Plan Nine...remake?

Plan 9 Teaser Trailer from Darkstone Entertainment on Vimeo.

What can anyone say? WHY does come to mind...

More details at Monster Island News, the Official Plan 9 site, and Darkstone Entertainment.

Keeping the World Strange

If you are a fan of Warren Ellis, click here to find out about the Year of Ellis.
Everyone else can just skip it.

Go Go Godzilla

Legendary Pictures Meets Godzilla

Legendary Pictures has the rights to make a brand new 3-D Godzilla movie, which they have named Godzilla 2012. In honor of Godzilla's impending re-visioning for American audiences, we thought that it'd be fun to interview one of the leading experts on all things Godzilla, the one and only Chris Nigro, creator and curator of The Godzilla Saga website.

OSH: Chris, could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your interest in Godzilla?

Chris N.: I have been a lifelong G-fan who grew up loving all aspects of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy, and my interest in the dai kaiju eiga sub-genre of sci-fi was always a major part of this. I never failed to catch G-films and other kaiju-films--Mothra, Gamera, the one-shot wonders like Reptilicus and Gorgo, you name it--whenever they were rerun on TV, I made a point to catch them. My grandmother often used to watch these kaiju-films with me, and her minor interest in this sub-genre spiked as a result of having a grandson who always asked her to sit and watch these great movies with him (to this day, we continue to have movie days together, and just the other day we sat and watched Iron Man 2 together). Also, my grandmother worked as a secretary for local branches of film companies who would do business with the smaller independent companies who used to release G-films in the U.S., so she would always let me know when these movies would be released and would often bring me press books and other memorabilia that she acquired from the industry. She took me to see some of these movies on a few occasions herself, while on other occasions I went with my mother. This interest in dai kaiju eiga never died down, but remained in full force as I "matured" (a pretty loaded word when applied to me, haha!), and ultimately the advent of the Internet gave me the opportunity to at last share my own thoughts with the world on everything about Godzilla. As a result of this opportunity and desire, The Godzilla Saga was born.

Anyone who has any interest in contacting me about Godzilla, be it to comment on any of my material on the site or to submit to my guest section, can contact me at g_saga_admin(at)fastmail(dot)us.

OSH: So you've been a Godzilla fan for a while now...

Chris N.: The first G-films I ever saw were from the era of the late '60s when he had a rather ambiguous relationship with the human race, along with the often less than fondly remembered movies from the '70s decade where he was depicted as a bona fide giant super-hero.

OSH: Godzilla as a Super Hero--that seems to be a pretty strange notion, at first, but it really did take off in the Seventies. Godzilla went from destroying cities to saving or protecting the human race. It's an intriguing concept, certainly.

Chris N.: I not only thought the concept of gigantic monsters that were capable of obliterating entire cities with a single day's rampage was a fantastic concept that really gave me story ideas and inspired me creatively, but I identified with Godzilla during his decade long 'super-hero' phase for the same reason I identified and also had a lifelong fascination with fictitious larger-than-life heroes like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and Captain America. They represented all that I wanted to be, the ultimate potential of myself and the entire human race, and the then super-heroic Godzilla (and Gamera) increased the already large scale of these heroics a hundredfold.

OSH: But Godzilla wasn't always a Super Hero...

Chris N.: When I finally saw the first G-film, I was surprised at the way Godzilla was depicted within, as I finally learned that he was initially intended to represent something far different than an intelligent and heroic defender of humanity with a human-like sense of moral justice. He was, as Tomiyuka Tanaka, the late co-creator of Godzilla and producer of the first film and the Showa and Heisei Series that branched out from it, once described him, "the sacred beast of the apocalypse." He was destruction incarnate, a seemingly mindless if cunning engine of extraordinary destruction, nature's volatile revenge on the human race for unleashing the atomic bomb on the world, a modern personification of Biblical monsters of incredible destructive power like Leviathan and Behemoth. In fact, if you read the Biblical descriptions of those creatures of towering might and majesty, they are so similar to Godzilla and others of his 20th century pedigree that it can be cogently said that dai kaiju had antecedents in legend just as popular cinematic monsters like werewolves and vampires were born out of rich legends in folklore, and man-made monsters like the Frankenstein Monster , who likewise had folkloric forebears with the legends of the Golem and homunculi. Godzilla and other kaiju are Leviathan updated for the modern world. This is what he was initially intended to represent, a force of nature that with every rampage makes it clear to human beings that they are not as immune to the wrath of nature as they like to think, and that they are not the most powerful living things on the planet, an incredible and deadly lesson in humility for our species.

OSH: That's one of the most intriguing things about Godzilla--how he has morphed over time from the embodiment of nuclear devastation to a protector-figure and back again to a gargantuan engine of destruction. The archetype that Godzilla expresses isn't totally nailed-down just yet. It's still a bit ambiguous, much like people's attitudes towards nuclear power...

