The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)

The Girl With All the Gifts (2016): adapted by Mike Carey from his own novel; directed by Colm McCarthy; starring Gemma Arterton (Helen), Glenn Close (Dr. Caldwell), Sennia Nanua (Melanie), Fisayo Akinade (Kieran), and Paddy Considine (Sgt. Parks): Tight, taut, thoughtful zombie movie adapted by the great novelist and comic-book writer Mike Carey (Lucifer, The Unwritten, the Felix Castor series) from his own novel. 

Barely released in North America, The Girl With All the Gifts presents a world several years into a plague of zombies unleashed by a fungal strain that attacks the human brain. But second-generation 'zombie' children seem to be sentient and 'human' so long as they don't get hungry -- or get triggered to be hungry. Why? 

While biologist Glenn Close tries to cure the disease, Gemma Arterton's school-zombie teacher tries to keep the most tractable and intelligent of the child-zombies happy and educated and non-lethally inclined. A very interesting piece of work, though a lot of the military stuff needed some serious consulting. Or me on the set to yell, "There's no way they'd put a plate-glass window there." Recommended.

Constantine X 4

Constantine's first appearance, c. 1984, in SWAMP THING

Oh, occult investigator/magician/former punk-rock musician John Constantine. Invented by Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben in the pages of Swamp Thing in the mid-1980's, he's become an eminence grise at DC Comics. His first series ran an impressive 300 issues at what became DC's adult-horror imprint Vertigo, though Constantine started before Vertigo existed. That 300-issue run had an impressive array of writers come and go over the years, along with an army of artists. 

That DC cancelled Constantine's Vertigo title to bring him back into the mainstream DC Universe continues to gall me: the two non-Vertigo Constantine series have been at best pale reflections of Constantine at his best. He looks like Sting. He probably sounds a lot like John Lennon, as they both hail from Liverpool. He fights Heaven, Hell, and assorted supernatural and human forces in between!

John Constantine Hellblazer: Son of Man (1998-99/Collected 2004): written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by John Higgins: Early 1990's Constantine scribe Garth Ennis returns for an arc with gritty artist/colourist John Higgins. Higgins' characters are stocky and brutal, befitting the story. As with many Constantine stories, it begins at the Ravenscar psychiatric facility in which Constantine spent a couple of years recuperating after the disastrous magical events in Newcastle in the early 1980's. A South London crime boss springs the young, unstable Constantine because he needs a magician to bring his five-year-old son back to life. 16 years later, an older Constantine gets pulled back into the crime boss' story again. There are repercussions to raising the dead.

Ennis, the most grotesque and splattery of all Constantine writers, brings the grue here. Higgins is an able collaborator, though he's not the world's best drawer of babies. The regrets of a misspent youth jostle for prominence with the regrets of a misspent present. The climax is comically anti-climactic, as Ennis always enjoyed taking the piss out of all of his protagonists and antagonists. But boy, the one demon we see here is surprisingly talky, given what sort of demon it turns out to be. Recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer: Good Intentions (2000-2001/ Collected 2002): written by Brian Azzarello; illustrated by Marcelo Frusin: One of a very few Americans to write Constantine's book, Brian Azzarello takes the Hellblazing magician on a tour of rural America. Marcelo Frusin's art is maybe a shade too cartoony at points for the events it depicts. It also gets cheesecakey at an unfortunate point involving Constantine's rescue of a woman who was being kidnapped so as to be raped and killed: maybe not the time for the hot underwear shots. Overall, the story is both weird and occasionally revolting. Constantine screws up, of course, but under the circumstances, almost anyone would. Infamous at the time for strongly implying a sex act between a drugged and drunken Constantine and a dog. I kid you not. Lightly recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer: Stations of the Cross (2004/Collected 2006): written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Leonard Manco, Marcelo Frusin, Chris Brunner, and Steve Dillon: Mike Carey's lengthy run as Constantine writer concludes here with an amnesiac Constantine beset by foes human and demoniac. Even without his memory, Constantine is dangerous to foes and allies alike. The climactic story, from the double-sized 200th issue, gives us Constantine at his most vulnerable. It's a fine finish to Carey's tenure. The art works throughout, and is especially dark and evocative during Constantine's voyage into the labyrinth below the church of a malign cult. Recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer:  The Roots of Coincidence (2008/Collected 2009): written by Andy Diggle; illustrated by Leonard Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Stefano Landini: This volume ends Andy Diggle's run as Constantine writer with a recontextualization of just who Constantine's greatest enemy was and is. Diggle draws effectively on Constantine's long comic-book history for this revelation. It works, though the mechanics of John's battle with his arch-nemesis never become crystal clear. It's a solid end to a solid run of comics, though the horror elements are mostly muted this time out and one of the lesser opponents, Mako, just doesn't have a name that strikes fear into me. Lightly recommended.

