That’s right, the first Airship Daedalus trade paperback is almost here! Brian and I will be bringing a limited number of copies with us for sale (and signing) to Emerald City Comicon, March 30, 31 & April 1. If you’re in the Seattle area, drop by our table (in Artist Alley) or come see me in the south lobby at the table for my current webseries project, The Collectibles!
The following guest post is from James Stubbs, author of the Dime Heroes RPG and co-author of Deus ex Historica. Although it was not selected as our foreword, it’s too good not to share.
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I blame my grandmother.
I suppose that I could lay it at the feet of the relative who gave her the tapes to begin with who thought it might be a good gift.
She just wanted to get rid of stuff that was cluttering up her home.
So, at the rather impressionable age of twelve, I found myself in possession of a set of audio cassette tapes of vintage radio shows. Mostly adventure and detective episodes but some comedy tossed in.
Mind you, this was all in the days before VCRs (or DVDs for you younger folks) and well before the Internet became common. Cable TV was a luxury enjoyed by only those who wanted to pay for it which meant that TV was whatever could be picked up off the air – which meant plenty of “dead air” time for a young boy who had no interest in the adult programs like the news or the soap operas.
But I had a tape player and a vivid imagination. Two deadly combos when it came to radio dramas.
Thinking back on it, those early days of the 1980s for me was, in many ways, mirrored those of the generations of children in the 1930s and 1940s who crowded around the radio to hear the new adventure of their favorite heroes. Mine was just available to listen to whenever I hit the Play button rather than having to anxiously wait a week for the proper airtime.
I wore out those tapes. It was a sad day when The Lone Ranger was became a mangled mess of magnetic confetti in my aging device. I got another set of tapes from my parents for Christmas that year only to be disappointed when many of the tapes were just the old episodes that I had already listened to time and time again. To be fair, they didn’t know and was probably confused with the love affair that I was having with stuff that was even older than they were.
In my ignorance, I didn’t know that these characters could be had in print. “Street and Smith Publications” meant nothing to me when it was pitched at the end of The Shadow and the names of various magazines only meant that they were old and I could never get them. It was a glorious day when I found a copy of a paperback reprint The Shadow in “The Creeping Death” in a library book sale. The book was in horrible shape (I still have it) but it set me off and running to find more. I now knew the old stories had survived and, most importantly, that there were others out there who shared my love of these heroes.
I quickly found that having all the love in the world meant nothing when you were a poor teenager and faced with the sticker shock of the prices on the old books and magazines. I had to be content with whatever was cheaply reprinted which, at the time, consisted of The Shadow, Doc Savage, The Avenger and The Lone Ranger. I got what I could and probably could have gotten more if my developing hunger for heroic stories hadn’t branched out into comic books which led into a monthly habit that took what spare money I made from my after school job.
If it was possible to be even poorer as a college student than I had been as a high school kid, I did it. Fortunately, I met Brian, a now lifelong friend of mine, who was just as passionate about the old heroes as I was. I read what he had and vice versa. We satisfied our cravings for adventure with Dungeons & Dragons and the old DC Heroes roleplaying games. None of which required any ongoing money to enjoy. It was another bolt from the blue when I found a copy of the old Daredevils pulp RPG in the clearance bin at the comic book store I visited to occasionally pick up back issue comics on the cheap. I never had the guts to try to run a game of it, afraid that my own skills as a game master would be lacking or, more likely, that it would fail to live up the grand adventures that I had concocted in my own mind.
It wasn’t until after college that I had a decent paying job that would allow me to financially indulge myself in comics and roleplaying games that I got involved in what you hold in your hands right now. You don’t remember seeing my name on the cover? That’s because I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I had discovered Deep7 and their 1PG line of games when I was writing reviews of free roleplaying games for RPG.NET back in the day. There was something about them thought that stuck with me, while with most companies or designers I did my article and went about my merry way.
I don’t know why I did it but I wrote a 1PG pulp game while I was at work. I tossed it off to Todd so that he could put it up as a free download to anyone who wanted it. He shot back that he wanted to buy it from me. Suddenly, something I had done on a lark was valued. Todd said that he had had a pulp game in mind for many years called Airship Daedalus but it had never gone beyond some preliminary stages. So, in many ways, I stole Todd’s baby all those years ago and this is his revenge – cutting me out of the picture. This is his baby in much that same way that Dime Heroes was mine.
I’ve done a lot of work for Deep7 over the years with everything ranging from Hong Kong chop-socky to gladiators but Dime Heroes and the pulps has always been my weak spot. It harkens back to a simpler time when bad guys were just bad – they didn’t need a mental condition or mommy issues to want to kill or take over the world. Heroes were good guys. They did the right thing because it was what heroes did. They weren’t in it for fame or wealth, although both often found them. Justice, in those pre-Miranda Rights days, was often delivered through a fatal bullet or the villain does himself in through his own misfortune (thereby absolving the hero of any guilt or legal ramifications). Gunning a villain down was okay as long as they were armed and you didn’t shoot them in the back.
So, in that vein, shoot straight, play fair and never take any wooden nickels… and, above all else, enjoy the perilous ride you are about to embark on.
