Star Walt: Star Wars (1977) #11-24

Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin's stint that started the Star Wars ongoing series wrapped up with issue #10. Starting with #11 former editor-in-chief Archie Goodwin and industry legend Carmine Infantino would take over the book for a lengthier run until Goodwin's departure at issue #50.

I was initially somewhat wary of Infantino as a Star Wars artist. Not that I dislike Infantino -- certainly not, he's one of the best to ever do it -- but his exceptionally clean linework seemed like an imperfect fit for the grungier design sensibilities of Star Wars vehicles and technology. The first issue of their run, #11, seemed to confirm my fears, opening with a splash page of the Millenium Falcon that made it look shiny and sleek (granted, some of this was probably due to the digital transfer of the coloring) rather than the hunk of junk it's often referred to. However, whether it was because Infantino adjusted to the setting or my biases simply faded as time went on, this became less and less noticeable within only a few issues, and while some of his original character and vehicle designs might not feel properly "Star Wars-y" these days (I need to come up with a better term for that) that has more to do with the visual language of Star Wars changing over time and less to do with Infantino understanding the assignment.

The first arc follows up with the teasers Thomas and Chaykin dropped about what Luke was up to during the previous arc. Set on the water-world Drexel inhabited by a group of scavengers (wait a minute…), the story feels like classic pulp sci-fi through and through. It's a fun enough romp, and Goodwin shows a solid handle on the characters from the get-go -- despite only having one movie, one novel, and a handful of comics to draw on his Luke, Han, and Leia are all very recognizable. This arc also ties up the plot thread of Crimson Jack, a space pirate Han first encountered in the Thomas/Chaykin run and who, to my knowledge, did not appear again. In some ways this arc and the following one-shot feel like they're closing the book on Thomas and Chaykin's briefly lived vision of the Star Wars setting; beyond just the direct continuation of the plots, these issues feel more in line with the style of Thomas and Chaykin's four original issues, while later arcs would feel more properly "Star Wars-y."

Speaking of, the one-off #16 is a hoot. Illustrated by Walt Simonson (!), it introduces the recurring character Beilert Valance a bounty hunter with an extreme hatred for droids. I cannot emphasize his loathing enough: he is seeking Luke Skywalker's death, not because he blew up the Death Star and dealt a grievous blow to the Empire in the process but because he worked with droids in doing so. It's delightfully unhinged, and once again shows how much early writers of Star Wars EU material grasped onto that "we don't serve their kind" line in A New Hope. The big reveal at the end of the issue is that since a terrible battle Valance himself has become more machine than man, and that his droid aversion is in fact a form of self-hatred. The issue is also the last appearance of the Star-Hoppers from the Thomas/Chaykin arc for quite some time, with Valance believing Jimm Doshun, the "Starkiller Kid," to be Luke because… he's a farm boy with a droid. Comics don't get better than this, folks, and I'm looking forward to the character's future appearances immensely.

Also #16 name-drops Telos IV, a key location in Knights of the Old Republic II, my favorite bit of non-movie Star Wars media. Neat!

The next arc is bookended by two flashback one-shots, one featuring Luke in Beggar's Canyon and another starring Obi-Wan in the old (lowercase) Republic. The former fleshes out Luke and Biggs' relationship and Luke's skills of the pilot, with some excellent sequentials from guest artist Herb Trimpe. The latter is notable for two reasons: firstly, it's the first of the relatively few pre-Prequel stories set in the Galactic Republic, and also the first issue written by Mary Jo Duffy, who would eventually be the series' last long-term writer. That being said, it's a fairly forgettable story in my opinion, as I assume Duffy didn't have free reign to explore what the Republic was like.

The last arc of this chunk is set on a massive space station casino known as the Wheel that would make a few other appearances in EU material. While characterization has been pretty consistent across the early EU material this is one of the first settings that feels properly (say it with me, in quotes) "Star Wars-y" -- I can easily see the Wheel as a location you explore in a KotOR spinoff or something along those lines. The arc also includes the first of what I imagine will be many "just missed him" moments between Luke and Vader. As I mentioned in my review of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, I think having Luke and Vader outright meet between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes back lessens the drama of their encounter in Empire (though forgivable in the case of the novel due to the circumstances). I'm unsure whether the two will encounter each other in the comic series before Empire's release, but I could see multiple two ships passing scenarios being equally tiring; for now, though, it's a fun little touch that enhances rather than diminishes the tension between the two.

Coming up next: The Han Solo Adventures trilogy by Brian Daley. I'll be looking at these three novels (bordering on novellas) as one whole before returning to the comics. Barring anything particularly notable I'll probably gloss over the next 15ish issues, and then -- oh baby -- it's Empire time.
 

Star Walt: Splinter of the Mind's Eye

Splinter of the Mind's Eye was the first original Star Wars book -- or at least, mostly original. See, Alan Dean Foster was given a few specific instructions and restrictions when writing this book because it existed mainly as a sort of back up plan. If the first Star Wars movie was successful Lucas would proceed with making the expansive and expensive trilogy of his dreams -- which, as we now know, is what happened. If it hadn't, Splinter of the Mind's Eye would be used as a basis for a lower budget sequel. As such, many of the creative choices were dictated by a hypothetical budget: less scenes in space (only one in fact), misty jungles and caves that could be made on the cheap, and a lack of the most expensive cast member (Ford/Han).

