Out of the Vault- Scorpio Rose

In the late 70's, DC Comics introduced a character named Madame Xanadu in a book titled Doorway to Nightmare. I never read any Madame Xanadu stories, but according to Wikipedia, she functioned something like the Hulk in his late 70's TV series. Each issue she would help a different person with their problems, with the bulk of the story devoted to the guest stars. When DC entered the direct market, they decided to give her her own title, Madame Xanadu, written by Steve Englehart and pencilled by the late Marshall Rogers.

Then Englehart and DC got into an argument over payment for a Superman/Creeper story (which found its way to Eclipse and morphed into Cap'n Quick and the Foozle). Englehart left DC and took his stories with him, so Madame Xanadu was cancelled after one issue.

Shortly thereafter, in 1983, Scorpio Rose #1 was published by Eclipse, once again featuring the Englehart/Rogers team. And like Cap'n Quick, Scorpio Rose was basically a reworking of Englehart's planned Madame Xanadu tales with an original character. Only since "Flashdance" had just come out to enormous success in April of that year, the magical Ms. Rose wore a leotard with one shoulder bare and leg warmers.

In the first issue, we learn that Scorpio Rose is a three-hundred-year-old sorceress whose mission it is to keep evil magical artifacts out of the hands of bad guys. She fights off a gang of guys trying to steal a magical tome called the Book of Fleshe and retreats to her home, where she is visited by a guy named Igor Gravesend.

Flashback 300 years to when Scorpio Rose was a young gypsy dancer whose camp was visited by the same Igor Gravesend. The sexy young Rose throws herself shamelessly at the city slicker, who keeps telling her he's not interested and to stay away from him. But that just makes her more determined, so she leads him out of camp, ostensibly to show him a "short-cut to St. Petersburg," which in the Romany tongue is apparently code for "Scorpio Rose's vagina."

Before they can get busy, though, Rose's jealous boyfriend Zachariasz shows up. He's kind of a douche.

A douche with a knife, which gets Scorpio all hot and bothered.

At which point Ms. Rose learns that, before you promise yourself as the spoils to the victor (Igor Gravesend, in this case), you should make sure he isn't actually some super-demon in disguise.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the demon-rape wasn't exactly the way it would have appeared in DC comics. Anyway, the rape breaks her soul, leaving her immortal. Left with time to kill, she goes out and learns magic and becomes the protector of good for 300 years, until Igor shows up again, having been sent by his boss to retrieve the Book of Fleshe. Igor warns Scorpio that he will be forced to return in his demon form, so she'd probably better make herself scarce.

She flees, pursued by the demon, but finally manages to escape by using a magical tarot card to flee into Purgatory. Where she runs into Zachariasz. Who's still a douche.

In issue two, Scorpio flees with the shade of Zachariasz into Hecate's realm to ask for help. Of course, Hecate tells her to take a hike. So after another run-in with Igor the demon, she flees to a sort of alternate dimension or something, where she decides it's a perfect time to make out with the 300-year-old spectre of her douche ex-boyfriend.

Meanwhile, Igor has returned to human form and uses a magical amulet to try to break free of the control of his evil masters. At which point he suddenly awakens in the suburban kitchen of this woman...

Sorry, wrong story. I meant, this woman...

And since this is a Steve Englehart comic, the appearance of a beautiful woman with the incredibly annoying verbal tic of constantly referring to herself as "This One" can only mean one thing: she's the Celestial Madonna, a character concept Englehart originated with a character named Mantis in Marvel's Avengers, then carried over to DC's Justice League of America (where he called her Willow), and has now ported over to Eclipse as Lorelei. And it turns out that the powers Igor works for want to use the Book of Fleshe to create an Anti-Christ to Lorelei's Celestial Messiah-son.

Which leads us to issue 3, in which... well, there was no issue 3. The entire story (including the lost issue 3) was apparently reprinted by Image in Coyote Collection 1, but I probably wouldn't read through it again even if you bought it for me. I've never been much of a fan of Englehart's writing, and though Marshall Rogers's art was really nice in places, Tom Palmer's muddy zip-filled inks and colors made the book hard to follow at times. Neither the rape-origin nor the Cosmic Anti-Christ plot really did it for me, and several pages are just jammed with overblown exposition disguised as dialogue. Speaking of "The Matrix," imagine a comic in which everyone talks like Morpheus or the Architect, all the time. Jeez.

No more for me, thanks. I'm full.

Vault Delayed

A number of obligations this week have added up to today's Vault being delayed (but not cancelled, yet). Look for it in late afternoon/early evening.

Big Game Wednesday - Dougal: From Face to Heel

So I haven't updated about our current game in a while, and thought I'd throw out a little update (which is kind of silly, since most of the people who read the blog are people who are already playing in the game--oh well...).

