Happy Independence Day!

Captain America and I wish all my U.S. friends a very happy Fourth of July weekend, with lots of fireworks, food and freedom.

I know I haven't been posting much here over the last month or so, but I've been buried in writing and editing work. I'm putting the final touches on the Captain Midnight prose anthology – including writing my own 8,000 word short story – for Moonstone (we're shooting for a January/February '10 release), pulling together the Captain Midnight comic book one-shot (Richard Clark's art is looking great!), and trying to catch up and get ahead on Kolchak scripts.

I'm also attempting to stay on top of my DVD Late Show review column for Forces of Geek, which takes a lot of time, what with all the discs to watch. There should be a new column this Tuesday.

Then, beginning Wednesday, I'll be starting a big editing/design job. Somewhere in there, my wife and I plan on switching office spaces and setting up my new PC (bleah). Even with all that, I still hope to post here more often, too.

I have been posting a lot over on my Spy-Fi Channel blog (Of course, I posted a lot the first couple months of my Guns In the Gutters blog, too), however, so if you're at all interested in my geeky ramblings about espionage pulp and cheesy spy TV shows, you might want to check it out. Or not. Whatever.

Have a great holiday weekend, friends!

It can only be one thing – Prehistoric!

In the Seventies, producer John Dark and director Kevin Connor made a series of fantasy adventure movies based on and/or inspired by the works of pulp writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan. These films (all starring beefy TV cowboy Doug McClure) were The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, At The Earth's Core and Warlords of Atlantis.

The other night, I re-watched The People That Time Forgot.

People, American International Pictures' sequel to the Amicus Studios-produced The Land That Time Forgot, was released in the Summer of 1977. A square-jawed aviator played by Patrick Wayne, son of John, and star of the same year's Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger, leads an expedition to the prehistoric island of Caprona in search of adventurer Doug McClure, still marooned there after the events of the previous film. The expedition consists of Wayne, his mechanic (Shane Rimmer; The Spy Who Loved Me), a female reporter (Sarah Douglas; Superman 2), and a paleontologist (character actor Thorley Walters). After their biplane is forced down by an attacking pterodactyl, the adventurers discover a beautiful cavegirl (the gorgeous Dana Gillespie, above), who eventually leads them to Skull Mountain and the evil, samurai-like Nagas who have McClure locked away in their skeleton-strewn dungeon.

People is a full-blooded, old-fashioned Saturday matinee adventure, with vicious cavemen, clunky dinosaurs, an evil Tor Johnson lookalike, volcanic eruptions, swordplay and plenty of heroic deering-do. As in Sinbad, Wayne makes an acceptable, if not particularly charismatic, hero, while Douglas, an underrated actress who's appeared in tons of fantasy films, makes the most of her spunky girl reporter role. Gillespie provides the eye-candy, and Walters and Rimmer provide solid support. McClure, who shows up late in the film, looks a little tired of these cut-rate lost world epics, but acquits himself adequately.

The production design and special effects have a charming, nostalgic cheesiness about them, with obvious matte paintings, miniatures and mechanical monsters adding to the cliffhanging fun. Although primitive by today's high-tech standards, I'll take this kind of hand-crafted filmmaking over today's CGI-dominated 3D toons any day. The photography is magnificent, making good use of the rugged, prehistoric-looking locations, and the score by John Scott is rousing, if a bit sparse.

The Land That Time Forgot and People That Time Forgot were released as a double feature DVD by MGM Home Video some years ago as part of their marvelous, consumer-friendly "Midnight Movies" line, and might still be available from some retailers. The disc is bare-bones – just the two movies and their theatrical trailers – but the widescreen transfers are beautiful.

Wednesday Cover: Planet Comics #14

New DVD Late Show Posted!

My latest DVD Late Show review column has been posted at Forces Of Geek. This week's installment covers a bunch of recent horror and B-films, including Nightmare Castle, The She Beast, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon, The Terminators and Burn Notice Season Two.

Here's the Direct Link to the column.

I neglected to post here when the previous column went up a couple weeks ago. But it's not too late to read my reviews of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, Dragonquest, While She Was Out, Two Evil Eyes, Fast Company, and Never Say Never Again on Blu-Ray.

Here's that Direct Link.

