It’s Got Its Ups and Downs: Hercules Unbound #1-#12

It’s Got Its Ups and Downs: Hercules Unbound #1-#12

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Hercules Unbound #1, by Gerry Conway, José Luis García-López, and Wally Wood (DC Comics, November 1975). Cover by José Luis García-López

Live long enough, it seems, and you will revisit the pleasures of your youth. You wonder if they still hold up, or perhaps you’re looking to learn if (or how) they shaped the person you’ve become. Which is why — for the first time since the mid-1970s — I recently reread Hercules Unbound #1-#12 (1975—1977), the complete run of a cancelled DC Comics series aimed at the 1970s’ booming sword & sorcery market.

DC’s Hercules is the demi-god of Greco-Roman myth, transposed to a post-apocalyptic then-future. The published issues of this solo series feature scripts by Gerry Conway, Cary Bates, and David Michelinie, and art by José Luis García-López, Wally Wood, Walt Simonson, and Bob Layton.

If the sheer number of creators on such a short run makes your spidey sense tingle, well, yeah. It’s not a great sign. But on this, more anon.

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 6: The Man with the Getaway Face

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 6: The Man with the Getaway Face

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The second Parker novel: The Man With the Getaway Face (Pocket Books, 1963)

What is it?

Parker has gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get a new face. Now he has to fight to keep his identity hidden, while also planning and executing an armored car heist.

A treacherous waitress and a punch-drunk former boxer complicate those matters tremendously.

This is Volume 2 of Richard Stark’s “Parker” series of crime novels. It is also the second part of the unofficial Outfit Trilogy, the first three books in the series, in which Parker goes up against an organized crime syndicate.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Bleak Noir – Jim Thompson

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Bleak Noir – Jim Thompson

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I have a shelf full of Jim Thompson books. For A (Black) Gat in the Hand, I decided to read a couple I had not got to yet. So, Wild Town was followed by A Swell Looking Babe. Then, Nothing More than Murder. And I mixed in The Grifters (which I have read, as well as seen the movie) into my audiobook listening.

While I’ve got a post dedicated to maybe his most unusual book – The Transgressors – in the works, I wanted to bring up one common aspect in his writing.

It can be difficult to sympathize with the main character, as they’re often not very nice people. That’s a post in itself. And those characters are often saturated with bleakness. I rarely read two Thompsons in a row. I need a palette cleanse after one. He’s good. But he’s about as joyful as Full Metal Jacket.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, April 1923 (Volume 1, Number 2) Part 2

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, April 1923 (Volume 1, Number 2) Part 2

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Weird Tales, April 1923

The table of contents of the second issue of Weird Tales advertises “Sixteen thrilling short stories / Two complete novelettes / Two two-part stories / Interesting, odd, and weird happenings.” More specifically, one of the two-part stories, the cover story, begins this month while the other concludes. As for the “interesting, odd, and weird happenings,” I wrote about them here, so now let’s get to the fiction. (Note that discussion of one of these stories necessitates quoting an ethnic slur, directed against the French, of all people.)

The first of the tales on offer in this issue is one of the novelettes, “The Scar,” by Carl Ramus (whose surname’s misspelled in the table of contents as ‘Rasmus’). It’s the only known published story by Ramus, though his sister Sybla was a writer whose work would later appear in Weird Tales. Carl Ramus had a day job as a doctor, and as it happens “The Scar” is a tale of a dashing young doctor pulled into a kidnapping plot. It’s not a terrible story, but it’s a surprising choice to lead off the issue as there’s little supernatural about it — the heroine claims to be able to bring on a fever by willing it and the hero believes he has a knack for hypnotism — and nothing I can see as ‘weird’ in any other sense. If the magazine’s still in the process of defining itself, then editor Edwin Baird has a different sense of where he intends it to go than we might expect from our later perspective.

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The Unfinished Monument: The Steranko History of Comics

The Unfinished Monument: The Steranko History of Comics

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The Steranko History of Comics, Volumes One and Two, front covers

Imagine Mount Rushmore with only one president on it. Picture a Washington Monument that’s only 185 feet tall instead of 555. How about a Statue of Liberty missing two arms and a head? No takers? I don’t blame you; there’s nothing more frustrating than a great beginning that remains incomplete.

Take The Steranko History of Comics, a work that was intended to fill six volumes. The first two came out in 1970 and 1972… and then, nothing. It’s been fifty-four years now and I don’t mind telling you, I’m starting to lose hope.

Certainly no one was (or is — he’s still with us at the age of eighty-eight) more qualified to write a history of comics than Jim Steranko. Active in the industry as an artist and writer since the late 50’s, he did his most famous work for Marvel on their Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. title. Charging through the door that Jack Kirby had kicked open, Steranko created some images (especially his Nick Fury covers) that have become icons of the psychedelic 60’s as essential as anything by Andy Warhol or Peter Max.

