Philip Jose Farmer's The Image of the Beast

Philip Jose Farmer's The Image of the Beast

adapted by 'Grisly,' Last Gasp, 1979

 

 

Here's a real Underground Comix oddity......an adaptation of Philip Jose Farmer's pornographic novel, 'Image of the Beast' (1968). The first printing of this adaptation was issued by Last Gasp in 1973, and copies are quite rare. This second printing, with expanded pages, was issued as a 32-page, black-and-white comic in 1979.

The artist, according to the Last Gasp website, was Tim Boxell, who used the pseudonym 'Grisly.'

For those unfamiliar with the original novel, my review is available here.

Needless to say, the explicit sex and violence in 'Image' is best served by an 'Adults Only' comic..........

 

Boxell's adaptation suffers from trying to compress the novel's plot into the confines of a 32-page comic. As a result, panels are cramped and often overburdened by text.

 

Keeping in mind that in the 1970s, comix were obliged to use lower-resolution paper and printing processes, Boxell's artwork is necessary and sufficient in terms of rendering the 'gothic' atmosphere of the novel. 

In many ways, Boxell's art and composition prefigure the styles that would appear in the black-and-white 'outlaw' comics that flourished in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s: Gore Shriek, Verotika, Faust, etc.

Summing things up, if you're a fan of Farmer's 'erotic' novels or comix, then this adaptation may be worth getting. I found my copy for $5, so affordable copies can be had with a bit of searching.

Book Review: The Disaster Area

Book Review: 'The Disaster Area' by J. G. Ballard

3 / 5 Stars

 

'The Disaster Area' is a 1967 anthology of short stories, originally published by Ballard in the interval from 1957 to 1966 in various UK magazines and digests, such as New Worlds. Several paperback editions of 'Disaster' have been released over the years, and many of the earlier releases are rare and costly. This Flamingo / Harper Collins paperback (191 pp.) was issued in 1992 and is one of the more easily acquired editions.

 

Needless to say, the stories in 'Disaster' mostly are set in a near-future version of the UK, and all are downbeat and dystopian. The plotting is restrained and the reader is obliged to parse things out, as Ballard prefers to be 'elliptical' in doling out revelations. His prose is superior to most of that appearing in American sci-fi stories of the same era; the pulp mannerisms that filled American stories utterly are absent from Ballard's fiction.

 

My capsule summaries of the contents:

 

Storm-Bird, Storm-Dreamer: in a bleak and watery landscape, a small group of UK residents cope with the aftermath of strange war between mankind, and overly large birds. There is an emphasis on mood and atmosphere and, neccessarily, Entropy. 

 

Concentration City (aka Build-Up): in the future, the entire world is one big city, with buildings miles high crammed alongside one another. 

 

The Subliminal Man: the future is a nightmare of unchecked Capitalism, given over to conspicuous consumption and pervasive advertising. Even phone calls are interrupted by five-second audio commercials - ! 

 

I found this concept quite disturbing, but it wouldn't surprise me if the telecommunications industry is contemplating it, here and now in this 21st century..........

 

Now Wakes the Sea: Mason has vivid dreams in which his placid suburb is submerged by rising seas. Is this an emergent, racial memory from the deep past, or a premonition ? A contemplative story with the introspective sensibility characteristic of postwar-era science fiction in the UK.

 

Minus One: a patient is missing from Green Hill Asylum, and he must be found straightaway or the local authorities will have to be notified; this would not be good.

 

Mr. F is Mr. F: the eponymous mister is the mild-mannered Charles Freeman, married to the formidable Elizabeth. Her pregnancy promises good things for the family, at least, that is until something strange begins to happen to Charles. This is the oddest story in the collection, and arguably a progenitor of modern-day 'weird horror' fiction.

