Atomic Pulp/Atomic Action Presents: CROM THE BARBARIAN

The Gravedigger team reunites for the forthcoming "Atomic Action" title from my Atomic Pulp publishing label, Savage Sagas, featuring "Crom The Barbarian," based on the very first barbarian hero in comics, created by Gardner F. Fox and John Giunta in 1950. The Savage Sagas one-shot will feature Crom in "Where The Grim God Creeps," written by Yours Truly, penciled and inked by Eisner Award-winning artist Rick Burchett, and colored by industry veteran Matt Webb.

Vintage appearances of Crom and Cave Girl

The back-up story stars Gardner Fox & Bob Powell's creation, "Cave Girl," in "The Devil Came Down The Mountain." This one is also written by me, with art by the great Neil Vokes, and colors by Matt. I've got a couple of terrific artists lined up for the cover(s) - I'll announce them when I'm ready to share the final cover art.

According to Rick, he always wanted to draw a sword & sorcery comic, but no one ever offered him one before. I can't wait to see pages on this! I'm planning a Kickstarter campaign for this book in the Fall, and hopefully, the book will be on sale in early '19.

ON SALE NOW! PERILS ON PLANET X Print Editions

After more than 15 years in production, all three issues of the interplanetary swashbuckler, Perils On Planet X,  by Yours Truly and Gene Gonzales, with colors by Ian Sokoliwski, are available to purchase NOW!

They are only available by mail order from IndyPlanet. This is is the best way to support us and the book, as the profits go directly to Gene and myself. Each issue is 32 full-color pages, printed on high-quality, heavy paper stock and includes pin-up art by several well-known comics creators.

Sales of these issues will help Gene and I determine whether there's enough demand for Volume 2: "Agent of Empyr," so if you'd like to see further Perils On Planet X adventures, be sure to order your copies soon.

Wednesday Covers: Gullivar Jones On The Loose!

At one point in the 1970s, Marvel Comics, unable to secure the comic book rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" stories (which were being published at rival DC), began adapting author Edwin Lester Arnold's 1905 sci-fi novel, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, in the pages of Creatures On The Loose!

Arnold's novel was a precursor to Burroughs' interplanetary fantasies, with a number of story similarities to the first few John Carter adventures. Marvel drafted their top cover artist, the legendary Gil Kane, to play up those similarities, leading to a pretty amazing run of swashbuckling, action-packed cover illustrations.Here are a few of them:

Wednesday Cover: The City Outside The World

The City Outside The World is one of Lin Carter's Mars Novels, a four book cycle of  homages (or pastiches, if you prefer) of Leigh Brackett's own stories set on the Red Planet. It's also the only one in the series I don't yet own. Still, I'm featuring it here because I find this cover painting (by an artist I haven't identified as yet) quite handsome and evocative of the Interplanetary Romance genre.

Wednesday Covers: Man-Wolf

Art by George Perez & Bob McLeod

Marvel's Man-Wolf was a weird character. Originally John Jameson, astronaut son of Spider-Man foil J. Jonah Jameson, he was briefly known as the super-powered "Jupiter Man," before discovering a strange, supernatural ruby on the moon, which caused him to transform into a pseudo werewolf. Later, he journeyed to an alien dimension, where he became a sword-wielding barbarian hero fighting wizards and other fantastic menaces.

Art by George Perez & Terry Austin

Anyway, I enjoyed some of those sword & sorcery-styled exploits when the character took over a couple issues of Marvel Premiere in 1978. Here are the covers to those issues, penciled by the great George Perez!

Adventures On Other Worlds

My birthday was earlier this week, and I was fortunate to receive a little cash as gifts from various family members. As I usually do around my birthday & Christmas time, I decided to pick up a few graphic novels. This year, my focus was almost entirely on the interplanetary adventure genre.

I ordered two John Carter Of Mars comics collections from Dark Horse Comics. The first of these, Weird Worlds, collects all of the Carter stories published by DC Comics in the early 1970s, while the other volume presents nearly the entire run of Marvel Comics' series from the latter half of that decade. The Marvel John Carter, Warlord Of Mars book was one of my favorite comic book series of all time (along with their Star Wars series of the same vintage), and I've long wanted a square-bound collection of those Barsoomian chronicles for my bookshelf.

