Killraven Epic Collection

Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds
Marvel Epic Collection, 2021

'Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds' was published in 2021. As an entry in Marvel's 'Epic Collection' imprint, it's designed to be an affordable trade paperback reprinting the comic books of the 1970s that featured the Killraven character. In the 504 pages of this Epic Collection, you get all of Killraven's entries in Amazing Adventures from issue 18 (May 1973) to 39 (November 1976). Also bundled in the book are the May, 1976 issue of Marvel Team-Up featuring Spider-Man and Killraven, and the 1983 Killraven graphic novel, 'Last Dreams Broken'. 

The last section of the Epic Collection contains various editorial essays, draft script and art pages, and Marvel encyclopedia entries for Killraven and his allies. In his editorial essay for the debut of Killraven in Amazing Adventures #18, Roy Thomas reveals that he first conceived of the character in 1971, but his pressing writing and editorial duties kept him from presenting Killraven until two years later.

One thing that should be noted is that the comics in the Epic Collection are recolored and are significantly brighter than those of the original comics. Purists might object to this process, but even making allowances for the inevitable fading of the original comic, in the scans compared below, I think the recolored version is better:

left: panel from Amazing Adventures issue 33 (November 1975), right, panel from the Epic Collection reprint

I still remember encountering Amazing Adventures #18 in the Spring of 1973 on the rack in the Seven-Eleven in Elmira Heights, New York, and thinking, 'this is a cool comic !' It had a far-out, sci-fi flavor quite unlike anything else on the comic book rack.

The Killraven stories had a level of violence, and gruesome deaths, that stretched the boundaries of a Comics Code book of the mid-1970s, which added to its hip quality. The  mutants and monsters and villains in the pages of Killraven had no qualms about snuffing out Earthlings in order to bring about the subjugation of the planet at the hands - or rather, tentacles - of the Martian invaders.

Indeed, in issue #27 (November 1974) readers learned of a facility where human females were housed in cages and regularly impregnated by their hapless husbands, so that their infants could be served up to the Martians as culinary delicacies - ! Pretty strong stuff for a superhero comic, back in the day.

The Killraven saga also offered some eccentric content that could only have been approved in the 1970s, such as the episode where Killraven encountered an underground city peopled by blacks who had fled the Martian invasion in order to establish a blacks-only realm, free of white racism. 

When Killraven stumbled across the city, its inhabitants were none too pleased to see him...........written by white writer Bill Mantlo, the story featured dialogue that exemplified 70s Black Power !  

The initial issues of the Killraven storyline were straightforward sci-fi adventure, and well illustrated by Marvel veteran Herb Trimpe. But with Amazing Adventures No. 27 (November 1974) P. Craig Russell joined as the permanent artist. Russell's artwork, with its Art Deco / Art Nouveau sensibilities, made Killraven stand out from Marvel's other titles. 

Unfortunately, with issue 27, writer Don McGregor's proclivities to overwrite were given free rein, a decision that was to handicap the remaining two years of the series. 

Too often, Russell's ornate pencils, and the imaginative color schemes of a revolving cast of colorists, were overwhelmed by McGregor's pretentious verbiage.

The plots became more contrived and unconvincing, and divorced from the 'war with the Martians' theme, in order for McGregor to demonstrate that, even though comics books are for juveniles, he was an immense literary talent who rose above the limitations of the medium.

The 1983 graphic novel is a disappointment. The opportunity to tie up some loose threads plot-wise is available, but McGregor can't resist overwriting things, and too many panels are burdened with excessive speech balloons, too many of which are stuffed with grandiloquent text.  

The verdict ? If you are a Baby Boomer, like me, and you want to recapture the fun of encountering the Killraven storyline once again, then the Epic Collection is a very affordable way to do so. Just be prepared to see the writing for the series evolve from sci-fi fun, to self-indulgent circumlocutions. 

The art, however, remains strong even after the passage of nearly 50 years.

