Well, everyone agrees that 2020 was the worst year since, basically, 2016. And lots of folks expect 2021 to be a much better year, because what could be worse than this one, right?

Predictions are, of course, a mug’s game. No one can know the future, psychic powers do not exist, and the future will always, always, always surprise us.

Nevertheless: Kids, it’s going to get so much worse.

Let’s start off with the obvious. COVID-19 got worse after Thanksgiving, when all the stupid, selfish nihilists had big dinners with lots of people and spread the virus far and wide. It’ll get worse after Christmas, when all the stupid, selfish nihilists had big family gatherings with lots of people and spread the virus far and wide. It’ll get worse again after New Year’s, when all the stupid, selfish nihilists will have big stupid parties with lots of people and spread the virus far and wide.

The vaccines will help, but the stupid, selfish nihilists will insist they don’t want them. Just like they don’t want masks. And they’ll keep spreading the virus far and wide.

We are, unfortunately, living in a society full of deeply stupid people who get all their instructions straight from their Mango Messiah, deeply selfish people who think their convenience and comfort is more important than other people’s lives, deeply nihilistic people who dream of setting the world on fire and dancing in the flames because lolol nothing matters.

What else we got? Kids, terrorism is probably gonna go through the fucking roof.

And we’re not talking about Shadowy Muslims blowing up buildings and shooting up shopping malls. We’re talking about very white, very Christian, very Republican Trump worshipers blowing up buildings and shooting up shopping malls. ‘Cause they ain’t adjusting well to their God-Emperor getting shown the door, and most of them would much rather cast out everything they claimed to believe about the greatness of American democracy, murder innocent people, and live in a full-on fascist dictatorship than deal with the fact that a (depressingly slim) majority of Americans don’t believe Nazis are Very Fine People.

“Well, heck, you’re over-reacting! It’s not like we’ve had a lot of terrorism already! I mean, other than the plot to execute the governor in Michigan. And the bombing in Nashville on Christmas Day. And hordes of Proud Boys, undercover cops, and neo-Nazis running wild and assaulting people every few weeks.”

Honestly, I think they’re just getting warmed up. Here’s this dude who lived through a similarly dumb coup attempt, and he says the terrorist attacks started about four months after everyone thought the nonsense was settled. I suspect America’s conservatives, mostly driven to madness by having to share power with women and brown people, are going to go wild with violence or, for those too sensible to pick up a gun or blow up an elementary school, making excuses for violence.

And the press, addicted to the fat ratings and profits of the tabloid Trump era, will be absolutely overjoyed by it all.

But enough about unimportant national news, right? What about the important stuff? What about comics?!

Heck, I have a really hard time saying much. I haven’t lived within four hours of a decent comic book shop in over four years. I don’t know what the big events are. I never hear anything about comics that are getting the big positive buzz. Sometimes, I’m not even really sure what’s getting published. But it still doesn’t feel good to me.

DC Comics got hit with a sledgehammer this year because AT&T decided they don’t care about comics, only IP. And Marvel’s head honchos are either Trumper loons or racist sock-puppet flatscans — plus their parent company has decided they don’t like the idea of paying royalties to writers. I don’t think any of those make for a healthy company. One willing to starve their comics division to maybe, possibly fund some movies and TV shows, and the other slaved to untrustworthy men and an untrustworthy parent that doesn’t value its creators.

I’m not even very optimistic about the various comics-based movies and TV shows. What I worry about is whether movie audiences decided the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s story was completed with the “Endgame” film — and thus may be unwilling to buy into a new phase of the project with new movies, new characters — but without Iron Man and Captain America, two of the series’ most popular characters.

A lot of the new Marvel movies and TV shows sound pretty interesting — but if the audiences don’t show up for them, can the studio continue to greenlight ’em?

As for DC’s movies — I need to see some more evidence that they’ve abandoned the grimdark dumbness brought on by Zack Snyder.

