Robocop 2 comic adaptation

Robocop 2
Official Comic Book Adaptation

Marvel, August 1990

The official comic book adaptation of the movie Robocop 2 was published by Marvel in August, 1990 and is 61 pages in length. The book was adapted by the script by Frank Miller and Walon Green by Alan Grant, and Mark Bagley provides the pencils.

The comic book adaptation adheres pretty closely to the script, so there are no surprises in terms of including scenes that were present in initial drafts, but cut from the shooting script.

Presumably the licensing deal for the comic book did not include the rights to the likenesses of the major actors, so Bagley's art renders the characters in a generic fashion. 

Bagley's art is serviceable, but not very impressive. I will say that reading the book, when I hadn't seen the film in some 10 or more years, had me laughing and brought back an appreciation of the sardonic humor that Frank Miller suffused in almost every scene in the movie. In my opinion, Robocop 2 was a sequel that surpassed the original.

Who will want a copy of the comic adaptation of Robocop 2 ? Well, it's clearly a least-possible-effort by the Marvel editorial staff: they were looking to get something out to capitalize on a movie release, not to make a comic that would be cherished by fans for decades to come. If you are a hardcore Robocop fan and you just have to have Everything Robocop, then you'll probably want to grab this adaptation. 

If you're someone who wants a good treatment of the second installment in the franchise, I would direct you to the 2007 Avatar graphic novel that compiles the issues of 'Frank Miller's Robocop'. Unfortunately, that graphic novel is long out of print, and used copies have exorbitant asking prices (i.e., $99 on up). So the 1990s Marvel version at least has affordability in its favor..........

Book Review: The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror

Book Review: 'The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror' edited by Stephen Jones

 4 / 5 Stars

'The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror' is a thick brick of a book at 524 pages, published by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., in 2021.

Britisher Stephen Jones is of course the world's foremost editor of horror fiction, with over 140 books to his credit.

In his Introduction to the anthology, Jones states that folk horror is '....basically the horrific side of folklore'. As well, folk horror is horror that usually is set in rural environs. I note that in 1993, DAW Books issued an anthology, edited (inevitably) by Martin Greenberg, titled 'Urban Horrors', so it would seem appropriate that attention be given to horror placed in pastoral places.

The contents of 'Folk Horror' range from old favorites (so to speak) from 19th-century authors, to stories from 20th and 21st-century authors, including many younger authors whose works were issued well after the Horror Boom of the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the entries appear to have been newly written for this anthology.

Rather than give capsule summaries of each of the 19 novelettes and stories in 'Folk Horror', I'll simply provide an overview that, hopefully, will give readers an idea of what to expect from the book. 

I will say that in general, the treatments of horror depicted in this collection have a subdued, opaque quality; splatterpunks probably will be disappointed with 'Folk Horror'.

The anthology leads off with Arthur Machen's 1899 novelette 'The White People', about a young English girl whose governess introduces her to pagan practices. The novelette is essentially one lengthy travelogue, rendered in Little Girl-ish, through a fairyland that doesn't contain the expected rainbows and unicorns (and perhaps is better for it). 

Traditional favorites from M. R. James ('Wailing Well') and Algernon Blackwood ('Ancient Lights') give readers new to the genre a grounding in the folk horror ethos. H. P. Lovecraft's vintage story 'The Hound' also somehow finds its way into this company.

The book's other novelette comes from Kim Newman, who first wrote it for a 2005 Science Fiction Book Club anthology, 'The Fair Folk'. 

'The Gypsies in the Wood' features Charles Beauregard, from Newman's 1992 novel 'Anno Dracula', as the lead character. 'Gypsies' deals with malevolent fairies, coming forth to infest a kind of Steampunk Disneyland operating in  Regent's Park. 'Gypsies' is one of the better entries in the anthology. 

Aficionados of horror fiction will find a well-known piece among the entries in 'Folk Horror': 'Sticks', by Karl Edward Wagner, the classic tale of Lovecraftian goings-on in the woodlands of upstate New York. 

I was surprised to see Dennis Etchison's 'The Dark Country' in this anthology. In my opinion Etchison's story fails to qualify as folk horror, or even as a horror story at all. If there is such a category as 'Mexican Noir', then 'Dark Country' belongs there.

Strange, unsettling places in rural England are the focus of well-composed stories from Alison Littlewood ('Jenny Greenteeth'), Mike Chinn ('All I Ever See'), David Sutton ('St. Ambrews Well'), Jan Edwards ('The Devil's Piss Pot'), Storm Constantine ('Wyfa Medj'), and Reggie Oliver ('Porson's Piece').

