Nightwings graphic novel

Nightwings
by Robert Silverberg, Cary Bates, and Gene Colan
DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel
1985

This 48-page DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel was published in 1985 and features cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz, interior art by Gene Colan, painted colors by Neal McPheeters, and lettering by Gaspar Saladino.

Silverberg's novella 'Nightwings' was published in 1969 and won the Hugo Award that same year. The adaptation for this graphic novel was done by Cary Bates.

Without disclosing any spoilers, I'll say that the graphic novel stays true to the novella, which in turn was Silverberg's effort to create a story that upended the traditional sci-fi narrative in which a heroic, square-jawed Terran rescues the distressed damsel from odious aliens. 

'Nightwings' takes place in a far-future Earth where civilization is in the grip of Entropy (very New Wave-ish) and deals with three misfits who join together to travel to 'Roum' (i.e., Rome). These outcasts are the Watcher, an elderly man who scans deep space for signs of danger; Gormon, a gengineered lizard-man who takes a dismissive view of society; and Avluela, a lithe young woman who can - at night-time - sprout wings from her back and take flight. Conveniently for this graphic novel, she does this in the nude.............

At the time he pencilled 'Nightwings', Gene Colan was moving away from the more traditional illustrative style of mainstream comics, and providing artwork that was looser and more abstract...............a style that incidentally was also easier, and quicker, to complete.

I can't say I find Colan's work for this graphic novel to be all that impressive. Indeed, that the artwork comes across reasonably well is due to the skill of painter McPheeters.

Summing up, Silverberg's novella is one of those rare New Wave-era pieces that has aged well, benefiting from an ending that had an unexpected, even 'shocking' tenor back in 1969. I can't say that this graphic novel adaptation represents a memorable treatment of the story, but if you are a fan of Silverberg's work and see it on the shelf of a used bookstore, you may want to pick it up. 

Book Review: The Block

Book Review: 'The Block' by Gerald Suster

2 / 5 Stars

'The Block' (286 pp) was published by Panther/Granada in 1984; the cover artist is uncredited.

Gerald Suster (1951 - 2001) was a UK author of a large number of fiction and nonfiction works on the occult and the supernatural over the interval from 1979 to 1997.

Is 'The Block' an undiscovered gem of a Paperback from Hell..........or another mediocre horror novel from the early 80s ?

The latter, unfortunately.............

The novel's opening chapter is mild enough: it's London, October 1982, and lawyer (er, barrister) Tom Bradley, his wife Veronica, and son Colin are overjoyed at moving into their seventh-floor apartment in the classy Lavender Gardens block. Due to Tom's dedication to pursuing Social Justice issues instead of taking on more lucrative legal work, the family's finances have been strained, and caused fissures in Tom's marriage; the move into the Gardens is seen as a chance to start over amid favorable surroundings.

No sooner have Tom, Veronica, and Colin begun to make their acquaintances with the other tenants of the Gardens when tragedy strikes; a resident is struck down in a gruesome manner in what appears to be an accident. But as the days pass, other mishaps begin to take their toll of the inhabitants of the building. Coincidence.........or malice ?

What Tom Bradley and the other residents of the Lavender Gardens don't know is that the site of the building has a dark and disturbing history involving the summoning of occult forces........and the awakening of these forces will bring death and destruction to the Block and its hapless tenants..........  

'The Block' has an interesting enough premise, but at 286 pages in length, it is too long and too indolent to really succeed as a horror novel.

In the initial chapters, author Suster has fun with describing the secret vices and perversions of the building's tenants, introducing both black humor and mild surprises, but these observations can't lend much momentum to the narrative. Episodes of violent deaths also pop up in the initial chapters, but these quickly become repetitive as the plot struggles to gain traction.

The final chapters bring on large doses of splatterpunk- style mayhem, but these are so belabored that rather than energizing the narrative, they simply prolong its misery.

I won't give away any spoilers, save to say that the denouement, when it finally arrives, has such a contrived quality that I found it to be disappointing.

The verdict ? 'The Block' is not one of the better examples of 80s horror fiction. Unless you are adamant about collecting all of Suster's works, this one can be avoided.

The Tower King episodes 15 - 18

The Tower King
episodes 15 - 18
Alan Hebden (writer)
Jose Ortiz (artist)
Eagle (UK) 1982

episodes 1 - 3 are here.
episodes 4 - 6 are here.
episodes 7 - 9 are here.
episodes 10 - 14 are here.

episodes 19 - 24 are here.

