Tag Archives: Geek Culture

The Ultimate Crossover: The Wold Newton Family

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 MythsAs long as there has been fiction one of the favorite tropes has been the crossover, characters from one set of stories meeting characters from another. Sherlock Holmes matching wits with Count Dracula, Allen Quartermain and Captain Nemo teaming up to repel an invasion from Mars, Rick and A.J. Simon teaming up with Thomas Magnum to take down a con artist. There is a desire to see interaction between these characters. And it is not just the realm of fan fiction that these happen. The examples I used above were from various published or produced works.

But there is one person who took the crossover idea to a new level, Philip Jose Farmer. In 1972 Farmer wrote Tarzan Alive. This novel was a biography written as if Tarzan had been a real person. This alone made it an interesting book as Farmer attempted to reconcile several of the inconsistencies in the Tarzan novels, such as claiming the apes that raised him were not actually apes but something closer to an African species of Sasquatch.  Towards the end of the book and in his follow up the next year Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life Farmer formed the basis of what would come to be known as the Wold Newton Family. This concept would be an attempt to tie Victorian and Pulp era heroes together in one great shared universe.

The concept takes its name from a real world event. On December 13th 1795 a meteorite fall just a few miles away from the small Hamlet of Wold Newton in Yorkshire, England. It was the first intact meteorite to be found in England and of great scientific interest.

What Farmer did was to take this event and use it as a jumping off point. According to Farmer when the meteorite struck two coaches were nearby carrying a group going on holiday at a county estate.  Due to some unknown effect of the meteorite’s landing the people in the coaches had their DNA altered leading to their descendants being extraordinary individuals.

Amongst the passengers were the following:

John Clayton, the third Duke of Greystoke, and his wife, Alicia
Sir Percy Blakeney, (the Scarlet Pimpernel), and his second wife, Alice Clarke Raffles
Dr. Siger Holmes and his wife, Violet Clarke Raffles
Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife, Elizabeth Bennett
Sir Hugh Drummond, and his wife, Georgia Dewhurst
George Edward Rutherford, and his wife, Elizabeth Cavendish
Honore Delagardie and his wife, Philippa
Sebastion Noel, a medical student of Dr. Holmes
The coachmen were Louis Lupin, Albert Lecoq, Arthur Blake and Simon MacNichols

You may have notice some familiar sounding names in there.  The idea from here is that the descendants of these individuals would be great heroes and villains.

An example is the family of John Clayton. Clearly he is the grandfather of Tarzan, but as it turns out Doc Savage, James Bond and even Fu Manchu can claim him as an ancestor.

Sebastion Noel’s family line includes Professor James Moriarty (who for a time went by the alias Captain Nemo), Dr. No, and Lex Luthor.

Sir Percy’s family includes the Shadow. Sir Hugh’s family has Bulldog Drummond, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Captain America.

I could go on but why don’t you go here and here to look at the vast family trees involved.

Here is a good time to point out that Farmer may have started this, but others have picked it up. It has become a literary game. People will go in and try to find connections to bring new characters into the Wold Newton family. Originally it was just Victorian and Pulp era characters but it has expanded to include modern characters from novels, TV, movies, video games and comics.

Example:  Indiana Jones is a Holmes as is his nephew, Daniel Jackson of Stargate SG-1. In what should surprise no one Lara Croft was one of his students.

Additions have been made that incorporate Star Trek, Lovecraft’s Mythos and Doctor Who.

And the monsters, oh the monsters.

The amount of detail some people have gone to in order to include the Universal Monsters is truly amazing.

There are chronicles for the families of Frankenstein, Dracula and Dr. Jekyll.

Conceits are created to explain different versions of the characters. For Dracula the idea is introduced that he could turn a person and then imprint his mind on theirs (a process he called soul cloning). Since the process was not exact it could explain differences in how the character acts in different stories.

For Frankenstein you have the idea of the family having an obsession that carries from generation to generation.

And then there are the attempts to tie things together. Let’s look at the story of the creature created by Frankenstein’s Great-Grandson Frederick Frankenstein, which you will all know from the movie Young Frankenstein. According to Wold Newton Elizabeth, the fiancé of Fredrick who fell in love with creature was in reality named Lilith and was the daughter of one of Dracula’s soul clones. When Van Helsing’s organization the League of Anti-Diabolists learned of their attempt to lead a peaceful life they stepped in to help, hoping to see if monsters could be rehabilitated. They were moved to America along with Lilith’s father and given guardian ship of a young orphan named Edmond who was infected with lycanthropy.  A league member Marilyn Krough was placed with them to observe their attempts at domestication. The creature adopted the name Herman. Thus they became the Munsters.

