Ahoy, Me Hearties! Archie's Raising The Jolly Roger

Main cover art for issue one by Ray-Anthony Height and Studio Skye-Tiger

You know I love a good Archie team-up comic, right? Well this one has the added bonus of being about pirates!

Beginning in October, the five-issue miniseries Vengeance Unchained: The Legend of Black Caesar is a collaboration between the legendary basketball player Shaquille O’Neal and Archie Comics.

It will recount: "the rise of one of history’s most mythological pirates" as a "grounded, character-driven pirate epic which follows the transformation of an African king into a feared outlaw of the Caribbean, blending historical inspiration with cinematic storytelling".

The series is being written by the Eisner-nominated writer Stephanie Williams, with artwork by Ray-Anthony Height and Studio Skye-Tiger.

47 Ronin (2013)

Anyone with even a passing interest in samurai, ninja and all things ancient Japan will be aware of the heroic story of the revenge of the 47 Ronin, even if they don't know the exact details.

However, this 2013 movie tackles the historical event through the same heightened reality kaleidoscope as used on films such as 300 or the Pirates Of The Caribbean, throwing monsters, demons, animated suits of armour and a shape-changing witch into the mix.

Although Keanu Reeves is the name over the title, his character - Kai, a half-breed outcast raised by mystical bird-featured demons called Tengu - really takes the role of the 'right hand man' to the leader of the 47 Ronin, Ôishi (Hiroyuki Sanada).

After Lord Asano (Min Tanaka) is magically tricked into attacking an unarmed guest, the wicked Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano), during a visit by the ruling shogun Tsunayoshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), he is granted an honourable death by his own hand, but his men are stripped of their samurai status, branding them ronin. Lord Kira is given Asano's lands and the hand of Asano's daughter Mika (Kô Shibasaki) in marriage - after she has mourned the loss of her father for a year.

The shogun forbids the ronin from seeking revenge, but Kira still doesn't trust Ôishi and has him thrown in an oubliette for a year to break his spirit. However, when he is released - a week before Kira and Mika's wedding - his desire for revenge is still burning hot.

He goes to rescue Kai, who has been sold as a slave to Dutch traders, having realised that the warning he ignored from Kai about "witchcraft", before Lord Asano's fall from grace, had merit.

Together they reunite with the other former samurai of Lord Asano and hatch a plan to seek revenge on Lord Kira - knowing that even if they succeed it will mean their death because they are disobeying the shogun's edict.

47 Ronin is a very straight-forward, revenge-driven action adventure, with the chaste romantic - love across social barriers - sub-plot between Kai and Mika handled really well.

But the most impressive aspect, storywise at least, is the film's determination to stick to the Truth of the honourable death conclusion.

I'll admit I was half-expecting some kind of Hollywood cop-out - which would have undone the importance of the story, of course - and so was rather taken with the downbeat ending the film delivered.

I rather suspect that this kind of ending might not gel with what the majority of Western audiences want from their action films, which might have contributed to the lack of box office success for 47 Ronin.

Now, admittedly beyond Ôishi and a handful of others, the ronin aren't really much more than red shirts, but - for me - the fantasy story sold itself, with its simplistic take on samurai honour jumbled up with monsters and magic.

Although the effects are very slick and modern, the scenery is striking and monsters are impressive,  47 Ronin has more in common with the sword and sorcery flicks of the '70s and '80s than genuine 'historical' dramas about the samurai era of Japan.

And on that level, I really enjoyed it.

PROJECT 60: Off The Rails!!!

Photo by Pixabay

Some of you may recall in the past I've talked about my PROJECT 60, an ambitious desire to get both a skirmish wargame and a roleplaying campaign all set up and ready to run by the time I turn 60 towards the end of this year.

You might also have noticed that I haven't actually mentioned it since February - when Nick and I went to our local wargames show and I picked up some suitable 3D printed buildings.

I'd like to blame the hot weather and my general ill-health, but honestly it's my fickle nature and life-long inability to stay focused on any one particular aspect my hobbies for long.

PROJECT 60 was, therefore, rather ambitious - but that was the point.

On the skirmish wargame side, I'm still sticking firmly to my plans to build a tabletop Wild West town for games of Dead Man's Hand.

I just haven't sent off any Western figures for painting this year and have actually done nothing concrete towards assembling and painting the buildings, which was always a goal for this Summer.

