Weekly Geekly Rundown for March 1, 2024
Lured by something Dank & Dark?
There are many role playing game products that surprise me with their mechanical design or their setting, but rarely am I surprised by the format a game uses for distribution. Most role playing games are either boxed sets, traditional hardcover/softcover books, or pdfs. The first time I was surprised by a publishing format was when I saw the old Darksword Adventures role playing game by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis.
I had never seen a complete role playing game published in a standard trade paperback format. Softcover? Sure, many times. Paperback? Had not seen. It wasn’t long after buying that book that I found out about the Advanced Fighting Fantasy role playing game (which had a couple books in traditional paperback) and Dragon Warriors. I’d played the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, so I had played gamebooks in paperback format but never a fully developed role playing game. Let’s just say that not only is Dragon Warriors a fully developed, and innovative, role playing game that is now published in more traditional formats, it also includes a rich and deep setting that has appealed to fans for decades.
All of this taught me that role playing games could come in many forms. A form I never expected though is the “Children’s Board Book.” You know, the books printed on cardboard to ensure they are tough enough to endure the toddlers chewing on them between parents reading the contents to them. It never occurred to me that this format would ever be used for a role playing game. Color me surprised again as Philip Reed, long time Steve Jackson Games and independent game designer, is doing just that with his upcoming game Dank & Dark. He will be funding the game on backerkit and I cannot wait to see the fully realized product.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
continues his coverage of zine based games for the month of February on his newsletter. I don’t know when February became Zine month, but I do know that Kickstarter’s Zinequest has been a big even in my gaming circles for a little while now and that it has become big enough that some cool stuff can get lost in the shuffle. That’s why Substacks like Jonah’s are a vital part of the conversation. has long been one of the hardest working illustrators in the comic book industry. Her work has run the gamut from the hardscrabble world of independent publishers and distributors to the assumed “gravy train” of mainstream super hero work. She’s shared some of her nightmare stories in the indie world over on her site. Like many excellent artist newsletters, she provides a realistic picture of what it means to work as an artist. We often think that the people who produce the things we love, and are relatively successful at making them, must be super rich. This is very often not the case. Hollywood is filled with “blue-collar” writers who are barely managing a middle class life in Tinseltown and comics are filled with hardworking illustrators wondering if they can afford their next meal.
Her most recent post isn’t as depressing as all that, but it does give a glimpse into how much work it takes to illustrate a single comic book page and that’s something we should keep in mind when we’re angry that a book is running late. Creativity doesn’t just happen. It takes time and effort. has a timely rundown of Robert E Howard’s Bêlit in his latest column. Bêlit is a key character in one of Howard’s most popular Conan tales, Queen of the Black Coast, and is often described as the “love of Conan’s life.” makes good use of Conan’s love of Bêlit in the second storyline of the latest Conan comic book from Titan Books, drawing heavily on the “one true love” narrative.
I’ve always thought that this fandom focus on Bêlit gave short shrift to Zenobia, the woman Conan promises to make his queen at the end of The Hour of the Dragon. I think some reason for the focus on Bêlit, rather than Zenobia, is rooted in two things. First, Howard wrote about the relationship between Conan and Bêlit with a lot more detail. They spend time, in print, together and she has a long lasting impact on his psyche. The second reason, and I’d argue the main reason more focus on her than Zenobia, is that Bêlit is a badass. She’s Conan’s equal in many ways and that gives her a kind of allure. Zenobia is, as she says in Hour, “only Zenobia…only a girl of the king's seraglio.” She is timid and fearful and that is a far cry from Bêlit.
What is lost in ignoring Zenobia as a romantic figure is that timid as she is, she rescues Conan and she is no fool. Howard makes sure to point this out when he writes, “Zenobia had chosen well in selecting the white horse. His speed, toughness and endurance were obvious. The girl knew weapons and horses, and, Conan reflected with some satisfaction, she knew men.”
Zenobia is different from Bêlit, but she too is worthy of Conan. She also represents something different. She’s a subversion of Howard’s normal preference for the savage over the civilized. Of course, careful reading of Conan stories shows that Howard’s thoughts on civilization vs savagery are more complex than a cursory glance would suggest. As I wrote in Conan: Patron of the Arts, Howard’s supreme example of freedom from civilization Conan is himself a lover of the benefits that civilization can offer. His love for the civilized almost kills him, but that’s the beauty of Howard’s subtlety. Civilization is rotten and less honest than barbarian life, but what it produces is beautiful and worth defending. It’s a nice contradiction and Zenobia, the victim of the most corrupt of “civilization’s” practices, is beautiful and saves Conan without herself becoming savage in the way that Bêlit is.
