BLOB SHACK

Hello, Cruel World

2011-11-08T15:27:00.001-08:00

New collection features Hello Cruel World, Dakk Waggitt and Platypus For Hire strips.

This 2011 release from Indianapolis artist Ron Braun features 100 pages from Hello Cruel World, Dakk Waggitt and Platypus For Hire strips. At first, Hello Cruel World seems to simply follow a small group of friends as they struggle to adapt to life after college, but things start to go a little supernatural after a mysterious stranger appears in their lives!

Fans of all things zombie and vampire will love this collection that features the entire run of the Hello Cruel World and Dakk Waggitt, Platypus For Hire! comic strips, original concept sketches, guest and fan art, promotional material, never-before-seen strips, celebrity fan photos and much more.

You can get your own copy for only $9.99 here and if you use the coupon code FALLBOOKS at LULU and you can get another 20% off that price.

References:

Toon-It-Up, Graphic Novels

LULU Store, Hello, Cruel World

The Maxx

2011-11-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

The Maxx - MTV Shows - Full Episodes

"The Maxx," based on the Image comic book created by Sam Keith, chronicles the story of a man who travels between two worlds. In our world, he is a homeless man living in a cardboard box in the City.

Right up there with Peter Chung's excellent Aeon Flux MTV animated series.

Stephen The Lesbian (2011)

2011-11-05T02:53:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. The highly elusive indie animator Harry Partridge presents his own take on being the self-proclaimed "King Of The Lesbians".

Dead Mans Run #0

2011-10-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

Written by acclaimed Hulk writer Greg Pak and Art by Tony Parker, Walking Dead producer Gale Ann Hurd, and Tony Parker, penciller of the Eisner-nominated 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Phillip K. Dick), comes this winter's biggest blockbuster new series - DEAD MAN'S RUN!

They call the prison 'Hell.' And they just might be right. The nation's toughest soldier heads into the world's most deadly maximum security lock-up and uncovers a world of terror and temptation beyond his darkest dreams. Featuring a brand-new 12-page story that sets the stage for next month's upcoming premiere of DEAD MAN'S RUN #1, make sure to get in on the ground floor of this newest exciting Aspen hit series! Complete with an additional sketchbook section showcasing the astounding artwork of series artist Tony Parker, never before seen character designs and sketches, and surrounded by a stunning new cover, this special zero issue is definitely not to be missed!

References:
Greg Pak.com, Pak Buzz
PDX Comic Geeks, Dead Man's Run #0
Friends of The Dallas Public Library, Greg Pak Nov. 4th!

Spider-Man (1967)

2011-10-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

The ol' web slinger has really got himself in deep trouble this time, gang.

The first Spider-Man animated television series ran from September 1967 to June of 1970. It was jointly produced in Canada (for voice talent) and the United States (for animation). This first animated adaptation of the Spider-Man comic book series, created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko was extremely popular and still sells DVDs 40 years later!

Spider-man first aired on the ABC television network in the United States and went into syndication at the start of the third season. Seasons two and three were created by legendary animator Ralph Bakshi (Wizards) in New York City. In season two and three Bakshi adopted a darker tone for the show with darkly colored settings, psychedelic images, and atmospheric music.

References:
Wikipedia, Spider-Man (1967 TV series)

Biff Zongo

2011-10-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

Biff Zongo, a cartoon and social commentary from Swedish artists Fredrik Sjöholm and Jan Kustfält.

Biffzongo.com is a webcomic by Swedish cartoonists Fredrik Sjöholm and Jan Kustfält. The comic has been described as a strange blend of bad-taste, high-brow, below-waist, elitist white trash screwball comedy.

The English production of BZ features cartoon characters rollicking in social commentary that takes hilarious pot shots at Western culture and stereotypes.

Legend of Bill

2011-10-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

Syndicated editorial cartoonist Dave Reddick's Legend Of Bill strip.

Syndicated editorial cartoonist Dave Reddick's Legend Of Bill strip is a parody and satire. Awesome excuses for fans of Robert E. Howard (auhtor of Conan) and Tarzan to really engage some comedic value. Artist Dave Reddick provides some great character design and story on his new series Legend of Bill.

A viking parody with strong art the color and humor are all there. Click the strip to see the latest.

KOMIKS PREVIEW: Drop Dead Dangerous

2011-10-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

Drop Dead Dangerous #1 with Story by Chad Cabrera and Art by Mike Banting. A macabre murder mystery manga by Chad Cabrera and Mike Banting, DROP DEAD DANGEROUS is hardcore, hardboiled horror set in the weird, weird west!

Available at Sputnik and Comic Odyssey. Digital editions also available at DriveThruComics and DriveThruHorror.

For more information, visit the new title's Facebook page.

Action oriented for Adults.

The Light Apprentice

2011-09-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

Creator driven animation and comic production from Mr. Igor Noronha.

Igor Noronha talk about his project and goals for his independent production company Amazu.tv. Amazu is produced in Viborg, Denmark by Mr. Noronha for American Paramount Studios among a growing list of clients.

China, Illinois

2011-09-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Frank and Steve, the Professor Brothers, combine forces with Baby Cakes for a series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

The imaginative and musically creative Brad Neely finds his characters Frank and Steve, aka the Professor Brothers, combining forces with suburban rapper/part time 12th level barbarian Baby Cakes for a new series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim premiering in early October of 2011.

Line Boil reports: "The brilliant Brad Neely has officially been granted an Adult Swim series. He’s worked with Adult Swim in the past, after his 4-part miniseries China, Illinois aired on the network back in 2008, but now he’s got the greenlight for a full series which is being animated at Titmouse. Now titled China, Il., the show centers on Frank and Steve Smith who are 'brothers who teach in the history department of a state university in China, Illinois.

They also happen to be legends in their own minds who will often sacrifice facts, lessons and syllabi for the sake of being awesome.'"

References:
Wikipedia, Brad Neely
Creased Comics, Brad Neely
Austin K. Leon, Animation Showcase

Hard Rock Heroes

2011-08-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

This 240-page graphic novel was released in March of 2010 by Blue Water Productions who also published Female Force: Margaret Thatcher, Logan's Run and have a Joan Jett comic coming out in June. The Hard Rock graphic novel features the biggest, dumbest bands in mainstream rock from 1980 to 1991 including AC/DC and GNR.

This book, based on the unauthorized biographies originally put together by Todd Loren who was killed at age 32 in San Diego in 1992, covers that special time in music when big hair and men-in-women's make-up ruled mainstream rock. These bands ruled with a curling iron, mopey choruses and dopey-eyed fans who affirmed the fact that yes, every rose really does have a thorn.

While the Blob (and few others) ran screaming from glam rock and towards bands like Dinosaur, Slayer, Ministry and the Butthole Surfers - American music in the eighties was dominated by the bands featured in Hard Rock Heroes, namely: Skid Row, Poison, Guns 'N Roses, Megadeth and Tesla - the absolute worst of cock/glam rock scene.

The book is really terrible, but it's terrible in a way that will make your sides aches as you watch Ozzy mistakenly scarf on a live bat in Iowa (see above) or the boys from Poison "show just how much heart a band from Harrisburg PA can have". There are also a few treats/fun facts for fans of The Runaways (like Lita Ford playing guitar in Joan Jett's band), Faith No More and Pantera. The book features art by many different artists including Dave Biggs (Megadeth section), Lyndal Ferguson (Snotley Crue section) and Mark Erickson (Black Sabbath and Ozzy).

References:
Blue Water Productions, Current Releases
Wikipedia, Todd Loren

Hard Rock Heroes on Abe Books:		Hard Rock Heroes at Barnes and Noble at:

Saga Of Biorn

2011-08-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Either Valhalla or Hel awaits Old Bjorn, the murder machine.

Spike and Mike, the long running irreverent animation film fest, deliver a tale of Viking heroism (and inadvertent suicide) in The Saga of Bjorn.

A film by: Benjamin J. Kousholt, Daniel D. Christensen, Mads Lundgaard Christensen, Jesper A. Jensen, Jonas K. Doctor, Steffen Lyhne, Pernille Ørum-Nielsen, Frederik Bjerre-Poulsen, Jonas Georgakakis as a B.F.A. film project from 2011 from The Animation Workshop.

References:
Animation Workshop, Centre For Education and Animation
Spike and Mike, Film Festival Info

Baby Cakes

2011-08-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Being a Chaotic Evil Elf Lord-Cleric by night ain't that Passive Agressive. Is it?!?

Brad Neely's awe-inspiring web series created in a limited animation style (think Pink Panther, Astro Boy, Bosko, early Mickey Mouse cartoons) uses cultural pre-programming to frame his animation for "Be Aggressive".

Dungeons and Dragons and Suburban Rap figure prominently in his animated series Baby Cakes and the equally as funny The Professor Brothers.

References:
Wikipedia, Brad Neely
Creased Comics, Brad Neely
Austin K. Leon, Animation Showcase

Gundarr

2011-08-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Every day is Gunsday w/Gundarr, the Barbarian.

Gundarr is a hilarious parody of Robert E. Howard's definitive Conan and Kull sword-and-sorcery epics. The series, with new episodes produced by Mondo Mini-Shows in 2011, was created by Corey McDaniel and Ted Wilson.

References:
Facebook, Gundarr Fan Page
Cold Hard Flash, Gundarr Reloads For Mondo

The Books Of Blood

2011-07-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Books Of Blood series are a 1985 anthology of imaginative and shocking horror stories compiled by writer and director Clive Barker and the perfect introduction to the darkened corners of the human mind. Much like Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe, Barker's ability to create a series of intensely imaginative short stories that fully incorporate fantasy elements within the everyday is at it's hardest hitting best.

