Yep, today’s page is #100 in our little adventure story, not quite halfway through; that’s equal to 4 and a half regular comic issues. Quite a milestone if you ask me….or even if you don’t! It’s hard for me to remember back two years ago when I started out on this adventure.
Actually, next week’s page was supposed to be #100, but because I keep monkeying with the story as I am drawing it, I ended up with an extra page somewhere along the way.
Another milestone: today’s my 5th wedding anniversary! And my little honeybunch feels the same way about fish as HPL did.
Watching Dagon this weekend; next week, a new Occult Detectives review.
Last, a giant man-eating squid story, just for you
Have a good weekend.
(Here’s a classic from the LIM archives that I always enjoyed. Hope new readers find it interesting and older readers….well, hope you like it too.)
Ok, it will take an imagination far greater than mine to tie this week’s post to H.P. Lovecraft. But I don’t get to share a lot of my collectibles (my wife still thinks this is an aberration that I will eventually grow out of, poor dear) so think of this as a break from the three-lobed burning eye.
You can read more about Spring-Heel’d Jack at Wikipedia, though I’d take the article with a grain of salt. This story of a ‘real’ creature that stalked London has grown over the years, but all too often it’s been hijacked by the folks who think JFK was killed because he was about to reveal a secret treaty the government had signed with aliens. (Hey, it could happen….) For me, the article leans a little too far in that direction, but I don’t have time to delve into it enough to do an edit. A much better accounting of SHJ can be found here.
I’ve only seen pictures of two of the original penny dreadfuls featuring SHJ, neither one dated but circa 1850. I actually think these are advertising posters rather than issues of the magazine, but no doubt the illustrations were used on the covers as well. Both are reproduced below, the first taken from Penny Dreadfuls and Other Victorian Horrors, the second from the Penguin Book of Comics. They don’t do much to clear up the mystery, as one shows the devil-like boogeyman, the other the man with spring-heeled boots. But note the different spellings of the name. It’s possible that these were two competing periodicals.
The covers below are from a 1904 series, probably a reprint of the 1878 serial from The Boy’s Standard storypaper. At least in this incarnation, SHJ was a costumed hero, a wronged nobleman named Wraydon, who used the costume and jumping gimmicks to strike fear in the hearts of the wrongdoers (like anybody would ever do THAT) in order to clear his name. The story is available at Amazon, in paperback and Kindle editions for those of you who are curious.
These are the only copies I’ve ever seen, though the cover of issue 2 seems to have been circulated pretty freely on the web (and is the cover for the Amazon edition). I can’t put my hands on it at the moment, but there was an independent comic book back in the ’90′s that used this costume, but made the character a tulku, a Tibetan supernatural entity of some sort. I don’t remember much else about it, so you’ll have to dig it up on your own. And Phillip Pullman wrote a couple of graphic novels with his take on the character, which are also still in print.
At the last minute, I did a Google search and found some more images of the penny dreadfuls, and oneof the comic book covers, which I now append:
A nice surprise this weekend was finding a review of Lovecraft is Missing by Lauren Davis on io9, a site you should be reading regularly anyway. It doubled the weekend traffic on the comic, and hopefully a few will stick around as regular readers.
One of the comments led me to a 1999 series called Necronauts, in which Houdini, Lovecraft Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Fort team up and I found a used copy online. I’ll give a report when I’ve devoured it.
This week has been full of hecticity as I prep for the start of the fall semester next week. It’s going to be an exciting semester and my schedule is full, so I am really going to be more slammed than usual. I’ll get the comic pages up but expect a few more reprint blog posts, and, if I can rustle them up, a few more guest posts.
I gave up on Dan Simmons’s Summer of Night about halfway through. It wasn’t bad, I just lost interest. When I find myself choosing to read a book on pedagogy over a horror novel, then I am definitely not interested. I did the same thing with Drood. In fact, the only Simmons book I’ve really liked was Carrion Comfort, which I liked a lot. I have The Terror on my shelf, but I think I’ll turn my attention elsewhere for awhile.
And finally, a question for anyone of you (or all) that care to answer: Is there anything you would like to see me deal with on this blog? Of course, Lovecraftian stuff will take precedence, but it’s not like there’s great news out there every week. I’ve bounced around popular culture quite a bit, and I enjoy that, and have plenty of other topics to cover. But at the same time, I can always use new ideas and I enjoy the interaction. Just post your comments. The only ones I don’t clear are ones that are ads for other people’s stuff. Post away.
Have a good week.
The Marquis: Inferno by Guy Davis, Dark Horse Comics, 2009, $24.99
This massive trade paperback collects the first three story arcs of Guy Davis’s Marquis character. As big a fan as I am of Guy Davis, this one slipped past me until just recently. I hurried to my local comic shop to find out the first printing had sold out, 
and the second one wouldn’t be out until late August. All things come to he who waits. And, not surprisingly, it was worth it.
