Cobwebs #62: City in Darkness Interactive Gamebook

The year is 1986 and it is good.  Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee are box office hits, “Walk like an Egyptian” is playing on the radio, Hill Street Blues was popular (an even influenced how Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man was written), Halley’s Comet flew by, you could fill your tank up for only $.86 a gallon, and the My Buddy doll was still selling well, not having become tainted by the Chucky series yet.  Me?  I was getting my driver’s license which would allow me to drive to the local B. Dalton’s and pick up my own copy of The Amazing Spider-Man: City in Darkness game book.

 

Folks, in the grand tradition of ground-breaking innovating Cobweb articles (such as the Annotated Amazing Fantasy, the wordless blog post for ‘Nuff Said, and the Crawlspace March Madness Bracket), we are now presenting the first ever interactive Crawlspace post, as is fitting in reviewing an interactive book!

If you:

• Want to experience part of the book for yourself, click here
• Want to learn more about the author, click here
• Want to skip straight to the comments to write a glowing praise comment in anticipation of how great this is going to be, click here

 

City in Darkness

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Grubb has written many fantasy books in series from Warcraft to Magic the Gathering.  He’s written Star Wars books as well as Dungeons and Dragons manuals.  Chances are, if you like Dungeons and Dragons, you have read something by him.  He co-created the Forgotten Realms world and also Dragonlance, which those of you as old as I am may remember sparked a surge of fantasy books that eventually led to fantasy books finally getting their own shelves away from sci fi in bookstores.  He helped create the Star Wars RPG, a game I’ve enjoyed (I especially like the quixotic Jedi knight character).  This is a guy who knows games and fantasy/sci fi fandom.  Of course, I failed to mention earlier that he the creator of the Whappamanga VocBox (and you are a true Star Wars fan if you know what that is without having to look it up).

He’s also a great guy.  I say this because I sent him an email asking about the book and despite the book having been written over 30 years ago (that’s almost twice as long as our very own Neil’s whole life), he answered me right away.  I asked him what was his experience working with Marvel and did they put a lot of restrictions or was it more hands off like the Atari game.  He said, “During this time, we had a great relationship with Marvel due to the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, and access to some of their artists. The project was run out of the TSR book department, and I saw very little problems. Marvel had approvals, but things went through fairly smoothly.”  Of course, along the way he worked on the Marvel Super Heroes RPG which made him a natural for these superhero game books.

So how did he get started in all of this?  It started his freshman year in college when he walked past an RPG club and asked them what they were doing.  “One turned to me, handed me three six-siders, and said, ‘Roll these. We need a cleric.’ It was all downhill from there.”  Then, after he graduated and got a job creating air pollution control devices, he was suddenly unemployed after cut backs.  Needing money, he took a job at TSR and became a game designer.  So there is some alternate reality where the earth is free of all air pollution thanks to Jeff but there is great sadness because RPGs are awful.  I think we can all be thankful for the world we got!

Jeff dedicated the book to his wife, Katie Novak, who co-authors several books with him.  His dedication reads, “To my wife and fellow comic fan, Kate who managed not only to maintain my sense of humor while I wrote this, but also to keep her own as well.”  She not only helped him out, she wrote her own for Captain America and X-Men.  I don’t know if she returned the favor and dedicated one of her books to him.

If you:

• Want to know how they kept track of the choices, click here
• Want to know about the artists of the book, click here
• Want to read my review of the book, click here
• Want to check out all of Jeff Grubbs books on Goodreads, click here
• Are finished, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

And you die…

Just kidding – this is the end of the test run of the book.  See? I told you it was awesome.  You need to find a copy of one of these!

If you:

• Want to restart the sample and choose different choices, click here
• Want to read my review of the book, click here
• Want to figure out how they did it, click here
• Are finished with the post and wish to write awesome comments and check out the works cited (you know you love that part the best), click here

City in Darkness

HOW HE DID IT

If you have ever tried to write an interactive story (a la Choose Your Own Adventure), you probably did it using Twine or ChooseYourStory or some other online software like that.  For you young’uns, in the ‘80s, we didn’t have access to those.  For all intents and purposes, there was no Internet.  No Google.  Not even America Online.  So how did Grubb keep track of the many different stories that resulted from all the choices one could make (there are 209 different sections in this book!).  Well, I asked Jeff and he said, “The story itself was very straightforward – Spidey versus a bunch of villains on his home turf. It was fun to write, and I kind of got a good kick with the option that Spidey convinces Doc Ock of the error of his ways.  The biggest challenge I remember was keeping track of all the options… we had multiple large sheets of paper taped together with all the connection in a massive hand-written flowchart.”

