Hollywood Gothic And The Monster Show!

Hollywood Gothic - The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen is a 1990, but updated in the early 2000's. Its sub-title tells up pretty accurately what the late David Skal was up to in this in look at how Bram Stoker's novel was composed and subsequently marketed, first on stage and later in the movie houses across the world. Stoker worked for a famous actor named Henry Irving and wanted his employer to bring the work to the stage but that never happened. Instead, the work was adapted to the stage a few times by various people, many with the authorization of Stoker's widow Florence, who in her time was a renowned beauty courted by not only Stoker, but Oscar Wilde among others. Dracula was a primary source of income for the widow, and she protected the rights with vigor. 

Many pages are dedicated to her battles to end distribution of Nosferatu, the German silent adaptation by F.W Murnau. Ultimately the court order to destroy all the prints of the movie failed thank goodness, or we'd not have arguably the scariest Dracula movie of all time. The other great Dracula movie is the 1931 effort from Universal and the story of how that cash-strapped studio finally put the project together is the core of this book. We follow not only the fortunes but also the misfortunes of the many actors and talents who have appeared in Dracula films. First among these is the bizarre Bela Lugosi who because of his appearance as the vampire became fantastically famous, but he was also trapped in horror roles. 

The book tracks the character as he became grist for others such as Hammer Films with their Christopher Lee offerings as well Frank Langella's take in a later Universal film. Even Marvel's long-running 70's comic version gets a mention. This is a fascinating investigation of the story of Dracula, from print to the silver screen. 

The Monster Show was written by Skal in 1993 and likewise was updated in the early years of this century. This book is a broader investigation of horror movies and how they've become such a staple of the entertainment diet. The title of the book was one considered as an alternate title for the movie Freaks by Tod Browning. Tod Browning is the focus of the early parts of this book as well as the way this director, formerly a carnival performer and explores his fascination with deformity. Deformity was something the world was forced to adapt to when so many soldiers returned from World War I with hideous life-changing war wounds, wounds that once upon a time would have killed them. 

Also of keen interest is Frankenstein, in particular the Universal horror movie starring Boris Karloff. Mad science is featured in horror films, progress run amok some might imagine. Skal tracks not only the Frankenstein films, but other such Island of the Damned and The Wolfman from the classic era. Then he follows the development of the monster movie into the 1950's and the bevy of radioactive monstrosities that rumble across the movie screen in all their giant splendor. 

The development of the "Monster Kid" generation was key with magazines such Famous Monsters of Filmland and the coming of classic monster movies to television.  Films like Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist helped to define the 60's and 70's just as flicks like It's Alive and sundry slasher films defined the 80's. The human body and the mutilation of same by science or midnight intruder are at the core of what we regard as horror. 

Both of these books are dandy reads, as Skal tries to make some sense of how the world came to become at once bewildered by, entranced by, and even fall in love with monsters. 

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Sherlock Holmes - Scarlet In Gaslight!

Where and exactly when I picked up Scarlet in Gaslight I don't recollect. But this masterful story of Sherlock Holmes facing off against Dracula made a huge impression. I first read the story as a collection from Malibu Comics from 1988. This slightly smaller version of the tale does some injustice to Seppo Makinen's elegant and vibrant artwork but the tale remains intact.

There have been many stories written pitting Arthur Conan Doyle's supremely logical consulting detective against Bram Stoker's supremely evil lord of the undead, but in this comics telling Martin Powell gives adds a flavorful dash of humanity to Holmes and oddly enough to Dracula too. Both are rich personalities with specific motivations and particular worldviews. In the case of Holmes, his confrontation with the startling reality of the undead rocks his world of reason and carefully groomed intellect and his mind falls into disorder. In the case of Dracula, his craving for control is frustrated by evil folks who seek use him as a weapon in their battle against a peaceful world. Both of our protagonists overcome their conflicts and that makes this story hum so effectively.
 

Seppo Makinen's artwork in these stories has a real flavor to it. Unlike so much of the comic art produced in the modern day, there is a real style and whimsy to Makinen's supple lines. The artwork improves as the story progresses, suggesting that Makinen gains his footing a bit through the tale, and by the end he is in full control of the storytelling and the textures. This is a black and white story, produced originally for Malibu's black and white "Eternity Comics" brand in waning days of what we now dub the "Black and White Boom". It's a story best told in black and white, not only to preserve Makinen's lush linework, but to retain the frosty atmosphere the story so successfully develops.

