Doctor Comics

The BAMF Podcast

2011-10-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Mike Lafferty, good friend and drunkard, hosted a podcast last evening and we had a couple of wonderful co-hosts including Green Ronin freelancer, political science professor, and cynic Chris McGlothlin, and IDW veteran and comic creator and game designer Dan Taylor. I learned a lot, as I always do at these round tables. And we shared our thoughts on the latest round of DC comics. Both Dan and

The Book is Out

2011-10-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

I am very pleased to note that my first academic book, "Superheroes of the Round Table: Comics Connections to Medieval and Renaissance Literature", is now out. It is published by McFarland, and went to print last week. I got a stack of ten in the mail today. McFarland assures me an electronic version of the book will be available through Amazon, but there is no sign of it yet. In fact, Amazon

ENG 12S: Comics go to War

2011-09-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

So just to prove you can't keep a good War down, my summer course which was cancelled at the last minute lives again as a last-minute addition to a Fall quarter with too many students and not enough courses. The final reading list is a very painful compromise. Captain America Comics (1941)Truth: Red, White & BlackBlazing Combat!Blackhawk: Blood & IronEnemy AceIt Was a War of the TrenchesThe '

Vigilance Press Nominated for Ennie Award

2011-07-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

For a couple of years now I have been publishing game material through the fine folks at Vigilance Press, who have this week been nominated for "Fan Favorite Publisher". Vote Here I first wrote to Charles Rice, the captain of this ship, when I was looking for a publisher to help with Arthur Lives! I chose Chuck because of all the books he had done over the years; he has a great love of the

Interview with Ron Marz

2011-07-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I got together with Mike Lafferty of Vigilance Press to do an interview with Ron Marz. Ron is a distinguished writer and editor whose comics cred includes many, many books including the last 70+ issues of Witchblade, some of my favorite CrossGen titles (Mystic and Sojourn), a long run on Green Lantern (in which he helped create the character of Kyle Rayner), and on and on. Ron very

Field Guide to Super Heroes, Volume 3

2011-06-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

It took a while for the third volume of this book to come out, but it is very exciting to see it on sale, and the fourth and final volume should take much less time. I hope to do a podcast with Dan, who provided all the art for this book as usual, sometime soon. You can find volume 3 of the Field Guide at RPGNow. There's only one volume left; we have the last ten archetypes to cover and I am

Frank Miller vs. William Blake

2011-06-10T15:11:00.001-07:00

Today Comics Alliance posted this wonderful piece by Louie Joyce, a portrait of Frank Miller made up of quotes from his work. Perhaps because I was trained by Robert Essick, one of the world's leading Blake scholars, the moment I saw this portrait I immediately thought of Blake's Laocoon. This piece, perhaps his last artistic work before his death, depicts the famous statue surrounded by Blake's

Interview with Dan Abnett

2011-06-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Last month I had the very good fortune, along with Mike Lafferty, to interview Dan Abnett as part of the Vigilance Press podcast. In particular, I wanted to ask Dan about his portrayal of women in comics, since he had been assigned both the Wonder Woman and Lois Lane characters for Flashpoint. Also, Dan has some great insights on collaboration in comics, something I have always wanted to be

ENG 140J Final Reading List

2011-06-06T19:37:00.001-07:00

This is the final reading list for my just completed course on the Superhero Narrative. Like many such lists, it is the result of many compromises. But it serves as a useful point of departure. Chapter One: The Superhero OriginAction Comics #1 in Superman in the FortiesSuperman #1 in Superman ArchivesFilm: Superman: The MovieUmberto Eco, “The Myth of Superman” in Arguing Comics, p 146-164Peter

"Superheroes of the Round Table: Comics Connections to Medieval and Renaissance Literature"

2011-05-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

A tip of the hat to Michael Torregrossa and his Medieval Comics Project who noticed that my upcoming book is now available for pre-order from McFarland & Co. This will be my first academic book, and the project began as my dissertation, An Imaginary Mongoose: Comics, Canon, and the Superhero Romance. Normally dissertations require extensive rewriting because they are written for the

Comics go to War

2011-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

This is the course I will be teaching this summer at UCR. It's a lower division English course, so will not be aimed at English majors, but it does fulfill a breadth requirement for non-majors and English folks may still find it useful as pure credits.

Latest Podcast

2011-05-06T12:14:00.001-07:00

This week I got to sit in on a Vigilance Press podcast with Chris McGlothlin, author of pretty much my entire shelf of Mutants & Masterminds books. Chris is a very thoughtful and generous guest, and we had a great time talking superhero comics, games, and films. You can check it out here.

