I'm very happy to announce that Snowboy Comics is working in partnership with Bedrock Games to produce an RPG called Journeys in the Forever-verse based on the characters and world of Snowboy Comics and using the Bedrock Games Network System. Below is a recap of the first session of play-testing.
Missing Persons (Session 1)
Characters:
Brick Soldier - a brick-strong Heroic
Starshine - a mystic with the ability to use shadows and starlight
War Urchin - a tech user with a gadget for everything
Story:
The three Heroics woke up in windowless steel cells with translucent energy shields for doors. As they came to, clueless as to how they got there, they witnessed a cybernetic, spider-like man with four robotic legs move past. Behind this man, two automatons dragged an unconscious alligator-man between them. War Urchin stood and yelled at the jailers, but they paid her no attention. Realizing that she was missing her armor and weapons, War Urchin used a piece of metal to strike the energy shield, and as she did so, the shield of the other two cells overcharged and sent a wave of energy at the other occupants.
The three Heroics began conversing and Brick Soldier attempted to form a Stone Shield in the middle of the beam, but it pushed his shield back and sent energy at Starshine and War Urchin. It occurred to them that each time they did this, the energy shield that was struck dimmed slightly. They then each attacked the energy shield simultaneously which shorted out the cells and freed them.
Now free, they found a fourth Heroic, still unconscious in an adjoining cell, and attempted to revive him, but were unable to wake him. Brick Soldier took up a position by the door that the robotic jailers went while Starshine and War Urchin went through the door to the left. They discovered a large maintenance room with a generator and War Urchin's gear. Reunited with her armor, she was able to spot two humanoid shapes at the far end of the room that were employing stealth-tech. War Urchin launched a boomerang at one and struck it in the head, causing both to drop their stealth and attack. The newcomers were the same type of automatons seen earlier and the battle lasted for several rounds before the heroes successfully dispatched them. As the automatons fell, they turned red and began to hum violently, so the Heroics ran from the room before the two exploded.
With only one way left to go, the team moved through the door Brick Soldier was guarding and in to another hallway. Each side of the hall was lined with three doorways and the floor had a strange logo emblazoned upon it. Starshine quickly noticed that there were once again two stealthed automatons at the far end, so Brick Soldier walked down and used his patented Brick Punch to crack one in the head. Having been attacked, the automatons once again retaliated by grabbing Brick Soldier's ankle, swinging him over their heads and slamming him to the ground. War Urchin threw more boomerangs and Starshine shot more Eldritch Bolts until the fight ended. However, as these two were destroyed, the simply fell down and did not explode as the others had.
Deciding to proceed through the door that the automatons were guarding, the Heroics found themselves in yet another hallway, this one with only one door on each side and a collapsed door at the far end. Brick Soldier examined the collapse and found it to be impassable. They then went through the left-hand door to discover an old burned out executive office that appeared to have been abandoned in the mid 1980's. Oddly, there was half of a human jawbone under the desk, which Starshine put into a pouch in case a future ritual called for it.
The door to the right led them into a large warehouse room that had been recently retrofitted into a laboratory. On one of the tables, they could see the body of the alligator-man and on the floor around him the bodies of three scientists who had recently been shot. Upon examining the alligator-man they found that he was dead. War Urchin heard a noise in the rafters, but could not see anything. At that moment two more automatons appeared and attacked. As the Heroics began to fight the automatons, two monkeys with cybernetic harnesses and wearing gi's dropped from the rafters and started to attack as well.
The monkeys employed several Abilities, including a Tandem Strike where they whipped one another at the team and a sword throw that almost struck War Urchin and then bounced off a wall and injured Starshine on its return. The monkey gave Starshine an eyebrow wink as it caught the sword, which enraged the mystic who retaliated by forming the light in the room into a giant star-headed mace which she struck the monkey with. The battle continued with the automatons falling first and then the one of the monkeys. Upon seeing his partner felled, the second monkey tried to escape but was stopped and knocked out by the Heroics.
Starshine stabilized the monkeys and tied them up to interrogate them. They found one monkey to be quite mean and intractable while the other was cowardly. Upon separating them into different rooms, Starshine and War Urchin were able to get the cowardly monkey, Koh'di, to talk. He told them that they are part of the Mung-Fu Monkeys and Master Tatonga Khan was hired to have them protect the lab. By sweet talking Koh'di further, Starshine was able to get from him that the cybernetic spider was Dr. Recluse and that after the alligator-man died he had left with several vials, but did not know where he had gone.
