It was originally my intention to write a review of the original D&D books that were released recently by WotC. After writing a few hundred words I changed my mind, since I was starting to fall into the snark again, and I think I’ve been snarky enough toward the legacy of E. Gary Gygax. I think I’d like to do an entry that details some of the weird and unnecessary aspects of the books — the harlot table, the incredibly complex unarmed combat rules, Gygax’s endless pontifications and his savage torture of the English language — but that’s for later. I decided that since I haven’t posted in so damned long I’d institute a new feature here, the Hall of RPG Oddities, a series of reviews of some of the stranger, lesser-known, or offensive publications that gamers have dealt with over the decades.

I’m starting off with a classic — the famous (and to some infamous) Arduin series by the legendary Dave Hargrave. From the top I want to make clear that I absolutely love the Arduin series. It contains material that I used for years in my D&D games, and in some cases still do. However, I am also of the opinion that the series is also one of the most insanely over-the-top examples of munchkin power-gaming ever published, one which remained unequaled until the publication of The World of Synnibar in the mid-90s (and don’t get me wrong — I also love Synnibar, for many of the same reasons — more on that particular work in a future entry).

Dave Hargrave’s contribution to the world of roleplaying is well-known. As one of the original cabal of west-coast gamers in the late 60s and early 70s, he and his compatriots, including such titans as Greg Stafford, Jeff Pimper, Steve Perrin, Clint Bigglestone, Tadishi Ehara and many others, brought their own ideas and sensibilities to the industry, injecting it with energy and imagination that drove it ahead for decades. Their contributions continue to be seen in the still-published Runequest and that classic of classics, Call of Cthulhu, a game that is still going strong decades after its original release.

Hargrave’s history and adventures have been amply chronicled elsewhere and they make for very interesting reading. His skills as a gamemaster, the high power-level and mortality rate of his years-long Arduin campaign, his elaborate house rules, fiery temperament, his feud with Greg Stafford and his legal tussles with TSR are all the stuff of history, and kind of beyond the scope of this piece — we’re going to focus on the obsessive madness that was (and actually still is) the Arduin series.

Journey to Arduin

Shannon Appelcline describes Arduin as  ”a collection of rather ‘gonzo’ house rules” but calling Arduin “rather gonzo” is like calling the language in a Tarantino film “somewhat profane.” Arduin is a joyful melange of every single bizarre idea that crossed Dave Hargrave’s eccentric mind, and despite his continual insistence that Arduin was its own roleplaying system, totally distinct and separate from that alliterative thing published by those guys in Wisconsin, his books contained a treasure trove of modular rules, tables, classes, monsters and treasures that could be slipped into a D&D game with all the subtlety of a GBU-28 bunker buster.

Once more I’m going to journey back to the late 70s when I was attending Portland State University and gaming every weekend. This was about the time that my original group was splitting at the seams after a new group of younger players had joined, bringing a more power-gamer oriented style of play and sending me and my immediate companions off into our own separate group (the one where we could cast unlimited Sleep spells and automatically retired at fifth level).

I stayed in touch with members of the old group however. Though the overly-competitive nature of their campaign turned me off, I was impressed by their willingness to experiment, to use house rules and to resist the rigidity that TSR was injecting into AD&D. Among the various features that they added were such things as the All the World’s Monsters supplements from Jeff Pimper and Steve Perrin, and a curious collection of digest-sized booklets — The Arduin Grimoire, Welcome to Skull Tower and The Runes of Doom, all authored by David S. Hargrave.

I liked what I saw — there were really off-the-wall monsters, bizarre treasures, new character classes and tables, Tables, TABLES! I was later to learn that Hargrave had presented this eccentric collection of supplemental materials to Chaosium as a self-contained gaming system, but that it had been rejected, triggering a feud between Hargrave and Greg Stafford that was to last for years. After this rejection, Hargrave struck out on his own, publishing the supplements himself, and the rest his history.

As I’ve previously noted, being a broke young college student I played D&D with photocopies of the original booklets. I similarly borrowed the Arduin books and copied parts of them as well — since they were written in more or less stream of consciousness style, broken up into individual sections and horrifically organized (see below), it was easy to copy only those portions of the books that interested me, such as the pages that had naked women on them.

I still have those photocopies today — they’ve held together surprisingly well. However, I was able to score copies of the original booklets in cut-out bins at local gaming stores over the years, so later editions of the original Arduin trilogy are now in my possession.

So let’s start with book one, shall we? It’s titled simply The Arduin Grimoire, and I can’t help but wonder whether Hargrave’s decision to publish it as a digest-sized booklet wasn’t influence by the fact that D&D was originally released in the same format.

The original printing features art by the awesome Erol Otus, who contributed extensive work to TSR’s AD&D books, including the cover for Deities and Demigods. He also provided illustrations for the Lovecraftian deities that were listed in the first edition of that volume, but excised later (along with Moorcock’s Melnibonean pantheon) due to copyright issues. The Arduin Grimoire was Otus’ first major project, and a preview of things to come.

Mind you, his art in this book is no great shakes — he’s clearly a talented but inexperienced artist, and in later editions of the book his work was removed and replaced by pictures from the more-established Greg Espinoza.

So what of the book itself? Well, like the other volumes in the original trilogy, The Arduin Grimoire is a heady glimpse inside the mind of its creator. Dave Hargrave was apparently an outstanding game master, and had a real talent for running games on the fly, throwing in everything but the kitchen sink and coming up with elaborate rule systems essentially off the top of his head. While this made for a really great GM and a fine game designer, what Hargrave really needed was the discipline and organization that a good editor and/or developer could provide. He would spew out the amazing ideas, the elaborate tables, imaginative monsters, new spells and artifacts, then his editor would whip the resulting chaotic jumble into something resembling a coherent final book.

In all honesty, none of the Grimoires show signs that anyone other than Dave Hargrave worked on them. They throw out rules that are alternately brilliant and silly almost at random, they are dotted with typos and clumsy revisions, and they are printed in an all but unreadable tiny, Courier-style font, a telltale sign that the whole thing was typed up on a word processor with no access to professional typesetting or layout services (and having done that job back in the days before desktop publishing, I’ll tell you that such services were not cheap).

And before we get into the meat of the work, we need to be honest with ourselves. Despite Hargrave’s protestations to the contrary, the Arduin books were intended as supplements for D&D. Any suggestion that they were anything besides this is silly. Certainly, Hargrave’s version of D&D differs significantly from the original (character levels up to 100+, anyone?), but at its heart Arduin must have been intended to supplement rather than replace D&D, since its rules modules slide and click into D&D so effortlessly.

In one particularly goofy instance of D&D imitation, Arduin’s monster statistics include an entry called “% liar.” Presumably this is a measure of how honest the creature is, but it’s also very telling since it’s a duplication of a similar statistic in original D&D called “% lair,” a rather silly number intended to indicate how often a creature was present in its home base. In the first edition of D&D, the statistic was misspelled “% liar” and this misspelling found its way into the Arduin Grimoire as if it was a legitimate statistic. Each and every monster stat block has “% liar” listed right after “Number Appearing.”

And so the fun begins with Hargrave’s opening dedication, which I reproduce below in its entirety:

I am deeply indebted to many people, without whom many of the ideas on these pages would have died stillborn. It has been a long, long year of trial and trouble, but made easier by friends both old and new. This supplement is dedicated to them certainly and with heartfelt gratitude, but it is also to those characters that lived, loved, and died in pursuit of loot and glory that my true dedication goes.

Keryu, leader of the forty-seven Ronin; Elric the Hell-Lost; Daniel the True Defender of the Dreaming Isles; Jothar, Champion of the House of the Rising Sun and Baron of the Realm; Kazamon, the Ring Bearer, hobbit and changeling; Benk the Benighted; Hismal Assad’s Twelfth Lancers; Mithrom, bandit turned demon; Mogadore the drunken dwarf; Zorella, amazon leader of the doomed Hell Raid; Lasuli, elven and unafraid; Fredrick the Bold, Slayer of Smaug and Sauron; Bolo Mark Nine, destroyer of a dungeon and near slayer of an entire world; the Seven Spartans and their never broken shield wall; Talso the grim mage; all of you are forever graven int he iron legends that will forever follow your steps through alternity. To you and the shades of near four hundred dead I lift a tankard of Rumble Tummy’s ale in respectful salute.

Without all of you I could never have dreamed my dreams of glory, nor beheld the beauty of the Misty Mountains of Arduin.

I’d say that there was an entire column’s worth of material in that dedication alone. First of all – four hundred fucking dead? Did they print character sheets on toilet paper or something? Jesus Christ that guy was a freakin’ sociopath… (And I mean that in the nicest way possible.)

And then there’s Bolo Mark Nine… Keith Laumer fans I’m sure know that a bolo is a giant cybernetic tank equipped with nuclear missiles and capable of laying waste to an entire continent. Yes, folks… giant nuclear-armed cybertanks could be player characters on Arduin.

I’m not even going to mention Fredrick the Bold and his twin victories over both Sauron and Smaug. Hell, not even Gandalf could have pulled that shit off. Holy crap, we are in for one major roller coaster ride here, kids.

(Rumble Tummy’s Ale? Seriously, Dave? Seriously?)

After his dedication, The Arduin Grimoire kicks off with what Hargrave calls a “Forward.” Now I know it’s kind of petty of me, but I think that he meant “Foreword”, and to add insult to injury I feel compelled to point out that forewords are not normally written by the author. This might best be called an “Introduction” or possibly a “Preface,” but certainly not a “Forward.”

Hargrave immediately gives us a taste of the take-no-prisoners trench warfare that was roleplaying publication in the 70s when he notes: “About three years ago fantasy role playing games began to become extremely popular… At first it was something new and wonderful… About a year or so ago things began to change: the joyous game was becoming big business. And those non-amateur game designers took on all the trappings of those things that have profit as their main motivational force: greed, secretiveness, hunger to ‘control the market’ and all of that other garbage.

“Amateurs who tried to publish their ideas were being told to cease publication if their ideas even remotely resembled any those big business types had published. Yet those same people ripped the amateurs’ ideas off quite freely, and with dismaying frequency.”

After reading a few of Gary Gygax’s vitriolic columns with their condemnation of APAs and anyone who wasn’t Gary Gygax, I can’t say that I’m unsympathetic to Hargrave’s position here. On the other hand, roleplaying games presented a fairly new phenomenon in the world of copyright, in that they presented the basic rules, but others produced work that derived from those rules and could be used with them, but at the same time did not actually COPY anything. In the end, I sympathize far more with the David Hargraves of the world than with the Gary Gygaxes.

As I said above, The Arduin Grimoire would have benefited from the services of a good editor. The first thing I noticed, after the crudely-typed word-processor text, was that all of the books are horrifically organized, written almost stream-of-consciousness, with each topic given one or two pages before Hargrave barreled on to the next. The subjects are broadly grouped together, but within these sections, topics are presented willy-nilly with no regard for order. Almost nothing is in alphabetical order.

Rather than a solid, concrete set of rules, Arduin reads instead like notes for a future roleplaying game. The text refers to rules, systems, spells and character classes that apparently don’t exist, rules are very ambiguously worded, effects are mentioned but never described, and so on.

The book starts promisingly, with a section called HOW TO PLAY THE GAME, which opens with a paragraph titled OVERLAND TRAVEL. While this paragraph does indeed describe movement distances, overland travel procedures, etc., it then segues into rules for random monster encounters, combat procedure and how to determine initiative — topics that wander quite a distance from the original subject matter.