I Like This Comic: Super Human Resources

I don't write about comic books (other than my own) here very often because I don't read many new comics. I can't afford to buy anything regularly, and there isn't a comic store nearby. I do read comics all the time, but they're usually older books from my collection.

Every once in a great while, though, one of my publishers will send me a few books to check out, and that happened last week. David Hedgecock at Ape Entertainment sent me a small CARE package of recent Ape titles, and while all of them were good and well-worth reading/buying, I was especially impressed by the Super Human Resources collection by writer Ken Marcus and artist Justin Bleep.

It can most easily be described as The Office with superheroes, but that does the book a bit of a disservice. It's actually considerably better than that.

Originally published as a four issue miniseries, SHR tells the story of Tim, a somewhat nerdy temp worker who is hired by Super Crises International (SCI), the corporate headquarters of a team of superheroes, to help out in their billing department. Basically, SCI's like any other big corporation, except that the receptionist is a zombie, the research department is run by a horny android, there's a mysterious caped crusader living in the basement, and the copy machine has just become sentient. Other than that, it's just like every office you've ever inhabited a cubicle in, with all the petty power struggles, surprise birthday parties, holiday gift exchanges, and monotonous paperwork that makes a job a sentence.

Super Human Resources is a lot of fun, and very funny.

You can read the entire first issue online here, for free, or you can check out the SHR website here.

Louisa Nadeau

My maternal grandmother, Louisa Nadeau, passed away late Monday night/early Tuesday morning. She slipped away peacefully, in the company of her children. She was nearly 94 years old.

She was the only one of my grandparents that I was ever truly close to. Her husband died when I was about five, and my father's parents were spending much of their time in Florida while I was growing up. A devout Catholic, French Canadian woman (who would frequently slip into French when excited or when her English vocabulary proved inadequate for the thought she was trying to express), she was always supportive of me and my creative efforts. We shared the same birthday. Every Christmas dinner was at her house. As a child, I spent many hours at her kitchen table tracing comic book panels and making up my own stories. I found my first Edgar Rice Burroughs novel in a box of paperbacks in her basement (I don't know who it belonged to originally – one of my uncles, perhaps – but she told me I could have it.), and when my sister and I would stay overnight on weekends that my folks were away on snowmobile trips or vacations, she always let me stay up as late as I wanted to watch the CBS Late Movie (which is where I first saw The Avengers and The Return of The Saint).

I never saw her angry. As far as I know, she was never anything but warm and loving, and I'm going to miss her – and the sparkle in her eye – terribly.

Rest in peace, Grammy.

Wednesday Cover: Superman

A marvelously well-drawn cover by the legendary Neal Adams graces this late Seventies issue of Superman, enticing the adolescent audience with a shocking scene designed to compel kids into shelling out their 30¢ to discover just why Kara would be doing such a heinous thing.

It worked on me.

I truly miss covers like this.

DVD Review: DragonQuest

The latest fantasy epic from director Mark Atkins (Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls) and The Asylum, is unfortunately not as entertaining as the director’s previous Merlin & The War of the Dragons, with an utterly predictable and sophomoric script, and a decidedly unexciting climax.

The story is one we’ve seen a thousand times – an evil wizard is threatening the countryside, a young apprentice is "the chosen one" to defeat him, but must go on a series of quests to acquire certain magical items – in this case, gems of virtue – before he can defeat the bad guy. As usual, he is provided with guides and protectors. Unfortunately, the script never adds anything new or interesting to this time-worn plot. Even the "quests" are boring – our hero just sets out in an apparently random direction, and each gem (with its accompanying lame "challenge") appear directly in his path, one after another, in order. This leads to one of those really boring sorcerer duels where two wizards stand about twenty feet apart and point their fingers at each other while animated lightning bolts leap back and forth between them.

Here’s a thought, guys: next time, why not have the wizards lob animated fireballs at each other like softballs, so that they have to dodge ‘em and avoid explosions going off around them. Put some movement and action in there. It’ll make your climax at least a little bit interesting.

