In the spring, 2006, The Austin Chronicle ran two articles–"The Notorious Irving Klaw" (March 10, 2006) and "Little Underground Worlds" (April 21, 2006)–centered around my interview with The Notorious Bettie Page director, Mary Harron. As often happens with these type of things, pieces of the interview end up on the cutting room floor. In celebration of Bettie Page‘s 86th birthday, here are some unexpurgated Harron comments about the world’s most famous pin up.

On Bettie’s endearing popularity:

On the appeal of Bettie to young feminists:

Sadly, Bettie Page passed away late last year. She is missed.

I loathe the idea that the Cartoon Network has moved into the live action arena. It was bad enough when they started showing live action movies and even crappy variety-style shows but now they’re moving into the Sci-Fi (oops..meant Scy-Fy) Channel arena of terrible original movie concepts.

Does the world really need yet another bad re-imagination of the King Arthur myth? I doubt it.

Are the ratings that much better for live action? I realize live action is cheaper and faster to produce than animation but a zillion channels already do shoddy sf/f live action. What about the shoddy original animated films? They need love, too.

I really like the idea of a network that shows nothing but cartoons.

What’s next? Comedy Central to air Sopranos?

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé

Promo copy:

The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin. This definitive three-disc collection brings together the best of these, and also includes the French television series Jean Painlevé Through His Films, rock band Yo La Tengo’s eight-film score The Sounds of Science, and an essay by film scholar Scott MacDonald.

More on this later…

Last Chance Harvey

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Set in London, this romantic comedy stars Dustin Hoffman as Harvey Shine, a divorced and haggard jingle-writer quickly aging out of his career and workaholic ways. With a warning from his boss (Richard Schiff) to not bother rushing back, Harvey goes to London, begrudgingly, for his daughter’s wedding, fielding that work calls the whole time he’s there. When Harvey greets his estranged daughter, Susie (Liane Balaban), it becomes clear just how far away he’s grown from his family. The film never spells out in exactly what ways Harvey was a bad father, but it is clear he missed the boat when Susie asks her stepfather (James Brolin) to give her away. As Harvey leaves his heartbreak at the ceremony for an emergency work call, he misses his flight and gets fired. While nursing a whiskey at the airport bar, Harvey bumps into Kate (Emma Thompson), an airport employee escaping her own bad day with a glass of wine and a book. Suddenly taken by Kate’s British charm, a tipsy Harvey bombards her with tales of his trouble. This unlikely trading of sob stories leads to lunch, a walk around London, and a day of unexpected romance.

Look

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With LOOK, accomplished screenwriter and director Adam Rifkin (THE DARK BACKWARD, DETROIT ROCK CITY) takes the modern world’s infatuation with surveillance technology to a disarming new level. After opening the film with a jarring title card that explains just how many surveillance cameras exist in our society, Rifkin then goes on to prove it by using surveillance camera footage exclusively to tell his multifaceted story (artificially constructed, of course, but convincing nonetheless). What follows is an acerbic commentary on America in which a wide spectrum of citizens are captured in a series of unsettling, uncomfortable, sometimes hilarious, and ultimately dramatic situations. They include two cop killers on the lam, two bored convenience store clerks, a philandering husband, a sex-addicted clothing store manager, a high school teacher and the student who is out to seduce him, a nerdy office worker who is constantly harassed by his coworkers, a devastated mother whose daughter is abducted, and the mysterious abductor himself. Rifkin ingeniously uses his conceit as a way to comment on how depraved our society has become, yet he also uses humor to keep things from becoming too bleak and dour. As hidden camera after hidden camera captures the glaring foibles of these intersecting lives, we become further embroiled in the dramas at hand. The result is an unsettling portrait of a world at its nastiest, where good intentions become bad ones, and in which happy endings occur, albeit with crushingly ironic twists.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V. S. Redick

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Scant years after a terrible war that shook empires, a six-hundred-year-old ship sets sail for enemy lands in an attempt to forge an enduring peace between the world’s two greatest monarchies. A vast city afloat, the ancient vessel bears a royal bride-to-be; a stowaway tribe of foothigh warriors; an honest young tarboy with a heritage of treason; a rat with a magical secret; and a dark conspiracy centered around the Red Wolf, a legendary and dangerous artifact.

When the conspiracy is uncovered, the voyage takes a turn into perilous waters, and the sword-wielding young bride and her quick-witted tarboy companion must face deadly assassins, treacherous mermaids, and monstrous slavers to uncover secrets at the highest levels of power—secrets that will send heroes and traitors alike careening towards a mysterious destination that could destroy both empires at a stroke.