Now we jump to a page called POINT SYSTEM in which XP awards for various events are given, such as death (yes, you get XP for dying in Arduin), being the sole survivor of a party (apparently this happened quite a bit), being cursed, obtaining cool magic items, casting certain spells, etc.

Next comes experience tables for Arduin character classes such as Thief, Slaver, Techno, Courtesan, Assassin and so on (as noted, not in alphabetical order), with XP totals for levels one all the way up to 105th level and beyond.

Next, in keeping with D&D’s strange obsession with keeping non-humans down, is a table with level limitations by class for each of 41 (count ‘em — 41, all jumbled together in non-alphabetical order) player races, including the standard humans, elves, hobbits (Hargrave didn’t seem too concerned about Tolkien’s estate and their lawyers), dwarves and half-orcs, but with the addition of such exotica as uruk hai (different from half-orcs how?), amazons (yes, amazons are a race in Arduin… More on them later), kobbits (a kobold/hobbit hybrid… OH MY GOD!!), saurig (lizard-men), phraint (insect-men), gnorcs (gnoll/orc… since I think gnolls were originally supposed to be gnome/troll hybrids, this is getting downright messy), and so many more. These seem a bit harsh — as in D&D, humans can advance an unlimited number of levels in every class, while other races are severely limited.

Immortal, arrogant elves who have built ancient and powerful civilizations and act like they’re better than everyone else, for example, can only advance to 10th level as warriors, and 8th level as Clerics, Mages and Thieves. They are, however, allowed unlimited advancement as Psychics, and “All Others”, but cannot become Monks or “Palidins” (sic).

Most races are like this — they are seriously limited in most classes, forbidden from a few, and able to advance to unlimited levels in one or two. The distribution of these limitations seems, well, pretty random. Half-elves, for example, can be 10th level clerics, but only 6th level wizards, 12th level thieves but only 8th level warriors. Centaurs can be 4th level clerics, 12th level warriors and 3rd level psychics. And so on.

No wonder humans run the show. They can rise to 100th+ level in everything. Hell, if I were a human I wouldn’t be the slightest bit scared of an elf warrior, since he can never be higher than 10th level.

Next come ability limitations by race and gender. This has always been something of a sore point in roleplaying, since females invariably are given lower Strength and Constitution scores than males, but usually higher Intelligence and Charisma. I know that on average women are not as strong or large as men, but I’ve known women who were almost as tall as me, and one or two who could have put me through a wall, so I think this concept is kind of outdated. Just roll your stats and let the chips fall where they may — if you have a female with an 18 Strength, then have fun with her.

Next comes one of those tables that makes Arduin so much fun. It’s called the NOTES ON FANTASTIC BEINGS, and includes columns for player races’ average lifespan, age of majority, usual alignment, “ability to mate fertilly with humans” (so that’s where all those half-elves come from… and no, “fertilly” is not a word, but that never stopped Hargrave), general temperament and notes.

These brief, concise overviews of racial characteristics are extremely useful  for GMs who want to come up with characters on the fly, and for players to provide guidelines on behavior. Mind you, they’re also kind of weird. The Amazon, for example, has a lifespan of 90, age of majority of 18, alignment Neutral, able to mate with humans (assuming they want to), have a general temperament of Boastful & Arrogant, and under notes we learn that they are “Pushy, man-baiters, frequently lesbian.”

I’m not even going to get into how sexist Arduin is (or maybe I am, but later), but come on, Dave. An amazon is a powerful, aggressive, proud female warrior, so naturally she’s arrogant, a man-hater and frequently lesbian. I don’t know about you, but I’ve known a few amazons, only some of them were lesbians, and they all liked me just fine.

Next comes another useful table, the CHARACTER AND ALIGNMENT OF PLAYERS CHART. Apparently you have the option of choosing your alignment at random, and this chart gives guidelines for behavior and outlook for no fewer than 14 alignments (rather than the paltry eight of 3E and the paltry two of 4E). I have to admit, when Dave Hargrave goes, he goes big.

We have the familiar Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil axis, as well as a couple of others such as “Moderately” or “Marginally Lawful” (oddly enough there’s no “Marginally Chaotic”), “True Chaotic” (which us purists insist on simply calling “Chaotic Neutral”), “Amoral,” “Amoral Evil” and “Insane.”

Each alignment has a column for “Kill Factor,” “Lie Factor,” “Tolerance Factor,” “Loyalty Factor,” and “Cruelty Factor” although there is no explanation of what this means. If nothing else, it illustrates Hargrave’s penchant for reducing everything to percentage rolls. Does “Kill Factor” equal the percentage chance that a character of that alignment will try to kill you? How about “Cruelty Factor”? What the hell does that mean? The chances that the character will be cruel? Of so, how?

The last column is a hoot — under “General Notes” it tells us that Lawful Good is “Goody two shoes type, always smiles,” Marginally Lawful is “Losing ‘faith’ in the ‘system’”, Neutral Good is “Ready to accept most any decent idea,” True Chaotic is “So unpredictable even he doesn’t know what’s next” and Chaotic Evil says “You never know what he’ll do, but you can be sure it’s nasty!”

As loony as all this sounds, it really is a breath of fresh air compared to the stodgy, pretentious stuff that was coming out of TSR at that time. This, remember, is when Original D&D was switching over to AD&D, and Gygax was busy telling us that we had to play the game exactly as he’d written it, or we were all traitors who would wreck everyone else’s fun. As Hargrave was a huge advocate of critical hits, spell points and other heresies, my guess is that he sat squarely in Gygax’s crosshairs.

Next we come to one of the most fun collection of tables you’ll ever see — the Special Abilities chart. Each group of classes has its own percentile table, with a list of abilities ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. Roll a 37 for a fighter and you get “Ex-seafarer, who cannot be drowned even in full armor (he sheds it).” A roll of 18 for a wizard yields “Time and gate competent, with total inability to use all ‘cold’ spells.” Roll a 60 for a cleric and you get “Desert born, add plus 3 to constitution and ability to find water (90%).” Roll 00 for a techno or courtesan and you hit the jackpot — “Roll once on any three tables of your choice ignoring this number, but if you can’t use what you roll up, tough, you’re stuck with it.” And so on.

I loved these tables and used them a lot, though my characters invariably got abilities like “Hates all animals (and they can sense it so will attack 85% of the time)” or “Obese glutton of unsanitary and foul habits, -6 charisma, plus 6 versus poison” while my friends got stuff like “Sexual athlete, plus 5 charisma versus opposite sex, never get enough” or “Flesh tastes bad to monsters (98% chance they’ll spit you out).”

If you happen across a copy of The Arduin Grimoire, I strongly urge you to at least check out these tables — they will fuck your campaign up in the most entertaining way possible.

Next we finally get to character classes (remember what I said about organization?), including several (but not all) of the character classes listed earlier — here we have (once more in glorious non-alphabetic order) the Trader, Psychic, Barbarian (the class had not been introduced by TSR yet), Rune Weaver, “Techno’s” (sic), and Witch Hunter. Notably absent are the Courtesan, Slaver, Alchemist and Saint, even though they were discreetly listed on the earlier XP chart.

The classes are a strange lot — the rules for them are typically amorphous, with lots of room for GM and player interpretation (and, I’m sure, argument). The psychic can’t use magic, has to have low physical stats and gains special abilities such as “Mental scream” every few levels. The Barbarian is listed as being “extremely vulnerable to magik,” but no actual rules for this vulnerability are presented. As we all know, Barbarians can “go berserk,” adding +4 to their attacks but subtracting -3 from their defense. “Once berserk, they will fight blindly for 1 melee turn for each level less than 20th level that they are, even if all of the enemy are dead. There is also a 60% chance for 1st level Barbarians going berserk uncontrollably, rolled for every melee turn.”

Okay, I’m confused. A Barbarian can go berserk at will, but must fight “blindly” for a number of rounds — say 10 for a 10th level Barbarian. What does he mean by “blindly”? He’ll attack anything? Attack the nearest figure? Attack trees and rocks? Attack the darkness? And when that period is over, is he still berserk, and can he continue to use his +4 to hit? Once more, it feels as if we’re reading someone’s campaign notes, rather than a coherent rules set. No wonder Chaosium rejected Arduin.

And so it goes — Rune Weavers are spellcasters, but it takes them one round per spell level to cast, and they get more spell points than regular casters. “Techno’s” (sic — dammit, Hargrave needed a copy of Strunk and White!) “are specialists that disbelieve 100% in magic and work from a strictly scientific point of view… They are constatnly dismembering dragons to see where the flame thrower was hidden!” Medicine Men are “Barb    ian priest/mages” (sic), Witch hunters “are religious fanatics (99% Chritian) that are obnoxiously ‘holier than thou’ in their attitude towards just about everyone and everything.”

The entries are all organized differently, as if (surprise!) Hargrave developed them all separately, then pasted them together for the book. Some have a single mass of text with the rules all run together, others (such as the Witch Hunter) are organized with headers and specific rules, each given its own lettered paragraph. Witch Hunters have entries for “Advantages” and “Disadvantages” but no other classes do. They have a level chart listing their “Fighting Capability” as being equal to “Man +1,” “2 Men,” “3 Men,” “Hero,” “Myrmidon +1,” “Super Hero,” and so on (reflecting the original D&D fighter level table, though I can’t for the life of me figure out what is meant by “3 Men.”).

The characters really are all over the map, with rules ranging from ironclad specifics to vague guidelines. To play them would require a huge amount of GM interpretation, yet Hargrave assures us that everything in Arduin has been playtested over “hundreds of hours “ of gaming. Clearly these rules worked for him and his fellows, and given that he brags about over 400 PC deaths, his players kept coming back.

I think that more than anything else, Arduin’s character classes tell us a lot about David Hargrave and the state of gaming in those days. Despite TSR and Gary Gygax’s insistence that everyone march in lock-step and play the game exactly as written (lest they be condemned as talentless fools and hateful luddites), a lot of people (I would even go so far as to say “most people” but I have no real proof of that, beyond the people that I myself gamed with) played the game any damned way they pleased.

Hargrave’s campaign was clearly high-powered, had a huge death-rate, and was pretty much over-the-top in every aspect. It was also very fast and loose, and given the vagueness of many of the “rules” he cites in his work, required some pretty heavy GM interpretation.

Fun as it is, the confused jumble of half-rules, guidelines and polite suggestions that passes for character class entries is followed by the Multiversal Trading Company Price List. Interestingly enough, armor is listed as “Defensive Weapons” which is an odd designation, but the chart is pretty familiar to any rpg-er.

Now we get to the magic rules which are, as always, pretty vague and make sense only in reference to the original D&D rules from which they are derived. Hargrave discusses in considerable detail how long it takes to memorize spells (one hour per spell divided by the number of spells that the mage may memorize at his or her current level).

In his example, a fifth-level mage takes three hours to memorize one third, two second level and one third level spell. Honestly, who ever really did that? Everyone I ever gamed with simply assumed that the mage’s spells automatically regenerated each day and didn’t bother intricately mapping out how long it took to memorize spells. I can imagine the real effects now:

It’s bright and early in the morning in the Lost Dungeon of Death. The party has awakened, unspiked the door, eaten a hasty breakfast and is preparing to set forth once more.

FIGHTER: Hey, guys, let’s go! I want to investigate that temple complex we found yesterday! I think there might be lizard men!

THIEF: You betcha! That idol with the giant gemstone eyes looked pretty sweet! Come on!

WIZARD: No, wait up guys. I have to memorize my spells.

FIGHTER: Criminey! Always with the spell memorization. How long is that gonna take?

WIZARD: Only three hours or so. Just hang on and I’ll get started.

