The Curse of The Man-Thing (2021)

Title – The Curse of The Man-Thing
Author – Steve Orlando + various artists
Publisher - Marvel Comics
Format - Comic Book (3 part event)
Year - 2021
Original Cost – $4.99 x 3

The Curse of The Man-Thing is 3 part comic event in celebration of the 50 year anniversary of Marvel Comics' favorite swamp monster. With the comic industry being what it is now they have, probably quite wisely, invited their big hitters to the party to ensure some strong sales.  So while this is very much a story about the possession of The Man-Thing's body and powers by a villain called Harrower, the battle manages to crash through the worlds of The Avengers, Spider-Man and the X-Men.  Fortunately The Man-Thing has past connections with all of these 'franchises' which stops it feeling too contrived.

Parts 1 and 3 are perhaps the best with the Spider-Man book feeling a little like filler.  But beneath the superhero banter and the inevitable muscle flexing, there remains an overall attempt to force some new ground into the Man-Thing's back story without undoing it.  It also feels a lot like a set up for something more, perhaps a solo limited series or even another attempt at an ongoing monthly title.

There is now more to the origins of the monster, more to it's relationship with the bit of Doctor Ted Sallis that still dwells within and more to the Nexus of All Realities, the magical bit of the swamp, where the Man-Thing generally lurks.

All in all I thought it was pretty good and while the art style is not as dark or detailed as I prefer and given the fact its still a mainstream Marvel Comic aimed at a younger demographic than me, it was actually a worthy next chapter to the legacy.  And I will be interested to see what happens next.

Steve

The Man-Thing (1971 to present)

The Man-Thing (statue by Gentle Giant Ltd)

It didn’t occur to me how much I really liked Marvel Comics' Man-Thing until I found myself advance ordering the long overdue reprint of The Man-Thing Omnibus.   Its not cheap.  I’m sure it will be massive and gorgeous when it gets here but it’s way more than I’ve paid for any book before

I circled around the idea for a week or two before finally committing the accumulation of birthday and Christmas money to better use than just sitting on the shelf waiting for the shops to open again.

It’s done now though, so it seems I am committed to the cause!

Of course, there were clues before this; There were comics, smaller graphic collections, action figures and even my one and only Funko Pop purchase is of the marvelous Man-Thing… and I bloody hate those bobble-headed collectibles as a rule.

There are other comic characters that were and have remained equally important to me and most of them are monstrous in form as well.   Deathlok, Ghost Rider and Morbius to name but three. I’m not sure what that says about my tastes as a kid.  I obviously also read Hulk, Avengers, Spider-Man etc as well but I have little desire to go back to any of those titles now in quite the same way that I find myself drawn back to the monstrous and morally ambiguous antiheroes that colonised my head-space back then. And the proof of that point being the imminent hefty purchase mentioned above

Interestingly and not entirely unconnected is the fact that it is the 50th anniversary of the Man-Thing’s creation this year.  So it turns out we are of a similar age and I don’t exactly know how I feel about that.  Its odd to now discover that when we first met in the mid 70’s (74/75?) possibly guest starring in a Hulk or Spider-Man comic, but more probably as a solo back up strip in Planet of the Apes Weekly, he was younger than me!  He looked so grown up. So dark and brooding and perfectly formed that I had assumed he had been around for decades like all the cool comic characters.

And now he has been. 5 of them, and I still think he’s cool and I still haven't quite got to the bottom of my fascination with him.  So when those tendrils and vines crept into my young mind, they never really let go.  I’m very OK with that as I think there is still more to discover.  Happy Birthday big fella, here’s to 50 more

Steve

Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom - Novelisation (1979)

Title – Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom
Author – Philip Hinchcliffe
Publisher - Target
Format - Paperback
Year - 1979
Original Cost – 60p

 

“All vestiges of humanity had long since disappeared and it was now a mass of tendrils and fibrous shoots, like some giant, malformed plant: but a plant that could move and crush and Kill.  Slowly, it began to stir.  From where the green growth was thickest there came a strange, low rattling sound.  Then, the whole monstrous shape started to creep towards the door.”

Doctor Who and The Seeds of Doom is the only Target novelisation that I distinctly know where I was when I first read it.  It was also the only one I have ever read in one sitting.  These two facts are not unconnected.

