Book Review: Nightblood

Book Review: 'Nightblood' by T. Chris Martindale

3 / 5 Stars

'Nightblood' (322 pp) was published by Warner Books in January 1990. The cover artist is Greg Winters. A quintessential 'Paperbacks from Hell' cover !

This is one of the more rare Paperbacks from Hell, and copies in decent condition have steep asking prices. I was able to get this rather battered copy for about $12.00. According to the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, Valancourt Books will add 'Nightblood' to their lineup of trade paperback reprints of the best of the Paperbacks from Hell inventory. Until they do, I wouldn't recommend spending a lot of money for the 1990 mass market paperback version.

As Grady Hendrix states in his review, this book 'supersizes 'Salem's Lot'. 

The little Indiana town of Isherwood (the sort of small town where the little old lady sitting at the counter of the local diner asks for 'Coky-Cola') is a stand-in for Jersusalem's Lot; instead of the Marston House, we have in Isherwood, the Danner Mansion; and instead of Susan Norton as the love interest, we have spunky waitress Billie Miller.

The novel's initial chapters take their time acquainting us with the novel's hero, Vietnam veteran Chris Stiles, who is depicted as so much the laconic, cynical, Man of Action Who Nonetheless, Deep Inside Himself Yearns for Love, and Life Not Dedicated to Hunting Vampires and the Existential Anomie that Accompanies Such a Lifestyle, that the author soon (inadvertently) turns him into a kind of Horror-Hero parody. 

Once he arrives in Isherwood - brought there by a Premonition of Evil, of course - Chris Stiles begins romancing Billie Miller, makes friends with Miller's two sons, investigates the rumors of disturbing phenomena at the Danner Mansion, and becomes the object of some scrutiny by the town's police deputy, Charlie Bean.

The vampire onslaught hinted at on the book's back cover blurb doesn't start up until page 229, but once it does, it has sufficiently frenetic action to redeem the slow pacing of the earlier chapters. There are plenty of vivid descriptions of firearm, sword, bludgeon, and simply hand-to-hand, acts of combat and author Martindale shows a willingness to let the vampires win some of these contests, keeping the story from getting too formulaic.

I won't reveal any spoilers about the ending, save to say that it avoids contrivance.

The verdict ? 'Nightblood' stands the test of time as a good representative of a Paperback from Hell. It has the strengths of the genre, as well as some of its weaknesses. If you are a devotee of the Paperbacks from Hell, than you'll want to investigate the Valancourt trade paperback version.

Monster Paintings by John Higgins

Monster Paintings
by John Higgins
from Beyond Watchmen and Judge Dredd: The Art of John Higgins
Liverpool University Press 2017

Most of these were for the covers of The Thing from Another World comics for Dark Horse in the early 1990s.

Edgar Allan Poe's Shadow by Corben

Edgar Allan Poe's Shadow
by Richard Corben
from Eerie No. 86, September 1977

With Halloween just 6 days away it's the right time to feature a nice little comic from Richard Corben............note that the color scheme was done well before the advent of Photoshop, or Illustrator, or any other sort of digital rendering software.

UPDATE: After consultation with reader Turtle, I found the 'missing' prologue page that accompanied this comic when it was first printed in black and white in Creepy No. 70 (April 1975). Subsequent color reprintings deleted the prologue page. 

I guess Jim Warren was too cheap to make the story an 8-pager when he 'recycled' it for the 1977 Eerie issue.........

Book Review: The Whispering Horror

Book Review: 'The Whispering Horror' by Eddy C. Bertin

3 / 5 Stars

The late Eddy C. Bertin (1944 - 2018) was a prolific author. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Bertin grew up in Belgium and published his first story in 1968. During the 70s he was a frequent contributor to horror anthologies in Europe and the USA, including DAW's The Year's Best Horror Stories series. 

Bertin also had one of the better entries ('Darkness, My Name Is') in the 1976 DAW H. P. Lovecraft anthology The Disciples of Cthulhu.

Many of his works were published in European books and magazines, and never were translated into English. Those of his stories that were translated into English tended to appear in small press magazines and digests. So, when I learned that the UK small press publisher Shadow Press had issued this trade paperback (2013; 277 pp) containing 14 stories, I was interested enough to order a copy.

