Comics

Super Heroes and Crimefighting

Hey! Look! More time-wasting ruminations on super heroes!

In the first decades of super heroes, their purpose was firmly fixed: Crimefighting. Even most supervillains, to this day, are petty criminals much of the time. This actually makes a lot of sense, given the time period they rose up in. Pre-WWII America was a crime-ridden, nasty place. Even today, America has an absurdly higher rate of violent crime, especially gun crime, than many other industrialized nations. If super heroes were first written today, though, or actually existed, would they be crime fighters? I don’t think so.

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Belated weekly pull review.

Sorry the pull review is late this week. Without further delay:

Beasts of Burden One-Shot: Hunters and Gatherers

Dark Horse Comics
Evan Dorkin, Jill Thompson
For those of you who have never read Beasts of Burden before: WHY? Seriously, this series about dogs and cats defending the town of Burden Hill from supernatural threats is amazing. Great characters, wonderful art, a dog lycanthrope, it’s got it all. I think it passes the Bechdel test, but I’m not entirely sure that it is particularly useful here, since you’ve got to guess the gender of the various animals from context clues/familiarity with the series, and there is no way to tell for some of the minor characters and extras. (I still have to finish the series proper myself, but I’m working on it). I think I’m just going to start commenting on whether a comic passes the Bechdel test, the test is non-applicable, or it is a serious failure. Otherwise, just assume it failed, which is sadly pretty normal in comics.
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Thrilling, engaging news!

That’s a lie.

I’ve been doing editing on my comic scripts. Important, but hardly thrilling. Cleaning up dialogue, plot loopholes, trying to reduce panel counts (especially in the earlier issue), ensuring continuity is stable: bleh.

Otherwise, I’ve about finished the second draft of Siegebeast’s rules. I just have some final tinkering to do, then it is time to prepare another prototype for this version. I’ve reduced the complexity a bit by getting rid of a number of unnecessary features,  including level restrictions on ability cards, and I’ve evened out the stat bonuses given by ability cards as well. (There are four stats: Armor, Speed, Attack, and Range. Armor and Range both start out at 0, Speed starts at 4, Attack starts at 1. Previously cards would give all sorts of bonuses to them, ranging from +1 or +2 to a single stat to giving bonuses to multiple stats. I’ve replaced this with having each card give +1 to each of two stats, along with whatever ability it grants normally.) I’m still having trouble with abilities for two of the factions, but I’m narrowing down the problems.

Undertow

So poking around in my recent comics, I found one I wanted to mention to you guys:

 
Undertow #1

Image
Steve Orlando, Artyom Trakhanov, Thomas Mauer
Undertow is spectacular. The first issue just came out last week. It’s a comic about primordial Atlantis, while humans are still savages without language or any but the most rudimentary tools. Atlantis is an autocratic, almost fascist society, and the story follows a group of rebels and refugees looking for a better life. The writing is great, the art is spectacular, and if you can, grab the spectacular Simon Roy variant cover art. (I’m a huge fan of the current run of Prophet, so his variant art is what made me pick up Undertow in the first place). It sadly fails the Bechdel Test, but that’s hardly surprising, given how many comics do fail, and it doesn’t fail egregiously. Nothing that the Hawkeye Initiative would need to look at. Also, since the characters aren’t humans, it takes a second to figure out some of their genders anyhow (though some are much, much more obvious than others). Anyway: Great comic.