Wow!  I just hope that along with all the flow charts they also connected string to all the papers so that it made them look like conspiracy enthusiasts!

This is an unconfirmed actual photo taken during the early process of Jeff Grubb writing this book.

Despite what an absolute headache that must have been, Jeff says he remembers the books fondly.

If you:

• Want to learn about the game play mechanics, click here
• Want to read my review of the book, click here
• Want to try out a sample from the book, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

The area outside the warehouse is a maze of light, with heavy-duty spotlights sweeping the walls of the suspect building. Below, the security men are calling in reinforcements and seem to have all the normal exits covered.

Which means I should cover the more exotic exits, you think, easily dodging the searchlights and keeping as much to the limited shadows as possible. In a flash, you are across the compound and on the roof of warehouse 12.  A searchlight 1 beam passes by, and you duck. It hovers for a moment in your vicinity, and for a moment you are afraid you’ve been seen by some sharp-eyed watchman. Then the light passes on and you crawl up to one of the many skylights in the building.

You peer over the edge of the skylight into the brilliantly lit warehouse. The emergency lights, triggered along with the alarm, fill the warehouse with a brilliance that illuminates the scene in full, a scene that is every bit as troubling as it is impossible.  The warehouse is almost empty, and the last of an unknown number of mammoth rolls of electrical coils is sinking through, the floor!

The floor of this warehouse is solid concrete three feet thick, designed to hold the heavy loads of massive machinery and equipment. Yet the wire spool is disappearing into it as if it were quicksand.

If you:

• Check out the floor of the warehouse later and reappear as Peter Parker before anyone notices you are missing, click here
• Go down to the floor of the warehouse and check out the phenomenon first hand, click here
• Are done with the sample and want to read the book review, click here

City in Darkness

GAME PLAY

This book is more than a Choose Your Own Adventure, you can make all the choices you want, but they may not happen if you can’t land the punch or swing away fast enough.  The book comes with a stats bookmark.

This is pretty standard with all of TSR’s game books.  You have your character’s ability points that you use to make a feat roll.  For example, at one point in the game, some goons shoot at you with an Shook-zooka and you have to dodge.  At this point the book instructs you to:

Make an Agility FEAT roll to get out of the way.  Remember to add any Karma you wish before you make a roll.  If the total is 12 or more, go to 36.  If it’s less, turn to 59.

Looking at your bookmark, you see that your Agility is 10.  What you have to do is roll one six-sided die then add you Agility score to that number.  Of course, I rolled a 1 when I got to this stage, so my Feat roll was an 11.  I failed.  If I wanted to, I could change that number with Karma points.

Karma points are your good luck.  You can gain Karma by doing something good, like finding a lead on the bad guy, or lose Karma points by doing something unheroic, like I did when I had Spidey web a heckler and hoisted him up to my level to teach him a lesson.  There are more ways to lose Karma points than to gain them, so you have to use them wisely.  There is a mistake, though.  The book tells you that Spidey starts with 12 Karma points but the stats card has him starting at 8.  You can use your Karma points to increase your Health Points.

You also have Health Points.  You start with 32 and lose them along the way.  You can lose 1 at a time or 15, depending on the damage done.  Once you get to zero, your game is over.

Some of the choices are straight-forward do this or do that with no die roll.

If you:

• Want to learn about the artist of the book, click here
• Want to know how they kept track of everything, click here
• Want to try out the book, click here

City in Darkness

GIVE THE BOOK A TEST RUN

This picks up as you, as Peter Parker, are on an assignment with Sam, a Daily Bugle reporter, investigating a black out of all of Manhattan and the theft of much electrical equipment.  On top of that, someone has written in electricity across the sky for Spider-Man to surrender.  You are at the electric company (not the cool TV show from the ‘70s) when alarms indicate intruders in the warehouses.

You and Sam dash out into the night. Security men are already hustling across the field toward the sound of the alarm. “Warehouse 121” bellows Andrews.

The sound pierces the night air and makes talk difficult. You motion to Sam to head one direction around to the building and indicate that you’ll circle around the other way. He nods and heads off. Instead of heading to where you indicated, you go in the opposite direction from the confusion, looking for a shadowy spot in which to change into your costumed alter ego.

