Chadzilla ROARS!!!

Hack/Slash Vol. 3: Friday the 31st - by Tim Seeley (writer) and Emily Stone & Matt Merhoff (art)

"No one is getting all tentacle porn on me, fucker!"

Cassie and Vlad face off against Chucky, a couple of skinless psychos, and an ancient evil from an alternate dimension.  Fun times.

Some of the material collected in this particular volume, namely Cassie and Vlad's run-in with Chucky, the killer Good Guy doll, is where I first jumped into the Cassie and Vlad story pool.  My opinion of that adventure remains unchanged: It's a rocking good ride that, like the entire series, is essential reading for any and all slasher-horror fans.

Revisiting the yarn(s) in this volume with a far more knowledgeable set of eyes (I have read almost all of the Hack/Slash comics available on the market) regarding who Cassie and Vlad are and where they come from, I cannot praise the ongoing series, the first few issues of which fill the second half of this volume, enough.  I also noticed and appreciated the now obvious to me groundwork that was being laid for the ongoing series in the duo's Chucky themed outing.

As far as those first few issues go, most of it was fresh.  So the monetary double-dipping was far less painful than the serial/trade double-dipping I have been making with The Walking Dead.  But that is a subject for a different commentary.

Again, those first issues.  Cassie's run-in with Dr. Gross covers background that has been so well covered in previous and subsequent serial and stand alone stories, I could walk it blindfolded with no fear of tripping over some hidden nuance.  While newcomers to the series will no doubt need to be told of Cassie Hack's origins, I think it is time for Seeley and the gang to push to character building envelope.  Something they did with the very next story arc, a demented and delightful thrashing of Hair Metal bands, the King, and Hentai.  If that description doesn't sell you on this series, I don't what will.

All I can say is, if you are a horror fan, then you are doing yourself a real disservice by NOT reading this oh-so-awesome horromedy series.  Horromedy?  Could that even be a real word?

A Threat to Justice - by Chuck Norris, Ken Abraham, Aaron Norris & Tim Grayem

The Civil War is over, so Ezra Justice's "Justice Riders" can go their separate ways...and they do.  Ezra and his former slave and childhood friend Nate return to Tennesse to rebuild the family plantation.  Reginald Bonesteel heads off to the California gold country in search of wealth.  Harry Whitecloud returns to Princeton to get his medical degree.  The Hawkins twins, Roberto and Carlos, plan to raise some hell in St. Louis, then head down to New Orleans and raise some more.

But while the war might be over, the wounds that it made are still raw and painful.  There is also a lot of anger.  Anger that is being directed at the former slaves by a group known as the Klu Klux Klan.  A group that does not take kindly to Ezra Justice's close friendship with his former slave.  Soon the Justice Riders regroup to face A Threat to Justice.

That old descriptive saw for chaos, "The cowboy jumped onto his horse and road off in all directions," is a perfect one for A Threat to Justice, the directionless sequel to Chuck Norris's The Justice Riders.  A quick read book (I polished it off in about a day) that takes the reader nowhere fast.  Threat spends 220 of its 236 pages meandering to a perfunctory climax that is distinctly anti-climatic, because the very real evil that the Justice Riders face down (racism) is still around today, so their triumph is a hollow one.

Everything that actor turned author Chuck Norris (with the assist of his brother Aaron, writer Ken Abraham and screenwriter Tim Grayem) got right with the first Justice Riders novel, gets wrong this time around.  The religious aspects are ham-fisted and about as subtle as a roundhouse kick to the face.  The action/adventure elements are far too paltry, with nothing coming close to the sinking of the Sultana set piece from the first book, and the drama shallow and predictable.  Threat just sits there as its characters wander around, looking for something to do, while I sat there reading, waiting for something exciting to happen.  It didn't.

There has not been a new Justice Riders adventure since this effort debuted in 2007.  I am going to assume that Norris was distracted from doing another entry by his work on his non-fiction effort Black Belt Patriotism and hope that the series will not end with this lackluster "sophomore slump."

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater Presents: The Masque of the Red Death (Ep. 201 - January 10, 1975)

"Remember your place.  Remember who and what you are!"

The year is 1996 and wealthy industrialist Milo Manderson has built a special retreat atop Lookout Mountain to house and hide a small and very select group of friends and family (and those descriptive terms are used very loosely) from the Red Death, a hemorrhagic disease where the victim literally sweats blood before dying.

Manderson's guests are son-in-law Jack (an organic farmer who violently resents being forced to stay in the house while so many others die), daughter Doreen (who worships her father, but still manages to love Jack, which is why Milo forces Jack to stay) and Milo's fiance (and future Trophy Wife #4) Flossy.  New arrivals Nils and Magda (a deaf mute) don't really count, as they are just servants.

With the doors and unbreakable windows locking the group inside the house, the view grim and the news reports even grimmer, nerves begin to fray.  Jack becomes more and more insistent that he be released "to do something," while Doreen can't keep quiet about her disdain for Flossy and her jealousy at the friendship growing between her husband and her father's fiance.

Then Magda collapses while serving the bickering group dinner drinks...she has the Red Death.

As effective and brilliant as they may be, few, if any, of Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre do not lend themselves to dramatic adaptation.  Poe considered himself to be primarily a poet, and I think that many of his stories reflect that.  The emphasis in his tales are mostly on emotion rather than any kind of dramatic complexity.  His story The Masque of the Red Death really isn't a story at all, it is more of a narrative tone poem.  A decadent Prince walls himself and his compatriots into a wing of his castle, to hide from the scourge of the Red Death.  But the Red Death finds them anyway.  Poe spends most of the story describing the various rooms in which the Prince's final masque is being held.  A great deal of attention is given to a clock.  No attention is given to the Prince, his guests, or any sort of connection to reality.  Poe's tale is a described phantasm.  A dream of Death crashing a party that attempts to forget that Death even exists.  Not exactly prime ingredients for a plot driven audio play adaptation.  So the adapter needs to flesh out the background, the setting, and the character's motivations...

