Book Review: Children of the Dragon

Book Review: 'Children of the Dragon' by Frank S. Robinson

4 / 5 Stars

Not to be confused with Frank M. Robinson (‘The Glass Inferno’, ‘Waiting’, ‘The Prometheus Crisis’), Frank S. Robinson apparently published only one novel in his time, this 1978 Avon paperback. The great cover illustration is, unfortunately, uncredited.

‘Children’ gives away most of its plot on the back cover, so I’m not disclosing any spoilers when I provide this brief outline:

Long ago, on an alternate earth, in the empire of Bergharra, rules the emperor Sarbat Satanichadh. 

Sarbat is a psychopath, fond of meting out the most hideous punishments for no other reason than because he can. When a notorious bandit named Jehan Henghmani is captured and imprisoned in the fetid dungeons beneath the emperor’s palace, Sarbat decides to take a look at this monster. For Jehan is indeed a monster: seven feet tall, surpassingly strong, and surpassingly ugly. 

When Jehan mocks the emperor as the ruler peers through the cell bars at him, Sarbat does not fly into a rage and order the bandit executed; instead, in a fit of perverse whimsy, he orders Jehan spared. Only to be continuously tortuted – but never to death – for the rest of his natural life. 

And to add to the torments to be inflicted on Jehan Henghmani, the prisoner is to be fed exclusively on human flesh – the legend of Jehan the ‘Man-Eater’ is to be made literal.

The first 100 pages of ‘Children’ detail, in prose not for the squeamish, the agonies inflicted on our hapless bandit hero. Even hard-core splatterpunk readers may be turned off by the atrocities detailed in the prison segment of the book. Things get a little more 'gentle' in the remaining pages, but not by much. Author Robinson takes a proto-Splatterpunk approach to things that was more than a little transgressive for a mainstream work of fiction produced in the late 70s.

Of course, Jehan ultimately escapes his prison, and the remainder of the book deals with his rise to power and his pursuit of revenge.

‘Children’ has the strengths and weaknesses of its genre, the 70s ‘epic’ adventure that served as the primary (and financially successful) creative output for authors such as James Clavell, John Jakes, and James Michener. The world of Bergharra and its peoples is drawn with depth and detail; the plot expands in time and space as the narrative unfolds; and each chapter brings new twist and turns to the overall storyline. 

However, the middle sections of the novel tend to drag, and the reader may find himself or herself having to persevere in order to arrive at the final chapters.

‘Children’ has a downbeat, cynical tenor that reflects its late 70s conception, and this may make it worthwhile to readers who are looking for an epic ‘barbarian’ fantasy with a flavor different from contemporary novels and series like ‘The Name of the Wind’, ‘The Game of Thrones’, and 'The Warded Man’.

Dangerous Curve

'Dangerous Curve' by Caza

from the April 1981 issue of Heavy Metal

a little more text-heavy than usual from Caza, but still an entertaining strip....

Book Review: Star Gate

Book Review: 'Star Gate' by Andre Norton

  4 / 5 Stars

‘Star Gate’ was originally published in 1958 in hardback by Harcourt, Brace, & Company. This Ace paperback (188 pp.) was published in February 1974. The cover artist is uncredited, but may be John Schoenherr.

In the far future, Terrans, as a race of 'Star Lords,' have spread throughout the galaxy, often taking up permanent residence among worlds settled by less advanced, humanoid races. For a small civilization of Terrans housed on the planet Gorth, where the aboriginals eke out a living using medieval-era technology, there is debate among the Star Lords as to the wisdom of raising up their adopted home's culture to a Space Age level. 

Do the Star Lords have the right and duty to interfere in the development of a culture not their own ? 

A decision is made: the Star Lords will depart, and let the native Gorthians evolve without interference.

Kincar s’Rud, the orphaned son of a Star Lord and a Gorthian woman, finds himself bereft of land and title by a usurper. Hearing rumors of a Star Lord encampment where spaceships are heading to distant planets, he sets off across the wilderness to find the camp, and perhaps a new career among the Terrans.

After some violent encounters with outlaws amid the mountain passes, Kincar joins a group of Star Lords, and their half-breed progeny, in the midst of fleeing an attack by a bandit army. 

The Star Lords pass through a hastily erected ‘Star Gate,’ which leads them to an alternate universe...... and an alternate Gorth !

