wow

very cool (via Spurgeon)

More thoughts on "Christian Horror" (Updated)

Huh--many weeks after this post, Steve Biodrowski responds to it at Cinefantastique. My impression is that he didn't read what I had to say very carefully, because most of his "objections" are addressed in the post itself or at least in the comments. In fairness, I wrote that post a little too off-the-cuff and didn't make some points as clearly as I should have.

His main beef seems to come down to this:

[Purcell] seems to be writing not about genre material that includes Christian elements; for him, “Christian Horror” represents something more specific: a form of horror that hews so closely to fundamentalist doctrine that it would achieve approval even from the most conservative self-appointed guardian of public morals.

I find this argument to be a straw-man: basically, Purcell says that if you’re a Christian horror writer, you must do this, and this won’t work. But the reason that this won’t work is that Purcell has deliberately defined this in a way that won’t work. As logicians would say, he is begging the question.

John Morehead of TheoFantastique voices much the same complaint in the comments:

For my response, Curt’s argument hinges upon specific definitions of “Christianity,” “horror,” and “compatibility” that I do not accept, in addition to disagreein [sic] with the further arguments he advances in support of his thesis. As an interesting side note, in my view, the definitions Curt uses which lead to his incompatibility thesis are the same as those used by fundamentalist and many evangelical Christians who arrive at the same conclusion. Both do so erroneously in my view, as my specific essays on this topic as well as the overall thrust of TheoFantastique indicate.

I kind of thought that's what we were talking about--horror that could be shelved in the "Inspirational Fiction" section of Barnes & Noble, or sold in Family Bookstores, or reviewed in Christianity Today, or consumed by people with iPods full of Christian rock (or whatever genre of Christian music they listen to). Because when you're talking about "Christian _____," that's the market you're talking about. Because who else ever demands a specifically Christian version of whatever? I'd guess most "mainline" (i.e. non-evangelical Protestant) Christians don't particularly care if their entertainment caters to their religious worldview, so long as it doesn't blatantly offend their sensibilities. No, it's evangelicals who are so determined to filter the whole of their experience through their faith that they support entire industries devoted to supplying them with the Christian version of everything.

Morehead may chafe against the restrictiveness of evangelical culture, but I'd be very surprised if his desire for Christian horror isn't coming from a basically evangelical mindset. I know quite well, from my younger days, what it's like to want the Christian version of something, but to feel great frustration at the low quality and unchallenging nature of what that market produces. I know what it's like to imagine ideals of what "Christian ______" could be. Yet somehow those ideals never get realized, do they? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Coming back to Biodrowski's post, of course I'm not unaware of things like crosses in vampire fiction. I mean, come on--I wrote this. As for his claim that, "horror does not celebrate monsters, darkness, and chaos," I can only shake my head. His question about horror that uses the tropes and trappings of other religions is no can of worms--why shouldn't different cultures draw from their religious traditions for conceptions and images of supernatural horror, just as the West has with Christianity, just as I myself am doing (as I mentioned in my original post)?

So I guess we're off on another round of discussion here. Have at it!

By the way, here's something of related interest.

UPDATE: Looks like Morehead recently posted about Biodrowski's piece on his own blog. He says, "I see no incompatibility between my faith commitments and my appreciation for the fantastic, including horror," and to a certain extent I'd agree. Obviously, plenty of Christians, whatever that means to them, are fans of horror to varying degrees. That doesn't mean the notion of "Christian horror" makes a lot of sense. I'd be curious to see some examples that really get it right, in his estimation. Maybe I need to comb his blog a little more closely; I know he has a lot of examples of various Christian critical approaches to horror, but I can't recall any examples of the kind of "Christian horror" he's wishing for.

THE TERROR OF FU MANCHU by WIlliam Patrick Maynard (Black Coat Press 2009)

The insidious Dr. Fu Manchu is back!

Officially sanctioned by the Sax Rohmer estate, Black Coat Press recently published this new novel featuring his greatest creation: Asian supervillain Fu Manchu, the criminal genius/master hypnotist dedicated to the destruction of the West and eventual world domination. The book is canonical, fitting in comfortably with the established series, for which author William Maynard shows great respect. He writes in the early 20th Century style of Rohmer (albeit less prolix and somewhat more risqué), yet is not bound by the political/racial conventions of that era. Its Anglo-Saxon protagonists still fight against the “Yellow Peril” but they’re cognizant that the danger is partly a result of “blowback”, a fanatical nationalism born of imperialist policies towards China by Britain and other western powers. That they recognize this fact does not in any way lessen their steely resolve to combat Fu and his forces of subversion and terror.

