MichaelPenkas – Page 5

Rat Queens, Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery

Tuesday, July 1, 2014 MichaelPenkas Comments 2 comments

I’ve seen this title compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tank Girl, and Lord of the Rings. But honestly, it seems to be nothing more or less than a homage to Dungeons & Dragons. Not the novels or the cartoon show or the (ugh!) movie. It’s a homage to the game we played, complete with fighter/magic-user/thief/cleric four-member parties, healing spells as plentiful as aspirin, random monster encounters, and characters who talk more like a group of suburban teenagers than mercenaries in a pseudo-mideval age.

The Rat Queens are a team of four adventurers. Violet is a dwarven fighter who worries a bit too much about her image. Hannah is an elven mage whose necromancer parents occasionally nag her on a scrying device that looks suspiciously similar to a cell phone. Dee is a human, an atheist, and a cleric (because nobody cares who you pray to, as long as your healing spells still work). Betty is a smidgen (because the Tolkien estate owns the term “hobbit” and the Dungeons & Dragons estate probably laid some claim to their alternative term “halfling”) thief who sounds just like someone whose diet consists of drugs and candy. Together, they kill monsters for money, then spend that money on alcohol and drugs (which gets them into more trouble than the monster killing).

The story opens with the Rat Queens (and four other four-member adventuring teams) being arrested for wrecking the city of Palisade on a drunken bender. To avoid a stint in the dungeon, they are each given a quest. On their way to murder a pack of goblins, the Rat Queens are waylaid by an assassin, then a troll. When they fail to find any goblins in the area, they realize that they’ve been set up. Returning to Palisade, the Queens discover that the other teams were similarly ambushed and many of them are dead. What follows are more fights with assassins, a troll army, and the mystery of who hired the assassins to kill the adventurers. Many people die and the survivors get totally wrecked at a party.

Rat Queens is a fairly new series (only six issues out so far), with the first five issues already collected in a trade paperback titled, Sass and Sorcery. The stories in these issues start with fairly conventional fantasy plots, then twist them into bizarre new shapes. There is a lot of profanity, a lot of drinking, and some drug use, so it’s not an all ages book by any stretch of the imagination, but well worth its low introductory price ($9.99) for anyone who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons. If you’re looking for a comparison, instead of Lord of the Rings meets Bridesmaids, how about Knights of the Dinner Table meets Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas?

Rat Queens, Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery is written by Kurtis J Wiebe, illustrated by Roc Upchurch, and available in both print and digital formats. Find out more about this series (including preview pages and where to order a copy) at Image Comics.

From the Celluloid Cellar: Star Wars

Tuesday, April 1, 2014 MichaelPenkas Comments 10 comments

Long-time science fiction fans will likely be familiar with Star Wars, if only by its reputation. Initially a flop at the box office, it survives today mostly as a midnight movie curiosity. Indeed, it took studios over a decade to invest in another big-budget science fiction film after the massive failure of George Lucas’s love letter to the movie serials of the 1930s. But an objective review shows that it’s not nearly as bad as word-of-mouth makes and, once the plot finally gets moving, is actually a lot of fun, despite (maybe a little because of) its many flaws.

So, the plot? In a distant galaxy, an evil empire rules the many inhabited worlds with an iron fist. Cue the ragtag rebellion trying to free the galaxy from the Empire’s control. First problem with the plot? The Galaxy, Empire, and Rebellion are unnamed in this film, each going simply by a definitive article.

The leader of the Rebellion is Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher), dressed all in white like a virgin sacrifice, but carrying a bad-ass ray gun. The main bad guy? There is an Emperor (mentioned, but never seen) and General Tarkin (played by Peter Cushing as a delightfully over-the-top space nazi); but the clear face of evil is Tarkin’s chief lieutenant, Darth Vader. A seven-foot tall wizard dressed in head-to-toe black armor, face covered by a black Shogun skull mask and voiced as pure hate incarnate by James Earl Jones, it’s hard to imagine this film was ever marketed to children with this walking nightmare engine chewing the scenery. The scenes between eighteen year-old wisp Fisher and this creepy heavy-breathing monster are especially disturbing.

