A rip-roaring outburst of creativity featuring Jim McPherson’s taut storytelling and spectacular artwork gleaned from the pages of Phantacea 1-5 (1977-1980), Phantacea Phase One #1 (1987) and #2 (unpublished), it presents the stirring saga of extraterrestrial Shining Ones and the doomed but unyielding Damnation Brigade. Anheroic Fantasy Illustrated, with a wraparound cover by Phantacea’s master colourist Ian Bateson and 120 pages of interior artwork in glorious black and white by a wide variety of exceptional artists often at the very beginning of their careers, the two-part Phantacea Revisited series reveals how Jim McPherson’s ongoing Phantacea Mythos really got underway.
In "The War of the Apocalyptics," the first book in the Launch 1980 story cycle, a number of acknowledged devils breaks out of the Sedon Sphere, the dimensional barrier between the Inner and the Outer Earth. In response, the Supranormals re-emerge whole, bodies with minds, from nearly a quarter century in Limbo.
In 2009 Phantacea Publications released “The War of the Apocalyptics”, the opening entry in the ‘Launch 1980’ story cycle. At its centre stood the same stirring saga of extraterrestrial Shining Ones and the doomed but unyielding Damnation Brigade as that related in “Phantacea Revisited 1: The Damnation Brigade”. That 2013 graphic novel gleaned material from the pages of Phantacea 1-5 (1977-1980) as well as Phantacea Phase One (mid-1980s). Its novelization’s until then untold Outer Earth sequences introduced or re-introduced a number of fascinating protagonists; ones who appeared or would have appeared in the comic book series had it continued. With a breathtaking cover by Ian Bateson, “Nuclear Dragons” turns the spotlight back on many of them. Given what’s coming, though, if they’re on Centauri Island days after the launching of the Cosmic Express, will any of them last long enough to return for a third entry in the ‘Launch 1980’ story cycle? No matter. Jim McPherson’s Phantacea Mythos is as full of incredible individuals as it is of astonishing challenges for them, and/or others, to survive.
Thrygragos Varuna Mithras offers his two Great God brothers the option of henotheism, with him as the top god on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. If they refuse his offer, he promises to obliterate them. They refuse.
In the third volume in the Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories series, Nergal Vetala, the Blood Queen of Hadd, the Land of the Ambulatory Dead, is the lone devic vampire. For 35 years she has been unable to prevent the encroachment of the living on her realm. Then her soldier falls out of the sky and she's back in the pink againNas in arterial. But that's hardly enough for her.
Contagion Collectors aimed to destroy the Inner Earth's Shining Ones, their devil-gods, by killing off those who would worship them - virtually everyone alive beneath the Cathonic Dome that enclosed the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. Thrygragos Everyman and his firstborn Unities thought them sorted when they stormed the Hoodoo Hamlet in 5476 as the four fearsome Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And so they had ... except, it wasn't just the bringers who needed sorting. It was the poxes and plagues they brought. The Hidden Headworld needed purging. There could be no doubt of that. Yet the Moloch Sedon had disappeared from the night's sky years earlier and evinced no signs of returning. Everyone knew what needed to be done yet no one, especially not Thrygragos Everyman, the Lord Laziest of Great Gods, was willing to command the purge begun. Then someone, ostensibly in the name of love, played a Trigregos Gambit. The Head lost its Balance, capitalized and female. Her brother Unities, Order and Chaos, regarded each other balefully. No longer restrained, a continental catastrophe of unprecedented proportions ensued. With calamitous rapidity, nearly 500 years of Panharmonium gave way to seemingly endless despair. The Inner Earth's populace lost faith in its devil-gods as by far the mightiest of them went at each other unrelentingly, unmindful of those they trampled beneath their gargantuan feet. The Dead didn't stay dead, though. They rose, disbelievers no longer. They battled on, their newly puissant goddess to exalt the higher. Came All-Death Day there were more Dead Things marching than Living Beings breathing. Fecundity no longer, the Vampire Queen of the Dead looked to rule the world - both sides of it!
Some 65 decades after claiming credit for abolishing the Death's Head Hellion and more than 50 decades after finally realizing their long-held dream of Panharmonium, Thrygragos Everyman and the Unities of Chaos, Order, and Balance, are horrified to learn that the plagues and poxes ravaging the Inner Earth are far from natural. They're deliberate attempts to end its days.
For most of the previous century forces loyal to the death-gods of Lathakra, King Cold and his triplet sister, the Scarlet Empress, have sought to replace the Head's reigning sense of hopelessness with another Golden Age, that of their own. Equally godlike devils such as the Unity of Chaos support them.
"I am immensely impressed . . . this particular Brigade needed a book of its own and now it has one which is definitely first-rate. . . . A fine book." —Bruce Catton "One of the '100 best books ever written on the Civil War.'" —Civil War Times Illustrated " . . . remains one of the best unit histories of the Union Army during the Civil War." —Southern Historian ". . . The Iron Brigade is the title for anyone desiring complete information on this military unit . . ." —Spring Creek Packet, Chuck Hamsa This is the story of the most famous unit in the Union Army, the only all-Western brigade in the Eastern armies of the Union—made up of troops from Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
The extraordinary time-traveling adventures of Katie Berger-Jones-Berg continue in the second entry in this historical trilogy In 21st century New York, Katie Berger-Jones-Berg is a little concerned. She's seeing people in old-fashioned clothes who have a worrying habit of disappearing. Then she receives a mysterious note, and is sent hurtling back through time! In 19th-century London, Queen Victoria is on the throne and England is on the brink of war with Russia. For some reason, everyone's looking to Katie to save the day. But for a traveler in time, Katie's is fast running out.
