Art of the Genre: Leiber, Mignola, and Graphic Novels

Art of the Genre: Leiber, Mignola, and Graphic Novels

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Mignola... when doves fly...
Mignola... when doves fly...
In 1991 I wasn’t a fan of the Mike Mignola. To be frank, I actually couldn’t stand his artwork, but again I was twenty and my taste in art leaned much toward the polished standard and less toward the truly talented.

At that time I also wasn’t much of a reader. Sure, I read almost every day, taking in as much fantasy as I could, but for the most part it was also commercially driven stuff that in the final call of ‘what matters in fantasy’ it would almost all be found woefully lacking.

So it was with great interest that I discovered Epic Comics rendition of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on my comic shop’s shelves. It was noteworthy because it featured art by Mike Mignola, was adapted by Howard Chaykin, and had a kind of darkness to it that was antithesis to the flare of most superhero books coming out of the early stages of the comic boom.

For me this series created a kind of enigma, that being that I loved fantasy but had only associated with Fritz Leiber in the TSR gaming supplement Lankhmar: City of Adventure. [Note: At the time I role-played in TSR’s Lankhmar, the song ‘One Night in Bangkok’ was on the radio and to this day I can’t say the world Lankhmar without setting it to a British vocal intonation accompanied by the words ‘City of Adventure’, just as Murry Head would began his song with ‘Bangkok, Oriental Setting’. BTW, it has to be the only Top 10 song in history that makes Chess seem downright cool.]

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Masterpiece: The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

Masterpiece: The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

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PZO8005-Cover.inddI committed a major heresy, in public and on record, against the sword-and-sorcery community when I stated on the recording for a podcast that, in the realm of “sword-and-sorcery” fiction, I prefer Leigh Brackett over Robert E. Howard. Although at least one participant on the podcast seconded my opinion, I do understand why most sword-and-sorcery readers cannot go with me on this. Howard is, after all, the Enthroned God of the genre. And, strictly speaking, Brackett did not write fantasy or historicals. Her specialty was action-oriented science fiction with heavy fantasy influences, the sub-genre of science-fantasy known as “planetary romance.” (Sometimes called “sword-and-planet.” I hate that term.)

I love Robert E. Howard’s work; it’s foundational for me. But, it’s “not that I love Howard less, but that I love Brackett more.” To that extent, I want to promote the sheer awesomeness that is Leigh Brackett whenever I can. And in her 1949 novel The Sword of Rhiannon (buy it here!) she reached what I believe is her apex: a planetary romance set across an ancient version of Mars, crammed with sword-swinging action, pirate-style swashbuckling, alien super-science, a hero as flinty as granite, an alluring and surprising femme fatale warrior, and an overarching theme of redemption, loss, and futility that ends up pushing what sounds like a standard adventure into a work of intricacy and overwhelming emotion.

Leigh Brackett (1915–1978), a long time resident of the same neighborhoods in Los Angeles where I grew up and still live, was a student of Howard’s work and an immense admirer. However, she didn’t copy him when she started her own career, but infused his passionate style with her own passions. Brackett shows the influence of other predecessors — Clark Asthon Smith, A. Merritt, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Otis Adelbert Kline, Edgar Rice Burroughs — but her mixture is blended so perfectly that all of it feels fresh and driven. I just finished another re-reading of The Sword of Rhiannon, and I am as thunderstruck as ever with how damn great Leigh Brackett was at what she did. Even more, I am awed at how modern her tale feels, even though the outer hull shows it as an old-fashioned pulp romance. Not that there’s anything wrong with the old pulp style; I still read Edgar Rice Burroughs avidly. But Brackett to this day stands in a class of her own.

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Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings wins the David Gemmell Legend Award

Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings wins the David Gemmell Legend Award

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the_way_of_kingsBrandon Sanderson’s novel The Way of Kings (Tor) is this year’s winner of the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2010.

The list of nominees, including Peter V. Brett, Markus Heitz, Pierre Pevel, and Brent Weeks, was announced in April. Sanderson was nominated twice — once for The Way of Kings, and once for Towers of Midnight, his posthumous Wheel of Time collaboration with Robert Jordan.

The David Gemmell Legend Award is a fan-voted award administered by the DGLA. The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel was first granted in 2009, to Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves, and last year’s winner was Graham McNeill’s Empire: The Legend of Sigmar.

The Ravensheart Award for best Fantasy Book Jacket/artist went to Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts (HarperCollins Australia); illustrated by Olof Erla Einarssdottir.

The Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer/debut went to Warrior Priest by Darius Hinks (Black Library).

The complete details of the awards ceremony are available at the DGLA website.

