Book Review: Together Brothers

celebrating Black History Month 2018

Book Review: 'Together Brothers' by Jim Robinson

4 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate Black History Month by covering a book - fiction or nonfiction - that illuminates the Black experience here in the United States.

For this year's Black History Month selection, the book is 'Together Brothers' by Jim Robinson.

‘Together Brothers’ (154 pp) was published by Award Books in 1974. It’s a tie-in novelization for the film of the same name.

‘Together Brothers’ is now regarded as one of the best films to emerge from the Blaxploitation era; its low-low budget turned out to be an advantage in terms of giving the film a documentary-based visual style. The plot is straightforward without being perfunctory, and the cast, mostly made up of amateur actors, delivered very good performances.

The soundtrack was composed by a young, up-and-coming soul artist named Barry White. His ‘Together Brothers’ theme song is pure classic early 70s R & B. Also good is ‘Somebody Gonna Off the Man’.

You can access the film via YouTube; even though the video quality is quite poor, it is watchable.

The novel adheres quite closely to the film, which is set in Galveston, ca. 1974. Needless to say, the ghetto lacks air conditioning, and everyone is coated with a film of sweat from the steamy Summertime heat. Despite this, the Brothers wear long pants and hats. See the still below - years before L. L. Cool J made wearing a Bucket Hat a major fashion statement, the Together Brothers made it their own hip accessory:

‘Mr. Kool’, the young black police officer assigned to foot-patrol the ghetto, is a representative of The Man. Although Mr. Kool is not welcomed by everyone, many of the residents see him as one of their own, and a needed presence amid the poverty of the ghetto.

The neighborhood gang: teenagers H. J., A. P., Monk, Gri’Gri’, and Mau Mau, are on guarded (but mutually respectful) terms with Mr Kool. 

When Mr Kool is murdered – brutally shot down in the street at night by an unknown assailant - H. J.’s younger brother, five year-old Tommy, is the sole witness. Although Tommy has seen the killer’s face, the shock of seeing the murder has left Tommy unable to speak.

Aware that the killer will try and eliminate Tommy, H.J. and the gang come to a fateful decision: they will launch their own, street-level investigation and discover who killed Mr Kool. This means they will tangle with a rival Latino gang, the local crime lord, indifferent prostitutes, and the police themselves. 

But for H. J., A.P., Monk, Gri’Gri’ and Mau Mau, the stakes are too high to let the death of Mr Kool turn into yet another unsolved killing…….. 

‘Together Brothers’ is a quick read and a good complement to the film (some of the more cryptic conversations and actions in the film are more clearly established in the novelization).

Unfortunately, copies of the novelization are going for steep prices (i.e., $10) at the usual online vendors. Ten dollars is a bit too steep, but if you can find a copy that is a little less pricey, ‘Together Brothers’ is well worth picking up.

The Pretenders, 1980

The Pretenders
London, 1980

left to right: Pete Farndon, Martin Chambers, Chrissie Hynde, and James Honeyman-Scott

One morning I received a call to say that Jimmy’s body had been found on the sofa of a girl’s flat. He had died of heart failure due to cocaine intolerance. After we fired Pete because his drug problems were affecting his performance, he drowned in a bathtub with a needle in his arm. Common stuff. Not unique to us.

- Chrissie Hynde

Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats

Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats
Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980
Edited by Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette
PM Press, December 2017

2017 was a good year for lavishly illustrated retrospectives of paperback books.

September saw the publication of Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, which examined American horror paperbacks from the late 60s to the early 90s.

December 2017 saw the release of 'Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats’, from US publisher PM Press, a small press company that mainly publishes books devoted to Marxism, Class Struggle, the Liberation of the Oppressed, and other far-left topics...... ?!

Copies of 'Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats’ are readily available at your usual online book retailer, as well as from the PM Press website.

‘Girl Gangs’ is a well-made, 336 page trade paperback tome, printed on good quality paper stock, with high resolution reproductions of some 400 covers of paperbacks published from the early 50s all the way up to the early 80s. The emphasis here is on paperbacks published in Australia, the US, and the UK, with the lineup of 20 contributors reflecting this multinational approach.

