Dan Dare 2000 AD

Dan Dare: 2000 AD
from Dan Dare 2000 AD, Rebellion (UK), November 2015

The inaugural issue of 2000 AD comics in February, 1977, not only signaled something new and exciting in the world of British comics, it also brought with it the revival of the beloved British sci-fi character Dan Dare.

Dare's adventures had ended in 1969 when the British boy's paper Eagle ceased publication. When IPC obtained the rights to the character, and Pat Mills was given the task of writing the plots for the weekly installments of 2000 AD, he decided that the 'rebooted' Dan Dare would have an edgier, punk-inspired personality, in keeping with the nihilistic state of mind of the UK in early '77.

The Dan Dare who appeared in Eagle was the personification of the Best of British: 

......bound by a sense of honour, never lied, and would rather die than break his word.

The Dan Dare who appeared in 2000 AD was far from the gentlemanly character of the Eagle days. He was an aggressive, trigger-happy, and not overly concerned with being honorable towards his opponents. The emphasis in the 2000 AD stories was on violent action with a high body count.....and deaths by disintegrator beam were rendered with much care and attention to detail.

Many fans were appalled by what Mills did with the character, but many 2000 AD readers loved the new version.

In an era in which aliens were depicted in US popular culture as mysterious, but beneficent creatures sent to save Mankind from his own perverse impulses towards self-destruction (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), it was refreshing to see Dan Dare sneer as he blasted alien scum to atoms.....!

In any event, in November 2015, UK publisher Rebellion released a hardbound compilation of the 2000 AD Dan Dare comics originally published during 1977 - 1979. I've posted scans of the inaugural episode from this compilation below.....featuring great artwork from Massimo Belardinelli, and an energetic story from Mills.

Book Review: Daddy Cool

Book Review: 'Daddy Cool' by Donald Goines
Graphic Novel adaptation by Don Glut (script) and Alfredo Alcala (art)

 

celebrating Black History Month 2016

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate Black History Month by reading a book - fiction or non-fiction - that illuminates the Black Experience.

For Black History Month 2016, we're looking at the graphic novel of Donald Goines's 1974 novel Daddy Cool.

I first learned of this unique little book when a post about it appeared at the Museum of Uncut Funk website.

(The Museum of Uncut Funk is definitely a site to visit and bookmark, especially if you are a fan of black popular culture of the 70s).

The Daddy Cool graphic novel was published in 1984 by Holloway House, a small press company devoted to publishing the works of Goines and other black authors.

The graphic novel is a black-and-white, mass-market-sized paperback. There obviously are problems with adapting the artwork to this format. Those pages with just one or two panels will have a low-res, Ben-Day-dot appearance, while others with several panels are much more legible. 

Overall, however, the high quality of Alfredo Alcala's artwork impresses.

'Daddy Cool' opens in Flint, Michigan......it's the early 70s, and the water is safe to drink. But Flint is still a gritty, low-down industrial town, and Larry Jackson - aka Daddy Cool, ace hitman - is there to take care of some business. 

Daddy Cool prefers to work with knives, which he throws from close range. Daddy Cool is careful and methodical when he's on the job, knowing that the slightest mistake can earn him the electric chair. 

Off the job, however, Daddy Cool is prone to losing his temper. He don't take shit from anyone, least of all his beautiful, but headstrong daughter Janet; his wife Shirley; and her sons, Jimmy and Buddy. 

After a particularly heated confrontation with her father, Janet decides to run away from home and live with her boyfriend Ronald. But Ronald, as it turns out, is not the man she thought he was when she was dating him. For Ronald is a cruel and self-centered pimp.....and Janet is to be his ticket to easy street.

Daddy Cool decides that the best course for Janet is to receive Tough Love, in the form of a harsh education in the reality of the streets. But as the days go by, and Janet sinks ever deeper into degradation at the hands of her boyfriend, Daddy Cool will have to take action....violent action.....before Janet's humiliation is avenged.......

This graphic adaptation of Daddy Cool is by no means a comic book aimed at a juvenile readership; to the contrary, it depicts R-rated, Straight Up, Unapologetic Ghetto Action, which is precisely what Donald Goines hoped to achieve with his novels. If you are a fan of black writers like Goines, Chester Himes, Iceberg Slim, and Nathan C. Heard, then you'll want to pick up this graphic novel version of Daddy Cool.

