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Welcome to a pH-Webworld Archival Page

- Web-Publisher's Commentary Pages from 2001 -

Original page starts here

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Phantacea Publications in Print

- The 'Launch 1980' story cycle - 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Fantasy Trilogy - The '1000 Days' Mini-Novels - The phantacea Graphic Novels -

The 'Launch 1980' Story Cycle

The War of the Apocalyptics

Front cover of War Pox, artwork by Ian Bateson, 2009

Published in 2009; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

Nuclear Dragons

Nuclear Dragons front cover, artwork by Ian Bateson, 2013

Published in 2013; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

Helios on the Moon

Front cover for Helios on the Moon, artwork by Ricardo Sandoval, 2014

Published in 2014; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here;

The 'Launch 1980' story cycle comprises three complete, multi-character mosaic novels, "The War of the Apocalyptics", "Nuclear Dragons" and "Helios on the Moon", as well as parts of two others, "Janna Fangfingers" and "Goddess Gambit". Together they represent creator/writer Jim McPherson's long running, but now concluded, project to novelize the Phantacea comic book series.

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'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Epic Fantasy

Feeling Theocidal

Front Cover for Feel Theo, artwork by Verne Andru, 2008

Published in 2008; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

The 1000 Days of Disbelief

Front cover of The Thousand Days of Disbelief, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

Published as three mini-novels, 2010/11; main webpage is here; ordering lynx for individual mini-novels are here

Goddess Gambit

Front cover for Goddess Gambit by Verne Andru, 2012

Published in 2012; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

Circa the Year of Dome 2000, Anvil the Artificer, a then otherwise unnamed, highborn Lazaremist later called Tvasitar Smithmonger, dedicated the first three devic talismans, or power foci, that he forged out of molten Brainrock to the Trigregos Sisters.

The long lost, possibly even dead, simultaneous mothers of devakind hated their offspring for abandoning them on the far-off planetary Utopia of New Weir. Not surprisingly, their fearsome talismans could be used to kill Master Devas (devils).

For most of twenty-five hundred years, they belonged to the recurring deviant, Chrysaor Attis, time after time proven a devaslayer. On Thrygragon, Mithramas Day 4376 YD, he turned them over to his Great God of a half-father, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras, to use against his two brothers, Unmoving Byron and Little Star Lazareme, in hopes of usurping their adherents and claiming them as his own.

Hundreds of years later, these selfsame thrice-cursed Godly Glories helped turn the devil-worshippers of Sedon's Head against their seemingly immortal, if not necessarily undying gods. Now, five hundred years after the 1000 Days of Disbelief, they've been relocated.

The highest born, surviving devic goddesses want them for themselves; want to thereby become incarnations of the Trigregos Sisters on the Hidden Continent. An Outer Earthling, one who has literally fallen out of the sky after the launching of the Cosmic Express, gets to them first ...

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The '1000 Days' Mini-Novels

The Death's Head Hellion

- Sedonplay -

Front cover for The Death's Head Hellion, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

Published in 2010; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;

Contagion Collectors

- Sedon Plague -

Front cover for Contagion Collectors, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2010

Published in 2010; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;

Janna Fangfingers

- Sedon Purge -

Front cover for Janna Fangfingers, collage prepared by Jim McPherson, 2011

Published in 2011; two storylines recounted side-by-side, the titular one narrated by the Legendarian in 5980, the other indirectly leading into the 'Launch 1980' story cycle; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;

In the Year of the Dome 4825, Morgan Abyss, the Melusine Master of the Utopian Weirdom of Cabalarkon, seizes control of Primeval Lilith, the ageless, seemingly unkillable Demon Queen of the Night. The eldritch earthborn is the real half-mother of the invariably mortal Sed-sons but, once she has hold of her, aka Lethal Lily, Master Morgan proceeds to trap the Moloch Sedon Himself.

In the midst of the bitter, century-long expansion of the Lathakran Empire, the Hidden Headworld's three tribes of devil-gods are forced to unite in an effort to release their All-Father. Unfortunately for them, they're initially unaware Master Morg, the Death's Head Hellion herself, has also got hold of the Trigregos Talismans, devic power foci that can actually kill devils, and Sedon's thought-father Cabalarkon, the Undying Utopian she'll happily slay if they dare attack her Weirdom.

Utopians from Weir have never given up seeking to wipe devils off not just the face of the Inner Earth, but off the planet itself. Their techno and biomages, under the direction of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon's extremely long-lived High Illuminary, Quoits Tethys, have determined there is only one sure way to do that -- namely, to infect the devils' Inner Earth worshippers with fatal plagues brought in from the Outer Earth.

Come All-Death Day there are more Dead Things Walking than Living Beings Talking. Believe it or not, that's the good news.