The Books of Blood, the first story in the series, is the central "wrapper" story that contains the rest of the books. This "wrapper" concept was originally written by apparitions in bright, red letters ripped into the flesh of a boy in the presence of a paranormal investigator.

These supernatural writings contains several stories including: The Midnight Meat Train later to be made into a 2008 film starring Vinnie Jones and Bradley Cooper, The Yattering and Jack which later was made into a Tales From The Darkside episode, Pig Blood Blues a kind of The Stand w/ghosts, Sex, Death and Starshine that features elements from Hell Raiser, Dread an unusual study in victimization, Rawhead Rex which became one of the most heavily censored movies in UK film history, The Forbidden featuring the first appearance of the Candyman and one of the most original short stories ever published in English: Human Remains.

References:
Clive Barker.com, Blood Bank
Wikipedia, Books Of Blood
IMDB, Midnight Meat Train (2009)
IMDB, Book Of Blood (2009)
Fantastic Fiction, Omnibus Collection
Film Review On-Line, Book Of Blood (2009)

Horse Glue

2011-06-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

A bleak experiment in conflict as two worlds are sewn together with a gloomy soundtrack.

Stephen Irwin is a graduate of Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, with an M.A. in Communication Design, specializing in animation. He received the Best Emerging Talent award from EMERGEANDSEE 05 for his graduation film Dialog, and in 2005 was commissioned by the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund & Film London to make Bows & Arrows as part of their digital shorts scheme, PULSE. In 2007, he was one of five filmmakers commissioned by BBC New Talent to make Dry Lips, a music video for Lightspeed Champion, produced by Warp Films. His work has been screened at festivals all over the UK and abroad; including the Edinburgh International Film Festival and The Times BFI London Film Festival.

References:
Small Time Inc., Film Fun
Small Time Inc. on Blogspot, Work By Stephen Irwin
Animate Projects, Horse Glue

Thank You, Maskman

2011-06-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

This 1960's experimental animation was based on a bit by the notorious Lenny Bruce.

After stand-up comic Lenny Bruce O.D.'ed in Hollywood in 1963, San Fransisco animators Jeff Hale and John Magnuson put together an animation based on one of Bruce's most shocking and irreverent bits.

This underground movie was completed and screened nationally in 1968. Since then, Thank You Mask Man has been a part of film fests such as Spike And Mike for many years.

References:
IMDB, Thank You Mask Man (1971)
Wikipedia, Thank You Mask Man
Scissor Monkey, Thank You Mask Man

Sidewalk Scribble

2011-06-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Experimental animation presented by Peter Lowey - in the sketchiest sense of term.

Peter Lowey, an Australian animator, has won First Place in The Annecy Film Fest's first on-line competition for his remarkable short Sidewalk Scribble. The other winners of the Annecy 2011 YouTube competition were Mathias Lachal (France) who took second and Georgina Dunn (UK) who placed third.

All three were selected by a jury including Kevin Deters from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Elsa Keslassy from Variety, and Mathias Malzieu, leader of Dionysos.

Remember that the public has selected 10 films, amongst which 3 were awarded by the jury. Lowey has been invited to the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, from 6th to 11th June, where his film will be screened. All were offered a 5 night trip to L.A. by Disney studios for a guided tour of the studios in Burbank, California.

This means a solid connection for all the winners at Disney/Pixar and even more inventive animation in the coming years.

Old Fangs

2011-06-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

This visually rich indie animation comes from an Academy Award nominated studio in Ireland.

Old Fangs is a Irish indie animation that screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Fest winning Official Selection. The film has won awards in Seoul, Galway, Glasgow Film Festival and in Wissembourg, Alsace.

The short is directed by Adrien Merigeau and Alan Holly.

References:
Adrien Merigeau, Old Fangs
Alan Holly, Portfolio

Spend It Wisely

2011-05-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Markus Vad Flaaten's wild world of humor, remorse and ... rappin' vegetables?

Spend It Wisely is an animated short about the world's love affair with capitalism. The short was created by Norwegian artists Tommy and Markus Vad Flaaten and their team of sound and graphic artists based in Tønsberg, Norway.

References:
Markus VF, Reel

Salad Fingers

2011-05-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Have you started doing the voice yet? That creepy, low overly courteous one? Yes, it's rather divine.

David Firth, creator of the creepy Salad Fingers animated web series, is primarily a 2d Flash animator who is based in England. The BBC has hired Firth on several occasions to work on TV programs and commercials. due to his unforgettable characterizations and amazing audio engineering skills.

References:
Wikipedia, David Firth
Fat Pie, Rather Enchanting Too
Youtube, Fat Pies On Me Stove

Homeboy

2011-05-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Writer Seth Morgan died October 18^th 1990 at the age of 41 the same year his only book, a hardcore crime drama titled Homeboy, was published. Morgan was planning another book when he was killed in a motorcycle crash with his passenger 37-year-old Diane Levine. The couple crashed and burned anonymously on a deserted bridge outside New Orleans.

Morgan, an infamous binge drinker, complicated matters by maintaining a series of addictions to both cocaine and heroin and then going on full-blast tears through the countryside. The last ride he took - killed him.

It doesn't have to be pointed out that Seth Morgan was clearly a classic fuck-up. Right to the very end. No fluttering cape or chrome briefcase tied him to any collective aspirations of heroism. He was a counter-culture denizen who refused to acknowledge the losing hand that life continually dealt out to him. A fraction of his experiences as a drop-out, drug addict and convict are retold in fiction in his 1990 book Homeboy.

In the late 1960's, before Morgan became a sleazebag, ex-con or charred corpse he was a U of C at Berkeley drop-out. He loved a vibrant young woman from Texas who loved him right back. Morgan's woman was a blues singer who was well known for her personal warmth. Something was unmistakably present in her character that was missing in so many others. Something unmistakably alive. Morgan's squeeze loved him enough to accept his proposal of marriage, probably the first one she'd ever heard or first one that he'd ever given. Then, right before the marriage - she died from an apparent drug overdose. She died young, respected and famous. Her name was Janice Joplin.

Morgan never really seemed to get his feet back on the ground afterward. Like the Red Sea had parted for the man just long enough to lure him into the center of the dry sea bed and then crashed back down on top of him.

In the mid-1970's, Seth Morgan started and operated a part-time porn theater in San Francisco and jammed Rolling Stones songs as Deepthroat raged on the screen. During the day, Morgan played "art films" to a mostly deserted theater. To complicate matters, Morgan developed a junk habit the size of a silver-back gorilla. To maintain the quiet escape of a junk habit he burglarized Bay Area businesses. The habit eventually landed him in San Quentin for Theft from 1977 to 1980.

Morgan's only book was begun while Morgan was in San Quentin. Homeboy is a crime novel set in mid-seventies San Francisco. The book is not for the squeamish. It's harsh material riddled with trauma and addiction from the first page. The book does not glamourize murder or drugs - it simply lays them out in a bloody heap the way a hard-eyed prosecutor or coroner would. Homeboy belongs in the detective novel tradition of Dashiell Hammet and uses a whip-smart, sharpened awareness that's usually only very faintly perceived by junkies and writers. This kind of laser beam clarity is rarely articulated or captured. The fact that these impressions are recorded at all owes a debt to Bill Burroughs and Hunter Thompson's carefully crafted, critical insight into human character through it's marks, con men, crooks and unremitting, gleeful brutality.

Morgan uses hipster vocabulary to outline a criminal underclass who inhabit the fringes of society in the dicey Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Morgan himself stars as Joe The Barker, a small-time hood and junkie, who is eternally entangled with livid crazies, naive hookers and eventually a caper much bigger than he can handle in the form of the corpulent Mr. Baby Jewels Moses aka The Pimp Blimp.

Morgan writes his characters from the inside out rather than describing their physical appearance and riding the descriptions around for 400 pages. His characters are rendered with shocking clarity - describing hookers are wounded rape survivors:

"...it wasn't like intros were needed that night in the garage when she was twelve and he was drunk and bent her over the Pontiac's front fender and went to town...Rings 'N Things had been her handle since a biker named Sugarfoot broke her out of the Encino split-level where she'd been held POW fifteen years...".

Morgan's junkies are hamstrung with mental illness like The Barker's inept robbery partner, Rooski, who recalls being addicted to "Edison medicine" or Electro-Shock Therapy while in a state mental hospital to the point that:

"- with an addict's typical ingenuity figured out how to ground himself to the radiator...on his 16^th treatment he snatched the saline sponge from the horrified technician, doused his testicles, and looped the wire around his penis. Like a lightning rod it sprang erect, buzzing blue and white sparks like sperm. 'Bringin' the rush home!' shrieked Rooski just before the hospital's circuits blew."

Homeboy is a hilarious and haunting portrait of where underground culture, a bleak underworld of sex and drugs, meets mainstream culture. Homeboys are the people on both sides of the law that make up this brutal exchange.

References:
Caught By The River, Pearls, Stones and San Quentin
Words Urge, The Umanageable Burden of Hope
New York Times, Seth Morgan Dies At 41
Mike Dennis.com, A Fellow Toiler

Mike Tyson's Brunch-Out

2011-02-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

Dan Meth examines the merits of anger issues and fine dining in Mike Tyson's Brunch-Out!

