Making Magic with chezkevin: Worldbuilding with Cardboard

Welcome back to Making Magic with me, chezkevin. I talk about my Commander reskin project, crossing Metroid over with Magic: The Gathering.

You can start here if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Today, we're going to talk about worldbuilding.

With these fan projects, the world already existed. The fan is there to put them together. Phazon Corruption becomes Poison counters. Ridley becomes Skithiryx. That carries over throughout the whole project, and you still want to put together a deck of 100 cards that you can play at the table.

When possible, I tried to preserve the title of the original card. That gave me some clear mappings.

However, other cards didn't exactly fit, or had named proper nouns that I simply couldn't use. So those were given nicknames.

I'm a fan of the alliteration I chose for the re-name of 'Karn's Bastion.' Also, I looked into the history of this as well, and Karn's Bastion was actually first printed in War of the Spark, a Planeswalker-themed set. The idea was that you would proliferate the counters on your planeswalkers. However, the Proliferate mechanic was first printed in Scars of Mirrodin, originally intended as a way to proliferate Poison counters. In a way, my take on it is bringing the Proliferate mechanic back home, to poison.

Together, these cards tell the story of a world that was poisoned, a civilization that fell with it and the ecosystem that survived. The Chozo clearly map onto Green in this deck: they provide Samus a sense of heritage, and attunement with nature and community. That's represented in many of the green cards in my reskin project. They might be the one 'bright' spot among the bleakness of the poisoned world of Tallon IV. Yet, the world is still beautiful. I tried my best to represent that with the lands.

I'm particularly happy with Misty Rainforest, as it captures the feeling when you begin Metroid Prime. You're here on a specific mission, and you have a job to do. But when you land, everything is just so beautiful you have to stop and admire it. It reminded me of the choral music that plays when you land on Tallon IV: a little bit wondrous, a little bit grand, like you've stepped into something that's bigger than yourself, but it's inviting you. I never even realized that the song was a riff on the original 8-bit theme used for Brinstar, in the original Metroid on the Nintendo Entertainment system.

Later, I found amazing horizontal art by LightningArts that I turned into a triptych:

It captures that sense of wonder, and as you read it from left to right, it gives you a sense of dread: what is this world hiding? I had a lot of fun with the lands, and believe there is yet a plethora of more landscape art of Metroid waiting to discover their Magic: The Gathering counterpart. To close out, please enjoy this mega-collage of Metroid basic lands.

What I enjoy about the standard print cycle (the top row) is that they're all from the same artist, DigitalFrontiers, who used software to 'freecam' from the video game Metroid Prime Remastered, allowing him to get angles of the video game you wouldn't otherwise be able to get. Each image contains a creature from that particular area on Tallon IV. For example, the Metroids in the Phazon Mines represents the swamp. A beautiful pairing.

The full-art Island, Swamp and Mountain are from a series by the same artist, and I tried my hardest to match the style for the other full-art basic lands. The full-art forest matches exceedingly well, while the full-art Plains certainly lacks the certain full-art concept. It's a good thing my deck only uses Sultai colors -- Blue, Black, and Green.

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Making Magic with chezkevin: The Legendary Creatures of Metroid: The Gathering

Welcome back to Making Magic with chezkevin. I'm writing about the design process for my reskin project of a Commander deck. The in-universe Commander is Brokkos, the Apex of Forever and it's reskinned as Metroid Prime, Corrupted Apex.

Don't know what a Commander is? Or a Metroid? Catch thyself up, little one.

Brokkos is a Nightmare Elemental Beast hailing from the magical plane of Ikoria, a realm of behemoths. It reigns supreme as an apex predator of its domain -- there are others, but this is the one we're choosing for our Commander deck, namely because it comes back from the dead using the Mutate mechanic, very similar to the way Metroid Prime adapts to destruction in the Metroid Prime series.

In the climactic boss battle of the original Metroid Prime on the GameCube, you encounter the Metroid Prime in its insidious lair, where it's been irreversibly mutated by the Phazon meteorite that smashed into Tallon IV. It feeds from within, getting stronger and stronger as its poison spreads across the planet.

