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Well, let me tell you something, Brother! Whatcha gonna do when Hah-Re-Mania runs wild on you?

[Phantoms of Fear]

Phantoms of Fear

This is another brand-new book for me, and my copy also feels very new despite being printed in 1987.

The plot here is that I'm a wood elf shaman who has had a Watership Down style vision of some terrible evil corrupting the forest and eventually all the land. I need to head off and defeat the demon prince Ishtra (who is immune to all earthly weapons). It's an interesting start and very different from the usual 'you're a wandering adventurer' stuff and the old 'only you can save the world, off you go with no provisions or friends' cliche is set due to this being some kind of dream-inspired message from the Elven gods. You being an elf is also a nice touch and this is referenced a number of times throughout.
As a shaman I have a new stat: POWER, which is a sort of measure of my dream potency and isn't capped at your starting rate like the usual FF stats. I started with a high power, which I soon found out is essential for this book (as ever, high skill is pretty important). As ever, when given the choice I always take the left-hand path (or go west)

After an inspiring dream I set off West into the forest, pausing to share a campfire with some humans moving east away from the oncoming corruption of Ishtra. As I continue west it becomes evident to me that things are not right in the forest, forcing me into combats with some forest creatures (including a skill 6 boar that beat me up quite badly). That night, asleep in a tree, I have another strange and disturbing dream but am able to navigate the visions of horror and draw further power from mastering the dream world around me. The next day, continuing west, I stumble across a sort of elephant's graveyard for the huge and majestic deer that roam the forest. I approach with humility and the spirits of the place wish we well on my quest and grant me a boon of a twelve-branched antler.
By the afternoon I am climbing a hill within the forest and decide to sleep overnight in a cave, experiencing another cryptic dream (I was initially frantically noting down all the stuff in these dreams, convinded they'd be clues and stuff - not sure they are there's too much to describe really, but they're all allegorical and weird). When morning comes the light shows me a narrow passage at the back of the cave. My magic detects no harm within, so I crawl inside and eventually come into a large cavern, illuminated by phosphorescent lichen and containing the skeleton of an adventurer with their hand trapped underneath a large rock. The rock wasn't heavy enough to trap the poor soul here, so I suspect something's up with whatever is under the rock and decline to move it, instead examining the skeleton and taking from it a silvery green pendant.
Eventually I make it out of the cavern and cresting a nearby rise am shocked to see the corrupted forest ahead of me: kilometers of rotting trees and decaying vegetation surrounded in a foul miasma. A foul wind buffets me in a way that seems almost directed, and I am forced to continue my journey at a crawl for a while before descending into the terrible valley below.
The final bastion of good before I enter the valley is some kind of pixie glade, where I am able to refresh myself and am given a second boon: a magical silvery branch, one of twenty-two. Then it's into the corrupted part of the forest, and it is grim indeed. I am informed that my magic no longer works - I'd used it exactly once so far in a useless way, so that's not really a great loss - due to the great aura of evil that permeates this place. After fighting off an attack from some manky roots from the evil trees that were no match for my elven blade I follow a worn path to a wall of poisonous brambles which, when climbed through, reveal a ramshackle hut, neatly walled off from the rest of the forest. I'm watching this shack with care when a foot comes down on the back of my neck and a gruff voice demands I give up my weapon. Ulp!

I'm a peaceable Elven type so I throw my blade aside and stand to face my captor: a wild, savage looking human with a well care for, shiny axe. It soon becomes apparent that this guy is totally crazed and has a very tenuous grip on reality as he keeps laughing and muttering to himself, but I bide my time and address him carefully and respectfully until he calms down a bit. Due to my impressive POWER score my voice and bearing eventually break through his lunacy and a semblance of sanity returns to his eyes. He offers me a small piece of amber with a number 20 inscribed upon it, and allows me to stay in his hut overnight, which seems to be a sensible option as opposed to sleeping out in the forest of evil so I accept. That night I have an awful dream where a tree attempts to throttle me, and I first deal with the rubbish dream combat (more on this later) but I am dream-victorious, increasing my power further, and the next morning my crazed host, now somewhat less crazed, offers to join me on my quest. His name is Eric Rune-Axe and he is a retired adventurer who part-lost his mind in the maze of Zagor (I empathise - we've all been there dude). With the encroaching evil of Ishtra he seems doomed if he stays alone, and I could do with a new Mungo / mate, so off we go together!
Somehow navigating the poisonous holly again we press on together, him chuckling away to himself at odd moments. In the middle of all the corruption I am surprised to spot a beautiful deer - Eric seems cautious but I approach, thinking perhaps it is an avatar or vision from the Elven gods. It isn't, it's a shapechanger, and this absolutely mauls me. Its only SKILL 10 but that outclasses me and leave me on 6 STAMINA. There's no reward for killing it so I scarf down as many nuts and berries from my pack as I can and we head on, only to be ambushed by a gang of dark elves. There's six of them and we must fight three each. Again this combat is appallingly hard for me - I dispatch my foes, leaving me on a grand total stamina of 2, only to find Eric is dead and I must face two remaining dark elves, who cut me down for an ignoble end to my quest.
Disappointed I rewind a bit, avoid the shapechanger fight so I can tackle the elves with full stamina, and die again. Looks like I'm not skilful enough to beat this one, time for a full restart...!

