Heavy Metal magazine Winter 1986

'Heavy Metal' magazine Winter 1986

January, 1986, and on MTV, the video for Sting's single 'The Russians' is in heavy rotation.

Heavy Metal magazine, having decreased from monthly to quarterly circulation, unveils its 'new and improved' Winter 1986 issue. Darryl Hanna is the cover subject, depicted on the poster for the upcoming film The Clan of the Cave Bear.

While most of this issue's content is not very memorable, it does feature the longest story ever printed by Jean-Michel Nicollet (using the pseudonym 'Sesar'). 

As with his July, 1985 Heavy Metal contribution 'Metropolis', Nicollet again turns to classic old films for inspiration........ this time it's King Kong that inspires a story titled 'The Great Kong', posted below.

Book Review: Montana Gothic

Book Review: 'Montana Gothic' by Dirck Van Sickle

2 / 5 Stars

I first saw this book at the 'Too Much Horror Fiction' blog and, based on the brief blurb there provided, decided to read it. 

‘Montana Gothic’ (254 pp) was first published in hardback in 1979; this Avon Books paperback was released in June, 1980. The artist who provided the striking cover illustration is uncredited.

The novel is organized into four Parts, each consisting of several chapters which progress through time, and are loosely linked by shared characters.

In Part One, it’s 1915, and Deke Morgan, grieving over a failed love affair, decides to move from Baltimore to Citadel, Montana (as best as I can tell, author Van Sickle uses fictional locations, or those of ghost towns, throughout the book), there to take over as the town’s undertaker. Morgan is depressed by the mud, cold, and isolation of small-town Montana. Then he discovers that the actions of the former undertaker have made the entire town loathe and detest the undertaker’s services……….

In Part Two, set about 50 years later, two cowboys – one a young man, the other an aged veteran – are working a small cattle herd in the wilderness. Within the cramped log cabin that is their refuge, they cope with the isolation and cold of the Montana Winter by playing cards and philosophizing.

In Part Three, also set ca. 1955, a mentally retarded young woman is caught up in a clandestine affair; her brother and father are left to deal with the consequences.

In Part Four, set in the 70s – 80s, a cowboy named Mavis Lambrook Herman roams the streets and sidewalks of Montana’s towns and cities, intent on staying true to the Code of the Frontier despite its obsolescence in the modern day.

I won’t disclose any spoilers, save to say that some of the characters in ‘Montana Gothic’ will be visited by tragedy and misfortune.

On the whole, ‘Montana Gothic’ was a disappointment. It’s devoid of supernatural or horror elements, relying instead on black humor to inform its expositions on human frailties. There is an earnest effort to make Montana the real ‘character’ underlying the events in the novel, but too often these efforts are related in a purple prose that quickly becomes tedious, and does little except pad the narrative.

It doesn’t help matters that Van Sickle’s handling of dialogue is less than impressive; for example, in the chapter ‘Winter Calf’, there are lengthy sections of conversation related in a labored ‘Homespun Frontier Wisdom’ dialect:

Montana, she ain’t fer sale, it’s free, but ya gotta love ‘er enough ta find it in yerself. She ain’t no whore.

This stuff is a pain to read. In later chapters, the conversations adopt modern forms of speech, but even here, Van Sickle’s dialogue is stilted and unconvincing.

My recommendation ? ‘Montana Gothic’ has its moments, but they are too few and far between to justify wading though the bulk of this novel. 

The Trespasser Part Three: Ruins

The Trespasser
Part Three: 'Ruins'
by Don McGregor (script) and Paul Gulacy (art)
from Eerie No. 105 (October 1979)

The Trespasser Part Two: Dusk

The Trespasser
Part Two: 'Dusk'
by Don McGregor (script) and Paul Gulacy (art)
from Eerie No. 104 (September 1979)

The Trespasser Part One

The Trespasser
Part One
by Don McGregor (script) and Paul Gulacy (art)
from Eerie No. 103 (August 1979)

Among the better features in the pages of Eerie in the late 70s - early 80s were the collaborations between artist Paul Gulacy and writers such as Doug Moench and Don McGregor. 

I've already posted the outstanding three-part serial 'Blood and Black Satin' by Gulacy and Moench that appeared in 1980, but the three-part serial 'The Trespasser', which appeared a year earlier, also is worthy of a posting.

Although the issues of Eerie from which I'm making these scans are 35 years old, dog-eared, and wrinkled and warped, with my scans set to 300 dpi / 1 MB each, hopefully the high quality of Gulacy's art is apparent despite the compromised paper quality.  

[I suspect contemporary readers may not recognize the actor that Gulacy uses as a model for the hero.....so for the benefit of those modern-day readers, that actor is James Coburn.]

Below is Part One of 'The Trespasser'.....Parts Two and Three will be posted in successive order here at the PorPor Books Blog.

