Judge Parker and Zip-A-Tone

Judge Parker and Zip-A-Tone

Zip-A-Tone (aka Zipatone) was a widely used technique in graphic art, including comics, in the days before software-based art composition became commonplace. 

It required the user to cut out pieces of adhesive-backed plastic sheets, with different patterns to each sheet, and pasting it into the comic page of interest.

It wasn't at all unusual to see Zip-A-Tone effects in black and white comics of the 70s and early 80s, as it was a way to impart eye-catching textures to a given panel or panels, as this impressive splash page created by artist Paul Neary for a 'Hunter' story in Eerie No. 55 (March 1974) shows:

So I was startled when, perusing the ever-shrinking comics pages in recent deliveries of The Washington Post, I saw that the strip 'Judge Parker' was employing Zip-A-Tone....!!!!

Each panel (scanned originals, above) measures only 5" long by 2" wide - a sad fact of how tiny the comics have become in today's newspapers - so the Zip-A-Tone effect is comparatively subdued. However, given the infantile state of current comics art, it deserves some notice.... and even praise ! 

I'm guessing that 'Judge Parker' artist Mike Manley used a software app to render the Zip-A-Tone, as I'm guessing few, if any, sheets are still available.

It's open to question as to how many contemporary comics readers will even be aware of what Manley is doing with the strip. In my workplace of > 300 people, I am the only employee who brings a newspaper in to work........ With more and more comics being relegated to the 'online' version of national newspapers, I can foresee a day when comics simply are absent from printed newspapers.

Book Review: Killerbowl

Book Review: 'Killerbowl' by Gary K. Wolfe

5 / 5 Stars

‘Killerbowl’ (162 pp) was published by Doubleday in hardback in September 1975; the cover art is by Steve Marcesi.

[A mass market paperback version was published in 1976 in the UK by Sphere Books.]

Author Gary K. Wolf (not to be confused with sf essayist Gary K. Wolfe) wrote several sf novels in the 1970s. His 1981 novel ‘Who Censored Roger Rabbit ?’ was the basis of the hit 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit ?

Blogging about sf and fantasy books published during the interval from 1968 – 1988 occasionally allows me to discover an overlooked, rare gem of a title, and ‘Killerbowl’ is one of these.

Although ‘Killerbowl’ came out the same year as the movie Rollerball, which also examined a near-future USA in which blood sport was a carefully crafted corporate tool for ensuring a compliant populace, ‘Killerbowl’ is not a derivation, but rather, a more satirical treatment of the themes of American sports, its superstars, TV coverage, and the viewing habits of ‘Joe Six Pack’.

As ‘Killerbowl’ opens, its New Year’s Day, 2010, and within an eight-block area of downtown Boston, the Street Football League’s Super Bowl XXI is about to begin.

The city center has been temporarily evacuated, save for the two, 13-man teams of the San Francisco Prospectors and the New England Minutemen, the referees, and a small army of cameramen.

For the next 24 hours, the two teams will battle through the falling snow and freezing temperatures for the Championship of the SFL (the descendent of the NFL). In the SFL, violence is not only an expected part of the game, it’s encouraged. The act of tackling an opposing player includes the use of long-bladed knives and blackjacks, and if a player is killed, there are no substitutions.

The populace watching Super Bowl XXI has been beaten down by decades of the Energy Crisis and attendant economic dislocation that started in the early 70s. With little hope for the future, the citizenry are content to consume bread and circuses, in the form of the SFL, handed out by the corporations and their political allies. With over 90% of the population of the USA tuning in to Super Bowl XXI, it’s an unprecedented display of the International Broadcasting Company’s dominance of American social and political life.

For aging veteran T. K. Mann, quarterback for the Prospectors, Super Bowl XXI is personal. His Minutemen counterpart, the arrogant, self-centered, sadistic Harv Matision, has risen to stardom based on publicly humiliating Mann and murdering Prospector players. For Mann, it’s less about winning the game and more about exacting revenge on Matision.

But the IBC wants the highest rating possible, and to that end, the entire season has been rigged in favor of Matision and the Minutemen. Things aren’t going to change just for the Super Bowl, either. For the IPC wants Matision and the Minutemen to win the game….and kill T. K. Mann in the process……………….

‘Killerbowl’ works very well as both a page-turning action novel and as a social satire, something that many sf novels try for, but rarely accomplish. Author Wolf uses a clear, declarative prose style – never a given for an sf novel published during the New Wave Era – to lend a documentary-like quality to the violent proceedings of the SFL season and the Super Bowl. 

As well, the book is spot-on in terms of extrapolating the depressed, entropy-laden zeitgeist of the mid-70s forty years into the future: the 2010 version of the USA described in 'Killerbowl' is a very logical projection, given the state of the USA in 1975.

The major problem with ‘Killerbowl’ is that it’s long out of print, and copies in good condition are quite pricey. If you can find an affordable copy in the shelves of your used bookstore, don’t hesitate to pick this novel up !