Ramsey Campbell presents a tale set in rural England. 'The Fourth Call' is about a village tradition that is perilous to ignore. It's a newer story, and thus, for Campbell, a better one: the horror content is more reified than Campbell was wont to do in his older tales.

Supernatural forces loose in the wild are treated in Maura McHugh's 'Gravedirt Mouth', Steve Rasnic Tem's 'Gavin's Field', and Simon Strantzas's 'The King of Stones' (which has the most graphic horror of all the anthology's contributions and, as a result, is memorable).

Folk horror outside Anglophone countries is featured in 'The Offering' by Michael Marshall Smith (you'll think twice about renting an Air BnB in Denmark, especially with a snotnosed teen in your entourage). Christopher Fowler's 'The Mistake at the Monsoon Palace' deals with an Ugly American who finds redemption in rural India; it's more a fantasy tale than a horror tale. 

I finished 'The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror' with a willingness to assign it a Four Star Rating. Every reader will of course have his or her opinion on what stories should, or should not, be included, but I think the only real dud entry is Etchison's. Replacing it with something from Robert Holdstock (such as 'Scarrowfell') would, I think, propel 'Folk Horror' into Five-Star territory. But read it for yourself and see what you think............

Night and the Enemy

Night and the Enemy

by Harlan Ellison and Ken Steacy

'Night and the Enemy' was a collection of comics, graphics, and illustrated text bundled into an 81-page graphic novel from independent comics publisher Comico, and released in November 1987. 

The stories in 'Night' were adapted from the so-called 'Earth-Kyba' stories Ellison published from 1956 to 1987.

The Comico edition of 'Night and the Enemy' is long out of print, so Ellison enthusiasts were pleased when, in 2015, a trade paperback reprint edition (85 pp.) was issued from Dover. The 2015 edition reprints the entirety of the 1987 volume, and includes some ancillary material in the form of an 'Afterward and Pictures' section.

Canadian artist Ken Steacy (b. 1955) teamed up with Dean Motter to produce the comic, and later graphic novel, of 'The Sacred and the Profane' in the mid-1980s, so he was familiar with the process of composing and rendering science fiction content.

The stories in 'Night and the Enemy' all display Steacy's distinctive art style, both in color, and in black-and-white. Rather than speech balloons, dialogue is presented in a minimalist manner, as typeface with tails to indicate who is speaking.

As I noted in my review of 'The Sacred and the Profane', Steacy is not a traditional comic book artist in the sense of using art that lends itself to dynamic action. The artwork in 'Night and the Enemy' has a static quality, even in scenes of action, and while this works well for some of the stories, it is less effective in others. But the reader is invited to view the book and make their own judgments.

As for Ellison's writing, the Earth-Kyba stories were intended, in that inimitable Harlan Ellison style, to be vigorous repudiations of the sci-fi ideology of the postwar era, where virtuous Terrans battled malevolent alien invaders and won a noble victory. The tales in 'Night and the Enemy' avoid jingoism and remind us all, in a blunt way, that War is Hell.

There are a couple short stories included in 'Night and the Enemy'. 'Trojan Hearse' is a two-pager that gets the job done, while 'The Few, the Proud' takes the theme of the war hero and subverts it with a particularly caustic, 'surprise' ending.

Summing up, 'Night and the Enemy' is one of the better efforts to mingle Ellison's text with graphic art. It's on par with 'The Illustrated Harlan Ellison' from 1978, and superior to the comic book series 'Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor' from 1996. So, if you're an Ellison fan, you'll want to have a copy of 'Night and the Enemy' in your library. 

Return to Second Story Books Warehouse

Return to Second Story Books Warehouse

November 2023

It's been a couple years since last I visited the Second Story Books warehouse in Rockville, Maryland. So last week, on a mild Fall day, I decided to check out the warehouse. I prepared by including my portable urinal (below) in my travel gear.

While construction on I-66 has more or less been completed, an accident resulted in the slowing of traffic to stop-and-go levels. And then, when I got on the DC Beltway, construction in the vicinity of the Dulles Access Road meant even more delays. It took me 2 hours and 45 minutes to go from my front door to the Second Story lot.

Once inside I found a good selection of mass-market paperbacks, as always, just a buck or two each, and in conditions ranging from good to very good.

'The Godkeepers' is a 1970 noir novel; the author, E. Richard Johnson (1938 - 1997), was a well-regarded hardboiled crime writer.

'Earthwind' is a 1977 science fiction novel from Robert Holdstock, while 'The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde' is a 1970 compilation of stories from Norman Spinrad.

