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DC seems to have problems with Jon Kent, but that was not always the case. While not every fan liked DC’s Convergence event from 2015, where it pulled heroes from…

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Canada has played an important and often overlooked role in the history of superheroes. While many readers immediately think of American comic book icons, Canada has produced its own remarkable…

The post The History of Canadian Superheroes appeared first on First Comics News.

Title: Battle Beast # 8 Publisher: Image Comics Writer: Robert Kirkman Artist: Ryan Ottley Colorist: Annalisa Leoni Letterer: Rus Wooton Covers: Ryan Ottley & Annalisa Leoni, Ryan Sook, Chrius Burnham…

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Pupi Herrera, es una artista, del cómic argentino, que ya juega, en las grandes ligas, del cómic internacional. Decir que, Pupi Herrera, es una buena dibujante: ¡Estás en lo cierto!…

The post PUPI HERRERA, UNA ARGENTINA TRIUNFADORA appeared first on First Comics News.

Cannabis and creative media have always shared an unofficial relationship. From underground comix in the 1960s to modern graphic novels that explore altered states and counterculture, the plant has been…

The post How Has Cannabis Culture Influenced Comics and Entertainment in 2026? appeared first on First Comics News.

The post Video of the Day – In Conversation with Carole Ann Ford, 2025 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

 Bringing the She-Devil with a Sword into a Sword of Cepheus (2nd Edition) game requires balancing her legendary prowess with the grounded, often lethal mechanics of the 2D6 system.In Sword of Cepheus, a character like Red Sonja functions as a high-tier Heroic NPC or a veteran Player Character with significant career terms in Barbarian and Mercenary.Red SonjaDescription: A fierce Hyrkanian Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Miles is back in the classic red and black costume this August for the beginning of a new era from writer Bryan Edward Hill and artist Nico Leon.   New…

The post BROOKLYN’S FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN RETURNS TO ACTION AND CONFRONTS A DARK THREAT FROM THE PAST IN MILES MORALES: SPIDER-MAN #1! appeared first on First Comics News.

A Blood-Soaked Pulp Fantasy Where Axe-Swinging Meets Occult Chaos…and Survival Isn’t Guaranteed. APR. 20, 2026, (PORTLAND, OR) — Mad Cave Studios brings GRIT back to print, returning readers to the…

The post Southern-fried Sword and sorcery gets its due… appeared first on First Comics News.

PORTLAND, Ore. 04/20/2026 — The legendary Rob Liefeld (Youngblood) will team up with artist Seth Damoose (Tales of Mr. Rhee, Savant) to bring fans an exciting Youngblood spinoff in the upcoming…

The post LEGENDARY ROB LIEFELD TEAMS WITH SETH DAMOOSE TO BRING BELOVED YOUNGBLOODCHARACTER HIS OWN SOLO SPINOFF IN BADROCK LAUNCH THIS JULY appeared first on First Comics News.

If you never, ever checked out ComicBook+, you should! It contains 1000s of public-domain comics from the Golden Age and up through the Silver Age. It is also a fantastic…

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2000 AD Prog 2479 UK and DIGITAL: 22 April £3.99 COVER: STEVEN AUSTIN WITH MATT SOFFE In This Issue: JUDGE DREDD // FLAMES AND WHITE PHOSPHOROUS by TC Eglington (w) Paul Marshall (a) Quinton Winter (c) Annie Parkhouse…