In both cases, I’m really nervous about the idea of jamming theaters with mountains of superhero movies when we’re not even sure if there’s still an appetite for that much stuff. Overwhelming indifferent audiences seems like a good way to release a bunch of flops and killing off the superhero movie for good.

I’m not a complete pessimist. I think we’ll get COVID-19 under control eventually — maybe by summer, maybe after that. I think the economy will start to claw its way back — but the process will be helped along if the Democrats in the Senate realize they can make some improvements by pushing Mitch McConnell down a flight of stairs. And I think some comics will continue to be very profitable — namely graphic novels aimed at younger readers, including books by Raina Telgemeier, Dav Pilkey, and plenty of others, which generally have sales that make DC and Marvel look like indie publishers.

Still — just because 2020 was bad doesn’t mean 2021 is gonna be a lot better. Y’all be careful out there.

My friends, none of us have a single good thing to say about this absolute tire fire of a year. COVID-19 turned everything upside down, the comics industry started collapsing, Trump was in office all goddamn year.

We lost so very many great people. We lost Chadwick Boseman, Wilford Brimley, Kobe Bryant, Mary Higgins Clark, Sean Connery, Richard Corben, Mac Davis, Kirk Douglas, Mort Drucker, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stuart Gordon, Ian Holm, Grant Imahara, Terry Jones, Tiny Lister, Little Richard, Ennio Morricone, Denny O’Neil, Martin Pasko, John Prine, Carl Reiner, Diana Rigg, Kenny Rogers, Richard Sala, Joel Schumacher, Joe Sinnott, Jerry Stiller, Alex Trebek, Eddie Van Halen, Max von Sydow, and Fred Willard, among far too many others.

I know my expectation is that, somehow, 2020 will find a way to get even worse in its final week. But for now… well, it’s Christmas, and even in 2020, that’s not bad. So let’s have some fun with some comics covers.

Y’all have a merry one, please. Let’s try to squeeze a little goodness outta 2020.

Awright, it’s Christmas Week, and nothing’s slowed down yet! Everything’s still goin’ crazy! Who has time to review anything? I DO, BECAUSE I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH I JUST GOTTA BRING Y’ALL MORE REVIEWS!

So we’re gonna review a short novel called Buffalo Soldier by Maurice Broaddus

Our story follows Desmond Coke, a Jamaican spy turned renegade, who is escorting a quiet, strange boy named Lij as they flee through an alternate-steampunk version of the Wild West while trying to escape from agents of the global empire of Albion.

They run into far too much trouble in the Free Republic of Tejas, but manage to cut through a bunch of corporate mercenaries. Unfortunately, the gun-slinging Pinkerton agent Cayt Siringo is a more dangerous foe, but they still manage to hobble over the border into the Assembly of First Nations, but not even this most technologically advanced territory may be able to protect them from their enemies.

Can Desmond and Lij escape to freedom? Can they find anyone they can trust? And what is the secret hiding in Lij’s genes?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Broaddus’ novella revs up fast and rarely slows down. The action is excellent, and the settings, particularly the extremely high-tech Assembly of First Nations, are lots of fun.

Characterization is also a very strong point. Desmond and Lij are both skillful and subtle creations, but some of the secondary characters are especially great, like the desperate but mannerly Cayt, the dignified fury of Inteus, and the calm, commanding, but compassionate Kajika.

It’s also a story about stories. Seems like everyone tells stories to Lij at one time or another, generally about legends and mythology. He’s on the run because someone decided they could decide what the story of his life was going to be — the stories show him he can decide for himself.

If you’re looking for grand, action-packed fantasy with a steampunk-Western twist and a fun, diverse cast, you’ll want to pick this up.

Hey, here’s some stuff I feel like I shoulda mentioned before!

