it came from a comic book

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories is a bigass hardbound collection of artsy-farsty "indie" style comics. It's really great, even if it doesn't feature the spandex-clad fisticuffs I normally want out of a funny book. And I even found a few items in the book that absolutely begged to be swiped for gaming.  For example, here's a panel from Charles Burns's Curse of the Molemen. The anthology only includes a small excerpt of the total story, so I can only guess that the dude below is one of the aforementioned Molemen. But I'm going to put him to another use.


LAAZGHUL
# Encountered: d6 (2d8)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90' (30')
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 2 (claws) or 1 (head beamer)
Damage: d4/d4 or see below
Save: Fighter 3
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: XXI/B

Laazghuls are mutant relatives of ghouls and have all the normal undead immunities. They cannot paralyze with a touch like their more common kin, but may use the emitter array on their heads to blast foes. Roll on the chart below, either for each laazghul or the entire group, to determine what their skull zapper shoots.  Range for all attacks is 90'.

1. Heat Ray - 3d6 plus save or metal objects melt
2. Cold Beam - 2d8 plus save or frozen to spot for 2d6 turns or until chipped free
3. Napalm Gout - 2d6 plus d6 for next d6 rounds
4. Hypno Ray - save or switch sides for 2d6 turns
5. Pulse Blaster - 3d6 no save, but to-hit roll required
6. Lightning - 6d6 save for half

Laazghuls turn as normal ghouls.  Anyone killed by Laazghul claws will rise in 3 nights as a Laazghul.  Those killed by their head beamers are probably too zapped to return from the dead as anything.

an old joke in the mighty Marvel manner

Marvel's version of Wonder Woman is atrocious, but then most of Wonder Man's costumes have been dubious at best.  Gender-swapped Luke Cage looks pretty dang awesome.

ho, ho! what's this?

Today was the family's weekly pilgrimage to local public library. One of the sections I regularly peruse whilst there is the comic book shelves. I am always amazed by how much good stuff they have in terms of graphic novels, trade paperbacks and other combinations of word and image. On this visit I snatched up What It Is by the always awesome Lynda Barry, a mysterious volume called The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 which I selected solely based upon the enigmatically numeric title, and A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman. I'm not really sure who Emma Goldman is, but I've been on a bit of a comic-biography kick. Recent visits to the library found me borrowing graphical bios on J. Edgar Hoover, Malcom X, Ronald Reagan and the Dalai Lama.

As I'm leaving the section to go look for something in the fiction section my eye catches a quick glimpse of a rather thick volume with a familiar name emblazoned thereon.  Dig it:

I already knew that Zak S., the criminal mastermind behind DnD with Porn Stars (NSFW, duh) and "I Hit It With My Axe", was a serious artist by day.  And I already knew that he had done a series of works, one for each page of Gravity's Rainbow, that was something of a hit in the art world.  But I didn't know he had a book deal or that the book had reached the provincial backwaters of central Illinois where on online friend of his could stumble across a copy.  The world is full of strange connections.  Even finding this work in the funny book section is a bit of a puzzler, because as far as I can tell this isn't graphical fiction in any sense.  It looks to me like one would need a copy of Pynchon's novel to make narrative sense of the images.

So I checked out Zak's book and Gravity's Rainbow.  I need two more 700+ books on my reading list like I need another hole in my head, but I think sometimes you need to listen to the signals the universe sends you.

"I don't like going inside banks...

That last line just cracks me up.  From Corinne Mucha's contribution to I Saw You..., a comics anthology based upon the Missed Connections section of craigslist.

microbyzantium

One of the oldest and oddest miscellaneous links on the ol' Gameblog leads to Ze Ball Breaker Micro-Heros.  As far as I can tell, once upon a time some dude used one of the online virtual paper doll thing-a-ma-bobs and a paint program to make his own Spider Jersusalem avatar for a Warren Ellis forum.  Some other people, mostly French people initially, thought that was the greatest idea ever and soon were making their own Micro-Hero avatars.  Like this:

The poses are all stiff, most Micro-Heros are built off a small pool of body templates, and shading is generally limited to a single additional color.  That's why they are hated by many serious comic nerds and precisely why I love the crap out of Micro-Heros.  Like the programming magic of HeroMachine, the design ethos of Micro-Heros makes it braindead easy for normal non-artist types like me to participate in creating superhero visuals.  Grab a template or one of the zillion already-made figures.  Then open it up in MS Paint, hit the Zoom feature and get crackin'. YOU can make your own Micro-Hero.  It's that easy.  The figures are so small you can edit them one pixel at a time and it doesn't feel like superhard work.