Dougal has gone through several transitions in the game, and has emerged as a rather contradictory character. He started out as an engineer with a healthy skepticism for claims of "magic"--a giant Scully with man-boobs. That opinion has obviously had to go through a few revisions over time, since like Jack Burton, he's experienced some very unreasonable things. Some of it he has explained to himself in terms of Christian faith (a seer with visions of the future being analogous to a Biblical prophet, or of course, the whole "we're in Hell" episode which still gets some mileage) and others in terms of scientific principles that have been lost (alchemy and monsters, for instance).

Interestingly, though, the Hell that is Atlantis has morphed from a place of punishment to a Purgatory designed to tempt and corrupt him so completely that he might finally be consigned to the flames of an even worse Hell. He has been tempted by money (vast riches carted out of an ancient city), violence (he's done a lot of killing), pagan worship (an ancient evil goddess with whom he had to bargain to escape said ancient city alive), lust (the Princess with whom he has fallen in love has some very... flexible morals when it comes to sexuality), and power (his prowess with a mighty flaming sword having helped him defeat demons and sorcerers, drawing him into intrigues surrounding the throne of Atlantis and the vice-regal government of the British colony).

Though he has fallen short in most areas, he had always remained a loyal British citizen. Until he learned that the Princess Leda (one of the contenders for the Atlantean throne whose death was faked following the attack of a demon foretold in visions) was carrying his child. Dougal is smart enough to know that his child would be perceived as a threat by both the boy-emperor and the viceroy, so he has decided to ally himself with the supremely dangerous Amice Belden, descendant of the most reviled sorcerer in the history of Atlantis, the man responsible for the cataclysm which sank the island originally.

So Dougal has now transformed almost completely into someone that he would have reviled had he met him at the start of the game: a brutal killer allied with witches and a traitor to the Empire. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on his behavior in the future.

I'm of two minds about the whole thing, myself. On the one hand, the roleplaying is a lot of fun, and as I've said, light-years beyond most of the gaming I've done. On the other hand, this is not a game in which any kind of long-term planning is rewarded, because circumstances can change completely from one week to the next. I feel as if I'm somehow not contributing if I'm not trying to help shape the story, assert some kind of positive control over my actions rather than simply reacting from week to week. But then, so much happens that simply must be reacted to.

Yeah, I Know

I can't settle on a header design I like. After Halloween, I tried something science-fictiony, but it didn't turn out well, and I just didn't like looking at it. I went back to the noir header, but I was tired of looking at it. So then I decided to try something else I'd been thinking of doing a long time ago: redoing the Digger header I used a while back with a different approach to the heroes. The only one who still uses the same illustration is Angar, and I'll probably be changing him around soon, because he's bald in the book.

And as that was happening, something went kablooey in Blogger and my background tiles are no longer showing up. So I've had to change to a flat color for now while I try to figure that out.

Oh and speaking of headers, if you're not visiting Hero Go Home every week, you've been missing out on some Easter Eggs. A brief recap of recent weeks, told in headers...

I've not received one comment about this, on the blog or in person. Not actually sure if anyone noticed.

Movie Monday - Atom Man vs. Superman, Chapters 4-7

Continuing our recap of the second Columbia Superman serial starring Kirk Alyn, 1950's Atom Man vs. Superman.

One thing I failed to mention last week was that, since this was a sequel to a serial that appeared only two years earlier, there was no need to recap Superman's origin at the beginning. What a relief, eh?

Anyway, there's a lot to cover, so let's get right to it. At the end of Chapter 3, Lois and Jimmy were trapped in the lab of Professor Stone, who had been locked inside his vault, where he was using special controls to scour his lab with fire. And seriously, at this point, given how ineffectual Luthor has been, I'm wondering why a guy who looks like this...

who has his lab rigged to do this...

isn't the real villain of the piece? Seriously, everybody needs a vault like that. Talk about a panic room...

So of course, as Chapter 4, "Superman Meets Atom Man," opens, Superman saves Lois and Jimmy from the flames, then switches back to Clark. When Professor Stone gets out of his vault, he's pissed at our heroes, blaming them for concocting some sort of stunt to get a sensationalized story for their paper. Then he throws them out, and the coin goes unanalyzed.

Later, Luthor and Alber have a little therapy session about Superman's interference. Then Lawson shows up with some stolen jewels, only he's holding out, which prompts Luthor to have him searched. When they find jewels hidden in his hat, Lawson claims he 'forgot' they were there. Before he can claim he was just holding them for a friend, and besides it wasn't even his hat, Luthor has him thrown under the Main Arc and sends him into space and the Empty Doom.

Meanwhile, Lois is having a birthday party at the Daily Planet. After Clark helps her blow out her candles, she opens her presents and receives a special coin that teleports her into the Atom Man's secret cave. The Atom Man tells Lois to make a special broadcast to let Superman know he has her. Her script says for Superman not to look for her, but she starts ad-libbing, telling Superman to hurry up and "go after him."

