No, no, NOT the one with Sebastian Cabot! The OTHER one!

Once upon a time (1988), I created and wrote a comic for DC called Checkmate!. which ran for about 33 issues, and was recently revived by DC for another 30 issue run, playing a major role in whatever mishagas the DC Universe recently through. But way back when, I apparently had the bright idea to do a Checkmate! novel and even went so far to write a couple of chapters. I don't remember doing this, but then, I have so many bright ideas, who can keep track? The date in the story itself is 1990, so I'm assuming that's around when I wrote it. Here's the first chapter (heavily influenced, I notice, by Adam Hall's style in his Quiller novels...highly recommended!):

Checkmate (c) DC Comic

Everything else (c) Paul Kupperberg

Chapter One

New York City.  September 5, 1990.  1:36 A.M.

Twisted metal.  Safety glass popcorned from impact, little diamonds littering the pavement, glistening in the lamplight.  Acrid gasoline stench.  Hissing steam from mangled engines.  The cemetery stillness of night.

And the dead.  Innocent and guilty alike.

Time’s still speeding, senses heightened by adrenelin.  Heart pounding, blood pounding, head pounding.

          

This is the worst moment, when it’s over.  Slumped against a wall, skin itching, the whole being surprised to be alive.  It takes the conscious mind a while to catch up with the environment, adjust to the cessation of danger.  And fear.  That was a big part of it, the motivating factor in survival.  Fear of death, or worse, of pain.

          

The other players in this game were lucky.  They weren’t going to have to deal with pain.  I was luckier, because neither was I and I was still around to appreciate the fact. 

          

And wonder who the hell wanted me dead. 

          

Wrong question.  My line of work is all about people wanting to kill me, for one reason or another.  The right one would be, who wanted to kill me at this particular moment in time?  I haven’t been active for almost two months and I’d been in New York for less than an hour, my flight having just landed at Newark Airport.  Even in this city the odds of having a car full of heavilly armed individuals trying to blast you and your taxi to bits in the heart of Manhattan inside of sixty minutes are astronomical.  So either I’d won some bizarre sweepstakes, or somebody is real unhappy me with.

         

 I wasn’t being presumptuous assuming I was the target of the attack.  The only other warm body in the vicinity during the incident had been the cab driver, one Mohammad Hardeji according to the hack license on the dashboard.  He took the first hit when the black sedan had pulled abreast of us on Houston Street, splattering his head like an overripe melon in mid-complaint about those sorry bastards at the Taxi and Limousine Commission.  I was doing what I’ve done with verbose taxi drivers the world over, tuning him out with thoughts of the nice, soft bed awaiting me uptown at the Plaza Hotel.

         

 I guess two months out of the saddle blunts the edge, dulling the instincts that you rely on to keep you alive while a mission’s running.  I didn’t do more than glance at the Buick as it came alongside the cab before settling back in my seat and closing my eyes, wishing Mohammad would shut up.

        

Something exploded.  Glass shattered.  Mohammad screamed, a high pitched cry of terror and pain cut short by the disintegration of the top of his head, his hands reflexively jerking the wheel to the left.  I didn’t get it right away, sitting up ready to deliver a few well chosen words about his driving skills.  That’s when the flying glass and bits of human tissue flew into my face and the reality of what was happening hit me.

        

I didn’t know what or why, and it wouldn’t have made a damned bit of difference if I had.  The cab was careening out of control, bumping up over the curb while automatic weapon fire chewed up its side, and me without a weapon handy.  They didn’t let you carry artillery onboard airplanes these days.  Damned stupid regulation as far as the good guys go, at least from my current vantage point.  But who the hell thought I’d need one for the cab ride between airport and hotel?

        

The Buick was speeding past us, guns trailing heavy fire out its windows.  Forget them!  The emergency, any emergency, was composed of moments, fragile slivers of time, each holding their own danger.  The worst mistake you can make is not taking them in order, one at a time.  Start thinking ahead and the control is lost.  Concentrate on the instant.

          

The instant: Mohammad was slumped over the wheel, a dead man steering us straight towards a brick wall.  I didn’t know if I was going to survive the bullets, but I wanted the chance to try and that meant I had to get out of the cab in one piece.  I was over the back of the front seat before I even knew what I was doing, shoving aside what was left of Mohammad, grabbing the wheel, fumbling to find the brake pedal with my foot.  I felt it under my shoe and squashed it down to the floorboards.  The brakes caught with a tortured squeal, but we were going too fast, the brakes locking and the cab sliding without any appreciable slowing.  I spun the wheel hard, feeling the automobile about to tip over before slamming into a wall broadside with spine jarring impact.

         

 The instant: The Buick was skidding around in the middle of the street, coming back around for another straffing run at the cab.

        

The instant: I slapped the gear shift into reverse and jammed down on the gas, gunning the car back onto the street, then into drive.  The Buick was coming for me, so I went to them.  They wouldn’t expect that.  The victim is always supposed to turn and run in the face of overwhelming firepower, right?  The Buick’s driver tried to swerve, but there wasn’t time or space.  I stayed with the cab just long enough to make sure of that before I yanked open the door and rolled out onto the pavement, still rolling as I heard the metallic scream of the head on collision.

          

The instant: I was on my feet, adrenelin filling my ears with a dull roar.  I’d taken the initiative; the trick was to keep it, not let my adversaries regain their balance.  Don’t do a single damned thing they might expect.  Drive straight at them.  Charge into their guns.  Take away the security they derive from superior numbers and heavy firepower.  Make them wonder just what the hell kind of suicidal maniac they were dealing with. 

         

 The instant: An unsteady figure in a dark suit dragging himself out of the crumpled sedan’s window on the driver’s side, steam hissing from the mangled front ends.  I was on him, charging out of the obscuring cloud of steam before he was halfway through the window.  He had his gunhand outside the car, leveraged against the door panel to help pull himself out.  He saw me and started to bring up his weapon, a Steyr A.U.G. autoloader, but I slammed my foot into his wrist, pinning his arm against the door and jamming my elbow down into his throat.  If he made a sound, I didn’t hear it over the rush in my ears and the escaping steam.  The Steyr dropped from dead fingers as he slumped in the window frame.