The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor #5) (2009) by Mike Carey

The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor #5) (2009) by Mike Carey (a.k.a. M.R. Carey): Argh! Mike Carey hasn't written a Felix Castor novel since this one. Come back, Mike! Freelance exorcist Felix Castor finally gets his showdown with the demon Asmodeus, who's in possession of the body of Castor's best friend. Asmodeus is out and about in London, up to something that will free him from his unwanted mortal vessel without sending him screaming back to Hell. Meanwhile, the supernatural world seems to be shifting, changing the rules that have only been in place for the ten years since ghosts, demons, and other beings were inexplicably unleashed on Earth.

Castor is a fun hybrid of hard-boiled detective and snarky, ironic commentator. Carey's put a lot of thought into Castor's world, in which scientists and occultists alike try to master the spirit world before it masters them. If there's a flaw here, it's that it's hard to care about Felix's best friend Rafi. He willingly participated in the ritual that stuck Asmodeus in him. 

Moreover, we've never seen him unpossessed in the series: we're told over and over again what a charming rogue he is, but we never really have that shown to us. It makes the stakes somewhat light: like some of Castor's occult colleagues, I find it hard to justify worrying so much about keeping Rafi alive when the demon riding his body is racking up such a death toll. 

But other than that and a last couple of pages that reminds me of all those 1960's and 1970's American TV dramas that ended with everyone standing around laughing despite the catastrophes that came earlier in the episode, The Naming of the Beasts is a fun and often wildly imaginative ride. More Castor please! Recommended.

The Devil You Know (Felix Castor #1) (2006) by Mike Carey

The Devil You Know (Felix Castor #1) (2006) by Mike Carey (a.k.a. M.R. Carey): The prolific and enjoyable Mike Carey's first novel after more than a decade of fine work in comic-book writing on such titles as Hellblazer and Lucifer introduces us to London, England's favourite (ha!) freelance exorcist, Felix Castor. Castor moves through a world pretty much exactly like ours with one significant changed premise: about eight years before the events of this novel, various ghosts, spirits, and demons started to appear in the world. Now they're pretty much everywhere, with no real explanation as to why the afterlife expelled so many creatures and dead people.

Carey does a lovely job of giving us just enough back-story and exposition to keep us afloat in this strange new world. Exorcism is something that only certain individuals can do, regardless of religious affiliation (of which Castor has none). Castor plays tunes on a tin whistle to work his exorcisms, while others use anything from cat's cradles to more traditional bells, books, and candles. Exorcism is basically a state of mind and a talent linked to that mind that can take pretty much any form. When it works, exorcism sends the ghost away. Where? Castor doesn't know.

In this first adventure, the not-very-hard-boiled Castor takes an assignment to purge a rare documents library of a newly acquired ghost which seems to have arrived with a shipment of pre-Revolutionary Russian documents. 

Of course, nothing is as it seems. Castor will soon come to question the ethics of exorcism itself. He'll also have to face human crime-lords, a giant were-something that looks just barely human, and a succubus called up from Hell. There will also be an embarrassing moment at a wedding and a moment of seriocomic vengeance at an annoying teen's birthday party.

Everything goes down smoothly and enjoyably. Carey's imagination is a fun place to stroll around in, his characters deftly sketched, and Castor an occasionally guilt-wracked but generally witty and humane narrator. 

And then there's Castor's best friend Rafi, in an insane asylum with a demon welded to his soul. That's partially Castor's fault, and the Rafi story-line will gain in prominence as the five Felix Castor novels play out. Recommended.

John Constantine Hellblazer: The Gift: written by Michael Carey; illustrated by Leonardo Manco, Fraser Irving, Tim Bradstreet, and others (2004-2005; collected 2007)

John Constantine Hellblazer: The Gift: written by Michael Carey; illustrated by Leonardo Manco, Fraser Irving, Tim Bradstreet, and others (2004-2005; collected 2007): Mike Carey's fine run on what was DC-Vertigo's flagship title for various stretches of its 300-issue run comes to a mournful close. It's a volume that really needs to be read immediately after the previous collection, Reasons to be Cheerful, as the two collect what is really one long arc. 

Pissed-off, post-punk, Liverpudlian magician John Constantine finds himself in the crosshairs of an entire demonic family, three of whom are his children by a particularly sinister form of magical rape (!!!). And they're the grandchildren of his longest-running demonic foe, Nergal, who's been messing things up for Constantine since the early 1980's Newcastle incident that sent John to the Ravenscar psychiatric facility for several months.

But Nergal needs help against his daughter and grand-children to regain his kingdom in Hell. And John needs Nergal's help before all of John's remaining friends and relatives end up murdered by John's demonic hellspawn.

