Wild Stars Mega Round Up Post

We’ve been talking about the Wild Stars and plugging it all over the place, so we thought it would be a good idea to do a round-up post!

We’ve only got two weeks left in the Wild Stars IndieGoGo, and we REALLY NEED TO HIT THAT $8K goal! Especially if you guys want more Cirsova Magazine in 2020. This project’s will give us the funds we need to make it happen!

The Wild Stars Twitter Megathread

B/X D&D Stats for Griefs

Michael Tierney and P. Alexander on Shane Plays:

P. Alexander on Geek Gab:

P. Alexander on Superversive SF:

 

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Michael Tierney & P. Alexander Talk Wild Stars on Shane Plays

If you missed it live, you can now catch the podcast version of our appearance from last Saturday on Shane Plays. Michael and I talk about his fantastic Wild Stars epic.

Also, I’ll be on the Superversive Sunday live stream with Ben Wheeler, so be sure to sub and tune in.

We really need our readers and supporters to back the Wild Stars IGG ASAP! We’ve only managed to raise $2k of our $8k goal, and… well, Cirsova Publishing REALLY needs to make this happen if we’re going to have any traction going into 2020!

Soon we’ll have the last cover from Mark Wheatley and the omnibus cover from Anton Oxenuk to show you!

 

 

Wild Stars Megathread Unroll

Thread by @cirsova: “Okay, megathread time. Michael Tierney has been in the comic industry for about 40 years. His Little Rock location, The Comic Boo […]” #WildStars #pulprevolution #pulprev #EdgarRiceBurroughs

Posting here for posterity.

Check it out, and support Wild Stars!

 

Cirsova Presents: Wild Star Rising!

The IndieGoGo is live!

Cirsova Publishing is teaming up once again with Michael Tierney to publish his all new SFF time-travel adventure set in his Wild Stars universe, Wild Star Rising!

Plus, to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Wild Stars, Cirsova will be releasing all-new premium magazine-style editions of the Wild Stars graphic novel, Book of Circles, and the hybrid comic/novel, Force Majeure. We’ll also be reprinting a new 2019 edition of last year’s Kickstarter-exclusive illustrated novella, Time Warmageddon.

Cirsova Publishing is creating an all new standard edition of all previous Wild Stars books that will match the new release, Wild Star Rising.

Wild Stars: Book of Circles collects the early comics, Erlik (WS Vo1 1 #1) and First Marker (WS Vol 2 #1), placed chronologically within the 2001-2002 run of Wild Stars comics (WS Vol 3 #1-7)

Book of Circles tells the story of conflicting timelines and parallel worlds that culminate an alliance between a wolf-like alien race called the Brothan and alternate time-line fascists, the Artomiques, that aims to attack and destroy the earth by launching a comet at Jupiter to ignite it as a second sun.

These comics feature artwork by Frank Brunner (Doctor Strange, Howard the Duck), David Brewer (Cable, Deadpool), Dave Simons (Ghost Rider), and Michael Tierney, plus the collected editions feature additional painted works by Mary Tierney.

This new edition of the almost 300 page graphic novel will be printed in Cirsova Magazine’s standard 8.5″ x 11″ format, and will fit nicely on the shelf between your collection of Cirsovas and the rest of the 35th Anniversary Wild Stars books.

Wild Stars II: Force Majeure wraps an 83,000 word novel around 38 pages of comics penciled by Armando Gil (Conan the King, Ka-Zar the Savage), along with 50 ‘flashback’ illustrations by Dave Simons.

Seeking revenge for his defeat, Carthage kidnaps the First Marker’s infant daughter and absconds with her through time! Erlik and Daestar aid Mark Mackavicka and Akara in their search through time for their missing daughter. Except to preserve the future and prevent a resurgence of the Brothan empire, they can’t rescue Mark and Akara’s daughter until she’s already a grown woman!

This new edition of the novel / comic hybrid will be printed in Cirsova Magazine’s standard 8.5″ x 11″ format.

Wild Stars III: Time Warmageddon continues the saga of the Wild Stars as former-President Bully Bravo seeks to solve the mysteries of distant suns going missing, only to be replaced by white dwarfs, and newly discovered planets showing the apparent signs of previous human colonization, all while pursued by an evil pirate queen and a rogue time-traveler trying to create a god.