This is all fairly well known at this point, so I was a little surprised that the introduction made no mention of it. The edition I read included an introduction by George Lucas written around the time of the Phantom Menace. The novelization of the first movie had a similar introduction where Lucas was fairly forthcoming about certain details about the production of the book. Here, Lucas merely speaks of it as the first step in creating the Expanded Universe. It's standard mythmaking type stuff, talking about how Lucas realized how there were more stories in his world than he could ever tell alone, and somewhat misleading considering the circumstances. From my admittedly slapdash research it may be that Lucasfilm wasn't open about the "true origins" of this book until Pablo Hidalgo's Essential Reader's Companion in 2012, which is a shame. I understand that peeking too much behind the curtain can be contrary to Brand Management, but it's very useful for understanding some of the choices made in this book.

Jumping way ahead, one area where this knowledge is useful is the final confrontation between Luke and Vader. If one solely knows the movies, then the fight between Luke and Vader in Empire is their first time encountering each other since the battle at the Death Star. This heightens the drama, as we can assume much about Luke's stewing hatred toward the Sith Lord who cut down Obi-Wan and Vader's own grudge against the pilot who escaped him. Any story between A New Hope and Empire where the two encounter each other outside of a "just missed him" situation undercuts this drama, making the Cloud City fight just another encounter between the two (albeit one with a shocking revelation at its end). However, in this case we can forgive Foster for Vader's inclusion seeing as it was almost certainly foisted upon him due to the book's nature as the potential basis for a sequel. Had Empire not been made, then of course Lucas would want Vader to appear in whatever sequel he did get to make. It's a reasonable instance of Lucas hedging his bets, rather than simply adding more Luke/Vader fights just for the sake of it, but without knowledge of the book's genesis one would reasonably consider it an instance of the latter.

That being said, what an anticlimactic final battle. After some fairly intense action, including Leia getting to use a lightsaber (despite frequent insistence at this point that she is not force-sensitive), Vader just kind of... falls in a hole. Odd.

At this point Foster had about as much experience with these characters and this world as anyone else save Lucas, so it certainly feels properly "in continuity" with the first movie. Some things might feel a bit odd and out of place with Star Wars as we know it now, but to the extent one can restrict one's view to just the first movie and this book they largely feel in harmony with each other. One of my favorite examples of this is Leia's PTSD from her interrogation. While the exact details of whatever happened with her and that menacing droid in A New Hope remains vague, Foster takes the reasonable position that whatever happened would have greatly affected her, as torture always does. However, he manages to depict this in a way that doesn't detract from Leia's now well-known characterization as a tough and capable wartime leader. While she may have been a victim, she is not weak. It's a side of Leia that I'm not used to, and one I think Foster handles well -- the way the movies otherwise just have her interrogation as a Thing That Happened and not as a traumatic experience seems lacking in comparison.

Another thing that Foster gets into that is generally only implied by the movies (movie, singular, at this point) is the racism of the Empire. This is a major theme in many other EU works, and although it is not exactly stated in the movies is shown by the human-centric nature of the Empire compared to the more diverse nature of the Rebellion and fringe planets like Tatooine. Foster drills more into the Empire as an occupying force in an alien world, with the native Mimbanites being actively and categorically oppressed by their colonial masters. It runs into some perhaps problematic elements when considered as an analogy for real world imperial colonialism, with the Mimbanites being shown to willingly debase themselves for liquor, but on the whole Foster gives a more thoughtful and concrete example of the repressive nature of the Empire (granted, blowing up a planet is fairly repressive).

One funny example of the context of the early EU changing with later movie releases: Luke is down so bad for Leia. Granted, he is in A New Hope and Empire, too, but the internal monologue when he thinks about her body against him and such makes it feel a bit more "oh noooo."

On the whole, Splinter of the Mind's Eye is a solid first entry in the novels of the EU. Foster is a more-than-competent writer, and he introduces a few concepts and themes that will later become commonplace in the setting (force-sensitive non-Jedi, Imperial xenophobia, ancient alien civilizations with ties to the force, etc.). Most of the novels faults are related to things beyond his control, though I'm still a bit baffled by that ending. If this had been adapted to film, surely they would have come up with something a little more exciting than "Vader takes a wrong step and falls."

Star Walt: Star Wars (1977) #7-10

After finishing their six-issue adaptation of A New Hope, Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin only stayed in the book for four more issues. These four issues were the first Star Wars material to be published that wasn't overseen by Lucas in some way. As a result, they feel a little less "Star Wars" than later EU material.

