My top 22 horror short stories, October 2023

 October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 
at the PORPOR BOOKS BLOG !

My Top 22 Horror Short Stories
October 2023 

I've been reading horror stories since 1970, when I was 9 years old and I saw a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum (Random House, 1965) on the shelf of my grammar school library. 

While most of the stories in the book were rather tame - it was aimed at an audience of juvenile Baby Boomers, after all - Joseph Payne Brennan's story 'Slime' immediately gripped my attention, and from then on, my interest in the genre began, and has lasted since.

After some contemplation, I've decided to stand forth with a list of 22 short stories that in my humble opinion are the better ones I've encountered in 50 years of reading all manner of horror fiction. Since it's the interval covered by this blog, I've concentrated on stories that first saw print from the 1960s into the mid-1990s. 

I've posted a brief, one-sentence synopsis for each story, to jog memories or to give the reader a sense of what to expect.

One problem with focusing on such stories is that in many instances the books where they first appeared long are out of print, and copies in good condition have steep asking prices. Accordingly, where available, I've tried to provide alternate sources for obtaining these stories.

My Top 22, in chronological order:

The First Days of May, by Claude Veillot, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961; Tales of Terror from Outer Space, 1975

‘Alien invasion’ theme, well done.

***

One of the Dead, by William Wood, The Saturday Evening Post, October 31, 1964; Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me; A Walk with the Beast, 1969; Great American Ghost Stories, 1991

Although a bit over-written, this is a well-crafted melding of the haunted house theme with the anomie of mid-1960s life in suburban Los Angeles.  

***

The Road to Mictlantecutli, by Adobe James, Adam Bedside Reader, 1965; The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories,1965; The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural, 1981

Morgan, a ruthless criminal, is travelling on a mysterious road in Mexico. The strange sights and passions he encounters will lead him to change his life........for good, or for ill.

'Adobe James' was the pseudonym of American writer James Moss Cardwell (1926 – 1990), who had his short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. 

***

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1970; The Best of Modern Horror, 1989

A resident of rural Maine discovers something disturbing in the deep, dark woods.

***

Goat, by David Campton, New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural #1, 1971; Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror, 1977

Creepy goings-on in an English village.

***

Satanesque, by Alan Weiss, The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror, #6, 1974; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, 1975

Starts off on a thoroughly conventional note, then unexpectedly transitions into something entirely imaginative and offbeat.

***

The Shortest Way, by David Drake, Whispers #3, March 1974; From the Heart of Darkness, 1983; Vettius and His Friends, 1989;  Night & Demons, 2012

A 'Vettius' story set in the days of the Roman empire. Our hero elects to travel on a road that the locals take care to avoid. An atmospheric, memorable tale.

***

The Taste of Your Love, by Eddy C. Bertin, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, 1975; The Whispering Horror, 2013

One of the better Serial Killer tales I’ve read.

***

The Changer of Names, by Ramsey Campbell, Swords Against Darkness II, 1977; The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories: 4, 1978; Far Away and Never, 2021.

I've never been a fan of Campbell’s horror stories and novels, but his sword-and-sorcery stories featuring the ‘Ryre’ character are entertaining exercises in creepiness. There are metaphors and similes abounding in the Ryre tales, to be sure, but as compared to Campbell's horror stories the purple prose is reduced in scope, and plotting receives due consideration. 

While the Swords Against Darkness paperbacks have exorbitant asking prices, a new (October 2021) reprint of Far Away and Never from DMR Press collects all four of the Ryre stories, along with other fantasy tales from Campbell's early career.  

***

Long Hollow Swamp, by Joseph Payne Brennan, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, January 1976; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V, 1977

Another great 'monsters-on-the-loose' tale from Brennan.

***

Sing A last Song of Valdese, by Karl Edward Wagner, Chacal #1, Winter 1976; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V, 1977; Night Winds, 1978, 1983

One of two entries by Wagner, who wrote a lot of duds, but when he was On, he was On. In a remote forest, a lone traveler comes upon an inn filled with sinister characters.

***

Window, by Bob Leman, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1980; The 1981 Annual World’s Best SF, 1981; The Best of Modern Horror, 1989

A neat mix of sci-fi and horror, revolving around a portal to another dimension.