[Shadow Publishing, which was founded by David Sutton, seems to since have been subsumed into the UK self-publishing / POD portal 'This Is Horror'.]

The entries in 'The Whispering Horror' first saw publication in the interval from the late 60s to the early 90s.

My capsule reviews of the contents:

Introduction, by David A. Sutton: Sutton provides an overview of Bertin's life and writings.

Composed of Cobwebs: a Seriously Disturbed man stalks the night-time streets.

Ten: an embittered scholar seeks vengeance through unusual means.

A Taste of Rain and Darkness: yet another tale of a psychotic killer stalking the night-time streets in search of an unsuspecting victim.

I Wonder What he Wanted: one of two 'first-person diarist' tales in the anthology. This is the better of the two; it's about a young woman who decides to rent a house.....a house with a checkered past..........

A Whisper of Leathery Wings: Colin Barker decides to spy on the village Witch Woman. It turns out to be a bad idea.

The Taste of Your Love: a serial killer stalks the Italian coastal town of Riccione. One of Bertin's best stories.

The Whispering Horror: little boys shouldn't go poking around the cellars of decrepit houses.......another of the better stories in the anthology.

The Man Who Collected Eyes: another 'psycho tale'; this one is about a man with a fetish - obviously enough- for eyes.

Belinda's Coming Home ! : the second 'first person diarist' entry. This one's about a girl with her own approach to problem-solving. It's Bertin's effort at a Splatterpunk tale, but it's too contrived to be very effective.

Like Two White Spiders: what if one's hands decide to embark on a Career of Evil ? One of the more original treatments of this topic.

Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams: a novelette about a coastal English town where the worship of Forbidden Beings brings severe consequences. One of Bertin's better Mythos stories, although I imagine most readers will see the denouement coming well in advance.

Behind the White Wall: short, 'shock' tale of a man and his telephone. 

Something Small, Something Hungry: a circus is plagued by deaths of a suspicious nature. This novelette goes on much too long, and has a very unconvincing ending. The worst story in the anthology.

My Fingers Are Eating Me: a Belgian journalist named Danny Vermeert looks to do a feature story on the London Underground. But his late-night jaunts on the subways reveal disturbing things........

This novelette takes its time getting underway, but in the end stands as another decent Mythos tale from Bertin. 

The verdict ? Even making allowances for the effects of translation from 'Belgian' (i..e, Dutch or French) to English, Bertin's prose is at times a bit too florid for my tastes, and too many stories suffer from overwriting. 

That said, several of the entries in 'The Whispering Horror' stand the test of time as good examples of the traditional style of horror fiction that dominated the genre during the interval from 1960 - 1990. 

[If you're looking for Splatterpunk, or VanderMeer-style 'Weird Horror', you're likely going to be disappointed with Bertin's offerings.]

Accordingly, while I can't designate this book as a Must-Have, if you see a copy on the shelf of your favorite used bookstore, it is worth picking up.

Art by Michael Whelan

Art by Michael Whelan
cover for The Year's Best Horror Stories Series V, edited by Gerald W. Page
DAW Books, July 1977

They Only Come Out at Night

They Only Come Out at Night
The Edgar Winter Group
November 1972

This album is referenced in Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salems Lot, so it is a undoubted touchstone of 1970s pop culture.

Although the tracks 'Frankenstein' and 'Free Ride' were successful singles, one of the best tracks on the album was the overlooked 'Autumn', written and performed by Dan Hartman (who would go on to have a big hit in 1984 with the song 'I Can Dream About You' from the movie Streets of Fire).

'Autumn' is a great 70s ballad, pure and simple.

Nightwings graphic novel

Nightwings
by Robert Silverberg, Cary Bates, and Gene Colan
DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel
1985

This 48-page DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel was published in 1985 and features cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz, interior art by Gene Colan, painted colors by Neal McPheeters, and lettering by Gaspar Saladino.

Silverberg's novella 'Nightwings' was published in 1969 and won the Hugo Award that same year. The adaptation for this graphic novel was done by Cary Bates.

Without disclosing any spoilers, I'll say that the graphic novel stays true to the novella, which in turn was Silverberg's effort to create a story that upended the traditional sci-fi narrative in which a heroic, square-jawed Terran rescues the distressed damsel from odious aliens. 