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phantacea Graphic Novels

Forever and Forty Days

- The Genesis of Phantacea -

Front cover of Forever and Forty Days; artwork by Ian Fry and Ian Bateson, ca 1990

Published in 1990; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

The Damnation Brigade

- Phantacea Revisited 1 -

Front cover of The Damnation Brigade, artwork by Ian Bateson, retouching by Chris Chuckry 2012

Published in 2013; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

Cataclysm Catalyst

- Phantacea Revisited 2 -

Front cover for Cataclysm Catalyst, artwork by Verne Andru, 2013

Published in 2014, main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here

Kadmon Heliopolis had one life. It ended in October 1968. The Male Entity has had many lives. In his fifth, he and his female counterpart, often known as Miracle Memory, engendered more so than created the Moloch Sedon. They believe him to be the Devil Incarnate. They've been attempting to kill him ever since. Too bad it's invariably he, Heliosophos (Helios called Sophos the Wise), who gets killed instead.

On the then still Whole Earth circa the Year 4000 BCE, one of their descendants, Xuthros Hor, the tenth patriarch of Golden Age Humanity, puts into action a thought-foolproof, albeit mass murderous, plan to succeed where the Dual Entities have always failed. He unleashes the Genesea. The Devil takes a bath.

Fifty-nine hundred and eighty years later, New Century Enterprises launches the Cosmic Express from Centauri Island. It never reaches Outer Space; not all of it anyhow. As a stunning consequence of its apparent destruction, ten extraordinary supranormals are reunited, bodies, souls and minds, after a quarter century in what they've come to consider Limbo. They name themselves the Damnation Brigade. And so it appears they are -- if perhaps not so much damned as doomed.

At least one person survives the launching of the Cosmic Express. He literally falls out of the sky -- on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. An old lady saves him. Except this old lady lives in a golden pagoda, rides vultures and has a third eye. She also doesn't stay old long. He becomes her willing soldier, acquires the three Sacred Objects and goes on a rampage, against his own people, those that live.

Meanwhile, Centauri Island, the launch site of the Cosmic Express, comes under attack from Hell's Horsemen. Only it's not horses they ride. It's Atomic Firedrakes!

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Phantacea logo prepared by Jim McPherson

What's Old in October 2001

Spring-Summer 2001

Face spotted on a cliff on Saturna Island in 1994, photo by Jim McPherson

 

Jim McPherson's First Commentary of the Sixty-First Century Year of the Dome

  1. Autumn 2001 Teaser
  2. Summer 2001 Heading
  3. Introductory Remarks & Hestia-Housekeeping
  4. Details, images & links re how the Witch Goddess Hekate might fit into the PHANTACEA Mythos
  5. Today's Topic: Revenge of the Day-Glow Markers
  6. Phantacea Publications available in print and digitally

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Web-Publisher's Commentary: Spring-Summer 2001


1. Hestia-Housekeeping

Greetings. Welcome or welcome back to PHANTACEA on the Web.

To begin with an ending, after very nearly five years out here in Cyberia it's finally 'All Hail and a Fond Farewell' to the fully four-book long, multiple hundreds of pages 'Launching of the Cosmic Express' Tetralogy[.] To continue with another ending, this time up also features the, as you were forewarned, frustrating finale to Rings '60 -- 'Aspects of an Amoebaman'[.]

I'll comment further on both of these, pardon the fay-saying, moderately monumental milestones momentarily[.] Immediate item on the agenda is to dispense with our usual [.] Rather, the first item on the agenda is to reiterate just what it's purpose is, -- that is to say my Web-Publisher's [-].

In case you missed it[,] Hestia was the Greek Goddess of the Hearth. Presumably that means tidiness was one of her attributes. Something 'on the Web' is not now and, despite efforts to improve its straight-forwardness, may never be is tidy. That doesn't stop me, here in pHpubs, from at least attempting to focus your attention on stuff I've put up this time around that's either not been seen previously or isn't where it used to be.

An example of that is where last time up's [-] can be found this time up[.] Which you may have already noticed, thrice now and counting[,] is [!] Which is also where you'll find out just what the heck I meant by [-]. As for what the Herr Hel[']s with the [-], I'll get to that momentarily as well[.]


Snakehead, taken from a postcard bought in Costa Rica, 2003Heck[,] Hecate or 'Hekate' is only nominally a Greek Goddess. Isn't part of the Olympian Pantheon. Nor is she a Titan, although according to some of my resource material she was the granddaughter of two of them (Coeus or 'Koios', a day-timing male, and Phoebe or 'Phoibe', a night-timing female).