In the other room, Brick Soldier attempted to goad the other monkey by antagonizing him, but he gave up nothing further. The others returned and tried to trick the angry monkey by saying that Koh'di had already spilled the beans, but the deception was seen through and he stopped responding to the Heroics.
War Urchin then hacked into one of the computers in the lab and Brick Soldier was able to decrypt a few of the files and phrases to discover that there had been four scientists working in this lab and that one was now missing, Dr. Steinman Messer. Also, they found mention of the project that was being worked on, Geniton Bomb Project. Finally, they found an image of the logo that was on the hallway floors with an image tag giving the name Eudicys.
Having gotten all of the info they could, the Heroics retrieved the unconscious man from the cellblock and Koh'di and left the facility through a carved out tunnel and ascended a long staircase that opened to a hatch. Stepping through the hatch they found themselves on the banks of a large river with skyscrapers all around. Not being from this city, none of them immediately recognized where they were, but saw that directly behind them was a large abandoned office building.
[This is where the session ended]
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Monday, May 23, 2016
The Weekly Sketchbook
Each week during my 9-5 job's morning meetings, I like to doodle on the service report I print out. Sometimes the sketches are geometric or nonsensical (at one point I went through a maze faze) and sometimes they give birth to new Heroics or Deviants.
A while back I had come up with this idea of a WWII graphic novel about a bunch of Deviants sent into Germany to fight the Nazis. I have always been a big WWII fan and movies like the Dirty Dozen, Das Boot, Force 10 and even more recently Band of Brothers or Inglorious Bastards. Why not then do a mashup of these and Suicide Squad? It was a fun idea that I rolled around the noodle for a bit but ultimately was never excited enough about to take any further.
Last week, riding the Blue Line in to town, I thought of one of my favorite WWII movies, Kelly's Heroes. It's a fun romp starring Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland about a group of soldiers who want to rob Hitler of some gold. Hollywood did an update of this a while back starring Clooney called We Three Kings, but Kelly's Heroes did it best. This got me thinking again about the WWII Deviant idea and what it would look like if they weren't sent in to Germany, but went on their own to rob the Nazis! Now I was excited.
The morning meeting went on for a while and my pen worked furiously, sketching out the bottom dwelling madmen crazy enough to want to go into a warzone for some gold and glory.
The lineup from left to right are: Mr. Ghastly, a half-zombie; Snowfall, an aging stage magician who can freeze things with a touch; The Ugly Archer; Golden Back, a doctor who made a formula that could turn him into a golden backed gorilla for one hour at a time; Professor Perfect, the most evil genius alive; Blue Dragon, a mystic who can fly and shoot blue flames; Crimson Dame, a mob assassin and the Eyeball, a hypnotist with a flair for the dramatic.
I named them the Filthy Few and the basic idea of the adventure is that the three core members, Ugly Archer, Prof. Perfect and Snowfall all are tired of being beaten up trying to rob banks in Centropolis. It just so happens that the Archer knows a guy who's brother is over in France and keeps talking about all of the swag they are taking back from the Nazis when they liberate a town. One bad decision leads to another and off they go.
I won't say much more now, as I'd like to develop this idea further, but keep an eye out for more!
KEB!
Friday, May 13, 2016
Character Profile: Fireballer
Character Profile: Fireballer
The Fireballer isn't the flagship character by any means, to me that is The Grin (Seen above on the blog's title card.) but he has always been my first superhero creation. First created back in the neon days of 1985, he was a sort of hybrid of Human Torch, Green Lantern and Spider-Man. An odd combination, to be sure, but my adolescent mind thought it was the coolest idea ever. Here was a fiery hero who was also part of a galactic army and worked as a photographer on Earth. [Nebcron Note: When you're a kid, originality can sometimes be a relative concept.]
In those days I would randomly draw my hero on a sheet of paper, fighting against some unnamed galactic villain. They would shoot beams at each other until the piece of paper was covered in incoherent scribbles and I would throw it away. It wasn't until '87 that I sat down and made a "comic book" for the Fireballer. [Nebcron Note: That year I also released the widely popular Teenage Mutant Psycho Ninja Ducks. Yes, they were ducks and they were psycho, so totally different than the Turtles. *Sigh* Also, widely popular meant that five kids in my class read it and wanted a second issue.]
