New Comics Purchase: FRANK FRAZETTA'S DEATH DEALER (2022)

Hey everybody, it's been awhile since I posted anything, but I've been working a lot on Serpent Sword, the sequel to my novel Battle for the Wastelands. However, I'm writing to let you all know that I've bought some comics from a comic shop for the first time in probably over a decade. Here goes...

A couple weeks ago a friend, his wife, and new(ish) baby were visiting from out of town and after lunch we went to a Marietta comic shop in the same shopping center where, many years ago, the son of our old Scoutmaster worked. One of the comics I saw--but ended up not buying at the time--was based on noted fantasy artist Frank Frazetta's iconic fantasy character The Death Dealer. Given how I'd read the 1990s-era Death Dealer novels at the library when I was younger and own the Frazetta art book Icon, my curiosity was piqued. And when I found out via CBR that Frazetta's family intended the new Death Dealer comic to be the beginning of a "Frazettaverse" incorporating characters and creatures from his art, I decided to give it my financial support.

So I went to a comic shop closer to my home in Atlanta and purchased the first, the second, and the third issues, which is all of what seemed to be available. According to this website, the next issue is slated for August 24.

The Plot: I would describe this as "Conan the Barbarian meets Venom." The protagonist Kur, once a warrior seeking power and glory, put on a supernatural horned helmet, which he cannot take off. The helmet has a mind of its own, generally egging him on to more violence and talking enormous amounts of smack. Kur lives alone and is contemplating suicide when he rescues the red-haired witch Admira and her young son Mesh from wolves. He takes them back to his underground lair, where Mesh takes a liking to him and Admira, tending to his wounds, quickly gets physical. Awakening the next morning, Kur finds both of them kidnapped by dark forces and, against his better judgement, sets off to rescue them. He encounters a sorceress--who seems to be an old flame who has a history with the damned soul dwelling in the helmet--and it turns out there are more supernatural doings afoot.

The Good: Giving the Horned Helmet (in the novels it was capitalized) a mind of its own rather it just being a device that amped up the protagonist's physical prowess and aggression was interesting. This allows for Kur to have an Eddie Brock/Venom-type relationship with it. That was one thing I really liked about the first Venom film (I haven't seen the second), even though the movie was basically a buddy comedy and this...isn't. The Death Dealer is such a cipher character--in the painting he's just a big scary-looking dude--that one can do a lot with him. In the novels he was a noble savage trying to defend the valley that would someday become the Mediterranean by any means necessary, while in this one he's a much more tired and anti-heroic figure. Given how the Horned Helmet can go from person to person, it's possible the novels (and an earlier attempt at comics) take place in the same continuity, although the novels were explicitly set on prehistoric Earth and this comic seems to be in a totally different fantasy world.

The art is also really good. It's very colorful and vivid. I also liked how they worked specific Frazetta concepts into the comics--not only is the titular character a direct draw from a Frazetta painting, but they also worked in another one in which the Death Dealer confronts a gigantic crocodile.

The Bad: I must be a bit spoiled from graphic novels (which are typically collections of multiple issues that tell the complete story) because I thought the comics were a bit short. This is especially blatant with the third issue, in which two side quests (a unicorn and a wizard) that might merit expansion into an issue each are dealt with in a few pages. And since this is a monthly comic, it means a lot more waiting in between. If each comic were a bit longer, this wouldn't be a problem. Also, although I wouldn't expect a Frazetta adaptation to be particularly modest--Frazetta wasn't known for that at all, even if he wasn't nearly as raunchy as other fantasy artists--the way we first meet the sorceress is kind of dumb.

I emailed the comic company to see about the possibility of subscribing (since unlike the 1990s X-Men comics there's nothing to mail in with a check) or whether the individual comics would be consolidated into larger graphic novels. At $5 per comic, a graphic novel consolidating all the individual comics into one larger issue covering an entire storyline would be the better buy. However, the comic is so new (and it's from a smaller company) that it might not get to that point unless it does well enough financially. And that requires people buy it now. The comic shop offered to set me up with a subscription (i.e. they let me know when it's in for me to pick up or they mail it to me), which I might well do if I don't hear back from the company.

New Year, New Cover for THE THING IN THE WOODS

The first cover for The Thing in the Woods, originally published by Canadian small press Digital Fiction Publishing, was assembled from two pieces of Adobe stock art I found for the publisher. However, the cover for its independently-published sequel The Atlanta Incursion was illustrated by artist Matt Cowdery and laid out by designer Mikio Murikami. Although the fonts are the same, the illustrative style is very different and this is something that has been remarked upon.