London, 1913: The bizarre murder of an ex-clergyman has Special Commissioner Nayland Smith and colleague Dr. Petrie fearing the worst — that Fu Manchu is alive, that the Si-Fan, Fu’s secret, lethally efficient organization, is once again active on British soil. The dead man, an acquaintance of Smith and Petrie’s from a previous adventure, was about to have the memoirs of his experiences in China during the Boxer Rebellion published. Now he’s dead and the only copy of his manuscript is missing. Smith believes that the book may well hold the key to Fu Manchu’s true identity. Investigating the publisher, a link to another secret society — a Theosophist occult group called the Brotherhood of the Magi — is uncovered. Is the Brotherhood working with or against the Si-Fan, or is it being unwittingly manipulated by them? As Smith hunts for clues in England, Petrie travels to Paris and joins in an uneasy alliance with master detective Gaston Max of the Sureté to learn more about the Brotherhood. The trip proves to be anything but a Gallic holiday…

Our heroes face numerous pulpy perils, to include a giant snake, a crocodile pit, Si-Fan operatives dressed in weird snowman costumes, and people unknowingly hypnotized into becoming assassins. And that’s as it should be — pure Rohmer. Like the titular vampire of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Fu himself makes only brief appearances in the flesh yet casts his sinister influence over everything and everyone… When he does appear it is for maximum dramatic impact, signifying key moments in the narrative.

The Terror of Fu Manchu marks the welcome return of one of pulp fiction’s all-time greatest villains and a fine debut by Maynard.

Zora N. 144: L'ucccello Prensile (The Prehensile Willy), Published in July 1980

Welcome to the circus, Groovy Agers, and prepare to gaze upon the mighty Obelisk Man! He may look like an average dude...



...but he has a very impressive "obelisk".



Thus our lovely vampires Zora and Frau Murder naturally seduce him after watching his show.



Alas, after leaving Zora's house the poor Obelisk Man loses both his hands in an accident. Add a couple of months of heavy drinking, and he starts to lose his mind, too.



He has developed a new ability, though.



Mmmm, nothing beats the taste of good old whiskey!



Killing bitches is fun, too!



But it's Zora he really wants to kill, because his sick mind blames her for the accident. Will our lovely vampiress survive this ordeal? Find out within two weeks, same Obelisk Time, same Obelisk Channel!



Anyway, this beauty is one of the first Zoras I ever owned, I think I purchased it somewhere around 2002/2003. On the other hand the conclusion of this story was among the very last Zora issues I bought, I got it when I completed my collection early this year. I had to wait over five years to see how the tale unfolded, but you all just might get more lucky.

FINAL GIRL by David Hutchison et al. (Antarctic 2007)

I scanned the full cover of this "pocket manga" because I wanted you to be able to read the back cover copy, but I didn't feel like typing it out myself. Anyway, click for the biggie, read it, then look at the front cover. Now, on that basis, what are your expectations? They're wrong! This is not a slasher. And even though the first couple pages give detailed profiles of four potential "final girls," the "story" is not about them, it's about this lot:

Who are they? Fuck if I know. They start off that faceless, and never get fleshed in. There's starting in medias res, and then there's just never establishing anyone or anything ever. What are they up against? Fuck if I know. There's a lot of stuff here that looks weird and certainly threatening, but it's so random and unexplained, it's more surrealistic than scary.

Flipping through this before I bought it convinced me to buy it, because if there's one thing I can say in this thing's favor, it's that the art is really quite pretty. Seriously, this looks absolutely amazing cover-to-cover.

The problem is that Hutchison doesn't seem to know how to tell a story with pictures, or at least gives no evidence of knowing how to do so here. I can barely ever tell what's happening from one panel to the next. I mean that literally. The transition between panels, which should be figure-out-able if not transparent, almost always loses me. I honestly couldn't say if the story here is any good, because the art (gorgeous as it is to look at) just doesn't tell it.

How frustrating. Not recommended.

Comics for girls

Whether you agree with the particulars of the Bingo card or the Women in Refrigerators website, their existence and "popularity" (if that's the right word) do suggest that current superhero comics creators could stand to do much better by their female characters and readership.

Sally was a British girls' magazine from the early '70s, and looking at the comics it featured is quite instructive, I think, in how to do it right. I'm struck by the enthusiastic depiction, in these comics, of physical action and adventure. Cat Girl is a young superheroine. The Ghost Hunters are exactly what the name says. The story below, "Jacey and the Pirates," stars a young judo expert who can hold her own in a scrap against much larger male opponents, and can even wrassle a giant crocodile! There's a simple presumption that such stories would appeal to a young girl readership, and why wouldn't they?--the stories really make it look thrilling and fun.

Now, male creators seem to have particular difficulty with female character motivations, with rape, and revenge for the death of a loved one, notoriously serving as the easy, almost default, go-to origin stories. The Sally comics show, however, that there's really nothing tricky or mysterious about motivating female characters.