Superman comes up with a plan. He flies out to the desert, digs a rock out of the ground and hurls it up into the sky so that it comes down with explosive force. Next thing you know, the newspapers are buzzing about the "meteor" that landed in the desert. Then Clark lies to Perry White that the university thinks that the meteor came from Krypton (what was that thing about trumping up sensationalized stories for the newspaper?).

Of course, Luthor bites hard on the bait and sends his thugs to steal the meteor from the museum. But rather than follow the thugs to their hideout, Superman heads back to the Daily Planet just in time to hear one of the thugs call in that Lois was last seen in the vicinity of Cave Mountain (where Luthor has moved his HQ). Superman shows up in the secret cave moments later, in what appears to be the same cave used by Luthor in Chapter 1. There he confronts the Atom Man, whose lead-lined helmet conceals his identity from Superman's X-Ray Vision (although seriously, how hard can it be to figure out?).

Of course, Superman does not fall victim to the fake Kryptonite. But then Atom Man warns him that there is a photoelectric beam that will kill Lois if he comes any closer. So Superman agrees to stand under the Main Arc (at which point the Atom Man and his thugs cross through the so-called "photoelectric beam" and Superman does nothing about it). The Main Arc is activated, and Superman disintegrates.

Atom Man uses a hypnotic ray to knock Lois out, then his thugs put her in a car and send it careening toward a cliff. Oh no!

But as Chapter 5, "Atom Man Tricks Superman," opens, Superman swoops out of the sky and saves Lois.

But hey, that looks familiar. Have we accidentally started watching Chapter 7 of the previous serial? No, it's just reused footage. And by the way, Superman's not disintegrated! He tells Lois that the Main Arc was unable to affect him because his atomic structure is different from humans. He faked his disappearance by moving faster than the eye could see (not the last one-shot invented power we'll run into). They then drive back to rejoin Jimmy and cops (this may be the only time we'll ever see Superman at the wheel of a car).

And as they get out, notice that apparently that Chaplin lady is not the only one to have an anachronistic cell phone (okay, she's actually just fixing her hair). Jimmy runs up to say that in the minute or two that has gone by since the car rolled past, the cops have searched the cave and found only "bare rock walls" (man, forget Luthor, get me the name of his moving company). They go back to the Planet.

Later, Superman explains to Perry White and the Chief of Police that Luthor's machine could have affected him if he'd used plutonium. No idea how he has figured this out, BTW, but it's necessary to set up Luthor's next plot.

And by "set up," I mean of course that Superman asks Perry to plant another fake story in his newspaper. What does he think this is, the New York Times?

So the Planet runs a story about a plutonium shipment, and Perry sends Lois and Clark to cover the story on the train. And of course, can't find a match to light his cigar. Hello, running gag. I've missed you.

Luthor, of course, knows it's a trap, but decides to send one of his men to fall into it anyway. He sends FGD-Alpha, who disguises himself as a porter, but gets caught by Superman when he pulls a gun on the fake detective carrying the fake plutonium. Superman flies FGD-Alpha back to Perry White's office for questioning. Last time he did this, in the previous serial, Perry ended up getting thrown out the window by the same actor. That doesn't happen this time. Instead, it's Alpha who gets thrown out, tossed into the air by Superman to scare a confession out of him.


Alpha then confesses that Luthor was just using the fake plutonium robbery to cover his real objective, retrieving a package from Central Station. Having planted the bait, Alpha then uses his magic coin to teleport out.

So Supes flies to Central Station to check out the packages. The Chief of Police expressed his doubts that they could "legally" open and search all those packages, so Superman just sweeps his X-Ray Vision around the room, finding nothing but personal belongings and a box of nails. After he leaves, Luthor's thugs arrive to claim the box of nails. Glowing nails.


Yow! Turns out the nails were made of a special alloy designed to turn to plutonium when bombarded with X-Rays. Great plan, except for, you know, the cancer.

As the thugs are leaving, Lois spots them and sends Jimmy to phone the police while she stalls them (there's a great throwaway moment where a newsboy asks Jimmy if he wants a paper, and Jimmy mutters an acid "Are you kiddin?" with perfect timing). The thugs capture Lois with Jimmy in hot pursuit. And of course, Clark has overheard the conversation with Perry, so Superman should be showing up soon as well.

The thugs drive out to an abandoned farm, where they tie Lois up in the barn. And wow, all of a sudden, Lois has really got the bullet bra thing working this episode.


The thugs hide when Jimmy pulls up moments later, driving right into the barn to save Lois. So the thugs knock Jimmy out (remember when I said last week that this would happen many times?), then shut and bolt the barn doors, leaving the running engine of Jimmy's car to kill the two reporters with carbon monoxide. Awfully considerate of Jimmy to provide the means of their execution.

But aw crap! As Chapter 6, "Atom Man's Challenge," begins, Superman arrives in time to save them. And because farmers tend to be practical people who anticipate and prepare for problems before they occur, the door already has a Superman-shaped cutout in it for easy access.


