Book Review: Pillars of Salt

Book Review: 'Pillars of Salt' by Barbara Paul

1 / 5 Stars

‘Pillars of Salt’ (183 pp) was published by Signet Books in April, 1979. The cover artist is Paul Stinson.

According to the biographical sketch provided in the book, Barbara Paul is a liberal arts major, with a doctoral degree in Theater History. ‘Pillars’ was her second published sf novel. Her other sf novels include ‘An Exercise for Madmen’ (1978), ‘Bibblings’ (1979), ‘Under the Canopy’ (1980), and a Star Trek novel, ‘The Three-Minute Universe’ (1988).

The novel opens in 2051, when so-called Time Visiting is a major scholarly pursuit. It involves clamping electrodes to the user’s head, after which he or she reclines on a couch and enters the mind of a long-deceased person, there to spend days (or even as long as a week) as a silent observer of all that their host sees and feels. The advent of Time Visiting is not without controversy, as some citizens regard it as an unethical and morally questionable practice. However, for historians and artists, it is a revelation to temporarily occupy the mind of historical personages.

(Paul carefully avoids the obvious question as to whether anyone has Visited Jesus, but she does reveal that Mohammed has been parasitized by these unique futuristic voyeurs !).

The heroine of the novel is a young college student named Angie Patterson, who, while occupying the mind of Queen Elizabeth in 1562, discovers that Elizabeth died of smallpox – an event in conflict with recorded history. However, her panic at finding herself unexpectedly occupying the body of a dead woman allows Angie to resurrect Elizabeth on the latter’s deathbed.

This discovery raises questions about whether the process of Time Visiting has altered history. Angie Patterson find herself teaming up with a group of researchers to examine the issue further….and in due course, confronts the unsettling possibility that travelers from Earth’s future may have played as big a role in tampering with the past……..

‘Pillars of Salt’ is not very good. I struggled to finish it, giving up multiple times before grimly slogging to the finish.

Most of the narrative is preoccupied with relating conversational exchanges among the lead characters rather than dealing with time travel per se. The sci-fi underpinnings of the novel are superficial (we never are given any details of the theories governing Time Visitation). 

The main purpose of ‘Pillars’ seems to be to allow the author to expound on historical events. This can become tedious; for example, one chapter, which deals with the Battle of the Kasserine Pass in North Africa in February 1943, expands on the battle's strategic and tactical background, before segueing into another chapter which discourses on the experiences of four GIs involved in Kasserine combat. The presence of these chapters makes 'Pillars' seem like a historical novel, masquerading as a science fiction novel.

The Big Revelation (about time travel and interference by visitors from the future) that the plot seems to promise never really arrives in the final pages, giving the novel’s denouement an unconvincing tone. In my opinion, ‘Pillars of Salt’ can safely be passed by.

Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art

Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art
by David Roach
Dynamite, April 2017

This book originally was scheduled to be published in January of 2017, but it actuality it didn't come out on store shelves until April. 

So, how does the book present ?

Overall, it's pretty good.

The opening chapters of the book provide a chronological overview of the work of Spanish artists in the comic book, magazine, paperback book cover, commercial art, and fine art realms of Europe and the U.S. from the early 1900s to the 1980s. 

Author Roach (who comes by his expertise in the Warren magazines and Spanish comic art legitimately, as the author of The Warren Companion, 2001, and The Art of Jose Gonzalez, 2015) does a good job of informing readers that the memorable work done by Spanish artists for Warren, Marvel, Skywald, and other U.S. publishers in the 70s and early 80s was only a part of the tremendous amount of art furnished by artists at such Spanish agencies as Selecciones Illustradas, Bruguera, and Bardon. 

The abundance of talented graphic artists in Spain meant that the Spanish commercial art market couldn't accommodate all of them, so many of the artists profiled in the book first began working for English publishers in the 50s and 60s, on romance and war titles. The adaptability of the Spanish artists meant that, after the end of the Warren magazines in 1983, many readily found work in providing cover and interior art for a host of German and Italian publications, such as the hugely popular Western series Tex.

The introductory chapters are followed by the artist profiles, which take up the bulk of the book. Major figures in the field, such as Rafael Aura Leon (aka 'Auraleon'), Jordi Bernet, Victor de la Fuente, Jose Gonzalez, Esteban Maroto, and Felix Mas all get several pages, while other artists may have one or two pages.

The book closes with a chapter, 'A New Generation', that looks at the work of  a newer generation of Spanish artists, including Ruben Pellejero, Daniel Torres, David Rubin and Ana Miralles, many of whom work for major U.S. and French comic book publishers on a variety of titles.