Why do Cat Girl, the Ghost Hunters, and "Miss Adventure" Jacey willingly face dangerous situations? Two words: interest and competence. It doesn't take a damaged character--or reader--to feel a sense of fascination and a bit of a thrill at the idea of having the kinds of experiences these characters seek out. And since they can, they do. If you could scale walls and run over rooftops like Cat Girl, why wouldn't you?!? If you had an interest in ghosts and a knack for dealing with them, why wouldn't you?!? Just seeing the way Jacey's judo moves are depicted on the page makes me wish I could do them. Mind you, this is a bit simplistic, but the simple truth is that being good at something, especially something that interested you enough to get good at it, is usually a pretty strong motivation for doing it. What's more, getting good at something is usually very much its own reward--competence just feels good, and physical competence literally feels good. Nobody has to be raped to enjoy learning judo.

Note, also, that these girls are really girls, not "boys with boobs." They are pretty and appealing, but realistically so. Their clothes are attractive, but appropriate to their adventures; Cat Girl wears her magic costume, the Ghost Hunters can be mod in miniskirts since their adventure calls for less physical action, but Jacey mostly wears sensible jeans and sneakers (or something like that) when she has to rough-and-tumble.

The stories aren't perfect, of course. The Cat Girl story I posted doesn't pass the Bechdel test, and at the time of this writing, there's an ongoing debate in the comments about the art's odd focus on Cat Girl's, uh, tail (which doesn't seem to be nearly as egregious in the Cat Girl story Pappy posted). The Jacey story below is embarrassingly racist--well, it's a product of its time (lame as that excuse may be).

Even so, unless I'm very mistaken, these stories are free of a lot of the problems that plague depictions of female characters in current superhero comics, and a lot could be learned from them about how to avoid such problems altogether.

torture blast from comics past!!!

Marshal Law Takes Manhattan is a 1989 comic featuring:

SERE!

Isolation! Waterboarding!

Please please please no accountability!

Of course this is all a bunch of tinfoil blame-America-first wackalooniness. Nothing to see here--keep on walking.

Interview with Angela Caperton

Angela Caperton is a writer of erotic fiction. Her novel Woman of the Mountain from eXtasy Books won a 2008 Eppie award from the Electronically Published Internet Connection. She's the primary blogger (with co-blogger Drake) at Exotic Fair of a Wandering Muse. I thought it would be fun to discuss with Angela some of the themes of her writing:

1. A lot of your erotica has some supernatural fantasy or horror aspect to it. Why do stories with supernatural elements lend themselves so well to eroticism and vice-versa, from your point of view as both a writer and reader/viewer? Do you think there's some inherent connection between sexuality and our imagination of the supernatural? Whether you think the connection is entirely inherent or not, what do you think forms the basis of it?

First, Curt, thank you so much for wanting to interview me. I love your blog and just the fact that you want to do this interview is a huge thrill. Great questions too!

I do think there are natural connections between supernatural fantasy and eroticism, both in a "real" way and in ways that arise from the manner our culture views the two themes.

Assuming that our interest in the supernatural is at heart a primitive one, we primitives surround mysterious things with explanations that sometimes come from our subconscious and from the brain's powerful desire to make sense of experience. The harder it is for us to find explanations, the more likely we are to be "terrified." What can be more mysterious than the erotic? Even if you reduce sex to biochemistry (and where’s the fun in that?), the essence of erotic attraction defies understanding, whether we are talking about vanilla male-female sex or the wildest fetishism. Erotic desires are fertile ground for supernatural, scary explanations.

Sex makes us nervous too. Sex is a pretty awesome thing – one we invest a lot of emotion in. Like anything that takes us out of our comfort zone, sexual anxiety can make the basis for a really creepy horror story. I’m a big Cronenberg fan.

Finally, the link between sex and horror is that – for many cultures – both occupy similar forbidden zones. In America, we tend to tolerate violence and demonize sex, but this is fairly unusual among world cultures. I find it funny when I encounter readers who love grisly horror but don’t want any sex to get in the way of the gore.

2. Let's focus on the "darker" and more horror-themed aspects of your writing. The blogger of And Now the Screaming Starts recently argued that the traditional notion of "forbiddenness" doesn't really explain the appeal of that sort of thing, since almost nothing is actually forbidden today--a view I agree with. Do you agree that we can rule out "forbiddenness" as part of the appeal? How would you explain the enduring appeal of these elements in a time when forbiddenness isn't much of an issue?

I touched on this a little in my first answer, and obviously I don’t agree entirely with the Screaming blogger. Although it is much harder to find forbidden topics today, the right setting can make non-forbidden things transgressive.

I just sold a story called "Calendar Girl" to a Cleis Books anthology called Peep Show. Among other things, the story involves the female protagonist's fascination with a glimpse of pubic hair on a model in a pin-up calendar and how that fascination leads into her personal forbidden territory. Now, "Calendar Girl" isn’t a horror story, but I think the analogy still works. The story is set in the late 1950s, when many things were taboo. I think it's possible to rediscover the forbidden.

