'Heavy Metal' magazine August 1980

'Salommbo' by Philippe Druillet (continued)

'Heavy Metal' magazine: August 1980

 

The August 1980 issue of 'Heavy Metal' featured a cover by Jim Cherry, ‘Fun Turns Into Love’, and a back cover by Michael Gueranger, ‘Not so Heavy Metal’.

Moebius featured part two of his 'Shore Leave' strip, and Bilal provided another chapter in his ‘Progress’ story. The next-to-last episode of ‘The Alchemist Supreme’ appeared, and (unfortunately) new chapters of Howarth’s mediocre ‘Changes’ strip and Stiles and Lupoff’s forgettable ‘Professor Thintwhistle’.

The best entry is far and away a new feature by Philippe Druillet, titled ‘Salommbo’. The name is derived from a famous 1862 novel by Gustave Flaubert, about a young priestess of ancient Carthage.

The strip ‘A Message from the Shadows’  from the July 2010 issue of Heavy Metal is a prologue of sorts (this strip appeared on the July 1, 2010 post at the PorPor Books Blog).

‘Salommbo’ is a great example of Druillet’s innovative use of full-page, ‘cosmic’ art designs in the context of a graphic novel. The plot is a bit thin, but features Druillet’s anti-hero ‘Loane Sloane’, who, in the best Gallic tradition, smokes cigarettes and gazes moodily into space thinking existential thoughts.

I've divided the scans of this first chapter of 'Salommbo' into two parts. Part one is presented below; part two will be posted in a few days.

Book Review: The Turning

Book Review: 'The Turning' by Justin Scott

3 / 5 Stars

In the dying upstate New York town of Hudson City, word comes that the old asylum on the mountain overlooking the town has been sold. Observers note the presence of blue lights in the windows of the dilapidated building. Soon after, groups of young people clad in blue shirts and blue jean overalls start to take up residence in the asylum, now owned by a vaguely Christian religious sect called the Revelationists. As more and more members of the sect arrive in Hudson City, the local merchants are overjoyed to find a rapidly expanding base of customers. 

Prosperity takes hold in Hudson City, but the town doctor, Alan Springer, finds himself questioning the motives of the Revelationists . When a sect member is badly injured and taken to the town clinic, Springer is forced to look on as the sect members enact a startling ‘faith healing’ of the crippled man in the doctor’s own operating room. 

 

Ensuing encounters with the Revelationists have Springer convinced that the benevolent actions by the sect’s leadership are simply a smokescreen. The sect’s leader, a mysterious, charismatic individual named Michael, has his own plan for the fate of Hudson City….and his plan starts with making converts of the town’s young people. 

 

Alan Springer realizes that something must be done to fight back against the sect’s sinister designs. But the Revelationists have no desire to turn the other cheek. Anyone who seeks to blunt the sect’s plans must be prepared to risk his life. And the odds of Alan Springer’s survival are getting less with each passing day…. 

 

‘The Turning’ (March 1978; Dell; cover artist uncredited) is a member of the cohort of other 70s novels dealing with the occult, such as ‘Audrey Rose’, ‘The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane’, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, and  ‘Harvest Home’. As such, I doubt if many readers under 40 will find it very engrossing. 

 

Author Justin Scott is a capable writer, but the narrative moves at a deliberate pace, seeking to build alarm and suspense in a gradual fashion. Much attention is focused on the emotional conflict between Springer and his teenaged daughter Samanatha, and the ambivalent response by the townspeople to the economic largesse that comes with hosting a wealthy sect. 

 

The occult and/or supernatural elements of the tale are very understated, and the novel is really more of a restrained thriller than a horror story. The violent action and gore that a younger generation (raised on zombie films, the ‘Saw’ movies, and Splatterpunk fiction) expects of a horror novel are absent from ‘The Turning’. 

 

The book does reward the reader who manages to stick with it through to the last few of its 268 pages, but the journey is taken in the slow lane.

'The Death of Orlaon' by Enki Bilal
from the July 1978 issue of 'Heavy Metal'

 

Marvel Comics: 'The Essential Luke Cage / Power Man'

Nowadays original copies of the first few issues of 'Luke Cage' (later renamed 'Power Man') comics go for steep prices, so the most economical way to take in the series is through the black and white 'Marvel Essentials' paperback, which collects the first 27 issues, from June 1972 through October 1975.