Luthor's thugs arrive at his lab and report the death of the reporters. But when Luthor checks on activities at the Planet, he learns Lois and Jimmy are still alive. He sentences one of his men to the Empty Doom for giving a false report. But then, since he's sorta' running out of henchmen, he brings him back almost instantly. Luthor's such a softie. I wanna see more Professor Stone. Now there's a scientist who knows how to kill people.

Luthor's next plan involves synthetic Kryptonite. "When the Kryptonite was in my possession, I analyzed it," he says. Okay, we know that the 'Kryptonite' a couple of chapters ago was fake. Are we supposed to forget that, or is Luthor saying that he had some real stuff before the serial began? I mean, we're told from the beginning that Luthor is Superman's arch-enemy, but this is really big ret-con from out of nowhere.

Anyway, Luthor's synthetic Kryptonite is missing only one element: radium. So Luthor goes to his extraordinarily diverse file of stratagems and... broadcasts on the police band that he's going to steal the radium. Perry sends Clark, Lois and Jimmy out to find the story, and then can't light his cigar. Could we take up a collection to buy him a Zippo or something? Please? You can use the "Donate" link on herogohome.com if you want.

So two of Atom Man's thugs go to the hospital (which is the same building as the university from the previous serial, only with a sign that says "Metropolis Hospital" by the door).



They pose as cops come to transport the radium to a "safe location." The genius working for the hospital pulls the radium out of the safe before asking for written authorization, at which point one of the thugs writes the authorization across the guy's jaw. With his fist. They drive away just as Clark Kent is pulling up. Clark's too late!

So Clark races to the Carlysle Reduction Plant, home of a second supply of radium. Turns out it's supposed to be transported somewhere else, but the armored car has been hijacked. So Lois is recruited as a mule to move the radium in her handbag. No one would suspect that.

Except the two thugs outside with a Gieger counter, who detect the radiation. Lois tries to fight them off with powder from her compact, but they somehow overcome that assault, take the radium, lock her in the vault and knock out Jimmy for good measure (third time in six chapters!). They flee with Jimmy and the radium.

Superman arrives moments later to find the plant manager out cold on the floor and Lois locked in the vault. The guy doesn't have the combination, so Superman says he'll use his "special powers" to find the combination.

Now at this point, you would be justified in thinking that Superman would use his super-hearing to listen to the tumblers fall into place, but you would be wrong. He simply spins the dials this way and that, and thanks to some undefined "special power," the dial magically stops on the right numbers. Wow, I know you can't be too picky with this stuff because it was written very quickly and not meant to be rewatched for continuity, but seriously: the writers are too lazy to even take the most obvious solution.

Superman then flies off in hot pursuit of the thugs, catches the car and turns it over. But too late! The radium and Jimmy have been transferred to another car. So Superman rips out the engine and uses it to trap the thugs in the car. "That ought to hold you for a while," he says before flying away.

Which it would, if the car didn't have, say, a glass windshield that could easily be broken by gun-wielding thugs, or if the entire gang weren't carrying special coins they can use to teleport to the Atom Man's secret cave headquarters. But how likely is that?

Anway, the car carrying the radium and Jimmy pulls onto a bombing range, where Jimmy is punched unconscious again (twice in one episode!) and then left to be blowed up real good by a bomb.

Which brings us to Chapter 7, "At the Mercy of Atom Man."

Boy these episodes are really packed with stuff! Should I stop here or try to fit in one more chapter? Show of hands?

Okay, one more chapter it is. Superman, of course, arrives just in time to pull Jimmy out of the car, but the thug uses his teleport coin to escape with the radium. So now Luthor has everything he needs to make his synthetic Kryptonite. While he's waiting for the furnace to cook the ingredients, Alber asks how Luthor knows this recipe will work.

Luthor says he knows everything about Krypton, pieced together from dozens of astronomical reports along with coded messages received by a ship's radio operator. And now we get four minutes of recycled footage of Superman's origin from the previous serial, showing how Jor-El built the rocket, got laughed out of Science Council, and launched Kal-El to Earth. Wow, so not only was I wrong about the sequel not retelling Superman's origin (although it did wait until Chapter 7 to do so), but that saved us a lot of description. We're almost done!

Soup's on! Luthor sends the new synthetic Kryptonite to his man inside the Daily Planet, a janitor named Harris. Harris plants the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Kryptonite in the water cooler next to Clark Kent's desk, just in case Superman should happen to get thirsty of something. Of course, Clark gets dizzy and passes out, which makes Harris think he's Superman. But as he's fetching another thug, Clark stumbles out, and Harris's story is judged hogwash.

Luthor decides the "Wait for Superman to get a drink from the Daily Planet watercooler" plan is a bit too iffy, so he decides to use the Craptonite at a ship launching that Superman is due to attend. Superman is introduced by Professor Hammil from Batman and Robin (last seen hawking papers in the first Superman serial).