So no more excuses as to why you don't have art for your superhero PC.  Hell, there are a few sci-fi and fantasy MH's out there as well if you need help with that sort of thing.  Though if you're looking for Starfleet personnel there's a cute little Star Trek paper-doll sort of thing out there that would be perfect.  Damned if I can find the link right now.

But the Micro-Hero concept goes from 'dumb but cute' to 'totally insano' with the work of this guy named Razer.  He does something called Byzantine style Micro-Heros.  Just imagine the 1990's taking a big ol' dump on the costume of your favorite comics character:

Pretty much every Byzantine character sports shoulder spikes of some sort.  Ridiculously long loincloths also seem mandatory, except for those rare characters who wear floor-length skirts for no discernable reasons.  Weird-ass helmets and from-the-nose-down halfmasks are also common.  This is transcendantal nonsense at its finest, my friends.

There's a real opportunity here for some enterprising supers GM.  Like Paul Czege's use of alternative superhero naming conventions, adopting a Byzantine design ethos could be a great way to customize a supers campaign.  No one would look a palette-swapped Superman, because in your world no self-respecting superhero would dress that way.  "Briefs over tights?  As if!  Everyone knows real heroes wear loincloths!"  Mix-and-matching parts from Razer's extensive body of work would make it real easy to come up with new character designs.

I love toys like this

Scott Pilgrim avatar creator, found via Comics Alliance

Check out these debonaire fellows.

Remember these guys?  Back in the 80's Marvel Comics decided that Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and Captain America needed a makeover.  In the world of comics there's an old editorial maxim that "every comic is somebody's first".  Any GameBlog readers start reading comics with one of these versions of the heroes?  Were you confused or annoyed when the dudes above were reverted back to their previous design?  I'm curious.

Some people are taking the recent elevation of Mike Mearls to head of D&D Research & Development and this EN World "acceptance speech" of his as a signal of 5E getting under way.  I'm not sure that's really the case and I see no point in arguing the possibility one way or another.  5E will come when it comes, no matter what the entrails say prior to the event.  I just want to take a moment to respond to the hope, already expressed by a few, that 5E will step back from the more recent editions and go back the The Way Things Used To Be.  I'm not one of those people.  I'm not particularly keen on the idea of a self-consciously Old School new edition of D&D.  My favorite edition has already had its turn in the sun.  Maybe each new generation of D&D players deserve a version of the game that speaks to them.  WotC shouldn't turn its back on the current player base to satisfy the needs of the old fart brigade, even if we really do outnumber the 4e kids 16 to 1.

Really, all I want out of Wizards at this point is for them to get their heads out of their asses sufficiently to resume PDF sales and/or offer their back catalog as print-on-demand titles and/or produce a 'classic' retro boxed set. Marvel and DC have realized there's money to be made in old material, as the pile of Marvel Essentials on the shelf behind me attests.  Are RPG fans really that much stupider than comic fans, that we wouldn't be able to navigate between the D&D equivalent of Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man?  I don't think so.  We all pretty much made it out of the 'AD&D vs. Basic/Expert' era intact. +10 nerd points for the first guy to mention that the Hulk was grey in his first few appearances and the green version is actually the update.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Red Skull

The second most hated Nazi in comics sure has a way with words. Panel from "Captain America and the Riddle of the Red Skull", reprinted in The Best of Simon and Kirby (Titan Books 2009).

Non-Fiction Comic Books Rock on Toast

Everybody knows about superhero comics and many have at least seen Archie on the newstand or supermarket check-out. Older fans might remember the good ol' days of war comics, action adventure comics, sci-fi comics and western comics. In the indie comics scene biographical and pseudo-biographical comics have become cliché. But I'm not sure everyone knows about the small stream of absolutely awesome non-fiction comics out there. Here are some of my favorites.