Everything has simply remained in a clutter in the gamesroom.

I really need to get sorting that before things go missing as I move books, Blu Rays, and bits & bobs around looking for other things.

And this isn't to say my wargaming thoughts haven't gone round the houses from Bronze Age Greece to Fantasy Medieval and 17th/18th Century pirates and highwaymen!

They've just circled back (for the moment) to the American West.

On the roleplaying game front, my initial passion for Twilight Sword has rather dampened (even before the printed materials show up), and been replaced by flickering flames of interest in Dragonbane.

I haven't found the time to read the rules properly yet, so my confidence still swings all over the place and my mind darts off in other directions every now and then (even, most recently, considering a Wild West roleplaying campaign... but with a twist).

However, as well as 40-year history in Sweden, Dragonbane (aka Drakar och Demoner) has a solid core of fans who really, really love the system, which gives me a lot of encouragement. 

I have actually noticed some mechanical similarities between Twilight Sword and Dragonbane, which has led to my brain classifying Twilight Sword as modern Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons whereas Dragonbane is modern Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!

Of course, I'm essentially starting from scratch with Dragonbane, and you know how slow I am at reading and absorbing things... especially new things.

So, I'm still hoping to get these games back on track for PROJECT 60, but I know my birthday isn't that far away and I have way fewer years ahead of me than behind.

Even if I can one or both of these games up and running, just how long will these "forever campaigns" actually last now?

Little-Known Stop-Motion Monster Movies

Rare VHS oddities. Forgotten fantasy films. Handmade monsters hiding in places you’d never expect.

Today we’re digging into some obscure and little-seen movies that delivered surprisingly great stop-motion creatures, from demonic vultures and clay dinosaurs to cyberpunk war machines and prehistoric monsters.

Thanks to the excellent SirBootis Flicks channel for this selection.

Dragon Crusaders (2011)

You have to admire the unrepentant chutzpah of The Asylum for its continued use of unattributed quotes making grandiose claims on their DVD boxes.

For Dragon Crusaders, an "anonymous critic" has declared it: "an epic action adventure in the tradition of Clash Of The Titans and Reign Of Fire!"

The Reign Of Fire angle being that it features dragons and the only Clash Of The Titans (presumably the remake) connection is the use of dodgy CGI - and, to be honest, it's actually a bit better here.

Dragon Crusaders is typical, low-budget Asylum mockbuster fare, but I've always contended that their fantasy, sword-and-sorcery titles are among their best - 2006's Dragon was the first Asylum flick I saw and remains my favourite.

A group of outlawed Knights Templar are fleeing across faux-Medieval England to find a sanctuary from the pursuing soldiers of the king (who we never see and are quickly forgotten about) when they are distracted by sounds of battle in a nearby town, which is being raided by pirates.

The Templars - of course - ride in and save the day, slaying the pirates, and then heading out to the pirate ship (which looks oddly anachronistic) to finish the job.

Unfortunately, as they arrive, a captive witch - Neem (Shinead Byrne) - on the ship has just finished invoking a curse that any who set foot on the boat and have shed blood will be transformed into demonic gargoyles.

The curse has a couple of twists - first anyone affected by it, but slain before the transformation takes place, will rise as a revenant and secondly the purer the soul of the cursed the longer the transformation will take.

Dispatching the pirate-revenants with the aid of wandering warrior woman Aerona (Cecily Fay), Neem reveals that she found the curse in a grimoire she stole from the "Black Dragon" sorcerer who has her people in thrall.

And the only way to break the curse is to travel to the Black Dragon's fortress and slay him. Oh, and Faolon (Steve McTigue) is called the Black Dragon because he can transform into one and has another seven, smaller dragons under his control.

There's witchcraft, bickering, internal disputes, chaste romance and some pretty decent fight scenes (even if one of the largest, against an entire 'village' of the sorcerer's slaves, just seems to suddenly stop without any resolution) along the way and if you can ignore the plot holes, dreadful acting, cheesy dialogue and laughable attempts at banter, Dragon Crusaders is an okay film.

Welsh-location filming certainly adds to the verisimilitude, and the woodlands and sweeping, rolling landscape makes for a dramatic backdrop to the action.

A 'silent' knight turns up at one point, peppering our heroes with arrows, seemingly commanding Faolon's dragons and then challenging the lead Templar, John (Dylan Jones), to single combat... but then disappears from the story as suddenly as he appeared.

