Heavy Metal April 1984

'Heavy Metal' magazine April 1984

April, 1984, and in rotation on MTV is 'Adult Education' by Hall and Oates. This song apparently is jumping back into the public eye due to its being included in the soundtrack to the monster-selling video game Grand Theft Auto V.

The new issue of Heavy Metal magazine is on the stands, with a cheesy cover illustration by Boris Vallejo, and a back cover illustration by Michael Kanarek.

The contents feature new installments of 'Ranxerox', 'Tex Arcana', 'The Third Incal: Planet of ZGold', 'Salammbo II', and 'Valentina'. It also features the second installment of Charles Burns' 'El Borbah' character, in a new series titled 'Living in the Ice Age'.

The series kicked off with the March, 1984 issue of HM; to keep things in synchrony, I am posting the first and second episodes of 'Living in the Ice Age.'

Book Review: The Broken Worlds

Book Review: 'The Broken Worlds' by Raymond Harris

1 / 5 Stars

‘The Broken Worlds’ (248 pp.) was published in August 1986 by Ace Books; the cover artwork is by Ron Miller.

‘Worlds’ was Raymond Harris’s first novel; he published two other sf novels with Ace, ‘Shadows of the White Sun’ (1988) and ‘The Schizogenic Man’ (1990).

The novel is set in the far future, where the Federation has long since dissolved, and the colony worlds go about their business with few thoughts about the other worlds in the galaxy.

Attanio Hwin is a young, affectless musician who performs in the sleazy bars cramming the pleasure district of Parmenio, the Red Light Planet for the known galaxy. After a performance one night, he finds himself befriended by a beautiful off-world woman named Sringle, who travels in the company of Martian mercenaries. 

Beguiled by Sringle, Attanio agrees to help her and her comrades – including a Martian aristocrat named Lord Teoru – steal a life-extending drug from Parmenio’s crime boss. The heist goes off, and Attanio is soon aboard Lord Teoru's spaceship Samuindorogo, where he discovers that the crew he has joined is no simple band of adventurers.

It seems that the Xilians, a humanoid, alien race, have embarked on a campaign of conquest of the known worlds, and Mars has been reduced to a wasteland by their assault. Lord Teoru and his followers are on a mission: recruit the most powerful of the colony worlds, and create a unified fleet, one with the firepower to confront the Xil invasion and stop it – before yet more worlds fall to their assault.

But as Attanio discovers, the colony worlds have little use for aiding a deposed Martian aristocrat……and when Teoru decides to use guile and deceit to gain allies, it’s strategy that brings great risk…….

‘The Broken Worlds’ starts off well enough, as the sort of mildly entertaining 80s space opera that was inspired to some extent by the success of Star Wars. You can’t go wrong with sleazy red light districts, greedy aliens, and laser battles in reeking alleyways.

Unfortunately, at the half-way point, ‘Broken’ turns from being a space opera into a sort of Galactic Travelogue for Gays, as Attanio visits the desert world of Ynenga in the company of Yuzen, a sensitive young Martian warrior. This leads to (wink-wink) a close and growing Friendship (wink-wink) between the two, a relationship aided by intensive study of yoga (wink-wink) within the close quarters of a desert cave – while a massive sandstorm rages outside…... yep, things get that cheesy.

After the desert world of Ynenga cements that Special Frienship between our two heroes, well, it’s off to the water world of Viharn, with its southeast Asian – inspired interior décor, tiki huts, colorful fashions with simply amazing fabrics, delectable foods, heavenly sweet music, and languorous atmosphere…….it’s one big beach party on Viharn !

Needless to say, once the Gay Travelogue material took over, finishing this book was a chore. 

I won’t disclose any spoilers, but I will say that eventually, the narrative slowly re-orients itself to the main plot point and the alarming confrontation with the Xil horde. However, the book’s denouement has a pat, perfunctory quality, as if the author was just looking to wrap things up as economically as possible.

As an example of 80s space opera, 'The Broken Worlds' can be passed by without penalty.

The Man with No Name (zombie)

The Man with No Name (zombie)
by Arthur Suydam
alternate cover for The Man with No Name: Sinners and Saints, issue 1, Dynamite Entertainment, July 2008

The Walls of Samaris Part Two

'The Walls of Samaris' by Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten
Part Two
originally serialized in Heavy Metal magazine, December 1984 - March 1985

 

The Walls of Samaris Part One

'The Walls of Samaris' by Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten
Part One

In 1983, the Belgian artist Francoise Schuiten, who was a well-known contributor to the magazines Metal Hurlant (France) and Heavy Metal (US), joined with writer Benoit Peeters to produce a series of graphic novels under the title of Les Cites Obscures (The Obscure Cities). 

Eventually, 11 installments (not counting another 14 or so spin-off novels) would be produced by 2008, and many of these translated into multiple languages, including English.

'The Walls of Samaris' (1983) was the inaugural volume, and serialized in English in Heavy Metal from December, 1984 to March, 1985. Unfortunately, Heavy Metal only printed the first 33 pages of the 48-page comic.

I'm going to post those 33 pages of 'Walls' in two installments here at the PorPor Books Blog.

'Walls' was created as a response to (or protest of) the destruction of many of the historic older buildings in Brussels during the 70s and 80s, buildings replaced by the spectacularly ugly, dehumanizing Modernist structures molded on the architectural principles of the French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret - Gris (best known by his pseudonym 'Le Corbusier').

 Modernist-architecture apartment blocks common to the banlieues, or planned suburbs, of the larger metropolitan areas of France

The 'Cities' stories are set in an alternate Earth where political entities revolve around cities, rather than states or nations, and technologies have taken different paths from those in 'our' world.