THIEF: Oh, fuck. Here we go again. Okay, who wants another pot of tea?

Hargrave then goes over some familiar rules. Mages can’t wear metal armor. At fifth level they can use magical swords and a tenth level they can use all magic weapons (there is an uncomfirmed report that Gary Gygax experienced a minor stroke when he read that rule).

Then we get into one of the more bizarre rules that Arduin presents. Apparently, you only get one saving throw against a given spellcaster’s magic. If you save once, you save every time that caster throws that particular spell at you. The opposite is true too — if you fail a save against Magico the Magical’s fireball, then you continue to fail every time he casts a fireball at you. Until of course, “you yourself go up a level” at which time presumably everything resets and you can start making saving throws again.

Holy crap, that sounds complicated. I’d have ignored this rule the first chance I got.

Next comes something that sums up Hargrave’s love of minutiae and his fondness for percentage rolls all in one beautiful paragraph.

The upshot of all this is simple; you have to have to have your magical goodies where your hot little hands gan get them at an instant’s notice. And if you want to really jazz up your game, just add in a PHUCKER PHACTOR. What’s a P&P you ask? Simply put, it is a percent for mages or whomever, to grab the wrong end of a wand or to read off the wrong spell on his scroll in his haste to slay the onrushing purple uglys (sic) that are going to eat him. A suggested base is 50% to start, going down 2% per level attained, and modified by your dexterity (-5% per each point over 12 or conversely adding 5% for each point less than 9).

Oh my God. Seriously? Phucker Phactor? Mage’s have a 50% chance of accidentally grabbing their wands upside-down? You’d think they’d take that into account. Wouldn’t a fumble on the Attack roll be more realistic?

Hargrave goes on to suggest a surprisingly modern-sounding solution to a common problem that was not addressed until D&D 3E — touch attacks. If a magical attack simply requires contact and not penetration, he suggests giving the attacker a flat +4 bonus to do so. That’s elegant, though I think I prefer the “Touch AC” solution that D20 adopted.

Finally we get to another of Gary Gygax’s sore points — spell points or, as Arduin calls them, “manna points”. Here’s the formula that Hargrave used: “Take the mages (sic) intelligence and multiply it by his level, then if his intelligence is 8 or less, divide by four. If it is 9 to 12, divide by three, and if it is 13 or greater divide by two. Therefore, a 7th level mage with an intelligence of 16 would multiply 16 x 7 = 112 and divide 112 by  2 = 56 manna points that the mage will generate each twelve hour period of rest.”

Whew. More math. More fun. And the fun continues when we actually start casting spells. Most first level spells, we are told, cost one to one and a half manna points. One and a half? In addition to all that multiplication and division we’re expected to keep track of half points. At this point, Gary Gygax’s complaint that spell points add more unnecessary bookkeeping is beginning to sound better and better.

A mage can use his “manna” (I believe the correct spelling is actually “mana” which Hargrave uses later in the book) points to cast spells he has memorized, but how many spells can he memorize? Again, Hargrave’s answer is in the form of a guideline, but he essentially tells you to use whatever system you like:

…the Dungeons and Dragons game has a nice workable system but as this is the Arduin Grimoire, here’s mine: For every two levels of experience, a mage can use one level of spells… However, there is a limiting factor based upon intelligence… the user’s intelligence is divided by two, thus a mage with an 18 intelligence could do up to ninth level spells…

So take whatever I have that you like, use the old established system, delve into Empire of the Petal Throne, Red Moon and White Bear (sic… The game was actually called White Bear and Red Moon, and can be purchased on Amazon for a mere $269) in a magic system. Who knows, it may end up such a good system that people will want you to publish your supplement!

And so once more we have the general outline of a decent magic system, but lacking any specifics or exceptions. How do mages get spells to memorize in the first place? Do they have spellbooks as in D&D? Spells can be cast at fractional power with similarly fractional mana expenditure — do you round up or down? Does “half power” halve the range as well as the damage? If you are using spells from another game such as D&D, how much mana do those spells cost? And so on.

There’s a really joyful sense of experimentation and chaotic wildness to Hargrave’s work. It’s mad, to be sure, but it’s a pretty intense and infectious madness. I keep coming back to how rigid TSR was growing at this point, and how imaginative and unfettered the rest of the growing gaming industry had become. The entire situation seems today like a huge disconnect between TSR and their customers, as Gygax savagely condemned the very people he should have been encouraging.

Another welter of charts follows — the “Turn-Away” (i.e. turn undead) chart, the “Detect Ability” chart which lists percentage chances for various classes and devices to detect such things as poison, evil, magic, alignment, weather, enemies, undead, treasure, traps, invisible objects, etc., etc., and tables of saving throws for items, character classes and races.

I love the next table to death — it’s a random matrix for generating magical items. Roll a 50 in the “Type of Weapon” column and, for example, you get a bolo (yes, a bolo — the weapon, not the giant cyber-tank). Continue to roll, and you discover that it is a +3 attack, +2 damage, Intelligence 15, Ego 16 magic bolo with the ability to detect undead, makes its user 100% immune to dragon breath and has a 9-step level draining ability.

Whew! That’s a lot for a damned little bolo. This table gives some other goofy results, like a dancing vorpal crossbow or a battleaxe of elemental conjuring.

Next we have a table for “prismatic walls and their usage.” I’m not entirely sure that prismatic walls deserve a full table here, but in any event you learn that a Bronze prismatic wall “stops all spells fired from wands, and does damage only to wands (they explode).” This is still more of Hargrave’s rough-note taking that takes the place of actually writing rules, and is only one example. I presume that any wand that “fires” through a bronze prismatic wall explodes, but the rule says “does damage only to wands.” Is the explosion harmless to the wielder, then? If so, how much damage is inflicted and does the wand get a save? I’m sure that all of this was handled by Hargrave on the spot, and may have changed from gaming session to gaming session.

The entry for Violet prismatic walls is similar — its effect is “General anti-magic shell, insanity.” What the hell does this mean? Anyone inside it goes insane? Anyone who tries to cast through it? Move through it? Look at it? Arduin is delightfully goofy and exuberant, but don’t expect specifics here. Ever.

Now we finally get to spells and even though there are only a few pages of them, they are indeed impressive. I can only go over a few of the more choice spells. They’re all identified by name, level, mana cost, range, area and effects. As I’m sure you’ve guessed they are jumbled together in random order, but thank goodness they are organized by character class.

Given the vagueness of Hargrave’s “rules” up to this point, his spells are surprisingly specific. The first spell in the druid list, for example is Yalywyn’s Spell of the Singing Winds:

Level: 3rd; Mana cost: 3 plus 3 per hour to sustain. Range: 120′; Area Affected: 60′diameter plus additional 10′ per level over level needed to use. Effects: A wonderfully scented gentle wind blows melodious music within the spell area, which immediately charms all up to 6th level into sitting and listening raptly.

Holy crap, that’s only the first spell! To me it seems like a pretty damnably powerful spell, since it apparently automatically (and “automatically” says to me “no saving throw”) charms every single life-form of level 6 and under in an area of over 45,000 square feet! And it evidently continues for as long as the caster cares to maintain it!

The fun never stops in Arduin — mage spells have names like Stephan le Strange’s Spell of the Instant Idleness, which essentially does the same thing as the Singing Winds spell, although targets are granted a saving throw. Masayuki’s Mist of Malevolent Misery creates “a purple, roiling, squirming greasy fog that moans and gibbers,” causing all victims of 2nd level or under to automatically choke to death (you get a save if you’re 4th level or higher, but still “suffer from intense confusion, dizzyness, nausea and watering eyes as long as still in the cloud,” even though there is no explanation what game effects these conditions have). Yorgan’s Falling For Forever Spell causes the target to become weightless and “fall” upward away from the planet at a rate of 100′ per turn. Khurluu’s Call of the Hell Spawn summons one demon locust +1 per level over minimum.

Clerics aren’t neglected either — they get things like Visions of Hell that causes victims to “see all your deepest ID nightmare sin living color and stereophonic sound. They can kill if they’re believed in.” The Spell of the Horns of Joshua (yes, the Judeo-Christian faiths are alive and well in Arduin) buildings to collapse (though again there are no specifics for the size of building, how much damage they do, etc.), and inflicts damage on everyone in the area.

As you can see, Hargrave didn’t hold back when it came to spectacular, Biblical-level spells. Jehovah might be a pretty mellow guy in this reality, but in Arduin he’s a fuckin’ badass. Real Old Testament Wrath-o-God shit here, kids.

Rune weavers then get some of their own spells, webs that they weave with magic. The webs are all different colors and have various effects — white webs cause cold damage, flashing metallic blue webs cause electrical shock, while mottled grey-green webs cause those caught in them to be “stoned for the duration of the web.” As this web is called Argoth’s Spell of the Spider Golem I strongly suspect that when Hargrave said “stoned” he meant “turned to stone” rather than “being reduced to complete dumbass status after using recreational drugs.”

Magical items follow, and they’re exactly what you’d expect from David Hargrave. The Misty Boots of Silent Speed allow the wearer to move on any surface, even illusions (!) at double speed and with absolute silence. Consider the consequences, my friends. An illusionist casts the image of a bridge across the deep chasm and presto! The rogue with the Misty Boots is across in a trice… Damn.

The Golden Drops of Heavenly Essence will “100% restore any dead being regardless of damage or how little of said being is left. They will cure disease, insanity and amnesia. They are so rare that only 21 drops have been seen in the last 1,200 years!”

Now I admit that I skipped most of the next section, packed with combat charts, guidelines for melee and missile combat and other stuff that I never really cared for in the first place. One of the best-known, most widely-known and infamous sections of Arduin is next, and it’s the part that I turned to most often. I speak, of course, about David Hargrave’s legendary Critical Hit and Critical Fumble tables!

But I think that’s going to have to wait until the next entry, as it’s getting late, my entry is already downright epic, and I’m exhausted. Tune in next time for the last part of the original Arduin Grimoire (including monsters and demons!), and the next two volumes in the series — Welcome to Skull Tower and the Rooms of Dune!

Excuse me. I mean Runes of Doom. My apologies. Peace out.

One of the reasons I love Metalocalypse is its farcical sense of self-importance. In the show’s world, death metal is the most popular form of music and the band Deathklok is the world’s sixth-largest economy. It’s been described as the world that death metal fans wish existed.

Liberality for All takes that same attitude and transfers it to the real world. Here, conservative talking heads and bloggers like Rush, Coulter, O’Reilly, Matt Drudge and even the likes of Dr. Laura Ingraham (apparently Glenn Beck was too wacky even for Mike Mackey, as I note he is never once mentioned in the series) are pillars of American freedom, and the last bulwark of democracy in a nightmare world of liberal tyranny. Needless to say, they are the first targets of the Islamofascist hit-squads after 9/11, and once they’re gone the forces of darkness have free reign to conquer the nation. That Mike Mackey endows a bunch of political talking heads with such awesome power is proof that he drank about a gallon of Fox News’ Kool-Aid before writing each issue of LfA.

This is pretty high-falutin’ stuff, especially for what critics have since begun to refer to as the “Conservative Entertainment Complex.” A more nuanced view of these people might suggest that, rather than freedom and democracy, their goal is to make money and obtain higher ratings, and to tell conservatives what they want to hear. The case could be made that, in the last election, far from acting as guardians of conservative principles, they actually contributed to the defeat of the Republican candidate by assuring right-wing voters that the polls were all wrong, and the usurper/socialist/Kenyan Obama was on the way to absolute and certain defeat. The exile of Sarah Palin, Karl Rove and Dick Morris from the hallowed halls of Fox News is just one sign of the onset of reality.