Factoid Press "Big Book" series

Calling some of these books "non-fiction" might stretch the definition a wee bit. The Big Book of the Unexplained, for example, devotes many pages to Big Foot. Either way, at about 11 inches tall and 200 pages, each volume in the Big Book series is a large collection of short pieces by a wide variety of cool artists like Joe Sacco, J. H. Williams, Paul Gulacy, Brent Anderson, Russ Heath, and Gahan Wilson. Any book with Gahan Wilson drawing creepy stuff is a good book. In addition to the Unexplained, I'm fond of The Big Book of Conspiracies, The Big Book of Urban Legends, The Big Book of Grimm (as in unexpurgated versions of the original Grimm fairy tales), The Big Book of the Seventies and The Big Book of Freaks.

Larry Gonick's Cartoon Histories

Pretty much anyone without a degree in history would probably do well to read Gonick's three-volume Cartoon History of the Universe. I just polished off his Cartoon History of the United States a couple days ago. Gonick isn't afraid to let his own voice creep into the narrative, so the latter volume leans more to the left than some people will dig. Gonick's book on basic statistics was a little harder to get through, though that was probably a combination of a shortage of cool characters for Gonick to (ab)use and my own innumeracy. Gonick's goal is to smarten up the readers, but his fun illos and breezy writing style are entertaining at the same time.

Rick Geary's Treasury of Victorian Murder

I got turned on to Rick Geary thanks to his contributions to the Big Book series. Let loose on his own he specializes in one subject: murder. The Treasury of Victorian Murder series includes accounts of the Lincoln assassination and its aftermath, the Ripper Murders, and my own personal favorite, The Beast of Chicago: An Account of the Life and Crimes of Herman W. Mudgett, Known to the World As H.H. Holmes. Other Geary volumes cover Lizzie Borden and the Lindbergh kidnapping. Geary's unsettling linework and matter-of-fact journalistic writing draw you into a disturbing world where crime seems as common as catnip.

Action Philosophers!

My most recent find in the non-fiction comic field is Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's Action Philosophers! series. (Well, it wasn't much of a 'find' on my part. If Chris Sims says a comic is awesome, you can take that to the bank.) The basic Van Lente and Dunlavey technique is to give you the Executive Summary of a philosopher in comic form. It's like as if Cliff's Notes were actually fun to read. And the cover to the first trade has Plato in a luchadore mask shouting "Plato Smash!" as Nietzsche opens his shirt to reveal the Übermensch costume underneath. What's not to love?

FYI...

...sixties Japanese Batman had the raddest rogue's gallery known to mankind.

Professor Gorilla!

The Mutant! a.k.a. The Man Who Quit Being Human!

Lord Death Man!

Go-Go the Magician!

Doctor Faceless!

All these awesome baddies can be found in the sweet reprint volume Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan. Since I just totally sold out to Amazon, you can click the thumbnail to the left to go directly to where you can order a copy. (Assuming I'm doing this product link thingy right.) Or order it from your local comics-type retailer. Or you can do what I did and borrow it from your library, assuming your local library is as supercool as mine.

Women are from Venus, Satan is from Mars

Pink-haired Space Satan is a pretty groovy dresser.

Shamelessly stolen from Stupid Comics.

The Bestiary of Bob

For years one of my favorite webcomics has been Bob the Angry Flower. The subject matter of the strip runs the gamut from international politics to mad science (real and imaginary) to the horrors of trying to give up smoking, all with easy cartoony linework, weird characters and fun dialogue. And along the way creator Stephen Notley whips up quite a few monsters, which leads to today's post.

Stab Fairy
Number Encountered: 1d6
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 60' (20') Fly: 180' (60')
Armor Class: 3
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 4
Damage: 1d4
Save: Elf 2
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: III + IV

Stab Fairies are the warrior class among fey peoples such as pixies and sprites. They attack larger creatures by flying into their foe's faces and slashing with all four blade limbs. Survivors of combats with these little maniacs often sport jagged facial scars.

Knife Ghost
Number Encountered: 2d4
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40') Fly: 240' (80')
Armor Class: 2
Hit Dice: 6
Attacks: 2
Damage: 2d4
Save: Fighter 6
Morale: 11
Hoard Class: XVII

These undead have slashing knives, snipping scissors and spinning dental instruments where their hands should be. Knife ghosts are immune to sleep, charm, hold and invulnerable to normal weapons, including silver. The wounds caused by these creatures rusty and dirty blades may not be healed in any manner until the victim is the recipient of a cure disease spell. [My bud Stuart whipped me up some 3E stats for Knife Ghosts back in '04 or so, but I'll be damned if I can find them right now.]

