Books of Blood Top 5

Here's a few books that should be on any horror aficionado's shelf.
     I've talked here at various times about my love of Clive Barker's works but I realize that I still haven't actually said anything about his first, and in many ways, still his most significant contribution to the horror genre: The 6 Books of Blood.
     When The Books of Blood were published back in the long forgotten yesteryear of 1984 they were an instant success, and though Barker attributes that mostly to the generous endorsement by Stephen King, the quality of the work itself makes The Books of Blood, even now 35 years later, stand out from a lot of other horror literature, despite his detractors all too eagerly labeling them as the very cheapest form of Splatterpunk.
     They still stand out and are still popular now because besides the expected horror-elements there's also an occasional touch of poetry to Barker's writing, and because despite a lot of these stories having heavy elements of violence, sex and gore, there's also an element that is quite bit rarer in horror fiction, and even in fiction in general. Barker manages to evoke something that harkens back to some of the earliest horror masters in the genre; in the tradition of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and Lovecraft he frequently manages to evoke awe in the face of the unknown.

     I've felt this quite strongly when reading Weaveworld and Cabal; and of course also here in the Books of Blood. It is a quiet feeling, mute and wondering in the face of something much bigger than ourselves, something darker, or maybe just different, but certainly almost always unknowable, and it is almost always present in his work. Barker has stated throughout the years that he is merely the tool through which something, something outside of himself, makes itself known, that this is where his creativity comes from. It is likely that this belief is relevant to the man's depiction of massive incomprehensible forces that impinge on and transform his character's lives. It is something I've come to expect to be present in all of his works that I pick up. And here in the Books of Blood is where it all started.

    The Ink-Stained Beard and I once had a conversation that led to us listing our top three Books of Blood stories. The Books themselves number 6, with about 30 stories between them (though 2 of those are about a page long and serve as the framing device for the entire collection), and a top three is kind of an easy order, so for the purposes of the post I'm making it 5 now.

Without further ado: My Top 5 Favourite Books of Blood short stories:

5

In The Flesh

Inmate Cleve Smith has been ordered to safeguard his new cellmate, the young Billy Tait, from the attentions of the other inmates. Though he resents the duty, Cleve does as he's told, and takes the vulnerable newcomer under his only slightly indifferent wing, and is in return made Billy's confidant. The young man reveals that he purposefully committed a crime exactly in order to be imprisoned, and that there was a very good reason for it;  his grandfather had murdered almost his entire family, and had hung himself in the very same prison Cleve and Billy are in right now, and that he had been buried here, and Billy reveals that he still has a spot of business with the dead man.

Thinking the young man insane, Cleve does his best to stay aloof, but soon becomes interested despite himself in his cellmate's odd doings anyway after Billy's found weeping and seemingly talking to himself near the prison's graves. From that moment on the boy begins to isolate himself, and Clive can't help but become more and more uncomfortable sharing the cell with him. His nights become burdened with strange dreams of a dead and silent city, and around the boy himself scary things begin happening.

     In the Flesh is a curious little tale, though it's actually one of the longest in the entire collection, and it's curious because its premise is so, well... almost banal. It seems familiar in its set-up of 'the protagonist has an associate who is haunted/tortured or who delves into forbidden secrets, until associate is delivered unto horror' type story. But it's interesting because Barker manages to make the mystery so compelling, his protagonist Cleve so down-to-earth, and the secret that Billy tries to unearth so obviously oh so very bad for him, and that quite quickly Billy also realizes this himself, and that despite of this it is unstoppable. It has creepy moments and the outright splatter and gore that usually is in full effect in other stories is here quite muted. Instead there is strangeness, something that ties into the flow of time, and life after the death. The theme of this one is similar to Cabal, and a few other of his stories, but here is its earliest form maybe.

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4

The Last Illusion

A stage illusionist has had an 'accident' under almost stage-show circumstances, and private detective and frequent dabbler in the occult, Harry d'Amour, has been hired by the late illusionist's wife, Dorothea Swann, in order to fulfill one of the man's requests as stated in a letter to be opened on his sudden death.

And so, beguiled by the lovely eyes of the widow Swann, Harry agrees to take up the ghoulish task of holding vigil over the deceased man's corpse. Soon after he suffers a vivid hallucination and is wakened by the late man's wife and her lawyer and then promptly sent on his way. But it's already too late and Harry is soon embroiled in a demonic struggle between two parties vying over a magician's soul.

     The Last Illusion is one of those that's an absolute favourite for many fans.

Despite being very good on its own, its horror quite strange and exotic, it also features the first appearance of Barker's very own occult Detective, Harry d'Amour, who went on to star in various of Barker's later novels.