The story has proven a success and has been reprinted a number of times over the intervening years by several publishers.

I most recently read the tale in the Moonstone version of Sherlock Holmes story by Powell and Makinen. There are two volumes in this handsome set despite the rather mundane and uninspired cover artwork. Building on the critical success of Scarlet in Gaslight, the two did several more Holmes stories pitting the detective against some very odd foes. I'll have more to say on those at a later date.

But I give Scarlet in Gaslight my highest recommendation. If you have not yet read this stunning tale of reason versus madness then seek it out and give it a go. It's one of the best stories of Sherlock Holmes not written by Doyle and one of the best stories produced in the comic book format ever.

NOTE: This is a Dojo Revised Classic Post. 

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The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century!

Century is the third volume in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga (following Black Dossier which is not technically a chapter but an appendix of sorts) and it delivers on many of the plot threads which have been gathering through the early stories. This is the first volume published by Top Shelf. The focus as always is on Mina Harker, now immortal and still hanging around with the equally rejuvanated Alan Quartermain as the story begins. The "new" character Orlando, a transexual immortal who wields Excalibur, also plays a very bizarre and significant role. 

In 1910 Mina, Alan and Orlando along with other members the ghost hunter Thomas Carnacki (created by William Hope Hodgson) and the gentleman thief A.J. Raffles (created by E.W. Hornung) find themselves confronting a terrifying menace which seeks to do no less than invoke the Anti-Christ of all things. In the backdrop of London as usual, this menace is confronted in the form of Haddo, a cult leader who as we will learn is able to migrate from one body to another giving him effectively a potentially eternal existence. There is also the return of Jack the Ripper to contend with. We also meet Janni Dakkar, the daughter of the elderly Captain Nemo, who rejects his desires that she replace him as leader of the pirates he'd assembled for decades. She strikes out on her own and comes to London as well and meets a terrible fate. Her bloody wrath is biblical. 

We jump forward fifty years to 1969 and at this point Mink, Alan, and Orlando operate under the control of Prospero from his other-dimensional "Blazing World".  In a weird, wonderful and terrifying odyssey, beginning when they are returned to London aboard the Nautilus by a much older and calmer Janni, they again seek the Anti-Christ and again battle the sorcerer Haddo who seeks yet another new body. But things go even more unsettled as Mina defeats the plans of Haddo, but she herself meets a grim fate after enduring an exceedingly "bad trip".  Alan and Orlando are leaderless, and their mission is called into question as the story ends. The end of the world seems nigh, but most folks are high. (We also get another glimpse of Janni Dakkar, but more on that next week.)

We slip forward to 2009 and in this version of London life has gone quite astray. The promises of 1969 have fallen well short, and war and suffering abound abroad and in the city of London proper, Orlando is set upon by Prospero to continue the mission abandoned decades before and seeks both Alan and Mina who have become lost. The latter she finds, and Mina is rehabilitated to some degree following a miserable fate. The two seek to find the Anti-Christ and succeed, but his identity is quite a shock for fans of young adult fiction. Alan Quartermain returns to the battlefield for a final time as the threat is ended but at a terrible cost for one and all. 

"Minions of the Moon" written by "John Thomas" is the text feature in this collection. This bogus sci-fi epic supposedly appeared originally in the equally bogus Lewd Worlds Science Fiction. (Though that would be a great name for a sci-fi mag.) It's a hodge-podge of elements, mostly about a coming conflict on the Moon between a society of Amazons (in desperate need of sperm to continue their race) and the Selenites first seen in First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. The Selenites worship the body of Cavor and it's his body, encased in amber that the Amazons wish to harvest for sperm. We also get the back story for the black-faced "Golliwog" who it turns out is an escaped slave from deepest space who landed in Toy Land on Earth and was saved by Frankenstein's Creature, among others. Mina Murray is around, sporting a helmet which renders her invisible as she tries stop the war per instructions from Prospero of the Blazing World. 

