A rather good article by Michael Chabon [The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), Wonder Boys (1995), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007)] on superhero costumes. Secret Skin, An essay in unitard theory.

As many of you are probably aware, Hero Games has decided to cease publication of Digital Hero - I guess the sales just weren't there. This is shame as Digital Hero put out a lot of nifty Hero content that would have been unlikely to have been otherwise seen. Hopefully, at some point and time, Hero Games will resurrect it's e-'zine.

I've been playing around with some of the new wigets that Amazon has created for it's Affiliates program. If you rest your mouse-cursor over some of the links showing up in this page you might see is floating box appear with a link to an a book that Amazon thinks is relevant to the highlighted text. It's kind of a neat (from my perspective) but it's not without flaws. I've already noticed a few "odd" selections popping up that I'm hoping I can correct with a little bit of fine tuning. The oddest one I've seen so far is the link it created for Champions Universe which leads to, instead of the book Hero Games has produced, something entitled How I Became Champion of the Universe - a kids book about wrestling. Go figure. (Even odder, it doesn't seem to pick out that actual book title for linkage)

I'l keep working with the widget to see if I can get more accurate results out of it. In the meantime, here a bunch of not quite random words just to see what pops up: Hero System, Hero Games, Champions, Fantasy Hero, Star Hero, Pulp Hero, Role-Playing Game, RPG, Superhero, Spoon!, Heroes, Dice, Cosmic Ju-Ju.

They (whoever "they" are) say that no news is good news. Unfortunately, No news is also dull. So, what's been going on in my gaming end of the gaming world? Not much really, although (wonder of wonders) I've once again got a regular group together and am currently running Fantasy Hero (yay!).

I've taken an odd approach to this Fantasy Hero campaign, based on the idea that (prepare yourself Herophiles, I'm about to utter a blasphemy) there are some good things in classic Dungeons & Dragons (by classic, I mean anything prior to 3rd edition). So, with this thought in mind, I cobbled together a few campaign guidelines designed to encourage my players to build characters that are reminiscent of the classic D&D archetypes and have started running sessions based heavily upon (ie. lifted nearly in whole) some of the great old xD&D modules. I'm having a blast (and the players seem to be having fun as well). I do, however, wonder if any of my players have recognized what I'm doing yet (even though I've not told the players what it is, the PCs are currently fighting their way through one of the most famous "dungeons" even published). I guess eventually one of them will mention something.

I was visiting some family in Atlanta this weekend and, just 'cause I felt like it, took a drive around town (much to the concern of my mother in-law who kept calling me to warn me away from the "bad" parts of town). While wandering I came across Oxford Comics & Games. What a treasure trove! One of the best stocked game stores I've ever seen. Picked up copies of Tuala Morn (very cool, and something I think I can get my wife interested in), The Ultimate Skill (a weighty tome), and The Ultimate Mentalist (haven't read this one yet).

Quick Review

Tuala Morn is Hero Games' latest campaign setting for Fantasy Hero. If Turakian Age just didn't trip your switch this might be the setting for you. Where Turakian Age was (very deliberately) a generic fantasy setting similar to what you'd expect from "that other fantasy game," Tuala Morn is anything but generic. Tuala Morn is a fictional Celtic setting
with lots of "not quite ancient Ireland" bit in it. Cool new profession packages add to the overall feel, and the magic system is very different from those presented in previous FH settings.
Highly recommended for even the most casual fans of Celtic-like campaigns.

Whaaah! Ok, I think I've now gotten over the trauma caused by Google buying Blogger.com - but it was rough (the system got confused when trying to migrate my old account over to my new "google" account - which wasn't new as I've had a google login for a long time. Oh well. It's over now.

Ok, first off, I know this isn't really about role playing games - it's about a comic book publisher. In my defense though I, like many super hero RPGers, crib a lot of ideas from popular super hero comics - particaularly thoe from the "Big Two" (that's Marvel Comics and DC Comics). Now, if you are a long time Champions player, you probably view the Champions Universe as being influenced by the comics of these two companies, particularly Marvel (which makes sense as Marvel was really at the top of their game when the original creators of Champions would have gotten their intial big exposure to super hero comics. There, that should tie this article more or less back to the primary topic of this site- now, on with my rant...

As may be obvious to anyone who trolls around this site, I am a long time reader of comics. I still read them, and still enjoy them - up to a point. Where is that point? The steaming pile of offal that Mark Millar has excreted out through Marvel's rectum this year called Civil War. Now, some of you may be out of the comic loop and are wondering, "What's Civil War"? Well, I'll tell you.

Civil War was a Marvel Comics big crossover event for this year (they had to do one, after all, DC did). The premise of the Civil War storyline is the Superhuman Registration Act being signed into law in the United States and the enjoying division that this creates within the super hero population. The tag line for the series is Whose Side Are You On?

As a litery concept it's not necessarily horrible. It's been used before, to varying degrees of success in stories such as Watchman and The Incredibles. Of course, in these exmaples it was done by writers who actually had talent and showed some love of the medium that they were working in. I've have never read a mainstream comic that featured so many characters acting "out of character" based on their previous published histories. Even worse, the ending was just horrible:

• Captain America is in jail.
  
• Tony Stark runs shield.
  
• The Pro-Registration side won because of collateral damage.

Although I say bad things about Mark Millar - I think the root cause is Joe Quesada (current Editor-in-Chief of Marvel). I really don't think he "gets" the character's he's publishing. Check this out...

NRAMA: We’re covered some topics with series editor Tom Brevoort, and will ask some of the same questions in our post-game wrap-up with Mark Millar next week …In your view , if the crowd of pedestrians didn't jump him, does Captain America deliver that last blow to Tony, yes or no? And either way, why?

JQ: No, I don’t think he does. I think he ends up feeling shameful that the thought crosses his mind and I think you can see a touch of that when he surrenders. I believe that that’s one of the reasons the crowd and its feelings really hit home with Cap. Not only does he look across the destroyed landscape of NYC but he looks within himself and sees what he himself almost did to another hero. It was Stamford all over again only this time Nitro was the edge of Cap’s shield.

He thinks cap is the bad guy. Marvel (and Joe Q) are showing themselves pretty much incapable of learning. The Iron Age of comics is over. People didn't really like it, and comic sales plumeted because of it. DC figured this out, and seems to be trying to fix thier issues. Marvel just seems to be be digging themselves deeper into the "grim and gritty for the sole sake of being grim and gritty" quagmire that (IMO) is one of the biggest barriers to potential new comic readers right.

Heck, I'm tired now - and I will soon (no doubt) be receiving nasty emails from people who tought that Civil War was "the bestest thing ever". If you want a full breakdown of the so called plot of Civil War I recommend the Wikipedia artcle.