Michael May's Blog, page 152

“If Quite Convenient, Sir" | Dickens

Illustration by Fred Barnard.

Borrowing from Siskoid's format on his Hamlet blog, as we look at Dickens' text, I'm going to copy the entire text of the section in italics and insert commentary. That'll help identify elements that we want to pay attention to in the adaptations.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocer' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. 

This is Dickens' first description of the City at Christmastime. He's mentioned the time of year already of course, but he only now gets around to describing the action on the street. Most of the adaptations have already given some looks at this by now, but let's keep an eye out for how they depict the celebrations. In Dickens, the bright and decorated shops share a paragraph with the bitterness of the cold. It's a festive time, but it's also a dangerous time. Which adaptations take note of that?

The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

I know at least one adaptation that includes this scene and contrasts it with the poor celebrations of the less fortunate. Oddly, Dickens isn't making an overtly political point here, though it would be totally in character for him to do so. I've divided the Lord Mayor from the shops with my commentary, but this is a single paragraph in Dickens and he seems simply to be pointing out that everyone - from shoppers and merchants to the Lord Mayor and his prisoners - are in the holiday spirit. Everyone, of course, except Scrooge. My recollection is that most adaptations keep this focus, but I'll look out for any that take a political or sociological angle.

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. 

According to my annotated edition, Dunstan was a medieval monk/blacksmith who claimed to have driven off a demon with a pair of red-hot pincers. That's not going to come up in any adaptations, but I figure it's worth explaining.

The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by gods, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of --

"God bless you merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.

Almost every adaptation has a scene of Scrooge menacing some Christmas carolers and they're usually singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Some of the versions have already put that earlier as a way of introducing Scrooge, but this is something else I'll pay attention to.

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

Though Scrooge hates Christmas and would prefer that it not exist, he's aware of it and he's the one who brings up the time off to Cratchit. That's surprising, since he seems like the kind of man who would force Cratchit to ask for time off. Instead, he's essentially volunteering it. We assume that this isn't the first time that Scrooge and Cratchit have had this conversation, but it still takes some bite out of Scrooge to have him be the first to bring it up. Earlier, I wondered how seriously Cratchit took Scrooge's threats to fire him. This gives him reason not to take them that seriously. His boss is still an unpleasant man, but not entirely unreasonable. This is something that adaptations can play with though.

"If quite convenient, Sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

Cratchit's smiling here may be another indication that he doesn't take Scrooge's threats too seriously, but there are many kinds of smiles and it will say a lot about Scrooge and Cratchit's relationship how each adaptation portrays this.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!"

Scrooge is almost sympathetic in this speech. He's still horrible and I wouldn't want to work for him, but I can also see his point. It's an opportunity for adaptations to create empathy with him if they choose to do that.

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff.

In Dickens, Scrooge takes off first, leaving his underling to lock up the shop, but then Cratchit gets to go home right behind his boss. This is done in different ways in the adaptations though, which can reinforce whatever the version makes of Scrooge and his management style.

The detail of Cratchit's sliding on ice with a bunch of boys makes it into a surprising number of adaptations. The Reginald Owen movie actually introduces Scrooge's nephew by substituting him for Cratchit and having a couple of the boys be Cratchit's kids. I'll point out other sliding scenes as we go.

My annotated Christmas Carol tells me that Camden Town was a suburb at the time and was characterized by small, cheap houses. Dickens actually lived there himself as a boy.

As for blindman's-buff, I've always heard it referred to as blindman's bluff, but that's probably a corruption of the original name. The "buff" refers to the buffeting that the blindfolded player received at the hands of the others. It was totally in rules for the other contestants to push the "blindman" or put things in his way for him to trip over in order to prevent being caught. I don't remember any adaptations where Cratchit actually plays this, so this is mostly just another point of interest instead of something to keep track of. There will be parlor games later, but we'll cover those when we get to them.

So here's what we'll be keeping track of this year:

How Christmas in the City is portrayed. Is it a universally joyous time or is it mixed with the deadliness of the weather or commentary on the rich and poor?Scrooge vs. carollers. And do they always sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"?Who brings up the day off? What does that say about Scrooge?Does Scrooge get any sympathy for his views as an employer?How does Cratchit react to Scrooge's stinginess? What does that say about their working relationship?Who leaves first: Scrooge or Cratchit? What does that say about how Scrooge manages Cratchit?Is there a sliding scene? What's its function in the story?

The Christmas Carol Project | "If Quite Convenient, Sir"

It's December again and time to get back to our annual look at everyone's favorite Christmas/ghost story, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. If you're new to this, the idea is to pay attention to the way Scrooge's story has been interpreted and adapted to other media over the years. I’ve broken the story down into scenes (or sometimes parts of scenes) in order to look at their translation to 19 different films, TV shows, and comics.

In past years, we've tackled these in the order in which they were made, but I always feel it's anticlimactic to end on a couple of recent comics adaptations. So this year, I'm going to try something new and group them by media type. The comics will come first, then animated versions, and finally live-action adaptations. I think that'll put the strongest work towards the end.

