The Board of Directors and Shareholders of Dragon Con / ACE, Inc., producer of Dragon*Con, Atlanta’s internationally known pop culture, fantasy and sci-fi convention, have agreed to merge the company into Dragon Con, Inc. (Dragon Con) in a cash-out merger.
Led by Pat Henry, David Cody and Robert Dennis, ownership of Dragon Con includes five of the six founding owners of Dragon Con / ACE (the old Dragon Con). The effective date of the merger is July 8, 2013.
Edward Kramer, who has not had any role in managing or organizing the convention since 2000, was offered cash for his shares in the old company. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“This decision only affects the ownership of the old Dragon Con,” said Pat Henry, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dragon Con. “Our members and others who attend Dragon*Con 2013 will experience the same fantastic convention they have come to expect from us.”
Dragon Con will continue the agreements with each of the host and overflow hotels associated with the convention as well as all of the guests and performers scheduled to appear at this year’s event, either “as is” or with amendments recognizing Dragon Con as owner.
About Dragon*Con
Dragon*Con is the largest pop culture convention featuring comics, film, television, costuming, art, music, and gaming. Held each Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Dragon*Con attracted more than 52,000 attendees in 2012. For more information, please visit www.dragoncon.org.
Hopefully this will now put the major stigma of having Mr. Kramer continuing to be associated with Dragon*Con behind them.
A leader in New Pulp and Genre Fiction, Pro Se Productions announces the debut of a New Pulp Character cast in the grand tradition of sword and sorcery classics! From Author Ralph L. Angelo, Jr. comes TORAHG THE WARRIOR: SWORD OF VENGEANCE!
“Journey with me,” Angelo states, “back to a time unheard of, a land of myth, monsters and magic where a steel muscled warrior must battle against an entire nation to avenge the wrongs done to him as well as to avenge his father’s death! Without a doubt my favorite creation so far, Torahg is destined to take his place alongside classic heroes such as Conan, Tarzan, Kull, John Carter and many more.”
An honored prince stands first in line for the throne of his father, the most powerful King in the world. Young and unaware that the world he knows, his very birthright is about to be snatched from him by murder. In one fateful day, his own brother, in league with a malevolent sorcerer, kills the king. And The Prince, the rightful heir to the kingdom, becomes a wanted fugitive, forced to abandon his life, to exile himself seemingly forever.
Twenty years later, the fugitive returns, no longer the kind hearted youth who watched his father murdered before his very eyes. He walks with the confidence and scars of a hardened warrior, a veteran of many campaigns, and a trained fighter in many forms of combat. With a heart hardened by twenty years as an outlaw across the world, Destiny calls again, driving him to return to the land of his birth. No longer the Heir to the throne, he is instead a man with only one mission. He is TORAHG THE WARRIOR: SWORD OF VENGEANCE!
“TORAHG,” says Tommy Hancock, Editor in Chief and Partner in Pro Se, “is exciting for Pro Se on a couple of levels. First, Ralph’s novel is a great addition to the Pulp fantasy we’ve become known for thanks to Nancy Hansen’s work and it comes from a different angle as well. Also, though, Ralph’s narrative style and presentation overall is unique amongst what Pro Se offers. The story takes the reader and puts them in the flow of the tale actively and allows them to vicariously stand alongside Torahg as he fights his way through his home and his own history.”
Ralph L. Angelo, Jr. is an author who has written for many major motorcycle magazines as well as having written a ‘how to’ instructional book on motorcycling entitled “Help! They’re All Out to Get Me! The Motorcyclists Guide to Surviving the Everyday World.’
His first novel ’Redemption of the Sorcerer’ was recently released. Since then he has written several more novels, including TORAHG for Pro Se as well as the forthcoming Sci-Fi adventure novel ‘The Cagliostro Chronicles’ amongst others.
