July 25, 2026 · 5:08 am

From Japan, a horror and a haunting

It took a few months but I finally watched the second and third movies in that set of horror films from Shochiku Studios

GOKE, BODYSNATCHER FROM HELL (1968) is one I’ve seen before but it rewatches well. A Japanese passenger jet crashes down in the wilderness with the typical mix of Airplane Drama characters on board: a corrupt politician and the man who bribed him, a bitter wife caught between both men, an American widow PTSDed about her husband’s death in ‘nam and both a professional assassin and a mad bomber.

As if that wasn’t enough, the eponymous alien oozes out of its flying saucer and takes over one of the group. He’s the advance guard for an invasion though killing them seems to be purely for kicks — it’s not like they represent a vital front in the struggle. The best of this set so far. “Ever since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, flying saucer sightings have increased dramatically.”


THE LIVING SKELETON (1968) is a less successful mashup of revenge thriller and ghost story, probably the weakest of the set (we’ll see after I get to movie #4). In the opening, a ruthless gang of pirates gun down the passengers and crew of a cruise boat. In the present, the traumatized twin sister of one of the victims tells her priest that she’s seen her sister’s ghost — and soon that spirit seems to be hunting and haunting her killers. But is that what’s really going on? This took way too long to engage me and some of the key plot points made no sense once I knew what was going on. “I remember you loved to quote Proverbs 1.”

Returning to America, I, MADMAN (1989) has a sexy bookstore clerk and horror buff become convinced the deranged scarface from the 1950s novel she’s currently engrossed in is hacking up everyone around her. That’s bad enough, but the culmination of his literary rampage will be cutting out her heart to wear around his neck … There’s potential in the idea but the execution is lacking — and, again, I don’t think the explanation for what’s going on holds together. “I’m more likely to find a gorgeous guy in a bookstore than a smart man in a singles bar.”

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July 24, 2026 · 4:30 pm

Cats and cons, bathrooms and battle plans

A week ago, I drove to Greensboro for ConGregate 2026. Up until this year, the con’s been held in Winston-Salem, but they had issues with the hotel and had to relocate. This worked out well for me as Greensboro is only an hour away.

The worst thing about the hotel is that it’s on the airport, several miles from anywhere else to eat. Not for the first time, I relied on the breakfast buffet to feed me for the entire day. And the collapsible kettle TYG bought me took care of my tea needs. The best thing is that the author alley, where I set up my table above, runs right outside the meeting spaces so everyone has to pass us by.

Did that boost sales? Not massively. However attendance seemed smaller than ConGregate 2025 — I can’t swear to it — but I made roughly as much money. That’s cool. And all the panels and readings had audiences that outnnumbered the panelists. That doesn’t always happen.

The patterns in sales always fascinate me. No sales on Atoms for Peace or Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast (that’s usually a consistent seller), one or two of most of my other books, seven of Questionable Minds. Which as it’s the one I most want to sell right now, suited me fine. One seller bought purely because of the cover, which is cool (thanks Sam Collins!).

Finally home, where I cooked a Thank You meal for TYG for having to care for all the pets while I was gone. Happily we’ve introduced Plush Dudley to canned chicken and for the moment he’s willing to scarf down his drugs if they’re mashed up into it. Fingers crossed that lasts until after TYG does some traveling in a couple of weeks, leaving me alone.

As I’ve been saying lately, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Last week I took into account that we’d be having contractors trooping in and out to work on the master bathroom. This week we had that to deal with — finished today, at last! — plus we had to take Wisp in to have a couple of problem teeth removed.

This was a challenge. Catching and caging Wisp is always a challenge. Happily for once we got good news: when the dental vet took an X-ray look at the teeth, it doesn’t require removal. No surgery, check back in six months. We’re happy she doesn’t have to be cut on, particularly as removing bottom teeth can have bad effects on the jaw.