Book Review: Psi High and Others

Book Review: 'Psi High and Others' by Alan E. Nourse

2 / 5 Stars

'Psi High and Others' (157 pp.) was published by Ace Books in 1967. The cover art is by Don Ivan Punchatz.

Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) is perhaps best known for his 1974 novel The Bladerunner, and his 1963 anthology The Counterfeit Man and Others, a perennial selection of the Scholastic Book Club during the Baby Boomer years. 

'Psi High' consists of three novellas. All are set in the 22nd century, and are framed using the plot device of benevolent aliens watching over human affairs from afar, forbidden to interfere. At the same time, however, the aliens are inclined to see that mankind rises from his self-inflicted handicaps and achieves emancipation among the other intelligent races of the galaxy. 

In 'The Martyr', a complicated medical procedure known as Rejuvenation can restore youthful vigor, and lengthen the lifespan, of the privileged few allowed to receive it. Given that the politically powerful and well-connected control access to Rejuvenation, such access has become a tool for coercion and control. Senator Dan Fowler, a genuine Man of the People, is using all of his considerable conviction and statecraft to try and make Rejuvenation available to the masses. But what if Rejuvenation isn't the remarkable gift it would seem to be ?

In 'Psi High' a malevolent alien, disguised as a Terran, roams the Earth on a mission of mayhem. Only telepaths, those with 'high' psi capabilities, can detect the alien. But of course, those with psi capabilities are hated and feared by some of their fellow humans. Can those gifted with psi powers nobly act to save their fellow humans - however bigoted these might be - from the alien threat ?

In 'Mirror, Mirror', hostile aliens have secreted their ship in the clouds covering the surface of Saturn. From a nearby space station, the story's protagonists try to find and destroy the aliens by mentally piloting attack drones down into the murk. But the aliens have thwarted these efforts by responding with devastating psychic attacks. Can Dorie Kendall from the psi academy discover a way to defeat the aliens, or is the Earth doomed to fall under an extraterrestrial invasion ?

I finished 'Psi High and Others' underwhelmed. While Nourse is certainly a more gifted prose stylist than those of his contemporaries who were writing sci-fi in the 1960s, the fact is that these three novellas are dull and unexciting. The narratives in these novellas are reliant on protracted dialogue passages, in which the characters indulge in melodramatic exchanges. The denouements of 'Psi High' and 'Mirror Mirror' rely on gimmicky contrivances that fail to live up to the overheated nature of the emotional and psychological confrontations that underpin the narratives.

These stories do promote a note of confidence and optimism in the human potential. But by 1967, when these stories were published, the burgeoning New Wave movement was expressing a more skeptical, and more nuanced, attitude towards humanism, and the meliorism of Nourse's stories already was becoming passe.

Return to Normals

Back to Normals

It was a mild Autumn day, warm, with hazy sunshine, and it had been 4 1/2 years since my last visit, so I risked the badly damaged, potholed, decaying streets of Baltimore to travel to Normals Books and Records on East 31st Street.

Not much has changed with the store or with the neighborhood (still sketchy and Inconclusively Gentrifying) since I first started going to Normals in the early 1990s. 

They always have some interesting things on display in their window............stopping to examine the displayed items always confers some instant Hipster Credit.

I came away with a modest collection of sci-fi titles and a 1985 copy of the book of the Friedman brothers' comics from Heavy Metal and National Lampoon, Any Similarity to Persons Living Or Dead Is Purely Coincidental. 

I'll have a post up about the Friedmans' book pretty soon. 

Always nice to be at Normals, on a nice Fall day..........

Book Review: Last Rites

Book Review: 'Last Rites' by Jorge Saralegui

1 / 5 Stars

'Last Rites' (279 pp.) was published by Charter / Berkley Books in November, 1985. The cover artist is uncredited.

The prologue of 'Rites' depicts, in a splatter-punkish way, a satanic ceremony, held in a San Francisco church in 1882 and overseen by an alluring woman named Lourdes. 