One of the thugs uses the fake Kryptonite to knock Superman out, then others arrive in a fake ambulance to whisk him off. How will Superman get out of this one?

Be here next week for the next clump of chapters.

Lost in Translation

Looking through who has been visiting the blog, I noticed that someone had translated my entry on the Bert Gordon movie "The Magic Sword" into Turkish. I have no idea how Google's English-to-Turkish translation will handle things like "tig ol' bitties" or "Lodac's all 'Wha?'" (ETA: Looking at the page again, it appears that Google punts on those two phrases, simply reproducing "tig ol' bitties" and "Wha?" verbatim in English). But I kind of wish I could understand Turkish so I could find out.

I remember a couple of years ago, running across some entries of mine that were being republished as content on someone else's blog. But it looked as if they had been translated into some other language, Chinese or Russian or something, and then translated back to English, because the syntax was seriously screwed up. And though I could vaguely remember what I had said on the subjects listed in the taglines, I sometimes had to struggle to find what I had said in what was now written. I know that some people get really upset when their content has been appropriated in that way, but I didn't sweat it too much. Number one, they credited me. Number two, who knew whether their crappy little cut-and-paste blog would get any traffic at all, other than from web-search spiders? And number three, they probably wouldn't be around long.

And sure enough, I can't find any examples now. So I just have to imagine. Or else go to the trouble of translating a page into some other language and then translating it back. But really, is that what we've saved all this daylight for?

Out of the Vault - Walter: Campaign of Terror

I had originally considered doing this as a Halloween entry due to the title and the grotesque nature of the main character, but after rereading the book, I decided to just concentrate on the stripper-witches and save this for after . So...

In 1996, John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke, the creative team behind The Mask, having turned their premiere character over to other (and lesser) creative teams following the success of the Jim Carrey movie, made their final foray into the world of their bizarrely violent main character with the spin-off miniseries, Walter: Campaign of Terror.

Who's Walter, you ask?

Walter was the Mask's arch-enemy, a giant hulking mute brute, super-strong and nigh indestructible. Imagine a cross between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, only smart enough to figure out how to make a profit off his violent inclinations by becoming a Mafia hit-man. Walter had battled various wearers of the Mask off and on through three previous miniseries, but had ultimately failed to defeat its power completely.

As the miniseries begins, Walter is hiding out in a ratty slum apartment when the cops arrive to arrest him, having been tipped off by the super. Things don't go well for the cops at first...

But it turns out they've brought a freaking tank for support, so Walter surrenders.

Walter is put on trial, represented by a beautiful and ruthless female lawyer named Anna Hamel (her services provided by one of the deep-pocketed Mafia characters around town who still wishes to retain Walter's services). However, even though the evidence against him is circumstantial, the Mayor is desperate to have Walter convicted so he can prove his anti-crime bona fides and get re-elected. The D.A. assures him the case is strong, and the judge is also playing on the Mayor's team. Things look bad for Walter.

Meanwhile, with Walter in jail, there's a hit man vacuum, which is filled by a spooky weasel named Mahlon.

In court, Anna Hamel is banging her head against the wall, trying to get the crooked judge to make any rulings in her favor. Suddenly, a man bursts into the courtroom with an automatic rifle and begins shooting up the place. Everyone dives for cover except Walter, who is not pleased that the man ruins his suit by putting a bullet hole through it. So he breaks the guy's arm, thus saving the lives of the judge and jury.

Next thing you know...

Walter's a hero. Which gives somebody an idea.

Hence the title. But Walter's campaign goes nowhere until he returns to his old apartment to pick up some stuff. While there, he beats up the apartment super who ratted him out in full view of a television camera. However, the camera also filmed the super throwing out a destitute single mother, and the footage is edited to make Walter appear a champion of the oppressed.

Suddenly, Walter is the people's hero, which convinces a desperate mayor to hire Mahlon the hit man to off Walter. Hilarity ensues.

The series was as well executed as a series starring a homicidal maniac could be. It was a satirical look at the sleazy political machines running the city, in which Walter emerged as the hero only because he was at least honest about what he was. It was like Bonfire of the Vanities, only with a Hamlet-style body count.

The art by Doug Mahnke and Keith Williams was excellent, too. It was one of the few comics I've read, though, where there were pages I would have liked to see without any coloring, just because the inking was so dense and detailed that the colors sometimes seemed to detract rather than add.

Dark Horse continued to create Mask projects, but Arcudi and Mahnke were done with the property. Another of Arcudi's Dark Horse projects, Barb Wire, was also made into a film, and more recently, Arcudi has been working on B.P.R.D., a spin-off of Mike Mignola's Hellboy. Meanwhile, Mahnke has been drawing up a storm over at D.C., illustrating the adventures of the Justice League, Superman, and Green Lantern.

Big Game Wednesday - Digger Returns, But Then...