Editor Iain McIntyre has published several books on Australian pop culture, while Editor Andrew Nette maintains the Pulp Curry blog devoted to Australian crime and noir fiction.

The chapters in ‘Girl Gangs’ are arranged in a loose chronological order, leading off with the chapter titled ‘Teenage Jungle’, which covers the advent of the juvenile delinquent genre in the 50s, spearheaded by Irving Shulman’s 1947 novel The Amboy Dukes. ‘Beat Girls and Real Cool Cats’ covers pulp fiction treatments of Beatnik culture, and ‘Love Tribes’, the ‘hippie’ movement of the late 60s and early 70s. 

‘Groupies and Immortals’ deals with novels about rock and roll, groupies, and hedonism, while ‘Wheels of Death’ covers exploitation literature about motorcycle gangs. ‘Cults of Violence’ switches to the UK and its unique pulp fiction about skinheads, terrace terrors, and punks. The final chapter, ‘Outsiders’, deals with the Young Adult novels released in the US in the late 60s and early 70s.

The text content of the book consists of critical overviews and synopses of selected books and genres, and biographical sketches and interviews with pulp fiction authors. These span novels published in Australia, the UK, and the US (what can I say, once again, Canadians may feel left out), sometimes offering insights into the cultural and sociological tropes that gave a distinctive ‘national’ flavor to each country’s paperbacks.

One potential problem with a book like this is the temptation for some contributors to adopt a self-consciously ‘scholarly’ or ‘academic’ tone in their writings. Thankfully, most of the contributors to ‘Girl Gangs’ avoid this temptation and endeavor to keep their prose simple and direct, although no one adopts the irreverent humor that permeates Grady Hendrix’s analyses of Paperbacks from Hell. The only real clunker in ‘Girl Gangs’ is an essay by UK writer Stewart Home, whose use of terms like ‘wimmin’, ‘bigoted stereotypes’, ‘heterosexist conditioning’, and ‘patriarchal sexualities’ makes his piece an (unintentional) parody of a college term paper in Gender Studies.

The cornucopia of paperback covers that make up the meat and potatoes (or tofu and kale, if you prefer) of ‘Girl Gangs’ are well integrated into the text and anyone picking up the book for a casual look-through is sure to find themselves quickly becoming engrossed.

For my part, the contents of ‘Girl Gangs’ provided all manner of new insights and appreciations of the genre, particularly for novels released in Australia and the UK, very few of which ever made the successful journey to the US.

As with any book that attempts to cover such a wide swath of pop culture, an argument could be made that ‘Girl Gangs’ overlooks some major works. Missing in action is any mention of Warren Miller's Cool World (1959), Richard Price’s The Wanderers (1974), and Trevor Hoyle’s Rule of Night (1974), all of which were squarely situated in the genre, but easily transcended it, by virtue of their vision and literary merits. 

That said, even the most ardent fans of the genre are sure to find new discoveries among the pages of ‘Girl Gangs’, and here is where a significant problem emerges: many of the treasures unveiled in the book are long out of print, and in the hands of speculators who are intent on charging exorbitant prices for copies, even copies in poor condition. Some encouragement can be gained from the fact that some of the novels showcased in ‘Girl Gangs’ are available as eBooks, but if you’re like me, an eBook is never as good as having the real paper-and-glue thing there in your hand. So be warned: reading 'Girl Gangs' is going to lead to myriad impulse purchases that your bank account probably is not well prepared for......

Summing up, if you’re a fan of the genre, a student of Anglophone pop culture of the postwar years, a devotee of commercial art, or someone who enjoys offbeat, weird, twisted deviant, and disturbing material (and here John Waters fans come quickly to mind) then ‘Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats’ is well worth picking up !

Olivia Newton-John

Olivia Newton-John
publicity shoot for the movie Toomorrow 
Soho Square, London, July 1970

The Wizard's Venom by Frank Brunner

'The Wizard's Venom'
by Frank Brunner
from Star*Reach Greatest Hits, 1979

Featuring some fine graytone illustration, this comic from Frank Brunner offers a satirical take on the 'barbarian hero' theme............