          

The doors on the passenger side of the Buick hadn’t been jammed shut by the collision and they flew open as I stooped to retrieve the fallen weapon.  Timing is everything, because as I bent, the two other occupants of the car opened fire over the sedan’s roof, bullets ripping the air over my head. 

         

 But the score had just evened up.

          

My hand closed around the weapon, my arm swept up, finger tightening on the trigger to unload what was left in the magazine through the window at their exposed bellies.

          

A dotted red line chewed its way across the face of a white shirt framed in the window, just above his belt, smashing him backwards and out of sight.

          

Two down, one to go.

          

The Steyr was empty, a useless hunk of metal and plastic that I disgarded.  The last man was on the far side of the Buick, crouched down below the level of the window, out of range.  He had a clean shot at my ankles and feet under the car; he could cover me coming around either end of the wreckage.  That left me with the option of going over the top.

         

 I took it, heaving myself up on to the roof, sliding on my stomach across the polished surface.

          

He heard me scrambling over the roof and was rising as I came for him.  He was too smart to expose himself, pointing the gun over the edge to fire blind at me.  I grabbed the barrel as he squeezed the trigger, jerking the weapon to the sky and throwing my full weight over the side and tumbling to the street, landing on top of him without letting loose of the chattering weapon.  I felt something in his arm snap as we hit the pavement in a tangle of thrashing arms and legs.  He howled but I didn’t care.  I wanted the son of a bitch to hurt, let him know he’d messed with the wrong man, prepare him for even more pain if he he had any thought of giving me a hard time when I got around to asking him why I’d been targeted.

          

He wasn’t ready to hang it up just yet, even flying on one wing.  He kicked out at my face.  I caught his ankle in the V of my crossed wrists, yanking up and twisting in the same movement, another bone giving way.  I leaned forward and dropped down to one knee, cushioning myself from injury on the hard pavement with the soft tissue of his groin.  His whole body heaved up, almost doubling over from the mind numbing agony of having my entire weight crushing down into his most delicate spot.

         

 Had I been thinking rather than merely reacting to the outside stimuli of attack, I probably would have admired the guy’s tenacity.  Wrist and ankle broken, balls squashed under my almost 200 pounds, he wasn’t giving up.  With his good hand he’d been groping for his fallen gun and found it, smashing it with everything he had left in him into the side of my head.  I went over, tiny stars of light exploding in front of my eyes.  I wasn’t feeling any pain from the blow, that would come later, but for now there was just the sensation of warm wetness oozing down my cheek from the gash in my forehead.  I was bleeding red.

          

Seeing red.

          

So I took him. 

         

 The heel of my shoe found his nose and mashed it into his face, jamming the stiff cartilage up through his sinus cavitity and into the soft mass of his brain.  His mind was dead several seconds before his body got the message and stopped twitching.

        

I was gasping for breath, shaking my head like a wet dog to clear the blood from my eyes, staggering to my feet.  The adrenelin was still pumping, but with the danger over, I didn’t have any way to burn it off.  I just had to wait for the glands to stop manufacturing it, for the uncontrollable shaking and stimulation of every nerve ending to die down.  Only then would it be truly over as far as my body was concerned.  But considering the alternate scenario, I could wait it out.  Gladly.

          

And that’s where I found myself now, propped against a wall, wondering why I’d just gone through this madness.  I didn’t have anything even remotely close to an answer, and I wasn’t about to get one from the trio of corpses with which I’d littered the Manhattan streets.  Maybe they’re carrying something that could point me in the right direction.  A long shot; they were professionals and pros don’t carry identification.  The best I could possibly hope for was to get a Scenes Investigative Team out here to do their usual fine tooth combing of the bodies and car. 

         

 Except for the thin, distant wail of sirens. 

         

 Far away, but getting closer, and fast.  There had been enough shooting to attract an army of cops.  From the sound of things, they’d be here in a matter of moments, which left me with two choices.

         

 I can wait for them like a good little citizen and spend the rest of the night in a New York police precinct, trying to explain what just went on without blowing my cover.  Local law enforcement agencies don’t usually take kindly to shoot ‘em ups in their streets, especially when they’re between members of a government intelligence agency and a car load of assassins.  Something about the feds in any capacity sets their collective teeth on edge in some strange territorial imperative.

          

Good luck on that score.

          

Or I could leave this mess for them to clean up and figure out on their own while I reported in to the nearest safehouse, getting what little information I had to people who could do something with it.  My superiors would handle the N.Y.P.D.  They won’t like being shut out of a triple homicide on their own turf, but things are tough all over.

        

I’m gone before the first patrol car screeches to a stop beside my handiwork.

Now THAT'S the Spirit!

The archaeological dig through my past continues as old files are sorted and full closets are emptied, yielding all sorts of wonderful and forgotten (or, in some cases, wonderfully forgotten!) treasures, personal and historic. Including an amazing and previously unknown piece of work by a seminal creator of the comics business; a Google search of said work produced zero results; I'm in touch with the creator's official biographer and we will be pursuing, at some point soon, a way to get this into publication with the family's blessing...but that's neither here nor there! We were, after all, talking about me.

Circa 1987, I apparently wrote up a hunch of ideas and sample scripts to submit to Cracked Magazine, the long-running Mad impersonator. One was a general piece, "What If Everybody Got In On The Max Headroom Craze?" (My guess is the result would have been that they too would be a forgotten pop cultural reference by now.) I also pitched a couple of ideas, "Wrestling From the Dark Side" and "The Cable-Ready World of Skeeter Kornfeld," an ongoing feature that would have allowed for all sorts of TV parodies. AND, "The Spookit," a parody of Will Eisner's The Spirit! My guess is the late-1980s TV movie had recently aired and, being an Eisner fan (although, who isn't?), I probably just went with it.

At any rate, I never did sell to Cracked, but my efforts at funny survive. Here, for you to mock and judge harshly (click on images to view them at a readable size), the unpublished script of "The Spookit":

(c) respective copyright holders

Vague Memories of Mr. T Past

Another unpublished script found in the files...one appropriate to the month in which we saw the release of the A-Team movie. It's for a 2-page strip called "Mr. T's Commandment". From the address on the manuscript, this was written some time between 1985 and 1987. I only vaguely remember the job, which was for a custom comic but I don't recall in connection to what. I pity the poor fool that hadda write this!!

