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Art of the Genre: Dark Tower and Bob Pepper

Art of the Genre: Dark Tower and Bob Pepper

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Goth Chick say 'bring it!'
Goth Chick say 'bring it!'

We’re a little less than three weeks from World Fantasy Con in San Diego and John O’Neill is at it again. This time he’s sent Goth Chick in from Chicago to prepare for his California arrival which wouldn’t be a problem except she and my receptionist Kandline don’t get along. Seriously, it’s was like watching Malibu Barbie and one of the Bratz go at it over the actual value of an immunity boost at Jamba Juice.

Meanwhile Ryan Harvey and I are watching the new Avengers trailer and debating which was a better hero, Ryan’s boy Captain America, or my personal favorite Iron Man. Yep, the offices were in an uproar and the only way to settle or satisfy the situation… Dark Tower grudge match!

Yeah, that’s how we roll here at Black Gate L.A.

Before you could say Strawberry’s Wild the game was out and sides declared. Ryan became the dapper-dressed troubadour king of Zenon, Goth Chick created the perfect persona as the necromantic queen of Brynthia, lovely Kandi decided on the enchanted and silver-charmed princess of Arisilon, and I of course took the unlucky and often lost in the wilds Baron of Durnin.

It was an epic contest, the tower spinning out brigands and dragons with equal delight, but in the end Ryan rethought his purpose in life, found religion, and joined the Sanctuary of Brynthia, Kandi finally allowed my baron to get ‘lucky’ in the ruins of Brynthia before we ran off together, and Goth Chick took the tower with the help of her undead hordes. All-in-all it was a solid days work, but as I played I couldn’t help stare at the art involved in the game with whimsical delight.

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Movie Review: TrollHunter Is the Found-Footage Film Norse Myth Nuts Having Been Waiting For!

Movie Review: TrollHunter Is the Found-Footage Film Norse Myth Nuts Having Been Waiting For!

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uk-troll-hunter-posterTrollHunter (2011)
Directed by André Øvredal. Starring Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck, Hans Morten Hansen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Urmilla Berg Domaas.

I love any review that gives me an excuse to use “ø.” Next I will have to find an Icelandic movie so I can write a review using “þ” and “ð.”

In the recent glut of “found footage” films that followed the successes of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, the Norwegian film TrollHunter (Trolljegeren) is a true gleaming piece of uncovered dwarf’s gold. It ditches the gloom that hangs over the other movies in this subgenre and lets the audience have a good time along with its light scares. And while most found footage films are horror movies, this one is a fantasy. A fantasy with dark thrills, but nonetheless a fantasy.

TrollHunter first screened in the U.S. at Fantastic Fest 2010, where Magnet Distribution picked it up for release in Summer 2011. (Magnet has picked up some terrific small films and done simultaneous VOD and limited theatrical release patterns for them, including Hobo with a Shotgun and Centurion. Anything that Magnet picks up catches my interest now.) The film is currently available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Netflix streaming, and anyone who gets a high from fairy-tale fantasy or Norse myth should give this film a look despite the overused faux-documentary trappings.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 7.3 “Girl Next Door”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 7.3 “Girl Next Door”

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Bobby explained to a heavily-medicated Dean that they're trying to escape from the Leviathan-possessed hospital staff.
Bobby explained to a heavily-medicated Dean that they're trying to escape from the Leviathan-possessed hospital staff.

Supernatural’s usually a bit more episodic than it has been lately. It seems like the last dozen or so episodes, even spanning back into the final episodes of last season, have had full-blown cliffhangers instead of just the usual dangling plot threads.

In this case, the cliffhanger is Sam and Dean getting taken to a hospital that is now run by Leviathan-possessed people. Bobby shows up in an uncharacteristically-dapper suit to get a morphine-laden Dean and unconscious Sam out of the hospital. They narrowly escape in a stolen ambulance, chased by Leviathans … and then comes the title splash. It does take a bit of the bite out of the cliffhanger when you know it’s going to get un-hanged before the title splashes across the screen.

With that out of the way, we get on with the plot of the episode, which focuses on an episode from Sam’s youth and his budding romance with a young woman named Amy … a girl who shows up in the present day in the form of Firefly and Stargate: Atlantis alum Jewel Staite.

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The Nightmare Men: “The Judge”

The Nightmare Men: “The Judge”

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fearful-rock-other-precarious-locales-selected-stories-manly-wade-wellman-hardcover-cover-artA man of great height and greater girth, Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, after retiring from the bench, devoted his golden years to investigating the occult in the works of North Carolina author, Manly Wade Wellman. Pursuivant, with his broad bulbous nose and protruding, warm eyes, was one of a half-dozen occult investigators created by Wellman over the course of his career, though the Judge has the distinction of being the first, and, in many ways, the most important of the lot.