Chris N.: After Godzilla gradually evolved into a super-hero character, the Showa Series met an ignominious end, and when he finally returned to the big screen, and to the comic book medium via Dark Horse and then IDW Publishing, his original nature as a creature who breeds devastation with every step he takes was restored, seemingly forever. Sometimes he may still battle and defeat other kaiju that present a threat to humanity, but only because these other creatures wandered into his territory, or attacked him first. Humans and their entire vast infrastructure mean no more to him in his classic incarnation than the ant in the field means to humans when they are going about their regular business. Godzilla is a clear protest to the misuse of nuclear power, as his attacks on humanity would have been far less frequent had the presence of nuclear facilities not been as numerous. The Japanese know this all too well, as no other culture on Earth currently can, and Godzilla was clearly intended in his classic incarnation to personify the dreaded atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended WWII. It ended a war, but at what price? Godzilla was initially created to ask that question in a somewhat disguised manner, something the sci-fi genre in general is very good at doing.

OSH: It's not just some guy in a rubber suit stomping on models. There's a lot more going on with Godzilla than just mindless carnage and mayhem.

OSH: You've been working for a while now on a Godzilla Movie Timeline, as well as a Godzilla Event Timeline in addition to your work on the Warrenverse and WNU. Could you tell us a bit about this project? Why three different chronologies? How does this tie into the Wold Newton Universe (WNU)?

Chris N.: Another popular sci-fi concept I have always been fascinated with for as long as I can remember--yet another one with an actual basis in quantum physics--is the idea of alternate timelines, realities both similar and different from each other where multiple versions of various characters can exist independently of each other, with histories that can be an endless amount of variations of a single basic premise that allow for many interpretations of these characters to be built on by different creators without any single version being "right" or 'wrong." In the eternity of the multiverse, all versions of a single character can be depicted by a plethora of different creators, each with their own unique vision building upon the core premise, with all resulting iterations of the character being equally legit in their own way.

In fact, the presence of the Atomic Titan and his Tohoverse crew of dai kaiju on many disparate alternate timelines was made quite clear--and was in fact the very premise of--the third series of G-films produced by Toho, which is often referred to as the Millenium Series (and sometimes the Alternate Reality Series for obvious reasons).

OSH: How will the new Godzilla movie affect the timeline? Is this the 'real' Godzilla or one more alternate universe version?

Chris N.: It can further be conjectured that the upcoming version of Godzilla that will be produced and released by Legendary Pictures will feature a version of the Big G who exists on yet another alternate Earth, distinct from all others seen before. The same can be said for the versions of Godzilla seen in comic book series published through the decades by Marvel, Dark Horse, and IDW, as well as Marc Cerasini's series of prose novels published by Random House in the late 1990s and the various manga published in Japan through the years. And of course, we have the heroic version of Godzilla seen in the Hanna-Barbera animated series from the late 1970s--an episode guide of this series can be found on this part of The Godzilla Saga. There is, of course, the terrific animated series produced two decades later by Centropolis, but like most fans I consider that kaiju to be an entirely different monster despite sharing Godzilla's name.


OSH: Godzilla wasn't the product of centuries of folklore like vampires, werewolves or their ilk. It's a modern, post-atomic monster. The first Godzilla movie appeared in 1954 and it encapsulated a lot of the fears and concerns of the day, but is Godzilla still relevant? Is there still some juice left in the Big G?

Chris N.: Godzilla remains relevant to modern audiences due to the concepts he embodies. The misuse of power and abuse of nature by the powers that be who presently rule the human race are as relevant today as they were in 1954 when the first G-film was produced and released. The same system under which humanity lived then remains intact today, and we still have wars and other conflicts between competing nations, and there are far more nuclear weapons extant in the world today than that which existed at the time the first G-film was released. I think the presence of these literally thousands of nuclear weapons in the world today cause human beings across the globe to suffer nightmares on a level that most of us may not be willing to admit, and Godzilla embodies this nightmare in the collective human psyche that enables us to deal with and face this situation by watching these films without coming right out and discussing it in real world terms, something that makes all of us a bit too uncomfortable. This is what the genre of sci-fi and its 'brother' genre, horror, provide for us, and why they are so important to modern culture. The archetypes expressed in the Bible that I mentioned above remain intact in the human collective psyche today as much as ever before (if you will permit me a Jungian moment). What the classic incarnation of Godzilla represented in 1954 is even more relevant to those of us who live today. This is because the international situation in the world--and the globally based socio-economic system under which we live--has not changed since that time.

Also, there is another thing that hasn't changed since 1954: moviegoers crave action, excitement, and terrible devastation on the big screen as much now as they did then, and what type of character can deliver all of that on the scale that a dai kaiju like Godzilla can? In other words, Godzilla has an inherent coolness factor that is difficult to deny in any decade :-)

OSH: What sort of a future do you envision for Godzilla?