When I was a nipper, it was a bit of a family tradition to spend the afternoon of Christmas day at an aunt and uncle’s house.  My grandfather, another aunt and cousins would also arrive to swap gifts and share in a large tea.  Not many on that side of the family had children of their own and if they did, they were considerably older and adults in their own right.  It therefore made for a very boring and torturous few hours when you are about 10 and not least because we had just left a lot of very nice new toys back at home. 

In 1979 I was well into my new obsession with Doctor Who, which had also kick-started my love of reading – it just takes the right sort of books – and so it seemed like a really good idea to take along a recently unwrapped copy of The Seeds of Doom and escape into it for a time. As I recall they had a second massive sofa at the back of the living room that could eat an unwary sitter and as such was also totally unsuitable for the elderly backed or frail limbed.  Sanctuary! An island to escape to from which the Queen's speech was a distant mumble.   I climbed aboard, positioned myself between strategically placed cushions and turned the front cover.  The rest is a blur of action and excitement and almost one of my best Christmas day afternoons…..prior to the discovery of girls!

I just read the book again this week, some 40+ years later and can see why I liked it and why I ploughed through it in just a few short hours, pausing only to eat and answer the occasional  conversational question along the lines of “What are you reading?” “Is it good?” and “Do you like Doctor Who then?”

If I had to describe the book now, and presuming the audience was genuinely  more interested than back then, I would have to say it’s a belting boys own adventures that starts with alien seed pods found in the Antarctic and ends with the destruction of a giant killer plant upon an English manor house by military forces.   Somewhere in between those things, peopled are infected and mutate into vegetable matter monsters and a couple of other people end up getting ground up and composted to help feed the roses! The Doctor is never less than brilliant, the settings are familiar and atmospheric, and the bad guys are properly bad.  It’s all thoroughly engrossing and engaging stuff, although with a keener adult eye, I can now see it’s been so stripped down that it has actually lost a bit of coherence towards the end.  It still does what it was meant to do though, which is to capture the gist of the TV show and retell the tale for those that missed it the first time or those that just wanted to relive it again. Of course, modern technology now allows us to do exactly that any time we want making the book more a thing of nostalgia, nostalgia about us, about who we once were and how we felt about things back then.

 

Happy Days.

Steve

The Day of the Triffids. (1962)

Title – The Day of the Triffids

Author – John Wyndham 
Script - Bernard Gordon & Philip Yordan 

Distributor – The Rank Organisation
Format – Film
Year – 1962
Viewed Via - Amazon Prime

Its a rainy Bank Holiday Monday which feels like a Sunday afternoon so an old black 'n' white sci-fi movie seemed appropriate,  Of course the 1962 version of The Day of the Tiffids, is actually in colour although I never seem to remember that fact and if I'm honest I'm not sure it benefits any for being so.  Its always had a slightly blurred smudged look to me which is perhaps appropriate given that its a slightly blurred and smudged adaption of the original materiel.  That said, I quite like it for what it is.  And after today's repeat viewing, I would say it still hold up pretty well.

I do love the original book but I'm not a purest as my discovery of Triffids came first through a comic adaption in the very early 70s, then the 80s' BBC TV version and then the book.  I knew of  John Wyndham as I had read The Chrysalids twice before I picked up the perennial killer plant based masterpiece but once I had there is no denying that any adaption as ever quite done it the full justice it deserves.

Condensing the horrors of the London streets onto a train platform works really well

I'm quite forgiving of the various changes this version makes though as they feel explainable for the time and the cinematic format.  Bill Masen has changed profession but then he does need to get on a boat and sail to France as the script writers want to play up the global nature of the catastrophe.   And of course the military don't come out of the original book looking all that respectable either so transferring the the final trigger to flee from a despotic self appointed military government onto a drunk and  rapey band of French escaped convicts, leaves the British armed services reputation intact and heroic.

The origin of the Triffids in this is that they came to Earth on meteors and are certainly excited enough by the second meteor shower to suggest the two are connected and part of a combined event.  Where as in the book its an unhappy accident that the blinding effect of the meteor shower gives the - probably bio-engineered in the U.S.S.R. and accidentally released - killer plants a sudden and massive evolutionary advantage over humanity.

