PUBLISHER ANNOUNCES PULP/SUPER HERO ROLE PLAYING GAME
FEATURING NEWLY DESIGNED SYSTEM
Pro Se Productions, a leading Publisher of Genre Fiction and New Pulp, announces that one of its most consistently popular properties is stepping beyond its covers and into the world of gaming.
YESTERYEAR by Tommy Hancock is a novel featuring a new universe of Heroes and Villains that explores the history of these characters, from their Pulp Roots in the Early 20th Century to the chaotic, power driven modern era of super powered beings. Centered around a manuscript that disappeared in the 1950s -along with its author -that has resurfaced, YESTERYEAR weaves a tale between two books; The original manuscript that peels back the gilded curtain from the Golden Age and the story of a modern publisher who has possession of the mythic tell all and has to sort out how best to use and it and stay alive.
Pro Se in conjunction with lost gamers productions announced that YESTERYEAR is being developed into a Role Play Game and will debut at Pulp Ark 2013.
“It’s really great,” Hancock stated, “that YESTERYEAR has gone to this level. In working on the second book (Nomorrow) it became quickly evident that there’s even a richer world than I first thought that can be played with in this series, not just by me, but by people who really know how to play. And to work with the guys at LGP is fantastic. They’re not only experts in game design and mechanics, but they came by that expertise by being gamers themselves. And to watch them apply their knowledge to my stories and to really breathe a whole new life into the universe I’ve gladly created, has been awesome.”
Not only will YESTERYEAR be a role playing game, it will actually be able to played in two different ways, thanks to a card-based system developed by LGP. The Quadrant System will allow YESTERYEAR to be a tabletop RPB as well as a LARP (Live Action Role Play) with no required variances.
“Although I’ve played a few RPGs,” Hancock said, “I by no means would qualify myself as a gamer. Yet, when I participated in one of the first testings of the Quadrant System for YESTERYEAR, it was simple and easy for me to understand. The ease with which the game can transition from tabletop to LARP is simple and amazing.”
YESTERYEAR has been and will continue to be tested in a variety of ways by the minds behind LGP, both internally and through application at conventions between now and April. The first official unveiling and playing of the game will be April 26-28, 2013 at Pulp Ark in Springdale, Arkansas.
Currently the Game Description is- Former Masked Man Ramsey Long’s once missing tell alljournal has resurfaced and both Hero & Villain alike are determined to take possession of it, by any means necessary. What secrets are kept within the journal? What really happened to Ramsey Long? And when the dust settles, where will your loyalties lie?
As for what materials will be available for purchase at Pulp Ark 2013 related to the game, details are still forthcoming. “Source books,” Hancock stated, “are in the planning stages and will be put together by some of Pro Se’s top talent as soon as all the particulars are worked out. As far as having something available for fans to walk away with at Pulp Ark 2013, we most definitely hope to have just that.”
For more information on YESTERYEAR’s debut as an RPG at Pulp Ark 2013, please go to www.pulpark.blogspot.com, email Hancock at proseproductions@earthlink.net, or call at 870-834-4022!
lostgamers productions (never capitalized), or LGP, is a gaming development group out of Memphis, TN. What started out as a small group of friends, arguing about every type of game available, has grown into tight-knit force of creative innovation. Since its inception, one major focus of LGP has been to evolve beyond the traditional style of tabletop & live action role-playing games and give its audience something different. Something they didn’t have collecting dust on a shelf at home. Along the way, they’ve introduced us to furniture-obsessed soldiers, multi-cultural pitchmen, living miniatures and computerized wrestlers. So, whether you’ve been SHAFTED or manipulated in a game of GEEK BALL, you can attest to their commitment to make sure you’ve experienced something fun. And nothing proves that better than their premiere experience, DEBATE OF THE DEAD.
Pro Se Productions is Your Home for New Pulp! Come join us as we Put The Monthly back into Pulp at www.prosepulp.com and www.pulpmachine.blogspot.com
New Pulp Author Van Allen Plexico’s latest novel is the first in a series of Military Science Fiction New Pulp Space Opera adventure novels called The Shattering, published by White Rocket Books.
Press Release – For Immediate Release
THE SHATTERING: LORDS OF FIRE Arrives in Trade Paperback!