Click on the images below to see them in a readable size. Everything here is copyright by the people what hold 'em!

Digging Through the Rubble

Ah, the joys of an impending move! It opens file drawers whose contents haven't seen the light of day since Hector was a pup (I don't know what that means, but my father used to say it).

From, man, I'm thinking 1985-ish...give or take a couple of years, 6 sample pages of Waystation, a funny science fiction graphic novel written by me and drawn by cartoonist and pal Chuck Fiala (lettering by Willie Schubert). We were marketing the strip to a European-album format, an 8.5" x 11" 48 or 64-page book on nice white paper with cardboard covers that a publisher called NBM was doing. I don't recall if Waystation was rejected or the publisher went under or the market changed, but it remained just a proposal and 6-page sample sitting in a drawer.

Until now...

Waystation © Paul Kupperberg
Art © Chuck Fiala

The Dead Zone

This is a short story I wrote about five years ago; the idea was sparked by a small footstone for Sidney Aronson in the graveyard near where my mother-in-law lies. My father's name was Sidney, so whenever we visit the cemetery, I always put a stone on Mr. Aronson's grave as well (it's a Jewish custom; you put a stone on the grave as either a sign that someone has been there to visit, or as a reminder of the fall of the Biblical Temple, I've heard both cited as the reason). The story's got a decent enough set-up, a good middle, but no finish. Everything I've come up with so far is flat and predictable, but I take a look at it every now and then and see if anything new or fresh jumps out at me. So far,nothing, but here's the first quarter of it:

A STONE FOR THE GRAVE OF MR. ARONSON

© Paul Kupperberg

Silent as a tomb. In the dead of night.

He never really thought about what that meant until now. Walking through a cemetery in the hour just after dusk on a bone chilling autumn evening, colder than the time of year warranted, cold, he thought, as the grave. There wasn’t a sound, not the buzz of insects, not the chatter of birds or the whisper and rustle of wind through the drooping branches of trees, heavy with the dry weight of dying foliage. Quiet. No life except for the one he brought through the graveyard gate and that wasn’t much of a life at all. Too quiet for his tattered nerves. Too quiet for a guy with a kilo of stolen cocaine jammed into the pocket of a lightweight overcoat as tattered as those nerves.

Row after row of cold, hard headstones growing out of withered, brown grass. Otherwise forgotten names long ago chiseled in loving memory, untended tributes to mother, father, grandparent, child. He read off the roster of the dead to himself as he trudged through fallen leaves carpeting the paths between graves. Steinberg, Abramowitz, Levine, Weinstock, Bromstein, Sherman, Tockman. The dates, parenthesis enclosing lives barely lived, lives lived long: 1911 - 1919. 1904 - 1979. 1924 - 1944. Do the math, compute the life-spans, no matter the longevity, never time enough.

Did the math for himself. 1969- 2004.

Koch, 1937 - 1980. Heller, 1901 - 1949. Greenberg, 1940 - 1967.

Anything to keep his mind off the truth, that he had come here to join the dead. Except there would be no carved granite monument bearing his name, no reason to memorialize what he would be leaving behind. He’d seen to that by living as he had.

Get used to it, he thought. This was going to be home for what was left of eternity.

Karp. Cronenberg. Golden. Moser. Deitrich.

Hi, neighbors.

They couldn’t have picked a better place for the meet. The Jewish section of the old cemetery outside of town, its last occupant lowered into the ground more than a dozen years ago, filling the final six foot by three foot by six foot deep piece of real estate. Who came out to an inactive graveyard at this hour, on a miserable night like this? One stop shopping for them: they got back their property and had a place to leave his lifeless sack of flesh when they were through. They told him all they wanted was the merchandise, that he could just hand it over, say he was sorry, and walk away.

But he knew what was going to happen, what had to happen. You didn’t mess with these guys, take what was theirs and not pay for it. Letting themselves get ripped off and doing nothing about it would be bad for business. Examples had to be made, messages had to be sent to the next guy who even thought about taking them off. He would be their billboard warning the whole world to keep hands off. He had hoped that throwing them Rickie, his partner in that sorry town and this even sorrier attempt at instant wealth, would satisfy them, but Rickie had wound up with half his head gone, shoved into the trunk of a wrecked Buick waiting to go through the metal crusher in the salvage yard on the other side of town. Now it was his turn.

The old man was there, standing with bowed head before a weathered headstone. He wouldn’t have seen him in the gloomy silence, would have walked right on by, mistaking him for just another graveyard shadow, if the old man hadn’t spoken, calling out to him, “Hello?”

He stopped, fear squeezing his heart. Were they here already? He had arrived early, why not? There wasn’t anywhere else he could be, no way in hell he could run from them. Besides, a man doesn’t want to be late for his own funeral.

Then he saw the old man, a shrunken figure in black topcoat with sparse white hair framing a withered face with wrinkles that were a roadmap of a long life lived hard. Rheumy eyes glittered at him in the half light. No, this was no harbinger of his own death, merely a mourner of an earlier victim of the reaper. So he forced himself to breath again and resumed walking, head down, back on track to his meeting with the inevitable.

“Excuse me?”

Keep walking, get there and get it over with. He’d been living with the numbing fear of his own coming mortality for more than two days now. Forty-nine hours to be precise, at 4:37 in the afternoon the day before yesterday when he realized there was nowhere to run and Junkyard hissed in his ear that they knew who he was and were looking for him.

“I’d help you, man,” Junkyard simpered, compulsively running his hands up and down the thighs of his greasy coveralls. “You’re my bud, I wanna help, but you gotta understand I can’t, don’t you? They know I did for you, they’ll kill both of us.”

Ray had just stared, a pulse beginning to pound in his forehead. He looked at the neon dial clock over the door of the small service station office. 4:37. The moment his death warrant had been signed.

“And they’ll know. Word’s out, dig? Hands off’a you and don’t no one cross these guys. You see my hands’re tied, don’t you, Ray?”

