Super Movie Monday – Hancock, Part 2

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Tony Frazier



Last week, we discussed the first half of Hancock, the 2008 superhero spoof starring Will Smith, Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron. And as the first half was ending, Smith was just finishing his transition from thoroughly unpleasant, drunken super-asshole to a well-meaning hero trying just a bit too hard to be polite while still maintaining an edge. It was funny and entertaining, with appealing performances by Smith and Bateman.

Oh, BTW, I don’t really do spoiler warnings as a general rule, but I’m going to throw one out here just because there’s a HUGE twist coming up. If you don’t want to know before you watch the movie for yourself, don’t click “more.” Continue reading →

Posted in Super Movie Monday | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Out of the Vault – Comics Greatest World: Golden City

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Tony Frazier


Last week, we started discussing “Comics Greatest World,” Dark Horse’s 1993 four-month, 16-issue miniseries intended to launch their new superhero continuity. Month one had featured Arcadia, a grim’n’gritty corner of the universe with horror-themed heroes.

Month 2 went in the opposite direction. Set in the gleaming Golden City, the second month’s set of titles was Rebel, Mecha, Titan, and Catalyst: Agents of Change. Like the Arcadia stories, one author wrote all four issues–in this case, Barbara Kesel–and like the Arcadia stories, the issues generally had bigger name artists on the covers than the interiors. The covers were provided by–in order of appearance–Jerry Ordway, Dave Johnson and Karl Story, Walt Simonson, and George Perez.

In the first issue, Rebel, drawn by Tim Hamilton and Gary Martin, we’re introduced to both the title character and the city. Golden City is a controlled community, run by a mysterious superwoman named Grace. She has built Golden City to be a little corner of paradise. You must be invited to live there. Grace is building a select community with a handpicked group of supers.

One of those (or I should say, two of those) is Rebel, a flying strongman who can absorb energy from other supers. Rebel has a rather unique fashion sense.

The gimmick is that Rebel is actually twins–one serious, one happy-go-lucky–who trade the power back and forth between them. The action kicks off when a dangerous super-criminal named Warmaker escapes from Grace’s jail. Rebel tries to stop the escapee, but has little success.

Luckily, he’s not alone. First he’s joined by a woman with metallic purple skin whose touch is acidic or something and whose name we never learn, and then, in the next issue, he is joined by Mecha.

Mecha, drawn by Chuck Wojtkiewicz and John Lowe, is about Art Thomason, who has somehow acquired a unique piece of alien technology that he doesn’t quite understand. He’s using it to fight crime, anyway, though, and has come to Golden City (gasp) uninvited, because it’s where all the cool heroes hang out.

He joins in on the fight with Warmaker, who is so incredibly powerful that you kind of wonder how they ever managed to capture him in the first place. We discover that Mecha can actually change the shape of his armor depending on what he needs it to do (though he doesn’t know how he does it), and that the aliens from the previous storyline are very interested in him.

The heretic they speak of seems to be the alien scientist who continues to appear in the page one prologue in each issue (the first page of each issue forms its own parallel story).

The alien has built an experimental facility under White Sands, and BY INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE, just happens to be conducting a delicate experiment at the same time that the Americans conduct a nuclear test just above. Disaster strikes.

In the next issue, Titan, drawn by Brian Apthorp and Jimmy Palmiotti, another of Golden City’s heroes joins in the fight. He is Titan, incredibly strong and incredibly arrogant. On the positive side, his vanity does not keep him from noticing all the little people. He seems sincerely devoted to keeping them safe.

However, as the fight goes on it seems as if even Titan’s mighty strength, combined with Rebel’s power, and Mecha’s, and Purple Girl’s, can’t seem to bring Warmaker down. Although maybe Titan would be more effective if Apthorp would concentrate nearly as much on rendering the fight as he does on rendering Titan’s buttocks.

I mean, those are some detailed cheeks.

Warmaker’s down, but not out, and the fight continues. Grace decides it’s time to take a personal hand in the battle, which leads to the last Golden City issue, Catalyst: Agents of Change, drawn by Jan Duursema, Damon Willis and Rick Magyar. Every different city in Comics’ Greatest World had one group title in it. Arcadia had Pit Bulls, and Golden City has Catalyst, which it appears will be the name of the select super-group Grace has surrounded herself with.