     The story moves along at a break-neck speed and once the set-up is complete Barker wastes no time in letting the insanity begin. What follows is some of the most evilly imaginative stuff that only could've come from the mind of Clive Barker. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I've seen it in his other work too, and haven't seen or felt it in any other writer; there's a dark vibrancy to his monstrous creations that quite does away with the usual idea of how evil powers are generally depicted in western fiction. Barker's evil monsters are strange and wholly his own.

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3

Rawhead Rex

In a sleepy village in the British countryside

 an ancient monster has awoken,

 and proceeds to rip the cowering locals to shreds.

Yep,

that's all you need to know.

     Raw-Head Rex is an uncomplicated story; Splatterpunk through and through, shocking in its depiction of violence, and positively brutal in the way that it crosses lines with screaming wild abandon. I can confidently say that Rawhead Rex is a guilty pleasure kind of read. The violence is staggering, and the... ahem, phallic nature of the titular monster is something that is both disturbing and highly intriguing. Barker has no idea he will leave unexplored or un-visited if it's something that genuinely interests him.

     This one was also in The Ink-Stained Beard's top three... Quite an unrepentantly bloodthirsty sort of fellow, wouldn't you say?

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2

The Midnight Meat Train

New York City is awash with rumour and speculation, the nasty ghoulish appetites of teeming humanity on full display, as they latch onto the newest sensation: The Murders in the Underground.

First, a pile of bodies had been found in one of the city's subway cars, all hacked open, and in various stages of disembowelment. Then, another car with a woman inside, her teeth pulled, and her body removed of hair, hung up by a hook to the ceiling and left there to drain of blood like a hog. And now another three bodies in another train car, in similar condition.

The subway is leaking violent death, but Leon Kaufman's only thought is getting home after a late night at work, and the express train is still the best way to go. But as he wakes after a brief doze to the dizzying movement of the swiftly accelerating train and the sounds of slaughter he has no way of knowing that work is only just about to begin.

     I had actually seen and loved the movie before I had read the short story, and to my surprise even knowing how this one would go, I really found it quite an arresting experience. It differed only a little from the movie: Though its story was largely the same it was noticeably shorter in its length, mainly due to the movie's inclusion of more characters and a clearer story arc overall, and there were certain elements of the story's resolution that had been left out of the movie.

     And as it was, I did not expect what eventually would shuffle out into the light, and so was left to taste awe in the face of the unknown. This is what I was talking about earlier. Barker always brings a supernatural element into his stories, and sometimes the shape it assumes is familiar, and sometimes is isn't, and when he just shows it standing there, revealed, and you have no real point of reference, and the character that's come face to face with it has no real point of reference, both of you just end up sitting there in dumb, fascinated shock.

     Still just a perfect little tale.

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1

In The Hills, The Cities

In the villages of Popolac and Podujevo excitement reigns; the annual ritual contest that is about to pit the two villages against each other is about to begin. But venerable Nita Obrenovic, the organizer and leader of 60 years worth of contests on behalf of Podujevo, has died and her inexperienced daughter has no choice but to take up the mantle of her responsibilities. And they weigh heavy indeed, and too many mistakes might prove disastrous.

Judd and Mick have come to realize that their interests really don't match up, and both feel that their relationship has probably run its course. It's only unfortunate that this realization has only come about halfway through their vacation in Yugoslavia, with no quick way out of the others' lives and companionship.

To make the best of it the two men move into the hills, to see new and unexpected sights, but as they feel the rumble of the ground and a deafeningly loud multitude of voices, they can not imagine the sight that'll greet them next.

     Also one of the Ink-Stained Beard's list, and how could it not?

In the Hills The Cities is quintessential Clive Barker. Everything you could expect from the man is in here: graphic sex, violence, the dirty grubby underbelly of human nature, stunning amounts of gore, and an almost paralyzing sense of awe that you won't find anywhere else.

     What's maybe most impressive about In the Hills, The Cities is that nobody but Barker could have written it. It's absolutely remarkable. He weaves his penchant for impressive body horror in such a way that it ends up being the thing that evokes that awe in the face of the unknown. He manages to construct his story in such a way that certain of its elements, despite being explained and understood by the reader, at a certain point in the tale transcend their base and understandable origins and become something 'greater' and almost incomprehensible, to both the characters in the story, and the reader reading it. There is imagery here that is fit to stand alongside the best of the hellish imagery in Dante's Inferno.

     It is also easy to believe that the sight that eventually greets Mick and Judd as they follow the sounds that lead them on could very well prove madness-inducing. Whenever I read Lovecraft and another one of his main characters goes insane looking at something he shouldn't have been looking at I always find it hard to credit. But not so here.