A publishing sensation in England, The Red Wolf Conspiracy marks the debut of a remarkably gifted young writer.

Goats: Infinite Typewriters by Jonathan Rosenberg

The first-ever book collection of the wildly popular webcomic Goats—a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the Internet Age

With webcomics like Penny Arcade and Megatokyo being published successfully in book format, the webcomics scene is fast becoming the red-hot incubator of comics talent. The Goats site (www.Goats.com) has one of the most devoted followings on the web, and has more than 1.5 million hits a month.

Goats’ wicked, weird, and deliciously geeky sense of humor places it in the tradition of such cult favorites as Futurama and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—it’s a major sci-fi parody epic. In Infinite Typewriters, two lowly techies are tasked with saving the universe from utter destruction. Along the way, they’ll encounter cyborg goldfish, omnisexual aliens, satanic chickens, random celebrities, Mayan death gods, and the other strange and wonderful denizens of the Goats universe.

The first of three Goats collections from Del Rey, Goats: Infinite Typewriters will also include some book only bonus features: an introduction by Penny Arcade cocreator Jerry Holkins’s alter ego, Tycho, and newly created material intended to welcome readers to the saga.

The Island by Tim Lebbon

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The worst has come and one man must rise to lead the fight against it. . . .

He thought he’d seen the worst . . .

No one knew about the Strangers from beyond Noreela, and it was the Core’s job to make sure it stayed that way. Kel Boon was once an agent of the land’s most secret organization, tracking, observing, and eliminating the Strangers as part of an elite Core team. But then one horrifying encounter left his superior officer—and lover—dead, along with many innocents. And Kel has been running ever since.

But the worst was still to come. . . .

Forsaking magic, living as a simple wood-carver, Kel came to the fishing village of Pavmouth Breaks to hide. But when a mysterious island appears out to sea during a cataclysmic storm, sending tidal waves to smash the village, his Core training tells him to expect the worst. How can he warn the surviving villagers—especially the beautiful young witch Namior—that the visitors sailing in from the island may not be the peace-loving pilgrims they claim to be? That this might be the invasion the Core has feared all along . . . and that he, Kel Boon, may be Noreela’s last chance?

The Patriot Witch (Traitor to the Crown) by C. C. Finlay

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The year is 1775. On the surface, Proctor Brown appears to be an ordinary young man working the family farm in New England. He is a minuteman, a member of the local militia, determined to defend the rights of the colonies. Yet Proctor is so much more. Magic is in his blood, a dark secret passed down from generation to generation. But Proctor’s mother has taught him to hide his talents, lest he be labeled a witch and find himself dangling at the end of a rope.

A chance encounter with an arrogant British officer bearing magic of his own catapults Proctor out of his comfortable existence and into the adventure of a lifetime, as resistance sparks rebellion and rebellion becomes revolution. Now, even as he fights alongside his fellow patriots from Lexington to Bunker Hill, Proctor finds himself enmeshed in a war of a different sort–a secret war of magic against magic, witch against witch, with the stakes not only the independence of a young nation but the future of humanity itself.

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Click on images for full sized versions.

Angry Comics #1 (1991) Art by Shane Simmons

Heading north of the border this time with Shane Simmons and his Eyestrain Productions. The prolific Simmons has worked on several TV and film productions and published numerous comics most notably the groundbreaking, minimalist Longshot Comics comedies: The Long and Unlearned Life of Roland Gethers and The Failed Promise of Bradley Gethers. In 1991, Simmons started his run on Angry Comics.

Angry Comics #2-5 (1991-92) Art by Shane Simmons

Angry Comics #6-9 (1992-93) Art by Shane Simmons

As with most cartoonists, Simmons used the form as a sounding board for societal and political ills, combined of course with some often perverse humor.

"Curiosity" by Shane Simmons (Angry Comics #1, 1991)

Issue three featured perhaps the first appearance of Simmons’ "talking dots" style.

Longshot Comics "A Little Romance" by Shane Simmons (Angry Comics #3, 1991)

Throughout the run, Simmons prided himself on the disturbing offerings. Among the best of those, "Cooking With Jeffrey Dahmer" a Food Network-styled show starring the cannibalistic serial killer, premiered in #5.

"Cooking With Jeffrey Dahmer" p. 1 by Shane Simmons (Angry Comics #5, 1992)

Simmons toyed with some unusual literary adaptations under the Classics Butchered banner.

Classics Butchered #4 "Jane Eyre" by Shane Simmons (Angry Comics #7, July 1992)

Following the ninth issue, Simmons changed the format from the 8-16 page 25 cent mini-comic to a 16-20 page two dollar digest with color covers. The series continued until issue #13.