A young fugitive prince fled the land. Now he returns and he will be forever remembered as TORAHG THE WARRIOR: SWORD OF VENGEANCE! Written by Ralph L. Angelo, Jr., Edited by Nancy Hansen, Cover art by Terry Pavlet, Design and Print Formatting by Sean Ali, Ebook Formatting by Russ Anderson! Fight alongside TORAHG THE WARRIOR in his debut adventure from Pro Se Productions!
This New Pulp Sword and Sorcery tale is also available as an Ebook for only $2.99 for your Kindle, on the Nook, and in nearly all available formats at Smashwords.
For interviews, review copies, and information, contact Morgan Minor, Pro Se Director of Corporate Operations, at MorganMinorProSe@yahoo.com.
Cubicle 7 Entertainment has released a teaser image for their upcoming game, The Rocket Rangers.
“It’s an alternate history pulpy retro-sci-fi space opera planetary romance. It’s throttled up rocket packs burning radium on the long blast to the farthest reaches of the Solar System. It’s hunting thunder lizards in the upland jungles of Venus. It’s battling Ancient Martian killing machines piloted by the Deutsche Marserkorps across the baking red deserts of Mars. It’s exploring the deadly skies of Jupiter under the constant threat of Europan disintegration. It’s RAY gun wielding heroes bulls-eyeing mutants in the blasted ruins of Io” -Ken Spencer, Rocket Age Line Developer
Stay tuned.
About Cubicle 7 Entertainment: Cubicle 7 Entertainment are the creators of high quality roleplaying and card games such as The Doctor Who Card Game, The One Ring, Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, Primeval, The Laundry, Victoriana and Cthulhu Britannica.
News Roundup – including an uncomfortably large number of articles dealing with bias, racism, harassment and BS that just has got to stop!, Time Machine roundup of the week’s most popular posts, and Mark A. Garlick’s artwork featured in this week’s IAAA Gallery.
Airship 27 Productions is proud to present the second in our exciting space opera series featuring Captain Mars McCoy, Space Ranger.
When the universe is imperiled, the call goes out to the brave men, women and robots of the Space Rangers; a group of highly skilled pilot/warriors dedicated to the preservation of law and order throughout the known worlds.Headquartered in the hidden free-floating asteroid station known as the Black Hole, the Space Rangers are ready to respond to any threat traveling the space lanes in their ultra-fast and powerful Black Bird patrol ships.
In this second volume, Captain Mars McCoy, and his gorgeous co-pilot, android Lt. Betty-12 of Black Bird 5 confront two unique and malevolent threats.In “The Curse of the Star Lance,” by James Palmer, they discover a lost Imperial Space Cruiser and the hidden horror that still dwells within it.
Next up is Van Allen Plexico novella length adventure, “Mars McCoy and the Chaos Horde.”A mysterious army of monsters begins materializing at random throughout the Fringe worlds wreaking chaos in their path.What is their secret origin and how can Mars and Betty-12 put an end to their lethal rampage?
This second volume features a stunning painted cover by Michael Youngblood with interiors by Shannon Hall, designs by Art Directory Rob Davis and edited by Ron Fortier.
Cast in the mold of classic pulp sci-fi heroes ala Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Mars McCoy Space Ranger blasts off once more for brand new outer space adventures jammed packed with galaxy spanning suspense and thrills.
AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCITONS – Pulp Fiction for a New Generation!
A Review of Kelly Everaert’s TRILOGY OF TERROR by Andrew Salmon
What’s in a name? Well, plenty. Permit me to elaborate. The title of Kelly Everaert’s homage to the great horror magazines and comics of yesteryear might lead the reader to conclude that there are only 3 tales in this beautiful 54-page, black and white, 10.5″ X 8″ stroll through nightmares. Not so, the title refers to the volume being a collection of the 3 issues of Everaert’s small; press comic. There are 6 tales in this gloriously beastly book – tales you don’t want to miss.