Plexico Brings Military SF/Space Opera to the world of New Pulp!
(January 28, 2013) White Rocket Books proudly announces the release in trade paperback format of Van Allen Plexico’s THE SHATTERING, LEGION I: LORDS OF FIRE!
Stripped of his authority by the Emperor of Mankind and assigned to duty in deepest space for failing to prevent the greatest robbery in history, former Colonel Ezekial Tamerlane believes his career as a soldier is over. But strange forces are at work, urging the Emperor to set out on a journey fraught with dangers into a nightmare realm a universe away from our own; and Tamerlane, like it or not, is going along for the ride. What he and his high-tech super-soldiers find along the way will shake the Empire to its very foundations, and unleash a crisis of galactic proportions that not all the armies in creation can hold back…
“Plexico is the master of space opera.” –Pulp Fiction Reviews
LORDS OF FIRE begins a new galaxy-shattering adventure from the author of HAWK: HAND OF THE MACHINE and LUCIAN: DARK GOD’S HOMECOMING, and bridges the divide between those two novels and universes. Here we see the fallout from the war of the gods in LUCIAN, and the growing crisis that will lead to the creation of Hawk and the other Hands of the Machine. Futuristic armies clash, godlike beings manipulate empires, and the gateway to the Underverse of the Below is reopened, unleashing slavering demonic hordes upon an unsuspecting galaxy!
Plexico’s previous novel, SENTINELS: METALGOD, reached #1 on the New Pulp Best-Sellers List in December 2012. “Nobody—not even Abnett and Lanning—does cosmic superheroes like Van Allen Plexico. Nobody,” said Barry Reese, creator of the Rook and Lazarus Grey.
“I wanted this book to kick off the new “Shattering” saga with a bang—with action from start to finish,” says Plexico of LORDS OF FIRE, “and that’s exactly what it does. I have no doubt that my loyal cadre of longtime readers will enjoy it, and I’m confident it will appeal to a new readership of bold Military SF enthusiasts who like a mash-up of high-tech combat and supernatural menaces in the vein of the Warhammer 40,000 books.”
White Rocket Books is a leader in the New Pulp movement, publishing exciting action and adventure novels and anthologies since 2005, in both traditional and electronic formats. White Rocket books have hit the Amazon.com Top 15-by-Genre and reached #1 on the New Pulp Best-Sellers List, and have garnered praise from everyone from Marvel Comics Vice-President Tom Brevoort to Kirkus Reviews.
THE SHATTERING, LEGION I: LORDS OF FIRE is a $15.95, 6×9 format trade paperback from White Rocket Books. 316 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0-61575-419-2 ISBN-10: 0-61575-419-8 (6×9” Trade Paperback)
Writer Ron Fortier and Artist Rob Davis will be guests at this year’s Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Conference to be held in Norman, Oklahoma May 2-4. Further details can be found at the organizations website.
Fortier and Davis will be presenting two 90 minute workshops on the creation of a graphic novel. The primary example of their presentation will be their own 108 pg. erotic horror graphic novel, DAUGHTER OF DRACULA published in 2007 by Davis’ Redbud Studio.
The team will be using a visual power-point slide show to illustrate the various technical aspects writing comics and the artist interpreting a script and bringing it to graphic life. Copies of the graphic novel will be on sale at the conference as well as this recently produced book version of the comic script.
“It seemed like a natural thing to do,” Fortier explains. “We thought writers having attended our workshops would benefit from not only having the graphic novel but the script from which it was derived as well. This way they could compare pages from the scrip to the completed art in the comic thus underscoring the points we will be making in our presentations.”
Last night the whole family went out to dinner to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday. And as regular readers of this column know, this is a birthday to truly celebrate. Less than a month after suffering a stroke with seizure complications, less than a month from bringing him home to die, my father is up and about. Not only has he recovered 99% of the use of his left arm and leg, he’s able to dress himself and perform most of the ADL’s (that’s Activities of Daily Living for you non-medical types) without assistance. Yes, he’s walking with the aid of a walker, but let me tell you, folks, I wouldn’t place odds against him in a race against The Flash. He’s zooming down the hallways of the rehab center like a bat out of hell.
