Lubango Vlog Is Back!

Learn all about the work my wife and I are performing in Lubango in this new vlog!

RIP: Peter B. Gillis

Yesterday the death of my friend Peter B. Gillis was announced.

Peter B. Gillis was a comic book writer who worked primarily from 1978-1990. He might be best-remembered as the creator of Strikeforce: Morituri. He was also the writer of the Defenders for many years with artist Don Perlin, who likewise passed away just the other month.

He became one of my favourite writers after I became enthralled by the Eternals. I loved the story he began in the 12-issue Eternals mini-series he started in 1985 with Sal Buscema and it was an enormous shame that he wasn't able to finish the story, leaving after the 8th issue.

But the earliest comic of his that made an impression upon me was What If #46: "What If Spider-Man's Uncle Ben Had Lived?" He was paired there with artist Ron Frenz, who did his best to ape and even recreate moments from Steve Ditko's earliest Amazing Spider-Man stories. In Gillis' story, Uncle Ben lives and Aunt May dies; Ben quickly surmisees Peter is Spider-Man and refuses to see his nephew meekly submit as his reputation is smeared in the newspapers. Gillis imagined that Ben had a real personality and I think it was the first time any Spider-Man story attempted to give Uncle Ben some depth.

Through Facebook I became friends with him and had a few private conversations with him. I'm happy I was able to tell him how much I loved his work. I found him very humble and sensitive. I fear that as he was embroiled in legal battles with Marvel over Strikeforce: Morituri that his legacy might not loom large compared to his contemporaries. But to me, at least, he was one of the greats.

Rest in peace, Mr. Gillis.

Radio Recap: The Player

The Player was a 15-minute syndicated program from 1948. It starred Paul Frees as virtually every character in the show ("your one man theater"), just as he would in the later series Black Book. Some places online refer to the Player as "Studio X."

The series called on a lot from Frees; he tended to narrate the stories while performing as the characters. It's not the most effective way to tell a story in radio (I prefer stories without narrators) but Frees was so adept at switching between voices that it works very well. The series was also augmented by the use of guitar as the primary musical accompaniment - that gives the series a sound that's very different from other radio programs. There are also plenty of sound effects, which make this series stronger than other shows I've heard which featured just one performer.

The stories on the Player vary; some are mystery stories, other adventure, some simply dramatic, other humorous. It seems as though primarily it was about demonstrating Frees' range, spending some time in his company as he narrates/performs a story. Four of the surviving episodes feature a character called "the Professor," a very smart and soft-spoken man who uses his wits to resolve conflicts in a light-hearted and humorous manner.

I found the Player to be pretty effective; Paul Frees was certainly a treasure and he was in fine form. My favourite episode is "Fate Upsets a Plan," concerning a bank robbery that goes wrong in a very Whistler-esque manner.

You can listen to the Player at the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Review: Le Horla

Guy de Maupassant's 1887 short story "The Horla" was my introduction to the author; I heard a production of the radio series Mystery in the Air with Peter Lorre in the lead role of a man being haunted by an invisible presence (here) and it made an immediate impression. Certainly the adaptation featured Lorre at the top of his range, closing with him in the midst of a ranting breakdown to beat all breakdowns.

I read a lot of Maupassant's short stories (possibly all of them, I haven't found a decent bibliography that takes into account all the variant English titles his stories have had). "The Horla" wasn't Maupassant's only supernatural tale but such themes are rare in his work. "The Horla" remains his most famous work.

The concept of an invisible presence isn't necessarily ideal for adaptation in a visual medium - perhaps why radio suited it so well - but it has been done. You might recall that in 2012 I reviewed an adaptation of "the Horla" in Ernie Colon's Inner Sanctum graphic novel. But that adaptation played pretty loose with the original work.

Perhaps Maupassant's work requires a fellow Frenchman to do it justice. Guillaume Sorel adapted the short story in a full-length 2014 graphic novel. I've looked at a few French graphic novels on the blog recently and I suppose I should reiterate - I don't read French. My Portuguese helps a little; exposure to French in my bilingual homeland helps a little; but what helped me the most in Sorel's Le Horla is that dialogue isn't what drives his adaptation of this familiar story. Most of the atmosphere and terror is visual in nature.

Sorel has a few means to make the invisible menace visible. One is by demonstrating the effects of the creature's presence upon the hapless protagonist, such as in this scene where it simply breaks a flower by the stem. It's eerie and suspenseful, taking good advantage of the Horla's unseen nature.

Sorel's second means is to simply depict the Horla; it appears as an outline of a figure when it hovers over the protagonist at night. I'm not sure how I feel about those scenes - Sorel's Horla is terrifying, but giving the creature even an outline makes it somewhat comprehensible. I feel some of the terror of the story is in the creature's unreality.

Maupassant suffered from mental illlness (namely, syphilis) and it's hard to avoid seeing that in the story of the Horla - that the protagonist's increasingly unhinged rants were coming from a place that Maupassant knew all to well. Sorel's interpretation of the protagonist is a bit more restrained and keeps the ranting to a minimum. Still, Sorel's Le Horla is the most faithful adaptation I have found of Maupassant's story and I do strongly recommend it to fans of Maupassant.

