New Treasures: Dungeons & Dragons The Shadowfell

New Treasures: Dungeons & Dragons The Shadowfell

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shadowfellRegardless of where your gaming loyalties lie these days — 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, Original Edition, Pathfinder, or Other — you have to admit that Wizards of the Coast has produced a top-notch line of adventure supplements to support D&D over the past few years.

They’ve put some of the best writers in the business — including Ari Marmell, Bruce R. Cordell, Mike Mearls, Bill Slavicsek, Richard Baker, and many others — to work crafting attractive and superbly produced game books that keep me opening my wallet month after month.

Yet, as an old-school gamer who cut his teeth on the golden age of role-playing adventures, one thing I still miss is those beautiful box sets TSR produced in the 80s and 90s.

You know the ones I’m talking about. The Ruins of Undermountain, Dragon Mountain, Menzoberranzan, City by the Silt Sea, and dozens of others.

These weren’t just outsized adventure modules.  They were complete campaigns, packed with gorgeous color maps, thick adventure guides, character sheets, new monsters, and other mysterious goodies.

When you held one in the game store, you felt the promise of weeks of adventure vibrating in your hands. Or maybe it was just the crushing weight of the box, making your wrists weak. Whatever.  Your hands trembled, and you knew that had to be good.

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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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Kimota! and Marvelman

Kimota! and Marvelman

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Kimota!I’m going to take a break this week from the Romanticism and Fantasy posts, because I’ve just finished a fascinating book, and I’d like to talk about it. It’s not a new book, and it’s not a fiction book. It is in fact mainly a collection of interviews about a comic-book character who hasn’t seen print (officially) in almost twenty years. The book is called Kimota!, and the character has been known both as Miracleman and, originally, Marvelman.

The Marvelman situation is difficult even to describe. Briefly: created in the mid-50s as a British knock-off of Captain Marvel (then the world’s most popular super-hero), the last story of Marvelman’s original run was published in 1963. The character was revived, with his backstory radically re-imagined, by writer Alan Moore for the British magazine Warrior in 1982. Warrior went under before long, but in 1985 Marvelman’s adventures continued, still written by Moore, now published by the American company Eclipse Comics. A few years later, Moore left the book, selecting Neil Gaiman as his successor. Gaiman projected three story arcs; roughly one and a half saw print before Eclipse folded in 1994.

From that time to this, the character has mostly remained in limbo. Marvelman’s the ultimate cautionary tale about the difficulties of copyright law. With every change of publisher, with every change of creator, the question of who owned what grew more complex, more debateable. Two years ago, Marvel Comics bought the copyright from Marvelman’s original creator, and began reprinting some of the character’s old adventures. That’s nice, in many ways, but it’s the Moore and Gaiman work that people have been waiting to see, and waiting to see completed. It may be a while before that happens.

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Fall 2011 issue of Subterranean Magazine Now Available

Fall 2011 issue of Subterranean Magazine Now Available

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subterr-fall2011The Fall issue of Subterranean Magazine  is now available.

This issue features four pieces of original fiction:

“White Lines on a Green Field” by Catherynne M. Valente
“SHAKA II” by Mike Resnick
“Antiquities and Tangibles” by Tim Pratt
“Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul” by Daniel Abraham

Plus the usual reviews, and a non-fiction essay:

Cutting Edge Technology: The Life and Sad Times of the Western Sword by K. J. Parker

Subterranean is edited by William Schafer, and published quarterly. Most of the first seven issues are still available in print; the 8th print issue — with contributions from Michael Marshall Smith, Tim Lebbon, R. Andrew Heidel, John Scalzi, and others — is in pre-order.

The magazine switched to an online format with the Winter 2007 issue, and has published 20 online issues so far. It is presented free online by Subterranean Press, content is released in weekly installments until the full issue is published.  The complete Fall 2011 issue is available here.

We last covered Subterranean with their previous issue, Summer 2011.

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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Weird Tales Summer 2011

Weird Tales Summer 2011

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wt358-170As usual, I’m behind the curve. I was delighted when I first heard that Ann VanderMeer was taking over Weird Tales but never got around to reading an issue under her direction because, well, I just never got around to it.  Alas, now she’s been relegated to the slush pile as a new owner wants to return the magazine back to its pulp Lovecraftan roots (although, the latest news is that the transition is being handled with a little more class than originally reported and it seems a final VanderMeer edited adieu issue is forthcoming).

I’m undoubtedly in the minority here amongst the crew of the good ship Black Gate in not being overly fond of Lovecraft, Howard and all the other pulp writers and am much more inclined to the “New Weird” sort of fiction that VanderMeer has championed.  Just take a look at the cover of the latest issue.  Nothing pulpish here. To my sensibilities, that’s a good thing.

Or, I guess I now have to say, was a good thing.

In any event, since nothing makes you more eager to catch up on your to-do-list than finding out some of the items are about to disappear, herewith my review of the fiction in the next-to-last VanderMeer edited Weird Tales.

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Take a Journey to Strange Worlds

Take a Journey to Strange Worlds

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strange-worldsStrange Worlds, a new anthology of Sword & Planet stories edited and illustrated by Jeff Doten, is now available. And it sure looks like an attractive package.

Containing all original fiction from Charles A. Gramlich, Ken St. Andre, Paul R. McNamee, Charles R. Rutledge, and others, Strange Worlds is fully illustrated with both full-color and black & white art accompanying each tale. Here’s the copy from the back cover:

New worlds and new adventures.

A sword and blaster at your side, the wind in your hair and the ringed moons rising overhead…

Sword and Planet is where it all started, the original space adventures on exotic and perilous worlds. Strange Worlds is the first collection of ALL NEW Sword and Planet adventures in a very long time. Eight stories and one comic, each story with both black and full color illustrations. This is space adventure at it’s (sic) rawest down in the dirt form, so strap on your gear and let’s get going.

Other than the obvious typo, it sounds good to me. According to contributor Paul R. McNamee, editor Doten provided nine color plates and commissioned nine authors to craft a sword-&-planet tale using one of them as inspiration. Doten also added some black & white interiors based on the resulting stories.

Strange Worlds is available from Space Puppet Press for $27 plus $3.75 U.S. shipping. Order today from strangeworldsanthology.com.

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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