How had it come to this? How did a life suddenly go from hope to hopeless in the blink of an eye, the tick of a clock on a rainy autumn afternoon at 4:37 P.M.? The scheme couldn’t have been simpler: walk in a door with three bucks to his name, pick up a package, and walk out a minute later richer than he’d ever been, ever hoped to be. It should have been a walk in the park.

So how did that turn into his last mile through a graveyard?

The answer was simple, as obvious as every other piece of ill fortune and bad timing that was the story of his miserable life. Born to the wrong parents, friends with the wrong people, consistently being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong idea. He gave nothing, took whatever he could get his hands on and to hell with who it hurt. Like Rickie, the poor bastard. And for all that, what was he left with? What had he ever done that wasn’t selfish and wrong? Whose life had he ever touched who would give a second thought to him when they heard he was dead? Except they never would hear the news. He’d just disappear, and the few who might, for God knows what reason, have cause to remember him, would just assume that he’d moved on to another place, where he could start stealing and swindling and creating misery among people who didn’t yet know, but would find out soon enough.

Forty-nine hours gone. About twenty minutes left to live. Did he want to spend it talking to some old fart in the cemetery? Would be like getting stuck with his senile old grandpa again. Old man had gone seriously nuts when Ray was in high school and had come to live with him and his mom. That was a trip, his boozer old lady and her old man, him shrinking daily under the weight of Alzheimer, her under the bottle, making each other crazy, spending all day screaming drunken, senile gibberish at each other. Good enough reason for Ray to have quit school in his junior year and get the hell out of there.

Where Have You Gone John Kemmerer?

Here’s something I found rooting around in archived folders: the manuscript for Mythology Around the World: Mesoamerican Mythology, a non-fiction book I wrote for Rosen Publishing in October 2005. Due to a misunderstanding (meaning I probably didn’t read the Series Guidelines closely enough), the book I wrote was a survey of the myths of all the Mesoamerican cultures when it was supposed to focus on a specific people (I forget which). I was paid a kill fee and this was never published.

Mythology Around the World: Mesoamerican Mythology

© Paul Kupperberg

Chapter 2: “This is the Beginning of the Ancient Word...”

No matter what the culture, regardless of their history, we all share the need to understand who we are and where we came from. While modern man depends on science for his answers, earlier cultures had to rely on their imagination and nature. Myths, traditional stories presenting supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serve as representations of certain types and ideas, are the response of primitive societies to this need to understand their place in the world.

Modern cultures also have the advantage of the accumulated knowledge of the past millennia, allowing us to better understand our place on this planet, this planet’s place in the solar system, this solar system’s place in the galaxy, this galaxy’s place in the universe.

We know that that thunder and lightning is nothing more than the interaction of electrons and moisture in the air. We understand that the sickness afflicting us is caused by a specific one of any number of microscopic organisms that infiltrate and disrupt the body’s natural and normal functions.

Nature and the Gods
Prior to learning these things, people trying to understand their history, their lives and their place in the world and the broader universe had to create the reasons based on their limited understanding of how the world worked. Unable to peer through powerful telescopes out to the edge of the universe, they credited beings created in their own images with responsibility for everything from the stars in the heavens to the crops in the fields. Uncomprehending of the organisms that sickened them, they could only believe that disease was a sign that they had somehow offended a god.

History becomes mythology, changing fact to fiction as it is told and retold down through the generations. A storm that may have turned the tide of a long ago battle becomes the epic tale of a divine intervention that determined the fate of a nation. An eclipse is the hand of a god blocking out the sun to punish a rebellious people.

Traditions and rites of passage are formalized in myths as stories that give them a history and a reason for their observance. Family tales, life lessons, the interactions of man and nature are all explained in myths.

A tale from the Oaxaca valley warns of the danger of pride in a story about the bat who, though he complained to the gods that he was cold, was in reality jealous of the colorful plumage of birds. The gods asked each bird to contribute one feather each to keep the bat warm. With so many different colored feathers, the bat became the most beautiful flying creature around. Day and night, he spread color across the sky and could even create rainbows.

The bat became insufferably proud of himself and the birds soon had enough of his arrogance. So they flew to the gods and asked that something be done about the bat. The gods summoned the bat to the heavens so that he could show them what he could do. But as the bat demonstrated his abilities, he began to lose his feathers, one by one. Soon, his feathers were gone and he was back to being his old, drab self. To this day, the bat is still ashamed of his ugly, unadorned body and only comes out at night, flying rapidly back and forth in search of his lost feathers.

The Power of Mythology
In his book, The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell, the cultural historian and chronicler of mythology, outlines two distinct orders of mythology. The first is the naturally-oriented myth, created to explain the origin of man and his universe. The second is the socially-oriented mythology that explains man’s place as a member of a particular society.

Together, Campbell writes in The Power of Myth, “they integrate the individual into his society and the society into the field of nature. It unites the field of nature with my nature. It’s a harmonizing force.” These myths may be stories about gods, but these powerful gods are really just metaphors, “personifications of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe—the powers of your own body and of nature. The myths are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being, and the same powers that animate our life animates the life of the world.” In other words, “there is a natural order and harmony to nature, and what the individual or group must do is fit in.”

The epic legend of the Popol Vuh, the creation myth of the K’iche’ Mayan, exemplifies the interplay between man, nature, and the gods, determined to inhabit the world with a people who would worship and praise them. After creating the world itself in the first age, the gods made animals. But the animals couldn’t praise the gods so they told the animals that they would therefore be of service to others as food.

In the second age, the gods tried again, this time making a body from the mud of the earth. This too was unsuccessful, crumbling and falling apart and capable only of speaking nonsense. This creation they let dwindle away, until it became “thought.”

In the third age, the gods created manikins of wood, the man of coral wood, the woman of reeds. But though the manikins could walk, talk, and multiply, they had no hearts to love their creators or minds to remember them. So a great flood was released to smash them, and today only monkeys, it is said, are still made of wood and look like humans as a warning that people must have a heart.