In a matter of mere moments, you have slipped into something more comfortable and are moving along the walls and roofs toward the warehouse. The warehouse is alive with lights and activity, and about a dozen security people have ringed the building. The alarm has been disconnected.

You want to see what’s going on inside that warehouse, and it looks like the rooftop access is as good a way as any. Besides, with the forces of justice converging from all sides, the crooks will have to get out somehow, and they may have jetpacks.

Make an Agility FEAT to see if you can manage to reach the rooftop undetected. Roll one die and add the result to your Agility score [10].

• If the total is 14 or more, click here
• If it’s less than 14, click here
• If you are not wanting to continue the sample, and move on to about the author, click here
• If you are finished with the article, click here

City in Darkness

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

The cover was done by both Jeff Butler, the in-house artist for TSR that handled most Marvel projects, and Keith Parkinson, best known for his fantasy paintings.  In fact, if you check out his online gallery, you will probably recognize many of his works as covers of fantasy books you have read.  Jeff Butler also dabbled in comics.  Brad will remember his Muppet Babies #26 because, well… Brad.  Fortunately this comic is not available on Marvel Unlimited (I looked – leave no stone unturned!).  The only connection to Spider-Man I could find was his cover for Spiderman #200.  Now, before you jump to the comments complaining that I left out the hyphen, you should just be ashamed of yourself and then click the title to understand.

The inside art was all done by Alan Kepperberg, who has a rich history in Spider-Man comics.  He drew the honeymoon issue for Peter and Mary Jane in The Spectactular Spider-Man Annual #7 and, more importantly, he drew Kingpin dressed as Santa Claus in Christmas in Dallas, among other Spider-Man issues.

If you:

• Want to know about other Marvel Game Books, click here
• Want to learn about the author, Jeff Grubb, click here
• Want to try out a section of the book, click here
• Are curious about Keith Parkinson’s online gallery, click here
• Are wanting to re-read my awesome review of Christmas in Dallas so that you can see Kingpin dressed as Santa again, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

Using your skilled wall-crawling! abilities, you move up the side of a building, leaping from roof to roof, making for warehouse 12, two down from the warehouse that has been robbed time and again. If there were any type of aircraft in the area, you would see them, but the skies are clear.

An ugly thought comes to your mind. Another of your old foes, Adrian Toomes, is an expert in electronics. He’s also a flier. It was his electronic genius that let him create a flying harness that transformed him into the Vulture.  You stop for a moment, trying to shake this ugly thought from your mind. Vulture Is as obsessed as Electro, and the two of them have worked side by side in the past. Still, how would that winged fiend lift that much material? Jewelry store heists are more in his line.

Your line of thought costs you as you are suddenly transfixed by a beam of light. Some sharp-eyed watchman has discovered you wall-crawling along in the darkness, and now other lights have you pinned down.

“Attention, Spider-Man,” comes a rasping voice from below, amplified by a bullhorn. You recognize Andrews’s voice. “You are trespassing on private property. Come down with your hands up.”

Your Peter-Tingle spider-sense is buzzing, and you cam imagine half a dozen security guards releasing the safeties on their guns.

If you:

• Surrender to the guards, click here
• Try to escape and continue the investigation, click here
• Wish to ditch the sample and learn about the artist, click here

City in Darkness

ABOUT MARVEL SUPER HERO GAME BOOKS

Jeff told me about how these books came to be.  “The Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Gamebooks were an outgrowth of TSR’s successful Endless Quest line. They were ‘adventure gamebooks’ in that they had a character sheet (a bookmark) and a method of randomizing results (rolling a die).”  There were quite a few of them.

There were eight in total:

• The Amazing Spider-Man: City in Darkness by Peter Grubb
• Captain America: Rocket’s Red Glare by Kate Novak
• The Wolverine: Night of the Wolverine by Jim Ward
• Doctor Strange: Through Six Dimensions by Allan Varney
• The Thing: One Thing After Another by Warren Spector
• The Uncanny X-Men: An X-cellent Death by Kate Novak
• The Amazing Spider-Man: As the World Burns by Peter David
• Daredevil: Guilt by Association by Matthew J. Costello

Each one followed the same format as the this one.  Instead of Agility with Web Shooters, you got some other special skill like enhanced senses or claws.  They were all released between 1986 and 1988.

