This doesn’t mean I am anywhere close to finished with writing nonfiction pieces as we enter the New Year. I have several project ideas planned in January, all of which will find a new home over at Medium. 

I’ve been a member of Medium for several years and have long considered it an excellent tool for storytelling, both in fiction and nonfiction. As I worked on At The Helm, I let my writing on that site fall by the wayside. Medium allows me the flexibility to write about a lot more than I would on this site, while also bringing some return on the words I’m sending out on the tubes of the interweb. 

This does mean that a large amount of the content you’re currently reading here will be on the other side of a paywall. I would encourage you to sign up for Medium’s incredibly affordable five-dollar-a-month plan. The content on the site is incredibly wide and varied and offers a little bit of something for everyone. But I also know that not everyone wants to sign up for yet another subscription on the internet. I’m looking out for those readers as well.

Subscribers to my Super Powered Newsletter have always received free links to my work over at Medium. That won’t change after the calendar changes and this blog disappears into the ether. If you aren’t already a subscriber, you can easily join here to get my biweekly missives with all the news on my current writing and more. While NicholasAhlhelm.com isn’t going anywhere any time soon, the Super Powered Newsletter will be the place for the most up-to-date news on everything. 

If you’ve been a loyal reader to At The Helm, I want to give you a heartfelt thank you. The page has never quite reached everyone I hoped it would, but it’s always been a joy to share my thoughts and feelings here. I hope you will follow me on Medium and keep up the grand tradition of some great writing. 

Thanks and I hope to see you over there in the New Year! 

The death of David Bowie inspired me to return to the idea. Just hours after his death, I sat at home in the middle of a snowstorm as my wife and kids slept for the night. That old idea connected with my brain at that point. I started to develop a novel called The Spaceman with chapters inspired by Bowie album titles. But I quickly realized the idea was too big in scope. Too wide reaching. With a quarter of the novel done, I shelved it with no plans to return.

In the last year or so, I’ve taken a look back at my own younger years for inspiration. The 90s are a strangely unexplored time in a lot of genre fiction for whatever reason. One way, that history plays out is in the form of a partial project I will return to soon called Bad Girls, inspired by the independent wave of superhero comics of that era. But I also wanted to tell a more personal story, one tinged with life in the Midwest in a time period where a massive technological upheaval was preparing to change the way we interact forevermore.

When I bought the George Cotronis piece for the cover of Smoke & Ash, the image you see to the right was also featured on his site. The slightly haunted woman connected to a strange machine became the final piece in the maze of my brain for the connections to fire. My previous work on The Spaceman, my thoughts on more personal Midwest stories in the 90s, and that image all jelled together as one.

From that wellspring, Nat and Fiona burst forth. As soon as I had a basic plot, I knew I needed to write their meeting and their first adventure, one that swelled to twice its original planned length before I finished. In the process, I created a beautiful novella, a story of love and loss and the will to persevere.

She’s a Spacegirl! is now funding on Kickstarter and needs your support.

It’s been over a year since the release of my first collection of shorter works, Smoke and Ash. I’m proud to announce that the next volume in the series is prepping for publication on Kickstarter as of today. She’s a Spacegirl! is seeking funding to cover the costs of design and editing.

This new edition will be exclusive to Kickstarter for at least six months, so this will be the only way to get the book before next spring! She’s a Spacegirl! collects at least nine stories from across the history of the MHP Universe, including the debut of a new novella and a new short story!

The name and background of short story will be released as a funding goal over the next few weeks, but the novella is the book’s namesake. “She’s a Spacegirl!” follows a young woman named Nat at the lowest point of her young life. Her life changes when a girl from outer space appears not far from her. Suddenly she’s pulled into an adventure that will pull her around the small towns in which she live and bring her up against a threat that could endanger her new friend and the world!

As a special bonus to people reading this right away and who want to back the book in the first two days, I have offered a special introductory price point for anyone that backs She’s a Spacegirl! early. Advance backers can get a print copy for only $16 while this special offer continues, but it expires at the end of the day on October 3rd!

I encourage you to not delay for a second in heading over to Kickstarter to put your support behind this new project! Let’s make She’s a Spacegirl! one of the biggest crowdfunding projects in MHP history!

Mister Miracle 22

Behind a Marshall Rogers cover, this issue starts with a dramatic statement by Scott Free: "I must kill Darkseid, Oberon! ...And the sooner, the better!"

"Midnight of the Gods" is brought to us once again by the Englehart / Rogers team, together in this book for the final time. Englehart uses his John Harkness alias here, a name he's turned to a few times when he's unhappy with the direction he's forced to take on a book he's leaving. This doesn't appear to be an editorial issue though as often was the case later when he used the Harkness name. Englehart explains on his website: "Because I didn't think it measured up to my previous issues, I put my pseudonym, John Harkness, on it... Here, it meant only that I didn't think I met my own standard."

He also explains that he dashed this issue out in one day as he prepared to leave the country. The rush nature also might be apparent from the presence of two inkers over Rogers: Rick Bryant and John Fuller.

Moving back to our story, Oberon meets Free's declaration with humor. He jokes that he must mean they need some rest, as they're the only two men on all of Apokolips fighting the good fight. But before their conversation can finish, they're attacked by soldiers dressed somewhere between Imperial Stormtroopers and 80s-era Brainiac cosplayers. He slips free of their grasps though and grabs one of their guns. By the time they realize he escaped, he's blasting them with one of their own weapons!

The book also doesn't hide that Scott just committed wholesale murder. As a message starts to play from one of the bodies, Darkseid's hologram states, "Upon the death of Junior Jumbo, this pre-recorded hologram will be activated." Darkseid proceeds to threaten Earth should Mister Miracle not stop his assault.

