marvel heroic – illustrated example of play

Here you can see why I have no future in the fine arts!  Also, I will teach you how to cheat at this game!  Plus random Steve Ditko art!

(I’m using bold text for the GM (a/k/a the Watcher).)  Okay, so let’s cut to a new scene.  Spider-Man, you’re on top of the Fisk Building.  Since you stopped to threaten the Kingpin a second ago, I’m going to say that the Vulture’s had a few minutes to take to the air.  I’m plunking down Asset: Far Away, and I figure the Vulture flies fairly fast but not supersonic, so it’s rated with a d8.  (I’m allowed to do this to set up the scene; later it might cost me from the doom pool.)  The Vulture looks over his shoulder at you and snarls, “You’ll never catch the Vulture, wall-crawler!”  What now?

(I’m using regular text for Spider-Man’s player.)  Well, I guess I could try to web him up.  But I’m running low on plot points.  You know what?  Screw it.  I’m activating the limit on my Web-Slinging power set.  I’m out of webs!

Really?

Yeah, I mean, I really wanted to ruin the Kingpin’s upholstery back there.  You should see the place.  Webs everywhere.  I guess I shouldn’t have been so wasteful.  Anyway, I’m shutting down those powers, and you have to pay me with a plot point.  Thanks.  Spider-Man thinks to himself (makes thought-bubble gesture) “Without my web-fluid, he may be right!”

Okay, so you’ve shut that group of powers down, but what about for your action?

There’s probably heavy industrial stuff on this rooftop, right?  Like A/C units, satellite dish, water tower, that kind of thing?  I’m gonna rip up a big chunk of roofing machinery and chuck it at the Vulture.  That’s my Solo d8 + Superhuman Strength d10 + Wisecracker d8.

Man, don’t spam the Wisecracker trait.  You gotta give me something.

Fine.  “Hate to wreck property, but I gotta keep the HVAC unions in over-time!”  I notice you don’t force the Black Widow act out her Dangerous Liaisons trait. Anyway, that’s a . . . roll of 8 on the d10, and 6 and 3 on the pair of d8′s.  I’m going to keep the 8 and 6 as my total, for 14.  That leaves me with a d8 for my effect die.  What have you got?

There’s nobody to oppose you, so you’re rolling against the doom pool which stands at 3d6 + 1d8.  Rolling that, I get 6, 6, 4, 2.  My reaction is 6 + 6 = 12.  You beat me, and rip up the AC unit.  Now what?

Let’s use my d8 effect die to create an Asset: Torn-Up AC Unit d8.  What’s the Vulture doing?

Um, getting away but I’m honestly not sure.  The rules don’t say precisely how to increment assets like Far Away or Raging Wildfire.  Let’s try this: the Vulture’s gonna roll against the doom pool too.  If he wins, and his effect die is greater than d8 (so, a d10 or d12), then his Far Away asset takes on that value.  If he wins but his effect die is a d8 or smaller, the asset’s value bumps up by one.

Sounds okay.  That’s like the stress system, isn’t it?

Yeah, I guess so.  There’s a lot of self-similar stuff in this game, which is kind of confusing, but also, once you learn one trick, you can apply it elsewhere.  I still don’t know how I feel about that.  Anyway: Vulture’s got Solo d10 + Cowardly d8 + Feathery Flight d8.  He’s also trying to coax a little more performance out of his flying harness, so that’s probably +1d8 for his Tech Expert specialty.  Dang, this game uses a lot of d8′s–let’s pretend this Tens dice is a d8 and I’ll re-roll a 90 or 00.  I roll 7, 5, 5, 1, for a total of 12 with a d8 for my effect die.

Here, I’m rolling the doom pool: 3d6 + 1d8 . . . 8, 6, 3, 3.  The reaction is 14, beating your 12, so you lose.  Maybe the Vulture has gotten a little overconfident and still hoping to stay within gloating range?

Sure.  So my Asset: Far Away stays at d8.  And I rolled a 1, that’s an opportunity.  Do you want to buy it for one plot point?  It will let you bump up any push or stunt on your next action.

Nah–I have something else in mind.  Okay, so I’m going to throw the AC Unit one-handed at the Vulture and break those smelly wings.  “Vulture, if you’re flying south for the winter, you’ll need air-conditioning!”  Solo d8 + Wisecracker d8 + Superhuman Strength d10 + Asset: Torn-Up AC Unit d8.  Hmm, you do need to buy more dice!  I hate this stupid Tens dice thing you do.  Anyway, that’s an 8 on the d10, and 5, 4, 2 on the 3d8.  I’m gonna make my total 13, and use 1d8 for my effect die.  And maybe something else… but let’s see how you roll.

Vulture’s reaction is Solo d10 + Feathery Flight d8 + Acrobatic Expert d8 + Asset: Far Away d8.  I can’t think of a distinction that applies.  So that’s 8, 5, 5, and 2.  My reaction is 13, equal but not greater than yours, so you hit the Vulture.  You’re going for d8 physical stress with your effect die?

Yes, but I’m also spending that plot point, which lets me use a second, unused die on my roll for an effect as well.  So in addition to d8 physical stress with my first (free) effect die, I’m going to damage his Feathery Flight trait with my second effect die, a d8.  Try getting away now!

Hmm!  Let me mark off the stress.  The Vulture’s Feathery Flight is rated at d8, so you’ve demolished that power completely!  The Vulture groans in pain and plummets from the sky!  Okay, for his action he’s going to try to recover. I’m going to take that d8 out of the doom pool and use it to reestablish my flying trait.

Wait, I thought you can only try to heal yourself during a transition scene?  In an action scene someone else can try to heal you, but if you’re doing it all on your own you need to wait until things quiet down.  Unless you’ve got healing powers like Wolverine.

Huh!  Let me see, I thought I could do that.  (Checks rule book.)  Looks like you’re right.  Okay, well, let’s just say he’s falling toward a building helplessly–thinking maybe he had a spare power pack somewhere and realized he forgot it at home.  What do you do now?

I’m going to eliminate the distance asset.  That’s Swingline d8 + Solo d8 + Acrobatic Master d10–eh, you know, I’m going to split that d10 down to 2d8.  And can I fold in the Vulture’s d8 stress because he’s still hoping to get away?  Yes?  Okay, that’s me rolling 5d8 . . . 8, 8, 4, 3, 1.  Do you want to buy that 1 off me?  My total is 16, with a d8 for my effect die.

Sure.  Here’s a plot point, and I add 1d6 to the doom pool, which is now 4d6 + 1d8.  And for his reaction, the Vulture rolls Solo d10 + Acrobatics Expert d8 + Asset: Far Away d8.  I’m going to include my Cowardly distinction at a d4, because that lets me step up the lowest die in the doom pool, making it 3d6 + 2d8. 

Come on, man, how are you cowardly?

The Vulture’s screaming out, “My wings, my wings!”  He’s unsure whether to be more scared of Spider-Man or hitting the rooftop, and so isn’t able to prepare well against either.  Hmm, that’s 4, 4, 4, 4.  My reaction is 8, you beat me.  In fact, you beat me by more than 5, so your d8 effect die steps up to d10.  What were you hoping to do, again?

Eliminate your Asset: Far Away d8.  I’m closing in on my web-line.  Thwip!  Thwip!

Okay.  And–hey, wait a minute!  Weren’t you out of web-fluid?  You didn’t reactivate your Web-Slinging power.  I think your dice pool was wrong!

I, um, forgot.  Yeah, forgot.  Say, you know what’s interesting about the Vulture?  He’s like Spider-Man’s evil grand-dad or something.  They’re both gadget-guys, they’re both acrobats, but Peter Parker is a nice kid and the Vulture’s this mean old ex-con.

