Paydirt from Creepy issue 124

'Paydirt'
by Roger McKenzie (story) and Carmine Infantino and Alfredo Alcala (art)
from Creepy issue 124, January 1981

When Carmine Infantino was summarily fired early in 1976 as the Publisher of DC comics, according to Reed Tucker's 2017 book Slugfest, more than a few people were happy to see him go: " 'Carmine was a prick', says inker Joe Rubenstein".

Infantino became a freelancer, providing art to a number of publishers, including Marvel and Warren.

In 1981 he teamed up with Alfredo Alcala for this fine treatment of a Weird Western theme.

Book Review: Shardik

Book Review: 'Shardik' by Richard Adams

2 / 5 Stars

‘Shardik’ first was published in the UK in hardback in 1974. This Avon Books paperback was released in the US in February, 1976.

By the time ‘Shardik’ hit the paperback racks, author Adams had gained fame and fortune from the success of his 1972 novel ‘Watership Down’, and it was because I found ‘Watership Down’ entertaining that back in February 1976, I purchased a copy of ‘Shardik’ despite its alarming length (620 pages). I remember getting about 75 pages into the novel before I gave it up due to profound boredom…….

In the spirit of completism, 46 years later I again took up ‘Shardik’, this time prepared for a less-than frenetic read. I was aided by the knowledge that it’s August in Central Virginia, and the crushing heat and humidity make it uncomfortable to do anything outdoors. So, listening to my central A/C blowing cool air through the HVAC vents, I settled into my armchair and opened up ‘Shardik’.

The novel is set in a Bronze Age world governed by the Beklan Empire. In the northern fringes of the Empire sits the Telthearna river, and in the middle of the river sits the island of Ortelga. 

The island and its populace are impoverished, relying for spiritual nourishment on the utterances of secretive priestesses, who in their redoubt of Quiso worship a vaguely Old Testament-style God in the hopes that the Deity will bestow, at a time of His choosing, wealth, power, and prestige to His people, the Ortelgans.  

The protagonist of ‘Shardik’ is a young hunter named Kelderek, who, if not very bright, is skilled at his craft. As the novel opens, Kelderek faces almost certain death at the hands of a leopard when a miraculous intervention, in the form of a bear some 13 feet tall, saves his life. The sight of the monstrous ursine moves Kelderek to revelation: the bear can only be the reincarnation of the Shardik of Ortelgan mythology. Shardik, God’s messenger, and a portent that the Lord’s power again will descend on his people. 

The Baron of Ortelga initially is skeptical of Kelderek’s announcement of the return of Shardik, and demands a consultation with the priestesses of Quiso. This in turn triggers momentous events that will see Kelderek rise to the heights of power in the Beklan empire. But of course, as Kelderek is to discover, some gods can be fickle, and when he finds himself fallen into degradation and despair, can Kelderek still retain his belief in Shardik as the holy messenger of God, and a comfort to those of the Elect ? 

So: this time, I finished 'Shardik'. It was not a compelling read, and took me quite some time to accomplish. The novel’s deliberate, meandering pacing reflects the narrative’s primary focus on chronicling Kelderek’s personal journey from naïve backwoods boy, to an adult man with a stark and disturbing knowledge of the world’s cruelties. This journey is accompanied by much exposition describing the psychological, emotional, and theological dilemmas confronting Kelderek. 

Plot developments (such as battles) that, in other ‘epic’ fantasy novels would receive considerable attention, are given a brief, almost perfunctory treatment in ‘Shardik’.

The last 80 pages of the novel are quite plodding, as they deal with the advent of a kind of pantheistic humanism to replace the more brutish elements of Shardik-worship among the bear’s followers. There is also a recapitulation of the mythology of the civilizing effect contact with Arab / Muslim cultures had on the ‘barbarian’ polities of medieval Europe. 

In some ways, I found Shardik to be the most interesting character in the novel. He doesn't do much but eat, sleep, shit, and occasionally run amok, but his simple nature was a welcome change from the novel's relentless emphasis on Kelderek's internal turmoils. Curiously, author Adams never reveals whether Shardik is a 'living fossil' bear who has survived from the Pleistocene era, or a 'regular' bear converted by mutation into a giant. 

I finished ‘Shardik’ with no desire to read the quasi-sequel, ‘Maia’, which was published in 1984 and clocks in at a daunting 1,223 pages. Those with the patience necessary to digest such tomes are welcome to ‘Shardik’.............. 