     But also unfortunately, the set-up can't quite entirely work, logically. The premise strains the bounds of credulity just a bit, but who cares really, because Barker somehow manages to draw you in, and he graces you to see his own blood-drenched visions, to share in the delight of horror and awe. The only logical response would be gratitude, wouldn't it?

So, say thank you to the Master, and please understand that you're very much invited to continue further into his worlds, and that he still has such sights to show you.

The Penguin Red Classics

     The Penguin Red Classics, or the Gothic Classics, or Red Classics, depending on where you look and who you ask is a series of 10 classic horror books published in 2008 by the Penguin Group.

     And I have been reading them for pretty much that long. Or rather, I picked up the Red Classic edition of the Dunwich Horror just over 10 years ago when still in college and I knew nothing of Lovecraft. I was in for a few shocks let me tell you. Up until then I had primarily spent my time in the realms of fantasy and, in the store where I was supposed to do some study-shopping, I saw the striking cover, I read the ominous title and though I thought to myself, well that's a silly author name, there was still something about it and so I proceeded to take the book home with me.

     And it genuinely terrified me. There are precious few books that have actually managed to get that kind of a rise out of me, and this one is still one of the best.

The Dunwich Horror collects a bunch of good Lovecraft stories, of which my favourites, to this day are the titular Dunwich Horror and the Dreams in the Witch House. I remember being thoroughly creeped out and yet also strangely drawn to, and wanting to know more of, the secretive business on Whateley farm, its strange inhabitants and hints of occult and eldritch lore, and then that mad ending; it was all so darkly imaginative. The Dreams in the Witch House then was something that made me feel more uneasy than that it terrified me, at least right up until the final scenes which have such delicious tension building, and which ended in a genuine memorable moment of shock. Brown Jenkin is still one of those all-time-great monsters, and it is still surprising to me that he isn't more well known. Lovecraft really turned out to have a knack for shocking the reader with his final lines.

     So, with this edition and with pretty much these 2 stories, my love for all things Lovecraft was born. Here is where it all began. I chewed through Lovecraft stories on loan from a friend and later also bought complete editions for my own.

     But at the time I also bought 2 other books. The house on the Borderlands and the Masque of Red Death. I had already been familiar with Poe, or maybe I hadn't been, I'm honestly rather vague on that. Either way Poe's Masque of Red Death is my favourite of all of Poe's stories and pretty much all of the stories in here are absolute classics. Tell-tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, Pit and Pendulum, Black Cat, Eleonora, Oval Portrait, Fall of the House of Usher and even a few others. Poe doesn't need much attention here, because he's still simply one of the best in horror literature. Anyone who hasn't read anything by him has missed out.

     The House on the Borderlands on the other hand, I knew nothing about. It just looked and sounded like a haunted house type situation, 'the Borderlands' of the title hinting at isolation and probably some weird goings-on. And so, knowing nothing I jumped in. And four hours later (yeah, I do read slow), 2 o' clock at night I finished the book. And I loved it, and afterwards I couldn't sleep.

The book wasn't at all what I had expected. There was no haunting, except there sort of was, but not really, and the book definitely leaned into more of a sci-fi vibe than a horror one, but the thing I remember most of all was the profound sense of awe that the book left me with. The impression I was left with was vast beyond imagining. And yet, some fucker had thought it up. The House on the Borderlands is still one of my all-time favourite pieces of fiction, and though it is eerie, it's more into overwhelming the reader than giving them scares.

     And so, figuring these were all going to be as phenomenal as the first three books I had read, they became my go-to horror pile over the years. Though not one of them ended up bowling me over as either of the first three did, they were accomplished enough to have left me with some impressions. And all of them bad. But Levi, I hear you say, I thought you said they were accomplished, to which I respond, yeah, accomplished in pissing me off.

     The Lair of the White Worm came next, which was a very bizarre novel, though I was taken enough with it at the time. However, there were enough niggles to leave me with a vague sense of disappointment. After that came Vernon Lee's Virgin of the Seven Daggers, which left me so bored and annoyed that I nearly half a dozen times threw the book out of the window instead of finishing it. To this day I have only the vaguest impressions of the ghost of Lucrezia Borgia haunting some church or other, and I'm fine with not remembering any more. Even thinking about my experience with the novel has irritated me. Then came Marsh's The Beetle and I nearly gave up on acquiring and reading the remaining Penguin Red Classics completely. Long story short; it was boring, and fairly unimaginative, although I read that it has recently become a go-to novel for readers interested in gender identity in their gothic reading.

     I made one last attempt with Wilkie Collins' The Haunted Hotel and then threw my hat in the ring.