***

Where the Summer Ends, by Karl Edward Wagner, Dark Forces, August 1980; In A Lonely Place, 1983; The American Fantasy Tradition, 2002

 

A second entry from Wagner. It’s hot, humid, and dangerous in 1970s Knoxville. Stay away from the kudzu !

***

The New Rays, by M. John Harrison, Interzone #1, Spring 1982, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XI, 1983; The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, 2012

A disturbing tale with proto-steampunk leanings. 

***

After-Images, by Malcolm John Edwards, Interzone #4, Spring 1983, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, 1984; Interzone: The First Anthology, 1986

Another fine melding of sci-fi and horror, this time set in an English suburb. It’s too bad that Edwards, a playwright and editor, didn’t write more short stories.

***

The Man with Legs, by Al Sarrantonio, Shadows No. 6, October 1983, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, 1984

Two kids learn some disturbing secrets about their family history.

***

High Tide, by Leanne Frahm, Fears, 1983

Frahm, an Australian writer, sets this novelette in the vicinity of the Newry Islands in coastal Queensland. A family camping trip to Mud Island discovers something strange is going on amidst the mangrove swamps: Eco-horror at its creepiest !  

***

Mengele, by Lucius Shepard, Universe 15, 1985, The Jaguar Hunter, 1988

Troubling things are going on at an estate located in a remote region of Paraguay.

***

Red Christmas, by David Garnett, The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV, 1986

What seems like a conventional Mad Slasher story has a neat little twist at the end.

***

The Picknickers, by Brian Lumley, Final Shadows, 1991, The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX, 1992.

Unsettling events are happening in the graveyard of a Welsh coal-mining village.

***

The Bacchae, by Elizabeth Hand, The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX, 1992.

In a decaying near-future America, women have gained mysterious, and deadly, powers. This story has the amorphous quality of Weird Fiction, but laces it with splatterpunk imagery.

***

Shining On, by Billie Sue Mosiman, Future Net, 1996

A mutant suffering from severe handicaps finds a friend online. But you know what they say about online friends: just who are they in person ?

Book Review: Orbit 11

Book Review: 'Orbit 11' edited by Damon Knight

3  / 5 Stars

Well, here we go with another review of another installment in the 'Orbit' franchise, the franchise that delivers pure and unadulterated New Wave sci-fi. Or 'Speculative Fiction', as they were fond of saying back in those New Wave days. Editor Damon Knight always was receptive to stories that pushed the boundaries of the genre, which sometimes worked, but more often, didn't. Anyways.........

'Orbit 11' was issued in hardcover (216 pp.) in 1972 by G. P. Putnam, and in paperback, from Berkley Books, in March 1973. The cover art is by Paul Lehr.

The cover blurb tells us that Orbit 11 offers 'The Most Exciting Fiction of Our Time !'. Does it really ?

Well...............no. It's just another 'Orbit' volume. A few good stories, and some bad ones. Many stories have no sci-fi content. All exclusively were written for this anthology.

My capsule summary of the contents:

Alien Stones, by Gene Wolfe: a miles-long Terran spaceship, the Gladiator, meets up in deep space with an alien ship that is also miles long. Are the aliens friendly or not ? How do you find out ? This novelette stakes a claim to the Giant Spaceship theme a year before Arthur C. Clarke and his 'Rendevous with Rama', which I guess is to author Wolfe's credit. It's a hard sci-fi story, competently written, so it's one of the better entries in 'Orbit 11'.

Spectra, by Vonda N. McIntyre: the first-person narrator endures a dystopian future where dissent is punished by messing with your eyesight. This story is more horror than sci-fi, and is effective.

I Remember A Winter, by Fredrik Pohl: a middle-aged man ponders the choices he made in life and wonders how things could have, and would have, been different...... had he not made those choices. There is no sci-fi content.

Doucement, S'il Vous Plait (Gently, if it pleases you), by James Sallis: I challenge anyone to dispute my contention that James Sallis was the most pretentious of New Wave authors. And yet, the editors of New Wave anthologies never could turn down a Sallis submission. This story is the first-person narrative of a letter, experiencing the process of being delivered. Is such a concept the apogee of Speculative Fiction, or what ?!

