Kill, kill, kill

Art by John Hotchkiss

I jumped back into role-playing with gusto in late 1985, armed with Champions 3rd edition and a handful of enthusiastic friends. Before too long I was meeting lots of others playing the game, in person and through The Clobberin’ Times, and I got a good look at how plenty of people expected to play their heroes. How was it? Easy. In a word, they were killing all over the place.

Scary war

I completely missed war comics as a kid, and the reason is easy: the covers scared the shit out of me, the few I found in the pile of comics I’d inherited, e.g. Sgt. Rock, no less than those I’d see on the stands when I started buying comics, like Weird War Tales and War is Hell.

The big bad

This is one of the follow-up Cosmic Zap posts trailin’ in the wake of September, certainly related to Cosmic villainy, because we’re talking about metaphysical evil here. Especially the kind who favors red, fire, and underground habitation, and has something to do with death and sin and treachery. I know! It’s Set, from the ancient Egyptian pantheon, right? Uh, no …

Flyin’ high

Here’s what happened: in the course of a series of Spider-Man issues which included more and more youthful voices and more and more explicit political positions, Stan Lee and Gil Kane did a pretty intensive story including street drugs.