Although the third and unexpectedly final issue of Liberality for All was on the stands, Mike Mackey had even more ambitious plans for shattering the liberal’s stranglehold on liberty. He released a short preview (available on the old website here), cleverly titled Libarro World, which was intended to run as a supporting feature in LfA. I’m not going to bother lampooning it — Mackey does a perfectly good job on his own. Suffice to say it’s a one-joke strip in which conservative duplicates of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Howard Dean (seriously? Howard Dean?) and Ted Kennedy are created in a scientific accident, much to the chagrin of their babbling, oblivious libtard originals (recall, this is set in the fantasy world of Mike Mackey’s conservative imagination in which relatively conservative democrat Hillary Clinton is a loony leftist extremist and legitimate military veteran John Kerry is a draft-dodging flip-flopper).

As heavy-handed as the rest of LfA (sample jokes… Hillary shrieks “Does it take a village to get this thing started or what?”, Dean says to Kerry “For crying out loud! We just voted! First you vote for it… Now you vote against it?” and keeps suggesting — big surprise — that they clear everything through the UN), the never-completed supporting feature pokes crude fun at a former DNC chairman, two future secretaries of state and a now-dead senator. Enough said.

So with that needless prolog out of the way, we can proceed to the end of our trip through Liberality for All.

Liberality for All: Issue Three

Regrettably, Issue Three is still stuck in flashback-land, mostly following the tale of the svelte, muscular and sleekly hairless (save for that hot moustache, of course)  Sexy G, aka G. Gordon Liddy.

I’m going to reiterate that while Mackey seems determined to transform his conservative heroes into smoldering slabs of man-muscle for his own amusement, nowhere is this more evident than in the portrayal of the fragile, septuagenarian Liddy, who despite his advancing years (and without the benefit of the magical nanites that grant eternal youth and sexiness to both him and his partner Sean Hannity) still struts around the pages of LfA in tight pants, wielding massive and manly weapons, and kicks ass like a 20-year-old Navy Seal. His journey from elderly criminal and Fox News contributor to sex-god for a new era continues unabated in this issue.

To satisfy all those Republican comic collectors who are clamoring for more, LfA #3 again features two covers, and what covers they are. The first portrays a young boy — presumably li’l Reagan McGee — trying to tear down the hateful UN flag and replace it with the stars and stripes, presumably soaked in the blood of patriots and martyrs to liberalism.

The second cover is my favorite of the entire series — It portrays conservative blogger Matt Drudge, his signature porkpie hat lying nearby, his computer screen (with “Drudge Report” across it, in case we missed the point) splattered with his blood, while two treacherous thugs, their blue uniforms emblazoned with UN insignia, stand over him with drawn weapons. Matt’s dead of course (just like all us treacherous liberals wanted all along), but his face is turned away from the viewer, so I can’t tell whether Donny Lin fucked his portrait up as well.

The credits page lists Mike and Donny of course, and unaccountably also includes credits for Libarro World, which was penciled by one Aditia Wardhana and colored by one “Nichx.” Once more, Mike Mackey appears to have turned his back on good old red-blooded American comic artists, farming out his artwork to Indonesians, who presumably work for a lot less money. And once more, the artist appears to have vanished from sight, as a quick Google search reveals that there are a LOT of Indonesians named Aditia (or Aditya) Wardhana, but none list their occupation as “comic book artist.”

LfA now returns to the white house as young President Chelsea turns her hateful visitor, Ambassador Usama (btw, I’m using Mackey’s spelling, “Usama” rather than the more common “Osama” — he probably did so because only liberals spell it that way) over to the fat and sweaty care of VP Moore, who shows him around, eager as a young puppy to serve his new terrorist master.

Now poor li’l Chelsea (who Lin portrays as a real babe, by the way — something that I find vaguely creepy) tells the black nanny to make sure she washes little William Jefferson to remove the bloodstains left by Usama’s murderous fingers, then addresses the hateful, wizened, America-hating surrender monkey himself, UN Secretary General Jacque Chirac (who, as president of DIRTY, SURRENDERING FRANCE, REFUSED to join with George W. Bush’s COALITION OF THE WILLING when we went into Iraq to take out that MONSTER, Saddam Hussein, thus showing that he HATES AMERICA and is a DIRTY SURRENDERING FRENCHMAN, now head of the UNITED NATIONS, who have TAKEN OVER AMERICA and TAKEN AWAY OUR GUNS. Everyone knows that the French do nothing but surrender and give in to terrorists, and are clearly ENEMIES OF AMERICA. I’m emphasizing this because I’m afraid that Mike Mackey might have used too light of a touch in his original and people might not get it).

The conversation between Chelsea and Chirac is, once more, a prime cut of Mike Mackey’s worldview. “We need much more than we originally asked for” from the UN, Chelsea says, her big doe eyes gleaming with tears as she realizes how her own mother betrayed the land she loves so much.

“Chelsea,” Chirac replies, all Gallic reason and sympathy while contemptuously referring to the president by her first name, “why don’t you follow in your parents’ footsteps and raise taxes on the rich?”

Hard cheese, Frog-boy. “There are no rich in America anymore,” Chelsea mourns, thinking fondly of how the wealth of billionaires like Donald Trump used to rain down upon the nation like a shower of gold. “When their tax rate hit 90%, most of them emigrated to Britain or Israel.”

Fun Facts for Conservatives: The top tax rate in the United States is now 39.6%. In our heroic ally Britain, the top rate is 50%, and in our heroic ally Israel it’s 46%. Both of these states also have national healthcare, or as you like to call it “socialism.” In that socialistic police-state to the north commonly called “Canada,” the top rate is 54%, and that is one of the highest in the world. No state has a 90% top tax rate, not even the hateful communists in China or the backwards rustics of Sweden. Just keepin’ things in perspective.

Back to Chirac’s beatdown of poor Chelsea. “Just like the rich,” he says, nibbling on a snail while surrendering to the Germans, “always thinking of themselves first, never the good of the whole. Which reminds me, the recent recovery of Hannity’s laptop may lead to the discovery of FOIL’s lair.”

Nice try with the non-sequitur (sorry for using a French word for something, but I can’t think of a better one) says Chelsea, but what about the money?

No can do, Chirac replies, sipping champagne out of his mistress’ high-heeled shoe while smoking a pack of cigarettes. Not a good time. Nosireebob.

Chelsea furrows her little brow and stamps her little foot at this. “Do you realize the sacrifices America has made to the UN over the past decades? [And by 'America' I assume she means 'The United States of America' but like many conservatives, Mackey believes that the US occupies two entire continents.] America is on the verge of bankruptcy because of our capitulation to the very nations that make up the UN!”

(Try saying that three times fast… In the words of Harrison Ford, “Hey George — maybe you can write this crap, but you sure as hell can’t say it!”)

Chirac now shows his true colors — yellow. “Madame President,” he sneers, “your tone is as if (sic) you have wealth or military strength to bargain with… YOU DO NOT! For now you will make do with what the UN allows you to have. MWAAAHAHAHAHA! Bring me another prostitute!”

(That last part is mine, but you have to admit that it makes sense.)

Chirac stomps away, leaving Chelsea to go wash her hands.

CLANG.

Now back to Reagan McGee, typing at his computer (the libs actually let people have computers? Holy shit, they’re dumber than I thought, and believe me that is dumb) when his mom (having after 20 years graduated to MILF status) hands him a present that his dad wanted him to have. She’s been holding onto it for two decades, and I wonder what it is. It’s way too small to be a firearm, but as far as I’m concerned that’s THE ONLY THING HE COULD HAVE GIVEN HIS SON THAT WOULD HAVE ALLOWED HIM TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM…

Sorry. Seriously, this whole thing is really starting to affect my mind. As young Reagan accepts his prezzy and we prepare for yet another flashback, the TV drones on with the usual, predictable libtard news.

“…Ambassador bin Laden’s apology at the Unity Tower in New York… At 8:45 a.m. tomorrow, as light bathes the Unity Tree, Ambassador bin Laden will apologize while promising to usher in a new era… is also being celebrated at the Light-of-Peace [Uh-oh, it's the word "peace" -- must be another dumb liberal thing] ceremony in Hollywood hosted by Barbra Streisand [SEE? Told you.]…”

(Yup, you got us cold, Mackey… All us liberals wanted was an apology from that mean ol’ bin Laden. All he had to do was gaze into the video camera, make his eyes real big and say, “I’m sowwy,” and our liberal hearts would have melted. “C’mere, ya big lug,” we’d croon, throwing our arms around good ol’ Usama and holding him close. “I can’t stay mad at you!”)

Okay, back to six-year-old Reagan, sitting in class being programmed by his fellow-traveler teacher.

“Decades of saber-rattling an military posturing by warmongers caused a divide in the world,” she lectures. “Under President Hillary Clinton’s wise leadership, we are withdrawing our violent forces from all over the world, to be absorbed into UN peacekeeping forces.”

On the blackboard, of course, are the words From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, which needless to say is something that Hillary Clinton was careful to work into every one of her communisitic, America-hating speeches, and which she repeated every night before going to bed, instead of praying like a good American.

None of this sits well with the li’l patriot Reagan. Idiot, he thinks. Feeding us this garbage again. I… can’t… take… this… ANYMORE!”

“My father is in the army reserve and he can barely retreat without bullets!” Reagan declares. That’s one thoughtful six-year-old, dontcha think?

The teacher raises a finger to scold our little renegade. “Your warmongering father should not be there in the first place!”

“America has been betrayed by the UN!” Reagan shouts, in a cry that soon will be echoed by thousands — nay, millions — as they rise up in righteous anger. Again, pretty good for a first-grader.

Well, just as the teacher’s about to send Reagan to the Gulag, he’s instead called to the principal’s office. On the way, he punches the condom-dispenser that’s in the middle of the grade-school hallway (because us liberals WANT CHILDREN TO HAVE SEX and want CONDOM DISPENSERS IN KINDERGARTEN… CLANG!) and stomps into the office, only to see an Army sergeant with a letter for him. He gets the message (like we weren’t expecting it) and runs out screaming (altogether now) “NO!” (Btw, the message is that his dad’s dead, slain by the liberal traitors… I mean North Koreans or something.)

He’s still screaming when he runs out onto the schoolyard, past a newspaper with the headline Fox News Bankrupt!, past a flagpole where the UN flag flies above the stars and stripes, and past a big sign that says SUPPORT U.N.IFICATION. 

(I’m beginning to think that his school’s name is Clumsy Right-Wing Metaphor Elementary or something, given the sheer density of symbolic elements that surround poor little Reagan.)

As he’s out there, he sees another little girl being forced to stare at the flagpole, up in his classroom and their eyes meet (does she grow up to be that hot Liberty Belle chick I wonder…). As Reagan stands beneath the flapping, fluttering symbol of EVIL INCARNATE (that would be the UN flag), his shadow grows into that of a God-fearing, gun-loving, freedom-fighting-for American MAN, and we’re back in the present.

And speaking of presents, he’s still holding the one from his dad and hasn’t opened it, while the libtard news continues to blather.

It’s the evil Alan Colmes again. “With us today,” he says, “is Freedom’s guardian, who is also a PETA representative… So why is Freedom dying?”

CLANG! You see FREEDOM, is actually a BALD EAGLE, and the bald eagle is the SYMBOL of AMERICA. And since the EAGLE (named FREEDOM) is DYING, then FREEDOM in AMERICA is DYING, too. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

“Well Alan,” replies the PETA guy (and for once Mackey and I agree on something, and it’s that PETA is a bunch of loons, but that’s a discussion for another day), “since the death of his mate Glory [CLANG!] he has refused to eat his prey, flavored soy pseudo-rats.”