Yet Mister Miracle rushes headlong into his battle. Oberon tries to contact New Genesis for assistance, but Highfather admonishes him that no other help is available nor does he think it necessary. (This seems a clear reference to the current Return of the New Gods storyline.) Unfortunately, the broadcast attracts the attention of the Apokoliptan guard. He barely escapes before they destroy the location.

Meanwhile Scott Free returns to the Enclave, where he confronts the partially rendered, under-colored proletariat. He's met with a mix of excitement and hostility, examples of the confusion he's put into the people of the twin world. He fights off the soldiers in front of his growing supporters, but when they threaten to kill the lowlies, he surrenders rather than see them shot.

Kanto meets the captured Mister Miracle as he's led away. He asks if he's been thoroughly searched. Despite the soldier's affirmative, Kanto quickly disarms Miracle of some of the tricks he already knows Scott holds. He's then hauled off towards another dungeon and another cell, because the villains of Apokolips never quite learn he's the greatest escape artist in the universe. This time, he doesn't even get to his cell before he ignites the bomb still secreted on his person and makes his escape into the facility.

Finally, he finds his way to Darkseid's inner sanctum, but before he can find the evil god, Darkseid finds him. He arrives in perhaps the most oddball modern picture of Darkseid I've ever seen.

Scott blasts him with the same rifle he stole earlier in the issue. Bu despite the weapon's devastating power, it doesn't even faze Darkseid.

In answer, Darkseid offers a hard truth: New Genesis and Apokolips are locked in a constant battle for eternity. "Can you build a brave new world without balance?" he opines. "Light and shadows! Day and night! Waking and dreaming! And when the dreams grow most vivid, it is Darkseid that you see!"

Scott darkly realized Darkseid tells the truth. He's pulled deep into a spiral of Darkseid's dark laughter as Englehart and Rogers' final Mister Miracle tale comes to an end.

This is the kind of existential dread Englehart grew to use so much in his later work. I will also guess this is where the second inker finds his way into the story as the shift in blacks when Darkseid appears is dramatic. He's presented as almost a force of nature, craggy and cloaked in darkness. If it wasn't nearly a half decade before his debut, I would have guessed Rogers saw some Bill Sienkiewicz before this issue. Instead, he offered a stylized art that won't be seen much for another ten or fifteen years of comic history.

Unlike Conway on Return of the New Gods, this tale seemed dead set on making everyone know there was no escape from this battle. No one will win in the end. The only thing left is the battle. It's a dark message, especially for a mid-70s DC title — but perhaps not so out of place as the Cold War edged towards the 80s.

No mention of a next issue comes at the end of this and one might have assumed this was the end for Mister Miracle’s second run, but a new creative team would debut on the book quite soon before even another issue of Return of the New Gods could reach publication. But next time, we get a special issue stuck smack dab in the middle of that aforementioned New Gods series! See you then.

Even at my worst — my most desperate — I've never given up on the fight. Life is about the long game. While I'll never be able to enact any widespread change, I do know I can do small things to make the lives around me just a little better.

I started that move months ago on social media. I've stopped myself from posting negative takes on comics, movies, and shows numerous times. I strive to point out the great things I read or watch. It's easy to let the things that don't fall by the wayside.

Case in point: James Patterson by James Patterson, the new memoir by the ever-present writer. I've read Patterson before with little to praise, but his autobiography has proven immensely readable. I'm about halfway through as I write this, but the anecdotes from his early life are enough to get me to recommend the book.

In the last few weeks, I've strived to move that positivity to more personal interactions. I've grown into a person that doesn't suffer fools easily. I'm often fast to judge and distrust. But even in interacting with people with little or no respect for others, I strive to be kind. And I don't mean in the local way sometimes called Iowa Nice. I'm not going to stand aside and let people be outright awful. But I'm still going to strive to follow the ancient golden rule no matter how others treat me. We cannot fix anything by just saying "fuck 'em" to even the worst people. It's amazing how even an awful,  tense situation can be cooled by simply being kind.

I'm far from perfect. I've never pretended to be. I'll still fail. I'll still put my foot in my mouth. But just as the founding documents of this country didn't pretend to be infallible but instead strived for a "more perfect union," I plan to keep working on myself and my communities one day at a time. Maybe I'll never change anyone's mind. I don't know. But I want to put in the work to make things better rather than divide us even more. 

It’s the only way I know to let my own heroism shine.

Return of the New Gods 15

After a month-long digression into the world of Mister Miracle we finally continue the Return of the New Gods with issue 15. Gerry Conway is back on writing duties, while Don Newton takes a break to allow regular cover artist Rich Buckler to take the interiors with the always impressive Bob McLeod on inks.

Buckler doesn't have quite the same chops as Newton, but his work features an interesting mix of Kirby and Neal Adams that works quite well for the gods of New Genesis. His art shines as we open the story with a New God we rarely saw in Kirby's own work: Lonar.

If you remember from way back in issue 12, Lonar was the chosen protector for Nomak, the Eskimo that held a part of the Anti-Life Equation locked in his mind.

The lone warrior, rider of Thunder, isn't one for socializing, which makes him fit in among the sparsely populated Inuits. But his meditation on his own existence is interrupted by Nomak's cries of "DRUMAK! DRUMAK!" The word means stranger and as Lonar turns he sees a burning boy come across the snow.

The boy cries, "Help me! For the love of sanity, help me..." The title piece on the same page makes the focus on him quite clear. He is "THE APOCALYPSE CHILD." Lonar knows he should act, but he has no idea what to do!

We check in on Orion who as Anthony Masters again has a foul run-in with General Torch. Lightray, still smitten by Debbi Drake, doesn't like anything about his charge, Richard Roe. Richard gets attacked by the dealers he sold for, now wanting their money. He rescues Richard from the attack and sends him to the hospital. Just then his Mother Box pings as Lonar calls the most social of all the gods of New Genesis for his assistance.