If you really imagine a vampire's bite, it’s still terrifying. If you take the extra step and bring to life the loss of self, the transformation of normality into something unimaginable, and you do it in a new way, then you can still achieve the same frisson Bram Stoker did 120 years ago. A lot of it comes down to making the connection with the reader that makes them realize the horror. Is this easy to do? Certainly not. Even monsters have become icons – you've touched on this in your blog – and it's damned hard to make them scary or even interesting.

We really can't dismiss forbiddenness. You can buy scat films or the Guinea Pig movies. Torture porn has become mainstream, but there are still taboos and they constantly evolve and move in and out of fashion. Kiddie porn is by far the best example of this. If someone were to make a film today like the relatively innocent old exploitation movie Child Bride, the remake would be far more transgressive than the original was in 1938 and the makers would probably find themselves in court. And there are "forbidden" topics within genres…. I'll get into that more in the next question.

3. The style and concerns of your stories seem to skew pretty hard toward the romantic end of the spectrum. How has that affected your career and the kind of audience you attract? You've mentioned that you started off trying to write romance; is that something you hope to revisit in future projects, or are the kinds of stories you're telling now a satisfying enough outlet for your romantic tendencies?

Okay, let me confess something now and get it over with. I'm a romantic at heart, and I love good, textured romantic stories with happy endings, but I have found over the years that writing such stories is not my forte. My attempts to write "pure" romance were a learning experience and I struggled (attractively I hope) against the bonds of the genre. I wanted to tell stories that didn't fit comfortably into what was commercial at that time (and probably still isn't). Some of what I’m going to say here will sound pretty cliché – most genre writers say similar things, but that's because they are true.

The first sale I made was to eXtasy books, a publisher of romantic erotica, or "Amourotica." It's a very romantic story about a sculptor and his model, but the emphasis is on artistic creation not on romance and the story's punchline is erotic, not romantic. That has kinda set the tone for a lot of what I have written since. I won the Eppie for erotica, not romance.

I love writing romantic stories, but I can’t seem to stop myself from bending the conventions. The Passions of Pearl, which you've read, is a good example. It's packaged as an erotic romance, but I don't think anyone who reads it will find it typical of the genre. It's more of a hardcore, hardboiled fairy tale, and I’m pretty sure my publisher (eXtasy again) wasn't expecting anything like what they got, but Eros bless them, they have been very tolerant of my eccentricities in everything I have sent them. The problem for the writer, of course, is that, with a book like Pearl, some readers who might appreciate the story (heterosexual males for example) will never pick it up because of the way it's packaged. No blame on the publisher – Pearl is part of a line of books based on the Tarot and they have to go with what their known readers want.

Pearl was fun to write and it was the story I wanted to tell, but I think it surprised a lot of readers who may have been expecting a different kind of book. Likewise, my Eppie-winner, Woman of the Mountain is romantic but I also think it's a solid fantasy novel that guys would enjoy as much as girls have – if they ever picked it up.

I have a story in the Black Lace / Virgin anthology Lust at First Bite called "Understudy." Horror fans would appreciate the story – the protagonist is Bela Lugosi's understudy for the Broadway production of Dracula, and the tale is full of detail and vamp lore that many romance readers will miss, but horror fans will probably never read the story because the book falls outside the common boundaries of their genre. The accepted conventions of genre publishing can act like bars that keep audiences away from things they might like.

I'm stretching out (sorry, boys, no pictures!) in what I'm writing now so maybe I won't be identified as "just" a romantic author or an erotica author. My story "Life Model" will appear in the Sexploitation issue of the wonderful neo pulp magazine Out of the Gutter due out late this summer (preorders will be available around the end of this month). That is definitely a new direction for me.

4. As a reader and viewer, you seem to engage pretty intensely with different kinds of fantasy material in a lot of different media. What difference does it make to your imaginative/emotional experience, whether you're watching a movie, reading a story, reading a comic, or playing a computer game? What are you reading/watching/playing now?

I think the common element in all the stuff I enjoy is a purity of imagination and creativity. I really don't distinguish between media, except in the most mechanical way. I'm sometimes more of a content analyst than an audience, as fascinated by how the story works as I am entertained by its events. I will re-read a book or watch a movie again to help me see how it’s put together.

I read a lot of different things, romances, thrillers, comics, non-fiction, erotica though I am not really a voracious reader, mostly because I don’t have time. I did buy a Kindle II recently and have found it's a great way to read in odd times and places. I'm currently reading Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell on it, and have several others already cued up for reading as I can. My partner Drake is a huge fan of pulp entertainment of all kinds and I get a lot of cross-pollination from the things he reads. He is constantly fishing up odd bits of old literature, news, and media that make good fodder for stories. "Life Model" in Out of the Gutter, for example, has roots in an article Drake read in a 1940 true crime magazine about the art racket – where a promoter would put an entirely naked girl on a stage and rent drawing tablets to horny guys so they could claim it was a drawing class when the police came around.