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Mark of the Cloven, Part 1: Cripples’ Deluge

Monday, January 6, 2014 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

Mark of the Cloven is a nine-part illustrated novel set in the narrative world of Jiba Molei Anderson’s Horsemen series. The premise is that the ancient gods of Africa have set out to make their presence known in the world again. To this end, they have taken a sort of benign possession of seven human beings, not so much controlling their actions as giving them access to their forms and abilities. Basically, seven mortals are granted the powers of gods and use these powers to become superheroes. Of course, the existence of superheroes all but demands the equal presence of supervillains; chief among these villains are the Deitis and their superhuman children. At the start of this story, the seven god-blessed mortals are already well-known in this world; their influence has affected drastic social changes, resulting in Africa ascending to the dominant world superpower, as the United States falls into a new Depression.

Part one of this story opens with Djenaba, a doctor struggling to keep people alive in the remnants of Detroit, being asked by one of the god-mortals to help a boatload of refugees escape to Canada (in this world, America’s border patrols are focused on keeping people in, not out). In her aspect as water goddess Yemaya, Djenaba is guiding the rusted-out boat to the Canadian shore when she is attacked by three offspring of the Deitis, code-named Strain, Clarion, and Crate. All three of them are handicapped in some way, but Djenaba/Yemaya doesn’t underestimate them for long, because each has found a way to counter his or her handicap, turning weakness into strength. What follows is a series of fight scenes where our heroine struggles not only to stay alive, but also to protect the refugees (and even her three attackers).

The superhero comics came to prominence in the late 1930s, during the Great Depression. By setting the series in a new Depression, Jiba Anderson and Jude Mire evoke the very core of the superhero myth: the dream of having the power to make the world a better place. As a doctor, Djenaba is already in a position to improve the lives of others. We see just enough of her efforts at the story’s beginning to know that it is, essentially, a losing battle. As the quasi-goddess Yemaya, she has more power, but also attracts new problems in the form of supervillains. It goes back to the narrative device that keeps most superhero comics spinning their creative wheels indefinitely: all that great power only brings great obstacles that force the hero to exert more effort simply to maintain the status quo.

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Mask of the Macabre by David Haynes

Tuesday, July 9, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

Looking for some new horror, but sick of zombie apocalypses, vampire/werewolf boyfriends, philosophic serial killers, and all those ghost children? Something fresh? Or something that pulls from an older tradition? David Haynes’s Mask of the Macabre is available for ninety-nine cents.

This ebook is broken down into four interconnected stories set in 1860s England. The style borrows more from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari than Saw or The Walking Dead. The first story in the series, “Mask of the Macabre,” concerns a decadent patron of a decadent theatre whose life is touched unexpectedly by a string of mutilations that predates the Ripper murders by a quarter century. The second story, “Doctor Harvey,” delves into the background of a psychiatrist who has no business judging the sanity of others. “Memento Mori” concerns an early photographer who specializes in capturing the images of the recently deceased, whose latest commission is even grislier than mere corpses. Finally, “A New Costume” wraps up the series, explaining some mysteries of how the three previous stories are inter-connected, as well as leaving hints to future horrors that await those who continue with the series.

This is the first in a series of e-novelettes by David Haynes. If you want to learn more about the author, check out his website.

Michael Penkas has been writing for years. His first collection of stories, Dead Boys, is available through Amazon and Smashwords.

Battlepug by Mike Norton

Tuesday, June 11, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 1 comment

Battlepug is a weekly web-comic that follows the adventures a big, dumb beast. And his dog. Writer/artist Mike Norton starts off the story as a fairly standard Conan-style barbarian origin piece. You know the spiel … innocent boy orphaned after his village is destroyed, forced into a life of slavery that builds both his muscles and his hunger for revenge. But there are signs along the way that remind us this won’t be the usual dreary rip-off. First of all, the terror that murders our hero’s village is pretty much the cutest thing you’ll see (until the arrival of the titular pug, anyway). Second, the Northern Elves who enslave the boy look all-too-familiar (as does their grim and merciless king). By the time the giant pug on the cover appeared in the story (which is twenty pages, or five months, along), I was already sold on the premise.

Writing a cliffhanger serial is difficult enough. Writing a cliffhanger serial where every single page is a cliffhanger, without ever seeming forced, is the work of a master storyteller. This story never gets tedious, even when it breaks for the narrator offering her own commentary (of course, it helps that the narrator is naked and covered in tattoos, and the audience is a pair of talking puppies). The strip’s been running for over two years and still continues to pull left turns with no end in sight. All the common tropes, the princess in need of rescue, the obligatory big bad, the ruthless warrior woman, are given goofy interpretations, with a few surprise cameos (like an unexpected couple who run a ferry service). As a fan of fantasy (especially sword and sorcery), it was nice to see a story that was paradoxically lampooning, while at the same time honoring, all those standard plot elements. Basically, this story works even as it’s making fun of everything else in the genre.

