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Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung-Fu, Part Three

Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung-Fu, Part Three

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Master_of_Kung_Fu_Vol_1_22Giant-Size_Master_of_Kung_Fu_Vol_1_2Master of Kung Fu #22 sees the welcome return of artist Paul Gulacy who came and went a bit in these early issues. The first half of the story sees Shang-Chi set upon by Si-Fan assassins at a Chinese restaurant in New York before infiltrating his father’s skyscraper base of operations. Fu Manchu has captured both Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Black Jack Tarr. Shang-Chi stows away aboard Fu Manchu’s private jet unaware of their destination. Once on the ground, he follows as his father’s minions lead their captives to a cave in the side of a mountain which has been filled with dynamite. Shang-Chi rescues the two Englishmen and prevents the detonation which would have seen Fu Manchu kill his archenemy in the same instant he destroyed Mount Rushmore. Doug Moench, like Steve Englehart before him, has an embarrassment of riches that are largely squandered with insufficient page count to fully develop his narrative. This would soon change, however, and make the series one of the finest published in the 1970s.

Most of Marvel’s Giant-Size quarterly titles were throwaways, much like too many of their special Annual editions, but Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #2 was a 40-page epic designed to showcase both the character of Shang-Chi and the talents of the series’ writer and artist, respectively. Doug Moench had been harboring a desire to address racism and bigotry directly and a series with an Asian protagonist gave him the perfect forum to do so. Paul Gulacy now had the freedom to display martial arts fighting as well as moving displays of romance and longing relying solely on the power of his images in a string of panels that conveyed storytelling free of words. Even more significant is the fact that Gulacy’s depictions of lust and attraction never pandered to titillation as the artist evinced a mature understanding of the art form’s possibility. The fact that he was strongly influenced by cinema and Steranko’s pop art work of the 1960s take nothing away from the fact that Gulacy was coming into his own as an artist with this title.

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When Men Were Men and Aliens Were Green and Up to No Good: The Pulp Tales of Robert Silverberg

When Men Were Men and Aliens Were Green and Up to No Good: The Pulp Tales of Robert Silverberg

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In the Beginning Tales from the Pulp Era Robert Silverberg-small Early Days More Tales from the Pulp Era Robert Silverberg-small

Robert Silverberg’s career as a science fiction writer spans over six decades. His first short story, “Gorgon Planet,” appeared in the February 1954 issue of Nebula Science Fiction, when he was 19 years old, and his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, was published in 1955. He won a Hugo in 1956 for “Best New Writer,” and for the next few years — until the market for SF magazines collapsed in 1959 — he was extraordinarily prolific, routinely publishing five stories a month, and producing roughly a million words a year.

He published over 80 stories in 1958 alone, in magazines like Imaginative Tales, Fantastic, Amazing Stories, Imagination, and many others. His story “Re-Conditioned Human” appeared in the February 1959 issue of Super-Science Fiction (see the cover below left), and he had two novelettes in the April issue (below right): “Vampires from Outer Space” (under the name Richard F. Watson) and “Mournful Monster” (as Don Malcolm).

Those magazines are almost impossible to find now (unless you’re Rich Horton, of course), but Subterranean Press has done a favor for Silverberg fans — and pulp fans — everywhere by assembling two handsome volumes of his early work. In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era was published in hardcover in February 2006, and Early Days: More Tales from the Pulp Era will arrive on August 31, 2016.

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An Epic Finale for Ancient Opar

An Epic Finale for Ancient Opar

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BOAO-cover-small2Hadon-front-final1Over forty years ago, Philip Jose Farmer published a pair of officially sanctioned books recounting the history of ancient Opar, the lost civilization familiar to readers of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels. Opar was the first of the author’s lost cities that survived undiscovered in the African jungle until the noble apeman came along. Burroughs’ lost civilizations, like his alien worlds, were fantastic places of adventure that allowed the author to sharpen his satiric blade and skewer organized religion and politics alike.

Farmer, in notable contrast, was interested in using Burroughs’ concepts as a springboard for more realistic and decidedly more adult adventures. Farmer’s histories are peopled with conquerors and king-makers who are not just noble savages, but also savage rapists and murderers. His Opar novels opened Tarzan fans’ eyes to the antediluvian kingdom of Khokarsa. While the sword & sorcery boom of the 1960s and 1970s flooded bookshelves with immoral and amoral barbarians, Farmer set his work apart by treating the material as realistically as possible. His characters die tragically and sometimes prematurely. Sexual intercourse leads to unplanned pregnancies that alter people’s lives as it changes the course of a kingdom’s destiny.

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Enter: The Midnight Guardian

Enter: The Midnight Guardian

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51FJ8Q35TMLDarkman_film_posterJohn C. Bruening makes a smashing debut as a novelist with a hardboiled pulp yarn that is so good, it immediately makes you set the author to one side with a handful of other standouts currently working in the New Pulp field.