After a couple months of diversions, what with Gary's attempt to run Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, followed by mine, Gary decided to resume Champions again. He told me up front that I could bring Digger back if I wanted. Digger was a fairly well-conceived character with some history behind him, and importantly not a min-maxed monstrosity. When I mentioned that Digger had, you know, died along with everyone else in D&D land, he waved it off with a "characters in comics return from the dead all the time."

So Digger ended up being the only one who returned from an alternate dimension brush with death, and a new team was formed. With Digger being the only experienced character in the group (and since there had also been churn within the gaming group due to older players graduating and newer students joining up), he became the de facto leader of the New Champions.

I also decided that his return from apparent death would be a good time for a costume change, a not-so-proud tradition for comics characters with a new creative team trying to find a new creative direction. What I ended up with was the horror you see above--striped military pants out of Star Blazers, combined with the shirt from the original X-Men uniform, with a weird (and non-functional) anime-armor piece thrown over the top. I also included the signature poncho I'd had him wear whenever he tried to go out incognito and switched the boots to have an insanely large flap hanging down.

Plus a short-cropped haircut and a beard.

All in all, it was an almost total change from the previous look. The only common factor was the presence of the Drillers, and I'd even decided to have him weld on little fins to make those look cooler.

Unfortunately for Digger, the new look didn't make things any easier for him. His unlucky streak still held, and Digger was simply unprepared for the demands of leadership. The new group was younger and more volatile than the old one, but Digger was slowly beginning to grow into the role of leader.

And then he accidentally awakened an ancient Aztec deity from his ages-old slumber in a subterranean chamber. Tlaloc, God of Storms, emerged to conquer the world. Digger and the New Champions tried to stop him, but he overpowered them and sent them into the future.

This happened for a couple of reasons. Number one, Gary and I both liked X-Men, and "Days of Future Past" was still fairly fresh in our minds, as it had only been published a couple of years before.

And number two, Hero Games had published a new rules variant called Autoduel Champions that adapted the futuristic road combat of Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars into Champions terms. Gary was eager to try it out, and this was his way of doing it.

The big problem for Digger: he had lost his main powers. In those days, the Drillers were still defined as foci (obvious, inaccessible)--defined as unique bio-metal power batteries that could be removed for maintenance purposes. Tlaloc, after defeating the New Champions, had removed the batteries from the Drillers, then sent Digger fifty years into the future without them.

Still, I decided to accept the challenge so I could maybe develop Digger's skills in other ways, make him a really multi-pronged threat. I even drew up a special new character portrait of an anime-influenced Digger, his beard shaved off and his hair grown long again, surrounded by flames, with his shirt torn and that silly chest-piece missing. Dramatic, don't you know? Digger at bay, trapped in a world he never made.

We learned that Tlaloc had managed to take over the entire country (perhaps the entire world), establishing a totalitarian order that demanded obedience and human sacrifice. But there was an underground resistance, and they determined to help us do something to try to defeat him. I don't remember what the specific MacGuffin was, but it involved a road trip.

So we convoyed in two separate vehicles, and on the way, were intercepted by a cop (a trooper working for Tlaloc's evil regime, that is). That's when everything turned to shit. The driver of the lead vehicle decided to panic stop or something and failed his control roll, at which point we learned that we were traveling really fast, like 100 mph. That car rolled, basically incapacitating everyone inside. Half the team was out of the fight instantly.

Meanwhile, one of the guys in the car with Digger said, "Don't worry. I've got a force field. I'll draw their fire." He flew out and did just that. The laser on the cop car was really powerful, though, and Gary rolled amazing on the stun multiplier, so there was another hero out of the fight.

At that point, it was like Digger and one other hero (a martial artist or something lame), plus a female NPC who was not so combat oriented. As the other two characters tried shooting it out with the cop car, Digger grabbed a shotgun and leapt on top of the cop car's turret, using his clinging to stay balanced while firing down through weak spots in the car's armor (using his Find Weakness skill).

After a few rounds, the other PC and the NPC were both down, and only Digger remained. The car stopped and the cop got out to shoot Digger off the top of his car. This was the moment Digger had been waiting for, his crowning moment of cool. He would single-handedly prevail against this guy who had wiped out the rest of his team (though to be fair, half the team had actually wiped themselves out).

Digger did not have his blasters, but he had the highest allowable human strength, and insane speed and dexterity. He jumped down and punched the crap out of the cop, putting him down for the count. Sweet Victory!

At which point, the partner which Digger did not suspect was still in the car rotated the turret and shot him with several d6 of laser-fueled Killing Attack. And since at the time, he still had his damage resistance as part of a multipower, meaning he had to state he was consciously resisting damage--this due to the ridiculously low point totals Gary had instituted at the beginning of the campaign--he took full damage from the attack.

Digger died. Again. Like before, this was in an alternate world scenario using a variant rules set, but still...

This time, it wasn't so easy to handwave away. He hadn't had his form magically changed to a legendary monster, nor had he been killed in a land which included magical resurrection spells (as far as I know, anyway). He had just been shot through the chest by a really powerful laser.

