Kickstart the Week 71: the Thrilling Adventures of Zorro and zombies!

It's been a couple months since the last Kickstart the Week feature on this blog. It's been a long-standing mainstay that I like to focus attention on great new works over at that site. So I'm bringing it back as a part of a rotating set of features on Monday designed to bring attention to super powered fiction of all varieties. With this change, we're also be focusing on multiple Kickstarters, all of which I think are worth a look.


Robert Greenberger is a name recognizable to long-time comics fans for his work as an editor for many years at DC Comics. He parlayed that success into a run as a Star Trek prose author and has since teamed with several alums of both comics and Trek to form Crazy 8 Press. Now he's producing a new anthology from that press that should make fans of superheroes and pulp adventure excited! It's called Thrilling Adventure Yarns.

The project looks to tell stories in the tradition of the pulps, although it seems to have its major focus on the heroic side of things. It features several names that should be familiar to comic and pulp fans like Paul Kupperberg, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert T. Jeschonek and Jim Beard. It apparently even will feature an unearthed tale from the legendary Shadow creator Lester Dent never published before this book. That's an impressive line-up and is only about half the contents!

Give it a look and get ready for some great adventure yarns in the future.

Speaking of pulp heroes with a superhero flair, the folks at Gallant Knight have set out to finally create the first full-fledged role playing game based around the hundred year old hero Zorro!

2019 is the character's anniversary, so it's great to see old Los Angeles being brought to life in all its glory using the classic West End D6 system well known to a lot of gamers.

The company has been sharing bits and pieces of the rules online for the last few weeks, so be sure to check out the Kickstarter for more details!


William Tucci most famously created Shi, one of my favorite all time characters. Now he's making a big comic comeback. First, he has a new series with Axe Cop creator Ethan Nicolle called Appalachian Apocalypse. Now he's mounting the finished version of a story he started a decade ago, about a samurai fighting the undead: Zombie-Sama!

I'm all for Tucci branching out to producer more great work. I'm equally excited to see the talented John Broglia continue to produce stupendous art for the series. But I'm probably most excited that the project offers an ashcan of the upcoming return of Shi, a character I've waited for decades to see more stories about.

Head over to the Kickstarter and check out all the fun of Zombie-Sama and throw some support to a talented creative team!

Kickstart the Week 52: Golden Guard

A comic and a role-playing game? All in one? And it's set in the golden age of the 1940s, the heyday of superheroes in America. How can this not be great?

Check out the video below and then head over to Kickstarter and back Golden Guard now!



Remember to back Golden Guard at Kickstarter before it's too late!

Kickstart the Week 44: The Mighty Protectors

The name may be different, but the site makes no secret that The Mighty Protectors is the new name for the third edition of Villains and Vigilantes, one of the first two superhero role playing games ever made. Back in the early days of pen and paper RPGs, it was the game anyone that wanted to play superheroes wanted to play. And while it would eventually be supplanted by Champions and the first Marvel and DC games, it still holds a special place in many gamers' hearts.


Original creator Jeff Dee is back with the new edition and it looks to add a bit of old school gaming back into superheroes, complete with d20s, random character generation and all those things you remember from games of the 80s and 90s.

If any of that intrigues you, make sure to give it a look at Kickstarter.

Kickstart the Week 32: Masks

One thing that has become interesting in the expanding world of pen and paper role playing games is the focus on certain sub-sections of genres. Games oriented around super powered beings haven't done this as much as other genres, but Masks: A New Generation looks to change that. Masks makes players into a group of teenage heroes in a city overflowing with superhumans both good and bad.


The concept limits the scope of the game compared to other systems like ICONS or Mutants & Masterminds, but it also allows a great way to get characters to start out at the same basic experience level. Everyone is new to the supers game, so everyone being balanced makes more sense.

But with a game world designed around one of the best modern RPG engines and a creator with a proven track record, Masks is definitely intriguing. Give it a look on Kickstarter.

Kickstart the Week 24: Daring Comics RPG

As we continue to look for funds on Lightweight: Beyond, please check out this other Kickstarter featuring some great material.



I love super powered RPGs. If a role playing game lets me embody a hero of my choice and take him on huge adventures, I can definitely get into it. I probably own over a dozen superhero RPGs, but the Daring Comics RPG offers something a bit different: superheroes in the FATE system. FATE is an interesting, rather simple system designed for quick play which sometimes goes against the grain of a supers game, but the folks at Daring Entertainment understand that. The design team is working to blend the crunchier elements necessary for superheroes with the simple system of FATE. As the system runs Atomic Robo darn well, I suspect they will succeed admirably.

With less than a week to go, the Daring Comics RPG is still about a thousand dollars short of its glow, so give it your support if you can.

Kickstart the Week 16: Ron Fortier's Cape Noire RPG

It is strangely rare for folks from the new pulp community to fund their projects on Kickstarter, but Scaldcrow Games has already funded one game in that genre. Now they seek to build on the success of Worlds of Pulp to make Cape Noire. Set in the fictional city from Ron Fortier’s always excellent Brother Bones stories, it will serve as a sourcebook to Ron’s work while also giving the world a great game setting.

Projects like this are the backbone of developing markets, so it is very exciting to see that it just passed its goal. With some awesome stretches as well, it looks well worth continued support over at Kickstarter.