GMBC ep16 Superhero Genre Redefined: Lessons from Astro City
Astro City: Life in the Big City serves as a delightful exploration of a superhero universe that marries the extraordinary with the mundane, demonstrating how the presence of super-powered individuals shapes everyday life. In this episode, the hosts of the Game Masters Book Club, including seasoned GMs Jonathan Mazur, Shaun Murphy, and John Corbett, delve into the first six issues of this iconic graphic novel by Kurt Busiek, highlighting its unique storytelling approach that emphasizes character development over typical superhero tropes. They engage in a lively discussion about their favorite and least favorite superpowers, revealing the complexities of managing powers like telepathy and teleportation in tabletop games, while also pondering the moral implications of mind control. As they dissect the intricacies of Astro City's rich tapestry, they reflect on the nostalgic feel of a bygone era, where hope and heroism blend seamlessly into the fabric of daily life. With a balance of insightful commentary and lighthearted banter, the episode invites listeners to consider how they might bring the charm of Astro City into their own gaming experiences.
Takeaways:
The podcast explores the nuances of superhero games, emphasizing the importance of character agency and player dynamics.
Listeners are introduced to 'Astro City: Life in the Big City,' a comic that blends nostalgic themes with modern storytelling techniques.
The Game Masters provide insights into their favorite and least favorite superpowers, revealing the complexities of managing these powers in gameplay.
Discussion reveals how the setting of Astro City reflects societal themes, making it more than just a superhero narrative.
They delve into the idea that superhero stories often mirror real-life challenges, encouraging players to explore deeper character motivations.
The episode highlights various game systems that can effectively capture the spirit of Astro City, suggesting ways to incorporate its unique elements into gameplay.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
Astro City
Marvel
DC
Kingdom Come
Mutants and Masterminds
Prowlers and Paragons
GURPS
Savage Worlds
Fiasco
Dread
Worlds in Peril
Shadow Hill
Wild Cards
My Adventures With Superman
The Expanse
Love, Death & Robots
Heroin Addiction
Not Your Sidekick
Velveteen vs. the Junior Super Patriots
Powers
Icons
Standard Comics
The Hero Initiative - supporting comic creators
Transcript:
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.560
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:08.160 - 00:00:37.980
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience. This is Astro City Life in the Big City.
The first graphic novel set in the eponymous Silver age superhero setting of writer Kurt Rusiek and artists Brett Anderson and Alex Ross.
Game Masters and comic aficionados Jonathan Mazur, Shaun Murphy and John Corbett take us on a tour of the city of her, meeting both the iconic superpowered citizens and some everyday ones as well. Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker A
00:00:40.060 - 00:01:44.500
Okay, welcome everybody to the Game Masters Book Club. I'm Eric Jackson and I'm here with some fabulous game Masters who are here to talk about a fabulous series of comics.
Starting with the intro first six issues. Astro City bound together in the life in the Big city graphic novel written by Kurt Busiak and drawn by Brett Anderson.
Just one of classics of superhero comics and fits within our rules here at Game Masters Book Club in that we don't cover games that already have their own game systems. So Marvel and DC are out, but Astro City is in.
And today I'm going to have our Game Masters introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about their style of running games and also tell us about when they run a superhero game. What's their favorite or least favorite superpower to have to deal with.
I'm going to start initially out with veteran member Sean Murphy who's been done a couple of other shows before. Sean, tell the folks about yourself and tell them about your favorite or least favorite superpower.
Speaker C
00:01:44.660 - 00:02:58.560
Yeah, so Sean here I've run a bunch of one shot superhero games. I think that some of the old DC system upgrading those and bringing them in, people get sort of excited about those.
I've run some multi table games with superheroes.
I just think the genre works really well for people that like role playing games and that it's action oriented, you have powers and it's not that far a step aside from the normal role playing people like to do in terms of superpower love, hate, I have to say telepathy. I can deal with Green Lantern rings and super speed and super strength, but telepathy just seems to be.
We don't have as easy internal marker of how that works in terms of what it allows you to do or not do.
And it doesn't help that the source material, the comic books, if you look at sort of Saturn Girl's powers for example in the Legion, they just go up and down at various times as to what is a powerful telepath and what isn't. Jean Grey in the Same category. So from Marvel Gold to moving on through time, the various other incarnations she's had.
Speaker A
00:02:58.720 - 00:03:04.040
Agreed. Telepathy can be a stumper and hard to do in a live setting, although.
Speaker B
00:03:04.040 - 00:03:07.460
It might work better on a VTT platform rather than live.
Speaker D
00:03:08.020 - 00:03:16.180
I want to say I dealt with it with a moral code because we had a Jean Grey like character in the game. I'll reference in a second.
Speaker A
00:03:16.180 - 00:03:23.660
Jonathan, why don't you pick it up and talk to the folks about the kind of superhero games you've run and your favorite or least favorite superpower?
Speaker D
00:03:23.660 - 00:03:29.220
I'm Jonathan Mazur Bonafides as a gm. Is that how I'm introducing myself?