Try to tell me that is not a cool concept.

One more I really like.

Henry Jekyll’s formula did not work with way he thought it did. All it did was trigger his latent Therianthropy. This is a trait he would pass down to his offspring, many fathered as Mr Hyde. His decedents would include Bruce Banner and Ben Grimm.

I’m sure many of you have noticed similarities to both Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series. Both authors have stated that the Wold Newton Family was an influence.

And all this just scratches the surface. You can spend hours going over all the details people have added to this particular academic exercise. Go here for the best web site resource I know of. Also check out the book Myths of the Modern Age which is a collection of articles edited by Win Scott Eckert.

Now all we need to do is figure out which family tree Gibbs from NCIS belongs in.

 

The Power of the Geek

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“Age of the Geek, baby.”

This is the catch phrase of Alec  Hardison on the TV show Leverage. Hardison is a hacker and self-professed fanboy. His catch phrase is an assertion that the future belongs to geek kind as we have the skills that will prevail in the 21st century.

I of course agree and will take it a few steps further.
There is an underlying power in geek culture that is both awesome and terrifying.
Don’t believe me, well let’s take a look top ten box office movies of all time according to IMDB
1.       Avatar
2.       Titanic
3.       The Dark Knight
4.       Star Wars
5.       Shrek 2
6.       E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
7.       Star Wars: Episode I- The Phantom Menace
8.        Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
9.       Toy Story 3
10.   Spider-Man
Of those I would only exclude Titanic as a geek movie, and I know people who would argue with me on that. And as you continue on the list you have to get down into the hundreds before geek film dominance relents.
Want more proof?
10 years ago FOX broadcasted a short lived TV Series called Firefly. To this day fans hold out hope that it will come back. Enough hope that Firefly merchandise still sells. It’s an example of the idea that once you have the backing of the geek community you have it forever. Firefly star Nathan Fillion acknowledges and embraces these fans and they helped make his new show Castle an initial hit and gave it time to find a broader audience.
And of course there is that other failed TV show. You know the one with the spaceship and the Vulcan. What ever happened to that?
The geek vote can be a powerful thing and its good will can bring great success.
And of course there is the dark side to it.
How could a bunch of geeks cause harm? Let’s ask Paul Chrisoforo about that.
Mr. Chrisoforo runs a company called Ocean Marketing a social media marketing firm that also had an account to distribute a specialty game controller. A man who bought the product for Christmas hadn’t received it and contacted Ocean Marketing to find out why. To say the response he got was rude would be an understatement. You can read the entire exchange here. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Back yet?
As I’m sure you saw, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade got involved.  That led to the Penny Arcade community getting involved. And that led to the geek community as a whole getting involved.
So it went from Chrisoforo telling Krahulik on Monday night to expect a call from his lawyer to Chrisoforo begging Krahulik on Tuesday morning to make it stop. The internet basically rose up as one and attacked.
Is this an isolated incident? On this scale maybe, but ask anyone taken down by Anonymous or Lulsec if geeks are easily dismissed. 
Just this last week we saw another example when the online protest of SOPA and PIPA took these bills from looking like a sure thing to pass to being on life-support.
The moral of the story?
“Age of the Geek, baby.”

My Fanboy New Year’s Resolutions.

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I took time off from writing the blog for the holidays. This was needed as it was a crazy time for me and I needed the time.
However I did take time to reflect on where I want to go with this blog in the New Year. Let’s take a moment to look at my Fanboy News Network resolutions for the 2012.
First off my wife and I are rearranging our house. She is dedicated to make her home craft business Twisted Kitten Creations a success and I want to start making video entries. To facilitate this we are rearranging the house to give us more room for our creative activates. This will give her more room for making her products and give me a space to use as a recording studio.
This leads straight to my next resolution. Start making videos for the site. I have a plan now. Once the house is rearranged I will start making them. I may take a couple of tries at it before I release anything, but I will at least start recording. Once I start posting my goal will be a video port every two weeks. I’ve already invested in a more powerful computer to handle the editing.
And now I will make the statement that is sure to come back to haunt me. I vow that there will be a post on the blog every Saturday. This means that every Saturday I miss will bring me the burning shame of missing a deadline. If that doesn’t get me writing more nothing will.
I will do more posts that are reviews of material relevant to geek culture and not just editorials.
I will look at expanding beyond just a blog and work to make this a more legitimate site. I will look for advice from my sister as she is much more successful at this. (Assuming she buys my line about this being what family does for each other.)
I will start promoting the blog more. This is hard because despite doing this I hate going out and promoting myself because I fear that I will come off as an egotistical ass. I need to get over it if I actually plan on ever finding a larger audience. Again I will ask my sister for advice. 
And my wife.
 And Aron from the comic shop.
And my other friends
And those of you reading this.
Help!
Where was I?
I will make an honest effort to make a backlog of articles so that if life gets in my way I will still have something to post every Saturday.
I will create a catch phrase to end blog posts. I feel I just sort of end right now.
There it is, my goals
So with that here are some projects I am working on.
1.       An article on the power held by geek culture and that pros and cons that brings.
2.       A series of reviews cover Universal Horror, both written and eventually in video.
3.       A video series on what makes Seattle the Geek capital of the World.
4.       A new Alternate Interpretations.
5.       Tales from my days working at Wizards of the Coast.
6.       Tales from my days as one of the founding members of the Camarilla.
We will check in in on this list in July and see how well I did.
Have a happy New Year.