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Forgotten Authors: Dave Dryfoos

Forgotten Authors: Dave Dryfoos

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Fantastic Adventures, October 1950, cover by Robert Gibson Jones

Dave Dryfoos was born on March 29, 1915 in San Francisco, California to Jesse and Beatrice (née Goodman) Dryfoos. He attended Lowell High School and attained the rank of Eagle Scott before attending the University of California at Berkeley.  He earned a law degree from the University of California’s Hastings School of Law before being admitted to the bar in 1936.

In 1942, Dryfoos married Dorothea Gallatin and shortly afterwards was drafted into the Army, serving in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines during World War II before being mustered out in 1946 as a staff sergeant. He returned to Benicia California after the war.

Dryfoos published his first short story in the October 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures: “Lest Ye Be Judged…” Over the next six years, he published twenty-one additional short stories, including “Some Like It Cold,” “The Old-Fashioned Spaceman,” and “Younger by the Minute.” His work appeared in Galaxy, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as several other magazines. He stopped published in 1955 with “Seller of the Sky,” which appeared in the February issue of If.

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Sour Bill: The Issue at Hand and More Issues at Hand by William Atheling, Jr.

Sour Bill: The Issue at Hand and More Issues at Hand by William Atheling, Jr.

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The Issue at Hand, by William Atheling, Jr., AKA James Blish (Advent: Publishers, 1964). Cover by Jon Stopa

In 1952, a science fiction fanzine, Sky Hook, began publishing a series of critical essays by William Atheling, Jr. When its publisher, Redd Boggs, suspended publication, the science fiction writer James Blish publicly revealed that this was a pseudonym he had adopted. But a few years later, he revived “Atheling” for more criticism, published in another fanzine, Axe.

In 1964, Advent: Publishers collected his critical writings, including both fanzine articles and addresses given at science fiction conventions under his own name, as The Issue at Hand, credited to Atheling, “edited and with an introduction by James Blish,” though the book made no secret of the author’s identity. In 1970, a second collection appeared, More Issues at Hand.

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David C. Smith, Part 5: Sometime Lofty Towers, A Magnificent Work of Sword & Sorcery

David C. Smith, Part 5: Sometime Lofty Towers, A Magnificent Work of Sword & Sorcery

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Sometime Lofty Towers (Brackenbury Books, December 2025). Cover by Saša Đurđević

I’ve just finished reading what may be David C. Smith’s best work — Sometime Lofty Towers.

My first contact with Smith was from the Robert E. Howard related pastiche work he did earlier in his career. He wrote an excellent Black Vulmea story, The Witch of the Indies (Zebra, 1977, cover by Stephen Fabian), and a Bran Mak Morn tale, Witch of the Mists with Richard Tierney (Zebra, 1978, cover by Doug Beekman), and he and Tierney (1936 –2022) collaborated on six novels about Red Sonja. The Sonja tales are not REH pastiches, of course, but are based on a comic book character created to interact with Conan in the Marvel series.

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The Literacy Crisis – Audiobooks

The Literacy Crisis – Audiobooks

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Me… yet again

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I made an attempt this past fortnight to return to social media. As a small author, it’s really important to make attempts at getting seen if I have any hope of selling my books. Social media is one of the best ways to do this, for better or worse. I’m not especially good at marketing myself or my stuff, so I was trying to use this past couple of weeks as an opportunity to observe and learn.

This might have been an error. In just a week and a half of returning to social media, I have stumbled across several topics in the bookish world that may have done irreparable harm to my blood pressure. And sense of optimism.

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A (Black Gat in the Hand: Ballard’s Bill Lennox in Hollywood (my intro)

A (Black Gat in the Hand: Ballard’s Bill Lennox in Hollywood (my intro)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Pulp Fest took place in Pittsburgh first week of the month. It’s a really cool event, and the Hilton Doubletree is a nice site. Steeger Books rolls out its Summer line at this event. Last week I shared the latest intro I wrote for Hammett’s Continental Op series; which is up to four volumes. This week, it’s my other new Steeger release. I’m a big fan of W.T. Ballard’s Hollywood studios troubleshooter, Bill Lennox. He’s a neat take on the hardboiled PI. 

Lennox was featured in short stories and novels, and I wrote the intro for Volume 2.

Willis T. Ballard’s middle name is ‘Todhunter.’ While that is certainly a rare one, it is also the middle name of his cousin, Rex Stout, who created the hugely popular Nero Wolfe. Apparently Todhunter is a good name if you want to become a successful writer.

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