Cubes of Sadness

 

What more can be said of Gelatinous Cubes? They've been written about for decades. Forums have hundreds of threads about them. But they are so basic, iconic in D&D, that they remain fairly unchanged. They slide down  corridors looking to paralyze and digest organic material.  Not much else. 

 Old school/new school (I'm not sure) wildman Patrick Stuart has a new take that he discusses on his blog False Machine. I know Patrick from Deep Carbon Observatory, an almost unrunable adventure that I actually managed to run, adapting it (about 50% of it) for a Star Wars KOTOR game. Setting it on an alien planet actually made it much more workable than using it for my fairly vanilla D&D setting. But outside of this scenario the rest I know about him is from reading about Zak Smiths many many many kurfuffles with other OSR folk. Most of this happened while I was taking a very long sabbatical from the OSR and my own kurfuffles, so I don't have much in the way of commentary about it since I'm trying to have a more positive experience with talking about the hobby. But to me Patrick is kind of a mad genius with this stuff. To say he thinks outside the box when it comes to D&D is and understatement. He is a madman who kind of makes you think outside that box as sort of a contact high from his madcap stuff. Sometimes hard to describe in my own words the odd appeal. 

Recently on his blog Patrick talked about Gelatinous Cubes, the most basic of D&D creatures that defy tweaking. Sure, stick one in a trap door pit, or have one fall from above as a trap. But what more can you do with them? 

Mad philosopher Stuart has applied a sort of "Sadness Demon" aspect to them. They are attracted to grief. Or something.   As in Deep Carbon he can paint a picture with few words, making your mind fill in blanks in a way any great outside the box writing  can make you do. An instant collaboration. But man when he applies an abundance of word stuff it gets wild. I took some of that, shook it up with my own spices, and out popped my gel cube evolutions almost by inspired osmosis. 

So my take on the them, with a nod of the bonnet to Pat. 

Did you ever read Marvel Comics horror series Man Thing? MT was a mindless muck monster that shambles around the Florida Everglades, being encountered by everything from Fountain of Youth lost soul Conquistadors to Howard the Duck. 

A unique power/curse the creature has is a "fear sense," If a creature is in a state of fear nearby, it agitates the Man Thing. MT will seek the thing out and puts its muddy mitts on them. As the saying in the comics go "whoever shall know fear burns at the Man Things touch." Yep, if you are fearful (how could you not be in its presence?) you catch fire wherever it touches you. 

So, I'm not suggesting we change up the cubes damage to catch you on fire, nor be attracted to fear. But how about sadness? The cubes go about their business in the caves below, slurping up and quickly digesting dead rats, rot grubs, and goblin poop, but if some sentient creature within a few miles is in a state of great sadness, they change gears and seek it out. 

I kind of imagine a small town near a cave/dungeon complex. Travellers will come to town noticing how happy everybody is acting. Good cheer and friendly hello's. Even fearsome looking characters will be greeted happily. Whats going on? Perhaps the town drunkard, cheery at first, whispers to the characters that they should get out of town, as the constant cheer can itself be exhausting. He says he's had to forget his dear wife who died years ago so as to not dredge up sad feelings. He starts to weep a bit, and a few townies proceed to give him a pounding, all with smiles still on their faces.

Maybe you remember that old Twilight Zone with the kid who can grant his own wishes, and the remaining townfolk who are super cheery and "that's a good thing you did, Johnny!"

While obtaining rooms and having a drink at the inn, a hand at the stables gets kicked by a mule and is killed outright. The townfolk gather and try to put a stop to his wife and kids in shock and crying. If they don't soon stop, daggers come out and the party can intervene to stop the murders. 

Either way it is too late; a slurping and glurping sound comes from the outskirts of town from all directions, and into view comes sliding several full size gelatinous cubes that go after those sorrowful people. Even if the sorrow is stopped its too late. The cubes are here and they sense living meat. The siege is on. 

I can also imagine a roadside tavern scenario where one of the keepers children has died, and the sorrow in the place is heavy. The inn can be besieged by a couple of cubes (excellent for a low level scenario). A new twist on the zombie attack. More cubes start showing up, and a drunken sage says they are attracted by the grief. The party can take it from there. 

Or how about some sadness oozes and jellies? Sad blob attacks can be fun too.

How consistent the game world?

While staying with friends for a long weekend out of town, I had a planned visit from a girlfriend from many years ago who lived in that area who I had not seen in forever. Back in the day she played in my games a lot, and since the girlfriend of the pal I was staying with requested I run a D&D game I had asked my old friend to come and play with us. What was especially interesting is that my friend from back in the day now owned a game store in Northern Cali. So I came up with some encounters we could do in a fairly short session.

What I went with was the area around good ol’ Tegel Manor. Though the last couple of years I used a sort of prequel setting for the location, I went with full on classic haunted Tegel. There only ended up a couple of combat encounters on the roads and in the village, so the actual manor never got visited (hopefully we can finish that up some day), but in thinking about the setting, I was struck by how consistent I needed to be with it. See, in my game world maybe 30 years have gone by since any characters went to Tegel. A decent chunk of it had been mapped by a couple of parties over the early years, and many of the various NPC’s interacted with. So, would I still have Runic Rump the paladin around looking to sell the manor? Would the lich still be in the tower (though characters had routed him out decades before); would the black pudding still be in the outhouse? Should I change things to show the place had been looted before, and that all this time had passed?

See, I’ve used the same game world I created for D&D since I was a kid. The same world where over time I had adventures using many classic modules. Tegel, The Giants adventures, The Keep on the Borderlands, White Plume Mountain, Homlet. In my mind, I always thought towards keeping a certain amount of constancy. If the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief had been taken down, would a replica of it every pop up many years down the line for a different group?

Recently I have lost that desire to maintain that consistency. And why not? Over time, as my game groups come and go, I’m the only one aware of any true passage of time in the game world reality. Have I tried to maintain a certain consistency just so that, in my own mind, this can seem like a real place? That’s pretty daft.

I want to use lots of my favorite old adventures, such as Tegel, when I get back on D&D with my group. To hell with all the consistency. I’m not writing novels based on it, and I’m not maintaining internal integrity of the game world because I’m keeping meticulous journals on it over the many years. Hell, the notebooks with my notes on those old sessions are long tossed away.

My old comic collecting background is helpful for that. If you love a universe, such as Marvel, you have to accept a certain amount of retconning. Tony Stark originally had his origins as Iron Man in the Korean Conflict. Then Vietnam. Then The Gulf War. Ben Grimm was a WW2 veteran. Now I don’t think he is the vet of any war. These things are fairly minor, and the universe moves forward.

But I’m wondering how much other DM’s with long time game worlds of their own have done to maintain internal consistency of the game world. Would they go so far as to refrain from ever using the same module, as is, a second time even if it is for different players? Or is that just some weird conceit unique to me?