And on Wednesday, my physical therapist said my knee has improved enough I don’t have to book another appointment unless/until I need one. She did great, but I’m happy not to take the time. Especially as I screwed up the time and had to go, come home, go back, return.

Somewhat less happily, my glasses broke today — the right-hand screw holding the frame around that lens just snapped. I tried taping it up; didn’t work. Fortunately I have a backup pair and my eyesight hasn’t changed enough for them to be a problem. I will look for a repair place. Annoying but not catastrophiic.

Now, as to writing, my original battle plan had been to focus on Savage Adventures, like I did last week. It’s at the proofing stage and that adapts better than fiction to constant interruptions. Monday that went well. I rewrote some of the text, trimming quite a bit of it, and corrected some errors that had crept in. After Monday, though, things got nuts.

One thing I’ve started doing is taking little tasks and errands — submitting pet bills to the insurer, for instance — first thing in the morning. Gets them out of the way and I don’t have to worry about when to fit them in later in the day. However it’s very easy for them to expand and take up too much time. I’ll have to be careful going forward. This week, I was not.

Plus I had an unexpected experience with The Local Reporter. When I contact someone for an interview I don’t always get a prompt response, or any response (I suspect that’s partly because we’re not the paper of record for Chapel Hill/Carrboro the way the Destin Log was for Destin). I’m working on an article about the effect of the ongoing drought and this time everyone I contacted called me back. I spent much of Wednesday doing interviews.

Thursday I worked on proofing stories for Become the Sky, the sequel anthology to Ceaseless Way. As it’s a collaborative project we all have stories to proof. I have three: Maggie Maxwell’s “The Survivalist’s Guide to Faeryland,” Ada Milenkovic Brown’s “The Nixie of Alken Bog” and Kat Traylor’s “Surviving Dr. Bloodflask.” I got the first two finished Thursday.

So it’s actually a productive week, just not the stuff I planned to produce. Which isn’t the worst way for the battle plan to go off the rails.

Oh, and my editors at McFarland contacted me with some detailed editing questions about various passages in Watching Jekyll and Hyde. That’s pleasing — it shows they’re paying attention to the details. Not that I’d expect less, but it’s still good to see.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at Flash #209 as a harbinger of the Bronze Age. It had Cary Bates take over as Flash’s writer, a gig he’d hold all the way until the Crisis on Infinite Earths killed Barry off. It also showed that after a couple of years of avoiding super-villains, DC was bringing them back. I was delighted.

All rights to cover images remain with current holders. Southern Discomfort cover by Sam Collins, Ceaseless Way by GetCovers based on design by Arden Brooks, Flash cover by Dick Giordanoo.

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July 24, 2026 · 5:38 am

Whose shoes?

Seen on the American Tobacco Trail a couple of weeks back.

Who left them there? Did they leave them as a freebie for anyone who needs shoes? Did they switch them for running shoes? If so, why not put them into a backpack instead?

None of us will ever know.

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July 23, 2026 · 5:08 am

Rape needs to stop

“Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights. Most rapists operate on the premise that they can not only overpower the victim physically, but can do so socially and legally. They count on a system that discounts the voices of victims and only too often cooperates in silencing them, through shame, intimidation, threats, discrediting, the obscene legal instrument known as a nondisclosure agreement and a system too often run by men for men at the expense of women and children. That is to say, rapists count on getting away with it because of a system that hands them power and steals it from their victims. They count on a silencing system. On profound inequality.” — Rebecca Solnit in 2025.

Which leads me to Frederick Douglass discussing the Founding Fathers: “They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was ‘settled; that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were ‘final;’ not slavery and oppression.” Though they were as blind to women’s rights as they were to the rights of slavery, the principles the Founders embraced should nevertheless apply to all. Justice, liberty and humanity are final; not slavery, oppression and rape. We need to end rape.