That is if you’re a fan of the EC horror comics, Eerie, Creepy and the like. If the style of the cover illustration alone doesn’t ring any bells, then you’re in troubled waters, hard about. However, for any fan of classic horror, and who isn’t, TRILOGY OF TERROR will fit your reading needs like your favorite easy chair fits your nether regions. Everaert has clearly done his homework with this volume. That he is a fan of this stuff shines through on every page.
“Retribution From The Deep” gets the bleeding started with a haunting tale of greed and revenge. “Awaiting Rescue” jumps ahead for a quick sci-fi tingler featuring a female astronaut stranded on an alien world who may, or may not, be alone. “The Curse” yanks us back to Victorian times for a journey into the occult for the book’s longest tale. The fast-paced “Open House”shows us that a lot can be revealed when showing a property to prospective buyers. Should one only be afraid of getting mugged while walking through New York’s Central Park? “A Walk Through the Park” answers that question. Here Everaert gets a helping hand with inks by Robin Thompson. Everaert brings the collection to a bloody close with “The Prize Catch”, a shocker Lovecraft would be proud of.
TRILOGY OF TERRORis a throwback in every sense of the word. Everaert is not trying to re-invent the wheel here. This is no updating or re-imagining of the classic horror comics. Rather the book stalks down this familiar territory with gusto and verve served up by an artist who knows the route to what scares us. The artwork is richly detailed, heavy blacks abound. The tales move quickly. The writing duties are shared between the writing tag-team of Kelly and his wife, Michelle and the tales move towards their grisly conclusions at a great clip. The variety of tales here also means that there’s something for everyone to scream at.
For those readers out there who can only look longingly at the original issues of the horror classics or shake one’s head in awe at the prices for the various collections of same, TRILOGY OF TERROR, coming in at $6 a throw over at IndyPlanet will seem like a steal. Don’t miss this one horror fans!
CARSON OF VENUS is an all-new full color online weekly comic strip of interplanetary romantic adventure brought to you by writer Martin Powell and artists Thomas Floyd and Diana Leto. Carson of Venus is produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Incorporated. Look for Carson of Venus’ launch on June 1st!
Join the Excitement! For only $1.99 per month you can get Carson of Venus and the all-new TARZAN comic strip by Roy Thomas and Tom Grindberg– and there are more fantastic ERB comic strips on the way– at no additional cost!
Social commentary is pretty old news in science fiction, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that it figures prominently in what will probably turn out to be the summer’s sci-fi biggie, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Of course, if we wanted to be picky, or display our erudition, or be just a bit passive aggressive, we could point out that superheroes are science fiction, and there’s already one of those, a mighty successful one, on our local screens and another, cape furled, is waiting in the wings. But we’re not picky, show-offy or, heaven forfend, passive aggressive, so we’ll just elide past everything in the previous sentence and soldier on to the Trek flick.
I’m not a trekker, not by a stretch, but I have seen all the theatrical movies and a (pretty paltry) sampling of the video iterations. And one element has always bothered me – not a big bother, certainly not a pleasure slayer, just a nag somewhere in the far regions of whatever it is that passes for my social conscience.To wit: the implicit militarism in the Star Trek mythos.
I saw my first television Star Trek in the mid-sixties, when I was hanging with peaceniks and was recently freed from two absolutely humiliating years aboard a warship – pity me, but also pity the poor bastards whose hopeless task it was to cram me into regulations – and I was pretty sensitive to military stuff. And here came Star Trek, which, being science fiction, I was predisposed to like, but they were all wearing uniforms, the crew of the Enterprise, and they often carried sidearms and the ship itself was equipped with a futuristic version of heavy artillery and they had ranks and those ranks had a familiar sound to them: lieutenant, commander, captain, admiral…yeah, I’d met guys who carried those designations. They generally hadn’t been my pals.
Maybe back when Star Trek was but a blip on the zeitgeist, whoever was running the show did have the military in mind. But the current movie makes a point of letting us know that Star Fleet is not a military command. The ranks? Civilian vessels are run by captains and are manned by guys in uniforms.Rank does not necessarily equal warrior: duh.