One last good Batman Flick

Well, in the wake of Comicon the third and final entry in the Nolan Batman epic is almost upon us. I have to admit, I’m liking what I see about it a lot more than I did a couple of months ago. The underwhelming Bane info and footage that was coming out seemed horrible, and did not bode well. I still have my doubts, but he does seem a bit frightening in the trailers. Does he take the Venom drug and Hulk out? Still not sure. I’m still pretty “meh” about Hathaway as Catwoman, but it also doesn’t seem like they are doing more with the character than have her drive the Batcycle and throw a few kicks, so maybe the character doesn’t need to be great in this. Personally, to me anything is an improvement of the Burton Catwoman. Ok, ok, Michelle P is lovely. But c’mon (see Batman Returns below).

So since the late 80’s, several batfilms and batcartoons have come our way. How do I feel about them? Keep in mind, I grew up mostly a Marvel kid, but everybody digs Batman.

Batman – Tim Burtons first of an originally planned trilogy. That he “got” the grim noire of Batman was great. The tone inspired the incredible Batman: The Animated Series. At the time Nicholson’s Joker was iconic; certainly an improvement over Cesar Romero’s goofy loonster. But really, look back at it today and it is very dated. Everything so soundstagey. The great introduction of the Batwing, that gets ridiculously shot down by a handgun. Yeah, there are a few flaws, but it was so much better than:

Batman Returns – Oh man, I had a girlfriend at the time who convinced me this movie was great. We even went to a Halloween party and she was done up as the Poodle Trainer (with stuffed poodle – I was something non-Batman related but forget what). But in a few years I would look back on it and cringe. Talk about looking like it was all on a soundstage. And the villains were lame as hell. The dapper Penguin was turned into a drooling mutant who limped around the sewers in Doc Martins boots and long underwear with a shit stain that seemed to go all the way up to the back of his neck. The weirdest part was he somehow managed to have loyal followers, who themselves seemed quite clean as if they had never been in a sewer until 5 minutes ago. And the action was horrible. A bunch of poodle walkers and guys on stilts terrorize an entire downtown area with juggling torches and stun guns. If you ever wondered how Batman would fight a carnival fire breather, here is your answer. He incinerates them with the retro rockets of his Batmobile. Argh. OK, and also tell me how homeless circus clowns are able to break into the Batmobile and reprogram it in minutes? WTF? I hate this movie, but it was made up for in small part because these two Burton films lightly inspired…

Batman: The Animated Series – Did you ever see one of the really good episodes and realize it would make a great, non-Tim Burton live action movie? Yessir, Paul Dini really got Batman in a way no filmmaker ever would. The network (FOX) obviously told him it needed to be based on the Tim Burton movies. So Dini’s response was to set the action in constant night time, and to have citizens dress like it was the 1940’s. But he also dug deep into DC history and lore, and used his villains RIGHT. The series tried to focus on normal gangsters for a while, but soon they unleashed the super villains and there was no looking back. The single greatest episode had to be “Almost Got Him,” where Bats major villains gather at a bar and talk about how they almost killed him once. At the end Catwoman tried to hook up with him, but fails, uttering her own “Almost got him.” Another favorite of mine, a much later episode, featured Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn brainwashing Bruce Wayne into writing check after check for their downtown shopping spree, which includes the gals doing a “break the 4th wall” fashion show.



Batman Forever – OK, I liked this one. Only two things really bothered me. One, all the neon. Way too much neon. If you bought a hammer at the local hardware in Gotham, there would be neon on it. Kind of stupid. Also, Tommy Lee Jones already looks like he had acid thrown in his face. Two Face needed to be a handsome dude. Hello, Lando Calrissian? Anyway, I though Val Kilmer was a decent Bruce Wayne, and that Jim Carrey was a decent Riddler. I’d have hated to see what Tim Burton might have done with the Riddler. Probably would have had him killing people and making pies out of them.

Batman & Robin – ouch. Nuff said. Way too much to go into here. What you already think about it says all we need to know.

The Batman – this recent animated Batman was OK, but too many things turned me off. Putting Bruce Wayne in high school was weird. Also, The Joker was a bare footed, animalistic whirling dervish. He was much more like DC’s The Creeper character. Overall, pretty lame. I have friends who loved it though.

The Brave & The Bold – oh, yeah! You just cannot go wrong with old school homage’s. You’ll never see a third of the characters they show anywhere else. Anywhere. It’s like the makers pride themselves on dragging out third string DC guys from the 60’s, but it’s great! This is a pre-Neil Adams Batman who has long since gotten over his parents death and just fights for justice rather than revenge. He also cracks a smile once or twice. Nice.

The Nolan films – we know them, we love them. Like a lot of movies I feel they could easily cut 15 or 20 minutes out of them and not miss a beat, but whatever. Like a lot of people, the growly Batman voice is kind of annoying to me, but hey, Batman talks in a growly voice. Still, the Animated series from the 90’s managed a gruff Batman voice that didn’t sound like throat cancer.

So here we are with the third Nolan film. I probably won’t see it until my Sci Fi Academy screening which sometimes takes a few weeks. Have you seen it? What do you think?

Does Gygax get too much credit?

I'm sure this has been discussed in the OSR plenty already, but I'm actually not all that well versed on the subect of Gygax and Arenson's contribution distribution. It sounds to me like, more or less, it is like a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby situation fron Marvel's Comics silver age. Jack did a lot of hard work on characters that would become billion dollar icons, but Stan was the "Funky Flashman" charismatic face of the company. Face front, true believers!

In this Cracked.com article, the Gygax and Arneson history gets a small, but biting, entry in an article about getting too much credit for things.Cracked is awesome in general, but seeing D&D make a significant appearance on one of the sites articles really got me jacked. Here's the meat of it if you don't feel like looking at it (although with lines like "...Gary was more like the weird uncle who lived in the garage and clogged the toilet" you might want to check it out). If this is all true, the Dave created everything I love about the game except the part about using dice.


Who Actually Deserves the Credit:


During a nerd side quest, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax had an epic random encounter when they chanced to meet at Gen Con in 1969. Gygax was working on something called Chainmail, which was a war simulator only a bit more complicated than the average board game. With Arneson's influence, Chainmail was adapted to include:

- Exploring dungeons

- Using a neutral judge/dungeon master

- Conversations with imaginary characters (NPCs) to develop the storyline

- Hit points

- Experience points

- The concept of role-playing an individual character rather than just rolling dice

So, basically, he put the "R" in RPG.

The Deadliest Night of My Life

I’m no stranger to shamelessly ripping off ideas from other mediums to use in game scenarios (I use the somewhat harsh term “ripping-off” because I didn’t always reveal where I got my ideas from to my players).