Given how widely spread rape culture is in our society, that won’t be easy. Hell, Jesse Watters of Fox News thinks it’s hilarious to imagine American soldiers getting testosterone treatments running around committing rape. The misogynist Tate brothers have a massive fan base including the White House yet they’re allegedly (not that I doubt it) monsters: “The unsealed complaint against Tristan Tate alleged that he regularly choked, beat and raped a woman with whom he was in a romantic relationship in 2012 and 2013. She told authorities that he regularly choked her to unconsciousness, gave her a black eye and whipped her with a belt on multiple occasions, causing welts and bruises, the complaint said.” As I’ve said before, too many people swallow the idea the Tates are edgy and cool. (Here’s a discussion of the legal aspects).

As I wrote a couple of weeks back, I’ve no idea how to end rape but putting forward the proposal is the first step. Even with a time-frame — reduce rape 10 percent a year for 10 years, say — it’s a tall order. It will be taller than it should be because many people who have raped and gotten away with it, or enjoy the thought that they could if they chose, would scream bloody outrage. So would those who believe that punishing men for attacking women is fundamentally wrong. Celeste Davis: “Masculinity is not in crisis because the definition has changed. It is in crisis because it is currently predicated on being ranked above women and femininity in an increasingly gender equal world.” Not being able to rape women is a sign we’ve taken another step towards equality.

And, of course, even good political aims get derailed by politics and cronyism. North Carolina provides millions in grant money to agencies helping human-trafficking victims. In 2021, the Republicans transferred control of the money to a GOP-dominated branch of the government, despite protests from its employees they couldn’t manage that many grants. They couldn’t, and victims paid the price.

There are already men on the right dedicated to rolling back gender equality, like pastor Joel Webbon: “So long as we have democracy coupled with universal suffrage, you’ll constantly be going against the grain. You’ll constantly have half of the population voting for temperance, tolerance, suicidal empathy.  I don’t think you’re going to get people to vote away democracy. It has to be taken. I think that men, virtuous, ambitious, masculine men have to climb the ladder of power and forcefully take away from the people that which is their detriment.” Did I mention he wants the death penalty for women who make false rape charges? I’m sure he’d be fine if that resulted in even fewer rape victims speaking up. He’s one of many (though much as I despise the religious right, there are plenty of rapists and rape-apologists outside it).

When the rape apologists speak out, the media will treat their arguments seriously. “Critics says president’s call to end rape is really an attack on masculinity.” “Plan to end rape will offend believers in traditional gender roles, centrist Dems say.” Etc., etc. So we’d need to be ready with answers, and thoughts on how to deal with a media that, like much of our society, defaults to male dominance as normal. In the meantime, a couple of quotes:

“What many of us can do is try to construct a world in which survivors matter & concrete boundaries regarding abusers exist.” — from a Bluesky thread by Mo Ryan

“No abuser sustains a career of abuse alone. At every stage, they have people willing to give them second, third, 30th chance while the survivors keep being unable to pay their bills. those are also choices, and you don’t get to be automatically loved for them. Who gets all the chances speaks volumes” — Mo Ryan again. “Compassion without accountability is a form of enabling”

““How dare you consistently ask that political candidates have the kind of judgment & maturity that the average high school social studies teacher possesses?? Why are you being so mean to this smol bean white guy who displayed awful judgment many times over the years, including right now???? Ughh!!” — another thread by Ryan, on Graham Platner. “When the bar is set below hell, and somebody still doesn’t clear it, yes, of course, the people pointing that out are the problem, absolutely, makes sense.”

“A Texas man is facing federal charges after prosecutors say he created and distributed AI-generated pornographic images depicting women – including celebrities, public figures, and people he personally knew. Federal investigators accuse Arturo Hernandez of Bedias, Texas, of publishing more than 100 online albums containing explicit AI-generated content over more than a year. According to court records, the images allegedly portrayed victims performing sexual acts without their consent.” If he’s guilty, I hope he goes up for a long time.

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July 22, 2026 · 5:15 am

Our street by night

Where the trash cans stand as lonely sentinels against evil.

Where the streets loom against the sky.

