More Blood and Souls For My Lord Arioch!

Michael Moorcock's Elric may not have been my (post-Tolkien) introduction to the sword-and-sorcery genre (that honour rests with Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser), it was Moorcock's work that truly shaped my taste in reading.

I haven't read any Leiber in an age, but I often revisit the twisted, hallucinogenic, weird fantasy adventures of Elric of Melniboné and The Young Kingdoms.

There's something about the succinctness of Moorcock's early tales of Elric and his soul-devouring sword Stormbringer that I've always found more enchanting than the doorstop tomes so prevalent today.

It was after years of reading Moorcock that I instituted my "Moorcock Rule" (more of a guideline)  that stated that a book REALLY had to work hard to justify itself if it ran longer than 150-200 pages. 

That said, I've never used the Young Kingdoms - nor any of the trappings of Elric's adventures (even Stormbringer, itself) - in my own roleplaying games. 

I don't own a copy of Chaosium's Stormbringer/Elric of Melniboné RPGs (1981 - 2010). I've looked into it in the last couple of decades but those books generally command silly money on the secondary market.

However, in recent weeks, both Goodman Games and Free League have announced they will be releasing games based on this IP next year (after crowdfunding campaigns).

Goodman Games is planning two different iterations: one using Dungeons & Dragons 5e and one using Dungeon Crawl Classics. While I feel the latter system is probably more suited to emulating the demon-fuelled magic of Elric's world, neither of these systems really tickle my fancy at the moment.

However, my interest is well-and-truly piqued by Free League's offering, Legends of Stormbringer, which will run on the Dragonbane engine. 

I know I keep saying I'm out of the buying new games side of the hobby, but to quote Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III:

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Dragonbane isn't a game I'm particularly familiar with, except from second hand accounts which are a generally overwhelmingly positive... with a few minor niggles about some of the mechanics.

A translated version of Drakar och Demoner, a game system played in Scandinavia since 1982, Dragonbane's definitely been at the top of my "must check out the starter set" list since it was first released in English in 2023.

This recent announcement might be the nudge I "needed" to pull the trigger on yet another game that I may - or may not - run for the Tuesday Knights.

You can read about Free League's forthcoming Stormbringer offering (and a bit about Dragonbane) here.

She Is Conann (2023)

Presented as a series of vignettes, 2023's She is Conann, written and directed by Bertrand Mandico, is supposedly a feminist take on Conan The Barbarian

I would beg to differ. The various segments of this French art house offering present Conann (Con-ann, gettit?) at different stages of her life (which, as far as I could tell, was the main similarity to Robert E Howard's stories of Conan The Barbarian), starting as a peasant girl captured by barbarians led by the red-haired Sanja (also called Sonja), played by Julia Riedler.

Both Sanja and Conann turn out to be immortal - for no readily explained reason - but whereas Sanja is played by the same actress throughout her various appearances, Conann is portrayed by a succession of different actresses: Claire Duburcq at age 15, Christa Théret at age 25, Sandra Parfait at age 35, Agata Buzek at age 45, and Nathalie Richard at age 55.

Nearly always in her orbit is the dog-man Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), a cameraman documenting her life and narrating the movie. All very gender-fluid and meta, but ultimately sound and fury signifying nothing. 

Rainer (Elina Löwensohn)

Why is Rainer a dog-person? Who knows! However, I must admit that the make-up on Löwensohn (and the other dog-people who pop up) is very impressive. My mind couldn't help wandering to the dog-people of Jeff Noon's excellent Vurt books, and wondering why these had never been adapted to the big screen.

Perhaps She is Conann is meant to be a commentary on the broader machismo and sleaze of many of barbarian movies of the 1980s? However, to my mind, any film that requires a crib sheet to fully grok is a huge red flag.

She is Conann begins in a sci-fi/fantasy world (supposedly Sumeria, but you'd never know), with strong '80s-throwback, retro vibes (accentuated by the fact that the entire film is shot on a series of soundstages with old school, direct-to-video, levels of set decoration).

The story soon jumps to a more contemporary period and all semblance of a sword-and-sorcery setting is forgotten (bar the odd reference to "barbarism").

Every segment ends - segueing into the next - with the Conann of that period being slain by her next 'incarnation', until the final story when she has become a multimillionaire patron of arts and gives herself up to the artists she supports as an edible work of art.

The creators can only inherit Conann's limitless wealth if they totally consume her specially-prepared body.

The deliciously disturbing body horror sequence that follows is really the highlight of She is Conann. 

This being the most overt, and clear, segment of the movie, I'm pretty sure there was a clever metaphor about 'eating the rich' in there should you be inspired to look for it.