You can catch a new page of Battlepug every Monday at the website. It’s totally free, which means you’ve got no excuse not to check it out. But if you feel like supporting the artist (bandwidth isn’t free, people), the first bundle of pages have been collected into a traditional print collection (with volume two on its way in August). There’s also a pair of Battlepug t-shirts available (classic style or “Thunderpug”).

And if none of this has convinced you, I’ll just close my post with two words: ghost manatee.

Michael Penkas writes in a variety of genres, is the current website editor for Black Gate, maintains a blog, and has recently published a collection of his early published stories, Dead Boys (available through Amazon and Smashwords).

It’s Dark Inside by Karen Heard

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 4 comments

There’s a sub-genre known as “quiet horror,” an alternative to the explicit gore or overtly supernatural fare that’s been prevalent in horror since the eighties. Charles Grant’s much-praised Shadows series is one of the best examples you’ll find of this type of writing. There aren’t a lot of writers today who try this type of story and even fewer who succeed. Karen Heard is one of those rarely talented authors who can unsettle a reader without ever explicitly stating what has happened. It’s Dark Inside is her first collection and these six stories are hopefully only the beginning of many more to come.

The collection begins with “The Lighthouse,” a tale of isolation in the wake of some manner of unspecified disaster. “Snap” is set in what may be a not-too-distant future, wherein a photo-journalist is on a quest to find and photograph the last living elephant. “The Picture” is a different type of ghost story, where we learn about the things that can scare a man who is already dead. “Out of Order” surprises the reader by starting as one type of standard horror story before shifting into something very different as the reader is left unsure of not only what the “monster” is, but where exactly it is hiding. “The Promise” was a bit frustrating, as it depends on the protagonist not figuring out what is fairly obvious to the reader, but makes up for it with a wonderful twist ending. The collection wraps up with “Inside,” a story that leaves the reader unsure if the protagonist is beset by a supernatural menace or merely losing her mind, still managing to surprise with an unexpected (yet in retrospect completely logical) solution.

It’s Dark Inside is available in paperback for the low price of $6.50. For those of you on a budget, there’s the even lower-priced e-book edition for only 99 cents. For those of you on an even tighter budget (come on, already), you can preview one of the stories, “The Lighthouse,” on Ms. Heard’s blog, Misheard Fiction. Check it out and then decide if one of the best quiet horror story collections you’ll read this year is worth the cost of half a cup of coffee.

TAPE

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

Jason Coffman wrote, directed, produced, and shot this thirteen-minute slow-burn nightmare. Jim Carston (played by Aaron Christensen) has a problem. He finds a business card for one Mr. Lake, who specializes in “Unusual Services.” Mr. Lake agrees to make Carston’s problem go away, but on one condition. After the job is completed, he will receive a videotape and, no matter what he does, he will have to possess that tape for the rest of his life.

Now, right off, it’s a little strange that a 2012 film should revolve around a videotape, but the medium is already so outdated that it has a strange nostalgic feel to it. And, as we see in the film’s surprising climax, there’s just things you can do with a tape that can’t be done with a disc.

This short film is already gathering critical acclaim and you can watch it now on Vimeo, as well as learn more about it at the Rabbit Room Productions website. And if you want to see more of the enigmatic businessman, Mr. Lake, there’s a sequel of sorts floating around the Internet titled, “Secret Cinema.”

Just be careful about picking up strange business cards.

Michael Penkas is the website editor for Black Gate. A collection of four of his stories, titled Dead Boys, is available for download through Amazon and Smashwords. You can learn more about his various publications on his blog.

Penpal by Dathan Auerbach

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

It began in October 2011, when an anonymous poster on Reddit, going by the username 1000vultures, posted a creepy little short titled simply “Footsteps.” Over the following weeks, the fanbase for 1000vultures swelled as five more stories were posted. Eventually, Dathan Auerbach (the author’s “civilian” name) began the process of revising those six little pieces, connecting and expanding them until he had his first novel, Penpal. After a successful Kickstarter campaign (where he made more than ten times his initial goal), he was ready to publish the thing.