Author George Lother (I hope I am spelling that correctly, I currently do not own a copy of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater series guide) sets his adaptation in the then (1975) distant future year of 1996, with the cause of the Red Death hinted at being pollution.  The only futurist touch is the oddity of Manderson's house being able to rotate at the turn of the button.  When I first heard the episode broadcast back in the early 1980s, I turned it off (big mistake) because I was wanted a more traditional take.  The strange touch that Manderson has a house he can rotate with a press of a button, so it can face whichever point on the compass he so chooses, seemed silly to me at the time.  Today it still seemed silly, because, after its mention in the opening, nothing is made of it.  It certainly illustrates, albeit in a very ham fisted way, Manderson's need to control his environment, but it drops from the story, never mentioned again.  Pity, for when Jack points out the dead animals in the farms in the foothills, or the gradually failing lights in the nearby town, Manderson does not callously turn the house around to make a "better view" for himself.  Such touches would have given the barking and snarling between Jack and Milo (and later between Nils and Manderson) a sharper edge.  

The play does give Flossy a nice character arc, as she goes from callous and shallow gold digger to a more thoughtful and caring woman, and Manderson and his daughter Doreen have some nice human shading.  The aforementioned view of the dead animals and failing lights, and a second act news broadcast that has a television news anchorman succumbing to the disease, keeps the Red Death at the center of all conflict until its literal arrival in the third, when Manderson holds his Masquerade, and the identity of which guest is the Red Death is revealed.  Yes, one of the guests is the Red Death.

While there are some obvious construction weaknesses, the play overcomes them with a nice, gloomy atmosphere, well developed characters, and a punchy moment or two of horror that make for a solid and entertaining episode.

Altered Carbon - by Richard K. Morgan

It is the 25th century and humanity has achieved immortality, for the entirety of a person's mind and memory can now be recorded into a neural implant and inserted into a new body (or sleeve) after death.  Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. Envoy (a kind of super soldier) turned criminal, is taken out of storage (a.k.a. prison) and given an offer he cannot refuse.  Laurens Bancroft, a very old, very wealthy, and very powerful man has committed suicide.  Trouble is, Bancroft doesn't believe he did it and, since his suicide conveniently occurred before his implant could record his memories of the act, he wants Kovacs to find out who murdered him. 

I could try and explain the plot more, but it would just get confusing.  It would also spoil all the fun and ferocity of reading how Kovacs navigates the twists and turns of the complex mystery that Bancroft has forced him to solve.

When I first cracked open Altered Carbon I could not stop myself from wondering at how author Richard Morgan managed to pad his story to fill 526 pages and worrying if that content would hold my interest.  My worries were completely unfounded.  Morgan expertly balances his narrative between entertaining bouts of old school P.I. machismo and intriguing brave new world building.  I was taken by both, so Altered Carbon had a delicious one-two story hook.  I loved learning about this dystopian future every bit as much as I enjoyed getting to know the colorful cast of characters that populate it.

Also helping is how Morgan takes his noir narrative into the darkest realms made possible by this philosophically terrifying technology.  Since the sting of potential death has been removed, "enhanced" interrogation techniques have become a thing of the distant past.  Now thugs (or soldiers) can just torture a person to death and place the subject's mind into a fresh "sleeve," either real or virtual, and begin again.  Not that real death is impossible.  A neural implant can be destroyed and a mind "erased."

Morgan also explores just how extreme longevity can change, or warp, a person's mind.  Ditto the effects of having to grow old and infirm before dying more than once.  The latter being something that the very wealthy are spared, of course.

By the time I had reached the end of Altered Carbon I had forgotten all about my worries at the beginning.  I didn't want the book to end and I am eager to return to the dark and fascinating future that it introduced me to.

Dirty Harry #11: Death in the Air - by Dane Hartman

"Dirty" Harry Callahan's investigation of a young woman's murder at a busy BART station uncovers a rogue government scientist's experiments in germ warfare.

For a short while, the first three quarters, say, I had my hopes up that I had cracked open a Dirty Harry novel that was not only fun to read, but was actually going to be a Dirty Harry story that felt like a Dirty Harry story.

No such luck.  The novel goes off the rails in the last forty to fifty pages, right around the time that Harry decides to skin a man alive.  Stepping on a gun wound to save the life of an abducted girl, an event from the first Dirty Harry film, that I could buy.  But skinning a man?  That seems a bit over the top, even for a cop as tough and no nonsense as Dirty Harry Callahan.

But while my hopes were up, I was enjoying Death in the Air for the disposable escapism that it was.  The opening crime and action set pieces are quite close in tone to the film series that inspired the spin-offs.  Harry even does his "Did I fire six shots or only five" schtick and the author (Dane Hartman was a publisher created pseudonym) manages to get the "Do you feel lucky, punk" quote right this time around.

The rest of the book is really just a protracted action sequence littered with gun fights, fist fights and various chases that alternate between Harry doing the chasing or Harry getting chased.  The trick is to keep the all the non-stop action rooted in something that feels true to the source material.  It's a trick that this tie-in almost pulled off.  Close, but no 44. Magnum this time around.

Get Off the Unicorn - by Anne McCaffrey

Fourteen stories of the future and the fantastic from the mind of McCaffrey.  Anne, that is.

Just a book or so down the Science Fiction Book Review thread I mentioned the nibble factor.  Anthologies are great nibble books, especially if the anthology is a themed one and the reader finds himself or herself reading story after story on the same subject matter.