Throw in some exploding salt peter for good measure, some slick fight moves from Aerona and the Templar's resident archer (Feth Greenwood) and there's quite a bit to keep you entertained for an hour-and-a-half as long as you aren't expecting a replay of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings or either iteration of Conan The Barbarian.

SINBAD WEEK: The Lost World of Sinbad (1963)

Today's entry in this week of early Sinbad movies is a little known chanbara excursion  from that brief period in the Arabian sailor's storied career when he was, in fact, Japanese.

In this well-dubbed reworking of the Japanese movie, The Great Bandit, about the semi-mythical 16th Century Japanese merchant and pirate Sukezaemon Luzon. the legendary Toshirô Mifune (of Seven Samurai fame, as well as many other movies) takes the role of Sinbad.

The film begins with him inexplicably (in that it's never explained) escaping from being burned alive for the crime of piracy.

Back on his ship, however, in no time at all, Sinbad and his crew are caught in a massive storm and their vessel destroyed.

Sinbad and a couple of survivors are adrift, with a large chest of jewels, when they are set upon by the dread Black Pirate (Makoto Satô) who makes off with the treasure, leaving Sinbad for dead.

Our hero washes up on a beach, where he meets horny wizard Sennin (Ichirô Arishima) who carries his family curse of becoming paralysed whenever he sees the exposed flesh of a woman's cleavage!

Through a series of misadventures in the nearby town, Sinbad eventually falls in with a bandit queen and would-be rebel leader, the rather lovely Miwa (Kumi Mizuno, who crops up in several well-known kaiju films of the 1960s), and learns that the local ruler is taking peasants' daughters, in lieu of taxes, to bolster his harem.

Meanwhile, there's shenanigans at the nearby palace, where the sickly king (Takashi Shimura) remains out of sight.

The king's conniving Chancellor (Tadao Nakamaru) is trying to engineer a coup by getting himself hitched to Princess Yaya (Mie Hama, who appeared alongside Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice), with the help of his cackling pantomime demon-witch ally Granny (Hideyo Amamoto), whose skills include brewing poisons and turning people to stone with her gaze.

The princess, however, is betrothed to the Prince of Thailand (Jun Funato), who is due to arrive any day now for their wedding, which would scupper the Chancellor's ambitions.

Sinbad begins to suspect what is going on when he realises the jewels the kindly princess is wearing come from his own treasure haul (their original provenance is never truly discussed, but I like to think it's booty from a previous adventure of the "I'm not really a pirate" Sinbad).

Unsurprisingly, the lurid claims made in the movie poster (above) are gross exaggerations (the 'giant', for instance, is just a tall bloke, like Bernard Bresslaw in Hawk The Slayer or Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson in Game of Thrones) and there is no "lost world".

Nevertheless, The Lost World of Sinbad is a damn fine romp.

There's even some nice misdirection through the Chancellor's double-dealings that adds a surprising degree of complexity to the central plot.

Mitsukô Kusabue turns in a particularly good performance as Sobei, the Chancellor's overlooked consort, who definitely delivers some of the best snark .. before running afoul of Granny.

While the film boasts no monsters, there's plenty of magic on display, even if Sennin and Granny only have a handful of spells each in their repertoire.

Sennin's main trick is transforming himself into a fly, primarily to get around (including landing on a dancer's breast at one point... because family curse!), while Granny leans heavily on her petrifying gaze.

Towards the climax of the movie, a peculiar sequence sees Sinbad strapped to a giant kite to evade the enemy guards, when he and the rebels are storming the castle,.

He's not riding the kite like a magic carpet, as shown in the (again misleading) poster, but for some reason strapped on its back - facing the sky - so I have no clue as to how he was supposed to guide it.

Sinbad eventually gets into the castle entirely by chance!

Otherwise, the plot - for a dubbed effort that changed so much from the original and unfolds in a setting you'd never associate with Sinbad - is solid, has some good politicking in the court scenes, a cast of interesting and memorable characters, and, as you might expect with Toshirô Mifune involved, pretty decent fight scenes.

Honestly, I Can Justify Buying These Two New Games

Remember back in February when I implied that I wasn't going to buy any new roleplaying games?

Well, much to no one's surprise, that pledge didn't exactly last. Although I would argue that my recent purchases may have some degree of utility in my proposed 'anime-influenced' fantasy campaign that I'm hoping to run with Twilight Sword.