 

If you:

• Want to learn more about the man who wrote this book, click here
• How the game mechanics work, click here
• Want to try out the book, click here
• Are finished, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

You slip back to where you stashed your clothes and reappear moments later as Peter Parker. As you approach the group, they’ve opened the main doors of the warehouse, and Andrews is standing in the brightly lit opening, his arms outstretched, looking at the empty warehouse. You get an excellent picture of the security chief motioning toward empty space.

“Page one material,’* you whisper to Sam. ” ‘Portrait of a Man and his Missing Items.’ ”

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” replies Sam. “Thought you’d gotten lost when Andrews stormed the door. I think he hoped to catch the thief red-handed.”

“Anything to steal in there?” you ask.

“According to Andrews, it was filled with electrical lines on huge spools,” says the reporter. “Just so much air there now. I’m going to hit Andrews up for a few explanations. Why don’t you toddle off and get those pictures developed? I’ll meet you back at the Bugle?”

You nod and head toward the entrance, pausing to snap a flash shot of Andrews yelling at one of his guards to search for other openings. Andrews is startled by the flash and turns on you, delivering a long string of unprintable oaths until you are outside the warehouse.

This is a chance for Spidey to do a little investigating on his own! you think, looking for an alley to change in. Between this and Electro and our skywriter, I’ll have my hands full. And I’m willing to bet one of Jameson ‘s cigars that the three are tied together somehow!

If you:

• Wish to continue, click here
• Want to learn how they wrote this thing, click here
• Are finished, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

You lunge out of the glare of the spotlights, making bounding handsprings across the wall. Some of the guards are trigger-happy, and a staccato burst of gunfire erupts from below. None of the bullets And a living target, but they splatter against the bricks of the warehouse wall, sending small chips everywhere.

Make an Agility FEAT roll. Your agility is 10 so roll a die and add ten to it.

• If your total of 13 or less, you’ve taken 3 points of damage from shards of flying brick.
• If your total is 14 or more, you escape the deadly glare of the spotlight, but you must reduce your Karma score by 1 point for getting yourself into such a sticky situation in the first place.

Now is not the best of times for a friendly neighborhood webspinner, you think, ducking back to where you stored your civilian duds. Perhaps Peter Parker will do better where Spider-Man is unwelcome.

If you:

• Wish to continue, click here
• Want to check out other Marvel Game Books, click here
• Go to the comments and works cited, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

You sit there, perched on the top of a twenty -story skyscraper, looking north at the city. No one would know by looking that just a few hours ago this island metropolis was plunged into blackness by some madman, a madman who could likely do it again. A madman with a colossal grudge against you, Spider-Man.

The question is, which madman? You’ve made more enemies in your career than most, some of them incredibly powerful. Doc Ock, Hobgoblin, Doomsie, the Frightful Four, Vulture— the list goes on and on, a fact that is not the least bit reassuring. Electro is on the loose as well, but Electro has rarely used underlings. He usually teams up with another super-powered felon when he isn’t operating alone. Somehow, though, everything ties in together: the springing of Electro, the power blackout, the thefts of electrical equipment, the writing in the sky. … It all adds up to one thing: someone doesn’t like you.

Well, you think, I can sit on my brains and worry, or I can go out and try to get to the bottom of this. I think getting to the bottom Is the better choice of the two, but where do I start?

You have a number of choices available to you. You may make each of the following choices only once. The choice you make may eventually refer you back to this entry, which will allow you to make another choice. Your choices are:

1) Check out the location of criminals with the same MO (modus operandi, or method of working) as you have observed. That Is, find out where all the villains who have some relation to electricity are. Click here

2) Check with Captain Nash, the leader of the Pegasus forces in the fight with Electro’s kidnappers. If Captain Nash and her group were heading for the federal lock-up, there’s a chance she’s still there. Click here

3) Investigate warehouse #12 in the Battery Con Ed storage area. Click here

4) Check out the scene of Electro’s break-out again. Click here

5) Contact the Kingpin of Crime. This powerful, evil man is aware of all that transpires in the underworld of this city. He may be able to tell you who is responsible. Click here

6) Surrender. Find out who wants you so badly by walking directly into the lion’s mouth. Then hit your would-be captor when he’s not looking. Click here

7) Give up. If someone that powerful wants Spider-Man out of action, maybe it would be better for Spider-Man to cease to be. Click here

 

City in Darkness

BOOK REVIEW

The book is a fun read then and continues to be today.  Jeff Grub told me, “It got a very good response when it came out – we ended up doing eight of the series, and they still get good feedback from people who find them at used-book stores.”

