Dynamite Comics' Masks 1 + 2

This is one of those comics that should come as a no-brainer for me. The Shadow. The Spider. The Green Hornet and Kato. Chris Roberson writing a neo-pulp story based around these characters and set in the classic pulp era of the late 1930s.

Masks is an eight issue mini-series from Dynamite Entertainment that teams up their licensed pulp characters: The Shadow, The Spider, The Green Hornet and Zorro (Zorro in the 1930s?) with golden age heroes like The Black Terror, Green Lama and Miss Fury. This is a recipe for success...or great failure. I'm hoping for success.

Roberson's story is based around the classic Empire State stories from The Spider Magazine, three novel-length interlinked adventures from 1928. The Empire State stories were a thinly veiled analogy of Nazism, and how it could take root in the United States. Historically, these stories are interesting because they are some of the few pulp stories to tackle the evils of Nazis. In a nutshell, the original plot of the Empire State stories was that a cabal of criminals and corrupt politicians were able to push laws into effect and voted their Justice Party into power in the state of New York. Eventually this Justice Party took over the state and, using their Black Police were able to strong arm everyone into following them. Of course one man stood up to them, The Spider, and led a revolution against their oppression.

Chris Roberson takes the seeds of the Empire State stories, having the Justice Party rise to power in this shared universe of pulp and comic book hero greats. Now, instead of just The Spider fighting against the Justice Party and its Black Legions, a team of great heroes rise up to fight against these villains. Despite the Empire State stories predating it by decades, this story so far reminds me of The Dark Knight Rises, but maybe that is just because I finally watched the movie recently. The parallels are there: criminals and terrorists take over the city in an apocalyptic manner, rout the police forces and institute a near lawless regime where their words are taken as law. I think that these similarities come from the long lasting influence of the pulps on the comic books of today, and their cinematic offshoots.

Unfortunately, the story of these two issues is a bit disjointed. I honestly expected better from Roberson, after his work at DC Comics (I will admit that I haven't read any of his recent creator-owned works from Monkey Brain). These first two issues are a bit disjointed, and for a comic that is supposed to be only eight issues, I honestly expected more story in these comics. The first issue puts most of its efforts into building the connection between The Shadow and the Green Hornet, only to throw in The Spider in an almost random manner near the end of the issue. I am assuming that an Hispanic character introduced in passing in the first issue will eventually be revealed to be the pulp Zorro. To be honest, even though I love the character I think that his inclusion in this story seems to be a bit of a stretch, but I am hoping that Roberson pulls it off.

The art in these issues is a bit disjointed. Alex Ross does the first issue in his painted style, while the second issue is done by Dennis Calero. This is a bit disappointing. After Ross' great renditions of the characters in issue one (I love his Shadow and Lamont Cranston portrayals), seeing Calero's style in the second issue is jarring. Is that the secret origin of the Black Bat we are witnessing? For me, the art of the second issue was disappointing, mostly because in a mini-series I want to see a consistent art style throughout the book, and if you have to mix artists at least pick ones that have similar styles. Calero's style in the second issue does not appeal to me. It comes across as rushed and unfinished in places, particularly after the set up of Ross' photorealistic style in the first issue. However, Calero could very well just be suffering in comparison rather than due to the actual quality of his art.

I will stick with this book, because I think it has potential. I am looking forward to the re-re-introduction of the Green Lama and the Black Terror. I have loved these characters for a long time, and I really enjoyed their last use from Dynamite in the Project Superpowers books. I just hope that the characters aren't just abandoned this time around like they were before.

Overall, I liked these two issues despite the flaws.  Roberson's dialogue in the issues is superb and gives each of the characters their own unique voice. The story could have a faster pace, but that could be because I am comparing them to the source material, and Spider pulps were some of the fastest paced pulps written in the day. If these books suffer, it is not because of Roberson's writing on them. I do hope that the pace picks up a bit with the next issue, and they settle on a single artist for the rest of the story.

My main concern is that Masks is intended primarily as a world-building tool, much in the same vein as the First Wave comics that DC Comics put out, featuring Doc Savage, The Spirit, Batman and The Avenger. First Wave was a cool idea that ended up not living up to it's potential because I felt that the writer just didn't get writing characters like Doc Savage. Chris Roberson does not have this disadvantage. He gets these pulp characters and knows how to write them, clearly and with distinct voices. I just hope that he is allowed to write a story on its own merits, rather than one conceived to sell other merchandise and spin off new comics. Masks has the potential to be so much more than that, if the powers that be at Dynamite let it happen.