Speaker A
00:03:30.020 - 00:03:31.420
However you want to talk about it.
Speaker D
00:03:31.420 - 00:04:00.640
I ran a a pulp game in college.
I've run espionage, but probably the thing spent the most of my energy and put love into, I guess was a six part superhero game that I think I ran over eight years. They were broken into chapters, but inspired in part by today's book and also Kingdom Come and some other things.
I've always considered myself more of a player, but if Eric asked me to do this, I couldn't say no.
Speaker B
00:04:00.640 - 00:04:04.240
Jonathan is overly modest. He is one of the better GMs that I know.
Speaker D
00:04:04.320 - 00:04:57.570
And I would say referring back to that long running game which was called A World Needs Heroes case, I lapse and just refer to it that way. It was super speed or hyperspeed or super reaction. Not that I have anything against speedsters other than apparently the ability to say it.
It sort of becomes everybody wanted to react faster and it wound up becoming sort of an arms race, as it were, because of the number of actions that would occur in a particular round. It got a little hairy, let's just say. But I wouldn't say no to it.
Although in my experience, every speedster I've ever had as a player, it's like, okay, you have three actions before anybody else moves. Yeah, I'm gonna delay, I'm gonna hold back. I'm like, all right, I don't really know why you're playing a speedster then.
Speaker A
00:04:57.570 - 00:05:04.770
But okay, John Corbett, why don't you talk to us about your superhero gaming and your least or favorite superpower?
Speaker E
00:05:05.710 - 00:06:26.280
My name is John Corbett. I've been mostly GMing for about 45 years.
I guess the majority of that time I have been doing fantasy roleplay like Dungeons and Dragons, with occasional forays into other genres. My first superhero game was the 19, I want to say 70s or 80s Marvel superheroes RPG that TSR put out and that was not a great System bought.
Picked up superhero games as a player off and on. Many years later. A mutual friend of ours, Dave Clarkson, introduced me. I like the mutants and masterminds.
And then of course I got the Marvel Superheroes game that uses the cortex role playing system some 15, 20 years ago. I really liked that one quite a great deal.
So I'm not super, pardon the pun, super experienced as a superhero player GM or superhero gm, but I still enjoy it as an occasional foray. The only power that I think I found annoying or problematic is teleportation, because it's a little bit like the super speedster problem.
I had written down telepathy, by the way, but I had to scratch it. Yeah, the teleporter has a similar problem to the speedster. They can go anywhere, be anywhere. It's.
It's very hard unless you have a very mature and cooperative player. Very hard to pin them down.
Speaker A
00:06:26.660 - 00:07:34.220
Absolutely true. And I'm Eric Jackson and I've been playing since the Pleistocene and I've played a lot of superhero games.
I, I've run one or two in the past, but it hasn't been my main strength. But I do really like to read a lot about superheroes, so I'm hoping that will make up for my lack of tabletop experience.
But the superpower that I encountered both in superhero games and also fantasy role playing games a lot of times I'm not really a big fan of mind control, which is very interesting from a plot sort of idea for, or rather within a novel or a comic line. But player agency always becomes the issue at that point.
And I'm like, even the subtle Jedi, these aren't the droids or can feel really unfair after a while when that happens.
Not to all the way up to John Corbin and I are currently playing in a game where we have a bard who could just tell everybody you do this and they do that level of superpower. The idea that you can just control minds always makes me a little hesitant to put an Xavier kind of character into any sort of game.
They make me nervous.
Speaker D
00:07:34.300 - 00:07:38.060
You mean from a player versus player point of view or.
Speaker A
00:07:38.300 - 00:08:03.840
That's definitely where the biggest problem is. But my other issue is with just the, the morality of here because I'm generally having people play heroes because that's the kind of GM that I am.
It's very difficult for me to rationalize. It's you're a good guy and you're controlling people minds. It sort of violates the moral code of what I think heroes should do.
So I'm kind of less excited about mind control characters.
Speaker D
00:08:03.920 - 00:08:05.640
Okay, I get it. That makes sense.
Speaker A
00:08:05.640 - 00:08:26.540
Okay, now is the time where I get to give a summary of our current book so that folks know what we're talking about.
This is incredibly spoiler and that makes sense because we're going to be breaking down this book into little tiny pieces and doling it out to you so you can use every part of it. So if you haven't read the book, now's a great time to log off, go read the book and come back.
Speaker B
00:08:26.540 - 00:08:27.660
And keep listening to us.
Speaker A
00:08:27.740 - 00:10:20.700
Let's get started on Astro City Life in the Big City. It's a collection of the first six issues of this 1990s revival wonder of superheroes.
There's six short stories that don't require a lot of lore for you to enjoy, and yet with the obvious 1950s nostalgia of the world that never was, but gosh golly would just swell if it had, we could look down on Astro City from on high from Mount Kirby and feel like we recognize Busiak showcases the wonder of superheroes in quiet and crafted stories rather than the blood soaked, hyper realistic types of stories that were common in the 1990s.