Moriarty: The Dark Chamber

2011-05-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

My review of Daniel Corey's Moriarty: The Dark Chamber, published next week by Image, is up at Comic Book Therapy. You can check it out here.

The Secret Life of Comic Scholars

2011-04-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

So, there are people who study comic books for a living. I’m not just talking about Chris “Batmanologist” Sims and other bloggers, though we all read and enjoy such work. Rather, I am talking about professors at colleges and universities around the world who write books, teach classes, and do research on comics, including superhero comics. There are a few times in the year when these people get

Vigilance Press Podcast

2011-04-08T09:06:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while I do some podcasting with the fine folks at Vigilance Press, the roleplaying game publishers who have released my Field Guide to Superheroes and Arthur Lives! projects. This week we Skyped with Steve Perrin, a legend in the rpg community and a really nice guy to boot. Steve's latest release is a sourcebook for super heroics in the Golden Age. I've read more than a few of

Video Blogging

2011-04-01T19:42:00.001-07:00

With my new iPad fresh out of the box, I am experimenting with video blogging. In this first episode, I begin with the basic thesis of my Superhero Narrative course, and then use this to examine some aspects of Superman's origin, Kirby's New Gods, and the tension between fantasy and reality that we see in so many superhero comics. YouTube apparently picks the dorkiest moment from the video. I

The Comics Code

2011-03-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

Next week I'll be doing a podcast with the folks from Vigilance Press, and our head honcho Charles Rice has asked that we take the opportunity to commemorate one more nail in the coffin of the Comics Code Authority -- an instrument of industry regulation which ensured that, for thirty years, superhero comics would remain children's literature. That description of the Code might strike many

"A Book On Fire": A Brief History of Beowulf

2011-02-16T15:53:00.000-08:00

This essay was written in 2007 for IDW's comic adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Beowulf film. It, and a second essay I wrote on Beowulf in comics, was printed in issue 3 and 4 of the original six-issue series, but the essays were not collected when the trade came out later the same year. I'm using Beowulf in one of my classes this semester, so I reprint the article here in the hope it may be useful to

Posting on Comic Book Therapy

2011-02-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

With a hat tip to James Elmore who turned me on to the site, I have begun blogging for the comics news site known as Comic Book Therapy. I tried to start small, with a simple review, but sometimes things that seem small lead to places most revealing, and so it was with this. I started off talking about The Cape's latest episode, called "The Lich."

Podcasting

2011-02-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

When I am fortunate, I am invited to appear on Mike Lafferty's Vigilance Press podcasts. We've done two in the last week. The first focuses on the USHER Dossiers and is much enlivened by the fact that Mike had a few glasses of wine. He must be a cheap drunk. Mike also prompted me for a review of the recent Green Hornet film and Jon and I got into British comics when no one else was looking.

Course Description for Spring, ENG 140J

2011-01-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

Here's the course description for my next class at UCR, running in the Spring for ten weeks. THE SUPERHERO NARRATIVE This course examines the story of the superhero in many mediums. We will begin by dividing this story into two-week chapters: Origin, Enemy, Love, Teammates, and Death. Then, over the course of the quarter, we will read comics and novels, watch films and television episodes, and

Thoughts on the premiere episodes of The Cape

2011-01-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

I watched "The Cape" last night and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. Now, I may be an easy audience for a superhero show, I don't know. But I liked it far more than "No Ordinary Family" and I may have liked it even better than "Heroes". It was certainly worlds better than any episode of Smallville you would care to name. Here are some thoughts on The Cape, in no particular order. The character

ENG 176T: "Studies in American and British Literature"

2011-01-03T16:26:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of instruction for my course on American and British comics and "graphic novels." I have a full room of almost 60 people, including one old gaming buddy who is sitting in out of sheer love of comics. We're beginning with McCloud, since he is as good a guide to reading comics as I am likely to find. As Amy Nyberg and others have said so well, comics literacy is a skill

Three Little Indians

2010-12-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

My family likes to forward me news articles relating to comics. This morning I was sent a link to the mainstream media’s coverage of an upcoming death in the Fantastic Four. Apparently Marvel is killing off yet another great character in the hope of driving up sales. While superheroes have been dying and coming back to life since the genre was created, some kind of threshold was crossed with the

Adrienne Roy

2010-12-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

Adrienne Roy was the best colorist DC Comics ever had. She colored Batman and Detective Comics for something like 15-years each, accumulating 600 issues of the Bat-family in all. Her name appeared in more Bat-comics than anyone except Bob Kane. She also colored a little title called New Teen Titans, which in the humble opinion of this author was the best DC book of a generation. She was the first