Of course the film has an infamous and massive cop-out ending when it reveals, via the parallel subplot of two marine biologists working on a lighthouse, that seawater when liberally sprayed at Triffids will melt the veggie buggers to slush.  But then on reflection its not surprising they come up with something...anything rather than terminate the cinema audience's journey in the same way that the book does, with the heroes fleeing to safety and a promise to one day return to reclaim the world for humanity.  Its a great end to the novel but its not conclusive enough for the cinema of the time.  Those that invade the Earth and prey upon humanity must be seen to be stopped.  If its good enough for all the other sci-fi invaders of the planet, then it's good enough for Triffids.  And that's what the film reduces them to; another alien invader.  Effective if not faithful.

Down Boy!

Be seeing you

Steve

Doctor Who - Day of the Troll. (2009)

Title – Doctor Who – The Day of the Troll
Author – Simon Messingham
Publisher – BBC Audio
Format – CD
Year – 2009
Original Cost – £9.78

As we’ve established already, I’ve got a bit of thing for creatures of wood and root.  And if I recall correctly, it was the cover art for this particular CD that was the deciding factor in me finally buying it.  I like Doctor Who and I like stories on audio but there is so much of it that I’ve neither the time nor the shelf space to  amass anything other than a very choice collection.

For me this seemed like a nice one-off, read by the then current Doctor, set on a future Earth and with some sort of folkloric plant-based monster in it. It ticked a lot of boxes and delivered on all of them as it happened. I must have listening to this a half a dozen times since purchase and two of those were in the last month.

As previously mentioned, the story is set in a deserted future England where a group of scientists are trying to make the barren land fertile again.  The nation had previously fled to warmer southerly climes in response to a second ice age but with its retreat, and the world’s food supplies dwindling, its essential that the scientists are successful in their endeavors.  The base of operations for their experiments is The Grange, the family home  and estate of their leader, Karl Baring.  As the story starts Karl is snatched and possessed by an ancient power that resides in the dark beneath an old stone bridge.  The nightmarish abduction is witnessed by his terrified sister who flees only to run literally into The Doctor’s arms.  And thus are we set up for a pleasingly solid bit of storytelling via Simon Messingham’s words and Tennent’s absolutely top-draw narration with a host of pleasing characters voices to boot!

But apart from that why is it so good?

Firstly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, this feels very like it could have been a two-part television adventure within the 10^th Doctor’s tenure.  It has the same edgy unnerving sci-fi horror vibe as of The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit or Human Nature / Family of Blood.  And it also has that slight tonal shift between the two halves, giving them an individual flavour that makes them feel independently valid rather than just two halves of one long story.  Its perfect New Who

And perhaps paradoxically, it also feels like it could be a 3^rd or 4^th Doctor story as well. And that’s not to say its derivative, as I’ve read in some reviews, but rather that it taps into some of the key tropes of those earlier times.  I could just as easily imagine Pertwee or Baker’s incarnations getting to grips with this adventure in their respective eras, as readily as Tennent does in his.  I think that’s quite a neat trick, because what it basically means is that it’s a quintessential Doctor Who story.

Having picked this for the blog, I was interested to see how others felt about it. While favourable on the whole, it still seemed to pick up some accusations of being too similar to Tom Baker’s Seeds of Doom story, especially with the origin and evolution of the main alien protagonist. (Doctor Who Monthly #415)  I actually think that’s a somewhat lazy and short-sighted take, given where that 1976 story had drawn its influences from.  The Krynoids of The Seeds of Doom are at the very least riffing off the same dreadful fate as befalls Victor Carroon in Nigel Kneale’s The Quatermass Experiment.   And I would also argue only then because it’s a striking transformation and achievable on the small screen.  But there the similarities end.  Obviously DOTT is audio only which is why, when you consider the transformation of Karl Bearing into the Troll a little more closely, there isn’t especially any comparisons between the two either.  So all that those reviews are latching onto really, is the fact that it’s another plant based alien life-form taking over a human a host.  Which is a thin comparison to say the least and the same kind of reductive thinking that gets 28 Days Later labelled as a zombie film.

Which Segues, not unintentionally, into my next point about DOTT and the reason it feels comfortably familiar. Which is that as well as being classically Doctor Who in its plotting, it’s actually a nice big slice of that unique British Sci-fi tradition of catastrophe fiction that was so prevalent in the 1950s and then bled into the next decades film and television.

