Monday, April 30, 2018

The Thing Infection at Outpost 31 board game

The Thing - Infection at Outpost 31
Board Game
I've blogged previously about the paperback novelization of the classic 1982 John Carpenter movie The Thing, as well as a series of sequels released by Dark Horse comics in the early 90s.

Last Fall, USAopoly released a board game based on the movie............?! 
In general the game is getting good reviews, although apparently it's best when you have more than the minimum of 4 players participating. 


Mondo / Project Raygun, a sort of boutique version of Think Geek, has sold out of its deluxe version of the game. The regular version can be had from your usual online retailers like amazon and Think Geek for under $60.00.



I don't anticipate picking up a copy of The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31, but if you have, feel free to leave a Comment about what you think of it............?!

Friday, April 27, 2018

The Rance Allen Group

The Rance Allen Group
Say My Friend
LP cover art by Abe Gurvin
Capitol Records 1977


Rance Allen, born in Monroe, Michigan in 1948, formed a gospel group with his three brothers Tom, Steve, and Esau. The group garnered attention when they participated in a talent contest held in Detroit, and wound up being signed to a record deal with the Stax label. The Rance Allen Group released its first album in 1972 and soon emerged as one of the most long-lived and renowned groups in the Gospel genre (their most recent album, Celebrate, was released in 2014).

The stunning cover art for the group's 1977 album Say My Friend is by Abe Gurvin (1937 - 2012), who identified as a 'psychedelic' artist and produced artwork for album covers, books, advertising, and other commercial outlets.

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Huntsman from Bizarre Adventures No. 28

Huntsman
written by Archie Goodwin
art by Michael Golden and Steve Mitchell
Bizarre Adventures (Curtis/Marvel) No. 28, October 1981


Issue 28 of Marvel's Bizarre Adventures had the usual grab-bag of tryout strips and one-shots, including an 'Elektra' strip from Frank Miller; a Kung-Fu / Ninja tale from Neal Adams called 'Shadow Hunter'; 'Conscience of the King', featuring Triton from the Inhumans; and another installment of the mediocre Funny Animal series 'Bucky Bizarre'.

Probably the best entry in the issue was 'Huntsman', a sci-fi strip written by Archie Goodwin, with art by Michael Golden and Steve Mitchell. Its plot borrows heavily from the movie Logan's Run, but it's a worthwhile read. I've posted it in its entirety below. 

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Hole in the Wall Books

Hole in the Wall Books
Falls Church, Virginia



Earlier this month, on a sunny, breezy Friday, I decided it was the perfect day to make one of my twice-yearly or so visits to 'Hole in the Wall Books', which is about a two hour drive for me. The store is located on Broad Street (aka Route 7) in Falls Church, Virginia. 

As the name implies, Hole in the Wall Books is located in a small house converted into a bookstore. Practically every square foot of the interior is taken up with books or comics, and negotiating the rooms involves very careful placement of your feet, as the aisles are crammed with books, including those stacked on the floor and those jutting from overhead shelves.


The shop has a pretty big selection of new and used comic books and graphic novels, as well as shelving for crime and mystery paperbacks (they don't have much in the way of a horror section).

The science fiction aisles are the store's strong point; lots and lots of paperbacks in the sf and fantasy genres, and a good-sized section of hardbound sf as well. There also is shelving devoted to sf and fantasy art books.

The sci-fi section has a pretty good representation of older titles from the 70s and 80s. Most paperbacks cost anywhere from $2.50 to $3.50, and these are in the 'acceptable' to 'very good' range. Higher-priced vintage paperbacks are kept in a section behind the cash register; ask the store owner, and she will let you peruse this area.

I picked up eight titles (photo below) which give you a good idea of the books you can find on the regular sf shelves (the Brian Lumley title Spawn of the Winds was a 'vintage' book).



Poking around in the 'vintage' section, I picked up the complete 1975 Bantam Books editions of the Earthsea trilogy by Le Guin for $10.



Summing up, if you're going to be visiting the western DC suburbs (and you don't mind battling heavy traffic on Rte 7 on the weekends) then stopping in at Hole in the Wall Books can be well worth your while.


UPDATE: as of September 2019, Hole in the Wall Books closed permanently (the owner apparently decided to sell the property). This was sad news. 