Below are some sample pages from the issues.  The first two pages are Ross' art from issue one and the next three are Calero's art from issue two. I think that the sample pages demonstrate the jarring differences between the issues, art-wise.

Do I recommend purchasing these comics? I will have to say that my answer is a qualified yes.  They are definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of the pulps, the neo-pulps or the golden age of comics. I would not suggest having too high of expectations from them, however. They make for a good yarn, but I am not entirely sold on their long term readability. I think that $3.99 an issue is asking a lot for the content you get, in places. I still have high hopes for Chris Roberson's capabilities as a writer to pull all of this together and deliver a stronger story than these issues have so far demonstrated. Hopefully, I won't be disappointed.

Atlantis! An Old School Fantasy Role-Playing Game

Back a year or so ago, in the early days of my involvement with Google+, I started thinking about a game that was a hack of the Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules. I called this game Atlantis!, and yes the exclamation point was intentional. I found an appropriate piece of art and the concept cover was born (you'll find the most recent version of that concept art at right).

I like the Whitebox rules for Swords & Wizardry. They are simple and to the point, streamlined and yet they give you plenty of options for playing a fantasy game. My only complaint is that there isn't a thief class, which is understandable since the original game that it is emulating didn't have one either, but it is easy enough to fix this.

I ran a Whitebox game for a while on G+ Hangouts, until we "upgraded" to the Core version of Swords & Wizardry. I have a lot of respect for what can be done with a very few rules in a game. I went through my period, like a lot of gamers I think, during the 90s when I wanted a lot of rules in my games, even when I didn't really use them. The rules were comforting in a way, letting us all know that thing were covered if we needed them to be. Nowadays, that style just isn't my thing. I've played this way for a while now, but I have definitely become much more comfortable with a "rulings, not rules" style of play over the last few years. There's a trust there that everyone at the table is there to have fun and not screw each other around that I kind of like again.

So, Atlantis!

Most of my Swords & Wizardry gaming has grown out of my enjoyment of a sort of pulp style of fantasy fiction: Moorcock, Carter, Leiber, and Howard forming a lot of my ideas for what fits into a fun fantasy role-playing game. This makes sense since it is the sorts of fantasy that the designers of D&D were reading as they played and created the game. It is a fun style of fantasy, heavy on action and magic (some of the times), and people living their lives large. Beautiful women used their charms to bewitch the heroic leads, almost always against the backdrop of a world of ancient, decaying graces that are giving away to a new age.

That is what I am looking at with this game. Atlantis is sort of like my analogue to Moorcock's Melnibone. Except where Melniboneans were cruel and inhuman monsters subjugating the world through terror and magic, the Atlanteans brought culture, society and order to the world. This sets the stage for the Law versus Chaos conflict in old school fantasy games, with a world where the premier civilization is in its twilight days, but the light has not yet gone out. A world where chaos and weird monsters are again peaking out from the shadowy corners of the world, those things that will take stalwart adventurers to hold back. The great cycle of the conflict between Law and Chaos turns, and the world is changing....but into what? That, of course is up to those bands of adventurers that are around the world, trying to hold back the night.

From the Far East, there are the blue-skinned Strangers, with their sky ship and their strange weapons, and stranger magics. Some have even seen that there are Strangers with more than one set of arms, even. There are disenfranchised Amazons, wandering the world and seeking to right the wrongs within this darkening world, and bring their strange Amazonian ideals of peace and love through strength to the rest of the world. Barbarians are everywhere, causing destruction and seeking the chaos that can be found in the world. There are still the Atlantean Sword Brothers and Sisters, some of the best warriors to be found in the world, selling or giving the swords and their bodies to keep the light of civilization from winking out completely. There is magic. There are monsters.

