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Steamed – Gaming here at Black Gate

Steamed – Gaming here at Black Gate

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Hudsucker_RobinsElevatorEDITEDThe pay phone on the wall by the door into the dungeon…cellar…basement…journalist’s suite below Chicago’s permafrost layer rang at the Black Gate World Headquarters. I vaulted over the wood plank that rested on two sawhorses, which served as my desk. The last person who hadn’t answered before the third ring had been sent downstairs. ‘Downstairs’ was rumored to be the lair of a beast that Conan wouldn’t be able to defeat.

“Black Gate World Headquarters. Home of the world’s preeminent fantasy magazine.”

“Who is this?” barked the voice of John O’Neill, Founder, editor, publisher, CEO, CFO, and overall Grand Poobah of Black Gate. I could think of a three-letter acronym beginning with ‘S.’ “Is that you, Bryne?”

I took a breath. I had been writing for Black Gate for going on seven years now, and he still got my name wrong. I had given up trying to correct him after the second year. I figured, as long as I remained on the payroll, it didn’t really matter. Not that I actually got paid.

“Yes, sahib.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“Just working on a column, sir.”

“What do you mean, man? You’re in the office on a Sunday, working on a column?”

I caught myself. “Working on three columns, sir. I finished two yesterday.”

“That’s better. Thought I was going to have to reassign some stories from that Ted guy. Can’t have you coasting on past accomplishments.” He paused. “Of course, we’re a team here – no individual egos.”

Yours is certainly big enough for the rest of us, I thought.

“What was that, Bryne?”

“I didn’t say anything, sir.”

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 23: 1979 – Chaos in Canada with Alpha Flight!

Uncanny X-Men, Part 23: 1979 – Chaos in Canada with Alpha Flight!

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Welcome to my 23rd blog post detailing my epic reread of The Uncanny X-Men. I started in 1963 and had reached the classic Claremont-Byrne-Austin period that ran from 1977-1980. From Giant-Size X-Men #1 with thirteen team members, the creative team pared them down to seven by issue #111, peeled off Jean Grey and Professor X by issue #117 and in issue #119 injured Banshee so gravely that essentially these new X-Men are down to five effectives: Cyclops, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler and Wolverine.

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Rogue Blades Presents: Sometimes a Good Hero is Hard to Find

Rogue Blades Presents: Sometimes a Good Hero is Hard to Find

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Beyond the Black RiverRecently I’ve been reading Beyond the Black River, a collection of Robert E. Howard tales published by Wildside Press. Within those pages one can find a couple of horror tales but also a handful of Conan the Cimmerian yarns, including the short story which gives this book its title.

When reading Beyond the Black River, the book or the story, it is obvious not only who the protagonist happens to be, but also the hero. The two figures are not always the same individual within a tale. For instance, Conan features large in most of the stories here, and he is the hero in at least four of the tales, but he is not always the protagonist. Sometimes Howard would pen a Conan tale told from another point of view. But whatever the point of view, Howard was mainly a writer of action and adventure, thus he wanted there to be little question about his hero in any given story.

Also of late, like millions stuck at home, I’ve been watching my fair share of television, which is actually unusual for me. One show I’ve watched, again like millions, is The Mandalorian. Here, too, it is obvious who wears the title of hero and protagonist with the ever-helmeted “Mando” performing both roles. I also caught up on the show Justified, a modern Western of sorts featuring Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens in my home state of Kentucky (it was kind of fun to watch all the things the show got wrong about the Bluegrass State); once more it was not difficult to pick out the hero and protagonist, here the same individual in Raylan Givens.

However, earlier in the year I read novels and stories and watched shows in which it was not so easy to pick out a hero.

For instance, watching the super hero show The Boys on Amazon Prime, there are a whole lot of bad people but not a lot of real heroes. Even a regular protagonist is difficult to pinpoint as this show has more of an ensemble cast with the focus on characters shifting. Early on in the series, Hughie Campbell (portrayed by Jack Quaid) is the protagonist, but by the end of the first season Hughie has been taken in as part of the broader cast. Also, while Hughie occasionally does something that is heroic, he generally is too reticent to be a regular hero. Still, he usually tries to do what’s right, at least for the moment, and maybe that’s all we can ask for a modern television hero. And I don’t want to leave out other characters, for Starlight (Erin Moriarty) is usually the most heroic of the “supes” and she also tries to do what is right, but she’s not exactly the hero of the show. Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher character plays large on the screen whenever he appears, and he does sometimes do the right thing, even the heroic thing, but I don’t think anyone who has watched the show would consider Butcher a hero, especially as his motives usually come from pain, rage and sometimes even selfishness.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: James Lee Burke’s Cajun Hardboiled

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: James Lee Burke’s Cajun Hardboiled

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There was no American release for ‘In the Electric Mist.’ 90% of the world-wide gross came from France, where Bertrand Tavernier is well-respected.