(Squeaky little spoiler alert.)
What most pleases me is that the villains are not, in the final reckoning, demonized – that is they’re not portrayed as aliens.No, the chief evil-doer is your ol’ buddy the authority figure. And this is where the movie accepts the burden of social commentary: I am not the first to observe that the plot of the story is a reflection of the past decade of our history. And allow me the amusement of imagining that one character’s name on the first draft of the script might have been Cheney.
Because I’m writing these words on Memorial Day, and I have no wish to disrespect either the holiday or those it commemorates, let’s be clear: we should support our troops by giving them the equipment they need and by properly tending to their wounds and by granting them the benefits they’ve earned,and mostly by not sending them to be slaughtered in useless wars.
Crossing one’s own timeline is a cardinal sin for a time traveler. Walking over one’s grave even worse. So when The Doctor is forced to do that…
THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR
by Steven Moffat
Directed by Saul Metzstein
Re-appearing after its defeat a year previous, The Great Intelligence forces The Doctor to the location of his grave, wherein is hidden the physical manifestation of his timeline, a map of his life, which in the hands of the wrong people could be used to re-write his life. The Intelligence chooses to do so, at the cost of its own existence. The only way to save The Doctor, and all the good works he did, is with another sacrifice.
Emotionally, the episode worked exceedingly well. We got a solid River Song story, one where we finally see The Doctor admit his feeling for her. But narratively, we’re very close to seeing the same story three years in a row. An attack on The Doctor results in all of time and space being thrown out of whack, and only through a well-placed sacrifice can everything be undone. We saw it even before the Moffat years in Turn Left, where Donna Noble is manipulated so as to have never met The Doctor, resulting in his death fighting the Racnoss queen, and all of the events afterwards changing. The big twist here is it’s The Doctor who makes the final save of his companion, and not them saving him.
Having The Crimson Horror so closely preceding this episode somewhat diluted the fun of seeing The Paternoster Gang back – it might have been better to be a week ot two back, spread them out just a tad more. As much as people are clamoring for a spinoff series, the characters would need more fleshing out to stand up weekly viewing.
It all got a little needs-more-explainy at the end, but as is traditional, the emotional impact trumps any questions about how things could have happened as they did. And just in case they didn’t, that last scene is enough to forgive all sins, real or imagined.
GUEST STAR REPORTJohn Hurt (The Doctor (?)) has a staggering list of work in sci-fi and fantasy. Perhaps best known for being the incubator for the eponymous creature in Alien, (not to mention a brilliant parody of that moment in Spaceballs), he was also in 1984, V for Vendetta, the Harry Potter films, really too many things to list.
THE MONSTER FILES – The Great Intelligence returns this episode, taking the visage of Dr. Simeon, last seen in The Snowmen. Considering the Intelligence seems to have been destroyed, the likelihood that they’re using the other media’s claim that it is indeed the Old One Yog-Sothoth (from the H.P. Lovecraft stories) is exceedingly slim.
The Whispermen didn’t get a whole lot of chance to do much save for showing off an ability to phase their hands into people’s chests and stop their hearts, and speak in verse. Like The Shakri from The Power of Three, they certainly are interesting enough to warrant a future return, but it’d likely require a bit more explanation. It’s unclear if they’re created by the Intelligence as temporary forms for its energy, or something else. They bear a great resemblance to The Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures, leading many fans to believe that’s who was coming back.
BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details
I CAN NEVER GET IT IN THE RIGHT ORDER – Once again we’re seeing River Song out of sync with past appearances. She’s calling herself Professor again, which means we’re seeing her from near the events of Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. Indeed, since she has knowledge of her own death, she pretty much needs to be coming from AFTER that adventure, from when she was saved in CAL, the database in The Library. The whole point of the episode is about how you can’t cross your own timeline – she wasn’t aware The Library was where she was going to die when she got there, so somehow she was able to join them in their sleep-meeting from within CAL.
