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Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips

Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips

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java-jointYears ago, before I started Black Gate magazine, I worked with David Kenzer in the Commerce Drive offices of Motorola here in Chicago. Dave is the founder of Kenzer & Company, publishers of the award-winning Hackmaster role playing game and Jolly Blackburn’s brilliant Knights of the Dinner Table comic.

KenzerCo was the first investor in Black Gate, and without Dave’s early advice and guidance I never could have gotten off the ground. But perhaps the most important contribution he made to our success was his offer to include an original Knights of the Dinner Table strip in every issue. It was an incredible gesture of faith in my fledgling enterprise, and it helped bring my new magazine to the attention of thousands of gaming fans. Brian Jelke at KenzerCo wrote a proposal for a strip centered around a coffee shop, Steve Johansson signed on to do the art, and The Java Joint was born. It has appeared in virtually every issue of Black Gate, and in July of last year KenzerCo packaged up all the stories — together with a brand new 8-page strip — in Knights of the Dinner Table: The Java Joint Strips, published in print and PDF format.

I’ve written about my days with Dave at Commerce Drive, the multi-million dollar software deals and creative projects we did together, a few times now, including in  “How To Succeed in Business,” my editorial for Black Gate 11, and in my portion of the Tribute to Gary Gygax here on the blog in 2008. In my introduction to this new collection I tell the full story of our adventures together for the first time.

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Art of the Genre: The Pillaging of Kickstarter?

Art of the Genre: The Pillaging of Kickstarter?

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The Good of Kickstarter... The Order of the Stick
The Good of Kickstarter... The Order of the Stick

The pillaging of Kickstarter… Dramatic huh? Well, it might not exactly be the case, but I’ve seen a couple shocking trends happening out in the world of Kickstarter that disturbed me enough to talk about it here in my regular Kickstarter postings.

You see, Kickstarter at its very base level is about money, and that’s not a bad thing because it takes money to make cool things happen. Kickstarter, as a platform, helps thousands of independent minded artists, writers, musicians, inventors, and all other manner of creative people connect with fans to create projects that they love. How can that be wrong? Well, it’s not, but unfortunately corporations have now discovered the power of Kickstarter, and what was once a grass roots movement is quickly changing into a large scale money grab.

To illustrate this, I’m going to take you all through a couple of examples that I’ve seen in the past few months. First off I’m going to start with this little ‘Honest Man’s Kickstarter’ that introduced me to Kickstarters in the first place, the initial art recreation project by former TSR artist Jeff Dee. Dee, a forward thinking guy, was understandably put out that TSR threw away all his original art from his work on Dungeons & Dragons from 1979-1981. Who could blame him, right? So he goes to Kickstarter and asks folks to help him recreate those original pieces of art, as well as add some new ones if pledging was high enough. Jeff asked for $2,500 to do this and received funding to the tune of $5,750, which is a great thing to see for a guy who struggles with bills as much as anyone else in America today.

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The Best in Fantasy Manga

The Best in Fantasy Manga

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fairy-tail-1When I was invited to write a guest post, I immediately turned to manga. To my knowledge, Black Gate has never had a post dedicated to Japanese comics before, and I think that absence needs to be rectified.

The series I am about to recommend to you are as good, as dramatic, and as entertaining as any American comic book or even fantasy and science fiction novel.

What follows is a list of some of my personal favorites, as well as those that are must reads. At the end, I will list some of the series that I have not gotten to yet, but am looking forward to.

Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima

Ongoing. Kodansha has released 17 volumes in translation with vol. 18 due in March.

Lucy Heartfilia, a celestial spirit wizard, and Natsu Dragneel, a fire dragon slayer, form the nucleus of Team Natsu. Stealing a book from a corrupt noble and crushing dark guilds are just some of the adventures that Team Natsu and their friends find themselves in as they ensure Fairy Tail’s reputation as the strongest and most infamous wizard guild in Fiore.

Though the series starts out with a heavy does of comedy, the series has steadily gotten darker and more serious with each succeeding story arc yet still maintains an upbeat feel. Indeed, the series really starts to pick up with the Galuna Island arc. The great thing about Fairy Tail is that Mashima does not neglect minor characters. They all have moments in the spotlight. I personally find the series fun and enthralling, and it is without question my favorite series.

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New Treasures: Judge Dredd: Crusade

New Treasures: Judge Dredd: Crusade

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jd-crusadeAh, Judge Dredd. You always know how to make a jaded comic fan smile.

So the enticing artifact at right showed up in my mailbox last week. Why, I have no idea. Every week we receive about a dozen books for review here at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters, where they are diligently farmed out to the hard-working Review Corps, bless ’em. Usually they’re the latest paperback fantasy novels (the books, not the Review Corps). Or maybe advance review copies, or RPGS, or the occasional board game. But comics? Not so much.

