Clark the bad cop) to get the aliens to undo what they have done.

Fury of Firestorm #33: The Conway/Kayanan team is back together, and they pit Firestorm against Flambeau and his terrorist group who hope to force the government to release Plastique by threatening to burn Manhattan. Firestorm almost stops them but accidentally touches off at least a smaller conflagration accidentally. Meanwhile, scientist Lorraine Lincoln, haunted by nightmares regarding her former friend Crystal Frost, pushes her team to recreate the experiment which went wrong to produce the original Killer Frost, probably with the same result, but we'll find out next issue.

Justice League of America #236: Conway and Patton/Maygar bring their initial introductory arc to an end, with a confrontation between the League and Overmaster and the Cadre. The Overmaster claims to be millions of years old and responsible for the previous mass extinction events on Earth, and he's itching for another one. The new League is almost defeated, but Gypsy shows up with Dale Gunn. She's able to get to the mysterious glowing jewel floating about the head of a slumbering giant alien the League found, and apparently this leads to the villains being enveloped in a bright light and vanishing. Heading home, the group theorizes that the giant was the source of Overmaster's power with the latter being some sort of parasite with delusions of grandeur who created the Cadre to make his dream come true. As they watch, the mountain they escaped reveals itself to be a space vehicle as it rockets away from Earth.

New Teen Titans #6: Wolfman and Jurgens/Tanghal have the Titans receiving the adulation of the citizens of New York City after their defeat of Trigon. The Titans are still dealing with the traumatic fallout from what they experienced, though, and no one knows where Raven is. At Terry's suggestion, the Titans again go on a camping trip to give them a chance to talk and share their emotional burdens.

Longhaul

All the interstellar Science Fiction roleplaying systems and settings I can think of rely on faster-than-light travel (generic systems like GURPs or Hero System discuss the option of forgoing it, but I don't think either devote much space to it) and fairly rapid FTL, at that. It isn't surprising; most starfaring sci-fi literature does so as well. 

There are hard(er) sci-fi writers that generally adhere to a more realistic, slower than light universe, like Alistair Reynolds, Greg Egan or Charles Stross. Reynolds' star travelers enter cyrogenic "reefer sleep" to handle the years long voyages in "lighthuggers." Stross and Egan in some of their stories have digital minds broadcast across the distance as light to be reconstituted at the receiving end.

There are also works with sort of slow FTL, so that voyages still require years. Ruocchio's Sun Eater series has characters entering cryogenic fugue to pass the years. Simmons' Hyperion Cantos has FTL that still results in time dilation so ship time is less than the years than pass for observers.

It strikes me that whatever the method, space travel that takes long periods of time, and where the traveler is somehow able to personally elide the effects of so much time passing (either through cryogenics, weird time effects, or even just posthuman immortality) would make for an interesting aspect to a setting and campaign.

The PCs might set out as smugglers or free traders with valuable cargo for a 20-year voyage (from the perspective of the destination) and arrive to find the market had changed or a natural disaster had ruined their chances for making the sale. Mercenary PCs hired for a job, could find the government they were sent to defend toppled by the time they arrive or the person they were to report to succeeded by someone less friendly. 

Both of these changes are bad for the PCs, but they could have just as easily been advantageous. The point is with years or decades passing, the setting should hardly stay static. I think this would have the effect of modifying PC behavior a bit. It would make them take space travel less for granted, for one thing. Trips between worlds are no longer trivial. Two, even with cryogenesis or the like, long travel times would make PC aging meaningful.

Using a series of random tables to accomplish these changes would of course include the GM in the fun of discovery. A dynamic setting is often, I think, a more alive feeling one than a static one.