These four issues primarily focus on Han and Chewie -- there's a bit of setup of a story featuring Luke and Leia, but that wouldn't be fully explored until Archie Goodwin and Carmine Infantino (!) took over with issue #11. It's worth mentioning that generally Thomas has a pretty good handle on the voices of the characters; while the stories themselves feel a bit out of place in the context of the setting as we know it now, Han, Luke, and Leia each resemble their onscreen portrayals well enough that they doesn't feel completely disconnected.

#7 packs a lot into it, first following Han and Chewie as they leave from Yavin 4 with their reward (which they soon lose to rival smugglers/pirates), then telling a short story about anti-cyborg sentiments in the Galaxy, and eventually setting up the next three-issue story. There isn't too much to say about the first part beyond how it's interesting to see character designs that have more of a Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon/John Carter style next to Han. Obviously this style was a major influence on Lucas, and -- to repeat myself -- the visual feel of Star Wars wasn't quite fully defined, but it does feel a bit out of place to see a guy wearing a breastplate and having his muscular thighs exposed in a Star Wars comic. Star Wars is definitely science fantasy (the world's greatest science fantasy, as the comic's cover a claims), but in terms of style of attire I'd say the more mundane sci-fi side of things generally wins out for most characters besides Jedi.

The meat of the issue concerns a buglike alien priest attempting to bring a deceased cyborg to his final resting place while being accosted by those who don't want someone part man and part machine buried with "full" humans (Han and Chewie provide some muscle in exchange for some coin). This brief vignette is probably Thomas's most interesting contribution to the Star Wars universe (even if it wasn't revisited much) and is built on a similar basis as many other EU stories -- a single line from the movie. From the "we don't serve their kind here" remark in the Mos Eisley cantina, Thomas extracts a world of anti-droid and anti-cyborg prejudice. It's shallow, sure, and fairly routine science fiction, but it's a neat early instance of trying to crack the Star Wars setting open and figure out what life in the galaxy is like beyond what we see on the screen.

The remaining three issues are a three-part Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven riff where Han and Chewie assemble a ragtag group of miscreants to protect a village of farmers from a vicious swoop gang (in exchange for a reward, of course). It's solidly "okay," though it contains an EU character who has become the butt of jokes over the years, Jaxxon. Jaxxon is a green, man-sized, rabbit-like creature with a short fuse and supposedly was hated by Lucas so much that it led to Thomas and Chaykin leaving the book.

It's difficult to pin down what makes Jaxxon feel so egregious -- yes, he's a "kiddie" character, but Star Wars is at least as much for kids as it is for adults. My usual smartass quip about these kinds of things is that fans of Star Wars, much like fans of superheroes, don't like being reminded of this fact, but I'd be lying if I said I like Jaxxon or think he fits into Star Wars perfectly fine. It's a similar issue we'd see on a much larger scale with Jar Jar decades later, only that has the complicating factor of Jar Jar being a Lucas creation and is therefore ipso facto 100% Star Wars.

Chaykin's art is as good as it was in the first six issues, but it still didn't strike me as extremely "Chaykin-y." Granted, I'm mainly familiar with his more recent work, but had I not already known I probably would not have guessed he was the artist. At first I just chalked this up to Chaykin being younger, and perhaps not having yet honed in on his distinctive style. However upon finishing issue #10 I flipped the last page and was greeted with a pinup of the main cast that was so unmistakenly Chaykin it could be recognized from yards away. It goes to show how much his style is inherent in his inking -- while the various inkers who worked with him over the course of the series certainly weren't bad, but they definitely made his pages look like a Marvel Comic Book moreso than Howard Chaykin.

Next up: Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first original (well, kind of) Star Wars novel.

Star Walt: A New Hope (Three Different Ones)

Because I love tormenting myself I've decided to engage in a long-term, exhaustive project that, knowing me, will likely last two or three months before I abandon it: watch/read/play as much Star Wars media as I can possibly stand in publication order and write a bit about at least some of it as I go. I have a horrible sickness, I know, but it gives me stuff to read and write in bits and pieces between baby naps and other new father obligations. Let's get right to it and start where it all began with A New Hope (I will only tolerate calling it simply Star Wars if you actually saw it in theaters) -- the movie itself a bit, but also its two adaptations.

Despite being a Star Wars fan of varying degrees for most of my life and having absorbed some opinions about the changes made in the special editions, I am fairly certain I'd never seen the unedited cut of A New Hope until I watched it last weekend. Thankfully it turns out that when I bought DVDs of the original trilogy from a closing Hollywood Video back in college they were versions that included the original theatrical cuts on the second disc (well, "original" -- some minor changes such as the updating of the title crawl and other such tweaks made for home media were kept). The transfers of these are pretty lousy, being made from the 90s laserdiscs, with poorly compressed audio and video and an odd aspect ratio. While it would be nice to have a higher quality version widely available, I would guess it's probably the easiest way for others to find a copy to watch (legally, of course).

Enough has been said about the film version of A New Hope, and I'm not going to claim to have a unique perspective on it. But man: it still looks so damn good. Even in the shoddy transfer of the 2006 DVD, the costumes, puppets, models, and sets are so fully realized that every frame captures the imagination. Even if Empire is the better movie of the original trilogy, A New Hope is bursting with such sights and sounds that even now, after decades of Star Wars dominating popular culture, it still feels wonderful and captivating.