Book Review: Beyond Earth

Book Review: 'Beyond Earth' by Ralph Blum with Judy Blum

3 / 5 Stars

The 70s were a boom time for mass-market paperbacks devoted to the paranormal. 

Bantam Books' President Oscar Dystel was particularly fond of the genre, publishing a number of Erich von Danekin's titles, including Chariots of the Gods, which was a monster seller.  

The Bantam titles all shared a distinctive 'shadow' font, as seen below, that sometimes was copied by other publishers.

These books were cool !

I eagerly read them back in the early- to mid-70s, when I was in junior high and high school. They were a major aspect of 70s pop culture, and were part and parcel of a mini-industry of printed material, like Saga, and Official UFO, and Fate, and other magazines and digests that catered to the 'paranormal' readership and were always on display at the magazine racks in the supermarkets and five-and-dime stores.

The genre (arguably) reached its apogee with the release of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind late in 1977. 

'Beyond Earth' (Bantam Books, January 1974) was one of the best of the 70s UFO books, and my favorite. How does it hold up when re-read more than 40 years later ?

For 'Beyond Earth', the Blums use the device of a framing narrative that opens and closes the book; this narrative deals with the so-called 'Pascagoula Incident', which took place on the night of October 11, 1973, in that city. 

Two shipyard workers, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, were fishing at a pier on the Pascagloula River when they claimed that a large, intense, glowing blue light traveled across the water, hovered over the riverbank near them, and discharged three silver-garbed humanoid creatures (Hickson considered them 'robots').

Hickson claimed that he was paralyzed by the aliens and 'floated' into the blue light - which turned out to be a spacecraft - and subjected to a painless, but thorough, physical examination of some sort. The aliens returned Hickson to the riverbank before entering the spacecraft and departing.

The book's chapters cover, in chronological order, 'ancient' UFO sightings (according to the Blums, Cro-Magnon cave art depicts flying saucers); the 'airships' witnessed in the skies of the U.S. and Europe in the late 19th early 20th centuries; UFO sightings during the First and Second World Wars; and, of course, the postwar period and Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting of nine 'flying saucers' in June, 1947.

Other chapters deal with the U.S. government's investigations of UFOs, including the legendary Project "Blue Book", and The Condon Report. Still other chapters examine sightings in foreign countries (my favorite remains Brazilian farmer Antonio Vilas Boas, who claimed that in October 1957, he was abducted onto a UFO, and 'forced' to impregnate a stunning Alien Chick.....!).

Throughout 'Beyond Earth', Ralph Blum insists that it is critical to not dismiss even the most outlandish UFO stories out of hand, because, well, the people telling the stories seem so sincere.

Blum concludes 'Beyond Earth' by opining that the UFO Phenomenon can be attributed to three causes: extraterrestrial life forms, with advanced technologies, who are visiting the Earth; mass hallucinations; or '...a still greater mystery' unlike anything yet encountered in the human realm.

[Ralph Blum has since become a major New Age devotee, and the author of a series of books on 'Rune Magic'.]

Summing up, Blum's desire to Believe means that he buys wholeheartedly into the UFO religion, and thus 'Beyond Earth' is another UFO book that Preaches to the Converted, but is too badly flawed to be of any use to Skeptics.

But if you are in the mood to recapture some authentic 70s Nostalgia, perhaps to the accompaniment of some Emerson, Lake, and Palmer LP records, some pot, and some incense, then 'Beyond Earth' certainly delivers. And that's why I give it a 3 of 5 Stars rating.

My Best Bookstores

My Best Bookstores

In this post, I'll list the five bookstores that I recommend as the best places to purchase used sf, fantasy, and horror paperbacks published during the interval from 1970 - 1990, as well as - if available - sf-themed graphic novels and art books. 

These all are places I've visited in the past 6 years, and the emphasis is on stores primarily in the Eastern USA, if only because I live in Central Virginia........

Needless to say, every one of these places is going to have a surfeit of paperbacks by Piers Anthony, Marion Zimmer Bradley, John Brunner, Andre Norton, etc. But they also have, for the careful searcher, some less prevalent titles.