We have a powerful hero who berates himself for every second wasted as he longs to fly more for himself, a small time hood who learns a secret identity and can't figure out how to profit from it, a beat reporter who sees the story of the century but doesn't, a young woman who balances her love of her family and the darkly magical part of the city she's from with the bright three color world of downtown Astro City.
An alien is tracking the heroes of Astro City and sends a message out into outer space about what he's learned and two superheroes debate superheroing while on a date. Definitely not your typical stories that you were seeing in the 1990s comics.
All of these stories serve to introduce us to a brand new superhero world full of rich history and archetypes that any lover of superhero comics will enjoy.
Even the artwork from Anderson evokes tradition with Samaritan's toga like a cape to innovations on themes like adding a super cigar chomping grandpa and son to the first family. This is only the first of 100 issues of Astro City, but it already the world feels full and extraordinary. Gentlemen, what did I miss?
Speaker D
00:10:21.340 - 00:11:35.820
I think Busiak says in the introduction that it's purposefully a response to what was when he wrote it a few years earlier. The deconstructionist trend in comics at the time Most notably Watchmen, the Dark Knight Returns.
Basically, I think he says something to the effect of the point of deconstructing something is to learn from it and then possibly put it back together so that it works better than it did before or goes elsewhere. You know, you can do other things with it. The only other thing I would add is while it's about superheroes, it's also not about superheroes.
It's about a world that has superheroes in it and perhaps what living in that world might be like. And if I may, I read comically slowly. So for me to have read a book more than once is the highest honor I can give to it.
And I have read this particular collection probably a half dozen times. And the first story in particular, I absolutely love.
Speaker A
00:11:36.140 - 00:11:39.660
Fantastic Sean. Any other themes or anything I've missed out on?
Speaker C
00:11:39.740 - 00:11:57.140
So it's interesting. I mean, I also enjoy it. They just finished the Metro book collection of the whole series that I've been reading through.
You know, the first story strikes me as Busyk wrote a Superman story and realized he couldn't sell it as a Superman story.
Speaker D
00:11:57.140 - 00:11:58.580
Oh, very much so, yeah.
Speaker C
00:11:58.580 - 00:12:38.290
And it's just been sitting in his drawer trying to figure out where he could use it because it's really the only one where you get the inner monologues.
Well, it's not the only one because Jack in the Box later on spoilers and some others, but it's the only one where you spend a sizable amount of time hearing the inner thoughts of the hero and he's actually moving from fight to fight and crisis to crisis. Crisises are sort of background noise somehow to most of the stories that are going on.
And I recognize that Steeljack later on it features his internal monologues, but he's not a hero. He's a reformed or trying to reform villain.
Speaker D
00:12:38.370 - 00:12:42.570
But that's another story arc that is marvelous. I love it.
Speaker C
00:12:42.570 - 00:12:48.930
Oh, they're all. Well, they're not all great. Most of them are very. All of them are very good. Not all of them are great is the way I would put it.
Speaker A
00:12:48.930 - 00:12:54.850
And you use the magic word, John. Marvelous. It does invoke the Marvel's that graphic novel.
Speaker D
00:12:54.850 - 00:12:58.050
Well, that wasn't intentional, but sure.
Speaker A
00:12:58.450 - 00:13:02.610
John Corbett, anything you want to add to the themes conversation here?
Speaker E
00:13:02.610 - 00:13:26.030
Guys encapsulated it pretty well. I guess. The only other thing I might add is that it tries to move in directions that haven't been gone in with your traditional comics.
Like, yes, it is a deconstruction and kind of a reaction to the blood soaked den 90s if you will. But it's also tried to see it's aspirational as far as the storytelling. It's like, what can we do here?
What are some of the possibilities that we haven't tried with these superhero stories?
Speaker A
00:13:26.190 - 00:13:36.990
For those of you who don't know, John Corbett is the guy I mentioned at the end of every episode who does the artwork for the show. So I'm also interested, how do you feel the artwork played into this particular series?
Speaker E
00:13:37.070 - 00:14:03.970
Oh, it's gorgeous. Anderson is a fantastic choice for this. He has a. That's the. A great command of the line art.
Between that and the layouts, the colors, I think it's a great, great piece. It's not like my favorite. It's not what I reach for usually when I'm looking at a new book.
But I'm also pretty heavily ensconced in the Marvel and DC atmosphere environments. But yeah, I still think this is, this is perfectly great for what they're trying to do.
Speaker D
00:14:04.290 - 00:14:17.490
Oh yeah, Eric, one minor thing you left out was that the covers were all done by Alex Ross. So he. Someone you guys may have heard of, I don't know. He's fairly popular amongst the characters.
Speaker E
00:14:18.530 - 00:14:20.770
You can't much love comics, not love Ross.
Speaker A
00:14:21.330 - 00:14:39.830
So the other thing we're here to do besides to tell people how much we like the comic, how if we wanted to run a game that felt like Astro City, what would be the best system in which we could conceivably run this? And I'm going to start with you, John Corbett. Can you talk to us about what system you think would evoke the. The feeling of Astro City?