Oh man, don’t get me started.  There’s this whole anxiety about fathers in the Silver Age Spidey stories.  Jameson exploiting his astronaut son, Robbie worried about his kid’s politics, Harry freaking out on drugs and becoming the Goblin.  Captain Stacy.  It’s frequent and really sustained.  What’s kind of cool about the Vulture is that he’s got that same thing going on with his super villain career, but in reverse: passing the costume on to the younger Blackie Drago who has no respect for his elders.  A hero with no father and a villain with no heir.  Vulture and Spider-Man really deserve each other.

Gee, how about that!  So, um, what’s he doing on his round?

Trying not to splatter on the roof, I suppose.  He’s rolling Solo d10 + Acrobatics Expert d8 + Spry Geezer d8.  And I’m going to spend 2d6 out of the doom pool to add to my roll.  That’s 6, 6, 4, 4, 1, total of 12.  Want to buy that 1 off of me?

Sure.  Here’s a plot point, now I can push harder or stunt better on Spider-Man’s next turn.  The doom pool is now 1d6 + 2d8, right?  And also maybe the Vulture’s d8 stress.  Let’s roll: 5, 4, 3, 2.  Reaction of 9.  So I guess you don’t get splattered.

Okay, so let’s say you’re clambering onto the rooftop where the Vulture landed.  He’s all banged up and looks like he’s seen better days.  What now?

(play continues)

marvel heroic – musing hesitantly

Me, Tavis, and Tavis’s son played in the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying launch party at the Compleat Strategist, organized by the incomparable gaming mutant Jenskot.  We had fun!  Then Tavis and his kid had to leave and many new players came.  We had even more fun!  Then I went uptown and played it with some friends, and had fun too!  So: 3 for 3, but with some reservations.

the good social stuff you don’t care about

Here is how awesome my friend Jenskot is: he organized a launch party for free, developing elaborate cheat-sheets requiring hours of work, to promote the work of strangers, who couldn’t get their act together to ship their silly game on time.  It was a launch party to promote a book that doesn’t exist yet!  (You can buy the PDF on-line, though.)  But people still had fun!

"--?!?" is right

The really nice thing about playing these licensed games is that it gives you a chance to geek out with fellow nerds about your love of the source material.  “Wait, we’re fighting Razor-Fist?  Razor-I have prosthetic steak knives instead of hands-Fist?!?  The guy’s not a villain, he can’t even go to the bathroom!  But boy, Paul Gulacy man, what happened to him?  Nobody ripped off Jim Starlin’s style better.”  So that was fun too.

Also if a superheroic adventure begins with Iron Man pretending to get drunk, while Colossus gets wasted on vodka, and they fly around NYC together demolishing buildings in order to finally build the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway line, the game has already failed (in the eyes of a 10 year old comic fan) -

Pretend-Drunk Iron Man + Drunk Colossus + Unauthorized Urban Renewal = GAMING FAIL (for some people)

the good game stuff

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is a cleverly designed game that, in play, feels like a modern-day super hero comic book.  Lots of snazzy action, a dose of fan-favorite characterization, and (at least at this early stage of learning the game) very drawn out and “decompressed.”  The rules ship with a mini-module called “Breakout” based on the Bendis/Finch New Avengers arc of the same name, and a player commented, “You know, this felt exactly like those comics.”

The closest point of reference I can see is Dungeons & Dragons 4e, but only insofar as they’re both complex games designed to produce cool combat set-pieces by way of a cleverly designed economy.

The game operates by building a dice pool from various personality traits, super powers, and skills.  Your roll measures both your overall performance and the effect it has on the fictional circumstances; your opponent makes a similar roll to resist you.  As a player, you can heap inconvenience on your character–”Captain America is a man from the 1940′s, so I’ll say he has problems understanding how to deactivate the super-computer…”–to earn resources called plot points.  Plot points can be spent to activate special super power combos or to jazz up your dice pool in other ways.

(Indie Filth Alert!  This game expects you, as a player, to occasionally make things worse for your character in the hope of reaping a mechanical advantage.  A sizable segment of gamers don’t like that in any way, shape, or form.  If you’re one of them, you won’t like this game.)

Meanwhile the GM–called “the Watcher” in this game after Kirby’s version of the Man in the Moon–is on the look-out for any 1′s that you roll.  The Watcher buys them off you with plot points, and for every plot point he pays you, he adds +1d6 to the “doom pool,” which represents the general FUBAR nature of superhuman conflict.  When you’re trying to do something that has no NPC to resist you, you’ll roll against the doom pool.  The Watcher can also spend dice out of the doom pool to activate special super villainous powers or create plot twists.

So the game works by steadily growing the doom pool, with you earning plot points along the way.  In theory, the game is balanced if you’re rolling a bunch of d6′s for the Wasp and I’m rolling a bunch of d12′s for Thor, because the Wasp is going to be earning plot points about twice as fast, though the doom pool will also be growing a lot faster as she gets in over her head.

Several people on RPGNet have complained that the game doesn’t have a character creation system, but that’s not true.  It doesn’t have a randomized or point-buy character creation system, but damn if I didn’t create Sonny Sumo last Kirbsday in less than 10 minutes.  Almost all of that time was conceptual.  The game doesn’t really sweat exactly how strong you are: Thor, the Hulk, the Thing, and Colossus are all equally strong, which as a neckbeard offends me greatly.  But figuring out your character’s personality, and fine-tuning some super power tricks, takes a little bit of insight, because that makes a much bigger difference in play.

(Indie Filth Alert: if you like discovering your tabula rasa character through play, this is not the game for you.  If you require randomized character creation, this is not the game for you.  If you require transparently point-bought balanced characters, this is not the game for you.)

The game is also pretty great at handling bizarre power stunts.  You know how, in Kirby’s Fourth World titles, the little super-iPad called Mother Box can do practically anything?  It’s a huge pain in the butt in Marvel Super Heroes, because you’d have to spend hundreds of points of Karma and get many spectacular rolls to pull off so many one-time-only stunts.  But with Marvel Heroic those weird never-see-it-again powers carry a low, low price of one plot point.  Which makes it handy for guys like Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Courageous Cat, who never seem to run out of nifty tricks.

the bad game stuff

Man alive, this game has stats for no-name bozo’s like Armor, Iron Fist, the Constrictor, and Tombstone–but no stats for the Hulk, Thor, Doctor Doom, or Magneto.  Inexplicable!

This book gives the 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide a run for its money for disorganization–or maybe, in this case, over-organization.  The rules for healing and recovery are spread over three chapters, written largely the same way but in each instance there’s a little rule added that appears nowhere else.  This book’s credits list six editors; you could not prove it by the way the book is organized.

There are a lot of things in this game that resemble one another, but have subtly different mechanical effects.  “Stress” is exactly like a “complication,” except that stress doesn’t go away at the end of a scene; instead it converts to “trauma” which is also exactly like stress (which is like a complication).  A “stunt” is like a “push” is like a “resource,” and all of them are like “assets,” except that an asset is created by rolling dice, and all four resemble “traits” except a trait is a permanent part of your character.  Basically, they came up with a really nice economy, and then are trying to tell you there’s a mechanical difference between Coke and Pepsi–and there is, but it’s hard to discern at first.  So far, it seems that no two people who have read rules agree on how a fictional circumstance should translate into the mechanics.

Although the game describes superhuman speed, subsonic flight, and teleportation, there aren’t any rules for movement in general, or spatial relationships of any kind.  A single villain trying to run away from a group of super-heroes with differing rates of speed requires a surprising amount of mental gymnastics.

(Indie Filth Alert: if you really like battle-grids, miniatures, and being able to unambiguously declare where your character is in space, this is not the game for you.  If you like saying, “My guy’s kind of over here, and your guy is kind of over there” and having the mechanics reflect that, this game might not be for you–it appears to be an open question.)

