Ring of Roses

Ring of Roses

Das Petrou, John Watkiss, Trevor Goring,and Mike McClester

Dark Horse comics 1992 - 1993; Image Comics (graphic novel) 2004

Ring of Roses was first published by Dark Horse Comics as a four-issue limited series from November 1992 - February 1993. The series was republished in 2004, as a graphic novel compilation, by Image Comics.

As writer Das Petrou relates in the introduction to the graphic novel, in the early nineties he was an advertising writer, and he teamed up with artist Watkiss, and advertising designer Goring, to do a comic with overtones of Camus' The Plague. Petrou also was interested in incorporating a theme about secret societies (The Templars, etc.) fomenting a political conspiracy.

It's London, Summer, 1991......but an alternate London, where, in a manner akin to that outlined in Keith Robert's 'Pavane', the Catholic Church rules Great Britain.

Where Roberts had a victorious Spanish Armada serving as the vehicle for Catholic ascendancy, here, it's James the Second's victory in the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690 that has enabled the Church to assume power.

It's an uneasy world, however, with what could be the First World War underway on the Continent, and a British populace increasingly discontented with Papal rule. In an effort to retain British loyalties, Pope John XXIX is visiting London on a good-will tour.

This is a London where technology has advanced only to a point equivalent to the 20s or 30s of 'our' 1991. The police and military are armed with crossbows, radio is a newfangled gadget, antibiotics have yet to be discovered, and public health, an evolving institution. 

London's population is squeezed within the city walls, and the poorer districts are filled with garbage, dilapidated housing, and rats.

Samuel Waterhouse is a prosperous lawyer (er, barrister) who moves within the aristocratic circles of London society and politics. When ten priests go missing on the eve of the Pontiff's visit, a group of clerics ask Waterhouse to do some impromptu detective work. 

When Waterhouse finds his inquiries stonewalled by the establishment, he enlists the aid of a roughneck brawler, William Barnet, whose familiarity with the criminal world allows him access otherwise unavailable to an upstanding member of society.

As Barnet pokes within the dark corners of London, there are worrisome developments elsewhere in the city. An outbreak of severe illness is growing among the population, and by official order, the city gates- already scheduled to be closed for the week of the Pope's visit - are to be closed indefinitely to prevent its spread to the outlying districts.

 

Before long, the plague, and a conspiracy emplaced by the highest levels of the city government, collide to make London a dangerous place for Samuel Waterhouse and William Barnet. 

But if they fail in their efforts to unmask the conspirators, the death toll will be enormous...for the worst of the plague has yet to be visited upon London......

To me, Ring of Roses is an interesting melding of the novel 'Pavane' by Keith Roberts, and the 1977 thriller 'The Black Death' by Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr, still one of the best "plague loose in a modern city" novels ever written.

There are some weaknesses to Ring of Roses, however, and these can make the novel difficult to understand. One weakness is the lack of sufficient external narration to keep the various plots and sub-plots coherent. 

This emerges as a real problem when writer Petrou commissions one page to address two different plot threads, using text boxes reflective of one character's internal monologue superimposed on panels illustrating a different character, busy at something associated with an independent plot thread. This sort of quasi-cinematic jump-cutting occurs too frequently for its own good, and in fact, I had to re-read Ring several times before the sub-plots and side narratives finally made sense.

But the major drawback to the book is Watkiss's artwork. It's too loose, too half-finished, too murky. [A Spanish artist named Antonio Navarro was originally chosen to illustrate the series but withdrew when it became clear he couldn't meet the deadline]. I frequently found myself having to peer at a panel for an overlong amount of time in order to decipher Watkiss's poor draftsmanship.

Things aren't helped by the fact that the graphic novel released by Image uses an off-white, putty-tinted paper, that makes Watkiss's artwork even more opaque and difficult to make out.

[My advice is to seek out the original comic books, which are available at eBay for reasonable prices, and which used a white paper stock.]

In 2004 Petrou was approached by two film companies in regard to licensing rights to Ring of Roses, and in 2009 the film appeared to be nearing production stage. Where the project stands at this time is unclear.

