Counting down: two days until our Kickstarter for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition! This evening, Brandon Blackmoor (Evil Mastermind of Kalos Comics) sat in with Mike Lafferty, Sean Izaakse, and a few other gaming luminaries to discuss comics and their favorite “alternate continuities”. It should be posted to the BAMF! podcast in the next day or so, so keep an eye out!
[As always, I think I sounded like an idiot, and I wish I had talked more about the talented folks who will be contributing art and stretch goals for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition. Aaargh! — BSB]
However, we don’t want you to leave the Kalos Comics blog unsatisfied, so here is a sketch from Sean Izaakse, and one of our favorites: Chloe Zhang, also known in North America as Manticore. Chloe Zhang is the photogenic, famous, and brilliant daughter of Zhang Ka-shing, one of the twenty richest people in the world. Fun fact: In China, Chloe’s superhero persona is known as “Dragon’s Lovely Daughter”, while in Japan, she is known as “Super Demon Rider Girl”.
Counting down: four days until our Kickstarter for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition! This is a sketch from Sean Izaakse: Chthyra, the Crawling Chaos. Chthyra is a psychic parasite from a reality in close proximity to our own, which travels to our reality in its astral form. As such, it does not have a physical form in our reality. When Chthyra manifests in our reality, it usually takes the form of an oily black-skinned humanoid, a shapeless mass of hairlike tendrils of darkness, or something in between the two….
Don’t forget about our contest! Take one of the characters from Bulletproof Blues, and write, draw, or design a new format for the character’s write-up at the back of Bulletproof Blues Second Edition. The winner will receive credit in the second edition credits and a free print copy of the game (either the current edition, or, if they are willing to wait for it, the second edition). Here are the characters to choose from: http://ogc.rpglibrary.org/index.php?title=Bulletproof_Blues:Characters
The contest will run through the end of the Kickstarter, but don’t wait until the last minute. Send your contest entries to bblackmoor@kaloscomics.com.
As we said in an earlier blog post, one of themes of Bulletproof Blues is power and its preservation. So how would the entrenched powers of the Kalos Universe prevent the hoi polloi from threatening their hegemony?
Individuals working in government seek to accrue power and wealth, and they do this by bestowing political favors and receiving gifts. To preserve that source of income, government agencies target problematic individuals, entrapping them and then charging them with whatever crime is most convenient, typically terrorism. In the Kalos Universe, roughly 90% of terrorism convictions involve a government informant choosing vulnerable individuals and working on them for months, sometimes years until the informant snares the individuals into a government created conspiracy. There is little risk in these operations for the authorities: no matter how poor the government’s case — no matter how unreliable the informant or how many crucial conversations go unrecorded due to equipment failure or obvious edits — when the jury hears the “T word”, the jury convicts. Out of over 500 cases in the last decade, every single defendant has either been found guilty or pled guilty. This sends a clear message to any malcontents: if you dream of challenging the 1%, living in tents, scaling skyscrapers, and dropping banners, you do so at your own peril.
This is, of course, simply the default setting of Bulletproof Blues. You are welcome to ignore it, if you would prefer a more optimistic setting for your games.
Great news! In honor of the Kickstarter for the second edition of Bulletproof Blues (starting February 1, 2014), the British Library will be staging an exhibition of comics!
Boys in the late 1970s probably assumed the girls comic Misty was all boring romance, puppies and ponies. How wrong they were. They were full of “incredibly dark, weird, psychologically harrowing” stories with “trippy and odd” artwork, said John Harris Dunning.
Page from Misty, the 1970s comic book of supernatural and horror stories. Photograph: British Library Board
Dunning is co-curator, with Paul Gravett, of what will be the UK’s biggest exhibition of British comics, taking in everything from newly discovered Victorian comics to modern classics such as V for Vendetta.
The summer show, entitled Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, is being staged by the British Library which holds the complete output of the British comics industry but said it had not in the past done the genre justice.
Roly Keating, the library’s chief executive, said: “It is fair to say, if we are being honest, that we haven’t devoted to that sector of our collection the scholarly and curatorial effort we have devoted to some of the higher culture parts of our collection. This year we are addressing that with a vengeance.”
The exhibition will have sedition and rebellion at its heart, said Dunning. It will also aim to explode a few myths, not least that the publications are all about superheroes and that reading them is the pastime of boys, he added.
“When we first started to talk to people about this comic book show some people said ‘it’s only for boys’. It’s garbage,” said Dunning. “People were saying girls don’t like blood and psychologically upsetting things and the girls were saying, ‘we love it’.”
The show will explore the full gamut, from mainstream to underground.
Okay, we were pulling your leg: the British Library has probably never heard of Bulletproof Blues. But the exhibition is real, and that’s pretty cool. 😉
One week until our Kickstarter for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition, which is scheduled to start February 1st! This is a recent private commission by John Zeleznik: “Other Worlds”. If John’s stretch goal is successful, he will be painting the new cover for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition. Help us make this happen!
Don’t forget about our contest! Take one of the characters from Bulletproof Blues, and write, draw, or design a new format for the character’s write-up at the back of Bulletproof Blues Second Edition. The winner will receive credit in the second edition credits and a free print copy of the game (either the current edition, or, if they are willing to wait for it, the second edition). Here are the characters to choose from: http://ogc.rpglibrary.org/index.php?title=Bulletproof_Blues:Characters
The contest will run through the end of the Kickstarter, but don’t wait until the last minute. Send your contest entries to bblackmoor@kaloscomics.com.
Two weeks until our Kickstarter for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition, which is scheduled to start February 1st! This is a sketch from Sean Izaakse: Miasma, a disgraced Canadian Special Ops officer who now leads a team of elite mercenaries. Favoring non-lethal munitions and gas grenades, Miasma and her Fume Troopers have established themselves as professionals who can get the job done quickly and efficiently, even in the face of posthuman opposition.
Don’t forget about our contest! Take one of the characters from Bulletproof Blues, and write, draw, or design a new format for the character’s write-up at the back of Bulletproof Blues Second Edition. The winner will receive credit in the second edition credits and a free print copy of the game (either the current edition, or, if they are willing to wait for it, the second edition). Here are the characters to choose from: http://ogc.rpglibrary.org/index.php?title=Bulletproof_Blues:Characters
The contest will run through the end of the Kickstarter, but don’t wait until the last minute. Send your contest entries to bblackmoor@kaloscomics.com.
One month until our Kickstarter for Bulletproof Blues Second Edition, which is scheduled to start February 1st! This is a sketch from Sean Izaakse: Charlotte McCoy, better known as the Widow. In her guise as Widow, Charlotte’s entire body is covered by a thin layer of extraterrestrial nanotechnological goo. The goo can take on any color or texture, but because of the neuroses of the previous wearer of the goo, it now tends to display itself in ways that represent spiders.
As we gear up for the Bulletproof Blues Kickstarter, we are having a contest. Take one of the characters from Bulletproof Blues, and write, draw, or design a new format for the character’s write-up at the back of Bulletproof Blues Second Edition. The winner will receive credit in the second edition credits and a free print copy of the game (either the current edition, or, if they are willing to wait for it, the second edition). Here are the characters to choose from: http://ogc.rpglibrary.org/index.php?title=Bulletproof_Blues:Characters