Cephalogod
Number Encountered: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 30' (10') Swim 120' (40')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 20
Attacks: 10
Damage: 1d12
Save: Fighter 20
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: XV

These tentacled horrors normally lurk in the deepest ocean trenches and certain murky underground lakes, but they occasionally visit the surface world for the purpose of rampage. Instead of attacking with its mighty tentacles a cephalogod may opt to fix its loathsome gaze upon any single creature, who must save versus paralysis at -4 or be held for 2d6 turns.

Belaphathon
Number Encountered: 1 (unique)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (40') Fly: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 8
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6
Save: Magic User 8
Morale: 11
Hoard Class: XVIII (none if summoned)

Certain horrible grimoires record the ritual necessary for the conjuration of this infernal terror. Belaphathon casts spells as an 8th level magic-user and it is usually called to teach the summoner new spells. Note that it will only teach one spell per summoning unless the parties can agree to some long term pact. As is normal with such beings, Belaphathon will twist the meaning of commands, seek to bargain for the eternal soul of the conjurer, etc. Belaphathon cannot be harmed by normal weapons, but is vulnerable to silver and any weapon that has been blessed by a cleric since it last shed blood.

Attack Banana
Number Encountered: 1d6
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 90' (30')
Armor Class: 9
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d4
Save: Fighter 1
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: none

These guys aren't automatically hostile, but they have very short tempers. Angry attack bananas hop up to foes and latch on with their vicious fangs. Once they have sunk teeth into their victim they will not let go, doing automatic damage each round until dead. No doubt another creation of some smirking archmage with too much time on his hands.

Stay Weird

Here’s the sort of thing I have trouble passing up when I spot it in the bargain bin of a comic shop.


I don't know much more than To Be Announced was a black & white ‘humor’ comic published in Ontario. I want to like this book, but it’s not very good. However I really dig the mag’s mascot:


Yet another reason why I should never be made Emperor of the World (or Canadia): I would have a special prison set up for colorists who screw up rainbows that badly. Maybe if I was feeling particularly merciful on a given day I would allow the dude a chance to explain the artistic effect he was attempting to achieve with this brave new spectrum. But most of the time I would simply send such prismatic offenders to Bifrostcatraz where they would be made to write the mnemonic Roy G. Biv one zillion times on a chalkboard.

Anyway, here’s another pic of the unnamed mascot. I think I’ll call him the Cathode Gorilla.


I like that tree, too. Comics.org says artist Mike Bannon also did later work on Oombah the Jungle Moon Man. Dig the trippy cover, man.

The not-quite-humurous back-up story is actually better written than the feature, though the art is a lot rougher. The plot could easily be swiped for a sci-fi game: tow intergalactic con men are selling bogus real estate deeds on two planets in the middle of the neutral zone. It turns out that the folks on the other side of the neutral zone have taken an interest in the world. Suddenly the local government needs the con men's dog & pony show to serve as evidence that their own claim to the two planets is stronger!

Sunday funnies

From today's installment of Stephan Pastis' Pearls Before Swine.

The mystery beachcomber revealed

On Wednesday I asked the Gameblog readership to guess the age of a comic book character based upon four cropped panels of her frolicking by the ocean. Thanks for all the responses! All those pics came from a single page of Swords of the Swashbucklers, a 1984 Marvel graphic novel written by Bill 'the Thrill' Mantlo and drawn by Jackson Guice. I'm a big Mantlo fan but I'm not particularly familiar with Mr. Guice's art. I pretty much bought my copy of Swords of the Swashbucklers based on the fact that Mantlo's name was on the cover. Okay, maybe the space pirates helped.

Anyway, here's the answer to the mystery, given in a narration box on the same page:


Gameblog reader lisandro gaertner got it right in the very first comment on Wednesday's post. Gameblog regular wulfgar asked for Domino Blackthorn Drake's height, but I have no hard data on that point.


This is page 2 of the book. I haven't really been able to get much farther because this whole age thing snapped me out of the story before I could really even get into it.

It's interesting to note that writer Mantlo once had the reverse problem in that he wrote a character as a teenage girl but the artist drew her looking like she was in grade school. Chris Sims has the lowdown on that incident.

An experiment

Audience participation time! Below are four images from a comic book that you've probably never heard of. In the comments section below I want you to guess the age of this character, if you would please. On Friday I will reveal the actual answer.

And if by some amazing coincidence you are actually familiar with this comic, please no spoilers!