Lightray flies to Lonar's aid. Lonar introduces him to Lucifar, the so-called Apocalypse Child. Conway has never been a bad writer, but do not ask me to excuse his use of three characters with names all starting with L. That's asking for reader confusion. Anyway, Lightray tells Lonar his next move is obviously a return to New Genesis with the boy. Nomak and his wife insist they accompany the boy as well.

Unfortunately, the young gods didn't warn the simple Eskimos about the nature of New Genesis. They immediately scream in fright as Highfather appears. He introduces himself to Lucifar. The boy reveals he was sent to the gods of New Genesis in exchange for Esak, a new pact like the one that transferred Orion and Scott Free between worlds.

Apokoliptan demons - actual demons here, not Parademons, a mistake on Buckler's part I expect - attack the gods and humans. The Eskimos run for cover as Lightray and Lonar due battle, although helplessly outnumbered. Highfather screams out to the heavens, his call to the other warriors of New Genesis to return. The other New Gods return to join the battle.

But even as the battle rages, Nomak runs for cover. Unfortunately, he's run directly into Darkseid's trap. The supreme lord of Apokolips towers over the Eskimo, ready to extract the knowledge he seeks.

Lonar realizes the Eskimos are gone. He pursues them inside, only to run headlong into Darkseid himself. The gray-skinned monster hurls Nomak's motionless form back at Lonar, saying, "You've came too late, godling! I've drained this creature's mind of the information I need... and you may have him, for all the good he'll do you now!"

Lonar lets Nomak fall at his feet. He has his own declaration of intent towards Darkseid: "I may have failed to protect this Earthman, but I can still fulfill my duty, BY DESTROYING YOU!" Lonar hurls his full might at Darkseid, only to be blasted out of the air by the gray-skinned brute.

"No one harms me!" he declares. "NO ONE!"

He leaves Lonar's unmoving form as he disappears.

The other heroes combine their might to send the demons hightailing back to Apokolips. Only in the aftermath of the great battle does Highfather reappear. He carries the lifeless form of Lonar, who has given his life to protect Nomak. Orion wishes to take his fury out on Lucifar, but Highfather stays his hand. Again we end the tale with Orion silently declaring his quest for vengeance against his own father as we're promised next time, "The Titan and the Hunter!"

Despite his adept style, Buckler seems to miss at least two visual cues from the Kirby run. First, the strange demons look like nothing from Apokolips, but actual demons, which is a strange choice from a world with an army of parademons. Later, Lonar is struck down by Darkseid's power. But Darkseid kills him with just a blast of energy from around his body, with no sign of the Omega Beams he uses to kill at all other times.

Yet it does deepen Conway's revival of the property as he leads the book to its inevitable conclusion, one of course Kirby never finished.

The focus on Lightray and Lonar proved satisfying as well. Neither received much in depth characterization from Kirby, but they get much more personality at Conway's hand, even if they are part of a rather large cast. We will learn more about him in just a few short weeks, but first, we return to Mister Miracle as the final issue of the Englehart / Rogers run looms close!

I've talked about influences and inspirations several times in my career. From novels to comics to movies, I find strange bits and pieces that I can see and go "that's cool." But perhaps one of the greatest influences on my career was the 90s-era imprint Milestone Comics. 

This is far from my first conversation about it though. I talked about my love of Static before and covered the importance of Dwayne McDuffie to my entire writing career. But I wanted to talk about the character that is the most obvious influence on Backoff. 

Raquel Ervin was a normal girl talked into a home invasion by a deadbeat boyfriend. The theft goes awry because the rich lawyer they came to rob turns out to be the super-powered Augustus Freeman. He stops them, but she can't get the idea of an African American man with powers out of her head. She insists he could do much for the community if he would become a superhero. He agrees, with her as his sidekick. With an inertial belt as the source of her powers, she becomes Rocket, partner of Icon. 

The battle of politics between Icon and Rocket never overtakes the book, but it offers an interesting thought process on the nature of race relations in 1990s America.  Icon succeeds so well because it subverts everything one might expect from the pair, right down to the true lead of the book. Even when she learns she's pregnant and temporarily out of costume for a huge part of the first year of the book, Raquel is never anything but a true lead in a world of sidekicks. 

Meanwhile Icon's alien heritage comes equally into play, as we learn he's anything but a Superman clone. The book never stops pivoting in different directions as it goes along 

The inertia belt and Backoff's powers certainly have some similarities, as do the women behind the mask. But I distinctly wanted to make Backoff her own character. Her own woman. Rocket is in her DNA, as is Static and so much of Milestone. But it's wound together with bits and pieces of other ideas and other thoughts into something uniquely her own.

Her death plays an important part in the history of a key player in the MHP Universe. But she's far more than just her death.

I wrote "Last Breath" (available now as part of Smoke and Ash) because Backoff started to show that. Jasmin is a human, a girl barely allowed to live her life, yet one with a life well lived. She inspired a broken man to become the hero Federation and eventually the world needed. It's a vital, important role and one that deserved more than a one-note death scene.

I went on to write “Heroes Don’t Retire” because I knew I couldn’t just set aside Backoff either. She felt like a character that needed a place in the universe, even if it comes at the loss of a decade of her life.

Similarly, Rocket has gone through a revival of her own. She barely appeared during a brief Milestone revival in Justice League of America by McDuffie, but otherwise, Rocket has been missing in action for two decades of comics. (A version of her has appeared on Young Justice, but she's a far different character there.) That changed last year, when the new generation of Milestone Media debuted Icon & Rocket Season One.

The new series serves as the launching pad for an entire Milestone reboot. While some of the changes sit with me better than others, I’m happy to see the return of such a pivotal and important character in my comic reading history. Raquel deserves to be loved by a new generation of readers too.

