Search Results for: thrill power overload

Thrill-Power Overload: A History of the British Comic 2000 AD

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I love comic book history. I’ve got a few books at home of the golden and silver age of American comics I reread every so often. I recently got the chance to check out Thrill-Power Overload, the history of the British comic book series 2000AD in honor of their 40th anniversary. I usually read only American comics, but over the last two years, I’ve been reading 2000AD and Judge Dredd comics, both the recent ones, and some of the their…

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IMHO: Giving Voices to Your Characters

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James Doohan (as Scotty): “I’m giving her all she’s got, Capt’n!” I owe a great debt of gratitude to my two good friends, who were of immense help to me in the creation and shaping of my two (so far) volumes of Mad Shadows. Neither are strangers to Black Gate, for I interviewed both of them for this e-zine: Ted Rypel (author of the Saga of Gonji Sabatake: The Deathwind Trilogy, Fortress of Lost Worlds, A Hungering of Wolves, and Dark Ventures);…

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Paul Bishop on Lance Spearman – The Black James Bond

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) Paul Bishop wrote the very first entry for our Discovering Robert E. Howard series (covering REH’s fight stories). I knew he’d come up with another great piece for the return of A (Black) Gat in…

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Future Treasures: Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

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The six novels in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence have earned him a reputation as a modern master of urban fantasy (not to mention a Hugo nomination.) His latest novel, Empress of Forever, is something very different. Delilah S. Dawson calls it “A classic space opera that impossibly becomes a thrilling dungeon crawl fantasy,” and if that’s not a perfect book blurb, I don’t know what is. In her feature review at The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog yesterday, Nicole Hill…

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2000AD’s The Complete Futureshocks, Volume 1

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In my ongoing study of comic history and the craft of comic storytelling, I’ve looked at the history of 2000AD, Alan Moore’s Halo Jones, and the density of comic layouts, in part because as a novelist and short story writer, I’m trying to learn things from other story forms. And comics have a lot to teach me about pacing, conciseness and story density. And in no place are stories more dense than in 2000AD‘s Futureshocks. These are stories that range in…

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1970s Horror Comics, Old and New: Eerie and Bloke’s Terrible Tomb of Terror

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In time for coincidence with Hallowe’en, a friend recently pointed me at Bloke’s Terrible Tomb of Terror, a magazine walking in the path of such 1970s Warren horror magazines as Creepy and Eerie. I picked up a pdf copy just before the etsy store went on a bit of a break while The Bloke (Jason Crawley) moves house and shop. (30 October, 2017: The Bloke’s site is back up and I just bought two more issues at the online shop.)…

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Early Peek at 2000AD Prog #2050: A Jumping-On Issue

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2000AD is a weekly anthology book, typically with 4 stories running at a time, with some at the middle while others are ending, which makes it hard to find a meaty run to review. Several times a year, 2000AD publishes issues (pronounced progs if you’re speaking with a British accent) for new people to jump on — where every story is beginning. Prog #2050 is such an issue and will be hitting newsstand (and the internet as a digital issue) on…

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Breaking Into Comics as a Writer: Mucho Opportunities

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I knew I wanted to be a writer basically when I learned how to write in English. That might have been as young as grade two, but certainly by grade three (I was in immersion school so we learned to read and write in French first). My mother gave me my first four comic books in the summer between grades four and five, and I remember making plans with my best friend Eric (who liked to draw) about us making comics…

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When People Say the British Invasion of Comics, What Do They Really Mean?

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I think it’s a truism that either you have no taste as a child (The Golden Age of Science Fiction Is Ages 8-12 Effect) or that you just haven’t read enough to be discerning. I think I’ve certainly suffered from being 12 as well as not having read enough. There are books and comics I read when younger that don’t do anything for me in my forties. And there are good books and comics whose tropes have been so over-used…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

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Back in December, Derek Kunsken’s enthusiastic review of Star Wars: Rogue One, “I Am One With the Force and the Force Is With Me,” shot up to #2 on our monthly traffic chart. Last month he claimed the #1 slot, and he didn’t need a blockbuster film to make it happen — he did it the old fashioned way, with a book review. The book in question was Thrill-Power Overload: A History of the British Comic 2000 AD, a detailed history…

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