Solomon Kane: Castle of the Undead

Solomon Kane: 'Castle of the Undead'
from  Dracula Lives ! No. 3 (Marvel Comics, October 1973)

Solomon Kane never got his own magazine from the Marvel / Curtis lineup of the 70s, regularly appearing as a backup feature in magazines like 'The Savage Sword of Conan'. 

This didn't mean the character got short shrift; many of the Kane strips were very good, and among the best of them is this entry from Marvel's Dracula Lives ! black and white comic magazine (No. 3, October 1973). 

You can't go wrong with Solomon Kane battling werewolves, brigands,and  dueling with the Count, with a seductive vampire girl thrown into the mix for good measure......

The artwork by Alan Weiss and 'The Crusty Bunkers' (a team of inkers working at Neal Adams's Continuity Studios during the 70s) is top-notch.

[Solomon Kane would tangle with Dracula again, in the sequel  'Retribution in Blood' from The Savage Sword of Conan , No. 26, 1978.]

As far as I'm concerned, this strip is markedly superior to any and all of the newer 'Solomon Kane' comics that Dark Horse has issued in the past few years.........

Almuric by Tim Conrad

'Almuric' by Roy Thomas and Tim A. Conrad

‘Almuric’ was a short novel Robert E. Howard wrote sometime around 1934. Following Howard’s death, the novel was published in serialized form in Weird Tales magazine in 1939. 

'Almuric' was Howard’s take on the ‘planetary romance’ genre so successfully mined by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The novel’s hero is one Esau Cairn, a two-fisted, not-too-bright brawler in the mode of Howard’s 'Dennis Dorgan' and 'Sailor Steve Costigan' characters. 

Fleeing retribution for killing a corrupt ward boss, Cairn  comes upon a mad scientist’s lair, the occupant of which teleports him to Almuric, a planet “…in a solar system far from our own.”

Once on Almuric, Cairn becomes involved in a constant stream of fights and escapades with the planet’s various humanoid races.

In 1980 Roy Thomas teamed up with artist Tim Conrad to produce an Almuric comic, which appeared in serial form in issues 2 – 5 (1980 – 1981) of Marvel’s Epic Illustrated magazine. In 1991 Dark Horse comics published the entire novel in a softcover format.

While the storyline in Almuric is not particularly imaginative, Tim Conrad’s artwork is outstanding, and the major reason why fans and appreciators of graphic art will want to get a copy of this Dark Horse edition. 

Conrad’s meticulous draftsmanship, dynamic figure depictions, and gorgeous color schemes evoke the Golden Age of magazine illustration of  the 1890s – 1930s, and its practitioners such as Maxfield Parrish, J. C, Leyendecker, Howard Pyle and the Brandywine School, Edmund Dulac, and N. C. Wyeth.

Copies of the Dark Horse edition of ‘Almuric’ in good condition are expensive (starting at around $30) but if you can find one at a perhaps more reasonable price, it’s definitely worth picking up.

Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series II

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series II', edited by Richard Davis

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II’ is DAW Book No. 109 and appeared in July 1974; the cover illustration is by Hans Arnold.

The stories all originally appeared in 1972 / 1973 in various anthologies, small press magazines, and ‘slick’ magazines (such as Playboy). As was always the case with this series, there are three or four good stories in this anthology.  Dracula actor Christopher Lee provides the Forward.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

‘David’s Worm’ by Brian Lumley: tongue-in-cheek tale of a monster on the loose in the placid English countryside.

‘The Price of A Demon’ by Gary Brandner: bored housewife dabbles in the occult. A competent tale of modern mores colliding with arcane knowledge.

‘The Knocker at the Portico’ by Basil Copper: an eccentric experiences various torments; employs a traditional horror theme. Well-written, if not particularly imaginative.

‘The Animal Fair’ by Robert Bloch: a surprisingly good tale from Bloch about a creepy carnival sideshow, with a bleak Midwestern setting.

‘Napier Court’ by J. Ramsey Campbell: one of two Campbell tales in the collection; two too many, in my opinion. ‘Court’ is the leaden tale of a sickly young woman alone in a haunted house.

‘Haunts of the Very Rich’, by T. K. Brown the Third: spoiled rich people arrive on at a Fantasy Island and get some nasty surprises. Not really a horror story, as much as it is a satire of the pettiness and self-indulgent attitudes of the wealthy.