Finally came the fourth age when the gods at last understood how to make proper humans. Fox, coyote, parrot and crow bring yellow and white corn to Xmucane, the goddess of corn. She ground it up into cornmeal that becomes human flesh, arms and legs. Their blood is water; the water in which Xmucane rinsed her hands became human fat. These beings can speak and think and, most importantly, praise and thank the gods for having made them.

Here is man’s place in the cosmos: created by the gods to worship the gods, made from the very things that sustain them and tie them to Earth and nature. It integrates, as Campbell believes a myth must, man “into his society and the society into the field of nature.”

The universality of Campbell’s statements can be seen in the many cultures whose mythologies would seem to be drawn from the same or similar sources. It is not uncommon to find the story of a great flood that partially or completely wipes humanity from the planet (which we know as the Biblical story of Noah’s ark) in cultures from all over the world. Is this because they have all experienced a great flood at some point in history, or because the fear of such a cataclysmic event is common to the human experience and, therefore, likely to make its way into multiple mythologies?

The myths surrounding creation also contain common ideas and themes, including the shaping of human beings from nature (clay in the Judeo-Christian world, corn and water in the Mesoamerican) by a superior being. Even the telling of these tales may share surprising common ground. The King James Bible (a translation commissioned by England’s King James I, published in 1611) opens with the sentence, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Mayan Popol Vuh starts with “This is the beginning of the ancient word, here in this place called Quiche (K’iche’).”

But while mythologies may share themes, every culture puts its unique stamp on their myths. Feathered serpents, giant brothers posted at the four corners of the universe to hold up the sky and gods who turn into black ants to bring corn to mankind are only the beginning of the rich and ancient mythology of Mesoamerica.

Cat-Girl and the Black Queen, Part The Last

The end of this unpublished 1980s Archie Comics superhero story (Part I, Part II, and Part III here) I scripted, with art by the amazing Pat Boyette. As always, click on the images to view the images at a readable size...

CAT-GIRL AND THE BLACK QUEEN, Part 3

© Archie Comics

The Warrior Matron, Conclusion

If you haven't read earlier episodes, you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.

And now, the conclusion of...

PASSED LIVES

© Paul Kupperberg

Kahna ate some more of her cold provisions as she continued her journey to the First City on foot. Several miles along, well past the staggering army’s advance, she found a stray horse, saddled and bearing the colors of the City of the Stars. His reins hung to the ground as he drank from a stream. She guessed the beast had fled the battle after his master had fallen to a demon, but it was calm now and didn’t shy from her. She took the reins and, letting the horse drink its fill, talked soothingly to it.

It was only when she tried to mount him that the horse grew skittish. She started singing to calm it, a soothing tune that was, at first, a wordless melody. But then she recognized it and the words came back to her and she began to sing it. The lullaby her mother sang to her, the one she sang to every one of her many, many children.

Kahna turned her head, embarrassed least even the horse see her eyes fill with tears.

* * *

The horse finally let Kahna mount him and she pointed his nose on the road toward the First City. She let him go easy at first, getting used to her weight on his back and her hand on the reins. But soon enough, she had him at a trot, and she was determined to make her destination before nightfall. She was certain she would find Thalis there, one way or another, and be reunited to fix this thing and get on with lives that had been interrupted more that eight centuries earlier.

What would Thalis see when he looked into her eyes, now those of a different woman than the one he last knew?

Once, he told her he saw in those eyes a reflection of his own soul.

If she was indeed who she knew herself to be and not some deluded mad woman, that is what he would see again. Not the tired, sagging face, the thickened body and gray-streaked hair of a middle-aged smith’s wife, but Kahna, his soul mate.

But she knew that each time she looked in the mirror, she would see Malasa.

* * *

Kahna approached the walls of the First City on foot, under the cover of darkness. She began smelling the sea late in the afternoon and, by the time the sun had dropped, she could hear the pounding surf and feel a fine, cooling mist.

She let the horse go and, by the simple act of draping a blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, her sword and shield were hidden and she was effectively disguised as a harmless old woman.

Kahna had deliberately chosen a small gate on the leeward side of the City. As she recalled, it was seldom used and often unguarded, but that had been centuries ago. The entire city might have changed in the time she had been away...

Except time moved slowly for Atlantis, this mighty empire that had stood 50,000 years and might yet see 50,000 more. That which did change did not do so with haste, not even the watch schedule of forgotten portals.

The gate was little more than a doorway that opened onto the back of a row of densely packed dwellings, stinking from garbage and smoke. There was no one about, but Kahna had expected that. Whatever was happening in the City, the merchant and craftsman, the servant and shop clerk would flee from it or hide in their cellars until the danger had passed. Only arrogant royals and stoic soldiers stayed behind while demonic forces came wreaking havoc.

And the mage, she added quickly. The mage was always there until the very end as well. All she need do was first find him and bring him there.

Keeping a hand on the hilt of her sword under her shawl, Kahna made her way through the dark streets of the First City. She stayed close to the homes and shops, joining with their shadows to keep out of sight. She saw no one, but periodically, things passed by overhead that cast large and evilly distorted shadows on the street, accompanied by otherworldly squeals and chitters.

She needed the palace. If the Guard had managed to hold the palace, she would learn much from the commanders and advisors inside the heavily fortified heart of the First City. Kahna smiled to herself, wondering how she would convince the Royal Guard to let her pass. Or generals to reveal their secrets to a housewife claiming to be a reincarnated warrior.

Kahna took a longer but less visible route to the palace. She made her way through alleyways and back streets, circling open areas to avoid crossing in the light. The streets were as quiet as death, patrolled from the air by the same winged monsters she had fought through the night.

Kahna paused on the fringe of the great park that surrounded the darkened palace. The landscape was level and, before it had been pitted and charred by combat, meticulously planted and maintained. The park was wide open, intentionally created to give attackers intent on stealth no hiding places. Whether the palace was held by friend or foe, she was certain any attempt to cross the encircling park would most likely meet with an attack.

She stood in the shadow of a tall, leafy tree on the park’s edge, watching the tall, graceful spire of the palace as she pondered her situation.