On this version of Gorth, the Star Lords rule as cruel despots, abusing and enslaving the native population. The Star Lords of Kincar’s party are determined to bring down their evil doppelgangers.

Kincar is dispatched to find a weakness among the corrupt rulers of the alternate Gorth, a dangerous task made even more complicated by the fact here, the counterpart of his father is alive and well…..and quick to order the death of any half-breed that comes into his clutches.

‘Star Gate’ (the book apparently has no relation to the 1994 MGM film, or the subsequent television series), like much of Norton’s fiction, was aimed at a young adult audience, but I think older readers will find it worthwhile as well. The prose is clear and direct, and the while the plot is fast-moving, the world of the alternate Gorth, its rogue Star Lord masters, and their fearful slaves, is portrayed with depth sufficient for a novel of short length. 

Reading ‘Star Gate’ as I did, after digesting yet another early 70s New Wave anthology, was a nice change of pace. This Norton novel is worth picking up.

'Heavy Metal' magazine April 1981

'Heavy Metal' magazine, April 1981, featured a front cover by Esteban Maroto titled 'Sybil', and a back cover by Les Edwards titled 'Woof !'.

Ongoing series installments dominated this issue, with Corben's 'Bloodstar', Howarth's 'Changes', 'Ambassador of the Shadows' by Christin and Mezieres, and 'What Is Reality, Papa ?' by Ribera and Godard.

Among the better of the singleton comics was 'Good-bye, Soldier !', written by Ricardo Barreiro, with distinctive black and white art by Juan Giminez. 

In its style of illustration, setting, and pacing, 'Good-bye' calls very much to mind contemporary shooter video games like 'Killzone' and 'Halo', although back in April 1981 the idea that a video game would be technologically capable of rendering anything more than rudimentary images would have been considered impractical, if not wildly ambitious..........

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

'The Zombie Factory', edited by Patrick O'Donnell

Like me, you may have had your childhood warped by the black and white comic magazines produced by Eerie Publications. 'Terror Tales', 'Witche's Tales', 'Horror Tales', and other titles sported garish, tasteless covers, and comics heavy on mutilated corpses and severed heads.

The Eerie magazines were the brainchild of schlock publisher and gun nut Myron Fass, and Carl Burgos (creator of the Human Torch), of Countrywide publications . Fass created the Eerie line in the mid-60s as a way to capitalize on the success of the Warren horror titles. Most of the stories appearing in the Eerie magazines were re-workings of 50s horror comics, the original sheets of which Fass had purchased en masse at a discounted price.

However crude and mercenary Fass's marketing philosophy may have been, the Eerie books were the most hard-hitting horror material on the shelves from the mid 60s to the early 80s.

Unfortunately, getting one's hands on the Eerie comics nowadays is expensive. Copies of 'Terror Tales', etc. in good condition sell for more than $15 each at eBay.

It's not clear who (if anyone ) now owns the reprint rights to the Eerie comics. According to Mike Howlett's comprehensive overview of the Fass publishing empire, in 1976, increasing acrimony between Myron Fass and Countrywide co-executive Stanley R. Harris (Fass actually fired a bullet through the wall of his office and into Harris's) led to the latter man's departure to form Harris Publications. Harris took with him the rights to publish the horror titles.

No one knows if Stanley Harris and Harris Publications, which is still in operation ('Vampirella' is one of its more well-known titles), intends to release the Eerie equivalent of the affordable softcover compilations for Old School comics, as the Marvel 'Essentials' series or the DC 'Showcase' series have done. 

Until something develops on that front, the best that fans of the Fass and Burgos comics can do is to pick up 'The Zombie Factory'.

'Zombie' is available for $18.99 from amazon.com; the book is published by Idea Men Productions, a small independent publisher whose titles are primarily issued in a print-on-demand (POD) format (i.e., no physical copies of the books are maintained in inventory, but once an order is received, a special printing press is used to produce the book in softcover format within minutes). 

[Presumably the Eerie comics presented in 'Zombie' are in the Public Domain, but I'm not one to quibble over licensing rights.]

'Zombie' contains 27 strips that appeared in the Eerie pubs from 1970 to 1978. Unfortunately, detailed information on the artist and writer for each comic is not provided, but some of the artists represented include Dick Ayers, Chic Stone, Ezra Jackson, and Oscar Fraga. 