One example is when I was at the height of my Champions campaigns around 1990. One of my regular players, Gaz, liked to do a little “powder” on a Friday night at his pad in Santa Monica. Gaz was not a drug dude by any means, nor particularly skeevy (just a plain ol’ geek). He just had some friend who gave him blow now and again, and he liked to hang out on a Friday, no party or gathering or anything, and watch MTV and do a few lines. Cocaine was never my thing, but Gaz would invite me over for a few beers, and since I was a ten minute walk away I would cruise over to watch videos and sink a few, and wish I had something else going on in my Friday nights. During that period I was working full time at both the Southern and Northern Renaissance Faires , each lasting more than two months’ worth of weekends, the Northern Faire involving weekend drives each way all the way to Mendocino County that took almost 8 hours (nowadays the I-5 highway has a 70 mph speed limit and the drive would be around 6 hours, but back then, as Sammy Hagar lamented, the limit was 55 anywhere in California). So especially right after Faire season it would take a bit of time for me to get back in the swing of normal socializing outside of the recreated Elizabethan country village. So a relaxing night at Gaz’s drinking beers then staggering back home was a decent, causal Friday to me (Saturday nights I still tried to do things un-geeky, like trying to date non-Faire chicks and hang out with non-Faire people. Going out to local bars and such).

So anyway, with us having so much fun with my Champions settings with my regular group, Gaz suggested we do some solo stuff on the Fridays seeing as we were getting looped anyway. Nowadays I’d rather take a kick in the nads than try to do solo gaming with somebody, but at the time it didn’t seem like a bad idea. So he created a character, Jessie Steel, who was a non-costumed hero, sort of a genetic super soldier who worked as a hero for hire. So what I did, in between many trips to the bathroom (the blow Gaz got from his friends was heavily cut with baby laxative, it seemed), I ran couple of hour sessions for him. And his character was perfect for what I had in mind. What I did was basically put his Jessie characters through little detective adventures based entirely on old episodes of The Rockford Files. It was my favorite show as a kid, and I had many of the best episodes memorized. Rockford, looking for some rich guys missing wife, gets knocked unconscious, framed for murder, and chased by the Mafia, so I just did it all to Jessie Steel, but pumped up with a bit more harrowing combat and martial arts (Gaz was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so most detecting elements he solved had to be handed to him on a silver platter by NPC’s). Gaz was not a real Rockford fan, and I don’t think I told him about my inspirations for those little Friday night games that winter/spring until the mid-90’s or so. He didn’t seem to mind.

Although I came up with tons of original stuff for my games for the most part, there were pleny of examples of homage in my games. There is one example that is my favorite “rip-off.” That’s the Daredevil comic book shown above. It was written by Sci Fi guy Harlan Ellison when current scripter Denny O’Neil was sick in hospital and asked his pal Harlan to fill in for a few issues. These were great comics.

“The Deadliest Night of My Life” had Daredevil following a suspicious little girl who was running around the city streets alone late at night, and she led him to a large mansion in a walled off estate. Turns out the father of one of DD’s old foes who died built the place, and automated it to draw DD in and kill him with any number of traps. Snake pits, shark tanks, electrocution chambers, flame thrower hallways, etc. It was all pretty cool. Daredevil ends up in a room with a big TV, and the deceased enemy “monologues” to him and says why he is doing all this. DD manages to escape at the last second when he figures out the whole place is set to blow as soon as the guy on tape stops talking. Excellent issue.

So I adapted it for a D&D game I was running for my group in the later 90’s. In my game, the mansion owner was a high level mage whose family had been brutally murdered by thieves while he was away. Now hating all thieves, he lured in the characters who were set on looting the place (I was doing a Thieves Guild campaign) and put them through the Daredevil stuff, but all run by magic instead of automation. I think a character died that game, and the rest got out before it blew to hell.

The players loved that game. None of my players were big comic book fans, at least of Daredevil, so I got away with my “homage” scott free. My D&D games tended to be sort of weird (yes, “weird fantasy”) and offbeat, so it seemed like a scenario I would come up with. Some time later I told at least a couple of players in casual conversation about that game, and one of them even asked to borrow that comic (she said something about the game being better than the comic, which while I don’t personally think was true, felt pretty good).

So taking ideas like these, while not my stock in trade or anything, usually turned out quite well. I mean, most old school D&D’ers go to many sources for their inspiration, or outright adaptations. The game itself started as sort of a mash-up of mythology, Tolkien, Leiber, and Vance fantasy, and ancient history. So why the hell not?

I kind of get the feeling I’m not alone in this either. So many great ideas out there to steal!

DC Comics and The new 52

The new 52 is yet another DC relaunch, somewhat like the 80’s great Crisis on Infinite Earths, but without the set-up and durm and strang of that multiversal gangbang. What seems to be going on is updating 52 of the companies’ titles to the world we live in now (all fucked up). In the 60’s and much of the 70’s comics seemed to be time-locked into a sort of 1940’s/early 50’s vibe. That is mostly because the creators where all older dudes who were not adept at change. Even in the late 70’s many female side characters (Daredevil’s Karen Page, Fantastic Four’s Invisible Girl, Iron Man’s Pepper Potts, etc) still seemed to have hairstyles and often even clothing from over a decade prior. At least Archie Comics were on the cutting edge of women’s fashion.

But today the young creators in comics seem to be busy trying to make up for the old fogies conservative values. The men are more angsty and assholish, and the women are super-sexualized (apparently one of the controversies is the whoring-up of characters like Starfire, previously sort of frigid characters, to complete and utter hoochie momma status), or relegated to “girlfriend of male hero” status. From what I can tell, Catwoman has been turned into a total neo-Goth hose monster.

OK, so I don’t really buy comics anymore. At around 5 bucks a pop now, I can’t afford to buy a pile of comics every month and keep them next to the bed or in the bathroom magazine rack, and eventually into a big white box in the garage. So I can only really muse from afar at what is going on in comics. The true life story is usually more interesting than what is happening on those gaudy pages anyway.

These re-launches are often cool. Crisis back in the 80’s blew me away. The Anti-Monitor was a truly scary villain. A whole passel of various-age Supermen were running around, and even obscure characters like Jonah Hex and Sgt. Rock were right there in the mix. I could not believe what they were doing.

But the aftermath of that was not good. DC writers struggled for years with the conundrums that came out of that particular re-launch. Things that happened in the comics of the 1950’s and 60’s were important canon to many characters. Some writers even had characters that no longer knew each other act towards each other as if they had adventured together for decades. Turns out it was not as simple as just Killing Supergirl, erasing Supermen from Earths Two through Two Million, or Wonder Woman from the Justice Society of the 40’s.

