Best New Horror 15 (2003)

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 15 (2003) edited by Stephen Jones: The Mammoth series of annual 'Best of' horror anthologies has been a godsend for over two decades now, and even more of a godsend ever since the DAW 'Best of Horror' annual series ended with the sad and early death of its long-time editor Karl Edward Wagner. That the Mammoth series has at least twice the page count of the Wagner series, along with lengthy Necrology and 'Year in Horror' sections, makes it even more essential, if that's possible.

Stephen Jones is a voluminous and gifted anthologist, and the yearly Best New Horror has become one of the things I look forward to each year, like the Super Bowl or Fox TV's annual purge of all its best shows.

This anthology of stories from 2003 is the usual solid job, with good stories by perennials that include Ramsey Campbell, Glen Hirshberg, Caitlin Kiernan and Neil Gaiman, along with offerings from lesser-known and new writers. The great Gene Wolfe does one of his reality-bending bits with "Hunter Lake"; Hirshberg offers a melancholy new take on the Golem and the Holocaust in "Dancing Men"; Campbell expertly mines childhood fears in "Fear the Dead"; Toronto's Gemma Files comes up with a really awful innovation in the realm of puppetry with "Kissing Carrion" (also set in T.O.); Simon Clark and Tim Lebbon work wonders with a story about the great fantasist Arthur Machen's WWI story-turned-urban-legend "The Archers of Mons"; Joyce Carol Oates comes up with an atypically typical (for her) bit of nu-Gothic in "The Haunting." There's even a story set on an island in Lake Erie ("Lucy, In Her Splendour" by Charles Coleman Finley) and a creepy, M.R. James by way of H.P. Lovecraft story by Mark Samuels, "The White Hands." One of the pleasures of the Mammoth series is catching up with old friends; another lies in discovering "new" writers whose names you'll have to look out for, such as Samuels.

All in all, this is another fine addition to the Best New Horror series, and a useful reference book for the year in question. Jones is extremely catholic in his horror selection, with stories running the gamut from gruesome but natural horror to mind-bending examinations of the supernatural Sublime. Long may he run. Highly recommended.

Doom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Showcase Presents Doom Patrol Volume 2, written by Arnold Drake, illustrated by Bruno Premiani and Bob Brown (1966-68; collected 2010): Ah, the Doom Patrol, DC Comics' weirdest and most Marvel-like superhero team of the 1960's. Like the X-Men, they had a leader in a wheelchair. Like the Fantastic Four, there were four of them, including an orange strongman, a super-genius, a person who could stretch, and a flying hero with energy powers. And yet the timeline for the creation of those three books makes plagiarism on anyone's part pretty much impossible -- though it has been suggested that a conversation on a golf course may have somehow influenced the rosters of those two Marvel and one DC super-teams. So it goes.

Commercially, Doom Patrol was either the second-most successful of those titles in the 1960's, behind The Fantastic Four but ahead of The X-Men, which somehow couldn't become popular enough to stay out of reprints even with Neal Adams drawing the book.

Of course, Doom Patrol got cancelled around the same time as X-Men went to reprints and pretty much stayed in reprints for six years until Giant-Size X-Men #1 reinvented the X-Men, who would then gradually become Marvel's most popular book over the course of the late 1970's and early 1980's. DC tried bringing the Doom Patrol back in the mid-1970's, but it wasn't until the late 1980's that yet another relaunch lasted longer than the original run, and gave us writer Grant Morrison at his early, weirdest best.

Like many of Marvel's super-teams and supergroups, the Doom Patrol (Robotman, Negative-man, Elasti-Girl and the Chief) squabbled a lot. Well, they did have a hero named Negative-man on their roster! They fought distinctive, and distinctively weird, super-villains: Monsieur Mallah, a super-intelligent, beret-wearing gorilla; the Brain, a brain in a jar; the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (A-V-M-Man for short), a guy who could turn into pretty much anything; Garguax, an alien with an army of super-powered plastic robots; and a host of other freaky supernatural and superscientific menaces. The heroes were occasionally self-loathing, seeing themselves as freaks, though ultimately they became like a PSA about embracing one's own difference.

Quirky writer Arnold Drake and underappreciated artist Bruno Premiani wrote and drew pretty much every Doom Patrol adventure from their first appearance in the anthology title My Greatest Adventure (they don't make comic-book titles like that any more!) to the last issue of their own comic, which was actually just My Greatest Adventure with the title changed but the numbering intact.