When Fall comes

When Fall Comes
excerpt from 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Chapter Six, The Lot (II)
1975

But when Fall comes, kicking Summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of the places he has seen and things he has done since last he saw you.

It stays on through October and in rare years, on into November. Day after day the skies are a clear, hard blue, and the clouds that float across them, always west to east, are calm white ships with gray keels. The wind begins to blow by the day and is never still. It hurries you along as you walk the roads, crunching the leaves that have fallen in mad and variegated drifts. The wind makes you ache in some place that is deeper in your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.

Book Review: Golgotha Falls

Book Review: 'Golgotha Falls' by Frank De Felitta

0 / 5 Stars

'Golgotha Falls' (341 pp) was published by Pocket Books in September 1985. The stepback front cover art was done by Lisa Falkenstern.

Frank De Felitta (1921 - 2016) wrote a number of well-known Paperbacks from Hell during the 70s and 80s, among them Audrey Rose (1975) and The Entity (1978). 'Golgotha Falls' was the first of his novels that I've ever read. It's pretty awful. I'm not all that excited about reading any of his other novels.

The premise of 'Golgotha' is not without promise. The narrative is set in the eponymous small Massachusetts town, a town fallen on hard times. The modest Church of Eternal Sorrows, constructed in the 19th century to serve the townspeople, has a troubling history of priests gone mad; whisperings of ghosts and spirits; and a thick atmosphere of entropy and decay. It has been abandoned for decades.

As 'Golgotha' opens two parapsychologists, the shapely Anita Wagner and the broad-shouldered Mario Gilbert, have come from Harvard to conduct a scientific investigation of the rumored supernatural phenomena said to haunt the Church. Their expedition happens to coincide with the arrival of a Jesuit priest named Eamon James Malcolm, who intends to reconsecrate the church and purge it of its evil reputation.

As events unfold, the trio will confront strange signs and wonders, and their own inner demons.  And the evil that resides in the ruined church in Golgotha Falls will rise to strike at the Catholic Church itself.........

I struggled to finish 'Golgotha Falls', coming to close to giving up on it altogether numerous times.

One reason the book is so bad is the prose style. Author De Felitta belongs to the Ramsey Campbell School of Horror Fiction, and encrusts every paragraph with empty sentences and purple prose:

In the shadows of collapsing buildings, the dogs moved as though underwater, with a lolling, doll-like swaying of their heads.

The priest was blond, and his hair trembled in the night breeze while the crickets screamed an abominable and indifferent derision.

Red ants fled the heat, like animated drops of blood fleeing into the soil. 

Along the bottom of the church, the red-brown dirt oozed like soft feces.

Golgotha Falls had split them like living wood from dead.

The jet droned on, sleepily, bouncing into stormy night clouds.

I could perhaps tolerate the purple prose if the plot had sufficient momentum to compensate, but the reality of 'Golgotha Falls' is that the plot is worst thing about the book. All of its melodramatic and overheated prose can't conceal the fact that nothing happens. 

There are all sorts of what may be hallucinations, or visions, or actual physical manifestations of Evil, but the author's refusal to assign these things a unambiguous presence means the the book reads more as a labored psychological thriller than a horror novel. 

In its closing chapters 'Golgotha Falls' tries to inject energy into the narrative by venturing into 'cosmic' territory, but even here, the final confrontation between Good and Evil is so drawn out and overwritten that the novel ends on a decidedly flaccid note.

Summing up, 'Golgotha Falls', for all its great cover design, is a dud. Those seeking the most rewarding entries in the canon of the Paperbacks from Hell will want to pass on this novel.

October is Spooky Stories Month

October is Spooky Stories Month

Well, it may have been over 90 degrees today in Central Virginia, and they're calling for another 90 degree day tomorrow. But it is October, and with it Fall should be arriving, along with Halloween.

Here at the PorPor Books Blog we always celebrate October and Halloween with reviews of horror novels and short story compilations. For October 2019 we have some promising selections, including some Paperbacks from Hell; some Brit Horror; and a collection of short stories from the well-known Belgian author Eddy Bertin. Look for reviews to be posted in the coming weeks !

Comics of the American West

Comics of the American West
by Maurice Horn
Stoeger Publishing Co., January, 1978

Comics of the American West first was published in hardcover in 1977. This Stoeger Publishing Co. trade paperback version (224 pp) was published in 1978. It is one of a number of overviews, encyclopedias, and histories of comics and comic books that Maurice Horn authored during the 70s and 80s. 