Should mention at this point that several characters have started to speculate on Grace’s motivations by now. A mysterious fellow named Madison, who seems to be Grace’s assistant or advisor or something, is suspicious about why Grace agreed to imprison Warmaker in Golden City in the first place, and also wonders if Grace might have arranged for his breakout. Rebel is also curious about how Warmaker broke out and finds himself questioning Grace’s intentions as well.

And well they should, because once Grace joins the fight, the first thing she does is offer Warmaker a job.

Warmaker refuses, so Grace takes him down. But he manages to last long enough to kill Grace’s ace-in-the-hole, a healer named Rhapsody. Grace then decides it’s time to move on to the next phase of her plan, which is to secede Golden City from the United States.

And that was it for Golden City. If you wanted to find out the ramifications of the secession, you would have to wait for the regular Catalyst book to come out. In the meantime, the next set of issues would introduce Steel Harbor, including what would the most famous character of the entire franchise.

Next week…

Posted in Out of the Vault | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Down With OPB – Unforgettable

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Tony Frazier

Fellow Codex author Eric James Stone is currently serializing his novel Unforgettable online, adding one chapter a week, like I am (link goes to the first chapter). Unlike me, however, he has the entire thing available as an ebook if you’re not in the mood to wait.

I’ve read the three chapters currently available, and I’m excited to see where it goes. The plot: Nat Morgan has lived his life with an unusual talent… or curse. No one can remember him for more than a minute. If he is out of their sight for more than 60 seconds, they forget everything about him, forget that there even is a him. This makes everything in life harder, but is also an ideal ability for a spy.

If you like science fiction and spy stories, give Unforgettable a try.

ETA: Eric has stopped serializing hte novel for the best possible reasons, e.g. possible representation and interest from Hollywood. And, BTW, he is now a Nebula winner, so that’s cool, too.

Posted in cool stuff | Leave a comment

Extra #23 – Secret Origin of Bugs

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Tony Frazier

It surprises me sometimes how many of the characters in this story got their start as gaming characters. I’ve gone into the origins of Digger in some depth on They Stole Frazier’s Brain, but to recap briefly: he was originally created as a character for the superhero role-playing game, Champions. Rev, Whiz, Angar, Psicho, and X-Tron 12, Space Robot (originally known as Astron 12, Space Robot) also got their starts as Champions characters.

But before them all came Bugs. Bugs has a somewhat similar origin, but in keeping with his current role as Digger’s antagonist, he was originally generated (like Dominatrix and Deathdealer) as a character for the other big superhero roleplaying game of the early 80’s (I don’t count Superhero 2044 or the short-lived Superworld), Villains and Vigilantes.

That’s him on the right, in an illustration I did for a proposed comic book in the early 80’s.  Notice that his costume is yellow rather than white as described in the novel. I was worried about using plain white for the costume, because you might have print-through on the cheap pulp paper they were using for comics. Yellow was a smarter choice than white at the time.

I had originally avoided Champions in favor of Villains and Vigilantes, which seemed to have a more accessible design, being closer to Dungeons and Dragons, with which I was familiar. But one problem with V&V was that you couldn’t seem to ever develop characters as powerful as those in the comics.

The problem was starting characteristics. You would roll a strength between 3 and 18 (normal human range), and then you might get a power like Enhanced Strength. But even if you rolled really well, you would still only end up with a character about as strong as Captain America or something. Nothing close to Superman or even Spider-Man. And the rules were vague about advancement. It seemed that even with level advancement, you wouldn’t get any stronger, just more skilled. So superheroes could never be truly super.

But then along came Bill Willingham’s supplementary adventure, Death Duel with the Destroyers. And for one of the characters, Behemoth, he did something truly eye-opening. V&V had some open-ended powers which weren’t actually defined beyond saying, “The player and Game Master should work together to come up with something cool here.” One of those powers was called Mutant Power, and in Behemoth’s case, it was defined as doubling the final strength score, after adding the effects of two Heightened Strength.

So one afternoon, I decided to generate some V&V NPC’s for my campaign, and for one character, my dice were suddenly red-hot. I rolled a character with all high natural stats and 5 powers without a single dog in the bunch:Invulnerability, Regeneration, Flight, Animal/Plant Powers and Mutant Power.