While that is certainly not the case with Anne McCaffrey's Get Off the Unicorn - while some of the stories do have some very strong connective links, they all are meant to stand alone - I nonetheless found myself setting the book down and picking others up.  I do not think that this reflects on the quality of the book the way it did on Contagious, but just the fragmented nature of anthologies themselves.  Sometimes it is better to sip, than it is to gulp.

Like many a writer, McCaffrey will expand short stories into larger, novel length narratives.  Something that happened to the book's first two offerings, The Lady in the Tower and A Meeting of Minds.  Although that was not the case when this book was first published 32 years ago.  Has it really been that long?  While I enjoyed those two stories, and will get around to reading the novels they inspired "some day," I found the world of Daughter and Dull Drums and the characters that inhabit them far, far more interesting.  I can only hope that McCaffrey has also gotten around to finding a way of expanding those stories into a larger story that I can spend a few days snuggled inside of.

Changeling left me cold on the story front and depressed on the political front.  Gay rights still have a very long way to go to avoid the scenario described within the story's pages.

Weather on Welladay makes the short list for my favorite story in the book.  It's a fun little adventure mystery set on a water planet beset by violent storms and very bad weather.  Unfortunately The Thorns of Barevi, the story that follows Welladay, is my least favorite.  I have issues with rape themed stories and the heroine finding herself reluctantly enjoying her "coerced seduction" left a sour taste in my mouth.

The book rebounded nicely with the remaining stories in the book.  Horse from a Different Sea is a humorous story about a rather unique method of alien infiltration.  Great Canine Chorus is another on my favorite story in the book list.  It's a touching tale of a well meaning cop, and abused and neglected psychic girl going wrong, and dogs.  Lots and lots of dogs.  Finder's Keeper, A Proper Santa Claus, and The Smallest Dragon Boy are all variations on the coming of age story.  Each is good, but Santa Claus (with its original downbeat ending restored to powerful effect) is the best of the bunch.  

Closing out the book are Apple, which is flat out the best story in the book, and Honeymoon, which McCaffrey warns newcomers they will not fully understand without having read The Ship Who Sang. I agree with that comment wholeheartedly.

For those, like me, that have not read the novels of Anne McCaffrey, but are interested in doing so, but do not know where to begin.  Get Off the Unicorn is the perfect sampler to get directions to the best places to do so.

On Basilisk Station - by David Weber

Captain Honor Harrington's command of the HMS Fearless is far from a pleasant one.  Her ship has been stripped of its most effective weaponry, which severely hampers her battlefield maneuvering ability.  Her first officer and crew resent her and, due to numerous test battle failures caused by her ship's limited maneuvering abilities, she is assigned to Basilisk Station, the armpit of the Manticore territory.

But those that have punished her have severely underestimated her command abilities.

It was a very good thing for this reader that Honor Harrington (a space opera variant of Horatio Hornblower) was not only a damned good captain, but a strong and interesting character as well.  How she faced her assorted problems and overcame them with a mix of smarts, steely willpower, and plain old good luck, kept my interest - and won my heart - even as digressive sections, such as when author David Weber paused in the midst of a tense space battle to give the reader an overly detailed how's it done history of speedy space travel, did not.

Even with those digressive sections of technical detail, however, Weber's world building left a bit to be desired.  I found far too many of the background details of Manticore, the space faring monarchy that Harrington serves, and Haven, the space faring republic that attempts to steal Basilisk Station away from Manticore, to be sketchy, at best.  Then again, this is the first novel of what appears to be a rather long series.  So I am going to give Weber the benefit of the doubt and gamble that greater background detail will be forthcoming in other series entries.  Series entries that I plan to read, in time.

On Basilisk Station is yet another fine example of why I have been reluctant to read series novels in the past.  If I like the book, then I am impelled to read every other novel in the frakking series, which can be every bit as expensive as it is time consuming.  This has happened with Dune, Dies the Fire, and several others.  Now it has happened with Honor Harrington.  By the time Station reached its rousing and satisfying conclusion, I was hooked and hooked badly.  I knew that I would be raiding my girlfriend's bookshelves for the remaining novels in the series (and there are a lot of them) in the coming months.  At least that shelf raiding will save me some cash to spend on the other series that I have become addicted to.

Contagious - by Scott Sigler

The battle may have been won in Infected, but the war wages on in Contagious...and it is getting nastier by the hour.

A great judge of a book for me is its "nibble" factor.  Do I find myself cracking it open to nip at a paragraph here, or a page there, whenever the slightest opportunity to do so presents itself?  Those are the best kinds of reads.  The ones that demand that I finish them ASAP.

Scott Sigler's Infected was just such a book.  I cannot say the same for Contagious, Sigler's gruesome sequel to his first published, and every bit as gruesome, novel.  In fact, I put the book down and read several others before picking it back up and finishing it.  That is not a good thing, obviously.

As I strolled through horrifying set piece after horrifying set piece (and believe me, some very nasty action is splashed across the book's pages) with a strange sense of detachment, I kept wondering what was wrong.  Why wasn't Contagious grabbing me the way Infected had?

The reason turned out to be a simple one.  Sigler rides shotgun with his characters, and there are a lot of them this time around, but he very rarely crawled into their hearts and minds the way he did with "Scary" Perry Dawsey, the tormented anti-hero of Infected.  Even worse, Dawsey, who has survived his infection, but with psychosis inducing scars, is pushed into the background of the story.  Sigler also makes the mistake of telling the reader of the father/son bond the develops between CIA operative Dew Phillips and Perry, rather than showing it.