     Now, granted it probably was my fault. Something to do with expectation and patience, but I've come to almost dislike these four. I'm generally of the opinion that any piece of literature has merit, but then I do only tend to pick up the best of the best, and don't wade through cookie cutter bullshit like most people these days. So, even though my time with these four had not been good, I'm aware enough of how I was at the time that I can concede that I would've had a better time had I been more open to it.

And so, even though I didn't have much interest in completing the series at this point, I felt bound to continue anyway, and so this year I forced myself to purchase the remaining three and getting them done by October. And I did.

     The Spook House and MR James' the Haunted Doll's House were both pretty standard horror collections. And I'm wondering if desensitization isn't just to blame for my take on that. They were well written but their contents mostly have been presented in one form or other in the years since they've been published that all of it felt like treading water.

At this point I've seen and read so much horrific stuff that these works, so stiff and so reminiscent of a different age, couldn't help but start at a disadvantage.

However, they're still easily a cut in quality over the last 4 books that I'd read in the series.

    Ambrose Bierce's collection of short stories in particular had a few rather inventive and memorable stories: Chickamauga, A Jug of Syrup, Three and One are One, the Thing at Nolan, the Affair at Coulter's Notch, Night-Doings at Deadman's and others were funny, and sad, and horrible by turns, frequently having elements of war and hauntings, and which were all really well written.

     MR James' collection of stories I can't remember much about, even though I read it this year. Looking at the index I believe that I was quite partial to The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, but that I was disappointed enough with the titular short story that I wish that either of the two opening short stories had been given honour of title. Oh wait! Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance was definitely a very good one, a story where a man finds a relic of evil at the center of a maze, with definite hints of Biblical evil, which is always my kind of thing, and the reason why I remembered it.

     And then, lastly, the final one; Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch.

And though I can concede it's an excellent collection of short stories, the titular tale only taking up about 100 pages of the total 240, I didn't quite enjoy reading them. Don't get me wrong here, because they all ended up being exceptionally good, but the stories all tended to be rather depressing, the horror only coming from the abominable circumstances of the main characters' lives than any kind of supernatural force.

     The writing style was also so belaboured that I only started to pick up speed when I made a conscious alteration to alter my usually labourious reading manner into something a bit faster.

I'll tell you, it's weird to have to do that, to only be able to enjoy a specific kind of writing by shutting part of your mind off, or something. But when I managed it Gaskell's tales became rather engaging narratives. Lois the Witch in particular, which is a fictionalized account of the Salem Witch Trials through the eyes of a newcomer in town, was pretty damn powerful. When it was over I could understand how this all had happened, I understood the Mass hysteria, and I understood why people would, without torture, admit to being witches, when in reality they were just frightened and confused. There's an awareness of the psychological side of the events here that reminded me of The Turn of the Screw, though where that book leaves things up to interpretation, this one, bound to history as it is, wasn't able to do so.

So. 

That ends my look at the 10 Penguin Red Classics.

From best to worst:

1. The Dunwich Horror

2. The Masque of Red Death

3. The House on the Borderlands

4. Lois the Witch

5. The Spook House

6. The Haunted Doll's House

7. The Lair of the White Worm

8. The Beetle

9. The Haunted Hotel

10. The Virgin of the Seven Daggers

Bloodborne Comic, A Song of Crows

Well. Eh... This was weird.

I'm honestly quite unsure of how to begin this one.

     Song of Crows is the third installment in the Bloodborne comic series, though every installment stands alone, their stories unconnected. Right out of the gate everything seemed kosher and fine: The art was awesome and though the writing was a bit confusing, I did already get the sense of what the comic was going for, already seeing the hints of a full-circle-resolution type thing that was only going to make sense at the comic's eventual conclusion. But then... shit got really weird.

     Writer Ales Kot did make it pretty clear at the start that things weren't going to be so straightforward.

Woven into the narration where our protagonist Eileen questions her place in time and her reasons for her decision to bury the dead of Yharnam there is also a musing on the nature of the story about to be told. Tres meta.

If you put the fragmented narration together it states quite clearly, addressing both Eileen and us the readers, and it informs us:

No matter how hard you try to understand, you'll never know the whole story.

Not your own, not anyone else's. At certain points you may be convinced you do.

 You may even choose to convince yourself that you've found the right angle from which to see the totality of the world, of the universe. You'd be wrong.

For time is the deepest grave of all. And graves tell no complete stories.

There's a hole in the center of the story.

There's a hole in the center of my story. And time is the deepest grave of all.

It has no shape. But time has a flow.

Time doesn't have a shape. But we make shapes of time.

     First things first: This isn't exactly Eileen the Crow's story from the game. It is also not her origin story. Once again, if you came into this comic looking for answers, you're going to be disappointed. Eileen the Crow from the game either vanishes or is killed by you, at the end of her story arc in the game, never having given in to the insanity or the blood-lust that many of the game's other characters do. At no point before that ending did she gave in to madness.