Well, since Cowdery's art has been highly praised by pretty much everybody I run into at in-person events and he has done the cover for the planned third novel The Walking Worm, it's time to make the whole "Long War" series consistent. Furthermore, according to some writing podcasts I listen to, a new cover is a good way to spike sales for an older book.

So here's Cowdery's cover for Thing, featuring male lead James Daly and female lead Amber Webb (her first canonical image) confronting the titular horror.

Both the e-book and print book are now live with the new cover. Enjoy!

The Cover and Book Copy For THE WALKING WORM

Over the last few months I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to and spending a lot of time on writing-adjacent activities like marketing. One of those activities is arranging for cover art, since getting a good cover, getting it designed and laid out, etc. is dependent on other people in a way that actually writing isn't. I'd actually finished The Atlanta Incursion well before the publication date, but I had to get all this other stuff taken care of.

So I decided to get the cover for The Walking Worm, the second sequel to The Thing In The Woods, done well in advance of actually finishing the manuscript. Considering my tendencies to dawdle, the fact I'd shelled out for a high-end cover gives me a strong incentive to actually finish the manuscript and start paying that cover off.

So here's the cover by the mighty Matt Cowdery:

This is the first canonical image of series protagonist James Daly (right) and MJ-12 agent Thomas Bolton (left), who briefly appears in Thing and plays a much larger role in TAI. James is a college freshman in TAI, while Bolton is probably in his early 40s.

(In some back-story I've written for Bolton he was an early 20s rookie MIB in 1993. If the series goes well, young Bolton will have his own prequel novel, The Battle of Dulce Base.)

And here's the current draft of the back-cover copy. The book includes the mythology introduced in TAI, but is a small-town creature feature more in the vein of Thing. Spoilers for TAI if you haven't read it yet..

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

At long last James Daly has finally gotten to UNC Chapel Hill , but every dream comes with a cost. James works for MJ-12, a covert agency that has fought extraterrestrial colonization since the 1940s, and now faces a threat much closer to home…

Now a junior, James is part of UNC Chapel Hill’s ROTC program, a disguise for his real role serving in the secret war against the murderous alien Grays and, since the defeat of the Thing in the Woods and the battle beneath Atlanta a year ago, keeping watch for the predatory Kraken. And although he’s achieved his childhood dream, there’s trouble in paradise. His girlfriend Amber Webb won’t move in with him and, more dangerously, a fellow MJ-12 agent has disappeared in a nearby town.

James’ investigation alongside senior MJ-12 agent Thomas Bolton, whom he blames for the death of his best friend Eli Schwartz, results in an awful revelation. A creature spawned from the last underground nuclear tests has taken root, its telepathic powers a match for James’ own strange talents. To find its missing agent, MJ-12 must do battle against fellow Americans infested with deadly parasites, a battle that could stretch the secret agency’s capability to its very limits.

Right now I've completed about 16,000 words in TWW. Since Thing is 56,000 words and TAI around 60,000, I would expect this to be around the same length. At the rate things are going and given how I want to run the entire manuscript through writing group and then have it professionally edited, I would expect this sometime late next year.

THE ATLANTA INCURSION Cover Art Phase #1 and Phase #2

Although my first novel The Thing in the Woods stands on its own, most of my ideas for standalone stories tend to sprout sequels. Thing is no different. I've been working on its sequel, The Atlanta Incursion, for several years now and I intend to independently publish it in the next few weeks. The complicating factors are that I'm independently republishing Thing due to changes at the publisher and waiting for the cover art to be done so I can have a full cover designed. Only after that can the print and e-book be created.

In the meantime, here's the first phase of the cover by Matthew Cowdery:

And here's the second:

I sent him some clarifications about what the Grays' eyes, guns, stargate, and other technologies should look like and he's working on them now. If you want an idea of what the finished cover will look like, here's some previous work he's done for me:

Battle for the Wastelands

"Son of Grendel" (forthcoming)

Second full novel (tentative title "Serpent Sword")

BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS Cover Phase Two

Here's the current status of the cover for my forthcoming independent military fantasy Battle for the Wastelands. Artist Matt Cowdery says it's about halfway done.