Chris N.: I see continual revivals of Godzilla whenever a new crop of fanboys make their mark on the world and earn the proper credentials to convince Toho to give the Titan of Terror another shot at the silver screen. As I noted above, Godzilla's relevance remains intact; the only thing that puts him into periodic slumber are too many bad ideas for realizing such a great character presented one after the other in continual succession. Nevertheless, the character and the concept behind him are good enough that I am confident that new generations of fanboys turned screenwriters and producers will continue to present fresh interpretations of the character for a long time to come, if not indefinitely.

My ideas for a future Godzilla should look to what made the first film work, look at what the most successful G-films had compared to what the too many failures lacked, take what made him work and interpret these factors to a modern sensibility without losing the essence that is the crux of the character, and translate this all to a big screen project. I understand that a general and wide audience needs to be attracted, but this doesn't mean that the concerns and opinions of the fan base should be ignored or dismissed, because a general audience knows garbage as well as the fan base does, a lesson that a certain Mr. Devlin and Mr. Emmerich learned the hard way.

OSH: What do you think about the idea of a Godzilla RPG?

Chris N.: I think a G-Force RPG could work very well. It would allow the gamers to create characters based upon themselves, with certain desired fantasy skills and attributes tacked on, some from the onset and others earned by surviving long enough and making good decisions (along with a little luck of the dice, of course) as the game progresses, or on successive missions. The gamemaster could create a world threatened by dai kaiju to whatever criteria he/she may desire, and pick and choose which kaiju he/she wants to have emerge from their slumber and present a threat to the world and a challenge to the players. Different kaiju will have different strong points and weaknesses, and the random choice of these kaiju by the gamemaster could very well bring unpredictable and exciting moments for the players, who will have no idea if their particular characters will be more or less effective against any given kaiju chosen by the gamemaster (and he/she will have much to choose from), and which of their chosen weapons or skills will be most effective during any given day's scenario or mission. These RPGs could also present specs for a variety of technological weaponry and mecha, which would include both warships like Atragon and mechanized kaiju like Mechagodzilla and MOGEURA, each of which would likely require the different players' characters to have to earn the right to access and operate by gaining a sufficient amount of experience points determined by a combination of their success (or lack thereof) and the gamemaster's choice, and each of which would have a unique variety of strengths and weaknesses of their own, depending upon which "evil" kaiju they would happen to go up against. These decisions would partly be determined by whatever player was acting in the role of commander for his/her unit of G-Force, and partly based upon which kaiju the gamemaster chose to throw into the mix during any given day's scenario. Of course, mecha-kaiju wouldn't have to be limited to the status of weaponry utilized by the players, since alien forces have sometimes used bionic kaiju of their own to threaten the world, and this could allow certain of these types of kaiju to be directed by the gamemaster against G-Force.

Also, it should be noted that the realm of science and technology need not be slavishly adhered to with the result being that magick and mysticism are entirely dispensed with in the game. Of course, this would depend upon what type of world the individual gamemaster chose to create, but certain dai kaiju--such as Mothra, King Seesar, and Bagan--were of mystical origin, so there could be a G-Force member or two in any given team unit who may have a specialty in the mystic arts. Not all the non-bionic kaiju need to be in an adversarial role to the human race, or even under the constant control of the gamemaster. Certain members of G-Force could, for example, earn sufficient experience points in the mystic arts that they will come across a means of summoning Mothra and using her to battle other kaiju on behalf of the human race, or even to psychically convince other errant kaiju like Battra or Bagan to join her under certain circumstances--but possibly only if a certain (presumably high) number of experience points are earned. Not only that, but bionic kaiju controlled by malevolent alien forces under the direction of the gamemaster could, under certain circumstances, be captured by members of G-Force and reprogrammed to serve humanity against the "evil" kaiju or any malevolent alien forces the gamemaster may choose to utilize in any given game. Of course, it's also possible that the gamemaster may reserve the right to unexpectedly and periodically throw a mechanical "glitch" in the programming of a mecha-kaiju under the control of G-Force that will cause the giant robotic creature to temporarily run amuck, and lives may be lost and a lot of destruction can occur before the G-Force team manages to either regain control of the out of control mecha-kaiju or be forced to successfully destroy it in self-defense. The gamemaster could plan an epic battle that takes the G-Force players all across the globe, or limit the action to a few areas, depending upon his/her whims on any particular day. The gamemaster could even decide whether or not he/she wants certain factors such as invading alien races who use kaiju as part of their arsenal to be a factor of their individual world (or universe, as the case may be).

As you can see, the possibilities of a Godzilla-based RPG can be endless.

OSH: Wow. No kidding. What you describe would be a great RPG!

To wrap things up, for now, what would you say are the Three Coolest Things about Godzilla?

Chris N.:

1) He duly represents the extreme folly of power without wisdom or moral restraint, and thus serves as a powerful archetypal cautionary tale to those who view films featuring his classic incarnation.

