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Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Seven: “The Undersea Kingdom of Mongo”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Seven: “The Undersea Kingdom of Mongo”

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flashgordon2_1cvr3

“The Undersea Kingdom of Mongo“ was the seventh installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally printed between April 12 and October 11, 1936, “The Undersea Kingdom of Mongo” picks up the storyline where the sixth installment, “At War with Ming” left off with Flash, Dale, and Zarkov’s rocketship eluding Ming’s air fleet in the heavy fog known as the Sea of Mystery.undersea-kingdom-of-mongo1

A magneto-ray from the ocean brings the rocketship down, our heroes bail out, but only Zarkov and Dale come ashore on an island with Flash presumed drowned at sea. In fact, the magneto-ray has brought the unconscious Flash below the ocean to the undersea kingdom of Coralia where Queen Undina takes an immediate fancy to Flash.
Undina is the latest in Alex Raymond’s line of femme fatales. It seems that while Mongo has honorable males to offset the many villainous fiends and monstrous creatures, the females of Mongo are all scheming nymphomaniacs. Queen Undina has her chief scientist Triton subject Flash to the lung machine which converts him into a water-breather like her people. Consequently, he is now unable to survive on land. Flash joins Undina, Triton, and a scavenger party in looting the sunken rocketship that brought him to their world when they are attacked by a plesiosaur that Raymond amusingly re-christens a devourosaurus.

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Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

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super_8There are bits of wrapping paper static’d to the lamp shade and tendrils of curly ribbon hanging off the chandelier. Here I lay in a sugar and red meat coma under the pressing weight of one too many conversations with the essence of Christmas spirit, three times distilled. With New Years Eve still in front and a bacchanalia of epic proportions behind, what can I do but think happy thoughts about the coming year and a time when the little troll living between my ears will finally stop running in circles and shouting.

Trust me, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

But 2011 looms large and full of promise; that not all movies will be filmed in 3D, some remakes may be worth watching and some events will be worth waiting for. So for you I pull myself up off the sticky floor and shake the glitter off my Mr. Grinch flannel PJ’s to bring you the annual “Cool Stuff in 2011” list. I know you probably have some of your own things to add to it, but far be it from me to ask you to get up and try to type in your current state. Nope, leave it to me to take one for the team, and if you feel up to it later, go ahead and chime in.

Now that the room has stopped spinning, let’s start with the movies.

Super 8, a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams is the obvious place to begin, mainly due to the two gentlemen at the helm.  Until its release in June, you can content yourself by following along with the elaborate viral marketing campaign that has been teasing the crap out of those of us trying to determine the focus of this film.

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Art Evolution 16: Brom

Art Evolution 16: Brom

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The scope of Art Evolution continues, but if you’ve missed any previous artists you can go back and find them here.

‘Middle-Earth Lyssa’ was complete, and I was looking for more recruits. During this whole process I’d kept to my promise, making sure that every person I’d come in contact with, even those who’d turned me down, continued to get updates.

earth-air-254The winter progressed, and during the dead of that cold time it was a great surprise, and certainly a sense of justification for my efforts, when Brom emailed me and said that he’d see what he could do to help out.

Well, three cheers for Brom, a true man of character!

When I was in college, and spent most of my mother’s hard-earned money on comic books [instead of food, or gas, or clothing, or heat…], but I was happy with my long-boxes. That said, I neglected my RPG collection, but lucky for me a friend in my little circle of role-players decided to purchase the TSR campaign setting Dark Sun. As a DM at heart, I decided that I’d take a break from running a game [and therefore having to buy all the books involved in it] and let this guy do the legwork.

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Don’t Look Now, It’s the Birds: The Weird Tales of Daphne du Maurier

Don’t Look Now, It’s the Birds: The Weird Tales of Daphne du Maurier

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dont-look-now-nyrb-coverDon’t Look Now: Stories
By Daphne du Maurier, selected by Patrick McGrath
NYRB Classics (368 pages, $15.95, October 2008)

I have recently started an immersive journey through Cornwall, although not of the physical variety, since economically I don’t have the luxury of taking myself there. After a few years of vague fascination with the tip of the southwestern peninsula of Great Britain, which reaches out into the Atlantic to terminate in the pincer claw of Lizard Point and the Penwith Peninsula, I started to do harder research into its history and customs that separate it in weird and wonderful ways from the rest of the island that lays east of the river Tamar. My reason for this intensification of interest is, of course, for writing purposes. And if anyone wants to make a journey into Cornwall that involves fiction, he or she will have to spend some quality time with the Grand Dame of the land of tinners and smugglers, Daphne du Maurier.