This novella featured cover art by Timothy Lim (My Hero Magademia, Black Hops: USA GI, Street Fighter), and interior illustrations  and two variant covers by Mark Wheatley (Song of Giants: the Poetry of Pulp, The Flash, Blood of the Innocent).

This new edition will reprint this one-time Kickstarter-exclusive edition with new bonus content, including an additional epilogue on the whereabouts of Akara and the First Marker, two stories by Michael Tierney originally published in Cirsova Magazine, and the previously unpublished Wild Stars story, The Grimgrip.

Wild Stars IV: Wild Star Rising is both a prequel and sequel to the previous Wild Stars adventures. Looking back 75,000 years into the past to the last days of Atlantis and the final exodus to the Wild Stars led by the Ancient Warrior, Wild Star Rising unfolds the aeons-long plan to rescue the Ancient Warrior’s long-lost beloved, Phaedra, from the heart of a black hole where she was imprisoned by another powerful immortal… A sailor from earth’s distant past must join with the Ancient Warrior’s Wild Stars companions to help them navigate the great gulfs of space, free Phaedra from her black-hole prison, and stop the extra-dimensional squids that could destroy the universe if they can meet up and mate!

This illustrated novel will be printed in Cirsova Magazine’s 8.5″ x 11″ format, matching the previously released Time Warmageddon, the new 35th Anniversary Editions of Book of Circles and Force Majeure, and your collection of Cirsovas!

This edition will also contain the first-ever extensive bio-glossary of Wild Stars universe, making it a must-have for old and new fans alike!

June 28th: Wild Stars IndieGoGo Launches!

We recently mentioned that Cirsova Publishing will be putting out a new edition of Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars plus an all-new Wild Stars novel, Wild Star Rising.

Well, here is exactly what you’ll have to look forward to:

• Wild Stars: Book of Circles ($35)
• Wild Stars II: Force Majeure ($25)
• Wild Stars III: Time Warmageddon – Revised Edition ($20)
• Wild Stars IV: Wild Star Rising ($20)
• Complete Set ($90 – Save $10)
• Wild Stars Hardcover Omnibus [over 700 pages!] ($100)
• Original Wild Stars Comics [while supplies last]
  • Erlik ($10)
  • First Marker ($10)
  • Book of Circles 1-7 ($20)
• First Printing copies of Wild Stars III [while supplies last]
  • Regular Cover ($20)
  • Variant Cover ($20)
  • Hardcover ($40)
• Limited numbered art prints ($10)

Plus, we’ll be giving free posters and stickers to all backers while supplies last!

For more on the Wild Stars, visit Michael Tierney’s websites www.thewildstars.com.

To receive an email reminder of when the IndieGoGo goes live, subscribe to our mailing list!

Review: The Night and the Land by Matt Spencer

A while back, I was sent a copy of Matt Spencer’s The Night and the Land, the first book of the Deschembine Trilogy. While it was a very entertaining book, I find even now that it is difficult to write about because of how different it is. And trust me, that’s a good thing.

The Night and the Land is not an easy work to pin down; it upends a lot of the tropes that would make it fit neatly in this or that category.

On the face of it, The Night and the Land is a story about a young man with a supernatural birthright coming into his powers, meeting and falling in love with a runaway girl from another supernatural clan at odds with his and whose parents and siblings are trying to bring her back into the fold.

The “coming of age” plot has certain hallmarks of the YA trend, but the book itself is a savage and brutal affair, even in its romance, that might appeal much more to male readers than modern YA’s target market demographic of women 18-35. It is Not Safe For Cool Wine Aunts.

The Night and the Land is “Urban Fantasy”, but the “Urban” is very small-town and New England Gothic. The setting is intimate and picturesque, and the town of Brattleboro, Vermont is as much a character as anyone else in the story.

What could easily have been framed as a simple “Vampires and Werewolves don’t mix” type story is actually rife with mysteries and depth of setting that prevents readers from settling into assumptions and cozy stereotypes of the archetypical modern urban fantasy. [The monsters are certainly not vampires and not exactly werewolves; which makes them that much more uncanny].