    When we meet her in the game, she, in spite of her age, in spite of being cut off from the Hunter's Dream and thus susceptible to true death, continues to hunt the hunters who've gone mad or who've become beasts, holding fast to her duty, until it finally kills her, or until, after you've helped her in her fights and she finally realizes that she just cannot continue, she ends up giving you her blessing, after which she vanishes from the game. It is unclear what happens to her.

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     If you take the comic's story as possible, then it takes place after that vanishing. But almost nothing else of this story can be discerned. We follow Eileen as she tries to make sense of her situation, confused as she is about her place in time. At points we are gifted with flashes to her childhood, which may not actually be scenes from her childhood and instead could just be a symbolic representation of an event yet to come, or an event that has happened but which she is hiding from herself. Or there might be some strange synchronicity thing going on where one lake hides a dead child, the other a Vacuous Spider or something. The Child might also just be a representation of Eileen herself.

     There's also another hunter who shows up and tries to guide her and who Eileen ends up fighting, but who I'm sure is Eileen herself, and since this Hunter's eyes are visible, I think it's safe to say that this is a representation of Eileen's consciousness that has been given insight. Although she's likely not even there.

What I'm trying to get at is that this is a very non-linear comic book, and that it is all rather experimental. I ended up loving it, but even here at this time when I think I've understood a lot of it, it still remains bewildering and really quite disorienting.

     What does become clear is that there is a definite point where Eileen lost the plot, where she definitively lost her grip on her place in time and reality; at the end of Issue 2 when she met Rom the Vacuous Spider and the spider likely gifted her with eyes, though it is likely this event took place far in advance of issue 1.

     To Have Eyes in the world of Bloodborne is to have gained knowledge, and to have become intimate with the dark secrets of the Bloodborne universe, which frequently also leads to true Lovecraftian insanity of the mind. Which is where Eileen finds herself at the start of the comic.

     The meeting with the spider is represented by a rather experimental approach and the delivery of both subliminal and symbolic imagery. It might also have been padded out a little too much.

A hole in the ice, becomes a whirpool, which becomes a crow tearing out the eye of another crow, which, weeping suppurating goo, becomes the Blood Moon, gashed and weeping fluids, and becomes the other hunter with her visible eyes and all of them originate from the dark eyes of Rom the Vacuous Spider. Or something.

I honestly love it.

It's this type of convoluted story telling that is so easy to dismiss as a creator deep inside his own arse, or trying to be artsy or deep, but because Bloodborne's own stories tend to be focused on insanity, dreams and the nature of reality, and the stories and characters tend to be very difficult to follow or even understand, their information so hidden and secret, that I do think, that even though it certainly won't be for everyone, that of the three so far, this might be the comic that's closest to it in spirit. 

Either way, it was an unsettling but pretty great experience.

Early next year will see another Bloodborne comic and I'm really, really looking forward to it.

In the meantime. If you are confused by all of this but are starting to get interested in Bloodborne. You could do worse than to take a look at VaatiVidya's story video. The man gives a pretty coherent and insightful look at the world, and is likely to really calm you down with his dulcet tones.

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One last thing though. A little niggle I had about A Song of Crows:

Strangely enough. Though Eileen is said to perform sky burials in the game, as a way to honour and 'help' the Hunters who've gone mad, and the first time we see her there, she is standing by corpses she hoisted into the air, and even though there are a few depictions of a form of sky burial in both Eileen's investigation in issue 1 and her flashbacks to a time in her youth in subsequent issues, in issue 1 she bizarrely is introduced to us burying corpses in the ground. I'm not sure why she's introduced burying in the ground rather than actually performing sky-burial, which she then continues to end up doing anyway later in the comic. It's an odd little inconsistency, I think. Or it could be I'm just missing something.

Dredd Musings and Complete Case Files 23

Hello, hello, glad to see you here. Just thought I'd do a quick appreciation post on the 23d installment of the Complete Case Files of Judge Dredd. Complete Case Files is a series that'll of course end up covering the entire legendary lawman's career. But it is a career that isn't over and done yet, even though he's been active since 1977 on a weekly basis, the stories, and his age, progressing in real time, and we are all still following along in the same timeline as when we first saw him.

     Yeah, when the Complete Case Files will finally be done and over with, it is going to be damn huge. Case Files 34, which'll be out later this month, collects the series up until prog 1275 together with the spin-off Mega-zine issues that came out during the time the included progs did.

     I think that this week 2000AD released prog 2152.

That's still at least more than double the amount of Case Files until we arrive at that point, and still more when you realize that the amount of progs included in each Case Files has diminished since the inclusion of the Megazine issues in Case Files 15.