In summary, despite mediocre artwork, and a narrative that often gets too complicated for its own good, Ring of Roses is one of the more clever treatments of an alternate, quasi-Steampunk UK, and readers with a fondness for that subgenre of sf will want to take a look.

The Heart of the City

The Heart of the City

by Margaret Gallagher and James Romberger

from the August 1982 issue of Epic Illustrated 

Book Review: The Last Deathship Off Antares

Book Review: 'The Last Deathship Off Antares' by William John Watkins

3 / 5 Stars

‘The Last Deathship Off Antares’ (204 pp.) was published by Questar / Popular Library in January 1989. The cover illustration is by Blas Callego.

When the Terran Stellar Incorporation decides that the Antareans, or ‘Anties’, are a threat to the profitability of the galaxy, a mighty space fleet is dispatched to the Antares Platform. Undergunned and underarmed, the fleet is promptly destroyed, and nearly half a million of its soldiers and spacemen taken captive by the Anties.

For the Anties, who adhere to a kind of alien version of the Japanese samurai code of bushido, surrender is a disgraceful act, and they decide to give their Terran captives a chance to redeem themselves. The Terrans are dispersed into a fleet of prison ships moored at the Platform.

Aboard each of these ‘death ships’, ten thousand men drift in low gravity and fight among themselves over access to the small number of feeding stations scattered around the interior of the ship. With each day, more men die from exhaustion, lack of food and water, or murdered by their erstwhile crewmates.

The unnamed first-person narrator is one of the men living day-to-day on board the deathship The Last, utterly consumed with the brutal struggle to gain access to a feeding station, or ‘niche’. Once entered, food and water are disbursed for no more than 10 minutes, while the occupant is safely sealed within the niche. Once the ten minutes are up, the doors unlock, and the desperate throngs clustered outside will attempt to pull the occupant out and take over the niche for themselves.

One day the narrator encounters a blind man named Driscoll, and a fight for a niche ensues. Despite his handicap Driscoll is a devastating master of hand-to-hand combat, and he easily evicts the narrator from his niche, only to ask him if he’s interested in joining The Cooperative.

The Cooperative, it turns out, is Driscoll’s organization. An organization with a seemingly impossible aim: unite the human psychopaths aboard The Last, and take over the ship from the Anties.

And then the other ships in the prison fleet.

And then overthrow the Anties in charge of the Antares Platform.

And then destroy the Antarean battle fleet.

And finally, return to Stellar Incorporation space, and deliver a vengeful reckoning to the Profiteers who ordered the disastrous assault on the Antarean Platform.

It sounds insane. But Driscoll has a plan. All combat aboard the prison ships is hand-to-hand, whether between humans, or humans Vs Anties, so ranged weapons – blasters, lasers, power rifles, phasers - make no appearance. 

Driscoll’s peculiar genius is to turn the Anties’ single-minded preoccupation about fighting and dying with honor, into their greatest weakness.

It also helps that Driscoll has a new religion for the crazed occupants of the deathships: the potent philosophy of The Gradient ….

‘The Last Deathship’ has the kind of hokey title that conjures up the pulp sf stories of the 30s and 40s. 

In actuality, it’s an offbeat, if not entirely successful, combination of space opera, and….. the UFC (?!).

The first 80 pages of the novel tend to drag, as author Watkins devotes over-much exposition to the aboard-ship ecology of the niches, and the the political and tribal features of the prisoner population.

As well, sub-plots devoted to the various intrigues among the factions vying for supremacy aboard The Last regularly crop up in the narrative, and after a while, tend to become tedious obstacles to the advent of Liberation, and the forward momentum of the storyline. 
 
However, the descriptions of the hand-to-hand battles among prisoners, and eventually, the aliens, are suitably violent, and as blood-spattered as an 'Ultimate Fighter' episode on the Spike channel. These martial arts contests help propel the narrative when the frequent, and rather dull, internal monologues of the narrator start to slow things down.