Shot primarily in black and white, but switching to colour every now and again, She is Conann is also largely in French (with subtitles) except for a segment set in '80s New York when the characters speak - and swear - in English.

Ultimately, the 105-minute movie is a stylish, but empty, mélange of assorted styles and ideas from far superior sources, the unique cinematic voices of Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman mixed with literary tropes from Michael Moorcock and William S Burroughs.

Oddly though, as infuriatingly incomprehensible as much of it is, the story flows and moves quickly, probably helped along by the comparatively short length of time spent on each period of Conann's life.

But that also means each iteration never hangs around long enough for us to truly understand her character at the moment in her life or her motivations.

Presumably every directorial and narrative choice in the film has been made for a reason, it's just unclear what those reasons were.

On paper Bertrand Mandico's recipe for reimagining Conan The Barbarian should have created a perfect meal for this viewer, who usually has a lot of time for clever art films, but instead She is Conann is disappointingly too pretentious for its own good.

Paintings and Ice Schooners Lead Me Down A Rabbit Hole

Beautifully packaged parcel from Peahen In The Tree

When I started putting my thoughts together about returning to the world of blogging a year or so ago, I never imagined I'd be writing so much about my book collection.

But then I discovered Booktube, and my perspective shifted somewhat.

The other day, a random eBay advert hit my eyeballs for different edition of a key book from my formative years as a young gamer: Wereblood (or, in this iteration, Were Blood) by Erik Iverson (aka alt-history maven Harry Turtledove).

My 'new' copy of Wereblood

But what made this printing of particular interest to me was the painted Boris Vallejo cover (see above), which bore no relevance to the Gerin The Fox story told in Wereblood whatsoever.

In fact I knew it from a 1985 roleplaying supplement from Mayfair Games' Role Aids line that I was mildly obsessed with as a youth. Ice Elves did exactly what it said on the tin (and in Vallejo's 1978 painting).

It was an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure and rules supplement that explored the idea of a race of elves living in the frozen North, getting around on ultracool "ice riggers".

The reason I was rather hooked on this supplement is because of the similarities, especially in the whole "ships that glide over ice" aspect, to the first Michael Moorcook book I ever read: The Ice Schooner.

However, the more I thought about this - especially when my parcel from online book trader Peahen In The Tree arrived - the more surprised I was by the fact that Vallejo's art didn't decorate the covers of the either of the two editions I have of The Ice Schooner.

My two copies of The Ice Schooner

But a wee bit of Googling quickly revealed it had, of course, been used as a cover illustration for a 1978 Dell Publishing edition of The Ice Schooner:

Was this painting originally commissioned for this book?

A key aspect of the book that introduced me to the wonderful writing of Michael Moorcock is that it was another purchase from P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells.

This is the same - sadly, long-gone - second hand book store where, four decades ago, I discovered the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft for the first time and was transformed from a "dabbler" in comics to full-on collector when I purchased piles of Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans and John Byrne Fantastic Four comics.

It's no understatement to say that one store played a major role in shaping my lifelong geeky interests. 

The world needs more browsable, brick-and-mortar, second hand book shops.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whence Lovecraft?

Mythos Tomes: My earliest forays into the works of HP Lovecraft

I've been reading HP Lovecraft since I was a teenager. I recall writing about him in my English Literature A Level exam, which given I was supposed to be critiquing Dickens' Great Expectations probably explains my poor grade.

My memory of how I actually came upon the works of Lovecraft is rather hazy, but I'm sure I was already aware - and a fan - of his oeuvre before I invested in my first edition box set of Chaosium's seminal Call Of Cthulhu game.

This was published in 1981, with the second edition coming out in 1983, which suggests I picked up the game sometime between those dates.

I suspect my introduction to Lovecraft could well have been TSR's Deities & Demigods (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement, published in 1980, that - only for its first edition - included the Cthulhu Mythos as well as Michael Moorcock's Elric mythology, as well as various pantheons or gods and heroes from ancient religions around our world).

This almost certainly led me to invest in the paperbacks you see above, several of which are stamped as coming from the P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells (which is where I also came across my first collection of Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans comics that got me hooked on the medium and turned me into a 'proper' comic book collector).

Those paperbacks have seen better days. particularly The Haunter In The Dark And Other Tales Of Terror (a 1963 edition from Panther Books, priced at three shillings and six pence!) which is falling apart because it was read so much.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Conan Digests

When we were readying ourselves to move house half-a-dozen years ago, I was shifting boxes in the 'office' part of my attic-gamesroom and 'discovered' a long concealed bookcase; squirrelled away in the corner, on which was my collection of eight, old Conan The Barbarian digests.

These were pocket-sized, British reprints (in black and white) from the early '80s, of Conan's original stint in the pages of Marvel Comics, each around 50-pages long.