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

Click on images for full sized versions.

Art by John Lucas

With a style best described as the bastard offspring of Jack Kirby and Alex Toth, prolific artist John Lucas emerged from the wilds of the vibrant nineties Waco, TX indie comics scene.

Promotion for a Violet Crown Radio Players adaptation
of a Robert E. Howard Sailor Steve Costigan tale.
Art by John Lucas.

Also in the nineties, Lucas’ quirky work appeared in Mojo Press and Caliber publications.

Cover to Negative Burn #47 (Caliber)
Art by John Lucas

After moving to New York City in 2002, he quickly became a regular contributor for many Marvel and DC titles including Detective Comics, Superman: Man of Steel, Civil War: Front Line, Starman, Generation M, The Exterminators, and X-Men Unlimited.

From 9-11: September 11, 2001
(The World’s Finest Comic Book Writers &
Artists Tell Stories to Remember) (DC)
Art by John Lucas

Sometime in the 2000s, Lucas published Cow! The sketchbook compilation offered a wide selection of his work. All the art in this C.O.U.S. entry come from the 32 page, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" collection.

Cover to Cow!

Check out more Lucas here.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Wolverine 1: Prodigal Son by Antony Johnston (story) and Wilson Tortosa (art)

Promo copy:

The gripping, all-new adventure of the x-men’s greatest icon, completely reimagined in the Manga style

This is not the Wolverine you know.

Logan is a teenage rebel with a real good reason for having a real bad attitude. Ever since being left in a nearby forest–with no memory of who he was or how he got there–Logan (or Wolverine, as his classmates sometimes call him) has been stuck in a martial arts school in the icy wilds of Canada. No wonder he’s bored, restless, yearning. There’s a whole world out there, and Logan can almost taste it. But he’s chained to a past he can’t remember and can’t escape. Now it just may destroy his future.

Omen (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi, Book 2) by Christie Golden

The Betrayal by Pati Nagle

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The noble and magical aelven were riven by war when a rogue clan embraced a forbidden source of magic: the drinking of blood. In the bitter fighting that ensued, the vampiric Clan Darkshore were cast out of the aelven and driven across the Ebon Mountains. Stripped of their various clan colors, they were thenceforth known only as “alben,” hated and shunned. An uneasy peace now holds over the land, but it is whispered that Shalár, the beautiful and bloodthirsty queen of the alben, is readying a surprise attack to win back all that was lost–and none can say where or when she will strike.

The fate of the clans will depend on two young aelven lovers, Eliani and Turisan, who are blessed with a legendary gift: the fabled power of mindspeech. But this ability comes with great risks. Time is running out as the alben mount their attack–and their ultimate betrayal.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale

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Master of mojo storytelling, spinner of over-the-top yarns of horror, suspense, humor, mystery, science fiction, and even the Old West, Joe R. Lansdale has attracted a wide and enthusiastic following. His genre-defying work has brought him numerous awards, including the Grand Master of Horror from the World Horror Convention, the Edgar Award, the American Horror Award, seven Bram Stoker awards, the British Fantasy Award, Italy’s Grinzane Prize for Literature, as well as Notable Book of the Year recognition twice from the New York Times.

Sanctified and Chicken-Fried is the first "true best of Lansdale" anthology. It brings together a unique mix of well-known short stories and excerpts from his acclaimed novels, along with new and previously unpublished material. In this collection of gothic tales that explore the dark and sometimes darkly humorous side of life and death, you’ll meet traveling preachers with sinister agendas, towns lost to time, teenagers out for a good time who get more than they bargain for, and gangsters and strange goings-on at the end of the world. Out of the blender of Lansdale’s imagination spew tall tales about men and mules, hogs and races, that are, in his words, "the equivalent of Aesop meets Flannery O’Connor on a date with William Faulkner, the events recorded by James M. Cain."

Whether you’re a long-time fan of Joe R. Lansdale or just discovering his work, this anthology brings you the best of a writer whom the New York Times Book Review has praised for having "a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace."

My feelings toward Joe’s works are well chronicle. Simply put, this book is REQUIRED reading!

The Losers by Jack Kirby

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For the first time, Jack Kirby’s tales of World War II are collected! In 1974, while Jack Kirby was hard at work on such mind-bending epics as MISTER MIRACLE and KAMANDI, he also created a series of stories that drew on his own experiences in World War II. Starring DC war heroes Johnny Cloud, Captain Storm, Gunner and Sarge, this volume features stories in which The Losers stop a German attack using a tactic found in a comic book, German and American athletes who faced each other at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin meet again on the field of combat, and much more! Don’t miss this amazing collection of tales from OUR FIGHTING FORCES #151-162, and featuring a foreword by best-selling author Neil Gaiman (THE SANDMAN).