Dan Meth is rumored to be an associate of one Devin Clark, the director of Aaron Augenblick's Ugly Americans, an animated comedy that's a hit show on Comedy Central.

Mr. Meth's client-commissioned ads and personal short films have received much attention, traffic, and press for his inventiveness, humor and art style(s).

References:
Dan Meth.com, About Meth
Channel Federator, The Meth Minute

Methland

2011-02-13T21:43:00.000-08:00

Methland are the true stories of the socio-economic forces of greed and despair that have destroyed many regions of rural America. Methland analyzes beginngs of the drug as a legal stimulant, the legitimate sources of the drug and the the traffic of methamphetamine from Mexico to California to small towns in Iowa and Indiana.

The book focuses on Olwein, a small isolated Iowan town, and by doing so examines the process of small town culture from industrious and self-sustaining to a third world country. There are many more towns like Olwein where the factory or plant has shut down and the infrastructure that used to support it crumbles.

Methland features Roland Jarvis a meth cook who literally blew his face off (along with several layers of his skin), Lori Arnold the one-time queen of meth (sister to comedian Tom Arnold) and the Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations who use illegal immigration of migrant and undocumented workers to Olwein's meat packing plant as a cover for funneling tons of cheap crank into Midwestern America.

A very well written account of widespread Meth addition and the U.S. Government's efforts to control it. Featuring local and federal law makers including former Rep. Mark Souder(R-IN) whose Combat Meth Act from 2006 was one of the first real (and long overdue) pieces of legislation to fight Meth in America.

Day of the Star Cities

2011-02-12T19:01:00.000-08:00

Brunner's highly imaginative brand of science fiction often featured very real issues, in the style of Phillip K. Dick, set in fantastic worlds.

In 1967, four years after the Cuban Missile brought the very real possibility of a planet-wide nuclear annihilation into mainstream American consciousness John Brunner's Day Of The Star Cities (aka Age Of Miracles) was released.

Without warning, all the atomic weapons and fissionable material on Earth explode. Panic, death and chaos reigned for months before life on Earth reverted back to the Stone Age. By that time, scattered reports were already coming in of five mysterious star-shaped cities scattered over the globe - huge areas of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorienting to human senses and completely impregnable to attack. These aliens had ignited all nuclear and atomic weapons then built their bases on Earth. But were they conquering Earth or up to something else?

The book takes man and reduces him to an animal state using by his own weaponry. If that wasn't awful enough the book then sets up the truly alien, crystalline based multidimensional beings as the dominant form of life.

Brunner forces his survivors to attempt to communicate with their new masters. Doing so, his ragged, radioactive survivors confront sense inversion - receiving sensory information that is not analogous to the basic five human senses including magnetoception and electroception.

References:
Wikipedia, John Brunner
Fantastic Fiction, John Brunner
Fantastic Fiction, Day Of The Star Cities

Bike Ride

2011-01-21T07:19:00.000-08:00

Minnesota animator and teacher Tom Schroeder's Bike Ride.

The unique writing and animation talents of Tom Schroeder are unleashed on the Sundance Film Festival as Bike Ride makes it's 2011 debut in the snowy hills of Park City, Utah.

This is Tom's 60 plus film fest screening of Bike Ride which began it's festival circuit ride in 2002 showing to a few local jazz fans and has now been seen by many national and international audiences. It's hard to say enough good things about this film.

Experimental Animation

2010-12-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

Aussie band The Firekites song Autumn Story is turned into an animated video by Yanni Kronenberg and Lucinda Schreiber.

The Stand

2010-05-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

It should be pretty baffling that a horror writer became the voice of a generation. Think about it: King is a writer whose subject matter is full of bloody bludgeounings, soulless monsters with wide perfect smiles, hounded outsider heroes facing hopeless odds and a very real Apocalypse just around the next corner... So how did Stephen King get to be the popular interpreter of American reality if this country is really such a friendly, unassuming place to be? How did a horror writer connect to so many millions of people who were supposed to love apple pie more than murder?

All contradictions aside, King did. From post-Vietman to Gulf War One his glowing critical reviews and astronomical sales are undeniable.

The question is: is he right? Is King's picture of American life as seen in The Stand more accurate than we'd like to admit? Is the nation itself is the real monster? Maybe King's fiction is really just a way to deal with a culture that is overflowing with AIDS, crackoids and evil little men in cowboy hats who insist, at gun point, that America is re-e-a-aly about of upbeat pep rallies, Achey Breaky Hearts and Lite Beer ads. Just you never mind about the man with the squirmy eyes behind the curtain, Dorothy - because the safety on this thing, as you can clearly see, is off...

In The Stand, originally published in 1978 and updated in 1990, modern man's fear of an imminent and self-inflicted extinction is expressed to the fullest. A series of problems are dealt with by a vastly shrunken population of survivors who live like a society with 3 flat tires. The unbelievably well-rendered characters, both major and minor take up old fights in a flattened new world. In this new world, a war is on the horizon as true evil spreads out it's feathery black tendrils finding leftover nukes and describing it's intentions to destroy what is left of America as "the only solution".

Randall Flagg, arguably the central character of King's Apocalyptic masterpiece, is the concept of evil come to life. Emerging inexplicably from the desert, as nearly everyone in the world dies from a gruesome disease euphemistically referred to as "Captain Tripps" or tubeneck in a global pandemic. Flagg, a terrifying master manipulator of hatred and ignorance, preys on the weakness and overwhelming greed of the shattered individuals among the few scattered survivors in America. Not long after, Flagg gains a following of escaped cold blooded killers, escaped prisoners, prostitutes, con men, hired muscle and lunatics only to hold court in, where else? Las frickin' Vegas, baby.

As for the forces of good in The Stand, each individual becomes aware of the growing threat of Flagg and his followers as they cluster around a 100-year-old black woman named Abigal Freemantle of central Nebraska. Freemantle is a direct descendant of slaves and has an innate bearing of good about her that makes her the exact counterpart of the vile Flagg. Freemantle possesses something the survivors believe will help them build a new world in the ashes of the old - that is, if they can survive the brutal journey to her homestead from the destroyed and abandoned metropolis of New York City and isolated Atlantic coastline of Ogunquit, Maine.

References:
Dyslexic Comics, The Stand: The Graphic Novel
Bernie Wrightson, Horror Illustration

Come As You Are

2010-05-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Michael Azerrad's unauthorized biography of Kurt Kobain and his band Nirvana is a definitive account of rock music's adventure into mainstream American culture in the 1990's. The book was first published by Doubleday Books in September of 1993 just seven months before bandleader Kurt Cobain died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, alone in a Seattle home in April 4th 1994.

The book characterized Kurt's formative days as a kid and then as a struggling musician as a self-described magic marker sniffing "hanger-on" within a growing music scene that fluctuated in and out of suburban Seattle. Early alt-rock in Seattle was dominated by bands like the Melvins and was fostering the very beginnings of Sup Pop (who produced "Love Buzz" in '88), Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.

Cobain spent his teenage years doing menial 3rd shift janitorial work and spending his weekends wandering the city streets before picking up a guitar with a wide range of influences from punk and independent rock.

Azerrad's subsequent book, Our Band Could Be Your Life released in 2001 was a collection of profiles of thirteen prominent indie rock bands of the 1980s and early 1990s, including Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Minutemen and The Replacements.

References:
Wikipedia, Michael Azerrad
Wikipedia, The Story of Nirvana

Under The Dome

2010-04-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

It has been a long, strange road for master horror writer Stephen King. King has lived on both ends of the writers' spectrum from being a struggling, penniless genius to becoming a recognized master of his craft. However, in the late 1970's, prior to his unparalleled success as a horror writer, Stephen King nearly shredded the manuscript for the future blockbuster Carrie in sheer frustration.

According to his 2002 non-fiction book On Writing, he viewed working as a high school janitor or as a substitute English teacher as inspirational for a book like Carrie or Christine but a true hell for the old sense of self-esteem. Today in 2010, King has seen his work made into immensely eerie and resounding films by Stanley Kubrick who directed The Shining (He-e-re's Johnny!), the outstanding pulse-pounder The Mist as well as The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999). These last three were each directed by Frank Darabont.

Under The Dome, released in November of 2009, comes years after King collided with a series of struggles and catastrophes that were both man-made and self-inflicted. In his newest novel, Stephen King attempts to make a most welcome return to his proper bone-chilling form by finding his textured and toned voice once again.

Under The Dome is a 1,075 page exploration of a modern mini-apocalypse that takes place as a mysterious alien glass dome, large enough to cover an entire small town, descends over Chester's Mill, Maine.

Under The Dome is unlike 2006's interesting but ultimately thinly premised Cell (cellphone plus yuppie equals zombie?) and is very much like a fresh take on King's argueably best book: The Stand from 1978 with elements of smalltown meltdown that made Needful Things and The Tommyknockers good books. From the beginning of Under The Dome, readers are offered King's detailed, unique and burning vision of a quiet world set afire by the extraordinary.

References:
Stephen King.com, A Few Announcements...
Wikipedia, Under The Dome
IMDB, Frank Darabont

Less Than Zero

2010-04-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

Less Than Zero derives it's name from an Elvis Costello song written in 1977.The book plays out as the main character, a 20-something in LA, quickly finds himself so far behind the metaphorical 8-ball that breaking even would be a frickin' miracle.

