"We Are Gathered Here Today To Geek Out!"

Me with The Real Kent Ghostbusters at Geek Mania in Tonbridge

Today Rachel and I attended the first Geek Mania show (convention? gathering?) at the Angel Centre, Tonbridge, and it was magnificent.

There were stalls selling books, games, artwork, badges, dice, LARPing gear, and trading cards (so many cards), as well as participation tables for 5e Dungeons & Dragons, various shades of Warhammer, card games (so many cards), Beyblades, figure painting, a lightsaber training academy, and probably other things I missed.

A selection of the amazing props brought along by The Real Kent Ghostbusters

Rachel and I posing with Slimer

I'd really hoped to get Rachel into an "introduction to Dungeons & Dragons" session, but we were there around 11.30 and the tables had proved so popular that the first available slot was 2.30pm... and it was unlikely we'd still be around then (as I have limited reserves of stamina).

The participation tables were packed from the moment we arrived, and just got busier

These were the lightsaber tutors, but they mainly ran classes for younglings through the day

The vibe of the whole show was very welcoming and everyone we spoke to was incredibly friendly, delighted we were there, and happy to talk about whatever geeky niche was their forte.

There were cosplayers - always happy to pose for pictures - and LARPers, with a vast selection of costumes, masks, and boffer weapons for sale. 

I achieved a lifelong ambition and purchased my first pair of elf ears! 

Incredible array of costuming and weaponry from Gem's Trading Company 

"You've made an old man very happy," I told the lady who sold me these ears!!!

I strongly suspect I was one of - if not the - oldest people there (knocking on the door to sixty this year), but it didn't matter. There was a youthful, positive atmosphere that I hope translated into cash in the pockets of the organisers so that this will become a regular event.

Geek Mania was the brainchild of Planet JJs Geekery, which, in very real terms, is close to being at the bottom of our road (although too far for me to walk there and back, sadly).

I really must try and get signed up for regular RPG events at the store, which I have to confess we've only actually been in once. Rachel is supportively offering to be my taxi to and from the store if I join their "club".

I also believe that Geek Mania being organised locally is a massive plus for the future of the show, as there's an automatic community investment here.

Either side of the Pandemic, there were several attempts to make "comic-cons" a thing at the Angel Centre, but they never really took off.

Run by travelling groups who organise such events around the country, there was no great incentive to come back if they didn't rake in the cash they had been hoping for at the first attempt.

That said, Geek Mania was definitely busier than any of the "comic-cons" I've attended at the Angel Centre over the years.

Overall, Rachel and I stayed for about an hour-and-a-half, which wasn't too bad by my usual variable health standards, only having to have a single sit down and cookie break.

Even though Pokémon is an alien language to me and seemed to dominate every other stall, I still managed to pick up some mighty treasures (as well as my ears) from the traders:

My Geek Mania haul

My first purchase of the day was a He-Man Funko Pop (because, like dice, you can never have too many Pops). Sadly, they were all out of Frieren-related Pops.

I was excited to find a couple of boxes of old 60s/70s pulp sci-fi anthology magazines on the floor of a bookseller's stall.

She very kindly picked them up and put them on the table so I could sort through them properly.

My main guiding principle here was looking for authors that Michael K Vaughan had mentioned on his Booktube channel, so that it appeared as though I knew what I was doing.

And finally I bought a cute little pocket zine from local artist Katherine Burgess, whose style and obvious talent made me wish I was producing a game - or a supplement - so I could hire her to illustrate it.

"Tonbridge. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (2010)

When Prince Caspian breathed new life into The Chronicles Of Narnia franchise (after the pretty bland Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe), I had high expectations for the next adaptation from the cycle: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.

And I wasn't disappointed.

Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund Pevensie (Skandar Keynes) find themselves transported once again from war-torn England to the fantastical land of Narnia.

This time the method of transport is a magical painting and they are joined by their obnoxious and cowardly cousin Eustice (the great Will Poulter in an early role).

Plucked from the sea by King (formerly Prince) Caspian (Ben Barnes) on board the sailing ship Dawn Treader, the children soon find themselves swept up in an epic voyage to track the location of seven lost friends of Caspian's father who held seven magic swords that are required to defeat a growing evil in the East.

The evil manifests itself as a green mist that has the ability to project itself as one's fears and doubts.

There is a moment, towards the end, when Edmund realises that the green mist has latched onto his own fears and with the look he gives, and the way he says "oh no", you just know 90 per cent of the adults watching are thinking: "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man".

Voyage Of The Dawn Treader is a classic sea-borne, island-hopping tale, in the style of The Odyssey and Sinbad stories, with every island being a different - increasingly dark - encounter for our party of adventurers as they make their way towards their final destination.

A true family action adventure film, this expands the fantasy world of Narnia beautifully, with some truly amazing visuals - to rival those of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings movies - and high quality special effects that are so slick they never threaten to shatter your suspension of disbelief.

Director Michael Apted ensures there's never a dull moment here and, even though our heroes never actually set foot on the final island, the story wraps up in a suitably magical and convincing fashion that shouldn't leave anyone dissatisfied.