There is no such thing as too much Kirby!

Fragment by Warren Fahy

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In this powerhouse of suspense—as brilliantly imagined as Jurassic Park and The Ruins—scientists have made a startling discovery: a fragment of a lost continent, an island with an ecosystem unlike any they’ve seen before . . . an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards.

The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins . . .

For when they reach the island’s shores, scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years.

Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking than anything humanity has ever encountered: because among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any scientific theory—and must be saved at any cost.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes ORIGINAL, UNCUT VERSION

From the FantasticFest blog:

Nowhere was this more apparent than in J. Lee Thompson’s CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the toughest, most violent and political of the entire series and one of the best science fiction films of its time. Test audiences in 1972 were shocked by the film’s violence and call for revolution, so much so that the film was cut by over 9 minutes for fears of earning an R rating from the MPAA.

Fox issued the uncut edition as part of the Blu-ray Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection. I have the standard DVD version of the uncut Conquest.

My latest Nexus Graphic column over at SF Site centers on my visit to the 5th STAPLE! con.

I then go on to talk about several of the people I met. This issue’s reviews all tie in with STAPLE! including coverage on Alan J. Porter‘s James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 and the anticipated The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1910.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, et al (writer) and Ed Piskor, et al (artist)

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In The Beats: A Graphic History, those who were mad to live have come back to life through artwork as vibrant as the Beat movement itself. Told by the comic legend Harvey Pekar, his frequent artistic collaborator Ed Piskor, and a range of artists and writers, including the feminist comic creator Trina Robbins and the Mad magazine artist Peter Kuper, The Beats takes us on a wild tour of a generation that, in the face of mainstream American conformity and conservatism, became known for its determined uprootedness, aggressive addictions, and startling creativity and experimentation. What began among a small circle of friends in New York and San Francisco during the late 1940s and early 1950s laid the groundwork for a literary explosion, and this striking anthology captures the storied era in all its incarnations—from the Benzedrine-fueled antics of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs to the painting sessions of Jay DeFeo’s disheveled studio, from the jazz hipsters to the beatnik chicks, from Chicago’s College of Complexes to San Francisco’s famed City Lights bookstore. Snapshots of lesser-known poets and writers sit alongside frank and compelling looks at the Beats’ most recognizable faces. What emerges is a brilliant collage of—and tribute to—a generation, in a form and style that is as original as its subject.

The Good Humor Man by Andrew Fox

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A witty tribute to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this surreal, futuristic narrative explores the highly topical relationships between obesity, government health care, pop culture, and body image. In a world where chocolate is worth more than cocaine on the black market, government-sanctioned vigilantes known as Good Humor Men patrol the streets, seeking to immolate all fattening food products as illegal contraband and summarily cancel the health insurance of any offenders. An evil nutraceutical company controls the food market with products engineered to keep the population painfully thin, while a mysterious wasting plague threatens to starve humanity. An ex-plastic surgeon whose father performed a secret liposuction surgery on Elvis Presley may hold the key to humanity’s future. Incorporating a colorful cast of characters—a civil servant with questionable motives, an acquisitive assassin, a power-mad preacher evangelizing anorexia, a beautiful young woman addicted to liposuction, and a homicidal clone from an experiment gone terribly awry—this satirical romp asks the question Can Elvis save the world 64 years after his death?

Blazing Combat by Archie Goodwin & various artists

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Written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by such luminaries as Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, John Severin, Alex Toth, Al Williamson, Russ Heath, Reed Crandall, and Gene Colan, Blazing Combat was originally published by independent comics publisher James Warren in 1965 and ’66. Following in the tradition of Harvey Kurtzman’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, Goodwin’s stories reflected the human realities and personal costs of war rather than exploiting the clichés of the traditional men’s adventure genre. They were among the best comics stories about war ever published.

Blazing Combat ended after its fourth issue when military post exchanges refused to sell the title due to their perception that it was an anti-war comic. Their hostility was fueled by the depiction of the then-current Vietnam War, especially a story entitled “Landscape,” which follows the thoughts of a simple Vietnamese peasant rice-farmer who pays the ultimate price simply for living where he does — and which was considered anti-war agitprop by the more hawkish members of the business community.

Writer Archie Goodwin and the original publisher James Warren discuss the death of Blazing Combat and market censorship as well as the creative gestation of the series in exclusive interviews.