One of the most fascinating things about Spencer’s tale is that while the characters, both the “heroes” and the “villains”, are almost unforgivably vicious, and sometimes even cruel and murderous, I found myself deeply empathizing with them—even torn at the end as the story built towards its final showdown, hoping for a “draw” that would give everyone a chance down the road for redemption and reconciliation.

Any recommendation I might make for this can’t be given without some reservations: it’s not for the faint of heart—some folks may find the strong language and visceral imagery off-putting. And the violence is EXTREME [like Fist of the North Star meets Uzumaki extreme]. But The Night and the Land was absolutely one of the most enthralling books I’ve read this year.

More Thomas Burnett Swann – Day of the Minotaur

Clockwise from Center: Eunostos the Minotaur, some random Panisci, probably Amber the Bee Queen, Thea the half-beast Cretan princess, a blue monkey, and either Chiron or Moschus.

I recently snatched up a stray Swann paperback at the library’s overstock outlet store / art cafe and got around to reading it this week.

I’ve ranted at length about how much I enjoy Swann, particularly Cry Silver Bells, another of his minotaur stories.

Day of the Minotaur is another cozy fantasy romance set on Crete; the island faces Achaean invasion, leading to the half-beast children of the king being forced into exile in the wilds of the island’s interior. All of Swann’s hallmarks are there, though some of the characters come across as a little thin [Cry Silver Bells, a prequel to Day of the Minotaur, fleshes out characters like Zoe and Moschus more, so reading this after having read CSB everyone came off a little strange].

But we’re given our share of monster boys and monster girls, touching romance and bromance, and the tragedy of the ever-retreating magic from the world.

One thing I’ve noticed about a lot Swann’s books is that Ace’s packaging for them are, well, odd and sometimes promise things that aren’t exactly there or might disappoint someone unfamiliar with the sort of stories Swann actually writes.

The tagline “They fought at Time’s dawn for the world of today”? I… I don’t even know what that means, but it takes very loosey-goosey interpretation to arrive at anything close to that from the story therein.

Another thing is the forced Tolkien comparison on the back of the book.

It’s interesting that for how hard Ace pushed Swann as “like Tolkien”, not only are his books very un-Tolkienian in most known senses, but he apparently had not read much Tolkien. In fact, in the one interview published, Swann claims to have only ever read The Hobbit.

Where they are similar, however, is the whimsical portrayal of the pastoral; Tolkien’s Shire and Swann’s pagan realms of fae share a magic that is made more precious by their inevitable decline and disappearance in the face of modernity.

Of course, no one thinks of that as being “Tolkienian” these days. Tolkienian means big sprawling worlds, huge battles, wars against darklords, etc. None of which you’ll find in Swann–a common complaint against him–as he wrote cozy pastoral romances

With the everpresent question of “just how influential was Tolkien really” on fantasy, it’s worth noting that it was being referred to as Tolkienian (or rather ‘like Tolkien/in the vein of Tolkien’) at a time before what was understood to be “Tolkienian” had taken shape. Even before “Tolkienian” fantasy took hold, Tolkien was becoming a marketing buzz-word in the 60s paperback world. Similarly Zebra slapped Tolkien’s name on Adrian Cole’s Sword & Planet stories in the early 70s. While Tolkien’s writing influence may not have been all over SFF in the 60s and early 70s, his name had huge market weight in the wake of the illicit LOTR paperbacks.

The fantasy of Swann is more like that of Dunsany, though this is incidental in that they were both drawing from a common mythical well (Swann’s writing and narrative styles are not particularly Dunsanian, though the theme of magic’s retreat is found in much of both writers’ works).

Finally, I’ll add that for those of our friends who have expressed that while they like stuff like Monster Musume in theory, they’re not actually into lewd stuff and bad oppai jokes: y’all need to be reading Swann. He’s got you covered in the monster girl department. Harpies, Sphinxes, Dryads, Tritons, goat-girls, bear-girls, bee-girls, dolphin-girls….

Also, knowing that A.A. Milne is one of Swann’s favorite authors and influences makes the snacky bear-girl in this that much more pureTM.