Today, I’m going to write about James Lee Burke and Dave Robicheaux. It’s not going to be like my look at Tony Hillerman and his Navajo Tribal Police series, where re-read the first nine books and dug into his autobiography. This column is due in about 36 hours. But I put Burke back on my radar Friday night, and I’m glad I revisited him.

Two days after my birthday in 1987 (giving you the opportunity to do some research, find the date, and get me a birthday gift in 2021…), Burke’s first Dave Robicheaux novel, The Neon Rain, came out. He had already written a few books, in sort of the ‘Americana’ genre. The year before, The Lost Get-Back Boogie had given indications of what was coming. If you haven’t read that latter book, but you’ve read Burke, give it a try. I think you’ll like it.

Robicheaux is an alcoholic ex-cop, who runs a charter-fishing and boat shop in New Iberia parish (county), Louisiana. His best friend, another ex-cop named Cletus Purcell (who is a train wreck and a wrecking crew rolled into one) is a series regular. Robicheaux mostly just wants to be left alone with his wife and adopted daughter, but it never works out that way. And while he’s more than willing to go outside of the law, he’s an honorable guy.

There have been twenty-three books in the series. I’ve read the first twelve. I will read all of them, I just get sidelined and am always reading something else. I believe that Burke is probably the best hardboiled writer of the Post-Classic Era. I’ve read Elmore Leonard, and I know Ross MacDonald, and I’d put in myself a plug for the excellent Joe Gores. But before moving on to a movie adaptation, I’m just going to say that Burke is a phenomenal writer. His prose – especially in the latter books – is wonderful. It’s almost poetic in its imagery. And his books are violent, and there is evil in them. But Burke never glorifies evil.

Okay – Last week, I was reading a Cormac Mac Art book by Andrew J. Offutt. And it was the best sword and sorcery I’ve read in some years. I was also reading a Jack Higgins book. I have about forty of them, and I was tackling this one for the first time. And I was reading part of a book on famous Victorians as research for a story. And…re-reading a Solar Pons story for an article.

But as I was loading up a Psych re-watch (that was last week’s topic, you’ll recall), I saw that Prime has In the Electric Mist. I had watched that some years before, and it didn’t do much for me. It was based on the sixth novel in the series; In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Psych of the Dead

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Psych of the Dead

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Psych_CastEDITEDI could not figure out what to write about today. I re-watched Paul Newman’s Harper, and thought about a post on that – especially since I recently re-read the autobiography of screenwriter William Goldman. And I saw Unholy Partners, a good hardboiled newspaper flick with Edward G. Robinson and Edward Arnold. I re-watched three versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles (Ian Richardson, Peter Cushing, and Jeremy Brett), and Bruce Campbell’s My Name is Bruce. I read Mark Latham’s Sherlock Holmes – Van Helsing novel, Betrayal in Blood. I started Robert E. Howard’s Cormac Mac Art stories, which I’d not read yet. I even started typing about Fortnite, the phenomenon with over 350 MILLION registered accounts – I play as a way to connect with my soon-to-be teenage son. But none of those subjects ‘clicked’ for this week.

I was sitting, looking at the well over a thousand books in my home office drawing a blank. I had a case of writer’s malaise. For Halloween, I watched a couple episodes of Psych, and I’ve decided to write about that. This isn’t one of my in-depth series’ looks, like I wrote for Leverage, and Hell on Wheels. But we’ll still talk about one of my favorite detective shows.

The premise of Psych is that Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday) has Sherlock Holmes-like powers of observation. Growing up, his dad (a terrific co-starring performance by Corbin Bernsen) was a hard-nosed cop who taught his son by locking him in the trunk of the car, challenging him in a restaurant to close his eyes and tell him how many diners are wearing hats, and the like. In the pilot, circumstances force Sean to pretend those observational skills are actually psychic revelations. He has to continue the charade to avoid jail. It sounds ridiculous, but they make it work well enough in the pilot.