Bullet Point! Baxter, the foster dog we were taking care of a while back, has now moved on to his Forever Home and Forever Daddy off in the distant wilds outside Marfa, Texas. He’s getting along great with his new big brother and greatly enjoying living in the country, where he gets to snuffle his nose in all the wet cow poop he wants. He’s probably forgotten us already, which is really the point of being a foster, to be honest.

The only thing about the whole situation I’m not happy about is learning that he has to get rattlesnake vaccinations now. Who even knew there was such a thing as rattlesnake vaccinations?!

Okay, here’s another picture of Baxter. He’s a good boy!

And next: Bullet Point! Hats off for Richard Corben, superstar comic artist, who died last week. He did art for Heavy Metal, Meat Loaf albums, Hellboy comics, and a bunch of other weird, glorious, gorgeous projects.

Let’s look at a little Richard Corben art:

Bullet Point! Disney announced a massive buttload of new Marvel and Star Wars movies and TV shows, as well as casting news and photos for their programs, including WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Hawkeye, Loki, What If?, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Dr. Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more.

Can I just say they really need to slow this stuff down a lot? I like superhero stuff as much as anyone, but I’m really not sure there’s that much appetite for so much superhero content on TV and in the movies. I suspect a lot of mainstream audiences figured “Endgame” wrapped up the Marvel Cinematic Universe nicely, and there’s not a guarantee they want more. Better to release one or two movies, see how audiences react, and go from there, rather than jump to a massive glut of Marvel movies and pray people will care.

Besides, why care too hard about Disney stuff when they’re balking at paying their contracted royalties to creators?

Bullet Point! Hats off for Tom “Tiny” Lister, who died just a few days ago. Like most character actors, he had certain kinds of roles he specialized in — namely, the absolutely terrifying black man — with more than enough skill to subvert those roles, whether for comedy, as Deebo in “Friday” or President Lindberg in “The Fifth Element,” or for pure drama, in his small but massively impactful role in “The Dark Knight” as the prisoner who throws the detonator out of the prison ferry.

I can’t say Lister was the best actor in “The Dark Knight,” because he was onscreen for such a brief period. But he doubtless played the part of the most purely moral character in the movie — a man who uses his fearsome appearance solely to preserve life — and he sold the role beautifully.

Bullet Point! It turns out it’s not a good feeling at all knowing that 70 million people and almost every elected Republican at every level of government believes Nazis are Very Fine People and that democracy must be destroyed.

Is there anyone left out there saying we need to reach across the aisle to these people, to learn how they think? Anyone still saying Biden should pardon Trump for the good of the country? I sure hope not, ’cause anyone still saying nonsense like that is a goddamn idiot.

Probably the only way we’ll ever save this country is to somehow get every Trump supporter in the country stuffed into an unmarked grave somewhere — which means it’s probably impossible to save America, ’cause the only people with the drive to execute that many people… are Trumpers and their fellow Nazis.

As I’ve said far too often: (1) if you’ve got the ability to flee the country, do so as quickly as you can. Save yourself, save your family, save your friends, save a few folks from vulnerable populations and (2) The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

Y’all, I’m starting to think I’m just bad at blogging.

Is the problem that it’s December, and Christmas is just a couple weeks off, and life is too busy right now? Yes, it is. Is the problem that I’m rapidly running out of books and comics that I can review? Yes, it is.

Is the problem that I’m really, really lazy? Yes, it definitely is.

So I dug one of my old GURPS characters out of storage, just to fill some space and get a post done. Let’s see what he’s like.

Before we get to this guy’s stats, let’s do a quick summary of GURPS for those of you unfamiliar with the system. It’s a point-based character system — stats over 10, advantages, and skills cost you points; stats under 10 and disadvantages get you some points back. Quirks are worth a negative point each (and limited to five) and must be roleplayed. Numbers in the square brackets are how many character points were allocated to each item. This is all done in GURPS 3rd Edition, ’cause 4th Edition was garbage.