If you’re not careful, it’s easy to say, “Well, what you just declared is mechanically permitted even though it doesn’t make fictional sense.  Oh no, we broke the fiction!”  Example!  Spider-Man hurls an industrial air-conditioning unit at the Vulture.  He rolls to get an “effect die,” which can be traded in for any one of the following; he can spend a plot point to do another thing too…

1. Spidey could inflict physical injury on the Vulture (effect die becomes physical stress)
2. Spidey could break the Vulture’s flying suit (effect die cancels out flying super power)
3. Spidey could inflict a painful memory of past defeats on the Vulture (effect die becomes emotional stress)
4. Spidey could remove the distance between him and the Vulture (effect die cancels out the “I’m far away from you” asset)

The first three are at least arguable given the fictional circumstances.  But there’s almost no conceivable way that chucking an A/C unit at the Vulture will physically move Spider-Man and the Vulture closer together.  Yet the game’s economy isn’t going to stop you from saying stupid stuff like that.  It’s the table’s responsibility to police the interaction between the fiction and the mechanics.

(Old Gaming Fart Alert!  If you doubt the good sense of the people you play with, this game is not for you.  If you believe that RPG’s should be hardwired to prevent you from creating logical paradoxes accidentally in play, this game is not for you.)

what do you think, middle-aged comics nerd?

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is an extremely nifty game that shows a lot of promise.  It is, however, extremely confusing even beyond the learning curve of a new game.  Aside from the crazy disorganization of the text itself and the almost-but-not-quite-the-same quality of many of the rules, the text veers toward a worrying (but manageable) one-night stand between cause and effect.  I played it three times in one day with three different groups, and we all had a great time!  You might too, but it’s not for everybody.

kirbsday: sonny sumo!

Last time: after Darkseid banished the Infinity Man, Desaad imprisoned the Forever People in the amusement park/concentration camp Happyland in a variety of cruel deathtraps, but their Mother Box escaped and sought help from a stranger named Sonny Sumo.

plot synopsis

Sonny Sumo is a Japanese guy hoping to make a name for himself in Jack Kirby’s version of pro-wrestling by fighting a giant, flame-throwing robot with swords for fingers.

Crazy Mother Box stunt of the week: healing Sonny’s third-degree burns.

Eager to prove himself against a real challenge, Sonny agrees to help Mother Box rescue the Forever People.  Which he does with astounding ease, making me wonder if that’s because Sonny Sumo is just that awesome, or the Forever People are just that inept.

Alternately, it could be that Desaad is an incompetent junkie, too busy getting high off his fear-siphon to prevent the escape.  “What can equal this for joy?  I find it strange that Darkseid would shun this!”

When Desaad’s guards show up en masse, Sonny Sumo mind-controls them . . . via the Anti-Life Equation!  Sonny Sumo’s the guy Darkseid has been searching for, lo these past five issues!

what’s the story with sonny sumo?

Kirby came up with Sonny Sumo when Marvel Comics letterer Morrie Kuramoto started giving him some good-natured grief about creating an Asian super hero, since Kirby and Lee had created the first mainstream African super hero with the Black Panther.

We know Sonny Sumo is comic book Asian because:

• He’s named Sonny Sumo
• He talks a lot about the samurai’s warrior code
• His skin is the color of fried chicken

(The coloring process in comic books at the time made it difficult to produce Asian skin tones.  This was a problem throughout Doug Moench’s and Paul Gulacy’s time on Master of Kung-Fu for example.)

That said, Sonny’s clearly the hero of this story, and he’s depicted in a way that’s both stoic and sarcastic, calling Big Bear “bushy-beard” and speaking in contractions in a time when a lot of Asians in comics were excessively formal.  He ain’t no Chop-Chop, is what I’m saying.

Kirby probably added Sumo to Forever People #5 for the same reason he added the Black Racer to New Gods #3: DC editorial had urged him to debut a lot of new characters.  The conceptual design is interesting.  The Black Racer is a mysterious, eerie, tragically vulnerable vigilante, signified by the armor, his so-weird-it’s-frightening mode of travel, his full-body cast, his eyes staring in horror.  And, maybe to white audiences in 1970, also his blackness.  (That said: Kirby has no problem depicting warm and relatable black characters, like the Black Racer’s sister or Gabe Jones over in Sergeant Fury.)

Sonny Sumo, in contrast, is a friendly, confident, pulp adventure character.  He’s an awesome fighter with great courage, but he’s pretty affable and low-key.  Plus it turns out that Sonny Sumo possesses the ultimate weapon, the Anti-Life Equation!  Even so, Kirby isn’t above exploiting Sumo’s Japanese heritage as a type of super power:

“Inside him, ancient centuries and even more ancient practices come alive!  Expand!  Take hold!–and to their work!”  As Sonny’s manager explains, “It’s a kind of oriental thing—like invoking a mystic power  in the mind!”

This kind of thing was unfortunately par for the course with Asians in comics back then: you’re either an honor-obsessed madman, a devious Oriental mastermind, a superstitious peasant, a powerful mystic, or a Judo master.  Sonny Sumo doesn’t rise above those stereotypes, but it’s clear that Kirby meant to create a sympathetic, effective hero.

have we learned anything?

Yeah!  First of all, when the Forever People ran into a serious problem, Mother Box went straight to the one guy on Earth who has the Anti-Life Equation locked in his head.  Surely that’s not a coincidence: Mother Box knew this from the start, and is therefore more clever than Darkseid or Desaad.

What does it mean that Sonny Sumo has the Anti-Life Equation in his brain?  Hell if I know!  Earlier in the issue, Sonny demonstrated sufficient willpower to reject his own injuries.  His desire to test himself against adversity isn’t a compulsion to battle, like Orion’s case, but rather a deliberate decision to set aside his instinct for self-preservation in order to confront new challenges.  Maybe that selflessness and iron will give you command of the Equation?  Who knows?

Though Sumo’s role here is a little fuzzy to me, there’s some fun stuff about the Anti-Life Equation, free will, and destiny.

Check it out: there are “many other” all-powerful cosmic equations.

Also, the Forever People give a pretty good explanation of their mandate: they believe that everyone should do his or her own thing, and are fighting the Blue Meanies who won’t let people live how they choose.

What does Darkseid think about this?

Everybody’s got their own nature, and everything they do will express that nature.  Darkseid explains: “It’s the very core of our conflict!  To fulfill ourselves—we must kill them!”  I love that!  If you take the Forever People’s just-be-yourself motto to its fullest conclusion, you’re going to get a sociopath like Darkseid eventually.  Darkseid’s villainy is simply his karma in action, and while he may regret the circumstances, it is his nature to do anything for power and he won’t fight that urge.

sonny sumo, in marvel heroic

I’ve been thinking for the past week or so that Marvel Heroic Roleplaying might be a better fit for Kirby’s Fourth World saga than my beloved Marvel Super Heroes, in part because it handles laughably flexible (i.e., totally deus ex machina) power sets like Mother Box much better.  Sonny’s a character who would work very easily in Marvel Super Heroes, but I’ve got this other game on my mind right now.

Probably the SFX and Limits could be better designed.  Still getting a feel for this thing.

