Here’s an item I picked up a while back that I’ve only just gotten around to blogging about:
(Moorcock, Michael) Cawthorn, James. The Stormbringer Sessions. Jayde Designs/Savoy Books, 2021. First edition hardback, an oversized graphic novel format. #30 of 100 numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and a Fine slipcase, with a sheet replicating the cover art laid in. A graphic novel reprinting Cawthorn’s rough sketch’s for Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Book of Stormbringer, a much more complete and elaborate graphic novel adaptation of the concluding Elric book than the version published by Savoy Books in 1976. At £100 plus transatlantic shipping, it’s a pricey item, but with such a small limitation (with only an additional 100 trade copies) for a Moorcock item, I thought it was better to snap it up when I could (and indeed, all copies are now sold out).
The scan chops off the very bottom of the cover, because that was all that would fit on my scanner.
The slipcase is embossed with a red foil version of Moorcock’s eight-arrowed chaos symbol:
Sturgeon, Theodore. Without Sorcery. Prime Press, 1948. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with slight bumping at head, heel and points and a tickmark and circled “A+” next to “Maturity” on the title page, in a Very Good+ dust jacket with edgewear and crinkling at head, heel and points, rubbing along edges one thin streak of discoloration to spine (not affecting any text), slight haze rubbing to front cover, and age darkening and dust staining to white rear cover, signed by Sturgeon. Sturgeon’s first short story collection (and first “real” book). Diskin, Theodore Sturgeon: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography, A54. Currey, page 473 (state B, trade issue). Chalker/Owings, page 352. Kemp, The Anthem Series, page 129. Bleiler, Checklist (1978), page 189 (not in the 1948 edition). Locke, Anatomy of Wonder, page 208. Barron, Anatomy of Wonder 4, 3-173. Bought for $50 off eBay.
So back at the beginning of 2020, I found out that there was a Godzilla in Hell comic book miniseries, for which a different professional artist painted every page of an issue, and that Bob Eggleton did the paintings for issue #2. I like Godzilla, I liked the idea, and I like Bob’s work, so I contacted him to see if any of the paintings were available. Some were.
So I bought one for what I think is an extremely modest sum for an artist of Bob’s stature.
Then it took me another year to buy, assemble, and frame the work. (Framing art is freaking expensive.) But I think the end result is quite nice:
I don’t have a lot of original art because I spend so much on books. But it’s nice to be able to afford the occasional piece…
As you can tell, I liked Godzilla vs. Kong, but I can’t deny that there are a few, ahem, scientific implausibilities in the film, and Screen Rants Pitch Meeting guy digs into those with gusto:
Of course, remember what franchise we’re talking about. Compared to “He must have programmed himself to get big!” (Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon), Godzilla vs. Kong‘s leaps in plausibility are mere hopscotch…
I was also aware of the third and fourth volumes in the Coscuin Chronicles series:
Sardinian Summer
First and Last Island
However, this wiki (evidently created by Ferguson) includes still more novels I haven’t heard about before:
Esteban, “a historical novel tracking the life and travels of the African slave who was the first ‘white’ (i.e., non-Native) man to enter much of what would become the southwestern United States”
Iron Tongue of Midnight (I know nothing about, except it shares the same title as a 1988 Lafferty poem)
Mantis (evidently a mystery novel)
Not listed there, and only listed on a couple of dubious webpages, so I have my doubts as to whether it actually exists, is The Giant Ratchet of Sumatra (with Sharon Scott). There is a reference to a first chapter manuscript in the University of Tulsa archives, but I see no sign that it had ever been completed.
Excluding the dubious and unfinished, by my count that’s fourteen unpublished Lafferty novels…
Godzilla vs. Kong
Directed by Adam Wingard
Written by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields (story), Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein (screenplay)
Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Julian Dennison, Kaylee Hottle and Demian Bichir
This is the best of the Monsterverse movies. The people at Legendary Films seem to have finally figured out what viewers actually want (hot kaiju-on-kaiju city-destroying action) and what they want left on the cutting room floor (boring human backstory).
The movie opens with King Kong contained within a Truman Show-type dome over Skull Island and Godzilla attacking the Florida research facility of sinister Apex Cybernetics (think Yoyodyne or Weyland-Yutani). The movie quickly splits into two strands: Millie Bobby Brown’s character (a bit less useless than in Godzilla: King of the Monsters), her tubby geek friend (Julian Dennison) and a conspiracy theorist (Brian Tyree Henry) try to penetrate Apex systems to learn The Real Truth, while Kong, along with his deaf Child Monster Whisperer companion (Kaylee Hottle; think Kenny from Gamera, but much less annoying) and guardian Rebecca Hall (the bank-teller from The Town) help Alexander Skarsgard take Kong to Antarctica on an Apex-underwritten mission to the hollow earth to uncover a new power source.
If the last part sounds extremely unlikely, you’re right, but they’ve cannily kept explanations to a bare minimum to keep you moving on to the next monster scene. (You know that 5-15 minute segment where they have to knock out Kong to get him on the ship? They snipped that sucker entirely out and cut to him already in giant chains mid-voyage.) The first battle between Godzilla and Kong takes place at sea, with round one going to our reigning lizard champion.
There’s some delightful stuff with Kong reaching the hollow earth, where he roams the verdant green-and-purple landscape, fights some Quetzalcoatlesque giant flying serpents (which this rundown dubs “warbats”) and finds a giant ancestral throne room and (plot point alert) a Kong-sized Zilla-spined axe.
In the other plotline, the Scooby Gang discover that Apex is breeding Skullcrawlers (from Kong: Skull Island), and are promptly whisked via high speed underground tunnel to Hong Kong (Monsterverse tech seems to be advancing much faster than our own), where they discover that Apex head honcho Walter Simmons (Demian Bichir, basically playing Evil Tony Stark) has built to his own Mechagodzilla to put man back at the top of the food chain.
If you watched the Toho Godzilla films, you pretty much know how this is going to turn out.
We finally get Godzilla and Kong smashing up neon-lit Hong Kong in a truly epic battle royal that Mechagodzilla later joins. Legendary really makes use of the possibilities of CGI to make you feel like you’re in the middle of a battle between two giant monsters, with the viewpoint frequently swooping in and around the action. There’s even a scene where Mechagodzilla emerges from a hillside that I would swear is an almost exact lift from a Toho hillside monster emergence scene.
This is the Godzilla movie where Hollywood finally figured out how to get out of its own way. No “reinvented” Godzilla, no tedious backstories, no time wasted on pointless human drama, no 15 different studio executives having to stick their dicks in the soup to justify their salaries. Just compelling kaiju on kaiju action rendered with top-notch modern CGI that puts you in the middle of the city-stomping. (And none of the “they make their own weather so everything is dark and stormy” effect used to excess in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.) It bests all previous Moinsterverse films in just about every area (except Kong: Skull Island in cast; Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman and Tom Hiddleston beat Eleven, Ben Affleck love interest and a random Skarsgard hands down).
And it’s light-years better than the 1962 King Kong vs. Godzilla, which features perhaps the saddest Kong ever committed to film. (Banglar King Kong doesn’t count.)
If you like Godzilla movies, this one is well worth catching while it’s still in theaters.