Which is why I can’t grasp why people seem to think this will be the last time we’ll not be seeing her again. What we saw was The Doctor coming to grips with the fact that River has at some point died. The image that faded was the mental link image Clara was connected to – River simply closed the link. We know for a fact that there are two adventures that have not yet occurred for The Doctor – he has not yet told her his name, and he has not giver her that adapted sonic screwdriver she had in that first/last story. She will be back, and that’s that. What we ARE seeing is their timelines starting to fill in. In the two hundred or so years The Doctor was away before The Impossible Astronaut (remember, he goes from nine to eleven hundred years old) a lot of the stories in their diaries match up (Jim the Fish!), but not ALL. Plenty more to come.
“On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh” – Dorium first names the place and the prediction at the end of The Wedding of River Song. “Silence will fall when The Question is asked”, and indeed that’s what happened – When Simeon asked for The Doctor’s name, it gave him the opportunity to undo all of his deeds, including keeping Davros from destroying the universe. So indeed, it’s possible The Silence was fighting the wrong enemy, and they should have been trying to stop The Great Intelligence and The Whispermen.
“I was born to save The Doctor” – It’s funny that one of the rumors about the upcoming 50th anniversary story was they’d be inserting Matt Smith into past Doctor footage – it turns out it was done here. In addition to using Hartnell footage to present the first moment of The Doctor’s adventures, we see her appear in footage from The Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity, and Dragonfire. Most impressively is we see her standing behind Ten and Donna as they survey The Library in River Song’s first adventure. We see Troughton and Pertwee from footage in The Five Doctors, and stand-in versions of the remaining Doctors.
“But not in the name of The Doctor” – As with the first episode of the semi-series, the title did not mean what it seemed it would. This new Doctor appears to have done things that the rest of his incarnations, the rest of himself, can’t bear to deal with. It’s fair to guess this includes causing the end of the Time War, but that’s not yet guaranteed.
BIG BAD REPORT /CLEVER THEORY DEPARTMENT – Pretty much we’re just looking backwards now. We can see what the common threads were during Clara’s appearances, and for the second half of the season.
“I don’t know where I am” Oswin says it in Asylum of the Daleks, Clara says it in Bells of St. John, and says it again here.
“They’re my echoes” – We heard references to ghosts and echoes throughout the series as well. The mysterious creatures in Hide (not to mention Clara’s statement that “we must all be ghosts to you”), the memories and experiences in Rings of Akhaten, the Ice Warrior out of time in Cold War, all creatures out of their proper place in time.
NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO – Well, we know a little bit. After that setup, there’s going to be a GREAT deal of rumormongering and Clever Theorizing over the next half year. But even what we know is pretty damn cool.
David Tennant and Billie Piper are returning for the 50th anniversary episode, and so far, none of the other original Doctors are. We don’t know from what point of Ten’s timeline we’ll bee seeing him. Since it appears he and Rose are still traveling together, it’s likely from before Doomsday.
Jemma Redgrave will return as Kate Stewart, new head of UNIT.
The Zygons will return to the series, and appearances by Cybermen and Daleks are also rumored.
Hermes Press has released the first cover for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a four-issue mini-series written and drawn by Howard Chaykin premiering August 2013.
Here’s how Hermes Press describes the book:
“Before Star Trek and Star Wars, Buck Rogers captivated audiences around the world and made science fiction a national obsession. Now, over 80 years after the creation of the newspaper strip that became a household word, Howard Chaykin has returned the character and his universe back to basics: Buck Rogers, former World War I ace is accidentally suspended in time only to awaken to a new and different earth, 500 years in the future, fragmented by war and ruled by an omnipotent force — the Chinese. Now, Buck along with Colonel Wilma Deering, begin a new fight, to free the United States!”
This is very good news. Dragon*Con announced this on their Facebook page today:
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