Despite its uneven pacing, I finished ‘The last Deathship’ thinking that it was a decent enough novel, with more coherency in its 200+ pages than the 500+ page military sf novels routinely published these days by Baen Books.

Ultraterranium

'Ultraterranium: The Paintings of Bruce Pennington' 

edited by Nigel Suckling

'Ultraterranium' (128 pp) was published by Paper Tiger (UK) in 1991.

Bruce Pennington was born in Somerset in 1944, and attended Beckenham College of Art, later the Ravensborn College of Art, where he embraced the Op art and Pop art styles very current in the early 60s.

From 1964 to 1966 he worked on movie posters. In Spring 1967 he received his first commission for a book cover, for Panther Book's 'The Defense', by Nabokov. His first SF book cover came later that year, for 'Stranger In A Strange Land' for the New English Library.

Since that time Pennington has continued to provide artwork for books, magazines, as well as noncomissioned paintings, some of which are presented in Ultraterranium.

Ultraterranium covers Pennington's cover illustrations for books (primarily from UK publishers) in the SF, horror, and fantasy genres from 1970 - 1990. Pennington's skillful use of color and composition meshed well with his subject matter, making him one of the more accomplished of the sf illustrators of the 79s and 80s. His later works, in particular, have an ornate, Dali-esque style to them.

Pennington's website is at: http://www.brucepennington.co.uk/index.htm
 

Heavy Metal magazine July 1982

'Heavy Metal' magazine July 1982

The Summer of '82 rolls on. In heavy rotation on MTV are Paul McCartney and Wings with 'Take It Away'. Featuring John Hurt, George Martin, and Ringo, it is still one of the best Wings songs ever.

The July issue of 'Heavy Metal' features a front cover by Thomas Warkentin titled 'Cadmium Anniversary', with 'In Flight', by Chris Achiellos, on the back cover.  

The Dossier contains a number of argumentative columns on sci-fi, film, and what Rok Critic Lou Stathis calls 'Electro-Popism', but could just as well have been called 'New Wave'.

 

The  ongoing  essay authored by David Black, 'The Third Sexual Revolution', continues, this time on the topic of 'macho woman' (?!), with an illustrated accompaniment by Caza. It's too bad that editor Julie Lynch didn't just delete Black's hokey essay and substitute a full-length Caza comic strip.

There are continuing installments of Corben's 'Den II', Jodorowsky and Moebius's 'Incal Light', 'Nova 2' by Garcia and Bequer, 'At the Middle of Cymbiola' by Renard and Schuiten, 'Zora' by Fernandez, and 'The Voyage of Those Forgotten', by Bilal, which is posted below. 

Sabre issue 1

'Sabre' issue 1

Eclipse Comics, August 1982

'Sabre' was first published in 1978 as a 38-page black-and-white graphic novel by Eclipse, an independent comic book publisher. The book is considered by some to be the first 'graphic novel' ever to be released, although I would argue that Gil Kane's 'Blackmark', from 1971, was actually the first work to merit the title of a graphic novel.

Sabre represented an effort by writer Don McGregor to produce material not stifled by the restrictions of the Comics Code, or the heavy hands of the senior editorial staff at the major publishers. 

In 1982, Eclipse comics released the graphic novel in issues one and two of Sabre, a newly launched, full-color comic book. 

Another 12 issues of original material followed, before the series ceased in 1985 with issue 14.

Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, McGregor wasted too much time presenting himself as a talented wordsmith battling the ignorance of the System, and too little time actually being a good writer. 

Much as he did with the Killraven series for Marvel, McGregor buried Paul Gulacy's exceptional artwork under turgid, overwrought prose.  Even by the standards of comic book writing of the 70s and 80s - in which prolixity was commonplace - McGregor showed a signal lack of restraint.

Still, it's worth taking a look at the 1980s run of 'Sabre', for every now and then, when McGregor allowed Gulacy's illustrations to take center stage, the book rose above and beyond the usual.