The whole thing is marvelously written and illustrated, though I occasionally wish that Leonardo Manco would let go a bit in his visuals, especially in those occasionally photo-referenced urban backgrounds. But his character work is exquisite, and in that 300-issue-run, I'd rank him below only John Ridgway and Steve Dillon as long-time artistic chroniclers of the Hellblazer.

Mike Carey's swan song on the title is as gritty and imaginative as ever, with the politics of Hell never so tellingly and squalidly depicted, nor John's anguish. Really a fine end to a fine run, and hopefully DC will collect this and Reasons to be Cheerful in one volume when they reach that point in the re-reprinting of Constantine. Highly recommended.

Horror Comics Old and New

John Constantine Hellblazer: Reasons to be Cheerful: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Leonardo Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Lorenzo Ruggiero (2004-2005; collected 2007): Excellent but frustratingly short collection of Constantine stories really ends halfway through an arc. This is something DC used to do a lot with its adult-oriented Vertigo collections, I'd assume in order to squeeze as much money as possible out of the trade paperback reprint market. They're now re-collecting Constantine's Vertigo title in lengthier collections from the start of the comic. I'd assume this arc and the subsequent The Gift will appear in one reasonably priced volume some time in about 2016.

Carey's an excellent writer, and really the second-last great writer of Constantine's now-cancelled Vertigo Universe title. The art by Leonard Manco and others is solid and moody, and the horrors suitably horrific. Of course, Constantine is Odysseus-like in his on-going ability to get everyone associated with him killed. As the main arc partially collected here deal with a threat to Constantine's relatives, friends, acquaintances, and people and things he only met once, a high death toll is assured. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Recommended, but you should probably wait for a new, more complete collection.

The EC Comics Library: Shock SuspenStories Volume 2:  written by Al Feldstein and Ray Bradbury; illustrated by Johnny Craig, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jack Kamen, Reed Crandall, George Evans and others (1952-53; collected 2007): Shock SuspenStories was the Whitman's Sampler of EC Comics during that comic-book company's brief, brilliant run as the best comic-book company in the United States in the early 1950's. Stories reflected the breadth of EC's comics line, from social agit-prop stories (known as "preachies") to science fiction, horror, and suspense.

If one wants to see EC in all its glory, Gemstone's over-sized SuspenStories collections are the way to go. Grotesque horror stories with terrible puns in the title include "Beauty and the Beach" (illustrated by Jack Kamen), in which two jealous husbands enact ridiculous yet appropriate vengeance on their sunbath-loving wives, and "Seep No More", a riff on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart."

There are also two excellent adaptations of Ray Bradbury stories here -- "The Small Assassin" and "The October Game", both suitably under-stated and horrifying in their implications. Notable "preachies", which were pretty much always illustrated by the great Wally Wood, include "Fall Guy," a gimmicky story with a visual bit riffed upon in Watchmen; "Came the Dawn!", a loopy ax-murderer tale with the sexiest woman Wood ever drew for EC; and "...So Shall Ye Reap!", a justifiably much-lauded tale with dual, unreliable narrations.

Also included is artist Reed Crandall's terrifically grotesque "Carrion Death," a story of murder and vengeance meted out by the natural world. We also get not one, not two, but three stories about Martians -- and only two of those Martian races hostile -- and for unintentional laughs the bizarre and ridiculous anti-drug "preachie" "The Monkey," in which recreational marijuana usage inevitably leads to murder, as it so often does. In all, highly recommended.

Some Endings and Beginnings

John Constantine Hellblazer Volume 5: Dangerous Habits: written by Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis; illustrated by Will Simpson, Steve Pugh, Sean Phillips, Dave McKean, and others (1991; collected 2013): Brit Jamie Delano was the first full-time writer for occult detective/punk mage John Constantine, a character created by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch over in the pages of Saga of the Swamp Thing in the mid-1980's. Constantine got his own adult-oriented book in the late 1980's, with Delano tapped to write it.

Delano wrote 40 issues and a few annuals and miniseries entries before passing the baton to the up-and-coming Irish comics writer Garth Ennis. This volume collects Delano's last handful of regular Constantine issues and Ennis's first six-issue arc.

Constantine, hardest of the occult hardasses, is in something of a downward spiral in Delano's final issues. The psychic cost of fighting evil -- and inevitably getting one's friends and lovers killed during the battle -- has taken its toll. Delano probes Constantine's childhood in a striking horror tale, "Dead Boy's Heart," before turning to the incandescent wrap-up to 'his' Constantine.

What a wrap-up! Issue 40 of Hellblazer contained rare interior artwork by Dave McKean (probably still best-known today for his covers for Neil Gaiman's Sandman). I think it's one of the artistic highpoints for nominally mainstream comic books during the 1980's, dense and detailed to go along with a dense, detailed prose look at Constantine's life and works. This could have served as a fitting end to the series had it been cancelled, but Ennis came aboard with issue 41.