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About two and a half years ago, I bought a pair of shoes for work. I usually maintain three pairs of shoes - a pair of sneakers for weekends, a pair of black dress shoes for whenever I have to dress of up, and these - my go-to work shoes that I used to wear almost every day. In September of 2024, I realized that these shoes were starting to wear down - they were about a year old at that point, and they were starting to fade. However, I decided that I could probably get to Christmas with them, so I waited on replacing them.
Then I got sick. A doctor gave me a letter that said I had six to twelve months to live. My priorities shifted. I had to 'get my affairs in order'. I had debts to resolve. Bank accounts to organize. A will to revise.
I looked at these shoes and decided that they were sufficient. They would see me through to the end.
I no longer needed these shoes for work. I was 'permanently disabled'. I still pulled these shoes out from time to time. I wore them to the doctor's office when he told Mary and me that the many rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy had not helped; my tumors continued to grow. He explained that he had 'nothing more he could do', but suggested we consider a 'second opinion'. 
I wore the shoes again when we drove to Pittsburgh. To our surprise, the doctors had a plan. Lutathera; a nuclear treatment designed for pancreatic cancer, but which may also attack my tumors since they shared many characteristics.
Four trips to Pittsburgh. Four treatments. Eight months. Same shoes. Because why get new ones, right?
But, because of God's grace and mercy, the treatments have worked. My small tumors have been destroyed. Larger tumors made smaller. 
I decided I felt healthy enough to substitute teach a few days a week. I looked at the shoes and decided they'd get me through that. They could substitute teach one or two days a week. I was still 'permanently disabled', right?
But my most recent visit was the most optimistic. Out of my team of doctors, my local oncologist was the most positive. He was effusive in his hope for my future. We have options - either more treatments of Lutathera to destroy the tumors further, or other treatments that are likely to prevent further growth and stablize tumors where they are. I will have cancer for the rest of my life. I don't know what that is, but it's no longer 6-12 months. My affairs are in order as much as they need to be. I don't feel permanently disabled.
This morning, I saw a listing for my dream job. If you could write up a perfect role for me, this is it. It would allow me to leverage everything - my education, my passions, my experiences, my hobbies. All of it comes together in this one job. 
I sent in a cover letter and my resume.
I think it's time to buy a new pair of shoes. I'm going to need them.

By Operant Game Lab
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-2

Decades ago, there were two adventuring bros—Thom the Mighty and Oolnor the Weird. After much questing and looting and war against the hated bone men of the North, they carved for themselves a dungeon fortress one day’s march from the nearest village. Here, in this righteous bro cave (RBC), they stationed their henchmen, stashed their gold, and hosted epic parties. But there has been no trace of Thom or Oolnor for ten years now. A brave few have trespassed into their RBC, lusting for the riches that no doubt reside there. None have returned, for no force could be mightier than Thom and Oolnor’s eternal, bloodthirsty friendship. 

This ten page adventure describes about 32 rooms in a “double adventurer” lair much akin, and a homage, to B1. It’s trying hard, and has some decent formatting and a writing style that is, in form if not function, almost consistently great. And, also, it comes off a bit staid and disconnected from itself. You getting close there, Operant Game Lab.

The set up here is much the same as B1, on purpose. Two adventuring buddies build a fortress to live together and then they disappear for over ten years now. Inside you’ll find some things harkening back to B, like pools, as well as some mushroom men wandering around, “the bone men”, a tribe of barbarians trying to retrieve the bones of their ancestors that were stolen by the dynamic due, and  some leftover orc servants trying to fend off the bone men incursion. 

I talk sometimes about good writing and great writing and how there is a way of writing in which more is implied than the written word. If I can write three words and it makes you think of some kind of misty forest glen, coming alive in your minds eye, then I’ve done a good job. But if you can build the rest of the forest from that then I’ve done an even better job. A good room description may bring a room to life and an even better one brings the SITUATION to life, or the NPC, or so on. And, one hopes, it is tersely written, helping us scan the page and run the game at the table, the whole idea being using words to their maximum effectiveness, implying more than the words themselves describe. At one point in this adventure you come across some orc officers, planning to repel the bone-men barbarians. They will talk, but want to make sure you are “orc tough” and “they are willing to generously split the resulting bone-men meat 50-50.” This is very good writing. You know EXACT:LY the tone that the designer is going for with this encounter. From this you, as the DM, know how to run this encounter perfectly. You can ad-lib and fill in the gaps of the encounter, and, because of this, can turn it in to something quite memorable for the party, something they will recall in stories for sessions to come. More than just imaging the environment of the room, it has communicated tone and a situation. And that is the very highest form of evocative writing. That certain wryness comes through in other places in this adventure as well, so while not consistently hitting, it’s not an accident either. One of the wandering encounters, on a roll of 00,  has the two adventurers, “Thom and Oolnor, returning home at long last” with their seven giant golden idols. Well there’s a sticky wicket to toss in!