The cast is generally wooden and uninteresting except for its top-billed and presumably better paid stars. Veteran heavy Brian Thompson (Cobra) is effective enough as the evil wizard, considering that his role is horribly underwritten. Of course, he can play these sort of parts in his sleep, and just may be doing that here. Jason Connery’s (Shanghai Noon) part is little more than an extended cameo, but he plays it okay. Marc Singer (The Beastmaster, V) hams it up outrageously in his role as a washed-up old warrior, but at least that makes him fun to watch and injects a bit of energy into the otherwise listless proceedings. As our young hero, Daniel Bonjour is boring as hell, though leading lady Jennifer Dorogi looks quite hot and handles her swordplay with some flair.

Production-wise, well, the CGI dragon effects by Tiny Juggernaut are fairly decent, but sparsely used. The setting is supposed to be another world, but there’s nothing particularly otherworldly about the way it’s shot. How much would it have cost to have digitally tossed in an extra moon in the sky, or for that matter, tint the sky a slightly different color? Make an effort, for goodness’ sake. This is a fantasy! The look of the film is pretty boring, too. The California locations are adequate, but they’re not nearly as visually appealing as the Welsh vistas used in Merlin.

On the plus side, composer Chris Ridenhour once again provides a superior score that almost seems too good for the film it accompanies.

Anyway, The Asylum DVD presents the feature in a sharp, anamorphic widescreen transfer and 5.1 surround sound. The traditional extra features are there: a half-hearted "behind the scenes" documentary, blooper reel and selection of deleted scenes. And, of course, a selection of trailers for other current Asylum releases.

After enjoying Merlin And the War of the Dragons, I had high hopes for Dragonquest, but maybe that was the problem. Considering the budgets and speed with which The Asylum cranks these flicks out, it probably doesn’t pay to set your expectations too high. Fantasy fans might enjoy giving this disc a spin, but on the other hand, it might just be better to wait for it to hit the SciFi Channel.

David Carradine, R.I.P.

I never really watched Kung Fu. In fact, I've probably seen more episodes of the 90's syndicated sequel series, Kung Fu: the Legend Continues, and I only saw two or three of those. So, David Carradine wasn't "Grasshopper" to me.

No, I'm a B-movie junkie, so David Carradine was Frankenstein in Death Race 2000, Kaz Oshay in Deathsport, Coy "Cannonball" Buckman in Cannonball, hardboiled cop Shepherd in Q, Rawley Wilkes in Lone Wolf McQuade, Kain in The Warrior & The Sorceress, badass bartender Jim Roth in Armed Response, the two-gun Dracula of Sundown, and of course, four different characters in Circle of Iron.

And those are just the characters I remembered off the top of my head.

David Carradine died yesterday in Bangkok, Thailand. Apparently it was a suicide. I have a hard time reconciling that with confident, cocky, sometimes arrogant Carradine, but one never knows, I guess. He was 72.

Rest well.

Happy Birthday to the Gentlemen of Horror!

I'm a bit late in acknowledging the anniversaries of the births of the three greatest horror stars of the 60's and 70's – Peter Cushing (May 26, 1913), Vincent Price (May 27, 1911) and Christopher Lee (May 27, 1922). Of the three, we are fortunate to still have Christopher Lee with us and still acting – according the IMDb, he has six movies yet to be released, in addition to his over 250 other film and television appearances!

Between them, they've provided me with countless hours of sinister cinematic satisfaction, and I can't imagine my life without their presence. Happy birthday, gentlemen!

Wednesday Cover: Black Diamond

Still in a spy-fi mood... Back in the early 80's, Bill Black's Americomics (AC) published a short-lived spy comic called Black Diamond. Now, I'm not sure if it was based on an unproduced Sybil Danning movie script or was a comic idea first, & attached to Danning afterwards. Either way, the blonde B-movie amazon was clearly the model for the lead character (See? Her name's right there on the cover!) and was featured in several photo spreads within the comic's pages.

Most of the covers (after #1 by Black) were stunning pieces by the best "spy artist" in comics, Paul Gulacy. Here's his beautiful B&W cover for Issue #2. I remember at the time thinking it was a ballsy move on AC's part to go with a stark, B&W cover illustration - it really popped on the racks amid all their competitor's colorful offerings.

One of these days, I'll have to dig these issues out again and review them in my Guns In The Gutters blog....

New Blog: Spy-Fi Channel

Yeah, so, I've created yet another blog that I won't post to nearly as often as I'd like to. This one's devoted to one specific fanboy obsession (of many): my love for spy movies and fiction, or as I generally refer to it, "Spy-Fi."