Animal/Plant Powers was sort of like wishing for more wishes, because it would give you from 1-6 more powers. I rolled a 5, and taking a hint from Behemoth, I chose Heightened Strength, Heightened Senses, Insect Control (Ants), Natural Weaponry, and a special animal power – Ant Strength, basically taking the strength score and multiplying it by 5 because he had the proportional strength of an ant. For Mutant Power, I gave him the Hellblast, basically a focused nuclear detonation.

To justify all this, I came up with an origin story which involved him being an American spy in the Soviet Union (I rolled him up during the Cold War) who was caught and left to die by being buried up to his neck in an anthill out in the middle of nowhere just before a nuclear test. The radiation from the explosion cause the entire colony of ants to fuse into his body, protecting him from the radiation and giving him their strength. He also had the ability to cause a nuclear blast himself as a last resort; however, because it would also cause an EMP, there would be no photo or video evidence, so no one would realize that he had this extra capability.

Although I created him to be an NPC in my Villains and Vigilantes campaign, I never ended up using him. But I liked the character so much, I kept recycling him for other projects. First, he was a villain in my superhero cycle of Comix screenplays. When I decided not to pursue that project, I slotted him into a possible Astro comic as the villain. That never went very far, either.

I finally came up with the idea of using him as my Phantom Stranger in my late 80’s Champions campaign. Since he was so unbelievably powerful, he would only observe fights from afar, not participating since no one could offer him any real challenge. He would only get involved if someone turned out to be so dominating as to offer him a real fight (I used this to save my players from a beatdown at the hands of Firewing one week, for instance).

After I lost my job at the Daily Oklahoman in 1988, I decided to try my hand at writing a novel, and Bugs was the character I decided to base my novel around. Of course, I had to ditch the comics-appropriate, but silly-in-a-novel anthill origin, and instead settled on this idea that God and the Devil made a bet.

I got two-thirds of the way through the first draft and bogged down as he teamed up with Thor to fight his way through my own superpowered version of Dante’s Inferno. The backstory you read in last week’s chapter was the way the novel was supposed to turn out, had I finished it.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Posted in Extras | 1 Comment

Super Movie Monday – Hancock, Part 1

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Tony Frazier



So for the next little while, I’m going to cover superheroes who are original to the screen and did not appear in comics first. This week and next, I’ll cover two stories featuring Will Smith as a superhero named Hancock.

Problem is, the two stories make up one seriously flawed film. Continue reading →

Posted in Super Movie Monday | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Out of the Vault – Comics Greatest World: Arcadia

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Tony Frazier

In 1993, Dark Horse Comics gave birth to what was perhaps the most unnecessary shared superhero universe ever, grandiosely titled “Comics’ Greatest World.” It was introduced in an elaborate four-month rollout that saw a different title published each week, centered on four cities– Arcadia, Golden City, Steel Harbor and the Vortex–with four titles each for a total of 16 weeks.

The first month was devoted to Arcadia, a grim’n’gritty city that played host to X, the Pit Bulls, Ghost, and Monster. All four issues were scripted by Jerry Prosser.

The series started with X, a mysterious cross between Batman and Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. His issue featured a cover by fan favorite Frank Miller, with interior art by Chris Warner, who had been a Dark Horse regular. X is a mysterious figure who is killing corrupt city officials and crime bosses connected to the waterfront. Oh, and he dresses like a professional wrestler.

Looks like it would be hard to stand up when you’re squatting on your cape like that. Note that in addition to the big X on his forehead, the laces on his boots and gloves and girdle all form numerous tiny red x‘s as well. Symbol overkill.

As X is fleeing from the police after offing another victim, he is observed by two mysterious, invisible aliens hunting a mysterious heretic.
They apparently have some connection to a UFO that buried itself in the Nevada desert in the 40’s, as told in a one-page prologue to each issue. The story is minimal, understandable given the demands of the weekly release format and the low $1.00 price, but still, it felt more like one of those promotional inserts you would occasionally find in established comics, pitching a new series, and less like a standalone title worth paying money for.

Still, since I liked much of what Dark Horse did (and since they were just about the only U.S. publisher left whose comics I still read–I was mostly reading manga, with a few DC titles in the mix), I stuck with Comics’ Greatest World to the end of the introductory series.

Week 2 brought the Pit Bulls, a lame story illustrated by Joe Phillips and John Dell that features an odd group of mercenaries or a special cop tactical team or something. In fact, we never find out exactly what they are supposed to be within the context of the story. We only know that they are trained fighters with savage aspects to their personalities, which the narration continually and pedantically compares to the pack instincts of dogs..

