Fighting Fantasists

Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone posing with swords in front of a wall full of vintage board games!

This photo is the motherloving BOMB!

Read an interview with the two most important authors in the world HERE.

Vintage FF Ad

On entering his house, this delusional youngster proceeded to hack his parents to death, screaming: "Die, gorgon scum!"

Incidentally, (and I apologise for the sheer nerdiness of this), the script for this ad is technically incorrect. Any reader of FF books worth their salt will tell you that you never "turn to page 36" you simply turn to 36.

Just saying.

The most metal FF book EVER!

To Hackney Oxfam where I purchased a tatty old stack of Fighting Fantasy books. That's my bit for Haiti done then. Phew.

I've decided to try and build a complete run of FF purely from charity shops. No ebay, no secondhand bookshops, just charity. Bring it on. The 15 I nabbed yesterday brings my total to 20. Among the dog-eared haul - this beauty...

Love that cover! Sensationally good. The codpiece, eagle, eyepatch and spiked flail would've been metal enough, but to have the geezer riding a sled pulled by two sabretooth tigers?! FUCK YEAH! Break like the wind, baby!

Port Blacksand and Khare

The cover to my favourite Fighting Fantasy book...

I'm a city boy me, and this was the first one where you got to go urban. Port Blacksand is propah! Full of weird shops, drunken monsters, cutthroats and dark alleys!

It's not as good as the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure city book though...

I believe that this later got rebranded as an FF book, but when it first came out it stood apart from the main line. The second installment of Steve Jackson's epic Sorcery quadrilogy, (not a real word, but it should be), Khare was an ace book full of killer statues, sewer monsters, vampires and the obligatory dangerous taverns. Blew my tiny mind as a lad and still has a prime spot on my bookshelf.

I wish I'd thought of this

http://fightingdantasy.blogspot.com/

Great idea, done well.

Your adventure ends here...extended edition

Regular readers will know that I like nothing more at the end of a hard day's bagging and boarding than kicking off my shoes and relaxing in the warm nostalgic glow of a good fighting fantasy death. The likes of Jackson, Livingstone and Dever sure did know how to warp the imagination of their pre and early teen audiences with their tales of spiked pits and man-eating trolls. Yet these masters of the macabre didn't only open up minds to death, occasionally the discerning Fighting Fantasy fan was forced to confront a different kind of end, an end with no end! Here, for your delectation, are a few of these rare non-fatal FF finishes...






Magic stuff.

Briefly

To business.

Firstly big shout out to Clubber Lang, who found his way to LLC via THIS OLD POST. Thanks for dropping by Clubber and, yes, I have plenty more Fighting Fantasy deaths up my sleeve. Here's a particularly nasty one for your delectation...


...OUCH. My prediction...Pain!

If FF has had as profound effect on your life as it has mine, then I suggest that you join THIS FACEBOOK GROUP (sadly you'll need a Facebook account to share the sadness, sorry).

Next, thanks to Spinx for taking the time to look me up. I met Spinx on the Northern Line a month or so ago when I was fairly drunk, he was reading some Silver Age Flash reprints and had the misfortune of being a captive audience while I ranted nonsensically about Gorilla Grodd. Apparently I also recommended Criminal to him, which was quite sensible of me really. Hope you're enjoying the trades mate, Brubaker+Phillips = comics goodness!

That's the bulging electronic mail sack out of the way then, what else is itching my comics anus? Well, I'm currently in shock at the news that Marvel are releasing Secret Wars II and its various tie-ins as an omnibus. Seriously...

see for yourself

Yup chums, that's right: £58 of your hard earned for a luxuriously presented collection of some of the WORST comics Marvel has ever put out.

For the love of Stan and Jack!

Why are they foisting this shite upon us? Could it have anything to do with the fact that The Beyonder turned up in Bendis's Avengers Illuminati recently? Is Bendis about to reintroduce The Beyonder in Secret Invasion? Does his reappearance really warrant an omnibus? And could this be the first omnibus that ends up making its way into the bargain buckets of your local comic shop?

I think so, because honestly, can you see ANYONE buying this?

Lone Wolf

You know, the one thing I loved as much as comics when I was a 13 year old was wanking. But if I had to pick my third favourite thing in the world at that age its likely that roleplaying would just about have pipped the ZX Spectrum to the bronze medal position.

Of course the trouble with roleplaying games is that you need people to play them with. Whilst I wasn't short of pimply peers with a penchant for kobolds and complicated encumbrance tables, my hunger for fantasy games often needed satisfying at times when I wasn't allowed out. Thank God then for Fighting Fantasy.

I read some Stephen King as a teenager, but other than that, FF books were the only things I had any interest in looking at outside of comics. I say FF books, but really I'm using that as a catch all term for the "choose your own adventure" craze that Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson started, but which quickly spawned a host of imitators.

While unpacking a bunch of boxes full of my mouldering tat earlier today, I ended up wasting a fair few hours thumbing through The best of these imitators, (better than FF in fact), Lone Wolf, a series of books which could be played individually or (and this was the cool part) as an ongoing adventure that rewarded the returning player by allowing him to take his character from book to book. WOW! Just like D&D baby, but without the need for interaction with real people!

Of course you had to play the character provided for you, but what a dude he was - LONE WOLF, last of the Kai Monks. A sort of cross between David Carradine and Aragorn, Lone Wolf could whoop arse with a sword or (and obviously this was the preferred route) by using psychic powers.

The books were written by Joe Dever and illustrated by the genius that is Gary Chalk. Chalk also did the drawings for Talisman, a monster of a board game from Games Workshop that ran to six expansions (five of which I own and still play by the way). He's without doubt one of the greatest fantasy artists EVER. Anyone who likes Juan Jose Ryp's work will love Gary Chalk .

I've picked up quite a few of the Lone Wolf books from charity shops in recent years. Although the later ones (the series ran into double figures) are quite scarce and go for a fair amount of dosh, the real winners are the first six or seven.

Anyway I enjoyed looking through the books this afternoon, but at the end of the day I was happy enough to stick them in a cupboard where they will probably turn a crisp yellow. There are plenty of folk out there who are properly obsessed with the series though, including this man who thinks he is Lone Wolf...



and this lot (lol at their Lone Wolf names. SLAVEMASTER!!?? Fans eh?!)...

The Call - online!

One of my favourite comics last year was The Call. I talked about it HERE in case you missed it.

Well good news, The Call is now online.

Go forth, interact and ponder what it all means HERE

Bolland does Golden Heroes

I've figured out why I can't find the Brian Bolland art in Golden Heroes. The copy I bought on e-bay has had the Bolland pages removed. Oh well, that's what you get for 1p I suppose.

Fortunately I've managed to track down the stuff Bolland drew for the game. Or at least I think I have.

The following images appear in The Art of Brian Bolland, and are described by Bolland himself as drawings done for Games Workshop. I think I remember them from my original copy, but we are going back 22 years, and the mind can play tricks...

Missing artwork from Golden Heroes?

Cover to Legacy of Eagles

Unused art from Legacy of Eagles?


SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE

Since we're on a bit of a Brian Bolland super-hero tip today, here are some scans of unused Bolland designs for the cover of the Fighting Fantasy classic Appointment with F.E.A.R.

And just in case there's anybody out there who hasn't seen it, here's the design that did get picked...

Still available at bookstores and most branches of OXFAM.

Your adventure ends here...

Various fighting fantasy deaths culled from the pages of "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", "The City of Thieves", "The Caverns of Kalte", "The Chasm of Doom" and "Shadow on the Sand"