As for Backoff… I’m far from done with her either. But you will just have to wait and see where she will pop up next. In the meantime, if you haven’t read her first two appearances, be sure to seek out a copy of Smoke & Ash, now available pretty much wherever you can buy or order books.

I've never been one to deal a ton with the concept of process in writing. It's probably because I spent so much time second-guessing my own writing style for years. Every book on the subject of writing I read for the first 25 years of my life insisted full outlines and clear step-by-step plotting ahead of time was the only way to work.

I was pushing thirty by the time I said "screw it" and started to just write.

Over the years, I've bounced between plotting as I write and working from a (very) rough outline. I've joked before that I regularly write prose in the "Marvel style."

When Stan Lee wrote eight Marvel titles a month, he didn't have time to do the full scripts most comics worked on at the time (and these days as well). Instead, he trusted his talented artists to do some of the heavy lifting. So he would write just a couple paragraphs that described the events he wanted to have happen in the story. His artists produced ten or twenty pages out of those paragraphs. Then Stan would come back and add dialogue to the pages.

Obviously, I don't add all my dialogue at the very end, but I often build stories from just a starting point and a finish. This allows me to add and subtracts bits and pieces, flesh out subplots, and throw in interesting bits and pieces as I go. Every chapter of Lightweight has been built with this system, though I sometimes pull out tighter plots for the end chapters of each story.

That's not the only comic concept I've used in my writing, however. I'm also quite a fan of the Levitz Paradigm.

Paul Levitz designed the structure for his work writing Legion of Super-Heroes for years and years. Dennis O'Neil might have named it though as he covered it in the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics. Here's his synopsis:

So each issue (or chapter) would cover three to four plots generally. One dominates the chapter, one gets a few pages of space and the last one or two rarely take up more than a page or half page. Here's a sample of Levitz's paradigm from his run.

I used the Levitz Paradigm to design every individual chapter of Epsilon. If (more like when) I return to those characters, I will bring the Paradigm back to work. It found its way into F.O.R.C.E. as well and will likely influence upcoming volumes of KITH as well. So never let it be in doubt that it isn't a useful tool in prose as well, especially when you're building on multiple characters to juggle.

So there are a few hints on how I build on what I write from month to month and story to story. Feel free to share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

After far too long a wait, my classic novel Epsilon is now available in print for the very first time! The tale follows a new generation of heroes that have inherited the role of the Epsilon, a group of heroes that have the deformities of degens but also the superpowers of metahumans. As they seek to recover from the loss of their original leader in their greatest battle, a new threat rises up to endanger everything the late Wave built both for the team and their school, the Eastman Academy!

Epsilon is now available through Amazon in print and ebook editions. Widespread distribution should roll out within the next few weeks!

Mister Miracle 21

This issue of Mister Miracle kicks off with an interesting credits box, as it declares the Englehart / Rogers team as direct from Detective Comics. It seems even during this low-selling era of Batman books, that title still sold better than our faithful New God hero. Vince Colletta returns for inks, immediately making me wonder how much better this might have looked with a better inker. Few could match Terry Austin on that Detective run, but Vinnie isn't exactly the best guy to embellish a detail-oriented artist like Rogers.

Our new tale kicks off on New Genesis. As you might recall before the insane digression into the Brave and the Bold alternate universe, Big Barda fell back under Granny's control. Now she apparently is dying, her mind damaged by the meddling inside her brain.

Scott storms off, adamant he must find a way to save her. This leaves Oberon and Highfather to have a fascinating conversation about the nature of their relationships with Mister Miracle. Oberon's weird father/sidekick role has always made him fascinating and it's used to great effect here.

Meanwhile, Scott confronts Himon about the secrets kept about the true nature of his powers. Himon reveals it was all pre-ordained. Orion needed New Genesis to tame his dark soul, while Scott would go to Apokolips to harden his soul before his powers flourished. It's an interesting take on the characters, although the scene is marred at the end, where Scott refers to Barda as his mortal wife. Sounds like no prize territory to me.

Time passes. We switch scene to Apokolips, where Granny Goodness reveals to Darkseid a mysterious flyer making its way around the lowlies. This leads to another very Darkseid speech as he talks of being above notions of good and evil. He shuns insipid morals for he sees the true nature of life. Typical megalomaniacal bad guy talk really.

Oberon accompanies Scott to Apokolips, making him about a thousand times braver than yours truly. He's there because Scott needs a friend, but he's also quite convenient for leading the camera they use as well.

Mister Miracle promises to take power away from Darkseid, but the slavish masses of Apokolips don't exactly trust him. He promises to show his worth the next day at the Terrorium, then vanishes in a puff of smoke - really just another one of his many tricks.

This continues perhaps one of my biggest problems with these comics: despite all the talk about his new powers, he's pretty much still just acting like his old trickster self. It's barely even nailed down what powers he gained when he combined with Mother Box.

Darkseid sends out his minions to track down Scott. They look quite a bit like Terminators (about a decade before that film) and like the Terminators they fail miserably at recovering Mister Miracle.

The next morning, Darkseid stages a public execution, just exactly the kind of event for Mister Miracle to interrupt with a shower of fireworks spelling out his name. Darkseid quickly detains Scott as he doesn't even put up a fight. And though Darkseid may be one of the vilest villains in the universe, he still hasn't learned to not put Mister Miracle in a death trap, no matter how hard it is to escape.

The Terrorium is a massive structure of swinging crushing blades, but Scott and Oberon easily escape through the tunnels meant to dispose of the mangled corpses afterward. The blades instead cut themselves, destabilizing the entire structure. Mister Miracle and Oberon rise from the damaged structure.

Mister Miracle declares, "I have challenged the power of Darkseid, and I have won!" He uses this fact as a rallying cry for the people, even as its broadcast back to New Genesis. Yet it might be his final words that might prove the most important. "This was for you, Barda."