We watch a lot of films, some mainstream stuff, but more foreign and exotica. We just finished the BBC documentary Pornography, which was fairly insightful about the place porn has occupied in Western culture for the last few hundred years. I recently made my way through the two seasons of Dexter that are out on DVD and really loved those – a great example of subject matter that would once have been unimaginable becoming mainstream. Another recent film I liked was a Japanese movie called Ten Nights of Dreams, more surrealism than horror, but a lot of fun. I also really loved Let the Right One In and wish there were a thousand more horror films as entertaining!

Drake and I play online games and we are having a lot of fun with the multiplayer game Age of Conan. We "roleplay" using the game as a kind of stage to interact with other players and to tell spontaneous stories. It sounds odd, but it is a really stimulating thing for a writer to do. It's like fast-paced creative composition, writing dialogue and plotting at the same time. I've written quite a bit about the experience in my blog.

5. What upcoming projects would you like to tell us about?

Well, let me start off with a finished project that I am desperately seeking a home for. Last year I wrote the best story I have ever written, an erotic horror novella called Springs. Because it is not romantic, is extremely dark, and on the long side (10,000 words), I haven't found any potential markets for it and I am absolutely dying to get it out into the world. If you know any small horror presses looking for a really good (and yes, sexy) story, I'd love to hear from them.

While I was working on answering your interview, I heard from Circlet Press that my short story "The Coming Age" has been accepted for their forthcoming Steampunk anthology Like Clockwork. "The Coming Age" is set at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893 and involves a scientist who has found a way to harness erotic energy, and to use it…

The big project in front of me right now is the sequel to my award-winner Woman of the Mountain. Where the first book was a fantasy parable on the creative and destructive power of erotic love, the second, Woman of the Water, is an exploration of dominance and submission between men and women. This is a much different and darker erotic fantasy than Woman of the Mountain.

I just published a fantasy story called "Making Rain" in a benefit anthology, Coming Together: Al Fresco, and I have one that might be of more interest to your readers in another Coming Together book – Coming Together: Against the Odds. That story is "Under a Moving Star" and it’s my shot at telling a different kind of noir detective tale set in the 50s when Sputnik is overhead.

Trendy urban vampire stories don’t often speak to me, but I just submitted to eXtasy what I suppose is my contribution to the genre. "Green Flash" is a contemporary erotic bloodsucker tale set at the annual Fantasy Fest bacchanal in Key West, Florida. It is scheduled to be published as a stand alone e-book around Halloween.

I would love to write a graphic novel, but don’t know anyone who could draw it.

6. Anything else?

Again, thank you so much for a chance to talk to an audience who might never know about my work otherwise. One of the things I love about your blog is the diversity of material you cover. You give me hope that I won’t spend my whole career in genre bondage!

Thank you, Angela!

Under Pressure by Frank Herbert

Originally titled The Dragon In The Sea, Under Pressure deals with a future that seems more than a little bleak. Seems that the only way the The United States can get oil is to use these things called subtugs that go on covert missions to leach oil from the wells of foreign powers.
Now comes a bigger problem. The last twenty subtugs sent out on missions have never returned. That's when they send in Ensign John Ramsey of BuPsych to find out what is taking out all the subtugs and what bizarre things are occurring on the subtug named Ram. Seems that one of the four man crew went insane and the others are behaving in a peculiar manner.
I really enjoyed this novel as I do with most all of Herbert's non-Dune books. As a matter of fact the final book, Chapterhouse Dune just tends to annoy me and I refuse to reread the damned thing.
But, we were talking about this book. In a brief 220 pages Herbert manages to convey the future where The United States is forced to steal oil from its enemies and The British Isles are a radioactive wasteland to be avoided at all costs. Ninety-nine percent of the book takes place in the cramped confines of the sub, but we learn so much about this fictional future through the four men inside the subtug.
I was happy to see the layer of Christianity throughout the book, like a lot of Herbert's work. It makes a positive statement without resorting to heavy handedness or being preachy. A lot of modern so-called Christian writers could learn a thing or three from this man's body of work.
In the end it's a solid piece of sci fi that has every potential of coming true and gives a wild explanation as to what is causing the behaviors of the crews of the subtugs. A definite winner in my book.
One last thing;
Every so often I will be reading along in a book or whatever and a phrase or sentence will stick out and slap me in the face and say, 'Pay attention to me!'. Well, in this case it was this;
'You can't tell a man you love him-not if you're a man. That's a problem, too. We don't have the right word-the one that leaves out sex.'
I thought that was an interesting statement to make. Especially if you look at the time frame it was written in. 1955. Men were rough and tough and far from being in touch with their feelings. Hell, it still holds true today for a vast majority of the male population.
Just an observation.