Kahna heard a noise and froze in place. Footsteps, shuffling down the street! They were drawing nearer, making no attempt to be silent. Not daring to draw her sword, Kahna slid one of Khar’s daggers out from under her sleeve and slowly raised it, her ears tracking the approaching intruder.

And then she was there, but it was neither demon or soldier who, gasping, drew to a stop when she spotted Kahna. It was a woman, like her. Like Malasa. Middle-aged, worn and haggard, unraveled by her life, wrapped in a dark shawl against the night chill.

“Who are you?” Kahna demanded, her tone harsher than she had intended.

The woman was wide-eyed. She could only stammer, “I, I had not expected...everyone else has fled or is in hiding...!”

Kahna pulled the woman into the shadow of the tree. “You should be doing the same,” she scolded. “What are you doing out here?”

The woman began to tremble and her eyes filled. “Tyrla...my daughter...she’s only a child, but she’s missing, you see,” she sobbed. “I’ve been looking for her everywhere... the first night the demons came...I lost her in the mob....”

Kahna tried to quiet her. “You need to find shelter,” she hissed.

The woman shook off Kahna’s hand. “I can’t,” she said and Kahna was taken aback by the sudden steel in her voice. “They killed my husband and took my children. She is all I have left.”

The woman pushed past Kahna and continued on her way, muttering, “All I have left!”

Kahna stayed in the shadows, not moving until the woman was out of her hearing. Then she turned her gaze back to the palace. There, high above streets torn by demonic warfare, the doors on the king’s balcony had swung open, golden light from within spilling out like a beacon in the night.

A lone figure stood on the balcony, bathed in the lights warm glow.

She took a step forward, narrowing her eyes. The figure was tall and lean, with long flowing hair tied at the neck. He raised his hands high above his head and she saw the light around him grow brighter.

“Thalis,” she whispered.

So...he magician did not need his warrior lover after all! She was surprised that she felt nothing at this revelation. Well, at least she had arrived in time to join him in the endgame with whatever otherworldly foe he now prepared with his magic to dispatch.

She took another step, into the light and the open park.

But the scream made her stop and whirl, drawing her sword and crying out.

Thalis, high above the city, did not hear the woman’s scream.

She looked frantically around. She heard the sounds of chattering demons, the scrape of talons on the walk and ran towards them, sword in hand. A prayer caught in her throat, a prayer for the missing child and her poor mother. A prayer for what she would see when she found the woman.

Dark shapes with leathery wings were melting into the night sky as she burst onto the scene. There was little left of the woman, jagged and bloody pieces of raw red and cracked bones, recognizable only by the dark shawl thrown across a nearby bush.

She sank to her knees next to the remains and, for reasons that would not become clear to her until morning, she knelt there through the night, crying and praying.

All the while, the night sky was made bright as day by the magic spells that would decide the fate of Atlantis.

* * *

By noon, she passed the army she had left the day before as it rode for the First City. She did not bother to tell them it was over.

She had left her weapons and armor on the street alongside the woman and walked from the City through the main gate. She would not need them where she was going.

Not in this lifetime.

But if the past was any indication, the future would hold opportunities aplenty to save the world again. And lives enough to be reunited with Thalis.

But for now Malasa yet had two young ones to shepherd into maturity and a husband with whom she had long hoped to grow old waiting at home.

-- END --

The Warrior Matron, Part 7

Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6! Now read on:

PASSED LIVES

© Paul Kupperberg

The demon army withdrew as the sun began to set. The soldiers of Atlantis staggered about the battlefield, giving aid to fallen comrades and dispatching the wounded among their foes. Kahna did what she could, binding wounds, offering water to the casualties, holding the hand of a young man, a boy more than a man, really, as he died from his wounds, tears streaking his face. She wondered how his mother would feel when she received the news, then quickly banished the thought from her mind.

As she made her way across the battlefield, among the dead both human and demonic, Kahna gathered what she needed from those who had fallen. A scabbard and belt for her sword, a sleeve of armored mail to protect her sword arm, a small round shield of metal, covered in layers of thick hide. Miraculously, she found her bedroll on the side of the road. She never saw the horse again.

The armies of Atlantis regrouped up the road, away from the blood and carnage. There would be no time to bury the dead now.

Kahna sat with a dazed and silent group of infantry from the City of the Mists, warming themselves before a small fire as they made of meal of dried meats and leather-tough biscuits. A clatter of hoofs roused Kahna from her post-battle exhaustion and she looked to see the commander of the army of the City of the Stars and his lieutenants rein up their horses near her campfire.

The commander regarded her. “You are the old woman who fights like a well-trained youth,” he said to her.

Her companions leapt to their feet in the presence of so lofty a personage. Kahna did not rise. “I suppose I am,” she said wearily.

“From where do you hail, mother?” asked one of the lieutenants.

“From the City of the Stars and the City of the Archers,” she said. “Take your pick. And,” she added, staring darkly at the fresh faced officer, “I am not your mother.”

The boy flinched and his commander pretended not to notice. “I hear you are much the warrior,” sniffed the commander. “I hear, too, that you call yourself Kahna and seek the presence of our lord, the mage Thalis.”

“All true.”

“What exactly is your business with Lord Thalis?” the commander said, finally asking the question that had brought him here.

“It is my business,” she said.

The commander raised an eyebrow, then glanced briefly at each of his lieutenants. “I see,” he said.

“Have you much experience battling demons, commander?” she asked before he could think of a way to rephrase his question.

He blinked. “Well...no,” he said. “Have you?”

She nodded. “Enough to know they like to attack in the night, especially after first softening up their foes.”

The commander blinked again.

In the night, the first shrill war cries of the demon army were met with the blaring of trumpets and the roar of the men of the Atlantean army.

* * *

Kahna could not describe the beasts she fought through the night. They were large, with leathery skin as tough as armor. She would catch only the briefest glimpse of them in the flickering light of a torch or a body aflame from eldritch fires, but she did not care what they looked like. All she knew was that they died when cut and did not seem to be particularly clever in the ways of combat. They would come screaming in from the darkness, all but announcing their presence and she would thrust her sword at them, taking their heads, severing limbs, slicing open their bellies, robbing them of whatever manner of life they may have possessed.

