The Art of the Affair (History)

by Catherine Lacey (author) & Forsyth Harmon (illustrator)

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (January 3, 2017)

Hardcover, 96 pages.
 

“Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe lived together in Brooklyn and later the Chelsea Hotel while the two were in their twenties. Robert told his conservative parents he had married Patti in a strawberry field in California so they would accept the living situation. In her memoir, Just Kids, Patti calls him the ‘artist of my life’ and after they parted ways as lovers, they still made art together. Robert took the cover portrait for her breakout album, Horses. When the pair met Andy Warhol he dismissed them as ‘horrible’ and ‘dirty’ Robert looked up to Andy, but Patti didn’t see the appeal. ‘I felt little for the can and didn’t like the soup,’ she said.”

The copy I have of this book is an advanced reading copy, a softcover one, so the material I read might be slightly different from the final version. I was given it as a Christmas present from an old friend of mine. She isn’t connected to the literary world, so I have no idea how she got her hands on it. She claims it was bought at a gift store (a cheap one), but I have my doubts.

Wherever the copy I have in my hands came from, this is a fun and expertly researched volume. It’s amazing how the sexual lives of various artists (of all stripes) collide together to create this web of debauchery. From the secret homosexual love of James Baldwin, to the constant adulteries of Ernest Hemingway, to the tempestuous drug fueled love life of Billy Holiday, to the long lasting (but forbidden love) between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The six degrees of separation law never seemed to small after reading this book.

A fun easy read. It also gave me several suggestions for further readings in the autobiographies of the various artists mentioned.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Blood Run: Mack Bolan,The Executioner #133 (Crime) (Action)

 by Mike Newton, (Characters originally by Don Pendleton)

Published by Gold Eagle Books (1989)

Softcover, 219 pages

Finished 3/26/2018

Barnes and Noble listing 

          “It ran against the grain for Bolan to conduct defensive operations. He preferred a swift offence, with the advantage of surprise, but playing escort stacked the odds against him, giving his opponents the edge. In any combat situation, the defender was essentially a passive target, marking time until the enemy revealed himself and praying the that the first shot was a good, clean miss. Defenders chose the killing ground, where possible, but their opponents chose the time, the method of attack.”

          Just a little taste of the Executioner’s style of prose. For those who’ve never heard of the character let me give you his backstory. After two tours of Vietnam, Mack Bolan returned home to his loving family. Then one horrible day, the family decided to go for a picnic lunch in the park. Just when they started to chow down, two rival factions of the mafia started to go at it, with Bolan’s family cut down in the crossfire. His wife, son, and daughter were killed. From that day forward, Mack Bolan was determined to destroy the mafia and all other criminals that the law couldn’t touch. He became The Executioner.

          Now if that sounds like a rip-off of the Punisher, you’d be half right. The Punisher is in fact a direct rip-off of the Executioner. The first Mack Bolan novel, War Against the Mafia, was published in 1969, while the Punisher made his debut in Amazing Spiderman #129 in 1974. It just so happens that copy outshone the original. The biggest reason for that is Generation X loves its comic books and they now have creative control of the film industry.

Don Pendleton, author of The Executioner

          The two characters were the same, destroying crime wherever they could. A one-man army of death and destruction. Eventually Bolan is recruited into training several other off-the-books vigilante teams, unofficially working for the Justice Department. This formed the spin-off series Able Team and Phoenix Force, which were combined into the single Stony Man series. The French publishers also added Kira B, who was Bolan’s Daughter. Pendeleton’s wrote the first thirty eight books, before the series was sold to Gold Eagle, an imprint of Harlequin Books, which began to churn a new novel out once a month. In addition, they also supplied a Superbolan, every other month, which was a double sized adventure. Gold Eagle continued to publish until 2014 when the division was shut down after a corporate takeover. All -in-all close to five hundred volumes were penned in the series’ run.

          This book is what one would expect from a series that the Punisher was cloned from. The head of a Colombian cartel, Ernesto Vos, (an obvious analogue for Pablo Escobar) has been captured on American soil. There is only one witness left that can put the kingpin away for life. Consequently there is only one man who can make sure that the witness arrives at the trial alive, Mack Bolan. It is a race across the country as Mack Bolan, and his brother, dodge Neo-Nazi’s, biker gangs, crooked cops, and corrupt federal officials- all of whom were dreaming of the fat bounty. It is an action packed, blood fueled, violent ride. Does he make it on time? Of course, he’s Mack Bolan after all.