And the best sign of all? He’s grumpy again, turning around to harummph at my mother to “keep up, Laura” as he did a loop around the floor and complaining that he wants to go home. How miraculous is this? Well, last night at the restaurant – for those of you who live in the Cherry Hill, NJ area and are looking for a great dining experience, it was Caffe Aldo Lamberti, a very fine Italian restaurant at the intersection of Route 73 and Haddonfield Road – we bumped into one of my father’s doctors from Cooper University Medical Center, who didn’t even recognize him. “The last time I saw him,” the doctor said, “he was literally at death’s door.”
And while we were out celebrating and toasting and laughing and stuffing our faces – so wildly boisterous, in fact, that our waiter came over to tell us that there was a complaint from one of the tables, to which I said “Screw them!” and my brother said, “My father is 90 years old, he was a death’s door, and if it wasn’t for him they’d be speaking German right now!” – yeah, we were all pretty drunk; even my father had a couple of sips of Glenn’s Kamikaze and my mother’s Pinot Noir – Isabel told me about two wonderful graphic novels she had just finished, Smile and Drama, both by award-winning graphic novelist Raina Telgemeir.
Smile is an autobiographical novel in which Ms. Telgemeir tells the story of the accident which led to the loss of her front teeth when she was 12 years old and its resulting agony of surgeries, implants, and false teeth. Parallel with all of this was Ms. Telgemeir’s experience with her corresponding puberty, with all the roller-coaster joys and terrors of that time in all our lives – crushes, maturing bodies, middle-school cruelties, and changing expectations in herself and from her family.
The New York Times Book Review said about Smile “It hits home partly because there is nothing else out there like it.” Kirkus Reviews said “An utterly charming graphic memoir of tooth trauma, first crushes and fickle friends, sweetly reminiscent of Judy Blume’s work. . . . Irresistible, funny and touching – a must read for all teenage girls.” And Publisher’s Weekly said “A charming addition to the body of young adult literature that focuses on the trials and tribulations of the slightly nerdy.
Drama is the story of a girl named Callie, who is a total theater geek. But she prefers the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd from backstage, so Callie is the set designer for her school’s production of Moon over Mississippi. And Callie is determined to bring Broadway-worthy sets to her middle school, even if the budget doesn’t exactly match that of Annie. And even if Callie doesn’t know a thing about carpentry. And even if tickets aren’t exactly selling like hot cakes.
And even if Callie’s crew isn’t what you could call a Band Of Brothers. Plus there’s all this “drama” going on between the actors, and those two realllly cute brothers who join the production.
Ada Calhoun of the New York Times said Drama has “an inspirational message for girls, and it’s communicated more subtly here than in Smile. What makes Callie happiest is not catching the eye of that week’s crush, but winning the coveted position of stage manager and finding her place in the world.”
Raina Telgemeir is also the author of four Babysitters Club graphic novels that made the American Library Association (ALA) Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth 2007 list, as well as being selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) as a Great Graphic Novel for Youth that same year. Ms. Telgemeir also co-authored X-Men: Misfits, a graphic novel that was on the New York Times Graphic Books Bestseller list. She has been published by Random House, DC, and Nickelodeon Magazine, and her comics have been nominated for the Ignatz, Cybil, and Eisner awards.
Accolades that are all very prestigious. Accolades that are all very deserving.
In February 2002, almost twenty-one years ago, DC published a Batman graphic novel that I had written called Batman: Seduction of the Gun. It had its genesis two years earlier when John Reisenbach, the son of an executive of Warner Bros., was shot dead while using a pay phone. DC execs, themselves struck by the senseless act of violence, decided to address the issue of gun and gun-related violence in a special book. Batman was selected as the character best suited for such a story as he has witnessed his own parents shot to death when he was just a boy as part of his mythology.
Our own Dennis O’Neil was the editor of the Batman titles at the time and he approached me as the writer. I had worked with an anti-gun lobby at one point so he knew I was already conversant with the issue. Neither of us wanted to create just a screed against guns. Denny was clear: it first and foremost had to be a good story. What we wanted to say could be layered in but the story itself came first.
I agreed wholeheartedly. As I’ve said elsewhere, I prefer to write questions rather than answers. I believe in having a point of view, especially when writing on an important issue, but I prefer to lay the matter out (as I see it) to the reader and let them come to their own conclusion.
