Search Results for: tale covers

EC Comics is back

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Cruel Universe #1 and Epitaphs from the Abyss #1. Covers by Greg Smallwood and Andrea Sorrentino EC Comics is back. In cooperation with Oni Press, the classic imprint that brought us Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and other titles is back. The two new titles are called Cruel Universe and Epitaphs from the Abyss. Cruel Universe #1 features four stories, “The Champion,” “Solid Shift,” “Drink Up,” and “Priceless.” The stories are each written…

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I Read a Year of Robert E. Howard Pastiche So You Don’t Have To (But you really might want to)

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Three installments in The Heroic Legends Series from Titan Books: Conan: The Shadow of Vengeance by Scott Oden (January 30, 2024), Solomon Kane: The Hound of God by Jonathan Maberry (November 28, 2023), and Bran Mak Morn: Red Waves of Slaughter by Steven L. Shrewsbury (March 26, 2024) Pastiche — basically, licensed fan-fic — has been around as long as there has been fiction, but certain properties “lock in” on it; becoming sometimes so richly filled with authorized sequels, continuations…

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Booyah! Quatro-Decadal Review, an Introduction to the World as it was in November 1999

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Some of the print SF magazines of November 1999: The 50th Anniversary issue ofThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, and the October-November doubleissue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Covers by Chesley Bonestell, Kim Poor, and Jim Burns With the ‘69, ‘79 and ‘89 magazines behind me I prepare to delve into 1999. On the one hand, my memories of 30-year-old-me (30 YOM), while closer in time than 20YOM, are perhaps a bit hazier because unlike 20 YOM, 30 YOM…

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A to Z Reviews: “The Curious Child & the Covetous Dragon,” by Sara L. Uckelman

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Over the past several years, I’ve embarked on a series of year-long review cycles at Black Gate. In 2018, I reviewed a story-a-day to coincide with an author whose birthday it was. In 2022, I selected stories completely at random from my collection to review. In both of those cases, the projects served to find forgotten and minor works of science fiction that spanned a range of years. They also served to make me read stories and authors who I…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Dragons and Wolveses

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Wolfhound (Russia, 2006) The Barbarian Boom of the ‘80s was the first normalization of fantasy as a mainstream genre for the movies. As the boom faded in the ‘90s (Xena notwithstanding), it seemed as if fantasy film had been just another passing phase. But then, in the early 2000s, along came The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean series: the Second Normalization of Fantasy Film had arrived, and as we’re still living with it in 2024, it…

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Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery – Cover Artist Perspectives and Campaign

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Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (author, screenwriter, podcaster, and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS first two magazine releases (also Mele’s review of #1), and NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes (July of 2024).  Now, as of Sept 19th, NESS continues this epic trend of presenting contemporary adventure fiction in fun ways with their second crowdfunded book DOUBLE-EDGED…

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The End of Time and Me: Michael Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time

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The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy: An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and The End of All Songs (Avon Books, September and November 1977, and June 1978). Cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes When I discovered Moorcock in the early 1980s, I read his trilogy Dancers at the End of Time and the associated novel A Messiah at the End of Time. I remember enjoying the trilogy, though I have only vague memories of the stand-alone novel. Back in…

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Of Artistry, Addiction, and Self-discovery: Forthcoming Memoir of Fantasy Artist Tom Barber

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The art of Tom Barber: Amazing Science Fiction, March 1976, and the first issue of the paperback version of Weird Tales, edited by Lin Carter (Zebra Books, December 1980) The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. –Kurt Vonnegut Tom Barber was working in a commercial art…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Pirates Rise from a Watery Grave

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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (USA, 2003) It’s hard to remember now, but a mere quarter-century ago, the pirate movie genre was dead and over, ninety years of cheesy swashbuckling and occasional scalawag glory doomed to the ash-heap of history. And then, grinning with malice, pirate films rose like drowned zombies and shambled back to the screen, more raffish and rakehelly than ever. And who do we have to thank for this unforeseen and unholy…

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The Tuvela Theory: The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz

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The Demon Breed (Ace Books, September 1979). Cover by Bob Adragna Earlier this year, I visited my city library during a book sale. One of the things I spotted on their shelves was a novel by James H. Schmitz that I wasn’t familiar with. I’ve liked Schmitz since I discovered his story “Novice” in the collection Analog 2 — so I bought this one. The Demon Breed came out in 1968, fairly late in Schmitz’s career, which lasted from 1943 to…

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