Carnival of souls: Special “dual must-reads” edition

* Ready to have your guts totally ripped out? Read Tim O’Shea’s interview with Driven by Lemons‘ Josh Cotter. I am at a loss for words as to what even to say about it, except this: Josh, if you’re reading this, you stepping away from comics would be a disaster for comics. This is a MUST READ.

* Sylvester Stallone is 99% sure he won’t make a fifth Rambo movie. I’m fine with that. More fine if he was gonna go in the “Rambo vs. genetically engineered soldier-monster” direction he’d mooted, less fine if he was gonna go in the “Rambo vs. Juarez” direction, but basically fine either way because how do you top the last one?

* Dash Shaw and Jesse Moynihan teamed up to do a three-feet-tall comic strip about Lost for the new issue of The Believer? Yes please.

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* I’ve got something to say: Go buy Henry & Glenn Forever, the new collection of romantic gag strips starring Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig by Tom Neely and his Igloo Tornado compatriots. Don’t think about it–do it!

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* Recently on Robot 6, a pair of links swiped from Comics Comics: Dan Nadel & Paul Gravett’s Jack Kirby art show and the music of the ’60s Spider-Man cartoon. Frank Santoro, if you’re reading this, check the comments to that last post.

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* Although it seems as un-spoilery as possible, Kiel Phegley’s interview with Mike Mignola about the next cycle of B.P.R.D. stories is still, you know, an interview about the next cycle of B.P.R.D. stories, so caveat lector.

* Kevin Huizenga appears to be serializing his story “Rumbling” on Jordan Crane’s gorgeous webcomics portal What Things Do–here’s the stuff that’s already been published in Or Else and a minicomic, iirc.

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* Here’s a comic by Bill Griffith about Levittown, the town on Long Island where my wife and I now live. (Via JK Parkin.)

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* Kate Beaton does Macbeth. Gee, whichever strip shall I choose to illustrate this link?

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* Curt Purcell continues his Blackest Night retrospective with a salute to the superheroic state-of-the-art visuals of Ivan Reis and Doug Mahnke and his personal issue-by-issue breakdown of how the event would best be read, collected, and thought about. My superhero-centric readers are really gonna wanna read both.

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* Like basically everyone else, Jason Adams thought The Human Centipede was much ado about bullshit, as the aforementioned Bard once put it, I think.

* Jason also reviews the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, a cautionary tale of what happens when imaginationless people make a movie about the power of the imagination.

* I’m always game for a genre-trash poster-art gallery. Thanks, Monster Brains!

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* The BBC interviews the great choral composer Eric Whitacre about his now-viral “virtual choir” video for his song “Lux Arumque.” I could not love Whitacre’s music more.

* Your quote of the day:

“It’s so funny because when the economy first started collapsing, everyone was freaking out and asking when comics would be hit, but now that things have really taken a toll on sales, no one is saying shit about it.”

–a friend of mine on Marvel’s month-to-month sales analysis for March 2010.

* Jiminy Christmas, this is an absolutely epic Playing D&D with Porn Stars posts on the myriad ways to “railroad” your players, i.e. to leave them with little or no choice but to do exactly what you want them to do. Seriously, I saved it for last so you can immediately go and read the whole thing yourself (after listening to the Whitacre interview of course).