Speaker E
00:14:40.140 - 00:15:48.810
All right. I think my choice is a little potentially controversial.
I read this book and I see, much like we touched on earlier, I see that it's not really entirely about the heroes. The heroes and the city and the conflicts going on.
There are kind of background to, or rather they are sort of the thing that happens to the characters. So like in the one chapter, it's the criminal who's got an idea. He's a small time crook, an idea, but then he wants to get out of town.
The other one, this is about the lady who. She's kind of from the darker part of town and then she comes into the bright part of town and all kinds of wild stuff happens around her and to her.
I think a system that supports more human characters, the sort of backup characters would be one that would best evoke this life in the Big City book. How exactly would you do that?
I would Suggest something like again, maybe controversial fiasco where you can take a bunch of cards and put people in situations and you have to get buy in from your players. You tell them, hey, we're going to go do a superhero game. And then you say you're a bus driver or you're this lady.
Speaker D
00:15:49.450 - 00:15:52.090
Yeah, you're not the heroes, but yeah.
Speaker E
00:15:52.090 - 00:16:37.300
Yeah, yeah, you're this lady who goes to work at the bank. So you have to prep your players for that. But I think it could work as a series of vignettes with Astro City as the background.
Similarly, I think something like Dread would work with the Jenga Tower. You would progress towards an endpoint that logically would happen within every game session. These wouldn't be campaigns, in my opinion.
And if you wanted a heroic spin, maybe the players are part of an organization that's heroic or law abiding. The first idea I thought of was maybe you're part of some government organization that catalogs what Astrocity's superheroic phenomenon are.
And that way you're purposely going out and running into these people, these heroes and whatnot.
Speaker A
00:16:37.300 - 00:16:40.460
Like the alien guy in. I think it's issue five.
Speaker D
00:16:40.780 - 00:16:43.660
Yeah. No Reconnaissance, Chapter five. You're right.
Speaker A
00:16:43.660 - 00:16:48.460
Jonathan, would you like to follow up, Jasko, with your choice of mechanics?
Speaker D
00:16:48.540 - 00:16:51.820
Well, if I can speak to John's point for a second.
Speaker B
00:16:51.820 - 00:16:52.180
Sure.
Speaker D
00:16:52.180 - 00:19:22.030
Because I have often considered doing something in a superhero world, but where the players aren't the superheroes. And as you say, you'd need complete buy in or at least you'd have to be careful about how you sold it.
But I was actually thinking something more akin to a completely different series, which is Brian Michael Bendis Powers, where again, superheroes exist in the world and it's about interacting with that world. But the main characters, at least back when I was reading it, are police officers. And I actually think somebody did do a similar sort of game.
I want to say the Gumshoe Rules have a universe called Mutant City Blues or something like that, and or Mutant City Blue, like Police Blue, though I haven't personally investigated that.
If I were going to do it and somehow do it from a superhero perspective, I would probably just because of the range of powers presented in the six issues that we're looking at, I would probably pick a system that was a little crunchy, so probably something like Mutants and Masterminds, which I believe is currently in its third edition, but I believe I mostly played the second edition myself. And I believe Steve Kenson just confirmed that they're doing a fourth edition.
The Other day, the superhero game I ran, that I referred to a couple times, we actually did. And this is. What'd you say, Eric? The Pleistocene. This is really old. But we used a heavily modified version of the villains in Vigilante Woo.
And there was a lot of math involved but. But that was mostly in. In the creation part of the characters. In the way that it inspired my game.
It was what are the superheroes doing when they're not involved in a big fight?
Whether you want to call that downtime or real life or they have jobs, they have relationships, they have friendships, you know, the eating, sleeping, making a living, that dating, romance, whatever. All of those things to me within the comic book world, within the world of the superhero.
I would just say I was able to mine that for a lot of very interesting story possibilities.
Speaker A
00:19:22.430 - 00:19:24.590
Sean, you want to follow that up somewhat?
Speaker C
00:19:24.590 - 00:20:16.290
Depends on what game you want to be playing here. I mean, if they're playing ordinary people and they're finding out about the supers, maybe that's a kids on bike variation.
If it's sometimes they're ordinary people, sometimes they're not, maybe you're looking at a system like GURPS or Savage World that lets you do a little bit of each. I probably would pick Prowlers and Paragons because it has pretty good tier system. And so it would be the same system no matter what you're playing.
You just tear down the ordinary people, make them pretty good at something like the woman in the story who's, you know, knows about magical, this sort of thing. Or the burglar who finds something out, you know, maybe he's got some burglary skills to sort of bring it together. But I think you.
And this sort of goes to John's comment about Fiasco.
Speaker E
00:20:16.290 - 00:20:16.390
You can.
Speaker C
00:20:16.460 - 00:20:23.980
You kind of need to have a really good session. 0 everybody nods their heads and agrees on the types of stories you want to be telling together.
Speaker A
00:20:24.380 - 00:22:09.610
Deeply important to make sure everybody agrees what kind of game you're going to be playing. Along the same lines of what we've been talking about here. I was looking at Worlds in Peril. It has a powered by the Apocalypse game engine.
