Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Off to Comic Land and Other Bits


I checked back in with Google+ after a few week absence and punched back out tonight. I cannot take it. While some very cool people hang out there, it's impossible to get separation from the noise. People were talking about "drama" and rape threats via e-mail and my head almost popped. I feel as though the same blog traumas have simply migrated over to Google+, which is basically Facebook for nerds.

    Instead, I have been reading comic books and writing about them. If print zines are a great way to jettison oneself from the "community",  then doing the comic book thing is a stellar way to escape. I am digging going to the shop, finding a book, bringing it home, devouring it, then writing about it. It's this crazy, self-contained activity. I also love that there are six shops within 20 minutes of my house and the people who run them are so cool.

    I have a wee comic blog up. I'm sharing it because I figure that a few of you zine readers might be into comic books. If so, I can hassle you with questions as I have no idea what I am doing in comic land. It's all pretty bewildering to me. As far as I can tell, there are, like, 10 billion comic titles and I have no freaking clue what the difference among the 12 (or maybe there are 20) Batman comics are.

    At any rate, check out Christian Reads Comics if you are so inclined.

     As far as the zine goes, I have stat blocks to write and Jay is working on a cover and two interior illos.I think we'll see a mailing date of mid-July. The line-up for no. 12 is as follows: Full Moon Rebellion - the second article set in Whitaker Cove; A Study of Preternatural Skeletal Structures - a follow-up piece to "Thursday Night Fight Club" which ran in no. 6; Part V of the Vampire: The Requiem series.

     For what it's worth, this will be the last issue that will contain Vampire: TR material. Moving into the second year of the zine, I want to tighten the focus. Instead of following my whim in regard to content, I think we'll see, say, three series that anchor almost every issue.

     In the running are the Hex/Haldane series powered by D&D, the new Whitaker Cove series and...I am feeling super heroic these days. I am kicking around Mutants and Masterminds. I am thinking about a super villainess named Loviatar who terrorizes the decent folks of Pacific City. Man, that could be fun. "Your icy whip and plunging neckline cannot beguile me, foul temptress!" Old school fantasy, modern/supernatural crunch and supers. How sick of a mix is that?

6 comments:

  1. Sounds pretty cool to me. The only way it would be better is if it were Villains & Vigilantes instead of M&M. (If I were there, you'd be seeing a lopsided grin and a winking eye on my face.)

    I keep trying to think of new features to add on to my blog. Maybe a Traveller series, since that is so much on my mind these days. I've already got V&V, old game reviews, and a couple of others, a semi-regular patron encounter or the like might do well.

    Just thinking out loud, I guess.

    My copy of Loviatar arrived today. Looks good on a quick skim. I'll be reading it later in more detail. Love the new series. The opening entry has got that Garcia-Marquez kind of feel to it.

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    1. I was hoping you'd dig the new series. It feels like there are very few GURPS fans out there these days. I love the system. I just like to tinker, fiddle and to make attempts at modelling my own reality.

      Lt. McCollough was intended to be a Call of Cthulhu character, but I ended up going in a different direction.

      It's funny that you mention V&V. That game has been sitting on my bedside table for a few days now. I really like that game. I have fond memories of my friends - playing heroic versions of themselves - foiling bank robberies and other crimes in our San Diego suburb.

      The decision to go with M&M is not yet set in stone. If I read the game and loathe it, I will switch. The recommendation came from two bloggers I really like, so we'll see. One of them is Lowell Francis, who writes the Age of Ravens blog and wrote the new Project Superman comics.

      Like you, I dig Traveller. I wish I would have played it more. I have barely any experience with it, but it always looked fun. :)

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    2. I still love GURPS (in fact, I just bought the new Pyramid and a couple of other things), but I don't know if I'm going to play it on its own again any time soon. Of course, it will depend on what gaming groups I find myself involved with, but for my own preferences, I've been moving away from point-buy systems in general and back toward random-roll. I'm also extremely unhappy (still!) with the decision to not offer print versions of the new products, despite the proliferation of POD services out there. Still, like you say, it is highly amenable to the sort of tinkering that is almost second nature to me now.

      I remember when you were talking about doing a Call of Cthulhu thing. I guessed that was what happened with it. I love it when ideas evolve like that. It's fun to look at how and why they change.

      I actually don't know much about M&M. It would be interesting to find out more. But I still love the ease with which I can make a character for V&V. When I feel like I haven't updated in too long, all I have to do is roll a few dice and write up some crap about psychological trauma. (Kidding! Though that is kinda becoming a little too much of a trope for my metahumans. I should do something about that).

      Crikey, I've got at least two Traveller articles in mind for the blog, not counting stuff to use in play! I want to write a personal history of my own involvement with the game, and an introduction to how to play. That is, a look at the basic concepts that drive play in that game as opposed to others. Come to think of it, I should do that for other games, like Top Secret, too. Hmm…

      One of the reasons I love "talking" with you is that when I do, the ideas start pouring out of my keyboard!

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  2. Google+ can be quite tiring, but there is a lot of interesting stuff there now as well. Here is a Google+ pro tip. Assuming you are just using Google+ to talk to other D&D people, make two circles: one for people who are enjoyable to read, and one for people who are too chatty, too argumentative, etc. When you view the later circle on the Goolge+ website, there should be a slider in the top right of the page that indicates how much information from that circle should show up in your "All Circles" stream. You can slide it so nothing shows up. So now you can read stuff from people you like, but share stuff to everyone interested in D&D.

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    1. This is more or less what I do, also. I have an "interesting to read circle" which is a subset of the general RPG circle. They function sort of like an inbox and outbox, as I make my RPG posts so anyone in either circle can read them.

      (Sorry about the deleted comments. I can't seem to type today.)

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    2. Thanks for the advice, guys. I will put it to good use.

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