Book Review: Stopwatch

Book Review: 'Stopwatch' edited by George Hay

2 / 5 Stars

‘Stopwatch’ (224 pp) was published by the New English Library in November 1975. The cover art is by Tim White.

In his Introduction, editor George Hay announces that the theme uniting the stories (all of which were written exclusively for this anthology) is ‘subversion.’

My capsule summaries of the contents:

The Protocols of the Elders of Britain, by John Brunner: a technician assisting with repairs to the UK Ministry of Defense super-computer makes some unsettling discoveries. One of the better entries in the anthology.

Are Your Home Grown Vegetables Radioactive ? by Kathleen Brennan: satire about governmental oversight of healthy eating.

Ash, Ash, by Robert Holdstock: a man is one of the galaxy’s most heinous mass-murderers…..or is he ? Author Holdstock tries to do ambitious things with this story, but I found it unconvincing.

All We Have on This Planet, by A. E. Van Vogt: editor Hay attempts to defuse criticism at having an entry by Van Vogt in this anthology by stating that it addresses the theme of subversion with skill and style...........?!  The story, which has something to do with a writer confronting an alien invasion, is plotless and vague.

EA 5000: Report on the Effects of a Riot Gas, by Ian Watson: in a near-future UK riven by anarchy and social strife, a team of Ministry of Defense staffers strategize a humane way to incapacitate rioters. Watson’s setting serves as a believable extrapolation of the economic turmoil gripping Britain in the mid-70s. This is another of the better entries in the anthology.

Intracom, by Ursula K. Le Guin: an overly labored satire of ‘Star Trek’; it gradually emerges that most of the crew is female, rather than male. This presumably is the ‘subversive’ element of the story. A reminder that the late Le Guin could produce some mediocre material.

A Bedtime Story, by Douglas Letts: faux-historical treatise about a UK company that designs and manufactures robots. Too dull and long-winded to be effective.

The Invisible Men, by Christopher Priest: the Prime Minister and his American minder try to converse on matters of import. Unremarkable.

Now is Forever, by Edward Allen: Neils Jorgsen becomes the world’s first man to Jack In to a supercomputer; in so doing, he receives a revelation about the Oneness of All Living Things. A slight tale, but one that perhaps deserves mention as a proto-Cyberpunk tale.

Charley, by Perry Chapdelaine: melancholy humor pervades this entry, about a boy who finds that sci-fi stories tell him as much about the human condition as his teachers and parents. Another of the better entries in ‘Stopwatch’.

When the Music’s Over, by Andrew Darlington: unremarkable tale of a conquered city which possesses some unusual audiovisual properties.

In Memoriam, Jeannie, by Josephine Saxton: a renegade team of scientists decides to conduct an illicit experiment involving the genius researcher Dr Jeannie Hardcastle. Saxton is attempting to say something ‘subversive’ with this tale, but the truth is, it’s underwhelming.

Doctor Fausta, by David I. Masson: a parallel universe theme is used to make satirical observations about how profoundly dysfunctional society is, whether located in Britain…… or in ‘Tribain’.

The verdict ? ‘Stopwatch’ is yet another all-original anthology of sci-fi stories where the majority of the contributors simply grabbed something from the top of their Unfinished Manuscripts pile, did a bit of additional work, and then mailed it in. The presence of three stories of quality really isn’t sufficient justification to recommend searching out ‘Stopwatch’.

Wonders by Maroto

Wonders
by Esteban Maroto
Eurotica, 2002

Spaniard Esteban Maroto (b.1942) is one of the most talented artists in comics and commercial sci-fi and fantasy art during the last 50 years. Disappointingly, there is no English-language overview of the artwork he has produced during that time.

I had some hopes that 'Wonders', an oversize trade paperback published by Eurotica in 2002, might be an effort towards rectifying that defect. Unfortunately, the book is not very good. Its 64 pages mostly are taken up with recent (i..e, around the time of the book's publication) graytone and color pictures Maroto has done for the pinup collector market; most of these have a softcore porn emphasis that is super-cheesy.