One thing that I find about an old school fantasy approach, particularly with older versions of D&D, is that they tend to be happening during the apocalyptic times, when things are going bad but there is still a chance for change. That is one of the things that influences Atlantis! in my mind. This is not some idyllic time. This is not an age after things have happened and people are trying to survive. This is the time of change, the time of battle, when strength of mind, of body, of will can make a difference to those who are willing to try to make a change in the world. And that, to me, is one of the things that makes RPGs so much fun. You can be that person who steps up and says "None shall pass!" and make that stand, whether or not the odds are in your favor. Hopefully, this will come through in the final version of Atlantis!

Tomorrow People, Where Is Your Past?

The other day I pitched to my G+ Hangout group doing a Fate-based game for a bit, using the playtest files from the Fate Core Kickstarter. After I sent them all a message, I was nosing around YouTube when I found an old video from the British TV show from the 70s, The Tomorrow People.

This science fiction series featured a group of kids, and young adults, who were the next step in human evolution: Tomorrow People! The Tomorrow People had evolved mental powers (revolving around the powers of telepathy, telekinesis and teleportation). These Tomorrow People also had the genetic disposition towards non-violence, which meant that there wasn't a lot of fighting or big guns in the show. The most offensive that the Tomorrow People would get would be using stun guns at times.

This is sort of the seed of the game that I have pitched, with the characters being similar to Tomorrow People. The non-violent natures will make for interesting play as it will force the players to think outside of the box of how gaming traditionally deals with conflict, which is typically violence.

So, I am looking at a 70s style of science fiction, probably in a more contemporary setting. We will use the setting creation tools of Fate Core to fill in some of the blanks of this setting, starting from these seeds.

Also, David Bowie will probably seep into the mix as an influence as well.

We have some loose ends to tie up in the Swords & Wizardry game before we get to playing this, so we're not looking to start until middle or late January. It will be nice to shift gears for a bit and give a different type of gaming. It will be a good way to recharge the creative batteries.

Dorkland! Rountable with James Raggi

I spoke with James Raggi, of Lamentations of the Flame Princess (both the game and the company) about his history as a gamer, getting into game design and some of the differences between gaming "culture" in America and Finland.

Who knew that Finland considered internet access a basic human right? Anyway, there is some good stuff in here. I tried to dig around in some of his influences, both in fiction and in heavy metal music, to get at the root of the whys behind his creation of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess game, as well as his various adventures. His aesthetic is an interesting one, and it gets at the root of the differences between the approach of his game and some of the other retroclones out there.

Dorkland! Picks: Some Of My Music Favorites From 2012

Yeah, I've never really been a fan of "year's best" lists. They tend to be weighted heavily towards whatever has been on the commentator's CD player/turntable for the last few weeks or months, forgetting the stuff that might have come out earlier in the year. And when you have as big of a musical year as you did in 2012, there is a lot of stuff that can just disappear without knowing it. So, instead, I'm going to do a post about some of the albums that came out this past year that were my favorites (with an occasional nod to a single or two, and some non-traditional releases as well).

This isn't a "top" anything list, other than being some of the stuff that I enjoyed listening to over the last twelve months or so. They aren't listed in any particularly order, just how they pop out of my mind and how they showed up in my Winamp player.

I own a lot of music, in a lot of formats and in a lot of styles. Hopefully this list will reflect that. I will share links to some YouTube videos, where I can, for those of you who may not have heard all of the bands that I am going to talk about today. Strap yourselves in, folks, we are in for a bit of a bumpy ride.

Swords & Wizardry on G+

This past weekend a new "function" rolled out on Google Plus, called communities. Communities are sort of like forums, but in the same style and formatting as G+ proper. It is a nice functionality because it does away with some of the things that I hate about online forums and it allows you to interact with new people that you may not know, without having to leave the relative safety of your Google+ stream.

The Swords & Wizardry Discussion community sort of exploded (in a good way), but we are looking for more people to join in on the discussions. Matt Finch and various of the Frog God Games people are already active in the community, as well as some of your favorite Swords & Wizardry bloggers. Click on the image, and come join us.

Dorkland! Roundtable Doubleshot: George E. Williams and Jason Morningstar

Another double shot of my baby's love, or in this case Dorkland! Roundtables.

I spoke with George E. Williams (also known as Loki). You may know him from the Planewalker gaming site, or with his work as a freelancer on some cool Pathfinder material. We talked about his gamer origins and some of our favorite ways to prepare and/or eat alligator. This is the point at which I would say "it was a fun talk," but that is starting to become a bit of a cliche in my writeups of these Roundtables. I am enjoying the reveal of the things that make us similar as gamers, but I am finding those bits and pieces that make us unique from each other to be even more interesting to discover.