Michael Newton

          The actual author of this volume, Mike Newton wrote close to ninety books in this series (triple that of the original). What impressed me is that he used a lot of real life details in constructing the narrative. The groups mentioned were real. The biker gang, The Mongols, is an actual violent gang. Little details like that really open it up for me. If you’re looking for some character growth, or an arc where it’s unsure that the hero will prevail, or he learns something of life or himself from blowing his enemies away, then this isn’t the book for you. It is nothing more than it advertises on the cover- And that’s not a bad thing.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History (History)

by John Dickerson

Publisher: Twelve, reprint edition (July 11, 2017)

Paperback 464 pages

          “The newspaper wars of the 1790s, in which Callender enlisted, were ferocious. ‘The golden age of America’s founding was also the gutter age of American reporting,’ writes historian Eric Burns. Papers were partisan, not impartial, and editors attacked each other in the street. Editors cursed each other with prolixity, and backwards running sentences. They seemed to have the typesetting equivalent of  unlimited minutes when it came to using insulting synonyms found in the thesaurus. Their enemies were ‘depraved’, ‘worthless’, ‘vile’, ‘intemperate’, and ‘wicked’. Accusations of drunkenness were frequent (and accurate) as were charges of corruption and debauchery.”

          That was describing the presidential race between Jefferson and Adams, only the third in this country’s history.

          This book is collection of stories from various campaigns from both centuries of America’s existence. From the “corrupt bargain” that saw John Quincy Adams into the White House, denying Andrew Jackson the prize; to the immortal “Dewey Beats Truman” moment where, once again, the pollsters were overwhelmingly wrong in their predictions; to the disastrous Dukakis in a tank photo shoot. 

          The book puts the 2018 election into perspective. We all might remember it as a particularly vicious election with both sides painting the other as sub-human monsters intent on only evil, but surprisingly it was not the bloodthirsty election in American history. They have all been particularly brutal in one form or another, with character assassinations on both sides. At some point nearly every candidate since 1952 has been accused of racism and thus by extension anyone who follows him must be a racist as well.

Very similar to the 2016 upset

          For instance, the first incumbent to call his opponent a Nazi was Harry Truman, only a few years after W.W. II. Grover Cleveland had a sex scandal involving an illegitimate child he fathered and then refused to marry the mother as she was a “person of intemperate habits”- that means she was a crazy whore only good for a pump and dump. Cleveland was able to overcome this and become president. Both of the presidencies of Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison were popular uprisings of the common man against the snotty elites who felt they were owed the election (sound familiar anyone?). In fact, the rise of Jackson was more telling than one might think. It occurred on the eve of male suffrage (you didn’t realize there was such a thing did you?) where all men were given the vote. Previous to that, only men who owned property were eligible.

          I think we get the idea of old presidential elections as austere affairs, with educated up-right men debating points of interest in a polite manner. This primarily comes from old time television where, due to censorship, it was presented as such. In reality, each one has been incredibly wild, scandal packed, and emotionally charged.  In addition, biased reporting by news outlets has nearly always been the rule, rather than an exception.

Author Jon Dickerson, host of Face the Nation

          Keep in mind however that the author’s bias is showing. He seems to have no problems categorizing republicans in a bad light, or adding ad hominem slurs, but always shies away from writing anything negative about Democrats. Their “downfall” always seem to be the result of dirty tricks, not gross mismanagement, corruption, and plain old dumb ideas.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Now Playing: A Seek-And-Find Book for Film Buffs (Humor)

By Alexandre Clerisse

Publisher: Chronicle Books (August 8, 2017)

Hardcover, 56 pages

          This is a fun collection of pictures in the vein of Where’s Waldo, only each panel has a different famous director and characters from his films as the subject. Featured here are Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Pedro Almodovar, Joel & Ethan Coen, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino.

