Dark City Games Oracle’s Breath Now Available for iPhone

Dark City Games Oracle’s Breath Now Available for iPhone

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o-breathWe’re big fans of Dark City Games’ terrific line of solitaire fantasy games. We’ve wasted many hours with these little wonders on the Black Gate rooftop headquarters, when we should have been plotting the overthrow of the entire publishing world.

Instead, we searched for the buried archives of long-dead sorcerers on The Island of Lost Spells, stood alongside Roman Legionnaires at the border between Gaul and Germania in Wolves on the Rhine, and plumbed the depths of an ancient ruin for a powerful relic in The Oracle’s Breath. There are publishing barons in Manhattan who owe their Perrier to Dark City Games, and that’s a fact.

Subscribers may even remember that we published a complete solo adventure from Dark City Games in issue 12 of Black Gate: “Orcs of the High Mountains,” by Jerry Meyer, Jr. Don’t tell me we don’t share the love.

Now comes word that Questland Games has made one of Dark City’s best adventures available for the iPhone: Oracle’s Breath.

Yes, now you can journey to a rich world of fantasy while everyone else in the staff meeting thinks you’re checking stock prices.

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Goth Chick News: A Perfect Day

Goth Chick News: A Perfect Day

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image020“It’s a what?”

“A ‘celebrity show’.”

I’m chatting with my sometimes-Goth-Chick-News-photographer Chris and I’m afraid this is yet another attempt on his part to talk me into doing something questionable. Like the time we covered a Halloween celebration at a world-class amusement park and he convinced me to ride one of the US’s largest wooden roller coasters… backwards.

I’m wondering if this latest suggestion will also result in throwing up on myself.

As it turns out, he is proposing we attend an event at a hotel in downtown Chicago. Apparently, the premise is that movie and TV stars set up tables and for a fee you can have your picture taken with them and have a little chat.

They will also sign items you bring with you (also for a fee). If you ever wondered where those eBay sellers get Happy Days lunch boxes signed by ‘The Fonz,’ this is apparently the source.

Chris is pushing a flyer into my hands listing all the attending celebrities and assuring me I will, without a doubt, get material for Black Gate out of the venture.

At first perusal, I can’t identify a single “celebrity” on the list. But two of them self-identify as “adult film stars.”

Seriously…?

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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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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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