Back on New Genesis, Barda shocks awake. The sight of her husband finally brings her out of Granny's brainwashing. At the same time, many of the lowlies start to rise from their own dark miasma of existence.

Next issue we are promised, "Mister Miracle attacks Darkseid within in his own layer." But the story title proves the most ominous: "Midnight of the Gods."

This was the weakest Marshall's work has looked on the book so far, almost certainly due to his time crunch on two books mixed with the pure laziness of Colletta's lines. Vinnie may be the world's most maligned inker, but he deserves a lot of flack for the loss of so much of what makes Rogers' art so vibrant and strong.

It's sad as this would prove the penultimate issue for Marshall's run with the character. For that issue, we're free of Vince Colletta but have two inkers in the place of one. Coupled with a sudden appearance by one John Harkness on the writing duties... an ominous sign for any fan that already knows that name.

But first, it's the return of the Return as the New Gods as they face "The Apocalypse Child!"

I've long had a fascination with horror characters. For years, I’ve imagined ways to make superhero versions of the classic horror characters. The first of these was Dracula, a tragic yet heroic figure named after the dark vampire of yesteryear. She made her original appearance in the pages of an old anthology of similar stories called Horror Heroes. Some of my older work hasn’t aged as well as I might like, but I don’t feel that way about Dracula: Half-Life. I didn’t want to stop people from enjoying the story due to an appearance in an uneven collection of stories. I decided I want the debut of the character to be enjoyed by anyone that reads my fiction.

That is why Dracula: Half-Life is now free to read over at Wattpad.

I experimented with Wattpad for a few different stories over the years, but never found it to be a solid resource for the kind of stories I write. While it is an amazing site with a bevy of great fiction, I never quite found a way to make it work for me.

I have, as it does offer me a great way to share free stories with you in a customizable easy-to-read format. So sit back and delve into the world of a dark new heroine for the MHP Universe.

But first, head over to Wattpad and read the new story. and be sure to let me know what you think!

Cover credit: Andrii Podilnyk via Unsplash.

I mentioned last week that I played, beat and thoroughly enjoyed the nearly decade old game Saints Row IV over the last month. While open world crime simulation isn’t really my cup of tea when it comes to video games, this game drew my attention for two other reasons.

The first was a writer. The three-member team responsible for creating the narrative and dialogue were two veteran designers and a newcomer to game design but not writing, Tony Bedard. Before transitioning to video games, Bedard worked for nearly two decades in the comic field. Starting in Valiant, he wrote several issues of Shi and freelanced a bit before signing on with Crossgen, where he wrote one of the most criminally forgotten comics of all time: Negation. For most of the aughts, he wrote for both Marvel and DC, most notably with critically acclaimed but never high selling runs on Exiles and Rebels. He excelled at large cast narratives with a variety of characters and a mix of gravitas and humor. A game about a gang boss turned President and their team of weirdos fit the bill as a perfect use of his talents.

The second reason — and perhaps also why they hired an ex-comic writer for the game — is the superpowers. After the “Playa” becomes the President of the United States, they end up in the middle of an alien invasion by the Zin and their overly Shakespearean leader Zinyak. The story ramps up with most of the action placed inside a computer simulation of Steelport, where your character can unlock an array of powers starting with superspeed and super-jumping and expanding from there.

The game doles out powers as you progress through missions. You gain the ability to fire multiple energy blasts, do diving sky strikes, and strike the ground with massive force. But the game does have some limits as those abilities are only available in the main portions of the Steelport simulation. Depend on them too much as you play and you will find the various missions to free your friends and expand the storylines a lot more difficult when you suddenly don’t have access to them.

While those missions often add a bunch of parody into what could otherwise be a very dark story, their need to go back to what worked in past games of the Saints Row series frequently makes them the parts of the game I like least. I understand this is a game taking an old formula in a new direction, but it’s in the new direction the game ultimately shines brightest.

Well, in that and in the fact that your Vice President is straight-up just actor Keith David. After playing a major villain in a previous game, Keith David serves as a support character throughout much of the game. The game drops references to his time on Gargoyles, but really leans heavily on his co-starring role in They Live with Rowdy Roddy Piper — who makes his own appearance in the game.

Ultimately at its best, Saints Row is an incredibly solid sandbox superhero simulator free of the flaws of earlier games like Infamous or Prototype. With a fun, often irreverent story, the game could have been used to build a masterful superhero engine. Alas, it was instead used to build a few subpar sequels that never quite live up to the peak of Saints Row IV.

Later this year, the franchise will return with a full-on reboot that looks to remove so much of what made this game of interest to me. It remains truly odd to me that no franchise has really mastered the superhero sandbox gameplay without a specific licensed character at the forefront. Instead, Saints Row IV remains an exciting oddity in a sea of games that often feel cookie cutter from one to the next.

Brave & the Bold 138

The cover is impressive in its own rights, as a villain that appears to be Marvel's Batroc the Leaper cries out, "You two are the world's greatest escape artists, but you can't escape my ISLAND OF DOOM!" The title page reveals the villain is in fact an acrobat and French, so maybe actually he is a thinly disguised Batroc.

The story opens with Batman and Mister Miracle as they leap out over the volcanic island Trond-Hag. Their descent is hastened when the pilot cuts their lines and flies away! In the water below, Batman and Mister Miracle discuss why they've come here. It appears a famed geologist Dr. Steve Lang has been missing, and he was last seen on Trond-Hag. (My guess is he's off building Sentinels.)

Honestly, the more I read Haney's writing, I wonder if he's inadvertently set his heroes on Earth-616 instead of Earth-1.

The two heroes escape the lava flows and make their way up the volcanic island. When they reach its peak, they discover the island isn't naturally volcanic at all. A machine rests inside the mound, churning out the magnetic fields that make aircraft nearby go crazy.