Need an avatar?

Here are two you are welcome to use:


My buddy Pat tore the first one out of an old issue of Juxtapoz or something similar. That second one comes from a nifty one-page comic published in Heavy Metal in the 90's. Click to embiggen it:Now that I think about it, that barfing T-Rex would make a pretty cool avatar as well.

Waitasec, what's this?

Okay, so I was reading the fourth trade of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run when I noticed something on the cover. Check it out:


What's the first thing you notice there? Is it Flex Mentallo's superpowered bicep? His leopard-print crotch? (It's okay. I won't tell. Little Flexie was the first thing I spotted as well.) Howzabout the Pentagon he's squatting over? Maybe the waiter from the Tea Room of Desolation caught your eye. All those things leap off the page. But look towards the upper right of the image.


When I saw both these diagrams AND the Pentagon on the same cover I had a pretty good idea where the storyline would be going. I don't recall if I first encountered the "Pentagon-as-magical-containment-device-for-horrible-entity" thing in Principia Discordia or the Illuminatus! trilogy, but it definitely appears as a plot point in the latter. But Morrison manages to make that trick work a second time. He's good at that.

But let's zoom in on one of these pentagrams:


This is funny to me, because that's the emblem of the Order of the Eastern Star, a masonic appendant body. "Appendant body" is Mason lingo for an ritualistic organization that was founded by and/or is subordinate in some way to mainstream "Blue Lodge" masonry. Those scary 33rd degree masons all the conspiracy kooks like to talk about? They get degrees 4 to 33 from the Scottish Rite, one of the more popular appendant bodies. There are literally more appendant bodies than you can keep track of. I'm not sure I could name all the appendant bodies that meet in my own lodge building. Heck, some guys belong to so many they can't recall the names of them all and sometimes they get all the secret passwords and handshakes horribly mixed up. Its kinda funny sometimes, at least when everyone in the room is dedicated to learning lotsa crazy rituals by rote.

During the five years that I was hot and heavy into Freemasonry I was initiated into a lot of appendant bodies myself. I only reached the 32nd degree in the Scottish Rite, so I don't get to help run the New World Order or anything cool like that. Among the other appendant bodies I joined was the Order of the Eastern Star. In fact, I was rather active in my local chapter for a time. My wife was a member as well and that's where we got to know each other. And what is cracking me the hell up about this Doom Patrol cover is that the Eastern Star is one of the most innocuous Masonic orders you're likely to find. The mens-only appendant bodies dress up in crazy costumes, waive swords around, and swear bloody and nonsensical oaths. If you're the kind of conspiracy nut interested in getting frothed up about the Masons, the Scottish Rite and York Rite and Shriners give you plenty of material to work with. The Eastern Star is more like an afternoon tea.

WTF? Theatre proudly presents...

...Batman and a cowboy discussing Scooby-Doo.

I'm racking my brain to figure out a way to use this panel as evidence that the old Scooby Doo/Batman & Robin crossovers are in continuity. Considering everyone that the Mystery Inc. gang has encountered over the years, that would be mind-bogglingly awesome.

This dude is great

One of the mags available this Free Comic Day was a sampler of EC Comic reprints. EC had a great range of comics like Weird Science and Tales from the Crypt. The Comic Code that was supposed protect America's youth was basically designed to put EC out of business. Gemstone Publishing has been releasing archive editions of this stuff, with six issues to a volume. I didn't know this until I got this freebie comic. I'm definitely putting some Weird Science on the ol' Amazon wishlist. That stuff is awesome.

Take, for example, this tale from the reprint. A blob from Venus is loose on the Earth, devouring everything in its path. The President calls on his Top Men for a solution to this problem. Enter a guy who looks a bit like Leslie Groves without his mustache:


What I love about this guy is his casual attitude towards unleashing nuclear hellfire on American soil. There he is sitting with his knees crossed, smirking behind his corncob pipe. All of a sudden he has this hum-dinger of an idea. "Gosh gee-whiz, boss! We've got all these gol-durned A-bombs sitting around gathering dust. Maybe we could fire one off and see what happens?"

I know his cavalier attitude towards launching atomics can be partially blamed on this comic's origin in the fifties. In any later era he'd be standing up, hunched over the sitting President, his clenched fists slamming the desk. "With all due respect, Sir, nuclear weapons are our only option." Instead, this guy's almost jolly about it.