The first few pages of Sabre No. 1 introduce us to the dystopian state of the US in 2020 AD:

Here's a nice example of what Paul Gulacy could do when given a text-free page with which to work:

Unfortunately, too often Gulacy's artwork had to maneuver around large chunks of text:

My synopsis of issue two / part two of the original 'Sabre' will be posted next month.

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

Book Review: The Earth Strikes Back

Book Review: 'The Earth Strikes Back' edited by Richard T. Chizmar

4 / 5 Stars

This year sees the fortieth anniversary of the highly influential book The Limits to Growth, published by The Club of Rome. 

Along with Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, Limits defined the eco-catastrophe mood that dominated intellectual circles and pop culture during the late 60s - early 70s.

(For an interesting take on The Limits to Growth after 40 years, see this article by the economist and skeptic Bjorn Lomberg).

A number of eco-catastrophe - themed sf anthologies were issued in those golden days, but starting in the mid-70s, the genre began to lose its appeal, and fared rather poorly throughout the 80s.

With the 90s, eco-catatrophe experienced something of a mini-renaissance in sf circles, and one of its best manifestations is this 1994 anthology from horror / fantasy publisher White Wolf.

‘The Earth Strikes Back: An Anthology of Ecological Horror’ (462 pp) is, as its title suggests, devoted to eco-catastrophe in that good old 70s style. 

All of the 20 entries were produced exclusively for this anthology. The authors are the ‘usual suspects’ of horror / sf writers for a mid-90s anthology: Charles de Lint, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Poppy Z. Brite, Ed Gorman, etc.

The first entry in the collection, Dan Simmons'  ‘My Copsa Micas’, is not really a fiction piece, but rather, a disorganized, rambling essay touching on ecological / environmental themes. Apparently the submission deadline caught Simmons without a finished short story, and this is what he hastily came up with.

‘Harvest’ by Norman Partridge, ‘Ground Water’ by James Kisner, and ‘Cancer Alley’ by Nancy Collins, focus on ‘environmental injustice’, in which hapless minorities, and low-income folks, live in neighborhoods since converted into toxic wastelands.

A number of contributions acknowledge Joe R. Lansdale, and appropriately enough, go for frank horror (exemplified by toxic goo dissolving people). These are: ‘Double –Edged Sword’ by Barry Hoffman; ‘Tyrophex-14’ by Ronald Kelly; and ‘Toxic Wastrels’, by Brite. Gary A. Braunbeck’s ‘The Dreaded Hobblobs’ features gross-out humor in the inimitable Lansdale style.

Themes of corporate corruption and (sometimes) comeuppance are dealt with in ‘Where It’s Safe’ by John Shirley; ‘Binary’ by Roman A. Ranieri; ‘Please Stand By’ by Thomas Monteleone; and Yarbro’s ‘Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200’.

End-of-Civilization / Nature’s Vengeance topics are explored in Thomas Tessier’s ‘I Remember Me’, William Relling Jr’s ‘Expiration Date’, Mark Rainey’s ‘Torrent’, Rick Hautala’s ‘Toxic Shock’, and Hugh B. Cave’s ‘Genesis II’.

Ed Gorman’s contributions to 80s and 90s anthologies could be hit-or-miss, but his ‘Cages’ turns out to be one of the best entries in ‘The Earth Strikes Back’. With a prose style that mimics a good Harlan Ellison tale, an imaginatively warped near-future setting, and plenty of black humor, ‘Cages’ stands out.

Richard Laymon’s ‘The Fur Coat’ incorporates some dark, politically incorrect humor in its portrayal of vengeful environmentalists.

‘The Forest is Crying’, by de Lint, is the worst story in the anthology. It’s a mawkish tale of a cynical detective who comes to recognize the Sanctity of Mother Earth, via (naturally enough) the intervention of Native Americans (because, as we all know, only Native Americans truly understand the abomination of the White Man and his despoilment of the Earth).

Taken altogether, ‘Earth Strikes Back’ is a decent anthology, and, if it had been issued in 1971, would have been received as a stellar story collection, well in keeping with the eco-disaster themes then predominant in sf.

If you’re into that sub-genre of sf, then you’ll want to pick up ‘Earth Strikes Back’.