The Summer of the Irish Sea, by Charles L. Grant: clad only in a loincloth, a feral man navigates the terrain of a near-future United Kingdom. This early-career story from Grant is quite untoward, reading more as a Harlan Ellison tale than the kind of overwritten, decorative fiction that would come to represent Grant's literary style. Because it emulates Ellison, it's a good story and one of the standouts in the anthology. 

Good-Bye, Shelley, Shirley, Charlotte, Charlene, by Robert Thurston: this tale opens with an allegorical scene of the narrator playing cards with God. I sighed and prepared for metaphysical, artsy-fartsy bullshit in that inimitable New Wave style. But after the prologue, 'Good-Bye' settles into more conventional storytelling, about a man whose girlfriends are so similar in looks and temperament as to suggest otherworldly forces at work. There's little sci-fi content, but it's a readable story.

Father's in the Basement, by Philip Jose Farmer: Millie's father is busy writing the Great American Novel, and he must not be disturbed. A subdued horror tale from Farmer, one that would have been more at home in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than 'Orbit'.

Down by the Old Maelstrom, by Edward Wellen: some people in a research laboratory have dreams, which are related to the reader in surrealistic prose. The verbs 'amoebaed', 'alligatored', and 'depontiated' are encountered. This easily is the worst story in the anthology.

Things Go Better, by George Alec Effinger: allegory about a nice Jewish Boy named Steve Weinraub who decides to hitchhike across Pennsylvania, to 'find' both himself, and America. It's devoid of sci-fi content.

Dissolve, by Gary K. Wolfe: the author of 'Killerbowl' addresses the philosophies of Marshall McLuhan, who, in 1972, was very much an influential figure in both pop and highbrow culture. The narrative, which is designed to mimic the changing of channels on a TV, is choppy and a bit contrived.

Dune's Edge, by Edward Bryant: some people find themselves in the desert, and compelled to climb a dune. It's all so very existential.

The Drum Lollipop, by Jack C. Dann: Her parents' marital quarrels lead Maureen Harris to project her anxieties onto a toy drum, which in turn leads to all sorts of phantasmagorical phenomena. An exemplar of seventies, New Wave, speculative fiction. I found it boring.

Machines of Loving Grace, by Gardner R. Dozois: in the Future City, machines will do everything for you. And perhaps that can be a bad thing. Sardonic humor makes this one of the standout stories in the anthology.

They Cope, by Dave Skal: in the future, everyone is bipolar, which makes for a complicated society.

Counterpoint, by Joe W. Haldeman: some are born into wealth and privilege, while others, into poverty and misery. This is a very good story, but it's devoid of sci-fi content and would have been more at home in Esquire, Playboy, Penthouse, Cavalier, or any other early seventies 'slick' that published fiction.

Old Soul, by Steve Herbst: a nurse's interactions with a dying elderly man are complicated when his memories of his younger days 'infect' her mind. This story is supposed to say something profound about The Human Condition. I was bored.

New York Times, by Charles Platt: a three-and-a-half page prose poem about the dangers of living in the city. There is no sci-fi content. I was bored.

The Crystallization of the Myth, by John Barfoot: a two-page prose poem about the aftermath of Armageddon. Meh.

To Plant a Seed, by Hank Davis: using something called the 'McJunkins Field', researcher Roy Cullins wants to put a spaceship into suspended animation for billions of years, with the goal of having humans present when a new universe emerges from the old. It's an interesting premise for a sci-fi story but the author's prose veers from the straight-faced, to the awkwardly comedic, even puerile:

Cullins, Cain, and Erika realized simultaneously that the thing looked like an enormous athletic supporter. Looking at it made Erika hornier than ever. 

On the Road to Honeyville, by Kate Wilhelm: Elizabeth and her mom are making the long drive on two-lane blacktop to the town of Salyersville, by way of the town of Honeyville. En route, they enter the Twilight Zone. The story lacks sci-fi content.

The verdict ? As with the other entrants in the 'Orbit' series, Damon Knight's eccentric approach to selecting content meant that the anthology has more than its share of duds. I am comfortable giving 'Orbit 11' a three-star rating based on the contributions from Wolfe,  McIntyre, Grant, Dozois, and Haldeman.

The Art of Ron Cobb

The Art of Ron Cobb

Titan Books, 2022

'The Art of Rob Cobb' (208 pp.) was published by Titan Books in 2022. Like all the Titan titles it's a well-made hardbound book, measuring 9 1/4 inches by 12 1/2 inches.