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| The first and only issue. Published June 1987. |
As you can see, the first iteration of the Fireballer was something of a scribbled man-shaped blob and the story within is a riveting tale of him flying around lighting muggers on fire. To differentiate him from the Human Torch, I gave him a He Man style cross guard on his chest. Good times. Fortunately, as time has gone on, my ability to draw has gotten marginally better. Another fun fact about the first Fireballer was that he didn't have a name. He was just the Fireballer; poor fiery sap. Leafing through the rudimentary pages, which I have purposely not shared here due to overwhelming embarassment, I found that the whole idea of Fireballer being a photographer was never even mentioned or explored. Alter-egos weren't my thing back then, that's the story I'm going with anyway.
I spent a lot of time drawing during High School in the 90's and even though I created a large number of characters and drew even more for Orvis, I would always come back to Fireballer.
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| Fireballer 2.0 |
Here you can see that the Fireballer took a more human form, sans proboscis, and had a eye wrap mask, fiery hair, a wrestler's onesie combining his shirt and pants, boots, gloves and some Liefeld-esque arm bands. Fireballer still had no alter-ego or name, but he managed to acquire an arch-villain at this point; Hurricane! [Nebcron Note: Who has since become Hurrikan. You'll have to wait for a profile on him for more info!]
I can't pin down the era of this next version, but it was somewhere between High School and Los Angeles. The cross guard made a (thankfully) brief return and Fireballer was starting to shed clothing like Dr. Manhattan. The FL on the Depends-style underpants was for Fireballer League. Fireballer thanks me for not sticking with this design for so many reasons.
Moving along in the 90's, living in Los Angeles gave me more time to draw as I worked in a comic shop. I created a series of posters for a giant universe spanning series a la Zero Hour. It was called Angel's Falling and of course, Fireballer was the star of one of the posters. The clothing is once again gone, replaced by flames. [Nebcron Note: The streaks in the back are the Mysoni, an alien race of living technology. This was their first appearance on paper.]
Finally, we get to the current era of the Fireballer. After the launch of Nebcron Comics in 2004, the Fireballer was relegated to a Silver Age, team of old called the Samaritans. That team disbanded and the Fireballer took to the stars, never to be seen again. There he might have remained if I hadn't come up with two origin stories for a character named White Star. I loved both stories so much that I struggled to let one of them go, so I re-worked the idea, changed one to be the Fireballer and ushered the my original superhero into the current era of Nebcron.
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| Fireballer circa 2016! |
For me, this is the final version of the character. His hero form is human, but glows golden yellow. The white bands are not set, but instead move along his body. It might be a little dizzying in live action, if the Fireballer were ever so lucky to make it there, but I like the idea and it adds a little throwback element to that original cross guard design. [Nebcron Note: The above is a generic human form I found online and edited to meet my needs.] The age in the picture is probably wrong as the current Fireballer would be about 16. And he finally has a name, a truly respectable superhero name; Andy Abbott.
I have a rough breakdown of the first Fireballer graphic novel down on paper and hope at some point to give it some life. I won't give much more info on who Andy is now or what his background is because those are elements that take life through the tale, but I'm pleased with how the idea has grown and evolved over the years.
KEB! [Keep 'em Burnin!]
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
The Past is Prologue
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| Nebcron Comics logo |
The idea of Nebcron Comics has been a long time in forming. I started putting it together in 2004 with a semi-thought out team called The Power Company. (Yes, I'm aware DC published a limited series with a similar name, but other than name the two are wholly unrelated.) It was truly the first venture in a long time that hadn't been in some way connected to Orvis's Snowboy Comics Universe. I spoke with various artists throughout the community and got some fantastic art, but really nothing became of the Power Company in that incarnation. And truly, other than my own musings, Nebcron Comics itself went into a sort of dormancy. I've continued creating and commissioning art here and there, but aside from that the universe my heroes existed in only felt half-formed.
Then in July, 2013 I lost my co-creator, my best friend, the guy I had experienced so much of my life with. It was difficult to know that someone so passionate about comic books, superheroes and their exploits would no longer be around to discuss new developments. Thankfully, before he passed away, Steve wrote down a guidebook to the Snowboy Universe. Speaking with Steve's family and his widow, Beth, I gained their blessing to take that Universe and bring it to life.
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| Logo I created for Steve for Snowboy Comics |
My goal from here is to lay out the combined Universe and share with you all the various notes, character designs, tidbits and ideas that Steve and I put so much time and love in to. I'm currently working on what I hope will morph in to graphic novels retelling the history of the world, but until that happens, I at least have this outlet. Below is the first page from the first graphic novel entitled, Elder Days. The image is Orvar the Havoc Magus returning to his castle stronghold.
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| Pg 1 - Elder Days |
As Steve loved to say, "Keep 'em burning!"
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