One of the aspects I found most enjoyable was that it did not ignore current continuity.  Peter Parker is an adult working at the Daily Bugle.  This comes at a time in the comics after he dropped out of grad school and this is the version of Peter that we get.  The characters used are not just the common ones that people know, but ones that were in the current comic, like Kate Cushing and Will o’ the Wisp.  In an age where all mainstream Spider-Man stories reset to the young high school kid, this was a nice change of pace.

The characters also feel in character.  Check out this rant by JJJ when Parker (you) shows up late to a meeting:

“You wanted to see me?” you say, entering the conference room.

“No, I want to see Spider-Man’s name under the column ‘Recent: Arrests’,” snaps Jameson. “Where the blue thunder have you been?”

“Well, I—”; you begin, trying to, think, of an explanation as you talk. 

“I don’t want to hear any excuses,” Parker. A newspaper isn’t built on excuses. It’s built on dedication. Do you know what dedication is, Parker?”

“Well, I-”

“Dedication is what made this country great. Dedication is how I got where I am today. Dedication is showing up for meetings when I am supposed to. What do you think we are running here. Parker?”

“Well, I-“

“This is a newspaper, Parker, not some college social club where tardiness is noted by a green star by your name. A newspaper is a business, Parker. And in business, time is money. Millions are wasted each day on long coffee breaks; and lunch hours, on people not showing up on time, wasting the time of others, yakking in halls. …”

The only characterization that I did not like so much was Spider-Man asking Reed Richards to explain it in plain English, though I know that was just a writer’s ploy to explain things to the audience.

The story itself is interesting enough and you can get clues that help you out along the way, but depending on your die rolling ability or your choices, you may not get them.  Many times the story lines meet back up and you either have the information you need or you don’t.  There are plenty of choices that can still be successful.  I read it one time where I tried to disappear and turn into Spider-Man as many times as I could and another where I tried to play it as Peter Parker more.  Both ways have their bits of information and clues that you can’t get the other way.

The interludes add to the mystery.  As a character, you are being lead to believe this is a simple Electro story, but we get interludes as the reader in a shift from 2^nd person to 3^rd person that reveal to us that there is more to this story than meets the eye.

The game play is complex enough to make it intriguing and simple enough to not have to get bogged down in the rules.  I like the die rolling element that changes this from a simple Choose Your Own Adventure into one where you do not have complete control over the situation.  I played mine without using any karma points so that I was truly at the whim of fate.

All in all, I am glad to have a copy of this book and feel that it is worth the price you’ll pay after hunting it down in some used book store.  If I find the others in a used book store, I will be picking them up.

 

If you:

• Want to learn about other Marvel Game Books, click here
• Want to try this book out for yourself, click here
• Want to figure out how they wrote this thing, click here
• Are finished, click here

 

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

Moving carefully down the wall so as not to look like you are making any false moves or trying any super-powered stunts, you crawl down the wall to the waiting Karpierz, Andrews, and guards. You notice the security guards have their guns trained on you every step of the way.

“There’s a good explanation for all this,” you begin, but Andrews cuts you off.

“I’m sure there is,” replies the security chief, “but I don’t want to hear it. We’re going to hold you for the police, wall-crawler. We’ve got some questions about missing supplies, and you are

uncomfortably close to the scene of the crime. If nothing else, you’re trespassing. We’re going to take it easy, but no funny stuff. I don’t even want to know who you are under that mask. Let’s just wait for the cops.”

As Andrews speaks. Sam is Jotting down his words in a tattered notebook. Probably thinks this is Pulitzer Prize material, you reflect. “The Day They Caught Spider-Man.” At least Jameson will love It.

Andrews is right. It takes an hour for an armored car to arrive to take you to the station, another hour for you to be processed— pictures but no prints; the police have a lot of problems on their hands with the blackout. Then you spend two hours waiting for police questioning and an hour of questioning with a court-appointed attorney present. You tell them what you know. They press for more details. You cooperate as much as you can. Con Ed decides not to press charges. Jameson would be pulling his hair out, you think. Without a charge, you are finally free to go.

