From Zombos' Closet

I Shot an Arrow...

Here's a picture of me (recently fallen out of a photo album) that captures some of the zeitgeist of the 1960s. I'm pretty sure this was taken at 1000 Acres Dude Ranch (though they call it a horse ranch now). I'd be stuck there for much of the summer, anxious to get back to my comic book and monster magazine racks and color television (a Sony Trinitron). I remember one summer I almost missed a critical Fantastic Four issue with the Silver Surfer and Galactus, but, luckily, when I got back home from the ranch, the corner luncheonette, which was awesome for getting my monthly comic and magazine fix, had been closed for vacation too. I didn't miss the issue! It was still on the rack waiting for me.

But the ranch wasn't all that boring for a Brooklyn kid. I learned how to shoot an arrow, row a boat, play pool, tilt a mean pinball, play ping pong and shuffle board, and ride a horse without falling off. Getting on was always a challenge, and one fine day a horse stepped on my foot and refused to move. Man, that hurt like a son of a... All of that was fun (sort of) but my point is more related to those arrows and bow in the photo. I'm pretty young there.  Those arrows were steel tipped. I shot them into fabric targets wrapped around straw, about 10 or more feet away. No fencing, no protections for bystanders or passersby, and I'm, like I said, pretty young there. If that doesn't say much about where we've been and how paranoid and litigious we've become, I can't think of a better illustration. I also remember one summer when I walked into the ranch's management office and up to the counter. I asked for the bow and arrows  and was told they had discontinued it. Some idiot kid had aimed the wrong way and that was that. He ruined it for the rest of us. 

And isn't that always the case? It's always some idiot messing up the good stuff for the rest of us; or complaining about the good stuff and how evil the rest of us are for liking it; or preaching about how bad the good stuff is for the rest of us and we must return to the light. Seems there are a lot more idiots these days than back in the 1960s. I miss the comic and magazine rack. I miss Joe's corner luncheonette. But mostly I miss the good stuff we can't have anymore because of so many idiots now ruining it for the rest of us. 

Perhaps that's why I like horror movies so much. It's pretty much the only genre where the idiots always get their due. Go monsters!

Atom Man vs. Superman Pressbook (1950

Unfortunately, without the boffo effects of today, this serial pales in comparison to today's superhero magnum opuses. But the characters are still endearing and it must have been quite exciting to see your favorite comic book hero on the big screen for those young audiences. More of a budget would have helped a lot, too. I wish I had a lot of those tie-ups for my collection. 

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I Have Asked to Be Where No Storms Come by Gwendolyn N. Nix Book Review

My review for I Have Asked to Be Where No Storms Come first appeared in The Horror Zine. It is reposted here with permission.

Sometimes words can get in the way of what an author and editor believe they are placing on the page. So much so that, by the time the novel is finished, you have a highly creative story that is confusing on first reading for anyone but the author and editor. With muddled elements in its framework of figurative joists, and a world-building nomenclature and landscape not putting out enough cogent information to keep the reader’s head above the tale being spun instead of getting mired, it becomes a challenging and bewildering endeavor.

Such is the case with I Have Asked to Be Where No Storms Come, an ambitious novel that melds dark fantasy, alternative history, and weird western fiction, three rich areas for imagination and drama, into a dense reading filled with flashbacks, here and there and now and then scene changes, and dialog heavy chapters alternating the experiences of two special but cursed brothers. All this is made denser by spiritually glossy words combined into metaphysically heavy sentences, replacing direct descriptions with concept-art word-pieces reaching for deep meanings but less clarity. Too much of a good thing is one way to describe this effort.

The head-scratching begins with trying to pin down the “when” of this narrative. A clue is given with how both Domino and Wicasah, two brothers of the Western Plains, from a family of witches, are, briefly, fossil hunters for hire. That would seem to place the time-period around 1877, a boon time for paleontologists in the old west after discoveries that led to dinosaur quarries producing tons of bones. But that does not sit right with other elements in the story that bounce automobiles in with the wagons, and Domino driving a cool muscle car in Hell. Another bone to pick, aside from time, is how Gwendolyn N. Nix pulls from various mythologies and cultures to weave her alternate world and its realms as if she has lots of interests and, sure, why not add it all into this one story. The result is an everything but the kitchen sink aesthetic that is confusing.

