The Serious sides of Gamma World/Mutant Future

Today in his “Free Friday” post, James over at Grognardia started a discussion on taking this genre more seriously, pointing out a Jim Ward article at “Wizards of the Cost (spelling mine).”

This hit home for me, as it reminded me of a bit of a conundrum in my recent attempts at doing a Metamorphosis Alpha game (using Mutant Future). We have played around four games or so far, and in the most recent game a couple of weeks ago the party came close to where they are going to exit the level and find out about the world “outside” the fields they know. The next session should be both interesting and exciting as they find out they are on a spaceship, and just how large the universe actually is.

But as far as Grognardia James’ post is concerned, it really struck a chord with me. You see, those first few games came off just so goofy. We had big fun with the powers and disabilities (nobody wanted to be pure human because we had such a gas with the random mutations), and character creation was a hoot. Unfortunately the hilarity did not stop with the wacko mutations.

In Gamma World and Met. Alpha games of my youth, we had some giddy fun, and there were laughs galore in the games. But we always approached it with a certain degree of seriousness. There may be insane powers abounding, but the game is still set in an apocalyptic setting. It is a game of survival even more than D&D, and at least in the case of Gamma World you are adrift in a decaying world full of danger. Now, I actually played in Cyclopeatron’s Gamma World (my first time sitting down as a Gamma World player in around 30 years) one-shot earlier this year, and the game was full of good chuckles. But even though this GW setting was more akin to what you would find on a classic heavy metal album cover (our characters were mutated rock stars of the far far far future), and was almost more high fantasy than any kind of serious science fiction, it managed to find enough of a dramatic tone to balance out the goofiness.

But goofy is just how my first few of these recent games I ran. But before this most recent game I put my finger on the button of what kept certain seriousness from drifting in along with the crazy mutants. And what the problem was comes right down to me. You see, without even thinking about tone, I went into the games laughing more than anybody. And I set the scenes and encounter with a certain comedic tone without even realizing it at first. All the laughing is great, but this isn’t fucking Toon or Paranoia or some other game where laughs are first and foremost. It’s basically Gamma World, and it should be more frightening and chilling than pure guffaws.

So before this last game I decided that the world could be as goofy as hell, or whatever the players wanted out of it. But for me, as GM, I needed to try and not share in the laughs. I had to approach my game setting and the session more or less serious as a heart attack. Instead of describing an encounter with a flock of sheep that turn out to be carnivorous with a big grin on my puss, I need to think in terms of just how scary this could be. A pleasant postcard scene of sheep on a hill, then suddenly this flock is tearing into you like fluffy wolves. Lovecraft could easily present this weird situation in a non-goofy manner, so why can’t I?

The funniest movies are the ones that act like they are not in on the joke. Austin Powers was funniest in the first movie because he wasn’t in on the joke like he seemed to be in the later films. And the funniest Jim Carry movies have everyone in the foreground talking about some serious matter, while in the background Ace Ventura is jumping around with an alligator or whatever clenched on his ass. Or, you can even turn that around a bit. The home invasion and rape scene in A Clockwork Orange has in modern times become sort of a comedic punch line, but at its core it is one of the most frightening scenes in any film ever made. It all depends on approach.

So in the last game I took a more serious stance, and although the players still had a jolly good time with their sicko super powers and crippling disabilities I think there was a bit more respect for the setting, and what I was trying to do with it.

The things that happen in any role-playing game very often elicit laughs and humorous ironies, but sometimes it is best if the GM doesn’t act like he is in on the joke.

All that in-game argle bargle

After several weeks we managed to get back to The Night Below. Until last night I figured it would be maybe three games to finish this up. Now I feel I could not have been more wrong.

I can’t say it wasn’t fun. It was a mostly role playing session, with a short bit of combat at the end. But it was not meant to be hugely talkative, because in this game I expected the group to meet the Derro Renegades, and then spend around half the game in the Derro Town (the last stop before The City of the Glass Pool). I’m no railroady DM though, so things rarely pan out the way I would like, especially in relation to the amount of time things take.

I have a group where the players are all often of a different mind about things with each other, and it is for sure like that with the characters. Not generally especially argumentative with each other, when it comes to the handling of captured NPC’s or treasure they can argie bargie (using the terminology of my Scottish parents; “argle bargle” counts as well) up a storm.