Death by a Thousand Cuts

2010-12-15T08:24:00.000-08:00

Lots of exciting things going on here, but I thought I would start with a hello to anyone who might be visiting from the Vigilance Press Podcast, sponsored by nobleknight.com. I had the pleasure of participating in this last evening with Mike Lafferty, Charles Rice, and Daniel Gallant, and after we talked about the Field Guide and Daniel's new ICONS character portfolio, we had a great time

Field Guide to Superheroes, Volume 2

2010-11-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

The first piece of the Field Guide has gotten us all great reviews both from RPGNow and from Steve Kenson, the creator of ICONS, who you can hear on the latest Vigilance Press podcast. Now that I am back in town, I am working furiously on the final edits for Volume 2, which will add ten more archetypes and complete the first half of the project.Art is starting to come in from my collaborator, Dan

"Comics & the Graphic Novel in America and Britain"

2010-11-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

So a couple days ago I got a call from Deborah Willis, who is Department Chair in English at UCR now but who I will always remember as the woman who taught me Marlowe, and she asked if I would like to teach a class on, well, pretty much anything I wanted. Ordinarily I am kind of a dope when offered awesome things, but this time I had the sense to say yes. The course number we are using is

Quick Plug for Usagi Yojimbo

2010-11-04T15:41:00.001-07:00

I first discovered Usagi Yojimbo as an undergrad, and I have to admit that when I first read it I considered it something of a guilty pleasure. I mean, this is a comic about a rabbit. It felt ... so childish to be reading a comic about a rabbit. Except, of course, that the comic is "about a rabbit" to the same degree that Maus is "about mice." Which is to say: not at all.By now, everyone who

Vigilance Press Podcast

2010-10-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

I had the real pleasure last night of participating in a podcast with Mike Lafferty (the self-described "Stephen Wright of gaming"), the highly-entertaining and wonderfully talented Dan Houser, and the distinguished Charles Rice, President Emeritus of Vigilance Press. We talked about ICONS, a relatively new superhero RPG system with a rules-lite, fun-heavy approach.You should check it out.ICONS

The Morning After Magicians

2010-09-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

My good friends and regular D&D partners celebrated a birthday with a trip to an Indian reservation and a 12-hour peyote trip, which led to a mystical experience involving aliens, telepathy, and "rolling" states of altered consciousness which I cannot help but -- in at least a small way -- envy. For while I study and read and write about magic and magicians, and no doubt will continue to do so

"The Last Great Work of Alan Moore"

2010-09-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

The last 24 hours have seen an outpouring of sympathy and, I imagine, scorn over the folding of Wildstorm's shutters. I don't have all that much to say about it, really. I mean, these were people getting paid to make comics, it's the best job in the world, they seemed to know that, and now those jobs are gone. That's about all that needs to be said about it.But over at Heidi McDonald's Comics

Superhero Campaigns

2010-09-11T21:56:00.001-07:00

I'm two-thirds of the way through my D&D4e campaign and everyone seems to be having a (mostly) good time, so it's not like I have any time to run anything else in the next, oh, year. But a casual remark by one of my players a month or so ago got me thinking that, if I were to run a new game, and if that game was a superhero game, what sort of game might I run?This is a hard question, not an easy

Arthur Lives, Going Savage

2010-09-09T23:42:00.001-07:00

So I have been spending my spare hours this week working on the Savage Worlds version of Arthur Lives. The two games are very different, not least because only one has classes and levels. True20 has a certain presumption of action-worthiness built into the system; your character cannot go up in level and be completely helpless, because your attack bonus, defense, and saves all go up with you. Yes

Strictly Non-Aryan

2010-09-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I stumble across images that grab me and make me write about them. This is one. It's from Look Magazine's 1940 two-page comic, "What if Superman Ended the War?", which you can read in its entirety here.There's a lot to think and talk about here; Corey Creekmur uses these two pages to bring up ethical issues concerning the ramifications of super powers. I don't know specifically where he

Cut Till it Hurts

2010-08-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of revising Superhero Comics and the Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance with an eye towards removing images I can live without. This will make my editor happy, which is a good thing, and might make it easier to get permissions, which is also a good thing. What's tough about this is that comics are about text and image, and my natural instinct whenever I am talking

7 Minutes to Midnight

2010-08-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

The book deadline looms; there is no way that I will finish everything and have the project ready to be mailed by the 1st of September, but if I am fortunate I will have all the text written, and will only need to complete a few final steps, including:Going through the text for a final pass to remove any un-necessary illustrations, in order to make getting permissions easier.Working through Pete