I think most of you know who Jason Morningstar is, after all Tabletop did do an actual play of his game Fiasco, and there are many, many more people who watch them than me. Up at that link some people play a game of Fiasco (although according to Jason in our interview they do get a few things wrong, but that's OK too), which is interesting to watch. I admit that I've seen Fiasco at some stores around town, but I haven't played it myself. It does look like it could be fun. He also talked about the origins and development of his latest (at the time of this interview and post) game Durance as well.

This was an interesting interview. We talked about a lot of Jason's games, but we also spent time talking about his interest in LARPs (Live Action Roleplaying, just in case there's someone who reads this blog and doesn't know what that means). LARPing is another one of those things that I have never done, but find interesting, so the conversation was of interest to me. I should look into finding some people involved with LARPing for future Roundtables.

So, at the beginning of this post I talk about discovering the differences that we have as gamers. I think that those differences is where the interesting stuff all goes on. Some would have you believe that there is this monoculture of geekiness, or even of gaming, but I think that these interviews start to show something different. Yes, there are points of similarity in us all...many of us entered into gaming through some of the same games, or we have some similar interests, but as time passes those similarities start to drift and become less and less important as we find our own voices. Nothing is as important as finding your own voice, even if others don't like it.

Dorkland! Roundtable Doubleshot: Steve Russell and Ben Gerber

I have fallen terribly behind on posting my Dorkland! Roundtables to my blog. To catch up I am doing a two-fer of Steve Russell and Ben Gerber. 

I spoke with Steve Russell of Rite Publishing. Steve's company is a 3PP (third party publisher for those not hip to the lingo) for Paizo's Parthfinder RPG, as well as having an upcoming game using the system from Erick Wujcik's trendsetting Amber Diceless, produced under license from the current rights holders of the game. Steve gave some interesting insights into being a small press games publisher during our talk.

and Ben Gerber, creator of the Troll In The Corner website and the delightful role-playing game for children of all ages, Argyle & Crew. We talked about returning to gaming, and taking that interest in gaming from blogging to design to publishing. Ben also talked about the board game that he is working on, that he hopes to find a larger press board game publisher to pick up from him.

Both were great interviews and gave some interesting perspectives on being a small press publisher.

The Magic World Cover

Magic World from Chaosium games is coming. Built from their historic and influential line of fantasy role-playing games comes a new edition of Magic World. This is a "generic" fantasy RPG that isn't tied to any one world or setting and is built from the foundation of Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing system that haw powered such games as Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, SuperWorld and Larry Niven's Ringworld. Here is a first look at the cover to come:

There is also further support for Magic World past this core book planned, so stay tuned for more to come.

MAGIC WORLD
Item # CHA2028
220 Pages (estimated)
SRP $26.95 (estimated)
ISBN10: 1568823657
by Lynn Willis, Ben Monroe & Friends

You can find out more about the upcoming Magic World at: http://www.chaosium.com/article.php?story_id=508 and http://basicroleplaying.com/magic-world/

Between this book and the new edition of OpenQuest coming, I am very excited for percentile-based gaming.

Fun With YouTube Analytics

As many of you know, I use Google+ Hangouts and YouTube to record interviews with various people in gaming, designers and publishers mostly. I also use them to run a couple of games and record them as well. I was looking at some of the anayltics that YouTube provides and found them interesting. I'm not sure what they mean to me, or what they should mean to you, but I thought that I would share them anyway. This particular table is over the last 30 days.

Video	Average view duration	Average view percentage
Dorkland! Roundtable with Rafael Chandler	9.64	16.95
Dorkland! Roundtable with Zak Smith	7.58	11.1
Masks of Nyarlathotep: Episode 1	10.45	11.43
Dorkland! Roundtable with Wolfgang Baur	8.27	16.06
Dorkland! Roundtable with James Maliszewski	14.73	23.37
Dorkland! Roundtable with Jason Durall and Ben Monroe	6.37	12.05
Dorkland! Roundtable: CONcurrent Q&A With Keith Baker	6.08	11.72
Dorkland! Roundtable with Steve Russell	6.34	10.58
Dorkland! Roundtable with Tracy Barnett	5.85	12.46
Dorkland! Roundtable With Kyrinn Eis	12.86	23.29

I think that it is interesting to see how long people are actually watching these interviews (and the one actual play video that made this list). It might not mean anything, but still it is interesting to see.