The thief member of the slavers that were fought (to a standstill more or less) last game was charmed by Kyrsantha the drow, so she returned at the beginning of this game from running away from the cave-in. Two characters, Big Ben’s Lumarin the Grey elf MU, and Terry’s Helena the human fighter, were at negative hit points and therefore pretty damn jacked up. The slaver’s young thief Prentyss was then taken into custody (but treated friendly at this point) and the group backtracked a few miles and found a perfect side cave to take the several days rest required for the negative hit point nellies to recover. On a side note, Helena was negative 8, and it had been a long time since anyone in my game was that bad at such a high level (Helena has around 50 hp). My impulse is to at least have some minor crippling of some kind, but that is always tempered by the fact that D&D isn’t really set-up for that. In the long run, I didn’t have anything be wrong once the time period went by, although I am likely to give her a minor thing next game, like a minus 1 to the strength in her shield arm or some BS like that.

Anyway, let the hours-long never ending argle bargle commence. Ultimately, both Kryantha the drow and Lumarin the elf felt fairly harsh measures where called for. Not killing (I think), but at least stripping Prentyss of her stuff and sending her off alone into the Underdark. Now, both these characters are lawful in alignment (Lumarin lawful good; Krysantha lawful neutral) and it seems that the last couple of games I have to constantly remind them. I’m like “If you are going to choose a lawful alignment, fucking own it! I didn’t make you choose that alignment.” Man, nothing is more tiring than fretting over alignment issues. The people that don’t use them for sure have a point.

It seemed like they were ready to send Prentyss away to the surface world along with an Invisible Stalker escort to protect her, despite the now uncharmed and tied up Prentyss telling them that gang leader Xavier has a map of the City of the Glass Pool and would probably trade it for her. It really seems that both Lumarin and Krysantha are taking out a lot of their anger at Lily for her betrayal last game on this thief NPC. It all smacked of chaotic actions to me. Even ol’ chaotic good half elf bard Vaidno has become a voice of reason aimed at these guys. Only Vaidno, Helena, and Ormac the gnome seem to not have become bitter at the heavy experiences they have had in the Night Below.

Dia, the NPC ranger and bearer of Finslayer the anti-Kuo Toa, Aboleth, and Drow sword, finally spoke up, and the sword demanded that Prentyss be kept as a useful hostage. Finslayer only cares about what will help the goal of destroying it’s hated enemies. Meanwhile, both Lumarin and Krysantha seem more bottled up with their own vendetta’s against a couple of young female thieves than in destroying the true evil power in the area. In this game for sure they seemed somewhat unlawful to me. Both Ben and Dan are stone sure they are correct in their thoughts and actions (and I have to admit that it is often hard to figure out what is supposed to be coming from the characters, and what is being vented by the players themselves. Here is where it starts to feel like work).

So it is decided that they will take the hostage Prentyss along with them. So begins the hour long bargle over who gets what out of Prentyss’ belongings. Hoo boy, another long spirited debate. At one point Andy was yelling at hard-headed Dan here, and it was a comfort hearing somebody else having to raise their voice at the sometimes obstinate and power gaming Dan.

Poor Paul. Paul is a young guy who came along late in the group, and had no tabletop experience before (although he had lots of D&D type video game experience, such as Neverwinter Nights). He turned out to be a great roleplayer though, and his actions as Lily last game netted him more experience than anyone else has received in one game in this group. Just outstanding stuff. Paul got a kick out of all the trouble Lily was still causing in the group despite having run off with Xavier and gang, but lets face it; sit around for three hours listening to the arguing with no character present is tiring, and finally he was picking up his stuff and ready to book. But I had him stay, and for one little combat encounter with a Derro patrol I had him show up with a Githyanki NPC to run and join the party. In the little bit of time we had, he got right into the character (he had Githyanki experience from them being a major plot point in one of the Neverwinter Nights games).