The warden of San Quentin prison provides a memoir of his time at the prison:

I was pleased to get an Alfred Hitchcock anthology from 1966.

'Super-Tanks', from 1987, is an assembly of sci-fi war stories.

I got a copy of the 1968 Ace Books edition of Heith Roberts' novel 'Pavane'.

Finally, I picked up the original 'Sabre' graphic novel from 1978 for $6. Old School goodness, from the Second Story Books Warehouse !

Book Review: The Shaft

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

Book Review: 'The Shaft' by David J. Schow

2 / 5 Stars

Nowadays Splatterpunk is mainstreamed as a horror genre, so much so that if I go to amazon.com and do a book Search for the noun, I get deluged with an entire library of small-press, self-published, Print On Demand trade paperbacks and Kindle titles. 

I'm sure the majority of such titles receive little (if any) editorial oversight beyond asking submitters to do a Spell Check, and maybe Grammarly, on their Word files. So I'm not especially motivated to obtain, and read, very many of them. 

But I am willing to take a trip back to when splatterpunk was just emerging as a genre, and one of its foremost practitioners was mining new territory in the era of the 'Paperbacks from Hell'.

David J. Schow (pronounced 'Skow') was born in Marburg, Germany in 1955 to an American military family (his father was a gunner on a B-24 Liberator bomber in World War Two). The family moved to the U.S. when Schow was of kindergarten age and eventually settled in Huntington Beach, California. Schow grew up in rather strained circumstances, but realized at an early age he loved monster magazines, the Outer Limits TV show, and the idea of writing stories.

Schow went on to coin the term 'splatterpunk', and unlike other writers associated with the term (such as Joe R. Lansdale) he never has shied from standing forth as a representative of the genre. He made his first short story sale at age 23, to Odyssey science fiction magazine, and later published his second short story in the Twilight Zone Magazine in 1982. Schow advanced to publishing novels, screenplays, and nonfiction books, emerging as one of the more successful horror writers of the 1990s and beyond.

'The Shaft' originally appeared as a short story in the Spring of 1990, in a special 'David J. Schow' issue of yet another revival of Weird Tales. The story also is available in the anthology 'DJStories' (Subterranean Press, 2018).

Later in 1990, Schow expanded the story into a novel, which was published in the UK in both hardcover and paperback editions.

Both the original printings of 'The Shaft' are long out of print and command very steep prices. Fortunately, this trade paperback edition of 'The Shaft' was issued by Macabre Ink Press / Crossroad Press in April, 2020. According to Schow, the trade paperback (372 pp.) contains additional content as compared to the 1990 version.

'The Shaft' is set in wintertime Chicago in the late 1980s. Three young people, all 'damaged' in some way, find themselves taking residence in the deteriorating tenement known as the Kenilworth Arms:

Jonathan is a graphic designer who, after breaking up with his girlfriend, decides to leave Texas for Chicago and a new start in life. Consumed with self-pity, Jonathan is a cuck who finds the northern snow, sleet, and freezing temperatures as just one more injustice visited upon his hapless shoulders.

Jamaica is a streetwise and sexy call girl whose clientele are not very nice people. But they are well-equipped with drugs, and liberal with their cash. An encounter with a resident at the Kenilworth Arms sets in motion a chain of events that will have unpleasant consequences for some of the debased Chicago residents that make up her social circle.

Cruz is a young up-and-comer in the Miami drug trade, but when something goes really wrong, he has to flee to Chicago and wait for tensions to subside. Unfortunately for Cruz, his place of residence in the WIndy City turns out to be the Kenilworth Arms.............

What Jonathan, Jamaica, and Cruz don't know is that Something Evil is lurking inside the slime-covered ventilation shaft inserted into the structure of the Kenilworth Arms. As a blizzard strikes Chicago, our trio will find themselves threatened by this malevolence.....and they have no one to rely on, save themselves........

'The Shaft' declares its commitment to splatterpunk in its very first chapter, which is simultaneously gross, and laugh-out-loud funny. Needless to say, it likely would have repelled and disgusted Charles L. Grant.