In GURPS, 100 points is considered a good starting point for beginner-level, unpowered characters, being significantly above the average person, but not strong enough to power through every obstacle. Some campaigns, particularly those dealing with high-level fantasy or superhero games, can be much stronger, up to 500 points, 1,000 points, or even more.

This is Andre Bonart, a blacksmith in the Wild West.

Name: Andre Bonart
Total Points: 100
Appearance: Black male; Age 19; 6’1″, 170 lbs.; black hair (mostly bald); blue eyes; bushy mustache; burly, muscular build; tends to overdress for most occasions when not on the job.

Statistics:
ST: 14 [45]
DX: 11 [10]
IQ: 11 [10]
HT: 11 [10]
Speed: 5.5
Move: 5
Dodge: 5

Advantages:
Animal Empathy [5] (Reaction: +2/+4)
Attractive [5] (Reaction: +1)
Common Sense [10]
High Pain Threshold [10]

Disadvantages:
Charitable [-15]
Gluttony [-5]
Honesty [-10]
Stubbornness [-5]

Quirks: Dislikes violence; Eats only two very large meals a day; Sings loudly while working; Speaks French to all animals; Strict Catholic. [-5]

Skills: Animal Handling-14* [2]; Armoury/TL6 (Rifles and Handguns)-10 [1]; Bard-11 [2]; Blacksmith/TL6-13 [6]; Brawling-12 [2] (Parry: 8); Carousing-11 [2]; First Aid/TL6-10 [½]; Fishing-11 [1]; Guns/TL6 (Rifle)-12 [1]; Intimidation-11 [2]; Mechanic/TL6 (Wagons)-11 [2]; Merchant-12 [4]; Packing-13* [1]; Riding (Horse)-14* [1]; Singing-11 [1]; Stealth-9 [½]; Streetwise-10 [1]; Teamster-14* [1]; Veterinary/TL6-14* [2].
*Cost modifiers: Animal Empathy.

Languages: English-11 [2]; French (native)-11 [0]

Biography: Andre was born in Kansas City to recent French migrants. As a youngster, he was befriended by a local blacksmith and eventually was apprenticed to him. When he skilled enough to open his own shop, he decided to move further west, ending up in a small town in Montana. He’s mostly content to quietly run his shop, but he’s already found himself pushed occasionally to take leadership roles and to protect locals who are in trouble.

Design Notes: What the heck, man, another Wild West character? Don’t you write a comics blog? Where’s the superheroes? Well, honestly, I kinda like making Western characters. They’re nicely uncomplicated, generally, with plenty of room to make them offbeat and fun. If I post more Western characters, though, I think I’ll start working harder to tweak their personality or abilities to make them even more fun.

Seriously, I’ve got a ton of these characters — I feel like I could post way more of them than I do.

We’ve already talked a bit about the “Wayfarers” series, with our previous review of “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,” remember? Well, let’s check out the sequel — A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

So Chambers’ followup to her much-loved debut novel leaves the crew of the Wayfarer behind and focuses on a couple characters who were mostly supporting cast in the first book. Pepper is a genius with electronics, and she helped out the crew of the Wayfarer several times, while Lovelace used to be the Wayfarer’s AI. After an accident wiped out her memories and reloaded her with her old default programming and personality, she was uploaded into a new hypertech artificial body. Unfortunately, giving Artificial Intelligences realistic bodies is illegal, and if she’s caught, she’ll be destroyed, and those who helped her will suffer severe penalties. Now Lovelace has to learn how to function out in the real world, with the aid of Pepper and her friends.

This novel follows a couple different storylines. In the first, Lovelace interacts with the world around her, chooses Sidra as her new name (Lovelace is a common program for AIs and would cause too much trouble for her if she kept it as a name), tries to figure out ways around the limitations of her new body, cautiously makes new friends in Blue and Tak, and endures a few personal crises on her way to becoming the best person she can be.