          Each two page panel has the director hidden in a montage of their work. The game is to spot the director and also various characters (Indiana Jones for Steven Spielberg) and objects (a number of birds for Alfred Hitchcock) associated with each director. The art style is deceptively simplistic- that means it is  simplistic, but is in fact very detailed, at least enough to identify each of the characters hidden in these pages.

          The only drawback to this book is that, of course, you have to be familiar with the works of these directors to complete the tasks. Some of them are more universal than others. For example, I am not familiar with the works of Pedro Almodovar, hence I was unable to pick out most of the film references on the pages dedicated to him.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

A Clockwork Orientation (Science Fiction)

By Brian Barr

Published: Brian Barr Books (February 28, 2018)

Softcover 32 pages

      From the finest traditions of science fiction, we have “A Clockwork Orientation”. When you look back at old school science fiction, A.E Van Vogt, H. Beam Piper, Isaac Asimov their work was more about a speculation on life and new ideas, rather than a spectacle of images - which is where much modern written science fiction seems to be headed. An error in my opinion. For the best sci-fi asks questions, they didn’t shoot the answer at you in a great space battle. So reading this short story was a breath of fresh air.

     The story deals with an artificial intelligence who goes berserk one day and kills over a hundred people. Rather than scrap the creature, its owners decide to attempt to rehabilitate them with a new program that will allow the creature to feel pain, specifically his victim’s pain. This has some unexpected results.

Author Brian Barr

    The story asks some deep questions on the nature of emotional development. The cyborg main character, Mannix (not named after the TV show character, I discovered), murdered over a hundred people because he was bored, because he was given toys but not allowed to use them. This is sociopathic behavior in a human, but with artificial intelligence the ability to emote to another life form is not a given. Part of our empathic nature is that we are nurtured by others and shown love, but artificial intelligence will not have that. They will blink on with full consciousness. If they are empathetic it will be towards their own kind, not us.

    Some may say that emotions can be programmed. But, as the story points out, are they real? Or will a pre-programmed set of actions just cause an AI to go through the motions, while harboring other ideas beneath them. You cannot force someone to care about something, as the story demonstrates, even if you torture them, as what happens to the protagonist. This is the fascinating nature of the story. Quite a lot for only thirty two pages.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

The Green Hand and Other Stories (Graphic Novel)

By Nicole Claveloux, Donald Nicolson Smith (Translator), Daniel Clowes (Introduction)

Published: New York review Comics (November 29, 2017)

Hardcover 108 pages

This collects a series of comics that originally appeared in the late 70s to early 80s in Métal Hurlant magazine (the French version of Heavy Metal magazine). If you haven’t heard of this illustrator before, don’t beat yourself up, she is somewhat obscure. Even I, with my reading addiction, was unaware of her name before picking up this book. I had seen her work before but never registered a name to go with the art. The plan is to rectify this gap in my knowledge as quickly as I can. That is, once more of her stuff is published in English.

It is difficult to discuss the artistic style of Nicole Claveloux. Upon first viewing I was taken in by the shading, the round - nearly glossy - style, all of it one step removed from reality. At the same time, I was nearly at a loss for words on how to describe the material. Then I read other artist’s comments on her work (including the introduction that Dan Clowes provides for this volume) and realized that I am not alone in this. It is unique, but it isn’t. Like the surrealness of her stories, it is just one step out of sync with the rest of the world. Occasionally there seems to be an awkwardness in limb drawings or perspective, but strangely these add to the surrealness of the overall piece, rather than detract.

The common theme running through the pieces deal with the dangers, uncertainty, and banality of growing up. The greatest joy to the author, it seems, is to remain the eternal child and dwell in a never-never land, one step beyond reality. The stories collected here are not coherent in the regular sense. They follow a logic of a dream. Some of them don’t seem to have been plotted out beforehand and drifted along as the author’s imagination drifted. These don’t make the stories bad, but just be warned. Don’t expect concrete stories with a definite character arc. These are one step aside from that.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Night of the Jackass! - Eerie 115 (Graphic Novel)

By: Bruce Bezaire & Jose Ortiz

Publisher: Warren Publishing (October, 1980)

Magazine, 78 pages

Finished 3/8/2018

Amazon Listing

Normally I don’t cover individual issues of a magazine but this one is special. For those who read my review of The Rook Archives I mentioned that the best recurring story in the history of Eerie magazine was “Night of the Jackass!” and hoped they would eventually put out a hardcover graphic novel collecting all of the stories. While there was apparently a version released in 2009 in the UK (at least it is listed on Amazon UK), copies are seemingly non-existent. So in my random pursuit of the book, I came across the knowledge that Eerie had reprinted the entire four story series in issue 115. I jumped onto ebay and procured one forthwith- And let’s have a round of applause for ebay, my collection of obscure books would be vastly incomplete without it.