Book Review: Well of Shiuan

Book Review: 'Well of Shiuan' by C. J. Cherryh

2 / 5 Stars

‘Well of Shiuan’ (253 pp.) was published by DAW Books as book number 284 in April, 1978. The cover art is by Michael Whelan. This is the second volume in the so-called ‘Morgaine’ trilogy from C. J. Cherryh. The first volume in the trilogy is ‘Gate of Ivrel’ (1976), and the third, ‘Fires of Azeroth’ (1979). These three volumes are available in the DAW omnibus ‘The Morgaine Saga’ (2001).

Cherryh produced a fourth and final book in the series, ‘Exile’s Gate’, in 1988. 

 

My review of 'Gate of Ivrel is here.

 

My review of 'Fires of Azeroth' is here.

As ‘Well of Shiuan’ opens, our hero Morgaine, and her dutiful servant and man-at-arms Vanye, have traveled through a star gate from the world of Andur-Kursh, the setting of ‘Gate of Ivrel’, to the world of Shiuan. There, Morgaine aims to make her way north, to the star gate located near the eponymous Well, in the hopes of destroying the gate and thus preventing the villainous Roh from manipulating said gate for his own purposes.

Entropy was a very fashionable theme in sci-fi published during the New Wave era, and in ‘Well’, author Cherryh suffuses her setting with plenty of entropy. 

There is much exposition on the entropic state of life in Shiuan. The land is beset with rising sea levels, earthquakes, and torrential rains, and its bedraggled populations of serfs, and degenerate aristocrats, are beset with apprehension. Sodden and surly in their soaked and crumbling villages and castles, they pin their hopes on a Deliverer – who just may be Morgaine - to open the gate at the Well, and allow the people to escape to a world better than Shiuan.

The problem with 'Shiuan' is that Cherryh's prose never rises to the level of that of Michael John Harrison, a master at invoking the atmosphere of entropy, as he does (for example) in this passage from his 1983 'Viriconium' novel 'The Floating Gods' :

…….Strange old towers rose from a wooded slope clasped in a curved arm of the derelict pleasure canal. About their feet clustered the peeling villas of a vanished middle class, all plaster mouldings, split steps, tottering porticos and drains smelling of cats. Ashlyme trudged up the hill. A bell clanged high up in a house; a face moved at a window. The wind whirled dust and dead leaves around him. 

 

Moreso than the other two volumes in the trilogy, ‘Well’ suffers from indolent pacing. Much of the narrative is preoccupied with documenting melodramatic exchanges between Vanye and Morgaine, and between Vanye and various residents of Shiuan. A plot device employed in all the Morgaine novels, in which the dimwitted Vanye is captured by his enemies and must use cunning and guile (related in lengthy passages of stilted dialogue) to escape and rejoin Morgaine, lends little momentum to the narrative.

Things become a bit more action-centered in the closing chapters of ‘Well’, when the interminable journeying over waterlogged terrain, through mean and miserable landscapes, comes to an end. But the fact that this is the middle volume of a trilogy means that the denouement necessarily can’t get very adventurous. 

The verdict ? ‘Well of Shiuan’ is the weakest of the three volumes of the Morgaine trilogy. It’s best approached with a large measure of patience, and the awareness that it is designed to propel, in an unambitious fashion, the narrative into the third, and final, arc of the storyline.

Penthouse magazine August 1974

Penthouse magazine

August 1974

Let's travel back in time to August, 1974. 

'Billy, Don't Be A Hero', by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, and 'Band on the Run', by Paul McCartney and Wings, are in heavy rotation on FM radio. And on the stands is the latest issue of Penthouse magazine, with a 'retro' themed cover that reflects the Nostalgia Craze then prominent in American popular culture.

Along with the unintentionally (?) comical Penthouse Forum, 1974 offered a monthly feature called 'Couples' which provided risque 'interviews' with swingin' men and women, whose exploits were 'analyzed' by 'the eminent sexologist Dr.  Robert Chartham'. Like the Forum, I know that the content of every 'Couples' feature was 100%, absolutely, utterly true and factual !

One thing that is readily apparent in looking at the 'pictorials', is that back then the girls were pretty, and personal grooming standards a bit different............

This month's interviewee is none other than film director Roman Polanski, who took care to  present himself as a super-stud. In 1977, Polanski would be arrested and charged with rape of a minor, but in '74, he was living the high life.