Not that comics aren’t welcome. Especially (let’s face it) Judge Dredd comics. ‘Cause Judge Dredd, he’s the man. The last line of defense in a post-apocalyptic megacity perpetually on the verge of chaos and destruction! With no pension plan, and not even a decent sidekick. Trust me, if all you know of officer Dredd is the cheesy 1995 Sylvester Stallone movie, you’ve missed out on three decades of great comics. Check out Judge Dredd vs. Aliens. No, seriously, check it out. It’s awesome.

Anyway, here’s the blurb for this one:

In a riot of violence at the ends of the Earth, when a scientist returns from a 15-year deep space mission claiming to have a message from God himself, judges from all of the world’s Mega-Cities race to Antarctica to try and claim the secret for themselves. Among them is the toughest future lawman of them all – Judge Dredd – but in the scramble to secure the scientist, the judges all brutally turn on each other as the prize proves too much to resist! Meanwhile, a deadly agent from one of the world’s superpowers stalks through the warzone, hoping that the confusion will ease his path to securing the secrets of the cosmos!

In the back-up story The Frankenstein Division by Mark Millar and Carlos Ezquerra, the sinister judges of East Meg create the ultimate judge by stitching together pieces of their best. But when it goes on the rampage it heads for Mega-City One and the one man responsible for the death of its many ‘donors’ – Dredd himself.

Come on, like you needed the blurb after you saw that cover. A slathering monster, and Judge Dredd armed only with a sidearm and a stern expression? Admit it, you were sold 90 seconds ago. (Click on the image for a larger version. Come on, try it! There. Wasn’t it worth it?)

Here’s the 411 so you can sound cooler than your friends: Judge Dredd: Crusade was written by comic superstars Grant Morrison (Batman and Robin, All Star Superman) and Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, The Ultimates), and illustrated by Judge Dredd co-creator Carlos Ezquerra, and Mick Austin. How did they get Carlos Ezquerra to return to illustrate a new story? They didn’t — this is a reprint from 1994/95. But at least it has a great new Brian Bolland cover. (Love the cover. Did I mention?)

Word on the grapevine is there’s a new film in the works (Dredd, staring Karl Urban, scheduled for release this September), which explains the timing. But whatever. I’m just glad to see a little love for some classic Judge Dredd. The heck with the Review Corps — I’ll be curling up with this one myself this evening. If my teenage sons don’t find it first.

Goth Chick News: Welcome to Scotland, Where Vampires Still Suck

Goth Chick News: Welcome to Scotland, Where Vampires Still Suck

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image0041A few nights ago my inbox lit up with an email entitled, “They still suck over here.”

Now I believe I’ve already explained that one of the job hazards I face regularly (besides the toilet seat being left up in Black Gate’s unisex bathroom) is being the recipient of email clearly meant for an entirely different “Goth Chick” in an entirely different profession which is substantially older than my own.

However, in this particular case I recognize the sender as a former colleague from my time as an expat residing in the UK. “Ian” lives in eternal hope of enhancing Black Gate’s content by passing along what he considers appropriate Goth Chick fodder from the British Isles.

Honestly, to talk about the British horror industry is nearly as much of an oxymoron as British top chefs or British fashion designers. And as snarky a sweeping generalization as that may appear; suffice to say that if I ever penned the book A Yankee Goth Chick at Cambridge it would now stand as the primary source on adult bullying.

But even still, I did become chummy with a few nice, normal folks who weren’t still harboring secrets resentments over July 4th and one of these was my good friend Ian.

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Goth Chick News: When Goth Chicks Attack

Goth Chick News: When Goth Chicks Attack

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image002Vampire Fashionistas, Flesh-Eating Ogres, Paranoid Werewolves and Sugar-Addicted Zombies…

Welcome to Gothopolis.

As I stare at the cover of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 which was just delivered by the spotty intern handling the Black Gate mailroom this semester, several thoughts are competing for top billing; like “Where is this ‘Gothopolis’?” and “Someone get my travel agent on the horn,” and “Would Steven Roman mind if I developed a crush on him?”

Finally, someone who understands…

The cover of this magnificent work of art is reminiscent of looking in a mirror. Okay, not so much. But still I’m mesmerized. Is this really a novel about a zombie shooting, werewolf booting Goth chick?

It looks too good to be true really.

So I fire up the blender and with fine adult beverage in hand, I climb into my comfy chair (the big leather one just under the life-size stand up of Bela Lugosi) to have a nice, long, get-to-know-you session with Pandora Zwieback.

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I’ll Look Down and Whisper “No”: “Before Watchmen”

I’ll Look Down and Whisper “No”: “Before Watchmen”

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Watchmen 1Last Wednesday, DC Comics announced a new publishing venture: “Before Watchmen,” a set of related miniseries that would act as a prologue to the best-selling and critically acclaimed Watchmen graphic novel. The news was met with a considerably mixed reaction. Alan Moore, writer and primary creator of Watchmen, has spoken out against the project. Personally, I’m not going to buy any of DC’s new series, and I want to explain why.