And let’s face it, much of the talent brought on board to reboot characters back then, like Marvels big fat paycheck man John Byrne, fell flatter than Mr. Fantastic stuck in a Baxter Building elevator with one of The Thing’s farts (man, I should be writing for comics). The new DC’s first team-up of Superman and Batman had them facing a punk rock chick in big glasses and a Mohawk named “Magpie.” She liked birds and stealing stuff. She was nothing special, pretty much a Penguin rip-off. This was the new DC universe of the rest of the 80’s? Man, this millionaire was really phoning it in. Those John Byrne issues of Superman were some of the last comics I bought new in the store (I really only pick up the occasional used copy at swap meets since the 90’s). Yes, they turned me off that much.

So here we go, another massive re-launch. A bunch of 1st issues will be sold. But what then? Will writers encounter a maze of problems created by renewing the universe? I already see some. In this new universe Bruce Wayne has only been Batman around 5 years. But appearing in his new ish is an older Robin (Dick Grayson) who is now long since become Nightwing, the current young Robin, and at least a couple of the other previous Robin’s of various ages from the last 30 years. They can be hammered into new continuity I guess, but really, Grayson has gone from a little kid joining Batman in his early adventures, to a cynical and seasoned Nightwing in less than 5 years?

OK, like I said, I don’t really put any money into the pockets of comic book companies and creators anymore. I have no real stake in what they do with this. But as an old school comic book fanboy from back in better times, I guess I’m rooting for this to be a success for the sake of comic goodness to come. Monthly comic magazines are already an endangered species. No sense in helping them limp into the history books.

Talkin' Smack to Hitler

In honor of the repellant Hugo Weaving playing the repellant Red Skull in the Captain America movie, here’s a couple of favorite scenes of mine from Super Villain Team-Up #16.

Few Marvel villains were eviler than Red Skull. He was a bad guy who was chosen to be a bad guy, and he embraced it, and the hollow promises of the Third (and Fourth, and Fifth, etc…) Reich. A bellboy whom Shicklegruber pulled from obscurity to prove to his toadies that he could create an Aryan superman practically from thin air, he exceeded all of that rat fink Adolph’s expectations.

Marvel may never have presented a splash page as truly heinous. Two hoity toity pricks enjoying a feast while prisoners starve below.

And The Skulls thinly veiled insults at the Hate Monger have a special resonance when you realize HM is Hitler himself. Few could speak to Der Farting Fuehrer in such a manner, but The Red Skull feared no man. He will very much come to life with Hugo in the wheelhouse.

Show me the most beautiful woman in the world...

I’ve stopped reading about games online as much as I have the last couple of years. In all honesty, my curiosity about other people’s philosophies and ups and downs of gaming has significantly decreased. When I started this blog to talk about my own gaming past and present, I was super excited and very inspired. But that has dulled down a good bit since I became busier with career stuff and with other good life things. Also, I had only just started gaming regularly again after years off when I started the blog, and it all seemed so fresh.

It feels sort of like a couple of year relationship that has lost a lot of it’s initial luster after the long honeymoon period. As Bill Maher has said in the past, “show me the most beautiful woman in the world, and I’ll show you a guy who is tired of screwing her.”

Grognardia, the best gaming blog out there, and my own inspiration to start this blog, is no longer daily reading for me. I pretty much stopped reading and subscribing to other game blogs over a year ago (the main reason I don’t have at least a couple hundred followers of my own blog is for this very reason. Not tooting my own horn, but many fairly uninteresting blogs have followers in the hundreds due to those particular bloggers signing up for every new blog that comes along and those bloggers returning the favor. Amount of followers is not a good indication of how many people are actually reading). I never really cared much about amount of followers. This blog has served mainly as a place to vent and a place to practice writing about things I like. For myself. If other people find interest in it, great.

I’ve quit going to Dragonsfoot and other forums almost cold turkey in the last few weeks. But it’s not only a lack of interest; I’ve found a lot of the smugness, arrogance, holier-than-thou attitudes, and just plain hostility of many gamers online to be very uninspiring, aggravating, and very tiring. It really reminds me too much of my childhood playing at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, surrounded by older, angry pricks who thought they were “doing it right” much like many douche bags on DF who go on with great pride about how “sandboxing” or creating “mega dungeons” is some kind of high art. As if.

Sure, I’ve posted my own negative things on this blog in the past, but it was out of true and honest venting, not any kind of “I’m a better gamer than you” approach, or an attempt at hateful schtick that seems to be kind of popular on a few blogs. I sometimes opened up with honest emotion, and was often a little too open. I’ve for sure had my fill of my own hubris in terms of gaming. I really don’t intend to do much gaming outside of my own full, great group of people I have the good fortune to sit at the game table with, now on an almost weekely basis (wow). So my own negative reactions to some awful experiences in the greater gaming world at large are probably not going to happen anymore. I just don’t have the time or will to go out there and game with others with a very regular group going, and a life that demands more time away from the world of pretending.


So my focus is now on actual gaming with my group. I have also started to spend more of my free internet time looking at things that interest me, and have been a part of my life since childhood, other than gaming. Comic books were a big part of my life growing up, and even though I only buy a comic now and again these days (usually cheapies at garage sales and such) I am still in love with the medium and get the same type of chills from thinking about them as I have from thinking about gaming.

I wanted to point out this fairly new blog I have discovered by Jim Shooter, late 70’s/early 80’s editor in chief at Marvel Comics. As a kid and a teen I had about as much interest in the personalities behind comics as I did about games. Sure, we D&D’ers all knew about Gary Gygax, and we Marvel geeks all knew much about Stan “The Man” Lee (who I had the pleasure to meet and talk to as a young teen at the 1977 San Diego comic con, now a big time con). But Jim Shooter was one of these enigmas. He was mentioned in comic industry magazines, and I remember there not being much in the way of positives about him. I knew nothing about him, but I didn’t like him. But in this blog Jim is telling old stories, and giving his own side of things from back then. It is not only fascinating, but obviously Mr. Shooter has been long aware of his name being sullied for decades, and in his own personal touch is setting the record straight. It is super fascinating in a way nothing in the world of gaming currently seems to be to me. I am pouring over Shooters older posts with a vast passion as I try to catch up. For old school, Silver Age comics fans it is fascinating reading and I highly recommend you check it out if you grew up with comics.

I’ll mention some personal tales of my own that relate to some of Mr. Shooters posts in the future, but I am not done with gaming posts entirely. My Knights of the Old Republic campaign is a blast, and I at least, if not to share, want to use this blog as a place to keep a sort of journal about it. So when I have some time I’ll post on that, and anything (especially non-game related) that pops up of interest. There will be gaming stuff here when I post from time to time(you can bank that the couple of power gamers in my group will continue to annoy me), but let me declare at this point, officially, that Temple of Demogorgon is now more about pop culture than just game culture. This is in many ways an alternate to just abandoning a blog almost three years old. If you are one of the few readers here, I hope you continue to check it out and share your comments, and even smack me down when I geek out too bad or get too hoity toity.