Those interested in a strictly visceral reading experience should enjoy Contagious.  The alien threat morphs into an entirely different kind of beast.  One that peppers the book with some truly disgusting (albeit fascinating and entertaining) set pieces.  But those hoping for a more emotionally resonate reading experience will, more than likely, set the book down disappointed.

Dies the Fire - by S.M. Stirling

On Tuesday, March17th, 1998, the world Changed.  The power went out in everything.  Cars stopped running, airplanes fell from the sky, phones and radios were silent, and, as cities began to burn to the ground, law enforcement officers, private citizens, and ruthless thugs were shocked to find that gunpowder no longer worked.  In one horrifying instant, the 20th century was switched off...permanently.

But from the ashes of the Old World, a new kind of world begins to grow. 

Dies The Fire scratched my post-apocalyptic itch, but good.  The book is packed with plenty of pulse pounding action, heroes that manage to be both larger than life and true to it, and the narrative builds a world that I look forward to visiting again and again.  (But one I certainly would not want to live in full time.)

It's a good thing, then, that the book is the first part of a trilogy.  If it wasn't, then I would be far more disgruntled with the abrupt ending than simply eager to find out what happens in the next book. 

My biggest complaint is that the saga's primary villain, a murderous professor that seizes control of Portland, Oregon and begins forming a conquering army of former street gangs, is only introduced, not developed beyond being a menacing background figure.  Most of the book is focused on getting the primary heroes situated and their various communities developed.

Speaking of focus, I would have liked to have seen a bit more focus on the actual apocalypse.  Having a character or two actually experience the hell of the collapsing major cities would have fleshed out the disaster to a point where it feels truly epic.  Perhaps in the next book.

The Book of Lies - by Brad Meltzer

Cal Harper, a good man with a bad past, has not seen his father since the man was carted off to prison for killing Cal's mother.  When the two are reunited via a bizarre circumstantial tragedy, they undertake a dangerous mission to find the map within the "Book of Lies" to find the answers hidden with the mystery of Cain's killing Abel.

Although this was a selection for the Mystery Book Club I attend, it is not a mystery.  It's just a confusing jumble of poorly thought out ideas and cliched "characters" attempting to be a Da Vinci Code style thriller.  It also makes a hamfisted attempt at being meta just by having the characters mention the book Brad Meltzer is ripping off (wait, I'm sure that this isn't really a rip-off, but a "homage") but just having your characters point out how silly and unoriginal your core concept is doesn't make your book meta, Mr. Meltzer.

The novel is stuffed with generic thriller and pop culture filler - the aforementioned Cain and Abel, the origins of Superman, a ruthless and quite psychotic assassin with a pet dog (did Dean Koontz help with a draft?) some boring family history trauma and Nazis - yet none of it fits together to form a credible tale of suspense.  I was just turning the pages, sometimes by sheer force of will, wondering when these disparate elements would come together to entertain.  They didn't.  The novel just reaches a conclusion that is every bit as unoriginal as the debris I had to sift through to get there.

Although I do think that the grand reveal sequence would make for a fine short story, it is not worth getting the book. 

A Fate Worse Than Dragons - by John Moore

Terry, a knight of humble means in the Kingdom of Medula, has undertaken a dangerous challenge in order to win the hand of his beloved Princess Gloria.  He has hunted down and killed a Dragon.

But there is a problem...a border dispute with the neighboring Kingdom of Oblongata has been resolved to Terry's disadvantage.  Instead of winning the hand of his beloved Princess Gloria, Terry has won the hand of Crazy Princess Jane.  Rather than marry Jane, Terry boasts that his squire Huggins actually slew the Dragon.  Good thing that Huggins is too drunk to argue.

But there is yet another problem...Princess Gloria has been assigned to a marriage.  Rather than marry someone other than her beloved Terry, Gloria concocts a kidnapping from which Terry will rescue her.

But there is yet another problem...Gloria is kidnapped for real and Terry finds himself partnered with Gloria's chosen fiance.

It's going to be a long adventure for all involved.

The best - and only - descriptive word that came to my mind while reading John Moore's A Fate Worse Than Dragons was cute.  Other words that I could use would be light, frothy, and funny.  The book was so funny that it made me laugh out loud often enough to draw a "You sure are laughing a lot when you read that" comment from my girlfriend.

But does that make the book good, or at least good enough for me to recommend it?  Well, yes and no.  If Monty Python and the Holy Grail or The Princess Bride are your kind of funny (and my gut instinct tells me that most regular visitors to this blog are) then the novel will be the kind of weekend reading you'll want when you're in the mood for something light, frothy, and fun.  If it isn't, then just walk away.  There is nothing for you here.  Believe me.

The characters are uniformly likable and easy to relate to, even the evil ones.  The jokes range from broad to subtle.  My personal preference leans towards to the subtle jokes and the almost Woody Allen style banter between the various heroes and heroines as they bungle and regroup after each humorous misadventure.

I don't know if John Moore routinely revisits these particular characters and the mythical land of the Twenty Kingdoms, but I will definitely be cracking open a few more of his books to find out.

New Comic Book Day - (03/04/09)

Hey, remember me?  It's been awhile.  I've been busy, you know.  Watching Japanese monster movies and, last weekend, attending Wonder Con.  Spent most of the Con talking with friends, rather than just attending panels, which was a refreshing change of pace from Cons previous and the primary reason that I didn't post a Wonderful Wonder Con report these year.  It's also the primary reason I haven't finished Scott Sigler's latest thriller.  A review of it should be up this weekend, along with one of that campy new super hero flick from Zack Snyder.  Bet that thing is going to be hilarious.

Speaking of hilarious, went to Flying Colors last night and this is what I came away with: Jungle Girl Season 2 #2, House of Mystery #11, Hack/Slash #20, and Kolchak Tales Annual #1.  Good stuff, at least I hope that it will be.