Not that it mattered. They were cannon fodder, of course. Savage, snarling monsters sent to weaken and decimate the human troops before they reached the First City. The Darkness fairly crawled with such beasts, all waiting the opportunity to break free to feast on humanity. No doubt the armies racing to defend Atlantis from all points on the compass were being thus met. Whoever, whatever, commanded this hellish army, had sprung wide the gates of Hell and set loose all that was evil and dark.

Kahna battled well past the hour she felt she could fight no longer.

* * *

Kahna slept as one dead, her head resting on her unopened bedroll and her sword, still sticky from the blood and gore of combat, near at hand.

By dawn’s light, the demon army withdrew. They left behind only the rapidly decaying remains of their defeated and the masses of human dead. From her brief survey of the battlefield, it seemed as many as half the soldiers she had marched with the previous day had lost their lives to the demons. The number of demonic dead was even greater, but that did not matter. Their population was near limitless, with only the magical barriers between the Darkness and the mundane world preventing them from overrunning mankind. Rare was the power that could breach those barriers, but such a power now held the First City hostage.

As she slept, near paralyzed with exhaustion, Kahna dreamed. The battle between man and demon raged around her, but she held no sword, no weapon of any kind. Across the field where she walked, thick with blood red mud and fallen warriors, two young girls, sobbing in fear, called out to her. Kahna wanted to go to them, but her way was blocked by the swirl of combat. A step in the wrong direction would mean her death.

But those poor children...

They clung to one other, faces smeared with tears and dirt and gore. Demonic forms fell around them. Soldiers on horseback jumped over their huddled forms. Swords and arrows and spears whistled through the air mere inches from them. No one else seemed to notice or care they were there. Kahna had to save them, but did she dare change her course and go to them?

“Mama,” the children screamed in horror, a decapitated head landing at their feet.

Kahna closed her eyes and turned her head so she would not have to watch them suffer any longer.

“Mama!” Their voices pierced the din of battle.

Kahna awoke with a start, screaming out the names of Malasa’s children.

Shaking, she decided she had slept enough for now.

To be concluded!

Cat-Girl and the Black Queen, Part III

More of this unpublished 1980s Archie Comics superhero story (Part I and Part II here) I scripted, with art by the incomparable Pat Boyette. As always, click on the images to see them at a readable size...

CAT-GIRL AND THE BLACK QUEEN, Part 3

© Archie Comics

500 Words A Day and the Temple of Doom

Bits and pieces of The Same Old Story, my 500-words-a-day-novel-in-progress, are scattered through previous postings (here, here, here, here, here and here). Of course, once things got rolling, I was averaging more than that (better than double) and, for the past several days, I've been concentrating exclusively on finishing this up. Today will likely be the day, so here's an excerpt from one of the later chapters:

THE SAME OLD STORY

© Paul Kupperberg

Chapter 23/ HILLBILLY HANK

The local law was more than a little perturbed when I showed up splattered with another man’s brains to report a suicide. I left out a few pertinent details, especially the part about the $80,000 in cash, which I’d stowed under the DeSoto’s seat cushion, one half-hearted search away from discovery but the best I could do under the circumstances. I didn’t know these local cops from Adam and eighty grand was a tempting target for anyone. I had carried the case back out through the woods to where I’d left the car, then drove back the way I came until I hit something that resembled a town and asked the first person I saw for direction to the police station.

Sheriff Billy Van der Hooven was a beefy but hardy looking specimen with a round face, shining cheeks and an honest desire to want to understand what the hell it was I brought with me when I walked into his office. I told him to call Uncle Mick in New York, tell him it was about me. The sheriff looked none to happy about having to make a long distance telephone call but he took another look at the gore I’d been unable to wipe off my clothes and face and dialed.

The rest was sort of a blur. Sheriff Van der Hooven confiscated my clothes as evidence and left me with a pair of dungarees and a jailhouse shirt to change into it. My number was 877. Two deputies were sent to investigate and, if necessary, secure the cabin. He let me wash up and I scrubbed at my face with lye soap until the skin was stinging and raw and I could no longer feel the little bits of Jimmy’s life that had clung there.

I spent the next three hours telling Van der Hooven what exactly it was that had brought me here. He took extensive notes, breaking only to take a report from the deputy who had been sent back for reinforcements and orders, confirming the dead body. The young deputy said it sure looked like a suicide to him but the sheriff wisely pointed out that such a determination should be made by wiser and more qualified heads.

When there was no other way to tell my story, the sheriff left me in a small locked interrogation room with a table, two chairs and an egg salad sandwich and coffee. I drank the coffee and ignored the sandwich. I couldn’t imagine the next time I’d want to eat again.

I stared at the wall, trying not to replay the sight of Jimmy’s head exploding like a melon, flinging blood and bone and gore all over the cabin. There was nothing left. Jimmy just ended at the shoulders. But that was all I could see. Over and over.

I closed my eyes and thought about Shelly.

She was innocent. Of everything. How come I couldn’t see that? How come I didn’t just believe her when she told me?

Because criminals lie, I told myself. If she had been guilty, she’d have lied about it. How was I supposed to know until I had the evidence.

The testimony of a dead man.

In my mind’s eye, Jimmy Noonan kept killing himself. The click of the trigger, the booming eruption of gunpowder, the slow motion disintegration of his head, like a popping balloon popping balloon full of water.

And then silence, except for my screaming and heaving and crying.

And then I see it again.

So I try looking at something else. The moment before he died.

I’m guilty of a lot of terrible things, he said just before he pulled the trigger, but Bob Konigsberg death ain’t one of them.

Click. Boom.

Dead.

I’m guilty of a lot of terrible things, but Bob Konigsberg death ain’t one of them.

Jimmy Noonan had just confessed to one murder. He knew he was just seconds away from ending his life. Why would he deny killing Bob if had?

He wouldn’t.

I blinked and in my head, all the pieces of the puzzle tumbled into place and made a perfect picture.

Oh, god.

Shelly.

Click. Boom.

The Warrior Matron, Part 6

The saga continues! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 are here:

PASSED LIVES

© Paul Kupperberg

She left early the next morning, before the sun came up. Khar pretended to be asleep and she pretended to believe him. She packed what little she would need, a bedroll, her cloak, a skin rug, a few extra pieces of sturdy, warm clothing, provisions and personal items.