Pursuivant made his first appearance in Weird Tales in 1938, in the story, “The Hairy Ones Shall Dance”, wherein the Judge faced off against a werewolf. He appeared in Weird Tales three more times from 1938 to 1941, in “The Black Drama”, “The Dreadful Rabbits”, and “The Half-Haunted”, respectively facing off with a vampiric Lord Byron, demon-rabbits and ghosts. All of these stories have been anthologized on a number of occasions, and have all been collected in the 2001 Nightshade Books collection Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales.

Besides the aforementioned four tales, Pursuivant appeared as a supporting character in a number of Wellman’s other stories, including his Silver John novel, The Hanging Stones, where he aids John the Balladeer, another of Wellman’s occult investigators, in combating a tribe of inbred, druidic werewolves. And, even if he doesn’t appear, Pursuivant is likely mentioned…indeed, the Judge looms over Wellman’s other occult investigators like a guardian angel, wielding knowledge, wit and wisdom in support of humanity’s more active defenders.

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Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Fifteen – “The Fall of Ming”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Fifteen – “The Fall of Ming”

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flash_3_-_fall_of_mingraymond_flash_fall_ming_cvr“The Fall of Ming” was the fifteenth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between January 19 and June 29, 1941, “The Fall of Ming” picks up the storyline where the fourteenth installment, “The Power Men of Mongo” left off with Flash having reached the gates of Ming’s concentration camp in a daring attempt to rescue Zarkov and the other political prisoners held there. Bulon is just about to assassinate Flash when he is captured by Ming’s guards. The traitor quickly reveals Flash’s hiding place. Flash barely escapes with his life, but later succeeds in infiltrating Ming’s “death patrol.”

Dale makes a full recovery and learns from Rena that Bulon is plotting against Flash. The two girls defy Ergon’s orders and set out to rescue Flash. Dale is captured by Sergeant Mordo, one of Ming’s patrolmen while Rena manages to escape. Dale is sent to the concentration camp, but Flash soon learns of her arrival and sets out to rescue her.

Alex Raymond again pushes the boundaries of 1940s sensibilities in the panel showing the muscular and unattractive female guards stripping Dale of her clothing. Likewise, his efforts to show the brutality of German concentration camps proves effective on an entirely different level. The camp’s warden Terro is depicted as a monocled Aryan monster (admittedly, Mongo is also filled with other politically incorrect caricatures from insidious Asians to traitorous Semitic characters as was common in the pulp fiction of the era). Raymond shows many of the prisoners with shaved heads, half-starved, and regularly beaten by the abusive warden. He also depicts a nubile young woman with her back being broken on a wheel. Don Moore’s script notes that prison cells are designed to prevent inmates from standing straight or being able to sit or lie down in an attempt to drive them mad. Raymond was obviously outraged by the War in Europe and was doing the best he could to draw readers’ attention to it by making Ming’s heinous actions strongly parallel Hitler’s atrocities that were recounted in newspapers of the day.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 7.2 “Hello Cruel World”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 7.2 “Hello Cruel World”

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Dean tries to help Sam deal with his hallucinations.
Dean tries to help Sam deal with his hallucinations.

Following the season 7 premiere, Castiel is taken over by the leviathans that he sucked out of Purgatory. This episode begins with a weakened Castiel-turned-leviathan leaving Dean and Bobby with a promise to deal with them later. He heads out into a lake and dissolves into black cloud of water that erupts out flowing in all directions … right into the local water supply, which allows the leviathans to begin taking over unsuspecting residents.

The vessel of Castiel appears to have not made it through the process, leading me to believe that Misha Collins (the actor who played Castiel) is gone from the show, at least for the foreseeable future. Dean certainly laments him, as he finds his trademark trenchcoat floating in the lake.

Sam is having some problems of his own, of course, as he’s having visions of Lucifer, who’s telling him that he never actually escaped from the cage where he trapped Lucifer and Michael (back at the end of season 5). Instead, Lucifer claims to have been inspiring this delusional post-apocalyptic “escape” as a way of torturing Sam. Dean claims that Lucifer isn’t real, but then that’s also what Lucifer says about Dean, so it’s hardly a compelling argument.

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Goth Chick News: The Doctor Will See You Now… So Run!

Goth Chick News: The Doctor Will See You Now… So Run!

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image003Considering what I get up to in my free time, one would not immediately peg me as squeamish. Rodents? No problem. Dead bodies? Nope! I dissected one in college. I’ve even gone so far as to occasionally baby-sit children who are not yet potty trained and not even flinched.

