Weekly Geekly Rundown for June 16, 2023

TSR and WotC Vaporpublications, Film Reviews, and More

Add Proton Fire to My List of Abandoned Games I’d Love to See Published

As a lover of superhero role playing games the top two games of my list of abandoned games I want to see published are the d20 Modern expansion d20 Spectaculars and the Judge’s Guild role playing game Supra Sentinels. I’ll write about those later this week, just in case you are wondering what these magical missing manuscripts are all about. I’m also interested in the games that almost, but never where, published by some of the leading companies in the industry. That’s why I was surprised when I learned about 1985’s most exciting role playing game that never came to be. That game is Proton Fire from TSR. Proton Fire was solicited to retailers and advertised in TSR’s annual catalog, but it never got published.

Though the game was never released, it was playtested and heavily promoted. In issue 99 of Dragon Magazine, the Ares section of the magazine included a feature article by Michael Breault discussing the background of the game on pages 76 and 78. You can find copies of those pages around the internet, and they don’t include any mechanics, so I won’t include them here. I will say though that if TSR had managed to release this game, they would have provided some pretty serious competition for FASA’s Battledroids (now Battletech) game. That game came out in 1984 and was still gaining a fan base. Looking at the proposed materials for Proton Fire, it looks like it would have been more of an RPG than early Battletech and that would have made for an interesting market dynamic. Which would perform better, a tactical miniatures game or a role playing game? We'll never know, but I would love to see the Proton Fire rules if they ever surface.

This Week’s Comic Book Read

Since Disney newest Marvel based series is inspired by the Secret Invasion plot line in the Avengers titles, I’ve decided to go back and reread them using my Marvel Unlimited account. It’s a fun series where the Skrull infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. and pose as several super heroes in an attempt to take over the Earth. Their plan gets exposed when a Skrull who had taken the form of Elektra dies and it’s up to Wolverine and the New Avengers to stop them. This plot line is on the grimmer side, but most of the plot lines involving the Kree-Skrull War have been. Galactic Storm had quite a shocking ending that ended up dividing the Avengers in the comic books for quite some time. This story doesn’t have consequences quite that extreme, but it is a fun read. You can read Luke Y. Thompson’s review below to see if he thinks the tv series can live up to the comic book version.

Weekly Luke Y Thompson and Courtney Howard Review Cavalcade

In a surprise review that’s a little outside of his normal wheelhouse, Luke Y Thompson reviews Jazz Town for CineGods. Jazz Town is a documentary about the Jazz scene in Denver, Colorado that spends more time trying to define what Jazz is and not enough time focusing on the Jazz musicians that make Denver worthy of being the subject of a Jazz documentary or the history of Jazz in the city. While Jazz, like Punk, might in some ways be an attitude, it is also very much a genre of music that can be spoken about in music theory terms. I’m not the person to do it, as I’m just a listener and not a practitioner, but YouTube is only a few clicks away and it is filled with people knowledgeable on a wide variety of music (like Adam Neely for example) who can talk about Jazz without “mystical” terms.

Returning squarely to his wheelhouse, and showing how he can be an iconoclast in pop culture reviews, Luke has written up some less than flattering thoughts on the new Marvel series Secret Invasion. One of the failings of the series, or at least one of the things that leads to less than desirable storytelling, is in the how and why of the “Secret Invasion.” In the comics, the Skrull are pretty universally bad guys. To be fair, so too are the Kree in the comics…a problem that leads some heroes to engage in extreme action at the end of Galactic Storm. Since the Skrulls are largely baddies, with some heroic and noble individuals, in the comics having the shapeshifters secretly infiltrate and engage in subterfuge comes with little or no normative baggage.

In the Captain Marvel movie though, the Skrull were shown to be innocent refugees on the run from the villainous Kree. So turning refugees into a subversive threat, while also trying to critique right-wing extremism, isn’t the best narrative fit. The problem here is having to deal with the narrative threads and history of a prior entry in the series which are different from the comics, a difference that makes the Secret Invasion a potentially poor choice for a story arc. I say this as someone who loved reading Wolverine battling Skrull. Where Captain America: Winter Soldier’s use of an often overlooked mini-series (Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D) as a launching pad worked well, if Luke’s review is correct using the more well known Secret Invasion storyline didn’t mesh well with the MCU.

Finally, Luke shares his thoughts on the new Indiana Jones movie. I won’t go into as much detail here as I’d like you to read his thoughts as he comments on a lot of aspects of the film.

The Courtney Howard review I’m highlighting this week is her examination of the Chris Hemsworth helmed Extraction 2 for Variety. I loved the first entry in the series and was hoping it would get a sequel. The end of the first film made that look unlikely, but unlike Man on Fire we do get to see what happens next and I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’ve long thought that Denzel Washington got a raw deal with Man on Fire not getting the follow up. The end of the film is similar, not identical, to the book. The main character is “dead” at the end of each, but the book was the first in a series where the film just fell short by not giving us the same “out” as the book. It’s a wrong that Washington has partly corrected with his Equalizer series, which I totally view as the sequels to Man on Fire, but I still think the ending of Man on Fire did Washington a disservice.

Classic Film Recommendation

One of my favorite actors, Treat Williams, died this week and I’ve been watching a couple of my favorites from his catalog of films. While my own guilty pleasure favorite, Dead Heat, is a little too goofy 80s action-comedy to give a “Classic Film” recommendation, that isn’t the case with Hair which is a must see musical in which Treat Williams gives a powerful and engaging performance. Hair is a film that sneaks up on you and I always find myself crying at the end. There are some great musical numbers and one of the best is in the video below.

What I’m Listening To…

I like to have music in the background when I’m doing a variety of activities, so I thought I might start sharing one or two of the artists I’m listening to lately. While Genesis may not be my absolute favorite band, they come pretty close. For me Duke, the album where they begin their transition from Prog to Pop is a truly wonderful listen. It features some wonderful thematic tunes and a couple of real chart worthy pop tunes. “Behind the Lines” is a great track on the album as it contains both Prog and Pop elements. It begins with anthemic Prog sensibilities and then shifts when it hits Phil Collins’ lyrics. Just fantastic.