I was devastated. I had played Digger at that point, off and on, for well over a year, so having him die suddenly like that really hit me hard. I went out and drowned my sorrows at Fatburger. The big lesson I learned? Don't try to jazz up your campaign by changing the rules on people. Players get used to the way the world works, and it is really hard to adjust mentally to a sudden change in rules, especially something that affects combat and lethality.

As far as I know, that was the last game of that campaign. We were coming up on the end of another school year IIRC, so we left it on the cliffhanger, and I think everyone just decided to let it hang. It wasn't as if the other players were real gung-ho to keep going after the serial embarrassments of losing to Tlaloc and a Highway Patrolman, and without Digger, I didn't see the point. I was going through my own troubles at the time anyway, since I was flunking out of Cinema Production.

We continued to game, but I really don't remember much about it. I know that we had a new guy come in at one point claiming to be a very experienced Dungeon Master with an awesome set of house-rules designed to create very powerful characters. He ran probably the most boring session I had ever sat through up to that time. We didn't really do much other than meet some powerful NPC who was pretty evidently his pet character, an elven princess who wore a distinctive crown of leaves. He spent probably five to ten minutes just describing her, including a leaf-by-leaf and dewdrop-by-dewdrop description of her crown (apparently just the kewlest magical item in his campaign , and he wanted to make sure we knew it).

I think I rounded out my time in L.A. playing Bushido and Runequest with Brian running while I worked a couple of horrible part-time jobs over the summer, trying to make it in L.A. When my dad called a few months later to tell me I could come home and stay rent-free in his house in Oklahoma City, I said 'yes' in a heartbeat, thinking I would take some time to regroup, get my screenplay writing honed, then someday come back.

I never did. But Digger did.

Movie Monday - Atom Man vs. Superman, Chapters 1-3

Starting our recap of the second live-action Superman serial, released two years after the first. This is about as pure a sequel as you are ever likely to see, produced by largely the same cast and crew (with Kirk Alyn once again uncredited as Superman), with music and special effects recycled from the old serial. Some of the incidental music cues from the "Batman and Robin" serial are also used.

Chapter 1, "Superman Flies Again," opens with a crime wave terrorizing the city. A group of thugs are surprised while robbing a war surplus depot. Two of them hold off the cops while a third uses a radio to call for help. Who ya gonna call?

Lex Luthor. Luthor uses a special machine to cause fiery flares to shoot from the building, distracting the cops long enough for the thugs to escape.

At the Daily Planet, the old gang is still together. The cast hasn't changed a bit, though Lois is now sporting shorter hair.


They discuss Superman's arch-enemy, Lex Luthor. Perry White doesn't believe Luthor's involved in the recent crime wave, though. "I still believe Superman scared him away"

Clark Kent, who is the first of many through the years to exhibit a problem remembering how to pronounce Luthor's name, says that if it is Luthor, he won't be able to keep from bragging about himself. And literally seconds later, Luthor's on the radio, threatening to destroy Metropolis unless he is paid a huge ransom. He says he'll destroy a bridge first, as a demonstration of his power. Perry sends his reporters out to get a story, then has trouble finding a match to light his cigar (we'll see this gag a lot).

So Lois and Jimmy head out to the bridge, where we see stock footage of the real Tacoma Narrows Bridge swinging in the wind. Lois points and says a woman has driven onto the bridge, at which Jimmy replies, "Typical woman driver," then we cut to stock footage of a car on the road.

Meanwhile, Clark changes to Superman and flies out to save the bridge. Columbia is still using the same animated flying effects...

but is now also intercutting close-ups of Kirk Alyn with smoke blowing past him to simulate flying.

Supeman stops the bridge's swaying long enough for the woman to be rescued (an effect accomplished by simply stopping the film in mid-swing, then cutting to Superman with his hands braced against a stone wall), then uses his super-hearing to trace the ultrasonic waves to Luthor's hideout. Moments later, he has captured the mad scientist. It's ten minutes in, and Luthor has lost. Now what the hell are we supposed to do for 14 1/2 chapters?

Luckily, a new crime wave starts once Luthor's in jail. Jimmy Olsen, sent to cover a fire, catches a crook running out of the burning building. The crook pulls out a distinctive coin and disappears.

The next day, convicted killer Lawson, on his way to the state pen, pulls out a similar coin and also disappears.

Clark suspects Luthor's hand in this, but Luthor is still in the penitentiary. However, he also has a special coin that he uses to transport himself to a secret cave headquarters, where he reveals to Lawson his newest invention, the Main Arc. Apparently a bigger version of the machine he used to get out of the pen, the Main Arc can transport people anywhere; he plans to use it to beam Superman out into space for eternity, into what he calls the "Empty Doom." Luthor claims to have developed it with the help of his partner, Atom Man.