“How about feeding Freedom live prey?” Colmes asks, knowing the answer.

“His soy-prey has the same nutritional value,” huffs the PETA guy, “and live prey? Well, that’s just plain MURDER. Instead of starvation, we have decided to put Freedom to a humane death tomorrow.”

Get it? They’re PUTTING FREEDOM to DEATH, which symbolizes the DEATH OF FREEDOM IN AMERICA.

Did you hear me? I said, THE DEATH OF FREEDOM IN AMERICA!

We never do find out what Dad’s present to little Reagan was, but Mom does say, “He would be so proud of you.”

Reagan shakes his head sadly. “I haven’t done anything for him to be proud of…” He raises his eyes with growing hope and determination, gazing at the screen where Freedom the Eagle stands, condemned to death by liberal/PETA treachery and says, “…Yet.”

Back at FOIL HQ, Sexy G is there, clad in a tight, tight, TIGHT turtleneck and what appear to be riding breeches (but are probably supposed to be military-style trousers with cargo pockets), inspecting a wounded finger, while extending his neck to a length of approximately two feet. Nearby, a hot blonde in a tight, tight TIGHT body suit stands, holding a smoking automatic rifle (and it ain’t the ONLY thing that’s smokin’, believe me). She has a huge silver cross around her neck, too, a symbol of her unending devotion to Jesus, hanging sweetly between her succulent, overflowing breasts.

“Nice shot,” Liddy says.

“I aim to please, Lovie,” replies Ms. Hottie. Holy crap. Is she actually fucking this 90-year-old fossil, or is she just flirting with him? Either way… Creepy. She’s still unidentified, btw — I think Ollie North called her Diana (though she looked different in Issue One), and Mackey never once mentioned Anne Coulter as being a member of FOIL. Perhaps she’s actually Sarah Palin, rejuvenated by the power of nanites and provided with huge, supple, heaving breasts and a round, sensual ass.

Noor (aka “Oscar”) is nearby, mixing up his special formula. “Quickly, Gordon,” he urges. “I can’t measure the effectiveness of your cellular reconstruction until you’re unconscious.”

“Too bad Annie is not operational,” Gordon complains. “We could useher tomorrow. Can you imagine Annie wading through all those UN troops? It would be a massacre!”

“True,” agrees Noor, “but let’s get you five by five before worrying about robotic PMS!”

Yup, nothing like a sexist joke about how cranky women get at that time of the month to cement your rep as a fearless conservative defender of freedom, Mike. Keep up the good work.

So Sexy G reclines his rippling muscular manliness on Oscar’s exam table and drifts off to slumberland, hoping that this time he doesn’t have nightmares.

No such luck. We’re back in 2006, when, in the words of Reagan’s interminable narration, “terrorists tried to kill every vocal conservative. And all the free health care in the world would not help those killed.”

CLANG!

“I was only a child, but I don’t remember too many tears shed in the media. Like other times when patriots have died, it seemed unpopular to step forth to support the fallen.”

(Get it? Because LIBERALS HATE HEROES and HATE AMERICA!! You know, I’m starting to get a little hoarse from pointing out Mackey’s subtle messages, but I’ll carry on, because… well, fuck… You know… AMERICA!)

G. Gordo, fresh off nailgunning that evil terrorist, visits the hospital to see how his special buddy, Sean Hannity is doing. There, he meets Ollie North and Noor, who is determined to save the gravely wounded Sean, and with him, freedom.

“My machines can make him as good as new,” he says, patriotic determination oozing from every pore. “In fact, better than he was before.”

Their bedside conversation is interrupted by the cops, who show up to arrest poor G. Gordon “for the possession and illegal discharge of a gun within the city limits.”

(For the last time, libtards… It’s not a GUN, it’s a WEAPON or a FIREARM!)

Back in Oscar’s lab, Noor notes “His nanites are reacting very aggressively. Cellular repair and telomere replacement both at a consistent 102%. That means unless he takes a bullet through the pump… He’s probably now immortal!”

G. Gordon Liddy — hot and sexy… forever! Yes, Liberality for All is a true conservative fantasy. Too bad it’s not real.

…Or is it?

Okay, back to the G-dog’s remembrances. A long-haired hippy-type lawyer is talking to the press, liberal platitudes and hate-speech spewing from his disgusting left-wing cakehole.

“Mr. Liddy’s archaic belief in the Second Amendment has earned him 30 years in federal prison,” he says, “which is the mandatory minimum sentence for the possession of a handgun within the New York City Limits. And although no body was found, human and pig blood were discovered in a warehouse where we believe Mr. Liddy brought harm to an innocent Arab youth.”

Oh yeah? How about a TERRORIST Arab youth, huh? I mean, hell, it’s up to conservatives to defend freedom, and if it takes torturing a suspect with a nailgun, then by God and Jesus and all that’s fuckin’ holy THEY’RE GONNA DO IT! Because… Well… AMERICA!

“In this new American era,” Reagan prattles on, “yesterday’s patriots are today’s criminals, and history always makes the determination (sic) between the two. Obviously, crime pays, or there’s be no crime, but does patriotism pay when leaders turn away from the nation’s founding principles of yesterday? Who can blame those of us who embrace such criminals (sic).”

Back in the lab, Noor suggests that “the nannites (sic) in Gordon’s biosystem are exceeding their design capabilities… I may be able to help Sean and Ollie with their vision… Maybe even get Annie to behave rationally.”

Ms, Hottie, who is sitting in on the proceedings, and calls everyone “Lovie” (maybe she’s fucking all of them… even conservatives need casual sex now and them, I guess), says that “Annie” makes her uncomfortable, while in the corner we see the shadow of a high-heeled figure shrouded in covers. Maybe that’s the mysterious “Annie” — a hot, spike-heeled warrior robot with the stars and stripes painted across her generous bosom, perhaps? We’ll never know.

Back to G’s past. With no explanation of how he slipped his treacherous liberal-forged bonds, we see Sexy G being picked up by Ollie North at New York Harbor with the betrayed Statue of Liberty (a gift from the French, wasn’t it?) in the background.

“The base is not far,” heroic Oliver says, “Our liberal masters saw fit to close Manhattan’s FEMA base. Sean, Oscar and I reopened it!”

Sexy G expresses concern that Ollie is going blind (“Yep! A bit more each day,” North replies), and that this might be contributing to the fact that he’s driving them both straight into Long Island Sound.

No fear, they drive into the hold of the carp-shaped supersub we saw in Issue One.

“Once Hillary closed all the military bases, they scrapped the top secret toys as well,” Oliver explains to a chorus of falling anvils. “The base could survive a nuclear strike against the city, and has underwater access… Because of a few silent patriots on the ‘Right’ side [get it? RIGHT SIDE] this base has been erased from all recorded records.”

Recorded records? Damn. It would be terrible if it was still on all of those unrecorded records, wouldn’t it?

“The Coulter Laws have made us all fugitives,” Ollie continues. “I guess it’s appropriate that this base is underground.”

So Sexy G meets his fellow rebels, Oscar and Cyber-Sean, and together they begin the fight for freedom.

Remember when Sexy G said he was afraid of nightmares? Well, he gets one, and boy is it hilarious. He dreams he’s sleeping, and a hand touches his naked shoulder.

“Wake up, GG,” whispers a coarse but feminine voice. “It’s time for our ‘STAFF MEETING! [It's subtle, but I THINK she means SEX].”

Sexy G rolls over to see his partner, and sets eyes on the most hideous harpy from hell…

HILLARY CLINTON!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

“I thought I didn’t know what fear was,” he mutters, quivering in terror.

Okay, enough hilarity… Back to the serious subject matter — bionic conservatives fighting terrorists and liberals.

Oscar is discussing a nanite treatment with Oliver North (and we all know how that’s going to turn out, don’t we… Not one, not two, but THREE bionic, nanite-enhanced patriots to battle for justice…), while on the big monitor Alan Colmes, Prince of Evil, says that tomorrow is the day that the good and kind-hearted Ambassador bin Laden is going to deliver his apology.

Then we see the Freedom the Eagle broadcast, in which the slimy PETA guy reveals that he’s going to kill Freedom. Get it? Kill Freedom… Because Freedom is…

O0ps, sorry. I already explained that.

Sexy G watches the story, eyes narrowing, wheels spinning with in his gleaming, hairless and oh-so-strokable head, while the blonde chick smiles seductively at Cyber-sean and escorts him and Ollie from the chamber, presumably for a hot all-right-wing three-way.

Also in an inset, we see Noor slipping unnoticed from the room. What could that signify, I wonder?

Okay, okay, let’s wrap this travesty up, shall we?

Next we’re at UN HQ, where the treacherous Jacques Chirac is talking to a black-clad, buzz-cut blonde Aryan type, discussing how they’re going to find that damned elusive Hannity.

The blonde guy turns out to be a German UN military rep, named Commander Hissler. (Get it? His name is HISSLER, and he’s GERMAN. Just like HITLER. And his NAME is “HISSLER” so it sounds just like HITLER, because the UN is just like NAZIs, and GERMANS are… No, wait… This whole clumsy allegory thing is really starting to break down, isn’t it?)

Herr Hissler assures Chirac that the robbery at the Department of Peace resulted in the theft of only one item, something called “a Glucus Communication device. After 34 years, we are not concerned with any security issue it might pose.”

Boy, is HE gonna be SURPRISED when SEAN HANNITY uses the GLUCUS DEVICE TO RESTORE FREEDOM IN ISSUE EIGHT! HAW!

“And the conservative dissidents?” Chirac asks, and Hissler chuckles.

“UN forces found Matt Drudge hours ago. His website is now shut down… permanently. And during the arrest…” Hissler flashes an evil, evil UN-German-Nazi-Communist-Socialist-terrorist-tax-the-rich grin, “he apparently committed ‘suicide.’ BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHH!”

(Again, I editorialize. He doesn’t really laugh. He just grins happily.)

“Finally,” continues Chirac, “what of FOIL?”

“We have an expert working on that right now,” replies the blonde thug, lovingly stroking his blue ray copy of Farenheit 9/11. “Thanks to Dr. Noor Ilham, who has joined us, we are attempting to retrieve security data from Hannity’s laptop.”

NOOR ILHAM! You mean “Oscar” — the guy who saved Sean Hannity’s life, made G. Gordon Liddy the sexiest beast among all sexy beasts, who has fought for justice and America and freedom for all three issues of this magnificent comic? NOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes, it’s Oscar, betraying his friends and sucking up to the United Nations traitors.  ”I will be able to tell you everything about the location of the FOIL lair. In a few short hours (sic),” he assures Chirac. “Rest assured, nothing will stop the ambassador’s address tomorrow.”

“Sometimes,” Reagan McGee’s narration closes this issue, and with it, the entire run of Liberality for All, “you just don’t know who to trust.”

The issue ends with a couple of color plates, one of McGee and Gordon kidnapping Freedom the Eagle (like we weren’t expecting that), and the blind and brokenhearted Ollie North kneeling in the street with a discarded and battered American flag clutched in his freedom-loving hands.

Of course, the shocking “twist” ending is nothing of the kind… From the previous issues it’s obvious that Noor/Oscar has no intention of betraying his conservative buddies. He already knows the location of the secret freedom lair, he already controls the programming and operation of Hannity’s bionics, and he already is injecting weird substances into both Sexy G and blind Ollie. Unless he’s hatching a grotesquely convoluted plot against FOIL, it’s clear he’s acting as a mole in the UN, misleading them as part of Sean and Gordo’s plan to stop bin Laden’s plot against New York, and retake control of the traitorous LIB network.