The book is 'produced' by two women, Rachel Meinerding and Nicole Hendrix Herman, who make up the 'Concept Art Association', an organization "....committed to elevating and raising the profile of concept artists, their art and their involvement in the entertainment industries." The text is written by Jacob Johnston.

Prior to the publication of 'The Art of Ron Cobb', the only book dealing with Cobb's works was 'Colorvision', a 1981 trade paperback that, being long out of print, was very expensive. I was fortunate to pick up a copy back in the early 1980s.

'The Art of Ron Cobb' opens with a Forward by James Cameron, followed by a brief biographical sketch. Cobb (1937 - 2020) was born in Los Angeles but made Australia his home. Early in his career he earned recognition as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Free Press. When his friend Dan O'Bannon asked Cobb to contribute a spaceship design to the 1973 indie film Dark Star, Cobb found his calling: providing art design and direction for films, particularly science fiction films. Cobb assisted with the creation of some of the aliens in the famous 'cantina' scene aliens in Star Wars, and came to the fore when O'Bannon hired him as an art director for Alien.  Cobb's work on Alien made his reputation among Hollywood producers and directors and set him on the path as one of the premiere art designers of the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 20002.

The book's core is a chronological overview of Cobb's work in film and video game art conception and design, starting from Dark Star and going all the way to The Sixth Day (2000). These chapters are illustrative of how Cobb contributed, in larger or smaller ways, to many of the blockbuster films of the 80s and 90s.

Another chapter deals with Cobb's work in the video games industry.

Also receiving attention are Cobb's contributions to commercial art in the form of magazine covers and LP record covers. Then there is a chapter devoted to Cobb's cartoons for the Free Press.

The text is filled with anecdotes and reminiscences from major film industry figures, such as Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, and Paul Verhoeven, and these give insights into the processes by which Cobb envisioned the sets and images that were used in big-budget productions. it's quite clear that Cobb was a go-to creator for many productions, and his approach to a functional, engineering-based concepts of future technologies had a tremendous influence on science fiction cinema and television.

Then, too, I was unaware of Cobb's presence in the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. I had no idea that he was the originator of the iconic 'Ecology' flag / symbol.

While 'The Art of Ron Cobb' is a worthwhile book, it's not perfect. Perhaps its biggest weakness is that it's devoid of pictures of Cobb's 'finished' designs as they appeared in the films. This may be because the Concept Art Association was unwilling to pay fees to studios to use copyrighted material. 

It's also true that there is memorable content in 'Colorvision' that, arguably, deserved inclusion in 'The Art of Ron Cobb'. Again, it's not clear if this was due to difficulties in securing permission for reprinting such materials, or if Concept Art Association was disinterested in 'recycling', so to speak, previously presented artwork. 

In my opinion, then, the definitive collection of Cobb's commercial and studio works remains to be published. However, until such time as that takes place, 'The Art of Ron Cobb' is a good overview of Cobb's contributions over the course of his very successful career. 

Book Review: Of Men and Monsters

Book Review: 'Of Men and Monsters' by William Tenn

1 / 5 Stars

I remember buying this book back in September 1978, convinced by the great Boris Vallejo art that it was an action-based sci-fi novel. In reality, to my disappointment, ‘Of Men and Monsters’ (December 1975, 251 pp.) was an exemplar of deceptive marketing by Ballantine / Del Rey: a novel from 1968, repackaged for the 1970s with a more attention-getting cover. 

‘William Tenn’ was the pseudonym of the UK-born writer Philip Klass (1920 – 2010) who began publishing short stories in sci-fi pulp magazines in the late 40s. Tenn published a story called "The Men in the Walls" in the October 1963 issue of Galaxy magazine and later expanded the story into a novel, titled 'Of Men and Monsters', released in paperback by Ballantine Books in June 1968. 

Additional paperback editions since have been issued by a number of US and UK publishers; according to the ISFDB, most recently in 2011, by Gollancz.  

‘Of Men’ is set on a future Earth that has been invaded by a race of giant aliens, with humanity reduced to scrabbling out a precarious existence as vermin within the walls of the alien domiciles. The aliens, and their intentions, never are clearly described, reflecting an effort on Tenn’s part to present them as omnipotent figures whose nature essentially is incomprehensible to humans. The narrative is centered on the adventures of a boy named Eric, who, in the opening chapters of the novel, embarks on a manhood ceremony that involves leaving his tribe’s territory to filch food from the aliens.