Du Maurier (1907–1989) achieved enormous success as an author of twentieth century popular literature. On first publication, most of her novels received dismissive critical notices as “romantic thrillers for women,” while they ran through printing after printing to satisfy public demand. However, du Maurier’s novels have managed to escape the dustbin of most bestsellers of yesteryear and they remain in print and popular as ever today. Critical opinion has also turned around, and the author is now respected as an excellent wordsmith and crafter of plots, a literary descendant of Wilkie Collins, and as the twentieth century “voice” of Cornwall.

Most of du Maurier’s novels are historicals with emphasis on romantic suspense and Cornish settings: Jamaica Inn (1936), Frenchman’s Creek (1942), and The King’s General (1946). Her most famous work is Rebecca (1938), a contemporary-set Gothic masterpiece about an unnamed woman who marries into a sinister legacy in a mansion perched on the cliffs of what must be—although never stated as such—the jagged coast of north Cornwall. Rebecca’s reputation was furthered immortalized in the 1940 film version that brought Alfred Hitchcock from the U.K. to Hollywood for the first time and set the standard for the “creepy maid” figure in Judith Anderson’s Oscar-winning performance as Mrs. Danvers.

But du Maurier had an impact on the “weird tale” as well in her short stories, where she explored supernatural and perverse aspects that are only shadows on the Gothic fringes of her novels. Two of them, “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now,” are classics of supernatural horror that have also received the compliment of popular film adaptations, although du Maurier expressed dislike for Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.

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A Review of The Wolf Age by James Enge

A Review of The Wolf Age by James Enge

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thewolfageThe Wolf Age, by James Enge
Pyr (465 pages, $17.00, Nov 2010)

Yes, here I am again, to talk about James Enge. Specifically, The Wolf Age.

You know, I wrote about Blood of Ambrose, and I wrote about This Crooked Way, but this time I’m really stymied. I’m sitting here on my bed, laptop on my knees, feeling unworthy of the task ahead, and I have to ask myself:

“Now, Self, are we prepared to write about the third Morlock Ambrosius novel in a calm, clear, concise manner? Are we willing to dispense with our usual capital letters and exclamation points (I used plenty of those in my personal blog about this book, oh, believe me), and give a proper synopsis, and cite examples of AWESOMENESS and, and, not disintegrate into helpless wails of, But Lev Grossman already said it better than I could! It’s right there in the BLURB!”

And then I said:

“Well, Me, it’s tricky work all right. But someone’s got to do it! …Someone other than Lev Grossman.”

(I didn’t know who Lev Grossman was when I read The Wolf Age, but I envied his blurb, and then randomly picked up and read most of The Magicians before I realized that this Lev Grossman and that Lev Grossman were the same Lev Grossman!!! The Magicians is chilly-cool: like a cocktail of vodka on diamonds, lit with foxfire. So, whatever, I guess it’s okay that a bestselling author of a really good novel said what I meant to say about James Enge before I had a chance to say it. This being:

“James Enge’s books are like a strange alloy of Raymond Chandler, Fritz Lieber, Larry Niven and some precious metal that is all Enge’s own. They’re thrilling, funny, and mysteriously moving. I see 10 things on every page I wish I’d written. I could read him forever and never get bored.”

Speaking of cocktails, Morlock gets really, really drunk in The Wolf Age. For a very long time. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Oops. Should I have said “Spoiler Warning”? Well, I’ll try not to give too many of them.

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Just in time for Xmas (or whatever you celebrate this time of year)…

Just in time for Xmas (or whatever you celebrate this time of year)…

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interzone-2010Just arrived in the mail is Interzone‘s concluding issue of 2010 featuring the cover artwork of Warwick 2651Fraser-Coombe; the combined pieces of the six issues this past year form a complete work called “Playground (Hide and Seek).”  

A signed and individually numbered limited edition print can be ordered from the artist’s website.

In terms of fiction, this issue features the work of Jason Sanford with three stories and introductions by the author.  Additional stories are by Matthew Cook and Aliette de Bodard.

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Six: “At War with Ming”

Blogging Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Part Six: “At War with Ming”

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at-war-w-ming“At War with Ming“ was the sixth installment of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally printed between October 20, 1935 and April 5, 1936, “At War with Ming” picks up the storyline where the fifth installment, “The Witch Queen of Mongo” left off with Flash awaiting Ming’s recognition of Kira, the cavern kingdom he had conquered over the course of the last two installments as an official kingdom of Mongo.

Unsurprisingly, Ming rejects Flash’s claims that Azura has abdicated as valid and demands that she be vanquished before he will recognize Flash as a legitimate monarch. Sadly, just as in the real life it is a petty disagreement that is interpreted as justifiable cause for war.flashgordon2_1cvr2

Flash immediately declares war on Ming in response to the insult he received. Flash and Dale head the Black Lancers, while the Hawkman Khan heads the infantry and Dr. Zarkov heads Azura’s artillery unit. The first strip ends with Kira’s forces mobilizing for war despite being hopelessly outnumbered.