Those last two shots were darker IRL but the camera tech brights then. For the next few, from a night when the power was out, TYG showed me a workaround.

And here’s one from 2020 I think came out very well.

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July 21, 2026 · 12:40 pm

J. D. Vance does not want a godly America

J.D. Vance, told the Christian Post that the separation of church and state is Satanic. He’s full of it.

First off, I don’t believe a word Vance says, ever. He’s a soulless ladder-climber who’s made deliberate choices who to sell out to on every rung. To the extent he has sincere beliefs about the United States, they’re repellent. And this is no exception. According to the Christian Post article, “Vance called for ‘a more fully Christian politics,’ one that refuses to treat ‘economic growth’ as an idol, or to dismiss Catholic social teaching as merely ‘spiritual stuff’ with no input on how a nation should be run.”

“Christian politics” is as much gibberish as Mike Johnson declaring all you need to know is that he has a “Biblical worldview.” There is no one Christian politics or worldview. As Mark Noll has written, the Civil War, some Christians believed slavery was a compact with Hell; other Christians believed American chattel slavery was divinely ordained. Many civil rights marchers believed ending Jim Crow was God’s will; many segregationists believed Jim Crow was the will of god. Evangelical Christians in the 1970s were pro-choice; then in the 1980s they swung to “abortion is murder.”

I don’t think there’s any question that slavery and racism are evil; as Huck Finn said, if God wants black America in chains, our duty is to liberate the slaves and go to hell. And I think simple human decency is all that takes to figure that out. As a Christian I don’t dismiss the Bible as a guide; however if Protestants pre-Civil War could not reach a common agreement on what the Bible says about slavery, it’s not a clear, unambiguous guide. We can’t just look up answers like it was a search engine for heaven. And we are, after all, fallible mortals, as are our spiritual leaders. Even if the Bible is inerrant (I do not believe it is), we can’t assume our interpretation of it is.

All that said, I don’t believe for a minute that Vance wants “Christian politics” in the sense that all Christians should have the same right to influence the government. He wants a Christianity that supports his politics, which at the moment are authoritarian, anti-immigrant, and misogynist (I’m quite sure that if it was in his self-interest, he’d switch gears). Lots of Christians, including the Pope, are pro-immigrant; Vance is so anti-immigrant he bore false witness against legal Haitian immigrants, lying they were stealing and eating cats and dogs. There are Christians who are pro-gay and feminist; Vance is neither.

Our religion can support or influence our political positions. If, however, the only argument for our position is “God wants it,” that’s when church-state separation kicks in. Because some other Christian believes God wants the exact opposite, guaranteed.

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July 21, 2026 · 5:15 am

Triptychs!

Two trilogies from Ballantine Books, two sets of triple covers. First, The Lord of the Rings by Barbara Remington.

These covers go back to when LOTR was still seen as a one-of-a-kind thing. Epic fantasy didn’t exist as a genre; there was Tolkien and people knocking off Tolkien, that was it. They are very much what I think of as the covers. Remington says she hadn’t had a chance to read the books when she drew the art or she’d have drawn them differently.

Second, the three Gormenghast novels by Mervyn Peake, with covers by Bob Pepper.

Here’s a better look at the image without the titles.

If you think that looks weird, well so are the books: Titus Groan, Gormenghast — apparently I never blogged about V3, Titus Alone Peake’s wife put together a fourth volume from his notes and the novella Boy in Darkness falls between V1 and V2.

Part of the inspiration for this post was someone on FB saying that after reading LOTR they’d picked up the Peake books as another fantasy trilogy — that must mean a lot like LOTR, right? It must have been a jarring transition.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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July 20, 2026 · 5:12 am

I do not think making America healthy again is a Republican priority

I predicted last month that the Toddler administration and sociopathic crackpot RFK Jr. would start hacking away at anti-smoking rules if Big Tobacco paid them enough. I hate being right. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 14-year ad campaign, called Tips From Former Smokers, was highly memorable and, research shows, highly effective in motivating people to quit. Last year, though, as tobacco companies gave millions to political organizations related to the Trump administration, the campaign went dark.”