While the idea of a comic series devoted to fantastical architecture (particularly Art Nouveau) might not seem intrinsically exciting, The Obscure Cities novels stand as example of a proto-Steampunk styling, as well as alternate-world sf. These comics feature impressive draftsmanship by Schuiten (who reportedly would spend an entire week to draw a single page).

Unfortunately, the English-language versions of The Obscure Cities titles - either those currently out of print, or those currently being produced - are very expensive, with used copies for some volumes starting at $35, and new copies priced at over $100, placing them out of reach of most readers. 

Here's the first of the two parts of 'The Walls of Samaris'............

 

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

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV', edited by Karl Edward Wagner

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV’ (291 pp) is DAW Book No. UE2156 / 688, published in October, 1986. The cover art is by Michael Whelan.

All of the entries in this edition were first published in 1984 -1985, usually in the pages of other anthologies, or in magazines like The Twilight Zone Magazine, Interzone, and Night Cry.

There is a brief, two-page introduction by editor Karl Edward Wagner.

‘Series XIV’ is a standard-issue ‘Year’s Best’ compilation; in other words, the Usual Suspects are represented and accounted for: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee. 

But there also are some newcomers to Series XIV, and they provide the better entries.

My brief summary of the contents:

‘Penny Daye’, Charles L. Grant: mildly threatening British ghosts, ancient monuments, and the anomie of modern life. Another forgettable psychological horror tale from Grant.

‘Dwindling’, David B. Silva: Quiet Horror story about a boy whose family life is subject to unusual circumstances.

“Dead Men’s Fingers’, Philip C. Heath: in the South Pacific, the American whaler Reaper is found adrift, her crew vanished. One of the best stories in the anthology.

‘Dead Week’, Leonard Carpenter: a coed has unusual visions. Predictable, if competently written.

‘The Sneering’, Ramsey Campbell: British pensioners find life in a neighborhood undergoing urban renewal has its drawbacks. I wasn’t hoping for much from Campbell with this story, and he didn’t disappoint me........ Although it’s the first time I’ve ever read the sentence: ‘A car snarled raggedly past the gate.’ Cars …….snarling…..? Raggedly ? But then, who am I to say what is Art ?

‘Bunny Didn’t Tell Us’, David J. Schow: a burgeoning splatterpunk practitioner makes it into a DAW ‘Year’s Best’ anthology ! Hurrah ! Clever tale of grave-robbing gone bad…..because the grave belongs to a deceased pimp……!

‘Pinewood’, Tanith Lee: predictable tale about a grieving widow.

‘The Night People’, Michael Reaves: a hipster seeks solace for his angst by walking the city streets at night. I suspect most readers will guess the ending well in advance.

‘Ceremony’, William F. Nolen: a late-night bus ride leads to a creepy small town. Atmospheric, with a good ending; another of the better entries in this collection.

‘The Woman in Black’, Dennis Etchison: while employing his usual oblique, overly wordy prose in this story about a boy navigating a troubled neighborhood, Etchison makes this tale work by virtue of a bizarre ending.

‘Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea’, Simon Clark: more a fragment rather than a genuine short story. Supernatural events at night, in a British seaside resort.

‘Mother’s Day’, Stephen F. Wilcox: a man attends to his nagging mother. Not really a horror story, but in fact a psychological drama.

‘Lava Tears’, Vincent McHardy: confused tale of a psycho killer.

‘Rapid Transit’, Wayne Allen Sallee: an aimless young man witnesses a murder in a train yard. Essentially plot-less, and badly overwritten by Sallee, who at the time was a poet trying his hand at short fiction.

‘The Weight of Zero’, John Alfred Taylor: not a short story per se, but actually the first chapter of a never-published novel…?! It’s never a good indicator of editorial competence when the editor has to use a first chapter of an unpublished novel in order to meet his obligation for a requisite number of entries….anyways, this is the vague tale of a Euro-hipster pursuing occult rituals.

‘John’s Return to Liverpool’, Christopher Burns: as you can guess, Dead Lennon is resurrected and visits his hometown. Relying on New Testament tropes, the story comes is too mawkish and insipid to be effective.

‘In Late December, Before the Storm’, Paul J. Sammon: unimaginative tale of a dissipated young man fated to relive a traumatic event. Sammon would go on to edit the seminal Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror anthology of 1990.

‘Red Christmas’, David Garnett: a murderer is on the loose, just before Christmas. I started this story thinking it was yet another clichéd ‘serial killer’ tale, but it provides a genuinely imaginative, offbeat ending. The best story in the anthology !

‘Too Far Behind Gradina’, Steve Sneyd: it’s not a good sign when a story in a horror anthology starts off with a really awful poem in blank verse….this despite the fact that the author is a published poet…..’Gradina’ is about a bored British housewife on vacation in Croatia; she follows a pair of German tourists, brother and sister, to a forbidding destination in the hills above the coast. This novelette was a true chore to finish, as it consisted of the type of run-on sentences, heavily overloaded with stilted, figurative prose, that typified SF writing of the New Wave era. It closes the anthology on a very unimpressive note. 

The verdict ? ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV’ is no better, and probably a little worse, then the other volumes in this series that were edited by Karl Edward Wagner. But hardcore horror short story aficionados may want it for the virtues of the tales by Heath, Schow, Nolen, and Garnett.

Father Shandor: The Angel of Death from Warrior No. 9

'Father Shandor, Demon Stalker'
'Angel of Death'
from Warrior (UK) No. 9, January, 1983

Needless to say, some outstanding draftsmanship by David Jackson in this, the final episode of this particular 'Father Shandor' story arc in Warrior.

[Shandor continued to appear in every remaining issue of Warrior (i.e., up to issue 26), but with issues starting at $9.99 and up on eBay, my obtaining scans of those episodes is, unfortunately, very unlikely.....]