Affiliations

Solo d10, Buddy d8, Team d6

Distinctions

Honor Code, I’ve Handled Power All My Life, Underground Wrestler

Power Set: Mind Over Matter

Mind Control d10, Enhanced Reflexes d8, Enhanced Stamina d8, Enhanced Strength d8

• SFX: Anti-Life Broadcast.  For each additional Mind Control target, add +1d6 to your roll and keep +1 effect die.
• SFX: Chi Focus.  In a pool including a Mind Over Matter trait, replace two dice of equal steps with one die of +1 step.
• SFX: Second Wind.  Before making a roll involving a Mind Over Matter die, move your physical stress die to the doom pool, and step up your power trait die by +1.
• LIMIT: Exhaustion.  Shutdown any Mind Over Matter power to gain 1 plot point.  Recover this trait by activating an opportunity or during a Transition Scene

Specialties

Business Expert, Combat Expert

Milestone: Wielder of Anti-Life

• Gain 1 XP the first time you use Mind Control power trait in a scene.
• Gain 3 XP when you use Anti-Life to rescue yourself or others from the forces of Apokolips
• Gain 10 XP when you use Mind Control to harm someone for your selfish gain, or when you renounce Anti-Life forever

Milestone: Almost Famous

• Gain 1 XP when you introduce yourself to someone who hasn’t heard of you
• Gain 3XP When you gain stress from engaging in battle in public
• Gain 10XP When you defeat a tremendous adversary in public combat, or quit the fight game and become a derelict

ah hell, sonny sumo in marvel super heroes

Primary Abilities

• Fighting: Incredible (40)
• Agility: Excellent (20)
• Strength: Excellent (20)
• Endurance: Remarkable (30)
• Reason: Typical (6)
• Intuition: Good (10)
• Psyche: Incredible (40)

Secondary Abilities

• Health: 110
• Karma: 56
• Resources: 6
• Popularity: 20

Special Abilities

• Power: Anti-Life Equation.  This is Mind Control at Amazing rank.  It costs 10 Karma points to use this power.
• Power: Mind Ritual.  This is Regeneration (or, in the Advanced rules, Recovery) at Incredible rank.
• Talent: Wrestling
• Talent: Martial Arts
• Contact: the Forever People, super hero group
• Contact: Harry Sharp, boxing manager

 

 

Saturday Gaming in NYC for Dwimmermount and the Marvel RPG

Yes, it is clobbering time! I googled it.

I often wait too long to post about upcoming events for anyone to do anything about it (or for those who do not live in travel distance of NYC to feel bad for what they’re missing, like crazy high rents and getting gum stuck on their shoes in the subway). However, given the awesomeness of this Saturday’s events, I hope this will be enough lead time for at least some of y’all!

First up, nerdNYC is organizing a Marvel RPG launch party at the Compleat Strategist on 11 E. 33rd St. Anytime from 11 am until 4 pm, you can learn to play the new Marvel RPG from Margaret Weis Productions. I cannot confirm that James will be there to field-strip its reward systems or demonstrate his hot and weird abilities to open his brain to the Marvel maelstrom and barf forth continuity, but I know for sure that my son and I will be there with bells on. This should provide an interesting experiment in player skill, as my son has been reading himself to sleep with the Marvel Encyclopedia ever since he got it at his last (9th) birthday, whereas I wanted to put “It’s Clobbering Time” as the caption for that photo but then was unsure whether that was a Marvel or DC thing.

Then later that very same day at 7pm, I will be kicking off a series of explorations of the legendary Dwimmermount mega-dungeon at the Brooklyn Strategist‘s sweet new location on 333 Court St.

Geek Chic's hypographer says that the Sultan gets more press than Giles Corey. I love that they hire nerds so advanced that I need to Google this caption too.

If you can’t make it to this one, fear not! The Dwimmermount events will be at the B-Strat every Saturday throughout the campaign by Autarch and Grognardia Games to crowdfund the process of turning the notes and experience from James’ home campaign into a location other referees to use as the tent-pole location for their own campaigns, as an inspiration for designing their own dungeons, or as the source for many unique creatures and weird magical items that can be dropped into any fantasy game.

However, if you can’t make it I am not above making you feel bad. We will be playing on the B-Strat’s Sultan gaming table, and recording our progress by building the dungeon as we go with Master Maze pieces from Dwarven Forge sculptor Stefan Pokorny’s personal collection. Eventually we will also be using miniatures sculpted for the project by Sandra Garrity based on backer’s descriptions of their rival adventurers, which will also be illustrated by Jeff Dee.

If I can convince Jon Freeman to let me hang stuff on the walls of his beautiful new place, visitors to the B-Strat can also admire the original of the painting Jeff is doing for Dwimmermount’s back cover. Up in Toronto, players in James’ campaign will be basking in the glory of Mark Allen’s painting for the front cover, which shows their adventuring party in a characteristic moment of mystery and wonder. I am no less proud that my PbP adventurer Locfir the Astrologer was among the group seen on the back cover, especially since this let me earmark that one for display in my home town.

To continue this goal to make the published work reflect what really happened in play in as many ways as possible, one of  the seats at the Sultan each evening will be reserved for an artist in residence. Their sketches and maps and doodles during the game will be donated to the Play-Generated Maps and Documents Archive for the enjoyment of all. We also hope that each session of play will inspire at least one illustration, so that a moment from our adventures together will be published in the final Dwimmermount book and PDF bundle.

If the Kickstarter hits the right bonus goal level, a copy will be etched into gold, attached to a space probe, and sent beyond our solar system to make aliens feel bad about missing these Saturday events even there is no way they could possibly have attended.

kirbsday: the closing jaws of death

Last time: super-escape artist Mister Miracle literally stepped into Doctor Bedlam’s latest trap–a fifty-story building filled with ordinary humans driven to murderous rage by the doctor’s paranoid pill–and was bound in chains, locked into a trunk, and thrown off the 45th floor!

Mister Miracle #4 takes up split seconds later.  Short version: Mister Miracle escapes.  But that’s not the memorable part of this story.

big bonus! big surprise! big barda!

A woman!  A woman in a Jack Kirby Fourth World title!  Who’s not “simple but worried secretary Claudia Shane!”  Who’s not a wallflower like Beautiful Dreamer, whom readers didn’t think could talk because she was so passive!  Who’s not a villainess like Granny Goodness!  Mister Miracle #4 debuts Barda, a friend of Scott Free’s and an officer in the Female Furies of Apokolips.

Barda’s here partially for sex appeal.  Kirby based her look off actress and singer Lainie Kazan, who had done a nude spread for Playboy in late 1970 (not pictured because I value your continued employment).  Later this issue we see Barda in a bikini, and it’s an unusual amount of skin for a Kirby book, though she has no belly-button…

Barda’s also here to provide backstory. In the Mister Miracle series so far, every month something eerie and threatening happens, but Scott Free does not lose his cool: he expects it, and he’s pretty tight-lipped about explaining things to the poor, mystified Oberon.  Clearly there’s an origin story here, but Scott apparently is keeping it bottled up inside.  Barda’s less circumspect: she tells Oberon (and the readers) that she grew up with Scott in Granny’s orphanage and eventually helped him escape to Earth.  They’ve got a shared history, and at least one of them is willing to blab about it.

Barda is also here to add some chaos to Oberon’s somewhat-frayed domesticity.  It’s interesting to contrast the home life scenes in Mister Miracle with those in Forever People and New Gods.  The Forever People hang out with Donnie and Uncle Willie for a little while in issue #2, but the humans are weird hosts and the gods are strange guests, and they can’t wait to tell Donnie, “Have a nice life!” and leave in issue #3.  (The typical super hero doesn’t make such a formal goodbye unless he doesn’t expect or intend to return.)  The “O’Ryan Gang” is somewhat more ordinary than a crippled child living alone in a slum with his senile, gun-toting uncle, but they can’t take a break from formally introducing themselves long enough to have normal interactions.  Yet Scott and Oberon have a convincing foolhardy-child/worrywart-parent relationship, and Barda helps bring this characterization to the fore.  I’m trying to think of the last time I saw a male super hero cook dinner in a Silver Age comic…

And of course, Barda is also here to punish fools.

Yes, butch Barda’s version of Mother Box is called her “Mega-Rod.”  Don’t joke about it to her face.