The other two trade paperbacks I sprung for were from Dynamite Comics, a company that I've had mixed feelings about in the past. Exploiting the public domain status of Burroughs' early novels, they've been publishing their own Carter comics for the past few years. I've never read any of their Mars books, but I took a chance on Warriors Of Mars because I was intrigued by the premise. In this book they've dusted off Edwin Arnold's Gullivar Jones (protagonist of Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, a Martian adventure novel published more than a decade before Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess Of Mars), and introduced him to John Carter's milieu. Scholars have long noted the similarites between Arnold's novel and Burroughs' subsequent Martian tales, so I'm intrigued by the idea of seeing the two works/characters combined.

I also picked up the collection of their Flash Gordon: Zeitgeist miniseries, because I've read that the Alex Ross-plotted tale incorporates a lot of story elements from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie and the 1979 Filmation animated television feature. I happen to like both of those versions, and I know that Ross is a huge Flash fan, so I'm curious to see how that series turned out.

With luck, most of these books will be here by the weekend! 

Wednesday Cover: The Fantastic Jongor!

Robert Moore Williams' dinosaur-riding jungle man, Jongor of Lost Land, battles a centaur on this Fantastic Adventures cover. The cover art illustrates a scene from The Return of Jongor, the middle installment of Williams' pulp trilogy. I've got these adventures in paperback (with Frazetta covers), but it was cool to stumble upon this scan during one of my recent Google safaris...

Kline's Martian Tales

Along with all the Flash Gordon books I've got coming in the mail this month are these two novels of Martian swashbuckling by Otis Adelbert Kline. I've read some of Kline's other "planetary romances" - specifically, several of his Venusian novels - but I've not yet visited his version of the Red Planet.

Paizo Press re-issued these pulp tales a few years back, and I found inexpensive copies of these handsomely designed volumes online. With luck, they'll arrive before the holiday and in good shape. I'm looking forward to adding them to my ever-growing "To Be Read" pile....

For those of my blog readers who aren't all that into space fantasy and are waiting for me to write about hardboiled crime pulp/films again, just be patient. I'm in an outer space state of mind at the moment, but my pop culture passions tend to be cyclical. I'll be back working on the new Femme Noir graphic novel around New Year's and I'm sure I'll be totally immersed in that decidedly more Earthbound genre then!

New Old Stuff To Read

Every once in a while, I make a little money off my blogging. Recently, I got a tidy little kickback from the ads on my DVD Late Show and Space: 1970 sites, and decided to use it to order a few older graphic novel/comics collections online.

Having recently enjoyed re-watching the 1938 Universal movie serial Red Barry, starring Buster Crabbe, I became curious about the Will Gould newspaper comic strip that it was based on. After a little hunting around online, I discovered a 1989 Red Barry strip collection from Fantagraphics. I ordered a copy, and am more than halfway through it. Terrific stuff!

I then went through my Amazon wish list to see if anything I had on there had gone down in price. I've long wanted a copy of DC's The Warlord: The Savage Empire trade paperback by Mike Grell & company, but it's long out of print and used copies tended to be prohibitively expensive. Surprisingly, I was able to find a reasonably-priced copy listed and ordered it. It hasn't arrived yet, so I have my fingers crossed that it arrives in the "Very Good" condition advertised by the seller.

Another collection from the same time period that I ordered was DC's Cosmic Odyssey trade paperback by Jim Starlin & Mike Mignola. I missed the original 4-issue miniseries when it came out back in '88 and never got my hands on it after that. But it popped up on my radar recently thanks to Rip Jagger's Dojo, and since I've always loved Mignola's art, I decided to get it. I'm especially looking forward to his handling of Jack Kirby's Darkseid and The New Gods characters.

I also ordered the IDW hardcover edition of The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures, which collects the handful of Rocketeer tales that creator Dave Stevens actually produced in the 80s. I bought all the original comics (& the old Eclipse album) when they came out and have them stashed away somewhere in a longbox, but I figured it was past time to get all the Stevens' material in one nice bookshelf edition. Fortunately, I found an cheap copy online. Should be here sometime this week.