The Midnight Guardian: Hour of Darkness frequently put me in mind of Sam Raimi’s underrated 1990 film, Darkman in that it is likewise evocative of The Shadow and Doc Savage and is set in a world familiar to readers of Dashiell Hammett and those who love old Warner Bros. gangster pictures of the 1930s (and Universal horrors and serials of the same decade). While much of The Midnight Guardian is the work of an author well-versed in the vocabulary and mythology of the pop culture of the last century, it is also the creative construct of a first-rate storyteller who has denied himself and his audience for far too long.

Pulp means a lot of things to different people. For purists, it is exclusively the fiction (adventure, crime, thriller, western, romance, war, humor) published in pulp magazines (not slicks) in the 1920s through the 1950s. For others, pulp fiction is any fast-paced, action-packed story with stock characters and situations set in a world decidedly less sophisticated, but much more visceral  than our own.

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Beau Geste: Myth vs. Reality

Beau Geste: Myth vs. Reality

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Beau_Geste_novelOn my last trip to Tangier I purchased a 1925 edition of Beau Geste, one of those classic novels that I’ve always intended on reading but never had. It’s a swashbuckling tale of three brothers who join the French Foreign Legion a few years before the start of the First World War.

The novel opens with a mystery. Mild spoilers follow. A French officer in the Legion leads his troops to an isolated fort, responding to a call for help. Once there, he finds all the legionnaires dead inside, apparently shot by the warlike Tuareg. The commanding officer, however, has a French bayonet sticking out of his chest and the private beside him, although shot, has been carefully laid out with his hands across his chest. The private’s hat rests nearby, torn open. In the hands of the dead officer is a mysterious letter in English that contains a confession. . .

From that tantalizing beginning we cut to England, where three rich brothers have to flee home and end up in the French Foreign Legion. Add a cruel officer, hordes of Tuaregs, and some boon companions and you have the recipe for adventure. Author P.C. Wren writes in a breezy, wry style halfway between pulp pulse pounders and more highbrow literature. The style never feels dated although Wren’s worldview certainly does. There’s a definite hierarchy in this book, with the aristocratic Englishmen firmly at the top, the various Europeans and Americans they meet ranged further down depending on their social class, and the Arabs and Tuaregs right at the bottom. Women hardly figure in this book at all which, considering how agonizingly maudlin the one love scene comes off, is probably for the best.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1953: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1953: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy June 1953-smallThe June, 1953 issue of Galaxy didn’t include any serial fiction. If you’re looking for a good issue to read just to get a flavor of Galaxy without any commitment, I’d suggest this one.

“Tangle Hold” by F. L. Wallace — Jadiver’s autobath malfunctions, burning him with steam to the point that he nearly dies. A doctor replaces his skin with a synthetic version, and he’s eventually released from care to continue with his life.

Jadiver used to be a robot designer on Earth, but Earth was too crowded. He moved to Venus two years ago, but his skills aren’t as useful to society — except criminal society. He can design body costumes to change people’s appearances to help them go wherever they want without restriction.

When Jadiver becomes aware that his entire body has been redesigned as a type of surveillance unit for the police, he tries to understand its limitations and how he might be able to escape from the planet.

Wallace’s story has great pacing. There are enough questions to keep readers interested and engaged, and the answers come at the right moments, without being obvious.

“The Water Eater” by Win Marks — The narrator fixes his oil stove and dumps the excess oil into a roaster. To clean the roaster, he combines multiple cleaners together with hot water.

After dinner, he finds that the combination of oil and cleaners has become gelatinous. And it expands when water is added. Not only does it expand, but it tries to reach out toward the source of water to consume more.

The narration of the story works really well. He had a strong voice.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Century of John D. MacDonald

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Century of John D. MacDonald

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MacDonald_WSJIt’s no surprise, given the title of this column, that I’ve written more Sherlock Holmes-related posts than about any other topic. What is surprising to me, given that I know myself fairly well, is that I’ve only done one post about John D. MacDonald. You can read some stuff I’ve written about him over on my own blog, Almost Holmes, here and here and here. But perhaps because I haven’t been able to delve deeply enough into re-reading and analysis, I’ve not come back to him at Black Gate. Until today.

Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of John MacD’s birth. When MacDonald died in December of 1986 of heart-related problems, he was one of the most influential and popular authors in America. Thirty years later, while he is still respected and cited by many writers, including John Jakes, Randy Wayne White and others, he’s somewhat forgotten. Which is both sad, and something that I would like to ponder on for a future post as well.