Most of the strips are not among the goriest from the Eerie archives, although 'The Slimy Mummy' (Jackson) and 'Voodoo Terror' (Stone) are present and accounted for. 

I've excerpted a classic from Dick Ayers: 'A Corpse for the Coffin', which features Ayers' artistic trademark: popping eyeballs......

Book Review: 'The Silent Multitude' by D. G. Compton

1 / 5 Stars

‘The Silent Multitude’ (189 pp) was released by Ace Books in 1966; the cover illustration is by Leo and Diane Dillon.

The book’s title refers to the spores of an alien fungus, which has evidently been brought back to Earth by a space mission. The microscopic spores pose no threat to life forms, but they do love to degrade concrete and cement, often leveling a multi-storey building within a matter of days. Their advance across civilization is inexorable, and people are fleeing the major urban centers for refuge in the countryside.

As the novel opens, the spores are laying waste to the UK, with the city of Gloucester on the verge of becoming infected. It’s the ‘future’ (i.e., 1980), and the city is essentially a mass of ugly, soul-less concrete office buildings characteristic of the Modernist architecture of Le Corbusier (the pseudonym of French architect Charles Jeanneret).

The narrative follows the interactions of four people who choose to remain in the city after the evacuation, taking their chances with the coming dissolution of the buildings all around them: Dean Goodliffe, rector of the Anglican cathedral; ‘Paper’ Smith, a deranged elderly man who lives as a vagrant in a nook of the city’s commercial district; Simeon Crankshawe, an alienated young man whose deceased father was the chief architect of the modern Gloucester; and Sally Paget, an ambitious young news reporter.

‘Multitude’ is a very earnest effort by author Compton to write the sort of downbeat, existential novel characteristic of those then being produced, to great critical acclaim, by fellow Englishman J. G. Ballard. While there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, the awkward truth is that ‘Multitude’ is miserably bad. The narrative is profoundly dull, consisting of lengthy passages of internal monologues, and later lengthy dialogues, among the four characters, designed to notify the reader that he or she is encountering a Serious Work of Fiction rather than the juvenile literature associated with ‘genre’ SF.

Readers who are interested in tackling ‘Multitude’ will need to steel themselves for regular encounters with over-written passages such as this one:

He was a sadist, not in relation to people but in relation to the monstrous dwellings built by people. He sublimated his violent tendencies into the suffering of glass and concrete. He was perhaps a sadist toward society. But society was not people. He could not, would not have it that society was composed of people.

Compton tries much too hard to imbue every page with Deep Thoughts on the Futility of Modern Life, the angst that accompanies one’s awareness that God is Dead, the rejection of their elder’s values by Questioning Youth, etc., etc. The fragments of plot that survive being burdened with these overworked themes lack the necessary energy to propel the storyline, and I often had to force myself to keep reading the book.

‘The Silent Multitude’ is an unfortunate example of the Ballard pastiche that missed the mark…by quite a wide margin.

Epic Illustrated Spring 1980

'Epic Illustrated' Spring 1980

Back in the day, I never paid much attention to 'Epic Illustrated', the first issue of which appeared in the Spring of 1980.

It was clearly another effort by Stan Lee to try and cash in on the success of a magazine  introduced by a rival company. Much as he did with the black and white magazines designed to mimic the success of Warren's 'Creepy' and 'Erie', or 'Crazy', which was a pallid imitation of 'Mad', 'Epic' was designed to attract the readership of 'Heavy Metal'.

Showing prudence in regard to marketing and budgeting (earned by the comparatively poor performance of more than a few of Marvel's magazine-format trial run issues in the 70s), Lee produced Epic Illustrated on a quarterly basis during 1980. In ensuing years it was published at a rate of 5 or 6 issues per year, and then just one issue in 1986, when it ceased publication.

Nowadays issues in good condition go for $5 - $10 or more on eBay, and a complete set of all 34 issues in very fine / near mint condition will go for more than $120. I was able to get a bunch of copies in decent shape, and I will be posting stories from them on an ongoing basis.

I'm finding that Epic attracted some good talent, including Heavy Metal contributors like Arthur Suydam, Mirko Ilic, and Ray Rue, and its pages contained some worthy material. 

Issue one featured a 'Silver Surfer' story with outstanding artwork by John Buscema. Unfortunately, Stan Lee's script for 'The Answer' wasn't as impressive. I think maybe he should have let the Surfer's creator, Jack Kirby, do the honors....