So far so awesome. Seriously, it's going to look great when it's done. The horseman needs his rifle (probably a Spencer repeating rifle from the American Civil War) as well as a saddle and saddlebags and a cowboy hat to signal to readers that this is a Western (or at least Western-ish). I also had some quibbles about the placement of weapons on the airships' gondolas, but those are relatively easy fixes.

Definitely looking forward to the next update!

BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS Is Going Indie (Here's First Phase of Cover)

Although The Thing in the Woods is my first published novel, it is not the first novel I've actually completed. Not counting my two lengthy Harry Potter fan-fics "Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince" and "Lord of the Werewolves" and my rewrite of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen so aptly titled "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot," my first finished novel is actually Battle for the Wastelands, which can be described as "a post-apocalyptic steampunk military fantasy" or more concisely "Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones."

I completed the novel sometime in 2011-2012 and have been submitting it to different agents and publishers over the years, tinkering with it based on any personalized rejection or commentary I got. This prolonged process (plus an edit by Apex Publications boss Jason Sizemore, who offers extensive freelance services) resulted in a less wordier book--the current draft is 88.5K and the original was 101K. This was accomplished by cutting only words and phrases--not only did I not need to cut anything significant, but even I added a new scene to give the sole female POV character a more solid character arc (overcoming depression).

Unfortunately, the prolonged process meant that its window has likely passed. I was told by a fellow writer that unless one is Cherie Priest, Barnes and Noble isn't stocking steampunk books. This means publishers are not likely to buy them, since Barnes and Noble is the largest brick-and-mortar bookstore. Although Battle is more subtle steampunk--it's more of a military novel that happens to be set in a different world than "all airships all the time"--there's still airships, Babbage engines, etc. Furthermore, the steampunk fandom seems in decline--there're fewer steampunk costumes at conventions, steampunk-focused conventions are trying to expand their offerings, etc. Although one can market Battle without using the dreaded S-word, it has so many steampunk tropes and aspects that big presses are likely to turn up their noses.

Speaking of turnaround time, one publisher was reviewing the book for roughly two years (it made the second round of judging and I think there was some personnel turnover, so I'm not blaming them). Although patience is a virtue, especially if you're an author trying to get a book deal, there aren't a lot of book publishers who'd consider it left at this point. Furthermore, one of the remaining ones I was warned could take a similar amount of time. I finished this book (and a companion novella focused on the main villain's adult son) seven years ago. I'm getting a little tired.

Another big (possibly the biggest) issue with a professional sale is that it's not standalone. The book pretty obviously sets up more battles to come in a way that Thing and my forthcoming Little People, Big Guns do not. I don't have an established track record, so publishers aren't likely to take a chance on what's an obvious series starter. Many readers won't start a series unless it's already done, which a nasty catch-22 that leaves many series unfinished for lack of sales.

Finally, although Battle is a better book for years' worth of tightening, the more concise length also makes it less salable. I've spoken to many people who know what they're talking about who think a fantasy novel should be 100K words if not more. I'd considered adding stuff to pad it out, but that's the key phrase--"pad it out." It will be obvious that stuff was added to meet a word count and the quality would suffer.

So I hired Mr. Sizemore once more for proofreading--and he went above and beyond by answering a lot of my publishing questions--and I commissioned a cover from artist Matt Cowdery, whom I met at DragonCon this past Labor Day. The cover will be completed in stages--here's the first part, which in artist lingo is called a "comp."

The final product will look something like this or this in overall style and detail.

Independently publishing means I'll have to do everything myself, but I listen a lot of writing-related podcasts and know several independent authors in real life. I've got a lot of ideas on what to do, some of which I cite in the next chunk below.

My 2019 Hypericon Schedule

Ever since my debut Lovecraftian horror novel The Thing in the Woods premiered in 2017, I've been selling books (both Thing and the collection The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, in which I have a short story) at conventions in the Atlanta area. I feared I've been reaching the point of diminishing returns and so I started looking for conventions or events outside of Atlanta I could sell at until I've got more books available. Thanks to the Southern Fandom Resource Guide's calendar I found Hypericon, which is usually in Nashville but this year is in Murfreesboro. I've never done any authorial business in Tennessee, so this will hopefully be lucrative.

Here's my schedule for the convention, which will be July 5-7 this year. All events are in Central Time and will take place at the Clarion Inn in Murfreesboro.

