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The Haunted House in Westminster

This is a review of the short story The Haunted House in Westminster, aka Mr. Justice Harbottle, written by Sheridan Le Fanu and published in his collection Green Tea and Other Weird Stories. I have been reading and reviewing ghost stories for the past three months, and this tale – which is set in Victorian era England – fits that mold.

The hero (?!?) of our story is Judge Harbottle, who is old, corrupt, and ridden with gout. He has just sentenced the husband (a Mr. Pyneweck) of his mistress/housemaid to death. Sounds like a Victorian melodrama, right? Well, not exactly. The author does not explicitly say whether Pyneweck is innocent or guilty. Pyneweck’s wife shrugs off her husband’s death. Le Fanu tells us mourning is not in her nature, which he describes as coarse and unrefined. Whatever the reason, there are very few tears shed for the condemned man.

Pyneweck is important because he symbolizes the judge’s corruption, and is sentenced to death because Harbottle decides he must die. So was Pyneweck innocent? I suppose it doesn’t matter, and neither do the finer details of his character. But to me he morphs into something sinister, becoming the agent of the judge’s presumably supernatural downfall.

The story begins with the judge meeting a strange old man, who might be Pyneweck in disguise. The problem with this theory is that Pyneweck is in jail. A brother is mentioned. After Pyneweck is hanged, the judge falls asleep in his carriage and has a vivid dream/hallucination where he is tried by the Kingdom of Life and Death and found guilty.

Since the judge loves to indulge in vice, maybe it’s a hallucination brought on by overindulgence. This is possible, but later in the story everyone in the Judge’s household sees the ghosts. If that’s what they are. These apparitions seem solid for ghosts, but they appear and reappear like phantoms. I’d make more of this, except the frame story explicitly tells us that they are supernatural creatures.

Judge Harbottle is a nasty character, who in his youth fought his fair share of duels and never backed away from a fight. Of course, those days are long gone. Nowadays the Judge does most of his fighting on the bench, where he browbeats juries into giving whatever verdict he sees fit. In short, he’s an unlikable s.o.b. Nobody in this story is very likable.

Le Fanu, though, is likable! This is my first time reading him, and I enjoyed the story. He is famous as the author of Carmilla, a vampire story predating the more famous Dracula. Recommended for lovers of Victorian ghost stories.

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Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes Volume One

This is a review of Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes Volume One, written by Paul Levitz and featuring art from a number of artists, including Mike Grell. The Legion of Super Heroes is a Silver Age invention, with an ensemble cast of 30th century teenaged superheroes and superheroines, including Superboy (who flies in from the 20th century).

This volume features three interesting storylines. The first is the wedding of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, whose nuptials are disturbed by the Time Trapper. The Trapper alters history but nobody knows it except Superboy, who travels to the 30th century from a time period BEFORE history was changed. The second story features Grimbor the Chainsman, whose goal in life is tying up members of the Legion. Surprisingly, good ole’ Grimbor hasn’t been used all that much lately.

The third is a storyline about the framing of Ultra Boy, a character who possesses Superboy’s abilities but can only use one of his powers at a time. Ultra Boy visits former lover, An Ryd. Yes, that’s her name. Ultra Boy seems confused as to why she would choose a cheap motel room for their meeting. Unfortunately for him, An Ryd has no interests but self-interests and sells him out. I have no idea if she’s an objectivist, but this story makes it clear that Ultra Boy is really stupid. Poor An Ryd is murdered and Ultra Boy wakes, framed for her murder.

When his Legion buddies ask him to explain, Ultra Boy of course acts like a criminal and runs away. Left on his own, there is little doubt Ultra Boy would be in solitary for a hundred years, but luckily there exist Legion members with three-digit IQs. The culprit – not the murderer – is revealed, and Ultra Boy is vindicated!

There are a bunch of interesting things about this storyline, chief among them being that Ultra Boy cannot decipher social cues, especially sexual social cues. His girlfriend, Phantom Girl, looks very wholesome and even wears her hair in ponytails. There’s also the heavily muscled older male science officer who seems to take Ultra Boy’s betrayal personally. All stuff I would have missed back in my teens.

Anyway, did I mention that Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad get hitched? They have to quit the team because the Legion’s charter forbids married members. One of the reasons I enjoyed these issues so much is that nobody ever asks the obvious question, such as ‘why not change the charter then?’ The members themselves act more like new adults than teenagers, but there’s still a lot of posturing, chest-beating, and stupid drama.