With each store, I sum up the good and bad.

I also note whether or not if the store buys used books. Needless to say, you probably will not get the return you are expecting if you elect to sell your books for cash, and you usually are better off opting for 'Store Credit' for these exchanges.

McKays Books, Manassas, Virginia
8345 Sudley Rd., Manassas, VA 20109

McKay's Books is located in the Manaport Plaza Shopping Center, a nondescript shopping center in the 'Little San Salvador' section of Manassass.

[Take care where and how you park - 90% of the other drivers in this part of Manassas not only don't speak fluent English, but they also don't have Car Insurance......]

The good: a very large selection, among the largest of all the stores reviewed here, including a healthy selection of older paperbacks. There also are separate aisles for fantasy and horror, with large selections as well. Paperback books are usually in the $3 - $5 range. 

There is a large selection of graphic novels and art books, but these are priced rather high. 

McKays will buy books from you.

The bad: the books have a large, very very sticky price sticker on their front cover. If you succeed in peeling it off, the residue left on the cover of the book will adhere to anything it comes into contact with - if you lay another book atop it, there will be consequences......

Wonder Book and Video, Frederick, Maryland
1306 West Patrick St., Frederick, MD 21703

Wonder Book and Video is a three-store chain in Maryland; there are stores in Hagerstown, Frederick, and Gaithersburg. The latter is tucked away in the obscure back parking area of a shopping plaza, and is hard to find - I recommend that if you go, you print out a map beforehand, and be careful about over-relying on your GPS. 

I frequently go to the Wonder Books in Frederick, which is located right off of Route 40 in a nondescript shopping plaza. There is plenty of parking.

The Frederick store has a lengthy section of shelving devoted to sf paperbacks (fantasy titles are lumped in with the sf), and this is one of the best places to find gems from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Prices for these paperbacks are in the $3 - $5 range but expect some of the rarer titles to be $6 or higher.

The opposite side of the sf paperbacks aisle has a large selection of hardcover sf and fantasy books, as well as a decent selection of sf and fantasy art books.

Wonder Book and Video also has a large section devoted to horror paperbacks, again, with a lot of 70s and 80s titles represented. The stores also carry a lot of overstock graphic novels.

At the Frederick store, particularly rare or otherwise valuable paperbacks, priced in the $10 and up range, are kept apart from the others and stored in a locked glass-fronted bookcase within view of the front counter. You'll need to ask the staff to open the case for you.

Wonder Book and Video will buy used books.

Wonder Book and Video has an online store, and its shipping charges are reasonable, making it a viable alternate if you can't travel to the retail stores.

Utah Book and Magazine, Salt Lake City, Utah

327 S. Main St. Salt Lake City, UT 84111

This bookstore is so unique that I did an entire post devoted to it. Whether or not you will witness something amusing, Utah Book and Magazine has a great selection of older sf, fantasy, and horror paperbacks amid its cramped and crowded shelves. There is also a healthy supply of sf-related memorabilia, as Jordan H at Yelp! observed:

Being a science fiction nerd, I was particularly impressed with the store's selection of Star Trek novels. They have a MASSIVE bookshelf filled with more Star Trek works than I have ever seen in my life. I ended up picking up a set of blueprints of the interior of the Starship Enterprise for $15 as well as a Star Trek: Next Generation board game for $10. There's also a much smaller, but equally enjoyable, Star Wars section where I was able to find The Empire Strikes Back score on vinyl for $5 as well as the first Star Wars Expanded Universe novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye for $3. MAJOR SCORE!

The good: prices are very cheap...... $1 to $4 per book. 

There is an entire section of the store set aside to vintage nudie and softcore books, magazines, and memorabilia.

The bad: a lot of the books are only in 'acceptable' to 'good' condition. Expect 'very good' and 'like new' conditions to be rare.

Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore
2864 Chicago Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55407

Uncle Hugo's shares a building with Uncle Edgar's, a mystery bookstore. Chicago Ave S. is a main drag in Minneapolis, so you may have to find parking a block or two away from the store.

Uncle Hugo's has a large selection of used sf paperbacks in its cramped interior; I found myself having to step with extreme, ankle-twisting care around the shelving, as books are stacked on the floor.....and on the top of the shelves, where you will need steady nerves to select and remove that one book you are interested in, from the two-foot-high stack.

