Feed aggregator

Check out the cover for QUEEN IN BLACK #3 by Al Ewing and Iban Coello along with QUEEN IN BLACK tie-in issues on sale in August, including QUEEN IN BLACK:…

The post DYLAN BROCK IS THE KEY TO ENDING THE WAR BETWEEN KNULL AND HELA IN QUEEN IN BLACK #3! appeared first on First Comics News.

MIRACULOUS CHIBI 3-IN-1 VOL. 2 Coming this Summer from Papercutz Bigger Laughs, Bigger Chaos, and More Chibi Adventures with Ladybug, Cat Noir, and Friends MAY 5, 2026 (PORTLAND, OR) —…

The post Chibi Ladybug and Cat Noir Take Over Paris! appeared first on First Comics News.

New imprint debuts first titles in Fall 2026 and is dedicated to releasing manga, international graphic novels, illustrated chapter books, and picture books for younger readers   Los Angeles, CA…

The post TOKYOPOP LAUNCHES TOKYOPOP KIDS PUBLISHING IMPRINT appeared first on First Comics News.

Ahead of WORST MAN’s release this August, it is time to meet the cast. Here are some of the unforgettable characters at the heart of this sun-soaked chaos! Set against…

The post MEET THE CAST OF WORST MAN, A HILARIOUS HEIST-ROMCOM! appeared first on First Comics News.

Doctor Who’s Donna Noble, Catherine Tate, stars in dark comedy Oh Mary! until July

Doctor Who’s Catherine Tate is the latest star to take the role of Mary Todd Lincoln in the West End production of Oh Mary! The play is an uproariously dark comedy about a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Unrequited yearning, alcoholism, and suppressed desires abound in this 80-minute one-act play that finally examines the forgotten life and dreams of Mrs. Lincoln. It depicts her as an alcoholic former cabaret star trapped in a largely loveless marriage with the deeply closeted Abraham.

Tate takes over the role from Mason Alexander Park (The Sandman, Quantum Leap.) Across the Atlantic, the Broadway production of Oh Mary! has starred actors such as Jinkx Monsoon (The Devil’s Chord), Jane Krakowski (30 Rock), and currently Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live.)

Declared “one of the best comedies in years” by The New York Times, Oh, Mary! received Tony Awards for Best Leading Actor in a Play (Cole Escola) and Best Direction of a Play (Sam Pinkleton).

The former Doctor Who star, who played companion Donna Noble from 2006 to 2010 before returning to the role for the 60th anniversary in 2023, will be appearing in eight performances a week until the 18th of July. You can buy your tickets now from the Trafalgar Theatre website.

Though best known for her television roles, such as Doctor Who, The Office, and her own Catherine Tate Show, Tate has been appearing on stage in dozens of productions since 1988’s Blood Wedding. Notable roles including Lydia in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, Michelle in Under the Blue Sky, and Peggy in The Enfield Haunting. Perhaps most famously, however, is her astonishingly entertaining double act with Who co-star David Tennant for the 2011 production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

 

The post Oh Catherine! – Catherine Tate Stars in Oh Mary! appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Mack “Clownface” and Panda Make Their Artist’s Edition Debut in 2026 LOS ANGELES 5/5/2026 — Today Skybound and Image Comics, in partnership with Scott Dunbier’s Act 4 Publishing and Keven Gardner’s 12-Gauge Comics, shared a first look at the definitive new…

The post Act 4 Publishing & Skybound Share First Look at Jason Pearson’s Body Bags Artist’s Edition appeared first on First Comics News.

The Thread + Maple Telescopic Tool Case is a touch of functional luxury you can enjoy every time you stitch! This zip-top genuine leather case transforms into a stand-up cup to hold your tools - great on flat surfaces or in your car's cup holder! Take a closer look and enter to win your own […]

The post Thread and Maple Telescopic Tool Case Giveaway appeared first on moogly. Please visit www.mooglyblog.com for this post.

0

2000 AD Prog 2481 UK RELEASE DATE: 6th May £3.99 LUNAR RELEASE DATE: 20th May $7.99 COVER: TOBY WILLSMER In this issue:   JUDGE DREDD // CROSSED LINES by Ken Niemand (w)…

The post 2000 AD Prog 2481 preview appeared first on First Comics News.

Daredevil didn’t have a super villain he could call his own until he ran into the Owl, Leland Owlsley, in his third issue. In his first two exploits, the Man…

The post JUST IMAGINE! August 1964: The Gangster Who Glides appeared first on First Comics News.