From the first paragraph narrator Clay (no last name given), a Harvard student Clay home from college in New Hampshire, is surrounded and hollowed by the shallow, monotonous and vapid masquerade of upper class life in LA. This pampered and privileged class, due a culture of desensitization brought on by overindulgent and opulent lifetyles, require monstrous heights to feel anything like a human being again - even if that means rape or murder. Clay finds his life, and those of his inept drug dealer and naive model friends, cleanly commodified into equal parts tacky wardrobe, cocaine use and overindulgence.

Less Than Zero is a pointed, unflinching look at being surrounded by a out-of-touch and plastic imitation of life where the worst struggle most experience is choosing which trendy sushi bar to attend. The protagonist, slightly more sensitive than the average yuppie, is immediately mired in this superficial X-Mas-In-July atmosphere of SoCal. Clay becomes painfully aware that he needs something more than frantically reaching for skin deep perfection in an empty trip of heavy drugs and unsatisfying sex.

Clay, whose viewpoint slowly evolved beyond seedy rock clubs and relentless parties, finds his former friends in the process of burning out in dizzying downward spirals of desperation. Clay has a number of one-night stands seeking someone or something to steady him against a tide of insanity and drug abuse but only finds more grief.

Author Bret Ellis has also written two other unusual and interesting books based on sociopathic tendencies in mainstream culture: the violent American Psycho and the bizarre look at male modeling and international terrorism in Glamorama written in 1998. Imperial Bedrooms, a sequel to Less Than Zero, is scheduled for a release in June of 2010.

References:
Wikipedia, Less Than Zero
Wikipedia, Bret Ellis
This Is Not An Exit, First Look At Imperial Bedrooms

Post Office

2010-04-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

Charles Bukowski was a writer. Writing is a strange vocation that was, for many centuries, traditionally reserved for members of a lily white, over-educated, out-of-touch upperclass society. The same thickly insulated culture that produced Emily Bronte and Theodore Dreiser also thumbed it's collective nose at Poe and HST before hounding Ernest Hemmingway to death. So you see, Bukowski was in trouble from the start.

Bukowski was a wry, bare boned misanthrope. Not a prodigy or a senator's son. All of his wretched life, Bukowski lived among the same huddled masses who were once celebrated in an ancient inscription inspired by some French guy's concept of liberty and left on a statue accidentally dropped in New York harbor. Them dirty French ya know.

In Bukowki's formative period, in post WWII America, the concept of liberty seemed largely forgotten (or mistaken for lunch money) by the same country that this ideal was meant to be represented by - as a cold but immaculate consumerism fully took hold of the First World. When counter-culture exploded in the 1960's in America, embracing traditional values and heritage over consumerism, Bukowski's writing was a reminder that there was beauty in the ragged freedom of that kind of individualism. His voice was forged prior to this explosion and rejection of consumer culture - in a time when popular conformism over war and race was the norm - prior to "The Summer Of Love" there was "Duck And Cover" and "I Like Ike" sporting "Tricky Dick" Nixon as v.p. - this was the world Bukowski knew first.

Bukowski spoke through stories of struggling, brilliant super-functionaries - individuals who wandered through their lives in America like doomed misfits or endangered species working dead end day jobs.

By 1969, a 49-year-old Bukowksi had spent 20 years writing before accepting his first full-time job as a writer at Black Sparrow Publishing. He remembers this time by saying:

"I have one of two choices — stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve."

According to Born Into This, a documentary on Bukowski's life, Black Sparrow Press founder and owner, John Martin, offered Bukowski $100 dollars per month for life on the condition that Bukowski would quit working for the post office and write full time.

The product of this arrangement was Bukowski's first book, Post Office. It was written in 1971 and is the story of Henry Chinaski, a stand-in for Charles Bukowksi. Henry (the nickname his German immigrant parents called the real-life Bukowski) becomes a substitute mail carrier who hates his menial job, then quits this job to live on his meager winnings at a local horsetrack. After experiencing ups and downs gambling at the track Henry returns to working as a mail clerk where the work is familarly degrading. Henry survives through booze, women and an extremely cynical view of the world.

Bukowski's career produced a total of seven novels, seven short story collections including Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (written in 1972), thirty-two poetry collections including the bristling and wild-eyed Slouching Towards Nirvana released in 2005 and to date, eight films made about his life.

Bukowski died at age 73 in San Pedro, CA in March of 1994 of leukemia. A wise and cantankerous bastard to the very end, Bukowski's gravestone inscription reads: "Don't Try". This, however, is more insightful than dismissive or churlish. "Don't Try" refers to a 1963 conversation when Bukowski was quized on his methodology by John William Corrington and replied:

"Somebody at one of these places...asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug, high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or, if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it."

References:
Wikipedia, Charles Bukowski
Wikipedia, Post Office
Quarterly, Post Office

Catch-22

2010-04-01T00:05:00.001-07:00

"It was love at first sight." The opening line of Catch-22 does not deal with traditional love but the relief of a momentary reprieve from the insanity of war in a hospital bed. Joseph Heller's main character Bombadier Yossarian's love is really relief, relief at being relatively safe in a military hospital in western Italy during WWII.

At the crowded hospital in Pianosa, Yossarian is temporarily no longer running dive-bomb missions over the murderous flak-filled skies of war-torn Europe. After flying 44 missions, and eluding death time after time, Yossarian believes that his number will very shortly, be up. His state of mind decays as he is surrounded by the dead and dying. This mentality is reflected on pages 170-171:

"There were too many dangers for Yossarian to keep track of... There were lymph glands that might do him in. There were kidneys, nerve sheaths and corpuscles. There were tumors of the brain. There was Hodgkins disease, leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. There were fertile red meadows of epithelial tissue to catch and coddle a cancer cell. There were diseases of the skin, diseases of the bone, diseases of the neck, diseases of the chest, diseases of the crotch. There were even diseases of the feet. There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and everyone was a potential traitor or foe. There were so many diseases it took a truly diseased mind to even think about them..."

The book's title and premise, Catch-22, is a term defined a number of ways by many men in the course of Joseph Heller's seminal book from 1955. Each time, Catch-22 is referred to as an irrational policy for legalized craziness - a way to make sure that no combat pilot can be grounded for being crazy - especially when they are crazy.

A fellow airman, suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress, is described as "babbling incoherently when they fished him out of the dank bottom of the slit trench, babbling of snakes, rats and spiders. The others flashed their searchlights down just to make sure. There was nothing inside but a few inches of stagnant rain water." Following the hallucinations and panic attack, the airman, absurdly named Hungry Joe, is almost immediately re-assigned air combat duty by his superiors.

Heller's own experiences as a B-52 bombadier relate with a painfull, crisp clarity the effects of war on the male psyche. From crisises to women to death all made more crucial in wartime, Heller addresses each subject with clinically detached scorn. Heller relates the full story of Bombadier Yossarian's air squadron yet never loses the biting edge of cynical disregard for warmongers on each side of WWII.

Heller presents War as institutionalized insanity - a world at war being enough to drive anyone who lives in it completely crazy. Bombadier Yossarian, although high-strung and violent, is the lone sane man in a world gone completely crazy with war. The only place Yossarian feels safe at is a military hospital in western Italy. At this hospital, Yossarian is surrounded by war-jangled men who've come down with sudden cases of sanity in the face of a fiery death. They each argue the meaning of Catch-22 while trying to find a way to survive the war.

These men begin to act as crazy and incompetent as their commanding officers after running dozens of combat missions over Europe. Some are genuinely suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress but all of them will return to flight duty. According to one man's definition of Catch-22: "Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty is not really crazy." (Doc Daneeka's definition appears on pg.54).

The grim reality of turning men into sketchy, rattled headcases unfolds as good but luckless men die within Yossarian's shattered view as per airman Kraft who dies in his second hour of active combat service:

"Kraft was a skinny, harmless kid from Pennsylvania who only wanted to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading ambition. Instead of being liked he was dead, a bleeding cinder..."

This kind of re-occurring anonymous death becomes a daily event. In time, it only registers with a sick thump in the stomach.

Much as has written about Heller's masterpiece with varying degrees of accuracy. This Blob believes that this book is on the level with a long-form Kurt Vonnegut book (Slaughterhouse Five minus the sci-fi elements). However, Catch-22 is not just a toungue-in-cheek parody - it's a tragedy. The tragedy is made more real because it's based in the reality of blind bureaucracy driving human cattle to their inevitable doom.

References:
Wikipedia, Catch-22
Wikipedia, Catch-22 Logic

No One Here Gets Out Alive

2010-04-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

No One Here Gets Out Alive, originally written in 1980, is the first biography of Jim Morrison. The Doors remain rock demigods today nearly 40 years after Morrison's death in 1971 and the break-up of the band in 1973. The Doors, unlike rock stars today, are uncorrupted by cell phone sponsorships or the preening over-scrutiny of a million Youtubers. They are chiefly remembered through dusty vinyl, CD compilations and Oliver Stones's excellent biopic The Doors (1991).

In 1980, writers Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman dutifully recorded Morrison's habit of personal myth-making that made him a star. The book follows Morrison as a young man through a long rotation of colleges before forming the Doors. According to accepted legend, Morrison and Manzerek, both UCLA film school grads, met on Venice Beach in California in July of 1965. The two decided to form a band around Morrison's writing and Ray's musical connections.

The band they formed were a rock 'n roll phenomena that stood on their own musical merits w/out the information superhighway to propell them or MTV to sell them. Jim Morrison's vocals (like silk sheets being torn apart described one reviewer) and roughly poetic lyrics hynotized massive crowds, Robbie Kreiger's masterfull bottleneck infused the band's songs with blues soul, Ray Manzarek's psychedelic rhythyms flooded out in sharp rich melodies and John Densmore knew enough to stay out of the way while contributing his own take on scene dominated by some of the best drummers Rock had ever seen.