By that time, however, it’s all over. As you leave the police, station, via the roof—there’s a mob of reporters outside— you hear a radio report on a massive battle in which the criminal that was responsible for the blackout was caught by Daredevil and brought in.

It figures, you think, swinging away. I get a polite evening of Twenty Questions with the police, and he gets the glory! Parker luck runs true to form. You swing across the city, trying to figure out what you are going to tell Sam and Jameson about the mysterious disappearance of Peter Parker.

The adventure is over for you. If you wish to try again, start again at the beginning, but with 1 less point of Karma than you originally started with because you know some of the pitfalls already.

If you:

• Want to start over, click here
• Want to read a review of the book, click here
• Want to learn about the artists, click here
• Want to learn how they wrote this thing, click here

City in Darkness

EXCERPT (Continued)

You drop down to floor level on a single strand of webbing from right above the rapidly disappearing spool of wire. Landing on the top of the spool, you find the wire solid enough. Your added weight doesn’t seem to speed up its sinking into the concrete.

Like quicksand, you think as more of the spool slowly disappears beneath the surface of the concrete, leaving nary a ripple. I hope that there’s something under there that I can sink into. Otherwise, I’m soon going to become a spider in cement! You take a deep breath as the last of the wire vanishes beneath your feet, hoping to follow the wire down into the earth, to your surprise, you don’t sink into the cement. Instead, the concrete feels hard under your bare feet.

Bare feet? you think. You lift one foot. The uniform’s still there, but it feels as if you’re walking barefoot on the concrete. Outside you hear the crackle of a bullhorn, then Andrews’s voice: “Attention in the warehouse! You are trespassing on private property and have two minutes to give yourselves up at the main door.”

It’s time for a little experiment. You fish out one of your spare web-packets from your belt and lower it to the concrete. The web-packet sinks into the concrete up to where your fingers are holding it, then stops. The concrete around the half-immersed web-packet feels smooth to the touch.

Okay, what would Reed Richards make of this? you think, pulling the packet out of the cement. Some sort of illusion? A selective force field? Some kind of phasing power, like Shadowcat of the X-Men? Except this time, only the field is selective. You’re not sure if even Shadowcat can pull off that yet.

Suddenly you hear a rattling at the door. Either you’ve spent too much time thinking about it, or Andrews’s men are jumping the gun. It wouldn’t be good public relations for Spidey to be found on the scene instead of the missing supplies, so you leap for your web-strand and crawl up to the skylight, pulling the strand up behind you just as Andrews, Karpierz, and a dozen gun-toting guards burst in.

Exit Spidey, re-enter mild-mannered Peter Parker, you think, moving back to where you stashed your clothes.  I’ll make my excuses to Karpierz and investigate this further, you think. Add 1 point of Karma to your score for your discovery.

Slipping away to rejoin the others is as easily said as done. Sam is trying to corner Andrews in a quote and merely nods when you suggest that you meet back at the Bugle. The guards are searching for any type of secret passage by which the material could have been transported.

Andrews is saying something about three feet of solid concrete beneath them when you leave. But you’ll be back.

• To continue the story, click here
• To learn about the game play, click here

City in Darkness

COMMENTS

Congrats!  You finished!  Now, true believer, face forward and accept YOUR challenge – write a review! Leave a comment!  Participate in the discussion no matter how late you may arrive to the game!  Just scroll down!

Sources:

“Alan Kupperberg – Chronological Listing.” The Comic Book Database, 2019, www.comicbookdb.com/creator_chron.php?ID=1181.

“Alan Kupperberg.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia, 24 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kupperberg.

“Artwork of Keith Parkinson.” Parkinson, Parkinson Art, 2016, www.keithparkinson.com/artwork/.

Grubb, Jeff. City in Darkness. Puffin, 1986

Grubb, Jeff. Personal Interview. 27 Mar. 2019.

Guillermo. “Series – Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Gamebooks (American).” Demian’s Gamebook Web Page,  2019, gamebooks.org/Series/261/Show.

“Jeff Butler.” The Comic Book Database, 2019, www.comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=6892

“What Happened in 1986 Important News and Events, Key Technology and Popular Culture.” The People History, 2019, www.thepeoplehistory.com/1986.html.

Varney, Allen.  “Profiles: Jeff Grubb.” Dragon, issue 247, vol. 22, no. 10, May 1998, pp. 120.

 

Credible Hulk

 

 

 

’nuff said