We also get a glimpse of the defunct "Seven Stars", a team of costumed do-gooders Mina organized briefly in the early 60's. The team disbanded after one tragic battle. And all of this is framed around a woman who is suffering delusions in a mental ward, and of course as we know from the main tale, that's Mina too. 

I really enjoy Century. The three chapters set in three very distinct and different settings is a very clever way to spin a yarn. Moore and O'Neill do a fantastic job capturing the atmosphere of the different eras - a dour 1910, a psychedelic 1969, and a rundown 2009. Besides our team of Mina, Alan and Orlando, the stories all share "The Prisoner of London", a man who cannot move from the geographical region of the city, but who slips through time and appears in all three times, often with bewildering advice. The creativity bounces off the page in these stories and O'Neill's artwork seems particularly energetic. Great stuff!

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The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Empire Dreams!

Someone says to you that they will write a story teaming up many famous and infamous characters of the 18th and 19th centuries in a sprawling grand adventure set in a never-never land of world history, and they are incredibly unpleasant to each other to boot. Sounds a little fishy but Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill pulled it off when they gave the world The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The team is composed of a woman who has suffered a savage attack from forces of darkness, a famous white hunter who has become addicted to opium, a timid chap who changes into a man-eating monster, a murderous and lecherous fellow who cannot be seen, and a blood-thirsty pirate driven by revenge. This is a rollicking comic book tale with a stunning approach to grand old characters in that it gives them no respect whatsoever, they are forced to earn the reader's admiration all over again and some actually do.

This title has been out over twenty years, so spoilers seem unnecessary but but tread carefully because I divulge secrets below. 

The story begins with Wilhemina (Mina) Murray (from Bram Stoker's Dracula) being given a mission by the mysterious and rotund Mr. Campion Bond on the behalf of his downright enigmatic boss known only as "M". Her mission to round up a bunch of bizarre men who will form a task force to operate on behalf of M. Her first stop is an opium den where she finds a dissolute Alan Quatermain (of She and other novels by H. Rider Haggard). Next she and a reluctant Quatermain are introduced to Captain Nemo (from Jules Vernes novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island) and his enormous vessel the Nautilus which whisks them to Paris to discover another member, the savage Mr. Edward Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson's creation from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). 

After capturing Hyde, who reverts to the meager Dr. Jekyll, the outfit returns to England to visit a girl's school where strange things are afoot. Girls are seemingly being impregnated by supernatural means, but it is shown it is in fact the transparent Hawley Griffin (from H.G. Well's novel The Invisible Man) who is doing the knocking up. 

Fully assembled this "League" is given its mission, to track down and find some lost "Cavorite" (a mineral which defies gravity from Well's From the Earth to the Moon) that has fallen into the hands of an unnamed Asian villain called the "Devil Doctor" (Fu Manchu from many novels by Sax Rohmer). This villain plans to use the Cavorite to power an immense vehicle which give him power in London and elsewhere. 

The League finds the Cavorite and after bloody and ferocious fighting liberate on the behalf of "M". The mysterious M is not Mycroft Holmes as Mina had surmised but the "Napolean of Crime", Professor James Moriarty (Arthur Conan Doyle's creation from his Sherlock Holmes canon). Moriarty wants the Cavorite for his own air vehicle to give him the power and aid him in his battle against the Devil Doctor. 

We learn how Moriarty survived the Reichenbach Falls incident and then we are treated to the details of his scheme. Also listening in was the invisible Griffen who savagely assumes a policeman's identity to travel across London to tell his colleagues. They realize the mistake they have made and prepare to battle Moriarty's forces in defense of London. 

The war between Moriarty's air forces and Fu Manchu's forces spills across the sky of London. The League uses a balloon to infiltrate Moriarty's ship and then proceed to bring down his forces, in a most brutal manner. Moriarty is defeated when clinging to the Cavorite he slips out of sight into the sky. The League is recognized for their valor by Mycroft Holmes who assumes Moriarty's position. They agree to stay together as the skiy is brightened by the harbinger of a Martian invasion. 