Claremont's "Tempest": X-Men 147-150

2010-08-13T17:09:00.001-07:00

[ This is quite long. But what the hell. ]As we search for superhero comics that appropriate, re-enact, manipulate or comment on Shakespeare, it’s easy to restrict ourselves to those in which Shakespeare is actually quoted. “Tempest Fugit” throws us a lifeline of another sort; by making the title of the story into a pun on The Tempest, David sends up a signal that says, “Here there be Shakespeare

Claremont's X-Men

2010-08-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

This week I am in the Eaton Collection reading a bunch of classic X-Men books from the Claremont/Cockrum era, and I know it has been often commented on before but man is it a bit startling to read comics with actual dialogue again. Comics these days are so art-dependent, the writers seem to pride themselves on using as few words as possible. I'm all for the occasional silent panel, one of my

Peter David's "Tempest Fugit", Incredible Hulk 77-81

2010-08-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

I finally got my hands on the trade collection of Peter David's return to the character of the Hulk, his "Tempest Fugit" storyline which was published as Incredible Hulk #77-81. I come to this story with a particular interest in David's use of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, which is where the title comes from, but you can't just talk about one part of a story like this, you have to wade on

One Down, Three to Go

2010-08-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the last chapter in "Superhero Comics and the Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance" this week. This chapter, which will become Chapter 3 of 5, and thus be the "central" chapter if the designation means anything, is on Shakespeare and comics. I don't want to do another survey; there's a few of those already and they do great work. But I already did something of a

Jonah Hex

2010-07-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

I know this film came out a while ago, but Nicole and I waited for it to come to the dollar theater and we just saw it this afternoon. I didn't read Jonah Hex either before or after Crisis, but I could see that his post-apocalypse Road Warrior phase was a bad scene.That Jonah Hex is a lousy film is pretty much beyond argument, but there are some easy ways to tell it is a bad film, and the

Shakespeare Summer: the Ongoing Saga

2010-07-28T18:16:00.001-07:00

I finally got a chance to read Annalisa Castaldo's "'No more yielding than a dream': The Construction of Shakespeare in The Sandman," and boy am I glad I did. This is the best bit of criticism on Gaiman's use of Shakespeare that is out there, and I say that as a person who has read all the scholarship, though not, I am quick to say, all the fan press.What makes Castaldo's essay so good is that

MacBeth with Mummies

2010-07-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

The way I figure it, it would go down something like this: Shakespeare, established playwright, needs a new patron after Elizabeth's death, and naturally is looking to please the new King James of Scotland. So in his research, preparatory to writing a play for said Scottish King, he discovers the AWFUL TRUTH. When the Templars fled the Inquisition in the 1300s, they came -- as everyone knows --

Tempest in a Teapot

2010-07-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day I really felt I was working exclusively on the new chapter, plugging the hole in the ms. Rather than outline it -- which was my first inclination -- I decided to hit UCR's Eaton collection looking for some of the comics I knew I would have to read. Much to my disappointment, it looks like the Eaton does not have Peter David's 2005 run on Incredible Hulk, which began with a

Mistakes Were Made!

2010-07-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know how Gene Kannenberg's invaluable Comics Research Blog fell off my blogroll, but dammit, it's back.CBS reports that Kannenberg has not yet confirmed he is interested in returning to the blogroll. The White House admits it may have rushed to judgment.

New to our Family

2010-07-21T11:18:00.001-07:00

I'm proud to finally add Alternate Reality Comics to the list of blogs in Crossover Corner. Alternate Reality is the best comic shop I've ever found; it began as another store, "Dungeon Comics" I think, but Ralph swooped in years ago, bought it, and proceeded to make himself an institution. The fact that he is married to Kate, one of the Sequential Tarts and a former school-mate of both I and my

You take the High Brow, I'll take the Low Brow..

2010-07-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

.. and we'll both meet in the Blazing World, I think.Much of the criticism I have been reading on Shakespeare and Comics dwells on the debate over whether Shakespearean comics are "high brow" or "low brow." Does the presence of Shakespeare in a comic elevate the comic into a higher literary quanta, or does it diminish Shakespeare to be rubbing elbows with Superman? Now, the smarter critics don't

Screw Your Courage!

2010-07-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Finished the last chapter revision. There now remains only some minor odds and ends to go over in the manuscript, besides of course my main task: plugging the one big gaping hole which I have decided will be Chapter Three.I updated by Shakespeare and Comics Bibliography, below, with a few new pieces and I have done a lot more reading than I have had the opportunity to comment on in these pages.