Some describe Heck as the 'crone' third of the Triple Goddess (to Kore or Persephone's 'maiden' and Demeter or Ceres' 'mother'). Others have her as having three heads, -- that of a lion, a dog, and a mare. Still others call her 'trimorphos', that is to say triple-bodied (and as such, at least in terms of the PHANTACEA Mythos, suggestive of the Trigregos Sisters). There seems no doubt she was a goddess of witchcraft and, in all likelihood, was worshipped long before the primarily patriarchal Titans and Olympians came along.

William Blake's Triple Hecate, as scanned in from a postcard bought at the National Museum of Scotlan in Edinburgh, 2003Despite her evidently extreme (perhaps even Neolithic) antiquity, some post-Homeric sources claim her uncle was Aeetes, the father of Medea (of Jason and the Argonauts fame). These same sources identify one of her aunts as Circe, whom you might recall bodily turned Odysseus's men into swine. (I gather, like most Achaean Greeks of the time, they were already male chauvinist pigs.) Supposedly her other aunt was Pasiphae, she who married King Minos of Crete and whom, by a magnificent white bull, a gift from the Olympian (and therefore at least third generational) Greek God Poseidon, gave birth to the Minotaur.

(Note 1: I appropriated a number of these Classical characters, their names and aspects of various myths associated with them anyhow, for purposes of PHANTACEA. However, since you'll be coming upon even more of a superabundance of [-] shortly, I'll refrain from inserting any lynx to them right here, right now, in today's pHpubs.)

Medusa Head, spotted in San  Jose, Costa Rica, picture taken by Jim McPherson, 2003Nevertheless, even if Her Hell Heck does belong in such, um, interesting company as Medea, Circe and Pasiphae, thinking of her as an embodiment of Chaos wouldn't be quite right. Thinking of her as an agent of Chaos might be closer to the truth. In my view, Hecate's akin to the spark that escapes your fireplace and occasionally sets alight your carpet. When matters get out of hand chances are they got into Heck's. Attempting to clean up after the fact is extremely time-consuming. Hence my coining the term, Hecate-Housekeeping, to describe my ongoing [-] not so much at damage control as damage containment.

Besides having the obligatory Medusa-snakes in her hair, I understand Heck is generally depicted as carrying a bright torch and being attended by a pack of howling, presumably rabid hounds or wild dogs.

Thus, to complete the analogy, just as you might get lost (or eaten alive) following Hecate if you came across her at a crossroad after dark, I can virtually guarantee that once you begin following all the links I incorporate into my myriad web-pages (of which there must be close to a hundred by now, if you count the story sequences that may or may not still be out here), you'll soon lose track of where you began. Lots of stuff to see and read, though, so it won't be a wasted journey. That I can genuinely guarantee.

Part of Blake's Triple Hecate painting, scanned in from a postcard bought at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, 2003

(Note 2: Just by the by, when I was in Edinburgh in the Autumn of 2003 I spotted a postcard of a painting by William Blake (1757-1827) at the National Museum of Scotland. It was entitled "Triple Hecate". Only Blake depicted her flanked by an owl, a bat and what looks to me more like a donkey than a mare. I've taken the liberty of scanning in some aspects of that postcard and included them in this section (the bat and most of the painting itself) as well as in an entry on the Trigregos Sisters as found on my 'Ongoing PHANTACEA Features' webpage.)

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Be they ever-so-tantalizing[,] little blue specks or glaring, to my mind distracting, headlights that illuminate whole words, if you start chasing lynx from <'a'>-anchor to <'a'>-anchor you'll end up never having actually read what's on the page itself. Which, not so kindly, kind of defeats the purpose of PHANTACEA on the Web[.]

In this regard, my best advice is to BOOKMARK the Index Page (www.phantacea.info/index.shtml) and this one, my flagship page (www.phantacea.info/phpubs.htm), as your starting points. Read pHpubs at your discretion, check out the new story installments, which are always listed down below at www.phantacea.info/phpubs.htm#reading, at your leisure then chase lynxes to your heart's content.

If you're like me and enjoy visuals with your verbiage then www.phantacea.info/phpubs.htm#sites is the place for you to return to on a regular basis. Want to be notified when I put up an new installment of 'on the Web' contact me at jmcp@phantacea.com and I'll put you on my email list. Want to build up a library of PHANTACEA disks and actual hold in your hand publications look no further than www.phantacea.info/phorder.htm[.]

(NOTE 2: Despite remarks made on the [-] synopses page a few years ago, neither [-] nor [-] have as yet found their way into paperback. Guess that means you're stuck with ordering either [-] or [-] in disk format[.] Guess it does. Unless you're prepared to wait for them to show up on [-] again, that is. Which might not be all that long from now, sooth said.)