 Paul Levitz is the gold standard for the Legion of Super Heroes, and these stories are better than most of the comics being published around that time period (late 70’s, early 80’s). Recommended for Legion of Super Heroes fans and also fans of space opera, because a few of these stories (Time Trapper) feature interesting science fiction concepts.

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The Mezzotint

This is a review of the short story The Mezzotint, written by M.R. James and published in his collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Read my review of Lost Hearts, the last story I reviewed, here. M.R. James was a Cambridge scholar who wrote ghost stories in the early 20th century.

A mezzotint is “a print made from an engraved copper or steel plate on which the surface has been partially roughened, for shading, and partially scraped smooth, giving light areas (source: Oxford Languages).” I mention this because I didn’t know what a mezzotint is. Basically, it’s the proverbial picture of a vase of flowers on the wall, or the volumes of Classic Authors collecting dust on the bookshelves. Boring decoration, which is why the author uses it.

Like all of Mr. James’ protagonists, Mr. Williams is an academic. He is an Oxford man. James, who hails from Cambridge, takes the opportunity to poke some (assumedly) good-natured fun at the rival university. Mr. Williams takes the mezzotint ‘on approval,’ which means he can return it if he doesn’t like it. This mezzotint depicts a manor house at night. Dull, right? Except the picture changes when you don’t look at it, which isn’t so dull. Add in a figure draped in a black robe and a child, and you’ve got a creepy little ghost story.

I’d be remiss not mentioning the Sadducean Professor of Ophiology, the unnamed personage who makes a brief appearance at the story’s end. Sadducean Professor of Ophiology translates to a skeptical professor of snakes, or perhaps an atheist professor of snake handling. I don’t know which. It’s a joke. James loved making up official sounding academic titles that mean nothing. Besides writing creepy stories, he also had a sense of humor!

This is the last short story in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. I also reviewed Lost Hearts, The Ash Tree, Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, Number Thirteen, Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, Count Magnus, and The Treasure of Abbott Thomas. If you are a fan of ghost stories, there is no excuse not to read M.R. James, and this volume collects some of his best ghost stories. I say ‘some,’ because his later ghost stories are excellent also. Recommended!

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Daredevil Omnibus by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. Part One.

This is a review of Daredevil Omnibus by Frank Miller (artist/writer) and Klaus Janson (artist/inker), which consists of Frank Miller’s legendary run on Daredevil, from issue #158 – 191. This review covers the first half of the omnibus, from 158 – 175. Wow, that’s a lot of exposition! Are these comics any good? Well, yes, they sure are. Mr. Miller made such an imprint on Daredevil that creative teams have tried – and mostly failed – to imitate this run for years.

Frank Miller’s run began when he took over the art duties for writer Roger McKenzie. The highlights of Mr. McKenzie’s run in this omnibus are a three-issue fight with Bullseye, with the final battle set in Coney Island; and an encounter with the Hulk, which is a homage to the Man Without Fear’s fight with the Sub-Mariner way back in Daredevil #7. When Mr. Miller takes over the writing duties, Daredevil makes a seismic leap in quality. He writes the Black Widow out of the comic and introduces Matt’s crazy ex-girlfriend/assassin Elektra, who was created for one reason, which I will not mention here because spoilers. The stories themselves are shorter, punchier (literally!), and have a harder, grittier edge.

Mr. Miller stretches Daredevil to his limits, beefing up his rogue’s gallery by adding crime boss The Kingpin as the big baddie. In their first encounter, Daredevil dances around the Kingpin like a ballet diva, until the Big Man ends the fight with a single punch to Hornhead’s face. Having your villain be stronger and arguably smarter than your hero is something not many creative teams have the guts to do.

The creative team also puts Daredevil through the emotional wringer. When arch-nemesis Bullseye goes crazy because of a brain tumor and embarks on a killing spree, Daredevil beats the crap out of him in the subway. Bullseye lies unconscious on the tracks, directly in the path of an approaching train. Daredevil saves him because he believes in the law, i.e. that nobody is above the law. This ranks as the single biggest mistake of his crimefighting career, because after the doctor removes the tumor Bullseye goes back to killing people. Is Daredevil responsible? You can argue either way. There’s another reason letting Bullseye live was a mistake, but no need to go into that here.

Normally, I am not crazy about testing a character’s values in this way, because the writer holds all the cards. I believe it was writer Dan Slott who was asked who would win a fight between Hulk and Thor. His answer: whoever the writer wants to win. That being said, the way Mr. Miller tests Daredevil’s belief system is organic and believable. Some would say it is inevitable.