“The warning on the government website was stark. Some products and remedies claiming to treat or cure autism are being marketed deceptively and can be harmful. Among them: chelating agents, hyperbaric oxygen therapies, chlorine dioxide and raw camel milk.” That page has gone dark too.

On the other hand, Kennedy has announced he’s willing to devote his department’s resources to investigating Muslim groups for non-existent crimes.

To counter the US withdrawing from the World Health Organization, some states are joining. Right-wingers are unhappy.

“For NIH, it proposes a $5 billion cut to research program funding (~11% cut). It also proposes elimination of 1 institutes and 2 centers: National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health Fogarty International Center. The combined fiscal year 2026 budget for these ICs is approximately $1.2 billion so that leaves a $3.8 billion cut for the rest of NIH.” — Jeremy Berg on the Toddler’s proposed budget for 2027. This was a couple of months back so things may have changed, but as Berg says, the spending priorities show what Republicans think is important. Kennedy, for example, wanted to spend $5 billion of NIH funding, looking for the non-existent vaccine-autism link.

” Federal research funds are not an entitlement, they are not a subsidy: they are subject to exceptionally competitive award processes and intense federal government oversight. Universities do things private companies with research capacities cannot: train research talent, conduct basic research with uncertain payoffs, and distribute knowledge as a public good. And the rewards have been enormous. Everything from the internet to pharmaceutical and health care innovations evolved from such investments. We are richer and healthier for the investment.” — Don Moynihan on why both the Toddler’s war on university research partnerships is bad and people saying colleges should cut themselves free from such deals is also wrong.

Here’s a look at how government dictating scientific truth can go very wrong.

Despite which, the usual The Market Will Save Us suspects insist we should abolish the NIH and rely on the free market. Best quote from the thread, referring to the right wing fondness for herd immunity: “Ah yes, herd immunity, where the non-immune part of the herd just dies.”

Speaking of the free market, an epidemiologist responds to claims that vaccines are a cash cow for clinics and doctors: “Once you factor in staff time, storage and refrigeration, insurance paperwork, and the need to purchase vaccines upfront (often months before reimbursement), most pediatric practices break even. In many practices, low reimbursement for Medicaid and uninsured vaccine administration means the practice loses money on each vaccine administered.”

“Whiskey Pete” Hegseth rescinded the flu vaccine requirement for new recruits. One recruit has died of influenza. Wow, who could have anticipated that … except countless military commanders from the pre-vaccine era.

Despite Kennedy’s lies, studies have consistently found no autism-Tylenol connection. I doubt he knows crap about cellphones’ effect on our brains either. And he can’t do 20 pull-ups.

“I want to say, I’m creeped out by the memo saying that Olmstead “held only that a state cannot institutionalize such patients” — they’re talking about people with disabilities — “without justification,” and then adds, “What counts as adequate justification remains an open question.” Given Kennedy’s war on the disabled and the neurodivergent, I’m creeped out too.

Not a fan of Mehmet Oz serving as the Toddler’s hatchetman on the ACA either.

“An Idaho mother was charged with the murders of her 18-month-old twins more than a year after suggesting their deaths were the result of vaccinations.”

“I don’t think that the Democrats should relax sensible, science-based positions on vaccines and other health care, but I’m unclear on how much more confrontational and assertive Democrats could get on this issue.” — from a post about how to respond to the “woo” faction in our own coalition.

“A big problem for trust in government is that high-quality governance is usually invisible. When the various agencies designed to protect the American people from all manner of threats are working perfectly, most potential disasters are detected and prevented before they happen. A lot of highly trained government workers do diligent and difficult work for little pay and less recognition, heading off crisis after crisis, and the ignorant swing-voting layman assumes that all his tax dollars are being squandered.” — from a Prospect story on the cyclosporiasis AKA explosive diarrhea outbreak. Though in this case it seems the cluelessness was the ignorant Republicans now running things.