The writing here tends to be terse, but not overly so. Formatting and layout is done paragraph style, with a a few short intro sentences and a word or two bolded and then followed up in their own paragraphs, with rooms given names next to their key numbers in order to help frame the text for the DM. This is all great, easy to scan at the table while running. 

Encounters can be, in places, well done. Outside the entrance we get a couple of sentences that ends with “Every few minutes, a gust of wind blows away the humidity and mosquitos.” More than just padding and setting the scene, if you listen to the wind you you catch the faint sounds of a flute, following it leads you to where the bone-men have made their encampment and their lon guard killing time playing his flute. This, obviously, helps the party, giving them clues as to whats to come. Depth, following up on what the DM has related to the party leads to more information and revelations. And that’s what you want in a room description. 

In another spot, the treasure room, we get “Piles of Gold. On the scale of Scrooge McDuck, one could swim through these stacks of silver and gold coins. All told, there are 2,834 silver pieces and 198 gold pieces (many of them stained with the old blood of their previous owners)” On the Scale of Scrooge McDuck, this gives us an immediately visual image to work from as a DM. (As an aside, is that many coins really a hoard ala Smaug the Golden/Scrooge McDuck? The imagery works well but I’ve not sure I’ve ever seen an adventure in which the actual coinage lives us to that imagery. Or maybe I just don’t know what 2800 coins looks like in real life?) Other wry things include a room with an effigy of a woman in it, a crude statue built. “Parading the false wife around in “civilized” settlements confers a -1 ongoing penalty due to its creepiness.” That’s solid. The use of parading, civilized in quotes, creepiness. Great use of descriptive words to help nail the vibe.

There are some decent vignettes in this. Bone-men stacking up chairs and climbing on each other to get to their ancestors bones hanging from the ceiling in the great hall. A wounded bone-man, with his buddies keeping watch, that drank from a pool and hulked out and got wounded badly. In spite of this though I’m not going to even Regerts this. It’s close, but there are a few things that keep me from that. The entire thing feels, sparse? Staid? Disconnected from itself? Static? Maybe static. It’s not that there’s a lot of empty rooms, that can be cool in a dungeoncrawl. But it just doesn’t feel like a unified whole. There are little linkages, the bone-men through, the orc sector, the previously mentioned wounded bone-man from the pool. Certainly no order of battle though, or anything overly dynamic in the environment. It doesn’t feel like a place that is alive. The overall vibe of the place just doesn’t come through well. I wish I could put my finger on it. It doesn’t feel like a bone-man incursion to a place and the orc servants repelling them and the mushroom men adding trouble in a place that is already a little weird, being an adventurer home. Certainly all of those elements are present but they don’t feel like they are working together to create a unified whole. I’m thinking of this in terms of, say, the first level of Stonehell. Stonehell level one, or even the outside, feels like an empty dungeon but the overall emptiness, exploration, and creatures there make it, all together, feel like a certain place with a certain something going on. 

I’m certainly not angry about this. Most adventures are piss-poor wastes of paper and this is not that. The overall environment just doesn’t get me excited to run this. I think it’s close, though, to being something worthwhile. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is ten pages, essentially the entire thing. Great preview. I’d check out, maybe room 3, 12, and 25 for an example of some of the better rooms. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/561741/righteous-bro-cave?1892600

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The youngest state of Southeastern Parsulan is at once ill-omened and favored with great promise. Morrgna, capital of the Republic, is famed for the strange lights that can frequently be seen in its night skies: the aurora-like ribbons and curtains of pale color, sometimes with faces or forms moving through them and the flickering will-o'wisps that pass through the streets or hang in place for a time before fading. Such lights are often seen in association with the irruption of shadow cysts and they do seem to foreshadow the difficulties the area has with demonic forces.

At the same time, the Republic seems to be on the rise. Less than two decades ago, it was a sparsely populated backwater, ravaged by the demonic Wild Hunt. The tide turned with the so-called Miracle of the Church of Saint Lampada, wherein Leonhart Urzen, now First Citizen of the Republic, led a band of refugees in repulsing an assault by a demonic host. The cost of victory was the death of Leonhart's adventuring companions and their retainers, a group now celebrated as the Fallen Heroes. Those Heroes are entombed with honor in a crypt beneath the great church, guarded by special Keeper-Priests, for reasons that are doctrinally obscure. They are venerated on All Heroes Day, and the night before their spirits and those of the city's other dead are propitiated with offerings and their forgiveness is sought through rituals led by the priests.