2) His prominent presence in fantasy fiction makes it clear that the human race does indeed feel that it can be humbled and thus should never overstep its boundaries.

3) He is extremely cool, and the smashing of buildings is an awesome spectacle to observe onscreen.

OSH: Thanks for doing this interview with us and we look forward to talking to you some more about the Warrenverse in a future post. Anyone interested in Godzilla should definitely take a look at Chris' The Godzilla Saga website--there is a lot of great stuff there, including a Godzilla Glossary, a page dedicated to Godzilla TV Commercials, a very nice Godzilla picture gallery, and a Godzilla Magazine Cover Gallery--as well as loads of links and other fun stuff.

Atlas Update 1.5

While we were up along the North Shore of Lake Superior for our five-year anniversary, we spent a few pleasant hours in Duluth.  We took a walk along Superior and discovered a nice antique/rock shop called Fragments of History, split a yummy lake trout appetizer with some local beer at the Dubh Linn Irish Pub, and spent a couple of hours digging through the comics-bins at two of the local comic shops.  Dragon Port Games was having a twenty-five-cent sale in their backroom and we were able to scrounge-up a few issues of Magnus (mostly the Valiant version) and some other things that we seemed to have missed the first-time around like the Warren Ellis-scripted and very subversively odd Doktor Sleepless.  Dragon Port Games was advertising their upcoming RPG Auction, which might be fun.  We have a bunch of older RPG-stuff we're interested in unloading, like a first-edition boxed-set of Striker miniatures rules for Traveler, as well as a few other tid-bits.  It was a nice shop, very roomy and spacious and well set-up for running miniatures games, which they do regularly and often.  The other Comics Shop was called Collector's Connection, and it was also very nice, clean and well-lit...not at all like some such establishments.  The staff were friendly, helpful, and very knowledgeable...and able to handle obnoxious kids better than most school bus drivers.  We were able to find a nice copy of Wulf: The Barbarian (Atlas Comics), and some back issues of Dynamite's Buck Rogers and Project Superpowers which looks fantastic, but then how do you go wrong with Alex Ross doing the covers and re-design of these older, obscure public domain super heroes?

Speaking of Wulf The Barbarian of old Atlas Comics fame, apparently Wulf is going to be the third Atlas character to get re-imagined/revised/re-booted from Ardden Entertainment.  CBR has an updated article on Atlas at the New York Comic Con, and their plans for Phoenix from which I quote:

"We're rebooting it," Deneen said of the series inspired by the original Atlas title. "It's the same central premise where this guy is abducted by aliens, experimented on and then finds out their plot. The story is what happens from there. We're not changing that premise, but we take it to the next level. 35 years later we've seen a lot of these movies and comics – 'Independence Day' and 'War of the Worlds' and any number of alien comics since the original 'Phoenix.' So how do we take the original concept and twist it? We've added things we feel have never been done before. It's a new twist on the abducted by aliens and on the run story that Jim and I are really excited about."

Nicely done.  In 75 words or less Mr. Deneen manages to put most reservations about how they're approaching this character to rest and sparks a bit of much-needed interest at the same time.  As I said previously, the older version of Phoenix is a real train-wreck of a title that was in dire need of a re-boot before it appeared the first-time.  We're looking forward to finally seeing the 12-page Zero-Issue, perhaps sometime this coming weekend.  I still think that Jack Hawksmoor of Stormwatch / The Authority was/is about as great a re-boot of the core premise of the Phoenix, that of the alien abduction and cyber/nano-modification of their bodies, but of course, Phoenix wasn't ever made into The God of Cities.  He was more like an astronaut suffering PTSD with issues surrounding the source of his powers...and some nasty benefactors who wanted to destroy humanity.  That part could be really played around with quite a bit, and it is encouraging that they're sticking to that aspect of the character.  What he needs is a sidekick like R. Lee Ermery: a drill sargeant type to cut down the emo-detours into mamby-pamby land.

It is interesting that when I first heard about the re-launch of Phoenix and Grim Ghost, that it was emphatically stated that this was not a re-launch of Atlas, just a testing of the waters to see if these two characters would still have any traction in the marketplace.  Well, now it's a full-fledged relaunch, of sorts.  Again, CBR has an article on the Relaunch of Atlas, which they're characterizing as a Come Back.  Newsarama also has a rather nice in-depth interview with Brendan Deneen and Jason Goodman of Ardden Entertainment that clears the air and sets things straight fairly clearly. 

Like Mr. Goodman says:

“We have 28 titles and hundreds of characters imagined by some of the greatest minds in the industry," Goodman said in the release. "They will now find a new life in comics, television, and movies. We are thrilled to finally bring these great characters back for the world to enjoy."

Scoop, a free newsletter for collectors, offers a whole bunch of Atlas material that is well worth checking out.