The gender breakdown over the last 30 days is Male 84.6% and Female 15.4%. I'm assuming that information is taken from accounts, but I don't know.

Terran Trade Authority Kickstarter

The Kickstarter for the new edition of the seminal British Science Fiction classic The Terran Trade Authority has started. If you don't know about this incredibly cool space opera setting from the 1970s, check out the Wikipedia page for a bit more information. This edition will featuring role-playing rules, in addition to the setting material, for the Savage Worlds game.

Click below to go to the Kickstarter page for this project.

Dorkland! Roundtable with Rafael Chandler

I spoke with Rafael Chandler, an indie RPG designer and computer game designer on my Dorkland! Roundtable. We talked about his game Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium (with a new edition coming out this Fall), his work in computer games, his first novel and his love of heavy metal music.

It is becoming a bit of a cliche, I think, for me to talk about how fun these interviews are, but there are so many different perspectives and playstyles at work in gaming and it is good to see beyond what you normally do and you normally expect from a game, so that you can see the perspectives of others, what others are doing out there.

Let's Talk About The BareBones Fantasy RPG

There's a new RPG on the scene, BareBones Fantasy Role-playing Game. Brought to you by the same minds that brought The Star Frontiersman fanzine and the reimagining of a classic science fiction RPG. Now, I am going to say right off the bat that this game might not be for everyone. BareBones Fantasy is planted firmly in the rules-light end of the game design spectrum, weighing in at just 84 pages. Now, for me this alone isn't a big deal because I definitely prefer games that are lighter and more streamlined in their presentation.

Starting off with the art, the art in this book is very good. From the color cover, to the black & white interior art, this book sports some very strong art, stronger than you often see in a first time product from a publisher. The cover is evocative and pulls you into the action, as if you are the next adventurer who is throwing themselves against the dragon that is being fought.

The layout of the book is simple and uncluttered, making the book (or the PDF in my case) easy to read.

Once you get into the game you will see that this is definitely a first game by the designers. Some of the concepts could have stood to have better explanations, the use of "levels" in the skills is an example of this. Some skills need levels, while others don't. While there are tables on each of the skill descriptions that tell you the skills level, and what the "rank" of those levels are (much in the same way as classes are often ranked in older editions of games like D&D), since all of the skill scores are converted into percentile ranks it seems a bit puzzling as to why skills need levels (outside of giving a hook to those who are used to more class and level-based games). There is also a couple of steps that go into generating the percentage scores for skills, and it does seem that process could be a bit further streamlined.

That, I think, goes to the core of things with this game. BareBones Fantasy is intended to be a rules-light sort of game, but it is definitely on the more complicated end of rules-light. It is certainly not as light as a game like Risius, or even a game like Over The Edge. This is not a negative thing, it is just that I think that some of the processes could have been further streamlined to make BareBones Fantasy closer to what some think of traditionally as a rules-light game. I like the idea of using the classic classes of most class-based fantasy role-playing games as skills, This is a great idea, and something that I have toyed around with myself. I think that taking this approach cuts out a lot of the complexity of traditional class-based fantasy role-playing games.

Mechanically this game is pretty simple, and things boil down to a percentile, roll low system.  There are various situational modifiers that can be applied to various situations, but the previous sentence sums up how you do things in this game. Whether it is a skill check, or an ability check, everything uses the same mechanic.

The section of the game dealing with the bestiary has all of the monsters that you would expect from a fantasy RPG, if you were coming from other, already established, games. I think that from precedence some of the creatures could have been broken down into greater specificity. The dragon entry, for example, could have been further broken down into various types. I like a lot of monster, and I like unique and interesting monsters that help give players an insight into a games world. The monsters in BareBones, while serviceable, are a bit more generic than what I personally like. The simplicity of creature writeups in the game, however, make it easy enough for a game master to personalize creatures to better fit their world. My main issue, I guess, with generic monsters, is that they do not have a sense of awe that allows players to turn creatures into adversaries rather than just a set of statistics that have to be fought against. This could very easily be something tackled too by the game master in an individual game, but it is something that I would have like to have seen.