It’s hard to talk about Barda without also talking about female characters in super hero comics.  DC’s major heroines at this point were Wonder Woman and Supergirl, both of whom were strong and effective, but weren’t directly at war with traditional gender expectations.  Over at Marvel, the most prominent female characters at that time were probably the Invisible Girl, who was so stupid she couldn’t even pick a name for her baby:

And the Wasp, whose reaction when told that an innocent man is dying of a rare blood poisoning is that her boyfriend should stop working on a cure and take her out dancing:

By the late 60′s and early 70′s, the Women’s Lib movement was hitting its stride, sometimes depicted rather clumsily in comics.  So it’s kind of cool that Kirby presents this Barda character as someone who is physically powerful, assertive as hell, totally indifferent to gender expectations–and yet very friendly and cool all the same.

the day of the multi-cube!

So anyway, what happens in this issue, plot-wise?  How does Mister Miracle escape the falling trunk?  Well, he just does!  But later he explains the trick to Oberon:

He then gets throw into an iron maiden, on the set of some kind of Dungeons & Dragons style medieval TV show–because why wouldn’t there be a medieval TV show filming inside a modern office building?

Again, the multi-cube dissolves the back of the iron maiden, allowing Scott to escape.  Though Barda frequently offers to help, Mister Miracle refuses as it would compromise the warrior-code of this duel with Doctor Bedlam.  Eventually Bedlam himself manifests…

…and threatens them with a human stampede, except the multi-cube casts a sleep spell and the heroes are spared.  Mister Miracle wins again!

This issue closes with Mister Miracle giving Oberon a hypothetical account of how he pulled off these tricks, which is kind of a nice structure–maybe encouraging children to imagine how Mister Miracle could have done the impossible, and then revealing the secret.

kirbsday: will the REAL don rickles panic?!?

Last time in Jimmy Olsen 139: to secure a contract with Don Rickles, malicious media mogul Morgan Edge sends an eccentric employee, Rickles look-alike name-alike act-alike Goody Rickles, into a deathtrap managed by Inter-Gang underboss Ugly Mannheim.

“don’t ask! just buy it!”

Boy, you said it, Kirby!  Whew.  Okay, so basically, Clark’s trapped in space, zooming toward Apokolips…

…But is rescued by Lightray, a supporting character in The New Gods.  I guess this is nice, but given Clark’s secret identity it’s hard to imagine he was ever truly in danger.

Note that the collage is in color, unlike some of the previous efforts from a few months ago.  I’m not sure if this represents Kirby and the publisher discovering some new production technique, or just throwing a bit more care into the usual process, but by this point in late ’71 the photo-collages are starting to look a bit more vivid.

The Golden Guardian charges off after Ugly Mannheim and his Inter-Gang hoods, and beats an antidote to the pyro-granulate poison out of them…

And Jimmy and Goody Rickles make their way via the subway to Morgan Edge for medical help.

Meanwhile the real Don Rickles has shown up at Morgan Edge’s office, to the surprisingly demonstrative delight of the staff:

As Don and Edge sit down to iron out a contract, we get the inevitable collision…

The sudden onset of echolalia and echopraxia unnerves Don so much he’s got to sit down, even as Goody and Jimmy plead for their lives:

Morgan Edge calls the bomb squad, but is more concerned about his office furniture.  The Guardian saves them with the antidote, but Clark opens a boom tube right behind Don’s chair…

Finally, Don Rickles realizes that the only way he can escape the madhouse that is Galaxy Broadcasting is via the bomb squad:

and here we are again

So, although last issue was kind of inexplicable, Kirby manages to wrap the storyline up pretty well.  It works as a madcap action-comedy, and it’s a nice change of pace in a story about Black Racers, concentration camps at Disneyland, and mass hysteria.  There’s no denying it’s bizarre, and maybe the jokes could have been a little sharper, but hey: writing and drawing two issues a month.

These plots involving Morgan Edge remind me a little bit of some classic J. Jonah Jameson gags in the early days of the Spider-Man comic.  Way back when, Jameson wasn’t simply content to denounce Spidey: he wanted to defeat him by proxy, so he paid mad scientists to create killer robots, scorpion-men, and fishbowl-headed vigilantes to take the kid out.  Naturally, not only does Spider-Man win, but Jameson suffers a humiliating comeuppance.  (I can never get enough of the Scorpion-comes-after-Jameson storyline.)  Yet Kirby doesn’t humanize Edge with Jameson’s preening buffoonery: Edge is all coldblooded psychopathy.  I wonder whether any of these portrayals owe anything to longtime Marvel publisher (and Stan’s uncle) Martin Goodman–as a family member, Stan could have afforded a humorous wink at Goodman’s sharp business practices that would have been livelihood-threatening to employees like Kirby.

In the letters column this issue, readers grapple with the DNA Project.

The trouble with people like Randy Hiteshaw is that they aren’t privy to the classified documents that would explain how keeping hundreds of microscopic naked Jimmy Olsens in little white underpants is vital to winning the Cold War.

i am going to rationalize you, goody rickles, if it’s the last thing I do

One of the things I love to hate about comics fandom is the seemingly irresistible compulsion to rationalize everything.  Any loose plot thread or inexplicable occurrence must be harmonized with established continuity.  You see this with DC Comics all the time: in the mid-80′s they thought their setting’s history had gotten too complex, so they junked most of it with the Crisis on Infinite Earths.  But ever since then, they’ve had to revise stuff left dangling in the aftermath in Zero Hour and 52 and Final Crisis and the New 52 relaunch.

I generally think these efforts are unnecessary and quixotic. but dang it, even I give into temptation sometimes.

Weird things about Goody Rickles:

• Named after Don Rickles
• Looks exactly like Don Rickles
• Acts like Don Rickles would if Rickles were written by Jack Kirby
• Dresses in a super hero / New Genesis style costume with a big zero on the chest
• When he meets Don Rickles, Don ends up reflexively repeating Goody’s words and body language

This leads to one and only one conclusion: Don Rickles is a robotic “follower” unit as seen in Mister Miracle 2.  Goody is a native of New Genesis, High-Father’s court fool, dispatched to Earth and toiling away at the nerve center of a major metropolitan newspaper to keep an ear open in the aftermath of “The Pact!” (see New Gods #7, coming in like… 12 weeks) or maybe “Himon!” (again, weeks away).

Being a show-off entertainer, Rickles builds himself a follower and sends it off to Hollywood, where it becomes famous.  He names it “Don” as a mock-lordly title.  Due to signal interference from Doctor Bedlam (who employs a similar animate-technology) or perhaps the Overlord device used by Granny Goodness (one of Goody’s relatives?), Don Rickles starts operating independently and forgets its true nature.

Goody, meanwhile, stays in character like Edgar in King Lear.  The minute he suspects Inter-Gang involvement at Galaxy, he bursts in on Morgan Edge and harasses him for an investigatory assignment.  He tries to steer Kent and Jimmy away from the dimension-trap, and is heartbroken when Kent disregards his warning and seemingly dies.  Once he’s been booby-trapped with pyro-granulate, Goody makes a beeline to Morgan Edge, hoping the crisis will blow Edge’s cover and force Darkseid’s network to reveal itself.  Goody Rickles: unsung champion of the Life Equation. 

Well, I’ve wasted my morning!  Jeez, comics….

kirbsday: the paranoid pill!

It’s still Thursday somewhere, right?

Mister Miracle #3 is a bit like last time: an eerie challenger from Apokolips dares Scott Free to face an inescapable trap.  Doctor Bedlam isn’t as frightfully archetypal as Granny Goodness, but he ain’t bad.

Here’s the deal with Doctor Bedlam:

He takes interior decoration very seriously…

He can project his consciousness into those silver furniture-mover robots…

And he has the super power to know Scott Free’s phone number without dialing directory assistance.

“And now to my task!–To subjugate and break the spirit of that young rebel who dared to reject the powers that rule his world–and the master I serve!  The great Darkseid himself!”