Just as 28 Days Later owes a lot to John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids and yet fails to show us one killer plant, so does DOTT owe a nod of respect to John Christopher’s, Death of Grass or even The World in Winter for the Britain into which the Doctor arrives.

And that’s also probably really where the Nigel Kneale connection comes in as well.  Those three named authors helped to set the ground rules for that unique brand of post War mid-century apocalyptic slow invasion fiction into which this particular Doctor Who story so easily sits. 

Off the top of my head I can only think of one similar earth based Doctor Who story where the disaster has already run its course and the Doctor is merely helping the survivors, rather that averting the catastrophe in the first place and that’s The Sontaran Experiment. A wonderfully bleak two-parter from Tom Baker’s first season.  As a set up for a story its doesn’t feature too often in the show because the Doctor, as a full-on hero figure, is meant to save the day, not arrive after the fact.  So DOTT starts off in quite an interestingly dark place.

All of which has probably illustrated another of my lifelong story obsessions. That of pre and post-apocalyptic fiction. I’m sure we’ll explore it at length later on but in summary its origins are most often the world wars.  But as those that survived that time penned their respective fears into fictions, for those of us growing up afterwards through the tensions of the Cold War aftermath, we saw those fictions as potential realities.  Realities that were only ever three minutes away.  And if not the bomb, then the environmental backlash of some ecological horror that were also usually made manifest in someone else’s cautionary tale.

And here were we thinking we were just talking about a Doctor Who CD when in fact we were talking about the echo

Steve

Waiting For You: A Detectorists Zine #1 (2021)

Title - Waiting For You: A Detectorists Zine - issue one
Author - Various 
Publisher - Temporal Boundary Press
Format - A5 Fanzine - 56 pages
Year - 2021
Original Cost - £6.00

- o -

From Rupert's Raggety, to Paul Wright's Arcadia, to Mackenzie Crook's Detectorists and the new zine that its inspired.  There's a pathway there, I think, a through line  or even a Ley Line, if you will.  Given my lifelong fascination with folklore, folk horror, the concept of Arcadia or Blake's Jerusalem and the British country side as a landscape for story, I was always going to find my way to The Detectorists TV show.

I was slightly behind the curve, joining the audience on a late night repeat run of series 1 just prior to series 2 airing.  And it had me at the theme tune.  Its a funny, gentle, beautiful and honest show that felt almost transcendental in its viewing experience, as though watching it was akin to opening a window and letting fresh clean air blow out the stale cynicism within.  And as an occasional hay fever  sufferer, I don't make that comparison lightly.

I eventually journeyed to series 3 and the near perfect conclusion to the show and then, much like any other very enjoyable journey, I wanted to go again and take someone else along with me to share in the experience.

The second time around was with the wife. And the third time was the wife and Thing 2.  Surprisingly, being of the YouTube generation of fast edits and short attentions spans, it was a pleasure to find the youngster liked it too.  In fact she's ready for a return trip herself and we'll embark on that pretty soon, only holding off until Thing 1 returns from university so the last member of the clan can be in on it as well.  I know she is going to like it and the rest of us will get a little bit more out of it from yet another viewing.  So, if you are keeping count, this will be my fourth go round but there's a lot going on beneath the surface of the show; histories and secrets and, if found, ancient treasures that enrich the future.  I see a little something more with each visit and enjoy the journey more for knowing how it ends.  And this time I've got some reference material to guide me.

I like a zine and I like to support small publishers because on the whole they are the ones making the interesting stuff.  Waiting for You contains a collection of reviews, interviews and articles on the show that might just make you look a little deeper or even at a slightly askew angle the next time you visit Danebury.  Most were fascinating, with David Colohan's Phantom Signals covering the cost of entry alone.  I didn't agree with every analysis, and at least one piece seemed to forget the general challenges of making on-location television and the fact that the process will dictate some of the creative choices made and of what does or doesn't appear on the screen. By and large though, I thoroughly recommend the zine and hope we get further issues as there is still lots more to discover and elaborate upon.

Buy it here.....

    https://temporalboundary.bigcartel.com/product/waiting-for-you-a-detectorists-zine-issue-1

- o -

I'll probably do a future blog on the show itself after my next viewing but for now at least, its probably time to leave the pleasant and  pastoral and head into the realms of disquieting sci-fi.