Conan & Dragonero # 1 Writers: Stefano Vietti & Luca Enoch Artist/Colorist: Lorenzo Nuti Letterers: Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Tyler Smith Cover Date: June 2026 Rating: 07/10 The first installment…

The post REVIEW CORNER: Conan & Dragonero # 1 appeared first on First Comics News.

As I’ve wrote in one of my recent posts I am currently rereading all of my Alternity books. Alternity is a roleplaying game I’ve wanted to run since I first bought it but something always got into the way. But there’s a problem. Even though I own quite a few Alternity books, I don’t own all of them and since the game has been out-of-print for many years it gets increasingly hard (and expensive) to track down copies. But what about digital copies online? There are actually quite a few Alternity books available for purchase on DrivethruRPG. Unfortunately they are not easily found since most of them are stuck in the d20 Modern Generic section. Another problem is that the two core rulebooks are not available online aside from the “Limited Preview Edition” of the Players Handbook.

But I hear you asking “what about the new Alternity”. A couple of years back Rich Baker, one of the original designers of TSR’s Alternity released a new version of the game after a successful Kickstarter. Sasquatch Game Studio, Baker’s new company was actually able to register the Alternity trademark back then since Wizards hadn’t bothered to renew it. Unfortunately not much of Alternity’s original ideas made it into the new game. So while there’s still a game called Alternity out there, it doesn’t have much in common with the original besides being a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game. But like it predecessor it’s pretty much dead at his point. The last update on the Sasquatch Game Studio website has been in 2018 and no new products for the game has been released since then.

Could Wizards of the Coast actually bring back Alternity properly? That’s highly unlikely. The most we can hope for is that they release all the Alternity products as PDF downloads on DriveThruRPG and hopefully also add a POD option at some point. A limited reprint of the original corebooks as an “anniversary edition” like FFG did it with WEG Star Wars 1st Edition would be brilliant, but unlikely due to the trademark situation. The trademark is still owned by Sasquatch Game Studios and I don’t know what kind of deal Sasquatch has with Wizards which allows the latter to release products using that name.

One option I haven’t written about yet is a retro clone. In a post a few years ago I stated my belief an Alternity clone could cause ire from WotC’s lawyers but that’s probably not the case. As long as someone rewrote the rules without directly copying the texts things should be fine. Mechanics are not copyrightable after all. The bigger question is if there’s an interest in doing so. Sure, there are countless D&D retro clones, but D&D was way more popular than the rather niche scifi TTRPG released shortly before TSR vanished as an entity completely.

Roleplaying games aren’t really dead as long as some people still play them, but in the case of Alternity there’s a true risk of it going extinct. It’s out of print and it was a niche product even when it was new. There are other, more popular options for Sci-Fi fans which are available like for example Traveller in its many incarnations. But if we keep talking about Alternity there’s a chance someone at WotC will commit to bringing all the books back or someone writes a retro clone so that at least its mechanics are available to find new fans.

What are your thoughts on the state of Alternity? Would you like to see it properly resurrected? Do you actually prefer the Sasquatch Game Studio’s version? Please share your comments below!

I am always looking for comics that are different—in a fantastic way. That goes the same with bringing creators onto the podcast. I often reach out to creators and invite…

The post Pop Kill Review appeared first on First Comics News.

Recently, I sat down with Jimmy Palmiotti to talk about his Pop Kill from Mad Cave Studios. You can listen to the full show wherever you listen to your podcasts.…

The post Palmiotti on Pop KIll appeared first on First Comics News.

 In a Sword & Sorcery setting, back alleys shouldn't just be empty paths; they should feel like the digestive system of a decaying city—dark, cramped, and dangerous.Here is a d100 table tailored for the grit and high adventure of Castles & Crusades. This blog entry picks right up from D100 Sword & Sorcery Random Urban Encounters Table for Castles & Crusades rpgThe Back Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – The Whoniverse Show, 2026 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

 To bring Kutchek and Gore into your Sword of Cepheus (2nd Edition) game, you need to emphasize their sheer physical dominance and their "Dual-Hero" dynamic. In this system, they function as high-Stamina tanks who can dish out massive damage but are vulnerable to social manipulation or complex technology.The Barbarian Brothers (Kutchek & Gore)Trait: High-Octane SiblingsSocial Class: 2 (Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Doctor Who episode The Story & the Engine is among the 2026 Hugo Award nominees

Doctor Who has its 37th Hugo Awards nomination ahead of the 2026 ceremony taking place at WorldCon in California on the 30th of August. This year’s nomination goes to the fifth episode of the most recent season, The Story & the Engine.