My Favorite Role-playing game experience.

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Let’s get one thing straight, I love role-playing games.
I’ve been a role-playing enthusiast since I was a teenager. I can trace my connection to the majority of my social circle to role-playing games. I spent several years working at a role-playing game company.  I helped found an international organization devoted to role-playing. Role-playing is second to only comic books in the hierarchy of my fanboy interests.
I’ve played several versions of Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve played most of the old World of Darkness games and a couple of the new. I’ve played Champions, Gamma World, Toon, Chill, Cyberpunk 2020, Deadlands, and many more.
I am currently in a group that plays both Promethean and The Dresden Files RPG.
However like every role-play there is that one game. Every role-player has one, that one group that just clicked for them and even years after it broke up still has that lingering nostalgia for it.
In 1994 while working at Wizards of the Coast I found mine.
I found it when I learned a co-worker found a copy of the WWF basic Adventure Game and had started a group and wanted to know if I was interested in joining.
Yes you read that correctly.
My favorite role-playing group of all time was a group playing an RPG based on Professional Wrestling. It was a game published by Whit publication. It was meant to be the main book for a whole line, but as far as I have ever been able to learn it was the only book released.
To be honest that book as published was a so-so game but we worked at a gaming company. We were able to fix the rules to make a working game.
And what a game it was. For the majority of the nearly two years we played this game there were only three of us playing. All players had several wrestlers and managers, a ref, and a ring announcer.
It was structured so that in a match you would have two wrestlers and the third player would have his ref character in the match. Whoever was ref was the GM for that match. The game was basically a protracted fight that goes move by move with attacks and counters.  In a night we would have time for about 4 to 5 matches and all three of got to play as all three of us also acted as gm. 
Our fictional wrestling organization was Intercontinental Wrestling Federation or the ICW. It was located in Las Vegas. Steve, whose house we played out went so far as to get little wrestling figures to use as miniatures and made a scale map of the arena that took up most of the table to use for play.
As I said earlier each of us ran about 4 or 5 wrestlers. Mine were a mixed bag of various archetypes that would show up in wrestling.
Johnny Hartman the all-American. He was a college football star from South Carolina that had gotten into wrestling as a form of cross-training.  He was taken under the wing of “Captain America” Lance Arness, who he referred to as coach. He had a long rivalry with a wrestler only known as the Duke of Slamchester and a brief rivalry with the ICW champion the Golem. His finishing move was a pile driver he called the Touchdown.
Vincent “The Don” Vincenzo was a Mafia themed wrestler. He was managed by Uncle Guido Vincenzo and teamed with his cousin Benny “the leg breaker” Pagliocci.  I ran all three characters. Vincent would start most matches offering a bribe to his opponent to throw the match. His finishing move was a choke slam called the Strong arm.
Jerry Aldini, who was often called the hardest working man in wrestling. He briefly held the Intercontinental champion ship after defeating Apollo Storm. Eventually had a heel turn after he felt he was disrespected once too often.
We had storylines that would go on for months, we had rivalries, and we had pay-per-views. We were convinced that the house we played at was bugged because we would have a storyline and soon a similar storyline would appear in one of the real feds.
Seriously, we had a game session where one wrestler was taken out with a high heel shoe. A week later on WCW Hulk Hogan was hit taken down with a high heel shoe.
Of all the role-playing gaming groups I have been part of this one still stands as my favorite. I had more fun with this one than any other I have ever played in.  It was that perfect mix of the right people together with the right game setting. We had three other players that joined briefly at various times, but it was usually the core three.
 The group finally broke up when Shawn, our third player lost interest and Steve and I didn’t think anyone could really take his place.
I made a couple of attempts to put together new groups but they either didn’t gel or just didn’t get off the ground.
And what made me bring up that bit of nostalgia? Stay tuned, I will be getting to that.
So what was your favorite role-playing experience?