Friday, 7 PM, Oakland Panel Room: "In The Cauldron Boil and Bake." This is a panel dedicated to mixing genres. Think The X-Files, in which we had a wider science fiction plot involving alien colonization mixed in with "monster of the week" horror plots, more conventional crimes, and fantasy plots like the episode involving voodoo to raise the dead and another one featuring the ghost of a charismatic preacher who set out to forgive the man who murdered him. On my end, although The Thing in the Woods is straight-up monster horror, I drop some hints about the creature's otherworldly origins in a scene from the creature's point of view. The sequel I've sent to the publisher (and will self-publish if he doesn't want it) gets into the Grey/UFO/MJ-12 mythology and the third novel I've just started writing is more "small town creature horror," only with an old-school nuclear-test monster instead of something from another world. We'll get back to the alien-invasion stuff in the planned fourth book.

Friday, 8 PM, Oakland Panel Room: "My History With Horror." This is an autobiographical one-man show in which I discuss my own history with the scary stuff. It goes waaay back, beginning with watching Earth vs. the Spider on TV in pre-school, not being allowed to see Gremlins 2 and Arachnophobia in theaters (probably a good idea on my parents' part), seeing Jurassic Park when it first came out, and those elementary school staples, the Crestwood Monsters books and Calvin and Hobbes. I'll also discuss my first attempts at publication in high school, my first sale (the short but gruesome "I am the Wendigo"), and ultimately Thing itself.

Saturday, 1 PM, Oakland Panel Room: "Building a Better Beast: Monsters and Other Things That Go Bump in the Night." Something I've realized recently with the rise of "torture porn" is that I don't necessarily like horror movies per se, but monster movies. "Monster" being defined broadly to include things like dinosaurs, aliens, etc. After all, serial killers and depraved pervert torture types are real and should be feared, but giant bugs, alien energy beings building bodies out of human technology, vampires, formerly human S&M monsters, etc. aren't. I've written a lot of monster stories, so I think I'll fit in nicely here.

Saturday, 5 PM, Oakland Panel Room: "World-Building." This is an area of writing where I'm very good, if I do say so myself. And members of the different writing groups I'v participated in have said the same thing. :)

Saturday, 7 PM, Oakland Panel Room: "Marketing and Social Media For Authors." This is where I can discuss things like blogging, Twitter, newsletters, etc. This is an area where I need to improve, so hopefully I'll be able to learn from this panel as well.

I'm also going to be allocated slots at the author table to sell my books. Those haven't been finalized yet, but when they are, I'll update this post with the times. I'll also bring some books with me to each panel for anybody who's interested.

Movie Review: Fire and Ice (1983)

One of my favorite fantasy artists is Frank Frazetta, who was known for painting a lot of the Conan book covers. I even own one of his art books Icon, which I snagged at a library book sale for $1 when it would have cost much more on Amazon. In Icon, they discuss the film Fire and Ice, whose animation Frazetta was heavily involved with but unfortunately didn't do too well at the box office. Although I'm a fan of traditional animation (Don Bluth stuff like The Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time, and even Titan A.E. are particular favorites), I never actually got around to watching the movie.

Well, T.S. Dann (author of Nightmarescape and a regular convention table partner) mentioned that he had seen it recently and that made me curious. Many years after hearing about it, I decided to give it a spin. Here goes...

The Plot

At the end of the Ice Age, the evil sorceress-queen Juliana (Eileen O'Neill) and her son Nekron (Sean Hannon) attempt to conquer the world, driving southward in a fortress atop a mighty glacier that Nekron can move using magic. Human refugees flee their armies of Neanderthal-esque savages toward the equator, where King Jarol (Leo Gordon) rules a volcanic realm from Fire Keep. Juliana and Nekron's agents kidnap Jarol's daughter Teegra (Cynthia Leake), but they fail to reckon with Larn (Randy Norton), a survivor of a tribe thought exterminated, and the mysterious warrior Darkwolf (Steve Sandor).

The Good

*Western animation is generally seen as the preserve of children, so there's little realistic violence and heroes don't kill or seriously hurt villains (often winning through contrived circumstances), but Fire and Ice clearly doesn't have that problem. There's plenty of bloodshed going on around here. It's good to see an animated movie intended for more mature audiences in the same way Titan A.E. was. All the action means the film is never boring, which is a big plus.

*There are some impressive set-pieces, like a diplomatic delegation entering Nekron's fortress with his hooting and howling Neanderthal minions watching from the cliffs overhead. There's also an air raid using "dragon hawks" (pteranodons) that's pretty cool. Generally speaking I liked the concept and ideas behind it.