Morrison died at age 27, the same age as several other famous rock stars, including Alan Wilson of Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Morrison's girlfriend, Pamela Courson, also died at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose.

No One Here Gets Out Alive is a must read for all true-blue rock 'n roll nerds. The writers experience make this book more than a glossy long-form article. Co-writer Danny Sugerman provided a unique perspective on the band - Sugerman (along with a 12-year-old Billy Idol) began working as an assistant in the Doors publicity office at the age of fourteen before becoming their manager for two years after Morrison died. Jerry Hopkins was a contributing editor for Rolling Stone for 20 years and has written three books on Elvis Presley and one on Don Ho.

References:
Wikipedia, The Doors
Wikipedia, No One Here Gets Out Alive
IMDB, The Doors (1991)

Notes From The Underground

2010-04-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Never, ever let any pretentious latte sippin' hipster, hack artiste or stuffy square tell you that Russian literature is only for the egghead set - it ain't. Russian literature is: wild, insightful, fiery.

Exhibit A: 1856, Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground. The book is a copy of the same scribbled passages laying next to dozens of brilliant writers' keyboards from Piedmont to Poland. The Notes are written in a flowing, cramped hand in a frigid studio apartment located in the epicenter of the toxic waste part of town.

Notes From The Underground recognizes that certain factors are unchangeable despite geography or time: from finding personal truth to creating farces to extinguish love. The book, depending on translation, could have easily been written today in Chicago or Moscow. At 126 pages, Notes From The Underground isn't exactly the 1,475 page War And Peace. For existentialism, Notes is very accessible.

This accessibility is due to Dostoevsky's even hand as a writer. This book condenses much of this brilliance. He excelled at using his pencil like a surgeon's scapel - he cuts into the dark red fabric of the human experience. His accounts are of biting hunger, grim gore spilled in hatred, wild heights of love and lust and above all: the inexplicable sadness that haunts every generation.

The book is divided into two sections, the first being a series of dubious and hilarious essays on the nature of life, love, and work. The second section follows a wandering character known only as X. Each section contains several axioms, such as the naked truth of Self-Destruction: If man has no curse readily available - he will invent one for himself. On Sadism masquerading as Romance: When in love, a woman will tell herself, while tormenting the object of her love, that after torturing and degrading her lover - she will eventually reward him for every wound she inflicts. On Anti-Intellectualism firing off that: "intellectual activity is a disease".

This darkly humorous, subversive book had yer ol' pal the Blob holding it's sides and alternately sighing in deep agreement with the fundamental fact put forward by Dostoevsky - the fact that humans are doomed to be unhappy, self-important mammals.

References:
Wikipedia, Notes From The Underground
Fifty Books, Notes From The Underground
Salon, Notes From The Underground
On-Line Lit, Digitized Underground

Coming In Spring

2010-03-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Blob reviews more unpopular books for Spring including: unlikely relevance in 1864's Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky, bidding a fond farewell to ethics in rock 'n roll with Micheal Azerrad's chronicle of Nirvana in Come As You Are, examining the nature of the absurd in Joe Heller's Catch-22, re-visiting the surly legend of The Doors in No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and 1978 American Prisoners' Writing Contest winner Seth Morgan's Homeboy.

Queen of Angels

2010-02-27T00:02:00.000-08:00

The hardest book in the Shack wasn't written by Nietzsche or Girder. It was written in 1990 by a sci-fi author named Greg Bear. His book was radically different from anything else - as any novel set in future should be. Queen of Angels makes contemporary work like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game look like the overworked fumblings of a pretentious hack. While descriptions of diodes and flashing quasars verge on poetic - there's no emotional depth in Card's resigned Yoda-esque approach to genocide - and there must be! I mean, Ender's Game is genocide, right? Why does this book read like directions for Rice Krispies Treats when District 9 (aka Alive in Joburg) reads like an Auschwitz diary or Queen of Angels reads like a Thought Police report?

A clear problem to bad sci-fi, like Ender's Game, is a peristent lack of believable characters in situations that produce a emotional response. When this response is felt in good sci-fi books, like Bear's Queen of Angels, a reader has a kind of "A-ha!" sort of moment when they realize what was missing from previous books. "A-ha!" happens, in the style of "What is the Matrix?", "Use the Force" or "I am the Qwasadtz Haderach!", when connections and conflicts develop between the sci-fi environment and the characters in it.

Bad sc-fi happens anyway. It happens due to all the flyin' cars, bugger clouds and androids. As a countermeasure the characters must, through empathy/interest in their struggles, drive the rest of the story (see Butlerian Jihad). These characters must not simply go through the motions, mindlessly obeying genre convention, like badly concieved of paper dolls. Big tittie replicants flyin' space cars or no, this is clearly bad writing regardless of genre.

Queen of Angels differs greatly in this aspect. Bear relates how life in 2048 is radically different due to advances in technology and contrasts in prevailing social attitudes through his characters not through overworked architectonic descriptions. In spite of these broad ontological changes, there's an unmistakably human element running the course of a tight thriller. In 2048, life's road has changed but the rules governing that road, the unspoken rules of love and death, have not. Different road, same rules. It's a formula that has clearly worked for Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Phillip K. Dick and argueably Stephen King's apocalyptic ensemble in The Stand.

In applying this method of connecting environment and character, Queen of Angels does not become lost in long, hypothetical descriptions of futuristic toasters. Rabid technophilia is a huge failing of sci-fi writers like Orson Scott Card, Ben Bova and many, many others.

So here is Greg Bear's ultra-futuristic world of 2048 century Los Angles. It's a dirty megopolis of steel canyons that stretch to the sky and to the sea. Similar to Phillip K. Dick's Bladerunner, in it's dystopian humanist approach, L.A. is a series of vast metropolitan worlds that dwarf the individual. The City of Angels is built upon layer after layer of drowned history, sprawling throngs of disparate people and infamous crimes.

Concepts like an interior Internet, which Bear describes as the Country of the Mind, are causally referred to with astonishing detail. In doing so, the line between the psychological concept of Ego is given image and digital life. The Country of The Mind can be explored in a kind of virtual reality simulation that is used by police and psychiatrists for many purposes - to either investigate crime or alter a patient into a more acceptably compliant state of mind.

As a side effect, In Greg Bear's 2048, humans can be co-opted into enslaved hard drives subjected to lines of code or identity "viruses". If that wasn't bad enough, the human body itself is as malleable as computer parts. Completely new incarnations of the body come in the form of over-night plastic surgeries that can change race or sex to the point that the idea of Ego or Self as a bodily concept is almost entirely obsolete.

The plot for Queen of Angels revolves around revolution in Hispanola and the search for a revolutionary named Goldsmith whose namesake is a nod to George Orwell's own figures of Smith and Goldstein. Goldsmith, accused of a series of ghastly murders, is hunted down by Detective Mary Choy. Choy quickly realizes that her quarry could be hiding in the body or the mind of millions. To add another dimension to the question of identity, Bear includes a newly self-aware form of Artificial Intelligence as a character. The A.I. being attempts to understand it's creators while travelling in space and cryptically communicating with Choy.

Although the book was nominated for a Hugo, a Locus, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for which he won 2^nd place) all in 1991, to date, Queen of Angels hasn't won a major literary award. However, Bear's depth and imagination enjoys the deepest respect from fans and authors. It should also be noted that Greg Bear's career has only garnered him a single award: a Nebula in 1993 for Moving Mars.

References:
The Official Greg Bear, News
Wikipedia, Greg Bear
Wikipedia, Queen Of Angels
Worlds Without End, Sci-Fi Award Winners: 1991

The Stars My Destination

2010-02-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

Science fiction was perfected in 1956 by a little known author whose work is evident in every sci-fi franchise - although he recieves no credit. Modern conventions of social diaspora and hyperscientific mechanics in contemporary science fiction from transporters, space exploration, splinter colonies to updated Shakespearean villanry all come from one man and one story that was first published nearly sixty years ago. This man's name was Alfred Bester. His work went on to define the genre of science fiction.

In The Stars My Destination, the foundations of the story structure recall pre-exisiting literary conventions of Halmet's feigned madness and lust for revenge, notable similarities to Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and more obviously in quatrain stanza structures (text in four parts like modern verse) are employed in homage to William Blake's Tyger, Tyger. In fact, after being very successfully serialized in Galaxy Magazine in October of 1956 the first edition of Bester's book (now well into it's 20th edition) was entitled Tiger! Tiger!.

The story begins with Gully Foyle of the ship NOMAD. Foyle, a raw and simple-minded man, survives a catastrophic explosion in deep space that killed the NOMAD's crew. Foyle survives in a small "locker", a claustrophobic metal tomb, in which he lives for the next one hundred and seventy days. Isolated in deep space, Foyle begins to lose his mind, then regains it, only to lose it once more as he risks his life for the opportunity for rescue by a strange ship indentified only as the VORGA. The ship inexplicably abandons Foyle aboard the wreck of the NOMAD to a slow death.

As the narrator of his own calamitous story Foyle begins to translate the experience of prolonged isolation in the icy depths of space for the reader:

"Gully Foyle is my name,
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place,
And death's my destination."

In writing in this morbid, curious manner Bester is no fool. His inspiration comes directly from stanza five of Blake's Tyger Tyger which reads:

"In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What hand dare seize the fire?"