Although there is physical conflict in Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, most of the story revolves around dealing with intellectual and emotional problems - but in ways far more exciting than I've just made it sound!

A clever story, unsurprisingly there are "messages" in the text, but they are reasonably subtle and good natured, working on a fairy tale moral level rather than a sledgehammer approach.

The returning young performers, Henley and Keynes, have grown into their roles.

For completists there are some nice cameos by Tilda Swinton as The White Witch, Anna Popplewell as Susan Pevensie and William Moseley as Peter Pevensie.

Liam Neeson once more lends his vocal skills to Aslan and geek-favourite Simon Pegg replaces Eddie Izzard as the voice of warrior mouse Reepicheep.

The source material's Christian allegory gets a bit heavy-handed at the end when Aslan is talking to Lucy about "being known by another name" in our world (I'm presuming it's not Leo), but given then one of the characters willingly volunteers to travel on to "Aslan's country" (Heaven?) is this also advocating suicide as the character wasn't dead, just satisfied that he had had enough adventures in Narnia?

And, of course, the big difference between believing in Aslan, in Narnia, and believing in God, in the real world, is that Aslan is a walking, talking, breathing lion - not so much a test of faith as a test of eyesight.

Sometimes, I guess, it doesn't pay to think too much about these things!

"You've Got To Laugh, Haven't You?"

I made this!

"It's not the girl, Peter, it's the building! Something terrible is about the enter our world and this building is obviously the door. The architect's name was Ivo Shandor. I found it in Tobin's Spirit Guide. He was also a doctor. Performed a lot of unnecessary surgery. And then in 1920 he founded a secret society...

"After the First World War, Shandor decided that society was too sick to survive. And he wasn't alone. He had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted rituals up on the roof, bizarre rituals intended to bring about the end of the world, and now it looks like it may actually happen!"

Not the introduction to a Call of Cthulhu adventure, but some of Egon's dialogue from the original Ghostbusters and highly pertinent to what I want to try and say here.

Speaking as someone who has entertained the idea of running both a Red Dwarf RPG and a Ghostbusters campaign, I have strong feelings about the intersection of comedy and roleplaying games.

Where I feel the old Ghostbusters RPG went wrong - although I fully understand why they did it - was to establish a game world more inspired by the cartoons than the movie, full of bad puns, books with silly names, aliens in sports cars etc

The original Ghostbusters movie (a horror-comedy) worked because it was a seriously scary situation (just read the backstory, above, again) being handled by humorous characters (i.e. players in an RPG).

The humour comes from the approach of the characters (and their wildly variable skill checks) rather than the situation per se.

For me, that's where roleplaying game comedy comes from.

Why do you think there are so many memes about Ravenloft campaigns featuring Leslie Nielsen's vampire from Dracula: Dead and Loving It?

When a module (or game) tries to be funny, it has to take the simplest approach, and that's the most universal. Which usually means bad puns.

And, I don't know if it's my British "stiff-upper-lipness" but I'd be too embarrassed to read out a NPC's dreadful pun name (Ivor Clue, anyone?) to my group.

Humour is very personal, what's funny to one group may mean nothing to another.

I'd rather listen to me and my movie buddy Paul riff on a naff horror film than ever listen to something like Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Not because I think we're better at it than MST3K, it's just we've developed our own in-jokes over years of watching crap movies and have our own points of reference that probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone else unfortunate enough to be listening in.

And it's the same for comedy in roleplaying games.

Of course, there are extreme comedy games, like the delightful Toon and Rocky & Bullwinkle, which are all about slapstick and establishing a cartoon verisimilitude, but they really lean into the craziness and are a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

However, take the set-up of Red Dwarf: the last surviving human (a bloke) who will never, ever, meet another human being in his life, have a family etc and knows he's doomed to die alone; a hologram of his priggish nemesis; an insane supercomputer; and an amoral creature evolved from a feral cat.

Ghostbusters

In different hands, and depending how lenient the gamesmaster was, that set-up could unfold into a grimdark tale of Lovecraftian cosmic horror and existential anxiety.

But, in the hands of most roleplayers, it's almost certainly going to degenerate into wonderful silliness, knob gags, and banter.

A good gaming group, especially one that has been together for years and knows each other's senses of humour, can - sometimes too easily - turn any "serious" gaming set-up into a comedy.

I'm not talking about totally taking the piss and trashing the campaign setting (that's just childish and idiotic behaviour), but having a laugh within the confines of the game can be very therapeutic.

There's always room for witty word play and the occasional actual joke written into the setting, but the players don't need to meet "NPCs with funny names".

They're gamers. Having fun.

If they have the imagination to play a roleplaying game, the chances are your players have a good sense of humour, so give them free rein to crack wise occasionally.

Sometimes, of course, this isn't appropriate for the setting or mood that the gamesmaster has carefully crafted, and he's quite within his rights to put his foot down, and remind the players that (imaginary) lives are at stake.

It's just telling the group that they're playing, say, a Ghostbusters or Red Dwarf campaign gives players licence to relax a little, not take their characters' serious jobs so seriously, and relish in their screw-ups.