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July 19, 2026 · 4:23 pm

Spiders, sheep and young lovers solving mysteries: TV and Movies

SPIDER-NOIR (2026) stars Nicholas Cage as Ben Reilly, a 1930s PI who once fought crime and injustice as the Spider, with powers acquired from Great War mad science experiments (he played an animated version of the same character in Into the Spider-Verse). After he failed to save his great love, Ben gave up superheroics for the life of a down-at-heels PI. Now, though things are changing as more superhumans show up.

First we have Flint Marko (Jack Huston) whose body can turn into sand. Then comes Lonnie Lincoln (Abraham Popoola), whose body seems stone hard and incredibly strong. Crimelord Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson) is watching these new players with interest, while also hiring Reilly to find the traitor in his organization. Further complications include shady singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), and that both Ben’s secretary Janet (Karen Rodriguez) and reporter Robbie Robertson (Lamorne Morris) think Ben needs to suit up and take Silvermane down.

This is available in black and white and color both, though I couldn’t figure out the B&W option (I’d have preferred it). It was fun, with a solid cast and an interesting alt.version of the Spider-mythos. I was surprised that it actually shows people smoking as most period pieces these days skip that detail. “You told me yourself, Silvermane — never settle for what someone hands you.”

THE SHEEP DETECTIVES (2026) is a very oddball mystery film in which, as the title suggests, the detectives are sheep. George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) is a sunny, sheep-loving shepherd — he only takes their wool instead of killing them for mutton — in the kind of small, cozy English village where murders happen frequently. Every evening he reads to his sheep from a mystery novel; Lily (Julia Louise-Dreyfuss) is invariably able to figure them out.

Then one evening, George winds up dead outside his small trailer, and wouldn’t you know there’s no shortage of suspects? The local butcher. George’s young heir. Doesn’t his lawyer (Emma Thompson) seem a little suspicious? And there’s a few other people George feuded with … When it appears the nitwit village constable is way out of his depth, Lily and the sheep decide to investigate. After all, how much harder can mysteries be in real life? While I spotted the murderer early on, this mix of cozy-mystery parody and funny-animal story works really well. With Patrick Stewart as an old ram. “Is there anyone in the world who hasn’t seen Return to Oz?”

I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937) about six years ago as part of my Hitchcock (re)watch. When the Carolina Theatre announced it as part of their own Hitchcock film festival, TYG and caught it on the big screen. She liked it too, though she was thrown by the blackface musical number at the climax.

After weirdly melodramatic marital spat (as Hitchcock Romance says, it’s a surprise it’s not part of a stage show or a film within the film), the wife turns up strangled. When young Tisdale (Derrick de Marnay) finds the body, he realizes his raincoat belt was the murder weapon he panics and runs, get caught and charged. Realizing his bumbling attorney will be no use, Tisdale goes on the run with the help of Erica (Nova Pilbeam), daughter of the local chief constable. Can they find out who stole his raincoat before the law catches up with them?

The plot doesn’t make much sense. Is any belt going to be that identifiable? Did the cops even try to locate the husband? But of course such considerations are secondary in a Hitchcock film. What works is the romance and the troubles the duo get into finding the truth. Unlike many of Hitch’s lovers-on-the-run films, such as The 39 Steps, where the hero has to drag the female lead along until she falls in love, Erica takes Tisdale’s side from the get-go. That makes for a lighter film but it works. “Haven’t you seen anyone with a twitch yet?”

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July 19, 2026 · 5:15 am

Edward Gorey, Father Brown and Deathlok! Books read

BORN TO BE POSTHUMOUS: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery reminds me of my friend Ross’s observation that epic biographies should be reserved for people who live epic lives Four hundred pages isn’t epic by 21st century standards but it’s still too big for Gorey’s life.

