Bran Mak Morn The Last King!

Bran Mak Morn is an utterly fascinating character and one of the most mysterious created by Robert E. Howard. The Ballantine collection Bran Mak Morn - The Last King actually is a collection of not just Howard's Bran Mak Morn stories, but of his Pict stories in general.

Only three stories about Bran Mak Morn were published in Howard's lifetime, and only one, the outstanding "Worms of the Earth" is a full-fledged story from the Pictish king's perspective. Also included are "Kings of the Night" which co-stars Kull of Valusia and "The Dark Man" which showcases not Bran himself but his enigmatic statue which is the object of worship a thousand years after his death. One story rejected originally by Weird Tales was "Men of the Shadows" which lays out the Pictish history very nicely in a wonderful tale.

Also in this volume are some stories about Picts such as "The Lost Race", "The Little People", and "Children of the Night". There are lots of essays and background materials in this volume to flesh it out, all of it of keen interest to a Howard devotee.

Of all of Howard's burly heroes, the smaller dark king of the Picts seems in many ways the closest to the man himself.

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Monstermen And Other Scary Stories!

The Monstermen first appeared in the pages of Hellboy. All of the stories were written and drawn by Gary Gianni, a remarkable artist who has since gone on to become the successor to John Cullen Murphy on the venerable Prince Valiant comic strip, only the third artist on that venerable American creation, before he himself was replaced by Tom Yeates. The stories fall broadly into that category of fiction called "Ghost Detectives". 

While he has moved on from Camelot in more recent years still, but as with this volume his early Dark Horse work is still with us and is fascinating in many respects.

"The Monstermen" is a small (somewhat undefined) group also called "Corpus Monstrum" and are dedicated to fending off supernatural attacks of various kinds.  You get the sense that there are others, but the two we actually meet are the helmeted Benedict who takes the lead and his associate Lawerence St. George, a movie magnate who seems to be an assistant. We also encounter a villain of sorts named Crulk who reappears in very peculiar ways.

In the stories contained in this volume the team battles vengeful ghosts, dark demons and shambling monsters across the globe. My favorite story is titled "The Skull and the Snowman" in which the team encounters a most familiar monster. The stories are exceedingly luxurious in their image, but frankly I found the storytelling a bit too spare in places to allow me to keep up. There is though a wonderful atmosphere to the stories as a whole that elevates them, even with some meager plots.

The volume from Dark Horse contains the whole canon was supplemented by several classic horror and fantasy stories by the likes of William Hope Hodgson, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Gianni is an outstanding illustrator and he adds to classics like Howard's "Old Garfield's Heart" and Smith's "Mother of Toads".

I found this book for cheap, but it's really rather worth its price if you can find it. 

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The Web Of Crime!

Audiences have always cottoned to heroes who are resolute and have the courage of their convictions. The Shadow was such a hero, and he was rough and tough and very successful, so much so that imitators came into being. In The Spider, a vintage pulp hero published originally by Popular Publications beginning in the 1930's they found a hero who was not afraid to take the law into his own hands like The Shadow, in fact he was quite ready and willing to hand down death sentences to those he deemed worthy.  The Spider as written by Norvell Page and others is the best of those, following the model but being just different enough to garner his own following. This month I want to spend some time with The Spider and explore his grim menacing world. Thanks to publishers like Moonstone, Baen, Vanguard and others, there is a lot of great Spider material out there, from reprints of the original pulps to new novels and short stories, and even comic book and movie serial adaptations. Below are some of the works I'm hoping to get to this month. 

But The Spider did not fight crime alone. There are plenty of other vigilantes who took a bite out of crime and I'd like to visit and revisit with some of those distinctive agents of justice. See below for a chamber full of options such as Lone Justice, The Black Beetle, Monstermen, and The Dreamwalker. 