A cold-hearted vengeance begins to dominate Foyle. His new found lust for revenge inspires a desperate attempt at survival as Foyle crashes the drifting hulk of the listing NOMAD into a populated asteroid belt. His rescue from suffocation and starvation is short-lived when he is captured by the denizens of the asteroid belt, sub-Mutants, charming inarticulate devolved humanoids that want Foyle to mate with one of their females...

Foyle quickly makes his way across the solar system forcing a barely spaceworthy vessel from the asteroid belt. As he purues the VORGA he encounters a wide variety of characters including Telesends, a kind of one-way telepath and Neo-Skoptsies who resemble Christopher Pike styled cyborgs living as tended vegetables on Mars. Foyle learns he is unable to travel by "jaunt" a popular kind of futuristic and instanteous teleportation. To complicate matters, Foyle also is haunted by an apparition - a semi-transparent, ghostly, burning man. All the while Foyle seeks his revenge on the VORGA and it's holding company: a collosal and corrupt Terra based corporation.

In spite of all it's formidable strengths - The Stars Are My Destination is not the perfect sci-fi novel. At times, the book is as rough-hewn as Gully Foyle himself. When the story was finished in 1956, contemporary writer Damon Knight (who was the first to publish Frank Herbert's Dune) described the novel's "bad taste, inconsistency, irrationality, and downright factual errors", but also called the book "grotesquely moving" in a now defunct Chicago-based trade book called In Search of Wonder. The Stars My Destination became a blue print for the next 100 years of science fiction, horror and cyber punk books. It has shaped Star Wars, Event Horizon, The Matrix, Star Trek, Bladerunner and many, many more scripts that quote Bester's imagination and insight page after page.

References:
Wikipedia, Alfred Bester
Wikipedia, The Stars My Destination
Infinity+, The Stars My Destination
Bartleby, Tyger! Tyger! by William Blake
Bombastico, The Stars My Destination

The 47th Samurai

2010-02-25T10:28:00.000-08:00

The 47^th Samurai is the story of two cultures brought together by one instrument of war. American and Japanese warrior culture meet in the ashes of World War Two in Stephen Hunter's The 47^th Samurai.

Hunter, a capable writer of historical fiction with an action and miltary bent, is a Tom Clancy without the over-arching plots and greasy characterizations of communists and terrorists. In The 47th Samurai, Viet Nam era Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, resembles a kind of apolitical Jack Ryan with deeper scars. Swagger, now in his 60's is a recovering alcoholic in self-imposed exile in Idaho.

Hunter makes it clear from the beginning that Bob Lee's WWII era Marine Corps father Earl Swagger, part history and part myth, was the better Marine. Although Bob Lee is a battle hardened force to contend with, the elder Swagger was a hero: a man who died in the line of duty as a cop in rural Idaho after brutal wartime service. Earl, war hero, was killed by a junkie stick-up kid for a handfull of quarters. This bitter end came after the elder Swagger survived an invadion Europe and ran blind into the dragon's teeth of Imperial steel at Iwo Jima during World War Two.

There's a deep sense of loss and shame that a man like Earl Swagger could be killed at all. All we are left with is a sense of desolated emptiness and a rusty sword from a long forgotten gunbattle. The rusty sword is a relic of Earl Swagger's bloody raid on a fortified bunker on Iwo Jima.

The comparison of culture begins with this rusty, unnaturally sharp sword. A valueless trophy lost in a dusty attic in America. The same sword would be worshipped in modern Japan - where guns are illegal. This is the opposite of America, where 2^nd Amendment rights to bear firearms are cherished and blades and knives are seen as instruments of muggers and rapists. This is the first of many key paralells drawn by Hunter, a key cultural contrast among comparisons too numerous to detail in a short review.

The editing style in the beginning of the book jumps from the black sands of 1945 Iwo Jima on Sulfur Island as Earl Swagger, a tough as nails no-bullshit First Sergeant, bloodily takes a Japanese position to a present day 2007 Bob Lee Swagger - a retired Viet Nam era sniper who has since retreated from the same society that he had killed with impunity for - the same society that gunned down his father for simply doing his job.

The book contains unflinching insight into warrior culture of American Marines and Japanese Samurai. Both types of men are trained to live and die by culturally ingrained bushido. In Japanese, bushido literally means "the way of the warrior" this is roughly compared to the Marines motto of semper fidelis from the Latin for "always faithful". With these virtues firmly in mind, each subculture, through the Yano clan and the Swagger family, leave the comfort of home and family to fight the wars that their Emperors and Presidents have chosen. They each do so by leaving reason and compassion for the enemy, and themselves, far behind.

The language used is direct and natural and, as a sharp contrast, the research into Japanese culture adds a morbidly poetic quality to the tale. Stephen Hunter reminds us, early, of ingrained warrior mentality by attributing a quote to legendary Japanese fencer and philosopher Miyamoto Musashi:

"Steel Cuts Flesh.
Steel Cuts Bone.
Steel Does Not Cut Steel".

Legendary Samurai Kondo Isami.

In reminding us of the 16^th century warrior's credo, Hunter reveals that all war for both Japanese and American soldiers, begins in the mind of the warrior. it spreads outward from the focus of the mind's eye. For the American Marine, it issues from the barrel of his rifle. For the Japanese soldier, it comes in the arc of his blade - a blade that became Imperial steel in Showa era Japan.

Key civil eras in Japan, prior to Showa, led the country out of a feudal culture 400 years after Europe had militarized. These events, including samurai culture as seen in Kondo Isami pictured above, took place right up to the American Civil War ended in 1868.

Be warned, Hunter stumbles a few times in his tale of cultures, world war and society. The writer momentarily loses his footing in the first third of the book after an amazingly strong start but quickly regains it, midway, for a strong finish.

Stephen Hunter has written a number of books featuring WWII and Viet Nam with the Swaggers as well as American Gunfight, the true story of the narrow escape from assasination by Harry Truman from Puerto Rican nationalists in 1950.

References:
Wikipedia, Stephen Hunter
Unofficial Stephen Hunter, The 47^th Samurai

The Thin Red Line

2010-02-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

James Jones was one hell of a writer. His book The Thin Red Line demonstrates a mastery of the craft by telling essentially the same story through the eyes, hands, wounds, deaths and mouths of many different men as World War Two raged in the South Pacific. In the middle of fierce fire fights, his characters reflect, almost emotionally detached from the merciless deaths they encounter on the grim butchery of warcraft:

"This was war? There was no superior test of strength here, no superb swordsmanship, no bellowing Viking heroism, no expert marksmanship. This was only numbers. He was being killed for numbers."

This brutal and graphic account, based on Jones own experiences as a WWII Army Sergeant at Guadalcanal, is easily one of the most authentically skull rattling books about war and the senselessness that overcomes the men who wage that war.

References:
Wikipedia, The Thin Red Line
Wikipedia, James Jones
Pegasos (Finland), James Jones

Trinity

2010-02-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

Leon Uris (1924 – 2003) is referred to as "the author's author". He was recognized as a great writer in a time that was willing to listen to non-traditional voices, specifically in mid-1970's America.

Uris managed to turn many eyes towards classic power struggles that were long ignored or misunderstood by writing in a way that was grounded in real tragedy, real human tragedy. In his two major books, Trinity and Exodus, these tragedies and their fall-out took place across generations of men.

Uris's unflinching insight into the highs and lows of human condition came from personally witnessing the universal struggle for equality and independence that were part of his experience as a Marine in wartime and then as a traveler to Israel and Ireland after WWII ended.

After Pearl Harbor was bombed Uris, a Jew kid born in Baltimore, joined the Marines. In this capacity, Uris served in the South Pacific as a combat radioman at Guadalcanal where many fierce battles were fought and lost by the US. Uris's unit fought on an atoll in the Gilbert Islands named Tarawa that was the site of a British colony against the Japanese. He was deployed in New Zealand, another colony of the British Empire, from 1942 through 1945. Uris saw, first hand, the effects of the empires of Japan and England at war and the effect on the indigenous populations that lived on their battlegrounds of total carnage.

In WWII era Tarawa, Uris and his unit fought a dug-in Japanese force with the use of a scorched earth policy that completely decimated the atoll. Of the estimated 5,000 deployed Japanese fighting forces (that number does not include Korean laborers) embedded at Tarawa - only 146 Japanese soldiers survived. There is no record of native casualties. Today, due to extensive bombing designed to dislodge bunkers, the atoll still struggles to produce enough food to feed it's native population. The atoll was literally bombed into the Stone Age over 65 years ago.

Before the cliches pile any higher, human condition and military history and all this much spoken of rot, let's look at a clear example. An example of these same driving forces of greed and warfare were used to decimate the people of the First World nation of Ireland by the same Empire that Sgt. Uris fought on behalf of in WWII.

Trinity, written in 1976, is the story of the Irish fight, both political and militarily, for independence as a sovereign nation against the British empire well from 1850 to WWI. Whereas, a state of legal slavery was brought about by the haughty "divine right" of English Kings in Ireland for many generations - each generation of Irish man wanted a claim to his country for his own. These men were met with elitism, cold-blooded murder, insanity and imprisonment for the cause of their own country's independence.

These men were not the modern American or Mexican equivalent of "outlaws" - drug dealing rats that they are. They were not drug dealers pumping .22 rounds into crowds for kicks or hill-billys stringing up random strangers of the "wrong" color or occupation. These, for the most part, were honorable men with an honorable but desperate fight. Too often, the IRA employed violent tactics that damaged their own causes in the form of attempted assassinations and bombings that too often claimed innocent lives while killing very few of those who sought to undermine Irish independence.