It's a nice blend of nostalgia and marketability, untapped commercial potential and a bucket-load of fun, weird and vaguely familiar characters that could migrate into other media, say video/console games or movies.  Having worked with J. M. DeMatteis to revive and re-imagine Phoenix, Grim Ghost and Wulf, the new and improved Atlas (in partnership with Ardden Entertainment) is in a fairly interesting position regarding the legacy IP of the former Atlas Comics.  They did a wonderful job with Flash Gordon, they brought back Casper and the Spectrals, and it sounds like they have a real plan for how best to revive the Atlas universe.  Too bad DeMatteis has left Ardden Entertainment.  Hopefully this won't kill the momentum, but one has to wonder about 'different visions of how to proceed.'  Maybe they argued over doing Planet of the Vampires versus the Destructor next.  Whatever.  That's between them.  I'm curious how Wulf will do, and what, if anything, will be coming next.  I know that I don't get a vote, but I'm also not the only one who is clammering for a Planet of the Vampires re-boot, even if I don't get to write it.

Once we pick-up our copies of the Phoenix and Grim Ghost Zero-Issues from our local comics shop (we're not planning on going back to Duluth for a while), we'll post a review.

If you are at all interested in the older, deader Atlas Comics, then you really ought to download the Atlas/Seaboard Downunder pdf by Daniel Best.  Very interesting reading, for someone who is into old, obscure, once-defunct comicsbook publishing companies and all that sort of thing.

There is also a Message Board/Forum over at the Atlas Archives site if you want to dig into the facts, rumors or weirdness surrounding either the old or the new version of Atlas Comics.

Hmmm...old obscure comicbooks.  Characters relegated to the dustbin of pop culture, remaindered and buried amongst the dross and debris of the cheap-bins and known only to a few stalwart aficionados of the strange, the unusual, the mostly forgotten...

The stories and history surrounding the older, deader Atlas Comics is perfect fodder for a Lovecraftian occult conspiracy horror tale in their own right, either in fiction or in a game sceanrio.  The opportunity to blur the edges and bring the versimilitude up a few notches is also very appealing, so using the old Atlas as a springboard of inspiration, it's not hard to see how to develop some fun and unique plots, hooks or a whole campaign based off of a fictional doppleganger of the defunct Atlas.  Imagine, if you will, a comic book company started as an act of vengeance, one that makes a big splash and burns out in less than two years.  Then the whispering begins.  Strange tales of bizarre rites, secret wisdom encoded or encrypted into some of the issues of certain titles, possibly a set of macabre clues to some mystery, weird prophecies, even whole missing issues written entirely in constructed languages similar to Shaver's Mantong or Stanislaw Szukalski's Protong...but such things as these are for another post, when the stars are right and we have time to go down the ConLang Rabbithole a bit more in-depth.  For the moment, consider the implications of Cthulhoid Comics, not in terms of content, but in terms of the production of such things, the creation of comic book representations of cultic images and grimoiric passages to corrupt the youth of the world in ways that even Ed Gein's comic-hating lawyer couldn't have imagined...

That Squamous Feeling

Blair's recent "Just Imagine..." post at Planet Algol got me to thinking. He wants to play in an RPG that has Captain Kirk kicking Cthulhu's hind-end in a massively insane ultimate smackdown free-for-all that defies all common sense, good taste, copyright laws and any other crapulous creeds and legalistic impediments to gonzo free expression and Hargrave-level mad genius good times. That'd be cool. But it'd even be cooler if such a thing were televised. The revolution is already getting televised, even if it is over the internet, and I don't just mean "I Hit It With My Axe," the usual suspects doing gaming-related podcasts, RPG-podcasts, etc.  Nah.  That'd be too damn easy.

If the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society can produce a really effective pseudo-vintage faux-silent-era movie version of The Call of Cthulhu (which they did and it is absolutely wonderful and you can find it here and here), and the Trek-Fans have been able to crank out their own episodes of the series that would not die such as here, here and here, (and I'm really only scratching the surface when it comes to new versions of old Trek online...so definitely, if this is of any interest to you, check out the Wikipedia page on Star Trek Fan Films...there are a LOT of them...), then why not do a seriously demented mash-up involving Cthulhu's minions corrupting the Federation from within and bringing Kirk into the battle against the gargantuan nihilistic Jell-O(TM) bodied mathematically-dangerous, madness-inducing/anti-muse/squid-god of doom, despair and agony for all mankind?