Also included in each issue of the six-issue run and combined in the rear of the collection is "Allan and the Sundered Veil". This is prequel of sorts for the League story in which Allan Quatermain is summoned to a remote estate and given a drug which causes him to slip out of sync with time. In this other world of timelessness, he encounters Randolph Carter (H.P. Lovecraft's supernatural hero) and Captain John Carter (the stalwart of many Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs). The former is a seeker of weird mysteries and the latter a Civil War soldier who found himself for a time on the planet Mars. They are joined by a Time Traveler (from the Well's novel of the same name) who travels in a strange vehicle and end up fighting ferocious man-beasts in the future known as Mi-Go or Morlocks. Eventually they are stranded on a giant crystal of time and eventually return to their worlds. Quatermain is quite shattered by his adventure and seeks the solace of Opium where he will be discovered by Mina Murray. 

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman is a delightful brew of the familiar and the bizarre. Moore uses his encyclopedic knowledge of literature to feather the story with all sorts of references. Kevin O'Neill's bizarre but compelling treats these giants of literature with more vigor than respect, making them come alive all over again in this strange and wonderful tale. The story is a brutal one, and not for the faint of heart. It's filled with the whole panoply of passions people get up to, so the reader should be warned that this is not the calm and polite world in which these creatures usually inhabit. It's a raucous world filled enormous buildings and bewildering architecture of all sorts. It's a ton of fun and the best thing is that there is a second volume which to my mind is even better. 

More on that tomorrow. 

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The White Worm!

The White Worm by Sam Siciliano is the fourth to date in Titan Books series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It's the shortest of the four I believe and that's to its immediate benefit as the others are rather bloated affairs in the final analysis. The previous entries are The Angel of the Opera, The Web Weaver, and The Grimswell Curse. 

Once again we have the story told not by Dr. John Watson, but by Dr. Henry Vernier who purports to give us a more human presentation of the great detective. Actually by this fourth volume I find myself getting very tired of Vernier's somewhat pompous opinions and his rather constant reflections on sex. He's a married man and that's fine, but he's a bit of horndog and his desires are discussed more than I'd deem necessary to develop the mystery.

Siciliano this time has again attempted to fold Sherlock into a mystery from another literary source. He did this with The Angel and the Opera where he stuck Holmes into the middle of Gaston Leroux's novel of the Phantom. Here he plunders Bram Stoker's weird novel The Lair of the White Worm. I rather enjoyed the Stoker adventure and have a higher opinion of it than does Siciliano. Still I do agree it's a great setting for a Sherlock mystery.

The social dogma coming under scrutiny this time are Victorian notions of sex, particularly the lack of sex education given to youngsters so that they might approach their sex lives with some degree of understanding and with less fear and loathing. A noble idea, but like the previous obsessions with corsets and giant anatomy, the lectures get tiresome. But there does seem to be less of it here.

Sherlock is engaged by a young man of wealth to help him get to the bottom (quite literally as it turns out) of a mystery around his home which concerns an ancient cult and the devilish dragon/worm they worship. He wants assistance with that and help with the woman he loves, but for whom he feels less than capable of successfully bedding. While Sherlock uncovers the secrets of the cult, Vernier operates as a guidance counselor to the two youngsters giving them advice, backed up by his wife who shows up too, about a healthy marriage, one not necessarily built on the Victorian notions of pain and suffering.

We get to meet some real characters this time, a libertine lady who wanders around in the buff and constantly makes randy recommendations and a local pseudo-scientist who is positively insane. Death is close at hand at all times as are lots of snakes and other weird creatures. The weirdness does peter out though a bit sooner than the narrative and again the mystery seems not to be the primary concern, an odd choice for Holmes pastiche.

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Hammer Times - The Horror Of Dracula!

1958's Horror of Dracula is one of my favorite Hammer films.  This is the one which gave us the great Christopher Lee as Bram Stoker's immortal Count. The movie got the green light after the success of The Curse of Frankenstein the previous year, though the path to the theaters for this classic remake was a twisting one indeed. Along with Lee, we have Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing and the whole shebang is directed by Terence Fisher using a script by Jimmy Sangster.

The story is at once familiar but different enough to hold the interest throughout. I've always been particularly taken by the first half hour which focuses on Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) as he visits the castle of Dracula posing as a librarian. It's in these scenes only that Dracula (Christopher Lee) ever speaks and we are allowed to see the polished nobleman who contrasts with the bloodthirsty fiend of the rest of the flick. The story is wise to shift as it does to Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) as he follows up on Harker who had been working in league with him. I prefer a Harker who knows what he's getting into, it worked well. Now the balance of the movie shifts to the home of Arthur and Mina Holmwood (Peter Gough and Melissa Stribling) and we see the corruption of Harker's love Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh). The story is nicely compact and has a great pace.

