Common Grounds is a fine mix of comedy and pathos

 I stumbled upon Common Grounds by Troy Hickman over twenty years after it came out. A six-issue limited series, it is either obscure or I’m just an uncultured cad for having never heard of it.

But Common Grounds is worth discovering.

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The titular Common Grounds is a chain of doughnut shops that serve as a neutral ground for superheroes and supervillains, where they can meet and talk without violence. It’s an anthology, tiny slices of life, but forming an overall arc that we only see by the end.

More than anything else, Common Grounds reads like a love letter to Astro City. And, coming from me, that is a huge compliment. Superheroes as people is hardly new. That was the point of the Fantastic Four and an idea that Spider-Man elevated to darn near perfection. But Common Grounds does it really well. 

Like Astro City, Common Grounds is a world of original characters that are built off of archetypes to the degree that you intuitively understand who they are. And you can picture the characters being able to hold down their own series.

While the core concept lends itself to comedy, and there is comedy to be sure, there is also drama and even tragedy. Sometimes in the same story. A reunion of goofy giant monsters from the 1950s has a total mood shift when they hear about a child’s death from domestic violence. ‘Who is the real monster?’ works when it’s done well. 

And I don’t think that’s one of the stronger stories.

 

Little details and callbacks add up as the stories go on, culminating in the origin of the Common Grounds itself, rooted in tragedy and hope.

I wonder what an ongoing Common Grounds series could have been like. There was the potential for so many more stories. However, getting even these six issues and their cohesive vision is a delight. 

My November Gaming

 My gaming in November pretty much revolved around play testing. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have a lot of time for gaming in November. So getting a chance to do some play testing ended up being a way of making that time count.

I learned:

Paper Pinball - Miasma 

The Daily Weather (play test)

Wilderness 

Astro Rove (play test)

Jarl (play test)

Beyond the games that I played tested, I learned a couple of fairly simple Roll and Writes. One of them was part of the Paper Pinball series, which I have decided to finish my way working through so that I can just play whatever ones I want without any sense of an agenda.

While I don’t feel comfortable really discussing unpublished games, I will say at I think The Daily Weather and Jarl represent opposite ends of Button Shy’s spectrum while both being really good expressions of those extremes. I hope they do well when they get published.

I don’t always have the time or the concentration for Button Shy’s play testing forum. However I do appreciate the experience. And some months, it helps add structure to my limited gaming time.

My November PnP

 November ended up involving more PnP crafting than I had expected. That was entirely due to Button Shy’s playtest forum.

I made:

Twin Stars Season One

The Daily Weather (play test)

Music City

Dice Fishing D6

Roll on the Range

Koy

Pinball Builder + Expansion

Astro ROVE (play test)

Jarl (play test)

Reawaken (play test) 

Originally, the only project I had planned was the first set of Twin Stars cards. All I remember from my earlier tries at the system was finding it frustrating but I want to see how it feels with some years of solitaire gaming under my belt. 

I ended up making some other ‘big’ projects. I have high hopes for Roll on the Range and Koy but the rules of Pinball Builder feel like the designer is making a lot of assumptions about what the reader will understand.

I’m hoping to get to all of those games but it was the play testing that was my focus for November and the real focus of my crafting. And that’s been fun.

For Thanksgiving

 When I look back at the last several years, I realize that the two groups that I have consistently stayed in touch with has been family and gamers.

Now, I have had many friend circles over the years. And it’s not like I have fallen out of touch with the non-gaming circles or alienated any of them. (Or, if I have, they haven’t told me) However, it is the gamers who I hear from in a weekly or even daily basis. 

Many of these folks are people who I met back in the 90s. And we have all been through so many life experiences and changes during that time and been there for each other, despite vast geographic distances.

I am thankful for them.

Thor:Metal Gods isn’t brilliant but it is fun

 While I have become a big fan of cape punk, I’ve found, as a rule, books based on existing superhero IPs are generally pretty weak. In other words, books based on Marvel or DC haven’t clicked for me. 

Thor: Metal Gods by Aaron Stewart-Ahn, Jay Edison, Brian Keene and Yoon Ha Lee has proven to be an exception to that rule.