The novelization of A New Hope, initially titled Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, was published under Lucas's name but ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. Interestingly, the novel was actually published about half a year prior to the movie, so there were probably a decent amount of scifi fans who read it before the movie hit theaters. Of course, that number would be a vanishingly small percentage of all Star Wars fans now, but they do exist! The novel is based on an earlier draft of the script, and includes some scenes that were shot but cut from the movie. Some were added back in later in the Special Edition (pretty much uniformly for the worst) while others can easily be found online and in various home media.

As an actual piece of writing, I was pleasantly surprised with the novel. It's still more middling than good (my expectations weren't very high, to be honest), and Foster relies too much on adverbs and similes, but it's solid mass market scifi fare. I was most impressed with the final chapter, consisting almost entirely of the Death Star trench run. The scene is the highlight of the movie, an audiovisual spectacle that many other movies have tried, and failed, to match. While I assumed that translating it to prose would lose most of what makes it impressive, Foster managed to deliver a tight, intense rendition, avoiding the excessive wordiness he was prone to for the majority of the novel. Of course, what the trench run is to film far exceeds what this adaptation of the scene is to prose, but the fact that it isn't a pure disappointment when compared to its more famous counterpart speaks well of Foster's ability to adapt a highly kinetic scene.

Aside from some discrepancies in visual descriptions -- the visual language that is now crucial to making Star Wars feel like Star Wars wasn't quite defined yet -- the novel hews close to Lucas's vision for the movie, with nearly all of the "added" scenes having been filmed but left on the cutting room floor. Here we can already see the beginning of an "extended universe," albeit one still entirely beholden to Lucas rather than a purely corporate product. A New Hope is a stronger movie for not including these scenes, keeping it lean, but they fit into the novel without disrupting its pacing while simultaneously giving the then-burgeoning Star Wars fandom more details on this new galaxy.

One interesting difference between the novel and the Star Wars we know now is the description, however brief, of Palpatine. He is named in the prologue of the novel, well before his screen debut in The Empire Strikes Back, but we are painted a picture of a once-ambituous despot who now is controlled by Imperial bureaucrats -- a far cry from the cackling, over-the-top mastermind he'd later be known as.

The first couple of issues of the Marvel Star Wars ongoing comic series also hit shelves shortly before A New Hope debuted in theaters, and the six issues that serve as another version of A New Hope feels like a midway point between the novel and the movie (which sounds obvious now that I've written it out). Artist Howard Chaykin had concept art and similar materials to work from, and so the comic largely looks like the Star Wars we know (despite maybe a few instances of characters appearing off model). Furthermore, some of the more iconic lines that weren't present in the earlier version of the movie's script that the novel was adapted from now appear. However, nearly all the cut scenes that appear in the novel appear here, as well, and it appears that writer Roy Thomas lifted much of the text for the narrative captions directly from the novel.

As a comics fan, I was hoping to get more out of these six issues -- both Thomas and Chaykin are legends, after all. Perhaps it's just that I've had a bit of a New Hope overload in the past few days, but for the most part I found it unremarkable. Chaykin is, of course, excellent, and gives Star Wars tech a bit of a Kirby flair at points, but I think Thomas keeping so close to the novel didn't quite fit the pacing inherent in the monthly serialized format. Perhaps I'll be more impressed with their original stories, but considering Thomas gave us Jaxxon, one of the most mocked characters in EU history (which is saying something), I'm not getting my hopes up.

Speaking of, next up on my list is the remainder of Thomas and Chaykin's brief run on the Star Wars ongoing comic series (only 4 more issues) and the first original novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I don't intend to read the other novelizations of the original trilogy, as both their quality and their historical relevance appear to be limited -- though in the unlikely event that I continue with this project long enough to get to the prequels I'll give those a shot. May the Force be with me (ugh, I know).

Review: Martial Master Asumi

With the end of chapter 31 of Kawada’s Martial Master Asumi, and what seemed like the end of the series’ first act, I was excited to write a little bit about what I saw as one of the most promising new series in the magazine. But, as I often do, I fell a bit behind and found myself with only a couple of paragraphs written before chapter 32 hit (I can’t believe I used to get out reviews on a weekly basis way, way back in the day). I weighed whether I wanted to finish the article before reading the new chapter – keeping my thoughts contained to said first act – or peek ahead a little bit, and ultimately decided to go ahead and read the latest chapter.

Chapter 32, it turns out, was the final chapter of Martial Master Asumi. The first act that had me excited about what was to come was, in fact, the only act.

Perhaps the writing had been on the wall for more industry-savvy readers. I never paid too much attention to the unofficial “rankings” (i.e. the order of the series in the printed magazine), and my ear is very much not to the ground when it comes to manga news. I’ve had series I like be abruptly canceled before – whether in American comics or manga, that’s always a possibility with serialized comics – but I like to think I normally have a pretty good handle on reading the cues of “ah, they’ve been told to wrap it up.” This is the first time in a long while that a comic series I’ve really enjoyed has sucker punched me (pardon the pun) with an ending I didn’t know was coming until the final chapter, and I can’t lie, it’s a bad feeling.

