I got a little more elaborate than usual...

... with my cover design for the NUELOW Games edition of John Kendrick Bangs' "Alice in Blunderland".

I keep the cover images for the NUELOW releases very, very simple so they'll shrink down for display on sales listings on websites, and I think I may have outsmarted myself with this one. It doesn't shrink nearly as nicely as others. Still, I like the look.

If you follow politics at all, this book might actually be of interest to you. Although it was written in 1907, the jokes seem disturbingly relevant as Alice travels to a place where dimwitted politicos govern by whim and they view everyone and everything as their personal property. And that includes the teeth in people's heads and whatever they think of as their "private lives." Check it out. Plus, the $0.99 you'll spend goes to a great cause: Keeping me in house and home!





(BTW, I use the term "design" loosely when referring to the covers I make for the NUELOW Games products. All I do is make a logo, select art or photos from my archive [but limiting myself to the things I am certain I have clear rights to], and then put them together with a couple of graphics editing programs. As a graphic designer, I make a great movie and comics reviewer. Speaking of which... I'll have a new review up on this blog soon. It's been too long!)

Picture Perfect Wednesday:Cross-genre Weirdness on the Planet of the Apes

When I was a kid, among the first comics I owned and read were issues of Marvel's black-and-white "Planet of the Apes Magazine." One of the stories I loved the most, and bits of which I remember to this very day, was an epic tale of a time-traveler who sets out to rescue Taylor and the other astronauts stuck in the future... only to find himself stuck there, but in a place far weirder than any one they visited. And, like Camelot, perhaps even somewhat silly... as this title page shows.

Click on the image to see a larger version of that glorious Rico Rival splash page.

Joe Bloke at his wonderful Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures recently posted clear, legible scans of the entire tale and gave me the opportunity to read "Kingdom on an Island of the Apes" again for the first time since 1976 or so. And the jaded grognard that I am now loved it every bit as the tiny tyke I was then.

Click here to read this story by Doug Moench and Rico Rival that mixes sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book weirdness. It is one of the greatest tales to ever emerge from the House of Ideas. (Oh... and don't be frightened by the "adult content" warning. There are no naked boobies in this story.)

Picture Perfect Special: A Matter of Quality

These pictures of actress Patty Shepard show that you can get an interesting effect if you make a high-quality scan of low-quality images. In this case, pictures from printed page in a magazine. Click on the pictures to see the full-sized versions.

The pictures were originally spotted on this Spanish horror blog. For more on Patty Shepard and her movies, visit the Terror Titans blog.

(And my thanks to Ms. Shepard for summing up the unifying theme of this blog.)

Offensive Picture Perfect Wednesday

An objectified woman wearing fur and smoking a cigarette! The act of posting this photo might get me arrested in Tennessee.

Happy Independence Day to my American Visitors!

Oh swish! Candies for Cuties!

Fashions of the 2000s, as envisioned by designers in the 1930s.



Wait until you see the male fashion; I believe that designer must have truly had the gift of prophecy. And that his or her Third Eye was gazing upon Seattle.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Women of Elmore

Fantasy artist Larry Elmore was one of the major reasons TSR, Inc. and its roleplaying games became as popular as they did. His iconic fantasy images, particularly the paintings and character designs he created for the "Dragonlance" property, fueled the imaginations of a generation.

Elmore's lines grace my two latest releases--"ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters (Revised and Expanded... Because Bigger IS Better)" and "Houseboat on the River Styx". I am celebrating by presenting a selection of beautiful women from his drawing board (hopefully the first of many Elmore "exhibits" to brighten your Wednesdays here at Shades of Gray).

Available again... for the first time in five years!

In 1995, L.L. Hundal had an idea for a quick-and-dirty combat game for two players where each made a character, selected a few skills for them, and then set them about battling to the death. Steve Miller made a few contributions to it, and it was released into the Newsgroups as a freebie. It was a game that emphasized rollplaying over roleplaying. It ran about four pages.

That game was first coming of "ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters"

In 2006, ID Adventures released a revised version of the game, illustrated with art by Larry Elmore. Miller expanded the game with a spell-casting system... because how can you possibly have your fantasy game system taken seriously if it doesn't have a spell-casting system? It was still designed for two players and it still emphasized rollplaying over roleplaying. It was now eight pages in length.

Now, in 2011, Steve Miller and NUELOW Games are bringing ROLF! back again... bigger and better than ever! "ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighers (Revised and Expanded... Because Bigger IS Better!)" clocks in at a massive 10 pages, and it can now be played by two, three, four, or even five players! It's still got gorgeous black-and-white Larry Elmore line-art, and it's in a handy-dandy PDF format for easy downloading to you computer, your iPad, and who knows where else? You can even print it on paper and have your very own old fashioned, paper-based game rulebook!

Oh yeah... and it still emphasizes rollplaying over roleplaying.

"ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters (Revised and Expanded... Because Bigger IS Better" can currently be purchased for just $1 at www.RPGNow.com. If you you like RPGs and laughing with friends, I think you'll like ROLF! (The same might be true if you liked some of the humor in 150 Movies You (Should Die Before) You See, you might enjoy this also.

All proceeds from the sales of this game go to the Feed Steve's Hungry Cats Fund. Please buy your copy today!

The Shadow missing in 'International Crime'?

International Crime (1938)
Starring: Rod La Rocque and Astrid Allwyn
Director: Charles Lamont
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

There are times when I wonder why production companies who spend good money on licensing existing properties don't keep their writers and directors in line when it comes to creating the screen adaptations. Heck, I don't understand *at all* why the owners of properties that are licenced don't insist on some form of oversight and/or quality control veto-rights over what the licensee does with their creations. (And I hope to some day be fortunate enough to work on a propety where the owner doesn't care what the heck I do with it... so far, I've never quite been in that position, as every licensed property I've worked on has come with a very attentive and concerned person reviewing my work for the licensor.)

Take the truly awful adaptation of The Shadow that is "International Crime". In this film, Lamont Cranston is a hardboiled radio commentator and criminologist who has a bad relationship with the police and solves crime more through trickery than detection; he's basically a stock lead character for low-budget detective comedies from that era. There's none of the mystery (and none of the horror/thriller aspect) that surrounds The Shadow and his cases... and Lamont Cranston exhibits no supernatural ability to "cloud men's mind." His identity as The Shadow is widely known, as it's the name of his radio show rather than a secret alter-ego.



Worse, the ever-charming and resourceful Margo Lane from the real stories and radio plays, who was always there to help both Cranston and his Shadow alter-ego, isn't anywhere to be found in "The Shadow Strikes," and is replaced in "International Crime" by an annoying girl reporter (played by Astrid Allwyn, who is really the only attractive thing about "International Crime"... even if she shows virtually no acting ability).

All in all, this feels like someone took an unused script that was sitting around the producer's office and slapped "The Shadow" on it and renamed the main character "Lamont Cranston." However, the true is probably that Hollywood creatives were arrogant morons who felt they could "improve" upon properties long before "Modesty Blaise" and "Jonah Hex" (just to name two of dozens upon dozens of examples). The more things change in the film biz, the more they stay the same.

In memory of Gene Colan

Master craftsman and comics book legend Gene Colan has passed away at the age of 84. Here is a small gallery of artwork in celebration of the great legacy of entertainment he has left behind.