Merlin by John Buscema

Merlin
by Doug Moench and John Buscema (story) and John Buscema, Tom Palmer, and John Tartaglione (art)
Marvel Preview, No. 22, Summer 1980

Issue No. 22 of the Marvel / Curtis magazine Marvel Preview features a fine cover by the great Earl Norem.

This issue is devoted to a single story: 'Merlin'. According to the Introduction by Ralph Macchio, the idea for the story came from John Buscema, who was a fan of the classic Prince Valiant comic strip by Hal Foster.

Buscema was interested in doing a comic set in the Camelot era. Macchio approved, and assigned Tom Palmer to provide the inks for Buscema's art.

In keeping with the Medieval tenor of the story, John Costanza contributed Old Tyme lettering, using hand-drawn calligraphy (back in 1980, there was no such thing as computer-assisted lettering).

 Buscema's plot is reasonably interesting: while out hunting, King Arthur comes upon an unconscious, injured young knight, and brings him back to the Castle, to be treated by Merlin.

Once he recovers, the young knight, named Belial, reveals himself to be a man of culture and good breeding and wins over the respect of the King.

Merlin, however, has his doubts.....and as events unfold, it will be up to him to save Camelot from danger.

All things considered, this is one of the better entries in the Marvel Preview Presents series. The script is not over-written or contrived, and Buscema's artwork is top-notch considering all of the other assignments he was fielding at the time.

If you like the Knights of Merrie Olde England genre, then this one is worth picking up.

Book Review: New Writings in SF-13

Book Review: 'New Writings in SF-13'
edited by John Carnell

2 / 5 Stars

‘New Writings in SF-13’ (190 pp) was published by Corgi Books (UK) in 1968. The cover artwork – by Josh Kirby – is one of the ugliest I’ve ever seen on a sci-fi book.

All of the stories in this anthology were written exclusively for this volume, and - as might be expected for an anthology written in 1968 - many studiously adopt the New Wave aesthetic. 

My brief summaries of the stories:

The Divided House, by John Rackham (the pseudonym used by John Phillifent): The crew of a starship returns from a relativistic journey to discover that society on Earth has changed greatly, and not for the better…....a readable, if not markedly innovative, tale.

Public Service, by Sydney J. Bounds: in the densely populated cities of the future, fires require destructive measures to control…..a bit too destructive, it seems…….. One of the better stories in the anthology.

The Ferryman on the River, by David Kyle: would-be suicides get a reprieve from an unusual individual. Overwrought and unconvincing.

Testament, by Vincent King: an astronaut experiences First Contact, at a distance. This story suffers from an overload of New Wave prose contrivances.

The Macbeth Expiation, by M. John Harrison: an early-career tale from Harrison; the story is overly earnest in its efforts to relate psychological angst and emotional despair among the members of an Away Team.

Representative, by David Rome: a middle-aged insurance executive becomes aware of an alien invasion. Clever tale with a ‘Twilight Zone’ -style approach to the theme of Paranoia in the Suburbs.

The Beach, by John Baxter: after mankind has suffered a global nervous breakdown, a survivor wanders the abandoned streets of a seaside resort. While showing obvious signs of being influenced by J. G. Ballard’s prose, this story has an atmospheric, offbeat quality that makes it a worthy read in its own right.

The City, Dying, by Eddy C. Bertin: an early-career tale from prolific writer Bertin. The plot deals with a man’s efforts to rebel against a dystopian regime. The story is textbook example of New Wave prose affectations, such as the use of single-word, ALL CAPS paragraphs; text aligned in different patterns (including vertically); and stream-of-consciousness passages rendered in any of five different fonts. Needless to say, ‘The City, Dying’ is barely coherent.

Summing up, while I can’t say that ‘New Writings in SF-13’ is a must-have, it’s no worse, and probably marginally better, than a lot of the original content anthologies churned out in the New Wave era.

The Mercenary: The Cult of the Sacred Fire

The Mercenary
The Cult of the Sacred Fire and The Formula
NBM Books, 1985

In 1980 the Spanish artist Vincente Segrelles (b. 1940) decided to get into comic books and produced a strip set in a fantasy kingdom, featuring a hero known as the Mercenary. 

At the time an established artist and illustrator, Segrelles hand-painted his comics in oils, which, needless to say, was a very labor-intensive process. The results, however, were impressive.

The Mercenary's first installment, later to be titled The Cult of the Sacred Fire, was serialized in English in Heavy Metal magazine in 1981 - 1982.

This NBM trade paperback compiles The Cult of the Sacred Fire and the next installment, The Formula, in a very nice 8 1/2 x 11 inch volume, printed on glossy paper with high- resolution reproductions of the artwork.

The Mercenary's early adventures take place in the Country of Permanent Clouds, a landmass in Asia that is cut off from the rest of the world by its high altitude and constant cloud cover. Above the cloud cover is a land of temples, castles, flying dragons, wizards, damsels in distress, and other trapping familiar to readers of sword-and-sorcery fiction.

Segrelles' color scheme, with its luminous whites and grays, is carefully used to evoke the atmosphere of an aerial world. At this website, Segrelle provides excerpts from his book Como Pinta Vincente Segrelles (Vincent Segrelle's Art Handbook) on the processes he uses for painting the fantasy art displayed in The Mercenary.