Now 88, the French-born Horn has retired from writing on comics. An argument could be made that he has never gotten the appreciation that he has deserved, appreciation and praise that has been liberally bestowed upon other critics or observers of comics and comic books, most notably Scott McCloud. In my opinion, Horn remains one of the more perceptive chroniclers of the topic, and his books - although necessarily dated - retain their value to the present day.

An informative overview of Horn's contributions to comics is available here. 

Comics of the American West is divided into five chapters; Chapter One is an Introduction to the western comic strip; Chapter Two covers the Western comic book; Chapter Three, The West in Comics, is an overview of the depiction of the west in other genres of comics.

Chapter Four covers Westerns Around the World, while Chapter Five deals with Themes and Inspirations.

The book has copious black and white illustrations, although these are often low-res and not reproduced very well. There is a an eight-page color insert section.

It's no big revelation to say that the Western was the touchstone genre for the early days of both comic strips and comic books, all the way through the 50s and early 60s. Horn's first two chapters provide a good overview of chronicling the massive amount of cowboy and western material generated in these glory days, including the advent of franchises centered on real-life personalities like Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. 

Baby Boomers who grew up with Marvel's Kid Colt, Two Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid and other heroes will see these characters covered as well.

Horn chronicles the slow but inexorable decline of the Western genre in U.S. comics and comic strips as the 70s unfolded, when Marvel began filling up its Western titles with reprints from the 50s and 60s.

During the early 70s both Marvel and DC made some half-hearted efforts to introduce new concepts to the genre, such as Marvel's Red Wolf, which featured an American Indian protagonist, but during the 70s and 80s the only established Western comic, for all practical purposes, was All Star Western and its spinoff, Jonah Hex.

In Europe and South America, of course, the Western remained a flourishing genre and Chapter Four, Westerns Around the World, does a good job of covering all of this material. Horn gives mention to all the major characters known to the European readership: Lucky Luke, Fort Navajo / Lieutenant Blueberry, Jerry Spring, Tex Willer, and Gun Law.

Reading through this chapter of the book, it's quite apparent that there is a substantial body of quality material that, sadly, has not been translated into English and presented to the American comic book readership. 

Summing up, while inevitably dated, Comics of the American West remains the only overview of the topic, and thus continues to serve as a very useful resource for those interested in the genre. If you are a fan of Western comics, or just comics in general, it's worth picking up this book; used copies in good condition can be obtained for very reasonable prices.

Big Mac Tonight, September 1987

Big Mac Tonight
McDonald's advertisement 
September 1987

When the clock strikes
Half-past six, babe
Time to head for
Golden Lights

It's a good time 
For the great taste 
(dinner !)
At McDonalds.........
It's Mac Tonight !

(come on make it Mac Tonight !)

In September, 1987, I was in grad school and renting a room in a brick rowhouse on South Potomac Street in the Highlandtown neighborhood of Baltimore.

The rowhouse didn't have central air, and the muggy Baltimore heat turned it into an oven. I had recently moved up from the South so I was accustomed to the heat to some extent, but still, there wasn't much relief to be had from a window fan when the temperature inside the second floor of the rowhouse was in the high 70s.

Then, as the second half of the month finally arrived, there would come a night when the temperature would get down to the 60s, and life got a bit more comfortable. And when the end of the month came, the daytime temps slowly would get milder and more bearable.

Along with the arrival of Fall, airing in September 1987 was a cool commercial for McDonald's and its Big Mac sandwich. A man - who would come to be known as 'Mac Tonight' - wearing a quarter-moon mask sang a jingle based on the old 1959 Bobby Darin hit Mack the Knife.

It was sufficient motivation for me to step out into the cooling night air and walk to the nearest McDonalds. Not for a Big Mac - I think it's their worst burger - but a Quarter Pounder with cheese was fine for me and my grad student budget.

Now, some 32 years later, as those first cooler days and nights of September come I think back again to that commercial. And I will head for the 'Golden Lights' ! 

For an interesting look at the commercial, and the 'Mac Tonight' character, there is this YouTube video.

The Banana Splits Movie: review

The Banana Splits Movie: Review

3 / 5 Stars

I decided to rent The Banana Splits Movie from amazon for $2.99. It's barely 90 minutes in length, so if you don't intend to purchase the DVD, then renting is recommended.

It's scheduled to air on the Syfy Channel on October 12, if you are unwilling to rent.

The film was shot in Capetown, South Africa, which gives it a strange sort of familiar-but-foreign visual sense.

