Category: Science Fiction and Fantasy

Weirdworld

Updated to mention Alex Niño’s name. And emphasize it.
Weirdworld was a fantasy comic series created by prolific writer Doug Moench and fantasy/horror artist Mike Ploog, who apparently also created the look for the character Ghost Rider and was closely associated with the Marvel title Werewolf By Night. Plenty of other talented artists worked on it, including John Buscema, P. Craig Russel and Tom Palmer and especially Alex Niño, who elevated Ploog’s layouts to art.

Marvel Premiere 38

The Weirdworld stories were published in a variety of different publications, starting with a short story in a comic magazine called Marvel Super Action #1 (the cover featured the Punisher…), followed by a full-length story in the rotating-feature comic Marvel Premiere (issue 38, September 1977). This is where I first came across it. There was a 3-part story published in gorgeous full, air-brushed color across 3 issues of Marvel Super Special, and then bits published here and there, in Epic magazine and Marvel Fanfare. But I think the first story I encountered was unequaled, probably because the combination of art by Mike Ploog and Alex Niño.

Now, at the time I saw that first story, I didn’t know about Lord of the Rings, although I might have read The Hobbit. I did read Conan comics, so barbarian swordsmen and evil wizards were part of my 9-year old (!) vocabulary. But this was probably the most amazing fantasy story I ever saw. Tyndall of Klarn, a child-like elf swordsman, ventures into “The Heart of Darkness”, a patch of sunlit land surrounded by a circular realm of darkness. In the skeleton of a giant beached whale, he finds a huge egg, which hatches, and a beautiful elf girl emerges, quickly wrapping herself in a cobweb bikini. Both Tyndall and this girl (his instant love) don’t really know where they come from or what they really are, but they set off to find out.
Except they get snatched by these wonderful wax monsters, working for a Sea Hag-inspired old wizard (that’s the Sea Hag from Popeye). The wizard points out that Klarn is actually a ring-shaped island floating directly overhead (it’s what casts the shadows forming the lands of darkness), and sends Tyndall up there, rocketing into the air on a flying patch of sod, to slay a dragon.

This story fascinated my brothers and me. When I mentioned it to my brother, he told me that it probably isn’t as good as I remember. Well, I dug that issue up recently, and I think it is. The writing isn’t that great (my sister, who insisted on getting a look at it because she also had fond memories, complained that when she looked at it as a kid, before she could read, the dialogue she made up in her head was better. Reading the actual story, she complains the characters come across as really dumb). But the story, and particularly the art that Mike Ploog and awesome inker Alex Niño use to tell it, each panel echoing fantasy art classic compositions, from Frazetta to Disney, each shadow and sketchy horizon hiding new mysteries and secrets, is pure magic.

I should scan my poor, coverless copy, before it falls apart.

Weirdworld Super Special

Links: Mike Ploog Art, more Mike Ploog Art (good scans) and an interview with Mike Ploog. An article about Alex Niño and a page about him with more art and links. Some covers and links from here. Or maybe here, in French.

Roleplaying Science Fiction and Fantasy

Keith Parkinson Dies

Keith Parkinson, fantasy artist, died of complications from leukemia on October 26, four days after his 47th birthday.

Parkinson was one of the most impressive artists working at TSR, and did some very pretty covers for Dragon magazine and Dungeons & Dragons books, which etched themselves subliminally into my growing gamer brain. I spent an evening with Aya once going over her “Art of Dungeons & Dragons” book while she talked about the different artists, their skills and technical shortcomings, and what the paintings meant for her as a gamer and an artist. This work, a lot of it journeyman efforts by young and still developing artists, talented but sometimes technically limited, really means something to the kids who consume it: the chicks in chainmail, the hooded and cloaked knights, the dragons, the dark forests and campfires, the distant mountains on the horizon – these are the things and places where we were escaping to in our heads.

And I’m thinking “only 10 years older than me?”

Blather long Resources Science Fiction and Fantasy

Jack Cohen today at Weizmann

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date October 27, 2005

Prof. Jack Cohen (alien designer to the stars, co-author of The Science of Discworld and other books) is giving an lecture at the Weizmann institute tomorrow this morning at 11:00; if you can follow a very smart Brit talking very fast about science, it’s worth coming to hear him.

