poplitiko

Sunday, August 2, 2026

The Awesome and Amazing

GROOVY STUFF
By Alex Ness
August 10, 2026

ART BOOKS THAT KICK ASS

I was asked if there are collections of sci fi, fantasy, comic book artists that one might keep even if they can't afford the original, they can remember and look over the works in a work. However good they are, these aren't the groundbreaking, auction record breaking, museum works, that one might think of when considering art. They ought to be, mind you, they collect just as interesting work as those in the museums. And why not both?

I don't have many art book collections, but, I wish I did.

These are some cover images of the Art of works:
Barry Windsor-Smith
Neal Adams
Wallace Wood
Steve Ditko
Jack Kirby
Peter Bergting
Dave Cockrum
Michael W.Kaluta
Frank Frazetta
Alex Schomburg
Albrecht Dürer
Howard Pyle
Arthur Rackham
Gustave Doré
Harry Clarke
The work of Studio Ghibli
The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki

ROMANS AT WAR

The world, except for the non specialists often perceives the Roman military style of battle as being violent, mass actions, without nuance, or ability to change in midstream. Sometimes, that would have to be true. But it is not the case that it was a style often used. For instance, in Caesar's brilliant battle, the rebellious Gauls led by Vercingetorix gathered in Alesia, with the knowledge that many reinforcements were on their way. Caesar surrounded the city with battlements and men, and also erected, a wall around their wall for protection from the warriors coming to relieve the people and army surrounded by Rome. At a point of desperation Romans had to defend an assault from inside the circle, and those on the outside, having chosen to squeeze the Romans out. The involvement of Caesar among those in hand to hand direct battle, gave the Romans extra hope. In the end, Caesar defeated both armies, and took Vercingetorix to Rome, as a part of the victory parade *a Triumph. As a reader of the history of Rome at war, one might actually read the nuanced battles, and replay them. From the great victories to the losses of ground shaking enormity one can pursue the battles, and see exactly how they occurred.

LINKS:

MY POETRY: AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
MEDIA: Poplitiko.Blogspot.Com
PROSE THOUGHTS: AlexNessWritesv1.blogspot.com
My Published Works: HERE

Social Media
https://bsky.app/profile/alexanderness63.bsky.social
https://x.com/alexnesspoetry

All works shown and/or considered are copyright the respective owners, fair use is the sole means of use asserted.

Monday, July 27, 2026

FANTASY: Comics, Magazines, Books

FANTASTICAL STUFF
By Alex Ness
July 28, 2026

AGAIN, Or, MORE FANTASY COMICS

While the titles seem endless to most readers, to the fans of fantasy genre comics there instead appears to be that it is a good start, but in general there are too few comics of a fantasy genre. I am not intending to insult anyone's taste. I am not suggesting that the people saying we need more are blind to the many that have been published. I do know that of my readers here who are comic fans, most like superheroes, or, have been vocal about that suggestion. I enjoy the genre, in comics, books, games, and film. As such, this is even less of a passive aggressively aimed insult than it might seem. This list includes magic, barbarism, game related stories, book adaptations, and some wonderful stories.

I point to the previous fantasy article for a comic series that I didn't enjoy. The first issue is listed here, not to say it is good, as I didn't like it, but others might well like it. As such it is a symbol, not a specific work.

For me, and I hope many others, Fantasy comics supplement the RPGs. That suggests to me, the goal of, and vital practice of story telling is the ultimate reason to play RPGs. The best comics might well be works that tell stories in the manner of creative and excellent games.

(Click image to make it grow.)

RPG MAGAZINE Resources

In general, it would be true to say that RPG gamers need to go beyond the four corners of the creative works of RPG games. Adventurers, White Dwarf, White Wolf, Shadis, Arcane, Pyramid, D8, Last Province, Challenge, Warlock, Different Worlds, Kobold Quarterly, and Dragon are the periodicals. These works helped many gamers in their desire to expand, deepen, and make more rich the settings and game play found in their gaming. I have copies of each of them, and enjoyed them, even if I didn't altogether enjoy the games they served. I tended to enjoy the magazines from the UK, not because I am unAmerican or a Anglophile. The magazines were able to delve more interest, clever letter pages, and fantastic art. But, that is a matter of taste.

BOOKS TO FILL YOUR FANTASY LOVING BRAIN

Brian Jacques writing and a beautiful book cover made the enclosed image and book it represents very new, interesting, and a work of value. It is fantasy, seen through the eyes of many anthropomorphic characters. But it almost never, throughout the many books of Redwall, displays the use of magic. As such, the world and characters are the reason to read, not the action, not the great magic, it is a mysterious world, with great characters.