Under the circumstances, Ennis wisely went with the tactic of briefly mentioning the events of issue 40 and then never, ever mentioning them again. DC's decision to put Ennis on the book was something of a stroke of genius. He and Delano are both gifted horror writers, but of almost completely different stylistic modes. Where Delano is baroque and intellectual, Ennis is visceral and bleakly comic in a punk sort of way. To some extent, splatterpunk had come to Hellblazer.

Delano did benefit from some lovely, horrifying artwork at the end of his run, other than McKean. Steve Pugh's grotesques worked perfectly for the Grand Guignol two-parter he illustrated, while the cooler Sean Phillips meshed perfectly with Delano's writing on their issues together. Ennis wasn't quite so lucky early on -- Will Simpson, who pencils Ennis's first six issues, is not a gifted artist when it comes to horror, though he rises to the occasion at points.

Anyway, the first five volumes of the re-edited and re-compiled Hellblazer are marvelous, though why this series didn't get the hardcover treatment the second time around is a puzzle. Unless DC is about to scrap this reprint series and start another one in hardcover. Which, given the mercurial nature of DC's publishing habits these days, is entirely possible. Hidey ho! Highly recommended.

　

The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross and a host of others (2013): Brilliant companion piece to the equally brilliant, ongoing comic-book series The Unwritten delves deeper into the backstory of the series while also offering the reader a dead-on pastiche of Young Adult fantasy novels.

Indeed, the world Carey, Gross, and other artists conjure up for the first volume of the imaginary Tommy Taylor series is filled with more wonder and interest in 60 pages or so than the entire Harry Potter series. And it comments on the sinister implications of a separate race of magic users walking among the powerless mundane. A great work on its own, and a great and rich expansion of the series, which has about 12 issues left to run in its storyline. Highly recommended.

 

Literary Geography

The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Yukio Shimizu, and others (2009-2010); The Unwritten: Inside Man: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Yukio Shimizu, and others (2010):; The Unwritten: Dead Man's Knock: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Yukio Shimizu, and others (2010); The Unwritten: Leviathan: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Yukio Shimizu, and others (2010-2011); The Unwritten: On to Genesis: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Yukio Shimizu, and others (2011); The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Yukio Shimizu, and others (2011-2012):

Carey and Gross's epic metafantasy pulls out a lead character modelled upon Christopher Milne and Harry Potter and throws the whole of fiction, poetry, myth, legend, and religion at him. Tom Taylor starts the narrative as the bored, drifting son of mysteriously vanished children's literary titan Wilson Taylor. Wilson seemingly modelled the hero of his incredibly popular series of children's books upon his own son, much as A.A. Milne did with Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh.

Well, at least his own son's name and general appearance. And then Wilson vanished, leaving Tom Taylor to make his own way in the world by attending various literary and fantasy conventions as the "real" Tommy Taylor. He signs memorabilia. Sometimes he gets lucky. Mostly he's bored.

But why did Wilson make Tommy memorize an encyclopedic array of knowledge related to "literary geography" -- both the places where works were written and the places where works took place? When Tommy gets kidnapped by an obsessed fan who seems to be an actual vampire modelled upon the literary Tommy Taylor's vampiric nemesis Count Ambrosio, things start to get weird. Especially when he's saved by a young woman named Lizzie Hexam, who knows more about the real Tom Taylor than he does, though less about herself than she's aware of. And all this is just in the first issue of the ongoing series.

The Unwritten is a lot of fun as a narrative, as a metanarrative, and as a fictional meditation on the nature and meaning not just of stories, but of Story itself. And as conspiracies are revealed, the nature of Story assumes geopolitical significance: control a society's narratives about itself and one controls the society.

A complex, funny, and scary piece of work, with lovely art on the stories themselves by Peter Gross and the occasional helper, and by Yuko Shimizu on the gorgeous covers. Highly recommended -- I'd guess there are maybe 20 issues to go before the whole thing wraps up.

Debts

Lucifer Volume 5: Inferno: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormiston and others (2002): After his fight with the malign, supernatural card deck (!) known as the Basanos, Lucifer is weakened, many of his powers separated from him and stored in two lost feathers from his wings (double !). Challengers with vengeance on their minds are after him. He really needs to get back to the administration of the universe he created.

Oh, and Lucifer owes a debt to part-angel Elaine Belloc, a debt that he must repay by rescuing her stolen soul from the great areas of uncreated space known as the Mansions of the Silence. And there are, of course, other loose ends that involve the archangel Michael, the fallen cherub Gaudium, and the fate of the demon who killed Elaine.