My money's on James T. Kirk.  Especially if it's Shatner.  But even if it isn't Shatner, maybe it's better if it isn't Shatner/Kirk, you could show the forces of nihilistic gibberitude demolish the Federation, take on the Klingons and get smacked around by the Organians and so on.  Losing Kirk frees you up to blow shit stuff up in a big way, and that'd be good fun.  The PhaseII episode Blood and Fire comes close to bringing Cthulhoid squishiness into the future, even if it is just some 'Regulan blood worms.'

http://www.startrekofgodsandmen.com/

The quality is uneven and a bit hokey at times, but even so, the effects are at least as good as 1965 and steadily improving, the writing is getting better as people gain valuable first-hand experience, and actors from the actual series are getting involved...it sounds a great deal like the OSR in relation to RPGs, only it's television...podcasting...new episodes of old, dead shows...in a way it's as daft as doing marketing materials for dead RPG products, and who'd ever do anything as silly as that?  If you haven't experienced the burgeoning renaissance of fan produced episodes for Star Trek (likewise for Star Wars via Atom and Lucas himself since he officially & personally supports the making of fan-produced movies inspired by his franchise),  it's worth giving them a look.  Some are pretty good, some are more than a little rough, and quite a few are nowhere near as crappy as certain installments in the franchise's big-budget movies have been...but that's a pissing match calm and respectful discussion to have some other day.

Why stop at just a game session around the table?  Why settle for a few rolls of the dice when the technology is available and getting cheaper every year, allowing us to actually get out there and make the movies we want to see...as long as we dance around Copyright issues, trademarks, and other landmines of modern IP law.  The game scenario sounds like fun, and it is...Dave Hargrave would have run it in 1979 and he'd have included a Bolo tank and  a balrog just to keep things interesting.  Don't get me wrong, it would be a fabulously crazed thing to pull off at a convention or in a campaign...it is most certainly as Old School as anything else that claims the name in the RPG-end of the imaginative pool...but wouldn't it be more fun to see it come to life as a freaking movie out on that there internet?  We have tools and resources available to us today that the originators and root-level creators would have killed to get their hands on.  Why pitch your world, your game, your most precious possession to coke-snorting accountants and narcissistic 'producers,' when you can make use of the technology available to do it yourself?  DIY is at the core of the Old School weltenschaung, ain't it?  Heck, if budget is a problem, and unless you've got Paramount's backing it always is, why not do a fan production mash-up of Star Trek and Cthulhu over at the Go Animate site?  They already let people do Star Trek animations/toons...and HPL's stuff is in the Public Domain...so it's eminently do-able...just think, those Orion Slavegirls might have more than a little in common with the New Innsmouth colony...

If I get some time after the next big project, I might just see if I can re-build some of my old mini-comics over at Go Animate.  It might be fun to adapt some HPL short stories as 2-D Flash animations as well...
Why wait for the Nerd Messiah?  Rise up and exploit entertain the masses with technology!  Let's build fun stuff!

Atlas Rides Again, Sort Of...

Atlas Comics are (almost) returning from the beyond, and this time they're out for vengeance...err...or maybe this time they're Not out for vengeance?!?  WTF?  Well, in either case, two particular titles from the Atlas Comics all-too-brief hey-day are coming back, whether or not you care, remember them or want them to--because no IP, no matter how obscure or marginal or buried will escape the latest craze for comics sweeping Hollywood.  There's money in them there funny books.

The Press Release is available at the Atlas Archives site.  It reads as follows:

In 1974, Martin Goodman, the Founder of Marvel Comics, created Atlas Comics. On October 8th, 2010, Jason Goodman, the grandson of Marvel's Founder, will re-launch Atlas Comics at the New York Comic-Con.

Goodman, in association with Ardden Entertainment, will release Atlas' first two titles, THE GRIM GHOST and PHOENIX. Both series will draw from the original Atlas library that featured stories and art by such industry legends as Neal Adams and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko.

THE GRIM GHOST and PHOENIX are the first of many Atlas properties that Goodman plans on releasing. "Although my grandfather eventually sold Marvel, he insisted on keeping Atlas Comics in the family. As a result of his vision, Atlas Comics is the largest individually-held library of comic book heroes and villains on the planet."

Goodman continues, "We have twenty eight titles and hundreds of characters imagined by some of the greatest minds in the industry. They will now find a new life in comics, television, and movies. We are thrilled to finally bring these great characters back for the world to enjoy."

Co-President of Ardden Entertainment and comic book industry veteran, Rich Emms, and Brendan Deneen, Co-President of Ardden Entertainment and a former development executive for Scott Rudin and Bob & Harvey Weinstein, add, "Ardden has had success and critical acclaim for our own Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost re-launches. We are very excited to be working with Jason and his Atlas team on revisiting a group of characters created by some of the biggest names in the business."

Ardden's Editor-in-Chief and legendary comic writer, J.M. DeMatteis, concludes, ""The Atlas universe is filled with characters of tremendous potential. I look forward to being a part of this re-launch as we re-imagine these wonderful characters and send them off on new adventures for the first time in thirty-five years."

For more information, contact Jason Goodman at Jason@NemesisLtd.com  or Brendan Deneen at Brendan.Deneen@GMail.com.