The King of Ys by Poul Anderson and Karen Anderson was as brilliant as other works by Poul Anderson, but it also had a soft feel to much of it. The genre was fantasy, but it is constructed to take place at the collapse of Rome. The Ys happens in history, as a country, similar to Carthage, a sea faring nation, led by 9 powerful sorcerers, and they then master the map we now would not recognize. For the magic and power plus curiosity, made the people of Ys the most powerful actors on our earth.

The book Hainish Novels and Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin is brilliant. I have found all of her books that I've read to be nothing short of excellent. This work views existence if instead of found on earth it was found elsewhere. And the development of genetic engineering and on one planet, the idea about, and experience with gender, is incredibly important, and perceived as exceptionally different that all other planets. That is, she recreates existence as being ordered, perceived as predictable or they follow a path that is understood. The removal of religion from the beginnings of the human form, lends to a different set of concerns, interests, and trust in the leaders of the greater society.

Gods in Darkness by Karl Edward Wagner is a collection of the stories that feature Kane, his anti hero character. The difference with Kane from Conan, would be that Conan often would end up making a moral choice, rather than to act in pure selfishness and violence. Robert E. Howard understood the lasting echoes of evil actions... you find it harder and harder to appreciate anything about the character. Kane acted with wisdom and intellect, but made choices that are immoral. A great warrior and accomplished sorcerer Kane could achieve most all of his goals.

Evangeline Walton wrote fantasy, and did so in ways that enriched the reading world. Her work, the Mabinogion tetralogy embraced the beauty of a world that was magical. Faeries and heroes, epic treks and beautiful vistas lead the reader to wish to embrace the life someone might live in this world. Evangeline Watson did not meet great sales with her books, but she was a cornerstone in ways, telling great stories, with a loving and flexible hand.

LINKS:

All works shown and/or considered are copyright the respective owners, fair use is the sole means of use asserted.

Thursday, July 23, 2026

Taste, in Fantasy differs from person to person

FANTASY: I AM SORRY TO SAY...
By Alex Ness
July 23, 20206

It might not surprise you, for whatever reason you also enjoy the worlds of popular media, that in at least half of the emails or texts I receive, I get asked why I don't post much, at all, about works I didn't enjoy. No one ever likes everything. But that was never the my goal. I received so many items through the mail, from about 2002 to 2010, I couldn't write enough reviews to cover the good works, let alone spend time to shat upon someone's creative hard work.

I don't like the idea that someone might shred one's creative work, with the agility of a hippo. I received many fine reviews for one work, but the one poor review was clearly about something they didn't read in the work. They were a famous libertarian, and posted about their own hatred of Vegans with bile. They thought because of my attention to a variety of ancient traits we still have as modern humans, that I was a vegan, and that I was a socialist. This was absolutely false. However, they weren't judging the work, they had decided that the writer (me) of the story was something they hated, and never tried to understand the actual story.

But I certainly do love Fantasy, and to make those writing emails or messages asking for a list of stinkers, I am going to share works that didn't move me. Having said that, I trust that they may move you, will do so for whatever reason you have. It certainly doesn't effect my outlook, and it might give me a new reason to appreciate whatever was in question.

Films

I've mentioned many films I have truly adored. Across fantasy I loved Excalibur, DragonSlayer, I have liked the PJackson LOTR cycle, loved the Bakshi unfinished LOTR. It is a world of creation where there are memorable works. I enjoyed many films even empty headed. Sorceress was a stinker, but so bad it was rather funny. The Sword and the Sorcerer was bad overall, but had a number of fun and quirky aspects. But Willow worked so hard to be sincere, that it seemed cynical. Reign of Fire was a good idea, but it was soooo over the top and poorly acted, it couldn't be realized. DragonHeart, for me, was a stinker. It was filled with points at which I thought, ok, here it will be more than idea. It never did that. In 2000's Dungeons and Dragons, it made me angry for the crappola it was. It didn't feel like the world of imaginations found in various humans. It felt like it was a story told to allow the title, rather than to embrace the worlds already imagined. Of all the works, this was truly awful.

RPGs

I have not played Earthdawn enough to crap on it. I get that. Some players might well have enjoyed it way the hell more than me. I played with bright humans, imaginative people, and we all abandoned the campaign in almost two seconds. It didn't feel authentic, it felt like a set of rules rather than a setting and system that was worth exploring. But despite the people, it could be it was better for younger aged players. (We were all 30+).