San Diego Comic-con; Let the games begin

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Back on July 1st I set out to make Seattle the Geek Capital of the World 51 weeks of the year. Today marks the start of the other week. That’s right today is the beginning of Comic-Con International, better known as the San Diego Comic-Con.
Found in 1970 the San Diego Comic-con is the premier pop culture event of the year. The unofficial motto of presenters and exhibitors is “go big or go home.” As a former exhibitor I can tell you that unless you have attended it is almost impossible to grasp the scope of this event, and it has grown in the years since my last attendance in 2004.
Starting tonight a lot of fanboy news is going to be coming out. I am going to do my best to comment on the highlights. Even now, with show not even open yet we have a lot of information.
  • Tomorrow night will see Captain America: The First Avenger premier a day early. Star Chris Evens will be there to kick off the event.
  • The official World Premier of Cowboys and Aliens will take place at the convention.
  • IDW will have a special offer called Sparkles for Blood. Attendees will be able to trade in a copy of any of the Twilight books for a new 30 days of night graphic novel. There stated goal is to return vampires to what they were always meant to be: bloody and terrifying monsters.
  • A group of fans have vowed to stage a protest of DC Comics upcoming relaunch. It will be interesting to see if that actually happens.
And trends from years past will be repeated.
  • DC comics will be a focus as they prepare for the relaunch in September.
  • Marvel will be pushing their movies and valiantly trying to steal the comic news press away from DC.
  • Several TV shows will have panels. Half of which have nothing to do with comics, Sci-fi, or fantasy, but want to be at Comic-con anyway.
  • Twilight fans will swamp the con again in hopes of seeing the stars.
  • Cos-players will hit the floor looking to be noticed. There will be far too many Batmen, Harley Quinns and Slave girl Leias.
  • And the convention hall will once again reach maximum capacity, leading people to beg the convention to move to a bigger site like Anaheim or Las Vegas.
So let the good times roll and let’s see what this year brings.

Seattle: Geek Captial of the World

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I am a proud resident of the Seattle area. I bring this up because I now live in the only state in the union that does not have any form of state sponsored tourism marketing. The State Government is encouraging private business to advertise our state’s virtues instead.
(I want to preface this with the statement that I do not make any income from anything related to tourism.)
I think that we here in the Seattle area have a potential for tourism that could be tapped. Appeal to geek culture.
One week a year the center of geek culture is San Diego California. I say we make a play for the other 51 weeks a year.
We have a head start. In Seattle we have the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of fame. We have Seattle Pioneer Square with the Seattle Underground tour.  We have the original Game Works. We have PAX which is becoming, if not has become, the major convention for gaming, electronic or otherwise. We have Emerald City Comic Con, a fast growing comic book convention. We are the home of corporate headquarters for Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo America, Wizards of the Coast and I Can Haz Cheezburger. The number of gaming companies of all sizes in this area is in triple digits.
So how do we do it?
Well first all those groups I mentioned above? They need to get together and start promoting Seattle as the place where geek culture comes from.
Next someone would need to build something that would be a year-round destination for the geek fans. Anyone remember the Star Trek Experience that used to be featured at the Las Vegas Hilton? Something along those lines that, but where it is the center piece of a whole center, maybe a resort.
Someone is thinking this is a good idea. In 2014 a Star Trek theme resort will be opening in Aqaba, Jordan. Now I don’t know about you, but even though I would love to go to a Star Trek resort, I do not see myself traveling to Jordan to do it.  I could see people coming to Seattle to see it however.
Or how about a hotel that had rooms that were rigged to simulate being haunted. As long as I have the ability to turn off the effects when I want to I think that would be awesome, and could be a big draw every October.
However none of this would be a sure bet. In 1997 The Wizards of the Coast Game Center opened in the heart of Seattle’s University district. It was a complex dedicated to gaming and included a game shop, video arcade, a network of computers for LAN gaming, a tournament gaming area, and a twelve pod Battletech combat simulator. A gamer’s dream come true. It closed its doors just four years later. There has been a lot of analysis of what went wrong. Although mismanagement is the likeliest culprit, It stands in people’s minds are a failure of a geek centric venue being able to draw people in.
But does that mean no one should try again? Paul Allen didn’t think so when he opened the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in 2004. Housed in the same building as the Experience Music Project, the Museum is a collection of Memorabilia such as the Original Star Trek captain’s chair, and exhibits like the current Battlestar Galactica and Avatar exhibts. It also hosts the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and Science Fiction Fantasy Short Film Festival in association with the Seattle International Film Festival. True it was folded into EMP last March, but it is still effectively a going concern.
Maybe we need to start a meme. “Seattle, Geek capital of the world.”