SO....what's a PorPor Book ?
'PorPor' is a derogatory term my brother used, to refer to the SF and Fantasy paperbacks and comic books I eagerly read from the late 60s to the late 80s.
This blog is devoted to those paperbacks and comics you can find on the shelves of second-hand bookstores...from the New Wave era and 'Dangerous Visions', to the advent of the cyberpunks and 'Neuromancer'.
September, 1984, and in heavy rotation on the FM radio stations is David Bowie's song 'Blue Jean'.
The August, 1984 issue of Heavy Metal magazine was bad. The September issue, unfortunately, isn't much better. It does have a striking wraround cover by Luis Royo, however.
There are new installments of Benard and Schuiten's 'The Railway'; Druillet's 'SalammboII'; Frank Thorne's 'Lann', and John Findley's 'Tex Arcana'.
However, the rest of the content is mediocre. Kierkegaard's 'Rock Opera' persist in being published, Nicola Cuti's 'Things' is forgettable, and the most awful strip in the issue is a one-shot titled 'Sen Lubin from Ernst' by a duo named Victoria Petersen and Neal McPheeters.
Perhaps the most interesting, and surprising, article in the September issue is the Heavy Metal '1984 Music Video Awards'. After having spent the interval from 1981 - 1983 regarding music television with some degree of the dedicated hipster's disdain, the magazine's editorial staff now enthusiastically embrace music videos, and devote 8 pages to showcasing their faves for the year (loosely interpreted as 1983, and the first six months of 1984).
Some of these videos ('Every Breath You Take' by The Police) will be quite familiar to anyone who watched MTV at that time; some are a bit more obscure - I'd completely forgotten those grainy, washed-out-palette, jerkily handheld camera - imitating Neil Young rockabilly videos like 'Wonderin'.
Still other videos earning accolades from HM are utterly obscure - does anyone remember Jack the Ripper by The Raybeats ?! it's a retro surf-rock song with a spot-on video.....
In any event, below I've posted the text of Heavy Metal's 1984 Music Video Awards, so you can see for yourself what was hip and cutting-edge back in those long-ago days......
'Antibodies' (220 pp.) was first published in hardcover in 1988; this paperback version was released by Worldwide Library in April, 1989, one of the books in the 'Isaac Asimov Presents' imprint.
The cover illustration is uncredited, but is almost certainly by Vincent DiFate. 'Antibodies' is one of three sf novels published by David J. Skal in the 1980s, the others being 'Scavengers' (1980) and 'When We Were Good' (1981). All received critical acclaim, but Skal discontinued writing fiction after 'Antibodies', and instead concentrated on film history and criticism, particularly horror films.
'Antibodies' is a satirical novel, set in San Francisco in a near-future USA, in which 80s consumerism and pop culture pervade every aspect of life for those who are white and affluent. Lead character Diandra (we are never told her last name) is a young woman who works as a fashion designer for Croesus, an upscale clothing store associated with all that is trendy in fashion and art. Diandra suffers from alienation, not just from society, but from her family, and from humanity in general. Luckily for Diandra, she has been contacted by an underground cult called the Cybernetic Temple. The cult has no physical presence per se, but rather, dispenses its doctrine via videocassette tapes filled with subliminal messages, and carefully managed social gatherings in which participants dress as exotic androids and eat a tasteless nutritional paste designed to promote their identification as 'artificial' persons.
The Cybernetic Temple has gained considerable notoriety by promulgating a theology that is the complete antithesis of humanism: the human body, and its functions, emotions, and morals, is little more than 'meat' doomed to gradual decay and dissolution. The Temple offers its acolytes access to new, cutting-edge technologies for organ replacement and, by extension, immortality. As 'Antibodies' opens, Diandra is struggling to survive her final day at work, before leaving for the Central American enclave of Boca Verde, where the Temple's state-of-the-art facility will remake her as a cyborg, visually perfect, and immune to the sorrows and indignities of the flesh. As the novel unfolds, we are introduced to a cast of California eccentrics, all of whom interact either with Diandra and the Temple. Some of these eccentrics, like the egomaniacal cult 'deprogrammer' Julian Nagy, see the Cybernetic Temple as an abomination that must be eliminated - particularly if so doing brings fame and fortune.
Others, such as the artist and style dictator Venus Tramhell, are advocates for the Temple and ruthless in promoting its goals....which are quite different from those that the naive Diandra has been conditioned to believe....... The back-cover marketing blurbs for 'Antibodies' describe it as a collage of ideas and concepts from David Cronenberg, Harlan Ellison, and J. G. Ballard, and to some extent, this is true, particularly in light of the inclusion of some splatterpunk scenes that counterbalance the satirical passages that take up much of the narrative.
However, sf novels that successfully pull off the trick of embracing satire for their entire length are few and far between, including those in the sub-genre of humorous sf, and the works of Ron Goulart and Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, all of which I have found underwhelming, if not tedious. And while I consider 'Antibodies' to be superior to anything from those authors, even at only 220 pp. in length, I found the plot beginning to tire by the time the final 30 pages unraveled. 'Antibodies' does succeed at mingling cyberpunk-era sf and social satire, and is worth picking up if you are a fan of either genre. But it remains very much a product of the time and place of the late 80s, and I'm not sure contemporary readers would find it particularly appealing.
Car Warriors issue 1 Epic Comics / Marvel, April, 1991
'Car Warriors' was a four-issue miniseries published from April - September 1991 by Marvel's Epic Comics imprint. The series was based on 'Car Wars', an RPG first released in 1980 by Steve Jackson Games. The game probably drew heavily, in turn, from the 1975 low-budget, cult classic movie Death Race 2000.
The game was subsequently expanded for use with Jackson's GURPS system in the late 1980s, and in 1991 a card game based on 'Car Wars' was released; this may have been the impetus for the publication of the comic book series.
While I'm always skeptical of the quality of comic books based on tie-ins to licensed properties, I was quite pleased with 'Car Warriors'. It's filled with quirky little touches of originality and flair. For example, the setting is not your usual Mad Max - inspired desert landscape, but rather, the US Heartland, albeit reduced to an economic and ecological wasteland, beset with anarchy and the threat of mass starvation. How many action comics have sequences set in Council Bluffs, Iowa ? Or Green Bay, Wisconsin ?
The actual 'Death Race' locale is Michigan's Upper Peninsula, not the place one would ordinarily think of for such an event. The course goes from Fort DeLorean, on the shore of Lake Superior, south to Lansing. The betting is high, and some of the racers are among the nation's best. But the homicidal motorcycle gangs and cannibal tribes of the Upper Peninsula's wastelands are well-armed, well-informed, and looking for fresh meat among the contestants...... The hero is an alienated young Mexican man named 'Chevy' Vasquez, aka 'The Meaner Beaner' and 'The Mad Mex'. Once, long ago, when he was a child, Chevy Vasquez had a run-in with one of the Upper Peninsula tribes.....an encounter that left him with nightmares, night sweats, and a growing desire for bloody revenge.
While it offers a good dollop of explicit violence with each issue, 'Car Warriors' also provides plenty of sarcastic humor, which gives these comics extra appeal (to me, anyways).
It also helps that penciller Steve Dillon's artwork is well done, and well complemented by the inks of Phil Winslade and the colors of Steve Buccellato, giving the 'Car Warriors' comic books the appropriately gritty, 'entropic' sensibility this type of tale requires.
So, posted below is the entire contents of the first issue of 'Car Warriors'. Look for the remaining three issues to be posted in the coming months here at the PorPor Books Blog.
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