In August of '74, you could join the Occult Arts Society..........the movie The Exorcist no doubt motivated some into taking a membership. 

In '74 Penthouse didn't have quite the advertising portfolio of Playboy, although it was beating the former in terms of circulation. There was enough advertising to get the page count up to 152. Among the products on display were aphrodisiacal products, which are a potent (pun intended) reminder to us that back in '74, there were no such things as Viagra or Cialis. 

The most you could hope for was a jolt from the 'I, Brute', supplement marketed by Joe Weider (!) which offered the promise of ginseng and other 'Oriental herbs' to those suffering from........errr.............difficulties. 

And only in '74 could you get the decade's most quintessential swinging bachelor cocktail, the Tequila Sunrise, in a can !

Swinging bachelors also could take advantage of Xaviera Hollander's game to make that all-important transition from foreplay to erotic 'action'...............

Let's close the show on a high note, with a consumer product sure to raise eyebrows..........do you know that back in '74 you could procure Male Comfort Spray to ensure your crotch area is free of 'chafing, stickiness, and irritation' ?! Maybe it had to do with those tight doubleknit slacks everyone was wearing............anyways, before hitting the Regal Beagle singles bar, a bit of MCS surely was a confidence-builder.

There you have it...........a look back in time to a different era, and a different attitude towards what it meant to be a Manly Man..............

20 Years of Heavy Metal

20 Years of Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal Books, February 1997

20 Years of Heavy Metal (266 pp.) was published to celebrate twenty years of the magazine, which by 1997 was owned by Kevin Eastman, of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' fame. 

This is a well-produced 'coffee table' book, printed on a high grade of paper and with topnotch color separations.

The contents are something of a mixed bag. 

Material from prior to 1980, which I consider the magazine's heyday, is in short supply. Whether this was due to expired printing rights and / or licenses is unclear.

The opening pages are a gallery of T & A pictures. Looking at these, one can see how the magazine changed over time from its early focus on finely crafted, imaginative, sci-fi-flavored content stuff, to become a T & A showcase.

Despite the predominance of material from the late 1980s and the 1990s, there are worthwhile pieces in this book. An undoubted masterpiece is 'The Cathedral' by Jean-Claude Gal, with its intricate black-and-white draftsmanship. Also of value are a 'Mercenary' story from Segrelles, and the post-apocalyptic western 'Children of the Spider' by Segura and Ortiz (the duo behind 'Burton and Cyb'). Also standing out is  'L'Lobo' by Caza.

I was pleased to see a transgressive Ranxerox story, 'Aie, Robot !', from Liberatore. 'Druuna' artist Serpieri is represented by a Western tale, titled 'Women of the West'. This has, as one might expect, female nudity, but no tentacled monsters consumed with lascivious intent. And Enki Bilal contributes 'On the Wing'.

Artist William Stout teams up with Moebius for 'Arzaq', a homage to the franchise.

The remainder of the book is filled with marginal pieces from the late 1980s, and the 1990s. The artwork is makeshift, and the plotting forgettable.

I was able to buy my copy of '20 Years of Heavy Metal' in 2013 from the magazine's website. I think I paid about fifteen dollars for '20 Years', as Heavy Metal was having a sale on their graphic novels and art books. 

So it's alarming to see the bookjackers and speculators advertising copies of the book for $75 on up to $500. At eBay, the prices are just as exorbitant.

The verdict ? If you can find '20 Years of Heavy Metal' available for an affordable price (say, $30 or less), then it can be a worthwhile purchase. But there's no way I can condone spending more for this book.

Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor

Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor

Dark Horse Comics, 1995

From March to August 1995, Dark Horse comics released a five-issue miniseries of comic books, titled 'Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor', that anthologized selected short stories by the renowned author. 

The series featured comics, all-text pieces, and illustrated stories.

Each issue of 'Dream Corridor' led off with a one-page Introduction, rendered in graphical form, in which our hero indulges in raillery designed to remind readers that even though he's a Big Author, Harlan is excited about this, his latest foray into comics.......

Along with the venerable 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream', some older tales, and some newer ones, are serialized in the pages of 'Dream Corridor'.