You can find reviews at amazon about Dynamite's lineup of hardcover comic art books, particularly its Vampirella compilations, which criticize these volumes for poor color, or black and white, reproductions, as well as the omission of pages from the original art. While Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art doesn't reproduce any comics in their entirety, and so the 'missing pages' complaint is moot, I can say that Masters has very good color reproductions, printed on quality stock paper.

One area, however, where the book does fall short is in the large number of typos; while I can overlook a few here and there, the typos in Masters often are a distraction. I don't know where in the production process these creeped in, but it speaks to a need for better proofreading.

One thing Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art succeeds in doing, is sparking interest in the large body of work that has yet to be translated into English and showcased for an American audience. 

For example, throughout the early 80s, the Spanish magazine (revista) Cimoc, which could be considered the equivalent of Heavy Metal, printed some outstanding work by many of the artists profiled in the book.

Also of interest is Rambla, one of the 'adult' revistas that marked the boom in fantasy art magazines in Spain during the 80s. 

Whether the content of these revistas ever will be formatted for an English-speaking readership is uncertain, as no collections in Spanish, equivalent to the 'Archives' volumes published for the Warren titles, have (to the best of my knowledge) ever been released.

Summing up, Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art certainly stands out as a great overview of a topic of interest to anyone who likes comic book and graphic art, the American black and white horror magazines of the 70s, Heavy Metal / Metal Hurlant, and the large body of comic art presented in publications in the UK and Western Europe. These fans will find the book to be a worthy reference, an entertaining read, and in many instances a nostalgia trip.

It's less clear whether anyone under the age of 40 will find the book a must-have. As author Roach points out in the book's last chapter, 'A New Generation', few if any Spanish artists still use the highly textured, pencil- centered approach to comic art that marked the generation that contributed to the American magazines of the 70s. 

With no black-and-white magazines such as Creepy or Vampirella on the stands anyone, and most contemporary comic book content rendered in computer-assisted color, most modern readers of comic books have little, if any, familiarity with the illustrative styles that dominated comic book publishing over forty years ago. However, those younger readers who do elect to peruse the pages of Masters of Spanish Comic Book Art are sure to find material here worth their attention.

Paradox Part Two

Paradox
Part Two
by Bill Mantlo (writer) and Val Mayerik (art)
from Marvel Preview No. 24 (Winter 1980)

Paradox Part One

Paradox
Part One
by Bill Mantlo (writer) and Val Mayerik (art)
from Marvel Preview No. 24 (Winter 1980)

By 1980, the influence of Heavy Metal magazine on Marvel Comics was undeniable. In the Winter, 1980 issue of Marvel Preview, the black-and-white comic magazine that Marvel used to introduce new characters to its readership, writer Bill Mantlo and artist Val Mayerik showcased 'Paradox', a sci-fi story that yearned to be seen as the type of edgy, daring material routinely showcased in Heavy Metal.

 Although Marvel Preview was not bound by the Comics Code, it also shied away from depicting the R-rated content that distinguished Heavy Metal. Which means that the PG-13 content in some segments of 'Paradox' gives every sign of contrived efforts to titillate...........sort of like the way Esquire magazine was regarded in comparison to Playboy and Penthouse in the 70s. 

When looked at 36 years later, however, Paradox has its appeal. Its hero, the eponymous Paradox, is a ballet dancer who specializes in routines performed in anti-gravity - obviously, in the words of a Lunar bureaucrat, Paradox is 'a bleeding fairy !' 

(Back in the early 80s,such comments weren't considered Politically Incorrect).

But the plot soon reveals that Paradox, with his parted-in-the-middle blow-dried haircut that screams late 70s - early 80 fashion, is in fact a ladies' man, and in many ways a takeoff on the Warren Beaty character from the 1975 movie Shampoo.

Throw in decadent aristocrats, a drug that turns people into human torches, conspiracies, and handy concealed wrist lasers, and you get a story that is, in many ways, superior to contemporary sci-fi comics like Saga, Black Science, and The Manhattan Projects.

Val Merik's art, while not particularly polished, is serviceable for a black-and-white magazine.

I'm posting the entire 'Paradox' story in two parts. The original print quality of the Marvel Preview magazine from which I made these scans is pretty dire, and needless to say the passage of 37 years also hasn't helped........but hopefully, at 300 dpi, the scans provide sufficient resolution to overcome some of these deficiencies...........