It all opens with Domino in Hell, though it is later called Helia, as he sits pondering a cell phone, mystified by it. No foreshadowing here, it is soon dropped. Helia is finally explained later in the novel, although a little too late in Nix’s fluid 5-part plotting structure. In Greek mythology, Helia is a sun goddess. In Nix’s mythology, it is a place. This makes the explanation for it, which is the driving force of the story, important. Instead of being a carefully placed revelation to generate welcomed acknowledgement that the prime reason for everything happening is now revealed, it produces an oh finally instead. Nix continues to provide essential explanations in this way toward the latter part of the novel, for key plot elements introduced at the beginning, as if she were working them out as she wrote. These explanations come through lengthy dialogs well after readers may be wondering about all the esoterica casually tossed their way.

The many elements that Nix draws on give the effect of being add-ons instead of organic elements growing with the story. Instead of a carefully structured unfolding, they appear again and again like a collage of ideas instead of a careful seeding to build the emotional pull with the people inhabiting her bizarre landscape. This landscape is broken in two by the Dark and Bloody, an eco-apocalypse thematic tied to Helia and all the bad reasons Domino and Wicasah, are fighting to survive.

Much exposition is devoted to family turmoil with and between Domino, Wicasah, their witch relatives, and significant others, taking up a large portion of the novel; there is the other turmoil of demons, dead souls, witches’ blood, and witches and god-like beings playing with thunder and worlds. Both eventually coalesce, but the drawn-out nature of the family turmoil dilutes the other. Both are never fully given a history: only those reasons directly related to the plot. Why does Domino and Wicasah’s father hate their mother and all witches? Where did all the witches come from in the first place and why is it a thing? Where did Domino and Wicasah’s tremendous powers come from and why are they so important to others seeking to entrap them?

With all these elements vying for the reader’s understanding, not enough basic wording is given to flesh them out fully or pace them within their importance. It is here where Nix’s stream of spiritual style dulls the pragmatic needs of the underlying actions. Her descriptions are concept-flights that need be re-read, often, to fully grasp what is going on and why.

Lots happens to the people and creatures in Helia and on earth, but their actions and reactions go by like watching a landscape from a moving train. Why Domino and other dead souls wind up in Helia is wonderfully imaginative. Witches and their hungry familiars (Domino’s familiars like to eat bones and do not mind chewing on his now and then); unhappy demons (because of all the annoying dead humans who like to sniff demon bone dust); psychopomps (from Greek mythology, guides for the dead) like the lady-slippers queen and Anxius; nuckelavees (from Orcadian mythology, a man-horse demon); a determined heyoka wielding lightning and a bad disposition (in Sioux culture, a sacred clown)--all swirl together as Domino battles to save his brother from a dangerous father who hates witches, and as Wicasah battles to save his brother from a dangerous battle between witches and gods and demons and dead souls in Helia.

There is a better novel buried in the archeological dig of this one. If you are one for reading word-tripping esoterica and new age spinning fiction, this novel may be well worth your while. There is also enough going on here that a carefully adapted screenplay could capture for Netflix or another streamer for those of us looking for more straightforward storytelling. It would not be surprising at all if that happened.

For Monsters Only Issue 4 (1966)

ZC reader Justin noticed I hadn't posted Cracked's For Monsters Only, issue 4. Well, here you go, Justin. I found a toasty but cozy copy in the closet. I miss the days of hunting for monster mags on the newstands. I'm sure you do, too. Enjoy.

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See more toasty but cozy monster and pop culture magazines in Zombos' magazine morgue. 

Oops Dept. Update: I left out 6 pages from the original posting. They are now included.

Dancing With Tombstones by Michael Aronovitz

My book review for Dancing With Tombstones first appeared in The Horror Zine. It is reposted here with permission.

Turns out evocation is a good word to describe Michael Aronovitz’s collection of short stories and one novella in Dancing with Tombstones. Sure, there are the de rigueur sudden or drawn-out deaths, but then there are power tools wielded and heavy machinery painfully bumped in to. In-between all that his girls, psychos, martyrs, sacrificial lambs, students and teachers, and unbeknownst victims dance closer to their graves’ edges before toppling in. It is especially in the academic milieu where he nails it, from actual experience, along with some hands-on knowledge of power tools and heavy construction, oddly enough.