First, some more details. From The Beat website, a list of titles and creators:

– Rorschach (4 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Lee Bermejo
– Minutemen (6 issues) – Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke
– Comedian (6 issues) – Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J.G. Jones
– Dr. Manhattan (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes
– Nite Owl (4 issues) – Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert
– Ozymandias (6 issues) – Writer: Len Wein. Artist: Jae Lee
– Silk Spectre (4 issues) – Writer: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner

“Before Watchmen” starts sometime this summer, with one comic to be released per week. Each book will have a two-page back-up feature, “The Curse of the Crimson Corsair,” written by Wein, who edited the original Watchmen, with art by John Higgins, who coloured the series. An epilogue featuring a number of writers and artists will wrap up the event.

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The Nightmare Men: “The Haunted Wanderer”

The Nightmare Men: “The Haunted Wanderer”

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thumb_john_kirowanWhile Robert E. Howard is perhaps best known for creating Conan, he had his share of occult investigators of one stripe or another. There was Steve Harrison of River Street, Solomon Kane with his fiery Puritanism and cat-headed ju-ju staff and, of course, John Kirowan.

Kirowan is of an age and appearance with a number of Howard’s other characters, being tall, slender, brooding, and black haired — a Celt of the modern age. Sorrow hangs about him like a shroud, and his history is tragic. Though few agree on what form said tragedy might have taken, all believe that it has something to do with the years that he spent studying the occult arts in the black hills on Hungary and the secret places of Inner Mongolia.

What is known for certain is that Kirowan renounced these studies, and assumed the guise of a sceptic. But, when the nightmarish denizens of diabolical realms intrude upon the lives of his friends and companions, John Kirowan shows his true colours, and the haunted wanderer once more thrusts himself between the innocent and the devils in the dark.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 3: The Warlord of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 3: The Warlord of Mars

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the-warlord-of-mars-1st-editionAlthough there are still eight more books to go in the Mars series, with The Warlord of Mars I can bring to a conclusion Phase #1 of the saga: this completes the “John Carter Trilogy,” and the books that follow it take different paths with new heroes. John Carter will not return to the protagonist role until the eighth book, Swords of Mars, published twenty-one years later.

At the end of the thrill-ride of The Gods of Mars, John Carter lost his love Dejah Thoris in the Chamber of the Sun within the Temple of Issus. A whole year must pass before the slow rotation of the chamber will allow Dejah Thoris to escape. She may not even be alive, since the last moments that John Carter witnessed, the jealous thern woman Phaidor was ready to stab Carter’s love. Did she kill Dejah Thoris? Or did the noble Thuvia take the blow instead?

Readers hung on through the middle of 1913 until Burroughs brought a conclusion to the John Carter epic at the end of the year and made his hero into The Warlord of Mars.

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other natives and visitors, on the planet Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom. A dry and slowly dying world, Barsoom contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with nine novels, one volume of linked novellas, and two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: The Warlord of Mars (1913–14)

Previous Installments: A Princess of Mars (1912), The Gods of Mars (1913)

The Backstory

With a cliffhanger ending to The Gods of Mars, Burroughs was ready to roll with the conclusion. It was a ferociously busy time in his life: All-Story rejected his second Tarzan novel — one of the most comically blockheaded decisions in the history of magazine fiction; he quit his day job and became a full-time author; his third son John Coleman Burroughs was born; days later, his father George Tyler Burroughs died. In the middle of all this, ERB plunged back to working on Mars. He never developed an outline for the trilogy, and so he took the wrap-up of John Carter’s story as it came, daydreaming down on paper.

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A Few Words About The Order of the Stick

A Few Words About The Order of the Stick

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Dungeon Crawlin' FoolsDying is easy, the old saw has it, but comedy … that’s hard. Only — what happens if we’re talking about a world in which miracles happen to order, and people come back to life whenever a priest wants? Dying suddenly isn’t quite so easy. But comedy, real comedy … that’s still pretty hard.

Fantasy’s no more or less risible than almost anything else in life, and you can find comedic fantasy good, bad, and indifferent. I want to talk about one particular example. Lately, I’ve been rereading a lot of Rich Burlew’s webcomic, The Order of the Stick. It’s a successful, funny fantasy; impressive, since it looks like it should have no business succeeding as well as it does. It’s not just a fantasy comedy, it’s a gaming fantasy comedy. Clearly, the strip’s appeal is going to be somewhat limited.

The main characters are adventurers in a fantasy world that operates according to the rules of Dungeons & Dragons (version 3.5); inevitably a good part of the comedy comes from the characters consciously manipulating the rules of the game, and commenting on its conventions and mechanics. But there’s more to it. The strip isn’t just about the game, nor is it just a showcase for Burlew’s killer sense of humour. The comic’s run for over eight hundred installments up to this point, plus extra stories in various print collections; it’s developed a coherent story, and surprisingly sympathetic characters. It’s gone from a gag strip to a fantasy epic — a nice trick, given that the story’s told with stick figures.

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