Secret of the Swamp Thing - by Len Wein (writer) & Berni Wrightson (artist)

"...But Alec Holland is dead...and in his place stands only a...SWAMP THING!"

Dr. Alec Holland and his wife scientist wife Linda, working in a laboratory hidden deep inside a Louisiana swamp, have just perfected their "Bio-Restorative Formula" - a chemical compound that will allow plants to grow anywhere - when ruthless representatives of a criminal organization known as The Conclave arrive.  They demand that the Hollands "sell" their compound and themselves, or else.  The Hollands choose the "Or Else Option" and, one fiery explosion later, the Bio-Restorative doused charred remains of Dr. Alec Holland are reborn as the "muck-encrusted, shambling mockery of life" known as Swamp Thing.

For a great many years my knowledge of Swamp Thing was strictly limited to the campy movies made by Wes Craven and Jim Wynorski.  While I enjoyed both for what they were, campy monster movies, I suspected that neither film did the source material justice.  The reason for this were some choice comments regarding the original comic book run made by producer Michael Uslan in the liner notes for the soundtrack album to Craven's film.  Those comments were:

"Swamp Thing was synonymous with quality.  Rarely had the artform known as comic books achieved a level of excellence comparable to this series.  [Len] Wein's narrative was descriptive and mood-captivating - a far cry from the usual purple prose rampant in much of the competition.  His dialogue rang true and his characters were more than stereotypes.  They had depth.  Swamp Thing ached with pathos.  Those who read those stories never forgot them.  [Berni] Wrightson's art brought flavor of the grand old EC horror comics to the strip as well as the influence of Goya.  Unfortunately, Wrightson only stayed with the book for ten issues, Wein stayed for eleven.  Ah, but what a glorious eleven issues they were!"

Wow, those are some serious platitudes Uslan is foisting on his readers, and it was precisely those words that made me decide to buy Secret of the Swamp Thing (which collects issues 1 through 10 of the premiere Swamp Thing run) rather than one of the volumes that gathers together Alan Moore's celebrated run in the late 80s.  Those will have to wait from a later day, and a far larger tax return.  (Ouch!)

The important question to those that have not read, much less even heard of, the book would be, "Is it really that good?"

Short answer: Hell, yes. 

If you want to read a damn good monster comic (one that goes from soft science-fiction to supernatural horror, then back to science-fiction, only to return to yet again to supernatural horror, then back to...again and again) I cannot recommend this book enough.  The writing is solid (although there are a few story construction wonks, such as the clumsy separation of the Hollands deaths in issue one) and the artwork is just gorgeous.  The book's tone is consistently dark and sorrowful.  The imagery invokes both the textured Gothic feel of the old, classic Universal horror films (the black and white ones that starred Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster) as well as the colorful films of Hammer (the ones that starred Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein).  I loved every page of it and hated for it to end.

For any monster loving fanboy, the Secret of the Swamp Thing is essential stuff.

Friday the 13th (#2): Hell Lake - by Paul A. Woods

After he is executed, the serial killer Wayne Sanchez - a.k.a. the Devil Boy, so-called for his penchant for carving pentagrams into his numerous victims - finds that Hell IS a bad place to be.  The corner of the Underworld he has been consigned to is crowded with countless psychotics and perverts, all of which seem happy to take their boundless frustrations out on one another at a moment's notice.  The only good thing that could be said about Hell is that Sanchez finally gets to meet one of his beloved idols, Jason Voorhees.  Sanchez's other idol, the Big D itself, is noticeably absent.

Sanchez and Voorhees manage to bond and, before the boredom of eternal damnation can drive the former Devil Boy mad, Sanchez convinces Jason to lead a revolt to escape Hell.  They are successful and, on Friday, January 13th, 2006, the damned souls of innumerable serial killers, rapists and perverts erupt from the once placid waters of Crystal Lake.

Okay, what can I say about Friday The 13th #2: Hell Lake that I haven't already said about each and every other Friday the 13th / Jason X tie-in novel published by Black Flame?

While the novel's central idea is certainly an interesting one brimming with potential, it does not marry all that well with the established Friday the 13th mythology.  Also not helping is how Jason disappears for large chunks of the story and when he does appear, he does not behave all that much like Jason.

After starting off the story and getting the revolt of the damned underway, Wayne Sanchez also disappears from the story.  He does not resurface until the end, when he and several other characters can have their "just desserts" moments of poetic justice.  Why go to all the trouble of introducing and developing a strong character, only to have that character vanish and NOT interact with the protagonists?  It makes for a weak and fragmented story.  The various plot threads should come together into a tight little know of tension, not continue to slither off in opposite directions.

Then there is another, quite different problem with the story.  Jason has routinely returned from the dead since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Why does he need a go nowhere friendship with Wayne Sanchez to motivate him?  Hell, the simple fact that there is a sex, drug and rock n' roll fueled rave being held on the shore of Crystal Lake on his birthday would be more than enough to get the murdering behemoth stomping back to his killing grounds.

Oh, and why is his mother absent?  Shouldn't she also be in Hell, considering the body count she racked up?

Then there is the fact that this book just drags on and on and on...which brings me to my previous criticisms of these Black Flame tie-ins.  They're just too damn long and overwritten.  Paul A. Woods spends way too much time over developing characters and over describing details because there is a completely uncalled for 90,000 plus word count to be met.  Yet again a potentially fun story (and this story could have been a Hell of a lot of action packed fun, all that was missing was a wise cracking demon, or two) is drug out to a maddening snapping point.  This book not only over stays its welcome, it eventually dies from the morbid obesity of its excessive word count and then begins to rot.  Eventually the only thing it managed to accomplish was to stink up my inner Reading Place.