Tentative Bibliography

2010-07-08T14:33:00.000-07:00

A Shakespeare and Comics Bibliography(partial and with an emphasis on Tempest and Prospero)Abele, Elizabeth, "Whither Shakespop? Taking Stock of Shakespeare in Popular Culture," in College Literature 31:4 (Fall 2004), pp 1-11Brown, Sarah Annes, "'Shaping Fantasies': Responses to Shakespeare's Magic in Popular Culture," Shakespeare 5:2, pp 162-176Burt, Richard, "Shakespeare Stripped: The Bard (Un)

Shakespeare Summer: Shakespeare Newsletter's "Comic Book Shakespeare"

2010-07-08T13:52:00.001-07:00

Another week, another revised chapter. So far, the diss-->book project is going pretty smoothly. I may have finished collecting resources for the new chapter, which will focus on Prospero and the Tempest. In the meantime, I thought I would briefly discuss another article on the topic of Shakespeare and Comics."The Comic Book Shakespeare" was published in three parts in the Shakespeare Newsletter,

Summer of Shakespeare: "Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture"

2010-06-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

This summer I am adapting my dissertation into a book, which will involve writing another chapter. In my general preparation, and also in the interest of making sure I have read all the appropriate criticism, I've gotten the help of Jess Nevins, a wonderful friend and reference librarian, to point me towards articles or books on the topic of Shakespeare and Comics.The first of these to get

Who's That Girl?

2009-08-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

Could it be .. AMERICANA!David Acosta just showed me this awesome concept sketch for Americana and I could not help but show it off. It's so exciting to work with amazingly talented people.

Arthur Lives!

2009-08-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

So I have a new game out. Some of you have heard far too much about this game, others may not have heard anything at all. I had great fun writing it, it turned out very well, and the first part has gone on sale at RPGNow. AL! (as we call it around the house) is a game of cinematic adventure, occult conspiracy, and urban fantasy. Players take on the roles of Arthurian characters who have been

Teaching Literacy through Comics, Cont

2009-08-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

By way of the comments, this very interesting documentary film project on using comics to teach literacy. Can't wait to explore the website further. The blog has been added to the Doctor Comics roll!

Teaching Literacy through Comics

2009-08-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last few days working up a partial bibliography on this topic. I thought some folks might find it useful, so I'm posting it up here.-----This collection of scholarly resources on the subject of teaching literacy through the use of comics is not intended to be definitive nor to include every possible article on the topic. These resources do, however, touch on a surprisingly broad

Jobama

2009-08-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

Via Andrew Sullivan, these posters are going up around LA.Sullivan was confused by this depiction of Obama as the Joker: It's graphically striking, but politically obtuse. The Joker is a wild man; Obama is no-drama; the Joker is an anarchist; Obama is a community organizer. Obama's careful politicking, his almost painful resistance to emotionalism, are worth lampooning, because they at least show

Maker's Schedules

2009-08-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Via Sullivan, this article on the difference between the way managers use the day and how creative people use their day. This is absolutely applicable to me. I need half a day alone to work on a project. If I have only an hour and a half between classes, there are a thousand ways to while away that time, but forget about writing anything worth a damn.

Being Heroic

2009-07-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

We talk often about what makes a superhero "super." It's not always about powers, and its not always about a costume, though it often is about these things. Pete Coogan, of course, has a well-developed argument about the definition of the superhero which he published recently as Superhero: The Origins of a Genre. Jess Nevins, author of Fantastic Victoriana and those wonderful annotations to the

Comic Book Combat

2009-07-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

I had some thoughts on comic book/cinematic action, specifically how it relates to computer gaming. However, because my discussion includes Champions Online in occasional detail, I had to gate it behind the Preview Forums firewall.If you have access to that game, you can read the post here. If not, well, I talk about Thor a lot. So just go read Journey Into Mystery instead.