Book Review: The Return

Book Review: 'The Return' by Richard Maynard

  5 / 5 Stars

This book first was published in 1988 in the UK by small press publisher Souvenir Press, as 'The Quiet Place.' In 1990 Grafton issued a paperback edition, with a striking cover by Tim White.

In the U.S., a paperback edition, retitled ‘The Return,’ was released by Leisure Books, under the imprint of the 'Gloria Diehl Book Club Selection,' in October 1989.

 

‘The Return’ starts with a voyage into interstellar space by a team of seven British astronauts. Their goal is to travel faster-than-light to the Alpha Centauri system and back, a journey which should take the equivalent of sixteen years of Earth-time. Unfortunately the ship encounters navigational problems and goes off-course; by the time the crew corrects the error, they have been traveling for 15 years ship-time. The crew must confront the awful fact that, since their departure, centuries may have passed on Earth.

When the ship reaches Earth orbit, there is a disturbing absence of radio communications. The crew proceeds with splashdown into the Atlantic and find that no ships or aircraft have come to greet them. They inflate their emergency life-raft and slowly make for the coast of France. Upon arrival they are stunned to discover that the countryside is devoid of lights and traffic; everywhere, the landscape is covered with bushes and trees, suggesting that civilization as they know it has ceased to exist. 

And the humans that populate these landscapes are not friendly, as the starship crew soon discovers…...

Can our intrepid Brits discover their inner Cro-Magnon in time to survive in a world they barely recognize ? Can they uncover the reason for the decline of civilization into barbarity ? Does there anywhere exist a remnant of their era, or has the entire planet lapsed into a Stone Age culture ?

‘The Return’ is one of the better examples of 80s post-apocalyptic SF novels. It is a violent book, with as much bloodshed and mayhem as Neal Barrett Jr’s ‘Through Darkest America,’ Piers Anthony’s ‘Battle Circle’ novels, or the 'Mad Max' movies. 

The episodes of conflict between the hapless spacemen (who arrive on their home world unfortunately lacking laser rifles, grenade launchers, and railguns) and the inheritors of the planet are well-written and suspenseful, and maintain the narrative’s momentum on to the last of its 240 pages.

Indeed, rather than SF proper, ‘Return’ belongs more in the sub-category of Western adventure novels in which naïve, too-trusting white settlers or adventurers come into contact with hostile natives and endure all manner of ghastly abuse, all the time wondering, bleeding and bewildered, why no one wants to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbayah.’

‘The Return’ isn’t perfect; I for one was turned off by the too-frequent sentences in which the first-person narrator indulges in Portents of Doom (‘had I only known, I would not have let Pip and Barry take that fateful journey…’). Our heroes often do rather dumb things, as the author uses these as mechanisms to thrust his characters into yet another dangerous encounter. And the reason given for the downfall of civilization struck me as more than a little contrived.

However, these faults aside, ‘The Return’ is a very readable, downbeat take on a familiar SF theme, and worth searching out by fans of the genre. It's a shame that author Maynard didn't write any more sci-fi novels, as this one shows he definitely had the necessary skills to make a mark in the genre.

Killraven Amazing Adventures No. 36

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 36

(May 1976)

The May, 1976 issue of 'Amazing Adventures: Featuring War of the Worlds' (No. 36) is the beginning of the end of the 'War of the Worlds' incarnation of the title. There were only three more installments (i.e., up to issue 39) remaining. The Letters column in this issue indicates that WotW has been on the verge of cancellation for some time, so the writing is on the wall. 

Unfortunately, 'Red Dust Legacy', the story for this issue, must not have done all that much to attract new readers; it's easily one of the more incoherent episodes in the Killraven franchise. 

Don McGregor's plot opens with one of Killraven's ESP hallucinations (which I have excerpted below), before shifting to a veiled introduction of our hero's brother 'Deathraven', followed by  confusing segments involving inter-generational Martian angst; a Martian 'hatchery'; and conflict between Killraven and his follower Carmilla Frost.

As always, the art - layouts by Craig Russell and art by Sonny Trinidad - is very good, but in this issue in particular it's overwhelmed with McGregor's overwrought script. 

In order to accommodate McGregor's plot machinations within the confines of just 17 comic pages, the artists are forced to use too many small panels too crowded with narrative text and speech balloons. It has an overall effect of making the book a chore to read and understand.