His love for tools and tech stretches from Toll Booth—where heavy construction figures in—a story told in flashback where the ghost is alluded to while the tired-of-living main character does all the haunting of himself, and Soul Text—where cool tech turns hot—a convergence of instant access, social media, and a special neural implant, all colliding into quite a freak-out. Where Toll Booth executes a neat little trick that Aronovitz pulls off with a bit of heavy machinery, a mean hand at dialog and inner monologuing, and a bad bully-buddy relationship as the instigator for the downward spiral that begins with one bad act too many, Soul Text lulls us into a potentially real problem to play with our heads because of our childlike acceptance of tech. If you thought Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 wall-sized televisions were prescient of where we are heading as a society, you aint’ seen nothin’ yet until you read Soul Text.

The dénouements and dire situations evoked through his characters’ thoughts, words, and points of view will make you loosen your collar a little and have you listening more attentively for unusual sounds as you read. Do not fight it: you will succumb to their words and aching lives and unpleasant quietuses with a knowing nod of guilty satisfaction. His people know or should know, or do not want to know, and there lies the bare bodkin each in turn plunges and twists into themselves. Aronovitz has a knack for extending the twisting part and shortening the plunge, driving home the terrors faced in this collection with a nonchalant yet poetic turn. Perhaps a little too well as he stalls the terror until it creeps in towards the end, suddenly, to wreak its havoc.

Unless he is writing about serial killers, however.

With them he extends the terror throughout, as in The Exterminator and The Matriarch. Between evil clowns and “they all look like Mama” he cracks open the minds of his killers cleanly, in a judicious use of words and descriptions that capture the craziness with a matter-of-fact approach that is unsettling as they crack open their victims. Interesting tidbit: The Matriarch later turned into a pre-chapter for his novel Phantom Effect. In The Matriarch he delivers perhaps the best and most concise fictional witness statement put to print. It comes at the end and goes to the dark heart of experiencing real terror. It will leave an impression.

His plentiful terrors, both large and small, begin with a teacher, in How Bria Dies, who whips up a spooky tale for his unruly middle schoolers, but one so good it evokes something bad. His last terror ends with The Boy in the Box, a lose-win-lose hometown baseball story that gets the boy out of the gear box and onto the field, but that box lies waiting all summer long for a replacement. In the Girl Between the Slats, a surgically structured plot twists into an unexpected personal tragedy stretching three years of delusion and avoidance. In Puddles, an obsessive-compulsive paranoia leads to an improper use of an industrial shop-vac. Clearly, Aronovitz should never be left alone in a Home Depot.

Put to more proper and skillful use are his choice of words, which elevate his stories to a unique balance between the show and the tell, the basic challenge of fiction writing. His paragraphs give both internal thoughts and external actions and situations a depth that is vivid with emotions, that emanate from his characters but, in turn, are then invoked in his readers. An example can be found in How Bria Died, where the word “juking” is used as in “He was in the far corner of the room listening to his iPod, juking his head a bit…” Not many writers would use the word. It’s North American, informal, and means to do a sham move; or, it’s Northern English, Scottish, and means to turn or bend quickly to avoid something. Now think about it. The sentence imagery has the character listening to an iPod, presumably shaking his head to the beat of the music. Either definition you choose, you can see the character’s head bobbing a little up and down or doing a slight downward side tilt, back and forth, like a prize fighter shying away from a well-aimed glove. One simple word, yet he gets maximum impact for imagery in the mind’s eye of the reader.

Here's another interesting example from Toll Booth. “The woman and I shucked hard against each other.” Not many writers would use “shuck,” either, especially in the way Aronovitz does. It’s North American and has a slang meaning, but it usually means the outer covering of corn or shellfish. Its past tense means to remove the outer covering or husk. The way it is used in the sentence is curious. Especially when you realize the woman mentioned is dead. It almost has a sexual connotation given the sentence’s rhythm, but there appears to be a more direct relationship-driven implication here. Perhaps you will figure it out, but only after you read the story to learn more about that unfortunate relationship.

He broadens his approach with more careful choice of words like “Rayovac” (a brand of flashlight for you newbies), “Bazooka” (bubble gum that came with a Bazooka Joe mini-comic), “bent up Genesee Cream ale bottle cap” (soda bottled in Rochester, New York, from 1960), “Good and Plenty” (licorice candy that also had a cartoon character called Choo-Choo Charlie): not just words, but specific products that evoke a location, an age, an environment, and an identity for the narrator more so than simply saying “flashlight” or “bubble gum” or “bottle cap” or “licorice” could ever do. Possibly even evoking a sense of nostalgia in some readers that translates to an emotional tug, connecting them with the character. A sneaky way to endear yourself to your readers, but an effective one because it is so subtle.

