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.

Wednesday Comics: Gift Suggestions 2025

 Looking for a gift for a comic book fan you know (even if that fan is yourself)? Here are my recommendations for you to consider.

Absolute Martian Manhunter vol 1: Martian Vision

In the only one of the Absolute books that really caught me interest, Martian Manhunter is re-envisioned as a sort of memetic lifeform that invades the mind of FBI agent John Jones in a psychedelic story about alien invasion and family, among other things, by Camp and Rodriquez. This is, unfortunately, only the first 6 issues of the series, so not a complete story, but worth it, if only for Rodriquez's artwork.

Avengers: The Veracity Trap

I reviewed this gorgeous volume by Kidd and Cho here. The Avengers brawl with a host of Kirby-style Marvel monsters, courtesy of Loki, but soon develops in an even more metatextual direction as Thor pursues Loki outside the realm of the comic. The Avengers soon must come to terms with the sense-shattering reality of their existence and the fictional counterparts of Kidd and Cho finding the story becoming all too real!

Bug Wars Book One: Lost in the Yard

Teenager Slade Slaymaker, son of an entomologist who died under mysterious circumstances, finds himself shrunk and thrown in among warring tribes of diminutive insect-riding humanoids having epic battles in his unkept backyard!

Ad copy calls this "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Conan," but I feel like Aaron and Asrar are fulfilling the promise of Sword of Atom or the Hulk stories set in Jarella's world in a gritter, modern way. The thought but into the various cultures of the yard is one of my favorite parts.

Drome

This one has got a fair amount of buzz online, and I think with good reason. Check out my review here. Lonergan weaves a creation myth in a world part Kirby's New Gods and part Metal Hurlant in a unique style.

Hobtown Mystery Stories

The release of volume three "The Secret of the Saucer" just this week has given me the only excuse I need to put this series on the list again this year. Bertin and Forbes created a series that is sort of "Twin Peaks meets the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew" as teens in a small, coastal Canadian town uncover weirdness.

Marvel Age of Comics

I wrote about the Mighty Avengers volume in this series here. It's the only one I've read so far of these 33 1⁄3 explorations of Marvel history, but it got me interested in reading more.

The Seasons Vol. 1

Young Spring Seasons is the last hope to save her sisters and parents from the grip of sinister carnival that invades their home town. This series by Remender, Alzaceta and Lopez has been called a "dark fairytale" and "whimsical horror," which seem apt descriptors. Remender has said The Adventures of Tintin and the works of Miyazaki were inspirations, which I can also see, particularly the former as it seems a very "European style" comic to me

Clerics vs. Posthumans

Technology vs. magic, sometimes even to the point of a war, in a feature of a number of fantasy works, though I'm not aware of a published D&D setting that features it. 

Some science fiction settings have cultural/religious limits on technology, either as one facet of the setting or as a means for the author to keep technology in check to tell the sort of story they want to tell. Dune is the primary example, but there are series like the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio that follow its lead, and other settings that make it a feature. A more recent variant is a group or culture that rejects the rapid changes associated with things like cybertechnology and brain uploading. This shows up in Stross' Accelerando.

I think it would be interesting to sort of combine these concepts. Have the action take place within a fantasy world (perhaps a fairly standard one, or maybe a Spelljammer-ish system), but the demons, devils, and other Outsiders trying to get in and corrupt the world (at least from the perspective of the world's clerics and leaders who consuder them anathema) are actually posthuman intelligences that utilize technology, not magic. Presumably, "magic" (whatever it is) was what allowed these simple, unenhanced humanoids to hold on in a universe of much more powerful sophonts. The Outer Planes (as they view) them are really just planets, habitats or networks.

Of course, whether the Outsiders are really baddies would depend on the specifics of the setting--or maybe even be open to interpretation?

Challenge on the Moon

 Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last Sunday with the party trying to get to the Bright Rabbit Goddess of the Moon to ask her for a particular jewel that might be the key to saving Azurth's princesses from the petrification the evil Wizard had put on them. 

After several weird encounters in the fae lunar gardens, the party encountered one of the Rabbit Folk working in a fissure in the Moon's surface on the vast gearworks beneath.  He told them the gears controlled the movement of the gigantic, black tarpaulin that was drawn across the Moon's surface, causing its phases as observed from Earth, so that the lunar folk could have some privacy.

 He tells them that reaching the primary garden and the Goddess requires not thinking about going there. Sort of unfocus your eyes, he says, and the path will become clear. Only two of the party are able to accomplish this, but they can lead the other members on. 

They are greeted by a major domo in a ruff collar and fancy dress who listens to their concerns and puts their names on a list to see the Goddess. Then he ushers them off to one of the few empty tables in the expansive, side garden to wait.