     Where in previous Case Files we frequently got to read about 50 progs, leading to a steady accumulation of numbers, in later issues they would have to share that space with the Megazine issues, which frequently leads to less than two dozen progs per issue. 

     This is not a problem, as the Megazine is canonical and was conceived to explore the world of Dredd and the Mega Cities, frequently running in tandem with the prog stories.

     But it does mean that there's going to be an unholy number of Case Files yet to come.

And Dredd's continuity is still ongoing.

     That as a bit of an aside.

I just really wanted to talk about how good Case Files 23 (progs 940-959 and Megazine 2.81-3.07) in particular is. I can't remember having had this much fun since the Necropolis storyline in Case Files 14.

     The Recent Case Files had been a bit of a hit and miss for me lately. I gather that this is true for most people, this being the time in the 80s and 90s where Garth Ennis wrote a ton of the stories while he just did not get the character at all, which lead to a whole bunch of sub-par stories, where Dredd didn't feel like Dredd, where the ideas and plots where derivative, and the whole overarching relationship between the Judges and the Citizens took a step or two back right into super fascism.
     Things had been looking up since Case Files 19 and 20 where there were a few good stories, but which were deprived of being completely satisfying for me since my Case Files specifically had a few issues missing between progs. Imagine, I was having a lot of fun with the Inferno storyline and events were really beginning to spiral out of control, and all of a sudden there seem to be some pages missing, since Dredd is already in hand to hand combat with the Inferno storyline's main villain. Kind of took the wind out of my sails, let me tell you.
    But in the previous 2 Case Files, the Chief Judge Mcgruder/Mechanismo storyline was finally dealt with in the really quite good Wilderlands story arc. And though Mcgruder is a memorable judge which I do have a certain fondness for, she did have the unfortunate honour of being the one in charge between Necropolis and Wilderlands, that very dreadful and dull and out-of-character period that most of wish that it rather did not exist.

     And now, that second aside over and done with, we arrive at Case Files 23, which was an overall really enjoyable time, even though it quite stretched the bounds of credulity at points. Of course, this is a comic book with stories set in a sci-fi dystopia setting, so there's bound to be more than a few instances of outright fantastical bullshit, but this one nonetheless managed to up the ante a little bit.
     What I mean is; take a look at the Case Files 23 cover.
That is Judge Dredd and his two greatest nemeses: Mean Machine Angel, and Judge Death. 3 characters who would as soon tear each other limb from limb as look at each other. And there's a story around that, and it is canon. And surprisingly it is very, very good.

The story is called The Three Amigos, and it is hilarious and bewildering and very, very satisfying.

It was written by John Wagner and it has art by Trevor Hairsine.

It concerns a band of Muties tearing across the Cursed Earth, trying to establish the United Mutant States of America. For some reason, nearby Tex-city is unwilling to stomp on the threat and so the Muties do what they want. Until of course, The Three Amigos ride into town.

     I don't want to give anything away, since the moment you see that glorious piece of art where the three of them stand revealed, you're thinking that there's no way that this isn't just another dream sequence in order to please the fans by giving them another consequence-free appearance of Judge Death, but no: It's all real and it is all good, and it charmed the pants off of me.

     There's a bunch of other good stories in here with the Three Amigos simply being the flat-out best, but Goodnight Kiss, Bad Frendz, The Decision, Repeat Offender, Bug Crazy, Face of Justice, Hot Pursuit and The Wall, are also all very impressive, and many of these and lesser others set up interesting story lines to come.

     Loved it, and looking forward to what's next. I already read a bit of Case Files 24 last night, and the first story in there was already one that felt like it mattered, and which was engaging and well written. Yeah, I think Dredd's bad years are over.

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I did see that the next story in Case Files 24 has a crossover with another series as a certain robot makes an appearance, which means that I'm going to have to go and Collect the Ro-busters and the A.B.C. Warriors comics one of these days... Oh well. They do  look awesome, and they're out in nice shiny hardbacks too.

The Light is the Darkness, Laird Barron

After I had read Laird Barron's short story in the Grimscribe's Puppets anthology I decided I wanted to read more of the man, preferably some novel-length stuff, as I was quite taken with the style of what I had read and simply wanted just-more of it. Browsing through his work I found there were only a few full-length novels, 2 of which were only the opening salvo in a series of books of which the third has just been announced, and which 2, especially the latter one; Black Mountain, are apparently getting rave reviews. As I am a slow reader, I figured that if I was taken enough with his work I'd end up picking the rest up anyway and that it would be better then to delve through a whole slew of books at once, the more the better, and that in this case it'd be a good idea to wait a while.