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Modular: RIP Lenard Lakofka – Lord of the Lendore Isles

Modular: RIP Lenard Lakofka – Lord of the Lendore Isles

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Lakofka_L5CampaignEDITEDLenard Lakofka has passed away. Lakofka was one of the early figures in the history of Dungeons and Dragons. He was President of the International Federation of Wargamers when it worked with Gary Gygax to host the very first GenCon.

He began play testing the developing Dungeons and Dragons, providing input to Gygax. He created his home campaign, set in the Lendore Isles. His character, Leomund, is a well-known name in D&D history.

He wrote articles on D&D for his own magazine; many of which were reprinted in the new Dragon magazine. He edited, and contributed to, the core Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) books. Then things really began to pick up. In 1979, at the first official AD&D tournament, he finished second and TSR paid him $10,000 to write three modules. He was also given a regular column in Dragon – Leomund’s Tiny Hut.

Those modules had an interesting history. L1 – The Secret of Bone Hill, was the first official module written by a non-TSR employee. And it was based on his own Lendore setting. It was included in the World of Greyhawk, but it was the first setting not developed by Gygax. At the time, Lendore Isle, and the village of Restenford, was the only official campaign setting other than Gygax’ famous village of Hommlet.

Bone Hill is second-level, which meant the Dungeon Master had to come up with something for a first-level party, consistent with this new non-Greyhawk environ. It has some relatively tough monsters, with more maps than was standard in the day. Bone Hill leaves a lot of room for the DM to create motivations and adventure lines. I was 14 back when it came out, and I would have been overwhelmed as a novice DM.

TSR employee Kevin Hendryx was editing Bone Hill, and he created a lizard-man encounter. Lakofka asked that it be removed, and Hendryx began developing it into a full-blown adventure. There was even a cover developed. But Hendryx was sacked during the famous 1981 TSR purge. Douglas Niles took the existing material and turned into N1 – Against the Cult of the Reptile God, which is one of the most popular modules of all time.

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Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood by P. J. Thorndyke

Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood by P. J. Thorndyke

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Let me start with a story from when I was fifteen and had yet read only the Lancer Conan the Warrior, but was friends with several serious Conan (and Kull, and Solomon Kane) readers. They learned that Creation Con in Manhattan would include a presentation about the upcoming movie Conan the Barbarian featuring Valeria actress Sandahl Bergman, and they quickly convinced a bunch of us to get tickets. On a Saturday afternoon, we made the drive into the city. My memories of the convention itself are pretty hazy, but the movie preview is etched in my brain. Bergman was beautiful and funny. Any teenage boy would want to see the movie after seeing her. The rest of the presentation, though — woohoo, it stank. It was a slide show, just a batch of lifeless stills that, if they didn’t kill our enthusiasm for the movie, they definitely dimmed it. Nonetheless, we all saw it as soon as we could.

All these years later, I can’t speak to how my friends felt, but I hated the movie. I just rewatched it and now, having read all of Howard’s original stories several times, I hate it even more. But that’s a conversation for another day. My opinion, sadly, didn’t matter, and Conan the Barbarian became a cult success, helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger a star, and set the stage for an explosion of barbarian-themed movies. It’s that eruption of films starring loin-clothed, overly-muscled warriors that is the subject of  Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood by P.J. Thorndyke.

When I stepped back from reviewing at Black Gate (almost two years ago — holy shlamoley!) I knew there could always be something to lure me back. Clearly, John O’Neill knew what that something was when he saw it. He e-mailed me a copy of Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood, I scanned it and immediately knew I had to read it.  It opens with a solid history of sword & sorcery and closes with a brief explanation of why the film genre died. The heart of the book are synopses of dozens, if not all, of swords and sorcery movies of the eighties. If you’ve ever had any interest in movies like Thor the Conqueror or how Richard Corman came to produce such fare as Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans in Argentina, this is the book for you.

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What I’m Watching: 2020 (Part Two)

What I’m Watching: 2020 (Part Two)

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Campbell_Name1EDITEDA couple weeks ago, I talked about some of the shows I’ve watched during this Pandemic-plagued 2020. Well, I have a few more to talk about – along with some movies. So, awaaaay we go!