Action/Reaction

2009-07-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

A recent conversation on the CO Preview forums (which, alas, I cannot link to) brought up that old canard that superheroes are basically reactive creatures while villains are proactive ones, and this explains why everyone likes supervillains better. I got to thinking about this, and partly out of a desire to pull my weight, but more out of a desire to get back into a good writing habit, I thought

Words, Words, Words

2009-07-14T14:39:00.001-07:00

There has been no shortage of wonderful topics to blog about over the last few months, from political issues like Palin’s sudden resignation or that delightful business about flying to Argentina to get a little sum’m sum’m to comics-related topics like the Shakespeare & Comics book I am working on with Kate Laity at the College of St. Rose, to gaming topics like my personal D&D campaign or my

PCA 2009

2009-04-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

What with the difficulty of the job market, the expected financial difficulties in the Tondro household, and the initial skepticism with which my book proposal was greeted by University Press of Mississippi, I went to this year's PCA conference in a pretty pessimistic mood.But in fact I found the conference surprisingly invigorating. Indeed, despite a grueling schedule of some twenty panels, I

Champions Online

2009-01-22T10:58:00.001-08:00

The closed beta for Champions Online has started up and I'm not in it. Like a kid who wants a puppy, all I can do is stare in from the outside, my hands plastered up against the window, my breath fogging the glass.Cryptic has put up a "Rate my Champion!" game, which does allow us to see the characters the current testers are making and I confess I am stunned by the scarcity of anything actually

Yes, Me Too

2009-01-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

By the time I crawled out of bed and remembered it was Inauguration Day, the speech was already half over. I went and took a shower, came back, and watched it on YouTube. I was listening, paying attention, impressed but not -- you know -- overpowered, until he invoked Washington huddled on the Potomac in winter. And then, I guess that was when it turned into poetry for me. I could empathize with

I Hate These Guys...

2009-01-19T17:00:00.001-08:00

I was very uncertain about incorporating a Nazi element into the Arthur Lives! cosmology since, like so many other occult elements (ie: Templars), it seems terribly overdone. But I am determined to look on this as a challenge and opportunity rather than a limitation. I've used Nazis before to good effect, and if that experience burnt me out on them, well, its time to get over that burnout and see

Meanwhile, in Paragon City...

2009-01-18T14:13:00.000-08:00

I just finished a two week free trial of City of Heroes for the Mac. The first thing I noticed was that the game runs much better on the Mac than it ever did when I was using Boot Camp to boot my machine in Windows. I am no expert, but presumably whoever did the Mac port-over really knows how to make the mediocre graphics card built into a Mac laptop do things which the Windows version is blind

Rogues Gallery

2009-01-14T14:17:00.001-08:00

I've spent the last couple days making antagonists for AL!, including a Freemason mastermind vaguely inspired by the Mason in National Treasure (or, as we like to call it in our house, The deFranklin Code), an Illuminati double-agent, and "Mr. Invisible," a vicious hacker visually modeled on King Mob.In other news, my interview with Alcorn State is finally scheduled: next Wednesday morning. I'm

Ah, Alignment

2009-01-12T08:48:00.001-08:00

Gamers who dislike D&D often bring up alignment as evidence to back up that dislike, and it is certainly true that alignment debates have a tendency to be long, sticky, and argumentative. On the other hand, I have spent many an afternoon in a game store, whiling away the hours arguing about whether it was lawful good for the paladin to punch the dryad in the face. My weekly group got two new

Working Again

2009-01-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

A few days off and I am eager to get writing again. One thing that True20 has not done well to this point is Narrator advice. There's almost no guidance at all on how to outline a story, how to get the players interested, how to create and preserve suspense, and how to build to a satisfying climax. I look forward to doing some of this for AL!, using as a framework what I call "Whedonisms,"

Real Superheroes

2009-01-03T17:27:00.000-08:00

OK, so, I saw this on the Huffpost and it's an article in Rolling Stones about the "Real Superheroes" phenomenon. It looks like the Mystery Men stepped off the screen and into our homes. This is far out, and I have got to learn more about these people.Maybe, with my training, I can become their secret mentor or something.http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/25020634/the_legend_of_master_legend

Far from the Fields We Know

2009-01-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

Most Arthurian games leave Spenser more or less out of it. I had to include him. Frankly, I love Spenser, and one of the reasons I love him so much is because he is so damn difficult. Also, he was an incredible Arthur geek. I did not realize the extent to which he was an Arthur geek until I discovered King Ryons in Book III, and realized that this was the same Ryons who battles Arthur in the

More on Religion in Gaming

2009-01-02T14:42:00.001-08:00

I want to write a bit more on the presentation of real religion in RPGs. Somewhere in here is a meta-commentary about shoot-from-the-hip stream of consciousness blogging of the sort Andy Sullivan maintains, as opposed to a compositional blogging style of the type which, frankly, I more prefer. I leave it to interested parties to unwrap that particular package. I want to talk about God.Or God in