I won't disclose any plot spoilers, save to say that the Mercenary often has his hands full when trying to complete his contracts.

There is an element of humor to the goings-on, as well as the opportunity to please the Heavy Metal readership via the presence of nubile young women....

Segrelles finished the Mercenary storyline in 2003, at which time it comprised 13 volumes. Eight of these have been published in English translation by NBM Books. These are out of print and copies in good condition go for rather steep prices; I was able to find my copy for an affordable price.

Hopefully someone like the New Comic Company or Titan Books will obtain the reprint rights for the complete 'Mercenary' series. Until that happens, if you see any copies of the NBM volumes on the shelves at your used bookstore, they are well worth getting.

Process of Elimination

Process of Elimination
by Bruce Jones (story) and Russ Heath (art)
from Creepy, issue 83, October 1976

A hit man seemingly goes amok.....but there may be a method to his madness.....?!

This is a great story from Bruce Jones, and great artwork by veteran comics artist Russ Heath. The depiction of the woman taking a bullet (on the fourth page of the story), with its gouting blood, was unusually graphic for Creepy, which tended to be more restrained than, say, the Eerie Publications black-and-white horror comics.......

Book Review: Dr Adder

Book Review: 'Dr. Adder' by K. W. Jeter

3 / 5 Stars

I would like to add my vote in favor of showing female amputees in your magazine. One-armed and, especially, one-legged females offer a unique excitement and a pictorial featuring attractive girl amputees would certainly be welcomed by a large number of readers.

Letter, Penthouse magazine, November 1972

Not too many sf novels have an opening epigraph that consists of a letter published in the November, 1972 issue of Penthouse……. it’s a clear sign that Dr Adder is no ordinary novel.

According to the Afterward by Philip K. Dick, the novel was completed in 1972, but K. W. Jeter couldn’t find a publisher, a reluctance probably caused by Dr Adder’s explicit sex and violence. The book finally saw print in hardback in 1984 (completing one of the longest gestations in modern sf publishing history) and received immediate critical acclaim. 

Jeter eventually published two quasi-sequels, The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987).

This mass-market paperback version (238 pp) of Dr Adder was released by Signet in February 1988, and features a striking cover illustration by Barclay Shaw.

Dr Adder is set in a near-future Los Angeles, in a USA fragmented by warfare and social unrest into corporate fiefdoms. Most of LA is a seedy wasteland known as Rattown, a red-light district where hookers, pimps, drug dealers, junkies, psychopaths, anarchists, and fanatics all converge in search of profit and mayhem.

Dr Adder is both the unofficial mayor of Rattown, and its star citizen. In his gated compound, Adder performs surgeries on hookers, surgeries designed to ‘customize’ the girls for particular classes of clientele – not just the johns who desire amputees, but the johns willing to pay top dollar to satiate their unusually perverted fetishes.

Into Rattown comes E. Allen Limmit, an alienated, self-centered young man who has been tasked with delivering a briefcase to Dr Adder. Although replused by the violent, aimless nature of life in the city, Limmit agrees to serve as Adder’s assistant, and gains access to the nuances of the street culture that provides Adder with his patients.

But as Limmit is to discover, Rattown is living on borrowed time. For in neighboring Orange County, the Greater Production Corporation holds sway, and its CEO, a televangelist named John Mox, bears considerable ill-will towards Adder. 

John Mox has plans to wipe out Adder and Rattown, using an army of gun-toting religious converts. With Rattown ill-prepared to fend off such an assault, it will fall on Adder's shoulders to organize resistance, and Adder has in his possession a unique weapon of great power. But unknown to Adder, John Mox has learned that in Rattown, everything is for sale, including loyalty....and a betrayal is set in motion........

Is Dr Adder a Masterpiece, as Philip K. Dick states in his Afterward ? 

It's not. 

It benefited from being ahead of its time in terms of its edgy, explicit content.......in 1972, most sf was devoted to the New Wave movement, and intent on imparting at least some degree of a humanistic message to even its worst dystopias. But Jeter's depiction of violence and depravity in Rattown refuses to offer any sort of sop to humanism; all of the characters in Dr Adder are amoral and devoid of any redeeming graces. In that sense, it was offbeat and imaginative for 1972.

But Dr Adder suffers to some extent from being a First Novel. 

The first half of the book is the best, featuring some striking passages that drive home Jeter's uniquely sleazy and depressing vision of a near-future LA.

Unfortunately, the second half of the book tends to meander; its satirical treatment of the relationship between LA and Orange County was lost on me, probably because I'm not at all familiar with either LA or Southern California. There also are too many expositions on the main characters' emotional and psychological travails; these quickly become tedious.

Summing up, Dr Adder rightfully can be considered a first-generation Cyberpunk novel, for its bleak, street-level settings; its use of cyberspace; and its transgressive attitudes towards the humanism that tended to dominate sf writing of the 70s and early 80s.

If you're a Cyberpunk fan, then the book belongs on your shelf. Those who are less devoted to the genre may consider Dr Adder to be optional rather than a must-have.

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.