COMIC BOOK

I was never a collector so this isn't about cost and worth. At the time of the B/W explosion, independent works flourished, and that was great. However... some of the works were impossible to enjoy. The ADVENTURERS was popular for some stores. But finding copies on the shelf I was not interested. When I was offered at one store a reader pack of 10 comics for $3, I tried it. The art was unusual, detailed and not bad at all, but the stories were empty of value, a bit moronic. And the stories felt like they were written to kill characters in unusual and graphic ways. 20 years later, I found the first five issues, and thought what if they weren't so bad. They were worse even. In the time in life I'd be become more mature, and they felt more teenage male sick and cruel. It might be that the creative talents went on to be famous. I never looked them up. This work was putrid crap.

BOOKS

I know that the world of fantasy has a reader population that is great in numbers. So my own outlook is that whatever my views, the works, if popular in sales, is meaningless. That is, again taste is the reason for the difference and why some works are good, and others are stinkers. As such, I am not telling you what to like, what you think is wrong, why like something that moves you. I found Sword of Shannara to be truly annoying. I liked the Brothers Hildebrandt cover, I kind of liked aspects of the world built, but I never ever came close to liking it. There were areas of difference from other famous trilogies, seemingly just to say it was not a page by page analogue. More issues, were odd or stupid decisions by characters, poor character building, and other issues. I didn't like it, but all those things might have been perceived as new, different, valid, or interesting.

LINKS:

All works shown and/or considered are copyright the respective owners, fair use is the sole means of use asserted.

Sunday, July 19, 2026

UKRAINE V RUSSIA

A WORLD AT MODERN WAR
By Alex Ness (and source info boardgamegeek.com)
July 20, 2026

It has been a violent state of being in the Ukrainian/Crimean region. And it has gone on for 4 years. You might ask yourself if Trump won his greatly desired Nobel peace prize if he might have tried harder to stand between two neighbors fighting, one for its existential life, and the other for the hubris of a dictator. But whatever the rules and the parties and treaties, this war has called out sympathy in the heart of many, apathy in the minds of those already in a state of loss, and rot and despair in the average heart of people who just want to go home, watch tv, get a pizza, drink a beer.

It is unlikely that someone hasn't been aware of the war in Ukraine after invasion by Russia. It has become very clear that they do not understand the kind of war it is. I think mostly this is true because prior to such an event drones and satellites, striking oil resources and more, were thought to be last gasp choices. I no longer see them as such, in fact, I can see the lures of such kind of combat easily replacing human involved small arms or armored vehicles slugging it out. Shown below are three games that pay special attention to the current conflict, but, however good they are, focused upon the beginning do not fully capture the recent events and disasters.

PUTIN'S WAR

"Putin's War 2022" is a two-player historical wargame that simulates the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. It combines an area-based combat system with political and economic interactions, allowing players to control either Russia or Ukraine. From the game designer Udo Grebe Gamedesign.

2022: UKRAINE

This is a hex-and-counter wargame by CSL (Conflict Simulations LLC) that simulates the initial year of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Designed by Ray Weiss, it features specialized units like HIMARS and drones, and brutally honest mechanics that reflect Russian railway logistics and the chance of war crimes.

DEFIANCE
Volume 1: Miracle on the Dnipro

Defiance: 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War 2022-? Volume 1: Miracle on the Dnipro is a wargame published by GMT Games that simulates the initial 2022 Russian invasion, focusing specifically on the Kyiv and Chernihiv campaigns from February 24 to April 1, 2022.

The game information has been gathered from Boardgamegeek.com

LINKS:

All works shown and/or considered are copyright the respective owners, fair use is the sole means of use asserted.

Slava Ukraini!

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

ERIK LARSEN featured creator at Baltimore Con 2026, an Interview

A DISCUSSION WITH ERIK LARSEN
By Alex Ness
July 17, 2026

BALTIMORE CON 2026 Features Erik Larsen and his prolific creations. Holy shizzle dude, that is very cool! Is it about your 280 plus issues, and all the events therein, or is it beginning a sort of count down to 300? When you reach 300 will the comic world be doing a happy dance?

Erik Larsen: I don't know about the comic world but I'll be pretty happy to have that one behind me.

How does one become the featured creative guest at conventions of note? Is there a process, do you enter your name hoping to be chosen, or do they choose someone for a specific reason?