Zak’s thesis, which I take it is derived from a considerable body of thought and writing on RPGs, is that between a full-fledegd railroad and its opposite, a “sandbox” in which anything the players want to do goes, there are infinite gradations. Thinking back on my one glorious D&D campaign, I’m not sure how to characterize it using Zak’s terminology, because what my DM–the great Bill DeFranza, who I’m told is now professionally writing RPG material so look out, suckers–did was, over the course of months and I think even years (before I joined the campaign), deceive the players as to what was going on via a non-player character who was secretly a total bastard. Essentially, our ragtag group hooked up at some point with a mindflayer named Oolitek who, despite what we knew of his race’s proclivities, seemed to be a stand-up guy. In addition to helping us out of jams and giving us advice, he would actually say emotionally involving and moving things to us about issues in our characters’ lives. Seriously, I loved this dude. Alas, it turned out he was manipulating us all along to slowly eliminate major monsters, magic users, and power centers so that he and his cohorts could apocalyptically blot out the sun and unleash the Underdark upon the surface world, which is precisely what ended up happening. Now, were we steered toward this conclusion? Without a doubt. Once we took down the last major obstacle for Oolitek’s plot–a beholder, iirc–could we have stopped it no matter what we did? I sort of think not; I had some sort of disintegrator ray-gun I stole from an off-world spaceship that had crashed (leading to a lot of confusion for my medieval-level mind), and even though I missed when I blasted the big doomsday device Oolitek’s pals had constructed, I sort of doubt Bill would have let me gum up the works in the end. But none of us minded, because it was such a great story, and moreover one that was totally contingent on our group’s desire to Do Good in the wake of a variety of lousy personal choices each of us had made in the past. Plus, we could have avoided it all along if we’d, you know, never trusted a fucking mindflayer.

Anyway. Personally, I think you can apply many of Zak’s lessons about railroading directly to fiction writing. Sure, your characters don’t have the autonomy that real-live player characters in a role-playing game have–but wouldn’t you like it to feel like they do?

12 Responses to Carnival of souls: Special “dual must-reads” edition

  1. Zom says:

    It’s difficult to know how to respond to the Josh Cotter interview in that it’s tough to divorce what he says about art and his future as a comic book creator from the fact that he may well be in the depths of a depression right now. I know that’s unfair – he’s a person not an illness – but I’ve known a good few (clinically diagnosed) bipolar people over the years, and have suffered from full-blown depression myself, and I know all about the kinds of pronouncements that can and do get made when you’re caught in that black pit.

    Here’s hoping he does make more comics.

  2. I’ll spare everyone a recount of my own history with depression here, but suffice to say that I recognize a lot of what Cotter is going through. Like Zom says, it’s difficult to determine how much of Josh’s feelings about his work today will represent where he is a year from now. Real, honest-to-goodness clinical depression is sneaky and poisonous in so many ways. I’m less concerned about the work he will produce for my future enjoyment and the contribution he makes to comics in general than I am about his future well being. It’s hard to say how much being in the eye of readers and critics has helped or contributed to his depression these past few years, but ultimately if he feels the cost of devoting every hour of the day to creating comics and being part of the comics “community” is too high, then I have to agree with him that taking time out and focusing on his other interests (painting, etc.) can’t hurt. I think he knows that if he feels compelled to work in the medium again, he would be welcomed back with open arms. I hope the best for him.

  3. Tim O'Neil says:

    For clarification: are you saying that after a months-long campaign, the DM revealed Oolitek’s master plan and you all just – lost? You couldn’t do anything but watch the Mind Flayers take over the world? Because while there’s a part of me that admires that kind of storytelling resolution, it seems as if that would be a frustrating ending for a game like that where you – the real people – had invested so much of your time and effort and even emotion.

    I’ve never been a gamer so I don’t know how that whole shebang works, but this is one of my qualms with the notion that gaming is “art” – you can’t write a video game where the player loses in the end. You could never write a video game version of Anne Frank’s diary that had her escaping Germany and becoming a member of the French Resistance, for instance. Or rather, you could, but it would be stupid, if I’m making any sense.

  4. Davey Oil says:

    Oh my god! Oolitek! I remember that there was some plot reason that bill let me in on his secret a while before you guys. My character was a chaotic neutral necromancer dude who was just too nasty to not help, or something. (folks, I had a skull for a face and rode a racing snail! And I was the tall sexy drow elf from your Gothyest fantasies. Mine, anyway)

    anyway, Oolitek… You know, Tim, I don’t remember if we lost. I remember we killed an entire city of perfectly nice people by accident… Lotsa Zak’s gonzo consequences!