Despite the unwelcome ending, I said I was going to write about Martial Master Asumi, so here I am. I’m not making a petition to bring back a canceled series or anything like that – what’s done is done, especially when it comes to an (apparently) commercially unsuccessful series. – but I think it was a neat series, and a cut above most of the other regular offerings in Weekly Shonen Jump.

On its surface, Martial Master Asumi has many of the common tropes of shonen sports manga. Nito is a decidedly average highschooler – perhaps much like You, the target demographic of Shonen Jump! – without much ambition. When his friend, Fuchida, tries to get Nito to join the school MMA club, Nito is originally uninterested until he runs into Okiba, a girl in his school who is an MMA diehard. Of course, we soon learn that not only is Nito a natural at MMA, but his senile grandfather is a martial arts genius and his older brother, Kazuro, is an MMA star (and a bit of a bad boy). Outsider to the sport, latent talent, secret connections, originally only interested in a girl – we’ve seen all of these before, time and time again, and I originally thought the series was going to be a dud because of that. And yet, within the first few chapters it quickly moved up in my opinion from something to read to something special.

As is often the case with comics that seem plain from a basic description, one of the reasons Martial Master Asumi is better than it might sound is the art, and especially Kawada’s visual storytelling. What at first seems like a style more suited to a simple high school comedy suddenly bursts with raw physicality the second a punch is thrown. It’s a cliché in comic reviewing (well, in my comic reviewing at least), but you can feel every blow as it connects and the overwhelming pressure of each grapple. Even though Kawada also relies on a somewhat common visual trope – the near-demonic countenance Nito acquires when he gets pumped up in a fight – it’s sold so well that it doesn’t matter if it’s something that’s been seen before. The reader truly gets the impression that Nito is having the time of his life, and if that’s a little scary then perhaps it should be (he is beating the bejesus out of other people, after all).

One of MMA’s strengths as a spectator sport is that an observer doesn’t necessarily need to know much about combat sports to follow a match. To someone not versed in the ins and outs of MMA, there remains the primal appeal of watching two people slugging it out. For this reason, an MMA-based series could very easily just be another shonen fighting manga masquerading as a sports manga, where the techniques border on the fantastical and the finer points of the sport are reduced to a vague sense of “I need to get stronger.” But Kawada is a true enthusiast of combat sports and wants to share that enthusiasm with the reader. Like any sport, MMA has depth to it that isn’t immediately perceptible to the untrained eye, and one of Kawada’s goals with Martial Master Asumi is to show that there’s more to MMA than just a couple of meatheads punching each other.

This also, on its face, isn’t particularly unique to Martial Master Asumi; there are many sports manga that partially serve as introductions to the sport they feature. What Martial Master Asumi accomplishes better than many of its peers is how Kawada incorporates its didactic elements into the visual storytelling. The risk with any comic that is meant to inform as much as entertain is that it can become dry and overly wordy. In some ways it’s very similar to the modern trend of fantasy shonen fighting manga that gets too up its own ass about explaining the super cool magic/spirit/energy/whatever rules the mangaka has invented. With Martial Master Asumi, Kawada demonstrates an exquisite sense of tempo: we get a few words explaining what’s going on, followed by a visual payoff, some more explanation, then another payoff (this, obviously, is enhanced by the fact that Kawada’s fight scenes pack heft, as previously mentioned). Where a similar mangaka might have me rolling my eyes a bit and going “I get it” as they spend too much time describing the intricacies of their sport of choice, Kawada has me on the edge of my seat. I don’t just get it, I see.

There isn’t much to say about the final chapter, to be honest – or at least not much that is fair to Kawada. Kawada seems to have wisely decided to give Nito’s match with Kuronuma the breathing room it needed rather than rush through to free up another chapter or two for the conclusion (partially why the ending was such a surprise, since it wasn’t flashing many of the warning signs I’m used to at this point). As such, the final chapter mostly exists to hint at some of the plans Kawada might have gotten to had the series lasted longer. It isn’t a satisfying ending, but how could it be? Perhaps the one thing I can fault Kawada for here is the literal sidelining of Okiba, who appears in the background in a single panel of this chapter. This is all the more disappointing because one of the many pleasant surprises of Martial Master Asumi was how well fleshed out Okiba was. Despite Nito originally getting into MMA because he thought Okiba was cute, she is given nearly as much glory in the ring as him, and her intense drive to be the best is maintained rather than relegating her to solely support Nito. With that in mind, surely something could have been done to at least acknowledge Okiba’s accomplishments in the final chapter. Obviously, page space is limited, but surely that would have been more satisfying than some light teasing at Baku Asumi’s history that will never be resolved.