So I think it's a good match for Astro City. You get both an origin playbook and a drive playbook, which is actually more of like an archetype playbook.
So you can get both of those really classic feels of the characters that you're going to be dealing with.
And in addition, the game really does focus on those relationships with players and NPC with a system of bonds that help shape the game in a mechanical way. If you fail a role, you can burn one of your bonds. And as a hero for the city, you could. You have a bond with the city.
And maybe if you burn the bond, there's a lot of. There can be a lot of property damage. Might only be one type of fallout.
You could also have bonds with other heroes, and that could lead to the superhero group having tension. Or you could have a bond that results in creating your future nemesis.
The bonds become this personal focus of what can force a superhero game, which very often can become a smash and blast game, into something more appropriate to Astro City style kind of game, which was why I picked it. I'm dying to try it now. I'm like, this sounds great. I've watched a couple plays of it and I'm excited by it. So I think it would be.
I think it really would be cool.
But along the lines of finding cool stuff, we're going to move on to our portable section, which is where you guys can tell me all the cool things that you might steal for your own games, whether it be super or not. We'll reverse order and we'll start with Sean.
Speaker C
00:22:09.850 - 00:22:57.830
I mean, I really liked Shadow Hill, which is the haunted part of the city. I liked that there were rules that you understood in how to operate there.
I like the fact that the heroes there were a certain type of hero like the Hanged man, the Confessor. When we get there, he'll also be somebody who might hang out in that part of the city.
And I liked that notion of this part of the city is different than the rest of the city. And I've actually started a City of Mist game.
It's got me thinking about how having sort of unique areas causes players who have picked powers or attributes that sort of fit in that area to get a moment to shine in a way they might not in the bright and sunny rest of Astro City or a similar type environment.
Speaker A
00:22:58.230 - 00:23:06.310
Absolutely looking forward to seeing how you handle that since I'm in that game. Continuing to reverse Jonathan, what items do you think you'd like to swipe out.
Speaker B
00:23:06.310 - 00:23:11.450
Of Astro City and pop into one of your campaigns? Although you said you had already done something like that.
Speaker D
00:23:11.690 - 00:24:57.170
We talked about how Samaritan is possibly the most obvious archetype or replacement for Superman.
And no disagreement here, but in discussing Superman before or reading about him, I've seen a lot of different creators say, well, it's really Superman. That's the important part. To emphasize the Clark Kentness of it. If you Will. And yeah, that brings me back to what I was saying.
I found that sometimes a superhero had to do one of the players had to do in their secret identity.
The romance with the guy across the hall or something like that provided just as much drama and, or entertainment and, or comedy at times as a super villain robbing the museum again. So that sort of, I don't know what you'd call it, everydayness, down to earth, the ordinary little slices of life. How about that?
I think that again can be mined for all sorts of entertaining little vignettes. Other than that, I would just say the comprehensive.
I think Sean made reference to the well thought out city itself, but just the comprehensive history of the world that we don't get a ton of it in these first six issues.
But I think there reader is left with the notion that it's there that, you know, they reference things in a way that it's like I don't know what they're talking about, but I kind of want to just some of the allusions that are made to the silver agent and some other things. It's like, oh, there's obviously more stories here and I for one am curious as to what they are.
Speaker B
00:24:57.570 - 00:25:11.270
And that's the real goal of every game master, right? To give out information about your world and have the players feel like, oh, I'd like to know more about that.
John, do you want to tell us about the stuff that you would find portable from Astro City?
Speaker E
00:25:11.270 - 00:26:11.300
If I were going to utilize something, I would probably mine the. I think this is the second third chapter, the scoop.
The sort of generational nature of the heroes running around Astro City, when he goes down into that subway and he ends up encountering from the past.
I mean the story itself is somewhat in the past, but then when you sort of flash forward to the future part of the story, some of the same heroes are still running around. And it got me thinking about, well, I wonder, like, how would the world.
I would like to run a story about how the world or the players handle an aging superhero, somebody who's coming to the end of their life. Are they going to get like a nice happy retirement? Do they go do something outlandish like retire to Mars, you have a celebration on the moon.
Or is it horrific, like maybe they all experience some sort of apocalyptic or nuclear ending or they all go crazy or something and it's something you dread. It just seems like it would be a really interesting thing, like what happens as the superheroes age.
I think that would be an interesting thing to explore.
Speaker A
00:26:11.780 - 00:26:15.460
John, when we get to the media, I have a great suggestion for you.
Speaker E
00:26:15.540 - 00:26:16.500
All right, all right.
Speaker A
00:26:16.580 - 00:26:28.500
For me the takeaway was the 1950s that never was that I'm currently longing for a utopic world where journalists tell the truth, superheroes debate morality supreme.
Speaker B
00:26:28.500 - 00:26:32.740
The most powerful superhero spends all of his time trying to figure out how he can help people.