On their way in, they encounter Lang's pick and Mister Miracle barely saves Batman from the booby trap. A bit later, the villain finally reveals himself. He is Cosimo, perhaps Batroc's younger, mustache-less cousin. He holds the heroes at gunpoint and reveals he's been retrieving the devices Scott used as bread-crumbs on their trail inside the facility.

Batman and Mister Miracle (of course) escape. Scott explains to his ally that Cosimo was an acrobat and escape artist in his own right, one with a mad on for Mister Miracle because of all the lost competitions he suffered at Scott's hand.

This comic may present Batman in his most unflattering light, as he stumbles quickly on yet another death-trap which Mister Miracle saves him from. Cosimo attacks again, but the heroes almost waylay him instead! The villain uses his own escape artist skills, focused on passage through narrow tunnels, to slip through a crack hard for the heroes to follow.

The heroes find Steve Lang around the bend, but he appears to be hypnotized. He can only say one word, the same word he called them with by radio: "Kraken." As Batman and Scott Free struggle to understand the clue, they're caught in Cosimo's net and captured!

Cosimo gloats as the heroes struggle to free themselves. Satisfied in his victory, Cosimo calls for Kraken, apparently the man in charge of his plan. Kraken gives him the path out of the volcano through a radio signal. But Scott appears outside the net and threatens the villain. This causes the villain to release his grip on the net. The two heroes spring out from inside it! Mister Miracle hadn't been outside at all! The heroes strike, but again Cosimo slips away!

Batman asks Miracle how he did it and Scott gives him a simple, pat answer: hypnosis. The chair that holds the catatonic Steve Lang also has a radio and they use it to follow Kraken's signal. They quickly fall into another sand-blasting death trap. Though they cling on for dear life, they take Cosimo for dead, killed by his boss after his failure.

Steve starts to wander off, spouting about the "Kraken this way!" The heroes follow, knowing the mystery villain is their only hope of escape. They stumble upon a cave of vast treasure and the Kraken! Only their enemy is no man, but a giant super-computer!

Batman reveals that the island has long been the headquarters for Kraken, dating back to Viking raiders. But in order to operate with utmost secrecy, they needed a leader with greater security and mental acuity than any one man, so the Kraken computer was born! Lang had found it and Kraken assigned Cosimo to drug and kill him. The heroes' interference saved Lang's life and exposed the Kraken!

But even as the heroes realize the plot, a silent figure in Corsica watches them on a monitor. He activates a failsafe and the Kraken starts to build towards an explosion! They barely escape, but the tunnels are crumbling around them. Mister Miracle uses his cape to make a hot air balloon of sorts. The air currents in the cave carry the three men upwards and free of the deadly caves at last!

Batman reveals that he'd apparently known Kraken was a computer all along. His own satellites were pulling out every ounce of information the Kraken held, much to the chagrin of the veiled crime boss in Corsica. The heroes celebrate their victory, but both have much more work to do. Batman will bring down the crime ring once and for all. While Scott has his war with Darkseid and Apokolips to continue!

Thus, the story is quickly wrapped up in the typical Haney fashion. Much like his first use of Scott Free in the pages of Brave & The Bold, this issue offers a convoluted plot way too complicated for its 17 pages. So much of this book feels like panels are missing. In places it feels like it might have been written Marvel style with Aparo doing all the layouts and plots and Haney just trying to script it through (and failing rather spectacularly.) Yet if this was artist driven, it feels like it gives Aparo little room to shine as we get few really impressive shots of either hero.

Overall, this was a fairly run of the mill issue of Brave & The Bold, and the weird Haney-verse it existed inside. But as a chapter in the life of Mister Miracle, it falls even flatter than his previous two appearances. Mired in his war with Darkseid, it seems all too strange for Scott to even be involved here. Yet the comic acknowledges the fight a few times, even as he stops to help Batman simply find a lost friend.

Cosimo's disappearance is especially egregious, as we're left with just some dialogue lines to tell us he's surely dead. Since this was the character's only appearance, I guess he was. I'd rather think he was sent through whatever trans-dimension portal he first came through, grew out his mustache again and ran off to fight Captain America yet again.

Your results may vary.

Next time around we continue our Mister Miracle triptych! See you next month!

I have made no secret of my interest in playing with public domain characters to form a foundation for the Quadrant Universe. This was a purposeful choice on my part, but it vastly predates the era of convenient Wikia sites for such characters. When I first started to develop Living Legends it was all from a very cool book called the Encyclopedia of Super-Heroes by Jeff Rovin. Published in the early eighties, it attempted to be a comprehensive list of every superhero created up until that point. It also featured dozens of public domain figures I started to cobble together into a story idea.

From that the Living Legends concept was born, as eighteen of those characters are lost in time only to resurface seventy years after their disappearance. The foundation predated comic projects like Project: Superpowers and The Twelve by a few years, even if my final released volume came far later.

Old Soldiers was supposed to serve as the first novel of a trilogy. It stands on its own but leaves plot threads dangling for future installments for that reason. But as I set out to work on the second volume of the series, I quickly realized at the time I wasn't quite ready to bring it to life just yet. It was a complicated concept to begin with, and I found that I wasn't able to pull together the disparate threads as well as I would like for the ongoing series.

That makes it one of several projects I hope to finish over the next two to three years. I have any number of works set to expand the Quadrant Universe as a whole, and the next two Living Legends volumes are a significant part of that.

Don't let their delay though make you avoid reading the second book in the ongoing Quadrant Universe saga though. Living Legends: Old Soldiers introduces a plethora of new characters, many of which will eventually surface in other corners of the universe. And I don't want anyone to miss the origins of Lady Foulplay or The Coward, or the dark secrets of The Dart and Ace. There's a ton of adventure waiting ahead in these pages!