Uncle Hugo's also has a large section for new sf books, including hardbacks and small press.

The bad: when I went on a warm afternoon in early October, the store was stifling - dress to sweat, if the weather calls for higher temps.

Half Price Books
10201 University Ave, Clive, IA 50325

When I lived in Iowa, I routinely drove from my home in Ames to this Half Price Books location in the Westridge Shopping Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines. I also went to the Half Price store in Marion / Cedar Rapids. 

According to a recent article in the Dallas Morning News, Half Price Books has 126 stores in 16 states. 

The sf paperback sections in the Half Price stores I went to in Clive and Cedar Rapids were small compared to those of the other stores I review here, and were primarily comprised of newer titles. Nonetheless, with a bit of searching, you may find some books from the 70s and 80s. Book prices were in the $2 - $4 range. 

Separate from the paperback shelving, there is considerable shelf space for sf hardbacks.

Separate from the sf aisles, each of these stores had a free-standing spinner rack filled with older, higher-priced paperbacks in plastic pouches. These are priced in the $5 and up range and contain a variety of older titles in different genres. You can find some real gems here, for example, like Bantam's Doc Savage novels from the 60s and 70s..

These outlets do have some space devoted to graphic novels and art books; prices for these are rather high. 

Half Price will buy your used books.

So there you have it. Good luck with your scores.......!

9 A.M. by Dick Matena

9 A.M.
by Dick Matena
from Heavy Metal magazine, February 1980

Book Review: Star Child

Book Review: 'Star Child' by Fred Mustard Stewart

3 / 5 Stars

‘Star Child’ (239 pp) was published in hardback in 1974; this Bantam Books paperback was released in October 1975. The cover artist is uncredited.

Fred Mustard Stewart (1932 – 2007) wrote a number of novels during the interval from the late 60s to the late 90s. Some of these were sf, albeit more in the spirit of popular fiction than ‘serious’ efforts to explore the genre.

‘Star Child' is set in the Summer, 1974, in the hamlet of Shandy, Connecticut. The heroine, a young woman named Helen Bradford, is a French teacher at Shandy Prep, the exclusive boarding school that serves as the main economic and social anchor for the hamlet. Helen’s husband Jack also is a teacher at Shandy Prep, as are the members of their immediate circle of friends and acquaintances.

One warm night, Helen has an extraordinary dream in which an angelic – looking boy, called Star Child, tells her he is projecting his thoughts to her sleeping mind from his home planet orbiting the star Tau Ceti, 12 light-years from Earth (!). Star Child tells Helen that he is ready to supply the human race with the technical specifications for creating cheap and abundant fusion energy; this revelation will provide the Earth with a solution to the Energy Crisis, and usher in an era of prosperity and peace like none the planet has ever seen.

However, other residents of Shandy – including Jack Bradford – have received dream messages from another entity, this one named Raymond. Unlike Star Child, Raymond is malevolent, and seeks to coerce people into committing murder……as an act of worship to the Godhead of Raymond !

As the Summer unfolds, both Star Child and Raymond struggle to convert the residents of Shandy to their respective causes……and Raymond is winning, for his apostles have begun to carry out a wave of ritualistic killings - !

Only Helen is able to resist the demands of Raymond, despite the horrifying hallucinations he transmits to her sleeping mind in an effort to beat her into submission. But neither Star Child nor Raymond are able to conceal the truth of who they really are from Helen……and when she learns this truth, the fate of the Earth comes to depend on her, and her alone……..

‘Star Child’ is one of Stewart’s novels that is at heart a pot boiler, with some sf and horror elements stirred into the mix. This is evident in the opening chapter, in which a young woman is murdered after participating in ritualistic sex with an acolyte of the Cult of Raymond. 

Later on in the novel, the reader will encounter various sf tropes, including telepathy, Eco-catastrophe, and Mind Control. To his credit, author Stewart comes close, but never crosses the line, into silliness, and this combination of restraint and gimmickry keeps the narrative moving along at a fast clip.

Summing up, if you’re looking for an easily-digestible Beach Read with a good dose of 70s pop culture - including vintage Energy Crisis - inspired alarmism - then ‘Star Child’ will satisfy.