Friday, April 20, 2018

Excalibur movie poster

Excalibur
movie poster, April 1981

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Book Review: God Stalk

Book Review: 'God Stalk' by P. C. Hodgell
4 / 5 Stars

‘God Stalk’ (284 pp) first was published in hardcover in 1982; this Berkley Books paperback was released in August, 1983. The artist who created the striking cover is uncredited. 

It was the first novel by author Patricia Christine Hodgell, who followed with a number of sequels. These constitute the so-called ‘Chronicles of the Kencyrath’, which has reached 8 volumes as of 2017.

‘God Stalk’ features a young woman named Jame as its heroine; as the novel opens, Jame –suffering from amnesia, and pursued by vengeful beings – is stumbling across the northern wastelands, seeking shelter of any kind. She finds it in the crowded and chaotic streets of the city of Tai-Tastigon, where a horde of gods and godlings are worshipped by a bewildering variety of sects, many at odds with one another and engaged in perpetual feuds and commercial rivalries.

As Jame becomes familiar with the labyrinthine streets and neighborhoods of Tai-Tastigon, she decides to take advantage of an offer from one Master Penari of the Thieves’ Guild: become his apprentice, and a member of the Guild.

This in turn leads to an unfolding series of adventures as Jame, determined to prove herself, decides to steal some of the most precious- and closely guarded – treasures of Tai-Tastigon. The price for failure is steep: perpetrators are likely to be flayed alive and left to rot on the bench of the Mercy Seat at Judgment Square

But Jame has advantages that she is only gradually coming to terms with: her nature as the member of the Kencyrath, a race gifted with superhuman abilities, yet cursed with a history of betrayal at the hands of its three-faced god.

As Jame makes her way through the increasingly roiled streets of Tai-Tastigon, her heritage and her membership in the Guild both will merge to bring revelations about the world and her place in it ……….. but these revelations may not be as benign as she has been led to believe……….

At the time ‘God Stalk’ was published, ‘adult fantasy’ was just beginning to make its impact felt in bookstores, and the shelf space at Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, and Barnes and Noble devoted to the genre was a fraction of what it is nowadays. That said, ‘God Stalk’ was something new and imaginative. It was not a re-imagining of Tolkein, and lacked elves, dwarves, wizards, dragons, Dark Lords, and all the paraphernalia that then defined 'fantasy' writing. There isn’t even a Quest in ‘God Stalk’. Magic exists, but is an occasional indulgence on the part of a gifted few.

I would argue that ‘God Stalk’ is one of the foundational novels for the sub-genre now known as ‘Dark Fantasy’. Hodgell’s city of Tai-Tastigon is as much a character as the individuals peopling its pages and certainly prefigures the cityscape of New Crobuzon in the 2000 novel ‘Perdido Street Station’ by China Mieville.

‘God Stalk’ shares similarities with the works of M. John Harrison, as it possesses the darker, morally ambiguous flavor that permeates his novels and short stories about Viriconium.

The novel isn’t perfect; the closing chapters have something of a rushed quality and the plot revelations disclosed in these chapters have a contrived, often confusing nature. But 'God Stalk' is a solid four-star novel, and a book that stands the test of time as a standout fantasy novel for the decade of the 80s.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Lucky by Greg Kihn

Greg Kihn 
'Lucky'
April, 1985

In 1985 Baltimore-born rocker Greg Kihn released his album Citizen Kihn, with the song 'Lucky' the designated single. It reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 6 April of that year.



The video likely would be criticized nowadays for its depiction of The Homeless, but it does feature the quirky humor and offbeat imagery (including a cameo from Zippy the Pinhead ?!) that marked Kihn's videos.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

The Sleazy Reader

The Sleazy Reader
issues 5 - 7 (October 2017 - February 2018)
The advent of amazon's Createspace self-publishing imprint has revolutionized the publishing of zines. There now are quite a few titles devoted to vintage paperbacks available at amazon. These include the long-established The Paperback Fanatic, to more recent entries like Men of Violence, Pulp Horror, and the newest, Hot Lead, which is devoted to Western paperbacks.

These zines usually offer anywhere from 50 - 100 pages, and are priced from $7 to $15 each. They are published more or less regularly, and they feature higher-res reproductions of art, have coated paper covers, and inside, a non-transparent white-paper stock.

I recently decided to pick up three issues of The Sleazy Reader, which is priced at $8.99 for 58 pages. As the name implies, this zine is devoted to sleaze titles published in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s. 