Add in supernatural avenger Solomon (son of David), Loki, Yahweh, Mazikeen of the Lilim, and a standalone tale featuring a cancer-stricken convenience store owner and the surprisingly decent demon who frequents his store and you've got a collection. Recommended if one has read the books before this volume.

Tarot of Terror

Lucifer Volume 4: The Divine Comedy: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Peter Gross and Dean Ormiston (2002; collected 2003): Lucifer, based on the version of Lucifer in Neil Gaiman's earlier Sandman series, has succeeded in creating his own universe. Humans and supernatural beings have flocked there from God's universe through any one of thousands of portals, there to live by only two commandments: Thou shalt not worship any gods, and thou shalt not attempt to be worshipped as gods.

And things seem to proceed swimmingly.

But Lucifer has enemies and rivals. He also has allies, though he doesn't have any friends -- he's a self-involved jerk, which means readerly sympathy has to be built upon the supporting characters and, negatively, by showing that Lucifer's enemies are much, much worse than he is.

Carey, Gross, and Ormiston succeed in this task -- Carey's writing zips along, combining inventiveness with a quirky oddness of original creation; Gross and Ormiston are deft cartoonists, cleanly rendering a world of wonders and terrors both supernatural and natural. And the fallen Cherubim Gaudium really is cute in a gargoyley way as he complains his way across two creations.

Lucifer's chief opponent here is the Basanos, a sentient Tarot Card deck created as a malign twin of the Book of Destiny. The Basanos can see all possible realities and force the outcome they desire; Lucifer is powerful enough to shrug off almost any and all attacks imaginable. But we're dealing with a deck of cards here -- They/It have something up Their/Its sleeve(s). Highly recommended.

The Verdict on Satan: Quite a Guy!!!

Lucifer Volume 6: Mansions of the Silence, written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Dean Ormston and David Hahn (2003; collected 2004); Lucifer Volume 7: Exodus, written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly (2003-2004; collected 2005): Mike Carey's version of Lucifer, created by Neil Gaiman in his Sandman series, almost seems like a conscious upping of the ante with Gaiman's award-winning title about Dream of the Endless. Dream wasn't all that likeable. Indeed, he was something of a jerk. Indeed, the whole series was in part about Dream coming to terms with the fact that he was a jerk in the self-pitying Byronic mode.

And here we have Lucifer, who is even more of an anti-hero, though a fascinating and shaded one, and definitely not one to be burdened by guilt or self-pity. In such a situation, one's sympathies will be engaged not by the titular protagonist but by the supporting characters, though Lucifer occasionally comes across pretty well simply because so many of his opponents are such monsters and assholes by comparison.

Lucifer gave up his kingship of Hell fairly early in the Sandman series, wandering the Earth for awhile before opening a night-club (aptly named Lux) in Los Angeles. But his out-sized ambitions returned, and by the time of these volumes he's created his own universe, apparently hoping to learn from the mistakes of his Father -- that is, God, or the Presence as he is generally called herein.

Mansions of the Silence depicts Lucifer's repayment of a debt to the human/angel hybrid named Elaine Belloc, who saved Lucifer's life in a previous installment but whose soul was subsequently kidnapped and dragged off into the eponymous Mansions, a vast expanse inhabited by various supernatural beings who have no interest in living in any of the codified afterlifes of the spiritual universe.

Belloc's soul has been used to bait a trap for Lucifer; he despatches a ragtag group of allies into the Mansions both to reveal the extent of the threat and to preserve the integrity of this spiritual space, at least until he retrieves Elaine. Lucifer's power is too great for the Mansions to support his presence -- if he enters them, the entire realm will quickly disintegrate.

The quest is weird and wooly, with lots of mythical overtones, undertones, and shout-outs to a wide assortment of world religions. Exodus then follows Lucifer's subsequent moves, and the fall-out from God's big announcement at the beginning of Mansions. Lucifer plays the hero, to an extent, in both volumes, though always for his own reasons -- reasons which are not entirely revealed at the time. He's a right bastard, but less so than any of the gods (or God) we meet, and Lucifer's creation seems remarkably benign and pleasant under the circumstances.

Carey deftly combines humour and pathos and the epic throughout both these volumes -- a 'mini-arc' about an odd and very sympathetic demon who spins webs out of emotions he steals from human souls is the stand-out in Exodus, a weird little heart-warmer about families and friendship. The art by Peter Gross and others is crisp throughout, expressively managing to convey menace, the Sublime and a pleasing level of cartoony humour at the appropriate moments with equal skill. Recommended.

The Loved Dead

Vertigo Resurrected: Petrefax, written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Steve Leialoha (originally published 2000; this edition 2011): Enjoyable nouveau-fairy-tale romp starring Petrefax, the young mortician from the Sandman arc World's End. Petrefax hails from Litharge, the land of morticians, and he's struck out on his own to see the world and offer his services as a journeyman.

