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A New and Digital DC Universe

A New and Digital DC Universe

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The Justice LeagueI admit I’d been planning to write another post this week about my new fantasy web serial, The Fell Gard Codices, and why I was using the serial form, and how I thought it worked for this particular story. Then DC Comics dropped a bombshell, and since I know some of the readers here are interested in comics, it seemed worth trying to explain what happened and what it could mean.

DC has announced that they’ll be relaunching their entire line of DC Universe comics in September with new first issues. That includes all their big superhero titles — Superman, Batman, Justice League of America (to be renamed Justice League) — but excludes books from the Vertigo imprint, such as Fables. It seems that these relaunches will include some revisions to the character histories; Superman, apparently, will not only have a new costume, but some rumours suggest he’ll no longer be married to Lois Lane.

But DC announced something else as well. Starting with the September relaunch, digital copies of all DC’s books will be available online (legally) the same day they go on sale in stores. This is potentially far more important than the line-wide relaunch, and in fact the two things seem designed to play off each other.

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Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Four

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Four

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tod-20tod-19The Tomb of Dracula # 19, “Snowbound in Hell” is a sentimental favorite for me. This was the unlikely choice for Power Records to package with a 45 RPM record dramatizing the story, but it gave me my first taste of the series as a kid. This issue is a great character study with a snowbound Dracula and Rachel Van Helsing battling the elements to survive after their helicopter crashes in the frozen Alps. The ongoing subplots continue to build toward future storylines with Dr. Sun (still unseen) putting the vampire Brand through his paces while Quincy Harker learns Blade’s secret immunity to vampire bites. The story’s finish has Frank Drake successfully rescuing Rachel just seconds before she is about to fall victim to a starving Dracula who has been keeping her alive as a blood reserve. A nice change of pace issue that works well in developing the characters while advancing toward the inevitable showdown with Dr. Sun.

Issue 20, “The Coming of Dr. Sun” has Frank and Rachel hunting Dracula across the Alps by helicopter. Rachel reveals her traumatic childhood encounter with Dracula when he murdered her parents as part of his vengeance against the Van Helsing family. She reveals how Dracula was about to kill her until Quincy Harker’s timely arrival saved her. Dracula is captured by Dr. Sun’s minions who bring him to a secret hideout where Dr. Sun is revealed as a disembodied talking brain floating in a fish tank straight out of a 1950s B-movie. Clifton Graves survived the explosion aboard the ship and has been stitched back together and physically augmented by Dr. Sun. Graves attacks Dracula. Frank and Rachel stumble into the hideout and Graves is inadvertently killed by Rachel when she fires her crossbow at Dracula. The issue ends on a cliffhanger with Dracula, Frank and Rachel held captive by Dr. Sun.

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Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Three

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Three

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tod-131tod-141The Tomb of Dracula # 13, “To Kill a Vampire” really delivers on the promise of Marv Wolfman’s continuing storyline. Quincy Harker , Rachel Van Helsing, and Taj Nitall are overcome with grief over the loss of Edith Harker. Frank Drake is consumed with rage for his hated ancestor and Blade has no patience for their grieving and is eager to take the reins of the group or resume the hunt for Dracula alone. Clearly the group will continue to have issues functioning as a collective thanks to Frank and Blade’s respective personalities. Meantime, Dracula continues his reign of terror in London while an unseen Chinese criminal genius, Dr. Sun dispatches his minions to the morgue to reclaim the body of the vampire Brand.

There is a nice bit where Dracula attends a prize fight and is sickened by the spectators’ reactions to violence as entertainment. He fails to appreciate boxing as a sport from the perspective of the medieval conqueror he once was or the predator he has become. Following Edith’s cremation, there is a quiet interlude among the group of vampire hunters where Blade reveals his origin. His mother was killed by a vampire while giving birth to him. That one brief flashback provides all the information the reader needs to understand the character, his anger, and what drives him to obsessively hunt vampires. Again, Wolfman’s masterful skill with characters combined with Gene Colan’s stylish art sets this series well above the standard maintained by most comics of the era.

The issue races to a breakneck conclusion with Harker and his band of vampire hunters following a lead that takes them to Dracula’s hideout. The ensuing battle is particularly vicious. The vampire apparently has the upper hand thanks to his strength and supernatural powers when suddenly and unexpectedly Blade puts a knife through Dracula’s heart and kills him as the issue comes to an abrupt finish.