Game Review: Dragon Dominoes in Looney Labs’ Seven Dragons

Game Review: Dragon Dominoes in Looney Labs’ Seven Dragons

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sevendragons_1Two of my favorite card games come from Looney Labs: Fluxx and Chrononauts.  One of the major selling points of these games, for me, is that they’re creative games that have victory conditions that can change on a dime. You can be close to winning and then, with a lucky and well-played turn by an opponent, you can find yourself on the losing end.

Seven Dragons captures this chaotic feel, mixing it with some great fantasy artwork by Larry Elmore. The name comes from two different aspects of the game:

  • There are seven different colors of dragons represented in the the game: red, black, gold, blue, green, silver, and rainbow
  • The goal of the game is to create a chain of seven dragons of your designated color

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American Fabulation, Literary Fantasy, and The Kingdom of Ohio

American Fabulation, Literary Fantasy, and The Kingdom of Ohio

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The Kingdom of OhioHow to describe Matthew Flaming’s book The Kingdom of Ohio?

Well, at least it’s a good story. (Of course I’d have to say that, wouldn’t I? But really: it is.) It’s a story about conspiracies and struggles to reshape the world; about secret wars between men like J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. It is about one of the strangest and least-known mysteries of American history: the existence and disappearance of the Lost Kingdom of Ohio. It is about science and faith, and the distance between the two. Most of all, it’s a story about a man and a woman, and about love.

That’s from an early page of the novel. To this description one might also add: It’s about time, and memory, and the distance between those things as well. It’s about machines, and trains, and the secrets beneath our feet. It’s about the different worlds we live in without noticing. And it is about the way in which these worlds touch.

In terms of plot, the novel follows two strands; one a framing narrative of an old antiques dealer in contemporary Los Angeles, and the other the meat of the book, the story of a young man named Peter Force who was a miner in Idaho in 1899, comes to New York following the death of his father, finds work building the new subway system, and then meets a strange young woman who claims to have travelled in time. We learn that the woman, Cheri-Anne Toledo, is the only daughter of the last King of Ohio, and has collaborated with Nikola Tesla; but Tesla himself seems not to remember her.

Published in 2009, The Kingdom of Ohio is a stunningly assured book, outstanding in its skillful prose and consistent intelligence. The style of the book is powerful, evocative; it builds dreamlike worlds both in Ohio and New York, making a kind of fairy-tale of America, where inventors replace wizards and businessmen stand in for kings (sometimes). Its language is rich and perfect, reflecting a richness of conception — a richness in the way it imagines its setting, in the way it imagines its characters.

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Apex Magazine #26 Released

Apex Magazine #26 Released

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bigcover-239x300Apex Magazine is a monthly on-line publication of science fiction, fantasy and horror edited by Catherynne M. Valente.

The issue features three stories: “The Neighborly Thing to Do” by T.J. Weyler, “The Widow and the Xir” by Indrapramit Das and “The Rapid Advancement of Sorrow” by Theodora Goss. Paul Jessup’s non-fiction piece is “The Top 10 Experimental Genre Books You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Apex Magazine is sold online for $2.99; it’s also available in Kindle, Nook, and a downloadable format through Smashwords. Previous issues are available through their  store. We last profiled Apex with Issue 23.

You can subscribe and get 12 issues for just $19.99.

Art of the Genre: The Critical Hit Update

Art of the Genre: The Critical Hit Update

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tank_the_dragon_-_text_beneath_box-300Well now, I’m making this special appearance because I promised Zachary, who I haven’t seen in some time actually, that I’d post up news on The Critical Hit. News, you see, has finally happened, although it all seems very mixed at the moment.

A few months back, after posting several comics here in Black Gate, Jeff Laubenstein and I sold our comic, The Critical Hit, to Wizards of the Coast for a new website comic launch they were going with this summer. It was a kind of veneration to the old Dragonmirth comics found in the back of Dragon Magazines, so I thought The Critical Hit fit very nicely with that concept. So did Jon Schindehette the Creative Director at Wizards, and so Black Gate’s loss was to be Wizards gain.

Today, Friday the 8th, the test of The Critical Hit went live over at the Wizards D&D website so I hope that all of you who enjoyed the few comics I posted here will journey on over and take a look at it here. We’ve been getting beaten up a bit in the comments section, so if you do like the piece and would like to see it continue, please sign in and comment yourself. Otherwise, I guess I won’t see you in the funny papers!

The Nightmare Men: “A Doctor, Darkly”

The Nightmare Men: “A Doctor, Darkly”

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800px-carmillaIt’s always best to begin at the start, to quote no one in particular. We’ll start with the introductions: my name is Josh Reynolds and I wanted to be a detective when I grew up…no, not just a detective.