But the first chapter also signals that 'The Shaft' is not an easy read. Schow’s diction is an overload of dense prose and resolutely hard-boiled language. Here’s a description of the manager of the Kenilworth Arms:

His first shock had been Fergus, the “manager”, whose job description would read “pusbag” on some document if there was any justice in the cosmos. He lived in clothes that looked scrounged off dead winos and smelled as if he drank a pint of Aqua Velva a day…perhaps to pickle his flesh, which was doughy and spotted like overripe fruit. His ratty Converse All-Stars were slick and grimy; they had been white at the beginning of time. Maybe. Things had been hatched inside them, Cruz thought, and Fergus had slipped them onto his plump, horny feet while the membranes and afterbirth were still warm. Gnomish and dull of gaze, he exuded the aromas of stale dates and sour breath from beneath his megadose of aftershave. There were brown gaps between each of his teeth, and even in this freezing climate the tips of his hacked-off and slicked-back hair were perpetually gravid with droplets of some opaque liquid. Cruz would learn that the guy only understood English clearly around the first of the rental month. He had informed Cruz – in English – that rent would be acceptable only in the form of cash or money orders, the ukase new and the fault of newer tenants, who were unbelievable in such responsibilities. 

The plot of 'The Shaft' is rather thin, and struggles to bear the weight of too much exposition. I finished the book thinking that it would have benefitted from curtailing the descriptive prose sufficiently to reduce its length to under 250 pages. 

The verdict ? Die-hard Schow fans and aficionados of Splat will want to have 'The Shaft' in their collection, but in my opinion, the original short story, by virtue of its condensed nature, makes it a better read than the novel. 

The end of Heavy Metal magazine

The End of Heavy Metal Magazine

Over at Fred's HM Fan Blog, comes word that Heavy Metal magazine has ceased publication.

I haven't bought a copy of the magazine in over a decade. Fred's honest reviews of recent issues didn't give me a powerful reason to run out and spend $15 for the magazine. At the same time, I'm sad to see the magazine fold, as in its heyday it was a touchstone of sci-fi / Baby Boomer / stoner culture, an enterprise that revolutionized the presentation of graphic art and comics-based storytelling when it first appeared in April 1977.

For nostalgia's sake I opened up a copy of the August, 1980 issue and read, with some affection, Lou Stathis' pretentious review of 'Rok Muzick' recorded by the New Wave band The Residents; Steve Brown's scathing dissection of Robert Heinlein's turgid novel 'The Number of the Beast'; and Jay Kinney's overview of the comix scene. There are good pieces from Druillet ('Salammbo'), Bilal ('Progress'), and Ribera and Godard ('The Alchemist Supreme'). There's an interview with Moebius, in which he spouts all manner of bullshit, trying too hard to present himself as the eccentric (but visionary) comics artiste.

The minor one-page and third-page comics that were used to max the layout come across as silly, but sometimes interesting, little exercises in art and storytelling. They're part and parcel of a media package that did quite a lot for sci-fi fans back in the day. I'm skeptical that the floundering magazine market here in the U.S. will allow for any kind of resurrection of the magazine, but I know Fred will keep an eye out for any developments........

Book Review: Neq the Sword

Book Review: 'Neq the Sword' by Piers Anthony

4 / 5 Stars

'Neq the Sword' (192 pp.) was published by Corgi Books (UK) in 1975, and features rather gruesome cover art by Patrick Woodroffe. In the 1970s, this sort of graphic illustration could pass muster, but it's doubtful if it would be acceptable nowadays...........

This is the third volume in the 'Battle Circle' trilogy, the other entries being 'Sos the Rope' (1968) and 'Var the Stick' (1972). My review of 'Sos' is here, and 'Var', here.

All three volumes were packaged for the U.S. readership by Avon, in the omnibus 'Battle Circle'.

'Neq the Sword' is set in the same post-apocalyptic America as the first two volumes in the trilogy, in which Neq briefly appears as a minor character. 

As 'Neq' opens, due to the machinations of the enigmatic superman known simply as 'the Master', the nomad society in which Neq lives is in increasing disarray due to a breakdown in the distribution of food, clothing, medicine, and shelter by the technocrats known as the 'Crazies'.

The practice of the Battle Circle, which served to direct aggression into ritualized combat, has been abandoned. The landscape is infested by outlaws and bandits who murder, rape, and rob without fear of retribution. Truck convoys supplying goods to the Crazy hostels scattered around the landscape are being intercepted, and their contents pillaged. 

The Crazies, sworn to pacifism, can do little to prevent the depredations of the outlaws. But Neq, one of the greatest swordsmen in the history of the nomad empire, is willing to help the Crazies revive the supply convoys. He realizes that the nomad society is collapsing, and stern measures are needed to prevent the resumption of the barbarity that defined life in the aftermath of the Blast. 

Accompanied by a young Crazy woman named Miss Smith, Neq sets out on a long-distance drive across northern America, hoping to restore the hostels and quell the activities of the outlaws. His journey will reveal the fate of the former leaders and heroes of the nomad empire, their children, and underscore the need for cooperation between the the advanced society that ruled the world before the Blast, and the devolved remnants of that society.