While I remember seeing the Luke Cage issues on the stands in the early 70s, I was never motivated to purchase any, mainly because the villains were so cheesy. Instead of the 'cosmic' adversaries faced by the Fantastic Four, Thor, or the Avengers, Luke Cage - like Daredevil at this time in his publishing history - was pretty much left to fight third-tier nobodies like 'Mr Death', 'The Steeplejack',  and 'Chemistro', among others:

 Although on rare occasions, a genuine marquee bad guy would make an appearance:

My favorite of these oddball villains was one 'Black Mariah', an obese woman who did not take any jive from her fellow criminals, much less Luke Cage:

While no sellout, occasionally Luke had to put the smackdown on those 'radical' soul brothers who were pushing him to join the fight against 'The Man' :

 George Tuska's artwork on the series was quite good.Tuska always made Luke's battles look like they were genuinely physical, bruising affairs:

For a series that featured one of the first major black comic book heroes, portraying Luke in situations with some degree of social relevance did take place, but more rarely than one might think.

In a two-parter, Luke takes on a drug dealer named Cottonmouth, who is peddling slow death to the impoverished black folk of inner-city New York:

In another episode, Luke and his friend D.W. go West to seek Luke's estranged girlfriend; en route, they come across a prototype 'planned community' where they aren't exactly welcome:

Compared to the violent street culture that features so prominently in contemporary rap culture, these comics will seem restrained, if not tame to modern readers (Luke likes to shout 'Christmas !' when attacked, but this was after all a Code book). 

But if you are age 40 and over, they may evoke some nostalgia for the early 70s and the Blaxploitation era, the funky portrayal of a decaying Times Square, polyester clothes, and afros .

Book Review: Sunsmoke

Book Review: 'Sunsmoke' by James Killus

2 / 5 Stars

‘Sunsmoke’ (Ace, 1985, 182 pp.) features cover art by Don Brautigam.

It’s 1986 and Raymond Macgregor, a brilliant, but socially inept, programmer is exploring the use of the EPAnet  software package to model the development of smog formations over Southern California. This is Old School command-line stuff, done on cathode-ray-tube workstations with phone modems to a central server that does all the real computing. But back in the mid-80s it was considered the Cutting Edge.

Ray has been messing around with arcane knowledge and when he combines occult incantations and code, the result is the spawning of a creature – the Smog Monster – that feeds on pollution. And since it’s June, and the weather is heating up, the monster is going to find all the pollution it needs to grow, thrive, and make Los Angeles its private stomping ground.

Walter Peters, an atmosphere chemist and Macgregor’s longtime rival, watches his meteorological models with puzzlement and then increasing alarm. What is taking place in the air over the southern part of the state does not obey any natural laws.  As the monster becomes manifest and the body count rises, it’s up to Peters, a group of Southern California beautiful people, an alluring witch named Joella,  and a team of hardcore programmers, to discover the secret behind the smog monster and defeat it before the entire West Coast goes under a choking cloud of toxins and fire……

Author Killus was an actual smog modeler working on a EPA contract at the time he wrote his manuscript, so the science content of the novel is more or less accurate. 

However, I found ‘Sunsmoke’ to be an uneasy amalgamation of SF, horror story, and satire. Killus tends to use a lot of witty prose in describing the goings-on of his very ‘California’ cast of characters (think hot tubs, Sensual Massage, getting stoned, the I Ching, karate class, etc., etc.) but such prose tends to undermine his efforts to portray the smog monster as a genuinely harrowing phenomenon. When Killus labels the third part of his book ‘Godzilla Vs the Smog Monster’,  the layering of ‘Ghost Busters’ – style humor onto the plot becomes too self-evident.

If  ‘Sunsmoke’ had been written as a straightforward SF / horror tale it might have gained considerable traction, but as it stands, it comes across as a hesitantly defined mishmash of genres. I can only recommend it to those determined to read every manifestation of cyberpunk seeing print in the 80s.

'Mr Bunny' (detail) by Marion Peck

from the book 'Animal Love Summer', due from Last Gasp in November 2010.
Marion Peck official web page