So using the power of Elven magic I reroll my intrepid shaman to have a higher skill and start again. Following the same path, the only real change is that fight more bears, less moose, and I lose dream combat to the nightmare tree so have less power and less in the way of provisions. Me and Eric skip the shapechanger, take on the dark elves and this time I use luck like a madman in the combat and am able to survive the ambush with a ten stamina, but Eric does not survive. I eat the rest of my lembas and sadly bury poor old Eric, who was a total Mungo indeed. It seems I must walk this path alone. With my heart full of foreboding, I approach the entrance to Ishtra's tunnels - two huge pillars of ivory flanking a tunnel winding down into darkness. Glad in the uniform of a dark elf I proceed nervously into the darkness.

As I wind donwards into the earth I begin to realise that, so close to Ishtra's power, the worlds of reality and unreality are beginning to overlap and I can at this point switch between the waking and dreamworld almost at will. When in the dreamworld I will still sleepwalk about, which seems like a terrible idea, so I decide to stick with the real world for the time being. At a fork in the tunnel a statue of a sphinx warns me that the left hand path means death - but I suspect it is lying so I take that path and lo and behold a portcullis slams down and cuts me in half. Oops!
Turns out the sphinx was lying because it meant it's own left not mine... a cruel trick. I'm not fighting those dark elves again so I restart from the sphinx, go right, and conceal myself behind a pile of bones to avoid a virtual army of orcs on the march. I'm given the option of entering the dreamworld here but nodding off behind a mound of skulls with orcs about doesn't seem wise so I press on, stubbornly sticking west and passing a checkpoint by showing a boars tusk (this apparently is what all recruits are given as passes, so the boar population round here must be decimated!)
At this point I sort of wander about it, blagging my way past various goons, until I find a series of doors marked 11,22,33,44,55 and 66. I have the option of rolling my dice and when I roll a double opening that door, a process I can continue to do, or I can wander off. I've no idea why there's no element of choice here - perhaps my Elven traditions mean opening numbered doors can only be left to fate? A ridiculous amount of dice rolling leads me to first open a pantry, then find a door is locked, and finally open a third door that brings a patrol of bad guys rushing onto me who I cannot blag past and they murder me where I stand. WEAK auto death.

I restart at the sphinx, same route, but this time I decide to try entering the dreamworld when hiding in the bone pile. As you'd expect this shifts things to the deeply surreal, as instead of tunnels and underground rivers I find myself navigating deserts, volcanos and twisted woodlands. It's all very weird and difficult to map, and after I while I get a premonition of danger so I drop out of the dreamlands and find myself in a totally different place in the dungeon, having wandered whilst asleep into a room full of some weird mutant things called prowlers. Dispatching these with my new awesome skill isn't too hard and for good measure I smash up their eggs to stop any more of the horrid things emerging. I head north but find myself back where I was last time, so I go back into the dreamworld, swim a dream-ocean, move through a bleeding forest and eventually end up having to fight a sort of dream snake-demon with legs which I can only beat by rolling 8-12 on two dice three times in succession. WTAF. In a bizarre twist, I immediately did this and with my power stat intact am able to wrest control of the dream away from this creature and escape.
As the dreamworld gets increasingly hellish I'm told I'd best get back in the real world as I'm nearing the source of corruption. I do and find myself.... back at those dice rolling doors! I'm not doing that again.
I go left, sensing 'great evil' ahead and it's an auto-death paragraph. But wait! I can enter the dreamworld here! I do so and find myself facing Morpheus, the lieutenant of Ishtra: a vast bloated maggot-like creature composed solely of the seething, roiling stuff of nightmares of all creatures. Before I can face him I have to face three dream combats, against the nightmarish visions of a harpy, clawbeast and a wraith. Unable to win, I am forced out of the dreamworld back to the auto-death paragraph where a suffocating blanket of evil envelops me and drains my lifeforce away, leaving me a husk on the tunnel floor.