Metroid Prime is a first-person adventure game where you shoot with different energy beam weapons. Prime vacillates between weaknesses to those beams, clearly marked by the glowing lines on its carapace. I chose to put that on cardboard via 4 different beam variants.

The original artist is HanageMissile, and I did use AI to re-draw his original art to convey the 3 other beam colors (Yellow = Power Beam, Purple = Wave Beam, Red = Plasma Beam). I considered the icy cool blue of the original as the Ice Beam. The largest legs still reflect some blue in each of the AI-generates images, but I chose not to fuss over that -- it could be reasoned that they're merely reflecting the blue of its Phazon cave. Of the 3 variants, my personal favorite is the purple, as it pairs very well with that Phazon blue, as well as the red of its eyes. The red variant, while delightfully intense, goes a little overboard with the red. Each print is accordingly attributed.

I considered other artwork for this creature, but none of them had the quality of HanageMissile's. I also fussed around with the tiny Samus just above the center of the typeline. You can see it in some of the variants; others you can't.

A special note: Mutate creatures actually have a special frame, even on their standard prints (see Brokkos up top). The 'Mutate' portion of the rules text is semi-transparent, allowing you to see more of the artwork through the rules textbox. I considered using this semi-transparency to accurately convey the small Samus in the art, but concluded it was too much work for too little gain. I did mock up a version with that transparency, but ultimately decided against it, since it sacrificed too much for the sake of source material consistency. Considering I had 10+ other mutate cards to design, it wasn't going to be worth it.

Metroid Prime went through several iterations over the course of my 3 months of design, and each one was worth it.

Alternate Commanders

I took inspiration from the Ikoria commander decks, which had these two as Partner Commanders:

Cazur, Relentless Stalker and Ukkima, Stalking Shadow.

These two are clearly meant as 'partners' in the truest sense: they hunt together and rely on each other as partners. When Ukkima connects in combat, Cazur rewards it with a +1/+1 counter. For these two, I looked to the final phase of the boss fight with the Metroid Prime. After you defeat its initial form, it rolls over and falls into another dark cave, filled with pools of Phazon. You realize that the Metroid Prime has shed its outer carapace, and you see what's inside: the essence of Metroid Prime.

For this pairing, they are still 'partnered' as Partner Commanders, however it's in a completely different way: they are paired in an evolutionary arms race between hunter and hunted. I wanted to evoke that final battle with these two cards, and so the other is portrayed in each of their cards, just in the background. Samus hunts down the Metroid Prime; it adapts. Samus gets stronger to chase it; the Metroid Prime adapts.

And even in Ukkima's last ability, when it leaves the battlefield, it lashes out and deals damage to a target player. That's exactly what happens at the end of Metroid Prime, when the remaining blue blob of the Metroid Prime essence reaches out at Samus and steals the Phazon suit, becoming Dark Samus as seen in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

Other Legendary Creatures

I knew I wanted Toski in this deck. Toski is an indestructible creature and made for a perfect Mutate target for Brokkos. While not a 'perfect' mapping, it was the best I could determine after some deliberation. I mapped Toski onto the Etecoons of Super Metroid: when Toski or any of your creatures connect in combat, you draw a card. Effectively, combat = knowledge. That maps pretty well onto the Etecoons, who teach you how to wall-jump in Super Metroid. Hence, Wall-Jumping Wayfinders.

Skithiryx is a powerful Infect card that goes in pretty much any deck with Poison. He was an easy map onto Ridley. In particular, I chose the Metroid Prime version of Ridley: Meta Ridley. It worked out very conveniently that Skithiryx's typeline includes 'Skeleton,' when Meta Ridley is named as such because he's reconstructing his body after losing to Samus in the original Metroid.

Ridley took me several iterations to get right, and I'm a big fan of his flavor text.

Honorable Mentions

Fan reskin projects tend to get bloated with a litany of legendary creatures, reflecting the wealth of original characters in that particular universe. I'm happy with the restraint shown in my project. Instead, I showed characters in numerous non-legendary cards.

The original flavor for 'Cold-Eyed Selkie' mapped well for Samus as 'Cold-Eyed Stalker': I simply mapped the merrows onto the Chozo. Raven Beak as Baleful Strix is a little bit cheeky, and I think somewhere there is a legendary creature that would map even better on him. In general, you just can't not have a Dimir deck and omit Baleful Strix.