Gorey was certainly a fascinating person, flamboyant in personal style and grotesquely whimsical in his art. I was surprised to realize he’d died in 2000 — his work seems very much out of another era, which is part of its charm. Despite all of which, his life story isn’t as interesting as the man himself. Dysfunctional family. Flowering in college. Endless details of the plays and the artists he liked, the books he read, the literary friends he made (I’m impressed he had the poet John Ciardi as one of his college teachers). As I often say, it’s not the author’s fault I’m not as interested in the details of the topic as they are; still, the details really don’t seem interesting.

A bigger problem is Dery’s determination to see Gorey as a gay icon. Gorey described himself as uninterested or asexual when the subject came up, though his history shows that may not have been the case. It’s a legit topic for a biographer but Dery really obsesses over it: look at his gay friends, his gay sense of style, his love of Oscar Wilde, his arch, gay sense of humor… by the time we get to any gay subtext in his art I no longer cared. A third, minor problem, is that like many nonfiction writers, Dery tries to make the subject bigger than it is — without Gorey, the graphic-novel industry would never have been open to something as gay as Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home! For various reasons, I think that’s nonsense.

G. K. Chesterton’s second Father Brown collection, THE INCREDULITY OF FATHER BROWN has a number of moments I love. There’s Father Brown explaining the difference between a real mystic and a fake (real mystics tell you everything and you’re mystified; fakes hide everything and when you see it you’re bored), his discourse on vigilantes in “The Arrow of God,” on dressing gowns as a perfect disguise in “The Dagger With Wings” and the killer’s motivation in “The Oracle of the Dog” (“If he had really known the money would come to him, I actually believe he wouldn’t have done it.”). Some of the stories, such as “The Doom of the Darnaways” don’t work half as well. Plus we have Chesterton’s religious biases, for example frowning over the 19th century American secularist Robert Ingersoll (more vicious an enemy of religion than Voltaire!). And did you know Jews were subject to fair less persecution in medieval Europe than Christians (for anyone who doesn’t know religious history, this is blatant anti-Semitic bullshit)? Overall I enjoyed it but I can see why some people avoid the series like the plague.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: Deathlok the Demolisher by Rich Buckler (who did the striking cover here) and a variety of collaborators, including Doug Moench and Bill Mantlo, was one I read for this month’s Genre Book Club; the theme was cyberpunk and this 1974-76 series is very much proto-cyberpunk.

Luther Manning had been a capable military officer. When war hit the United States in the 1990s, he wound up stepping on a mine after which his CO, Major Ryker, rebuilt him as a cyborg (in a moment that’s now hilarious, the cyborg’s computer program runs on punch cards inserted into his prosthetic arm). “Deathlok” did a good job at first eliminating Ryker’s enemies, then Luther’s consciousness reasserted itself. Now he has two missions: take down Ryker and regain his humanity.

This has many cyberpunk elements: powerful computers, advanced tech, a decaying, violent urban setting, omnipresent surveillance. It’s most distinctive high-tech element is that even after Luther regains his mind, the computer is still in his head. The dialogue between Manning and the “‘puter” is the thing many people who glanced at the series on the stands remember.

In the Bronze Age, it was different from anything else out there, much bleaker than, say, the Atomic Knights (who were in reprint in Strange Adventures in the 1970s). There’s a lot I like, some nice touches (Luther’s in an interracial marriage) but the plotting is often wonky. Ryker’s girlfriend discover he’s a cyborg, then spends the rest of the series comatose, hooked up to a computer to enable more intuitive control of the weapons it commands or something like that. And she’s the chief woman character in the series for most of the run. And it’s really disappointing that while Ryker talks about merging with his computer and becoming “the God Machine,” the reveal is anticlimactic — apparently the entire series is about a turf war for control over New York, nothing more imaginative. A mixed bag, but one I’m glad to have read (this also includes Deathlok’s adventures in the present after his series ended, but I won’t get into that here).

Art by Gorey and Buckler, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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