And so, on a note of false suspense which fools no one, “America’s first conservative comic book” comes to a close, and you can probably predict pretty easily how the next five issues will go. More flashbacks, more disjointed blather from Reagan McGee, the rescue of Freedom the Eagle, the cyber-punching of bin Laden in the middle of an astonished UN, and a heroic speech via the newly-restored Fox News Network, informing the world that America’s back, and we’re not taking no shit from no one. And oh yeah, Chelsea Clinton decides she’s a conservative after all and then goes down on Hannity, Liddy and North simultaneously in the special “All Adult” issue.

Liberality for All: The Aftermath

As a publishing entity, ACC Studios lasted about ten months. As noted in the first part of this series, Mackey was largely ignored by the mainstream comic industry publications, a fact that he suggests, unsurprisingly, was due to liberal bias. What was more likely, as I previously suggested, is that the mainstream comics journals generally didn’t pay much attention to indie books, and certainly didn’t want to waste ink on them until they’d proved themselves in terms of sales. Outlets like CNN, The Guaridan, Fox News and their ilk didn’t care that Liberality for All hadn’t actually published a single issue when they interviewed Mackey — they just wanted to chum the water with some controversy, and attract a few sharks.

In this interview, Mackey comes across as a reasonably likable geek, and given his passion for the subject it’s kind of hard not to hope he succeeds with his li’l conservative comic book. However, toward the end of the interview he makes the following statement:

Yet there are aspects of the story that liberal readers should love: there is no war… ever! Michael Moore is the Vice President. The “Coulter Laws” have made conservative talk radios and other such conservative “hate speech” virtually illegal. America clears all international decisions through the United Nations. And last but not least, George W. Bush is not even a blip on the radar. Liberals should love this book, shouldn’t they?

Not to flog a dead horse, but it looks as if Mackey doesn’t really know shit from shinola when it comes to liberal political thought. He genuinely believes that liberals want Anne Coulter censored and that the United States be transformed into a simpering UN client-state. This, he thinks, is what liberals “love,” but all it shows is how little he really understands about liberalism, and it’s very difficult if not impossible to truly satirize something you don’t understand.

Issue Three shipped in July of 2006, but the promised fourth issue (listed as available for pre-order) never materialized. For ten glorious months, from October 2005 to July 2006, ACC Studios was flying high, and Mike Mackey was feted by the objects of his worship, interviewed by the hated liberal mainstream media (here’s an interview with him in which he mistakenly believes that The Guardian is a conservative paper, triggering loud guffaws from everyone who has actually read the damned thing), talked about throughout the blogosphere, and even promoted by his idol Cyber-Sean himself, who I’m sure told him he was a great American.  Sadly, Mackey never got to meet Sexy G, who probably had an appointment at the steam room or something.

A few websites reviewed the book, with the response ranging from reasonably positive to negative to overtly hostile (more the latter than the former, I’m afraid). Even the beloved conservative journal The National Review refused to take the book seriously, calling it “a carnival of colorful absurdity” and noting that it did nothing but conform to most liberals’ stereotypes of extreme right-wingers. It all ended abruptly without so much as a whimper. Issue Four languishes in limbo and we’ll never find out whether Reagan McGee and G. Gordon actually managed to rescue Freedom the Eagle.

It didn’t take long for the marketplace to chew ACC Studios up and spit it out, just like they treat most other independent publishers. All the controversy and Sean Hannity plugs in the world couldn’t change the fact that Liberality for All was an amateurish and inept conservative screed thinly disguised as an action comic book. LfA ended up suffering the worst fate imaginable for a comic book — it was utterly and totally forgotten by everyone. Except me, of course, since being a liberal I love inflicting pain on the innocent and those who can’t fight back. ACC’s web page still exists, a mute and tragic testament to its creator’s unfulfilled dreams. LfA’s wikipedia page was deleted on March 17, 2012

By the way, I just found this blog, which has a brief overview of LfA, and (wonder of wonders) says a lot of the same things I just said (for example, he was just as confused about Ralph Nader’s appearance in Issue One as I was), though in a much more succinct and non-rambling manner. The author even goes so far as to suggest that Mike Mackey has a man-crush on Sean Hannity, rather than Sexy G, who clearly deserves it more. Interesting how two entirely different readers of the same comic can come to such similar conclusions, eh?

It may seem like an odd thing for me to say, but Liberality for All might have been a good book in the hands of a Grant Morrison or an Alan Moore. Despite my enjoyment of books like Watchment and V for Vendetta, I’ve always considered them to contain somewhat conservative messages buried deep down under all the action and good writing. My reading also suggests that books like The Authority, which I have not read, also present fairly conservative values in an entertaining fashion.

Every political philosophy needs its ass kicked every now and then — every mode of thought needs to be questioned, dissected and criticized. As I noted in a previous entry, I think I could write a pretty good story about liberal politics gone wrong, and I dare say it would be less blunt and ham-handed than the work of Mike Mackey. But his clumsy treatment of the subject in Liberality for All makes the works of Alan Drury and Ayn Rand seem downright Shakespearean. Where a scalpel is called for, he uses an anvil, and where a light touch is required, he deploys a nailgun and pigskin.

Liberality for All is a product of anger and fear, not reasoned discourse or careful thought. It’s a document written by a man who genuinely believes that the blue-berets are at his door, that the black helicopters are on their way, and that only the heroic intercession of aging, overweight blatherskites who work for an Australian billionaire’s cable news channel can possibly save us.

Reality caught up with Mackey and LfA, for in November of 2006 the Republicans in congress were taken to the cleaners by a voting public long weary of a fruitless War on Terror. These same voters rejected the hated and feared Hillary Clinton in favor of the even more terrifying Barack Hussein Obama and a Democratic supermajority in congress. And after this conservative nightmare scenario — so close to what Mackey postulated — occurred, what happened? There were no moves to transfer the military to the UN, no attempts to silence conservative critics, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued.

The arch-criminal bin Laden was finally brought to justice, by the administration of a simpering, socialistic liberal, but conservatives proved singularly unwilling to give credit to a Democratic president. No, the Freedom Tower hasn’t been renamed. Bin Laden isn’t bringing a suitcase nuke to New York. The last American eagle isn’t being fed soy-rats by PETA. Alan Colmes isn’t running Fox News. The “liberals” (who aren’t really liberals at all… I hate to disappoint you) control both the Senate and the White House, and the American voters have had the lack of good taste to keep them there through two national election cycles. The right-wingers are still bemoaning moves for gun control and national health care, but freedom seems surprisingly intact, and our streets seem to be relatively free of UN troops. Liberality for All is a bizarre artifact of a very bizarre era, one which I’m only too happy to leave behind.

In the end the same free market capitalism that Mike Mackey embraced is what doomed Liberality for All, and neither he nor future legend Donny Lin have shown their faces since. It’s kind of a shame, really… I was really looking forward to the nude centerfold of G. Gordon Liddy.

Years ago, when the Iraq war was raging, I had a discussion with a gentleman regarding the anti-war protests that were taking place in Portland. While he felt that they were a very positive thing, I was less convinced. To my mind, the protests had shut down traffic and annoyed people, but at the same time had utterly failed to change anyone’s mind about the war. In fact I felt that a commuter, stuck on a bridge and late for work wasn’t terribly likely to sympathize with the protesters — in my view he was far more likely to be pissed off and have a negative view of their message.

That isn’t the point of protests, my friend replied. Political protest isn’t intended to educate or change anyone’s minds. It exists so the protesters can vent their anger, and to piss off the opposition.

So you’re saying, I replied, that political protest is just another form of jacking off?

While I’m sure that there is something to the man’s argument, I think that it’s not an especially intelligent or convincing one. The types who just get together so they can scream and wave signs aren’t really helping. They’re just preaching to the choir and firing up themselves — check out pictures of the Tea Party rallies from three years ago if you have any doubts. I think that real protest — effective protest — should exist to educate and enlighten, as well as to enrage. I thought that the Occupy protesters did a pretty good job of that, even though they were infuriatingly disorganized, and managed to flush all of their enthusiasm down the drain by not building on it, or doing anything besides protest.

I mention this only because that’s what I think Liberality for All represented — an elaborate four-color process neocon masturbatory fantasy, intended only to highlight how pissed off its author was, and (supposedly) to fire up the outrage of other neocons, whose enthusiasm might be lagging a bit, given how inadequate their simplistic world-view was proving.

Author Mike Mackey’s response to another fuckin’ liberal critic in the letters column pretty much points this up. I’ll deal with the letters in more detail later, but suffice to say Mackey seems downright delighted that liberals find his book to be funny. It seems to me that a good work of satire should at best cause those whom its aimed at to question their own views, rather than keeping them entertained and amused, but this subtlety seems lost on our intrepid author. Were I to write a dystopian tale in which the tenets of liberalism and progressive thought were perverted and turned into vehicles of repression (and believe me, I could write one — unlike Mr. Mackey I at least have sufficient perspective to see how my own political beliefs can go wrong, and how those of opposing views might actually be right once in a while), I’d probably be kind of unhappy if liberals found it amusing. Not so Mr. Mackey. He seems bound and determined to keep the hilarity flowing, and in Issue Two, he does just that.

Liberality for All: Issue Two

As we learned in Issue One, the world of LfA has gone to shit, and the blame can be laid squarely on the slumped, underdeveloped shoulders of the political left — the libs and bleeding hearts who thought that the US brought 9/11 on itself, and whose answer to the entire crisis was to go whining to the U.N. Now of course, the liberal pigeons have come home to roost — America is a client-state to the internationalists at the United Nations, our military has been “absorbed” and forced to wear those faggy French blue berets, our guns have been taken away, our freedom of speech and the press destroyed by the treachery of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, and worst of all, the collective conscience of the nation — right-wing talk show hosts — have been silenced by Islamic hit squads. It reads like Alan Drury’s Come Nineveh, Come Tyre! only with Muslims instead of Communists.

Unfortunately for us, Issue Two largely fumbles the ball, dropping the exciting “Usama’s-gonna-blow-up-New-York” plotline in favor of extended flashbacks, explaining how our once-proud nation became a toxic swamp of oppression run by cowardly Frenchmen and simpering libtards. To Mackey’s credit, we do get a lot more sexy glamour-shots of the manly G. Gordon Liddy being macho and kicking ass, further cementing my assertion that Mackey had a huge man-crush on the guy (and that’s fine, btw… every consenting adult in this great nation has the right to pursue love and happiness with other consenting adults in any way he/she sees fit, and if you disagree, well I guess you just hate America).

In addition, even I must admit that Donny Lin’s art has graduated from the level of a talented high schooler to that of a promising art-school undergrad. His tendency to draw weird lines all over people’s faces has been reduced, and he seems to have gotten better at digital coloring. Maybe in a couple more decades he really will be the comic artist legend that Mackey predicts he will be. Mind you, this will probably only happen if he buys up all remaining copies of Liberality for All and hides them in his parents’ basement, and that’s really not likely.

While Donny Lin’s art has graduated, I’m sorry to say that Mackey’s scripting remains as sophomoric as ever. The tale opens with our narrator continuing to blather. From the text I’ve finally been able to gather that the annoying bloviator is none other than Reagan McGee, the young man who called the Hannity show in Issue One, and was hanging out with that cute redhead with the nice ass while they defaced UN posters.