Book Review: False Dawn

Book Review: 'False Dawn' by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

4 / 5 Stars

‘False Dawn’ first was published as a short story in several anthologies in the early 70s. A fix-up novel was issued in hardback in 1978 by Doubleday; this Warner Books paperback (237 pp) was published in April, 1979.

The novel is set ca. 2010 in the Sierra Nevada mountains of a post-apocalyptic California (the exact nature of the apocalypse is not detailed, but seems to have been a combination of eco-catastrophe, overwhelming pollution, and plagues). Civilization has collapsed, and small pockets of survivors scrounge for their rations amidst its ruins.

The widespread release of genetically engineered viruses has created a growing subpopulation of deformed, crazed mutants, who are forced to live in isolated communities. Others infected by the viruses retain their human characteristics, although they display some unusual traits, such as the ability to re-grow amputated limbs.

As ‘False Dawn’ opens, the heroine, a young woman named Thea, is surveying the scene of yet another atrocity committed by the Pirates, the most vicious band of wasteland raiders. Amid the corpses of the victims she finds a man named Evan, left for dead by the Pirates. Thea and Evan form a wary partnership and embark across the mountains for Gold Lake campground, where, it is rumored, a safe and secure haven for the dispossessed is located.

The remainder of ‘Dawn’ is essentially an adventure story recounting the shared journey of the two characters, who encounter a variety of perils – mostly at the hands of their fellow humans, but also from the elements and the mutated wildlife.

For a novel published in the late 70s, ‘Dawn’ was quite graphic in its depiction of violence and brutality, particularly for a novel authored by a woman; at that time, only male writers like Norman Spinrad (‘The Men in the Jungle’) and Piers Anthony (the ‘Battle Circle’ trilogy) had written sf novels with as high a quotient of explicit mayhem.

What makes ‘Dawn’ effective is the author’s failure to offer contrived notes of hope; the landscape through which Thea and Evan move is one in which any last vestiges of kindness and morality are fast becoming expunged by the relentless onslaught of both raiders, and ecological decay.

‘Dawn’ is a cornerstone novel in the post-apocalyptic sub-genre of sf. If you like your post-apocalyptia to have a ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Fallout 3’ flavor, then it’s sure to appeal to you.

(For another review of ‘False Dawn’, readers are directed to the 'Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations' blog.)

Eschatus

Eschatus
Future Prophecies from Nostradamus' Ancient Writings
by Bruce Pennington

I remember seeing this book periodically being advertised in various magazines during the late 70s and early 80s, and reasoned that it was the ideal Stoner Book. 

I'm surprised that nostalgia hadn't motivated me to pick the book up since those long-ago days, but I recently did, indeed, get a copy; these can be had from the usual used book vendors online for reasonable prices. 

'Eschatus' (78 pp) was published in the US in 1977 by Fireside / Simon and Schuster. At 12" x 12" it's a large, well-made book with good quality reproductions, most of which are too large for me to scan in their entirety.

'Eschatus' is indeed a Stoner-friendly art book, one that perfectly captures the strange obsession with prophecy and the apocalypse that was a big part of 70s pop culture (remember Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth books ? Or the Omen movies ? )

Nostradamus (1503 - 1566) was the Latinized name of Michel de Nostredame, a French multidisciplinary scholar who, over the period from 1555 - 1558, published three books of poetry called The Prophecies. The poems were four-line works, called quatrains, that supposedly predicted forthcoming world events, particularly disasters. 

Nostradmus's poems were (even by the relaxed literary standards of the time) often obtuse, often incoherent, and often so open to interpretation as to be of questionable worth as prophecies:

Nonetheless, The Prophecies sold very well upon release, and over the centuries have become one of the cornerstone documents of Western explorations of the supernatural and the occult.

Which brings us to 'Eschatus', which Pennington considers a 'visual interpretation of many of the prophecies of Nostradamus.' Pennington is envisioning events that will take place several centuries from now (i.e., the late 20th century) and thus many of the illustrations in the book have a science-fiction theme.

Most of the quatrains that Pennington has selected to illustrate are those that - for him, at least - prophecy disasters of apocalyptic scale, giving rise to landscapes of ruination, destruction, and mass deaths.

Pennington interprets some quatrains as predicting the rise of a militaristic New World Order akin to those of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

Nostradamus's poetry lends itself well to interpretations of a symbolic, rather than realistic, nature:

Pennington's work is clearly inspired to some extent by the paintings of Salvadore Dali:

The final quarter of the book is made up of several pages of lists of phrases appearing in Nostradmus' poems, phrases which Pennington used to guide his compositions.

Summing up, 'Eschatus' is worth picking up if you are a fan of Pennington's art, fantastic art in general, or.....if you are a stoner and looking for some art that goes well with being stoned - !