The last of the graphic novels I purchased was the new Fantagraphics collection of Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk comics, originally published in the 1940's as a feature in Target Comics. Back in the 90s, Dark Horse reprinted many of these bizarre and brilliant adventures in B&W comic book reprints, with a few new stories about the character produced by various artists and writers. I have four of five of these issues, but I'm missing at least one, and I'm not sure if Dark Horse actually got around to reprinting the entire run. This new collection is both complete and in color. I love Wolverton's work, and I love the character - he's sort of like Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" in space, an unfathomable and unstoppable entity with a vast array of weapons and gadgets at his disposable.

Finally, in the non-comics category, I placed an order for an early Andrew Offutt sword & planet papernck novel. Chieftain of Andor. I read a lot of Offutt's fantasy novels in the 80s - primarily his Robert E. Howard pastiches and Thieves World stories - and look forward to reading this one, too.

More Summer Reading

It's not quite the same as coming across previously-unknown treasures while browsing through an actual used book store, but there's still some joy in discovering the existence of books you were unaware of while surfing online. Last night, for example, I came upon a blog where The Goddess Of Ganymede, an early Burroughs pastiche written by well-respected science fiction author Michael Resnick, was reviewed.

Being somewhat familiar with Resnick's later work, I was surprised to find that he had dabbled in the interplanetary swashbuckler genre at the beginning of his career, and it piqued my interest. The review of Goddess was fairly positive, and a little research soon found that there was a sequel to the book, Pursuit On Ganymede. From what little I've detremined from my Googling, it looks like there might be a bit of sword & sorcery in the mix, too.

You all know that I love this sort of stuff, so I went ahead and ordered copies of both books tonight. I expect that I'll enjoy them - after all, I genuinely like Lin Carter's and Gardner Fox's "sword & planet" novels, and if nothing else, those lovely Jeff Jones (I think) covers are worth having on my shelf.  Hopefully, they'll show up soon and in good condition...

Wednesday Cover: Solomon Kane

I haven't actually read any of Dark Horse Comics' Solomon Kane titles, but I must admit that this Mike Mignola cover for the The Castle Of The Devil one-shot, ingeniously laid out like an old Dell Comics cover, is just delightful on a whole lotta levels.

The Mark Of Kane

For three years, I patiently waited for an American distributor to pick it up. Never happened. And, despite the temptation, I even virtuously avoided illegal downloads and unauthorized YouTube vids -- but -- I could wait no longer! Once Brandi told me she'd bought us a multi-region DVD player, I scooted over to Amazon UK and ordered a Region 2 PAL DVD of 2009's Solomon Kane, based on the character created by Robert E. Howard.

Even with shipping, it only cost me five and a half bucks, American.

The disc arrived today, and I watched it this evening with Brandi.

Although not strictly faithful to the Word, Solomon Kane nonetheless captures the spirit of the Bob Howard pulp stories in a way that no other REH adaptation has yet approached. The screenplay is a bit too Hollywood boilerplate - and, thus, predictable - but the film as a whole rises above its script's over-familiar conventions and is, ultimately, a superior entertainment. Production design, casting, photography and musical score are well above par.

James Purefoy is note-perfect as the dour Puritan swordsman, and director Michael Bassett keeps the film moving at a fair clip while still allowing the characters time to earn the audience's sympathy/empathy. Also notable is the terrific musical score by Klaus Badelt and the gorgeous cinematography by Dan Lausten.

As for the special effects, yeah, there are a few dodgy CGI bits in the beginning and some cartoon demons in there, but it is a sword & sorcery saga, after all. I've heard more than a few complaints about the end of the film, but it mostly worked for me. Compared to every big budget Hollywood fantasy film I've seen in the last 5+ years, the climactic scene of Solomon Kane was positively restrained in its use of CGI; it was hardly the sort of pixelated overkill/cartoon orgy that's become de rigueur these days.