 

Zone of Terror: at a hospitable institute that treats businessmen suffering from mental strain, Advanced Designs Division staffer Larsen is failing to improve. Dr, Bayliss, his therapist, refuses to believe Larsen's accounts of seeing interlopers on the grounds of the facility. Are these observations the product of an unwell mind, or something more sinister ? Ballard leaves it up the reader to judge.

 

Manhole 69: psychology researcher Neilssen has lobotomized three men as part of a daring experiment to see what happens when humans no longer require sleep, the idea being that humans freed from the obligation to spend one-third of their lives unconscious will be able to do so much more in life. However, what the trio experience is something more disturbing than liberating. Another story where Ballard leaves it to the reader to decide if events are 'real,' or illusion.

 

The Impossible Man: a boy named Conrad is one of the few children in a senescent UK occupied by elderly people. This tale relies on an atmosphere of increasing disquiet to generate its impact.

 

Summing up, I award 'The Disaster Area' a Three Star Rating. Its content compares quite favorably to the other material published in the sci-fi genre in the 1950s and 1960s, but Ballard's penchant for obliquity likely is not going to go over all that well with 21st century readers........

Just Can't say Goodbye (instrumental)

Just Can't Say Goodbye (instrumental)

The Philly Devotions, 1974

According to this summary from the (defunct ?) 'Soul Strutter' streaming radio channel,  

The Philly Devotions were a short-lived quartet from Philadelphia consisting of Marc Covington, Ellis Hill, Ernest Gibson and Morris Taylor. They released only eight singles between 1973-76. The first two were for a small Philly label  Bry-Wek label before releasing, what is now regarded a dance classic, "Just Can't Say Goodbye" on Don De which was a one-off release for the label associated with Bey-Wek and had the same address. It was written, arranged and produced by the recently departed John Davis and recorded at Sigma Sound Studio in 1974. 

 

I guess it must have made some local noise as it was then picked up by Columbia and released with an instrumental flip  in Dec 1974. It scraped into the R&B chart at #81 in Feb 1975 and actually got a UK release and remember picking up a UK demo of it for the princely sum of 25p in the summer of 1975.

 

I recently picked up We're Gonna Make It, the Philly Devotions' compilation CD, issued in 2011. Among the 15 tracks on the CD is an instrumental version of the group's biggest hit, 'Just Can't Say Goodbye.' This is a complement to the rich, disco-friendly sound that emerged in 1972 from the Gamble and Huff studio in Philly. 

 

You can listen to the instrumental version of 'Just Can't Say Goodbye' here. Disco Dy-Na-Mite !!!!!

Playboy August 1969

Playboy 

August, 1969

August, 1969. Atop the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, we have the Rolling Stones and 'Honky Tonk Women.' Also on the chart are some country (Johnny Cash), some psychedelic-flavored pop (Tommy James and the Shondells), straight up pop (Neil Diamond), and the sci-fi single of the decade, Zager and Evans with 'In the Year 2525.' All good stuff !

 

The August issue of Playboy is on the stands, with model Penny James again on the front cover. In 1969 Playboy is a thriving periodical, over 220 pages in length. The lineup of contributors includes some of the more celebrated authors of the era.........

Being obtrusive with a two-page advertisement is Ralph Ginzberg (1929 - 2006), one of the more accomplished hucksters of the postwar era. Ralph excelled at positioning himself as a martyr for free speech and creative expression, all the while slyly selling a higher class of 'erotic material' to the goyim. Back in the 60s and 70s it wasn't unusual to see these ads from Ginzberg in national-circulation periodicals like Playboy and Esquire.

One thing about this August issue is that the photography is badly underexposed. A portfolio featuring 'Bunnies of Detroit ' (which isn't as bizarre as it would seem - Detroit in the late 60s still was a habitable city) nearly is illegible, perhaps because the art director was adamant about Earth Tones. I had to amp up the Brightness when working with these scans.