Leonhart guided the formation of the Republic by inviting in neighboring cities and towns, and organized a militia, both protect the land against demonic incursion and to collect magical artifacts that emerge from the shadow cysts and bring them to Morrgna's dungeon vaults for safe keeping. While citizens guard the cities and serve in officer roles, Mercenaries and adventurers compromise most of the forces sent into emergent shadow cysts and patrolling beyond the walls of the cities and towns. Those who die in service are considered to be added to the ranks of the Fallen Heroes laid to rest with the original group beneath the church. Though few would refuse such as an honor, agreement to this burial honor is said to be a stipulation of admittance into the militia's ranks.

Chris Achilleos is another artist I discovered while working at Metro Comics. Two years before Mike Ploog’s trading card collection,  which I mentioned in my previous post, the same company, FPG, published the Chris Achilleos Fantasy Art Trading Cards.

I don’t recall if I consciously knew Achilleos’ work before becoming obsessed with those cards. I had probably seen some of his Lord of the Rings pieces. I had definitely seen his most famous work—the Taarna Heavy Metal cover and the movie poster—on the record sleeve and later in other related media, but I had NO idea who the artist was.

You can listen to the Heavy Metal soundtrack below:

When I finally discovered the depth and breadth of his work through that trading card set, I was blown away. This was amazing fantasy artwork, but it felt entirely different from the work of the typical D&D artists and other fantasy painters I grew up with, like Boris Vallejo or the Hildebrandt brothers. His work had this fine-art quality mixed with a fantastical allure that completely fired my imagination.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this was the early 90s. We didn’t have Pinterest. We were online, but we certainly didn’t have access to art and images the way we do now. Art books, calendars, and these trading cards were my absolute main points of reference and inspiration. The best part about the trading cards was their utility at the table: I could make notes about the campaign, a specific adventure, or an NPC, clip them to a trading card featuring the art that inspired that bit of worldbuilding, and then physically show them to my players during the game.

The timeframe when these two trading card collections came out—1992 to 1994, and the years immediately following—was a defining era for me as a Game Master. I was actively organizing my campaign world, my written adventures, and my GM notes. In fact, 1993 was the year I officially rebooted the homebrew world I originally created in 1987, turning it into the version we have been playing ever since.

The Ploog and Achilleos trading cards, along with sets featuring legends like Elmore, Parkinson, Easley, Brom, Caldwell, Kelly, and Wrightson (some of those names might just pop up in future posts!), were a massive source of inspiration and reference throughout those formative years.

By the time I put together my first official, printed campaign handout for my players in 1999, I had already moved on to using desktop publishing tools and digital art. The physical trading cards started to see less use, and at one point, during a house cleanout, I ended up getting rid of many of them. The cards themselves might be gone, but the art and the artists I discovered through them continue to amaze and inspire my games to this day.

 This table transforms standard treasure rolls into immediate "Wait, why is the gold moving?" moments. Instead of just mimic chests, these entries turn the loot itself into the threat.d100 Treasures as Monstersd100The "Treasure"The Monster Identity / Twist01-05Loose Gold PileThe Coin Swarm: The coins are actually the scales of a buried, gold-plated subterranean serpent or a swarm of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Between July and November, five new Doctor Who action figure sets

A new wave of Doctor Who action figures is arriving this year, with brand new figures from across the show’s history, from the 1960s to the 2020s. The line contains five exclusive Vortex Edition sets, with each box to include a part of a buildable character. Fans who collect all pieces from across the five packs will be able to complete a scaled replica of the Yeti from 1967’s The Abominable Snowmen.

These sets will be available exclusively through the Character Options website, monthly from July.