Free (as in bootleg) comics

Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day, of course, and I "liveblogged" my impressions of the free comics I got as I read them. I looked at them primarily as advertising/promotional material. That's really the purpose of giving anything away that's normally for sale, from movie trailers (which give us, for free, eye-catching and intriguing moments from the movie) to food samples at Sam's Club to sample chapters of forthcoming novels printed in the backs of related novels to, in this particular case, comics.

As it happens, I guess there's an ongoing debate about free comics of another sort--bootleg versions freely available online. I'm not deep enough into comics fandom to know the particulars of the Scans Daily controversy (here's something about it, for example), but from what I gather secondhand it sounds like it revolves around this point. I know this issue came up in the comments thread of Dave Roman's reaction to my review of Agnes Quill (which, significantly enough for this discussion, began as a free webcomic and is still available as such). Here's my two cents about it.

I mentioned yesterday that I picked up vols. 2 and 3 of the tpb collections of The Boys. Well, here's the thing about that--I'd already read the whole of vol. 2 and half of vol. 3 in bootleg form I downloaded for free via bittorrent. As that suggests, I've read the whole of vol. 1, and will be picking that up as soon as my budget permits (probably when I get my tax return this week), and I'll definitely get the forthcoming vol. 4, which I haven't read any of at all. And the reason for that is, The Boys fucking rocks. I consider it worth purchasing--owning in book form and supporting with my money. The quality of the product won me over and convinced me to shell out for it.

This isn't the first time that's happened for me. I originally gave Hack/Slash a trial run via a bootleg I downloaded that encompassed the whole of the first Omnibus collection, which I then purchased, and part of the just-released second Omnibus, which I have on order.

I can state, pretty categorically, that I wouldn't have made any of these purchases had I not read those bootlegs. I came to The Boys as a very hostile audience (being no particular fan of "deconstructive" superhero comics), and to Hack/Slash as a skeptical one (being no particular fan of slasher movies), but they were on my radar insistently enough that I felt I ought to give them a look. The reason I gave them a look via bootleg rather than by going out and buying sample comics is that I didn't feel like throwing money away on something I truly did not expect to like.

The conventional wisdom when it comes to promotional samples is to give away just a taste, just enough to tempt potential buyers to give something a chance. If I went out and bought a sample issue or two of these titles, it wouldn't have been enough to bring me onboard. But the extensive, nearly complete bootleg "samples" did the trick. They got their hooks into me deep. Nineteen issues of a series that's only up in the thirties sounds like a hell of a lot to have out there for free, but at the end of it, I was a believer--and more to the point, a paying customer. I didn't have to "take a chance" on them; I was happily making a confident purchase of a known quantity.

This has been my experience, too, when the free online version isn't a bootleg. I wish the webcomic Sin Titulo were a completed story available in a nice trade version I could purchase, and as soon as it is, I will.

Honestly, there's stuff I have sampled via bootleg that I haven't ended up purchasing. That's not because I just don't feel like paying for content; it's because I just don't feel like paying for content that sucks. If it didn't suck, I'd have run out and bought it, as I did in the cases above. The lesson here, to my mind, for anyone who cares to hear it, is not that we need to clamp down on piracy so people won't get to check out stuff they might not buy--it's that content needs to be good enough that people will buy it after they've checked out the inevitable free version, whether that free version is legit or bootleg. We've come to a point where products like this really must and inevitably do function as the ultimate advertisements for themselves. Any creator or producer who doesn't flatly assume, from the outset, that their product will be available for free is thinking inside a box that simply doesn't exist any longer. I practice what I preach, too--I'm putting my novel-in-progress freely online in the confidence it's good enough that people will want to buy it when it's finished and ready to go.

There's plenty more I have to say about this, but I'll stop here and give you all a chance to weigh in. So what do you think?

FCBD: CLOCKWORK GIRL from Arcana

This was on the FCBD table, though I guess strictly speaking it has nothing to do with the occasion. You can get this very issue as a pdf here. I'm a sucker for all things steampunky and clockworky; toss in a fairy-tale vibe for good measure, and it was an automatic grab for me as soon as I laid eyes on it. This issue only offers the merest taste of a story, with lots of concept and design stuff to fill out the rest of the issue. Even so, I really dig what I see here, and the graphic novel is going on my to-get list--not especially high up, mind you, but I get around to everything sooner or later.

And that rounds out my Free Comic Book Day selections. They were a mixed bag, but that's to be expected, and I'm not sorry I got a chance to look any of them over.

Thanks to all the publishers and everyone else involved, and thanks especially to Galactic Comics, which is where I got mine from today.