I wanted to be an occult detective. I wanted to be Donald Pleasance hunting down the Horse of the Invisible, or Peter Cushing making a cross out of candlesticks and shoving them right all up in Christopher Lee’s fang-y mug. I wanted to be Carl Kolchak, Thomas Carnacki and Dr. Strange. I wanted to bust up eldritch cults, Draculas and devil-worshipping biker gangs.

Unfortunately, my wife won’t let me. So, instead, I scratch the monster-hunting, ghost-busting itch by writing…well, stuff like this. ‘This’, of course, being ‘The Nightmare Men’ (of which this is the first installment, natch), a series of semi-regular essays on the subject of occult detectives; one part introduction, one part analysis, all awesome, all the time. Basically, if you’ve ever wanted a primer on occult detectives, the Nightmare Men is for you. And we begin with the granddaddy of them all…

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Dr. Martin Hesselius.

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Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Nine

Blogging Marvel’s The Tomb of Dracula, Part Nine

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tod-44The Tomb of Dracula #44, “His Name is Doctor Strange” kicks off the series’ crossover with Marvel’s flagship occult title, Doctor Strange. The crossover was a natural choice given the characters and the fact that artist Gene Colan had a past association with Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts. Admittedly, the physical resemblance between Colan’s rendition of Stephen Strange and the Lord of Vampires is a bit too close for comfort, but Marv Wolfman delivers a solid script that makes the crossover fun despite failing to live up to the potential of what the meeting between these two characters might have been.

The story gets underway with Strange retrieving his faithful manservant, Wong from the crystal ball he had mystically disappeared into only to find his valet has been bitten by a vampire. Strange enters the crystal ball and visits the past to see Wong interrupting Dracula’s attack on an innocent woman and then watches through Wong’s eyes as the vampire turns on his manservant. This intriguing set-up sets Strange off to put an end to Dracula’s reign of terror. From here, we segue to a largely pointless comic relief subplot where tabloid journalist Harold H. Harold is incensed to learn that his publisher’s sexy, but dimwitted receptionist Aurora Rabinowitz has sold her story about their encounter with Dracula and earned a byline.

ds-14From there, we move to the much more interesting subplot involving the white-haired vampire who is being sought by both Blade and Hannibal King. The actual conflict between Dracula and Dr. Strange comes off rather well with the sorcerer tracking the vampire to his coffin and entering an astral battle with the vampire in 15th Century Wallachia. Unsurprisingly, Strange underestimates the vampire’s hypnotic powers and is attacked and bitten by Dracula. The issue’s real climax sees Blade and Hannibal King meeting for the first time on the trail of the white-haired vampire who ruined both of their lives.

Doctor Strange #14, “The Tomb of Doctor Strange” concludes the crossover with Steve Englehart’s script fitting as seamlessly into Wolfman’s storyline as Wolfman did with his in the first part. This uncommonly effective crossover can be contributed to the fact that Wolfman edited both titles. As the story gets underway, we learn that Strange’s astral form is still free while his physical body has fallen victim to the vampire. More significantly, Dracula first stumbles upon the deconsecrated Boston church in this issue which will play such an important role in the next story arc. Englehart also begins a continuing storyline with Dracula being pursued by an unseen spirit who taunts him with visions from his past. Dracula returns to feast on Strange and the magician’s astral form re-enters his body, awakening him. Strange calls on Jehovah and creates an astral cross which causes the vampire’s death. The effects of Strange and Wong’s vampire bits are reversed with Dracula’s death at the issue’s rushed conclusion.

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A (very) guilty pleasure: Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy

A (very) guilty pleasure: Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy

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the-dark-tideThe publication of Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara in 1977 was a watershed moment in fantasy literature. The success of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings left fans clamoring for more epic, secondary world fantasy with maps, and with The Sword of Shannara Brooks delivered. Its publication began a trend of Tolkien-inspired fantasy that deeply marked (marred, others might say) the genre thereafter.

But the ensuing years haven’t been kind to Brooks. Lin Carter, editor of the acclaimed Ballantine Adult fantasy series, said of The Sword of Shannara ,” [it’s]the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read”. Despite the commercial success of Shannara and its sequels, its now widely considered to be the poster child for Biggest Tolkien Ripoff.

But, prevailing claims to the contrary, The Sword of Shannara is not even close to that moniker. The championship belt for most slavish LOTR imitation (that I have read, at least) hangs proudly about the waist of Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy. In comparison to The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day, Shannara is a veritable bastion of originality sprung whole and entire from the forehead of Zeus. The Iron Tower Trilogy is, in fact, The Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off. Crudely. Anyone who possesses even a passing familiarity with Tolkien’s masterwork should stand aghast at the “similarities.”

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