He comes to the land of Malegrise, where magic reigns, and soon finds himself caught up in the efforts of a young woman, Calcinia, to bring the awful man to whom she's promised to justice for the murder of his brother and nephew. Naturally, he falls in love with her.

The story delivers a lot of wit in its depiction of the magic-based Malegrisean society, where demons and ifrits rub elbows with citizens and Roma. Apparently, gypsies are some sort of constant in the universe. Petrefax's mastery of ways of dealing with dead bodies comes in extremely handy on more than one occasion. He has to keep Calcinia, whose body has died, mobile and at least semi-unputrefied, and he has to deal with a few other unwieldy bodies along the way.

Old pro Steve Leialoha's art remains fantastic and yet grounded, and the muted colour scheme suits the storyline. Carey's deft hand with the fantastic is on display here; the fire-demon lawyer is an especially nice touch. Recommended.

Lucifer 1 2 3

Lucifer Volume 1: Devil in the Gateway, written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormiston and others (1999-2000): Lucifer resigned as ruler of Hell, got Morpheus to cut off his wings, and moved to Los Angeles to open an upscale piano bar called Lux in the pages of Neil Gaiman's Sandman in the early 1990's. Then Vertigo Comics decided to bring him back in 1999, with then up-and-coming writer Mike Carey at the helm.

Lucifer being Lucifer, the piano bar business seems to have become a bit boring. So when an angel comes calling with a mission from God, Lucifer accepts. Primal, prehistorical gods threaten to undermine Creation, so off Lucifer goes, at a price, to save the world.

After that, the Lightbringer heads off to Hamburg to get a divination. As the magical colony organism that is the world's first Tarot deck has escaped its prison, things get pretty hairy there, too.

As Lucifer is a manipulative, scheming creature whose saving grace is that he never lies, a lot of the weight of interest in these stories falls on the supporting characters, human and otherwise, whom we meet along the way. Lucifer's loyal servant Mazikeen returns from Sandman, while a host of one-off and recurring characters also appear. Lucifer, tricky as ever, has an audacious plan that will ultimately unfold over the book's seven-year run.

Carey already shows a deft hand for weirdness and drama amidst supernatural beings and humans, one that would only grow greater as his career progressed. The series gets off to a dandy start, reminiscent of Sandman at times but nonetheless possessed of its own nasty, metaphysically probing edge. Recommended.

Lucifer Volume 2: Children and Monsters, written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross, Dean Ormiston and others (2000-2001): Lucifer puts his plan into action, and it's a doozy. But then he needs to visit one of the Japanese Hells, where he has no powers (being from a different religion as he is) but where he needs to recover his lost wings from the ruler of that realm.

And that's only the beginning.

Carey and main artists Gross and Ormiston takes us through both mystic and mundane realms, sometimes at the same time. Magical beings and humans are being drawn like moths to a flame to Lucifer's piano-bar Lux, wherein Lucifer's grand plan unfolds. Hosts of angels plan a massive attack on Lux, with Los Angeles itself caught in the crossfire. And for some reason, a little girl who can see dead people is a major part of Lucifer's plan.

This second volume of Lucifer's wacky adventures also gives us an ancient and horrible curse, the fate of the Sumer-Babylonian gods (who are themselves weirdly and creepily rendered), and the further unfolding of Lucifer's plan. The archangel Michael, the fallen angel Sandalphon, and a variety of other gods and monsters also make appearances, including a particularly nasty pair of proto-Djinns who really, really want to get out of the 'normal' universe they've been trapped in for millennia. Recommended.

Lucifer Volume 3: A Dalliance with the Damned, written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross and others (2001-2002): The secret of the nominally Christian Hell imagined by Neil Gaiman in Sandman and expanded upon herein by Mike Carey is that it isn't really Hell as we normally understand it: damned souls can leave at any time if they can stop believing themselves to be damned. But that rarely happens.

The three major arcs of this volume follow Lucifer, a magical little girl and the denizens of one of Hell's provinces as various plans and counterplans proceed apace. Very bad things happen. A human released from torment manages to outwit his tormenters. Lucifer continues to be his grumpy, sardonic self. And his companion Mazikeen, bizarrely maimed in a successful attempt to save its life, begins to rise up the ranks of the Lilim, those demonic beings born of the union of Adam's mostly forgotten wife Lilith and the demons of Hell.

As always, there's a nice mix of zany but 'real' mythological material and Carey's occasionally post-modern musings on gods, angels, redemption, and damnation. The demons and devils are loathsome, but so too are some of the angels opposing Lucifer. Strange, heady stuff. Recommended.