It's not Van Helsing. It's not Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. It's a very modern, surprisingly mainstream special effects adventure film, and I cannot fathom why it hasn't garnered an official U.S. release. If the suits considered it too dark, or the character too obscure, or Purefoy too unknown  for wide theatrical distribution, I sorta get it. But it doesn't explain why it hasn't shown up on SyFy or on DVD.  I'm sure there's some good reason for it, but it's a mystery  to me.

In short, though Solomon Kane is not a perfect film, nor a literal adaptation of Howard's prose, I loved the movie. Best sword & sorcery flick I've seen in ages, and far better than the most recent Conan film.

I suspect the gentleman from Cross Plains would have gotten a kick out of it, too.

Wednesday Cover: Claw the Unconquered

Yep, another Wednesday, another sword & sorcery comic cover from the Seventies. Crom help me, I love this stuff. This time around it's the cover to DC Comics' Claw The Unconquered #2, their attempt to cash-in onrival publisher  Marvel's runaway hit Conan series. The art is by the great Ernie Chua (a/k/a Ernie Chan), a terrific Filipino artist who passed away just last week.

I first noticed the artist's work on Batman and Detective Comics, where he drew a damned fine Dark Knight. He was also DC's go-to cover artist for a couple of years there in the mid-Seventies. Later, he was praised for his work on Marvel's barbarian, where he often inked John Buscema on both the color Conan comic and the Savage Sword of Conan B&W magazine. I'll always associate him with the short-lived Claw, though. His Conan work was more polished, and his Batman stuff more widely-seen and appreciated, but Claw was his book. He was the first artist on it, and defined the character's fantasy world.

I always loved his lush inkline, and thought he was a great storyteller. He'll be missed.

Wednesday Cover: Dagar

Gold Key Spotlight was a showcase series for the publisher, and this issue featured an original tale of Don Glut's barbarian adventurer Dagar The Invincible, with interior art and dynamic cover painting by the astounding Jesse Santos.

Filling In The Gaps

Thanks to some recent freelance income, we were able to catch up on our overdue medical and veterinary bills, and even had a little left over. I've used some of that small surplus to fill in holes in my various pop culture collections. Specifically, I've bought the handful of seasons of the WB/DC Animated series Batman Beyond (seasons 2 & 3) and Teen Titans (seasons 3-5) that we were missing. I'm a big fan of both programs, and I'm grateful that I now have the complete runs of those shows on my shelves, especially since I missed the last couple years of both shows when we chose not to get cable TV here.

I also ordered the last Mickey Spillane/Max Allan Collins "Mike Hammer" novel, Kiss Her Goodbye. It came out last year, but I was unable to purchase it when it was released. Now I'm nearly caught up with my Collins collection... just in time to look forward to the next Spillane/Collins collaboration, Lady, Go Die! - which is due out in May.

Since I stopped buying comics on a regular basis several years ago, I have still tried to follow a couple of ongoing titles in trade paperback form. One of these is The Walking Dead, the other is Dark Horse' Conan. Unfortunately, money's been so tight the last couple of years, that I've fallen behind on both of them. I'm still behind (I think they're up to Volume 11 or 12... or maybe even beyond), but I was able to find volumes 7 and 8 of Conan on sale online at a very reasonable price, so I'm closing the gap slightly.

The two books arrived today, and I'm really eager to read them.

Wednesday Covers: Frazetta's JONGOR

The Return Of Jongor

Jongor Fights Back

As I mentioned here not long ago, I recently purchased the three Popular Press paperback editions of  Robert Moore Williams' "Jongor" novels. I just finished the first book, and thought it was terrific jungle pulp, with an intriguing Tarzan knock-off. Jongor swings in Lost Land, a prehistoric jungle valley somewhere deep in the Australian Outback, where he rides dinosaurs and battles the monkeymen of the lost continent of Mu. Fun stuff.

Even better are the cover illustrations by the legendary Frank Frazetta. Here are two of the three - sans obscuring cover type (I couldn't find a "clean" copy of the first cover). I love these paintings - both compositions are classic Frazetta.

Enjoy!

Jongor Of Lost Land Fights Back

Years ago, when I first read Richard Lupoff's book, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure, I found myself not only determined to read every ERB story I could find, but also intrigued by the Burroughs "imitators" that Lupoff discussed in one of the later chapters. Among those imitators, I remember Lupoff writing about Robert Moore Williams and his Tarzan-esque character, "Jongor."