Speaker A
00:26:32.980 - 00:27:00.000
That seems like the best of all possible worlds. I would love to engender that kind of feeling in a superhero game that I would run.
I think that I maybe not even not necessarily the nostalgia of the 1950s, that utopic kind of feeling that I think all of Astro City radiates as it tells its stories, even in the little tiny slices of life because it seems like everyone has hope. And gosh, golly gee, I do like me some hope.
Speaker D
00:27:00.080 - 00:27:03.120
Okay. Sort of a Silver Age feel.
Speaker A
00:27:03.520 - 00:27:06.880
I will take your word for it as a non scholar of comics.
Speaker C
00:27:07.200 - 00:27:33.620
Yeah, so Silver Age is generally the 60s or so before Conan. In the 1972, 73 things started getting a little bit more gritty.
You see Neil Adams and Denny o' Neil taking over Batman and moving it away from the campiness into more of the Dark Knight detective sort.
Slowly the Silver Age when you have happy Flash and happy, you know, Green Lanterns running around and they're all in the big clubhouse together and yeah, what.
Speaker A
00:27:33.620 - 00:27:36.380
Can I say that I'm a sucker for that kind of superhero.
Speaker D
00:27:36.380 - 00:28:22.940
Yeah, I know. One of the games systems, I want to say it was Silver Age Sentinels. Yep, that's right.
Basically their marketing thing was sort of a Silver Age sensibility with a, a modern overlay. So in other words it, it's supposed to be bright and optimistic and well I guess hopeful. But I think it's hard for people to go back.
Those of us that know what happened. It's hard to go back back to pre Watergate or even recapture that JFK, Camelot. Yeah, I know you've said 50s several times, but technically it's 1959.
And I think what they're trying to evoke is the hope of the. The turn of the decade into the 60s.
Speaker B
00:28:23.500 - 00:28:25.340
Anyone have more portables or comments?
Speaker C
00:28:25.500 - 00:28:53.540
I do want to follow up on what John said about the history. He, he does throw out things that don't happen until later year one of the stories and ironically enough an arc called the Silver Age.
But he's also not afraid to have things happen now like I can't recall and maybe Jonathan, you remember. I don't think they ever resolve the alien hitting that alarm and telling his fellows to come and invade Earth.
Like, I don't think we ever see that happen.
Speaker E
00:28:53.700 - 00:28:54.580
Wondering about that.
Speaker D
00:28:54.580 - 00:29:44.520
I will admit, when I was doing a little research today, number one, the first thing that struck me, I'm like, wow, this thing's been running for 27 years, huh? How is that? Oh yeah, I guess it is.
And the second thing was they sort of touched on different things and I, I must admit I don't remember the name of the alien race that the protagonist of the chapter five story is, but it did make a reference to the fact that those aliens did eventually invade Astro City. Now if they did, I don't remember reading that story.
But I will also say I have a bunch of comics upstairs that I have not read yet because again, I read very slowly.
Speaker C
00:29:44.520 - 00:30:10.120
Again, I don't know if he did or didn't do it, but he certainly didn't do it immediately. And I think that's one of the interesting things when you have a creator owned comic doing superheroes.
Because in a DC or Marvel universe, there would be an editor going, hey, when are you going to resolve the storyline? And there'd be letters saying, hey, when are you going to solve this?
Well, partially because this run got, it was only six issues and then they restarted it again.
Speaker D
00:30:10.200 - 00:31:16.920
I was going to say if one of the things, apparently in the 27 years that Oscar City has been published, one of the recurring themes, and I don't know if we ever said that Kurt Busiak's day job is writing for Marvel and dc. This, this was a passion project for him.
The publication schedule, there have been all sorts of hiccups and hang ups over those 27 years in terms of, I think it was briefly monthly or bimonthly, but yeah, then it's usually like, oh, is he doing it again? You know, and in fairness, the man has had frankly some weird health issues. Mercury poisoning. Who gets that anymore?
But you're right, that's another fun thing to maybe be able to do or steal. I know that in the game that I ran, I planted seeds for things that took four or five years to bear fruit.
But when it did and, and everyone realized that, oh wait, you mean that guy, that time with the thing? It's, it's worth it sometimes.
Speaker A
00:31:16.920 - 00:31:28.910
Let's take this out of Roleplay and into inspiration. Let's talk about media that folks could get similar inspiration from. Since I already told John Corbett I.
Speaker B
00:31:28.910 - 00:31:33.470
Was going to give him a recommendation, I'll start this off not with a graphic novel, but a regular novel.
Speaker A
00:31:33.470 - 00:32:38.570
In fact, everything I'm going to talk about are novels which makes me the odd man out I bet. And if not, I do like reading about superheroes. The first one is called Heroin Addiction by Jennifer Matarise.
There is a character named Vera Noble and she's living away from the big city, serving coffee in a diner, trying to live the normal life and she gets pulled back into the superhero world through some family drama. But it spends a lot of time on personal and I think it relates very well to what happens in Astro City.
Similarly, from a YA perspective, not your Sidekick by CB Lee is a Superheroes are very common.