So there we had it. A spirited game, but one that had way to much in the way of debate. Fun on one side of the coin; exhausting as the chapter in LOTR where they all argue at the meeting in Rivendell on the other side of the coin. Just in the spirit of getting the campaign to a conclusion sometime this millennium, I am going to have to cut these debates short, putting some kind of 15 minute time limit on any subject on the table. It was a special case though, in that they all spent a week in a small cave, and that added to the slow down in game play. I’m hoping we can now move into a nearly all combat phase of the campaign finale. In those brutal and deadly last hours of the campaign, these guys are not going to find me to be the softy, pushover DM I tend to be just for the sake of shutting people up.

Time to pump it up a notch.

Call of Cthulhu Friday: Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell wrote some of the most prolific and lasting Cthulhu Mythos tales in the latter half of the 20th Century. Although he has long since tried to distance himself from writing Lovecraftian setting stories, he himself freely admits that his favorite tales he produced are those dealing with those soulless god-beings of the Mythos.

As a more modern horror writer, Campbell is heavily influenced by of course Lovecraft, but also Howard, Robert Bloch, Robert Chambers (of “The King in Yellow” fame), and Richard Matheson (“I am Legend” and about a dozen Twilight Zone episodes). As a child of the 60’s and 70’s, these were most often the times his best tales take place in (80’s too). Shagadelic, baby! Yeah! These decades actually worked well as a time period for old school horror. Among free love and The Drug Revolution, Cthulhu and his minions could crawl in the psyche of mankind with impunity.

I think Campbell greatest contribution to the Mythos is The Severn River Valley setting. His earliest Mythos works were originally set in Lovecraft’s Massachusetts, but it was August Derleth who suggested that he come up with a new setting for Mythos tales. So Severn Valley was born, based on an actual river and area of England (The Severn is shown in the photo above) that he spent time in during his youth (including local towns and city areas still in ruins from The Blitz of WW2). His Brichester fills in for Lovecraft’s Arkham, and The town of Clotton is his Dunwich. Many of Campbell’s Severn Valley tales take place in these two locations and immediate environs. Campbell’s Necronomicon is The “Revelations of Glaaki,” at the time of the tales being reprinted in 12 volumes by Brichester’s Ultimate Press, who among other things are also producing pornography (finally the Mythos and sex meet, albeit in a printing shop). Brichester U. fills in for Miskatonic U. To give you a groovy hippy era vibe, Brichester has a variety of mod establishments, including a science fiction bookstore, tennis courts, and a vegetarian student hang-out called “Peace and Beans.”

All sorts of interesting things are going on in Severn Valley. “The Tomb-Herd” is a particularly chilling crowd. There are the tree-like Dark Young of Lovecraft fame running around in the woods (one of the few creatures in his works that Campbell did not invent), a god-monster living in a lake and blighting the homes around it with its cult, and the spacecraft of alien insects encamped in a clearing. There is even a sort of “Innsmouth taint” in one area, but instead of taking on the appearance of a toad, the rural villagers bring to mind the look of fat-faced rabbits (both amusing and chilling).

Campbell came up with quite a few of his own gods for the Mythos, including Eihort, a sort of multi-eyed elephant shaped blob that lays its young into a victim, who is driven mad and finally dies during a thunderstorm, tiny Eihorts bursting forth from his body. One of my favorites is Y’Golonac, a fat, headless being with eyes in its hands. Y’Golonac is usually found sitting behind a massive brick wall in a cavern, waiting for his name to be read aloud from “Revelations.” When it happens, he takes over the reader’s body and wreaks havoc. The Render of the Veils is especially scary, a being who shows you what the world really looks like, and when you see that you go forever mad. His priests call him forth with a blindfold on, which must be a treat to experience. It really is a clever take on why you can never see your God. I used all three of these gods in my 90’s CoC games.

“The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenents” and “Cold Print” are the anthologies you want to read to enjoy the Severn Valley Setting. But besides his Mythos tales, Campbell has also done extensive work in other aspects of horror, drama, and fantasy. In the 70’s he completed three of Robert E. Howards unfinished Solomon Kane tales. He has written novels about serial killers, demonic alien invasions, and even novelizations of Universal Horror classics. Just a few years ago, after working a several month stint at a Borders Bookstore, he penned a novel about a bookstore staff trapped and hunted by evil forces while working an all night shelving shift (The Overnight, 2004). Clearly, just like Stephen King and Lovecraft, Campell had the ability to make the mundane and normal seem sinister.