Cosmology

2009-01-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

I remember way back when Steve Jackson Games set their fantasy in "Yrth," a world colonized by real people from our own middle ages. Why was this ground-breaking? Because Yrth's inhabitants did not practice made-up religions which resembled our own but had all the serial numbers filed off. They were Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Well, most of them. Who knows what the Sahud were.As common as it

Best Knight redux

2008-12-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

After about seven or eight hours of work I have got my first AL! adventure in pretty good shape. It still needs another editorial pass, but overall I am pretty happy with it. I really want to take a look at Gumshoe, however. Laws and Hite are said to have come up with some pretty original mechanics for crime-solving roleplay, and I want to see them.The AL! manuscript is currently at 145 pages. I

"The Best Knight in the World"

2008-12-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

I've moved on to re-tooling the first adventure in the AL! saga. I ran this adventure years ago under the d20 Modern system. We did not finish the adventure, on account of the fact that it was far too lethal. Everyone nearly died at the first major climax. I had not realized then -- as I do now -- that d20 Modern was not actually intended for 1st level PCs. Player characters should be 5th level

Final Chronology

2008-12-29T22:34:00.000-08:00

I had not intended to go into this much detail but, you know, it's done and it's not as long as all that. Besides, players of Gawaine, Gaheris, Pellinore, Tor, and Balin will be plenty happy for that detail.The last year of the chronology for the core AL! release is 413 AD. It covers the final battles with Ryons and Lot, the marriage of Arthur, and the Quest of the White Hart.

Chronology: Three Feet High and Risin'

2008-12-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

The tough part about figuring out an Arthurian chronology is getting Merlin's prophecies to work out right. When Merlin convinces Arthur to let Lot and the other rebels escape in the first year of his reign, he does so by convincing Arthur that Lot will not threaten the realm again for three years. He's very specific. If Arthur's reign can be dated to 410 based on internal evidence, that means

Arthur Chronology

2008-12-28T15:51:00.001-08:00

My current Arthur Lives! project is a history of Arthur's early reign, focusing on his first three or four years. The first chapter is drafted. You can read it here. Subsequent chapters will introduce Guenevere and Morgause, Excalibur and Pellinore, the Dolorous Stroke, Arthur's wedding, and the Round Table.It feels really good to be doing this at last, although to others it probably looks like

"Lovely"

2008-12-26T18:35:00.001-08:00

Today I wrote a summary of the story of Avenable, which is found in the Prose Merlin. It's about a woman who masquerades as a squire and rises to become Seneschal of the Emperor of Rome, being knighted along the way. She is specifically described as skilled at arms, as well as strong, tall, and beautiful. I <3 her. She totally deserves a novel. Read her at the bottom of this page.

A Festivus for the Restofus!

2008-12-23T10:34:00.001-08:00

We will begin with the Airing of Grievances.Brian Michael Bendis: I have got a lot of problems with you. You managed to ruin many of my favorite characters. Strangely, these were also some of your favorite characters! You're shittin' in your own den! You should stick to your own original stuff. You do less damage that way.The Economy: I understand your need to crash, but dammit, I went on the

Character Formatting

2008-12-21T22:59:00.000-08:00

True20 already has a particular way that character traits are listed. I've listed that format, with a sample character, on the Allies and Adversaries page.

From the General to the Specific

2008-12-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

I completed my working version of the Arthur Lives! secret history. This whole project has been an expansion of an original draft which tried to answer the "What the heck is happening?" question and which I wrote many years ago. This new version adds considerably more illuminated high wierdness and, by being far more specific in many points, festoons the whole project with myriad plot hooks.The

High Wierdness

2008-12-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if Arthur Lives! yet qualifies as "High Wierdness," since while it does now have the Bavarian Illuminati, the Freemasons, Sir Francis Bacon, Rosicrucians, John Dee, the School of Night, Cecil Rhodes, Lewis & Clark, the Blackfoot Indians, Assassins, Charles Babbage, te Gnomes of Zurich, more Templars, and William Ashbless (!), it does not yet have carp falling from the sky. But one

"But of course."

2008-12-19T12:37:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the Ming Emperor hired Dracula to kill King Arthur? Neither did I. Until last night. It did take me a while to figure out exactly how that happened, of course, and I admit I was a little nervous. I couldn't bring myself to actually type the D-word. But there it is.Also, I did a biography of the Fisher King for one of my playtesters.