 

 

 

 

 

There are some pop culture touchstones in the book and film reviews. 'The Andromeda Strain' gets a good reception, as does Midnight Cowboy. Sadly, the music reviews are hopelessly fuddy-duddy, dealing with classical, jazz, and country LPs. Rock just didn't rate that high for Hef.

The August issue features a sci-fi short story by Robert Sheckley, about a young housewife who discovers her new vacuum cleaner does a lot of unexpected, but pleasurable, things.

 

Another short story, 'Quick Hop' by Brock Bower, is the rather lame tale of a louche woman who hires a banner-towing pilot to do some advertising for her 'unique' services. 

The second installment of a serialized novel, by Donald E. Westlake, titled 'Somebody Owes Me Money,' is markedly better than 'Quick Hop.' 

 

I grabbed the July, 1969 issue of Playboy (which ran Part One) so as to complete the novel in a couple of sittings. It's an entertaining tale of a hapless New York City cabby named Chester Conway who gets a tip, not in monetary form, but as a suggestion for a winning pony. Chester plays the pony, wins big, and winds up in all kinds of trouble, but there is a swell dame waiting along the way. If you like Westlake's stuff, it's worth looking up the 2011 reprint from Hard Case Crime.

 

Rather less impressive is the fourth fiction piece in the August issue, 'The Fire Fighters,' by Earnest Taves. It's about conflict on a U.S. Army base in postwar Japan, and struggles to say something Profound about the Human Condition. For me, it just signaled that serving in Asia in the employ of the Army is something earnestly to be avoided. 

 

There are some cartoons that would, perhaps, offend those in the modern-day LGBTQ Community. 

 

The personality profile, 'St. Thomas and the Dragon,' in this August issue deals with Tommy Smothers, who, along with his brother Dick, was a pop cultural icon in the late 1960s. The profile portrays Tommy as a liberal dedicated to warring with CBS over allowing progressive content on the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-1969). 

 

What impressed me most about 'St. Thomas' is the fact that Smothers was in regular pain and distress from a stomach ulcer, something that colored his entire life at the time. Helicobacter pylori would not be identified as a cause of ulcers (a discovery leading to an effective treatment for this ailment) until 1983. So back in '69, about all medicine could offer the hapless Smothers was supportive treatment (in other words, Pepto-Bismol).

 

Let's go ahead and close with the August Bunny, a groovy 21 year-old hippie chick named Debbie Hooper. We learn that Debbie is something of a free spirit when it comes to relationships, exactly what the middle-aged male readership of Playboy, looking on with envy at the Sexual Revolution, wanted to hear.........

 

 

 

 

 

And that's how it was, in that Summer of '69...........!

Book Review: Odd Corners

Book Review: 'Odd Corners' by William Hjortsberg

3 / 5 Stars

'Odd Corners' (266 pp.) was published by Shoemaker Hoard in 2004. This book is a trade paperback, sized a little bit bigger than a mass-market paperback. 

'Odd Corners' collects various pieces author Hjortsberg (1941 - 2017) first published in the 1970s.

 

The anthology leads off with an Introduction in which Hjortsberg imparts some interesting observations about trying to make a living in the early 1970s as an author, particularly an author of science fiction, which at that time (despite the success of the New Wave movement) still was considered juvenilia by the literary world.

 

Despite this, Hjortsberg was able to get his sci-fi novel 'Gray Matters' (1971; included in 'Odd Corners') published in both hardcover and softcover, to critical acclaim (John Cheever sent Hjortsberg a letter praising the novel). My review of 'Gray Matters' is here.

Also included in 'Odd Corners' is the novelette 'Symbiography,' first released in a small press edition in 1973. Hjortsberg later had a truncated version published in Penthouse magazine in February 1979. The longer version, aka 'Symbiography,' is the better incarnation and the best entry in 'Odd Corners.'