I also did research and found out that, at the time, government statistics suggested that one of four guns used in criminal acts in New York City (where the weapon was recovered) were bought in Virginia. It was one in three for Washington, D.C. Gangs from along the Atlantic Coast came into Virginia to buy guns by the dozens as Virginia had the loosest gun regulations perhaps in the nation. I worked all that into the story.
At the time, Virginia’s governor, Douglas Wilder, was trying to get a very mild gun control measure passed. It would limit gun owners to purchasing one gun a month. You could have belonged to the gun of the month club and still been legal. He heard about Batman: Seduction of the Gun and bought a bunch of them. He placed an issue at every legislators desk and issued press releases how even Batman was talking about the Virginia gun laws. The measure, against all odds, passed.
So – what has happened in the almost twenty-one years since Batman: Seduction of the Gun was published? Guns are more prolific, there have been more shooting in schools (as was depicted in the story), and Virginia repealed the One-Gun-A-Month law last year. The book could be published again today and, aside from a few continuity changes, be as relevant as when it was published.
All this has come to mind not only in the wake of the shooting of the children and teachers at Sandy Hook, CT, but in President Obama’s recommendations this week on gun violence and the NRA’s and the Right’s somewhat hysterical over-reaction to it. Comparing Obama to Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot because of these recommendations? Saying that Martin Luther King, Jr, would have sided with the gun nuts? How do you even start to have a reasonable conversation about guns and gun violence when it begins at that level?
The book was and is controversial. Friends and relatives who are gun enthusiasts hate it and have told me so. However, it is not, in my view, anti-gun. It does not, as I do not, call for outlawing guns. Aside from the Second Amendment debate, I think a prohibition on firearms would be about as effective as the prohibition on alcohol was or the prohibition or marijuana is now. It would just create a new revenue stream for the mobs.
Allowing military style assault weapons and 100 bullet clips, however, makes no sense to me, either. There are those who claim that the real intention of the Second Amendment was to fend off the Federal government. They are delusional. That was written when the gun was a musket. Today? Anyone who thinks their horde of guns is going to deter a government with guns, planes, ships, and drones is having a Red Dawn wet dream. No Amendment is absolute; you cannot libel someone, or shout “fire” in a crowded theater with the intent of starting a riot, no matter what the First Amendment says.
In the story Batman says, “No law passed can change the human heart or open up a mind that is closed. We must give up the guns in our hearts and minds first.” Art is one of the ways you reach hearts and minds. Story can do that, I believe. I look at things twenty plus years since the book was published and I have to wonder.
My hope is that someday Batman: Seduction of the Gun will be regarded as a quaint curiosity; my fear is that it won’t.
About Tier Zero: Tommy Scarred Wolf thought he had smelled the powder for the last time ten years ago. Then somebody messed with his family.
With no government willing or able to help out, it’s up to Tommy and his detective brother, Vince, to find Vince’s kidnapped daughter halfway around the world. But rescuing her is going to take funding, firepower, and friends. Fortunately, Tommy knows some shooters just crazy enough to tag along–including some survivors from his last suicide mission: retired SEAL team commander Rocco Cavarra; former Delta Force operator Jake McCallum; and the unflappable sniper Leon Campbell.
On the ocean, in the jungle, and an urban purgatory, Tommy Scarred Wolf and his warrior brothers will face human traffickers, modern-day pirates, a typhoon, and an ultra-secret black ops team so dangerous even the CIA can’t touch them. There’s something far more sinister than just “white slavery” going on here, and it’s about to ram these men through a crucible which may never end…except in death.
New Pulp Artist Nik Poliwko has shared some art from the upcoming The Monster of Frankenstein Returns featuring the character of Elizabeth Von Frankenstein.
The Monster of Frankenstein Returns is a full-color graphic novel based on the works of Mary Shelley and Dick Briefer as written by Martin Powell with artwork by Nik Poliwko. Coming from Sequential Pulp and Dark Horse Comics!
Belowis artist Nik Poliwko’s The Monster of Frankenstein Returns promo video.
Learn more about The Monster of Frankenstein Returns with more art here.