It's called Spy-Fi Channel, and like the Guns In the Gutters blog, it will be updated on an highly irregular schedule, as I feel like I have something to say on the topic. To kick it off, I've cross-posted some older posts from this site – the Lightning Bolt and Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. DVD reviews, among others – but I've also started writing about individual episodes of the old 1979 Robert Conrad spy series, A Man Called Sloane, and intend to review spy fiction as well, beginning with the Alan Caillou "Ian Quayle" novels of the mid-80s.

Why another blog? Well, like my crime comics blog, it's a subject I like to write about occasionally and I wanted to have a special place to do so. It doesn't mean that I won't ever post spy-fi reviews and stuff here, because I probably will. But most of that material will be relegated to the new site. Of course, most likely, it will be like the crime comics blog, with infrequent bouts of prolific posting followed by months and months of inactivity. But, hey – that's me.

So, if you're interested, check out the new blog here.

I Am Not A Number!

A major hole in my Spy-Fi collection was filled this past weekend when I was finally able to purchase A&E's 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition of the Patrick McGoohan series, The Prisoner.

For years I've tried to collect the series – first on VHS and then on DVD, but for some reason, I never managed to accumulate more than a small fraction of the series' seventeen episodes. Fortunately, I finally managed to stumble upon a previously-viewed (i.e. "used") complete box set at a time when I actually had the cash to pay for it. My wife and I have been watching an episode each evening, and I'm finding the show even stranger than I remembered.

I first read about the series in Starlog magazine around 1977, and soon after, it started airing on our local PBS affiliate. I watched it whenever I could, but there are several episodes I have never seen. I'm looking forward to remedying that sad state of affairs.

Wednesday Cover: In Stores NOW!

According to the Diamond Distribution shipping list, the Spinetingler Award-winning Femme Noir Volume 1: The Dark City Diaries, 150 pages of pulp-flavored crime busting and thrilling mysteries, is arriving in comic book stores TODAY! This epic tome was written by yours truly and illustrated by Joe Staton, aided and abetted by Horacio Ottolini, Mark Stegbauer, Melissa Kaercher, Matt Webb and Michael Watkins.

If you were one of those who pre-ordered a copy from your local shop, then we thank you, because it was folks like you who made the trade paperback collection possible!

As I mentioned in a previous post, the book is also available through Ape Entertainment's online store, and should soon be on sale through bookstores and online booksellers.

The cover art for the trade paperback is by the amazing team of Joe Staton (pencils) and Alfredo Lopez, Jr. (digital painting).

MeCAF Report

The Maine Comics Arts Festival was held Sunday at the Ocean Gateway event building in Portland, Maine. Femme Noir artist Joe Staton and I – along with our wives – attended the show, and publicly debuted the Femme Noir: Dark City Diaries trade paperback.

This was a creator show, and it skewed very heavily toward indy/alt/arty small press/minicomics creators and a small handful of kids' comics creators, so something like Femme Noir – or most of my stuff, for that matter – didn't really fit in. We did sell a half-dozen or so trades, and I sold a few other comics, as well, but didn't do as well as I'd hoped. We covered the cost of the table and the hotel room, though, so it could have been worse.

There were some cool people there. Heidi MacDonald of the Publishers Weekly comics blog, The Beat, stopped by to say hello to Joe, and I got to briefly visit with a few of the local creators I met last Fall at the Bangor BangPop show – Mark Ricketts, Ben Bishop, Alex Irvine and Joel Zain Rivers. I also got to finally meet, face-to-face, several long-time online acquaintances like John Platt, Dan Larson and Howard Hopkins. My old friend Bob Cram, who I hadn't seen in over 15 years, also made it to the show, and we were able to do a little catching up.

Like I said, I wish I'd been able to sell more stuff (and that fewer kids had pawed and mauled my books), but it was a pretty decent experience. Rick Lowell of Casablanca Comics (along with his wife, staff and volunteers), did an admirable job organizing the event, and the pre-show get-together on Peaks Island was fun. And, of course, it's always a treat to spend time with Joe and his wife Hilarie.

Brandi took a few photos. I may update this post with a shot or two later today.