Though I had not heard of Campbell in the 80’s, by the early 90’s I had discovered him (I think because of some of his entities showing up in a Call of Cthulhu supplement), and devoured his Lovecraft inspired stuff in a matter of months. He had a huge influence on my Call of Cthulhu games in the 90’s, and my very last few games I ended up doing in the late 90’s were going to be set in Severn Valley. But for some reason I went with Arkham instead. Pity, but maybe one day…

I plan to post more about Campell and his creations in future CoC Friday posts, but in the meantime, if you haven’t read him…go check out those anthologies!

Thinkin’ about campaigns for 2011

November always seems to be the time I start to look towards what will pan out for the game group in the coming year.

I’ve been doing pretty much the same 1st edition campaign for over two years now. So, with maybe three or four games left for my AD&D Night Below campaign (actually, the first few months of gaming in this group had nothing to do with the NB, I hadn’t originally planned for the party to end up in that grinder of a setting) I have to start thinking of what to do next.

A part of me wants to get right into a new D&D campaign. It has now literally been years since I ran for a group of low level characters, and it would be fun to start something fresh after all this time steering the destinies of higher level PC’s. But really, I love running other games besides D&D, and I want to have an opportunity to do more of that without it just being an alternate. So what I will do is take a break from running D&D for the first few months of 2011 (with the exception perhaps of the occasional White Box game) and do something entirely different.

Big Ben has been running his AD&D elf-centric game here and there, but I think for the first couple months of the year we’ll play a bit more of that, plus Terry has expressed interest in revisiting her old 2nd edition game world so we will maybe be doing a bit of that as well. So D&D, which Andy and I basically started the group to play, will be well represented without me actually running it. But run something regularly I will, but what?

As much as I love Call of Cthulhu, I’m still not sure this is the right group for it. Role playing abounds with these guys, but lots of combat also seems to be a big preference. That just don’t happen in CoC. I have done a few street level Champions games with Terry, Andy, and Paul, but I’m not sure that doing that or full blown superheroes will fit the bill for what I want from the group right now (I find Hero System, like all crunchy systems, to be best for small groups).

Basically, I have recently that I would do a space game of some sort for next year’s early months. But what would these guys like? Star Wars? Dune? Aliens/Firefly/Traveller type settings? Anyway, I posted those choices on our Yahoo Groups page, and out of the five who voted so far, Star Wars is the clear favorite. So I think I will do a short SW campaign. This is good for a couple of reasons:

One, I really have a bad attitude about Star Wars. All the Muppets and the childish, unfunny humor. The three prequels that put a bullet in the franchise for me. Sure, I find them watchable on TV here and there, but have zero desire to live in that universe or to know any of the people in it. What, you ask yourself “This is a good reason?” Well, as much as I think much about the films are lame, I love the Knights of The Old Republic setting with a passion, based mostly on my experience with the XBOX game of that same name. 4,000 years before the hubris of George Lucas. And less Muppets because less Outer Rim planets have been discovered. Lots of epic things happening too, like the end of the brutal Madalorian War, and the beginning of the Jedi Civil War. Jedi and Sith are all over the place, and Lightsabers more plentiful than empty beer cans on the floor of a Culver City bus. No stupid “Rule of Two.” Really, there are a million reasons why it is a great Sci Fi setting despite the silly films.

And reason two, well, I had a pretty shitty experience with running this game last year for a group of middle-aged Star Wars freaks who treated me like an employee and stuck around when I left to discuss my game performance at the end of the day (yeah, I know, much more to that tale but I have pretty much moved on from just another negative experience in a fairly overall shitty year). What, you ask yourself “This is a good reason?” Well, yeah. I like my regular group, and I put a lot of work, time, effort, and a certain amount of money (I owned no Star Wars books when I accepted the “assignment”) into the few games I ran for that Hollywood group. I think we can have a lot of fun with it, and light Sci Fi is something I can practically phone in like my D&D games.

So Knights of the Old Republic it is, for the first three or four months of the year, anyway. Besides the KOTOR games, I will of course throw out that odd OD&D White box dungeon crawl as an alternate, as well as some bits of Champions when the group is lacking players on a game night. I’ll alternate my games with whoever does some of their D&D. I’ll let Big Ben and Terry slug it out for those slots.