Reality Invaded

Movies:


Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day. Starring Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay, Mike Smith, Pat Roach, John Dunsworth, Jonathan Torrens, and Alex Lifeson as Undercover Prostitute#1. Written by Mike Clattenburg, John Paul Tremblay, Mike Smith, Timm Hannebohm and Robb Wells. Directed by Mike Clattenburg. (2009): The Trailer Park Boys franchise has managed to balance lowbrow comedy and biting social satire in a way unique to Canadian television. Maybe all television. The satire all aims upwards: at the hypocrisy of institutions, the willingness of governments to profit from people's addictions to gambling, the glaring flaws in the education system, and a host of other social ills. The comedy gets many of its laughs from violently slapstick moments -- never has a TV series (and subsequent movies) gotten so much profitable comic mileage from characters discharging handguns, for instance.

In this second TPB movie, nothing much has changed. Ricky, Julian and Bubbles get out of jail at the beginning, having served their time for yet another failed criminal enterprise. Mr. Lahey and rotund, unshirted Randy now run a new trailer park, the old one having been boarded up and abandoned. The boys come up with various schemes. Mr. Lahey falls off the wagon. Julian carries a rum-and-coke with him everywhere. The usual criminal hijinks ensue. Disaster looms. Oh, and Ricky studies to get his Grade 12 diploma.

As it's a movie, there's more money for car chases and location work. If nothing else, TPB:CTLD presents the world with an unprecedented twist in car chases, one which I won't explain here because it's quite funny -- and completely in keeping with the spirit of the series. I'm not sure what someone who had never seen a TPB movie or TV episode would get out of this movie. . There's nothing here as funny as the TV escapades of Mountain Lion Steve French, or satirically complex as the episode, "If I Can't Smoke and Swear, I'm Fucked," but I'd still say Highly Recommended.


Sanjuro, starring Toshiro Mifune, directed by Akira Kurosawa (1962): Mifune's wandering, crabby, justice-restoring samurai returns from the classic Yojimbo, this time to prevent an evil Superintendent from taking over a town. Kurosawa stages this as more of a comedy than Yojimbo, which makes the sudden shifts into serious drama quite startling. Like most of the great heroes of Hollywood Westerns, the samurai is doomed to save societies which he can never feel comfortable within. Highly recommended, but only if you've already seen Yojimbo.


Books:


The Last Coin by James Blaylock (1988): Along with the great American fantasist Tim Powers and several others, Blaylock was a friend of Philip K. Dick's. When a group of writers are friends, one calls it an Affinity Group. If there's any influence of Dick on Blaylock, it's in the realms of plot structure and character. The plot veers again and again into unexpected territory; the heroes are normative, faintly ridiculous, but well-meaning.

In this novel, Blaylock presents the reader with a present-day historical fantasy based on equal parts Christian fantasy and eclectic speculation. The 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot for his betrayal of Christ are potent magical items which have never been collected all together since Judas attempted suicide after Christ's crucifixion. At that time, Iscariot discovered that he couldn't die: assembled, the coins conferred immortality and great mystical powers upon their owner, though that mystical power was evil and debilitating for most humans. Fully repentant of his sins, Iscariot dedicated his immortal life to keeping the coins -- apparently forged by Satan -- from ever being fully recollected. Animals -- including a giant sea creature and a giant pig -- are naturally disposed to help protect the world from the coins; various humans take on the job of storing one or more of the coins; a sinister magician named Pennyman seeks to reunite them so as to gain complete power over the Earth.

And that's really just the backstory. In 1980's California, a somewhat hapless fellow who runs a hotel for some very peculiar people tries to get ready for the grand opening of his restaurant. Around him and his friends (and his mysterious uncle), the whole plot wheels. This is really a delightful romp with a cast of eclectic characters and a supernatural premise that's a lot more interesting than, say, The DaVinci Code. Highly recommended.


The Penguin Book of Horror Stories, edited by J.A. Caddon (1984): Any time I run across a survey anthology with a 50-page historical introduction, I figure the publisher was hoping for textbook sales. Caddon's selection of stories bounces from interesting to wonky and back again throughout -- I'd say about a third of the stories fail the Horror Test, which is to say I can't imagine anyone actually being horrified by them.

However, there are good and unusual selections from high-end, non-genre writers that include Faulkner, Kafka, Zola and de Balzac. I'd actually have been more interested had the editor tried to create an entire horror anthology out of horror excursions by non-genre writers -- the more traditional genre examples often fall short, though there are nice (albeit overly familiar) stories here by William Hope Hodgson and M.R. James and a few others. Recommended.


Dead Man's Boots: A Felix Castor Novel by Mike Carey (2007): At some time in the recent past of Carey's Felix Castor novels, some supernatural cataclysm resulted in dead souls being released from Hell, and the dead on Earth often being able to stay on Earth in spiritual form indefinitely. One of the attendant effects of this cataclysm was to awake a buried ability in some humans to act as exorcists, capable of binding souls or even sending them back beyond the veil of death. Castor is one of these exorcists, narrating his adventures in the manner of decades of hardboiled detectives before him. Each exorcist has a unique method of dealing with souls. In Castor's case, the music he plays on a tin whistle (!) can summon, bind and/or exorcise spirits and other spiritual entities (there are demons running around the Earth as well).

