'Flight Back' by Pepe Moreno

from the April 1981 issue of Epic Illustrated

Interview with P. Craig Russell

(from the October 1982 issue of Epic Illustrated)

Craig Russell did much of the artwork for the later issues of the Amazing Adventures / War of the Worlds / Killraven series, as excerpted here at the PorPor Books Blog.

The interview is from the pages of the October 1982 issue of Marvel's 'Epic Illustrated', featuring an 'Elric' story illustrated by Russell. Russell provides some interesting observations on comic art, working with writers on titles for Marvel, and his forthcoming single-shot, 40-pp Killraven book (which Marvel released as a graphic novel in 1983).

Arthur Suydam's 'Mudwogs'

from 'Echo of Futurepast' issue 4

A bedtime story featuring an unpleasant incarnation of Humpty-Dumpty.

Suydam's artwork in this comic is outstanding, calling to (slightly warped) mind Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, or Maxfield Parrish. 

The double-page spread of pages 24 and 25 must have taken Suydam over a week of careful draftsmanship and coloring to complete. The detail (below) of the fat woman scooping egg into her mouth, including the bracelets on her wrist, the ruffles of the sleeves of her dress, and the vertical slats of the back of the chair she is sitting in, gives some idea of the careful penmanship at work here.

 

Two paintings by Robert Williams

" Bedroom eyes, Party Gags, and Graveyard Demeanor"

"Strong Mezcal with Incendiary Chaser"

From Visual Addiction: The Art of Robert Williams, Last Gasp, San Francisco, 1989

Book Review: 'Space Viking' by H. Beam Piper

 1 / 5 Stars

‘Space Viking’ (243 pp.) was originally published in 1962 as a serial in the digest magazine ‘Analog’; this Ace paperback apparently was released in January 1977, and features a cover illustration by Michael Whelan.

In the far future, the Federation has collapsed, and the human-colonized worlds each stand and survive on their own. Some have loosely organized themselves into ‘Sword Worlds’, which send forth armed ships manned by ‘Space Vikings’ to raid and plunder other planets.

On the Sword World of Gram, Lucas Trask, an affable young man, looks forward to marrying his fiancée and living a comfortable life as a mid-level aristocrat. However, Andray Dunnan, a deranged former suitor of his wife-to-be, the Lady Elaine, crashes the wedding ceremony. Dunnan kills Elaine and seriously wounds Trask before escaping off-planet in a commandeered raiding ship.

Recovered from his wounds, Lucas Trask has thoughts only for revenge. He joins with Admiral Harkaman, an experienced Space Viking, on a quest to find Dunnan wherever he is hiding in the vastness of explored space. If that quest requires the plundering and destruction of hapless planets, so be it, for Lucas Trask is a man on a mission of vengeance. 

However, Andray Dunnan is not one to sit and wait for doom to come upon him…..and inevitably the fleets of pursuer and pursued will clash in battle.

Even by the rather forgiving standards of early 1960s SF, ‘Viking’ is a pedestrian effort at a space opera. The novel’s pacing starts to slow after the opening chapters as author Piper increasingly uses the standard-issue 'revenge' trope to fuel his labored musings on political theory and the decline and fall of civilization. 

The novel’s dialogue has the rather juvenile character of SF writing at the time. Damaged ships are ‘….leaking air and water vapor like crazy’, and more than a few passages can politely be called Wooden:

“I know, Prince Trask; you have no reason to think kindly of King Angus – the former King Angus, or maybe even the late King Angus, I suppose he is now- but a bloody-handed murderer like Omfray of Glaspyth….” 

‘Space Viking’ is best left forgotten as one of a large number of formulaic stories and fix-ups published by Analog during the late 50s and early 60s. 

Don't be fooled by the snazzy Star-Wars era packaging Ace books used to market this obsolete clunker as a masterpiece of modern SF.

'The Devil's Zombie' by Dick Ayers

according to Mike Howlett's 'The Weird World of Eerie Publications', this story is an adaptation of 'The Wage Earners', from Weird Terror No. 1, Sept., 1952. Its first appearance in a comic magazine from Myron Fass's and Carl Burgos's Countrywide / Eerie Publications line was in Tales of Voodoo Vol. 3, No. 3, 1970

'Report to the Plenary Council' 

from Starstream: Adventures in Science Fiction, issue No. 4, 1976

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’.