That “and” makes it sound like the powers that rule Scott’s world also rule Darkseid.  I don’t know if that’s the intention.  Reading too much into Kirby’s grammar–is probably a mistake!!

radio bedlam animates the anti-life follower

Let me blither for a quick second about the Doctor Bedlam concept.

I love it that this super villain is basically a state of mind: anybody can become Doctor Bedlam if they’re thinking the wrong thoughts.  (Doctor Doom has a similar power.)

Check out the themes going on with Apokolips, though.  In Forever People #3, “Life vs. Anti-Life,” Glorious Godfrey is using a supersonic pipe organ to obliterate critical thinking skills and lull people into becoming perfectly obedient Justifiers.  We’ve seen in New Gods #2 and Forever People #2 that Darkseid hopes to discover the Anti-Life Equation, the infallible method of destroying free will, by terrorizing the citizenry.  It’s your standard Rise-of-Totalitarian-Dictatorship-by-First-Inducing-Societal-Breakdown stuff, and as we’ve seen repeatedly Kirby endorses that theory in very strong terms.

And now as a direct progression along that axis, you’ve got Doctor Bedlam projecting his brainwaves into the mindless, robotic “animates,” who only exist as extensions of his bodiless will.  For my money, the Doctor Bedlam/animate relationship is the perfect demonstration of what the Anti-Life Equation would actually look like, except starting with a regular human instead of an empty robotic shell.

So here’s a little clue about Scott Free’s origin, too.  He’s been tight-lipped about where he comes from so far, though of course long-time Kirby fans know the deal.  But a hint is that last issue, Scott was messing around with a robot, “my people refer to it as a follower,” which appears to operate on the same principles as the animate-robot here, blindly obeying his psychic impressions.  If this was a deliberate hint, it’s delivered with uncharacteristic subtlety, but I dig it all the same.

(By the way, that expression on Bedlam’s face during the possession sequence reminds me of a similar Kirby character, Psycho-Man.)

shut up and summarize

So dig that.  First, there are formal dueling rules on Apokolips.  When Mister Miracle first sees the paranoid pill, he thinks that Doctor Bedlam is going to sedate him, and is outraged.  “You know the code of combat!  You cannot tranquilize an adversary!  He must be equally aware, to take full advantage of what weapons he possesses!”

While I’m a bit puzzled that a dog-eat-dog world like Apokolips has governing rules for bloodsports, it’s nevertheless a good touch for Mister Miracle as a series.  The deal with Mister Miracle is that he’s a super escape artist.  But that gig requires him to constantly subject himself to super-traps.  Which sort of obliges him to let himself get captured all the time, just like he did with Steel Hand in Mister Miracle #1 by making a bet.  I found it a little strange that a Earthly mobster like Steel Hand would consent to a gentleman’s agreement rather than just hauling him out into the woods and shooting him, but at least with super villains from Apokolips there’s apparently a formal process for these sorts of battles which helps to justify Mister Miracle’s affectations.

Second, it’s simply a cool idea for a trap.  As Doctor Bedlam says, “no metal, no gimmickry, no medieval chan or link for you, my boy!  My world is of the mind!”  The super hero has to fight his way past an army of ordinary people driven berserk.  It kind of reminds me of the whole “we want Barrabas!” bit, where the common people torment and destroy their would-be savior.

Yet even though Doctor Bedlam has forsworn any crude physical restraints, somehow Mister Miracle winds up inside a trunk…

Wrapped up in chains and ropes…

And then thrown down a stairwell straight out of Vertigo.  Cool shot, though–you don’t often get a sense of depth in comic books.  TO BE CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE!!!

what else is there to say?

Not  whole lot more about this particular issue.  But let’s take small step backward.

The Fourth World Saga lasted about two years of bi-monthly publication–11 issues in each of the three main series.  A couple more of the monthly Jimmy Olsen title, and a few haphazard Mister Miracles once the other titles had been cancelled.  So we’re now about a quarter of the way into the aborted epic.

What we’ve got, basically, is a trio of titles with extremely strong thematic links, and some looser links via some shared setting elements like Darkseid, Mother Box, and Inter-Gang.  The Jimmy Olsen issues don’t feel quite as strongly connected thematically, but then it’s an on-going series with Kirby jumping on late in the game.  Main themes so far revolve around non-conformity, mass craziness, totalitarianism, and (very lightly so far) parenthood.

We’re also deep enough in that the series are beginning to look and feel different.  A Mister Miracle story begins with a stunt rehearsal, interrupted by the arrival of a super villain out of Scott’s past who challenges him to a match; Mister Miracle cheats death, sometimes literally, with the aid of Mother Box.  New Gods opens with cosmic portents, before downshifting to Orion seething for battle before he launches the Astro-Force to protect his simpering Earthlings.  The Forever People features the title characters reacting to quaint Earth customs, sometimes oblivious to our resentment, heartbreak, or danger, but when they deduce that Darkseid’s around they tag in the Infinity Man.  And Jimmy Olsen these days seems to involve Superman showing Jimmy yet another gee-willikers unsettling aspect of the DNA Project, when Simyan and Mokkari try to wreck everything via rampaging mutants.

I’m being very reductionist here, which isn’t fair to the broader ambitions of Kirby’s project, but I’m highlighting these plot formulas for a reason: things will change up pretty soon.  I don’t know whether that’s due to editorial insistence, reader reaction, Kirby’s long-time intent, or just his restlessness taking the series into new directions.  But we’re at the end of the first act, and all of the major characters and their agendas are known to us.

kirbsday: the guardian fights again!

Well, somehow I got through the Black Racer; I can get through Jimmy Olsen #139 too.

Plot: Jimmy Olsen, Superman, and the Guardian finally leave the DNA Project.  (The Newsboy Legion is quarantined for medical reasons, but slink out anyway.)  Olsen and Clark Kent confront media magnate Morgan Edge, but are diverted into an Inter-Gang trap: Clark gets shanghaied into outer space, while Jimmy and the Guardian only have 24 hours to live!

But you will forgive me if that is not the chief interest in this, the debut of . . . Goody Rickles!

Yes.  It is Don Rickles.  As a super hero.  But with a different first name.  The past is a foreign country!

tell me there is a world where this makes perfect sense

According to Kirby’s then-assistant, Mark Evanier, he and his fellow assistant Steve Sherman were kicking around ideas for subplots and incidental gags in the Fourth World books, and somebody suggested, “Hey, what if Don Rickles met Superman?” as a brief throw-away incident.  Apparently someone at DC marketing loved the idea and insisted that it become the focus of the story, for media tie-in’s.  (Rickles’s star in Hollywood had been rising throughout the late 60′s with numerous appearances on Johnny Carson, and about six months after this story was published had his own sit-com.)  Except DC didn’t do any cross-promotion and neither did Rickles’s people.  So you’ve just got this comic book sitting out there, all alone, like its creator was some kind of crazy person…

So it turns out that Goody Rickles is a Don Rickles look-a-like working at the Daily Planet‘s parent company who is apparently insane.

Morgan Edge, who was hoping to sign the real Don Rickles to some contracts, decides there’s no other option but to murder Goody so that he won’t muck up the contractual negotiations: “The solution is obvious!  This man must be killed!“  (Murder appears to be Morgan Edge’s answer to everything.)  So he sends Goody on a suicide mission to investigate an Inter-Gang UFO.  He sends Jimmy and Clark along too.

Except they get jumped by goons, and the UFO instead vanishes with Clark inside, to Goody’s total befuddlement…

And the others are taken prisoners by Inter-Gang underboss Ugly Mannheim…

Who feeds them a meal laced with “pyro-granulate,” a poison which will cause people to spontaneously combust in 24 hours.  (This is not meant to give Eric ideas about new poisons in the Glantri campaign.)

they do things differently there

Last issue, Superman saved Metropolis from nuclear annihilation by incinerating a litter of tragically mutated Four-Armed Terrors.  This issue, Goody Rickles.