Here, the apparent suicide of another exorcist helps lead Castor and his allies (primarily the reformed succubus Juliet) deeper and deeper into a mystery surrounding the apparent (and supposedly impossible) physical resurrection of an American serial killer in present-day London. Something strange enough to attract the attention of Hell is going on, and Castor soon finds himself the target of attacks both natural and supernatural. Carey does a lovely job of using the world-weary tone of most hardboiled detective narratives in a dark fantasy context, and the fantasy elements are consistent and 'rational' without too much exposition being used to explain the workings of this particular universe (and Castor isn't certain how or why certain things like exorcism work anyway). Highly recommended.


Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (1940; rev. 1953): Conjure Wife is one of American fantasy Grandmaster Leiber's two or three best novel-length excursions into what I'd called 'hard fantasy-horror.' 'Hard' refers to the technical concern brought to bear on the 'laws' of magic, not to any prurient content. In this novel, a young American sociology professor is under the mistaken impression that his successes are solely the result of the hard work that he and his wife, Tansy, have put into his academic work over the past decade at staid Hempnell College.

They aren't.

Behind the scenes, the political wars of academia are fought by the wives of the faculty (this was written in 1940) through magic, an area all women are aware of but almost no men. When the protagonist finds his wife's store of magical items, he rationally assumes that his wife is suffering from a neurosis that must be addressed by getting rid of all the charms and wards she's been creating over the years to protect the two of them from magical academic intrigue. But when all the charms are gone, the professor soon discovers that witchcraft works.

Conjure Wife really is a model of suspense and 'rational' magic all the way through, along with a fair bit of horror. While the protagonist seems a bit dense at times, he is operating from the initial assumption that magic and the supernatural are imaginary, and that everything can be explained through empirical means. The portrait of academic life, while dated, still rings true in a lot of places. The book even nods to the old adage that the wars in academia are so nasty because the stakes are so low: and at Hempnell, the war gets very nasty very quickly. Highly recommended.


Comic:


Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol Volume 1: Crawling from the Wreckage by Grant Morrison, Richard Case, Scott Hanna, Carlos Garzon and Doug Braithwaite (1989): Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison's first foray into American comic-book superteams at DC in the late 1980's came on The Doom Patrol, one of DC's more marginal properties that had first appeared in the 1960's, been cancelled by the end of the decade due to low sales, and been revived twice after that. Morrison took over in the 19th issue of the second revival, and rapidly moved Doom Patrol into the realms of weird, adult-oriented superhero comics.

In their original configuration, the Doom Patrol were "the world's strangest heroes", fighting strange, quasi-scientific menaces throughout the 1960's. The initial line-up was brought together by wheelchair-bound super-genius Niles "The Chief" Caulder. Cliff "Robotman" Steele was the muscle of the group; Rita "Elastigirl" Farr could grow, shrink and stretch; and Larry "Negative Man" Trainor could release a bizarre "negative energy" duplicate from his body. They were easily the most misfit team in 1960's superhero comics -- compared to them, the original X-Men and Fantastic Four were exemplars of normalcy.

Morrison quickly ratcheted up the weirdness in what would ultimately by a nearly 4-year run on the title. The Chief became colder, more distant and more manipulative. Cliff Steele started to suffer grave psychiatric crises related to being a human brain stuck in a robot body. Rita Farr...well, she'd actually been dead since the late 1960's, and she didn't return. Larry Trainor and the energy being merged with Doctor Eleanor Poole to form a bizarre new hermaphroditic entity that called itself "Rebis", the "product of an alchemical marriage." Crazy Jane, a woman with 64 different super-powered multiple personalities, joins the group early in Morrison's run.

The villains also became weirder, though they'd always been weird (two of the Patrol's early nemeses were The Brain, a brain in a tank, and Monsieur Mallah, a hyper-intelligent, beret-and-bandolier-wearing gorilla). In Morrison's first 4-issue arc, reprinted herein, the Patrol face the Scissormen, shock troops of an invading, fictional reality created by a bunch of professors initially as a thought-experiment. Thus, Doom Patrol became the first superhero comic to have villains who were an homage to Jorge Luis Borges's short story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius." Later would come The Brotherhood of Dada, the Painting That Ate Paris, Hofmann's Bicycle, the SexMen, Flex Mentallo ("the man of muscle mystery!"), the Candlemaker, the Cult of the Unwritten Book, Danny the Street and a host of other weird and wonderful friends and enemies. Highly recommended.