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Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Two

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Two

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tomb-of-dracula-7tomb-of-dracula-8Marv Wolfman took over scripting duties on Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula with Issue 7. Despite the name, Wolfman was an unlikely choice for a horror title as he had never been much of a horror fan and had limited exposure to the character outside of Stoker’s original novel. Nonetheless, the decision to pair Wolfman with artist Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer elevated the series to classic status and insured its reputation for decades to come.

Issue 7 quickly sets the stage with the introduction of Quincy Harker and his daughter Edith. Quincy is the son of Jonathan and Mina Harker born at the end of Stoker’s novel. Here he is a nearly blind old man confined to a wheelchair with his daughter and faithful dog Saint as his constant companions. He functions as a mentor to Rachel Van Helsing and Taj Nital and has welcomed Frank Drake into the fold. Quincy is an amateur inventor whose vampire hunting gadgets give the story a Bondian edge that works very well. Wolfman’s sense of history and character instantly deepens the story and gives the reader a reason to empathize beyond the immediate sense of good vs. evil.

His innate understanding of people as an amalgamation of family history, mistakes, joys, and tragedies is Wolfman’s greatest strength as an author. Even his Dracula, for all of his cruelty and savagery, is imbued with such humanity and dignity that one can’t help hoping all of them can find peace. Wolfman may be the first writer since Stoker to successfully treat the characters as real people that readers recognize as something other than stereotypes. Finding the key to that empathy is what elevates his take on the property above so many others.

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Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part One

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part One

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1-11tomb_of_dracula_2Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula is beyond question the finest horror comic series ever produced – a fact made all the more amazing when one considers that since the original series ended, none of the many revivals (even those with the original’s classic creative team) have succeeded in bottling lightning a second time. Much of the success of the book is down to the surprisingly literate scripts by Marv Wolfman and the stunning artwork by Gene Colan and inking by Tom Palmer. However, Wolfman did not come aboard until Issue 7 so this first installment in an ongoing series looking at this influential comic will focus on the first six issues of a title undergoing the pangs of development.

Roy Thomas deserves the credit for bringing this series to life. It was Thomas who convinced Stan Lee that the loosening standards of the Comics Code Authority and renewed interest in the occult could make an ongoing horror comic featuring Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire count the runaway success of 1972. The Comics Code Authority came into being in the 1950s as a reaction against crime and horror comics as a result of the rather disturbed fantasies of Dr. Frederic Wertham. His 1954 study, Seduction of the Innocent imagined underage sex between Batman and Robin and convinced countless parents that juvenile delinquency was as much to blame on comic books as it was Rock ‘n’ Roll. The fact that Wertham’s book revealed more about himself than the actual content of comic books was lost on parents, whether over-protective or neglectful, who were quick to latch onto an excuse for why the post-war nuclear family was struggling. The result was the neutering of comic books for nearly twenty years and a ban on crime and horror as entertainment suitable for children.

Prior to The Tomb of Dracula, most comics companies would have turned the character into a misunderstood superhero. Marvel already had one of those with Morbius, the Living Vampire, but The Tomb of Dracula was determined to prove as revolutionary to Marvel as Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. Both titles were far more adult and, at the outset anyway, far removed from Marvel’s established continuity. They were gambles that paid off in an era when Marvel deserved to call itself The House of Ideas.

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Art of the Genre: An Inteview with Will McLean

Art of the Genre: An Inteview with Will McLean

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Two months ago I had the pleasure of writing up a small nostalgia piece on the Art of Will McLean, and after it hit the press John O’Neill gets me on my cell and tells me ‘It’s not enough!’. Ryan Harvey and I got a kick out of that, to be sure, both of us taking in some sun on the Black Gate L.A. corporate terrace. Such rants by John always elicit great mirth when we are both well aware of his location some 2118 miles away, meaning he has little power over us.

mclean-snake-ii-254Still, I was both moved and intrigued when a message from Mr. McLean showed up on my blog a few days later. This pushed me to consider that my article was indeed, as John insisted ‘not enough!’. Weeks passed, and John kept at me until he finally forced my hand with a full travel itinerary showing up at the office by Wells Fargo courier and the next thing I knew I was once again on a Zeppelin with an interview in mind.

The destination… Malvern Pennsylvania, a fine and upstanding Victorian era borough of less than four thousand people that resides some twenty-five miles west of Philadelphia, and home to Will McLean. Having spent twelve years in Maryland, this was fairly familiar country to me, and I eased into a transition from the heat of L.A. to the seemingly never ending winter of the northeast.