In the past week, I have acquired the Pirate Borg Starter Set and the core rulebook (and some add-ons) for the new Conan: The Hyborian Age roleplaying game.

Both are peak examples of modern production standards, although I know already my chances of actually running either are next to next to zero.

These are reference works, first and foremost, because I am fascinated by pirates and I am fascinated by Conan, and always imagine slipping elements of both into my fantasy games.

First off, though, I have to point out, for those who aren't already aware, the Pirate Borg Starter Set is probably the best RPG starter set I have ever seen.

For a ridiculously low cost (when you consider what's included), you get all of this in the solid, deep box:

That's an introductory rulebook, a campaign book, item cards, a pack of character sheets, some reusable character sheets with felt pens, three sheets of card counters, several battle mats and game maps, and a full set of  gorgeous (stylishly simple) dice.

None of these are cheap quality or flimsy. These items are designed for use at the games table. Even the inside surface of the box lids (top and bottom) have useful charts and tables on.

Much of this material, obviously, can be used with other game systems - which is good, as I still dream of running a nautical adventure, even if not with this elegant Mörk Borg hack.

My other purchase - this time from eBay - was an ex-Kickstarter bundle of core material for the, as yet, unreleased to retail new Conan roleplaying game, published by Monolith.

Unlike Pirate Borg, I haven't read more than a few lines of this yet, but from what I've seen it looks a reasonable simple and uncluttered system (especially compared to previous Conan RPGs that were overwhelmed by character feats, abilities, splat books etc).

I already appreciate the use of large text and white space (as you can see from the random selection of pages below), which tells me this should be straight forward for a numpty like me to grok.

As well as the core rulebook, my eBay bundle included a large map of Conan's world in the Hyborian Age, two packs of blank character sheets, and a collection of ready reference rules sheets to use when running the game.

Set Course For Next Tuesday

Luffy and Crew Sail Back Onto Netflix Next Month

Straw Hats! Grab your crew! One Piece: Into The Grand Line sets sail on March 10!

Netflix’s epic high-seas pirate adventure, One Piece, returns for season two — unleashing fiercer adversaries and the most perilous quests yet. Luffy and the Straw Hats set sail for the extraordinary Grand Line - a legendary stretch of sea where danger and wonder await at every turn. 

As they journey through this unpredictable realm in search of the world’s greatest treasure, they’ll encounter bizarre islands and a host of formidable new enemies.

Shiver Me Timbers! The Bluff Looks Brutal and Bloody!

In the late 19th Century Caribbean, a former female pirate must protect her family when her past catches up to her.

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: The Phantom (1996)

The Phantom has all the ingredients of a true pulp classic: Oriental pirates, mysterious native tribes, a plucky heroine, a quest for supernatural artifacts, feckless treasure hunters, sexy sky pirates (led by Catherine Zeta Jones), lost islands, corrupt city officials and a costumed comic book hero.

The year is 1938 and evil American business tycoon Xander Drax (Treat Williams) will do anything he can to lay his hands on the three Skulls of Touganda, which when brought together can generate an unstoppable energy force, and it's up to "the Ghost That Walks" aka The Phantom (Billy Zane) to ride out of his cave lair on the island of Bengalla and stop him.

Stylistically heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones movies of the '80s, The Phantom is harmless hokum but not without some moments of extreme silliness - such as why Kit Walker (Zane) can enter an otherwise empty room and then The Phantom appears and no one realises they are one and the same person?

And what would have happened if the first two magical skulls had been brought together in a room without a convenient giant map on the wall? How would they have indicated the location of final skull then?

Some of the film's special effects (for instance, the view out of Drax's office window is clearly a painting and not a very good one), and stunts, are rather dated and let's be honest: The Phantom's purple body suit and domino mask may work in the comics, but look rather suspect in the flesh.

The climatic duel between The Phantom's magic ring and the power of the skulls, as wielded by Drax, pushes the corny cheese factor just a bit too far and the whole story is probably too simplistic for modern audiences, but the film still manages to evoke the feeling of the pulp era Saturday morning serials.

One Piece Sets Sail For Season Two on Netflix Next Year

A new dawn is approaching. The Grand Line is no place for the faint of heart. Brace yourselves, One Piece Into The Grand Line sets sail in 2026! And it looks like Season Three production is kicking off...

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Like John Carter before it, The Lone Ranger was another victim of Disney's marketing team not understanding how to promote a classic pulp character to the general public.