A story fragment, titled 'Homecoming,' has never seen print until 'Odd Corners.' Hjortsberg composed it as part of a strange, early 70s effort by Playboy to print science fiction-themed illustrations in the back pages of the magazine, likely as replacements for the 'Little Annie Fanny' comic strip. Writers were asked to contribute short essays designed to accompany the illustrations. Hjortsberg was asked to provide an essay for an illustration by none other than Philippe Druillet of 'Lone Sloane' fame. As intriguing as this idea sounds, ultimately it never came to fruition.

Rounding out the contents of 'Odd Corners' is 'The Clone Who Ran for Congress,' which originally saw print in the May 31, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine, under the title 'Goodby, Goodby, Goodby, Mr. Chips.'

 

This is probably the only science fiction story ever to see print in SI. 'The Clone' is a clever, satirical look at sports culture and the marketing of athletes, and retains its impact almost fifty years after first seeing print. 

 

[ Looking through those old issues of SI from the mid-70s is a reminder that, back in its heyday, more than half of the contents of a given issue of the magazine would be given to topics other than major league sports, something that was permissible in that long-ago, more literate era of our popular culture. ]

 

If you are interested in the works of the New Wave era of sci-fi, then you might want to keep an eye out for 'Odd Corners.' 

My Woodstock, 1969 Story

Woodstock

August, 1969

So, here's my own Woodstock story:

 

In August, 1969 (it may have been the 15th or 16th), I was 9 years old and riding in the car with my father. We were returning from a trip 'downstate,' to New York City, and heading for my hometown 'upstate,' in Delaware County. 

 

Back then, when returning from the City, such a trip involved taking route 17 north up to Monticello, then taking state road 178 northwest through Bethel to Callicoon, and then north from Callicoon to Hancock.

It was afternoon, and well before reaching Bethel we were astonished when traffic slowed to a crawl. As we puttered along, we saw young people - 'hippies' - streaming along the sides of the road, where cars were parked front-to-bumper. What on earth was going on in this little patch of the Catskills ?! It took us a long time to drive clear of the congestion and continue on our way.

 

There was no internet back then, so it was only when my father consulted the New York Daily News that we learned that we had passed through a massive music festival called 'Woodstock.' The New York Times had a story on the festival, too.

And that was my brush with an iconic pop culture event, way back in the Summer of '69......  

A box of paperbacks from Etsy

A Box of Paperbacks from Etsy

Back 14 -15 years ago when I started this blog, I would order 'wholesale lots' and collections of sci-fi and popular interest paperbacks from eBay. You could get a box of books for under $50, back then. In the last decade I've rarely done this, as I have accumulated more than enough paperbacks to take up my reading time. However, recently while perusing Etsy I came across an offer for 40+ paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s.

There's something about opening that heavy cardboard box, and catching that first musty whiff of aged paper, that makes the Paperback Fanatic treasure his or her pasttime........

I'm not familiar with any of the books in my Etsy lot, but I'm hoping some are promising. I'm mindful that in general, the covers always are more exciting than the contents. Particularly with paperbacks from this era, which often took dull novels from the 50s and early 60s and dressed with up with lurid covers to entice people to buy them.

For example, there's 'Love Me Little,' by 'Amanda Vail,' which first saw print in hardback in 1957, before being reissued as this salacious mass-market paperback in October, 1967. Hubba-hubba, baby ! Let's ball !!!!!!!!!  

Then you've got 'The Touch People,' by Froma Sand, issued in December, 1973. The back cover tells us that it's all about the Castlemont Institute hosting a naked encounter ! I'm guessing that we'll be given much tedious psychological posturing, and very little nudie action.......

But I have high hopes for Paul Gallico's 'The Poseidon Adventure,' a foundational novel for the 70s genre of disaster movies.

My Etsy purchase included several potboilers, each over 450 pages in length, those pages being crammed with smaller font. I don't know how likely I am to sit down and read those books.

 

 

 

At the end of the day, when you buy a box of old paperbacks, it's all in the spirit of what you may find. That's what drives the Paperback Fanatic !