This fight against the English attempt to conquer Ireland made paupers and slaves for an ancient Empire anyway. The English honed their methodology for submission from lessons thoroughly learned from the Dutch and Spanish colonial efforts in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean then applied it with brutal force to The Virgin Islands and the subcontinent of India. The centuries long attempts to annex Ireland employed many of the same brutal tactics used in these distant colonies.

This effort to build and maintain an English Empire attempted to franchise the process of slavery and drain a foreign country of it's natural resources - ignoring the economic impact to native people. In these continual efforts to annex Ireland, it must be pointed out that in Ireland's case, one race of white people were quite nearly conquered by other race of white people for an alternating series of justifications.

Justifications varied with the centuries, from divine right of English monarchy, to expansionist Social Darwinism in social doctrines and finally the clash of two major sub-religions with each side claiming a truer path to the same God. In each century, England imposed it's will onto the sleepy backwater country of Ireland in hundreds of despicable ways.

In the late 19th century from 1850 on to WWI Irish/English relations were that of master and slave, strained with wild engagements such as the Easter Uprising in 1916, to refusing Catholic men the right to work (especially in Dublin, Ulster and Derry in Northern Ireland) as official public policy enforced economic slavery with a brutal efficiency.

By 1850, England had been in the role of occupier at war with the Irish for over 400 years - at war with a country with no official standing army. Ireland was instead represented by a series of corrupt politicians. These English pawns were snakes-in-the-grass that actively worked against their own people. The Irish have no native serpents but just the same, these corrupt self-serving snakes made it their business to vote down Home Rule and Irish Independence. These snakes-in-the-grass crushed the life from populist leaders like the brilliant leader Charles Stewart Parnell who had supported civil and religious freedom of choice for the Irish people. The snakes wound themselves tightly around the legs of the people of Ireland at every opportunity. These snakes did so in exchange for land stolen from a civilized people and blood money taken in quasi-legal farces.

These Men-Who-Were-Snakes claimed, before Almighty God and humble man alike - to be Ireland's true "leaders". Today, they live on in history as Judas Iscariot does - as loathsome, selfish creatures that crept, sneaked, sweated and belly-crawled through life by stealing bread from their brothers' table, the living table called Ireland.

Trinity is an 800-page-book, an outstanding record of a conglomerate family that lived and died in these struggles brought on by conquerors and snakes-in-the-grass. The Larkins, written with the real deeds of many real men in mind, represent a struggle in Ireland that has been fought for nearly 600 years up to the present day. Trinity covers all the events mentioned above and ends right before the partitioning of Ireland in 1922 into Northern Ireland and Ireland. The characters are vivid and the book is definitive of that elusive gem of what good writing should be - a saga, complete with heroes and very real villains who have shaped the course of history right up to this very day.

Uris, many years later, perhaps sensing a renewed need to examine the subject of Irish independence during the events prior to the Good Friday Peace Accords reached in Belfast reached in 1998, Uris returned to Irish sovereignty in his novel Redemption released in 1995.

References:
Wikipedia, Leon Uris
Wikipedia, Irish Republican Army
Library Thang, Trinity

The World Of Star Trek

2010-02-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

David Gerrold wrote a great book about the original Star Trek series in 1973 before anyone was really that psyched about being called a Trekkie. In 1973, the show, in which Gerrold was a writer and actor, had been cancelled for 5 years.

The book itself is unusual because most books written about or based on the Star Trek show are total garbage. They often feature hypothetical blueprints for transporters or ray guns, dull stories about Cap'N Picard chasing Borg out of his shirt sleeves or even worse: Kirk re-wrestling a Gorn he'd already drop kicked in the scaly green snout twenty years ago. The majority of Star Trek books are uninspired and genre-mired. I think the operational logic behind this concept in mass publishing trade paperbacks is: "fuck 'em they'll buy anything". Hey, maybe they're right. Abdom-o-sizers, blue Pith Helmets emblazoned with Dr. Who logos and Snuggies featuring Twilight characters don't exactly sell themselves.

David Gerrold with William Shatner Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Image courtesy of Alpha Memory.

As a counterpoint to consumer vapidity, David Gerrold, the writer of The Trouble With Tribbles and frequent contributor to the series, sat down to write an intelligent account of the years of development and the strain of production. His book details the unique individuals involved in the first real sci-fi series on American network television. The novel, which has been updated in 1980 and 1984, is both a documentary of the series and actors as well as a wry, light-hearted look at writing.

Although The World Of Star Trek is a hard to find classic is a great book accompanied with 100 production and PR photos from the three years Star Trek was actually on the air prior cancellation by brilliant NBC executives. The show's resurrection, through the wonders of syndication, has driven interest in pointy ears and befuddling electronic gadgetry to an all-time high.

References:
David Gerrold, Official Site
Wikipedia, David Gerrold

Stalking Susan

2010-02-11T11:59:00.000-08:00

Do you ever get fooled by a great title and excellent jacket art? The next thing you know you're picking up that flashy book at your local bookstore or library and taking it home. At home you soon find out how low the American publishing industry will sink to wrap a terrible story in that flashy cover that got your attention in the first place.

My one night stand happend with a superficial, limping narrative written by former Minnesotan WCCO-TV news correspondent Julie Kramer. Her book Stalking Susan, from Doubleday, was released in 2008. The NBC Today Show producer's 248-page book operates on the premise that two women named Susan were strangled by an unidentified serial killer. Then, more suspicouslly murdered Susans, the name being all that connects them, are uncovered. They're found in a wider and wider pattern where Julie's dead husband travelled before he was killed by her giant ego and lack of literary skill. Or, maybe it was a firebombing? It got very hard to tell as the chapters kept grinding along like Peg Bundy's nail file.

The thing could have been, with just a slightly deeper exploration of the characters and plot in the novel besides a precursory A/S/L description of them, much better. See: Malik is Pakistani, Aig Le is Hmong, Riley Spartz is white and ex-husband Boyer is dead - and that's it? Oh Jesus of Narareth pure or plain, this book was written like a text message from James "Short And Sweet" Patterson at a Minnesota press junket on "craft": badly and evidently for an audience of house wives whose idea of "suspense" lays somewhere between watching bread rise and paint peel.

The characters get more annoying and more annoying as they trade one-liners from The Wizard of Oz or Casablanca and then immediately indentify them by name and year. Do you know what it's like to have people constantly regurgitate movie lines in public? Aquatic mammal w/in city limits or no - it's worse than packing my ears full of Wrath of Khan bugs who sing nothing but upbeat and off key show tunes. Now you've got me reading this crap every few chapters? No ma'am. Your career spreading superficial smarm and luke warm thrills ends at page 111 for me. Good day to you and your book.

To further compound my grief, this unreadable, shallow and repetitive book was nominated for a literary award in 2009 - the Mary Higgins Clark Award for it's "suspensefull qualities"...it didn't win.

KHHANNNNNNNN!!!

References:
Julie Kramer Books, About Julie...

2010-02-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

Balance (1989)

2010-01-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

20 years ago, the Oscar for short Animation was awarded to two brothers, the Lauensteins, from what was for many decades East Germany. Their thought provoking 7-minute film deals with gaining emotional equilibrium through, however reluctant, group action.

Today, Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein run a televison production company in Germany and have worked for Coca-Cola, Nike, Smarties and MTV.

References:
Wikipedia, Balance (film)
IMDB, Balance (1989)

Mister B. Gone

2009-11-22T13:28:00.000-08:00

I admit it, Internet. I'd given up on Clive Barker. After becoming a a successful writer and film director - Barker didn't work on anything but projects that he chose (including Candyman and producing the James Whale biopic Gods and Monsters). Sometime in 2000, I figured that Barker had been out of the entrail-gorged trenches long enough for two bad things to happen.

These are the two things that eventually happen to a really successful horror writer: Number One, he grows very comfortable in his Beverly Hills mansion far from the horrible things that inspire novelists to kill monsters in print - and, after awhile, Number Two happens: he loses the icy chill of his trademarked "touch". Olympic sized swimming pools and acres of palm trees have a way of obscuring inspiration rooted in struggle and loss.

Originally, as a fan of the Books of Blood, the otherworldly horror movie Hellraiser series and the classic film Nightbreed I truly believed that all the creativity that could be wrung out of Cliver Barker's English brain had been spilt. Then, I read his 2007 release, Mister B. Gone.

This short novel (248 pages) takes some of what made Barker's competition so successful and applies it to the pathetic and vengefull minor demon, Jakabok Botch. He channels the ruptured realism of Koontz and direct approach of King to build the strangely lucid tale of Jakabok Botch. Botch is stolen from the Ninth Circle of Hell to visit his burning need for wrath upon humanity. That is, when he is not moments away from being skinned alive, boiled, lynched, beaten, stripped or incinerated by a superstitous 15th Century era world of corrupt Archbishops, deadly Angels and vicious Demons who all walk the earth in the same shadow that Botch attempts (and miserably fails) to cloak himself in.

There are many more twists in this book that are all narrated from the mystical prison that Jakabok is doomed to inhabit - the book in the reader's very hands. This book is very unusual and has Barker fans on the fence. As a stand alone work? Mister B. Gone is still notable for it's pacing, approach and thought provoking nature - 4 outta five stars, Internet.

Clive Barker announced through his official website that he will be writing the script to a remake of the original Hellraiser movie and has 5 more new books forthcoming. Additionally, Barker will be a featured artist at Horrorhound's 2010 Indianapolis horror convention.