The Acolyte: Lite

Last week's episode of the Acolyte is garnering a lot of hate online. I didn't hate it. I thought it was pretty funny. Recap follows.

Atop the Hoover Dam, OSHA and MAE are raised by a colony of lesbian mimes. Their mothers AUNTIE SEPTIC and DARTH MAULY demonstrate the Thread.

AUNTIE SEPIC: Children, we call it "the Thread." Other people, whom you have never heard of and will never meet, call it "the Force." It's important that you know they're wrong.
DARTH MAULY: Now watch as the power of one creates an invisible wind.
A lesbian mime flails in response.
MAE: Sign me up for that!
DARTH MAULY: And so you see the power of many. We are all individuals.
LESBIAN MIMES: We are all individuals!
OSHA: I'm not. I don't wanna be a lesbian mime.
DARTH MAULY: Too bad, there's no job economy atop the Hoover Dam. Get ready for the ceremony tonight.

The lesbian mimes perform a super-secret special ceremony to induct the children on top of the Hoover Dam. They fail to notice the JEDI sneaking up on them.

JEDI: 'Sup, witches?
DARTH MAULY: Get out of here, we certainly aren't hiding any children we couldn't possibly have.
JEDI: Like those two who are clearly hiding behind you? Hi, children.
OSHA: Wow, people other than the two dozen lesbian mimes I've lived with all my life!
JEDI: Hey kids, wanna join our cult?
OSHA: Are you lesbian mimes?
JEDI: No, joyless eunuchs.
MAE: Pass.
JEDI: But we carry laser swords and have qualified immunity!
OSHA: Sign me up for that!

The lesbian mimes order OSHA to flunk her Jedi tests.
JEDI: Don't think of the number three.
OSHA: Is the number three?
DARTH MAULY: Dammit! You fell for their Jedi mind tricks!
MAE: If you leave, it will destroy our family!
OSHA: So?
MAE: Well, I wanted to be the one to destroy our family.

A fire breaks out, all the lesbian mimes die from apparent asphyxiation.
OSHA: What have you done?
MAE: What have you done?
OSHA: What have you done?*

*actual dialogue

Radio Recap: The Black Chapel

There are only two surviving episodes The Black Chapel and precious little written about it among OTR fans - and that's a shame. It was a very cheaply-made 15-minute program that starred Ted Osborne as the narrator and sole performer. The only musical effects were provided by an organ which, one source claims, Osborne played himself!

The Black Chapel aired over CBS from August 19, 1937 until July 21, 1939. It was a horror program and aired from 11:45 to midnight (an appropriate hour). It was preceded by Lights Out and the Witch's Tale and doesn't appear to be as influential as either of those programs - yet, the two surviving episodes are intriguing examples of what the series was like:

• "The Mahogany Coffin" (January 6, 1939) A gravedigger who has prepared a very nice coffin for his own eventual death has to contend with a rival who wants to speed up his demise.
• "The Crawling Terror" (December 23, 1937) A horrifying blob-like creature lurks around a man's farmhouse, devouring everything that comes near it.

Ted Osborne was a prolific New York performer who appeared in just about every kind of program. According to the Suspense Collectors Companion, he's the only performer who appeared in both the first and final episodes of Suspense, aired 20 years apart!

There's nothing flashy about the Black Chapel; it depends entirely on how well you can follow Osborne's narration (I do find him difficult to follow when he drops his voice into a whisper). The stories themselves are true supernatural terrors like other 30s horror radio shows; if you count yourself a horror fan, you ought to give these short stories a spin!

The Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group has copies of the two surviving episodes of the Black Chapel in their Singles and Doubles collection on the Internet Archive. You can hear "The Mahogany Coffin" in this file and "The Crawling Terror" in this file.

Angola in the Comics #23: Mary Kingsley: La Montagne des Dieux

Once more looking at European publications, we have a 2012 French graphic novel titled Mary Kingsley: La Montagne des Dieux. This was created by writers Esteban Mathieu and Guillaume Dorison with artist Julien Telo, under the supervision of Christian Clot. It's an early entry in a series of similar graphic novels published by Glénat titled Explora, biographical works inspired by the lives of famous explorers.

Mary Kingsley is one of the few female explorers in this series and I'm ashamed to admit I hadn't heard of her before nor read her books (which are in the public domain). Based on the graphic novel and what little I've gleaned about her, Angola was a small part of her overall travels but it was one of the (many) African nations she visited and wrote about.

Mary Kingsley is only available in French so I didn't entirely follow the dialogue of the adaptation and I have yet to read her books, but it does seem like this book is inspired by her life and events and isn't necessarily an authentic account of her life. Nonetheless, the graphic novel opens with her arriving in Angola in 1893 and she spends about a third of the novel in Angola before moving on, eventually heading north to Cameroon.

As always, Europeans are very good at depicting Africa and avoiding the usual tropes I find in North American works. Julien Telo's art is very appealing, energizing the scenes of Kingsley's travels while still rendering them believeable. It's a well-made graphic novel and I'm sure I'll have even more interest in it after I've read Mary Kingsley's own writings.