I just gotta finish up the year, and finish up this damn Night Below campaign. Fun, but jeez, it’s starting to feel like I’ve been walking uphill with this setting over my shoulder forever. Gotta wrap it up (and kill some characters if at all possible). Stay tuned for details on that (finally back to AD&D next week).

So what you gonna be for Halloween?

In my earliest memory of a costume, I was probably around 7 or 8. My parents had only been in the country around 10 years, and dad was still working as a house painter. So my first costume was…a house painter. Easy enough, my dad is not a tall guy and by 8 I was already closing in on his height. I imagine I would have preferred to have been Gigantor or Kimba the White Lion or something like that, but even a crappy mask and a bit of fabric was beyond the reach of my fairly broke immigrant parents at the time. But one thing I loved: back then in the early 70’s you got lots of candy. Every house was giving it out. It was a good time to grow up by the 80’s, because by then it seemed like only one or two houses on a block were giving out treats.

By the time the folks had money, I was a teen and responsible for my own costumes. For a lot of my mid to late teens I worked up some half-assed outfits based on this or that D&D character, especially my first character, a ranger name Arcturus Grimm. I even remember running a couple of games on Halloweens, ones where we all made ourselves up like our characters. At around 17, my girlfriend at the time did herself up as her drow MU, with black skin and white hair and all. She was tall and thin with somewhat Mediterranean features , and it just looked great. After gaming a couple of hours, we all went to Westwood Village near UCLA to hang out and go to a screening of The Road Warrior. I ran into some girls from work ( a Walden Books in Santa Monica) at that theater, and they were blown away by my black-skinned, ivory-haired sweetie.

But by 18 I was no longer really interested in D&D dress-up. I had gone with friends to a convention dressed like the Clockwork Orange Droogies, and we were so popular there I liked to wear that outfit whenever I could. It always tripped people out (by the early 90’s droog costumes had been done to death). I went with some other friends in recent years, around 2002, to a Loscon in Los Angeles, and not only where three of us Droogs, but the girl with us got a red jump suit and worked it as the gang rape victim from the home invasion in Clockwork Orange (but in this incarnation she liked it). Clever idea, but it seemed to freak people out more than trip them out.

Back in my early 20’s I started working at a couple of Renaissance Faires during the year, and all that weekend dress-up kind of satisfied my desire to be in costume. For the longest time, a couple of decades in fact, I rarely went in costume to parties. When I did, it was usually as easy a costume to put together as possible. But in recent years I have gotten an interest in doing decent costumes, especially at Fools Guild parties. FG is an organization of Hollywood people, ex- Ren Faire folk, costumers, and general nutsos in Southern California. Every year they elect a King or Queen out of their ranks, and this regent organizes several parties a year for The Guild. My old friend and current player Terry is heavily involved in decorating these shindigs (I’m sure she is on the fast track for Queen status one year soon), usually held at rented venues in Glendale or Pasadena. As you can guess, there are some damn great costumes at these parties. Last year for Halloween I went to a FG party as a Satanic Bagpiper. Basically just my kilt with a black shirt, red tie, and red devil horns. Easy enough. And for their big April Fools party this year I did a pretty decent Hunter Thompson. At 6’2” and a bit under 300 lbs, I for sure don’t have Dr. Thompson’s body type, but people still knew who I was (although one drunk dude thought I was Jackie Gleason from some old go-go film from the 70’s called “Skidoo”).

For this weekend’s parties, I’m going as a Tap Out Ultimate Fighter (Tap Out boxing trunks and t-shirt, hand wraps and Everlast gloves, a black knit cap with a crucifix on it, fake arm tattoo sleeve, etc), and my date is going to be a ring card hoochie girl for me. As I already have some boxing gear and the Tap Out shirt, I really don’t need to buy anything, except maybe black grease to blacken an eye. Easy peasy.

I actually originally wanted to be Braveheart, but I could not find a wig that I was satisfied with. You see, this party is going to have a heroes and villains theme, and I thought I could be both. Am I Scottish hero William Wallace, or am I evil, sugar-tit loving alcoholic racist and sexist pig Mel Gibson dressed up like Braveheart? Great concept, but the damn wigs killed it. My date for Saturday is an actress who’s agent is throwing a client party at the Hard Rock in Hollywood Sunday night, so if I mind my P’s and Q’s maybe I’ll get to go to that to, and maybe bite the bullet and be Braveheart there if I feel like a different costume in order.