References:
Clive Bark.com
Horrorhound Indy, Guest Line-Up

God's Demon

2009-11-21T12:25:00.000-08:00

God's Demon, released in Fall of 2007, is Wayne Barlowe's demonic world war set in the driest, darkest wastelands of Hell.

In God's Demon, a defeated Lucifer is lost. His surrogate, Beelzebub, rules over the various bizarre fiefdoms in the eternally warring abyss. The air in Hell itself, is cursed with ash and evil. The ceaseless tide of arriving human souls are mercilessly tortured and saddled with a gaping hole in their chests where a mysical pain-inflicting "Burden" now rests instead of a soul. They writhe in pain - if they are lucky. Untold millions more damned humans can no longer toil for their overseers. These unlucky masses are summarily converted into "soul-bricks" then built into towering cyclopean columns and thick keep walls for their masters the Demons Major.

As a production artist on Guillermo Del Toro's Hell Boy series, Barlowes's work was intricate and unusual. This style is much more carefully elaborated in print in Hell, where the lawfully evil Lord Sargantanas, the chaotic and bloodthirsty regent Beelzebub (whose body is made out hundreds of millions of stinging flys), a banished ex-God, and the soul of Hannibal Barca wrestle for control of the darkest of all dominions.

There are additional colorful and well-realized chracters, including imprisoned giants and the only "life" naturally occuring in Hell - the semi-intelligent Abyssals. They serve to push the story along at crucial moments and many of which are utterly destroyed in the terrible carnage as Hell unmakes itself.

References:
God's Demon, Art and Imagery
Del Toro Films, News

Mind My Gap

2009-05-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

Rosto is a Danish animator and artist who has a growing following in the US. Picture the tall mathematician character Jeff Goldblum played in Jurassic Park with a with a darker sense of humor and evil looking goatee - and you have the guy.

In 2003, I was very fortunate to meet him in Minneapolis during a screening of his award-winning animated film Anglo-Billy Feverson.

Rosto uses story-telling elements from his graphic novels like Stream of Consciousness and Broken Narrative to shape his unusual settings. This effect is even more powerful with the addition of multiple animation techniques: oil, stop-motion, motion graphics and amazing CG/3d models. Rosto has enjoyed a period of great critical success winning acclaim in the Taos Film Fest, Revelation Perth, and the Hong Kong International Film Fest.

LOR

2009-01-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

Lots of Robots is an independent production of Andy Murdock an American animator in San Francisco. It's been in the works since November of 2002 with new sections added every few months.

Letter A

2008-10-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

Letter A by BLU on Vimeo.

Exquisite Corpse Was Animated

2008-08-13T13:16:00.001-07:00

MUTO by BLU on Vimeo.

Dave's Rag - The King is Alive

2008-08-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

Growing up stupid and poor, I gravitated to The King immediately. No matter how weird, charred and ugly my environment was I found the worlds that Stephen King created were vibrant and terrifyingly alive.

Cracked skulls, hilarious gallows humor, otherworldly monsters, wisecracks that haven't been hip since the 1950's and detailed trips through fully realized characters became a large part of my life.

To put this in perspective, the town I grew up in is infamous for a long series of man made disasters. Magnesium chemical fires have leveled blocks and could be seen from space. Epic toxic waste spills killed millions of fish and animals - leaving the surface of a local river covered in corpses. The spill also polluted the towns water supply with battery acid. The true deathblow came when the life's blood of the town, the auto factories, all shut down at once. The fact was: I didn't start out a horror fan - it was that the world I came to know was a non-stop horror show.

Living around a constant sense of inevitable decay and doom - Stephen King's apocalyptic scenes weren't that far of a leap. Discovering King, for an 11-year-old punk kid, who was growing up in a suffocating corner of the Rustbelt that was constantly under-going a calamity, meant finding a sense of humor about the whole derailed ordeal of childhood and the world.

Reading was an outlet. It was a way to escape the bleak social stigmatization of poverty and the real horror of man made disasters that killed my home town. Being poor but reading (and eventually writing) meant I wasn't doomed being stupid, toxified and grim forever.
I finished reading IT in a week, at 11, all 1104 pages if I remember right. In the car. At school, when I was ignoring binomial Algebra. Late at night, when I could manage fooling my parents into thinking I was asleep. On the bus, when the jocks were braying. I didn't get many of the cultural references at the time. I identified with the gang of outsider kids growing up in the middle of nowhere and the flashback narrative style. This set me up to be a huge Tarantino/Kurosawa fan in the future.

In IT, something about the talented, hunted group of outsiders got deeply ingrained into me at this point. My friends were mostly the same way. This whole phase lasted for about two or three years. I read every book he wrote that I could get a hold of.

However, living outside the city limits made taking home books from the library impossible. I could read a few chapters while I was there but that was it. It was either buy books or steal books from somewhere else. The "somewhere else" turned out to be the local shrine to capitalism - the mall. The local mall was built on what had been an Indian cemetery. Later, it became a land fill and dump before it was finally developed. The mall was about as close as the library via bicycle. There was a Barnes and Noble bookstore inside where I could buy a couple of new paperbacks for maybe 15 bucks.

Without the benefits of a library card I had to get cash for books from the Mounds of toxic Indian Skulls Mall. Getting busted shoplifting would've meant a lifetime ban from the only source of King I had - so it was way too risky to steal. For dough, I worked in the family business and later in an alternating series of part-time jobs. I never had a work permit at that age. I worked to earn enough bread to be a voracious reader of King's horror novels. At the time, I wondered if I could grow up to be a writer whose work would be published and read one day.
After a year or two into this King kick, I discovered Different Seasons featuring Andy Dupree in the original story of The Shawshank Redemption. The book also contained The Body (later to become Rob Reiner's Stand by Me) featuring Fat Ass's Revenge (mmm, mmm pie!), and the Apt Pupil featuring a sociopathic kid and a Nazi war criminal who had settled comfortably in America.The fourth Season could have been called Survivor Type? This was a short story about a marooned self-cannibalizing heroin addict on a desert island. It was gruesome but also read as an allegory about drug and alcohol abuse. Maybe this story was from another compilation? Now that I'm thinking enough about it: Survivor Type appeared in Skeleton Crew.
The Stand was the last great King book I read on this kick. To this day I remember Nick Andros, Stu Redman, Larry "You Ain't No Nice Guy" Underwood, Abigal Freemantle, Randall Flagg, Trashcan Man and The Kid, his happy crappy and every can of Coors Light. I got my grubby mitts on an unabridged version that had dozens of b/w illustrations (including the Kid's last stand against a pack of hungry wolves) - until the cover and pages were smudged or shredded. The way King linked these individuals stories during a man made Apocalypse was a herculean act of focused writing. The TV series starring Gary Sinese and Molly Ringwald, even for a tv program, really sucked. The only saving graces were Rob Lowe playing the deaf drifter Nick Andros and in a bit of brilliant casting I "remembered" the kid from Slingblade played the Feral Boy - apparently IMDB thinks different.
After Tommyknockers, an interesting story of a semi-sentient UFO uncovered in a New England backyard told as nearly every character in the book mutated into brain dead two-legged rats as the protagonist, Gardner, tried to stop the entire East Coast from going over to these zomboids.
The Bachman Books were originally published as cheap novellas under King's pen name Richard Bachman. The pseudonym was a combination of the band BTO and a character out of Donald Westlake's books. The stories were grim fairy tales with kids walking to death as a national sport in the Long Walk or criminals running for their lives and cash prizes in The Running Man which read as a kind of America's Most Hunted. The collection also featured The Rage, a story that dealt with a Columbine-esque school shooter scene but was written ten years ahead of the real life massacre.Reading some his anthologies (Danse Macabre and Graveyard Shift) and watching the two EC Comics inspired Creepshow movies eventually got me into the authors and themes that influenced Stephen King: namely Robert Bloch (Psycho), August Derleth, H.P. Lovecraft (Call of Cthulu), Edgar Allan Poe, and Alfred Hitchcock. The central theme of many of these writers was the mundane individual in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Silver Key and The Raven meeting with extraordinary or supernatural evil. The conflict between the two tranformed or even killed the hero: much like Pet Sematary, The Stand and Tommyknockers - King was known for imbuing the everyman with individual idiosyncratic responses to this struggle, as in Roadwork. King's characters leap off the page with a combination of realism, heart, gut-busters and imagination. Nonetheless, around this point, I set down my copy of The Gunslinger as cars and girls came along. I forgot about my old pal Steve for awhile.
It wasn't until I was spending a stretch in the old crossbar hotel that I was reminded about how much I dig this guy. His On Writing really put it on the money for me again. Reading about him getting his collarbone and hip remodeled by a drunk driver in Maine was really painful and as bad as any of his gruesome fiction.
The stories about his alcohol and drug addiction, that came to end after his intervention, took real balls to man up to. The guy was a genius and no chump. This last book is an autobiographical instruction manual made for writers and readers of any genre. Besides writing and adapting his books into a series of films and graphic novels he's raised three kids and still plays in a rock band with John Carpenter.

In recent years, Stephen King has started a non-profit that grants money to disabled and injured writers and artists called The Haven. After being struck by a drunk driver in Maine, and nearly being killed, provided King with a first hand look at struggling with finding the right medical care and paying astronomical hospital and re-hab bills.

After a 20+ year association with the work of Stephen King all that remains for me to say is: Long Live The King, people.

References:
Stephen King.com
Wordpress, Larry Fire