Again, the narrative captions serve as more of an annoyance than anything else. They form a complete, if somewhat rambling, discourse that carries on for the length of the entire issue, but as in Issue One, they are utterly disjointed, and since they’re spread out over numerous panels, the reader is forced to backtrack to figure out exactly what Reagan is saying. It doesn’t matter much anyway — his narration is more of a neoconservative Greek chorus than anything else, underlining action in the foreground that doesn’t require it, and self-importantly intoning things that we already know. Reagan’s a decent enough young man, mind you, but like most early 20-somethings, he doesn’t realize when he’s starting to sound like a pretentious douchebag.

Speaking of pretentious douchebags, Issue Two unsurprisingly opens with a couple watching the Sean Hannity show. It’s a flashback to 2006 and the horrors of the Al Gore presidency. The voices of conservative freedom have yet to be silenced, I guess, for Hannity is busy mixing it up with his arch-foe, ultralib traitor Alan Colmes.

I’m going to pause here for a moment to refresh folks’ memories on exactly who Alan Colmes is (was?), since in future issues of LfA he becomes a daemonic force of evil whose very presence causes  conservative men to become gay and boils to break out on the skin of Republicans. The esteemed Mr. Colmes was, for a few years anyway, what Fox News referred to as a “hard-hitting liberal” commentator. He was, in fact, the only “liberal” on the entire  network, and his job was to function as Sean Hannity’s human punching bag. Hannity normally talked him down, interrupted him, insulted him and made him look ineffectual. The only people who took Colmes seriously were his employers at Fox. Most liberals considered him to be something of a joke, and in 2009 Fox News finally accepted reality and fired him. If you have any doubts that Colmes was nothing but a well-paid straw man erected just for Sean Hannity to knock down, you might want to read this or this.

Knowing this, it’s surprising that Mackey chooses to demonize the poor guy, transforming him into one of the architects of innocent, heroic Sean Hannity’s downfall. At least Lin’s caricature is recognizable for once, though the upturned devil-eyebrows seem kind of over the top to me. Mackey really picks the low-hanging fruit when it comes to targets for his savage satire, doesn’t he?

Anyway, back to the great debate. As might be expected, Sean Hannity is heroically demolishing the craven Colmes’ liberal delusions.

“Vice President Clinton said unlike her predecessor, she fully supported diverting even more money from the military budget to social programs here in America,” Colmes gushes.

“Finally!” ripostes Hannity. “A Hillary Clinton promise I can believe! What an administration! Is it any wonder Vice President Lieberman resigned?”

“And what,” counters the Spock-eyebrowed Colmes, “is wrong with reducing a bloated military?”

“BLOATED?” demands Sean. “We are abandoning military bases world wide, like rats leaving a sinking ship! Over the past six years, President Gore has done nothing but gut the military and grovel before the United Nations.”

“But with our strengthened relations with the UN,” drools Colmes, “we just don’t need the military like we used to!”

Well, enough is enough “Certs is a candy mint/No, Certs is a breath mint” style argumentation for Hannity. He brings up a satellite feed direct from Seoul, South Korea, where Fox News correspondent Oliver North is on the scene, reporting live on how the libs have betrayed our brave fighting doughboys and -girls.

“Kim Jong-Il’s North Korean forces are slaughtering the South Koreans by the thousands,” he desperately reports, hoping someone, somewhere will hear him and end the liberal madness. “We’re calling the invasion of this city… THE SEOUL HARVEST.”

Oliver North, for the uninitiated, was a highly decorated USMC Lieutenant Colonel, and served as deputy director for political-military affairs in Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council. During his tenure he was accused of conspiring with Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, and of involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, in which American arms were sold to the radical Islamists in Iran, with profits used to fund the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He was also alleged to have been directly involved in drug smuggling activities by the Contras, which they also used to fund their military operations. North was convicted of three felonies, but the convictions were overturned on a technicality by the fancy-pants lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union. Once more, Mike Mackey chooses another noble, morally-unambiguous hero to represent his selfless cause.

(And it’s probably pointless to keep saying this, but comic-book Ollie North looks nothing like real-life Ollie North. While this is probably kicking Donny Lin while he’s down, I’m going to keep doing it, cuz I’m a liberal and have no heart.)

“We have been informed that the promised assistance from UN troops is not coming,” Ollie breathlessly continues. “I have never seen anything like this. It’s like…”

KER-WHOOM! A North Korean shell goes off nearby, and Ollie finishes.

“…HELL!” Talking straight into the camera, he concludes, “That was too close. America should know that President Gore has betrayed the…”

Too late, Ollie! The liberal cut the feed before you can reveal the depth of Al Gore’s treachery!

Back to Sean “Babyface” Hannity, whom Donny Lin still makes appear to be about 17 years old, introducing his next guest, Sexy G himself, the G-meister, the OG, G-Man G. Gordon Liddy, who’s in town to attend the Fight for Freedom Rally at the soon-to-be-renamed Freedom Tower that’s being built on the site of the 9/11 tragedy.

“What is the big deal?” slobbers Colmes. “It hasn’t even been finished yet, so what is wrong with renaming an unfinished building? Don’t you believe in global unity?”

Sexy G sneers. “You mean like the unity between President Gore’s nose to (sic) that of the collective rear of the UN?”

Not only does Sexy G engage in incredibly convoluted metaphor, he can’t even state them grammatically.

And so we cut away from all the Colmes-bashing to the fireman from issue one and his son, little Reagan, our narrator. Dad you see, is in the national guard and is being deployed to the fiasco in Korea (if Al Gore is stabbing our troops in the back, why are we deploying fresh forces? No, never mind…).

Mom worries that dad’s going to lose his fireman’s wages, but dad’s adamant. “Honey,” he says, “I’ll be fine. And it’s my duty to go.”

“I know,” she replies, wiping away a patriotic tear, “but I want a bright future for Reagan… College and all that.”

Not to fear, dad replies. “He’ll have a bright future… As long as he has two parents that love him.”

Now if you’ve seen enough action movies, you know what’s coming next. Sean and Sexy-G are going to be signing books tomorrow, so mom suggests that she and little Reagan go downtown to get daddy that book he wanted.

“So he can take it to Korea wit him!” cries little Reagan. Damn he’s happy. Only the most savage, cruel-hearted monster would want to take so much happiness away. Someone like a…

Liberal.

Next day, cute li’l Reagan is in school, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (I’ll give you three guesses how that turns out).

Meanwhile, his droning narration begins in earnest.

“There is nothing more patriotic than freedom of speech” he tells us. “As long as you don’t say the wrong thing.”

Oh, you mean like US Out of Iraq or Hillary for President? I really can’t help making statements like that, since Mackey’s writing has a gigantic “KICK ME” sign taped to its back.

Okay, okay, let’s get it over with. Li’l Reagan says “Under God,” the teacher has a shit-fit and makes him stare at the flagpole until he learns his lesson. And while he does, some hyper-patriotic gradeschoolers haul down the UN flag that’s flying traitorously alongside Old Glory, then deface it and put it back.

Teacher returns. “Have you learned your lesson yet?” “Yes,” Reagan replies, and when the teacher looks out the window at the defaced UN flag she exclaims (altogether now), “OH, MY GOD!”

(That’s ironic, see? She objected to Reagan saying “Under God,” but when she saw the flag, she said, “Oh, my God,” so it’s funny and ironic. Another anvil falls on the reader’s head.)

“I am sick of hearing how the hyper-sensitive feel,” adult Reagan continues. “Where in the Bill of Rights does it say you have the right ‘not’ to be offended?”

Mom picks up li’l Reagan and he asks, “Mommy, what is a patriot?” (Honest to God, when I read the kid’s dialog, I imagine him talking with an adorable li’l lisp, as in “Mommy, what’s a patwiot?”)

“Well,” she replies, “someone who loves, supports and defends his country, I suppose. BUT ONLY IF IT’S RUN BY CONSERVATIVES! IF IT’S RUN BY LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THEN YOU’RE A PATRIOT IF YOU HATE AND DESPISE YOUR GOVERNMENT, CLAIM IT ISN’T REALLY YOUR GOVERNMENT AT ALL, CALL EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH YOU A TRAITOR, INSULT YOUR ELECTED LEADERS AND BREAK THE LAW!”

Sorry, that’s not really in there… You see, I’m using irony, just like Mike Mackey.

Ahem… So the parade of predictability continues. “Like Daddy?” asks our lovable little conserva-tot.

“Yes,” mom replies, “I would say your daddy is definitely a patriot.”

This pleases li’l Reagan. “I’m going to be a patriot when I grow up,” he declares.

So mom and Reagan troop down to the bookstore to get Hannity’s latest screed signed. They missed Sexy G, but it’s okay. Reagan walks up to Sean and declares, “My daddy is a patriot!”

“Reagan,” says Sean, blinking away America-loving tears, “you should be proud of your father. He’s a great American!”

Sean’s next customer is a vaguely south-Asian looking guy named Noor Ilham and his headscarf-wearing wife. Knowing that not all Muslims are terrorists and that unlike the scourge of liberalism, Islam can be twisted to evil purposes by evil, unscrupulous men, Sean happily signs. Noor runs out to his car to get another book to sign, and Sean learns from Noor’s wife that he is a big fan and a bio-mechanical engineer, working on nanotech and bionic enhancements.

Wow, Sean exclaims, just like Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man! You know… I think this might be plot material.

Well, his wonder is short-lived, for elsewhere in the building a filthy bearded terrorist is setting off a suicide vest while (of course) muttering “Allahu akbar!”

Somehow Super-Sean senses that this is happening and tries to throw himself onto Noor’s wife in a desperate effort to save her and their innocent little baby, but he is too late. The bookstore goes up like Mitt Romney’s election-night victory fireworks would have had he actually won the election, killing or maiming everyone and leaving poor Noor outside, with only his battered copy of Injustice and Liberality for All  to comfort him.

Before I continue, I have to say that for once I notice that Mackey has dialed back the silliness, for a moment at least. Noor is of course Oscar, the nanotech genius who gives super-Sean his magic arm and makes Sexy-G an immortal sexy beast with his amazing nanotechnology. As his wife is wearing a headscarf, I presume Noor is supposed to be of the Muslim faith, which is a level of subtlety that I never expected from the good Mr. Mackey. Amid a rising tide of clumsy writing and on-the-nose symbolism he’s thrown in a character with a tiny bit of nuance, and for an instant I began to wonder whether LfA wasn’t going to become a little less of an angry polemic.

Nah, no such luck. In the next scene we’re back to our usual hackyened fare as Sexy G is riding in a cab to the airport, listening (surprise!) to Rush Limbaugh. The Fat One is busy complaining about those damned libs who are trying to suppress Anne Coulter’s new book as “hate speech.”

“They will not rest,” he declares, “until they’ve silenced us all… Kkkkkk…. Krrrzzzz…”

CLANG! After a brief respite in the form of a realistic and interesting supporting character, the anvils are back, and they fall thick and fast from here on.

Sexy G gets out at his destination only to be jumped by a couple of filthy Arabs, who pull scimitars (yes, scimitars) from their louse-infested beards and attack, not knowing that they are doomed, for they face an American with a firearm.

Sexy G reaches into his coat. “Didn’t you ever hear the joke about the Islamofascist that (sic) brought a sword to a gun fight?”

(Hey, hold your horses, G-man… It’s not a gun! It’s a pistol or a weapon. And it should be treated with respect, even if it’s made by Smith and Wesson.)

He takes out the first assailant by shooting behind himself without aiming (what a hunka man!), then quips “Here’s the punchline” as he kneecaps the second.

“You two just cost me four bullets, at twenty-five cents each,” he growls. “I want my dollar back!”

Sensual and lithe as a muscular bald-headed panther he may be, but Sexy G needs to work on his wisecracks a little.