Heavy Metal inaugural issue April 1977

'Heavy Metal' magazine
April 1977
Issue One

April, 1977, and on the radio, Glen Campbell's Southern Nights is playing. And a new magazine, unlike anything previously seen in American comic book publishing, is on the news stands.

As related at the Heavy Metal magazine fan page, Matty Simmons and Leonard Mogel, the co-owners of the magazine publishing firm 21st Century Communications, were intrigued by the French comic magazine Metal Hurlant. On a visit to France in September 1976, Mogel met with the 'Humanoids Association' - the coalition of artists and writers who published Metal Hurlant - and secured an agreement to publish a U.S. version of the magazine.

It's not clear if Mogel was aware that the Humanoids Association previously had approached Marvel Comics about reprinting Metal Hurlant in the U.S. According to a 2000 interview with former Marvel president Jim Shooter, posted to the cbr.com website, 

.........before the publication of Heavy Metal, Metal Hurlant came to Marvel seeking an American publisher. And after they did their presentation, we had a talk and Stan [Lee] thought that the stuff was too violent, too sexy and that good ol' sanitized Marvel couldn't do that. We thought he was crazy. But he was afraid that Marvel would get bad headlines, too violent, all that.

So it turned out that the people who published National Lampoon ended up with the American version of Metal Hurlant, which was Heavy Metal. And was phenomenally successful. Which made us grumpy.

[ There is limited information on Leonard Mogel available online; his birthdate is listed as October 23, 1922, and he evidently is alive and well as of 2017. He is listed as the author of a large number of books on magazine and book publishing at amazon.com. I found a black-and-white photograph of Mogel taken in 1968, when he was the publisher of Weight Watchers (!) magazine ]

Leonard Mogel, 1968

The inaugural issue of Heavy Metal features a striking cover illustration by Jean-Michel Nicollet and a back cover by Philippe Druillet. It's printed on 'slick' paper and features comics and illustrations in color, with quality separations and high resolution - things never before seen in the world of American comic books.

And, of course, the inaugural issue has plenty of tits, and ass, and frank nudity.......... 'European' stuff, rarely seen in American comic books, including the black-and-white Warren magazines. 

Stoners are intrigued.

I was only 16 when the inaugural issue of Heavy Metal hit the stands. I remember seeing it, but buying a copy was out of the question; I preferred to save my meagre supply of dollars for DAW books and other sci-fi paperbacks. It wasn't until November, 1978, when I had my first job and some reasonably plentiful spending money, that I bought my first Heavy Metal.

(Sadly, used copies of issue one in good condition fetch exorbitant prices. Maybe the current publishers of the magazine will re-release the inaugural issue as a special publication; otherwise, getting hold of a copy is best done by searching for the .cbr file on the internet)

Needless to say, the content of those early issues holds up very well 40 years later. The inaugural issue had some really great stuff: an installment of 'Conquering Armies' by Dionnet and Gal; a dialogue-free but memorable 'Arzach' tale from Moebius; and 'Selenia' by Macedo.

Also in the first issue was the offbeat story 'Space Punks', by Jean-Claude Mézières, the illustrator of the immensely popular Franco-Belgian comic (bande dessinee) 'Valerian'.  

'Space Punks' is posted below.

Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull issue 2

Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull
First Comics, 1986
Issue 2 (July 1986)
art: Rafael Kayanan and Rico Rival, story: Gerry Conway

(Issue 1 is available here).

Issue 2 of 'Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull' saw Alfredo Alcala depart as inker, but he was ably replaced by Rico Rival, another talented Filipino comics artist, who previously had worked in the Planet of the Apes Marvel / Curtis black and white magazine in the 70s.

Book Review: The Wind's Twelve Quarters

Book Review: 'The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Volume II'
by Ursula Le Guin

1 / 5 Stars

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters: Volume II (138 pp) was published by Panther Books (UK) in 1978. The cover artwork is by Peter Gudynas.

All of the stories in this anthology first were published in various sf magazines, digests, and story collections from 1970 – 1974, so they appeared at the height of the New Wave movement.

Each story has a brief Introduction from Le Guin, in which she relates some details about the story’s concept. Many of the entries in Wind’s revolve around what she refers to as her ‘psychomyths’, i.e., subjects that lend themselves to the allegorical storytelling that dominated much of the New Wave era.

My capsule reviews of each story:

Things: this story was titled ‘The End’ when it first appeared in Orbit 6 (1970). It’s the best entry in this collection. A brickmaker living in a coastal town subconsciously seeks to survive an impending disaster. Moody and atmospheric, it works due to its more ‘traditional’ short story structure, and less as a work of Speculative Fiction.

A Trip to the Head: a ‘psychomyth’ about a man recovering from amnesia. About as unrewarding a New Wave story as I’ve ever read. And that says........something, I think.

Vaster then Empires and More Slow: a team of neurotic, quarreling colonists (there’s a New Wave trope for you !) are dispatched to survey a promising,  Earth-like world. While written as a conventional ‘Hainish’ story, this tale has some remarkably stilted dialogue. For example:

I felt a strong anxiety with a specific spatial orientation. But I am not an empath. Therefore the anxiety is explicable in terms of the particular stress-situation, that is, the attack on a team member in the forest, and also in terms of the total stress-situation, that is, my presence in a totally alien environment, for which the archetypical connotations of the word ‘forest’ provide an inevitable metaphor.