The episode brought the Doctor and Belinda to Lagos in Nigeria. There they discover the sinister unnamed Barber has taken over the barber shop of the Doctor’s old friend Omo. He uses their stories to power his engine’s journey through the web of fiction, to further his mission to strike at the gods themselves. It’s a voyage which will also reveal a secret from deep in the Doctor’s past…

The prestigious Hugo Awards recognize the best in science fiction literature, film, TV, art and journalism every year. Doctor Who’s nomination is in the Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form category. This broadly, but not strictly, functions as the category of outstanding television episodes. This year Doctor Who is up against episodes of Murderbot, about a security robot with a mind of its own, Pluribus, in which an alien virus turns almost the entire human race into one vast hive mind, Severance, about a nightmarish office where workers’ personalities and memories are divided between work and time off, and The Wheel of Time, set in a world of magic and destiny.

 

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• Doctor Who: The Story & the Engine, written by Inua Ellams, directed by Makalla McPherson (BBC One, Disney +)
• Murderbot: All Systems Red, written by Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz, directed by Roseanne Liang, based on the book All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Apple TV)
• Murderbot: The Perimeter, written by Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz, directed by Paul Weitz, based on the book All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Apple TV)
• Pluribus: We Is Us, written and directed by Vince Gilligan (Apple TV)
• Severance: Cold Harbor, written by Dan Erickson, directed by Ben Stiller (Apple TV)
• The Wheel of Time: The Road to the Spear, written by Rafe Lee Judkins, directed by Thomas Napper, based on the book The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (Amazon Prime Video)

 

Billie Piper returned to Doctor Who at the end of the 2025 season.. But is she the Doctor? Doctor Who returns to BBC One and iPlayer this Christmas

The post Doctor Who: The Story, the Engine & the Hugo Award appeared first on Blogtor Who.

By Pat_Sagor
Pat_Co Productions
Nimble/OSR
Level 3

In the heart of a volcanic wasteland, the Tower rises amid fire and ash, a slender edifice of stone. Its citizens never leave the Tower, and keep their mysterious traditions out of sight from the outside world. But they have gained immense wealth trading wondrous artifacts extracted from the depths below the Tower… Outside the Tower, Baron Hugues DeMort’s massive army has been laying siege for over a month. Unable to breach its impervious gates, frustrated and desperate, he has devised a plan to infiltrate the Tower, and he just heard of a group of adventurers that are brave, capable, and … expendable. The perfect team to send on a probably suicidal mission!

Greetins Green Level adventurers! Friend baron has a new, fun, and exciting adventure for you! This fifty page adventure describes about twelve scenes inside a gigantic tower/city that is under siege. The party travels through a rigid caste-based society that really be in a 70’s social commentary scifi movie instead. Follow the script, stab the bosses and then … win?

Ok, so, Baron von Evil is laying siege to the massive tower city and sends the party in through some lower cave/tunnels to get to the city gates and blow them up with the bombs he’s devised for you to carry. You get in and find a massively caste-based society. The tower/city has four levels. The lowest, black are the workers, then the level above has the red managers, then the golden enforcers and judges above that, and then the white intelligentsia above that. We’ll let you decide if Black=Worst and White=Best has any meaning here. Anyway, it’s right out of a scifi movie and, in fact, this probably should have been a Gamma World adventure but, then, of course, it wouldn’t sell any copies at all. Ok, so, anyway, you’re in this city on the lowest levels. You gotta get ahold of some levitation bands to Ascend through the central shaft. Along the way you meet rebels, learns about the rape of an 8 year old by a cop, and find out that hte whites are not white, they are all really just one lich in charge of everything. 

The designer kind of knows they’ve written a railroad and has some words on advice on how to make it not a railroad and more interactive. There are some very basic maps of the city regions, but, ultimately, the adventure comes down to the twelve or so scenes/events that make up the plot here. You’re in the tunnels and then watch some cops kill a couple of citizens just minding their own business. You watch an Ascension, where citizens are promoted to the next color up. You meet a rebel and then get arrested by the ol “four more show up every turn” trick. Youre in the middle of the Barons army invading the tower, you boss fight Golden Centurion Marigold 1 (that’s one of the tower peoples names. Like I said, SciFi) who covered up the rape of the little girl. Let’s see, one of the lich’s victims telepathics you, and then you fight the lich. Let’s see … have I bitched about rape yet? Of a child? Why are people putting this shit in their adventures? This is supposed to be fun. You know what’s not fun? Child rape. People just seem to toss that shit around the way they toss around Hitler when arguing. Maybe give it a rest and find something else for the cops to cover up? Maybe Soylent Green is people. That’s fun. Can you  imagine? People love it. They riot over it. And it’s actually people. And, notably, not child rape. (and murder! Don’t forget the murder after the child rape.) 