So, what you gonna be for Halloween, and if not you what are the kiddies going as this year? What are the hot costumes for adults and kiddies? Chilean Miners? California candidate Jerry Brown? Prez Obama? The blue dog people from Avatar?

Season of the Witch

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Every October various cable channels march out old movie horror chestnuts for weeks leading up to Halloween. Some great, some good, and some crap. Last night I was watching a particular piece of crap that I seem to watch at least some of every year – Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. The thing is, some of the worst horror movie nonsense can be fascinating, and so it is with this sans Michael Myers addition to the Halloween movie franchise.

This 1982 film was an attempt to take the series away from Mike Myers and his Shatner mask, and create yearly anthologies of films about Halloween. Of course, John Carpenter would bring Myers back for the next movie, but for this one we would be exposed to Celtic mysticism, skull-crushing androids, head-melting masks, and dingy California Coast motels full of sleazy old- man-on-hot-young-chick sex.

It seems that there are strange doings at the Silver Shamrock novelty factory in Santa Mira California (a fictional town created in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which this film is in part an homage to), a town founded by Irish immigrants who apparently schlepped a large chunk of Stonehenge to America from the Islands. A local doctor (played by mustachioed John Carpenter workhorse Tom Atkins) and the brash and sexy daughter of a murdered man (played by the very 80’s looking Stacey Nelkin, who sort of looks like a cross between Elizabeth Berkley from Showgirls and the chick from Flashdance – you can see her in the pic above having a look at her own beautiful ass) investigate the evil presence in between bouts of nauseating old/young sex at the local flea trap.

One of their nemesis in the film are the super-strong androids in business suits (predating the agents of The Matrix by decades) who always seem to be around and ready to squash a dude’s melon in their gloved hands. When some of them are busted up there for sure seems to be robot-type parts in them, but the head bad guy, a wanna be modern Samhain loving Druid played by Dan O'Herlihy, mentions at one point that one of the suit dudes was created in 17th century Germany. Huh. This would lead me to believe that they are more like Homunculus than android, but what the heck to I know. Just another head scratching mystery in this film.

O’Herlihy plans to celebrate Halloween in a unique fashion. His popular masks have a computer chip fitted with a chunk of Stonehenge, and when a special (and annoying) musical commercial is played, the mask-wearers head turns to goo, and snakes, roaches, and other vermin come pouring out to attack any others who might be around. What the hell that has to do with druids, Samhain, Stonehenge, or anything else is entirely left up in the air. You want answers mister? Tough titties (Stacey Nelkin’s titties, which you get a decent look at in unedited versions of the film).

It is a weirdo premise, and it is exactly that premise that keeps me coming back year after year. This cheaply made film with an unattractive cast (except for Nelkin, who despite having a creepy look in her eyes is quite fetching. But once you see Atkin’s hairy mitts all over her in bed, you can never look at her the same) is just gonzo with all its bizarre mysteries. The idea comes from the original writer of the film, who actually has a pretty good pedigree. It’s Nigel Kneale, creator of Britain’s first science fiction scientist hero Doctor Quartermass (although his script here was dislike by Dino De Laurentiis, who didn’t think it was gory enough, so there were some rewrites and eventually Nigel had his name removed from the film).

The following is according to Wikipedia:

Historian Nicholas Rogers notes that Halloween III is "the only film in the [Halloween] cycle that explores the sacrificial aspects of Halloween in a sustained manner."[12] Film critics like Jim Harper, however, called Wallace's plot "deeply flawed." Harper argues, "Any plot dependent on stealing a chunk of Stonehenge and shipping it secretly across the Atlantic is going to be shaky from the start." He noted, "there are four time zones across the United States, so the western seaboard has four hours to get the fatal curse-inducing advertisement off the air. Not a great plan."[4] Harper was not the only critic unimpressed by the plot. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "What's [Cochran's] plan? Kill the kids and replace them with robots? Why?"

Why indeed Roger, why indeed.

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.