Hack/Slash #15 - 17, featuring Herbert West, Re-Animator

"If you truly want to live again...you'll have to take your medicine."

Going down the list of potential parental suspects, Cassie finally finds her father, Dr. Jack Hack.  The reunion is a troublesome one, though.  For Hack is assisting Dr. Herbert West with the Re-Animator's "Re-Agent" experiments and the duo have one very special test subject to work with.  The notorious "Lunch Lady," Delilah Hack.

First the bad.  Cassie's reunion with her father is rushed to the point of its becoming a blurred mess.  While the reunion does answer some questions, albeit in a most unsatisfactory and unrewarding way, it raises a great many more that will no doubt lead to further gruesome run-ins with revenant slashers.  No complaints on the latter point, but the former left me cold and every bit as confused about Jack Hack and his self-destructive motivations as Cassie seemed to be.

Then again, this is a serial where real world rules do not apply and writer Tim Seeley (with story creating assist from Barry Keating) might have been muddying the waters for future clearing.

I hope that statement makes sense.

Now for the good.  The story kicks ass in all other departments.  Herbert West is still the insanely driven Herbert West.  The reunion of Jack and Delilah is a rocking rollercoaster ride of horror, humor and pathos laced with generous and very much appreciated amounts of sex and violence.  Then there are the nudges, nods and winks to various classic slashers in the arc's middle chapter, issue #16.  It's nice to see Michele Soavi's Stage Fright getting some love, along with the usual suspect(s).  That's the kind of stuff that makes Hack/Slash so special.

New Comic Book Day - (02/18/09)

Hey!  I've decided to start posting my comic book buys again.  In your face, Faraci!  Nyah, nyah!

This week's haul: Zombie Tales The Series #11, Spooks Omega Team #4, and Jungle Girl Season 2 #3.  Christopher got Bart Simpson #45, Simpsons #151, and Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #2.

David Arquette's The Tripper (One Shot)

"Ronnie Reagan?"

The Annual Free Love Festival has come to lovely Carlyle, California.  But the festivities are spoiled when an axe wielding lunatic dressed up like Ronald Reagan crashes the party.

I thought David Arquette's retro-slasher horror/comedy The Tripper was okay.  It had some good moments and kills, but it also over stayed its welcome by a considerable margin.  About ten or fifteen minutes, say.

This comic book adaptation trims a considerable amount of that narrative fat off of the story, but it also loses some of the film's funnier - and funniest - jokes because of it.  Like the bit with the dogs.  If you have seen the film, then you know it.  Hell, if you've seen the film's trailer, then you'll know it.  Also lost is the depth of character development, with Samantha's spoiled rich kid ex-boyfriend suffering the most.  He's whittled down to a brief, four panel punchline.

What the story doesn't lose in the translation is the gore.  There's plenty of the red stuff splashing around the, uh, splash pages.

But, having actually seen the film, I can only say that the ample amount of red stuff splashed across the pages cannot hide the fact that this adaptation is pretty bare bones stuff.  If you want the meat of the story, I recommend you skip reading this and just watch The Tripper instead.

Rottweiler (2004)

The year is 2018 and a daring game of "Infiltration" (something to do with sneaking into foreign countries without the proper immigration papers for cheap and dirty thrills) goes horribly awry for Dante (William Miller) and his lady love Ula (Irene Montala).  Captured by the sadistic Kufard (Paul Naschy) the couple is separated.  Dante is sent to prison, while Ula is sent to who (Kufard) knows where.

One year later Dante manages to escape from prison and begin a desperate search for Ula.  But he soon discovers that he is being tracked by a murderous cybernetic dog.

A dystopian future (Is there really any other kind?) filled with ample amounts of sex, violence and gore, a Terminator dog and Paul Naschy.  How could something so filled with pulpy B-movie goodness be such a rancid sack of boring waste?

Answer: Director Brian Yuzna (Bride of Re-Animator, The Dentist) did not seem to understand what kind of movie he was making.  It looks like he was laboring under the misguided belief that Rottweiler was supposed to be a "serious film" about a man's psychological journey while trying to reclaim his lost love.  It isn't.  Rottweiler is a thriller about a guy getting chased by a cyborg dog that kills anything that gets in its way.

This is a movie that needed to move.  To gallop from action set-piece to action set-piece.  Instead the pacing is slow to the point of turgidity, the dramatic background filler is treated as if it were meaningful drama (and it isn't, not by a long stretch) and the dog attacks are slapped together and dropped into the movie with no apparent regard for building tension or even a sense of fear.  It was almost as if Yuzna were afraid of the story's pulp thriller ingredients.  That's too bad, because this could have been an awesome thrill ride of a movie.  Something that it's kick ass opening credits clearly promise.  Instead it's a complete and utter waste of an hour and thirty-nine minutes.

Friday the 13th (2009)

June 13th, 1980.  Pamela Voorhees (Nana Visitor, of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame) goes on a killing spree, murdering the camp counselors she blames for the drowning death of her beloved and rather "special" son, Jason.  The soul surviving counselor (Stephanie Rhodes) manages to fight back and kill Mrs. Voorhees by beheading the woman with a machete.  What Mrs. Voorhees did not know is that her beloved Jason is still alive and he witnesses the killing of his mother.  As the surviving counselor wanders off, Jason gathers some of his mother's things - a locket with their pictures inside it, her head, which commands him to continue on with the dirty work of vengeance, and, I believe, her machete - and disappears into the night.  (Why didn't he chase down and kill the counselor just like he did in the first sequel?  Why didn't he tell his beloved mother that he was still alive?  More on that later....)

Present Day (AKA 29 years later).