Erik: That's more of a question for the convention organizers--not me. I don't generally seek out conventions at all-- I just respond to requests. NYCC is my only regular show that I'll attend on my own dime and that's because it's been so rewarding in every respect.

I'd like to ask some specific Savage Dragon questions, and about the making of Savage Dragon. How much work does it take to create in 300 issues the life of a feature character? For instance, how many hours does each issue require, and outside of doing it, and creating for an audience, is the product for the creator equal to the reward?

Erik: Clearly it's taken me a number of years to get where I am. I haven't tracked the hours but it's a lot. Even with a full head of steam and cranking away like a man possessed it's a lot of man hours. And that's not counting the letterers and colorists that help me get each issue out the door. Some issues have taken me several months to complete and the anniversary issues in particular take an extraordinary amount of time.

Some creatives in the comic world cannot maintain their focus for 6 issues, while you've done other work WHILE doing Savage Dragon, and mostly alone. Do the fans in the comic book buying/reading world understand all the labors, and determination it requires?

Erik: Until you've actually made a comic book you really don't have much understanding of what goes into it. But it's been incredibly rewarding creatively. In many ways it's been one huge conceptual experiment--to see if a comic book could be set in real time, and have characters age as we do. Throughout the series we've seen births, deaths, weddings and funerals.

Malcolm Dragon inherited the title from his father but he hadn't been conceived when the series began. Now he's 30-years-old with a wife and four kids. Readers have hung in there as the book went from being about a superpower cop to the leader of a government super-team to a single father raising his adopted daughter to the adventures of a high school kid to a family adventure and so much else. We've been to space and under the ocean and to other dimensions. The characters have really been through the wringer.

And I am eternally grateful to have had a loyal and supportive audience along the way.

I enjoy aspects of Savage Dragon that might violate unwritten rules. Your characters age. They procreate. They are different than most "heroes" and yet every giant alien creature gets the shit kicked out of it by the green skin fin head gang. Why would an alien defend the world he adopts? Is there a red and blue strong guy at a different publisher who first considered that?

Erik: The book can be a pastiche at times and touch on themes from various places in pop culture. Savage Dragon has been described as my love letter to the comic book field. I've done romance stories and science fiction, even post-apocalyptic stories and comic strip parodies.

And the Dragon teamed up with that strange visitor from another planet a couple times along the way, as well as Spawn, the Maxx, Invincible, Hellboy, WildStar, WitchBlade and ShadowHawk. More recently the book has included characters from the public domain--like the original Daredevil, Captain Tootsie, Mickey Mouse, Popeye and even Dagwood Bumstead!

Is there such a thing as a preexistent perception of good, that aliens and humans would recognize as being an obvious value?

Erik: I think so. I think there's obvious good and evil, even if some seem to celebrate a bad boy who gets away with things--for the most part we know what we're looking at. We recognize greed and cruelty and I think that's universal.

Of all of your works that are cross overs which were the most difficult. Of the cross overs, which were so fun/result was so good that you'd be happy to do more?

Erik: The most difficult was the Superman crossovers just because of the contractual hoops that needed to be jumped through. The others have largely been handshake deals. People can be awesome--and those are the ones I seek out. If you're in the business and you're not working on your favorite comic book--you're doing it wrong.

How is the energy different working on a comic or run of your own character, versus that of some other creator or publisher? Does that reinvent yourself when returning to your own book?

Erik: It's a completely different experience. On my own I can impulsively decide to do anything that I want. Working at a company--everything needs to be run past an editor who can approve or reject anything that I propose. Whenever I do a project elsewhere, whether it's writing or drawing, or both--it can't help but make me appreciate what I have on Savage Dragon that much more.

Left to my own devices I wouldn't do anything as extreme as I have on my own book, certainly, but there are definitely things that I've wanted to do that I just couldn't do and even little dialogue tweaks can't help but grind my gears to some extent. Then I step back on Savage Dragon and there's nothing in the way. Literally nobody that can say no. And it's incredibly liberating.

Thanks Erik!

Find Erik at
https://www.savagedragon.com/
https://www.facebook.com/erik.larsen.75

All images are copyright their creators and use is fair use only and no rights claimed.

Saturday, July 11, 2026

PROSE WORKS OF MIKE BARON

A MIKE BARON BOOKAPALOOZA
By Alex Ness
July 13, 2026

Mike Baron has written hundreds of comics. And he has written 20 prose novels. He has created fandoms for his work, his humor, his imagination, with his ideas, words, and his ability to make his characters speak the way your mind would suggest they should. His works of fiction feel like truth, a concept known as Verisimilitude. As the Meriam Webster Dictionary says: Verisimilitude is the quality of seeming true, real, or believable.