I do like random tables in my fantasy games, and of the two offered up in the rules (Adventure Idea Generator and Random Dungeon Generation), the Random Dungeon Generation tables are the stronger of the two. Probably not as good as others that I have I seen, but they are good starting points for the game master to use in creating adventures for the character, while they are getting used to the game and the rules.

There is the starts of a setting in the Keranak Kingdoms. This is fairly traditional fantasy and could easily be further fleshed out by most fantasy game supplements. I don't know that it is enough to really start play entirely on its own, but I think that it can be used as a starting point. Expecting a fully fleshed out setting in a game this brief is probably asking a bit more than what is intended, so this is not something that I would consider to be a fault of BareBones Fantasy. Since most people are probably likely to plug in their own, existing, home-brewed setting, I doubt that the brevity of this section would be an issue for most of those interested in picking up this game.

So, is this a good game? I would definitely say that it is. Yes, there are flaws, but they aren't serious ones, and many of the things that I would probably have issues with would probably be easily handled with a house rule or two, something that a lot of gamers do with their games anyway. Coming in at just under $10 for the PDF this game is probably priced a little too high to be considered an impulse buy (I know it is for me at least), but it definitely would be worth the price. The commercial version sold at the link of the beginning of this post also has a low ink, printer friendly version with the fact that people will have to print this out in mind. While I would not call BareBones Fantasy an innovative game, it is rooted in simple and solid mechanics that will allow players and game masters to get to the game that they want to play quickly and easily. I definitely recommend checking this game out.

Necronomicon 2012 Interviews with Lakisha Spletzer and K.L. Nappier

This past weekend was Necronomicon 2012 here in St. Petersburg, FL. I've been a guest on their gaming track for the last few years, and I always enjoy getting the chance to speak about gaming and many other topics that I end up on panels for. This year, I decided to do a couple of short interviews with local writers that I have had the pleasure of meeting at the convention over the years. You can listen to these interviews here on the blog, or click through and listen to them on the SoundCloud site (where you can also download MP3s of the interviews). Both Spletzer and Nappier are self-publishing indie authors (although Nappier did start out "traditionally" with a larger publishing house.

Both talk briefly about their journeys as authors and share advice for other indie/small press/self-publishing authors, from the experience that they have picked up over the years of being writers and self-publishers.

Lakisha Spletzer

Lakisha Spletzer at Necronomicon 2012 by dorkland

K.L. Nappier
K.L. Nappier At Necronomicon 2012 by dorkland

I think that cross-pollination of ideas, even from sources that may not seem like they would have commonality (like the worlds of fiction and gaming publishing), can lead to learning new and interesting things about what we do ourselves.

Read Outside Your Comfort Zone: Paranormal Romance

This is the cover from the original hardcover edition.

Back in 2001, Kelley Armstrong did something revolutionary...she wrote a fantasy novel set in the modern day with a female protagonist, who happened to be a werewolf. Yeah, in less than ten years that manage to become a cliche, but this is where (for me at least) it all started. I found this book (I think it is up to it's third edition these days because I bought it in hardcover and I know there have been two paperback releases too) tucked away on a shelf in my then-local Half Priced Books (I miss them down here in Florida), and was blown away.

I've never been a big fan of fantasy literature, despite the best intentions of fellow gamers over the years, outside of a couple of authors that I enjoy (like Moorcock or Howard or Zelazny), so it is rare for a book with fantasy tropes to engage me. Maybe it was the female lead. Maybe it was the modern day setting. I don't know. It hooked me in and I've read every book that she has read since (which isn't a small number). Then I started casting around for other authors, and I found people like Patricia Briggs and Devon Monk. And I rediscovered old favorites like Nancy Collins (I consider her Sonja Blue stories from the 80s and 90s to be the prototype for a lot of the tropes of paranormal romance fiction).