Boring costumes, boring characters. No hook. As you can see, they fight X as he’s fleeing the cops from last issue.

Week 3 brought Ghost, the most successful and longest-running of the CGW characters, even to the point of having crossover adventures with Hellboy and Batgirl.

The reasons why she was the most successful are not hard to figure out. She was the most cheesecakey of the CGW characters in a time when cheescake was forming its own sub-genre, and the art on her books was provided by fan fave Adam Hughes (who also did that cover to Chassis #1 that prompted me to buy the book as discussed last week). Oh yeah, and her character is actually provided with a hook: she’s trying to solve her own murder.

As in the previous book, X is still on the run, but it appears he is also running at something, rather than simply away from the cops. He goes after a thug named Bradstreet, who is also being observed by a mysterious phantom woman in a white hood.

When X bursts through a window to kill the man, the Ghost intervenes.


The observing alien is shocked to discover that, not only can Ghost see him, but she can also hurt him. Unfortunately, she can’t stop X from killing the man she wanted to question.

As the cops close in, X flees from this issue into the final Arcadia title, Monster. The Monster is something like a cross between Marvel’s Hulk and Man-Thing. We don’t learn anything of his origins or nature in the brief story illustrated in pedestrian fashion by Derek Thompson and Ande Parks. He’s a huge, nearly mindless red brute covered with wicked-looking spikes. He lives in a sewer, because light hurts his eyes and people are scared of him (naturally). He is lonely and seeking companionship, but at the same time, he’s super-strong and easily angered.

So when someone like X reacts to the Monster’s sudden approach in the way that people normally would, they get the expected negative result.

When the cops arrive, the Monster retreats into a darkened building and the cops pursue him in. Unfortunately, the building happens to have been booby-trapped with tons of explosives by X, who blows up the building.

And you’re probably noticing a theme by now. Arcadia appears to be the horror-themed corner of the CGW superhero world. X is an unstoppable serial killer, and Ghost and Monster are self-explanatory. Which leaves open the question of what niche the Pit Bulls were supposed to fill. I mean, from their dog-like natures, are they supposed to be like werewolves or what?

Whatever. In the B plot, the alien wounded by Ghost dies, leading the remaining one to teleport away with his comrade’s body to resume the search elsewhere later, which leads into the next four-issue arc: Golden City.

Next week.

Posted in Out of the Vault | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

State of the Story – The End Is In Sight

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Tony Frazier

For those of you who may think that the story has slowed down a little too much in the weeks since the destruction of the Phortress, good news. The big climax is fast approaching and will begin before the end of the month.

And when I say “big,” I mean “big.” Under current projections, the climax will resolve and the current novel will end on June 24th. Yeah, that’s right. June.

That’s a lot of climax.

So what does that mean for the website? I don’t know. That’s something I have to figure out between now and July 1. On the one hand, I really like what I’ve built here, and I have a lot of ideas I’d like to try to make it even better, but I can’t really put any of those ideas into motion unless the site starts paying for itself. And on the other hand, it would be cheaper to drop this site and consolidate everything back on They Stole Frazier’s Brain, which is still receiving more traffic than this site is. But Blogger doesn’t give me as many neat features as WordPress does.

In the meantime, I’m trying to get myself worked ahead a little on the site again, so I can start editing the Digger anthology. I want to bring it out by June 1st at the latest. Here’s the proposed Table of Contents:

“Out of His League” – a Digger story first published in Daikaiju 3: Giant Monsters vs. the World

“Astromonkeys!” – Digger’s first published story from Baen’s Universe

“Double-Secret Weapon” – Another Digger story published in Baen’s Universe

“The Depths of Lame” – an unpublished Digger tale

“Anti-Mustard” – an unpublished Digger tale

“No Love For the Middleman” – a story featuring Digger’s former teammate first published at Strange Horizons

“Hong Kong Rendezvous” – an unpublished superhero story featuring an ape-man and an angel

I’m also contemplating adding another story featuring Caveat Maledictor and a certain unnamed guest star which I haven’t even written yet, as well as a horror-themed superhero story with no relation to the Digger-verse.

If you have any comments, make ’em now. If it turns into an actual conversation, I’ll add a topic to the completely unused forum.

Oh, and if you haven’t visited the forums and want to know some behind the scenes details of where the elements of the story got their start, you should drop by and read what few posts there are.