And her sword, riding in a leather sheath belted to the saddle and close at hand. As well, she went through Khar’s workshop and picked out a mismatched set of daggers, one to strap to her forearm, another to snug in her boot.

Malasa’s last act brought her to the bed shared by Shartra and Vannga. She had promised she would not leave without first awakening them. She had lied, the thought of having to say farewell to her babies too overwhelming to even contemplate. Just looking at them, so innocent in sleep, tore at Malasa’s heart. It was best it be done this way, that Malasa step from this house and ride away before the sun could show she was gone. The tears and the pain would still be there, but this way she did not have to see them etched on the faces of her children, to carry their heartbreak forever with her.

She kissed them, lightly lest she wake them, and Shartra stirred only briefly to wipe away Malasa’s tear as it fell on her cheek.

* * *

She rode southwest, for the First City.

* * *

Kahna rode into a detachment of the king’s soldiers from the City of the Scorpion on the road to the First City.

“Ho, grandmother soldier,” a young man in armor called with laughter from horseback.

“Do you need someone to help lift your sword, little mother?” mocked another.

“Did your little one forget his bedroll, mama?” laughed a third.

“Where do you ride?” she demanded of an amused sergeant.

“To the First City, mother,” he told her. “Ride along with us if you will, but know it’s to battle we march.”

Kahna nodded. “I can take care of myself, boy.”

The sergeant barked out a laugh. “I’m sure you can, mother,” he said. “Just don’t get in the way if trouble breaks out.”

Kahna smiled. “I won’t be in the way.”

* * *

The Scorpion City’s line soon joined a contingent from the City of the Mists, itself already merged with a battalion from the City of the Mages.

Soon enough the warriors of all the cities knew about “mother,” the sword wielding old woman who raced to every new arrival demanding intelligence on the Lord High Mage of the Realm.

From a bearded archer, she learned Thalis was said to have embarked on a quest to recover an ancient and powerful talisman to aid in his war on the demons. A cavalryman who claimed to have fought off demon hoards with the sorcerer on the Plains of Drlyss claimed Thalis had been captured, most likely by the minions of Celepha. A lancer scoffed at the notion of a water goddesses’ reach extending to the dusty Drlyss plains, positing instead that Thalis had entered the Darkness to fight the evil at its heart, while still another bitterly insisted the Mage had turned traitor and joined with the demons.

Nothing but gossip and rumor, Kahna knew. In truth, what would the trooper in the line know about the comings and goings of the land’s mightiest sorcerer?

She would just have to wait until they made the First City.

Kahna would have her answer then.

* * *

Two days out from the First City, the road was choked with refugees fleeing the war wracked capitol. Families carrying what they could hold, merchants with hastily loaded wagons, all seeking to be away from the madness that the seat of the realm had become. The city on the edge of the sea was overrun with hellspawn, the Guard helpless before their number, the temples of the Twelve Gods aflame, the King enslaved...

Kahna’s stomach tensed at the thought of the chaos that awaited up the road, but it was in anticipation of the adventure, not fear. She grasped the hilt of the sword sheathed to her saddle and grinned.

This, she thought with grim satisfaction, was reason enough for living.

* * *

It was an army gathered from across the continent that surged toward the First City under increasingly darkening skies. But a day’s march from its gates, it was plain to see that a sorcerous storm sat over the city, black clouds thrashing the air with mystic lightning, lashing it with thick, sulphurous rains.

Kahna rode alongside cavalry from the City of the Mists, wrapped in a hooded cloak against the chill. She was so tired of the riding and of her thoughts swirling about the battle that lay ahead and the fate of Thalis, but of course that was all she could think on. She smiled, remembering a little game Shartra had once showed them. “Whatever you do,” the girl had told her parents, “do not think about a pink horse! Not one bit!” and for the rest of the day, all either Malasa or Khar could think of was that accursed pink horse.

The warrior priestess was thinking of the farm-wife’s pink horse when the first warning shouts went up and the alarm shrilled from the horns of the trumpeters. Kahna grasped her sword, reveling at the sound of steel singing against the leather as she pulled it free of the sheath. Only once it was in her hand and raised did she look around for the cause of the alarm.

They filled the sky from the west, creatures of all sizes and shapes, none of them even remotely human. With swords and spears, maces and clubs, talons and fangs, they swooped down on the Atlantean army, slashing and beating at the startled and scared soldiers. Screams of terror and pain melded with showers of blow and the metallic beat of weapons striking weapons and armor.

Kahna wheeled her horse around, bringing up the sword Malasa’s husband had made for her just in time to block a spear thrust at her by a winged and furred beast with blood red eyes. She smashed the jagged spear from its clawed paws and then slashed across its face. It screeched like a battered child and feel away from her, clutching its ruined face.

She charged forward, screaming so she could hear herself above the din of combat, hacking at whatever came in her path. A beast more bat than man leapt onto her horse behind her, trying to wrest Kahna from the saddle. Her mount reared up and Kahna clung to the reins with her sword hand while the other reached over her shoulder and clawed at the monster’s face.

Something small and leathery and smelling unimaginably foul barreled into her and unseated her from her horse. Kahna hit the ground but was almost instantly back on her feet, the small thing impaled on her sword. Arrows filled the air, hoofs trampled the ground around her, swords and spears flashed and man and demon alike screamed in horror and pain as they died.

Kahna did not think about death. At least not her own. Blood of different colors and pieces of things once living but that she could not identify flew about her. She was in battle again, her heart pounding in her chest, her breath ragged gasps torn from her throat with each thrust of her blood slicked blade. The creatures kept coming. The soldiers of Atlantis fought and died all about her.

She saw the sergeant from the Scorpion army who had warned her not to get in the way in the event of trouble fall as a creature as big as two men hacked him in two with a broadsword as wide a floor plank.

Kahna could tell her body had lived near fifty years, but the heaviness in her limbs did not slow her down. She was a warrior again and, as gore from the foes that fell before her sword splashed her face, she began to laugh.

Gods, she had missed this!