In the second storyline, we backtrack to Pepper’s childhood as Jane 23, a cloned factory slave. After she escapes into the desolate wastes of her hostile world, she must fight for her survival, with her only shelter a broken-down spaceship and her only companion an outdated but deeply loving AI named Owl.

As with Chambers’ first book, the characterizations truly shine, and the compassion of the writing really drive the book forward. Pepper’s lonely and frightening childhood and Lovey’s lonely and frightening transition from disembodied intelligence to bipedal life form are countered beautifully by the friendships they build — with abandoned humans, with understanding aliens, with an old AI willing to devote herself to keeping a lost child alive, and sometimes with surprise doses of kindness delivered by unexpected people — soon after Jane’s rescue from her wasteland exile, for example, she’s offered a simple hug from a large, intimidating alien who understands how stressful and traumatic her new life has become.

If you haven’t read it yet, you should certainly go check it out. We live in a rough and often unkind world. You deserve to enjoy some of this compassionate, diverse, welcoming, and vastly wonderful science fiction.

Heya, it’s Turkey Day once again, even in the middle of a global pandemic, and I’m gettin’ a mite tired of listening to Covid-denying dumbfucks insisting that if they don’t get together with 30-50 mask-hating relatives to eat too much, argue about sports, and work grandma half to death to serve you turkey and pie, it’s an affront to America its own damn self.

Listen, I’ve had plenty of jobs that required me to work on Thanksgiving Day. I’ve been stuck in my grungy apartment because blizzards blocked the way home. I’ve made do with a frozen lasagna, a bag of M&Ms, and a diet Dr Pepper for my all-by-myself Thanksgiving dinner. And I survived it just fine. It made me appreciate my time with family all the more the next time we saw each other.

And I know only a few decades or a century back, when you left your family, you might never see them again. You might live across the country or across the ocean, without no speedy travel to the people you’d left behind. I’ve got an ancestor who left Ireland with her sister, got separated from her in New York City, and never managed to find her again. Now that’s a real tragedy, not “Trumper nihilists didn’t get to kill their grandparents for FREEDOM.”

We live in the modern world now, and we can communicate with distant family by phone, by emails, by Zoom and Skype meetings. Even when we’re apart, we can be together — and we don’t have to run the risk of infecting our loved ones with a potentially fatal disease.

Hey, kids, let’s look at some comics book covers, okay?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and save me a slice of rhubarb pie.

Well, here’s something utterly dreadful, something that hits on multiple levels. Not just concern for a writer who’s dedicated decades of his life to science fiction and fantasy, both original and adapted — but concern for the future of every other creator, writer, artist, and musician. And concern for the future of the entire concept of copyright.

Check the link above for the full details, but the general summary is this: Alan Dean Foster, who has been writing great fiction for as far back as I can remember and who has written lots of tie-in fiction for “Star Wars,” “Alien,” and more, hasn’t been receiving the royalties he was owed by Disney, which has mostly ignored his requests to get paid. They offered to negotiate once, but told him he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement first, which just isn’t done during contract negotiations. He asked the Science Fiction Writers of America for help, and Disney stiff-armed them, too.

Disney’s argument is apparently that when they acquired LucasFilm and Fox, they purchased the right to publish an artist’s work, but they did not purchase the obligation to pay artists for their work. In other words, they say they can publish a book, but they don’t have to pay the author.

This is, obviously, lunacy. No contracts are set up that way, except contracts written by crooks. Reputable publishers pay authors for the right to publish.

It doesn’t make much sense, on the surface. Disney has a near-monopoly on the entertainment industry. They’re worth, at the minimum, hundreds of billions of dollars. The amount of money they owe Foster — who has been diagnosed with cancer and whose wife has serious medical issues — would be a drop in the bucket for a multinational corporation like Disney.