Along the way, they picked up green, shape-changing teenager Beast Boy (later of the Teen Titans) and grumpy telekinetic millionaire Mento (the fresh-maker!) as auxiliary members. The focus remained pretty much on the four core members, though, in all their freaky and occasionally crabby glory. Grant Morrison pushed them into areas of previously untapped weirdness in the 1980's and early 1990's, but much of that weirdness is at least implicit here, and often explicit. All that and perhaps the most shocking final issue of a superhero comic book of the 1960's. What's not to love? Highly recommended.

Legion

Showcase Presents Legion of Superheroes Volume 4, written by Jim Shooter, E. Nelson Bridwell and Cary Bates; illustrated by Curt Swan, Win Mortimer, Dave Cockrum, George Tuska, Jack Abel and others (1967-1972; collected 2010): The fourth Legion of Superheroes (LSH) Showcase volume takes us through a period of transition for DC's group of super-powered teenagers in the 30th century (and Superboy and Supergirl).

Artistic great Curt Swan leaves for full-time pencilling duties on the Superman books, and World's Youngest Comic-book Writer Jim Shooter follows a year or so thereafter. Legion stories shift from Adventure Comics to Action Comics to Superboy, losing pages every time. But Superboy would become Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes soon after the stories collected here. Dave Cockrum, one of the best artists the Legion ever had (and a pivotal co-creator of Marvel's new X-Men a few years down the road) pencils his first few stories here.

The best story here is the opening two-parter by Shooter, Swan and inker Abel, in which a handful of Legionnaires flee to 20th-century Smallville with the forces of Mordru the Mystic close behind them. Mordru's powerful enough to defeat the entire Legion by himself (Superboy is as vulnerable to magic as anyone else), and the two-parter is a mini-masterpiece of suspense.

One of the things the Legion did for Superboy was regularly place him in situations of real peril that didn't always have to involve Kryptonite. While the Superman books of the 1960's seemed perpetually stuck with a nearly omnipotent Man of Steel, the Legion books gave us a Superboy who could be hurt and even killed by the villains he faced. It made for a lot more drama.

After Shooter left, things got a lot less interesting, though the end of the volume brings young writer Cary Bates and the aforementioned Cockrum onto the stage, hinting at better days to come. One of the icons of early comic-book fandom, the Legion also looked forward to the dizzying array of superheroes that would come to characterize Marvel's 1980's super-hit X-Men: Legion members included such bizarrely gifted heroes as Matter-Eater Lad (who could eat anything), Bouncing Boy (who could bounce really well), and Chemical King (who could speed up chemical reactions).

Unlike later X-heroes and X-villains, the Legion members had helpfully descriptive names: one could actually tell what their powers were just by knowing their names, a far cry from characters with names like Holocaust, Marrow and Apocalypse. So it goes. Long-time artist Win Mortimer's art on the Legion here is better than I expected, partially because Jack Abel's inking gives the whole thing that peculiar weight and darkness that was Abel's trademark. Long live the Legion! Recommended.

The Thunder Hides What the Lightning Sees

Thunderbolt Jaxon, written by Dave Gibbons, illustrated by John Higgins (2006): DC's Wildstorm imprint assayed a number of books in the mid-to-late oughts based on British comics characters of the 1940's, 50's and 60's. This was the so-called 'Albion' universe, which at its inception had some input from Alan Moore (Watchmen). And here we have two other Watchmen creators -- artist Dave Gibbons and colourist John Higgins -- on another Albion book, albeit as writer and artist, respectively. The history of the Thunderbolt Jaxon character is weird enough to warrant the inclusion of a link to it:

http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2009/03/origins-of-thunderbolt-jaxon.html

Wild, hunh? British comic books always seemed to have way loopier publication histories, especially when they dealt with super-heroes, who never gained the sort of strangehold on the comics mainstream that they did in the U.S.. The Albion miniseries of a few years back offered a cornucopia of bizarre British characters. One can see at least some of the occasional, carnivalesque wackiness of British comics writers that inlclude Alan Moore and Grant Morrison being inspired by the peculiar British world of super-heroes, science-heroes and giant crime-fighting eyeballs.