 Of the two books that remained, The Croning's cover put me off of it a little bit,

yes, I am indeed shallow like that. and after that I proceeded to look at the last novel which both in cover and in blurb warmed my cockles enough to give it a go.

And though I confess to being a tad disappointed with The Light is The Darkness' style, which was more fast and loose than what I was expecting, more pulp oriented than literary styled, it was nonetheless such a fast-moving and such a busy novel that I did end up having a good time.

It is a world in which the super rich fund illegal old-school gladiatorial games where man and beast fight until the spilled blood drowns the sands themselves. Groomed by his patron from childhood to become the best of these gladiators, Conrad Navarro has worked himself up to the number 1 position in America, and uses the money earned from these matches to both drink himself into a steady stupor and to fund the search for his vanished sister Imogene.

Imogene, an FBI officer, had gone missing while on the hunt for a sadistic scientist called Dr Drake who experimented on numerous children, including their ten-year old brother Ezra.

But recently Conrad has found out that Imogene has gone off the grid on purpose, and as he begins to find the clues she left behind, it swiftly becomes clear that arrayed against them are forces ancient and terrible and that their brother's killer might just be the smallest fish in the pond.

 And that it is a pond filled with creatures grown vast and terrible, and glutted on power. They posses dark and mysterious abilities and they make nightmares of the dreams of the living. Operating from the shadows these forces move entire organizations in advancement of their own mad designs. And Imogene reveals that they have their sights set on Conrad.

But Imogene has also revealed a way for Conrad to use the knowledge gained from Drake's sick experiments for himself. And soon Conrad himself might even become someone for the dark itself to be wary of.

     Yeah, it was pretty good. As I said, a very busy read. There was always something new around the corner, which frequently was also going to be, besides being new and different, also dark and twisted, and very damn brutal.
     It rubbed me good in all the right places, and I just wish there had been more of it, or that this world and the concepts had been explored more, given time to make fixed impressions in the brain. Conrad zips around the globe in pursuit of Imogene while taking part in blood-sport and having mind expanding experiences, and I would have liked to have seen that paced out a bit more.

     But then, though the novel moves along at a fast pace, it does dip in the middle a bit, at a point when Conrad goes through a transitory period filled with dream-like scenes and hallucinations, and the prose almost becomes a stream-of-consciousness babble, incoherent and seemingly unconnected, a style that does wonders for some people, but which for me, this time, didn't quite do the trick.

     The ending was quite interesting in the way that it leaves you to wonder, to guess and hypothesize about what might come next, though again, I just wish there would have been more of it.

     If I'm sounding ambivalent on the whole thing, then that's because I'm feeling out of sorts today, not because of any fault on the part of the novel. It's a good read, and a fast read, and though I feel as if there's a little niggle here somewhere, something I just can't quite grasp, I do want to go ahead and recommend this one.

     I'm also going to go ahead and order either one or both of Barron's first 2 short story collections, that or the Croning novel, which I've seen does go the whole literary route that I so wanted to see more of.

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Also, I should note that this edition came with three black and white illustrations by David Ho.

BloodBorne Comic: The Healing Thirst

     I spent a short half an hour back on the streets of Yharnam, once again in comic-book form.

I really liked the first Bloodborne comic and thought it'd be a nice treat if in the horror month I were to continue the story a little bit; there are 2 more installments out right now, after all.

     Strangely enough, or no actually, not really; Bloodborne The Healing Thirst does not pick up where the first volume ended, leaving the Nameless Hunter and his really quite creepy charge to fend for themselves, and instead we are transported to the time when Yharnam was on the cusp of becoming overrun by the curse of the Old Blood. This is that story, albeit very much on a ground level.

We follow two unlikely allies as they team up to try and find the source of the terrible plague that has started to turn men into beasts, and to stop it if they can.

     What's rather new for the setting is that we get to see some of the daily lives of Yharnam's citizens in the days before everything went to hell. We get to see the moment when the city topples from relative normalcy into madness through the eyes of Alfredius and Clement, the first of whom is a scientist dedicating himself to analyzing the bacteria found in the plague victims and who concocts potions to combat it, and who harbours a dark secret, and the other is a priest of the Healing Church, and who starts out as a devout follower of the church's teachings but who over the course of his and Alfredius' investigation gradually begins to suspect that the Church might be doing more harm than good.

     There's a neat progression to both characters' philosophies and outlook, and there is even a very clear moment where the reader realizes that the two men's functions have switched places, and that the man of science has become the man of faith, and vice versa.

     Unlike the first Bloodborne comic this one isn't all that action packed, and is instead more of a character piece, concerned with the pathos of the two men as they try and keep up with a situation that is rapidly spiraling out of control. Also unlike in the first Bloodborne comic, there's a lot to read, with occasionally a page or two filled with introspection, accompanied with a panel or two where one or the other of the two men are hunched over their writings, gloomily mulling it all over.