At this point I sort of gave up. I'd like to revisit this one, but it cannot be emphasised how utterly not fun the dream combat is in this book. You literally just roll 2d6: on a 2 - 7 you lose 2 power and 8 - 12 the enemy does. Your power does get restored after each fight but it's boring - literally just rolling dice over and over - and it's weighted against you so it's just not fun at all. Then there was that awful bit with the doors where I just sat there trying to roll doubles until I got a roll that killed me (I assume there's a cool prize behind one of the doors, but who wants to do that and find out?) and then the fight with the snake monster which I managed to pass, but the odds were so against me doing so I'd never want to do that again.

I did actually peek ahead at the last combat and it's either another super-power fight or you need a dizzying array of items so it's not like I would have got any further (and I would have auto-died beforehand anyway due to an item I was carrying)

There's a lot of cool stuff in this book. The writing is really nicely done, with the forest bits being very descriptive and vivid (for a gamebook) and the dream sequences being confusing and strange, in a good way - I felt very invested and drawn into the world. Being able to switch between the waking world and the dream world is a great idea and it leads the final part being, from what I can tell, two separate dungeons overlaid over each other so you can navigate between them, and the final combat can be done either in the physical or the dream realm. It's very innovative stuff.
Less good is the magic: at the start you're given a list of spells, of which I got the chance to use exactly one, and then when you get to the second part of the book none of your spells work so that whole bit gets ditched. Felt like a real waste of time even having them in there.

The art is all by Ian Miller, which suits the weird dream sequences and the corrupted forests fantastically, but the cover has to be the worst one I've ever seen for a FF book, being best described as some snot demons. As a kid I didn't like Ian Miller's work at all and would actively have avoided this based on the cover: as an adult I appreciate him a lot more, but I still think this cover is dreadful.

All in all it's a book I really wanted to love but ended up putting aside out of frustration. Creature of Havoc and Nightmare Castle were two of the best in the series and then they've been followed by this, Star Strider and Crypt of the Sorcerer and I know Chasms of Malice is to come.... not a strong run for the late 20s.

I'm going to head out later and try and pick this up. My local WH Smith doesn't stock the Prog but does stock Monster Fun, so it'll be interesting to see if its there.

Looks like there might be a lot of material here I've already read (Clockwork Cavalier and Worlds Fastest Man definitely) but it's such an ambitious plan it needs supporting.

Whenever this thread pops up on recent posts my brain assumes it's going to involve Hulk Hogan. Inevitable disappointment ensues.

Perfectly put sir. It's a beautiful ending.

And you're right about the original plots being recycled and mainly cobblers. I've really enjoyed Ennis' take on Johnny so far though - both this, and the stuff in the Battle one-off with von Jurgen... I'd love to read more of it.

Fond memories of those Buster books, thanks Richard!

Serious mockery for Sharko this episode. It's hilarious and absolutely deserved.

This has been out a while but I've only just picked it up. I'm re-reading some old 1986 Battle Action Force stuff at the moment and whilst that period isn't peak Johnny Red, it prompted me to go out and seek more.

Great artwork from Keith Burns - the aerial scenes are superb and the grounded stuff portrays and grimy, bloody, desperate existence. The story is a little bit of a stretch, but as perfectly researched as you'd expect from a Garth Ennis WWII tale and containing the well written dialogue, pathos and violence you'd expect along with it.

What really shone through for me though was the love for the original that practically radiates off the story. Nina, Yakob, Rudi and the like are lovingly potrayed and the ending - which these characters never got in the original run - did leave me a bit misty eyed. I'm not sure how this would work for someone less familiar with the strip, but for someone who grew up with it, pure magic.

This is amazing mate!
Serious skills going on here.

I'm with Colin in that peak 2000ad is the early to mid 80s. We've had some magificent stuff since but there's a lot of stone cold classic tales. during that period. My favourite period, and I suspect this is the same for a lot of readers, is of course the period when I started reading it (88-90) but objectively it's not as good as the years that came before it.