Here's hoping you're enjoying yours!

FCBD: AMELIA RULES! from Renaissance Press

With a young nephew, I find myself keeping an eye out for comics that might be kid-appropriate. I've noticed Amelia Rules! a time or two, and I was curious to check it out. What better time than FCBD? Actually, I think this is one of the leftovers from last year they included on the table, but so what?

It turns out to be pretty smart and funny, and apparently gets nominated for lots of awards. There's a full page of text in the middle of the story at a reading level my nephew won't reach for quite a few more years (heh--he's barely even talking coherently now), but for kids (by no means is this exclusively a "girls' comic") in the recommended age group of 9-12 years, I'd sure think you could do worse. I enjoyed this well enough. Here's a trailer of sorts:

FCBD: LOVE AND ROCKETS from Fantagraphics

When I reached for this, the guy behind the table exclaimed, "That's the one everyone should get!" Well, okay. It's my first time reading anything by the Hernandez brothers (either of them), and I must be missing something. What's the big deal over these guys? Someone please walk me through this issue and explain what's so awesome here. I'm persuadable, and I'd always rather appreciate something than not appreciate it, but after a first reading, nothing in this comic did much of anything for me.

FCBD: SHONEN JUMP Special

Now this is more like it! My experience with manga is pretty limited, but I've enjoyed most of those I've read, and have always wished I had the time and money to delve deeper into them. This free comic makes me wish that just a little harder.

When I first heard about this, my initial reaction was, "Who'd want to read a manga written by Stan Lee?!?" But I suppose it makes a certain FCBD sense, in possibly tempting a Marvel zombie or two to check out something different. I'm not sure how much actual writing he does for this, either--inside, he's credited with "original concept," whereas "story & art" honors go to Hiroyuki Takei. In any case, I've certainly read worse. It's a whole lot of fun, with morally polar opposite ancient magical cyborgs duelling in the middle of a modern city to devastating effect. The art is extremely easy on the eyes. For those of us who aren't used to it, there's something different and fun, too, about reading right to left--I'm glad they went with that.

Since they went to the trouble of including a pinup, I really have to scratch my head over their choice of subjects for it.

Aside from that dubious detail, though, I'm chalking this one in the WIN column--enjoyable in its own right, and even though I may not rush right out to buy this company's manga, they've certainly nudged me along in that direction.

FCBD: RESURRECTION from Oni Press

Hmmm . . . I wonder how these publishers decide what to put out for FCBD? If you're an indie press, do you try to make your hottest title an even hotter breakout from the broader exposure, or do you try to elevate something from a lower tier? My impression is that Scott Pilgrim is Oni's biggest deal going right now, and all the buzz has made me curious enough about it that a cool-enough free sample could certainly tip me over into buying it (I know I was just whining about my financial straits, but according to the IRS website, my tax return just got mailed out yesterday, so I should have a little cash in hand sometime this week). Actually, looking through Oni's books, there's a lot there that a solid sample could induce me to buy.

This, I'm afraid, doesn't tempt me at all. Not to complain about a free comic or anything, but judging from this sample, what we've got here is an awfully rote, boilerplate post-apocalyptic yarn with a schlubbier than usual hero (who doesn't even--ah, but I don't want to "spoil" anything), and a sinister Men-in-Black-type bad guy who only achieves two-dimensionality as a character by being "British." Meh. And the art isn't exactly wowing me, either--see for yourself.

As for the backup feature, well, let's just say I love Stephen Colbert, but Tek Jansen not so much.

I mean, thank you Oni for the free comic and everything, but as promotional material, this strikes me as two missed opportunities in a single issue. Next!

Free comics!

Wow, I got there only twenty minutes after opening, and Stuff of Legend was already gone. I didn't expect much of anyone else to want it, but I guess my tastes aren't so quirky after all. It was at the top of my list, and must have been at the top of a lot of other people's, because when I asked for it, they told me it was the first to go. If you managed to snag a copy, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts about it.

On the brighter side, I got a pick of eight, and they had a lot of last year's leftovers out, which worked for me since I missed last year.

I grabbed Cars, the DC Kids Mega Sampler, and last year's Tiny Titans for my wee nephew. Unfortunately, when I swung by to deliver them, he was down for his nap, so I suppose I didn't coordinate that very well.

As for the five I picked out for myself, I'll be reading and "liveblogging" them for the rest of today.

Amazingly, the shop had a half-off sale on indie trades, which to my mind sounds almost alarmingly steep, but I guess they know their business. It was great news for me, of course, but would have been better news if I weren't on such a strict budget. Instead of getting just one volume of The Boys, I got two, and that, sadly, was pretty much all I could afford.