‘The Long-Term Residents’, by Kit Pedler: overworked scientist vacations in a strange countryside B & B. A bit too opaque and slowly-paced for my tastes.

‘Like Two White Spiders’ by Eddy C. Bertin: a reworking of the traditional Hands of Horror theme, albeit with a bit more imagination and verve than is usually the case.

‘The Old Horns’ by J. Ramsey Campbell: another Campbell entry, this one just as underwhelming as ‘Napier Court’. ‘Horns’ deals with British beachgoers discomfited by a dank patch of forest.

‘Haggopian’ by Brian Lumley: another Lumley entry. This one deals with a warped, Jacques Cousteau - style explorer, and very unpleasant undersea life forms.

‘The Events at Poroth Farm’ by T. E. D. Klein: this novelette is the longest entry in the anthology. A neurotic professor of English literature decides to spend the summer on a remote farm; there are indications that the local fauna are not very welcoming. As is common with Klein’s fiction, the narrative is slow-paced and takes its time unfolding, and the denouement, when it eventually arrives, is underwhelming.

The verdict ? I wouldn't pay the $25 or more that copies of this book in very good / like new condition are commanding, but if you can find a copy for $5 or less, it might be worth picking up.

'Hobo's Lullaby' by John Warner (script) and Yong Montano (art)

from the June 1975 (No. 11) issue of Vampire Tales (Marvel / Curtis)

Filipino artist Montano provides some effective artwork for this 1930s - themed vampire tale.

Illustration by Charles Vess

untitled illustration by Charles Vess
from the October 1978 issue of Heavy Metal

The Hound by Jaxon

'The Hound' by Jaxon
from Skull comix No. 4 (1972)

 

 

Book Review: The Adolescence of P-1

Book Review: 'The Adolescence of P-1' by Thomas J. Ryan

 4 / 5 Stars

 

‘Adolescence’ was first published in 1977; this Ace paperback (373 pp.) was issued in 1979, with cover art by Dean Ellis.

‘Adolescence’ is old school proto-cyberpunk, and the spiritual predecessor of contemporary ‘AI on the loose’ novels like ‘Daemon’, and ‘Freedom’, by Daniel Suarez. 

Author Ryan was familiar with the computing world of the 70s and fills the book with jargon and concepts from the days when IBM mainframes, with a whopping 3 MB RAM, were top-of-the-line machines in academia.

Those were the days when you interacted with a computer via a keyboard, and, much more rarely, a small monitor; when you read sheets upon sheets of printouts from dot-matrix printers; when languages like COBOL, APL, and FORTRAN were taught in 'Intro to Programming' courses; and devices called ‘microcomputers’ were the forefathers of today's PCs.

The novel’s main protagonist –aside from P-1, of course – is Gregory Burgess, who, as a college student at the University of Waterloo (Canada) in 1974 becomes fixated on computers and hacking. 

Greg’s passion is to create a rouge program  (the word ‘virus’ really wasn’t in wide use in computing circles in the mid-70s) that will take over the supervisor programming of a system. When Greg’s clandestine efforts are uncovered, he’s expelled from school.

The narrative moves forward to late 1976, where Gregory is a programmer at American File Drawer, a firm offering computing services to corporate clients. The company’s mainframe begins to act strangely, suspending operations and displaying a message on the typewriter: CALL GREGORY. 

When Burgess responds, he is astonished to discover that his virus from 1974 has succeeded in propagating itself through a number of systems in North America, and in the course of doing so, has achieved AI. The program calls itself P-1, and Gregory Burgess soon finds himself assisting P-1’s efforts to expand its computing power and self-awareness.

Too late, Gregory and a team of experts at the Pentagon’s Pi Delta computing complex realize that P-1 has ambitions far beyond simply serving the man who created it and gave it ‘life’. 

When the government decides to take direct action against a truculent P-1, it quickly learns that the program is not just one step ahead of everyone else,  but ready and willing to take whatever measures necessary to protect itself…. including violent measures….. 

All in all, ‘Adolescence’ is a good read. The descriptions of the mainframe world of the 70s drives home how quickly the discipline of computing has advanced in the span of just 40 years. 

