End of an Era

One of the first online communities I joined was the Conan group on the Mongooses Publishing forums. Because the licensing ended with Conan LLC, Mongoose has ended the Conan line and will absorb the Conan post into "Other Roleplaying Games" by the end of October. If it gets thrown to the gaming mixing-pot, the community would just get diluted. This was a great place to talk about Conan with a lot of friendly people, and it even goes off-topic with other sword & sorcery systems and settings from time to time.

For sometimes now, I have been thinking about making a new off-site forum to not just to preserve the Conan gaming community, but to have a community that focuses pulp fantasy in general. This community would have topics on supernatural horrors akin to Lovecraft, planetary romance akin to A Princess of Mars (each with sub-pages for settings, and gaming regardless of system), and sub-topics on books and movies and such on pulp fiction. I have been playing with the phpBB demo features, and I have the hang of it. The only thing I'm stumped on is a good name. I what the name to be evocative to the over-all theme. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears!

The Basement of the Crosseyed Cyclops

I just spent a good part of the morning uploading 32 issues of Epic Illustrated at a site called Beware ,There's A Crosseyed Cyclops In My Basement!!! This comic book magazine is a lot like Heavy Metal magazine, with it's pulp-like selection of stories, and mature content. The Crosseyed Cyclops blog is a great place for back issues of old comics, magazines, and videos. I used it to load the complete collection of Komandi: the Last Boy on Earth, and Mighty Samson, so I can provide more info in the Mutant Future Wiki I have been working on. I really enjoy finding and reading the strange and obscure fiction found at that site. The only downside it having to deal with all the damn pop-ups and countdowns that crops up on Rapidshare and Magaload - if you are not careful, they might give your PC the AIDS or something from those pop-ups! But all-and-all, its worth it to find all those fantastic files.

Now if you don't mind, I got some reading to to. =D

One Who Walked Alone

Well, I just saw The Whole Wide World with Renée Zellweger as Novalyne Price and Vincent D'Onofrio as Robert E. Howard. It was adapted from the memoirs of Novalyne Price Ellis, called One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard, The Final Years. To anyone who is a REH fan, this is a must see! Buy it, rent it, steal it - anything!!! Its a good mix of humor and tragedy, but for the most part, it was quite amusing. One part I really enjoyed was when Bob took some lady's quote "A man without a mustache, is like a hard boiled egg without salt" to heart, and started to sport one.

For the Conan fans, this is what "Two-Guns Bob" thought about the character he calls the "damnedest bastard there ever was" (enjoy):

I have been thinking about making a MotU-styled RPG setting. I haven been running across a number of

Comicbooks + Heavy Metal = Epic Win!

I recently discovered a heavy metal band called Bal-Sagoth, that based their songs off the yarns of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and others. Being a Conan fan, I wanted to get strait to the Hyborian Metal, but I get sidetracked. While searching I discovered something quite unique. They made a song about a Silver Surfer story by Jack Kerby, where Silver Surfer has to deal with the Fourth Celestial Host (basically, space gods with the power to kick Galactus' ass!). I'm not a big fan of superhero comics beyond the 70's and 80's X-Men, and the song has a lot of narrative, but their is something epic about the song! Maybe its the way Silver Surfer is up against the all-powerful Celestials. Maybe is the way the lyrics ties in with the comicbook mythology. Maybe its the way it mashes with Jack Kerby's art. Well see it for yourself:



I cant really put thoughts to words, but this somehow inspires me!

Big Star Wars Haul

Well, I just had a big score over the weekend! I use an internet service called Freecycle. Its an exchange site for folks to get rid of old stuff, so it wont take up a landfill. I found a lot of good second-hand stuff from it – books, games, movies, furniture, electronics, clothing, my last two pets, and even friends. And all for free!

My huge score is a large collection of Star Wars books. It range from the earliest books, to the newer prequel-based books. I have the Rogue Squadron series, the New Jedi Order, and dozens of others. What I have been really looking forwards to, is Han Solo at Stars' End, and the two books that follows it. Long before Han's unblinking head side-step of Gredo's blast fire fiasco or the introduction of Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, Han Solo was the unquestioned rogue-scoundrel of the universe!

Well before I was born, my family have been Star Wars fans since the movies' development – it seems that the casting of teen sex-symbol Mark Hamill attracted a lot of young female fans. Growing up, I hear a lot about the Star Wars Mythology – stuff not mentioned in the movies. I grew up hearing snippets of Han's past, learning about how Anakin Skywaker became Darth-Vader (I was told that he shot down by Obi-wan, and his fighter crashed into a volcano), and other stuff. I also seen a lot of Star Wars movies growing up, so then I got older, I lost interest. Now that I'm even older, I'm reminiscing over thing from my past (old shows, comics, and so on). I been remembering all the things about Han Solo's past, so now I have the chance to read about it. I hops its good!

Monday De-Motivational