Michael Moorcock must have picked up on this feature when he created Elric of Melniboné’s wife Zarozinia, for whom Elric sets down his blade. Like Conan, Elric has an earlier and deeper love, but as with Conan there is some kind of salvation brought about by the second love. Moorcock’s novel Stormbringer has many similarities to Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon, though they also differ in tone and outcome, and one of them is in the name of the romantic interest. It should be noted that as a deconstruction of Conan tales, Elric’s love meets a much different fate as Moorcock and Howard are advancing different, if parallel, commentaries regarding society. Both Conan and Elric fight against the corrupting elements of civilization, while fighting for the benefits. There’s far too much to dissect in comparing/contrasting Elric and Conan for this pitch for you to read Just the Axe, Ma’am, but since the theme of an intelligent (not combat oriented) woman saving the day comes up again in the recommended film, I wanted to give Zenobia her props too.
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
I’m an unabashed fan of the 1980 Flash Gordon film. It almost perfectly captures the Alex Raymond style and color and has a nice balance between camp and seriousness. A cavalcade of academy award quality actors are having fun with the whole premise and chewing up the scenery, while a young an naïve actor plays it straight. It makes for a nice set of contrasts, just as the use of opticals and other interesting special effects help the film hold up better than one would expect. Sure, I’d like a “pure” Flash Gordon that’s serious to the bone some day, but given that Flash Gordon was produced in an era when none of the pulp properties were treated seriously the half-way serious nature of Flash Gordon stands out. It’s stylish and fun and just enough over the top to be great.
Luke’s latest action figure review for SuperHeroHype takes a look at the latest Flash Gordon action figures. Give it a read as Luke does a great job and gives appropriate praise to Brian Blessed who showed ably how to be lovingly camp. He is bombastic and his costume is almost laughable, yet he’s so into the role and so charismatic that you believe him. His performance in Flash Gordon made me a forever fan.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Courtney Howard follows up on her review last week of Jennifer Lopez’s latest film This is Me Now: A Love Story with a review of the documentary about the making of that romantic comedy. As she was with This is Me Now, Courtney is impressed with The Greatest Love Story Never Told. One of the things that impresses Courtney the most is the candor that Lopez displays in the film. The way she presents the film reminds me of the moment in the David Beckham docuseries when he tells his wife, playfully, to “be honest.” It was a moment that showed the mythmaking inherent in celebrity, the genuine affection the couple had for one another, and revealed more than they might have initially wanted to share. If the Lopez documentary has even a fraction of that, and it sounds like it does, it’s definitely on my must see list.
Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings
latest podcast episode includes a discussion about the underperformance of Ordinary Angels in the box office and whether it suggests something about the faith based film audience, that they want/need “meaner” films. It’s a discussion that got me thinking about the difference between films like Going My Way and God is Dead. Both are films where faith is at the forefront of the narrative and both are films where religion is on the defensive. In Going My Way, there is a sense that much of society is leaving religion (in particular Catholic faith) behind and that churches are withering as a result. In the case of God is Dead, faith is under attack from elite institutions. One of these films attacks this challenge with kindness and love and ends with a moment that brings me to tears even thinking about it as a character gets to see his mother for the first time in forty years. The other film ends with a person running to affirm their faith dying before they have the chance to proclaim their returned love of God. One film says that the answer to the lack of faith in others is testimony and patience, the other argues that those outside of faith deserve death.
This isn’t to say that all faith based films that are gentle are good. I recently watched The Hill starring Dennis Quaid. It’s a positive and gentle faith based film, that’s realistically critical of a certain kind of religiosity. Quaid is a good actor, who’s been in what I consider to be a perfect film (Breaking Away), but the film felt a little empty in places. In being gentle, the film sometimes felt hollow. I haven’t seen Ordinary Angels yet, but I wonder if it too feels hollow. There’s a difference between gentle and sincere, just as there is between anger/frustration and wrath/revenge. It’s a balance that faith based films have to keep, and it’s not an easy one to manage. After all, the best faith based films reach out to the faithless as well as the faithful.
No Film School Philosophizes
Okay, enough of me being saccharine, it’s time to talk about the “Most Violent Movie Scenes of All-Time.” The folks over at No Film School have a pretty good list of violent, sometimes shockingly violent, films that includes an okay discussion of the history of violence in films. As thoughtful as I found the list they provide, the article itself read like it could have been produced by AI. That’s not a complement. There was little sense of an actual writer’s voice or taste. I’m not saying it was AI written, but I would have liked more Geekerati-esque asides into nonsense or minutiae.
A film that was not on the list, but which is so violent that I was exhausted by the end of my first viewing is The Night Comes for Us. The film reunites martial artists and actors Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim (The Raid) in a film that makes The Raid seem tame by comparison. It was an almost never ending barrage of brutality. But it had a real emotional depth at the core regarding the value of protecting the innocent. As brutal and violent as The Night Comes for Us is, it has a strong moral core. So too, in many ways, does A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick’s film, which is on their list, is brutal. Alex is evil incarnate. Yet the film makes us question what and how we should do as a society to address our Alexes. Because of this it’s among my favorite films, even if it isn’t one I want to watch again and again. Also lacking from the No Film School list is Straw Dogs, and given it’s critique of civilization (and how closely it adheres to the Howardian view mentioned earlier) it deserves consideration on any list of violent scenes.