Cancellation is always a looming threat for both creators and fans of serialized storytelling, and in manga especially that threat can come crashing down with little to no warning. Unfinished works are hard to recommend even in cases of artistic geniuses, and as much as I enjoyed Martial Master Asumi I don’t think I’d go that far in my praise of Kawada. Still, I think there’s still something of value to be found in this series after the fact, particularly as a demonstration of how to deftly blend action and education in sports manga for either students of the artform or comic enthusiasts. Here’s hoping that Kawada’s next series is as much as a knockout (groan) commercially is Martial Master Asumi was in quality.

RPGs: Where I'm Coming From, Where I'm Maybe Going

I wrote entirely too much about this and probably could have broken it up into two posts, but I gotta get it off my proverbial desk and move onto something else.

I’ve been playing RPGs for a bit over two decades now – well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say I’ve been playing an RPG. Aside from a handful of one-shots in Call of Cthulhu and other games, I’ve specifically been playing Dungeons & Dragons off and on for about two decades while mostly only reading the rulebooks for other RPGs over that same timespan.

The first time I became aware of the concept of sitting around a table with a bunch of fellow nerds while pretending to be wizards, warriors, and so on was when I saw the Dexter’s Laboratory episode “D & DD.” While the “Monsters & Mazes” game that Dexter and his friends played wasn’t something I had a specific frame of reference for at the time, I was old enough to realize that this was a sendup of something real, something that actually existed but I hadn’t actually encountered yet. And whatever this was, it was something that seemed fun to me.

I couldn’t tell you exactly when D&D went from “that thing I’ve seen parodied in Dexter’s Laboratory and some other shows that seems kind of neat” to something specific I was aware of and wanted to get into, but at some point in the early aughts my parents gave me the 3^rd Edition starter set (“The Adventure Begins Here!”). I got some of the other kids in my neighborhood to play through most of the scenarios with me and they had a fun enough time, though it wasn’t the kind of thing most of them wanted to particularly get into. Not long afterward I picked up the 3^rd edition Player’s Handbook and gradually accumulated a small collection of other D&D-related books. I wanted to play D&D again, and while I enjoyed video games such as Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic (“Star Wars D&D” to me at the time). they weren’t a perfect substitute.

It wasn’t until high school that I actually had a number of friends that were interested in playing, but even then my attempts at would-be campaigns all fizzled out after a session or two. While I didn’t realize this at the time, a major reason for this was that D&D 3.5 (we’d gone up half an edition at this point) was simply way too complicated for most high schoolers, even “nerdy” ones, to want to bother with. There’s not much to say about the crunchiness of 3.5 and its progeny that hasn’t been said before, but the same wealth of options and granularity that I found so appealing when flipping through the various splatbooks (some of which I had even obtained legitimately!) was exactly what kept me from running the game smoothly and keeping my friends interested. I played 3.5 a couple more times in college, as a player rather than a DM, and read a lot of other game books in that time, but for the most part I was simply reading about games rather than playing them until shortly after college.

By far the most hours I’ve spent playing and prepping for any one RPG system is D&D 5E. After two (?) false starts putting together groups online, I wrangled together some friends in person and kept a group going for about three years. We started, like many people, with Lost Mines of Phandelver, and continued with more or less the same group into Storm King’s Thunder. Some players left, some new players joined, and some players changed characters, but for the most part we managed to get through a lengthy campaign with a fairly consistent core group (one of the original players who had moved away even managed to “return” via Skype for our final session).

I do think we had a lot of fun over the course of those few years, but I struggled a bit with the system. I was originally very enthusiastic about 5^th edition, as it somewhat resembled the 3^rd edition that got me into the game and pen and paper RPGs in general (and that I still have a place for in my heart despite its many faults), but with a lot less modifiers. Less modifiers, I figured, meant less fiddly bits all around, which meant smoother gameplay – and, compared to the clunky beast called D&D 3.5, this was true to a certain extent. Still, I found it to be a bit unwieldy and spent a lot of time over those three years googling suggestions for making certain parts of the game run easier. I also think some of the players didn’t exactly love or take to the system either, but the in-person element went a long way in getting us to enjoy the game anyway (and perhaps made me not realize I wasn’t actually enjoying 5E as a system very much).

The next campaign was less successful. When we finished up Storm King’s Thunder most of my in-person group had other obligations and couldn’t commit to another campaign. I instead decided to spend a few months prepping for a new attempt at an online campaign with some of the previous group’s members and some other friends who had expressed interest. My hope was to do something somewhat more player-driven and open-ended – perhaps not a true sandbox, but closer to that than the more linear material I had done before. After threeish years of running 5E I thought I had a good enough grip on the system to handle this. I wasn’t completely improvising – the campaign was set in Eberron, so I had a few sourcebooks I was mining ideas and locations from – but I was trying to stay only a session or two ahead rather than plan out some grand overarching narrative. Within three or four sessions, though, I was beginning to lose my patience.

Looking back, I don’t think I was actually having much difficulty with the improvisation and prep aspect of my not-quite-sandbox, I just wasn’t enjoying the underlying game, which then made me dread playing. The online nature of it exacerbated many of the problems I had with 5E that I hitherto had been glossing over because of the in-person social aspect, but I had bought into the Product so much that I had convinced myself my problems were with the style of game I was running rather than the system itself. I attempted to course correct by switching back a premade adventure – one of the best of 5E, supposedly, Curse of Strahd – but after another couple sessions I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm for it anymore.