There’s always been absurdity in Kirby’s work.  Sometimes it’s the crazy pulp adventure absurdity of the Savage Land in the midst of Antarctica.  Or the “it must have made sense in his mind, and I’ll go along with it” absurdity of the Black Racer or Flipper-Dipper.  But Kirby doesn’t usually try for slapstick guffaws.  I’m not sure it works 100%, but it’s funnier than most of the Newsboy Legion stuff, and it’s also nice to see some room for silliness in the middle of Kirby’s sturm und drang about the Twilight of the Gods.  Goody Rickles is the Tom Bombadil of the Fourth World Saga.

What’s interesting about Goody, of course, is that he’s a super hero parody by the guy who will be forever linked with grandiloquent super heroics.  Not the first parody either: Kirby and Simon had created a parody comic in the 1950′s, The Fighting American, which didn’t take off, and arguably the Fantastic Four and the Hulk in their earliest incarnations were, if not parodies, then pretty serious deconstructions of the super hero concept.

Anyway, here we’ve got Goody, a put-upon news reporter who is so bullied and misled that he’s evidently become deranged, and puts on a crazy costume not to fight injustice but to star in a movie that will never get made.  He’s a clueless, obsequious, abrasive schlemiel.  It’s not Watchmen, but it’s also not 1986, either.

jimmy, what happened to you?  you used to be cool (briefly)

Ha ha!  My teenage friends have been infected by microorganisms at the secret government biological warfare lab!  Also, they won’t be reporting this scandalous story!  And I stole their super-car!

The boys escape quarantine with the aid of one of the miniaturized “Scrapper troopers” from issue #136.

Darn right!  I don’t know enough DC continuity, but it would be awesome if the post-Crisis Flippa-Dippa became Black Manta.

kirbsday: death is the black racer

W
T
F

Okay, look, here’s the plot of this one, just to get it out of the way:

Orion gets a new pair of clothes from his friends who keep formally introducing themselves all the time, but he feels sad because he’s all ugly and stuff.  He and his pet, Dave “Dave Lincoln” Lincoln, find the members of Inter-Gang who had abducted people to Apokolips.  With the help of Mother Box, Orion and Dave stop their plot to destroy all communication devices in the city.  The End.

Along the way, the Black Racer shows up.  And God almighty, what to say?

Well.

So.

In his afterword to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus vol. 1, Kirby’s apprentice Mark Evanier notes that the Black Racer was originally a character who had nothing to do with the Fourth World.  Just some doodle sitting in the pile, maybe to feature in his own series someday.  DC’s then-publisher Carmine Infantino (who illustrated plenty of formative Flash stories) asked Kirby to throw in some brand-new characters in each issue of the Fourth World stuff, thinking it would be good for sales.  So, Kirby re-wrote New Gods #3 to debut the Black Racer.

Therefore running throughout the Orion plot of this issue there’s also a Black Racer plot, which doesn’t intersect especially well.

Just as the Black Racer is about to kill Orion’s friend Lightray, the science-god Metron diverts him to Earth, where he encounters a blaxploitation gunfight between members of Inter-Gang.  Moved by the death-wish of Willie Walker, a totally paralyzed and bedridden Vietnam vet, the Black Racer’s spirit possesses him, and Willie becomes a marauding spirit of doom who chases down and torments one of the gunmen.  The End (Again).

There are at least two things going on here.  One thing is, “This visual makes no sense.”

Many years prior I had learned about the Black Racer from Rovin’s Encyclopedia of Superheroes, which had a text description of the guy but no pictures.  I’m like, “Okay, cool: a guy in an all-black lycra wet-suit type of thing that professional skiers wear, with a big red ski helmet, and some red trim.”  And then I finally picked up a copy of this issue and I’m like, “Armor?!  Cape?!”

Obviously the Silver Surfer is another crazy cosmic dude flying around on something that doesn’t normally fly.  But the Silver Surfer is an extremely elegant design: basically a naked, hairless guy standing on an oval, and all of it sleek and shiny.  The Black Racer is a lot more complex visually–the skis, the ski poles, the cape, the high collar, the kooky helmet, the jarring mix of primary colors.  It kind of reminds me of the early design for the Black Panther.

The other thing is, “This concept makes no sense.”

The idea seems to be that since Walker is trapped in a kind of living prison, he is granted limitless power as an undead grim reaper . . . on skis.

And then it turns out that the Black Racer is some sort of composite entity with many different hosts–sort of like bi-location or something–and is a hit-man, excuse me “messenger,” for the Source, which is usually linked to the benevolent society of New Genesis.  We never see the Source itself, only the weird “moving hand” that writes letters of flame on High-Father’s wall.  The Black Racer, although a proxy, appears to be the Source at its most active.

For a messenger of the all-important Source, the Black Racer doesn’t do a great job of articulating his mandate.  He shows up out of the blue picking on Lightray for reasons we’re never told.  When he arrives on Earth, he does nothing to save the life of a helpless snitch when Sugar-Man, an Inter-Gang hitman, takes him out.  But when Sugar-Man threatens the helpless Willie Walker…

…the Black Racer saves Walker’s life, disfigures Sugar-Man, and then does his whole “take my hand” thing.  Once Willie becomes the Black Racer, he hunts down the half-blind Sugar-Man, activates the bomb Sugar-Man’s carrying with his mystic ski pole, and then sends both Sugar-Man and the bomb careening into the sky to explode.  Why?  As vengeance for killing the snitch, and if so then why not protect the snitch in the first place?  Or is it for attempting to kill Willie, but if so then why wait to kill Sugar-Man?  Or is it for being involved with Inter-Gang in the first place, but if so then why not go after his accomplices?  And if Willie wanted to die in the first place, why did the Black Racer get involved?

At some point you just gotta throw up your hands and say, “Dude, fuck it.  Death is the Black Racer.”  Near as I can figure, there’s something that sets this dude off about fearing death: he will find you and reunite you with the Source.  If you’re at peace with death, or even yearn for it after great suffering, you’ll be recompensed.

should I feel uneasy when a black character is referred to as “Black _______”?

Probably.  Sugar-Man is a pretty bad stereotype.  And when the Black Racer first appears over the city, and observes Sugar-Man’s gunfight in the ghetto, he remarks, “There, below–a place of black men!  Those who fight to live–others who risk my presence!”  That sure sounds pretty racist.  It’s not like any other mainstream comics were any better (“Sweet Christmas!”), but come on.

I will say one thing for the Black Racer, though: for better or worse this is one of the most unique visuals, and most unique concepts, in all of super comics.

what about orion?

yeah, so in this scene Orion is getting dressed in the nice clothes the Earthmen bought for him, and decides to have a soliloquy:

and he’s like, let me sneak a peek at my real face for a second:

Back in New Gods #1 we are told that Orion is the son of Darkseid of Apokolips, but Orion himself doesn’t know that.  In fact, Orion seems to think he’s some hideous, inexplicable New Genesis mutant freak.  That self-loathing is why he’s pissed off all the time, and what makes him their society’s most powerful warrior.  Thanks for not explaining the guy’s origin to himself, High-Father!  I mean sure the guy’s been tormented all his life by questions he cannot answer, but at least your secrecy gives you a berserker warrior to do all of your society’s dirty work.

No wait–God damn it, they just bought you those clothes!  Don’t go vaporizing them the minute someone asks a stupid question!

 

 

kirbsday: the big boom!!

Last time: a Four-Armed Terror hellbent on devouring the DNA Project’s atomic power plant trapped Jimmy Olsen, the Newsboy Legion, and Superman in some weird energy-egg thing, and now continues its march toward meltdown.

I confess that the Jimmy Olsen series has entertained me less and less after an incredible start, but this is a great issue.  Kirby piles on the tension, partially by showing the supporting cast’s panicky reactions to the news about the impending meltdown.