Lee's Dracula is laced with a casual brutality that can still be shocking even today. The way he casually tosses a body into a grave, the manner in which he coldly looms over his prey are pretty chilling. In contrast  Cushing gives us a Van Helsing with some decent characteristics, he's polite but determined. The finale is a pretty good one.

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The Blackest Of Dossiers!

The Black Dossier came out and I snatched up a copy. I promptly put it away and never got around to reading it. Finally I have and I must say that while I find the 1958 setting of an alternate-universe Britain recovering from the "Big Brother" period and poised on the precipice of space travel enjoyable, and the update on the characters Mina Murray and Allan Quartermain interesting much of this wild yarn is just too bewildering.

Whereas the early volumes of adventures of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" were rich with allusions and literary references, this book is overcome with them, so much so that the story grinds to a halt for me as I just gave up trying to figure it all out.

Here is a look at the Jess Nevins site which attempts to annotate the myriad references in this volume. It's a gigantic job and as I read through it I realized I never had a chance as most of the material was so Brit specific that I never knew of it to begin with, let alone have a chance to recognize it.

On the upside I have read Bulldog Drummond stories recently and that made his appearance much more enjoyable, in fact he's the stand out addition to the saga in this  installment, despite his loathsome ethnic opinions.

I cannot exactly recommend The Black Dossier, but I won't say you shouldn't try it either. It's a strange brew indeed.

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Night Of The Extraordinary Gentlemen!

This second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a much more compelling read than the first. Freed of the need to introduce our cast, this one can leap to the events which motivate their involvement, and as it turns out bring about their destruction.

I'm a big War of the Worlds fan and my re-reading of the TLoEG this time was prompted by the way they blend the classic Wells material in with that of Burroughs,  Lewis and others. The Martian threat is a compelling backdrop for all manner of heroics and we see them fully on display in this crackerjack adventure.

The League ends as quickly as it emerged, and that's fitting given the monstrous nature of its membership.

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Day Of The Extraordinary Gentlemen!

Let me begin by saying I think Alan Moore is overrated.

That doesn't mean I don't find some of his work fascinating and even fun, but the adoration the comics fans have heaped on him over the decades seems wildly out of kilter relative to the work he's produced. That said, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a whopper of a read. Kevin O'Neill's artwork is crazy distinctive and gives this story a cantankerous quality which helps it alternate universe bloom. (I read that Moore wanted Simon Bisley originally for this story -- a huge mistake that.)

It's been many years since I sat down and read TLoEG through, and since then the movie has appeared and I've seen it several times. I'd forgotten how comparatively vicious the comic is relative to the more polished and benign film.

This origin story is a compelling read, offering up glimpses of a literary universe brimming with weirdly familiar characters. The organization of the League is hair-brained and always seemed poorly motivated, but necessary for plot reasons. As we learn on the last page of the last issue, the League was assembled for potentially other reasons.

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The Color Of Dracula!

Marvel struck a rich vein indeed when they took advantage of changes in the Comics Code to branch out into monsters. Tomb of Dracula was a masterwork, one of the finest series of the Bronze Age. Likewise, Dracula found some success, at least for a time, in the black and white Dracula Lives series.

Roy Thomas and the late great Dick Giordano took advantage of all this Dracula comic page count to attempt an adaptation of the original novel by Bram Stoker. They worked diligently for many issues but alas did not finish, at least not for nearly thirty years when their version of the classic tale was at long last completed and published in glorious black, white, and red by Marvel in four lovely comic books.

Those comics were later collected and color by June Chung was added to the artwork. I've at long last added this brighter rendition of the story to my stacks, a handsome hardback collection of this magnificent work. Sadly, it's clear that Giordano's skills had diminished slightly by the time he was able to bring this classic story to a conclusion, but only slightly. The art looks fantastic in black and white thanks to Giordano's always crisp line work, and I have to say it looks pretty dang good in glorious color too.

Earlier this summer I re-read the classic Stoker novel, and I'm eager to re-read this vivid adaptation. 

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