  5. Davey Oil says:

    Oh my god! Oolitek! I remember that there was some plot reason that bill let me in on his secret a while before you guys. My character was a chaotic neutral necromancer dude who was just too nasty to not help, or something. (folks, I had a skull for a face and rode a racing snail! And I was the tall sexy drow elf from your Gothyest fantasies. Mine, anyway)

    anyway, Oolitek… You know, Tim, I don’t remember if we lost. I remember we killed an entire city of perfectly nice people by accident… Lotsa Zak’s gonzo consequences!

  6. Jon Hastings says:

    Sean – The body of RPG theory known as “The Big Model” has developed a number of terms that cover the kind of play Zack is talking about. Two that are appropriate for how you describe your D&D game are “illusionism” and “participationism”.

    “Illusionism” means that the players are under the illusion that their choices matter, but the DM is arranging things “behind the scenes” so everything turns out according to his/her master plan.

    “Participationism” is a kind of illusionism where the DM is arranging everything according to a master plan, but the players know this and are getting their enjoyment not from, say, making meaningful thematic choices but rather acting their character. (Following points made in Zack’s post: a lot of Call of Cthulhu play is like this, because everyone knows how these stories are supposed to end. The fun is in playing a character who is going insane.)

    Anyway, I agree that there’s a lot of options other than railroading and “pure” sandbox play, although I think I’d lay the variations out a little differently. I like to pose the question as: what kinds of meaningful choices can the players make?

    Tim – When it comes to tabletop role-playing games, there are a bunch that really do allow you to create narrative art and even a few that effectively tackle serious subject matter. Jason Morningstar’s Grey Ranks, for example, is a game where you play teenage resistance fighters in the Warsaw Uprising. To speak to Zack’s subject, in Grey Ranks the players have no control over the historical outcome but they do have control over their characters’ individual stories. So, we know the uprising fails, but we’re playing to see whether a given character can maitain her patriotism in the face of defeat or if she’s ovecome by despair or cynicism.

    (Whether or not video games are art is a different question. I’d argue that some are, but none of the ones I’d make a case for are examples of narrative art.)

  7. Zom and Sean: I think Josh is being a lot less self-deprecating about his work here than I was worried he’d be when I saw where his response was headed. I’m glad for that. What he’s saying ultimately, though–that for whatever its strengths, his work is still largely inconsequential–is maybe even tougher to here as an admirer of his comics and a person who thinks he’s a swell guy to boot. However pessimistic I’ve gotten about my life and life in general, I’ve never started questioning the value of art, for which I’m grateful. That’s a struggle I wouldn’t even want to contemplate going through as an artist. In my limited interactions with him, Josh has been a mensch, and I hope he finds solace wherever he ends up looking for it.

    Tim: We lost, yep! (We lost, Dave.) That said, it’s not like there were the words THE END and he made us stop playing. We didn’t die, we weren’t incapacitated, and we probably could have kept playing but for school starting up again. Also I believe Bill would have needed some time to generate ideas for the next stage of the campaign, which he was ready willing and able to do. We just never got around to it. Either way, I promise it wasn’t frustrating–it was AWESOME, because it felt like a consequence of decisions we’d made, rather than Bill stomping us by fiat.

    Tim again: I’m reasonably sure there are video games now where you can, indeed, lose. Popular, recent games, that is. I remember Cameron Stewart tweeting about replaying something after making different in-game decisions to see how things would end up either way. That said, I’m with Jon in that “narrative art” and “art” are two different things. Super Mario World and Super Mario Galaxy are art, I’d say with no hesitation, but they’re visual/experiential art more than narrative art.

    Dave: DAVE! Since your character had departed the party by the time the shit hit the fan, my plan if we ever continued the campaign after Oolitek’s apocalypse was to take your deathmask and wear it as penance for my role in the debacle, vowing never to remove it until we’d righted this wrong. It would have been AWESOME. By the way, I don’t think I knew that you knew what he was up to until this very moment, you son of a bitch.