When his sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti) goes missing at Crystal Lake, Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki) goes looking for her.  Meanwhile Trent (Travis Van Winkle) and his girlfriend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) take a bunch of friends to his parents' cabin at Crystal Lake for a wild weekend of drunken partying.

But these are Jason's woods and it's Friday the 13th...

It wasn't broke.

They didn't "fix it."

I think that most of the people who will be disliking this new Friday the 13th, and it is becoming quite clear that there will be a lot of them, word of mouth on this movie seems to be of the love it or hate it variety, will be rooting their various criticisms in the latter point of view, rather than the former.

Long term readers of this blog should know that I am an Old School Friday the 13th fanboy.  But just because I love me some Voorhees Machete Swinging Mayhem does not mean that I harbor any delusions about the "artistic quality" or "merit" of the eleven or so Friday the 13th movies that predate this series reboot.  A lot of the negative criticisms I have read, and they are all quite valid ones, could be leveled at just about any other film in the series.  This film basically has all of the same logistical problems that plagued Friday the 13th Part 2 and it deals with them pretty much the same way.  It just flat out ignores them.  I'll just point to my opening remark about the screenwriters and director not "fixing" the Friday the 13th formula (or mythos) and leave it at that.  If they had attempted to make sense of what is, and always has been, a nonsensical exploitation movie "thrill ride," then it wouldn't have been a Friday the 13th movie at heart.

When I read one review that lambasted the film for not creating an "Iconic Moment" for when Jason finds his hockey mask, I could only chuckle and think of the moment in Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D when Jason just showed up wearing the damn thing.  I don't know, I kind of liked the whole "looking in the mirror" moment and, although Jason is never seen with...um...crystal clarity, it looked like his visage was based on the bag headed  "Elephant Man" Jason of Friday the 13th Part 2.

Lacking in memorable kills?  Nah, can't agree with that, either.  Both my son and I hooted and hollered, along with the rest of the audience we saw it with, during certain kills (in true Friday the 13th fashion, I was wondering where the hell the bow and arrow came from, just like I had wondered where the hell the inflatable raft, the spear gun, and the harpoon came from in Friday the 13th The Final Chapter).

So I can't find it my heart to decry it for being a rather generic Friday the 13th movie, which is all it is, really.  My son loved it and I enjoyed it for what it was...an Old School Friday the 13th movie.  One that does have the best and most frightening "living Jason" I have seen since, well, Friday the 13th The Final Chapter.

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to go watch another one...and then try and finish the Friday The 13th novel I started reading yesterday.  Told you I was a Friday the 13th fanboy.

Holmes on the Range - by Steve Hockensmith

When Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer (Old Red and Big Red, respectively) are hired on as hands at the Cantlemere Ranche (known as the Bar VR to the local populace) Big Red fears the worst.  The Bar VR, so called for its distinctive cattle brand, has a nasty reputation and a nastier way of keeping its secrets.  Big Red's fears are confirmed when he discovers that his Sherlock Holmes admiring older brother has decided to try his hand at some Holmes style "deducifyin" when not one, but two of the men working the Bar VR turn up dead.  The first in a tragic "accident," the second clearly a victim of foul play.

Terrific.  Just what I need, another series to become addicted to.  I dare any murder mystery loving reader to crack open Holmes on the Range and, by the novel's tense and touching conclusion, not be eager to track down the next novel in the series, On the Wrong Track, and read it.  Go ahead, I Triple Dog Dare You.

Some books grab me and refuse to let go until I finish them in huge gulps of binge reading.  Others demand that I go easy with them.  That I slow things down just a tad and enjoy all the pleasant scenery as the story unfolds.  Holmes on the Range was just that kind of book.  I was so enjoying getting to know the colorful cast of characters (some of which seem to have wandered out of a Joe R. Lansdale story) and the world that they inhabit that I not only did not want the story to end, I wanted to take my sweet time getting there.  I am quite happy to report that the ending was well worth the extra time I took.  Usually I can polish off a 294 page book in two or three days, at most.  This time it took me a little over a week.

Your time spent reading Holmes on the Range will vary, of course.  But I do not doubt for an instant that, like me, you close the book eager to find out what happens on Old Red and Big Red's next mystery solving adventure.

American Splendor: Another Day - by Harvey Pekar

"Am I really so weird, or are there a lot more weird people out there who just won't admit it?"

Harvey Pekar shares the humorous and confounding events that make up his day to day life.

I just know that you have heard the old saying that "Truth is stranger than fiction."  Well Harvey Pekar's autobiographical American Splendor comic book series is an excellent example of that simple truth.  There are only a handful of what you could call stories found in this volume, which, for the most part, covers Pekar's post American Splendor movie life.

In The Day's Highlights Harvey guides us through his day long battle with his foster daughter, his cat, the New York Times, and himself.  Today I Am A Man tells of Harvey's battle with a plugged up toilet that becomes a Rite of Passage into Manhood.  Snow Chaos is another adventure stemming from his foster daughter and builds to a hilarious finale that anyone caught blowing off steam at the wrong time can relate to.  Joy Gets the Job is a non-Harvey centered story that has to be the most heartwarming thing I have read in years.  It totally caught me off guard.  Closing out the collection - story wise, that is - is New York City Signing, wherein Harvey valiantly struggles to deal with a truly oppressive amount of human interaction.  For him, that is.

The rest of the offerings are more vignettes that offer, or attempt to offer, little epiphanies from Pekar's life of not too terribly quiet desperation.  Some, like Delicacy, are a tad surreal.  Others, like Northwest Airlines Goes Socialist, are wonderful illustrations of the sitcom like situations real people can find themselves in.  Others, like Icarus, left me cold and scratching my head.  But there were not a lot of those.