So what’s the motive? Partly because they can, and no one can stop them. If Foster fights them in court, Disney’s lawyers can wait him out ’til he’s bankrupt or dead. If the SFWA helps out, they can drain the organization dry with not much more effort.

But it’s also an attempt to rewrite the rules of copyright. If Disney can prevail, any publishing or entertainment company can break a contract to give themselves no obligation to pay their employees by simply having the rights purchased by a sister corporation. If they can get the courts to bow for this, it means that copyrights will be a tool only for the largest and most powerful corporations. Anyone who publishes a book or an artwork or a piece of music or film could find their rights stripped away with ease.

How can this be stopped? I really don’t know. The SFWA is recommending using the hashtag #DisneyMustPay — but that may be hoping Disney will pay any attention to a social media campaign. The legal system may be of no help at all — besides Disney’s ability to wait out other legal teams ’til they’re out of money, the courts and legislatures have a tendency to roll over for anything the Mouse wants.

We can hope justice will prevail. But in the real world, outside of fiction, comics, and film, justice rarely makes an appearance.

So I was expecting November to be busy, but not quite this busy.

We’re fostering a dog ’til sometime around the Thanksgiving holiday. It was largely unexpected — the paper has been running Pet of the Week features for a while, and I expected my primary contribution to the project was taking photos of dogs at the shelter and then writing short blurbs about them. But I’m realistic — I know not every dog can be rescued.

But my sister made some calls to friends and relatives about one specific dog, and when a cousin from the Big Bend area decided he’d like the dog, we ended up agreeing to foster him until we could get him transport down south.

Anyway, this is Baxter.

He’s about three months old, and he’s a handful. We’ve kept my sister’s and brother’s dogs occasionally when they went on vacation, but this is our first time having to raise up a dog from a very young age. We’re trying to get him to learn his name, and how to recognize important words. We’ve taught him to accept being on a leash. We should probably be trying to teach him some commands.

We won’t have a lot of time to teach him anything — he’ll be taking the first leg of his trip to his forever home during the Thanksgiving break (unless we get snowed in, or unless we all get the ‘rona, which is a serious danger right now).

We’ve only had him for a few days, and he’s already very good at annoying me by chewing on my fingers and my shoes and my pants legs. And he’s already got me loving him for his enthusiasm and intelligence and loving, playful nature.

So basically, remember when I said I probably wouldn’t post a lot this month? It goes double or even triple now, ’cause I got this big baby to love on and/or suffer through…

Y’all, after the marathon review-fest before Halloween, I’m almost entirely out of stuff to review, so I’m going to start posting a bit more lightly for a while. November and December are some of the busiest months for me anyway, so I’d benefit personally from a bit less time blogging.

But I don’t want to go radio silent either, so here’s a bit of frivolity I ended up cooking up last week on Election Day.

Let’s go through some huge amount of backstory first. Back in the Ancient Days, right after I got out of college, I had a job in Levelland, Texas. It wasn’t a great job, I didn’t know anyone in town, I didn’t have cable TV, and personal computers weren’t a Thing yet. So to fill time after work, I’d sit down with a legal pad and make superhero and supervillain characters using the GURPS RPG system for as long as I could. I knew they weren’t going to get played, ’cause I didn’t know anyone who played GURPS, but I loved their character design system, and I liked getting to make up new characters.

Now flash-forward to Election Day. I didn’t want to pay attention to election news on TV or online — I already knew how badly the stress wrecked me in 2016. So I decided I’d see if I could still fill some legal pads up with GURPS characters. I figured the process of making characters in the early ’90s was more than absorbing enough to keep me entertained and distracted.

Well, I wasn’t entirely right. Part of my problem was that I hadn’t made any GURPS characters in about 15-20 years, and I was really out of practice. Plus I had trouble with the math. And really, when you get down to it, I wanted to go get online and see how things were going. So I only made one full character, plus a partial second one before my inspiration ran out.