And sometimes telling the difference between the good guys (or gals) and the bad ones can be a little difficult. Hardboiled dicks come in all genders it seems as we see with the classic It Rhymes with Lust by Arnold Drake and Matt Baker, Fiction Illustrated's Schlomo Raven by Tom Sutton and Chandler by Jim Steranko, Ms. Tree- Deadline by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, and Johnny Dynamite by Pete Morisi. 

And crime can strike anywhere, even the "most magical place on the Earth". So, it seems only appropriate to check out the devious doings of Mickey Mouse's arch enemy The Phantom Blot. The Blot debuted in the Mickey Mouse comic strip but proved popular enough to even get his comic book series from Gold Key in the 1960's. 

Crime makes for good anthologies as well as evidenced by DC's Greatest Detective Stories Ever Told and The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics. Both tomes have delightful surprises between their mysterious covers. 

And look for an overview of the early career of Marvel's famous crime crusher, the Punisher. Frank Castle rose to fame in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man and took the world by storm, shot by shot. These early tales allow a reader to enjoy the evolution of Marvel's toughest character. 

And I want to take a little time tomorrow to talk about the late great Steve Ditko who gave us two of comics most relentless crime fighters in The Question and Mr. A. Mr. A's stories have most recently been gathered together in the pages of Avenging World. 

And I mentioned Max Allan Collins earlier. He's a fecund writer of mysteries of all kinds and some of the ones I enjoy most are a trio of stories he fashioned which take a look at infamous crimes committed within the comics community, or perhaps might have been. 

And then there's more film such as the hard-nosed Blade Runner which adapts Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick with gritty determination. Also on hand is the somewhat more tongue-in-cheek trio of tales about Trancers which features a tough as nails detective named Jack Deth of all things. Also look for the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow a strange movie which has an even more bizarre connection to The Spider. 

That's a lot on my plate this month of Thanksgiving, and there's more I haven't mentioned. But we in America like to eat hearty during this month. So, strap in and come with me down some pretty dark crime alleys at Dojo this month. But be sure to keep your heads down amigos, the bullets are flying. 

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Another Kind Of Archie Collection!

I bought The Manhunter yet again. Let me explain.

Browsing at my new favorite bookstore Half-Price Books I chanced upon the heavy DC tome Tales of the Batman Archie Goodwin. Now I'm an Archie Goodwin fan from my earliest days since I detected something crisp and different in the Iron Man story in issue five of that series. Then I learned that Goodwin was a great editor, one of good repute with is colleagues and so when he tumbled over to DC (he moved a lot) I was there to catch hold as he took the moribund Detective Comics brand and infused pure adventure into its veins. The Batman stories were better with brilliant art by Jim Aparo, Sal Amendola, Dick Giordano, Howie Chaykin and Alex Toth, and the writing was even better. But as good as the lead Bat tales were the wee back up feature by Goodwin and Walt Simonson was revolutionary. The Manhunter needs no introduction I'm sure, but reading it for this adolescent was intoxicating, tiny gems of great price they were indeed. Along with Kirby's "Fourth World" and Cuti and Staton's E-Man they are my favorite Bronze Age epics ever.

I did not know they had been collected into this book, assuming at most the epic finale which does co-star Batman was the extent of it. But they are all here under a new Walt Simonson cover. Actually the table of contents says the reprint is of the Manhunter collection from 1999 which also includes the silent tale plotted by Goodwin and drawn by Simonson but never scripted since Goodwin passed away before it could be completed.

In addition to these gems are stories of lesser interest to me, not an inveterate Bat-fan, but which nonetheless look pretty good. A five-part yarn with Marshal Rogers art (another talent who died too soon) and a graphic novel by Bo Hampton. There's great art by Gary Gianni too, lush and festive.

Archie Goodwin was renowned to be a good man, an editor who understood and managed talent with aplomb and with a skill which made them love him. He moved around a lot, working at Warren, Marvel, and DC but never staying anywhere very long. He was a great writer and I'm glad to have his Manhunter epic in a handy format yet again. If I get the chance I might well buy it again in the future. Now to read it.

Here's a cover gallery of what's in this tome.

(Batman story not included.)

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