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ICon by proxy

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date October 23, 2005

You can’t see and do everything in a con (let alone in a festival), and ICon was no exception (actually, like most cons, it had the infuriating tendency to schedule lots of interesting events on top of each other. And then I went and registered to run games over these time-slots). But I love the buzz of being surrounded by geeks enjoying geek things, and I get a kick out of hearing someone raving about a cool game or lecture about Russian self-castrating monks or Trek sexuality or even Tryscer’s jokes.

So I got a bit of a kick to get home after ICon, turn on the Internet, and read that Abigail went to see Serenity and that Aya got to hang and bond with Tim Powers. Well, Aya’s Powers’ story actually verges on a case where a person seems to have so much more fun than you that it makes you (well, me) go green. But damn, happiness.

And for Aya, a link from Abigail that might be interesting: a new Doctor Who spin-off starring Captain Jack Harkness has been announced, called Torchwood.

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ICon tally

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date October 23, 2005

Here’s my summary of everything I did in the con, excluding meals and saying “Hi” to people.

Day 1– Opening ceremony (crowded, technical suckage, and boy, Tal Guttman was born to be a rabbi. Also, Tryscer lost weight), a Tim Powers lecture (wondered around missing half of it before I realized it was going on; it seemed to consist of all the funny anecdotes and clever remarks I found in interviews online, but the live delivery is excellent), a Tim and Serena Powers dinner (actually, sort of dinner with Joe Brown. There were annoying problems with the tickets/coupons/whatever. Powerses are charming, funny, and entertaining, and have more anecdotes up their sleeves), missed Serenity (again) because they were out of tickets (Bo called me to see if I could get him in, but in the end got in thanks to K and her connections with the usher). Spent all night writing characters for the Transhuman Space game.

Day 2 – Gave a lecture/workshop about roleplaying; actually had attentive people in the audience, although there was disappointment there was no demo section. Looked for a place to continue writing my character sheets, and ended up sitting in the corner of the Cinematheque. Then went to the Tim Powers press conference, where Kitaro asked too many questions. Stayed in the room to finish writing those character sheets and missed the Tim Powers / Carmel Bergman duel in the colloseum.
Ran my Transhuman Space game (should prep the game more – it ended up being a simple mission type thing, but timewas short anyway), dragged Bo and friend to Primer (I nodded off during crucial exposition, I suspect, although I think it was confusing as it is. Anyway, a good film that makes you think). Went home and slept instead of writing charcter sheets.

Day 3 – Tim Powers writing workshop: I realized two days before (Vered mentioned it during the dinner) that you need to bring something to read, but was too busy writing characters; brought my laptop with my unfinished five-year-old stories, and although I had the chance, passed on reading the first page of any. Powers was again clever and very good. I wish I’d asked him about how he outlines, but I skipped the relevant talk (day 2, a Powers lecture on writing) because I was running games. Ran my Brooklyn Jewish gangsters Unknown Armies game, with 4 registered players + a refugee from Dicky’s cancelled intro game. Not enough time, and again I should have prepped harder, but got some good moments – the refugee actually gave me the most fun, with both some nice touches of threatening gangster behaviour and a freaked-out by the supernatural performance latter on (the player was expecting a straight game. Those newbies, with their innocent unawareness of lasersharking…). Did have one terrific horror scene where the assassin creeps into the dark bedroom of his victim, lighting his way with a match, pulls the blanket off the bed and sees that what looked like a person is in fact a measuring dummy. He pulls back, and then the dummy suddenly bolts upright – and the match burns out…
Went to the Israeli SF&F society meeting, then to see the “Who is the Hero?” play, which is basically “Choose Your Own Adventure: The Musical”, except without songs (they did have dancing, and a lovely choreographed battle scene at the end). Worth seeing because of the charismatic and excellent Gorodin, Greif and Genkin, a lovely and graceful dancer whose surname also starts with G, and the guy playing “Tree Number 2”. Then found Bo, waiting outside the Cinematheque to see the Rocky pre-show, and dragged him to the closing ceremonies (more Tal Guttman and Tryscer; the nerd-baiting humor is begining to grate with me). Got dragged in return by Bo back to Rocky once that was over, dragged Bo out of Rocky after 7 minutes, and we went to eat.

I planned to go see Free Enterprise on Friday, but chose to sleep instead. Wanted to drag Bo to Gamerz later, but the Corky MySQL Upgrade Encoding Crisis sucked away the rest of my day (Sweden should be collated from orbit).