     I thought this was a daring touch, even a little experimental, as there generally isn't much information to be found either in the game or the first comic, where spoken dialogue or reading material were kept to an absolute bare minimum and where the player or reader was forced to deduce the story from the surroundings, rather than having anything spelled out.

     It isn't like one can find massive revelations in here though. All writing serves instead to build up the characters of the two men, their relationships with the people around them, and the reasoning behind their choices and actions.

     If there is one negative about the comic then it is that it ended a little quickly, if not exactly abruptly. The fall of Yharnam was always going to be inevitable, of course, and here isn't the main point of interest. But, although the two characters' final fates are perfectly in character and well built up I would have appreciated a little more time spent on Alfredius' final pages, a little bit more time spent watching the city deteriorate around him, before his final resolution.

     But, as the comic before it, Bloodborne the Healing Church is an actual worthy addition to the universe. Ales Kot is genuinely very good at writing these things, and I really hope that there'll be more to come. Piotr Kowalski has also returned from the first one for the art duties and is again pretty good. I loved the opening panel which tied this installment neatly to the first volume, where one can see the same scenes in both volumes' first piece of art but with a clear point in time to establish when the story takes place.

     As a fan of Bloodborne I loved it. If you're new to the setting, or haven't played the game: Well, do you like the Gothic genre? Do you like violence and bloodshed, and men fighting werewolves and things from beyond the stars with cruel-looking melee weapons? Do you like being submerged in a sense of doom and terror, and are you not afraid to be completely lost and disoriented in a setting that will not spell out a damn thing for you?

     If the answers to those questions all spell out yes, and I do mean ALL, then do yourself a kindness in this greatest and most terrible of all months and embark on a journey into the universe of Bloodborne, you won't regret it.

Oh, and in the game you'll probably die a whole hell of a lot, so you probably have to be pretty patient. But trust me, it is worth it.

Joe Golem Occult Detective vol 3: The Drowning City

Oh yes, it's finally here, the comic adaptation of one of my favourite novels of the last few years! Aaaaaand ....they only adapted the first half of the story.

God. I don't know why I'm still being taken in by anything with Mignola's name on the cover. I mean really?

     So apparently the novel Joe Golem and the Drowning City is being adapted in two parts, part one named Joe Golem Occult Detective the Drowning City 1-5 only adapts the book's first half, while the other part Joe Golem Occult Detective The Conjurors 1-5 will adapt the rest of the novel, possibly going a bit further into uncharted territory. The Conjurors is actually already out, the story over and done with, except it's not out yet in trade or hardback, which means I would have to track down either e-book versions or individual comics, which is not something I do.
And how long do I still have to wait to have the full thing on my shelf?

5 months. *sighs deeply*.

     Ah well, it's not as if I had a bad time so far, and to be fair, in the long run, having the story spread out over two volumes instead of one, gives it way more time to breathe, allowing them to linger on the crucial or emotional moments, and letting them spend time on the original story's tone rather than just getting it over with to explore the uncharted Joe Golem stuff.

     I was struck that they were already doing a very good job of this as the Drowning City 5 came to its end, when the action started to slow down and the writers let the realization slowly filter in, that this was it, that here it would end, that somehow our heroes had failed, and to the beat of repeating narration, the art slowly ramped its way up to revelation. It reminded me of the brilliant ending to Baltimore: The Infernal Train where the narration almost became a mantra, accompanying some truly awesome over-the-top art: a foreign language, incomprehensible, repeated over and over, as blood splashed the page and limbs flew, and then at the end, the final page and the final revelation revealed together with the English translation.

     Even though they'd done it better in Baltimore (mostly because of the amount of gore and blood, and the gothic trappings) I could really very much appreciate it here.

     Peter Bergting's art is a good fit for Joe Golem, treading the line between realistic and cartoony in a way that I didn't like in Baltimore, but here feels just right, adding a sense of nastiness to the supernatural horror, making the danger real and somehow jagged.

I'm still not too fond of some of his stylistic choices, but you can't deny that the man is a dab hand at faces at this point.

So, even though I was disappointed that the story was incomplete, the future will eventually see that remedied, and hopefully The Conjurors will close out the novel adaptation in a fitting manner.

If you're interested, maybe hold off until you can buy both volumes at once, or dig into volumes 1 and 2 which are also pretty good. Or failing that, Baltimore volumes 1-5, which are also set in the same universe as Joe Golem, are always a good thing to pick up, even if the series goes to hell after that. The whole priest storyline alone is worth picking these up. A masterclass in gothic horror comics and a pretty much traditional read for the Halloween month at this point.