For July 4th: Complete Golden Age Oddballs Patriotic Edition!

Just in time for 4th of July... the latest release from NUELOW Games spotlights two patriotically themed heroes from the Golden Age of comic books--Major Victory and Yankee Girl. 

In addition to every single Golden Age appearance of both characters, including covers, "Complete Golden Age Oddballs: Major Victory and Yankee Girl," contains brief publication histories for each; an overview of how they are being incorporated into NUELOW Games' emerging comic book universe; ROLF! game stats; and a bonus expansion to the OGL Modern superhero rules first published in "Madden's Boys."

Here's a preview of the book--a couple slash pages and some of the included covers.

Click here to see previews or to get your own copy of "Complete Golden Age Oddballs: Major Victory and Yankee Girl,"

Coming Soon: 'Complete Golden Age Oddballs: Angela & Miss Espionage'!

The fourth volume in NUELOW Games' "Complete Golden Age Oddballs" series is pretty much finished. I'm just having another set of eyes review one of the pieces slated to go in it, because I'm feeling a little insecure about its quality even though the editor has said "Oh, for the love of Jesus, it's fine!" (in an exacerbated tone and British accent).

This volume is focused entirely on female characters, and the bulk of it was drawn by one of comics industry's first full-time professional woman artists, Ruth Atkinson. She is best remembered for creating "Millie the Model" and "Patsy Walker" for Marvel Comics precursor Timely Comics, but even before that she had worked at industry giant Fiction House on numerous adventure series in anthology titles like "Jungle Comics", "Ranger Comics", and "Wings Comics."

But NUELOW Games being NUELOW Games is collecting for the first time anywhere what is perhaps Atkinson's most obscure work. In 1947, she created the high school comedy series "Angela" for Eastern's "Club 16." The series lasted four episodes, vanishing when Eastern pulled the plug on this attempt at cashing in on the teen comedy craze that "Archie" had started shortly before.

But as obscure as "Angela" is, "Miss Espionage" may be even more so. It appeared in two issues of "Power Comics" (#3 and #4) in late 1945 from Holyoke imprint Narrative Publications. This brief series is interesting, because it's may have been the first to use a post-World War 2 world as the backdrop for its action. The first story deals with a Nazi underground trying to lay the foundation for the return of the Third Reich, while the second deals with villains trying to rekindle hostilities between the United States and Japan. (It may also be of interest as it was written by the prolific and celebrated Bill Woolfolk and drawn by Rudy Palias and Maurice Whitman.)

And, of course, the book features a smattering of roleplaying game material inspired by the comics, as well as a text piece that brings the featured series together in the same universe... and that's the text piece I'm feeling a little insecure about. As I said up top, we'll see what the reader has to say.

In the meantime, here's a preview of "Complete Golden Age Oddballs: Angela & Miss Espionage" in the form of selected splash pages from the book.

Meet the first Muslim Superhero!

NUELOW Games latest comics/RPG release shines the spotlight on Kismet, Man of Fate. This long-forgotten superhero appeared in the four quarterly issues of Bomber Comics during 1944, with the first and final issues coinciding with the opening and closing of Ellliot Publishing.

Kismet was one of numerous Nazi-stomping comic book characters who appeared in comics magazines during the early 1940s, but he stands apart from the crowd not only for his ability to carry off running around shirtless while wearing gloves, a fez and a cape, but also because he is the first Muslim superhero. (There were earlier Muslim comic book heroes, but none were so obviously religious as Kismet, nor did they have superpowers.

I've edited a book for NUELOW Games that's part of the Complete Golden Age Oddballs series. For the first time anywhere, it collects all four Kismet stories under one cover, together with an all-new text piece and roleplaying game material for ROLF! and OGL d20 Modern. In addition to the Kismet stories, the also features all three published cases for Penny Parker, Debutante Detective.

By way of a preview, here are the first pages for all the Kismet stories.

Click here to see more previews, or to get your own copy of Complete Golden Age Oddballs: Kisment & Penny Parker.