To be clear, none of this is on the players, who were great: they were very accommodating to my request to put the campaign on hold while I reworked things and fully understanding when I called it quits. I know there are some horror stories about the 5E play culture, particularly when it comes to players, but that wasn’t an issue I ran into. I was just tired of 5E, and not long after I was tired of Wizard of the Coast as a company due to the Open Gaming License shenanigans, the bleak future of Dungeons & Dragons™ as a Product (entirely directed toward its attempted pivot toward a form of GaaS, and nothing to do with “wokeness” or any such chuddy reasons), and the mismanagement of Magic: The Gathering, another game I used to enjoy from time to time.

For a while I was convinced that I was done with tabletop RPGs entirely, or at least done with running them as a DM/GM/Keeper/whatever proprietary name the underlying system uses. Within less than a year or so I was, predictably, thinking “what if I tried again?” I’ve been once again reading a variety of systems, adventures, supplements, blogposts, and so on, and been trying to put more thought toward what exactly it is I want out of playing – and particularly running – a tabletop game.

So: what am I aiming for now? Well, first of all, I have a newborn son, so it will still be another year or two until things have settled into enough of a routine that I am comfortable enough with being able to have a semi-regularly scheduled game at all. The positive is that this gives me time to read, write, and prep so I’m ready to hit the ground running once it’s finally time. I’d also like to run a few one-shots in the meantime so I can try out a few different systems.

My experience running a game online has soured me on attempting to do so again. Again, this is entirely a me thing; nothing against my previous group, I just think it was something I struggled with. Perhaps the experience would have been better if I had used a proper virtual tabletop (a separate skill I’d have to learn and am not really interested in), or maybe all that would have made the difference was requiring the use of cameras. Whatever the case, I’d simply prefer to have my next game be in-person. Note that this is only my preference as a GM – I’m starving for more experience as a player in pretty much any game, and would be willing to play online to do so, though the aforementioned newborn means I probably couldn’t commit to anything other than some one-shots and maybe open table style games (more on that in a paragraph).

If the game is to be in-person, scheduling becomes even more of an issue. Most of my friends who would perhaps be interested in playing an RPG might not necessarily be able to commit to playing, say, every other week. However, in my experience, any less frequent than that and you quickly end up in situations where a month or more can pass in between sessions due to scheduling conflicts – a less than desirable outcome. The best way to address this, I believe, would be to have an open table hexcrawl: reach out to as many people I know who might be interested in playing, then set a semi-regular day and time that a certain maximum number of people can RSVP for, and those players decide what specifically they want to explore each game. I’d probably keep a Discord server or something similar so the disparate players can fill each other in on what happened during their sessions – hopefully further encouraging player engagement with the game.

Furthermore, since a lot of my friends who might be interested in playing aren’t extremely experienced RPG players, I want to run something that is relatively lightweight, at least on the player-facing side. This also fits with the open table idea: if it’s been a month and a half or so since someone’s last game, I don’t want them to feel too “left behind” when it comes to the learning curve of the game. It also aids me in reducing the amount/complexity of rules-related prep and improvisation.

Finally, I probably want to stick with something that hews somewhat close to the broad “default” genre of D&D, or at least what that is to me. There’s tons of great RPGs out there covering a lot of different genres, and that’s great – but I like dungeons and I like dragons, so that’s what I want to play (I just no longer care for Dungeons & Dragons the Product). Also, I picked up Skerple’s incredible Monster Overhaul and am dying to use it.

Thankfully when it comes to systems there’s an embarrassment of riches that fit what I’m looking for. I’m eyeing BX clones like OSE, various takes on OD&D from Swords and Wizardry to FMC Basic, and lighter-weight OSR games such as The Black Hack and its ilk. Gavin Norman’s upcoming full release of Dolmenwood seems like it could be a good fit for the style of play I’m hoping to cultivate, though it’s slightly further afield of the D&D genre I like (though still very cool). Maybe I’ll even consider a more lightweight 5E hack like Into the Unknown since it’s built on something I (and likely some of the players) are already familiar with, but I’m not fully sold on “O5R” as a concept. The most important thing is to not waste too much time hemming and hawing over systems, as over time it will likely be warped to suit the group anyway.

The nice thing is that, especially with a lighter and/or more “old school” system (putting aside that OSR is a retronym), there’s nothing really stopping me from getting started on writing up some setting, adventures, dungeons, and what-have-you and fitting it to a system when needed. In fact, I think I’ll start some of that this weekend.

Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions are a deeply flawed way of setting meaningful goals and otherwise improving yourself. Here are some of mine.

Write More

This is the big one, and the reason this blog is here. Unless I’m forgetting something, I did not do any critical writing at all in 2022 or 2023. I believe the last review I wrote was for Tatsuki Fujimoto’s excellent one-shot “Look Back” for my friends back at Multiversity Comics (a review I’m still very satisfied with). Shortly before that I launched and nearly instantly abandoned a webpage, one that was also timed around the new year. Surely this year will be different, and I will stick with it… but if not, well, at least I’m not paying for hosting.