Trying to figure out a way to get in sooner, they strike up a conversation with a young woman who claims to be from Mercury. She offers them a letter of introduction from the Empire of Mercury, which they accept but are too wary to use. 

They decide to ask the major domo if there might be some sort of inducement they could provide to get in sooner. He happily tells them that the Moon is mad for the more advanced gadgetry of Earth. They give him a stopped pocket watch (right twice a day!) that used to belong to the young Roderick Drue, who eventually became the Wizard. Or some version of him did, anyway.

They are whisked in to see the Goddess who is sympathetic to their plight. Unfortunately, she just granted the sapphire to a Faceless Collector from the Outer Worlds. Maybe they can convince him to give it to them?

The Collector, a cool, emotionless humanoid with knowledge of time, says he will give it them if they can defeat him and his servitor in combat...

Wednesday Comics: DC, February 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 November 22, 1984.

America vs. the Justice Society #2: The Thomases and Blair/Alcala start the Justice Society hearing, and it's mostly a recitation of old stories likely harmonized into a (more) cohesive continuity, but without knowing the old stories like Thomas does, it's hard to tell. It does highlight the absurdity of this sort of story where the members of Congress are forced to take the word (or not) of masked individuals regarding time travel, magic, and ghosts. In fact, the Spectre crashes the hearing to offer his old friends sanctuary on another world, and to sort of threaten their accusers. Wonder Woman also does some threatening when they impugn her honesty. 

The first round goes pretty good for the JSA despite that, but there's someone in the background out to get them for the death of his father, and he's got the Wizard set to testify.

V #1: Bates and Infantino/DeZuniga get tapped for the comics tie-in with the series follow-up to the successful TV mini-series. The series premiered on October 26, 1984, so the comic was hot on its heels. I watched some of it, I know, but I don't remember much about the regular series. The comic, with the human rebels fighting a resistance against the Visitors, strikes me as pretty similar to what the series was probably like, though it has a higher special effects budget, as I don't think the Visitors had soldiers with jetpacks on TV. The art really looks like DeZuniga drew it from Infantino breakdowns; his inks hide most of the Infantino-ness, besides poses of the characters maybe.

Action Comics #564: Kupperberg and Saviuk bring back that now obscure but common in the early 80s villain, the Master Jailer. He's got a device from the Monitor that induces amnesia in Superman, making him believe he's a warehouse worker named Mike Benson. The Monitor warns the Jailer that the amnesia may be broken if Superman encounters things that remind him of his real life in the next 48 hours. While Master Jailer commits crimes wearing Superman's costume as armor under his outfit, Mike Benson goes about his day, accidentally avoiding things that would trigger his memories, until he's asked to don a Superman costume for a children's benefit. Superman recovers his memories and captures the Jailer.

In the second story by Boatner and Bender/Hunt, Superman is in Philadelphia and attacked by an other-dimensional slaver (of a species that looks like humanoid geese) searching for his escaped slave on Earth. Superman helps the escapee, who was drawn to Earth after learning of the Underground Railroad, defeat his pursuer, and hopes Earth can become a stop on an interdimensional Underground Railroad. 

Arion Lord of Atlantis #28: Kupperberg and Sherman-Tereno have Arion find a scroll that he thinks might allow him to restore his magic. When he performs the ritual the magical being it summons seeks to trick him, and Arion's life is only saved by the intervention of a kid. In the end, though, Arion does get some magic again.

In the conclusion to the Lady Chian backup, she defends the young girl Lyla from the father the has fled, who intends to give her over to slavery. Chian is reminded of her own childhood in which her own father gave her up as a ritual offering to a warlord. Chian wins the fight, with the girl's father and her own past, and chooses not to kill the man but leaves with the girl.

All-Star Squadron #42: Thomas and Jones/Collins continue the story from last issue. The now-conscious Starman recounts how, the night before, he had an encounter with Japanese planes over the coast that were able to turn invisible. Soon, the All-Stars headquarters is invaded by Prince Daka and his and his invisible minions, Sumo, Tsunami and Kung, who were on those planes. The All-Stars present are defeated, and Daka claims Starman's cosmic rod.

Detective Comics #547: Moench and Broderick/Janson continue the Night-Slayer Batman story. While Bruce Wayne in the Night-Slayer outfit sits on top of a building and makes a pyramid from pebbles, Anton Knight as Batman is on a crime spree. Mayor Hill, who has been trying to frame Batman for attacking him, views Batman committing real crimes as some kind of trap, so he sends his goons to investigate. The blind woman Knight had stayed with finds his buried loot and realizes he wasn't tht real Batman. Robin and Nocturna set out to find Bruce but run into Anton Knight, who Nocturna wounds with a throwing star, but he escapes.

The fake Batman then meets accidentally with the tailor who provided Mayor Hill with the fake bat-glove for his framing attempt. After the encounter, the man starts thinking maybe Hill might be right about Batman. While he's contemplating this, he encounters the "Night-Slayer" who gives him a helping hand. 