These were my first exposure to both Conan The Barbarian and the works of Robert E Howard, I would have been about 14 or 15 when I picked these up.

I guess I was a comparative latecomer to the exploits of the mighty Cimmerian, having cut my sword-and-sorcery teeth - soon after being introduced to Dungeons & Dragons at the tail-end of the '70s - on Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Harry Turtledove's stories of Gerin The Fox, and then Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, years before I encountered Conan The Barbarian.

In truth, I think, after the comic book digests, my first actual Robert E Howard book was a remaindered copy of The Gods Of Bal-Sagoth, an Ace Science-Fiction collection of non-Conan stories, that I purchased in a discount book store while out shopping with my parents.

Like pretty much everything at that time, my early interest in Howard's work - and Conan - was fuelled by my desire to make everything about my blossoming passion for roleplaying games, and particularly Dungeons & Dragons.

A passion they still serve today.

Psycho Goreman (2020)

 A nameless, near-omnipotent force of evil is finally overthrown by the "forces of light" (aka The Planetary Alliance) and imprisoned on an out of the way world... which just happens to be Earth.

Playing in their suburban garden one night, two young siblings - borderline sociopath Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and her put-upon brother Luke (Owen Myre) - unearth a glowing gemstone.

The next day they discover 'something' has dug its way out of their garden, and they track the creature to a nearby abandoned factory, where it's hiding out.

The creature (played by Matthew Ninaber, with Stevn Vlahos providing the voice) is the "nameless evil", but the kids soon realise that it must obey Mimi's every command, because she holds the gem.

It reveals that its enemies refer to it as the Arch-Duke of Nightmares, but the kids decide to call it Psycho Goreman ('PG' for short) instead.

While the youngsters are having fun with their new 'toy' (for instance, one of their friends gets turned into a brain creature and a cop into a soulless, half-melted zombie... you know, crazy kid stuff), the forces that imprisoned PG on Earth become aware of his escape from captivity.

The Planetary Alliance sends Pandora The Templar (Kristen MacCulloch) to recapture the monster while he is still in a weakened state.

As this is all unfolding Psycho Goreman lives up to his nickname and enters Luke's dreamscape, trying to convince him to steal the gem from Mimi, but Luke sticks by his sister.

Until, she playfully orders PG to kill him one day!

You see, Mimi has become a living example of the old adage about "power corrupting", and while she started off with a mean streak, having PG at her beck and call has just made her worse.

Will the arrival of Pandora on Earth resolve the situation?

Written and directed by Steven Kostanski (who also made the brilliantly Lovecraftian horror The Void and the forthcoming Deathstalker reboot), PG: Psycho Goreman is truly bonkers, a gonzo, blood-spattered spin on the look of Power Rangers, interwoven with Japanese body horror, retro special effects, layered world-building, and a wicked sense of humour.

Even under Mimi's control, the invulnerable and superstrong Psycho Goreman has access to a broad arsenal of "dark magics" (such as transformation magic, telekinesis, paralysis etc) that ultimately means he is able to dole out whatever punishment he feels a target deserves.

Of course, if you fight honourably, you may well merit a "warrior's death"... which involves PG cannibalising your corpse in a most shocking manner.

With its tongue buried firmly in its cheek, PG: Psycho Goreman is most definitely not a film to be taken seriously, instead it feels as though Kostanki has thrown everything he loved from his childhood into a blender and splurged the results out onto the page.

Very much a comic book supervillain, there are shades of Thanos (and Darkseid) in Goreman's backstory, which makes his dominance by a young girl all the more humorous and rewarding.

He even has his own Paladins of Obsidian, a collective of unique villainous creatures, that he believes will come and save him.

The power dynamics of the PG universe are highly reminiscent of that employed by Michael Moorcock, with Psycho Goreman as the ultimate representation of chaos and Pandora as the definitive bastion of law.

Although the terms "good" and "evil" are bandied about, as is said at one point, the central battle is truly "evil versus an even worse evil".

Another geeky reference I grokked was the name of PG's homeworld, Gigax. Surely (even with the variant spelling) this is a reference to Gary?

And the anarchic and incomprehensible homemade game of 'Crazy Ball' that Mimi and Luke play all the time - and was always going to be a key element in the narrative - strongly reminded me of 'Calvinball'  from Calvin and Hobbes.

Coming in at just over an hour-and-half, PG: Psycho Goreman is like a well-made Troma Entertainment movie, a Full Moon Features film with a decent budget, or an unfettered student flick with a top-notch script.

Not so much subverting expectations as leaning into them, PG: Psycho Goreman is simultaneously reminiscent of so much trash cinema we've grown up loving, and yet wonderfully unique in its commitment to a solid story in a well-defined sci-fi universe.