I hated these issues when they came out in the early 1980’s, because I thought the art was ugly. It was different from anything I’d read before, and I had trouble processing. Now I will say that the art is dynamic, emphasizing the human form and giving readers Mr. Miller’s wonderful take on New York City (look at all that grit, kids!). This is one of the best superhero runs of all time, period. Recommended for fans of superhero comics; if you are a Daredevil fan, what are you waiting for?

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Lost Hearts

This is a review of the short story Lost Hearts, written by M.R. James and published in his collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Read my review of The Ash Tree, the last story I reviewed, here. M.R. James was a Cambridge scholar who wrote ghost stories in the early 20th century.

Recently orphaned Stephen Elliott comes to Aswarby (an actual village in England) to live with his elderly cousin, Mr. Abney. Mr. James begins by describing the architecture of the hall, which has no bearing whatsoever on the story, and then tells us that Mr. Abney is an expert in Greek paganism. This is important, mainly because Mr. Abney is planning on sacrificing his 11-year old young cousin.

Why is Stephen’s age important? I don’t know. Mr. Abney seems to think it’s important, because he makes sure that he’s under twelve years old. The voluminous expository text at the story’s end states that the human sacrifice must be under 21 years, but there is no way anyone – even an old coot like Mr. Abney – could mistake an 11-year old for a 21-year old. My guess is that the text at the end should read as twelve years old.

Neither Stephen Elliott nor any of the servants knows that Mr. Abney wants to sacrifice him, but it should be fairly obvious to the reader of this type of tale, especially when we learn that two other children under his ‘care’ mysteriously vanished. Mr. Abney certainly qualifies as one of James’ absentminded academics, with a twist. Evil or crazy, take your pick.

Lost Hearts contains two unsettling images, one involving a dream sequence in a bathroom and the other occurring on the night of the sacrifice – except Mr. Abney is the one who loses his heart. The old man wants to move to another plane, which describes death pretty well, so I guess we have a happy ending!

Lost Hearts is a good story, with more plot than most of the other tales reviewed in this volume. From the modern point of view, the main issue is that it is overwritten, but that is typical for tales of this time period. Also, young Stephen (the protagonist) could be more involved. Maybe he lets the ghost children in, or whatever. Right now, he is just a spectator.

Recommended for fans of ghost stories, especially Victorian/Edwardian ghost stories!

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The Flash Silver Age Volume Three

This is a review of The Flash Silver Age Volume Three, written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino. Read my reviews of Volumes One and Two here and here. The Flash is of course the Fastest Man on Earth. Mild-mannered police scientist Barry Allen is struck by lightning, which grants him super speed. He can outrun bullets, time travel, and control every atom in his body! He has a fiancée, hen reporter (not a typo, Google it!)  Iris Allen; a young protégé, Kid Flash; a weird friend, The Elongated Man; PLUS a bow-tie, and he’s ready to go!

Know that this volume contains many erudite rogues, the type of blue-collar supervillain who will haul beer crates during the day and invent a perpetual motion machine during lunch break. Instead of selling their inventions and living the rest of their lives in luxury, they use their inventions to rob jewelry stores. They’re all the same character in that they are doing it for the kicks and not the money. We have an episode with the Mirror Master – I think it was the Mirror Master – breaking out of jail because his rogue rating went down in the prison newspaper, which I’m guessing is put out by his fellow cons. His rogue rating goes up and then tanks when the Flash flattens him.

There are also a few science fiction stories. I respect the fact that Mr. Broome always invents an explanation for his ridiculous Silver Age stories. In one story, the Flash time travels to the future to videotape the end of the earth for his girlfriend. He touches something, which is stupid, and ends up with Hands of Death ™. Everything he touches withers and dies. How to cure this? Just eat grain and oats, which I guess is immune to aging but will absorb the toxins in his hands and thus create an antidote when consumed. Simple!

The Flash’s supporting cast continues to expand. We meet Iris Allen’s brilliant professor father, who I’m sure wanders around asking people what day of the week it is, but almost deduces Flash’s secret identity using Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. When Barry uses super speed, time slows down around him, and his watch slows down. That’s why he’s always late. He’s not a lazy bum after all! And we have The Reverse Flash, who hails from the 25th century and is destined to become the Flash’s greatest foe.