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Goth Chick News: Thirteen Questions for Horror Comic Creator Dirk Manning

Goth Chick News: Thirteen Questions for Horror Comic Creator Dirk Manning

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image0141Last Sunday I told you all about NIGHTMARE WORLD comics which I had the good fortune of discovering last month at the C2E2 show in Chicago.

I also learned from you that I wasn’t the only one scaring the crap out of myself as a kid by reading this sort of contraband content by flashlight; and from the emails I got, you lot have been sneaking around doing things you’ve been told not to for some time.

Which is why you are very welcome here.

And now, fortune pats me on the head for the third time this week in the form of an email from the man himself, NIGHTMARE WORLD creator Dirk Manning.

Moved by our mutual admiration of classic tales of terror and intrigued by the readers of Black Gate, to whom he had not previously been introduced, Mr. Manning agreed to brave the probing and in depth (insert lightning and thunder sound effects here) Thirteen Questions…

Are the restraints nice and snug? Then let’s begin.

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Nightmare World

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Nightmare World

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image0043I don’t know about you, but I never got a really clear look at horror comics as a kid, which may be why they still intrigue me to this day.

Back then, the acquisition of such contraband was generally via my older male cousins who were smart enough, even at that tender young age, to secret them inside the cover of The Archies. The comic would then be stashed between my mattress and box springs to be removed only after I had heard my parents go to bed. At this magic time, the comic would be quietly pulled out (don’t crinkle the pages too much, parents can hear that from the other side of the house) and read under a mound of stifling covers by the glow of a dimming flashlight.

The upshot of reading banned material was that I would scare myself silly and fall asleep clutching the flickering flashlight until the batteries went dead. It always seemed that the shadows cast under the covers and against the pages muted the comic book colors and make the icky stuff inside come to life.

Thus the reason horror comics were verboten.

Which, I suspect, is how I gained a lifelong addiction to horror comics and likely also the cause of ever-increasingly strong contact lenses as an adult.

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Fright: The Forgotten Dracula Comic

Fright: The Forgotten Dracula Comic

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untitledsonofdraculaMost comic fans are aware that while the Marvel Age of Comics may have begun with the 1961 publication of the first issue of The Fantastic Four, the imprint actually began in 1939 when Timely Comics published the first issue of Marvel Comics with the Golden Age Human Torch on the cover. In the 1950’s, Timely Comics became Atlas Comics who continued to publish Cold War adventures of Timely’s Golden Age favorites as well as horror anthology titles and westerns. Far fewer comic fans recall that Atlas Comics was briefly revived in the mid-seventies as a rival to Marvel under the auspices of estranged family members of Marvel’s publisher and editor-in-chief. They stole Marvel talent and did their best to give the industry giant a real run for its money.

At the time, Marvel had taken advantage of the loosening of the Comics Code Authority and produced the award-winning horror title, The Tomb of Dracula. The dark look and tone of the book combined with the consistently strong scripting by Marv Wolfman and stunning art work by Gene Colan (inked by Tom Palmer) made the 70-issue run of the original series one of the biggest artistic and commercial success stories of the decade. While Marvel has never quite managed to bottle lightning with the title a second time, revivals are frequent while sales of reprints remain strong nearly forty years after the fact. While the book was busy collecting industry awards for the exceptional talent of its creators and the level of maturity they brought to the title, the newly-revived Atlas Comics prepared their answer in the form of the first and (as it turned out) only issue of Fright featuring The Son of Dracula in the spring of 1975.

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Art of the Genre: Star Frontiers

Art of the Genre: Star Frontiers

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Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Cover Copyright WotC
Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Cover Copyright WotC

It’s summer intern time here at Black Gate L.A., John having flown in Sue ‘Goth Chick’ Granquist to help break them in. She’s not in love with the beach and the sun, but I must say seeing her in a black one-piece, Jackie-O glasses, and a hat right out of Vampire Hunter D, I had to take a shot with my iPhone because Ryan Harvey [who was struggling with a deadline instead of taking in some sun] would have never believed it otherwise.

That picture, snapped at a moment’s notice, got me thinking about technology and the crazy almost science fiction world we live in. When I was in junior high, way back in the early 80s, my love affair with D&D was in full bloom, and TSR was expanding its brand with new genres like the 1920s prohibition classic Gangbusters, the Bond-like Top Secret, and my personal favorite the space opera Star Frontiers.

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