I can’t say it was an easy read. Davis has created an alternate 18th century that is familiar yet just different enough from our own to keep the reader off balance, particularly in the area of religion. Familiar terms refer to unfamiliar concepts; familiar concepts have sometimes odd, or at least unusual, names and ways of being expressed. It took me awhile to get into the cadence and thought patterns of this strange world, but the story carried me forward until the Marquis’ universe became my own.
If the story owes little to Lovecraft’s concept, the monsters are all solidly connected to HPL’s concepts, especially the charming la Courtesane, a Lovecraftian horror if ever there was one. The devils are a remarkably personable lot, by turns meek, arrogant, violent and bookish. Despite their eternal damnation, some of them seem like pretty nice folks.
The story is rich and complex, but the essence of it is this: in a world ruled by the clergy, in a particular 18th city reminiscent of Paris, it is the job of the Inquisitors to drive out the devils that possess the common people. They aren’t particularly effective, which is actually job security. A former Inquisitor, Vol de Galle, believes he has had a visitation from a saint, who has given him the mission to do what the Inquisitors have failed to do. Wearing a confessional mask, de Galle goes forth with a brace of multi-barrel pistols and a sword. Through the eyes of the mask, he can see the devils possessing the townspeople. Or can he? There is just the slightest possibility that de Valle is mad as an 18th Century Unibomber. Whatever the truth, he believes he sees the demons, and slaughters them unmercifully.
Naturally this attracts the attention of the military police, who are under the direct control of the Ministry. General Herzoge is the veteran campaigner in charge; his superior is Grand Inquisitor Morgea, once a fellow soldier. Lots of oblique conversations about fear, faith and their relationship waft about the two men as they debate whether this murderer is a man or a devil. Despite his obsequiessness, Herzoge is a man of integrity; Morgea moves beyond the cliche of the pompous power mad religous leader to a truly menacing presence.
Meanwhile, as de Valle continues his quest, he finds that the demons refer to him as le Marquis, though he has no idea as to why. His obsessive devotion to St. Massard leads him first to a crisis of faith, and then to an even greater crisis of belief.
Though it has elements of Christianity, at least in its language, the religion of this world is an original and frightening creation of the author. Davis describes just enough to give it’s flavor and some of the broad core beliefs, but doesn’t get tangled up in trying to work out every detail. In fact, it’s a lot like what people in our world who are not regular churchgoers know about Christianity or Judaism or Islam. That. I think, is part of its powerful impact in the story.
To tell you anymore would ruin the surprises that are in store for you.
Davis’s writing tends to run on a bit, with long talky passages of pseudo philosophy and religion interspersed with the action. I can’t help feeling that a stronger editor couldn’t have pared these tales down a bit and made them the better for it. After seeing his artwork alongside the spare dialogue and quick pacing provided by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi on B.P.R.D., The Marquis seems to drag on a bit at times.
But his art work—well, Davis is just one of the best around. Probably for economic reasons The Marquis is in black and white, but you soon get past that due to Davis’s manipulation of line and tone. You ‘ll recognize his work, but the style is a little looser, a little more feathery than his work on B.P.R.D. or The Zombies That Ate The World.
To sum it up, The Marquis:Inferno is one of the most original concepts I have read in any genre in a long, long time. I understand Davis is working on a new story in his spare time. It’s ok. It will be worth waiting for.
I don’t usually post anything for Tuesdays, but so many little items came up all at once that I thought, heck, why be a stickler for tradition.
First off, for the Lovecraftian completists out there, be aware that Providence Monthly has done a small story with photo marking HPL’s 120th birthday. If you don’t live in Providence then it’s unlikely to show up at your favorite magazine rack BUT you can order a copy for a mere $3.00.
Address orders to Providence Monthly, 167 Valley Street, Providence RI 02909, att: Julie. And please tell them who sent you.
Second, Will Hart posted a bunch of new pics and audio recordings from a 1978 World SF Con panel on “What if HPL had lived into the 1960s?”; you can find the sound files here, and the pics here.
And last are three stories on Io9 that are just right up my alley:
The sun affects the supposedly consant rate of radioactive decay.
Robot camera to get third try at mysterious Great Pyramid shaft.
Lovecraft is Missing has 285 followers on Facebook. If you care to help us get over 300, now is the time to do it. And don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter, too.
As for Top Web Comics, we are in the same position that we are usually in, which, all things considered, is not bad. Being number 50 or 52, we are still way ahead of the other hundreds of comics.
And as long as I am talking numbers, I’ll pass this along. A friend of a friend was going over my stats and through some tracking program he knows found that Lovecraft is Missing was, on that day, the 451,398 most popular website. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, he said, until you consider that there are over 12 million websites. So being in the top half-million is quite an accomplishment. That’s thanks to all of you.
Last number of the day (play it on your lottery ticket): this week’s page will be the 99th page of Lovecraft is Missing. Can’t hardy believe it. And we’re only about half way through the arc. That means another two years of Lovecraftian adventure and horror. And the really good stuff is still to come.