Mister Miracle 20

Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers return for Mister Miracle 20 with the somewhat unfortunate inker choice of Vince Colletta, though the infamous Vince seems to put more work in here than he often does. Famous for erasing lines to make his life easier, pretty much no one looks back on Colletta’s work with fondness, but he at least isn’t too intrusive on Marshall’s pencils.

“Eclipse” kicks off with Oberon at the top of the mine shaft from last issue, which you will remember Granny Goodness set to destroy. Mister Miracle shoots out of the tunnel as it explodes outward in spectacular—and oddly colored—fashion.

Mister Miracle quickly sums up the events as he sets out to repair his Mother Box. As Scott communes with the box, Oberon looks on and marvels at the strangeness of it all.

Mother Box connects directly with Scott's mind however and speaks to him. (It's been a while since I've read the Kirby classics, so can anyone tell me if this is the first time Mother Box directly communicates?) She gives Scott bad and good news.

“Your attempts are beautiful, but futile, boy. You and I have parted forever. And yet, I am with you always, for we are joined at the Source. The miraculous things I showed you are part of your life, now! I will survive in you as you will survive in others! But you alone must forge your destiny!”

Sounds a bit trippy, but we're talking Englehart in the 70s folks. Recreational substances probably were involved in the creation process.

Anyway, Scott scoops up Oberon and flies up towards space. He realizes that he's earned the powers that are his birthright as a god of New Genesis. His destination is the moon, which we know from the sister book is Darkseid's new base. But he's heading towards a meeting with the four villains that attacked last time.

We also get our first continuity error (of sorts) between this title and Return of the New Gods. While Doctor Bedlam was in a new form in that book's last issue, here he still looks just like his Kirby original. Yet the book gives an easy solution for the discrepancy, as Bedlam sends his mind-force and enters another animate, this time in the form of a costumed Mister Miracle!

He attacks Big Barda, bent on bending her to Granny's will with thoughts of her husband's betrayal. Yet it causes Barda to smash the false Miracle in the face. Yet the real thing shows up just as the Bedlam-Miracle moves to strike again.

Scott starts to tear apart the moon-base, but the half-conscious Barda attacks him, not quite sure of herself after Granny's torture and MIND MANIPULATION!

Mister Miracle awakes in another Granny death-trap, this time two rockets bent on flying in different directions. Bedlam wanted to kill him quickly and efficiently, but she cries that wouldn't give her the full vengeance she desires. She seems to miss the fact that Scott escapes every trap she ever set, even as she declares his death to the crucifixion.

The rockets fire in a burst of smoke. All but Kanto declare him surely dead. The swordsman has some doubts, proving he might be a total fool here. Oberon uses the same rocket firing as a distraction to escape his own cell. The villains rush to find him, but Mister Miracle gets to him first! Miracle had simply cut himself free from one rocket and flew the other non-explosive device to its landing, where his new powers protected him.

Scott and Oberon escape the base on to the moon's surface. Barda attacks him again. But with his increased might, he's now a match for her. After trading punches, he manages to K-O his confused wife.

He knows she must be returned to New Genesis for medical attention. (How he will get her back with a Mother Box isn't shown here and will almost certainly be glossed over.)

Scott Free has other plans. He looks back at Granny's comparison to Jesus and declares that he will come to the gods of Apokolips as Jesus did to humanity, not to fight for religion but for freedom! It's a bit of a clunky concept, probably again owed to this era of Englehart's connection with the aforementioned variety of chemicals.

While Rogers draws a gorgeous issue here, the story proves to be a bit of a mess. The analogies don't quite work. The birthright given by Mother Box seems to have brought him into his full godlike abilities, yet Miracle talks about being human just pages later. His disregard for his wife's safety when she attacks also seems out of character, though one has to wonder if it's there to be some mandated action in the pages.

This issue doesn't give us much of a blurb, only ending with “The curtain goes up in Mr. Miracle 21” But before we reach that point, Mister Miracle has another team-up calling his name!

I’ve long been an admirer of the “Marber grid.” Created for Penguin by Polish-born Romek Marber in the early sixties, it became the look of hundreds of books published in Britain in the 60s and early 70s. A modified version was used for their science fiction titles. It was often a simple layout with a single image or icon to frame it.

It seemed perfect for Epsilon.

I started out with the plan to once again integrate the Greek letter epsilon (ε) into the cover design. I went over a few different variations of the letter which would eventually evolve into the modern E. That would form the main focus on the cover. I went with a simple blue as a nod to the original cover of the book.

From there, I set out to design a simple text title piece for the cover, one which like the covers above integrated the author's name with the title. I decided to throw a line through it to break up the simple sans serif font.

I felt the epsilon symbol wasn’t quite enough to bring the cover complete together. It left just a little too much open space against the black background. The cover needed just a little something more. Without giving too much about the novel away, I wanted something to represent the malevolence of the novel’s mystery villain.

I turned to the incredibly useful free use image site Unsplash. I had already bookmarked an excellent image of a less than happy close-up of an eye by the photographer Peter Forster. I immediately realized I could integrate it into the design with little trouble.

The final result is a uniquely interesting combination of photography and graphic design that I’m proud to share with you below.

Epsilon comes to print in June! Stay tuned for more news on the release soon!

One of my oldest novels, Epsilon, has long sat quietly in the middle of my back catalog, an unassuming tale in a library of books with bombastic covers and never-ending action. While Epsilon rarely shies away from action, it’s built around the lives of a group of the rarest type of superhero beings in the MHP Universe.

For most people, the metagene leads to one of two outcomes. If you’re lucky, the metagene activation gives you abilities unlike anything known to man. If you’re unlucky — as most people with active metagenes are — it leads to disfigurements and malformations that clearly mark the recipients as something other. With the increased activation of metahumans since the 1940s, they have been called degens.