Then for lunch, swung by the sushi express place that actually brings sushi within my budget, and got a "dragon roll." I don't think there's any universally standard "dragon roll," is there?--it's just whatever any particular place calls it, right? Anyway, at this joint, it's a California roll topped with tuna. Not the sushi I'd be eating if money were no object, but since money is tight, this'll do very nicely, thank you.

All in all, except for some minor disappointments, a pretty awesome day. So how's everyone else's Free Comic Book Day going so far?

SOMETHING FROM THE NIGHTSIDE by Simon R. Green (Ace 2003)

Someone warned me this isn't really set in London, and indeed it isn't. The Nightside is a kind of otherworld (othercity?) parallel to London and vaguely accessible from London through various portals disguised, for example, as tube station maintenance closets. It's basically a cartoonishly grim and gritty urban fantasy playground where it's always 3 A.M. and anything can happen. When I say "cartoonishly," I mean probably a solid third of the words of this novel are devoted to telling just how mean the Nightside's streets are, in terms so escalatingly hyperbolic the effect really becomes humorous--intentionally, I hope. It reminded me at times of Asprin's MythAdventures series, when Skeeve would describe everything in superlatives and ridiculously exaggerated metaphors.

Anyway, John Taylor is the private dick in a rundown London office who's trying to forget all the time he spent in the Nightside. But a dame--who else?--comes to him with a job that will drag him back in, and he can't tell her no. He has a paranormal power to find things, and her daughter has disappeared into that other dimension.

This was a quick, breezy (though, in fairness, genuinely dark at times), entertaining read. Nobody's ever going to accuse it of "transcending the genre," but it kept me turning pages, often made me smile, and washed the wretched taste of Ackroyd's Hawksmoor out of my mouth.

Anyone who thinks they might enjoy this probably will, but I'd recommend Jeffrey Thomas's Punktown books first and more highly as better overall, with better hardboiled/noir stylings, and better as urban fantasy (though the setting is nominally science fictional).

HAWKSMOOR by Peter Ackroyd (Penguin 1993)

Ugh. What this novel lacks in brute length (my edition weighs in at a mere 217 pages), it more than makes up for in excruciating tedium. I'm only pages away from finishing it, but fuck it--why waste another minute on this crap?

It sounds very intriguing in summary. Here's the back cover copy:

London in the eighteenth century is a city of extremes: squalor and superstition vie with elegance and enlightenment as the capital's brilliant architect Nicholas Dyer is commissioned to build several new churches in the aftermath of the Great Fire.

Two hundred and fifty years later in the vast, sprawling metropolis of London the legacy of the past lives on, as CID Detective Nicholas Hawksmoor investigates a series of macabre murders that have occurred on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches in the City . . .

The churches aren't fictional--they really exist. Only the architect was Nicholas Hawksmoor, not Dyer. I thought it would be interesting to see what significance this playing with names would have, since Ackroyd gives the detective the name of the original architect, and the architect another name entirely. Well, I haven't the foggiest idea what significance Ackroyd means it to have, and by this point I couldn't care less.

Alternating chapters that make up at least half of the book, maybe more, directly concern the architect Dyer in his own time period, and are written in an aggressively archaic and antiquated style that's really quite a slog. Sad to say, this is the livelier portion of the book. Dyer actually does at least take shape as a character, and even sputters to a semblance of life here and there in his narrative.

The earlier chapters that alternate with Dyer's depict the first two murder victims in the modern setting--a random child and a random tramp. For all the time Ackroyd spends on them, their deaths make little impression. We're more than a hundred pages in before we catch even the first glimpse of Detective Hawksmoor, and this is where Ackroyd really drops the ball. Hawksmoor is basically a few sketchy fragments of detective cliches that don't add up to so much as a caricature, let alone a character (even a two-dimensional one). Ackroyd plainly has no sense at all for mystery or crime fiction; I could only shake my head in embarrassment for him at the ineptness he doesn't seem to realize he's putting on display here.

It gets worse. We get Motifs reiterated with such leaden heavyhandedness that they seem positively intended to be bullet-pointed in boldface in Cliffs Notes. Dust is portentiously mentioned in dialogue and exposition on every other page. On every third or fourth page, we're treated to another group of children running or skipping through the street, chanting ominous nursery rhymes.

What a mess. Not recommended.

Forthcoming from Richard Sala

Speaking of Cat Girls! Of course, anything from Sala is a must--I'm only sorry it won't be out until "early Fall." Looks fantastic, though! (source)

UPDATE: Richard tells me it's "a full-color graphic novel, all done in watercolor." Now I really can't wait!

Free Comic Book Day

. . . is tomorrow, I guess. Maybe I'll go. If I do, I'll go here. I've never been to one of these, so how do they work? Do I get one free comic? One of each? Are these special free comics any good? If you're planning to go, which ones are you looking forward to snagging? What's up with that "Gold" and "Silver" distinction?