Eric's efforts soon come to naught, as he is among a number of tribesmen captured by the aliens, caged in a research facility, and used to validate formulations of 'pest control' sprays (the 'pests', of course, being humans). This segment of the book is Tenn's rather blunt way of informing those more dull-witted readers (who up to this point may be unaware that the novel is satire) exactly what type of sci-fi novel they are reading.

I won’t disclose any further spoilers, save to say that Eric manages to find both allies and an escape plan, and a strategy by which Humanity may persevere in an otherwise indifferent universe.   

Tenn clearly designed his novel to be a mordant rebuke of the sci-fi stories and novels of the pulp and postwar eras, in which plucky humans relied on ingenuity and courage to overcome their oppression at the hands of technologically and militarily superior aliens. In ‘Of Men and Monsters,’ the struggles of its human protagonists fail to do more than attract incidental notice by the aliens; indeed, humanity’s efforts are so inherently futile that they make a mockery of classic sci-fi tropes. Since it is intended as a rather ponderous exercise in allegory, ‘Of Men’ is dull. Action sequences are comparatively rare, and subordinate to overly plentiful dialogue passages which allow Tenn to sermonize, in an oblique fashion.

The verdict ? ‘Of Men and Monsters’ deserves a One Star Rating, nothing more. In the interests of fairness I will note that Joachim Boaz, over at the 'Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations' blog, gave the novel a 4 of 5 Star Rating. I also note that Rob Chilson’s 1989 novel ‘Men Like Rats’ is a homage to ‘Of Men and Monsters’, but, perhaps because Chilson’s novel is more action-oriented, I found it moderately more entertaining than Tenn’s book......... 

Book Review: Science Fiction Terror Tales

Book Review: 'Science Fiction Terror Tales' edited by Groff Conklin

 3 / 5 Stars

Here we go with one of the more than 40 anthologies edited by the indefatigable Groff Conklin (1904 - 1968) between 1946 and 1968.

'Science Fiction Terror Tales' (262 pp.) first was published in hardcover in January, 1955 by Gnome Press. A paperback edition was released by Pocket Books later that year. The edition I have, and which is pictured above, was issued in 1970. The artist who provided the striking cover image is uncredited.

The entries in 'Terror Tales' all first saw print in the 1940s and early 1950s.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Introduction, by Groff Conklin: Conklin states that with this anthology, he sought to include lesser-known, but high-quality, stories.

Punishment Without Crime, by Ray Bradbury (1950): George Hill, a cuckold, seeks vengeance on his wayward wife. An overwrought, contrived tale from Bradbury.

Arena, by Fredric Brown (1944): a Federation fighter pilot named Bob Carson is obliged to engage in a one-against-one, winner-takes-all combat with an alien. The future of the Earth hangs in the balance. Still a good story after these many decades, and the Star Trek episode which is based on this novelette would have been better, had it adopted Brown's ending.

The Leech, by Robert Sheckley (1952): an alien life form lands on the Earth and it proves to be unfriendly. Sheckley, when he wasn't writing comedic sci-fi, could write very good 'straight' stories, and this is one of them.

Through Channels, by Richard Matheson (1951): Leo Vogel's parents see a very strange display on their television screen. An effective story from Matheson. 

Lost Memory, by Peter Phillips (1952): robots investigate an unusual artifact. This story relies on dark humor and, despite somewhat awkward prose, succeeds as a satirical treatment of human nature.

Memorial, by Theodore Sturgeon (1946): Grenfell, an idealist, seeks to convince the nations of the world to abandon warfare. 

Even by the standards of 1940s sci-fi, Sturgeon's prose is painfully stilted:

"Whew !" said Roway, his irrepressible humor passing close enough to nod to him. "Keep it clean, Grenfell ! Keep your.....your sesquipedalian pollysyballics, for a scientific report."

"Touche !" Grenfell smiled.

Prott, by Margaret St. Clair (1953): an astronaut cultivates friendship with exotic alien life-forms; this turns out to be a bad idea.