There are some images that are PG-rated, and I've gone and posted those below, although they really don't represent his best works. Sadly, the definitive overview of Maroto's art remains to be written.

Lovely Day by Bill Withers

'Lovely Day' by Bill Withers
January 1978

January 21, 1978, and amidst a Top 40 Singles chart crowded with major releases from artists such as the BeeGees, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, the Electric Light Orchestra, and Queen, at position 35 and rising is a single from West Virginia-born singer Bill Withers, called 'Lovely Day'.

Withers by that time was a well-known chart presence, thanks to previous hits such as 'Ain't No Sunshine' (1971) and 'Lean on Me' (1972). 'Lovely Day', taken from his 1977 album 'Menagerie', features an amazing vocal performance: Withers sustained one note for 18 seconds, one of the longest ever recorded on a major record release. What makes Withers' performance even more impressive is that this note came after a series of sustained notes beginning around the 2:53 mark. 

In the modern era, in which Auto-Tune and other software packages routinely are used to correct the vocals of major recording stars, Withers' performance is all the more impressive.

When I wake up in the morning, love And the sunlight hurts my eyes And something without warning, love Bears heavy on my mind Then I look at you And the world's alright with me Just one look at you And I know it's gonna be A lovely day ... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ... When the day that lies ahead of me Seems impossible to face When someone else instead of me Always seems to know the way Then I look at you And the world's alright with me Just one look at you And I know it's gonna be A lovely day..... When the day that lies ahead of me Seems impossible to face When someone else instead of me Always seems to know the way Then I look at you And the world's alright with me Just one look at you And I know it's gonna be A lovely day...

Ghost Rider 2099 issue one

Ghost Rider 2099
Len Kaminski (writer)
Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham (art)
Marvel Comics, May 1994

According to Ronin Ro in his book Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution (2004), in the early 1990s Stan Lee was increasingly disillusioned with the failure of Hollywood executives to greenlight production of a large-budget film featuring Marvel characters. Lee decided to return to scripting comic books, and one of his ideas was to create a new series of Marvel titles that were set a century into the future.

Marvel's editor at the time, Tom DeFalco, endorsed Lee's idea, and the Marvel 2099 imprint began in 1992 with the publication of Spider-Man 2099. Despite the advent of the Great Comic Book Crash of 1993, additional 2099 titles were rolled out in succeeding years, including Doom 2099, Hulk 2099, Punisher 2099, and X-Men 2099.

Ghost Rider 2099 kicked off in May 1994, and eventually ran for 25 issues until May 1996. That year most of the 2099 lineup was cancelled due to declining sales, and in December, Marvel declared bankruptcy.

The 2099 books were set in a shared dystopian, near-future world devoid of 'traditional' superheroes. There was a decided emphasis on incorporating the Cyberpunk aesthetic into all of the titles, and into Ghost Rider 2099 in particular.

Writer Len Kaminski took the inclusion of Cyberpunk elements to heart in this first issue of Ghost Rider 2099........perhaps a little to earnestly. Practically every panel has some message designed to remind the reader just how well Kaminski knows the genre. 

Here's a panel where the speech balloon references the lead characters from William Gibson's Neuromancer and John Shirley's A Song Called Youth:

These kinds of cutesy callouts tend to give the book a gimmicky character. Things aren't helped by the artwork, which tries to simultaneously channel the artistic styles of Simon Bisley, Frank MIller, and Walt Simonson......and predictably winds up an incoherent mess, for the most part.

That said, Ghost Rider 2099 retains merit for taking all sorts of 80s tropes, like the dystopian cityscapes of the Judge Dredd comics, 'virtual reality', and Robocop-style urban policing and working them all together into a comic that, while flawed, continues to represent one of the better Cyberpunk-themed titles of the past 25 years.

Posted below is the entire first issue of Ghost Rider 2099. I've included scans of some of the advertisements appearing in the comic. By the start of '94 the trading card market was oversaturated, but Marvel and other major companies continued to churn out set after set............