Way back in 1995 I worked at Wizards of the Coast and oversaw the Magic: The Gathering comic books being made by Acclaim. We wanted to do something special with the comics for the release of Homelands and Acclaim agreed to do a special fully painted comic book. They recruited Dan Chichester as the writer and a young artist named Rebecca Guay.

We flew Dan and Rebecca out to spend the day at our offices with myself and Scott Hungerford, the creator of Homelands. We taught them to play Magic and Scott shared the world of Homelands with them. It was a great day with a couple of very talented creators. She did a mermaid drawing for me that hangs in our house even now.

Rebecca has gone on to have a brilliant career as an artist. I’ve encountered a number of her books for children since Vivian was born and her work is spectacular. Now she’s doing a Kickstarter for a retrospective book of her work. It’s going to be beautiful and thanks to the money she’s raised, she’s including a signed print with every copy of the book.

I’m very pleased to see that Aron Tarbuck and J Kovach’s Kickstarter for their original Lovecraft-Shakespeare mashup comic book is live once more. The DMCA takedown has been rescinded and they are back at it. Please check out their project — I think it sounds pretty great.

Aron Tarbuck and J Kovach are Kickstarting an original comic book mashing up Shakespeare’s The Tempest with the Cthulhu Mythos. They are now the subject of a DMCA takedown request by D.R. O’Brien, a young writer who self-published a comedic novel that likewise combined The Tempest and the Cthulhu Mythos.

It’s obvious how these two projects could happen independently. The Tempest is by far Shakespeare’s most occult play, with magic, spirits, a sorcerer, a monstrous slave, etc.

D.R. O’Brien is incapable of imagining that anyone would think to combine The Tempest and Cthulhu and indeed, he claims to own all intellectual property rights to that idea, which is a farcical notion.

His takedown notice breathlessly points out that Aron & J’s project uses main characters from the Tempest, and that indeed the cover to their comic book depicts a storm, which his book also prominently features!

Of course, the fucking play is called THE TEMPEST and is about a storm. But in D.R. O’Brien’s world, that is part of his IP and is evidence that Aron and J read his book and ripped it off.

Over the years Lovecraft has been mashed up with Sherlock Holmes, P.G. Wodehouse, Jack the Ripper, the Ghostbusters, the Salem Witch Trials, various superheroes, cyberpunk, Where the Wild Things Are, Dungeons & Dragons, and just about anything else you can name. The idea that D.R. O’Brien could possibly own the mashup of Cthulhu and The Tempest, or that no one but him could possibly conceive of watching Shakespeare’s most arcane play and imagine giving it a Lovecraft twist, is deeply ridiculous.

Amateur writers often believe that their ideas are theirs alone, and that no one in all of human history has ever thought them before. The reality is that similar ideas occur to writers all the time.

Kickstarter should refute this DMCA takedown notice and restore Aron & J’s project to its course.

Link to D.R. O’Brien’s takedown notice: https://www.kickstarter.com/dmca/prosperos-price-a-lovecraft-and-shakespeare-tale-submitted-by-pr

Kickstarter

Date: Feb 19, 2014Sender [Private] Sent via online formRecipient Kickstarter, Inc. 58 Kent StreetBrooklyn, NY 11222 USA Re:Prospero's Price; A Lovecraft and Shakespeare TaleDescription of copyrighted material: Shakespeare v Lovecraft, a horror comedy novel, was originally published in 2012 by Amazon…

We’re Kickstarting money for two new Delta Green short-story anthologies and I’m now a stretch goal!

Update 11: A new Delta Green story from John Scott Tynes · Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies

Your support has unlocked Ray Winninger's Delta Green story "Pluperfect," about a scientist uncovering horrors in the nature of language and we're already nearly halfway to Davide Mana's "A Spider with Barbed Wire Legs," set in postwar Paris.Now we are thrilled (and filled with not a little dread) t…

My friends Aron and J are creating a graphic-novel sequel to The Tempest! I’m very curious to see what they come up with.

Even if you can’t attend this year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon, in April you can still support their Kickstarter and get some sweet loot, including an Elder Thing figurine by Ann S Koi that looks pretty sweet.

H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon 2014 Portland, OR

April 11-13, 2014: Three days of indie films, readings, panels, art, music, & vendors, in honor of the master of the Weird tale.

'Convergence' on 'Plot Points'

“This is the only tabletop game I’ve ever played. . . . It really captured me in a way that I hadn’t anticipated.” The Plot Points podcast presents two episodes on the original Delta Green scenario…

Ophiocordyceps fungi in the lab and in the wild

Grow the next generation of ideas

Do you believe that secret forces control the world around us? That there are vast, possibly biological conspiracies which have shaped life as we know it and even now drive us to serve their occult desires?

YOU ARE RIGHT.

This research scientist is studying how a fungus turns ants into mind-controlled zombies which are compelled to climb the nearest plant, bite into it with their mandibles, and hold still until the fungus has completely devoured their soft tissues and erupts from the dead ant’s head in ghastly, curving horns. Evidence of this has been found in fossils tens of millions of years old and it’s still happening today all over the planet.

(“But that could never happen to humans!” you bleat pathetically, to which I suggest you read up on Toxoplasma Gondii.)

WHAT CAN WE DO IN THE FACE OF THIS VAST AND SHADOWY MENACE

Help science! She is raising funds Kickstarter-style on a science-crowdfunding website called Microryza. In the past I’ve donated to Microryza projects to excavate a triceratops and study a disease that is killing bats. I think this project is the most fascinating yet: she is going to determine which genes in the fungus are active during the mind-control portion of the infestation. Once we know that, I expect Delta Green will fund a retrovirus that will rewrite the genetic code of the fungus and save us all from certain doom.

FOR NOW

Please give a few bucks to her project. It’s real science and it’s really fascinating. And please share her project with your friends in the hopes we can stave off the darkness a little while longer.

How does a parasite create zombie-like behavior?

How does a parasite create zombie-like behavior?

If you thought my game Puppetland: A Storytelling Game With Strings was interesting, I hope you might have a few bucks for this Kickstarter to save the marionette work of a lifetime in Chicago.

Kickstarter isn’t just about getting; sometimes it’s about giving, too.