Just discussing Dredd, I also think Judge Cal is where it really starts to take shape as the Dredd we know and love. The Cursed Earth has some very ideas, but it's far from essential imo - as Jim says there's no MC-1 and Superhero Dredd.

[Dredd]

Saturday prog! I've had a very cool day today and this arriving started it all off.

Absolute stunner of a cover.

Really digging this Dredd, as Niemand flips from grim to ridiculous. Incredibly daft fun and beautifully illustrated: Googe's Dredd is very clean cut but everything else is so full of personality, he draws some fantastic expressions and tons of small touches like the 'official' lewd calendat, the little hats on the Cal-Hab droids and a cameo there from Survival Geeks too. Definite dig in there about a current meg strip. Great.

Durham Red also really enjoyable this week. Excellently put together episode. Stupid pigeons!

The Order It really does feel like it's finishing too fast - not in a Meltdown Man kind of way, but like maybe this could have wound down over a couple of series? It's all breathless action and that harks back to the original series (but this time with more robots and less cool characters) but I feel like the story deserved a bit more. With another quest hinted at and no Anna still, I cannot for the life of me see how this is going to wrap up in the time it has left.

Enemy Earth - skipped it.

Rogue Trooper so - the dialogue is great and the art is absolutely fantastic but there's no story here to interest me. Rogue, who is basically superpowered in this setting, massacres a bunch of totally outclassed dudes in a conflict he has nothing to do with. He's under no threat and we're unsure of his motivation. I still have hopes this will turn around for me, but right now I'm not feeling it at all.

Despite the negatives, top Prog.

Exquisite mini indeed! Love this.
I preordered mine from Comics & Cocktails but very tempted to cancel and go straight to Hiya as well.

Just seen the original picture of Shareella the Snow Witch on a copy of Warlock Magazine and she is super-80s:



Still got the bird hat, but a leggings and 80s ankle boots. She looks like she could be fighting the Ghostbusters.
I think I prefer this to the 80s version or Les Edwards more sultry image on the reissue.

Top man Colin! Raising them right.
Not ashamed to admit that my fascination with lava lamps started with Barbarella.

A real pleasure to catch up with this episode today! As ever the podcast is a joy. I hope things are going a bit smoother for you guys.

Some really wonderful work by John Burns in this episode. The retro feel is very strong: I love the 70s spacesuit-style diving suits and the Foss design on the Raven base (I didn't know Chris Foss by name until Simon brought it up, but I knew who he was and it reminded me of his work, if that makes sense). And the T-Rex of course which is straight out of a Ladybird book. I really like the outside shots of the ocean and stuff but the absolute tour de force is the dialogue free page where Marguerite falls to her death.
This tale has a really sinister ending I think, where Dante is all like 'I'm here now' with us as the reader knowing his intentions are bad. Hearing Edie expound on his dickish actions on the previous page towards Marguerite also really made me take this ending in a new light.
Not sure why the ooze becomes a T-rex or a giant scorpion, when being a giant ooze was working out fine for it absorbing all the pirate dudes, but I love dinosaurs and giant insects so no complaints!

I'm less keen on the British episode but again it looks amazing. It's a bit throwaway and daft but one of Dantes strengths imo is the way it veers between the serious and the silly.

Also: Lava lamps rule. I have one on my desk right now. Simons depth of dino-knowledge is great. Wicked Wanda was a bit of an eye-opener on Google.

Finally, Hammer films! I had a huge collection of these in the past: my wife doesn't really like them so I haven't seen any for ages, but my favourite ones would be:
Horror of Dracula is amazing.
Brides of Dracula is awesome but has no Christopher Lee. another good Dracula one is Dracula Prince of Darkness. Or Vampire Lovers with Ingrid Pitt.
The Devil Rides Out rules and does have Christopher Lee.
I have a huge fondness for Twins of Evil and Count Karnstein's hilarious panicked face when he closes the door near the end was a running joke between my brother and I for years. As with a lot of the witch hunter ones though it's unfortunately pretty misogynistic and a more difficult watch nowdays (this is true of a lot of Hammer in general sadly)
Plague of Zombies is a good non-vampire one.
Lastly a special mention for Vampire Circus. My parents saw this film at the cinema whilst courting and my Mum was so shocked / disgusted they left halfway through. I heard this story so many times Vampire Circus took on this sort of mythical status as a super-horrific film for me which of course meant I watched it as soon as I could. It's not as good as any of the other films on this list.