Evil Twin has that same level of delight: I could have mapped any old shapeshifter onto the SA-X of Metroid Fusion, but I particularly enjoyed its activated ability of destroying the creature that it copied -- something that many players of Metroid Fusion have likely encountered firsthand.

Samus x Tinkerbell mashup? Yes please. This is exactly the kind of crossover that sparks joy, and while it never made it to my main decklist, it was perfect sideboard material. Alongside the intentionally playful art, it maps onto real Metroid play patterns of copying your fallen enemies' abilities. Some other titles I workshopped for this representation of Samus:

Samus, Missile Magpie
Samus, Pickup Artist

You have to imagine that out there, somebody's drawn Samus hitting on someone at a space bar. I just know it exists already.

That does it for today. Next: Worldbuilding with Cardboard

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Making Magic with chezkevin: Introduction

Well, well, well. Look who came crawling back. Me. I'm still here; haven't gone anywhere. Where were you?

Anyways, I'm still reading comics and watching comic-inspired paraphernalia. It's just my life has become a lot more full since you've seen me last. A couple little ones of school age, a few pets here and there, a household to run. But this blog hasn't gone anywhere. Still waiting.

I wanted to document something that's been the top of my mind the past few months. As you may know, I play Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game created in 1993. The earliest I tried it was roughly grade school age around 2002: the release of Onslaught. My friends and I each bought a beginner deck and we mucked around with it. My interest waxed and waned, and I drifted between other TCGs like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. I even became a Pokemon judge around 2014, and travelled to Regional championships solely for judging. COVID put a short end to that, and Magic never really went away.

I've been at it for the better part of a decade now, and it's the kind of thing that I always come back to, kind of like comic books. Enter: July this year, I was hit by inspiration after viewing various fan reskin projects for Commander decks featuring the Metroid series, published by Nintendo. That's...a lot of words if you're not familiar with them.

1. Commander is a social way to play Magic: The Gathering. It's not necessarily about defeating your enemies more than self-expression via cardboard. If your deck 'did the thing,' then that is victory in itself, rather than being the last man standing.
2. Metroid is a sci-fi video game series published by Nintendo. It features a bounty hunter named Samus Aran, often alone, usually on a mysterious planet. Samus was orphaned by a nefarious group called the Space Pirates and raised by a bird species named the Chozo, and employs various Chozo weaponry to defeat the Space Pirates. Metroids are jellyfish-like parasitic creatures often exploited (or attempted to be exploited) by the Space Pirates to disastrous effects.

Metroid is another property integral to chezkevin's childhood. Metroid Prime on the Nintendo GameCube was one of the first video games I actually bought myself. I got it for Christmas, and it probably took teenage me the course of a couple of seasons alone to beat the game. You played as Samus Aran, alone on a planet named Tallon IV. As you go deeper in the planet, you unearth the history that the spacefaring Chozo had been here. There was a civilization here, before the 'Great Poison.' You encounter all kinds of creatures, full ecosystems also affected by The Great Poison, and by the end of the game, you learn what it actually is. It was a transformative experience for teenage chezkevin, and it still stays with me.

I'm not actually a huge fan of Commander. The social aspect is enjoyable but can detract from some parts of the game that I feel are central to playing. But Commander is an ideal format for grafting these other properties. You can tell a full story with a commander deck in ways you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. That's what this project sets out to do: use existing Magic: The Gathering cards to tell a particular aspect of Metroid.

Metroid has decades of history as a video game, and while the lore can be seen as sparse due to its silent protagonist, it can also be deep and meaningful to the right people. I'm one of them. There are 5 entries in the 2D mainline series, and 4 entries in the 3D mainline series, with a number of spin-offs and guest appearances. Samus undergoes various transformations and their relationship with the creatures they hunt becomes increasingly ambiguous. My project follows the footsteps of various other Proxy Designers, listed below (there are likely more).

1. Dark Samus as Captain N'Gathrod
2. Samus as Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER
3. Dark Samus as Etrata, the Silencer
4. Samus and The Last Metroid

I hope my addition is worthy of this list. My Commander is Brokkos, Apex of Forever reskinned as Metroid Prime, Corrupted Apex. I used existing Magic: The Gathering cards, but mapped them onto different creatures, characters, moments or other items from the Metroid series to represent those Metroid moments on a card.