J. M. DeMatteis has cleared-up some of the accelerating Atlas-hype here on his blog.

So, yeah, we get two titles coming out as Zero issues at New York Comic Con...if they do well, we might get to see more of these two, and that opens the door for the dot dot dot part.  When I first heard the tale and read the various snippets and rumors, I was shocked that anyone would be so daft as to resurrect Atlas as a company, but reviving a couple of its characters, that might be fun and who knows where that might lead?

Guess the Grim Ghost has dropped the Revolutionary War-era get-up and got hisself all modernized and re-Grim-ified.  I like the typography...but the bulgy muscles don't really suit this character.  He's a ghost who has come back from Hell to send bad people there in his place.  He has a pair of supernatural flintlock handguns.  He's not a bruiser, more of a marksman or spiritual highwayman on the road to perdition, trying to go the otherway just a tad bit too damned late.  The core concept has a ton of potential inherent in it that never got the chance to really unfold in the first 3-issue run.  Compare the dark, brooding modern cover to this one from 1974:

That's quite a bold leap forwards on several levels.  It might even be an improvement, depending on the contents behind that cover.  I'm skeptical about the whole 'updating' approach, as it usually means dumbing-down, neutering and throwing away all the good stuff in order to present a bland, shallow, ultimately empty version of a character that can now be summed-up in fifteen words or less.  The same goes for dropping details from the costume and making everyone dress like a slacker or a hooker.  But then drawing historically accurate costumery is tough enough without having to do it on the killer schedule that producing a comic book requires.  I'll reserve judgement, for now, but they better not have reduced Matthew Dunsinane to some sort of emo lackwit with an overwhelming guilt complex over the souls he sends to hell in his place like some twisted outlaw psychopomp with blazing flintlocks and a centuries-old score to settle.  This is a guy facing the ultimate challenge to not become a cold-hearted, absolutely ruthless bastard of the worst sort...and seeing him struggle with that challenge would be wonderful...especially as he sends the all-too-deserving A**holes on to a suitable final reward...this could be dark, sinister, brutal and give Dennis Wheatley nightmares.  And That would be Cool.

We'll see what the new improved Atlas via Ardden delivers.

I'm not much of a fan of Phoenix/The Protector.  That short-lived series was an atrocious mess that was so badly kludged together that even the main charcter was ready to kill himself over how messed-up the book was...and they sorted him out by having aliens give him a shiny new suit, new powers and a new name in the third issue.  Arrgghh.  This one bites.  If they are reviving the character, maybe they'll play-up the aliens a bit more, maybe look to Roy Thinnes' role in The Invaders and go for a more Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of vibe (like here, here or here)  with superpowered agents of competing pod-factions/alien forces who want Earth for breeding grounds.  That'd make more sense, and be a lot more fun than the way it got all mangled and messed-up the first time around.  In fact, you could easily take the way the original series re-vamped the main character to heart in a sort of bent and demented E. E. Doc Smith sort of approach and have him scavenge more and more technologies off of different servitor races and slave troopers and agents of the various competing powers kind of like a DIY junkyard-Iron Man who hybridizes things not meant to work together and winds up with a cyborg that only HPL could see coming...now that would rock.  I wonder what the new and improved revived version of this Atlas character is actually going to be like, though the ultra-manly pose and all those glistening muscles remind me of those sword-and-sandal Steve Reeves movies...just sayin'...

Okay, so Atlas might not be coming back exactly, but if I had to pick two titles to test the waters and see if there was any life left in the library, I'd pick differently.  Very differently.  The Destructor could easily get modernized into something very off-beat and cool, especially if the main character winds up doing some time in Afghanistan or found himself landed smack in the middle of a food riot in Haiti right after a nasty hurricane.  He also has the makings of a twisted take on the Executioner or Destroyer, and might wind up dropping the costume in order to use his powers more covertly...that one title could go a lot of different directions besides just parodying the whole Peter Parker stuff.  I'm a big fan of Remo Williams (Chiun!), Mack Bolan, and Nick Carter, so why not have a superpowered punk kid get trained-up to be some sort of superspy that isn't Jennifer Garner or Maggie Q...though the new Nikita is looking really good...

Now, as I've made clear previously, I'm a big fan of Atlas' Planet of the Vampires and I really liked the potential in their goofy Destructor and Chaykin's Scorpion would be awesome to see revived...again...away from the Marvel Universe...if that's even possible now.  (Same for Demon Slayer/Devil Slayer, I would guess...)  But the friggin' Phoenix?!?  Again: WTF!?!?  Phoenix!?!?!??  Why not Cougar, Wulf the Barbarian, or even Morlock 2001?  Grim Ghost I can see.  Heck, even IronJaw might have a shot at making the big time, really, but Phoenix is a flaming toxic waste spill amidst an earthquake during a full-out atomic war...talk about a mess to clean-up.  Ye Gods, even Tarantula makes more sense as an opening gambit than that train-wreck in the midst of oh so many other train-wrecks of bat-shit insane series/gonzo characters and off-the-wall concepts that proliferated within the pages of the first incarnation of Atlas.  You can check out the best maintained guide to Who's Who in the Atlasverse over at the Atlas Archives site, and decide for yourself.  (It opens on the letter 'B' since there are no characters in the Atlasverse with names beginning with 'A.'  It's just that friggin' weird of an operation.  Welcome to Atlas...)