Derived from the Latin verisimilitudo (meaning "likeness to truth"), it is most frequently used in literature, film, and art to describe the internal consistency and realism that makes a fictional world feel authentic to the audience. When you have a super powered slayer of Serial Killers, the ideal might be a balance between power and selfless obedience to the calling of the power. The Nexus character does not struggle over selfishness. He does not accept accolades of praise from those with less power. It feels righteous. As it would.

The works of Mike Baron are of high quality. The person behind the works, is generous, kind and thoughtful. The worth of his writing life for others as a mentor, a person and friend, is immense. I know people on both sides of the political divide who admire and call Mike a friend. He has his own values, none being knee-jerk reactions. In a world devoted to cancel culture, he doesn't make people stand in lines of allegiance to him or of various other political opinion. He is a good man, and one I am fortunate to know.

GET THE 5 BOOK BIKER SET

https://bloodyredbaron.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mikebaron2016/
https://baroncomics.com/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063593171020
https://www.patreon.com/mikebaron/

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

WARS Now are not so different from Then: The Cold War

“In summary, we have here [in the Soviet Union] a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. This political force has complete power of disposition over energies of one of world’s greatest peoples and resources of world’s richest national territory, and is borne along by deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism.”—George Kennan, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in an official cable to the U.S. State Department (“The Long Telegram”), February 22, 1946.

THE COLD WAR REMEMBERED
By Alex Ness
July 8, 2026

The archive of books that are non fiction regarding telling the story of the Cold War, tell generally the same story. It isn't that one side is evil, one side is good. The participants had their own perceptions of what was important. The Warsaw Pact as led by the Soviet Union argued that the countries in its orbit were economically and politically united, and part of a network of states that chose Communist organization of their own economies and politics. The NATO states were Western style democracies with free markets and free speech, led by a new style of treaties. Prior to the First and Second world war, the United States had not agreed to be drawn into wars by treaties. NATO was the moment when a treaty included joint defense across the Atlantic Ocean.

The fiction works shown are also worse than the reality of the purely historical non fiction. The idea of Cold War turned hot has disastrous endings. In almost any event, nuclear weapons are a last resort that are usually turned towards. Many writers of the Cold War period utilized spy thrillers to feature a means to going to war through an act of espionage. The so called information war before the active war, into the final nuclear war.

Viktor Suvorov's Icebreaker is generally a work experts do not altogether agree upon. However, it goes beyond purely history, if there is a particular quality of the work, it comes from a former Soviet Information officer, who defected, and filters out the reason to be of the USSR. Whether his argument is true, it is nonetheless accurate in presenting a world of war and outlook of state.

There are numerous excellent works collecting the events of the Cold War. The fiction works have an advantage, as, there is a world at peace, and when the book is finished one can start reading a new book, and deal only with a might have been.

The 10 Films shown are a form of fear, visualized. Paranoia as entertainment, they each have a discomfort about them at the same time as they have a purpose. While painting a nightmare on a film canvas, the stories told depict the 50 or so years of the stand off that led the previous world war to not be finished, officially, until the reunion of Germany, and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Chapters of the Cold War and human tales within are not easy movies to watch, as is right. The policies and strategies that were born from the anticipated war included conventional invasions through Poland into West Germany and Western Europe thereafter. The Fulda Gap would be filled with many armored divisions on both sides, and when the stalemate was established, the conventional war would enter nuclear exchanges. Perhaps limited, at first, but the tactics of nuclear war require destruction of the other... and until both sides are wiped from the face of the earth, the mutual assured destruction follows its course.

The truth of the Cold War wasn't that nuclear arms kept the world from a new and greater war. It was that the madness of using such weapons promised that it was more likely that an accidental event would destroy the modern world than a distinct and straight forward declaration of war. Numerous near misses occurred and thank the Creator, were avoided.

I have watched all of the movies depicted, and consider them to have value, if not always perfect execution. On the Beach, Fail Safe and The Bedford Incident are reasonable movies about the results of accidents that lead to further war. The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May speak to the domestic setting for an event featuring paranoia, espionage and war on a less physical setting. But between accidental wars, and secret events that might lead to war, war is the result.

LINKS:

All works shown and/or considered are copyright the respective owners, fair use is the sole means of use asserted.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”—Winston Churchill, address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.