Brokkos is a huge trampling mutate creature that can return from the graveyard by mutating. Destroying it does not solve the problem. It only gives it a pathway to mutate on top of a new creature and adopt new characteristics. That's the story of Metroid Prime (the creature). Even after Samus defeats it at the end of the eponymous video game, it lashes out and steals Samus's Phazon Suit. It adapts and becomes Dark Samus, seen in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

Brokkos resides in the Magic: The Gathering plane of Ikoria, a realm of behemoths. It's basically the kaiju world of Magic: The Gathering. There, the flora and fauna are just as important as any human beings. That aligns with the world of Metroid Prime, and other Metroid games. The world is the main character just as much as the main character. I emphasize that with the creatures and lands in the deck.

Every deck needs a way to win. This deck wins with Poison: if a player has 10 or more poison counters, they lose the game. The idea is that we mutate Brokkos (Metroid Prime) onto a creature with Infect. When a creature with Infect deals combat damage, the defending player doesn't lose life, but rather gains that many poison counters. Hit with Brokkos (Metroid Prime) enough, and they lose.

This Magic idea of poison maps pretty well onto Phazon, the radioactive poison that leaks out from a meteorite and infects the inhabitants of Tallon IV, mutating them into corrupted versions of themselves. The Chozo were alive during this period, and attempted to contain the poison underground, using various special artifacts. As Samus, you collect these artifacts and fulfill their prophecy: that the 'Newborn' will descend from the sky and put an end to the 'Great Poison.'

The poison of Phazon is represented with various game mechanics of Magic: Infect, Poison, Toxic, and Mutate. With decades of history between both franchises, there was a wealth of art for me to use on existing Magic: The Gathering cards. I'll be using this series to discuss my design decisions and talk about the process. It was a very enjoyable creative process that gave me a lot of sleepless nights. I hope to share that with you here.

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Night of the Ghoul (2023)

by Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla

Back in 2022 I started exploring "comiXology originals," original comics published by comiXology. Amazon has now purchased comiXology, so maybe you would have to call them "kindle originals," but it's all the same. Night of the Ghoul was a standout single from the bunch, and that next day I binged the rest of the series.

I'm saying goodbye to Amazon Prime, and as a result wanted to give the sendoff that Night of the Ghoul deserved. I re-read it again this week, and it's a hell of a suspense/thriller/horror comic, utterly sold by the words from Snyder and the atmospheric paints by Francavilla. Once I picked it up again, I just had to read through it all that night. It carries this feeling of dread that's so enthralling as a reader.

It's about a father and son who masquerade as insurance auditors for a dying old man in what looks like a hospice facility. Only, that old man is responsible for the greatest horror film never released, and the father is hellbent on completing the missing parts of that horror film.

Alongside this "A" story are various black-and-white clips from that film, "Night of the Ghoul," a post-World War II story about a ghoul that may have conceived all of the great horror tropes. The ghoul is this lanky, dead-eyed creature that feeds on necrotic material, and the idea is that it begat the blood plague that created the legend of vampires, and a brain-eating infection that created the idea of zombies. The ghoul in this movie is "the one true monster," what a delicious idea!

Scott Snyder is a genius at retcons, whether it's writing vampires into American history itself, in "American Vampire," or rewriting the history of Gotham City. Night of the Ghoul is no different, and every chapter dives deeper into the mythology of the ghoul. You're left wondering who's on whose side, whether it's the hospice facility, the original filmmaker, all the way down to the ambulance in the sixth and final issue. It's a creature feature masterpiece brought to life on the printed page. From the dread manifested to the climactic creature battle, it has everything you want in a horror experience. Comic books aren't exactly known for their horror stories, but it ought to be known for this one.

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Thor: God of Thunder Reborn and Inferno: Warzones!