The Stars Below: fleeing a Church-sponsored purge of the scientific class, an astronomer takes refuge among a group of miners. His worldview comes to adapt to his subterranean existence. This is one of the more accessible stories in the collection.

The Field of Vision: after a Mars expeditionary team examines what appears to be an ancient shrine, they are stricken with various neurological ailments.

Direction of the Road: the first-person narrative of ……….an oak tree. 

I’m not kidding. 

(This was heady stuff in the New Wave era).

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: this of course is one of the most well-known short stories to emerge from the New Wave movement. It was not unusual to find 'Omelas' in ‘regular’ short story anthologies used in introductory literature classes in college during the 70s. It’s an allegory about a city where the presence of peace and prosperity comes with a secret price. It remains an effective tale, although its prose could politely be termed ‘lumbering’ (for example, one paragraph is two and one-half pages long…………)

The Day Before the Revolution: this story is set in the Odonian world of Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed. It deals with the remembrances of an infirm elderly woman, whose actions as a revolutionary helped bring about a victory in the Class Struggle.

Summing up:

When I think of William Gibson's short story collection Burning Chrome (1986), any of the stories in it is superior to any appearing in the LeGuin anthology.

When I think of Bruce Sterling's short story collection Crystal Express (1989), any of the stories in it is superior to any appearing in the LeGuin anthology.

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters: Volume II demonstrates that the more sophisticated approach to writing triggered by the New Wave movement could never, on its own, rescue short stories whose plots were contrived or superficial.This volume is for LeGuin completists only.

I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get it Girl) by Instant Funk

I Got My Mind Made Up
(You Can Get it Girl)
by Instant Funk
March, 1979

It's the week of March 17, 1979.........and I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get it Girl) by the Trenton, New Jersey disco / R & B band Instant Funk, is the Billboard Soul chart number one single.

This song is an under-appreciated classic of the disco / funk era. If you are unaware of it, then you need to listen.

To achieve full immersion in the funk, I recommend viewing the segment on Soul Train featuring 'I Got My Mind Made Up'.

Book Review: The Gates of Heaven

Book Review: 'The Gates of Heaven' by Paul Preuss

4 / 5 Stars

'The Gates of Heaven' (210 pp) was published by Bantam Books in May, 1980. The cover artwork is uncredited.

'Gates' was the first novel for Paul Preuss (b. 1942), who went on to author a number of science fiction novels over the period from 1980 - 1993, many of them novels in the 'Venus Prime' series franchise. 'Re-entry' (1981) is a sequel to 'Gates'.

'Gates' opens in the Nevada desert, the site of Project Cyclops, a longstanding SETI program. It's August, 2037, and technician Lynn Nishihara is expecting an otherwise pedestrian night shift at the project's HQ. 

However, Nishihara is stunned when she detects a faint, but unwavering signal emanating from the vicinity of the star Tau Ceti, twelve light-years distant. The Cyclops staff are dumbfounded when amplification of the signal reveals a woman's voice....a distraught woman named Rebecca Meerloo.....a member of the starship Actis, which disappeared near Jupiter in 2026.

The news galvanizes the space program: how did the Actis travel the twelve light-years to Tau Ceti......and has its crew discovered a habitable planet in the Tau Ceti system ?

Colorado resident Michael Ward, a misfit genius, finds the news of the Actis's discovery intriguing, but his attention is focused on more mundane matters: trying to avoid being fired at his job with the Mathematics Instructional Committee, a nonprofit devoted to science and engineering education. Ward's habit of getting sidetracked by mathematical puzzles irrelevant to his duties at the Committee has strained his relationship with his supervisor, a bureaucrat named Franklin Muller.

Little does Michael Ward know that his doodlings with topology are going to be the key to understanding the fate of the Actis.....and the most ambitious project in the history of Mankind. For where the Actis went, others intend to follow........and Michael Ward will find himself among the crew selected to travel through a black hole........

In 1980, the year The Gates of Heaven was published, hard sf was making a comeback from over a decade of neglect (a consequence of the advent of the New Wave movement). 

The comeback was sparked by James Hogan's 1977 novel Inherit the Stars, followed by books by Charles Sheffield (The Sight of Proteus, 1978), Robert L. Forward (Dragon's Egg, 1980), and Gregory Benford (In the Ocean of Night, 1977; Timescape, 1980). 

When regarded in company with these works, Gates stands on its own as a very readable hard sf novel. The science content frames, but does not overwhelm, the narrative, the lead characters are well-drawn, and the novel's prose style (save for some occasional 'character introspection' passages) is clear and direct. 

When combined with the fact that Gates is of short length (210 pp), Paul Preuss's first novel is a reminder that, in the modern era of lumbering, 500-page space operas (and here Alastair Reynolds comes readily to mind), it's possible to write a genre novel that is concise and fast-moving.