I hope you are having a great summer, and are successful in your endeavors, gaming and otherwise. As Stan The Man might say…

EXCELSIOR!!

Avengers Assemble!

This promo poster art for next year's Avengers film is our first real indication of what the heroes involved will look like together. Interesting to note (to me anyway) how out of place the dude from Hurt Locker looks as a maskless Hawkeye the Archer. We have to keep in mind this is the Ultimates version of The Avengers (although that Hawkeye wore special glasses because they strangly had him be near sighted in that version).

Time will tell, but right now it seems unreal that I am actually going to get such a huge Marvel team-up in a live action film in my lifetime, and that it might actually not suck (it could be stupid, but it will be fun for sure). Now, where the hell is my Justice League film, true believers?

Hugo Weaving and The Red Skull

Captain America wasn’t one of my favorite Marvel characters, but for a time in the 80’s and early 90’s I was a regular reader. You could not deny his importance. Captain America was the one dude in the superhero community that all the other Marvel Characters trusted to open up to. From Spider-Man bemoaning his Aunt May’s latest heart attack, to The Black Widow complaining about that not-so-fresh feeling, Captain A was your go-to guy. His inspiring words got them back up n’ at ‘em.

In continuity, Cap was really the first superhero in the Marvel Universe (if you don’t count various wild west heroes). He fought through World War 2, and up till modern times has been the pinnacle of human perfection. His sparring partner, German bellhop turned Hitlerian super soldier named The Red Skull, came to modern times with him to continue the eternal dance.

In the media Cap never got a fair shake. He had a horrible TV pilot (he was a surfer dude, if I recall) back in the day, and in 1990 he finally got the big screen treatment. Despite a great back-up cast, including Ronny “Total Recall” Cox, Ned “Squeal like a pig!” Beatty, and Darrin “Kolchak” Mcgavin, it was a real stinker. Matt Salinger as Cap was uninspired casting. Plus they made the Red Skull an Italian. Huh? Wha? Was that even necessary? Was one of the producers German or something? Chalk that up to one of the most head scratching changes in comic to film history (making the 5’2” Wolverine a skinny 6’1” guy is a close second).

Now we are getting a new Cap film, one based in the new Marvel cinematic universe. The movie trailer footage looks great, with Cap in his WW2 natural environment. Cap is in the Nazi killing business, and brother, business is a’ boomin’! Iron Man set a high bar for this new generation of movie heroes, and both Thor and the upcoming Avengers film are going to at least be feasts for fanboy eyes (but hopefully better stories and continuity than the last Wolverine and X-Men films).

Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull is a no-brainer, and from the pic above you can see they are going the right direction for him. Since childhood I dreamed of comic book movies that didn’t suck and at least half-assed tried to get it right. For a fanboy of any age, this is looking like a good time to be alive if you love these iconic ink and paint characters.

The Dark Knight Rises

Warner Bros and Christopher Nolen have announced the two lead “baddies” in the next Batman flick. He also has settled on their actors.

Anne Hathaway has been cast as Catwoman. Tom Hardy (Inception) is set to play the South American brainy, muscle-bound “super steroid” freak Bane.

As a comic book fan who came up in the “silver age,” I have always loved Batman, despite in my earliest years being a diehard Marvel fanboy. I loved Neil Adam’s run in the 70’s, and Nolan’s Batman has a close resemblance to that incarnation. Before Nolan, my favorite of the films was the first Tim Burton effort, and also the Val Kilmer Batman (my only three problems with that one being a Robin who is too old, a two-face who is too ugly on the normal side of his face, and a Gotham City that is just too wrapped in neon – even the damn guns had neon tubing on them? Sheesh.)

Nolan has brought a great sense of realism to the world of Batman, and the first film was a fantastic origin story that hit all the right notes with comic fans and the “unbeliever” general public.

I really did love that first Christian Bale Batman film, and the second had a lot of great moments. I thought Two Face was kind of wasted (a criminal career that lasted around 20 minutes. Hardly worthy of entry into the Rogue’s Gallery down in the Batcave to be sure.) I think the new actress playing the love interest was a very strange choice. And I don’t *gasp* think that the late Heath Ledger’s Joker portrayal was all that extraordinary (although I do like a more toned down Joker, as he was often just too giddy and silly in some former incarnations). Overall, I think they should have shortened the film by around 20 minutes (something I say about a lot of movies. I’m looking at you, LOTR). It was just too much for one theater sitting.

So, how will Catwoman and Bane fit into the more realistic, non-comic bookey “Nolanverse?” Well, Catwoman was kind of a given anyway. The question is, which way will they go with her. The crazy leather bitch made famous by Michelle Pfieffer in Burton’s Trannyfest Batman Returns? The dominatrix prostitute of the 80’ and 90’s? Personally, I think a good take for Nolan to fit her well into his world is to make her more like her high society cat burglar persona from the olden days.

The Batman Animated Adventures from the 90’s did that with her, and did not have to stoop to making her a crazed, psychosexual being like Burton did. She actually pretty much had it together. I liked that version. Throw in that versions animal activism, and you’ve got yourself a reason to have Anne Hathaway bare her teeth and throw down with some martial acrobatics.

Bane? I dunno. I think it is a shit move. This was never that fascinating a character, and he only got into the consciousness of the fanboys by being the foe that literally broke Batman’s back. He also is not part of the old rogue’s gallery, which I think should have a focus on the old. A Nolan version of The Penguin (a non-mutated version, please), Riddler, or even bringing back Two Face would have been a much better choice. Nolan would have to take Bane to an entirely new vision for me to get behind it. I think he is a lame character.

This is most likely Nolan’s last Batman, and I think it is a shame that we will not see the return of Liam Neeson’s Ras Al Ghul, or at least his daughter Talia (who would be a perfect fit for the exotic and currently very popular Mila Kunis from Black Swan. Hell, maybe Anne Hathaway could have pulled off Talia) during his tenure.

OK, the film is at least a couple of years away from theaters. Sue me, I like talking about Batman.

Comic Dork Monday: “You…you’re a duck?!”

Howard the Duck is very dear to my heart. He was my first real non-superhero comics character that lived among superheroes. At around 12 years old or thereabouts, I had been collecting comics for a few years. It was the late 70’s, and my parents decided to take me on a San Diego vacation where they would let me hang out at the Comic Con (yes, the very same Comic Con famous today as a place for Hollywood to whore its sketchy wares). Actually, two years in a row, but I think it was that first one I really loved.

My parents went and soaked up the summer sun for two days while letting the con babysit me until around 9PM or so each night, before picking me up to head to our much cheaper hotel down the street. There were two great highlights of my young self’s odyssey. First (and probably the best) was sitting by the pool with Mel Blanc in the afternoon. Mel had spoken earlier in the day at a panel, so I knew he was the guy who did the voices in my favorite cartoons. For some reason, others did not really approach him, but I went right to his table. I sat for well over a half hour with him (although as memory fades, it could have been an hour, or it could have been ten minutes), and he did voices for me and even sang a song as Speedy Gonzales (it was about a fat Mexican lady “…wanna eat, wanna eat, wanna eat, Juanita”). I did not realize the magnitude of that encounter until years later.