Titus Crow: Illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian

Titus Crow
Illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian
from Ladies and Legends by Stephen E. Fabian, Underwood-Miller, 1993

Artist Stephen E. Fabian originally produced these striking black and white illustrations for The Compleat Titus Crow (1987), a collection of stories by Brian Lumley.

Gestation by Bruce Jones

Gestation
by Bruce Jones
from Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, Marvel / Curtis, No. 3, May 1975

When you land on an alien planet and you start to find that its vegetation is very....very...tasty, then perhaps you should be alarmed......

Artist / writer Bruce Jones was a regular contributor to Marvel's Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction during its brief print run in the mid-70s. This tale has its own offbeat flavor, as well as some good pencilwork (note - I had to overexpose my scans in order to reduce the discoloring from the foxing of the pages - this is, after all, a 41 year-old magazine). 

'Gestation' is also interesting for its use of cursive font in the external narration, to mimic the entries in a 'diary'. This technique has since become commonplace in comic books, but back then it was innovative. I can't say it's easy to read, however.....

Book Review: Diadem from the Stars

Book Review: 'Diadem from the Stars' by Jo Clayton

1 / 5 Stars

During the 1980s it was not at all unusual to see sci-fi novels by Jo Clayton on the bookshelves. Clayton (1939 - 1998) wrote 35 novels, many of which were part of the DAW Books catalog. Clayton played a major role in DAW Books’ emphasis, starting in the 1980s, on publishing sf and fantasy books - particularly serial novels - by female authors for an increasing female readership.

‘Diadem from the Stars’ (March 1977; DAW Book No. 235) is the inaugural novel of the so-called ‘Diadem’ series, which ultimately spanned nine books over the course of 1977 – 1986. The cover artwork is by Michael Whelan.

As the novel opens, the eponymous Diadem is stolen from the ‘planet of the spider-people' by Stavver, the galaxy’s greatest thief. The Diadem is not just a valuable jewel, but a sentient artifact with the ability to confer psi powers upon the individual lucky enough – or unfortunate enough – to wear it.

When the vengeful pursuit by the spider people damages his ship, Stavver is forced to crash-land on the backwater planet Jaydugar. Stavver survives the landing, but loses the Diadem.

The narrative then shifts to the adventures of Aleytys, a teenage girl, and the daughter of a long-vanished spacewoman. Aleytys has been raised since infancy by the tribesman of Jaydugar, from whom she stands out, not just for her physical size and red hair, but also for her self-confidence and defiance of authority, traits uncommon to the women of the native peoples of Jaydugar.

Aleytys also has psi powers that, as the novel opens, she is just becoming aware of – powers that include telepathy and the ability to rapidly heal herself, other humans, and even animals. When threatened, Aleytys is able to wield even stronger powers – powers dangerous to her assailants – and this has generated increasing unease among the tribe that has taken her in.

Circumstances soon force Aleytys to make her own way across Jaydugar to a remote locale where a chance to go off-planet may await. But a young girl traveling by herself, across the harsh and unforgiving landscape of a backward planet, is easy prey for any number of unpleasant people……..

I found ‘Diadem’ to be a dull and unrewarding read, even when making allowances for its status as a First Novel. Much of its failings are due to the author’s desire – clearly inspired by Dune - to over-elaborate on the sociology and anthropology of Jaydugar and its tribes (which are modeled on the Arabs of North Africa). This subjects the reader to a constant stream of invented words and phrases, and detailed expositions on cultural issues, which are a chore to wade through.

It also doesn’t help matters that author Clayton periodically engages in stream-of-consciousness passages associated with the heroine’s moments of Psychic Awareness; while such passages were part and parcel of New Wave era sf writing, they act here to burden, rather than enlighten, the narrative.

When it first was published, ‘Diadem from the Stars’, as well as the succeeding volumes in the series, were praised for breaking new ground with their depictions of independent heroines, as opposed to portraying women as the inevitable girlfriends or concubines common to sf literature at the time. While this may have been true of ‘Diadem’, when all is said and done, it doesn’t deliver much of a story………..perhaps the other volumes are better written and more rewarding, but this one is hard to recommend.