Jonah Hex #89: While Jonah is recovering from getting shot by Emmy Lou at the stern Mrs. Crowley's boarding house, the amnesiac Adrian Sterling continues to serve drinks under the name of Temple Starr, and Emmy Lou is still with the outlaw gang, believing she killed Jonah.

Hex has got further problems, because Jeremy Ashford, the son of the Gray Ghost, has just located him, having vowed to fulfill an oath to his father to kill the bounty hunter. The young Ashford begins to have second thoughts have Hex saves his life. He confronts Hex, revealing his identity, but Jonah convinces the boy that murder isn't in his nature. Ashford seems to agree, leaving Hex alive but choosing to commit suicide.

There's a house ad in the letter column proclaiming "Jonah Hex's new horse" showing Hex riding a motorcycle. It's "coming in June."

Spanner's Galaxy #3: This issue, Spanner and his sidekick Gadj arrive on the swampy planet of New Okeefenokee, where a family of researchers are under frequent assault by the native Okees, who have mysteriously turned aggressive recently. Spanner's arrival is the catalyst that allows secrets to be revealed: the daughter of the researchers is actually a native orphan the couple adopted and were using drugs and technology to make appear human with the hope of taking her off world. An Okee ritual reveals the truth, and the daughter chooses to stay with her people but promises to keep in contact with her adoptive parents.

Sun Devils #8: Rik and Annie fight Khun’s prime assassin, Draken, amid the wreckage of their ship. The fight ends with Rik's helmet shattered. Meanwhile, the rest of the team discuss the evidence of a traitor amongst them, before we get a better more of Scylla's backstory, and she and Shikon head out on a mission to retrieve the neutronium they need for the superweapon.

Supergirl Movie Special #1: Cavalieri and Morrow adapt the not well-received movie. We get a José Luis García-López cover which is pretty cool. Though, not of course, in continuity, this winds up being the last appearance of Supergirl before the pages of Crisis. 

Tales of the Legion #320: Levitz plots here with Newell on script and Jurgens/Kesel on art. A master thief called Magpie penetrates the Legion's headquarters to steal some valuable items on behalf of the Monitor--or so he believes. The Monitor has really engaged him in the service of Universo. Magpie is stopped by Dream Girl and Sun Boy. Meanwhile, Colossal Boy, his wife, and Gigi Cusimano, conspired to teach the womanizing Sun Boy a lesson.

World's Finest Comics #312: Cavalieri and Woch/Alcala introduce the previously teased Network. During the opening of a new disco in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne is there as the guest of Lilane Stern (and smoking a pipe, which I haven't seen him do in decades), and Clark Kent is reporting on the event, because apparently new clubs in Gotham are newsworthy in Metropolis. The place is attacked by the Network, a group of super-villains who each have a TV or radio related schtick. Despite the intervention of Superman and Batman, the villains warp out the discotheque into another dimension using their combined powers.

While Superman investigates this "white noise" dimension, Batman goes to the record company that had previously employed this group. During his investigation, Batman finds that the Network is blackmailing the president of the company before the Network sends him to the white noise dimension.

Weird Revisited: The Androids' Dungeon

The original version of this post appeared in February of 2014, inspired by "Bit Rot," a short story by Charles Stross.

Neptune's Brood and related works by Charles Stross take place in a posthuman future where the civilization of humankind's android/bioroid creations has spread out into the stars. These androids can look and act pretty much human--including eating and excreting biological material. The difference is that they are made of mechanocytes instead of biological cells that must "learn" to form organs and "tissue" types, and their brains have soulchip backups they can be placed into a new body if their old ones are destroyed. Interestingly, priests (like those of the Church of the Fragile, who seek to disseminate old style "fragile" humanity in the galaxy) have "powers." Special structures and training that allow them to control the mechanocytes of others to heal or alter forms.

All of this sounded like a good way to in-setting rationalize traditional dungeoneering rpg tropes, if you're into that sort of thing. Imagine a future where humankind is extinct and its android descendants live in a pseudo-medieval society--except for things like soulchips (or something of that nature) and clerical healing. The androids (who would just think of themselves as "people," of course) would go down into the underground ruins of old humanity (who they probably wouldn't realize were any different than themselves) to wrest treasures from less socialized posthuman intelligences, i.e. monsters.
What would be the point? Well, it would be an interesting mystery to add in the background of a science fantasy sort of campaign (like a variant Anomalous Subsurface Environment, maybe). Also, the increased durability and easy resurrection of posthumans would explain some things about how D&D works as written but it could also be used to ramp up the carnage (and probably the black humor). Death wouldn't necessarily mean starting with a new character most of the time, it would just mean starting with the same character, poorer than before or owing a debt to somebody.