Posted in posts | Leave a comment

Extra #22 – New Digger Wallpaper

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Tony Frazier

An experiment that didn’t quite work out the way I intended, but it’s still interesting. It’s sized for 1024×768. If for some reason you want to use this and need a different resolution, let me know.

Click to embiggen then right click to save.

Posted in Extras | Leave a comment

Super Movie Monday – Barbarella

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Tony Frazier



I mentioned last week that Starcrash was influenced by Barbarella, the French comic-turned-campy sci-fi movie. Looking back at Barbarella, the influence may be less extensive than I remembered, but it is still there. Both feature gorgeous heroines clad in very little, both are confusing and episodic, both involve a quest to alien planets to find a lost someone with knowledge of a mysterious superweapon, and both climax with the heroine watching men fighting on a viewscreen.

The big difference is, Starcrash wants to be an action film, while Barbarella is a sex comedy. The film stars Jane Fonda and was released in 1968, the same year as Kubrick’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey. I mention this because it’s rare nowadays to see a science-fiction film that was not influenced by 2001 in some way, but Barbarella clearly was not.

The film starts with Continue reading →

Posted in Super Movie Monday | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Out of the Vault – Chassis

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Tony Frazier

This is one of those books picked up as an experiment. In the mid-90’s, there was a boom in cheesecake books featuring hot babes as main characters, because hot babes on the cover sell books and the best excuse for having a hot babe on the cover is to make her the main character.

Chassis was one such book, published in 1996 by Millenium, an independent publisher out of Rhode Island. How long ago was it? On the inside front cover, the authors ask for feedback via email at ChassisMcB@aol.com.

Chassis is the story of Chassis McBain, a beautiful redheaded race driver. At least, we’re supposed to believe she’s beautiful, based on stuff like this…

See, if they want to put her in cheesecake ads, she must be beautiful. BTW, the reason she’s so angry is that she only wants to sponsor products that tie in with racing, because she’s got Principles.

The twist in the concept is that in this retro-future alternate 1940’s, the cars are rocket cars that race in the sky. And unlike Danica Patrick, Chassis actually wins.

One of her fellow drivers asks Chassis out to dinner, but she is planning to have dinner with her fiance, whom she just loooovvves. He doesn’t show, though, and we soon learn that he is avoiding her in order to keep her safe, because he’s mixed up in some deal involving a hallucinatory drug that causes people to experience their worst fears. Oh, and the drug just happened to be in the perfume sample that Chassis’s agent wanted her to try, because …

Well, that part never made sense. Anyway, heartbroken Chassis decides to go out with the hunky fellow driver she turned down before and we finally get to see the cheesecake we’ve been waiting all issue to see.

Yeah, I’m disappointed, too. But at least there’s danger in the final panel, as Chassis tries the drug-tainted perfume sample that thugs have been killing folks all over town to recover.

Chassis suffered from only two problems: the art and the writing. Which sounds like a flip dismissal, but seriously, it’s true. You can see in the panels above that William O’Neill’s art is too angular and sharp-edged to do justice to a cheescake character like Chassis.

And Darryl Taylor’s scripting didn’t make the characters pop. Chassis was supposedly principled,  but spent the entire book either pissed off or depressed, mainly over little things like an unappealing sponsorship offer (which was actually an attempt to kill her, but still…) and a missed dinner. We learned nothing about her past, not even whether Chassis was a nickname or her given name. There was nothing actually interesting about her, except (literally) her “chassis,” and that wasn’t well-drawn enough to be all that interesting, either.

So if it was no good, why did I buy it? Mainly on the strength of that Adam Hughes cover. I figured that if he liked it enough to add his talent to the cover, it must be okay. And I liked the zoot-suited, big-fins-on-the-cars, retro-future vibe. But the actual story just wasn’t interesting.

So I never bought issue #2. Chassis lasted for 3 issues with Millenium, then has continued to kick around with various publishers with different creative teams in subsequent years, including Hurricane Comics (3 issues), Image Comics (5 issues), and Bluewater Comics, which announced in 2008 that it would “re-lunch” the series (it doesn’t appear to have ever published any actual issues, though). There was even an announcement at the 2005 Comicon that Ben Burtt, legendary soundman, would be directing a Chassis movie. I have no idea if that’s still in the works.

So it must have gotten better. Maybe I should have stuck with it.

Posted in Out of the Vault | Tagged | Leave a comment