Flies, by Isaac Asimov (1953): three men who were college acquaintances attend a reunion. This is a real dud of a story from Asimov: stilted prose (He did not like to witness wild murder-yearnings where others could see only a few words of unimportant quarrel), and an underwhelming denouement.

The Microscopic Giants, by Paul Ernst (1936): strange goings-on in the depths of a copper mine. An imaginative story, and one of the better ones in the anthology.

The Other Inauguration, by Anthony Boucher (1953): a historian accesses a parallel universe and discovers that Absolute Power, Corrupts Absolutely. Boucher intends this story to be a minatory analysis of the American political system, but it's the worst entrant in the anthology, overloaded with obtuse prose, including the use of shorthand (?!).

Nightmare Brother, by Alan E. Nourse (1953): Robert Cos finds himself drafted into an unpleasant experiment. This story is too overwritten, and too slowly paced, to be effective.

Pipeline to Pluto, by Murray Leinster (1945): A young man named Hill is desperate to take the clandestine route to Pluto, where the work is hard and the pay quite generous. While the plot can be a bit confusing to follow, Leinster imparts a hard-boiled sensibility to this story that makes it another of the better ones in the anthology.

Impostor, by Philip K. Dick (1953): Spence Olham is a premiere researcher in what may be Mankind's final, desperate effort to stop alien invaders. But the government seems to think Olham is not quite himself........an effective tale from Dick. I'm sure readers familiar with his later writings will find many of Dick's more prominent themes in those works expressed, in nascent form, in this story. 

They, by Robert A. Heinlein (1941): the un-named protagonist is confined in an asylum, because he is convinced that the rest of the human race are aliens masquerading as people. This story vies with Sturgeon's story for 1940s sci-fi awfulness: badly overwritten, wooden prose, and a denouement that fizzles.

Let Me Live in a House, by Chad Oliver (1954): a team of four Terran colonists endure isolation and psychological stress in their transparent dome on Ganymede. Then, one day, there's a knock at the door............Yet another 'paranoia' themed dud, suffering from too many empty sentences steeped in melodramatic prose.

The verdict ? 'Science Fiction Terror Tales' is too short on quality pieces to rate as a must-have compilation of mid-century sci-fi. Those quality pieces it does possess, impart a Three-Star Rating.

Thorgal: The 'Qa' series

Thorgal: The 'Qa' Series

One of the most memorable episodes in the 29 installments of the 'Thorgal' comic book series (albums de bandes dessinees) was the so-called 'Qa' series. 

It was a four-part series, originally issued by the Belgian publisher Lombard, and consisted of the titles Le Pays Qâ (1986), Les Yeux de Tanatloc (1986), La Cité du Dieu Perdu (1987), and Entre Terre et Lumière (1987).

In 2008 - 2009, Cinebook published an English translation of the four titles, partitioned into two graphic novels: The Land of Qa, and City of the Lost God.

There is a note in The Land of Qa that some of the contents in the original album are deleted in the English translation, so as not to give offence; I suspect this has to do with the depiction of the Aztecs' human sacrifices, mention of which is increasingly politically incorrect nowadays.

Both Grzegorz Rosinski and Jean Van Hamme were in top form with the 'Qa' series. Van Hamme's plot stays coherent for almost all of its length and keeps the story beats to a manageable number. He also throws just about every sci-fi or fantasy trope into this series: ancient astronauts, levitating sailing ships, telepathy, telekinesis, and alien artifacts. 

The series kicks off with Kriss of Valnor, the franchise's central villain, coercing Thorgal, his wife Aaricia, and friend Tjall, into journeying with her to the land of Qa (comprising Mexico and part of South America), and completing a mission that is short on details, but long on danger.

Interspersed with moments of violence and mayhem is some lighter fare, often revolving around the avuncular 'Tree Foot', the elderly guardian for Thorgal's son Jolan.

The artwork is impressive, as always, with Rosinski successfully rendering a variety of peoples and exotic landscapes. The 'Qa' series leaves no doubt that Rosinski was one of the top-tier graphic artists of the 1980s and 1990s.

Who will want a copy of The Land of Qa and City of the Lost God ? If you are a Thorgal fan, then these books are well worth getting. But if you are less well-acquainted with the franchise, but appreciate skilled art and story in a European style, then the books are a good investment. It's possible to get each book for under $20 from your usual online vendors.