Give Bitten a read, I think it will appeal. Armstrong is also not a stranger to gaming, being a fan of the Unisystem rules. Honestly, I think that a couple of the books after Drug Store Magic read like they were written from someone's game reports. I don't mean that in a bad way either. The byzantine background reminds me also, in a few ways, of the setting of GURPS Cabal. I like that the supernatural protagonists are not treated like monster, in the cliched way that many horror writers and games treat these sorts of things. In a lot of cases, these characters are treated like they are in a novel of the everyday but that everyday just happens to have werewolves, magic-users and vampires in it. Unfortunately, a lot of "geeks" wrinkle their nose at the thought that a book might have romance in it. I find that silly.


The reason why I wrote this blog post is to issue a bit a challenge to gamers and geeks: read something outside of your comfort zone, outside of what you might normally read. You never know where your next favorite writer, or genre, may come from. My suggestion is to start with Bitten and see if the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre bites you.

The Eternal Warrior Appears From Valiant Comics

First came Ninjak… Now prepare for the debut of Valiant's next superstar hero — the  undying Eternal Warrior! Valiant is proud to present an advance preview of Archer & Armstrong #5 by New York Times best-selling author Fred Van Lente (Amazing Spider-Man) and artist Emanuela Lupacchino (X-Factor) — the FIRST ISSUE of "Wrath of the Eternal Warrior" and an all-new jumping on point for the series Comic Book Resources calls "refreshingly unpredictable"!

 

No one in the Valiant Universe is more dangerous or more experienced in the art of war than the Eternal Warrior. After thousands of years on the battlefield, he’s a master of strategy and weaponry, an unrelenting force of nature capable of dismantling entire armies with little effort and less conscience. His brother Armstrong, on the other hand, likes to read poetry and drink beer. Maybe that’s why they had such a bad falling out? But now — after years apart — the Eternal Warrior has a new mission: destroy young Obadiah Archer, Armstrong’s best-est new buddy and teammate in the war against The Sect. And, like it or not, Valiant’s history-smashing adventure duo will soon feel the brunt of the Eternal Warrior’s fist and steel.

 

The manhunt begins on December 12th as two immortal brothers go to war for the life of Obadiah Archer, only in Archer & Armstrong #5 - featuring a cover by superstar artist Patrick Zircher and interlocking incentive variants by Emanuela Lupacchino! And, comic shop subscribers, don't forget to reserve your Archer & Armstrong #5 Pullbox Exclusive Variant today — featuring a limited edition cover by Doug Braithwaite! Valiant will be maintaining a strict no overprint policy on all upcoming Pullbox Exclusive Variants, so pre-order now!

 

ARCHER & ARMSTRONG #5 - ON SALE DECEMBER 12th!

Written by FRED VAN LENTE

Art by EMANUELA LUPACCHINO

Cover by PATRICK ZIRCHER (OCT121228)

Pullbox Exclusive Variant by DOUG BRAITHWAITE (OCT121229)

Interlocking Variants by EMANUELA LUPACCHINO (OCT121230/OCT121231)

$3.99/Rated T+/32 pgs.

 

 

My Necronomicon 2012 Schedule

Necronomicon, a local SF, Fantasy and Horror convention here in St. Petersburg, FL. Starts on the 26th. I will be in the convention. If you're local and we have talked only online previously, please take a moment and come say hello. This is my list of panels, and I am probably going to be in author's alley at a friend's table helping out.

My schedule:

Romantic Elements in F&SF: the Male Perspective    
10/26/12     2:00 PM     2:55 PM     St. Petersburg 3    
William Hatfield, Chris Helton, Rick Wilber, Linnea Sinclair, Host: Nancy J. Cohen

How Not to be a Successful Writer    
10/26/12     4:00 PM     4:55 PM     St. Petersburg 1    
Our authors discuss the things that will keep you from ever finding an audience for your work.
Tracy Akers, Johanna M. Bolton, Chris Helton, Rick Wilber

Getting Started: Writing Game Modules    
10/27/12     9:00 AM     9:55 AM     DEMENS    
Whether you want to write modules for your friends or for profit, get the advice you need to make them great from our pros.
Chris Helton, Christina McCoy, Eloy LaSanta, Joshua Peterson, Hal Greenberg, Host: Chris McCoy

How to End the Story    
10/27/12     2:00 PM     2:55 PM     St. Petersburg 3    
You got started and you put some good stuff in the middle but how do you give the tale a good finish? Learn here.
William Logan, Stokely Gittens, Lakisha Spletzer, Michael L. Joy, Chris Helton, Host: T.S. Robinson