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2. Today's Topic: Revenge of the Day-Glow Markers

You may have noticed the similarity in a couple of the above titles, namely [-] and [-]. Heliosophos dying is nothing special. Not even for him! In [']Forever And Forty Days['] he dies at least 4 times; five if it turns out he was/is Cain, the Biblical Slayer of Abel. That's the thing about Helios called Sophos the Wise, -- he's a time-tumbler and, as such, has all these different lifetimes.

In Rings '55 and Rings '60, for example, he's still enjoying his First. In the Heliodyssey series of novels, which are set in '38, he's in his Eleventh and, in the Launch Tetralogy, he's ostensibly way up to Number One-Hundred. Thus, while All, the self-proclaimed Invincible She[-]Sphinx of Incain, who appears briefly in Last[-]Moon, has on occasion hailed him as her creator, she/it knows enough never to bid her Herr Hel Helios, as opposed to her Her Hell [,] a fond and especially not a final[!]

Not so Leandro D'Angelo. The supranormal initially code-named Amoebaman only got the standard, solitary lifetime. However, even though it ended in 1946, he's left all sorts of aspects of himself behind. A couple of them don't make it beyond the mid-Spring of 1960, though. Which is a major reason why Rings '55 and Rings '60 go by the overall title of [!]

So, what is it with all these [-] anyhow? Just my way of playing around with the Web. Want to know whom Rings will revenge himself upon, always presuming it's on anyone? Easiest way to find out is, of course, to read Asp[-]6. However, assuming your web-browser's up to it, you could discover their perhaps shocking identities right now by getting interactive and playing my version of fill in the [-]!

[-] is killed on [-]. However, [-] has left his [-] behind with the [-] and his uncle, [-], will go to almost any lengths to get hold of them. (Well, almost any lengths[!]) [-] also knows about these [-]; knows more than that, -- knows where the technology behind them came from originally, [-], and figures they belong to her people as much if not more so than they do to anyone else.

What use are [-], though, if no one can make what's detailed on them work? So [-] and [-] combine forces, just as they had at least once before[,] and set things up such that some serious, albeit perhaps dubious in terms of their political affinities, definitely financially strapped and, all too often, distinctly whacko-scientists can get seriously to work on deciphering them. First big problem is no one reputable, not even [-], can legitimately justify funding these looney tunes. Hence, it has to be done illegitimately. Hence, again, [!]

As much as professionals can be relied upon, [-] figures [-] should be ensured in case they either somehow bugger up ([-] sort of does and sort of doesn't) or, even though they're extremely well paid from the outset, those behind [-], including [-], get even more greedy. (Which they may or not do.) [-] agrees then goes a step further and seeks to [-] their cooperation.

To do so [-] opts for using [-]-methods, a [-] no less. [-] manufactures a facsimile [-]. [-] brings it to [-], via the [-], and in doing so may or may not have contracted [-], only to pass it/her onto [-] (whom we now know is actually [-]) or, perhaps just as likely, to a deeply jealous[,] not to mention already dangerously disturbed [-]. Whereupon things started going seriously sideways!

By the time [-] finds all this out, [-] has dispatched [-] to try to sort out [-]. Which is how [-] get involved and [-]'s precious [-] is yet again compromised. Somehow [-] finds out what's going on as well. Decisions are made and a now 17 year old [-] finally exacts some measure of [-][!]

Starting at [-], the first person who fully fills in all the above [-] and either e[-] or snail[-]mails proof of doing so gets the same non[-]prizes I offered when I set up the House Head Non-Contest a year ago. (This month being March 2001)

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What Hasn't Been New For Even Longer

  • Anheroic Fantasy's First Non-Contest

    (Warning: may contain scurrilous whispers about once-famous folks and definitely contains a whole whack of Jim McPherson's photos flashed specifically for

    'The House Head Museum'

    Which doesn't debut this time up any more than it did last time!


    And, as always ...

  • A Detritus of Devils

  • A Superfluity of Supras

    And the usual ...

  • 'While Supplies Last' Offer

  • Upgraded Main Menu

  • Framed Version of the Main Menu

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Webpage Last Updated: Spring 2015

There may be no cure for aphantasia (defined as 'having a blind or absent mind's eye') but there certainly is for aphantacea ('a'='without', like the 'an' in 'anheroic')

Ordering Information for PHANTACEA Mythos comic books, graphic novels, standalone novels, mini-novels and e-booksSun-moon-kissing logo first seen on back cover of Helios on the Moon, 2015; photo by Jim McPherson, 2014

Downloadable order form for additional PHANTACEA Mythos Print Publications

Current Web-Publisher's Commentary

Jim McPherson's Worldwide Email Address -- jmcp@phantacea.com

PHANTACEA: The Web Serials

pHantaJim's Weblog


Website last updated: Autumn 2015

Written by: Jim McPherson -- jmcp@phantacea.com
© copyright Jim McPherson (www.phantacea.com)
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(James H McPherson, Publisher)
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