But a third option exists, one first discovered in the mid-fifties by the team’s founder Wave. A rare few like himself suffered from the changes that would make them degens but also gained great powers as a result. Working in concert with agents of ACTION, Wave dubbed this rare breed epsilon.

Decades later, Wave runs the premiere academy for training young epsilon recruits. The threat of Rubicon, his former colleague turned archenemy, loomed over the academy for years. Ultimately this brought about a plan by Rubicon to tear the team apart from within… one that plays out in the very first pages of the novel.

Bad things happen and it sets a new path for the most hated and feared individuals in the entire MHP Universe!

Ebook editions of Epsilon are now available, but a revised edition of the ebook will launch with the print edition next month. Stay tuned next week as we debut the new cover that will grace this new edition.

In previous Influential columns, I regularly focused on books or characters that have a prominent role in comics history. But sometimes, there are characters with far less history that can prove just as important to the development of my characters, universe, or storytelling. One such unit is a little-known team of characters known as the Nova Posse.

The Nova Posse were a group of intergalactic adventures in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures' Dimension X (which is another galaxy in that continuity.) The team didn't exactly have a lot of appearances. They arrived on the scene in issue 48 and teamed with the Turtles for the next two issues of galactic adventure.

The characters were built with broad strokes and limited personalities, but the visuals and the Starjammers-esque personalities always stuck with me. I've long been a fan of the star-spanning super-team concept and the Nova Posse connected that concept with a small military unit surprisingly well.

It's an impressive feat that the creative team of the book managed to establish the characters so quickly.

Here's their simple introduction from the pages of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures 48. Chris Allan did an amazing job presenting characters with limited line work in an era where ultra-detail was the norm. He made the team look fascinating even if he kept their personalities fairly simple.

In the final chapter of KITH, "Sea of Stars", we meet a new crew of space mercenaries in Vreexel, Quay, Big, and Mort, the crew of the Dwarf Star. The unit owes much to the simple designs of the Nova Posse, built with broad strokes but with bits and pieces of history and characterization to make them real figures. And while they may not make it through their tale as well as the Nova Posse did in their debut, I hope to bring more of their adventures to the world in time.

Because, unlike the Nova Posse, the crew of the Dwarf Star wasn’t built for a single appearance. They will return. When? Where? You’ll just have to wait and see.

If you would like to check out the Nova Posse, their appearance has been reprinted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures Volume 11. The print edition is out of print, but the ebook is still easy to acquire.

The weight is over! The previously Kickstarter exclusive new novel by yours truly is now available on Amazon!

KITH introduces the four adopted Morgan brothers: Prometheus, Damocles, Horus and Samson, as well as their “father” Keith! Experimented on as children, they were freed only to grow up in a spaceship hidden beneath the Mississippi River!

Now adults, the brothers are pulled into the greater world as they finally seek out the organization that created them… and the dozens of others they transformed!

Their adventures take them across the United States and beyond. Be one of the first to check out their exciting new adventures!

Click the button to check out the book in e-book and print format!

Return of the New Gods 14

The cover gets an upgrade for Return of the New Gods 14 as previous cover artist Al Milgrom is gone, replaced by the superior Kirby aficionado in Rich Buckler. While Buckler has talent, he's still nowhere near as good as Don Newton on interiors. The creative team on the interior remains completely intact with Newton joined by Gerry Conway and Dan Adkins as writer and inker.

Orion shouts to the heavens at his father. Darkseid watches from afar, proud to see the darkness overcome his son as Orion grows more like Darkseid himself. He summons Doctor Bedlam to his side with a new grand step in his plan.

On New Genesis, the parents of Esak question Highfather's interest in their son. Highfather confirms the boy is different than his peers, telling his father, "Esak is special, though I cannot tell you why. I have... hopes for his future." To a modern reader, this makes Esak sound like he's in some Harry Potter and Dumbledore level of poor childcare.

On Earth, we check in with Forager. He's agreed to experiments performed on his person at the Cadmus Project. Doctor Bradford is nearly fried by the experiment though. As Forager recovers, Doctor Bedlam strikes and the two are locked in instant battle!

Jezebelle finds herself in Metropolis' fashion district as she looks for more human attire. But along with her human allies, she also comes under attack by Doctor Bedlam! Dave and Claudia have treated her as an equal or better, something Jezebelle never knew on New Genesis. She's grown fond of them, so she fights Bedlam with a renewed vigor!

Two thousand miles away, Anthony Masters and General Torch also are attacked by Doctor Bedlam. Masters uses the distraction to slip away and change to Orion so he can face down the foe! The three battles are brutal, but we soon learn that Doctor Bedlam is actually attacking all six heroes, though the events with Metron, Lonar, and Lightray don't merit showing here. And while Jezebelle dispatches her foe, the others seem unable to overcome their own enemy. Orion, in need of help, learns the others are also endangered and calls out to Highfather on New Genesis.

Highfather hears his call and in one of the few times I've ever seen Highfather act proactively, he sends a bolt of energy that splits in six as it reaches Earth. It strikes down all six Bedlam robots at once.

But Esak's parents arrive seconds later to reveal their son was captured by Apokoliptan bandits! They used Highfather's distraction to slip into New Genesis and abscond with the child. Highfather realizes he's played right into Darkseid's plan. Highfather screams "You will pay!" loudly to the stars. On Earth, Orion picks up his cry and vows to renew his offense on the demonic Darkseid!

For the first time in this new run, Darkseid feels like the master manipulator created by Kirby. Conway grows more comfortable with the characters and his plot as each issue progresses and Don Newton remains Don Newton, one of the most underrated artists in comics history.

Next issue, we're promised a "Pact of Evil," but we're stepping away from this book for a bit as the adventures of Mister Miracle take the lead in our column!