Jessica Tran is from a of lot online of supers but she doesn't have her powers so she she goes she gets a internship to beef up her college application. But wouldn't you know it, it turns out that one of the super villains is in charge of the corporation and from there things happen.
So that one is pretty this is what it's like to live in a superhero world. And finally the one I wanted to.
Speaker B
00:32:38.570 - 00:32:46.670
Recommend to you John, is the Velveteen versus series by Seanan McGuire. The first book is Velveteen versus the Junior Super Patri.
Speaker A
00:32:47.300 - 00:33:48.610
Seanan McGuire has a character named Velveteen who can animate stuffed animals and she is teamed up with other teen heroes like Action dude and Sparklebright who are really fantastic archetypes.
The whole story is a bit more cynical and snarky than Astro City, but it does have the truth and justice of what it means to be a superhero in it and it does actually deal with the original three superheroes who start the whole superhero sort of generation.
And they all are in the background for the first two books and in the third book which is Velveteen versus the Multiverse, they eventually resolve what happened to those main superheroes they are there and what happens to them after they sort of peak and leave becomes very interesting. Why don't you pick it up from there John, and tell him us sort of media you think would be similar.
Speaker E
00:33:48.610 - 00:35:10.800
To Astro City in sort of in line with the systems that I'd recommended.
I was thinking that there's a Hawkeye series by Matt Fraction and David Aja that encompasses some of the everyday problems that you could end up dealing with if you were living in a city full of superheroes.
I guess not that much dealing on the superheroes, but it's just just kind of hilarious and it's a character who doesn't have any powers running around and he's trying to take care of his business and he's just super bad at it. And I I found that incredibly entertaining. So that's one thing I might recommend. And then if you wanted to take it up a notch, love the Expanse.
I haven't read the books, but I know the TV series.
I love how the characters on that show are thrust into very difficult situations and they have to make extremely hard decisions in deep space where small mistake can be fatal. So that's another one I like to recommend. When people are thinking about making a game, bit of a. What kind of challenges to put together for players.
And lastly, if you're doing vignettes like I suggested, love Death and Robots. That animated series on Netflix is pretty great for setting like it gets sets up the world.
It gives you the main characters and tells you the conflict, all in the span of just a few minutes, and then you're off with the entertainment. So I think that could also be really inspirational for a Astro City game.
Speaker A
00:35:11.120 - 00:35:14.680
Sean, do you want to pick it up from there? What sort of media would you recommend?
Speaker C
00:35:14.680 - 00:36:20.550
I think Kurt Biezik is a good comic book writer. He's right there with Mark Waid. In terms of people that can tell a good story, we won't go wrong with Marvel's.
Certainly we already referenced that as part of this secret identity, which is Superman. But he doesn't. He's not flashy like Superman.
He's sort of hiding, you know, if you really like the Silver Age Untold Tales of Spider man is definitely in that sort of genre. Sort of has that happy feel to things in terms of other media. I would. This reminds me a lot of Wild Cards, the. The book series.
First of all, it's also in a series of stories. Wild Cards deals with both superheroes and non superheroes. And there is. Particularly in the earlier versions and many things.
Towards the end, it gets a little bit. Seems like they're sort of looking to try to find something to talk about.
But certainly in the beginning part, I thought Wild Cards had an excellent way of sort of bringing together new concepts for superheroes and how they interact with each other and with their environments and.
Speaker D
00:36:20.630 - 00:36:22.230
Who wrote Wild Cards?
Speaker C
00:36:22.790 - 00:36:24.150
You mean who edited it?
Speaker D
00:36:24.710 - 00:36:25.830
Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker A
00:36:26.950 - 00:36:28.790
The big George RR himself.
Speaker C
00:36:30.130 - 00:36:31.090
Yeah, Martin there.
Speaker D
00:36:31.410 - 00:36:34.010
Oh, I've heard of him. I think he did something else.
Speaker C
00:36:34.010 - 00:36:37.090
Well, sort of. He's most of the way there, but yeah, sure.
Speaker A
00:36:38.130 - 00:36:42.450
Okay. Jonathan, would you bring us home on the inspiration train here?
Speaker D
00:36:42.450 - 00:38:39.370
I will try. Basically, I was gonna say Kingdom Come because it is in. In one sense very different from Aster City.
In another sense, it's very archetypical and was also one of the things that inspired my game that time. But if I can sort of squeeze around the limitation, anything really by Mark Waid is probably good. Irredeemable, incorruptible.
He had an excellent run on the Fantastic Four back in the 2000s. I know the first trade is called Imaginoth.
Switching gears, here's a fresh take on what I suppose some people would argue is infinitely retread material. I very much enjoyed the Animated series My Adventures With Superman. I believe it's available on HBO Max.
I think that's what they're calling their service again this week. Anything by Gail Simone is also generally pretty good. Any of her superhero stuff, I mean, is really quite good. Good.
And if I can squeeze in one more honorable mention, there's a Canadian writer that is taking the position. What if the Bronze Age of comicdom had four regular publishers? DC Marvel, and this company, Standard Comics.