Music Recommendation
So, I was chatting with my friend Kevin the other day about various phases of punk rock music. As you might remember, the movie I recommended last week (Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains) was a fictional film about an imaginary punk rock band that ended up inspiring real musicians. Talking about this film, got us talking about the pop punk of the early 90s and Kevin said he thought that the Buzzcock’s pop crossover song Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) was a foundational song for what would become pop punk. For Kevin, and I’m largely in agreement with this, one element of pop punk vs hardcore punk is that you won’t find a lot of love songs in hardcore. After all, it was only after the Goo Goo Dolls were no longer a punk band when they recorded Iris.
The Buzzcock’s song came out in 1978, right at the end of the first wave of punk movement and at the beginning of the post-punk period and it’s a fun song.
While DEVO started out as a kind of geek punk band, they became more and more post-punk as they added more keyboards to their sounds. They still had a kind of driving punk guitar riff when they released Girl U Want in 1980 and I think it follows nicely from the Buzzcock’s effort as a second step toward true pop punk.
While DEVO likely added some element of humor/irony to later pop punk bands (so too would The Dickies be an influence here), a love song doesn’t need to be silly to be a future pop punk influence. Hüsker Dü’s 1987 song Could You Be the One is a straightforward song with a catchy pop sound. Hüsker Dü managed for a time to navigate the post-punk era and evolve.
All of these songs share one thing in common, other than the fact that they likely influenced later bands, and it’s that they are all catchy. I’ve noticed I’ve spent a decent amount of time in alternative land the past couple of months, so I might wander into some other genres in the coming weeks. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave one and I’ll see what I can do. My motto here is that I’ll geek out about anything and that includes almost any music genre too.
Classic Film Recommendation
Douglas Sirk’s 1947 film Lured occupies an interesting filmic space. It was marketed as a film noir and if reviewed as such might seem a slightly disappointing film. As dark as the underlying subject matter is, human traffickers and a serial killer, the tone of the film is anything but the traditional noir fare. Tonally it shares more with Myrna Loy and William Powell’s Thin Man series, and Hitchcock’s more romantic films like The Lady Vanishes, than it does M, Criss Cross, or Double Indemnity.
Fans of the Thin Man series, who are on the lookout for films of a similar tone, are often faced with a small library of offerings. Nick and Nora Charles’ adventures aren’t quite “cozies” as Nick’s former contact with the underworld is an ever present theme, but they aren’t what most people consider noir. The book by Dashiell Hammett would certainly fall closer to a typical noir definition, with its dark and almost hopeless undertone, but screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich bring a wonderful romantic charm to their films that places these films in their own genre space. It’s a space, as I mentioned above, that not many films fall into.
Lured is one of those rare gems that does exactly that. There’s a darkness to the tale and real threats exist in the foreground and the background, but there is a wonderful charm to the film as well. That charm is the result of the chemistry between Lucille Ball and the various men she plays opposite in the film. This is not the Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy, though she is funny and charming, this is a Lucille Ball who is a smart, tough, witty, and vulnerable detective. She’s like a fusion of Nick and Nora Charles, and she is an absolute joy to watch.
There are several subtle laugh out lines in the film, but to reveal them would be to bring spoilers into the film. Suffice to say that Lucille Ball’s Sandra Carpenter is a dance hall girl looking to earn a living in post-war London. When her friend Lucy Barnard (yes, her friend is named Lucy) disappears, she goes to Scotland Yard asking for their help in finding her friend. As she reveals information about Lucy Barnard, the Chief Detective on the case (Charles Coburn) notices similarities between the missing girl and the most recent letter the Yard has received from a serial killer. Sandra is recruited by the Yard to work undercover answering want ads in the hopes of trapping the killer. In the process she falls in love, uncovers a human trafficking ring, and comes face to face with the serial killer.
In my discussion of Conan, I mentioned that the theme of an intelligent woman saving the day would resurface and this is were that happens. Sandra Carpenter is an extremely, and casually, smart woman and her intelligence keeps her alive and gives her a laugh out loud charm and wit. I’m a sucker for the Thin Man movies, and I prefer Hitch’s more romantic films to his darker ones, add to that combination a visit from Boris Karloff and this is must see for me.
God's Not Dead 3 is actually a "nice" one, despite killing off a major character at the beginning. But it didn't seem to resonate with the fan base, and they went back to conspiracy theories thereafter. What's interesting is that American faith-based films (except actual Bible stories like The Passion or Noah) rarely do well outside of the US, I suspect due to quirks in US fundamentalism like belief in the Rapture, or that God blesses capitalism specifically.
(Ironically I had the faith-based film beat at Forbes specifically because they were among the only films Scott did NOT cover)