While most articles deal with 'traditional' sleaze and cover swingin' stewardessess, illicit lesbian lovers, and concentration camp dominatrices, editor Justin Marriott is willing to broaden the scope of the zine, and thus features coverage of the 'drug abuser' and 'biker' genres appearing in vintage paperbacks and men's magazines.

The Sleazy Reader primarily is geared towards the 'serious' collector who is willing to pay quite a bit of money to pick up the rarer titles showcased in its pages. However, if you're like me, and you're more interested in seeing just what sort of crazy and worthwhile material remains to be discovered, then the zine can be just as rewarding. 

There are some obscure gems revealed in the pages of The Sleazy Reader that can be had for affordable prices, and I'm keeping an eye out for them. 

I mean, I had no idea Dick Schaap, the sportswriter and broadcaster well known to audiences in the 60s and 70s, wrote a 1967 true crime book called Turned On about an heiress who Loses her Way in the drug culture.......?! 


Summing up, if you're a fan of vintage paperbacks, The Sleazy Reader and its fellow zines provide good coverage of several genres and are sure to direct you towards some titles that are necessary to complete your collections.


Monday, April 9, 2018

Book Review: Jog Rummage

Book Review: 'Jog Rummage' by Grahame Wright

4 / 5 Stars

This strange little book first was published in hardcover in 1974, with this Pan Books paperback (205 pp) released in 1977. The cover artist is uncredited.

'Jog Rummage' was apparently Grahame Wright's only novel; the brief autobiographical sketch in the paperback indicates he was born in Leicester in 1947, worked for a time in the basement of a large department store, and lives in Tadworth in Surrey. According to his ISFDB entry, he died in 1977 at the age of thirty.

The cover blurbs rely on a review published in Cosmopolitan magazine (who would have thought Cosmopolitan would have reviewed a novel like this.......?!) that mused that Tolkein fans would like 'Jog Rummage'. But it's more accurate to say that 'Jog' has more in common with novels like The Wind in the Willows and Watership Down than with anything by Tolkein.

The opening chapters of the novel introduce the reader to the world of the Jogs (the type of animal they represent is never explicitly disclosed, but apparently, the Jogs are a kind of hedgehog) and the Rats. While the world is seemingly peaceful and idyllic, in the tradition of the classic British 'Talking Animal' tale, there are tensions between the two races of animals. 

Rummage, a Jog and the novel's lead character, is the most learned and wise of the animals. While aware of the enmity between Jog and Rat, Rummage is preoccupied with discerning the character of the world he lives in and its curious features, which include the Great Star, the landscape of the High Mountains, the Shadow, the frightening Swoops, etc. 

Author Wright's use of the convention of capitalized certain proper nouns - very much a classically 'British' writing style - signals to the reader that forthcoming revelations about the nature of the world of the Jogs and Rats will be a key component of the novel.



Which makes it all the more confusing when, on page 50, the narrative shifts completely, from the world of the Jogs, to a gritty English cityscape, circa 1974. 

The plot now revolves around a trio of disabled people: a little girl named Elizabeth; her father, referred to as Mr Morgan; and Uncle Tony Lemon. The struggles of these, and other characters, to eke out a living in a neighborhood undergoing the massive urban renewal that devastated many UK cities in the early 70s are readable, but at the same time, had me wondering if 'Jog Rummage' was less a fantasy novel than a psychological melodrama about a modern working-class English family.

However, it transpires that Elizabeth has discovered her own Secret Place, one within a navigable distance for a handicapped girl. A secret place amid the overgrown, rubble-strewn lots where buildings have been torn down. 

Hidden amidst the nettles is a narrow entrance that leads down to the dimly-lit basement of what once was a major department store. Drawn by some compulsion she cannot define, Elizabeth decides to descend into the basement..........with fateful consequences for All.

The few reviews of 'Jog Rummage' available online stress the unique nature of the novel, a nature that prohibits neatly slotting it into any sort of genre or category. In this I have to agree. While the middle chapters of the book can at times seem unfocused and meandering, if you persevere, the closing chapters possess their own logic and avoid contrivance. Accordingly, I give 'Jog Rummage' a four-star rating. This one is worth searching out.

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Candice Bergen in 'Getting Straight'

Candice Bergen
in 'Getting Straight' (1970)

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Trashman Meets the Fighting She Devils

Trashman Meets the Fighting She Devils
by Spain
from Subvert Comics No. 1
Rip-Off Press, 1970

NOTE: this comic is likely to offend modern sensibilities..........