The narrative then moves to San Francisco of the mid-1980s. Lead character Nick Van Lo, who has been booted out of a faculty position at an esteemed Bay-area university for sleeping with his female students, has moved to the Tenderloin district. Low on money, and steeped in no small amount of self-pity, Nick takes a room at an old hotel, called the La Casa de Dolores, now converted to a flophouse. Nick hopes to restore his reputation and his self-respect by teaching tenth-graders at the estimable John Swett School.

One of Van Lo's students is the angelic Amanda Westerhays, who, along with her affluent affluent parents Jessica and Tod, enjoys a comfortable lifestyle at their home in a suburb outside the city. Amanda thinks very highly of her new teacher, and Nick reciprocates the sentiment. So when Amanda begins to display aggressive behavior, it raises concerns with Nick.

Nick also can't help noticing that there is something disturbing going on at La Casa de Dolores. The mortality rate for its population of transients, alcoholics, and derelicts rapidly is rising. 'The Doctor', an amiable transient who mans the front desk, is drinking more heavily than usual. The carcasses of dead rats, drained of blood, are scattered around the premises. The eccentric Father Angustia, an 'urban missionary' who ministers to the tenants, hints that there are dark and dangerous forces at work in the building. And Dolores, the decrepit elderly woman who owns the hotel, declares that she knows a great deal about these disturbances........and the malevolent acts that sullied the city in 1882.

Even as Nick struggles to understand the strange things going on at the hotel, he meets a striking young woman named Judith Harper. Judith, with her long dark hair, white teeth, and fabulous figure, is like Vampirella come to life. And she only visits him at night................

'Last Rites' has an interesting premise: vampires on the loose in modern-day San Francisco, preying on the vagrants and the demimonde of the Tenderloin District, delivering erotic thrills in exchange for sucking the blood of their one-night stands.

Unfortunately, after the first 50 pages the narrative starts to lose cohesion, taking on the form of a series of vignettes that are tossed at the reader in a haphazard manner. The author adopts a prose approach common to many Paperbacks from Hell, introducing spooky incidents that may, or may not, be hallucinations and nightmares. These incidents tend to give the plot a nebulous quality, as the reader labors to elucidate if the evil is 'real', or merely a phantasm.

It doesn't help matters that the author's prose is stilted, and overly reliant on melodramatic passages that contravene the 'show, don't tell' mantra of fiction writing. Such passages are particularly pronounced in the novel's final fifty pages, which suffer from considerable padding en route to detailing the final confrontation between the vampires and the heroes. 

The verdict ? 'Last Rites' is one of the more underwhelming Paperbacks from Hell. You're better off going with some of the other vampire novels that are plentiful in that category.

Paperback art of John Holmes

The Paperback Art of John Holmes 

at 'The Paperback Palette'

A very nice pictorial at the website of 'The Paperback Palette' on the art of the UK's John Holmes (1935 - 2011). 

If you grew up during the 1970s then you probably remember the striking cover art Holmes provided for the Ballantine paperback editions of the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

The pictorial at The Paperback Palette showcases many other memorable covers Holmes did for publishers in the US and the UK during the 1970s and 1980s. Unfortunately, Holmes's art began to appear less frequently in the late 1980s, and he doesn't appear to have been active in the art field in the 1990s and after. His current obscurity is undeserved............

Book Review: Golden Eyes

Book Review: 'Golden Eyes' by John Gideon

3 / 5 Stars

'Golden Eyes' is a rarity among Paperbacks from Hell in that it was published both in hardcover and mass-market paperback editions in 1994. Both versions were issued by Berkley Books. According to the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, the font used in the title is BTC Benguiat.

John Gideon is the pseudonym of Lonn Hoklin (b. 1946) who authored several novels in the suspense and horror genres in the 1980s and 1990s. Greeley's Cove (1991) and Kindred (1996; variant title Red Ball) qualify as Paperbacks from Hell (I note that the Too Much Horror Fiction blog was not overly impressed with Greeley's Cove). The Hourglass Crisis (1987) involves Nazis and time travel.