 

Details of the five sets

The 2026 Collect & Build offering recognises some of Doctor Who’s most memorable chapters, with five iconic Vortex Edition characters to discover – plus the buildable Yeti. In order of their release, the sets are as follows:

 

The Cybermen Set, available from July 2026 Cybermen Set, July

This set includes two Cybermen featuring the sign introduced in 2013’s Nightmare in Silver, including a swappable gun-arm. It also contains the first part of your collectable Yeti: the head

 

The Fifteenth Doctor action figure set, available August 2026 Fifteenth Doctor Set, August

August’s set stars the Fifteenth Doctor himself, in his costume from 2024’s Joy to the World along with red and gold sonic screwdriver. He comes with in-scale figures of Lux’s Mr. Ring-a-Ding, and Dugga-Doo from The Interstellar Contest. The set contains the Yeti’s upper torso.

 

The Fourth Doctor action figure set, available September 2026 Fourth Doctor Set, September

In September, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor gets a figure, this time based on his appearance in 1978’s The Invasion of Time and including his sonic screwdriver (though even that won’t get him out of this one.) There’s also a swappable head, giving a choice between a smiling Doctor wearing his fedora, or a serious one without. The Fourth Doctor set comes with the legs and feet for your Yeti.

 

The Season Seven action figure set, available October 2026 Season Seven Set, October

The next set focuses on the Third Doctor’s earliest adventures. It includes his original companion Liz Shaw, depicted in her costume from Doctor Who and the Silurians. She comes alongside Inferno’s Professor Stahlman, after his mutation into a vicious Primord by ooze from the Earth’s core. You also get accessories including a Nestene control sphere as seen in Spearhead from Space and Terror of the Autons. The promo photo for the set also shows a Metebelis III crystal, though that’s not from Season Seven, so is possibly a mistake. The set includes the Yeti’s right arm.

 

The Wirrn Set, available November 2026 Wirrn Set, November

The final set in the range features the Wirrn from 1975’s The Ark in Space. You get two Wirrn, representing the two stages of their development. There’s the giant, insectoid adult form, and the caterpillar like pupal stage. You’ll also complete your Yeti with the inclusion of its left arm.

 

 

The completed Yeti action figure, once you collect all five parts The Collect & Build Yeti figure

The Yeti debuted in 1967’s The Abominable Snowmen. Disguised as the mythical creatures, they were actually the robot servitors of the Great Intelligence. They later returned for two other battles with the Doctor, in The Web of Fear and The Five Doctors. Now figure collectors have the chance to collect this large figure standing nearly 16 and a half centimetres tall, with multiple articulation points. This version is based on their original design.

The complete Yeti buildable figure can be completed only by collecting the individual body sections spread across the five Vortex releases for this year. The figure has a lot of moulded in details. These include the fur effect that has been achieved using a base mould colour plus multiple sprays and washes. The head features the eyes and prominent fangs of the original Yeti that were near impossible to see on-screen, but were unmissable in a behind-the-scenes documentary of the story creation.

 

“Something bigger and better with a modern take”

Al Dewar, Character Options’ Creative Director, said, “This is a very interesting year for the Character Options Doctor Who range. It’s the first time we’ve introduced a Collect & Build figure for over a decade and a half. Plus, for the very first time we are showcasing the sets that we will be releasing up front!

“The Collect & Build Yeti figure should be a great surprise to most folk. Yes…  it’s been well known for years that we created a Yeti sculpt for the 1968 Web of Fear version but when we examined that sculpt, we realised the scale was wrong and some minor damage had occurred. So, it seemed sensible to go back further to where it all started, up in Tibet, near the Det Sen Monastery in 1967, with the original Abominable Snowmen. The Yetis are ‘big ole beasts!’ and I think we’ve brought something bigger and better with a modern take that lends itself well to articulation and play.

“Of course, the Collect & Build figure is just one of many things to look forward to, with five stunning new figure sets coming through – all upgraded to Vortex levels. Even the pre-existing Liz Shaw figure has been refined to be as good as it can be! The team has put their all into getting everything ready in time, and we can’t wait to bring the collectors something that’s so completely different.”

Further information on the collection is now available on the Character Options website. Fans can also register there to receive pre‑launch updates. More details on each Collect & Build set will be revealed in the lead‑up to each release.

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