'Nightwings' takes place in a far-future Earth where civilization is in the grip of Entropy (very New Wave-ish) and deals with three misfits who join together to travel to 'Roum' (i.e., Rome). These outcasts are the Watcher, an elderly man who scans deep space for signs of danger; Gormon, a gengineered lizard-man who takes a dismissive view of society; and Avluela, a lithe young woman who can - at night-time - sprout wings from her back and take flight. Conveniently for this graphic novel, she does this in the nude.............

At the time he pencilled 'Nightwings', Gene Colan was moving away from the more traditional illustrative style of mainstream comics, and providing artwork that was looser and more abstract...............a style that incidentally was also easier, and quicker, to complete.

I can't say I find Colan's work for this graphic novel to be all that impressive. Indeed, that the artwork comes across reasonably well is due to the skill of painter McPheeters.

Summing up, Silverberg's novella is one of those rare New Wave-era pieces that has aged well, benefiting from an ending that had an unexpected, even 'shocking' tenor back in 1969. I can't say that this graphic novel adaptation represents a memorable treatment of the story, but if you are a fan of Silverberg's work and see it on the shelf of a used bookstore, you may want to pick it up. 

Book Review: The Block

Book Review: 'The Block' by Gerald Suster

2 / 5 Stars

'The Block' (286 pp) was published by Panther/Granada in 1984; the cover artist is uncredited.

Gerald Suster (1951 - 2001) was a UK author of a large number of fiction and nonfiction works on the occult and the supernatural over the interval from 1979 to 1997.

Is 'The Block' an undiscovered gem of a Paperback from Hell..........or another mediocre horror novel from the early 80s ?

The latter, unfortunately.............

The novel's opening chapter is mild enough: it's London, October 1982, and lawyer (er, barrister) Tom Bradley, his wife Veronica, and son Colin are overjoyed at moving into their seventh-floor apartment in the classy Lavender Gardens block. Due to Tom's dedication to pursuing Social Justice issues instead of taking on more lucrative legal work, the family's finances have been strained, and caused fissures in Tom's marriage; the move into the Gardens is seen as a chance to start over amid favorable surroundings.

No sooner have Tom, Veronica, and Colin begun to make their acquaintances with the other tenants of the Gardens when tragedy strikes; a resident is struck down in a gruesome manner in what appears to be an accident. But as the days pass, other mishaps begin to take their toll of the inhabitants of the building. Coincidence.........or malice ?

What Tom Bradley and the other residents of the Lavender Gardens don't know is that the site of the building has a dark and disturbing history involving the summoning of occult forces........and the awakening of these forces will bring death and destruction to the Block and its hapless tenants..........  

'The Block' has an interesting enough premise, but at 286 pages in length, it is too long and too indolent to really succeed as a horror novel.

In the initial chapters, author Suster has fun with describing the secret vices and perversions of the building's tenants, introducing both black humor and mild surprises, but these observations can't lend much momentum to the narrative. Episodes of violent deaths also pop up in the initial chapters, but these quickly become repetitive as the plot struggles to gain traction.

The final chapters bring on large doses of splatterpunk- style mayhem, but these are so belabored that rather than energizing the narrative, they simply prolong its misery.

I won't give away any spoilers, save to say that the denouement, when it finally arrives, has such a contrived quality that I found it to be disappointing.

The verdict ? 'The Block' is not one of the better examples of 80s horror fiction. Unless you are adamant about collecting all of Suster's works, this one can be avoided.

The Tower King episodes 15 - 18

The Tower King
episodes 15 - 18
Alan Hebden (writer)
Jose Ortiz (artist)
Eagle (UK) 1982

episodes 1 - 3 are here.
episodes 4 - 6 are here.
episodes 7 - 9 are here.
episodes 10 - 14 are here.

episodes 19 - 24 are here.

When Fall comes

When Fall Comes
excerpt from 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Chapter Six, The Lot (II)
1975

But when Fall comes, kicking Summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of the places he has seen and things he has done since last he saw you.

It stays on through October and in rare years, on into November. Day after day the skies are a clear, hard blue, and the clouds that float across them, always west to east, are calm white ships with gray keels. The wind begins to blow by the day and is never still. It hurries you along as you walk the roads, crunching the leaves that have fallen in mad and variegated drifts. The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper in your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.