    Speaking of Zak’s gonzo consequences, here’s a good one: When we were in the aforementioned spaceship, some fungus creatures came in contact with this part of the ship deep inside its bowels that was glowing and green, and came away larger and meaner. So I decided I’d touch that green glowing thing and see if it would make me larger and meaner. Of course, everyone else realized that this was radioactive material but me, and our DM, in a classic case of Zak’s “nursing” concept, all but caused an earthquake to stop me from hugging the radioactive core of the ship. In the end I tripped before I could make full contact and came away with some melty skin on my hand and arm or something like that.

    Jon: I’m not sure why, but your post reminded me of the big reason I didn’t play RPGs in high school even though almost all my friends did. Dave and Bill and Ken et al were playing Illuminatus, and Ken explained the whole scenario to me and I was like “Cool! So, how do you kill the Computer?” “Oh, you can’t kill the computer.” “What??? I’m not playing then!” An inability to kill the arch-villain did not compute with me, if you’ll pardon the pun.

  8. Kennyb says:

    Dude, it wasn’t Illuminatus! It was Paranoia.

    Oddly enough, iirc the next major release of that particular rpg was set in a scenario where the Computers society had mostly broken down. I don’t remember the underlying cause, but the Computer was just another faction.

  9. Bill says:

    OMG! HOW COOL DO I FEEL NOW?

    (warm fuzzies)

    BTW: David and I had the COOLEST ideas for the next chapter… Do you recall, David?

    (And losing is never permanent for heros. Not in MY RPGs, baby!)

    Sean: Wearing Cathax’s mask would have been a cool tribute (yes, I remember the characters’ names… that’s the impact you all had on ME as co-creators of this story)

    Ah, what fun.

    Wacky idea… ever hear of Maptools? We can run that and skype and it’s like this… maptool = map (saw that coming, didn’t you?) and skype = 5 way voicechat… and we can play miles apart. people do it all the time. We could make a periodic thing of it, if there’s interest. As for the game itself, I’d reccommend (to anyone, frankly) Castles and Crusades from Troll Lord Games. This game simply rox, and so much so that it got me interested in this hobby again after about a decade away. Check out the quickstart rules and you can see how it’s got the same look and feel but is rules light. It’s more narrative and the rules that slow down the fun are gone, and not missed!

    Elegant yet robust is how I describe it. I recommend it to everyone who plays RPG, or even is thinking about it.

  10. Bill says:

    Sean, with your blessing…

    Castles & Crusades

    A rules light role playing game of swords and sorcery with one of the fastest growing fan bases in the world. C&C combines all the popular aspects of your favorite role playing game with an extraordinarily easy rules set. Same classes. Same races. Same attributes. Easier rules!

    15 minutes to master the game, 15 minutes to make a player, years of fun!

    Quickstart rules

    http://www.trolllord.com/cnc/ccqs.html

  11. Davey Oil says:

    Bill: yeah. I actually do remember it very well. Very well indeed.

    Actually, I just had to erase most of my comment as it gave a buncha shit away and all of a sudden I see a future for the (gulp) Benevolent Horde.

    Folks, we even had a flag!

    Okay, let’s take our plan making offline, shall we? Give mr Collins his coments section back?

    But you heard it here first, addreaders! Sean Collins, critic will be STC, roleplayer before the summer arrives. I wonder if we can get him to liveblog the whole thing?

  12. Bill says:

    Last one, I swear! 😀

    While it’s true we/I should stop hijacking Sean’s comment thread in such a narcississtic way, I must say this and Kenny’s Tumbr have been very heartwarming. I’m so glad this game had such a fun impact for you all, which is really the point, I’d say. It’s a game, so it should be fun, and it’s very gratifying to hear you had THIS much fun! I certainly had a blast.

    Is everyone on Facebook? Regardless of trying to play again, I’d love to get really back in touch with you all and do some catching up!

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