Like 'Sos' and 'Var', in 'Neq the Sword' author Anthony (the pseudonym of Piers Anthony Jacobs) provides an engrossing action novel within the span of less than 200 pages. More so than the first two novels on the series, the violence in 'Neq' is more explicit and could said to verge into Splatterpunk territory. There also are prominent traces of a softcore porn sensibility in the pages of 'Neq', which perhaps is not so surprising, given that Jacobs wrote sleaze paperbacks ('Pornucopia') in addition to science fiction. 

Where I had to deduct a star for 'Neq' was in its closing chapters, wherein our hero decides to purse the spirit of Kumbaya, and renounces the use of violence. This abnegation has a contrived quality, as if Piers Anthony belatedly had decided to infuse the closing stages of his violent trilogy with a 'make love, not war, sensibility'. Each reader will make his or her own decision as to whether this is a successful maneuver, but for me, I found it facile........

Summing up, while it's not perfect, the 'Battle Circle' trilogy remains a worthy read fifty years after it first was published. The trilogy's tight composition and action-centered discourse made it stand out from the New Wave compositions of the same era, and for this, it deserves accolades.

Wolverine / Nick Fury The Scorpio Connection

Wolverine / Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection
by Archie Goodwin (story) and Howard Chaykin (art)
Marvel, 1989 

'Wolverine / Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection' (64 pages) was one of the 75 'Graphic Novels' Marvel issued from 1979 to 1993. It's a nicely produced hardbound volume, printed on glossy paper.

As 'Scorpio' opens, an unknown assailant attacks a SHIELD field team at a site in South America. Among the dead SHIELD staffers is David Nanjiwarra, who happens to once have saved Wolverine's life.

When news of the attack reaches Nick Fury, he is disturbed to learn that the attacker left behind a momento: the sigil of a scorpion. 

Fury once battled a villain named Scorpio, who turned out to be his estranged brother, Jake. And long ago, Jake committed suicide. Who now is posing as Scorpio, and why are they targeting SHIELD ?

As Fury tries to answer this question, he's obliged to work with Wolverine, who is intent of avenging the death of David Nanjiwarra. 

We learn that the 'new' Scorpio has ties to the late Jake Fury.

As the story unfolds, it become clear that the new Scorpio is motivated by longstanding rivalries and betrayed alliances. Ones Nick Fury prefers to forget, for he helped engineer some of the betrayals. But when Wolverine is your ally, there is little room for negotiations and niceties, because for him, it's slice first, ask questions later.......

For me, 'The Scorpio Connection' was a disappointment. Archie Goodwin's plotting has a rushed, haphazard quality, as if he addressed the project in fits and starts, his mind on other things. The melange of conspiracies and double-crosses that propel the story are poorly served by a gimmicky denouement.

Howard Chaykin was not the best artist for this graphic novel. His pencils have a rough, blocky quality and the the spectacularly ugly color scheme (by Richard Ory and Barb Rauch) give 'Scorpio' the visual stylings of an awkwardly reimagined 1960s Pop Art production, rather than a late 80s spy adventure. 

Summing up, I can't recommend 'The Scorpio Connection'. Goodwin and the Marvel editorial staff could have done something memorable, but what they came up with simply was pedestrian. 

National Lampoon March 1976

National Lampoon
March 1976

It's March, 1976, and the number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'December 1963 (Oh What A Night)' by the Four Seasons, and the latest issue of National Lampoon is on the stands.

The advertising sees continued representation of Hereford's 'Cows' beverages. These seem to be a kind of alcoholic milkshake ?! (I've never had one).

Grand Funk, now known as Grand Funk Railroad, has released a new album, Born to Die.

This issue of the Lampoon takes aim at Nelson Rockefeller. By 1976, Rockefeller was kind of a passe figure to be satirizing, and this can be seen as a sign that the Lampoon staff were getting out of touch on the political front.

Also being advertised is a strange new form of media, 'Fiction Illustrated', something we nowadays call a 'graphic novel'. The advertisement uses the term 'adult comic'. I've never read 'Schlomo Raven', but it was a early project from Byron Preiss, a man who did much to pave the way for the concept of graphic novels.

The color comic presented in this March issue is 'Turtle Farms of South America', which, in my opinion, is not very good.

This cartoon from Sam Gross works better:

Underground comix artist Bobby London provides a 'Dirty Duck' episode:

M. K. Brown contributes a weird 'Mr. Science' comic:

And then we have Gahan Wilson's 'Nuts'.

That's how it was, 47 years ago !