It's a Kickstarter thing that I supported, but if you go to the website, I think it's Standard comics dot com. He uses a combination of original characters and ones that have fallen into the public domain to tell some entertaining stories.
Oh, and I'm sorry, one more thing on systems, even though we covered it earlier, honorable mention for icons. If nobody has said it, that's our inspiration.
Speaker A
00:38:39.370 - 00:38:51.420
Thank you gentlemen.
We're going to close out our episode tonight and and I'm going to ask you guys to talk about if any promotions, anybody or anything that our audience should know about. Why don't we start with you, Sean?
Speaker C
00:38:52.220 - 00:39:06.300
No, I don't have anything other than based on the publishing schedule for this, I think in October I certainly will be at Carnage and a gaming convention in Vermont. And yeah, hopefully others may as well.
Speaker A
00:39:06.460 - 00:39:08.780
Jonathan, anything to promote?
Speaker D
00:39:09.020 - 00:39:27.550
At the risk of sounding totally self centered, I'm trying to do more voiceover work.
I don't have a website right now, but if you want to hear my demos, you can send an email to the voice of jonathan mail.com and otherwise just support your local animal shelter. They do good work, people.
Speaker A
00:39:28.110 - 00:39:28.830
Excellent.
Speaker E
00:39:29.710 - 00:39:37.950
John, I would not mind giving a shout out to the Tradecraft podcast. It's not a competitor, don't worry. This is a podcast.
Speaker A
00:39:38.110 - 00:39:43.430
We have no competitors here. There's only. All podcasts are amazing. It's fine.
Speaker E
00:39:43.910 - 00:40:19.320
Okay. So yeah, this is the only one. Okay, good. Tradecraft is run by a good friend of mine, J. Alex Morrissey.
He's a writer, illustrator, designer, working since the 90s. Really talented guy. And on his podcast he talks to creators, particularly in the comic book field. Because that's where he got to start.
They do interviews and they talk about all kinds of creative subjects. Yeah, he's got everybody from Kelly, Sue Deconach, he's got Billy Hines, Kevin Cuff, Russ Braun, all these great, great, great folks.
And there's just, you know, hours of stuff you can listen to. Recommend checking them out@jalexmarcy.com all right, fantastic.
Speaker A
00:40:19.400 - 00:41:01.940
Continuing in the local theme, I will say hi to my friends down at Command D. They're a great comic. Local comic book shop here in Massachusetts.
And on a slightly wider note, I will tell folks, if you, you want to help out your comic book artist people, there's a great website called the heroinitiative.org which is a great place.
Basically its mission for aging comic artists who maybe not been the most successful and are now trying, are now trying to survive the medical situation and, or the retirement. And this is a great way if you have artists who you like in their, in their hour of need and be a hero. Look at the hero initiative.
Speaker D
00:41:01.940 - 00:41:05.620
I would say creators as opposed to artists because they.
Speaker A
00:41:05.620 - 00:41:06.540
Point. Point taken.
Speaker D
00:41:06.860 - 00:41:18.860
But a lot of writers, but yeah, they are great. Actually. They always bring a bunch of guests to Baltimore Comic Con every year, which is another thing that coming up in the fall. Yeah.
Speaker A
00:41:18.860 - 00:41:20.940
Which is when this will, this episode will drop.
Speaker E
00:41:21.260 - 00:41:21.660
So.
Speaker D
00:41:22.380 - 00:41:22.900
Excellent.
Speaker A
00:41:22.900 - 00:41:26.300
All right, awesome. Anything else before we wrap up?
Speaker E
00:41:26.380 - 00:41:41.480
Yeah, I want to think about hope and Astro City City. I think Astro City must be full of hope because why would a bunch of criminals do any crimes in a city where somebody like Samaritan lived?
It's a Metropolis problem. That's my closing statement.
Speaker D
00:41:42.120 - 00:41:53.880
Fair point, fair point. Well, it's kind of like New York City in the Marvel Universe. Like there's how many heroes that call it home. Yeah. Crazy.
Speaker A
00:41:53.880 - 00:41:55.480
Always trying to live that dream.
Speaker B
00:41:57.520 - 00:43:26.090
Excelsior. That's our discussion of Kurt Busiek's Astro Life in the Big City, the first of many amazing graphic novels in the Astro City lineup.
Super thanks to John Corbett, Sean Murphy and Jonathan Mazur for their comic lore and unsurpassed game Mastering Knowledge. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Be sure to listen in when they return to discuss the the Complete Adventures by Dave Stevenson.
You've been listening to listening to the Game Masters Book Club brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions. You can find a complete transcript of today's discussion as well as links to all of our podcasts@k-square productions.com GMBC.
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If you've enjoyed the show, please like subscribe and comment on our episodes in your chosen podcasting space and be sure to share those episodes with your gaming community. Thank you so much for listening. Continued praise and thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Be sure to check out our next episode with game masters Karen Form, Jason Keighley and Rob Chimarco return to discuss All Systems, the first novella in the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. Later, gamers and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.