These comics were written in the 1960s for children and young teens, and now they are being made into TV shows and movies that make millions of dollars. How influential are these comics? Well, if the creative team wasn’t doing work-for-hire, they would’ve been millionaires before they died. The lesson: own your own intellectual property! If you are a fan of the Flash and Silver Age comics you will enjoy this.

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The Ash Tree

This is a review of the short story The Ash Tree, written by M.R. James and published in his collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Read my review of Count Magnus, the last story I reviewed, here. M.R. James was a Cambridge scholar who wrote ghost stories in the early 20th century.

The tale begins with Mr. James telling us how he’d like to own a manor house, and thus be the Lord of All He Surveys. He segues to England’s witch trials, and how a woman (Mrs. Mothersole) was hanged because of the testimony of Lord Matthew Fell, who did own a manor house. Lord Matthew’s testimony amounts to him seeing her acting strangely, which doesn’t mean she is a witch, but it’s enough to hang the old woman. Lord Matthew dies horribly in bed soon afterwards. His limbs turn black and swollen, and anyone who touches his skin with their bare hands gets very sick.

Nowadays, there is consensus that the victims of the witch hunts during the Middle Ages were innocent, misguided, or perhaps mentally ill women. However, Mrs. Mothersole is not innocent, misguided, or mentally ill. She’s the real deal. Years later, Matthew’s grandson Lord Richard sleeps in his grandpa’s room, which has been shut up for decades. He keeps the windows open, and the next day is dead as a doornail. When the ash tree growing next to the window is examined, they find some things they don’t expect.

Doing research (i.e. Google), I was surprised to learn that ash trees were viewed as sacred in pagan folklore. Since the characters of this story are mostly Good Christian Folk (patent pending), they would not share this worldview. Ash trees are also associated with children, which is ironic given the nature of the creatures. And, of course, Mothersole could mean ‘sole mother,’ and the text of the story links the creatures in the ash tree to her. In a way, they’re her children.         

Sir Richard himself is what I’d term giddy, or perhaps contrary. James doesn’t do a lot in the way of character development, but he does enough here. Sir Richard is not very likable. Does he deserve what happens to him? Well, yes and no. Sir Richard oversteps when he sleeps in his grandfather’s old room, which has been shut decades for a reason. It’s a naturalistic interpretation of a curse – what lives in that tree is real and not supernatural, and only dangerous under certain circumstances: i.e., if the Lord of the Manor sleeps in his bed. That’s enough.

I would not call this story scary or spine-tingling, but if you don’t like bugs it might squick you out. Recommended for fans of ghost stories and weird fiction!

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Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: The Beast of Vargu and Her Fatal Hour

This is a review of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: The Beast of Vargu and its sequel, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: Her Fatal Hour, both written by Mike Mignola. For the past six months I’ve been reviewing B.P.R.D. (aka Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) titles – you can read the last one here – and while I enjoy them, I like changing things up.

Please note that these tales take place in 1962 and 1979, so none of the current members of the B.P.R.D. are present. These are stories of Hellboy when he was a member of the B.P.R.D. He quit because they put a bomb in the brain of Roger, his golem buddy, in a graphic novel I haven’t reviewed yet.

In The Beast of Vargu, Hellboy travels to Romania to meet the Wolf Man – er, the Beast of Vargu, a creature that looks like an enormous wolf with wings. The Beast kicks Hellboy in the teeth, which is strange, because normally Hellboy is the one who does all the teeth-kicking. Background, for the unwary/uninitiated: Hellboy may or may not be the Anti-Christ – he periodically snaps off his horns, which regrow – but part of his gimmick is that he’s the monster that monsters are scared of.

Not this time. A bruised and bloodied Hellboy is found by a young Roma woman. She takes him to her cigarette-smoking mother, who treats Hellboy to a puppet show wherein a puppet Hellboy and a puppet Beast of Vargu fight, but this time Hellboy kills it. Do you think the Beast is really dead? That’s a rhetorical question; of course it’s dead!

Next we have the sequel, Her Fatal Hour, when the no-longer young Roma woman summons Hellboy to help out with her psychotic suitor, aka Satan, who comes crawling down the chimney at midnight to claim her soul. Hey, it happens. Hellboy pummels the Evil One wearing his host’s pink, flowered bathrobe. We also learn that Hellboy has a High Noon poster in his bedroom, which totally fits.

I enjoy the shorter Hellboy stories, which all follow the same template: Hellboy beats the crap out of an exotic monster. Sometimes nice and simple is best. Recommended for those who like horror, the occult, the Hellboy universe, and Devils who come crawling down chimneys.