Mostly I want to do more critical writing: reviews, analysis, things of that nature. That’s what I’ve always been best at, and what I have the most experience with. The vast majority of that experience is with writing about comics, specifically, but I’d like to go back to my undergrad days and do some writing about books and movies as well. I might even write some about music, something I almost never do. These are muscles I haven’t stretched in a while, so I doubt there will be much of value at first, but it’s good to get the words out. Maybe I’ll even do some pitches by the time the year is nearly out.

I’m doing some very much in advance RPG prep for another year or two from now, when I have a bit more free time, and I will probably write about that here as well. It’s possible (but not likely) I’ll even give some creative writing a whirl again, though that’s never been my strong suit. I’ve also been journaling a bit about more personal matters, particularly my newborn son, though those thoughts are largely going to be kept private. I don’t see myself becoming a “dad blogger” but who knows, stranger things have happened.

Read More (Books)

I’ve actually been pretty good about this the past couple of years, but I can always do better. Currently I am reading The Three Musketeers, which is a lot of fun (if lacking in substance) and I’ll probably continue with the rest of the D’artagnan Romances afterward. I might read something else in between each book though; I have a couple Octavia Butler books (The Parable of the Sower and Kindred) I’ve been sitting on for a bit. I’ll also need to get back to reading some history and other nonfiction. I read Andrew Roberts’ Napoleon: A Life last year, which was very good, but I don’t believe I read any other nonfiction after I finished that about midway through the year. I have Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture on my desk (a lovely Christmas gift from my sister) and will probably start that this weekend.

Read More (Comics)

A happy discovery I made in 2022 was that there was a comic shop near me after all. For a few years I was primarily reading comics digitally because the closest shop I knew of was Victory Comics in Arlington (a lovely shop but a bit of a pain to get to), but the Amazon acquisition of comiXology and the ensuing enshittification of the platform had me looking for other options. Turns out a shop called Comic Logic had opened up in Ashburn just barely after I had moved and researched what shops were closest, meaning that for a few years I was unaware of its existence. It’s a lovely place, and for a bit over a year now I’ve been reading a few series from names I already knew or had at least heard about it, plus one or two things that just looked interesting.

In 2024 I’d like to expand my comics horizons a bit more. I’ve been out of touch with comics in general since I was in law school, so ever since getting back into reading them somewhat regularly I’ve mostly been reading cape comics. It was fun for a bit, but I’m once again a bit tired of them. At the same time, I don’t want to simply get back into the “big indies” of the direct market: Boom!, Dark Horse, Image, etc. I’ve grown disillusioned with the “Second Image Revolution” of the 2010s, an era I was previously a (very minor) cheerleader for originally. I want to read more non-direct market comics, whether from prestigious publishers such as Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly, as well as “true” indies as it were: small press, self-published, zines, webcomics, and so on. Of course, keeping up with such releases requires more work, of a sort, and I’ll need to first be doing more reading to know what to read in the first place. I suppose that’s what a Comics Journal subscription is for.

Listen to More New Music

Something else I fell out of touch with when I was in law school. I can’t claim to have ever been the most cutting edge when it comes to music, but I definitely listened to more new music back in undergrad. I think I only listened to two new albums last year (Slowdive and Jeff Rosenstock’s 2023 releases, both of which were very good)! This one shouldn’t be too difficult, there are countless ways to find new music out there (though I am uninterested in using any kind of “algorithm” to do so), I just need to remember to actually do it.

Keep Singing

For a few years between graduating law school and becoming a dad I took private voice lessons. It was a great experience and reconnected me with a part of myself that had been missing for a while, but it wasn’t something I could continue with post-baby. However, not taking lessons does not mean I should stop singing period, and I need to be careful not to let my development as a singer over the past years entirely regress. Once I’m used to my new routine with taking the little guy to daycare most days I’ll likely start singing again in a small church choir I’ve sung with before, but I should also remember to take time to look at some solo repertoire, even if it’s just for myself.

Play Less Video Games

And finally, it wouldn’t be a true resolution post without something I need to do less of. Yes, video games are art. To say so is nearly as meaningless as it is obvious. But most of them aren’t particularly interesting art, and many are often held back from being such by the heavy monetization of the industry. Aside from occasional true gems like Disco Elysium, I’d rather play the more fun and meaningless stuff than the kinds of games that are held up by the average gamer as a “magnificent work of art” despite being about as good as a decent movie.

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of fun piffle as a distraction every now and then, but if I’m mainly concerned with video games as entertainment (a subtle but meaningful difference from games as art, both of which can coexist and overlap), then I should probably spend less time playing them. Sometimes playing a game where you jump on enemies’ heads or blast them with a laser is a good way to unwind, but many times I’d be better served by doing something more meaningful with my time. Thankfully, taking care of a baby means I’ll have less time for them anyway!