One could summarily say that Dancing with Tombstones is filled with teachers making bad choices, kids making bad choices, kids with special needs not being given those choices, and crazies making bad choices for themselves and everybody near them. All those bad choices create bad outcomes, horrible outcomes in so many splendidly imaginative ways. And Aronovitz loves to make you suffer through it all through his honed knives of words and handy power tools of plotting structure. You will love it too.

Eventually. Once you get past the terror of it all.

Fugue Devil: Resurgence by Stephen Mark Rainey

My book review for Fugue Devil: Resurgence first appeared in The Horror Zine. It is reposted here with permission.

What started out as a dream for a young Stephen Mark Rainey turns into nightmares for his fictional people in Fugue Devil: Resurgence. In his introduction to this collection of thirteen tales of, mostly, the unfortunate, he notes how his younger self was “most enamored of monster movies” and how he “religiously collected copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Castle of Frankenstein, [and] The Monster Times.” These were monsterkid magazines that showcased his favorite cinematic horrors. Indeed, Rainey’s allusions to literary and cinematic themes pepper his stories, putting the salt in the wounds he inflicts on those caught between this world and those mysterious other ones his horrors hail from.

It is through these other worlds that his pulp-style approach (a focus more on outward events rather than inwardly emotional ones) makes him a close relative to H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers, a distant one to Robert E. Howard, and a family all his own with his vision of the Fugue Devil; of which, three stories directly pivot on, while relatives of the Great Old Ones appear in the other stories.

Those three stories include Fugue Devil, Threnody, and The Devil’s Eye. Every seventeen years a mysterious event happens to the town of Beckham, Virginia; a monstrous thing that “if you know about it, it knows about you,” emerges from the woods and people go missing. Is it a tall town’s tale or something more sinister? Newly arrived kid around town, Mike, convinces Ronnie to tell him more about the Fugue Devil, and that gets others involved. The terror begins when they decide to see for themselves if the gossip and fear is real or not. Rainey contrasts the terror to come with another kind of terror within Mike’s family, moving this story beyond the pulp-only framework, to better explain Mike’s interest in the Fugue Devil beyond mere curiosity, which provides a stronger motivation for him doing something we all know, from horror movies and horror fiction, will usually prove to be a bad decision.

But where Fugue Devil presents the “present” horror as it stands, Threnody tells us how it possibly started in pure pulp style. Here is where the younger Rainey’s influences and interests foster allusions to Lovecraftian beings and the summoning device in the Evil Dead movie. These allusions involve a scarce and odd book called The Spheres Beyond Sound by Maurice Zann and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Also written in first person as Fugue Devil, a man inherits his family’s house in Barren Creek, a few miles from the town of Aiken Mill, that is surrounded by dark and brooding woods. He finds the book, falls under its spell, and finds tapes recorded by his grandfather. Listening to those tapes, he turns up the volume and hears the results as his grandfather leads some neighbors in playing music from the book. Need I say more?

With The Devil’s Eye, we return after the events of Fugue Devil, but seventeen years later, when Jack, brother to someone who went missing that fateful night years ago, returns to find the truth. He enlists the aid of a local independent film maker to assist him, to capture proof with a camera, either way. Unfortunately, without him knowing, others are invited to act in the documentary event, and the situation worsens from that point on. More background to the Fugue Devil is provided: as the story goes, it appeared on the summit of Copper Peak when a man from Beckham played his violin to summon it. Still, there remains mystery surrounding why someone would do such a thing and mystery why the Fugue Devil returns every so often to do so much harm.

Moving from the Fugue Devil’s Virginia woods to a necropolis far from Viroconium in Roman Britain, Pons Devana (pons means bridge), leans more toward Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery, but with a theme of yet another dark, other, space exerting its evil influence on ours. This is one story that cries out to be made a novel because it ends while still in progress. As it stands, Quintus Marcius is ordered to investigate the maneuverings of centurion Titus Fabius, who is acting strangely. When Marcius finds Fabius, the centurion is wearing peculiar armor he has not seen before. Odder still, Fabius is married to a strange woman and there appear to be rats scuttling around in the shadows, though none are ever seen. Dark rooms and narrow hallways, tombs and crypts, and malevolence hanging in the air do not bode well for Marcius or Fabius. Unseen things grow close and even here Rainey brings the horror to the woods too. The story is reminiscent of the shadow beings in Babylon 5, but we are left with not knowing more beyond the unknown threat emerging from the necropolis.