The Lone Ranger also suffered from being saddled with its connections to the successful Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise and Disney's obvious desire to kickstart a similar series of movies - with the attendant lucrative merchandising.

The central performance by Johnny Depp as Tonto isn't really that much of leap from Captain Jack Sparrow. It's as if he only has the one arrow in his quiver these days when it comes to blockbuster action flicks. And did I miss the nerdrage at the racebending casting of Depp as the world's most famous fictional Native American?

But before you start thinking I didn't enjoy this film, I have to say there is a lot to enjoy about it and when the William Tell Overture kicks in for the climactic chase sequence you need a heart of stone not to be transported back to a childhood filled with plastic cowboys and Indians, cap guns and Lone Ranger action figures.

The film's grand finale is truly breathtaking - without a doubt the most incredible extended stunt sequence I've ever seen in a Western.

The problem is the film takes so dang long to get there. In total it's almost two and a half hours in duration and that's simply way too long.

Arnie Hammer plays John Reid, a greenhorn lawyer, returning to the West to see his brother, Dan (James Badge Dale), Dan's wife, Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) and their son, Danny (Bryant Prince).

He joins up with Dan - and is deputised as a ranger - to track down dangerous cannibal killer Butch Cavendish (an almost unrecognisable and decidedly evil William Fichtner).

Cavendish's gang ambush the rangers, leaving them for dead, but John is found by Tonto and nursed back to health. He then takes on the guise of the "masked man" to track down Cavendish and his confederates .

This is all well-and-good as a classic origin story, but the waters are further muddied by a very cliché plot involving a nefarious railroad man, Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson).

Like Pirates Of The Caribbean, the script - by Pirates alumni Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and Justin Haythe - blends the action with humour, but this is a bit hit and miss.

There are also suggestions of a mystical angle to some of the goings-on, but - unlike Pirates - the script seems unwilling to commit to whether this is really happening or is a product of Tonto's deranged imagination.

The story also has a framing device of an elderly Tonto recounting the tale of John Reid to a boy in a 1930s' funfair, which primarily serves to give the scriptwriters licence to play with the idea of Tonto being an unreliable narrator, so they can muck around with the linear nature of the story.

This works, but isn't really necessary.

The Lone Ranger could have done with losing about 30 or 40 minutes from its running time, but ultimately the main stretch isn't arduous - just sometimes feels it's going round in circles - and the magnificent grand finale is worth the wait.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008)

A self-styled "Oriental Western", The Good, The Bad, The Weird has to be required viewing for anyone interested in high adventure pulp action in the "Back Of Beyond".

A Korean movie set in 1930's Manchuria with three larger-than-life characters and one massive MacGuffin - a treasure map - leading to an epic chase across the desert, with some spectacular set-pieces and grand scale shoot-outs.

Lucky thief Tae-goo (Song Kang-ho) stumbles across the map while robbing a train, but psychopathic sadist Chang-yi (Lee Byung-hun), and his posse, is already after the map and ice cool bounty hunter Do-Won (Jung Woo-sung) is after Chang-yi - who he believes is a famous killer known as The Finger Chopper.

The rest of the film is pretty much one long chase, peppered with gunfights, martial arts, vehicle stunts etc

Two set-pieces stand out in particular, the fight around the "ghost market" (a town's black market area, which is patrolled by its own gang of thugs), which marks the half-way point of the film, and then the monumental "everybody chases Tae-goo" sequence which leads into the third act. This latter segment throws in a large detachment of the Japanese army and a gang of marauding bandits - each faction keen to get ahold of the map and find the treasure.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of these set-pieces, unlike many Hollywood blockbusters (e.g. the later Indiana Jones films, the Star Wars Prequels and The Pirates of The Caribbean sequels) is they don't look like video game levels, but genuine, old school, thrilling action with real actors, real props, real horses etc - not CGI!

As you may have guessed from the title, the film lifts a lot of ideas - and visuals - from classic Spaghetti Westerns - with the final three-way confrontation between our protagonists being the most obvious - but serves them up in a distinctly Oriental style.

Two hours is perhaps a bit too long for a movie with such a simple plot, but the constant action and subtle wit of the script make it thoroughly engrossing, so you don't notice the time.

The DVD comes with an alternate (Korean), extended ending which opens the doors to a possible sequel, although I actually found the ending as shown to be just as satisfying.