Oh well, I guess that by merging the shiny-new Protector-suit from issue 3 with the clueless astronaut-jock-dude allows you to go for the more tried-and-true territory of the spandex-homoerotic tales of heroic man bondage and derring-do that we've come to expect from 'superhero' titles.  Sigh.  If anyone would take a chance and do something gloriously insane and offbeat, you'd think that it would be Atlas or someone seeking to revive Atlas...but Phoenix looks like someone is playing it really, really safe and comfortable and tapping into the vast reservoir of knock-off-itis and copy-cat syndrome that pretty-much killed things off the first time around.  We don't need another Superman Clone, what would be cool is to really, really stand all the cherished tropes on their heads, set them on fire and drop-kick the whole mythos into the gutter right before taking a seat in the pub.  But they aren't working with Warren Ellis, are they?  They ought to be.  Ellis could really sink his teeth into the Atlasverse and make it scream beautifully as he transformed it into something less derivative and more outrageous and feral than anything we've seen up to date.  I won't hold my breath for that to happen. But damn it would be fun.

Alas, for what might have been, The Scorpion is perhaps my all-time favorite Atlas title...but then how can you go wrong with Howard Chaykin at the drawing board and typewriter word processor -- in short: You Can't.  Don't even get me started on Iron Wolf...as that'll be a post of its own in the near future.  Promise.

I've always seen Atlas Comics as being sort of the Arduin of the comics world: off-beat, off-kilter, weird, gonzo and wonderful for making the attempt, whether or not they ever succeeded. They Tried To Do Things Differently. Sure a lot of both of their work is ultimately derivative, even sometimes blatantly so (Brute=Hulk Duh!)  But a LOT of imaginative literature, sequentially illustrated or not, is derivative of everything else that has gone before it.  Consider Moorcock's Elric; if it hadn't been for Howard's Conan to mock/reverse, there'd be no Elric.  Atlas might not have produced a new Elric, nor even given us a decent Conan-clone, but it did produce Wulf, Ironjaw and other properties that had they been given time, might have developed into distinct, unique characters that blazed fresh trails.  At least I like to think that they might have done so, given the opportunity.  Maybe, maybe this time around things can be different somehow.  If the rebellious, gonzo spirit of Atlas gets revived, not just the Trademark and the library of IP that they still have on hold...that'd be damn cool.
Here's what other people are saying about the return of Atlas Comics over at Techland, CBR and again at CBR, SciFiPulse, Newsarama, and Comix411.  Wow.  Tom Mason over at Comix411 really cut the BS and stated things pretty much the way I might have, but now I don't have to; definitely read Mason's write-up.  I think that he's right on the mark, except that Planet of the Vampires is only tangentially any sort of knock-off of Heston's The Omega Man.  The suits those vampires are wearing are unmistakable.  Too bad that they only really ever lifted the designer Italian leather suits from the movie, but that's a digression.  Besides, The Omega Man is an improvement over The Last Man on Earth (even with the wonderful Vincent Price), which in turn was a degenerative spawn of the 1954 Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend that got converted into the Will Smith movie that may be getting a Prequel.  But that's another digression.

To quote Heston from The Omega Man: "There is no phone ringing!"

Maybe the Eye will make a come-back, somehow and get his own title...

The people at Ardden Entertainment are already involved in bringing out the Flash Gordon: Invasion of the Red Sword series and Caspar and the Spectrals as well as reviving Atlas.  Ardden's Flash Gordon is derived from and uses the previous (timelessly cool) work of the legendary Alex Raymond as its springboard and the first series Flash Gordon: The Mercy Wars had a very pulpish feel to it, in the best possible sense.  It's as credible a re-working of the classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy/American Swashbuckler in a world of weird science run amok/sword and planet/planetary romance/pulp goodness that got started back in 1934. However you categorize it, genre-tize it or pigeonhole the over-arching thematic elements, Flash Gordon is fun stuff, the kind of thing that they just don't make any more because people are too damned uptight and concerned over labels, marketing categories, and literary movements. 

You know, now that I think about it a bit more, the future for Atlas Comics (with none other than J. M. DeMatteis at the editorial helm!) in conjunction with a company that is rolling out a very decent retread of Flash Gordon sounds very promising.  I just hope that they'll stay as far left of center as they began and run as hard and fast as they can out beyond the envelope of the safe, known, conventional and boring dreck we have too much of already.  Just as long as they bring back Planet of the Vampires.  Damn, I'd like to write that!  Reviving some of the old Atlas characters/concepts/series might be a lot of fun...

Are they looking for proposals/submissions over at Atlas?  Man do I have some ideas for them...