The adventure gives you a list of NPC’s, a list of scenes, and a list of locations. There’s a decent number of summaries and background information as well, but, really, it is the people, places, and events that drives this.

Well, I say people drive it, but it tends to be more of a “Guest Star of the Week” kind of the thing. You get an NPC in a scene or situation and then you’ll be lucky if they continue to show up. Thus there is a relatively large number of named NPC’s, each with decently long NPC descriptions. Those descriptions are fairly well done but at some point you’ve got to ask yourself why we have so many people. You can’t possibly form a bond with any of them, not in the amount of time they are showing up. There is supposed to be this underlying theme pr regression, rebelling against order, blind adherence to order and the neutral observers to it all that is handicapped (Let’s see the judiciary enforce their decisions when enforcement power belongs to the people they are ruling against.) And then, of course, ultimately the entire system comes from corruption at the very top, the farce of the liches leadership. 

We’ve all seen a lot of liches. Party liches, grim liches. We’ve got a master manipulator here, that shows up a couple of times in public ceremonies impersonating a “white,” Possessing, really. And he has some tells. He raises his hands to his face and says “Actually …” a lot. There’s a fun little gimmick to get the party wondering, This is just slightly farcical and one of the better parts of the adventure.

Looks, it is essentially a railroaded scenebased adventure. The designer tries to help it not be that with some locations and a tad bit of free will, but that’s what it is. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is, I suspect, how the vast majority of people play D&D, some derivations of scene based with a lot of hand-waving. Not my favorite type, but I get it. If you’re gonna have scenes then lean in and write a scene based adventure. If you want your location based adventure to have events then dump those in. This adventure never fully commit to either and is the worse for it. Devo says you need to Sartre this baby up! This needed to be all events/scenes or a location based adventure with “secrets” to discover and a few events thrown in. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggest price of $1. The preview is eleven pages and gives you a good cross-section of different aspects of the adventure. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/563227/the-tower-for-nimble?1892600

The Weird Wood of southern Parsulan is an ancient forest infused with potent arcane energies. In halls of Magical Academy at Abraxad, surrounded and protected by the wood, it is labelled as Forbidden and students have been disciplined or even expelled for entering it other than by the proscribed paths. Treasure seekers and adventures from other places sometimes travel the forest, however, but many don't return.

What is known from the reports of those that enter it is that the forest is a place of unusual magical power. At the very least, it alters a visitor's perception of time and distance. The wood is also said to be the abode of strange spirits, beings inhabiting both biological and mechanical forms.

Faerie woodlands are hardly a rarity in Parsulan, but somehow, the Weird Wood has become infected or entwinned with technomagical devices in addition to its natural, elemental powers. Some point to its relative proximity to the Field of Fallen Colossi and suggest some stray, animate portion of the giant combatants may have made its way to the forest. Others argue that given the sheer number of constructs and amount armament debris found there, moss covered or half-buried, it must be the remnant of an assault by a substantial force. Perhaps in times past someone marched against Abraxad, and this is the result? If that is true, then Abraxad would surely have record of it in its extensive libraries, but those remain closed to outsiders.

Whatever their origins, it is these artifacts that draw the scavengers.

The commonly encountered fae of the forest are mostly harmless and appear as small, crude figures or vaguely animal or insect shapes of metal. They seem to mimic biological life in a rough but analogous way to the manner Meks resemble humans. 

The larger, more dangerous entities are harder to describe with certainty. Some appear as beasts with mechanical and biological parts. Others are shifting shapes of churning metal, churning storms of fury and blades.

 The Type 3 Security Cutter (also known as the Type 3 System Security Cutter) is a specialized law enforcement and patrol vessel in the Clement Sector RPG setting by Independence Games. While the Type 2 is a common sight in local system navies, the Type 3 represents an up-scaled, more formidable evolution of the security cutter concept.Here are the detailed specifications and background for Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0