For the next five and a half months, readers thrilled to Alex Raymond’s glorious depictions of battle. It seems strange, from the vantage point of the 21st Century, to see that the attitude that a war fought over wounded egos was still considered glorious after the tragic and monumental loss of life during the First World War less than twenty years before.

 

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Goth Chick News: A Very Bradbury Christmas

Goth Chick News: A Very Bradbury Christmas

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womans-day2Last week’s post, about how ghosts and Yuletide have as close an association as brandy and eggnog, prompted a quantity of mail from you lot. Not surprisingly, the readers of Black Gate know all about the creepier part of the holidays. But you’re also sort of warm and gooey on the inside as well, going all sentimental on me about your own Christmas traditions.

And your emails reminded me about something I had forgotten for a very long time involving Christmas, Ray Bradbury and a ghost story.

Many years ago in the early fall, my beloved Grandfather passed away very peacefully in his sleep. Being nine, I was convinced that no one in the whole world could be more heartbroken than me; I had been my Papa’s only grandchild for most of my young life and he had made me the center of his whole world. However, though I remember my own first experience with grief, what I recall most vividly is seeing my own Dad cry over the loss of his Father. To this day it is the only time I’ve ever seen my stoic Dad shed a tear.

Back then, and until this day, Mom was an avid fan of Woman’s Day magazine. So much so that she kept and cataloged her back issues primarily for recipes but for other interesting tidbits as well. Some weeks after my Grandfather’s funeral, Mom went into her library of Woman’s Day and pulled out an issue from December, 1973. I remember her using a scrap of paper to mark a place in the magazine and leaving it on Dad’s desk for him to find.

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Art Evolution 15: Liz Danforth

Art Evolution 15: Liz Danforth

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Art Evolution, the project that shows the personal take on a single unifying character by the greatest artists in the RPG field, continues. But if you’ve missed some, you can find the beginning here.

After last week’s entry I had my ‘3rd Edition Lyssa’, and I was ready to move further back in my timeline. For that purpose, I got into my way-back machine and dialed in the dawn of RPGs, the year 1976.

tunnels-trolls-254If you go back further than 76’ you’re fooling yourself if you think anything a gamer played was more than an advanced miniatures game. However, in that year D&D was beginning its infant run and Flying Buffalo put out its first module Castle Buffalo for Tunnels & Trolls.

That now infamous and out of print module was graced with a cover by Liz Danforth, the Queen of the Role Playing Game. Liz was doing RPGs before the world knew what RPGs were, and although I was only five years old at the time, I would come to appreciate her grace and dedication when I later discovered Middle-Earth Role-Playing from Iron Crown Enterprises in the mid-eighties.

As you’ve already seen, the first book I ever read was The Hobbit, so it certainly came to pass that when I.C.E. started producing role-playing in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth I was right there ready to buy a part of the experience.

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Black Gate 14: Game Reviews

Black Gate 14: Game Reviews

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cryptofeverflameWe’re finally nearing the end of the Black Gate 14 online tour, just as issue 15 nears completion. Whew! Timing is everything.

Today we’re looking at the Gaming column, edited by Howard Andrew Jones. Like Reviews Editor Bill Ward, Howard pulled out all the stops to make sure it was the best we’d ever had for our blockbuster 14th issue.  The result was 20 pages of in-depth reviews of the most exciting gaming products of the year, including:

Alien Module 1: Aslan, Gareth Hanrahan (Mongoose Publishing)
Traveller: Tripwire, Simon Beal (Mongoose Publishing)
Traveller: FASA and Gamelords, CD ROM (Far Future Enterprises)
HeroScape Expansion Pack 1-4: Blackmoon’s Siege (Wizards of the Coast)
Legends of Steel: Savage Worlds, Jeff Mejia (Evil DM Games)
Level UP Issue 1, Magazine (Goodman Games)
Far Avalon, Martin Dougherty (Avenger/Comstar Games)
Shard RPG Basic Compendium, Aaron de Orive and Scott Jones (Shard Studios)
Hero’s Handbook: Tieflings, Edited by Ken Hart (Goodman Games)
Hero’s Handbook: Dragonborn, Edited by Aijalyn Kohler (Goodman Games)
Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist, and Song, Edited by Aeryn Blackdirge Rudel (Goodman Games)
Forgotten Heroes: Scythe and Shroud, Edited by Aeryn Blackdirge Rudel (Goodman Games)
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook, Jason Bulmahn (Paizo Publishing)
Pathfinder Module: Crypt of the Everflame, Jason Bulmahn (Paizo Publishing)

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