Archie Gets Groovy Facing The Army of Darkness

Robert Hack cover art for Archie X The Army of Darkness,
from Dynamite and Archie Comics

Clearly February is the month for crazy comic book crossovers. Following the exciting announcement of the Fantastic Four landing on The Planet of The Apes, it's now come to my attention that a certain Ash Williams (of Evil Dead/Army of Darkness fame) is paying a visit to Riverdale - to save Archie and his crew from a soul-sucking horde of zombie deadites!

There’s a certain man – name’s Ash, you may have heard of him – who is doomed to battle against the forces of evil, over and over again, whether he likes it or not. No matter where he goes, the cycle of violence always repeats itself – until the day that he arrives in the picturesque town of Riverdale.

This supernaturally wholesome community seems to break the curse that has plagued Ash ever since he first encountered its otherworldly evil all those years ago. Or rather, the curse was broken – until an over-curious teenager named Archie finds a copy of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis and reads a portion of it aloud, summoning the horrifying Deadites once again!

Now Ash and the good townsfolk of Riverdale must hold back the undead hordes long enough for Archie to undo what he’s unwittingly done. Otherwise, an Army of Darkness will roll over Riverdale and destroy everything and everyone in its path – and that’s just not going to happen on Ashley J. Williams’s watch!

Fresh-faced author Erik Burnham (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters) joins wide-eyed artist Bill Galvan (Archie, Guardians of the Galaxy) for a long night’s journey into mayhem with Archie X Army of Darkness #1!

Burnham's run on Ghostbusters was superb, so I have high hopes for this melding of two very different humorous franchises when the first issue arrives in stores in February.

Featuring clean-cut covers from Galvan, Robert Hack, Laura Braga, Craig Cermak, and Stuart Sayger , this premier issue also boasts a special Premium Mystery Blind Bag that contains three limited editions of the issue selected randomly from a range of variant covers exclusive to this offering – including two original covers by Galvan and Francesco Francavilla, as well as multiple line art variants and coloured blanks. Please Note: The number of Blind Bags is limited, and allocations may occur.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Real Life Ghostbustin'

Filmed in the middle of the night on a "nanny cam" in our old house (in late September, 2015), I've kept this quiet (only Paul has previously seen it) until now because I know this kind of thing can freak Rachel out. 

 

A couple of seconds in, you can see an "orb" of some description fly from the top of the screen towards our old TV (on the right). 

It appears to hit the TV and ricochet off towards the bottom of the picture. 

I'm not saying it's a ghost (it's way more likely to be a dust mote... as they really exist) - but it's easy to see how these things can be construed as "supernatural" by those who want them to be. 

So, yes, our old house was probably haunted!

The Uninvited (1944)

Ghosts! Murder! Cats and dogs living together! A charismatic lead who doesn't take life too seriously!

The Uninvited was the Ghostbusters of its age, a film that - on paper - could have been quite scary, but is delivered with a lightness of touch and naturalistic humour that makes it more palatable to a wider audience.

I suspect when it was released, in the mid 1940s (at the height of the Second World War) it might have been seen as quite the chiller, but to modern sensibilities it's more a supernatural mystery, tame even by the standards of the Ghost Whisperer and the original Charmed.

Both Martin Scorsese and Guillermo Del Toro have described The Uninvited as one of the most affecting horror films they have ever seen, although I suspect nostalgia plays a role in those proclamations.

Carefree composer-turned-music-critic Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister, Pamela (Ruth Hussey), fall in love with an unoccupied house they come across on the Devonshire coastline while on holiday in 1937.

Finding it belongs to Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) they agree to purchase it for the princely sum of £1,200, much to the chagrin of Beech's pretty, 20-year-old granddaughter, Stella Meredith (Gail Russell).

Although her grandfather hasn't let her back in the house since her mother died when she was only three, Stella feels an attachment to the house, Windward, and wants to keep it in the family.

However, she soon finds herself attracted to the charming Roderick, and he invites her into the house.

And that's when things start to get a bit weird for everyone.

Based on Dorothy Macardle's 1941 novel, Uneasy Freehold, The Uninvited is steadily paced, with a great balance between humour (mostly from Roderick's flippant attitude) and mystery.

By today's standards the special effects for the ghost are quite primitive, but they're still effective, and the paranormal manifestations run the gamut from scared animals and howling cries, through messages from beyond and channelling, to cold spots and strange smells, before serving up actual sightings of an apparition.

In just an hour-and-a-half, the film does a good job of covering all the bases of paranormal investigations.

Roderick, as the audience's POV character for the most part, begins with the plucky, aspirational, grin-and-bear it attitude of the wartime (even though the film is set pre-war) but through his experiences his cynicism is worn away so that he starts to take the matter of ghosts and hauntings seriously.

Amid the emotional turmoil that forms the motivational core of The Uninvited, there's even a very overt suggestion of a lesbian relationship (or at least attraction) between two of the key players in the narrative, which was surprising discovery in a 1940's movie.

A delightful period piece, The Uninvited is a product of its time, but a very imaginative and creative one nonetheless.