Another encounter I probably took for granted at first (until I saw him on TV on a show called “Wonderama” some time later hawking comics) was with Stan Lee. I listened to a group of a dozen dudes or so in the lobby who surrounded Stan as he kicked back in one of the lounges answering questions (he was really friendly to the fans as I recall). One of the guys there asked “Whatever happened to Howard the Duck?” Stan had no answer and somebody else chimed in “he fell on some rocks and died.”

Well, Howard did not die. He actually fell off of some cosmic steps in the Man Things comics, and fell to our earth to start his own series. This is where I discovered the joys of Howard.

In his first issue, a Conan send-up where Spider-Man also appeared, Howard fought “Pro Rata” the wizard accountant. Here he met Beverly Switzer, his lovely companion (and eventually sometimes girlfriend) who would be his sidekick for most of his run. Most of their adventures would take place in and around Cleveland for the majority of Howard’s 70’s popularity.

Howard was created by Steve Gerber, writer of a number of Man-Thing comics. Man-Things Florida swamp had a major cosmic nexus point in it (in addition to other fantasy goodies such as The Fountain of Youth and a wizard’s tower), and Howard was one of a small number of extra-dimensional secondary characters who encountered Man-Thing and adventured with the mindless hump of muck before getting his own comic. Gerber wrote the majority of the Howard’s first run, and often was at disagreement with others staffers about what exactly Howard was supposed to be. Gerber thought of him not as a cartoon character, but an actual talking duck from an alternate earth. Early Howard artist Frank Brunner actually left the series because he wanted Howard to be a cartoon that, like a Looney Tunes character, could be smashed and crushed and pop back unharmed. “Un uh” said Gerber, this was a living and breathing alien creature who bleeds and feels pain when hurt; by no means immortal.

In the late 70’s Howard ran for president in the comic, and I for sure remember Marvel’s heavy promotion of this, with buttons and everything. Even 7-11 got into the act with commemorative Howard cups. Yeah, he was getting fairly well known for a non-superhero character. Howard even had a newspaper strip for a couple of years. I was an eager Howard collector at the time, owning the first 20 or 30 issues (I Ebayed these a few years ago).

Towards the end of his first color comics run, Howard was plagued with a load of problems of almost biblical proportions. Gerber, who complained nonstop about other people’s approach to his creation, was removed from the series by the Marvel mucketymucks. This was about the time I had moved on from Howard, and had stopped collecting. But Howard continued for a bit longer in black and white magazine format. I do remember buying one of these, and it featured a suicidal Howard bemoaning his loneliness (girlfriend Beverly had apparently left and taken up hooking down at the docks) in a bizarre parody of It’s a Wonderful Life.

In 1978 Gerber sued Marvel over Howard, in the first such case dealing with comic creator rights. He was championed by many comic book luminaries, including Jack “King” Kirby, who along with Gerber created the hilarious Destroyer Duck to help with legal fees. Disney threw their hat into the Howard ring, stirring up shit over Howard’s similarities to Donald Duck, forcing Howard to eventually put on pants to look different from Disney’s asshole-ish foul. This itself was actually parodied in the comics, where decency groups cried out to pants poor Howard (despite his apparent lack of any kind of genitalia).

Howard popped up in the Marvelverse™ here and there, and even had another wack at this own series before the heinous abortion of a film that was thrown together by George Lucas (apparently in the workings since the making of American Graffiti). For this awesomely awful outing, Howards philosophical and existential nature was entirely removed for the sake of making him a nice, likeable guy (spew). As clueless producer Gloria Katz said "It's a film about a duck from outer space... It's not supposed to be an existential experience... We're supposed to have fun with this concept, but for some reason reviewers weren't able to get over that problem." Hollywood threw away its chance to feature a smart, adult wisecracking character in the Groucho Marx mold. Instead of the cool Howard from the comics, we got a tired, out of date Marty McFly type good guy. It did not work, and for me at least, the film was the nail in the coffin as far as Howard goes.

Howard has been fully off my radar since that movie, but like any comic character of worth he has been continued to be milked in one way or another over the years. I heard that at one point Gerber used Howard, the “real Howard,” in Image comic series such as Savage Dragon. Gerber owns this character, who in the Imageverse™ is undercover and goes by the name “Leonard” and dyed his feathers green. He even has gal pal Beverly there under a new moniker as well. Huh. Maybe she just should have kept hooking down at those docks.

Whatever goes down with Howard, nothing will ever come close to the sheer cool that this character exuded in those early days of his existential existence. Howard, you will probably never get another movie, and I think that is a good thing. Sail on, Ducky.

Comic Book Dork Monday: Deathlok the Demolisher

Deathlok is Luther Manning, a soldier from near-future Detroit who is turned into a combat cyborg that fights against tyranny in a decaying urban landscape.

No, wait. Deathlok is a robot sent back in time to fight Captain America, and Luther Manning is a clone who also travels back in time to stop Deathlok from doing nefarious deeds. But wait, Deathlok is still Luther Manning and the Luther Manning clone never had the mind of Luther Manning. Luther Manning clone dies and Deathlok still has the brain of Luther Manning…

No…wait. Deathlok is John Kelly, and was created by the CIA.

Um, no, wait. Deathlok is Michael Collins, African American professor who becomes a cyborg in modern times and fights in Latin America for The Roxxon Corporation.

NO...he’s Jack Truman, an agent with SHIELD. Um, scrap that, because Jack Truman’s brain is removed from the cyborg and replaced by the brain of former SHIELD agent Larry Young.

Ugh. Way to go Marvel Comics. In the true style of “The House of Ideas,” a great original character concept, a refreshing 1970’s break from the typical superhero comic, is beaten, raped, and left to die.

Marvel did all kinds of stupid Team-Ups (the most irritating being one with The Thing from Fantastic Four) with Deathlok, and several ill-conceived time travel concepts that just beat the life out of what was a great alternative character in Marvel’s Silver Age. That not being bad enough, every several years they took what was a fairly unpopular but very cool and offbeat character and tried to reinvent him in what were very banal and not very clever ways.

But those first few issues of Deathlok were the bomb. Luther Manning was a soldier who got himself blown up, but the military forces that be reanimated his body and attached a computer and cybernetic limbs to it. The look of Deathlok was way ahead of it’s time. Spider-Man once described him as a “zombie cyborg” and that is indeed the look he had. Not only that, but the human portions of his powerful body were still decaying to some degree. Despite an anti-decay liquid that flowed in his veins instead of blood, Deathlok’s friends and foes alike often commented on the rotting smell that accompanied him. Cannibal surivers in the ruined cities could smell Deathlok a mile away, and came a ‘running to munch him up as if the dinner bell had rang.