Honestly, I picked up all of that after the fact. I’d never frequented Reddit’s No Sleep page, nor did I catch the Kickstarter campaign when it was going on. I just heard about a creepy little book by a new name on the horror scene and thought I’d check it out.

The book is broken into six parts, each set in a different point in the narrator’s childhood. Taken together, the stories come away like snapshots of one great horror, taken from different angles. The first story, “Footsteps,” evokes the universal fear felt by every child at least once: the fear of being lost. “Balloons” is the story that lays out the groundwork for what is to come. “Boxes” takes the story out of being strictly psychological horror and into something more physically threatening. “Maps” is the point when we are shown that the mystery might truly be something unknowable. “Screens” is the point when the author lets some of his own influences show. And the last story, “Friends,” wraps up the cycle with a couple surprises and a revelation of what truly is the heart of the story.

To be sure, this is the author’s first novel and there are some learning curve mistakes made in the narrative. The only problem I really had with the story was a sort of floating timeline. Ordinarily, it shouldn’t matter in what specific year a story takes place, but cell phones and the Internet seems to float in and out of existence. (Seriously, how do you not know how to find somebody’s phone number?) Otherwise, it’s a creepy little novel from a rising talent who hopefully produces many more.

You can pick up Penpal in print ($9.99) or as an e-book ($4.99) and learn more about the imprint 1000 Vultures (including how Auerbach came up with the name) at his website.

The Book of Horrible Stories by Sheila C. Johnson

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

The first thing we can tell about Sheila Johnson, before we even open this book, is that she has no fear of jinxing herself with a title like The Book of Horrible Stories. For a change, I was delighted to find that the work did not live up to the title.

Within are five (six, if you count the preface, which I do) short stories that explore the art of storytelling, the source of inspiration and how the tropes of horror are often metaphors for things even more horrifying. Beautiful and surreal, but never so vague that they lose the reader. “The Garden Witch and the Boy” sets the tone with a tale of childhood guilt and nightmares. (And when are guilt and nightmares more intense than in childhood?) “The Tree in the Field” starts with a quirky, surreal premise and takes it further than expected. “An Interlude” is Johnson’s answer to that eternal question asked of writers: “Where do you get your ideas?” (It follows up with the question no one asks: “What happens if you ignore those ideas?”) “Mrs. Ambrose and the Conversational Shimmer” is my favorite of the bunch, a ghost story of sorts and a zombie story of sorts, that delves into themes more disturbing than gruesome. The collection is capped by the story that gave the collection its name: “The Book of Horrible Stories,” a love letter to the horror genre itself and to every child who discovers it.

The collection is beautifully illustrated by Wesley Wong and available for $12.00 on Sheila Johnson’s web site. If money’s tight, you can get the Kindle version for a measly 99 cents. This one goes on the shelf between Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link (and not just because that’s where it happens to fall in the alphabet).

Seriously. Ninety-nine cents. Go. Buy.

Blue Sonja: The Last Red Sonja Post

Tuesday, April 23, 2013 MichaelPenkas Comments 1 comment

I started this series of posts with the intention of only writing one. “In Defense of Red Sonja” was meant to be a stand-alone post about how the character was more than just a female version of Conan the Barbarian, more than just a fan-service redhead in a chain mail bikini, more than a misogynist rape-challenge. I’ve been collecting comics from the “Bronze Age” (approximately 1970 through 1985) for years and Red Sonja wasn’t the only female character to pop up. There was Spider-Woman, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel … all clearly starting as female versions of established male heroes and all eventually transcending those limits to become their own concepts.

That first post quickly grew in size, reaching over three-thousand words before even going into her appearances in Marvel Feature or her self-titled book. As it covered three distinct themes (how she differed from Conan, where the bikini came from, what the vow meant), I thought it would be better to break it into three separate articles. By the time the third post came out, I’d gotten enough positive reaction that I thought it might be nice to keep exploring how the character grew over the course of her own title. It was at this point that I realized just how much humor got slipped in to various panels of the title, which got me in the habit of highlighting a couple images each week. The novels and film were good ways to show how the character translated into other media, as well as how she was still evolving. And it was all a lot of fun.

So why is this the end? There were two more Marvel Comics series in the early eighties, as well as two Dynamite Entertainment series (Red Sonja and Queen Sonja) currently running. Not to mention a slew of one-shots and mini-series. I’ve got enough material to easily keep this column running at least another three years. And it is tempting to try.

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