'Golden Eyes' is set in the summer of 1988. The novel's protagonist, a history professor named Mark Lansen, is a cuck. At the architectural firm where she works, his sleek and shapely wife is having sex with her boss, but Lansen avoids denouncing her for fear of triggering divorce proceedings. He and his son refer to each other as 'Dad-Bear' and 'Tad Bear', the kind of cringey appellations that had me rooting for the monsters from early on in the novel (and echoes the conversations between Todd Bowden and his mom Monica, from Stephen King's 1982 novella Apt Pupil).

The setup for 'Golden Eyes' constitutes something of a homage to King's classic vampire novel 'Salem's Lot. 

Lansen decides to spend the summer in his boyhood home of Oldenberg, Oregon, which is a West Coast version of Jerusalem's Lot. Instead of the Marsten House, in Oldenberg, we get Gestern Hall, looming over the village from wooded heights. Instead of Susan Norton as the local girl / love interest, we get Tressa Downey, a woman with a Troubled Past. Instead of a man named Kurt Barlow as the villain, we get the dissimulating Mark Gestern, lord of Gestern Hall. 

Upon arrival in Oldenberg, Lansen becomes aware that beneath the quotidian cycle of village life, an aura of tension and unease has established itself among the residents. Many are fearful of going out at night, for reasons they cannot define. And the suicides and mysterious deaths of some residents have only deepened the feeling that the town is beset by EVIL !!!!!!

As the summer weeks pass, a horrified Mark Lansen will discover that Oldenberg is assailed by an ancient malevolence, one that preys on the unwitting townspeople, drawing their blood as sustenance. This malevolence even is capable of resurrecting the dead to act as its agents. Can Lansen, along with a gun-toting bounty hunter, a crone who makes enigmatic remarks, and mysterious French priest, mount a defense against the vampiric forces conspiring to turn Oldenberg into a charnel house ?

At 457 pages in length, 'Golden Eyes', like many Paperbacks from Hell, has plenty of space to devote to its narrative, and there is abundant exposition in the novel's opening 300 pages. The unhurried pacing occaisionally receives some propulsive jolts in the form of brief episodes of explicit sex and violence. As the final third of the novel unfolds, the splatterpunk content rises to such an extent that it lends a sly note of facetiousness to 'Golden Eyes', telling the reader that author Gideon is not taking things too seriously.  

The denouement is protracted, taking nearly 90 pages to accomplish, by which time my patience was diminishing. I won't disclose any spoilers, save to say that the confrontation between our heroes and the vampires of Oldenberg has both a comic-book quality, and a some revelations that seemed more than a little contrived. 

The verdict ? 'Golden Eyes', with its unusual vampires and nods to 'Salem's Lot, is a solid three-star novel. If you have the willingness to stick with its slow pacing, you may find it to be one of the more rewarding Paperbacks from Hell. But those looking for a memorable and novel treatment of the vampire theme likely will be disappointed.

Kiss Psycho Circus issue 3

Kiss: Psycho Circus
Issue 3, October 1997

Let's go back in time to October, 1997, and issue three of the new Kiss: Psycho Circus comic book series, a series that ultimately would go for 31 issues, until June 2000.

Image founder Todd McFarlane was adamant that the series avoid the Kiss-as-superheroes motif of the Marvel comics featuring the band. Instead, Gene Simmons and McFarlane agreed to adopt a darker and more adult sensibility (the comic was devoid of a Comics Code rating). Writer Brian Holguin understood what McFarlane and Simmons wanted, and focused on plots that depicted the band's alter egos as mysterious figures with ambiguous motives and morals. 

What really made the series stand out was the artwork by the U.S. artist Angel Medina. Medina used the 'house style' of Image Comics in the 1990s: highly detailed, with lots of skritches and skratches and spidery, Todd McFarlane-inspired lines. But Medina gave his pencils an eccentric quality that fitted well with the outre nature of Psycho Circus. And Image's inkers, colorists, and letterers were excellent, as always.

I've scanned the entirety of issue three, a one-shot issue titled 'The Nature of the Beast', at 300 dpi per page. It may in turn take some time to load............but I think that at 300 dpi the artwork really shines. And......it's a great tale for Halloween !