A cool laser pistol and a magnetic knife (so it would stick to his leg without a sheath) made up his arsenal. Deathlok combated military dudes, suit and tie bodyguards, mutants, post-apocalyptic gang members and bandits, cannibals, robots, and other cyborgs in his grim and gritty original adventures. In the original run, Luther Manning’s brain was supposedly taken from the Cyborg shell and place in a Luther Manning clone. A character saved? Not quite. In usual Marvel style, they would later kill the clone (in a Captain America comic no less) and state that Manning’s true brain still resided in the cyborg. Great way to continue the character, no? Big NO. Some years later Marvel just went ahead and reinvented Deathlok again and again.

When I was a kid Deathlok showed me that there was more to comics than good looking superheroes. I still have those original issues, and every few years I bust them out and have a great read of a great 70’s comic character.

Comic Dork Monday: Asbestos Man

The Human Torch. A high-powered superhero who is capable of generating enough heat to wipe out a major metropolitan city, once met his match in a man in a suit made of the infamous naturally occurring substance the Greeks named “Asbestos.”

Actually, long before Johnny Storm met his match at the gloved hands of this 1960’s “mort,” the World War 2 Human Torch and his buddy Toro tangled with the first Asbestos-based villain, The Asbestos Lady. This angry red-head was pissed because her criminal brother who had been captured by the Torch got hanged. Yes kiddies, 70 years ago they put your head in a noose and dropped you off a plank for being naughty. Now you just get rehab.

But for true modern Asbestos villainy, you just cannot beat the modern Torch’s 1960’s nemesis, The Asbestos Man. Looking a lot less sexy in an asbestos suit than Asbestos Lady, AM took his fireproof suit, shield, and asbestos netting and beat the Torch hands down. Just once, though. See, Torchy was still in his early stages of herodom, and the Fantastic Four had yet to have tons of world-spanning adventures where they truly came into their own in respect to high level superpowers. Eventually, Torch figured out that all he needed to do was use his flames to take the oxygen out of the air around Asbesty, and you had one huffing and puffing scientist bad guy. That’s it for you, Asbest-hole. Probably in more ways than one.

You see, asbestos has been around for thousands of years. The Greeks had it, and figured out for themselves that the stuff was dangerous, as witnessed by countless slaves working in construction coming down with severe lung problems. Marco Polo marveled at the stuff, witnessing Persians cleaning carpets of asbestos by throwing them onto fires.

The people in charge, in ancient days and in America, were long aware of the dangers of this substance. But it wasn’t until around 1970 that the public was made aware of what the government was for the most part covering up. This shit can jack you up in ways Joe Camel could only dream of.

After their earliest appearance, both Asbestos Man and Asbestos Lady were never heard from again, and their fates are unknown. But we know, don’t we? These poor, low level villain numbnuts sealed their fates by doing what many a dead villain has; dabbling in things they didn’t really understand.

Comic Dork Monday: Prez

I’d like to talk today about my Night Below session from last week, where a character in the party ultimately betrayed their trust and turned on them when that characters evil ex-boyfriend showed up with his gang of slavers. But it is just too deep and exciting to have time to post that on a Monday morn, so I’ll have that later in the week. For now, let’s enjoy some comedy filler (or an attempt at comedy anyway) to cheer up our hectic Monday (where it is raining here in Southern California after two week of brutal, record setting heat).

You young punks! You don’t know how good ya got things nowadays! Why, when I was a lad, we had a teenage president! You think Dubbya Bush screwed up this country? You shouda seen what President Prez was up to. Talkin’ to animals instead of balancing the budget. Fightin’ legless vampires instead o’ making peace in the Middle East. Yeah, Prez was what set up on this path of doom.

I’ll get to the Prez comic in a second, but let me admit right off the bat that at one point in my futuristic Champions game world New Haven (based on the setting in Superhero 2044). In the early 80’s, I briefly toyed with the idea of a teenage president getting elected and the ramifications of that (luckily it never happened, keeping me from having to retcon an entire period of time in my game world when I got older and smarter). Of course I was inspired by Prez, one of DC Comics greatest Morts (Mort = in retrospect embarrassing and poorly conceived comic book character) of the early 70’s.

Although admittedly set in an America that was alternate to the ongoing DC comics continuity (even though Prez appeared in an issue of Supergirl at some point), it still seemed like an idea out of the worst fever dreams of a hacky comic book writer. But no hacks worked on this; no less than Jack Kirby collaborator and co-creator of Captain America Joe Simon created this ode to an idiotic decade.

Through some sketchy political wrangling, the age of American President Candidates is lowered to 18 years old. Why not? We knew everything there was to know at 18, right? “Prez Rickard,” called Prez in infancy by his mom who obviously wanted him to be president one day, bust onto the political scene (in his origin story he got all the clocks in his town of “Steadfast” to run on time, making him a hometown hero) and took those unhip, fuddy duddy Washington fat cats by storm, winning the election hands down. Groovy, baby! Do it for the kicks!
A firm believer in nepotism, Prez put both his mommy and his hot teen queen sister in high profile White House positions. Also into this already weird mix came Eagle Free, a sort of a native American Doctor Doolittle. No suit and tie for Eagle Free, please. Even after the sweater and jeans teen president makes Eagle the head of the CIA (!??), ol’ Eagle still runs around with feathers and leathers and no shirt. Even in the white house at press debriefings. No damn shirt.

Eagle Free teaches Prez the ins and outs of animal fighting abilities (which, I shit you not, Eagle Free apparently learned himself from a library of animal books in his humble cave home). So now Prez can fight like…a…bear. And…a…horse. Or…an…elephant. Or…ok, look, for the most part a human who fights like a bear or an elephant is going to be fairly piss poor in your average bar fight and get his ass brutally kicked. His teeth are gonna be flying like popcorn. So for the sake of sanity, let’s just say Prez somehow is bestowed supernatural animal powers by Eagle (although it is clear in the comic Prez is “taught” these techniques as one would learn karate) and call it a beautiful day.

Prez only managed 4 issues. The most interesting storyline featured our Presidential hero battling handicapped, legless vampires. No shit. Let me just say that the truncated undead were about as scary and deadly as you would expect. Which is not at all.

Many yeas later Neil Gaiman would give Prez and appearance in an issue of the acclaimed Sandman series, but otherwise DC has not often thrown him a bone. He didn’t even show up in that multiple realities warping 80’s series Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Although my own “Prez” didn’t happen (thankfully) in my Champions game world, we at least have the original and the best to look back on fondly. Kidding aside, it is a fun idea from a kooky 70’s perspective. But c’mon, legless vampires?