My Name is Bruce

In the first essay, I mentioned that I did a complete rewatch of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, which is my second-favorite show of all time. Along with listening to Campbell read both of his autobiographies (highly recommended), I re-watched My Name is Bruce. It is an amusing parody of both his own career and his low budget B-movies. Campbell has a fantastic sense of self-deprecating humor (trust me on the autobiographies: great reads, and great fun to hear him narrate his own life story), and this movie is all about him poking fun at himself.

He filmed the whole thing up in Oregon on his own property, and the cast is full of old friends, including several folks from The Evil Dead. Ted Raimi plays no less than three different parts. And he’s funny in all of them. I quite enjoy this silly movie. The in-jokes are fun to look for.

The Expanse

I mentioned this one in the earlier post, and I’ve since completed seasons two through four, so I’m all caught up. Season three was a disappointment, but I liked season four well enough that I’m looking forward to the fifth installment, which should drop on Prime in December.

Based on a series of novels by James S. Corey, this is intellectual scifi. There’s action, but the show is more about political intrigue, genetics, national expansionism, and evolving character relationships. I felt this was a better version of the Battlestar Galactica remake. That show just plodded along, weighed down by its own gravitas. I was more bored than intrigued and I gave up on it.The Expanse has the same heft, but moves along more smoothly and kept my interest.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: At the Movies with Basil (Rathbone)

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: At the Movies with Basil (Rathbone)

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RathboneColor_RathboneeditedI started writing a regular column for Black Gate in March of 2014. I’ve covered a lot of ground, but today we’re going to try something new. Earlier this year, I was watching Casablanca (yet AGAIN) on TCM, and I decided to do do a running commentary about it on my FB page. I know a LOT about that movie. TCM showed it again a little over a month later, so I did it again. It was fun.

I decided to do the same thing with a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movie. But I watched it on Youtube, which let me pause it while I typed comments, and took screenshots. That worked satisfactorily. During Casablanca, I was so busy (mis)typing comments, I missed half of the movie.

So, this is a mix of my running commentary, with more information and fun stuff added in during composition of the essay. It’s a hybrid, but not as detailed as I normally write. We’ll see how it goes as we look at two films: Terror By Night, and The Scarlet Claw. I already wrote a full post on the second movie. I just felt like watching it again.

Of course, all fourteen Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were black and white. But colorized versions, both official and not, have been around for a while. I watched colorized versions of both films, via Youtube. Terror By Night was done by TCC (Timeless Classics now in Color). They’ve got a bunch of movies on their website. And the quality of this one was excellent. The best colorized Holmes I’ve seen. The Scarlet Claw was by ATC, and it was muddy.

TERROR BY NIGHT

We start with number eleven of twelve in the Universal Pictures series. Only one more Holmes movie remained, as Rathbone, tired of being typecast, walked away from the franchise (and the associated radio show).

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 21: Epic Magneto Triumph and More X-Men Death!

Uncanny X-Men, Part 21: Epic Magneto Triumph and More X-Men Death!

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I started collecting comics in 1981. I was lucky that a friend had been collecting for a while and didn’t care much for X-Men. I ended up trading comics with him and ending up with X-Men, which was my favourite. Because of that, for the longest time, the earliest X-Men issues I had were #112, #116 and #118. Occasional trips to the comic shops in Toronto and my many visits to my town’s lone second-hand book store helped me fill in many gaps, although it wasn’t until the 1986 reprint series Classic X-Men that I got to read issue #111.

That experience of just trying to collect all the stories of your favourite characters seems alien to my son, who has trade and omnibus editions, can read digitally for a pittance and so on. My reading experience growing up was not knowing what was in the missing issues which felt like standing on an island and looking across the way to another island I couldn’t reach, but could imagine.

Welcome to my 21st post in my ongoing blog series of my reread of the X-Men starting in 1963. We’ve reached 1978, just three years before I started collecting, and we’re into issues now that form part of my biographical comics playlist. These were among the stories that shaped the outline of my creativity. The art and story and emotion still leave me in a bit of awe.

So put on your bell bottoms, check your medallions and pull up a chair to 1978. If you need help getting into the mood, the radio was playing Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty, September by Earth, Wind and Fire, Just What I Needed by The Cars and Abba asked us to Take a Chance on Me.

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