Steve

Musings on Reading

     I'm not one of those people that reads a book, finishes it, then starts the next one.  I tend to have a half a dozen on the go at any one time.  In my experience this seems to bother some people, perplexed at how I don't get myself all confused and muddle the various stories up.  My usual answer is that most of us are perfectly capable of watching different TV shows in parallel without blending the plots and much like my TV viewing habits, I read what I'm in the mood for at that particular moment so sometimes it might be something light and funny, or it could be something factual, or science fiction based, or a horror story.

Currently, in the reading pile for 2021 are Unofficial Britain: A Journey Through Forgotten Places by Gareth E Rees, Doctor Who: Rags by Mick Lewis, Equus (the script of the play) by Peter Shaffer, Phase IV (the film novelisation) by Barry N Malzberg, Elidor by Alan Garner, What On Earth Are We Doing, a Ladybird conservation book from 1976.  And Tom Baker's Doctor Who novel, based on a movie that never happened; Scratchman.  Oh, and also; Waiting for You: A Detectorists Zine.

Now initially, that seems quite a random collection, all be it that there are two Doctor Who books in the mix, although tonally they couldn't be further apart.  However the more I review the list the more I can see some strong through-lines connecting the various titles together.  To start with those Doctor Who books.  This is my second attempt at Rags and if I'm honest it might not get finished this time.  Its built around a rather brilliant central idea that all of those 1970 Earth-based Pertwee stories are taking place (UNIT dating paradoxes permitting) at the same time as the UK boom in publishing gory pulpy horror novels such as those made famous by Guy N Smith, James Herbert and lesser known writers but of a similar ilk.  So why not stick the Doctor and Jo Grant into that kind of a story.  Now I'll happily reread both of those named authors and enjoy their books for what they are but so far this is very much a marriage of opposites and I'm not comfortable with how it's making me feel. Equally I cant quite put my finger on why its bothering me so may yet continue the experiment just to discover the answer.  Apart from having been bought Scratchman this Christmas, I think I picked it up because I knew enough about the planned film version to know that it also contained an Earth based folk horror influenced tale but one delivered through the warm and fruity tones of  Tom Baker and his 4th Doctor.  I clearly still wanted to enjoy that kind of Doctor Who story but replaced the first with a version told in lighter hues.  Not to say that Scratchman's killer scarecrows marauding and murdering their way through an English village doesn't have its disturbing moments but its not as unrelentingly bleak as Mick Lewis' take.

And then we've got a couple of my favorite weird 70's films in the form of Equus and Phase IV, the former in its original play script format and the later as a novelisation - the preferred and most common way to re-experience a film back then.  I'll invariably talk about both those films in future posts but for now, know that Equus explores the darkest of deeds committed by a fragile mind fed on the indoctrination of a rigidly decent English Middle-class upbringing, and the other is what I can best describe as the eco-horror movie equivalent of 2001, where a trippy kaleidoscope of images takes us to both inner and outer space and washes us up on the shorelines of a conclusion but leaves us to make our own way home.  And of course Phase IV is also ultimately a base under siege by an alien intelligence story, which is of course one of the very cornerstones of Doctor Who plots. Pertwee would have got to grips with that particular menace in no time at all.

What On Earth Are We Doing, brings conservation to the Ladybird Children's library and it's quite disturbing to note that little of what was warned about several decades back has really been dealt with now.  We are still poisoning the world and our little corner of it, making the countryside that should be nurturing us, a place of danger and our own slow destruction.  Where is the Doctor when we really need him!

Elidor, a children's book about magic and myth encountered by four children from Manchester is somehow juxtaposed by Alan Strang the protagonist in Equus who creates his own myth and rituals in order to make sense of his feelings about God, sex and horses.

Which finally brings us back to Unofficial Britain: A Journey Through Forgotten Places  which  contains an exploration of  those abandoned and liminal spaces where we create stories to fill the gaps and from where stories create themselves. It reveals our paranoia and fears through the psycho-geographical relationship between landscape and mind.

All of which leaves me wondering if my book choices are quite so whimsical and random as I had first thought. There seems to be some very clear themes and very specific journeys of discovery shared between them. The past is being excavated to find some hitherto hidden truth about my relationship with the culture and country I grew up in.  Random pieces connected to a larger story, found artifacts like those on the display tables of The Danebury Metal Detecting Club.  And there is as much to be learned from ring pulls through the ages as a bejeweled golden aestel.

Steve