2008-12-19T12:35:00.001-08:00

Brainstorming

2008-12-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

Last night I came to the realization that when the Lady of the Lake, Morgan, and the Queens of Norgales and the Waste Lands took Arthur to Avalon by boat, and could not heal his wounds, they put his body in the Cauldron of Annwn. I had been wondering what vessel was worth holding it.Edward III knew about the plan for Arthur's return, but the plan had not yet progressed far enough for an actual

AL Update: Secret History

2008-12-17T19:47:00.000-08:00

I have begun work on the Secret History behind Arthur Lives! I have an old draft of this, but it needs to be greatly expanded and improved upon. So far, I have been able to come up with a pretty good way to explain the magical Arthurian age itself, as compared to the historical Arthur. That is, there's an explanation for why we have plate armor and jousting in 6th century Britain. Some of this

AL! Update: Kings.

2008-12-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

Since one of my playtesters has a concept for an incarnation of the Fisher King, I decided to create a Path for Kings. I have long considered this anyway, but had left it out mostly for reasons of time and space. However, it really does fill in a gap and if players want it, I would be remiss not to include it.This also required making a very slight modification to the Knight path, which had

Welcome to Arthur Lives! fans.

2008-12-16T13:34:00.000-08:00

My current creative project is Arthur Lives!, a roleplaying game based on reincarnations of Arthurian characters. It's inspired by some of the Arthurian comics I have read and written on over the years, including both Mage and Camelot 3000.The draft of the manuscript is online as a wiki which can be found here.Today I set up a character page for one of my playtesters, who is making a riff on Sir

POTUS Post-Mortem

2008-11-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

For the last two and a half months I have been running a Mutants & Masterminds campaign based around the 2008 Presidential election. The heroes are Secret Service agents assigned to the first superhero candidate for President. I'm doing a post-mortem of the campaign on the M&M forums, the Atomic Think Tank.Interested parties are encouraged to read or comment.

Thoughts from the Campaign Trail

2008-11-06T09:35:00.001-08:00

When this election began two years ago (!) I was not in Obama's camp. Of course I would vote democratic, but I was a part of the "anyone but Hilary" camp. This may alarm some readers, since Hilary Clinton is a smart, determined, and extremely well-educated individual who might very well have been an excellent President. My basis for ruling her out as our nominee was based not on her talents, but

Tomorrow Morning in America

2008-11-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

I feel a bit sorry for those of you who may have come to this blog and expected interesting ideas related to my academic and professional interests -- comics, gaming, Renaissance and Medieval literature, writing, and so on. Now that the elephant in the room has been kicked to the curb, I look energetically forward to writing on more of my favorite topics and perhaps giving the rest of you

Reality Bites

2008-11-02T14:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the best ideas for stories are found in real-life events, which leap out of their brown paper bags and bite us in the ass.Today's reality bite: A researcher develops an artificial intelligence which is, by design, evil.

The Neo-Know Nothings

2008-10-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

You know what I miss? The intellectual wing of the Republican Party. And I’m not the only one; Times columnist David Brooks, whom I used to despise as the constant Right-Wing balance to E.J. Dionne on NPR, is also in the same state of mourning. I know some really smart Republicans, and this was a party who once trumpeted science as the solution to all our problems. I mean, Reagan wanted to

This is Red Five; I'm goin' in.

2008-10-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

My first application letter and CV is going to the University of Texas at Austin. Everyone has told me that Austin is by far the best place to live in Texas for, while it is expensive, it is also a liberal bastion. All I know is that In Nomine based its campaign arc there -- a decision I always found a bit narcissistic.UT at Austin has the Harry Ransom Center, a collection of rare books and

Word(le)!

2008-10-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

Waking from the Nightmare

2008-09-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago I had a dream, and it went like this: it was election night, 2008 and Pennsylvania and New Jersey went Red. John McCain became the President of the United States. How could such a thing happen? I asked myself this, and my dream-voice said something about how unemployed folks in these states had moved elsewhere looking for work, so could not turn out to vote. As is typical for a

The Secret Origin of Doctor Comics

2008-09-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's all Darren's fault. Really, it is. I don't need to tell you that the only kind of nickname worth a damn is the sort someone else gives you. Shoeless Joe. William the Conqueror. The Gubernator. Okay, maybe if you become Roman Emperor, you can name yourself Augustus with a straight face, but the rest of us are doomed to accept whatever name we're given, while hoping desperately that said name

Obama's "Billy Martin"

2008-09-14T16:15:00.000-07:00

Some writers on dKos have begun voicing a suspicion which my inside voice first began to articulate at the Democratic National Convention. As we heard speaker after speaker -- Hillary, Bill, Biden, and Obama himself -- praise McCain as an honorable man, we got a universal sinking feeling. Surely, we were not going to get the same level of respect from the GOP; Obama's nice guy stance just meant