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Count Magnus

This is a review of the short story Count Magnus, written by M.R. James and published in his collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Read my reviews of The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Canon Alberic’s Scrap Book, ‘Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come to You, My Lad,’ and Number Thirteen. M.R. James was a Cambridge scholar who wrote ghost stories in the early 20th century.

A scholar and gentleman-of-means named Wraxall travels to Sweden to write a guidebook and becomes interested in one Count Magnus, a deceased Swedish nobleman with a nasty reputation. Among other things, it’s said the Count went to Chorazin on the Black Pilgrimage and brought something/someone back with him. Before this, I’d never heard of Chorazin or the Black Pilgrimage. Reading is educational!

Wraxall, who talks to himself and easily loses track of his surroundings, seems like the type who walks into trees and other people’s houses. His cluelessness proves fatal when he unwittingly resurrects the Count and his companion, who looks like Cthulhu’s bratty kid brother.

Does this sound familiar? Maybe it does, because it’s the same plot as the past four stories in this volume. It goes like this: a scholar and man-of-means with wanderlust encounters the supernatural during the course of his travels. Sometimes he escapes with a few bad memories and minor phobias; sometimes his curiosity costs him his life.

None of James’ narrators have much in the way of a personality. All overstep a boundary, often without knowing it.  In this case, Wraxall summons Count Magnus by saying out loud he’d like to meet him. He has no way of knowing that the Count is ready and eager to accept visitors!

Lastly, the star of James’s stories is always the ghost, whether it’s a dancing and singing ghost, a ghost made out of bedsheets, or a ghost with the skin of a toad. James’s ghosts – and the way he describes the ghosts – are why he is still known and read today. Recommended for ghost story lovers!

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The Girl from HOPPERS: A Love & Rockets Book

This is a review of the Girl from HOPPERS: A Love & Rockets Book, drawn and written by Jaime Hernandez. Read my review of Human Diastrophism, drawn and written by his brother Gilbert, here. Love and Rockets is an indie comic that came out in the 1980’s. Jaime writes about Hoppers, a fictional working-class Mexican-American neighborhood in California, while many of Gilbert’s stories are set in Palomar, a mythical town in Latin America.

The characters in this graphic novel all grew up in the 1970’s and 80’s, just like me. I myself came of age thousands of miles away in a suburb, but my experiences were pretty similar. Boredom. Restlessness. The urge to escape. It’s lost youth, except some of these characters are in their twenties and thirties. Being a rebel is great as a kid, but when you’re thirty years old and bagging groceries at the supermarket or a perpetual couch surfer who spends time at the homeless shelter, it loses its luster.

There are two standout stories in this volume. The first is the Death of Speedy, who has a thing for Maggie but ends up having sex with her sister, which upsets the gangbanger she’s dating. Anyway, Speedy dies, which isn’t a spoiler because that’s the title of the story. At first I thought I was missing something, but there’s nothing to miss. In the volume I read, he isn’t mentioned again. This is a bold storytelling choice because it’s so realistic. Life goes on, and so do we. We are all Speedy, R.I.P.

The second story involves Izzy, Speedy’s sister. Izzy travels to Mexico, meets a guy with a young son, almost marries him, and then her guilt arrives in the form of Satan and she checks out. I think it’s because she had an abortion, but it’s not clear. Mr. Hernandez makes the editorial choice to leave things murky, which doesn’t bother me but may drive others crazy. I will give Izzy this; she allows herself the space to process her feelings, as awful as those feelings may be. Most of the characters in this graphic novel are too busy anesthetizing or even killing themselves to bother.

To say The Girl from HOPPERS has an ensemble cast is to understate things. Characters wander in and out of the story, just like in real life! I haven’t even mentioned the through story, which involves Maggie getting mad when she misses going on Hopey’s band’s tour because she overslept, and then Hopey vanishes for two years, which makes Maggie so angry she dumps her current boyfriend Ray as soon as Hopey returns. Ray seems like a decent guy but Maggie doesn’t want decent. She’s drawn to Hopey, who never met an impulse she didn’t act on.

This graphic novel is comic storytelling at its finest, but it’s not for everyone. There are a LOT of characters, the timeline jumps back and forth, and sometimes motives and even plot points are left intentionally ambiguous. But if you like your comics unsanitized, with realistic (read: flawed) characters who don’t always do the right thing, and who don’t always get the happy ending, you will love this series. Highly recommended!