Ascension Epoch created by Michael DiBaggio and Shell 'Presto' DiBaggio.
Grimalkin | After Dark (Part 4)
Taken day by day, the life of a masked vigilante is kind of boring. Between the big showdowns, the busted capers, and the close brushes with death, there’s a lot of waiting for trouble, and most often trouble doesn’t trouble to happen. The truth is there’s an awful lot of running around for what seems […]
Close Encounters | After Dark (Part 3)
I already knew there was going to be trouble tonight. I didn’t know where or what kind, but I knew it. It had nothing to do with ESP, just one of those feelings anybody can get, a notion that sneaks inside your skull and curls up in a corner of your brain, periodically flashing its […]
Like a Stone | Copper Knights & Granite Men (Part 3)
We found our working class hero weighing down the back of an ambulance, his massive shoulders hunched as he breathed deeply from an oxygen mask. He was naked except for a blanket draped over his lap, with stony fragments of what I later realized were his petrified shirt, pants, and underwear still stuck to his […]
Merry and Bright | A Challenger Foundation Christmas Story
Story and Illustrations: Shell Presto Allen Adams had always been content to go unnoticed. On the farm or in the air force, it was his experience that the nameless and the faceless were usually found doing the most important work. Being useful was what mattered, not recognition. So it was ironic, and uncomfortable, that he […]
The Nice List | An Irregulars Christmas Story
The doors of St. Jamison Doyle’s opened a few minutes after seven o’clock, letting the muffled voices of choir and organ drift towards heaven with the chimney smoke and hang with the frosted stars in the dark winter sky above Pittsburgh. The congregation filtered out gradually. First came the young loners, desperate to avoid awkward […]
The Lights Go Out | Population of Loss (Part 4)
Story: Michael DiBaggio | Cover Art: Paul Roth Captain Sheldrake’s great round face thrust out from the doorway, his eyes darting, his red cheeks quivering. An impatient gust from his lungs set his push-broom mustache billowing. “Hurry, God damn you!” But Professor Addison Lang couldn’t possibly hurry any more than he already was. He had lost his shoe and now […]
The Devil to Pay | Population of Loss (Part 3)
It was the ninth day of Oak Creek’s captivity when Lobo and his bandits led a new prisoner into the canyon. Those few citizens of the small Arizona mining town still around to talk about it were in a commotion, their eyes gawking and their voices full of fear and anticipation. As he squinted over […]
The Lost Boy | Population of Loss (Part 2)
Story: Michael DiBaggio | Cover Illustration: Arthur Rackham (PD) The streets of Woking were crowded that Saturday afternoon, much more so than usual owing to the commotion in the sandpits outside of town. There, the boffins and such folk as didn’t have enough business of their own to mind had gathered to gawk at a […]
In Hoc Signo | Population of Loss (Part 1)
Journal of Jamison Doyle 13 July, 1898 I enter the following account without hesitation, though any who should read it may think me a liar or else insensible, drunk, or delirious from facing that monstrous power that drives man toward extinction. But such awesome events as I have witnessed demand chronicling regardless of the risk […]
First Impressions | After Dark (Part 2)
Balanced on the tips of her toes, Evangeline reached for a thin volume on the top shelf and then stopped, letting her pink-nailed fingertips drag down the spine of the aged text, softly scratching on the embossed golden letters that called her attention. She frowned, suddenly unsure of why she should care about Sumatra’s giant […]
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