Comic Dork Monday: June Jitsui kicks Spider-Ass

Believe me, this is not a comic book post but a gaming post. But let’s talk comics for a second.

Any older dude who read Comics back in the day probably fondly remembers the old Twinkie advertisements on the inside back cover. Usually, a major superhero like Spider-Man or Superman would for some reason need to use Twinkie snack cakes as a secret weapon to stop some bank robber or other low level street hood. That’s right, Spider-Man can dodge bullets and Supes can spin the earth backwards on it’s axis, but they need fattening snack treats to take down numbnut criminals, costumed or otherwise.

In this particular ad, Spider-Man is on his way home from the deli when he runs into a beautiful but deadly mistress of martial arts. First off, Spidey is a native New Yorker and Twinkies are what he gets at the deli? Huh. Second, why the fuck is he walking home? If he had gone as Peter Parker, would he have swung home? Who the hell is writing this shit, Rob Liefeld? Sheesh.

So while passing through Central Park (wow, Spidey does live dangerously) our hero runs into the formerly unseen by us villainess June Jitsui. Apparently Spidey has a past with her that we are not made privy to. Maybe a jilted booty call from before he met Mary Jane? We’ve really only see Peter Parker get lucky with white chicks. Well, anyway, you know what they say about Asian girls…

Oh my God, this apparently unpowered Chinese chippie proceeds to kick the living shit out of Spidey, who describes her prowess as similar to “running into a truck.” Why can’t this proto-mutant half spider take her on? I mean, he is superfast, agile, has a danger sense, and is strong enough to bend steel girders. And check out the kick in panel 3. What the hell? She obviously just phoned that one in. Looks like the kick a trucker would use to boot the rest stop hooker out of the semi’s cab. He couldn’t block that? Well, for some reason his webbing will not work without the awesome power of sugar and cholesterol, so it’s his bag of Twinkies from Morty’s Deli that saves the day.

June greedily eyes the Twinkies and brashly proclaims to them “I’m going to turn you into poo!” before scarfing them down. Well, ok, that line is actually from Family Guy. I’m trying to be a funnyman here.

OK, here’s the rub. At some point in the late 80’s I used June as a villain character in my Champions games. I shit you not! I needed a crooked sensei to operate a chain of martial arts studios that fronted for criminal enterprises, so I plucked June from this strange advert. I did however make the last name “JItsu” instead of “Jitsui.” C’mon, I have a little respect for my GM’ing rep.

She was around for awhile in the street level games that I ran. One martial arts PC even had her as a bit of an arch enemy. At some point somebody hired this guy’s enemies (including June, some criminal wrestlers, etc.) to attack him one at a time to weaken him. The third attack or so of the day was from June in a busy outdoor shopping mall, who actually bitch-slapped the already weakened PC around much like she did to old Web Head in the ad.

In the 90’s she didn’t really show up in my Champs games, and went back into obscurity.

I recently started doing some street level “Dark Champions” games as an alternative for my group, and for the first game I resurrected June Jitsu. I even still had a mini for her (that actually looked a lot like the comic book June). Thing is, it’s around 20 years later, so I made her a washed up entrepreneur who was down to just one studio in the bad part of town. She still fronts for her students criminal activities, but is a bit worn down. She smokes and drinks a lot now, and though still decent looking in her 40’s she is for sure not on her game as she once was.

After a couple of games the characters have yet to tangle directly with her, but that will happen next game (and who knows when that will happen – this is an alternate when I only have three players at a session). As used up as the dragon lady is, she still has some skill (don’t forget that mighty “trucker kick”) and I’m looking forward to her mixing it up with the PC’s one at a time or as a group. She is good enough still that one on one the PC is very likely to experience the smack down that poor, deli loving Spider-Man did that fateful day in Central Park.

Now go eat a Twinkie!

Addendum: from what I understand, June Jitsui appeared one other time in the 80’s. It was in a mini-series called “Fing Fang Foom,” a great old school Marvel monster character I loved, but never heard of the miniseries. Apparently, June appeared in some kind of Riker’s Island jail break scene (she is such a tough cookie they probably had her in with the dudes making bitches out of all the bikers, skin heads, and Mexican Mafia members).

Basing NPC villains on characters from other media

Comments in one of Grognardia James posts this week had me pondering my “rip-offs” of personalities for use in my own games. Having grown up as a comic freak, it was only natural that colorful villains would be an important part of many of my D&D games. Characters who gained arch-enemies would often get the rare treat of battling it out with bad guys in a tavern, back alley, temple, or city street instead of the usual forest or dungeon chamber.

I created a multitude of unique NPC’s, but for bad guys I would occasionally base them around other personalities from other media.

In the 80’s I based an entire group of baddies on an 80’s X-Men assassin group called “The Marauders.” The Marauders in the comic had attacked NYC’s sewer mutants, pretty much wiping them out. So my homage to this was “The Children of Trouble,” a group of powerful high level, magic-item wielding bad guys who were created by an evil rival kingdom in response to the good kingdom’s access to the services of the player character party and to generally be engines of chaos in foreign lands. There was a high level monk, assassin, gladiator, and cleric in the “Children,” and most memorably also a +5 iron spear-wielding ogre who wore gauntlets of giant strength. When the ogre fought characters in the crowded streets, his weapon would slay bystanders and knock bricks from buildings when it missed the players. The player party and the bad guy group had several memorable combat encounters over that campaign, including one on the city streets when The Children of Trouble were instructed to massacre elves that lived in the city.

One of my regular players, Alan, had read those X-Men comics and was fairly snarky about the fact that I had based something on it (even though, in fact, it was the idea of the group more than the characters that I used). But what the hell, the other players loved having combats that came off like something out of a comic book, rather than the usual sword and shield dungeon slug fests.

One of my favorite baddy groups, also of the 80s’ got based on the three villains from Superman 2. I turned general Zod and his two cronies into a small party of evil adventurer’s who were hired to steal a magical portrait, headquartering in a dungeon that the party had to go into to fight them. “Zod” was a high level thief, a kinky lady sorceress with a magical, mind-controlled length of rope that could attack, and a big dumb, mute fighter with a 18/00 strength. All had variations of black leather armor. The female, Desmadonna, actually managed to escape getting killed and showed up for many years from time to time. Eventually she even became queen (in a memorable early 90’s game) of a small, evil-controlled pleasure town known as the “Pleasure Dome” out in the desert. I still have the great, sexy figure I used for her, and hope to have her show up again some day soon.

This evil bad guy homage was actually very well received by the players, and they especially loved Desmadonna (maybe that was how she escaped alive).

I can’t think of any such homages from the later 90’s, or from my recent return to gaming, but you never know what I might have subconsciously done. I think it is just fine to base ideas on the ideas of others (The American Way?), as long as it makes for colorful, memorable characters and fun gaming, why the hell not?