*Although the animation comes off as a bit dated (it reminds me a lot of late-1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Mightor or even Herculoids as well as the Disney movie The Black Cauldron released two years later) and the colors dull, it's good to see old-school cell-drawn animation. I'm less interested in the Pixar-type stuff that has dominated the field since The Princess and the Frog. And I'm a big fan of Frazetta's overall style. The landscapes, the monsters, the ominous ancient ruins, etc. are all a lot of fun. A pity this movie bombed because I would have loved to see more films like it.

*I liked some of the characterization. Teegra is pretty clever and puts her brain to use at critical times, including one scene early on where she uses her looks to manipulate a bunch of Nekron and Juliana's Neanderthal minions. She's also not a passive damsel-in-distress type at all--although she gets captured a lot, watch out if she can get hold of a knife. And Nekron and Juliana's dynamic suggests a strong-willed son rebelling against an overbearing mother and Nekron's petulance shows that on some level he knows her wisdom is superior (i.e. she wants him to marry Teegra to father a dynasty and cement an alliance with Fire Keep) and just doesn't want to admit it. And although Darkwolf is underused, he's pretty cool when he does show up.

The Bad

*Larn is supposed to be the male lead of the movie, but he doesn't seem to have much personality to speak of. I found Darkwolf to be much more interesting, but he's only in a few scenes despite his prominent appearance in the poster.

*Has the concept of armor ever occurred to anybody in this world? All this world's cultures have metallurgy (swords, axes, etc), but nobody wears armor. Even animal skins would be an improvement over going into battle wearing only a loincloth. Yes, I know Frank Frazetta liked to show off his anatomical skills at every opportunity, but how pretty much everybody's standard outfit was a loincloth if not a straight-up thong was just ridiculous. Even in the Neolithic Era where this supposedly takes place people probably knew they needed protection from the sun and elements. This is especially blatant in the last third or so of the film that takes place in Nekron's glacial fortress where people are running around semi-nude even though it's got to be incredibly cold.

*Per my remarks about clothing, everybody is wearing what looks like animal skins and yet Teegra is wearing essentially modern lingerie? Hell her bottom is so sheer in the back she might as well not be wearing it. At least the "sexy cave-girl" outfits in One Million Years B.C. and When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth were made of the right materials and more useful as clothing.

*The animation for the facial expressions, especially Teegra's, could stand some improvement. Her kidnapping early in the film is not well-drawn, especially her supposedly-terrified screaming.

*The character naming conventions are just bizarre. You have all this garbled fantasy names like Teegra and Larn, you have English animal names like Darkwolf, and then you have Jarol (which I initially thought was "Gerald") and Juliana. It's kind of grating, even though it's so common there's even a TVTrope for it.

*I'm not sure if it's Leake's voice or the script, but Teegra's dialogue is often rather annoying.

*Nekron and Juliana's minions are all darker-skinned and the one female of the group has what looks like an Afro. They're explicitly referred to as "the sub-humans" despite their having metallurgy and spoken language. Meanwhile, the heroic characters are all white. Seriously, either provide the minions with more development beyond them being childlike and violent goons who speak in gibberish (Lord of the Rings had Sam wondering if one of the Haradrim was truly evil or had been deceived or outright coerced into fighting for Sauron and the Haradrim language is very impressive to listen to) or diversify their appearances. And nix "sub-human" for people whose main difference between the heroic character is their skin color, teeth, and apparent intelligence. As-is the villains come off as a mother-son Goth duo sending out dull-witted and sadistic black cavemen to kill or abduct white people and given how this was a movie kids would have likely seen (due to it being animated), that's not cool.

*The world's technology level is rather inconsistent--both Nekron's and Jarol's coalitions seem to be at roughly Bronze Age levels, but there's one city that looks like ancient Rome or Arabia during the Islamic golden age. If it turns out the battle between Nekron and Jarol is a tribal sideshow that wealthier and stronger civilizations view in the same way as Americans view a conflict in the Third World that's one thing, but the opening narration of the film makes it seems like this is the Apocalypse.

*So many shirtless men but nobody seems to have nipples. That's weird.

The Verdict

If the description "the world's most violent Hanna-Barbera cartoon" appeals to you or if you're a Frazetta fan you should definitely check it out. It's not as campy and ridiculous as I expected from watching the trailer, but it's still pretty up there. Worth a rental at best. 6.0 out of 10.