The Jongor stories appeared in the pulp magazine Fantastic Adventures, back in the 1940s, and were reprinted in three paperbacks by Popular Library in 1970, graced with a triptych of evocative Frank Frazetta covers. I found the second of these, The Return of Jongor in a used bookstore a few years ago, but, as I recently noted here, I dislike reading series fiction out of order, so it remains unread.

While on my online book safari last week, the one where I found and purchased Star Barbarian, I decided to see if I could find the other two Jongor books at affordable prices. As it turned out, I could, so, in a few weeks, I'll have more vintage jungle pulp to add to my reading pile.

It looks like Moore also wrote some sword & planet novels about a character called "Zanthar." If I enjoy the Jongor books as much as I hope to, maybe I'll try and track down those adventures, as well.

Wednesday Cover(s): STAR BARBARIAN & LORD OF BLOOD!

Okay - a while back, I picked up a sword & sorcery novel at a used bookstore, based solely on the cover art. It was Lord Of Blood by someone named Dave Van Arnam. I didn't read it - I just put it on the shelf with the rest of my fantasy paperbacks. Well, a few days ago, it caught my eye, so I pulled it down off the shelf and started to leaf through it. It was then that I noticed that it was, in fact, a sequel to a novel called Star Barbarian. Which I didn't have.

That bugged me.

Ask my wife - I get obsessive about the weirdest shit, and I cannot knowingly read a series book out of order. Yeah, I know: what the hell, right? Further, I don't even know if Van Arnam is a decent writer, or if these books are even worth reading. But, still....

So, I went online, found a cheap copy of Star Barbarian (pictured above, and sporting a cover painting by the late Jeff Jones) and ordered it. I expect it in my mailbox any day now. Then, both it and Lord Of Blood will be placed on my ever-growing "To Be Read" pile.

Oh yeah, that Lord Of Blood cover that caught my eye? Here it is; artwork by Jim Steranko.

Here's hoping these books don't completely suck....

Wednesday Cover: DAGAR THE INVINCIBLE

Thanks to my generous mother-in-law and her holiday largesse, I was able to order myself a copy of the Dagar The Invincible Archives Vol. 1, featuring stories by writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos. Should be here sometime next week.

This artwork originally graced the sixth issue of Gold Key Comics' Dagar the Invincible/Tales Of Swords & Sorcery, back in 1974, and Dark Horse Comics used it for the cover of their hardcover archive edition. Unfortunately, the Grand Comic Book Database doesn't identify the artist.

Wednesday Covers: Kane Of Old Mars

a/k/a The City Of The Beast

These are the Lancer Books editions of Michael Moorcock's "Kane of Old Mars" trilogy, a highly enjoyable, if fannish, pastiche of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" cycle. These three books chronicle the adventures of American physicist and Olympic fencer Michael Kane, who invents a teleporter that accidentally sends him to ancient Mars. There, he fights blue giants and wins the love of a beautiful martian princess. You know - the usual.

These three paintings are by the great Gray Morrow.

I actually own these books in multiple editions - the DAW Books paperbacks from the 70s-80s with the Richard Hescox covers and the omnibus edition published by White Wolf in the 90s, with its John Bolton cover painting. These Lancer editions are my favorites, though.

Although these books are unabashed imitations of Burroughs, written by Moorcock when he was still quite young, and, as such, have all the weaknesses inherent in pastiche, they will always hold a special place in my fantasy-loving heart. You see, when I was in Junior High, I found a copy of this Lancer edition of Warriors of Mars (later, with the other two volumes, re-titled by the author - see captions), with that gorgeous and exciting cover, on the school bus. I turned it in to the driver, who put it in the lost & found box under his seat. After a week, no one had claimed it, so he gave it to me. It was my first taste of interplanetary romance, and it - obviously - had a huge impact on me and my reading tastes. I still pull these books down once a every year or two and revisit them.

a/k/a Lord Of The Spiders

a/k/a Masters Of The Pit