Next day, Clark is reading that Lawson previously did a Human Fly act, when Jimmy runs up to say there's a human fly scaling a building. It's Lawson, of course. He robs a diamond merchant then uses a coin to disappear.

At the scene, Jimmy peeks into the back of a TV truck and sees Lawson inside, pulling diamonds out of his pocket. Another thug happens by and knocks Jimmy out (the first time of many).

He's dumped into the TV truck, which takes off. Lois sees it and tells Clark, then takes off with the cops to give chase. Clark changes to Superman and chases it down. The driver gets out and runs while guys in back call for help on the radio. As Superman is disabling truck driver, the truck blows up with Jimmy inside.

Until Chapter 2, "Atom Man Appears," when we see that Jimmy and the thugs teleported to Luthor's secret cave headquarters. Atom Man appears, wearing a black robe and a soup tureen covered with glitter for a helmet.

Boy, Atom Man's main helper on the left sure looks familiar.

Atom Man explains the Main Arc again, then uses it on Jimmy, teleporting him to the Daily Planet to challenge Superman or something. Luthor immediately radios his thugs in another TV truck to retrieve the special coin from Jimmy. Those guys look really familiar, too. Perry tells Lois to store the coin in the safe, but she keeps it and leaves the building.

We now interrupt the story in progress, so Superman can save the passengers on a burning cruise ship, while Perry White can't find a match to light his cigar (again).

The thugs come in to steal the coin from the safe, by posing as electricians come to check the wiring. Um, in the safe...

Perry figures out their ruse, so they punch him, and holy crap, I recognize them now...

They were two of the Spider Lady's men. The guy in back is Rusty Westcoatt, who was also one of the bad guys in "Batman and Robin." The guy in front is Jack Ingram, better known as Anton, aka the Alpha half of the Fabulously Gay Duo (and of course, now I remember why Luthor's assistant Alber looks so familiar--he was FGD-Beta). The two thugs escape by jumping off the roof then teleporting away. And yeah, in case you're wondering, the rest of Luthor's gang also appeared in the previous serial, and some also were in "Batman and Robin." And the guy playing Killer Lawson was actually Kirk Alyn's stunt double in the first serial.

But back to the action. Atom Man's thugs are chasing Lois, who drives into a blast area to evade capture. Superman saves her from the blast, then captures the thugs chasing her. He keeps the coin, which Luthor is happy about, because he can use it to lure Superman into a trap. Not sure why Luthor doesn't just try to teleport Superman into his secret cave with the coin, but oh well.

The thugs try to lure Clark Kent into an ambush, but as usual, Lois hijacks the call and falls into the trap. Superman tries to save her, but is struck by reused Reducer Ray footage from the first serial. It doesn't hurt him, but it slows him down.

Lois gets pushed out a window and falls into Chapter 3, "Ablaze in the Sky."

Superman saves Lois, while Jimmy notices a TV truck nearby. Given his recent history with another TV truck that looked exactly like this one, you'd think he'd be suspicious, but he never mentions it to anyone.

Later, Luthor is paroled for helping the government with a new defense weapon, said to be a cross between radar and television. It's never really explained beyond that, although from the description, I picture one of those standard mad-scientist viewscreens that allows them to see stuff at a distance without a camera, and from the same angles that the cameraman on the show uses.

Clark and Lois confront Luthor, who says he's going straight by investing in a TV studio, where he plans to use his "inventive genius." And of course, neither Clark nor Lois think about the TV truck that captured Jimmy in Chapter 1, because that would be, I don't know, intelligent.

A couple more reporters arrive, but Clark spots a gun inside their camera and helps nab them. Luthor claims they must want to stop him from testifying or something, but Clark is suspicious.

And well he should be, because Luthor is still just as crooked as ever. And in his business suit, he looks a lot like the future Business Luthor from John Byrne's Superman reboot.



It's like he's channeling the future or something.

So later, Superman stops a stock-footage oil well fire, because he's got to do something super every chapter, even if it has nothing to do with anything.

And once that interlude is done, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy are sent upstate with the coin to have it analyzed by one Professor Stone. Only the bad guys have rigged one of the plane's engines to catch fire. Superman puts the fire out, though, so the plane can land safely.

The thugs then race ahead and take the professor prisoner. They lock him in his own vault, then one of the thugs poses as Professor Stone so he can get the coin from the reporters.

Chark sees through the ruse, though, and beats up three armed men, taking a bullet in the process. He passes it off by saying the bullet hit the coin in his pocket. He pulls out the coin and uses his super-thumb to dent it. When he shows it to Lois, one of the thugs grabs it and runs away. Clark chases after him, leaving Lois and Jimmy to keep the other thugs covered.

At which point Professor Stone wakes up and uses special controls in his vault to seal his office door and roast the lab with jets of flame shooting out of the walls. Seriously, how hard-core paranoid is this guy that he's got special lab-destroying controls inside his vault?

We'll find out next week.