Honestly, once more I’m pretty unclear about what happens next. G. Gordon pulls a shipping invoice from the wounded assassin, then we cut to the interior of a warehouse where a greasy guy in an apron is delivering a couple of barrels. Then G walks over to a crate that’s marked “Harley Davidson.”

He opens the crate, discovering a mint condition 1930 Harley that’s intended to be shipped to Saudi Arabia.

“I don’t think so,” Sexy G purrs, stroking the Harley like a lover.

“Trying to kill me,” he snarls, opening the trunk of his car and pulling out the wounded assassin, “that I might forgive. But condemning a Harley-Davidson to life in a desert. I DON’T THINK I CAN TOLERATE THAT!”

“Do you know what sand does to an antique engine? Sand sticks to oil,” he declares, throwing his prisoner to the ground and brandishing a bucket full of crimson liquid, “like pig’s blood sticks to skin!”

“NO! NOOOO!” cries the craven terrorist. “Allah will not…”

“Let you into heaven?” Sexy G holds up a bloody pig skin. “That’s right. Now you’ll tell me exactly what I want to know. Or I’ll duct tape these pig skins around you!”

After that, the cowardly terrorist’s resolve collapses like Alan Colmes’ arguments and he admits that bin Laden sent him to kill the famous and dangerous Sexy G, and others would die at the same time.

Great Scott! thinks Sexy G. That means that Rush and Anne might be… NO!

He turns on the radio only to hear the devastating news that freedom has been destroyed.

“…Among them Rush Limbaugh, who famously noted he had talent on loan from God, has settled his debt with the almighty today, found with half his brain behind his back. Others confirmed dead include Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham, all killed in what seems to be a string of both attempted and successful assassinations on conservatives nationwide…”

This gets Sexy G’s patriotic dander up, believe you me. “I was only bluffing when I said I would duct tape pig skins to you,” he says, his voice a low throb of rage as he produces a pneumatic nailgun, “you see, I DON’T HAVE ANY DUCT TAPE!”

(Okay, I can dig the whole “nanites make GGL immortal” schtick — it’s a comic book, after all. But this portion of the comic is set in 2006. That a 76 year old Liddy can kick ass on two al Qaeda terrorists while looking all hot and buff and sexy goes a long way toward confirming my suspicion about Mike Mackey’s secret obsession with the guy.)

And so we leave our patriotic defender of liberty, busily torturing his captive to death with a nailgun in the great tradition of American warriors, and return to the tragedy at A to Z Books. Fox News reporter Kiran Chetry is bringing details of the atrocity live (of course it’s Fox — the other networks only report on dumb stuff like school massacres and mall shootings, SO THEY CAN TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS!), and like every good Fox reporter, shoves her microphone into the face of a grieving victim. It’s Noor, of course, who tells us that he’s lost both wife and child in the explosion.

Meanwhile, Reagan’s narration babbles on, to the point where I’ve pretty much stopped paying attention. “The loss of liberty leaves a void in the soul, which (sic) yearns for fulfillment. It’s the nature of those who have been robbed of such a precious gift to never stop searching for it.”

In a jarring shift back to the present day of 2021, Super-Sean comforts the grieving Noor. Noor dries his tears and mans right up, and gives Sean a big hand — a cybernetic hand, that is! He’s designed a brand new arm “using a new software code from my contact at the Department of Peace.”

(Of course, if the word “peace” is associated with anything in this series, it’s the traitorous, limp-wristed, daisy-eating libtards who are so naive as to think that there’s any alternative to constant warfare and violence. Silly people.)

“It’s tougher,” Noor tells Sean, “than the bionic liver I designed for Teddy. Just try not to be as hard on it.”

CLANG!

Elsewhere in the secret Conserva-cave, Sexy G is cradling his big sword and watching Fox — Oops, sorry “Liberty International Broadcasting” (Get it? The initials are “L.I.B.” like LIBERAL, because the media is RUN BY LIBERALS! Hence, the initials L.I.B., because that’s short for “LIBERAL”!) — where Alan Colmes downright daemonic visage dominates the airwaves.

I guess Alan Colmes got a shot of some kind of super-nanite serum too, because in Mackey’s world he’s an evil mastermind who pals around with terrorists. He’s hosting live coverage of a visit to the White House by your friend and mine, the greatest and most generous, peace-loving guy in the world, his buddy Ambassador Usama bin Laden!

Fun-loving Usama is introduced by the snail-eating UN General Secretary to the rather hot President Chelsea and her cringing, bowing and scraping fat tub of subhuman lard vice president, Michael Moore, who drools “Sir, it continues to be an honor advancing your efforts.”

“And this,” Chelsea says, indicating a baby held by a black nanny, “is my son, William Jefferson.”

(Who’s his father? I’m sure we’ll find out in a future issue and it will be another subtle and sophisticated jab at a liberal icon.)

“He stays here while you rule this nation?” Usama asks, for no other reason than to give Mackey another straight line.

“Oh, little Willie just loves to play in the Oval Office,” gibbers the quivering, sweat-covered vice president. “He always has.”

CLANG.

(It’s a joke, see? President Bill Clinton had SEX in the White House. And “Willie” is slang for “PENIS.” So when Michael Moore says that “Little Willie just loves to play in the Oval Office,” he’s actually referring to Bill Clinton having SEX IN THE WHITE HOUSE! It’s a JOKE! Get it????)

Usama then scares the hell out of the baby and admires the Oval Office. He looks greedily toward the president’s chair.

“The fates of many nations were decided from this very spot. May I have the pleasure?” he says, moving to sit down in it.

Needless to say, the cringing Secretary General and the crawling, sycophantic Moore say “yes,” even though President Chelsea says it’s “inappropriate.”

“How comfortable it is!” declares the filthy killer of thousands as he leans back in the most sacred chair in freedom-loving America. “I must admit I always wanted to do this.”

Back at underwater Conserva-lair One, our heroes are of course outraged.

“Ollie,” Sean says, slapping one of his companions on the back, “for once, be glad you’re blind!”

(Yeah, yeah, it’s Oliver North. The crowd goes wild.)

Our orgy of conservative outrage is interrupted by the appearance of a hot blonde in a halter top (no, not the Liberty Belle from Issue One, dammit, but she does bear some resemblance to what a conservative might think Anne Coulter looks like), who tells Ollie that her mission is accomplished (where have we heard that before, I wonder?)

She draws back the cover on a giant computer console, and Ollie tells his friends that it is “The S.D.I. Mobile Command Center, and with it, the return of the Strategic Defense Initiative!”

Holy shit, those terrorists are in trouble now!  Issue Two ends on this high note, and we’re told to wait for Issue Three:

“As Ambassador bin Laden’s ‘apology’ approaches, President Chelsea Clinton begins to question America’s ties with the United Nations. G. Gordon Liddy’s [gorgeous, sexy] body undergoes repairs that explain both his and Hannity’s origins. Although blind, Oliver North begins to set his sights on freedom as Reagan McGee remembers a day he wishes he could forget.”

We end with another letters column. The lead-off is from some hipster who says he read LfA cover-to-cover in the comic shop and didn’t pay for it, and Mackey justifiably condemns the creep as an Anti-American pinko fag.

The next letter is from a conservative essentially telling the libs that they can dish it out but can’t take it, since they’ve been so mean and unfair to poor President Bush and all those patriotic Republicans, it’s only just that LfA be just as distorted and stupid.

“The America portrayed in the comic,” he concludes, “could easily become reality if the far left gained control. I’m still waiting for a lib to prove me wrong, hasn’t (sic) come up yet.”

When he says “far left” of course, he means moderate Democrats, since at this point Hannity and his friends considered Hillary Clinton to be a dangerous, unhinged extremist ultraliberal.

Another letter complains about the whole “Coulter Laws” thing, assuming (correctly) that Mackey considers the Fairness Doctrine to be the first of these laws. Mackey replies, “Congrats to Dan, our first liberal reader to view the ‘Coulter Laws’ as ‘fairness.’ No doubt interrupting one of Anne Coulter’s college speeches is what you consider ‘equal time’?”

Mackey shows a certain native cleverness here, using a classic “straw man” attack. Since other people whom you agree with have done something unethical (interrupting Anne Coulter’s speech at a university, which happened a couple of times), therefore you must also believe that it’s okay. Therefore, you are a foe of free speech and support censorship.

Of course he doesn’t have any clue as to whether Dan supported interfering with Anne Coulter’s free speech, but since he’s brought it up he walks away claiming victory.

As for the Fairness Doctrine, it was government policy from 1949 to 1987, and required holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission’s view, honest, equitable and balanced. By no definition would the Fairness Doctrine have “censored” Anne Coulter — in fact, it required that views like hers be presented, but only if done so in a “fair and balanced” manner (sound familiar?).

In 2005, when LfA was being published, there was a move in congress to restore enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine, and needless to say, it caused conservatives to have kittens. The move went nowhere, and the Fairness Doctrine is today something of a dinosaur, with the Obama administration instead advocating for opening the airwaves to more broadcasters with as many diverse viewpoints as possible.

Whether the Fairness Doctrine was a good idea or not is up to the individual. Rather than taking Mike Mackey’s word for it, free speech and ethics expert that he is, read about it here and decide for yourself. The fact is that it was in place in this country for nearly 40 years and did not result in a liberal dictatorship, nor did it cause — directly or indirectly — the confiscation of firearms or a takeover by the United Nations.

Mackey gets a couple more letters telling him how fucking hilarious he is, to which he replies, “One thing is certain: Conservatives and Liberals seem to live in such different worlds that praise from the icons of one side is viewed as pathetically amusing by the other. So I will leave it to each reader to answer the question: ‘Liberality For All’: Serious or Satire, Parody or Prophecy?”

(See my suggestion above that LfA is just a huge conservative wank-fest… If Mackey were attempting to educate or change minds, I might feel a tad more respect for him, but since he’s pretty much admitted that LfA is a right-wing stroke-book, I’m not terribly inclined to take him seriously.)

Finally we end with a conservative fan, who pretty much confirms my opinion of Mackey’s serious readers by saying, “Finally, a voice of reason has decided to create a comic worth collecting. Surely, this comic is going to raise the wrath of the uninformed, hate-their-own-country, pacifistic, boot-licking left. I must say though, it truly terrifies me that this work of fiction could be a work of fact if the vocal minority were allowed to have their way.”

I give up… This really isn’t a satire, is it? This is what certain hard-right demagogues thought would really have happened had Al Gore been elected president. It’s alternate history written by the John Birch Society. It’s a clarion call to keep the Democrats out of the White House, and a dire prediction of what will transpire should another lib win the presidency.

Good thing no liberal has been in the White House since George W, huh? I mean, if one of those bleeding hearts actually won the election through some weird fluke, we’d be overrun by terrorists in no time… The UN black helicopters would be swooping down to take our guns while our schools would be turned into socialist indoctrination centers, where our precious little angels would be transformed into propaganda-spouting junior revolutionaries… I mean, damn! Thank God no damn liberal has managed to…

Oh, wait.

Sorry, never mind.

Issue Two concludes with more art, including some nice sketches of our heroes. Oliver North (listed as “Oliver Hero”) is extending his arm, allowing an American eagle (what else?) with an approximately 10-foot wingspan to land on it, while Sexy G is at his sexiest, casting a smoldering glance of to one side, resplendent in sensual black leather, a rigid steel saber clutched firmly in one massive forepaw.

If nothing else, Liberality for All did its best to turn an aging felon like G. Gordon Liddy into a sex symbol. Too bad it only ran three issues.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this exciting report in my next exciting post!

AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!