From this headlong, desperate charge (which, by the way, is yet another five pages of splash panels–but because it’s a typical action comic sequence it’s less noticeable than last issue’s psychedelic concert), Kirby cuts to the kids trapped inside the egg…

(eh, no great pictures of this: they’re trapped in an egg, believe me)

And then a terrific shot of the Four-Armed Terror.

Now, the Four-Armed Terror as a concept doesn’t do a whole lot for me.  He’s a prototype mutant bred to survive the aftermath of a nuclear war, which is cool.  And he eats radiation, which is cool.  But he’s basically just an ugly dude with four arms who’s really hungry.  He’s no Granny Goodness, let alone a Darkseid.  But he looks totally boss, and all he says is “Arruk!” over and over, which I guess is what I want in a monster, even if he doesn’t really seem like a worthy foe of Superman.

The Terror digs toward the nuclear plant, while Jimmy and Superman escape the egg via comic book science:

The logic here is pretty impeccable.

1. The Four-Armed Terror created the egg via electrical discharges
2. The egg’s density must be controlled by static electricity
3. Rubbing your hands together creates static electricity rather than blisters (contradicting an experiment I performed when I was 8 years old)
4. If Superman does something, it is like magic

I really wish there was a super hero game that worked like this.  “Aquaman, those guys just robbed a bank, and all you can do is talk to fish!  We hate you!”  “Bah!  Behold the power of Aquaman!  I can mentally control fish!  All humans, including bank robbers, evolved from fish!  I will psionically dominate the primitive Fish Cortex of their brains, causing the robbers to flop helplessly on the ground, gasping for water.”  The more logical fallacies involved in your proposal, the more tokens it costs to pull off.

Anyway, Superman escapes and goes chasing after the monster.  Meanwhile…

Holy hell, the Daily Planet!  In a Jimmy Olsen comic no less!  We haven’t seen the Daily Planet since issue 134, four months ago in publishing time, but probably only a couple of days in fiction.  Here, Terry Dean, a character from before Kirby took over, stops by to get news about Jimmy from his boss, Perry White.  White remarks that his own boss, Morgan Edge, is a “‘smiling cobra‘ . . . [who] assigned Jimmy to drop out of sight . . .  Edge is ruthless!  And he’s not above gambling with human life!”

It’s really nice to get a breather from the DNA Project and see regular people again, even if, as 365 Days of Kirby theorizes, this page was simply an editorial mandate to include more familiar elements from the series.

The art fixes here strike me as totally unwarranted.  For Superman and Jimmy, I can almost understand: Kirby’s faces aren’t in the style of long-running Superman artists Curt Swan and Wayne Boring, and maybe don’t match how DC wanted to market the book.  But who’s buying the book for Perry White?  Or for Terry Dean, who showed up only in issue #127?

Cut to the soldiers and former Newsboys closing in…

Cut to Simyan and Mokkari sending in more Four-Armed Terrors from their hatchery…

Cut to Morgan Edge, alerted that all of Metropolis will detonate in a nuclear holocaust in less than five minutes, now flees via the helipad while assuring his employees that everything’s fine…

Cut to a hug firefight as Superman, the soldiers, and the Terrors all converges at the nuclear reactor.  The soldiers and the Golden Guardian try to hold back the monsters, while Superman throws the reactor into a tunnel the Project had been drilling toward the center of the Earth.

These are, presumably, heavily genetically modified human beings–quite possibly clones of Jimmy Olsen–committing mass suicide because Superman threw away their only food supply.  But hey, nothing else was working.

The reactor explodes far underground, Metropolis is saved, and everybody is happy except for Jimmy and the Newsboys, who got left behind in the egg yolk and missed the whole fight, and are grumpy about it in classic sit-com fashion.

a few comments

With this issue, we’re six months into Jack Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen.  Kirby got off to a jaw-dropping start by recasting Jimmy Olsen as bullheaded hellraiser determined to get a story at all costs–more like a pulp adventure hero than a sidekick.  And there was one heck of a story to get: the Whiz Wagon, Wild Area, the Mountain of Judgment, the DNA Project, and an invasion from Apokolips.  And with each issue the supporting cast expanded.

Yet over the last few issues I felt this series slowing down a bit.  It’s like when the Whiz Wagon landed at the Project, Jimmy Olsen lost his narrative momentum.

The supporting cast now includes the young Newsboys, the original Newsboys, the Golden Guardian, Dubbilex, Yango and the Outsiders, Jude and the Hairies, a cluster of clones, Simyan and Mokkari, Morgan Edge, and the monster of the month.  This issue also folds in some old-timers like Perry White and Terry Dean.  It’s a huge cast, but few of the characters are mutually antagonistic and none of them seem to have internal conflicts.  So you’ve got a setting under siege, populated with characters who make a strong first impression but then have little to say.  Sometimes literally: Tommy has barely said a word in six months.

(Sometimes you want a static character.  But if you want a character who’s in an uneasy spot, give her goals which are irreconcilable, or desires that run contrary to her best interests.)

All of which is to say that this issue, which is almost nothing but a race-against-time action thriller, really helps to juice up the series a bit, and it’s interesting to check out Kirby’s pacing techniques here.

1. The first page splash recaps the situation.
2. The next four splash pages work to impart a sense of urgency and enormous scale.  It’s interesting: last issue, I felt that 5 pages for a drug trip felt a little over-long, like Kirby was padding things out a bit.  That may have been entirely due to the quality of the reproduction: in smudgy black & white, the trip doesn’t look exciting or fun.  Maybe in color it would have had an otherworldly aspect to it.  Anyway: here the extra space helps to emphasize the emergency mobilization of a military base.
3. Right as we’re rushing along with the soldiers, smash cut to the gooey, inescapble egg.  This sudden shift from reckless headlong movement to what’s basically a tarpit helps to sell the kids’ frustration, interspersed with images as the Four-Armed Terror wreaks destruction on the base.
4. All throughout this issue, Kirby’s narrator captions keep chanting out: “Eleven minutes to doomsday… Nine minutes to doomsday… ” etc. etc.  This refrain, coupled with images of all these characters racing around frantically, helps to sell that we’re on the cusp of disaster.
5. The sudden cuts to the Daily Planet–first with Perry and Terry, and then with Morgan Edge–theoretically halt the flow, but sort of work as palate cleansers and reminding us exactly what’s at stake if Metropolis explodes.  The bit with Morgan Edge is particularly well done: we’re reminded of the countdown clock (5 minutes), plus we get some excellently loathsome characterization of Edge.  It’s not enough he’d send six children to their deaths to blow up the Hairies, but he’s casually lying, in an especially smarmy way, to people just moments from death.
6. After each of the Daily Planet interludes, the stakes escalate as more soldiers and monsters show up.
7. There’s finally a big ol’ scene where practically everybody is on stage panicking at once, which is a stage play technique but effective here too.
8. Superman saves the day not by force, but by desperately outwitting his enemies as the clock reaches zero-hour.  Admittedly, the previously unmentioned tunnels down to the center of the earth are a kind of annoying deus ex machina, but apparently they featured in another Superman story appearing that month, so it’s not totally out of the blue.

at last his identity is revealed!

I am obsessed with whoever answers the phone at Inter-Gang.  People are always like, “Hello, is this Inter-Gang?  Put me through to your Insidious Scheme division” or, “Operator, I want to talk to Joey Exit-Wounds in Wetwork & Removals.  Can you give me his extension?”  Who is this operator?  Is the Evil Factory’s cloned version of Gabby, as I theorized a few weeks ago?  Have I gone completely insane?

No . . . it’s some weird dude with sunglasses and a cigar who looks like he’s never smiled in his whole life.  He looks sort of worried, in fact.  (Probably because the whole city is about to explode.)  I guess working for a super-villain is, in the end, just a job like everything else.