A quote from Stephen King:

“John D. MacDonald has written a novel called The End of the Night which I would argue is one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century. It ranks with Death of a Salesman, it ranks with An American Tragedy,”

A quote from me, Bob Byrne (I admit, I don’t quite have the cachet of that King fellow):

“John D. MacDonald is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century: In any genre. He was a skillful storyteller and a first-rate social commentator.”

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Lara Destiny and the Question of Identity

Lara Destiny and the Question of Identity

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61kUt9hg1UL._UX250_Dick Enos has proven himself one of the most prolific New Pulp writers since he emerged five years ago.

What sets Dick apart from many of his contemporaries is his unwavering vision to create original pulp characters. Until recently, I was only familiar with Rick Steele, the adventurous 1950s test pilot who has appeared in seven novels thus far. Rick is cut very much from the mold of the classic newspaper strip, Steve Canyon and OTR and Golden Age of Television favorite, Sky King.

I was vaguely aware that Dick had launched a second series featuring an original character, a female private eye called Lara Destiny. I immediately thought of Max Allan Collins’ Ms. Tree and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski. Female private eyes were a rarity in hardboiled circles thirty years ago, but what could Enos offer in the way of a new twist? The fact that Lara Destiny was born Lawrence Destiny is a good starting point.

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An Introduction to B.C. Bell’s The Bagman

An Introduction to B.C. Bell’s The Bagman

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Tales of the Bagman-small Tales of the Bagman-back-small

Author B. Chris Bell is one of the bright lights of the New Pulp world. For Airship 27 Productions he’s written stories appearing in Secret Agent X, The Green Ghost, Jim Anthony Super-Detective, Gene Fowler: G-Man and many others. His wonderful story, “How Pappy Got Five Acres Back and Calvin Stayed on the Farm” was a winner in SFReader.com’s 2007 Annual Short Story Contest. He made the Horror Writer’s Association Reading List for 2012. His Kindle novel, Bi-Polar Express, is a wild ride of genres, almost impossible to label with its mix of the true-to-life horrors of addiction, rehab wards, hospitals, and post-apocalyptic science fiction.

Chris Bell was born and raised in Texas, and now lives in Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago, and still live here. But Bell writes about Chicago as if he were born and bred to the mean streets of the Windy City. Heck, he knows so much about 1930s Chicago that you swear he’d grown up during the Depression. And that’s the period in which he’s set his wonderful Tales of the Bagman (Vol. 1): 1933 Chicago, during the last days of Prohibition.

The Bagman is one Frank “Mac” McCullough, a one-time courier and thug for a crime family during the Great Depression. At an early age Mac’s life took a major turn when he became an orphan, spent time in a reformatory, and then later got involved in the rackets. But he’s always had a core of decency and honesty buried in his heart. So when he chooses to help and old family friend who got in hock to the Mob, Mac turns his back on crime and his Boss, Slots Lurie, and suddenly finds himself taking another turn on the road of life. In a last-minute decision to conceal his identity from the wise guys he’s hunting, Mac dons a paper bag over his head, and soon he’s known as the mysterious Bagman. (Later he acquires a mask more appropriate to being a man of mystery and a crime-fighting avenger.) And then, in the first part of this origin story, he becomes a fugitive wanted by both the Mob and the police.

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The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

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The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology Berkley 1967-small Astounding Tales of Space and Time Berkley 1967-small

The lifecycle of a modern anthology ain’t that complicated. It comes out in hardcover or trade paperback from a small press, stays in print for 5-6 years or so — or until the small press suffers a horrible death, whichever comes first — and then vanishes, popping up thereafter only on eBay and at SF conventions, like a Star Trek action figure.

It didn’t always used to be this way. Used to be that anthologies would appear originally in hardcover, just like real books, and then get reprinted in paperback (also, just like real books). And sometimes those paperbacks would get multiple editions over the decades. (No, I’m not joking. And yes, I know we’re talking about anthologies.)

But go back father than that, to the beginnings of American publishing itself — scholars of this dark and mysterious period are conflicted about actual dates, but in general we’re talking about the 1940s and 50s — and we enter a time when paperbacks had a fixed upper page limit. So how did these primitive cave-dwelling publishers reprint popular volumes, like for example John Campbell’s 600-page beast The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (Simon & Schuster, 1952), when the typical paperback of the era contained barely 100 pages?

No easy task, but our intrepid publishing forefathers found a way. They broke the book up into two volumes and, because giving them similar names would have been just too easy, gave the paperback editions completely different titles. Thus the groundbreaking hardcover edition of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology spawned two paperbacks: The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology  and Astounding Tales of Space and Time, both of which remained in print in various editions for years, confusing collectors like yours truly for decades. Let’s have a closer look, because I ended up buying all seven of the damn things before I figured out they were all the same book, and they might as well be useful for something.

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