Although I have been reading comic books off and on for that past thirty years, I would not have known about Harvey Pekar if I had not rented American Splendor last year. But now that I do, I can't get enough of him and his only-in-the-real-world crazy life.  If you haven't read his work, or seen the movie, I can only recommend that you do so as soon as possible.

R.I.P. Lux Interior, 60

Lux Interior, front man for The Cramps and husband of guitarist Poison Ivy, has died.

25 Writers That Influenced Me.

Lee Goldberg has participated in a meme that, although I don't write professionally or even all that regularly, I just have to chime in on.  So, here are 25 writers that influenced me:

1. Peter Straub, 2. Stephen King, 3. James Herbert, 4. William Goldman, 5. Ramsey Campbell, 6. Raymond Carver, 7. Joe R. Lansdale, 8. Peter Benchley, 9. Charles L. Grant, 10. Edgar Allan Poe, 11. H.P. Lovecraft, 12. Ray Bradbury, 13. Robert Bloch, 14. John Carpenter, 15. David Seltzer, 16. Richard Matheson, 17. Rod Serling, 18. Jeff Rice, 19. Whitley Strieber, 20. William Faulkner, 21. John Irving, 22. Joe Bob Briggs, 23. Roger Ebert, 24. David Cronenberg, 25. Wes Craven. 

Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Lovecraftian Horror - by C.J. Hendersen (writer) & Jaime Calderon (art)

"Being convinced the end of the world is as tangible a concept as the new fall line-up, a lot of things begin to lose their importance."

When Kolchak is scooped on a "dead gill man" story, Tony Vincenzo demands that Carl make the drive up the California coast and dig around a bit.  See what there is to uncover regarding the outlandish story.  What Kolchak learns is a secret so mind-shatteringly terrifying that he even he agrees the world is better off not knowing what could, and will, happen here.

If one were to make a list of all the monsters and evil spirits that Carl Kolchak, every horror fans' favorite disgraced reporter, has yet to do battle with, I'm sure that Cthulhu and its minions would have been on it...

Until now.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker: The Lovecraftian Horror has Carl face off against a horror so awe inspiring, even he agrees that the world would be a far better place, for however little time it has left, not knowing about it.  Think about that for a moment.

Something else that I spent several moments thinking about was just how Moonstone's interconnected Kolchak universe has grown.  Not only are characters and events in the movies and series mentioned, but so are apocalyptic events in an adventure that I was not aware off.  I don't know if this was sloppy writing on C.J. Hendersen's part, or if these are events that are covered in one of the Kolchak the Night Stalker books sitting on my "to be read" shelf (shelves actually, I buy a lot of books).  When I know for certain, I'll let you know.  Just keep checking back, I'll be cracking those books open at some point in the coming year.  Until I read this book, I had kind of forgotten just how much I missed Carl's paranormal adventures.

As a Carl Kolchak story, it hits all the proper beats, even if his narrative voice is a tad more colorful than it has been in the past.  Then again, this is Carl narrating an H.P. Lovecraft pastiche, so some purpling of the old prose is to be expected.  As a homage to Lovecraft's legendary Cthulhu Mythos, the story, again, manages to hit all the marks and invokes an aura of dread that is almost palpable.  A tip of the straw hat to all that were involved.

Now for the smackdowns.  Did Jaime Calderon bother to read Henderson's text?  (Note, this book isn't really a comic book.  It's more of a long short story illustrated with a series of "widescreen" dual splash pages.)  At one point Carl tells the reader that he decides to take the inland "Interstate 101" (which is really Highway 101) instead of the coastline hugging Highway 1, but Calderon's artwork shows Carl tooling along Highway 1.  Whoops.  Then there are some editorial gaffs, such as having an entire paragraph of text getting needlessly repeated on pages 24 and 25.  Also, how did the Pacific get magically transported to the eastern coastline of North America?

While the story and artwork are good, and the end of the world image splashed across pages 70 and 71 is just spectacular, the writing and editorial gaffs keep me from recommending anyone pay the full $12.95 cover price for it.  Sloppy work should never be rewarded.

Soultaker - by Bryan Smith

Jake McAllister returns home to help save his younger half-brother from the clutches of girlfriend from the worst side of the tracks, Hell itself.

I'm sure that Bryan Smith is a good, decent and hard-working man.  But good mythical-lord was this novel awful.  It breaks the supposed first rule of storytelling by telling instead of showing.  Another problem is that there isn't a single character in the book, or at least in the first 58 pages that I read, that was interesting, likable, or sympathetic.  Outlandish stuff is just shoved into the readers face, with no perceptible effort taken to put them into context or create a feeling of suspense or dread.  Soultaker is a truly dreadful book.

No matter your gender, I think that you will agree that every narrative artist (writer, poet or filmmaker) has a Lover from Hell story in them.  Sometimes these stories are told with humor, other times with melodramatic bombast, or, as is the case here, as battle of the sexes horror story.

The power of First Love and the inevitable painful lessons in harsh reality that it teaches (one lesson being that loving a bad person doesn't make said person want to be good, another is that it can make a smart person very, very dumb) have birthed countless therapy sessions in fictional form.  Soultakerappears to be one, although author Bryan Smith goes to considerable lengths in his acknowledgments to let the reader know that his novel is not autobiographical.  Every seasoned spinner of tales knows that sometimes all it takes is a single image, or hearing a word said in a certain way, to fertilize the egg of imagination.  Even if 99.9% of the narrative is utter make-believe, it is that .1% inspirational kernel that readers and critics will try to sniff out.  Who the hell was she and what the hell did she say or do to inspire this book?  Then again, maybe there is no she at all.  The world will probably never know, and it will be a better place for it.