The Nao of Brown By Glyn Dillon 206 pages, $24.95, SelfMadeHero/Abrams
Somewhat lost amidst the affection showered on Chris Ware’s Building Stories was Glyn Dillon’s triumphant return to the comics form with the impressive Nao of Brown. Dillon began making a name for himself at Vertigo with a variety of works, notably the Egypt miniseries and then walked away to work in film. The tug of comics was strong enough to lure him back and commit nearly three years of his to producing this lengthy graphic novel.
Making his writing debut, he presents us with the story of Nao, a half-Japanese/half-English twentysomething who is yearning for a normal life and love but struggles daily with purely obsessional compulsive disorder, a secret she shares only with flatmate Tara. Her mind is filled with images of committing extremely violent acts and rates them on a scale from 1-10. As we open, she’s using Buddhist meditation to control her impulses and takes a job selling Japanese collectable toys at a small shop run by her friend, Steve, totally oblivious toward how he feels for her.
Instead, Nao is drawn to a large bear of man, Gregory, who repairs washing machines. Engineering a meeting, she damages the flat’s machine so he can come fix it. They begin to date, a tentative start at best given his own issues. He has some deep pain he masks with alcohol so we have two damaged souls looking for love and saving.
Throughout this beautifully illustrated work, Dillon presents a parallel story in Nao’s favorite Ichi style. While it features a protagonist named Pictor, who tries to rescue his family after being turned half into a tree by a being called the Nothing, it also has father figure Nobodaddy, who looks somewhat like Gregory. Here, Dillon shows his versatility, channeling the influence of Moebius and Miyazaki although the sequences don’t always work or really enhance the main story.
Tara, Steve, and the mothers to Nao and Gregory are fine, underdeveloped supporting characters. Contrasting the relations between the lovers and their mothers might have given this a little more substance but it’s nice to see positive familial relations and good friends in a story like this.
This is a slice of life style story as we meander from the shop to the flat to dates to Nao’s OCD and imaginary tale. We enjoy this because Dillon, younger brother to noted artist Steve Dillon, takes his time and makes us care about these characters. His naturalistic style emphasizes body language, setting, and mood through watercolor work that is a delight to look at.
He does not dwell at length on any of the themes raised in the story and this is far from a moral tale about OCD, despite the unique take on the mental disorder. He told The Comics Journal, “I was learning to meditate as well. In this meditation group there were other students saying how they couldn’t stop their minds from racing when they were trying to meditate, and there seemed to be parallels between that and OCD that all interested me at the time.” We get into Nao’s head and see what she gets out of meditation, what she sees in Gregory, and how she copes day in and day out. The coping and self-absorption, though, blinds her to other issues such as Steve’s infatuation or Greg’s personal demons, which eventually are thrown in her face.
As a tyro writer, though, he does not successfully build up to a strong climax, but let’s things happen and then we hurry through the crisis and then leap four years ahead for a too-tidy ending. A compelling character study, I find his overall message elusive. While entertained by the characters and enthralled by the art, the conclusion suddenly feels predictable, undercutting the rest of the book’s strengths.
Dillon’s return to comics is a most welcome one and if The Nao of Brown is an indication of what he’s interested in exploring, I‘ll be there to see what he uncovers.
From Elsewhere In The Multiverse: If you yearn for the Silver Age, when heroes and villains were easily defined, Project: Alpha is for you. If you miss the old-school space operas where dashing men and beautiful women had two-fisted adventures on strange planets, Project: Alpha is for you. Lee Houston Jr.’s second series character (The first, Hugh Monn, is a hardboiled detective who plies his trade on a distant planet) is a super-hero/sci-fi mash up that will be a delight for those who want a gentler, less dark adventure for their heroes. I sat down with Lee to talk about the series, writing and how the face of mainstream comics has changed since we both were younger.
Titan Books continues to re-release the Philip Jose Farmer library in January with the release of Hadon of Ancient Opar, the first of the Khokarsa Series chronicling Wold Newton’s Prehistory. Look for this title to be available in paperback and ebook on January 15th.
About Hadon of Ancient Opar: Twelve thousand years ago the great lost city of Opar was in its prime, with its Atlantean tradition, its fabled jewels, its living goddess and Hadon, son of ancient Opar, whose claim to a throne launches him upon an enthralling and dangerous venture.