Turning from Howard to Robert W. Chambers, whose supernatural work figures prominently in Masque of the Queen, we meet a twenty-eight-year-old woman, Kathryn, desperate for an acting job. She finds it with a play whose story follows, oddly enough, the fictional play The King in Yellow. As rehearsals continue, the play and those acting in it, become more and more disturbing and disturbed. Three actors leave but she is convinced to stay. It is at this point that the use of the word “fugue” by Rainey becomes most clear, explaining his approach to each of his stories in this collection. On the one hand, fugue means a musical composition, and we see that in his stories centering around the Fugue Devil and other horrors. The word also means a loss of awareness of one’s identity, and it is here in Masque of the Queen, that the loss of identity becomes all too real as the crescendoing moment in the play, where the character of Cassilda sings her song, and acting gives way to stark terror and another other space intrudes with dire consequences for her.

This other space is set aside, briefly, for an inner one in Somewhere My Love, where a music teacher practices a more personal sorcery on a young student, who continues the spell into adulthood. One gets the feeling this is a more personal and less fictional story for Rainey, but it goes deeper than pulp-style and garners more emotional involvement. The musical summoning theme reappears with a boom When Jarly Calls. A couple on a wine-holiday find out who the true vintner is and what else gets crushed along with the grapes. This story also ends on a more positive note, or so you may hope.

Through all these stories, other-worldly music, bizarre sounds, and big and little monstrous things that should not be seen or heard in a normal world, intrude into the woods, the towns, and the cities with their deadly intentions. This is not a book for those who like happy endings.

Horror fans will appreciate that.

Raw Deal (1948) Pressbook

At 24 pages, this 11 x 17 inches pressbook is a good deal of promotion, theater ballyhoo, and actor articles. Take a look at the portable Emerson Radio (I'd still want one!) or the "inner sanctum" wallet (ditto). Very interesting is the 16-page comic story in Mysterious Traveler Comics. The blurb reads "...offering at a special low rate reprints of this section for use as heralds or as kiddie program giveaway." Kiddie program giveaway? Never thought a crime noir movie would be good for a kiddie giveaway. Go figure.

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Johnny O'Clock (1947) Pressbook

After you watch enough movies from the 1940s you get a feeling the men did most of the heavy lifting storywise. Women were either hometown girl, femme fatale, or cute and sassy cut outs to paper over. While the guys threw all the punches, the woman either dodged, sidestepped, or pulled out a gun to handle the situation if those fists were aimed to close. I mention this because if you look carefully at the poster art for Johnny O'Clock, guess who's in the driver's seat and who's tagging along for the ride. Men: can't live with them, can't find a safe enough place to stash the bodies. Go figure. If you haven't seen Dick Powell playing detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, you really ought to. While it's a better movie than this one, he always gives a hardboiled, smart ass performance that's pure noir alley, so you can't go wrong catching this one too.

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Cry of the Werewolf (1944) Pressbook

Okay, so what if a young Joe Dante panned Cry of the Werewolf in an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Sure, the poster art is the best thing about this movie, but at least you can read the Scary Wolf-Woman On Vegetable Diet for a laugh, anyway, on page 6.

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13 Hours by Air (1936) Pressbook

This Paramount airborne thriller has a nifty cast that includes Brian Donlevy, Dean Jagger, Fred MacMurray, Joan Bennett, Zasu Pitts and others. It has the usual beautiful blonde-intoxicated male driven plot with a few twists and turns. Of particular interest for us jaded passengers is the United Airlines Boeing 247 and tour of airports. Those were the days. 

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Underground (1941) Pressbook

The poster art and unusual size (9 inches x 20 inches folded, 18 inches x 20 inches unfolded) grabbed my attention for this Underground (1941) pressbook. More pulp than noir in effect, but still noirish enough to be compelling. Here are the first few pages. To read the entire pressbook, download the ComicRack reader version. Even if you don't have that application, you can change the downloaded file extension to .zip instead of .cbz and extract the jpeg images. They're big, so best to view on a large screen. 

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Tower of London (1939) Pressbook

Here's another rare pressbook: Tower of London with Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. A wild and wonderful 17.5 x 23 inches when opened to read. I'm not sure if any pages are missing as I found this one in loose sheets. But what's here is still stellar. Aside from the auctions selling the covers alone, this original release pressbook has not been shown before. You lucky devils. Universal really overdid themselves with this one. The Showmanship page lists really cool theater lobby promos. You will need a big screen to view this beauty in all its glory.

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