The Old Gentleman would be…well, a truly old gentleman today. It’s his 120th birthday, and I use the present tense because HPL is still with us today. It’s amazing to think that an obscure pulp writer for an ephemeral magazine could have had such an astonishing impact on popular culture. His concepts, once so unique, are now mainstream; even without direct attribution, the look of monsters has forever been altered by Cthulhu and the others. T-shirts, role-playing games, comics, movies, television, hundreds of books dedicated to his fiction and life, not to mention all the pastiches, rip-offs, plus scholarly scrutiny that rivals that of most giants in the literary field.
Lovecraft was dying just as First Fandom was getting organized. He was revered by a handful of those pioneers, but can you imagine what he would have thought if he’d lived even ten years longer? If he’d made it into his 80s, which would have been the 1970s, would he have been pleased or freaked out by all the attention, the reverence, the awe?
No telling, obviously, but we can safely put to rest his notion that his fiction would be forgotten.
And by the way, today’s vote incentive is a silly sketch of the Ultimate Crossover that completes our Crossover week celebration. All in good fun, foks, all in good fun.
The Imp of the Perverse has dictated that I make this week Crossover week. This won’t take away from HPL’s 120th Birthday, but it isn’t exactly a sub-the
me, either.
I’ve done absolutely no research on when the first fictional cross overs occurred, but from my own collection, I do know that it happened occasionally in American dime novels. Nick Carter, probably the most famous of dime novel heroes, appeared in at least two issues of Old Broadbrim Weekly, #48 (Aug. 29, 1903) and #49 (Sept. 5, 1903). As these stories were often written with a loose continuity stretched across four stories in order to collect them together into a larger paperback, it’s likely that stories on either side of these two issues might also contain Carter.
Then, as now, it was probably a sales gimmick as Old Broadbrim Weekly appears to have changed its title to Young Broadbrim Weekly over the course of the
next month. Old Broadbrim, aka the Quaker detective, was Josiah Broadbrim, a detective that worked out of New York; he met young Harry Wilson while on a case in Montana. The two got along so well that Harry–accompanied by his mother!– moved East and became the older detective’s partner. It’s hard not to think that this was a response to the popular detective team of Old King Brady and Young King Brady (no relation) over at rival Frank Tousey, Publisher.)
Old King Brady had a long history before the advent of Secret Service, which teamed him with his young assistant, Harry Brady, and later, Alice Montgomery. I’ll save the details for a future feature on Brady, but for years his solo stories appeared in Tousey’s New York Detective Library. Even after the stories of the James Boys took over that title, Brady would often be called in to assist Carl Greene, the detective dedicated to capturing the notorious outlaws. There were well over a dozen stories featuring Brady against the James Boys, one of which is shown below, NYDL no. 720, Sept,11, 1896.
(As always, you can click on the pictures for larger versions.)
I’ve said this before but the time has come to say it again: the reviews and opinions on this blog are my reviews and opinions; they are not meant as Received Text, or the Final Word, or the Right Way. I do make mistakes, I do have biases. I am not seeking acolytes, and in fact enjoy passionate yet polite disagreement. I am not here to make anyone eat their broccoli if they don’t want to. (I’m not a big broccoli fan myself, but truly hope I don’t find broccoli websites putting me down for it.) We’re just a group of friends who gather together around these topics, not a political party.
Last week’s review of Shadowmen ruffled some feathers on another website with my comment about the Wold Newton universe. Though I stand by my opinion , and my memory was pretty much correct, I made a “misinterpretation” largely due to a little hyperbole and the fact that, not being interested in the idea, I was unaware that others had continued and expanded the concept over the years. I was incorrect in my summary of the WN concept. My bad.
Despite the snarky comments on the other website (“Big concept, small mind” was my favorite), I went back to the original books Farmer wrote and read the Wikipedia article on the Wold Newton universe. I amended the offending paragraph to reflect the modern extensions of the idea , though my comments to the other blog about my intention to do so (probably a tad snarky in themselves) weren’t posted. But just to show that I really do mean what I say, that everyone can and should decide for themselves, let me provide those of you who may be interested in the Wold Newton world with the Wold Newton Wikipedia link as well as Win Scott Eckert’s Wold Newton webpage. Eckert coined the name ‘Wold Newton Universe’ and has written numerous books and articles about it.
But I do wish all people could disagree as politely as reader John, who was the only one courteous and forthright enough to comment to me directly. That I can respect.
As is usual, some positive came out of the negative: in my research, I did find a really great site, Cool French Comics. While it adheres to the WN idea, what makes the site great is that it provides, at least in some cases, more information on the characters in Shadowmen, plus characters who weren’t included in the book, and, best of all, lots more illustrations. Like I said, I’m a glutton. I snagged a few off the site to whet your appetite, but you really need to go check it out for yourself.