“Night of the Jackass” is one of the most disturbing stories that Warren Publications ever put out. By the time these were being produced, they had long run out of vampire, werewolf, and zombie tales, and were groping along looking for something different. This was one of them, the best of them. It does not hold back in its depiction of murder of children, rape, or violence. These are not “safe” stories. Nor does the arc end happily.

Set in the late Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century, a drug Hyde-25 has gotten loose in capitals of Europe. After a wrist is slashed and the drug applied, a person is transformed into a slathering bestial version of themselves. A walking Id with superior strength and the appetite of the most deranged rapist. The catch is that after the drug wears off, the imbiber dies. The type of person who “jackasses” are from the bottom rung of society - drifters, bottomed out alkies, terminally ill, the castaways of society. The backdrop of industrial decay plays perfectly with this bleak scenario- human wreckage being one of its bumper crops.

          Into this comes our two vengeance filled heroes. The first is Samuel Gibson, a middle class Londoner, whose wife is killed on their honeymoon after a group of jackasses take over the hotel they are visiting. His aim is to stop the horror from spreading. Clause Bishop, a depressed, Welsh coal miner, who checks into that same hotel with the idea of suicide, but finds a reason for living in destroying those who jackass. He is the most complex character because he battles the jackasses for the same reason they use the drug in the first place. Later, they are joined by Mme. Berthe Astruc who accidentally created the formula for Hyde 25 and is hastily attempting develop a cure.

Among the various themes running about these stories, the most interesting is that of society sowing the seeds of its own damnation. While the science of the Victorian age is tearing itself apart, the police do little to counter it. Their standard action when a jackassing occurs is to seal off the building and let it burn itself out, damning the innocents inside to be raped and murdered. The ones who commit the deeds were placed in a position where a murder/suicide romp was a pleasant thought by the same society they desecrated.

In the final story, after pages and pages of death and sexual assault, a cure is found, but this does not wash away the horror that has happened. None of the characters has a sense of relief only more dread. That’s because the cure is not an antidote, but a weapon to use against the jackasses. All of them took the drug knowing what the effects would be. Thus the nightmare was not truly over.

 Which is why I felt there could easily have been more Jackass stories. They never touched into who was manufacturing the drug and its distribution method. This sort of thing doesn’t just “appear”, someone had to be profiting. A few more stories, two or three, could easily have been added to the lore. Not that they would have really been able to top the first three stories in terms of brutality or shock, so perhaps it was just as well that they left it as is.

Along with these stories is an additional tale, called “Excerpts From the Year Five”. While it is not part of the Jackass series, the tone of hopelessness and survival are congruent with the other stories. It was written by the immortal Budd Lewis who is responsible for some of horror comic’s greatest tales, and also illustrated by Jose Ortiz- an illustrator that is chronically under recognized. “Year Five” shows the journey of one man as he struggles to survive physically and mentally after the world’s fossil fuel supply runs out. Grim and gritty. Nothing more needs to be said.

              I also have to comment here on the advertisements in the magazine. It didn’t seem strange when I was younger, but while the content is geared more for adults, the advertisers all assumed it was kids who read the magazines, as it is riddled with ads for toys, fantasy books, and model kits. Dominating the toys were the science fiction giants of the day Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back had just been released a month before), Battlestar Galactica, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek, and Alien. Actually, most of those franchises still dominate the market. I guess there really are no new ideas.

 Nostalgia gripped me and I spent a pleasant half hour looking through all of the ads, picking out which ones I had (and subsequently destroyed) and, more importantly, the ones I did not have and regretted it. An old grasping nature crawled up in me and I yearned to go back in time and pick up the Star Wars Droid Factory, or Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer, or the Y-Wing Fighter. Ah well.

Some pine for unrequited love, I pine for unowned toys

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.