The plot isn't overly complicated: little Harley Williams loves The Banana Splits, and is thrilled when his Mom and prick Stepdad Mitch announce that his gift will be attending a taping of the show.

But even as Harley shrieks with delight along with the others in the studio audience, backstage, unfolding developments will jeopardize the lives of everyone in the building. 

Because the Splits are not happy..........and when the Splits are not happy, they like to kill people...........

The Banana Splits Movie does some things right. The seedy, rundown studio lot where the show is taped, and the visibly decayed costumes of the Splits, create a suitably creepy 'retro' vibe that tells the audience that the show is a misbegotten leftover from the early 70s.

The script provides plenty of opportunities for satire, as well as a cast of odious characters whose deaths at the hands of the manic Splits will evoke cheers and laughter.

These deaths, by the way, are quite gory - this is not a movie for kids.

Inevitably, given its low budget, the movie starts to drag by its midpoint (all of the action takes place within the same studio in the same day) and I watched it more out of a sense of duty (and to see just how many more people the Splits would gruesomely dispatch) than fervid enjoyment.

Summing up, if you're a Baby Boomer who would appreciate a mocking, postmodern sendup of a long-ago kids' TV show then The Banana Splits Movie may be worth watching. But if you're under 30, then much of the irony and facetiousness likely will come across as underwhelming.

Book Review: The Misfits

Book Review: 'The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders' by Colin Wilson

3 / 5 Stars

'The Misfits' first was published in hardback in 1988 in the UK by Grafton; this trade paperback version (271 pp), also from Grafton, was published in 1989.

Colin Wilson was always happy to use titillation to sell his books. Who can forget the immortal title: The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme (1963) ? Or Sex and the Intelligent Teenager (1966) ? 

'The Misfits' is a nonfiction work that takes Wilson's philosophical concept of The Outsider and applies it to various historical figures, in turn using these historical figures to make observations about attitudes throughout Europe towards sex, during the interval from the 1700s to the 1970s.

But strangely, Wilson opens his book with two chapters devoted to a drag queen (?!) named Carl Harjdu (Karoly Hajdu) who regularly intruded into some intellectual circles in London in the 60s and 70s as 'Charlotte Blair'. Despite his better judgment, Wilson allowed himself to be co-opted into becoming a supporter of Hajdu / Blair. By the time 'The Misfits' was published the two had become estranged over Wilson's growing dismissal of Blair's 'science' of 'human ethology'. These opening chapters in 'The Misfits' therefore provide Wilson's rationale for rejecting Blair's eccentric notions.

Once the two initial chapters are done, Wilson begins his recounting - in successive chapters in chronological order - of the lives and times of representative Sexual Outsiders, beginning with the Marquis de Sade, followed by Lord Byron, Nikolai Gogol, Algernon Charles Swinburne, 'Walter' (the author of My Secret Life), Havelock Ellis, a somewhat obscure composer named Percy Grainger, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. Other luminaries from the worlds of literature (such as Pushkin, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence) are referenced.

To keep the reader's attention from wandering during these recountings, these chapters are liberally sprinkled with excerpts from all manner of pornographic works.

It quickly will become clear to the reader that the individuals profiled in 'The Misfits' aptly deserved this labeling; they all were quite nasty to their female companions, and were quick to take offense at any questioning of their innate genius. Wilson shows that these Outsiders had their own peculiar quirks and deviancies (James Joyce, for example, was erotically charged by the sight of the yellow and brown stains in his wife's underwear). 

Where 'The Misfits' fails to cohere is in Wilson's purpose in surveying the Sexual Outsider: yes, these writers, artists, poets, composers, and philosophers all were screwed up in some way or another; but what is the point of analyzing their actions ? 

Nowhere in the pages of 'The Misfits' does Wilson invoke his own philosophy of New Existentialism, nor does he ever make reference to 'Faculty X' as he does in his 1975 book The Occult: A History (1971). 

Presumably, the Misfits profiled in the book represent men who failed to recognize their innate ability to use Faculty X to free themselves from their sexual problems and self-destructive behaviors, and thus missed the opportunity to attain more fulfilling lives (and romantic relationships). But Wilson never comes out and explicitly states this, giving 'The Misfits' a rather purposeless character (aside from titillation, of course).

Summing up, 'The Misfits' contains enough Juicy Bits to reward those 99% of purchasers who picked it up in those long-ago days of the late 80s, when the internet and its vast reserves of pornography did not exist, in the hopes of gaining some measure of Stimulation. But those 1% of readers who are hoping for additional insights into Wilson's New Existentialism will find this book to be disappointing.