One thing about 'Dream Corridor' that immediately is apparent is its modelling on DC's 'Vertigo' comic book imprint, which by 1995 was receiving lavish praise from the more intellectually inclined members of the comic book readership. The stylized, abstract artwork that was prominent in Vertigo's titles is self-consciously mimicked with 'Dream Corridor':

Most of the stories presented in 'Dream Corridor' are unremarkable. They usually have a twist ending, and are designed to impart some degree of comeuppance to their amoral protagonists. The one exception to this format is the story 'Cold Friend', which is serialized in issues four and five and as a more traditional sci-fi theme, and slicker artwork.

The text pieces featured in 'Dream Corridor' are disappointments, mainly because Dark Horse elected to print them in teeny-tiny, 4 pt font in order to accommodate them within the page count restriction for each issue. I didn't have the energy to pull out magnifying spectacles to read these stories, so I can't tell you if they are any good or not.........

Summing up, I really can't recommend 'Dream Corridor' to anyone other than those diehard Ellison fans who just have to have anything and everything that came from the hand of The Master. Along with the mediocre artwork and unremarkable stories, the imposition of cringey segments featuring Harlan's efforts to be a mensch tend to grate..........

'Dream Corridor' simply doesn't live up to the standards set by Ellison's earlier foray into graphic art packaging, 1978's The Illustrated Harlan Ellison. 

Letter to Xaviera

Letter to Xaviera Hollander

from the July, 1974 issue of Penthouse magazine

Sometimes I think it would be fun to have been the guy at Penthouse whose job was to write the 'letters' to Xaviera Hollander ('Call Me Madam') in her monthly column. 

This missive from 'Betty' is a classic combo of over-the-top humor and sleaze, 1970s style........

Book Review: Fires of Freedom

Book Review: 'Fires of Freedom' by Jerry Pournelle

4 / 5 Stars

'Fires of Freedom' (616 pp.) was published by Baen Books in July, 2010, and features cover art by Kurt Miller. 

'Fires' is a compilation of two early novels from Pournelle: 'Birth of Fire', and 'King David's Spaceship'.

'Birth of Fire' first was published in March 1976 by Laser Books. As the novel opens, protagonist Garrett Pittson is involved in a gang fight among the decaying cityscape of a 21st century Baltimore, Maryland. Police intervention sees Pittson arrested, and given the choice of 'volunteering' to join the Federation colony on Mars, there to start life over as an indentured servant to the corporate firms conducting mining and other businesses.

Resigned to never seeing Earth again, Pittson decides to make the best of his situation on Mars, where, if nothing else, one's past history is not held against someone. In due course, Pittson makes the acquaintance of some 'Marsmen' and embarks on a hard-working path towards advancement in the bleak, windswept territories outside the city of Hellastown.

But as he works towards a future on Mars, Pittson becomes aware that all is not well between the hardy colonists staking claims in the wilderness, and the corporate entities who levy taxes and direct energy development. When the corporate hand weighs too heavily, the colonists revolt.........and a civil war erupts on Mars.

Compared to the Federation and corporate police, the Marsmen are undergunned. But they have a firsthand knowledge of surviving in a hostile environment, and they plan to use that knowledge to their advantage.........

'Birth of Fire' is a competent action-adventure sci-fi tale. For the first-person narration, Pournelle adopts the clipped diction of a private-eye or suspense novel, an approach to storytelling that was - depending on your point of view - either reactionary, or transgressive, in 1976 during the height of the New Wave era.

'Birth of Fire' is adept at incorporating scientific knowledge of Mars, circa 1976, into its plot. There are no life forms, or 'canals', or ancient ruins on the Mars of 'Birth', just geological formations that are portrayed as attention-worthy entities in their own right. Curiously, in its closing chapters 'Birth' incorporates a plot device that is reminiscent of that deployed in the 1990 film Total Recall. 

'King David's Spaceship' is a revised version of Pournelle's 1973 novel, 'A Spaceship for the King', which I reviewed here. As best as I can tell, the revisions made to 'King David's Spaceship' were designed to incorporate the novel into the CoDominium / Moties franchise, and in particular synchronize the 'Spaceship' narrative with that of Pournelle's 1974 novel 'The Mote in God's Eye'.

I can't say that the expanded text introduced in 'King David's Spaceship' improves on 'A Spaceship for the King' all that much, and I finished 'King David's Spaceship' content with retaining the four-star rating I gave to the original novel.

Summing up, those who like action-oriented, military science fiction with an unashamedly conservative flavoring probably will find 'Fires of Freedom' rewarding.