While Wildstorm's Albion miniseries brought a number of the old British characters into the modern world mostly unchanged, Jaxon instead attempts a complete reboot. It's an interesting though perhaps overly familiar at points story (kids find magical artifacts, magical artifacts turn one kid into an adult 'superhero' [in this case, the Norse god Thor]). Higgins's art looks great, and Gibbons keeps things zipping along.

The whole thing feels a bit decompressed (five issues for an origin that only truly gives us 'Thunderbolt Jaxon' at the very end?), and as sales were apparently not enough to justify an on-going series or another miniseries, we're pretty much left in the end with the end of the beginning of Thunderbolt Jaxon. Oh, well. The name itself is still great. Recommended.

Angry, Dizzy Hulk

Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk Volume 1, written by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Paul Reinman and Dick Ayers (1962-1963): Of all the classic Marvel characters created in the early 1960's, the Hulk was the least fully realized in his early appearances. He started off grey and surly and possessed of a full, albeit thuggish, vocabulary.

Over the course of the six issues collected here, the Hulk turns green, changes from Dr. Bruce Banner to Hulk only at night, can't change back into Banner at all, is briefly mind-controlled by teen sidekick Rick Jones, changes between Hulk and Banner only when bombarded with gamma radiation, and gets cancelled with issue 6. Whew!

Banner is clearly the hero in most of these issues, with the Hulk playing a supporting role that alternates between grumpy menace to humanity and two-fisted saviour of humanity. Indeed, Banner and not the Hulk saves the entire Earth from the invading space armada of the Toad People, and it's Banner and not the Hulk who convinces misguided Communist super-scientist the Gargoyle to turn against his Commie masters in the Hulk's first issue. Banner's mind also (sort of) controls the Hulk for a couple of issues, though growing more surly and (early) Hulk-like by the panel.

The first few issues are a lot of fun partially because of the protean nature of the Hulk: it's like reading Lee and Kirby workshopping what would eventually become a very popular character, trying stuff out and discarding that stuff almost as quickly. Two of the most defining traits of the Hulk in the broader popular imagination -- his child-like personality and Banner's transformation into the Hulk when under emotional stress -- wouldn't appear until the Hulk was brought back from cancellation to star in his own stories in Tales to Astonish a couple of years after the stories collected here. Lee, Kirby and Ditko do their usual fine early-1960's work. As a bonus, Ditko inks Kirby on a couple of issues here, a penciller/inker combo as rare as it is awesome. Highly recommended.

Ligotti's Comics and Stories

The Nightmare Factory, written by Joe Harris and Stuart Moore, illustrated by Ashley Wood, Colleen Doran, Ted McKeever, Ben Templesmith and Michael Gaydos, based on four stories by Thomas Ligotti, introductions by Thomas Ligotti (2007): Solid collection of four comics adaptations of Ligotti short stories. Ligotti, a contemporary horror writer who deserves far more popular and critical recognition than almost all his peers, supplies helpful introductions to each story. Art on each story seems appropriate, and Templesmith, whose work on 30 Days of Night I wasn't impressed by, really raises his game here, but all four story artists (and cover artist Ashley Wood) produce fine work here.

Inevitably, the stories are better simply as stories ("The Last Feast of Harlequin", Ligotti's secret sequel to Lovecraft's "The Festival", is a masterpiece of modern weird fiction), but that's in part because Ligotti's work relies so much on suggestion and ambiguousness. He's like the literary love-child born of a four-way among Lovecraft, Kafka, Borges and Robert Aickman, capable of existential horror that nonetheless carries with it a certain drollness and bleak humour. Recommended.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire, written by Jonas Frykberg, based on the novel by Stieg Larsson, directed by Daniel Alfredson, starring Noomi Rapace and Mikael Nyqvist (2010): Disappointing second film in the adaptation of Larsson's best-selling Millennium trilogy. Even though large chunks of the novel are (necessarily) discarded to make a 2-hour running time, what's left is still plot-heavy and characterization-light, to the extent that the ridiculous coincidences that drive most of the plot become way, way too apparent.

Rapace and Nyqvist are still excellent as super-hacker (and by this point, superhero) Lisabeth Salander and muck-raking reporter Mikael. Bonus marks for making a genetic disease with much the same effects as leprosy into the source of a villain's, well, super-strength and super-tolerance for pain. I'd only recommend the movie for people with a high tolerance for 1930's-Republic-serial level coincidence and villainous incompetence.