Thor: Vol 1: God of Thunder Reborn

Collects Thor (2018) #’s 1-6
by Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo

I started Jason Aaron's Thor run in 2014, with the Esad-Ribic-drawn God Butcher and Godbomb. We last left it at Jane Foster's turn with Mjolnir, in 2021. We pick up the hammer once again, with a newly-worthy Thor Odinson, in God of Thunder Reborn, in this year of our Lord, 2024. A whole decade later, and 6 years after its original publication date! Thor is a whole new book today. I am a whole new person. What have I missed?

Well, not much but I can’t say it was a great experience coming into this series cold, for all intents and purposes. You’re expected to know about all these Thor side characters and what they’re going through in the 6 issues told. Thor has a new arm, a new hammer and a new dog but those are backstories at this point, told in other stories.

For the uninitiated, the primary backdrop of the story is Queen Cinder’s war on the realms, these 6 issues focusing on her attempt on Niffleheim, the cold and misty land of the dead of Asgardian legend. Thor and Loki reunite with their other brother (which I guess has always been around?), and attempt to save the realm from the Queen. There’s a wedding somehow shoehorned into the story, along with a side-story set at the end of times, with King Thor, Old Man Logan as the Phoenix and a Sorcerer Supreme Doom. It feels like a mash-up “What If?” Story that’s allowed to be canon because it’s so far in the future.

Serviceable, and it has all the dry humor you’d expect from Jason Aaron, but without being immersed in the story for so long, you feel behind right from the start. The art feels “premium,” and matches the lofty themes of the magical world of the nine realms, though I didn’t find the painted art to my liking. Shapes blend into each other and digital effects take away from the painted feel of the art.

I’ve already collected all the way to the War of the Realms. See you in Volume 2, which, at my rate, could take another half decade!

More Thor? I say thee...yea!

Thor: God of Thunder -- The God Butcher and God Bomb

Thor: God of Thunder -- The Accursed and the Last Days of Midgard

Original Sin

Thor: The Goddess of Thunder and Who Holds the Hammer

The Mighty Thor: Thunder in Her Veins and the Lords of Midgard

The Mighty Thor: Asgard/Shi'Ar War and The Unworthy Thor

The Mighty Thor: The War Thor

The Mighty Thor: The Death of the Mighty Thor

Thor: God of Thunder Reborn

Inferno: Warzones!

Collects Inferno (2015) #’s 1-5

By Dennis Hopeless and Javier Garron

This is a small side-story that's part of the mega-event Secret Wars from 2015, but it's a whole lot better than it needed to be. Inferno: Warzones! is a strong, character-focused story that reads like a “What If?” that you just want to keep following after the last page. The original Inferno was a crossover X-Men event in 1989 that opened the gates of Hell to Manhattan, unleashing hordes of demons while unlocking new powers for Magik, AKA Ilyana Rasputin, a New Mutant and the younger sister of Piotr Rasputin, AKA Colossus of the X-Men, and Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean Grey. Magik learned about her demon half in that story, and Maddie channeled her magical powers and became the Goblin Queen.

Wow, talk about backstory. If you are or can get familiar with the three mutants above, you're in for a good time. The primary focus is on Colossus and his annual attempt to free his sister Ilyana from the clutches of evil, but it's really an arc: Ilyana is too far gone, overtaken by Darkchylde, her demon persona, and Colossus needs to learn when to let go. There's tragedy in that.

Plus, that arm later becomes a bad-ass demon arm that allows Colossus to wield the Soulsword.

Cue in some great side characters in a post-apocalyptic Mr. Sinister, a snarky wisecracking Boom Boom, and a darkly ambitious Goblin Queen, and you're in for a good time. Nightcrawler joins the gang, and is woefully/awesomely transmogrified into a teleporting demon dragon. It's glorious.

What makes this comic so great is that it tells such a refreshing story with fan-favorite characters that I've been reading for years. The fact that it's an "Elseworld" means that you can take liberties with the characters -- turn them into badass creatures, kill off adversaries that you couldn't kill off in the mainline universe, for the catharsis. The story feels brand new, and I just want it to keep going after the last page. The stuff of great comics.

And by that, I mean SPOILER: The Goblin Queen takes the throne of Inferno, absorbing the Hellfire from Darkchild's smoldering body and becomes something new. Glorious.

Bonus content: The Goblin Queen introduces her son, and, proves why she would fare much better in Battleworld than Jean Grey.

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