Before we get to this guy’s stats, let’s do a quick summary of GURPS for those of you unfamiliar with the system. It’s a point-based character system — stats over 10, advantages, and skills cost you points; stats under 10 and disadvantages get you some points back. Quirks are worth a negative point each (and limited to five) and must be roleplayed. Numbers in the square brackets are how many character points were allocated to each item. This is all done in GURPS 3^rd Edition, ’cause 4^th Edition was garbage.

In GURPS, 100 points is considered a good starting point for beginner-level, unpowered characters, being significantly above the average person, but not strong enough to power through every obstacle. Some campaigns, particularly those dealing with high-level fantasy or superhero games, can be much stronger, up to 500 points, 1,000 points, or even more.

This is Jimmy Watchill, an aspiring gunfighter in the Wild West.

Name: James “Jimmy” Watchill
Total Points: 100
Appearance: White male, 20 years old, 5’7″, 140 pounds. Sandy brown hair, brown eyes. Wears old, dusty, but generally well-kept clothing, including a battered hat.

Statistics:
ST: 9 [-10]
DX: 14 [45]
IQ: 10 [0]
HT: 12 [20]
Speed: 6.5
Move: 6
Dodge: 6

Advantages:
Alertness +2 [10]
Charisma +1 [5]
Danger Sense [15]

Disadvantages:
Lecherousness [-15]
Overconfidence [-10]
Poverty: Struggling [-10]

Quirks: Hates cold weather; Wishes he were a superstar gambler; Early riser; Brags about his cooking; Enjoys singing with others. [-5]

Skills: Animal Handling – 9 [2], Bard – 10 [2], Brawling – 16 [4], Cooking – 12 [4], Detect Lies – 9 [2], Fast-Draw – 16 [4], Fast-Talk – 10 [2], First Aid – 11 [2], Fishing – 11 [2], Gambling – 10 [2], Guns – 16 [4], Jumping – 15 [2], Lasso – 14 [2], Pickpocket – 14 [4], Riding (Horse) – 15 [4], Singing – 12 [2], Stealth – 14 [2], Streetwise – 10 [2], Swimming – 15 [2], Tracking – 11 [4]

Languages: English (Native) – 10 [0], Spanish – 9 [1].

Biography: Jimmy grew up a Kansas farm kid with fast fingers, a lot of skill with guns, and not a lot of patience with farming. The family hit a rough patch when his mother died of fever and his father was killed by bandits — bandits who Jimmy managed to kill just a few minutes too late. His older brother inherited the family farm, and Jimmy realized he didn’t want to grow old in his brother’s shadow — and he wanted to escape his feelings of guilt over failing his father. He hit the road, hoping to turn his skills with a gun into enough money to let him buy his own property in the distant Northwest.

Design Notes: Jimmy probably has more points in Skills than he ought to, considering his young age. But I kept screwing up my math while I was building him, and the easiest way to fix him was always to add another couple points into Skills.

Also, for the record, I’m kinda proud of giving him the Overconfidence disadvantage. It means he’ll rarely hesitate before stepping up to any challenge. That’ll probably turn out well for him when he’s shooting down a bad guy, picking a pocket, or twirling a lasso. But it’s gonna get him in a lot of trouble — fun, adventure-filled trouble — when it comes to his low-ranked skills in Detect Lies, Gambling, Streetwise, and Animal Handling.

Why a Wild West character instead of a superhero? Partly because I didn’t want to dig out the GURPS Supers book, partly because Western characters are nicely archetypal, so it’s fun and easy, and partly because the gunslinger was what popped into my head when I sat down with the legal pad.

So there’s my boy Jimmy. I’ve got a few more in reserve from back in the days when I had a personal webpage, and I’d really kinda like to make a few more new characters, too, though I feel like I need a nice long weekend to work on ’em. Eventually, I may post more of ’em, if I feel like it.

I’ll try to be back with some more posts soon-ish, so y’all stay safe and sane ’til then.