My understanding is that it started out as an audio book, which might be part of why it works. (I’m also pretty sure the four authors rotated writing chapters) My theory is that different media require approaches and DC and Marvel heroes come with so much baggage. The MCU worked by ditching the baggage and being self-contained.

Anyway, that’s a never-ending topic. Back to the actual book in question.

Metal Gods is a cosmic epic where Thor and Loki have to deal with an eldritch abomination that both of their poor choices have helped get a tentacle in the door to get released. I particularly like that Loki’s involvement was slumming in a rock band in the 80s because he was bored, as opposed to an evil scheme to conquer the nine realms.

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There are two closely linked things that Metal Gods does that makes it work. First of all, it creates it own continuity. Tons of references to Marvel’s cosmic setting and alien races but still its own thing. The interpretation of Thor is a mix of the cinematic and comic book version, more cinematic, but its own thing. The second thing is does is that authors make that continuity good.

If you spent your childhood reading lots of Marvel comics like I did, there’s lot of Easter eggs for you to find. However, if you just kind of  know Thor is a superhero, you’re good to go. Metal Gods isn’t high art but it is a lot of fun.

Phonogram ends on a treatise about growing up

 Earlier this year, I read the first two of the three volumes of Phonogram by Kieron Gillen, a comic book about music and magic. I finally got the third volume and finished reading the series. 

Upfront, the series absolutely peaked at the second volume, The Singles Club. But the Singles Club is a high water mark, one of those comic books you use to convince non-comic book readers to read a comic book and to prove that comic books are real literature. However, The Immaterial Girl was still a strong finish.

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Phonogram is set in a world exactly like ours, except some people are able to use music to perform magic. How much is it like our world? All of the literally hundreds of musical references are for real acts. Fortunately, there is also a detailed and snarky  appendix at the end of each volume, explaining all the references. That said. I honestly think the actual stories are clear and easy to follow, even if you don't know who 75% of the artists are.

The magic phonomancers use is much less flying and fireballs and much more about redefining yourself and influencing other people. Really, its really just describing how so many of us use music couched in magical terms. Heck, the Singles Club could be revised to remove all the phonomancy elements and still be just as strong.

The third volume focuses on reoccurring character Emily/Claire. She used phonomancy to basically split her personality in half, exiling the one half to a world of music videos. The conflict in the story is the banished half fighting back and  how the two halves ultimately reconcile.

 

And it's good plot. Like the first volume, it has some definite influences from Garthg Ennis's first run on Hellblazer but that is not a bad thing at all. But that's not what I took away from the Immaterial Girl.

Virtually every phonomancer is an arrogant, self-centered poser. More than that, that seems to be pretty much a requirement.  (The one exception is Kid-With-Knife, who is, at best, a phonomancer by association and who we only see use magic once. Honestly, I think the point of the character is that he's comfortable with who he is and doesn't have any need for phonomancy) The Immaterial Girl is about the passing of an era, the cyclic nature of social behavior and just plain growing up.

Gillen uses the death of Michael Jackson as a powerful end of an era moment. A point where the older characters realize that its time to start acting like a grownup. And when the younger characters start taking over and look to be doing the same darn thing. The moral of The immaterial Girl is kind of obvious, growing up is rough but it sure beats remaining an immature brat, but its still true and it does a good job telling it.

Now that I have seen Phonomancer as a whole piece, its good all the way through.

Good bye, my beautiful black cat

Yesterday, as of the posting of this, we said good bye to our cat Cleo.

She was eighteen years old and spent sixteen of those years with our family. She was solid black, including her whiskers and nose leather, with bright green eyes. Over the years, she ranged between fourteen to eighteen pounds. She was a big girl with a big personality to match.

She jumped into my wife’s lap at the Treehouse cat shelter in Chicago. Cleo knew she belonged with her. We weren’t dating at the time but I helped her bring Cleo home from Treehouse and that was the start of a long, wonderful journey.

Cleo lived with us in Illinois and Arizona and Florida. She played and argued and cuddled with two kitty sisters who she outlived. She demanded love but she gave so much love back.

Near the end, she had a number of geriatric issues, including severe arthritis that limited her mobility but not her spirit or voice. In the end, none of them were enough to stop her and she passed away from an unrelated stroke.

I have so many memories of Cleo. She was a part of our lives before our marriage and our son. She was our sassy, beautiful Chicago alley cat.