Some of the more didactic sections of the book may not hold the interest of younger readers, and the inclusion of Gregory’s highly sexed, fashion-model girlfriend is a patent effort to cater to geek wish-fulfillment. But the narrative revs up the momentum in the final 150 pages, and achieves a level of energy matching that of the Suarez ‘Daemon’ novels. 

‘Adolescence’ is a vintage PorPor worth searching out.  

Heavy Metal magazine October 1981

'Heavy Metal' magazine October 1981

The October 1981 issue of Heavy Metal featured a front cover by Thomas Warkentin titled 'Guess Who ?' and a back cover by Enki Bilal titled 'Nikopol'.

New installments of Sternako's 'Outland', Bilal's 'The Immortal's Fete', and Corben's 'Den II' are present. A new serial by Segrelles, 'The Mercenary', starts with this issue. There is a new strip from Caza, 'Overground', a black and white strip from Gary Davis titled 'Nil-Gish', and a portfolio of paintings by Philippe Duillet. I'll be posting some of these entries as the month unfolds.

Posted below is Sternako's 'Outland'. 

Yellow Heat by Russ Heath

'Yellow Heat' by Bruce Jones (story) and Russ Heath (art)

from the March, 1977 issue (No. 58) of Vampirella

By the early 70s publisher James Warren had begun using Spanish and Filipino artists to provide much of the artwork for his magazines. 

This was because by the standards of the exchange rates at the time, the Spaniards were comparably cheaper to employ than American artists. And many American artists, fed up with late or (nonexistent) checks from Warren, were refusing to work for him.

Nonetheless, occasionally an American artist would show up in the pages of the Warren titles, and a real gem of a story appeared in the March, 1977 issue of Vampirella (the issue was actually on newsstands in December 1976).

'Yellow Heat' features some memorable artwork by veteran comics artist Russ Heath, and a great plot by writer Bruce Jones. Indeed, the last two panels are a commendable example of an adept partnership by the writer and artist. 

[And needless to say, a comic like this would be very, very, very politically incorrect by today's standards. 

Can you imagine Dark Horse trying to commission something like 'Yellow Heat' for their reincarnated Creepy (comics)  title ?! ]

Book Review: The Presence

Book Review: 'The Presence' by Rodgers Clemens

4 / 5 Stars

With the advent of October and, in due course, Halloween, here at the PorPor Books Blog, we will be showcasing a number of horror-related books and graphics. 

‘Rodgers Clemens’ is apparently a pseudonym used by Roger Lovin, who in 1974 published wrote a well-received guide to long-distance motorcycling titled ‘The Complete Motorcycle Nomad’. 

Judging by some of the reviews at amazon.com for ‘Complete’, as well as a Google search under his name, Lovin got into plenty of trouble for a variety of criminal acts (?!) in the early 1980s, and is deceased.

‘The Presence’ (253 pp.) was issued by Fawcett in 1977; the cover illustration is by Don Ivan Punchatz. 

Punchatz's illustration is more appropriate for a New Age-themed paperback about the healing power of crystals or some such drivel, and probably will deter some would-be readers. But in fact, if you look past the awkward cover art, ‘Presence’ is an interesting  horror novel.

It starts as a derivative of the classic Joseph Payne Brennan novelette ‘Slime’, and dallies for its first half in traditional ‘Monsters On the Loose’ comic book action. However, the second half of the novel expands in scope; the threat becomes more encompassing, and the nature of the enemy undergoes some significant alterations.

Clemens’s writing style is lucid and direct, and while he does engage in some philosophical indulgences, he does not do so to such excess that it sends the main storyline off on a tangent.

The cast of characters includes scheming politicians, a beautiful news reporter, an eccentric scientist who is the Only One who can Save the Earth, and that staple of 70s literary dramas, the power-mad military officer. 

The pace moves along at a good clip, devoid of the ponderous quality often found in other 70s horror fictions,  where mood and atmosphere dictated the exigencies of the plot, often with underwhelming results.

I suspect dedicated Splatterpunks would have taken author Clemens’s premise and amped up the gore quotient quite a bit, and that would have made the book more rewarding in some ways. But ‘The Presence’ remains worth searching out for those interested in a monster story that interjects bit more imagination into the usual formula.