At least not much anyway.

But even those of us that can claim a stoutness of heart in nearly every situation, the operative word there is “nearly;” because everyone has something that makes their skin crawl.

Now this skeeviness is not to be confused with fear. Fear is saved for terrifying things like clowns. I’m talking about that one thing, rational or not, that makes your stomach roll over and all the blood run out of your face until someone asks you if you need to have a lie down.

For me, this is hospitals.

Before you jump in and try to tell me I’ve got a doctor phobia, I don’t. I’ve never been admitted to a hospital or been seriously ill.

However, I did work in a hospital and the results of this adventure are that even passing someone in the mall wearing a little too much white can make me throw up in my mouth a little.

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Alyx Among the Dandelions: Exploring Joanna Russ and Ray Bradbury

Alyx Among the Dandelions: Exploring Joanna Russ and Ray Bradbury

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My copy looked like this. A far cry from John's vintage original.
My copy looked like this. A far cry from John's vintage original.

I think our book club should have a name. It’s that cool. It consists of our Mighty Robot Overlord John O’Neill, awesomely chill Chicago author Geoff Hyatt, our own Dread Patty Templeton and myself. Four people make for a nicely balanced book club, in my opinion.

Now, we may not meet in the most consistent fashion ever (our two meetings had a wee gap of four months between them), but we do read SPIFFY BOOKS. Or at least… discussable ones.

I mean, we started out with The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, which was written up by Mr. Hyatt back in May. Then we decided to get our claws into some Joanna Russ and vintage Bradbury. Next we’re going to do Fritz Leiber’s Swords against Death and China Mieville’s Iron Council.

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Art of the Genre: A Gaming Family Tree

Art of the Genre: A Gaming Family Tree

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Sir Fleetwood: Basic Edition Fighter, Level 30, Art by Jeff Easley
Sir Fleetwood: Basic Edition Fighter, Level 30, Art by Jeff Easley

I began my journey here at Black Gate telling everyone that I was a gamer, a lifer as I put it, and that’s something I just can’t seem to shake. It all began when I was in junior high school, very early eighties, and with that damnable Red Box… but that isn’t to say that there weren’t thousands of others who did the same things I did concerning the D&D hobby in their school years.

What makes me different is that I still play today, but again, I’m not alone in that either as sites like Dragonsfoot help link like-minded, and yes ‘old’, gamers into an online world where they can still discuss the trials and tribulations of gaming life.

[Note: True story, I was on Dragonsfoot last week and someone asked a question about the module B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. I answered the question and added a bit about the nasty trick in the room in question. Bam! I get jumped all over for not posting a spoiler alert on my answer… for a thirty-year old D&D module! We old gamers take our hobby seriously I guess.]

But back to the point, I salute anyone who can continue a hobby for thirty years. Like most things started in youth most people will simply grow out of such simple passions. For me, however, a deep love of history and art kept me involved in gaming, along with a good deal of chance.

To tell this story, I’m going to provide a history, but for the art side of things I’ve gone to great lengths to recruit all the friends I’ve made in this industry the past two years as a visual guide. To me there is a symbiosis involved, and one cannot truly appreciate the tale without the visual additions, because any good fantasy tale deserves some wondrous illustration.

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14 Questions for S.M. Stirling

14 Questions for S.M. Stirling

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_dsc2558_2I’ve known S.M. Stirling, or Steve as his friends call him, for ten years now. He and I were in the same writers group in New Mexico, called Critical Mass, and I believe I’ve read exactly eight-five kajillion of his words. A rigorous editor and rewriter of his own work, he’d often dwarf the rest of our submissions for the month. It’s been my privilege to watch from this vantage point as he climbs the sales charts, from a well respected niche writer to now a New York Times bestselling one.

Unfortunately, my move from New Mexico to London ended my time in Critical Mass, but not the friendships or the contact, thanks to the miracles of modern technology. Steve’s career continues to move from strength to strength as he fleshes out his Emberverse series. Set in a future in which some of the laws of physics have taken a vacation, humanity must live without electricity, gunpowder, or even steam power. Any attempt to harness these old technologies falls flat. Magic and mythical visions, however, gain strength with each passing year. To me, this a brilliant fantasy premise that makes use of the science fiction conceit, “it could happen someday”. The characters learn to make castles out of concrete and swords out of scrap metal. SCA members find their fluency in Tolkein Elvish and armor making skills useful in a way they never imagined. Wicca becomes a mainstream religion, and a history professor who once worshipped the despots of old becomes one. Whether you’ve actually made your own chain mail, or merely think that’s a cool idea, you should give his books a try.

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