Here's the list of adaptations in the order I'll take them this year:

• Classics Illustrated #53 (1948)
• Marvel Classics Comics #36 (Marvel; 1978)
• A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel (Classical Comics; 2008)
• A Christmas Carol (Campfire; 2010)
• "A Christmas Carol" in  Graphic Classics, Vol. 19: Christmas Classics  (Eureka; 2010)
• Teen Titans #13 (DC; 1968)
• A Christmas Carol cartoon (1971) starring Alastair Sim
• The Stingiest Man in Town (1978) starring Walter Matthau
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) starring Scrooge McDuck
• A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey
• A Christmas Carol (1910) starring Marc McDermott
• Scrooge (1935) starring Seymour Hicks
• A Christmas Carol (1938) starring Reginald Owen
• Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim
• "A Christmas Carol" episode of Shower of Stars (1954) starring Fredric March
• Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney
• A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott
• The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) starring Michael Caine
• A Christmas Carol (1999) starring Patrick Stewart

Annual Disclaimer: This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list. I started with my favorites, added some that people have recommended over the years, and then threw in some others that just caught my curiosity. We can talk about the ones I left out, but I will say that the reason Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol isn’t here is because I hate it with a passion. It’s neither a good Christmas Carol nor a good Mister Magoo cartoon. There’s also no Scrooged or An American Christmas Carol or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. When I first started this, I tried to stick to more or less faithful adaptations, but even though I've since added Teen Titans to the list, I'd rather that be a fun exception and not have to figure out where I'm going to draw the line.

This is going to take years. Every December we'll look at one scene, starting with Dickens' version, then exploring individual adaptations of that scene in the days leading up to Christmas. Last year, we met the two solicitors unfortunate enough to ask Scrooge for a charitable donation. This year, Scrooge will say goodnight to Cratchit and get in some last digs at Christmas before heading off to begin his adventure.

The fun starts tomorrow![image error]

Kill All Monsters: The Ministry of Robots is under construction

Jason leaked a couple of images from his office last week on Facebook with the captions, "Now what could this possibly mean...?" and "This is happening."

Just thought you should know.



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The Delightful Rogue (1929)

Who’s In It: Rod La Rocque (The Shadow Strikes), Rita La Roy (The Mandarin Mystery), and Charles Byer (Beautiful But Dumb).

What It’s About: A flamboyant, modern day pirate (La Rocque) pursues a singer (La Roy), causing her to question her relationship with her boyfriend (Byer).

How It Is: Not that delightful, actually. Calling the pirate Lastro “flamboyant” is an understatement. I don’t know the first thing about gay culture in the 1920s, but from this century looking back it’s impossible not to see Lastro as a gay stereotype (despite his professions of love to the singer Nydra). He's an annoying character at best.

Though he’s horrible, he could almost work as a plot device in the story of Nydra (La Roy) and Harry (Byer). Harry is a wealthy American who’s met Nydra on the South Pacific island of Tapit and fallen in love with her. Nydra loves him too, but doesn’t trust that his family will accept her or that his feelings for her will stay the same once they get back to the US. Lastro presents an opportunity for her to test Harry’s love though when Lastro kidnaps Harry and offers to release him unharmed if Nydra will spend the night with Lastro.

It could have been an interesting scenario if we weren’t clearly meant to hate Harry and root for Lastro. Harry’s reaction to the test is predictable and boring, but Lastro’s no alternative. His gaudy affectations aside, he’s just a butthole of a person. He claims that he never intended to force Nydra to have sex with him, but at the very least he’s perfectly willing for her to think that’s what he’s going to do. There’s no chemistry between him and her and it’s completely implausible that Nydra suddenly becomes attracted to him when Harry reveals his true colors.

On the positive side, Nydra’s a complex, independent character and I enjoyed spending time with her and wondering how she was going to pan out, even if I wasn’t happy with the result. And the South Seas setting is great, especially some of the street scenes that grabbed my imagination about island life. Nydra’s band is also very cool, especially the drummer who’s showy and flamboyant in a good way. Small pleasures, but they made the movie easier to get through.

Rating: Two out of five blowhard buccaneers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have no idea who made these dioramas or where they first appeared, but I'm very thankful for them nonetheless.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Terror of the Sea Caves: An Adventure in Publishing [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Jan Laurvik stumbles upon a knife fight in the streets of Singapore. An Englishman and his Lascar mate have taken the worst of it in a fight with several Chinese attackers. The six foot two Scandinavian has to fight for his life as well:

Startled and furious at this novel attack, Jan reached for his knife. But before he could get his hand on it the Chinaman had leaped into the air like a wild-cat, wound arms and legs about his body, and was struggling like a mad beast to set teeth into his throat. The attack was so miraculously swift, so disconcerting in its beast-like ferocity, that Jan felt a strange qualm that was almost akin to panic. Then a black rage swelled his muscles; and tearing the creature from him he dashed him down upon the floor, on the back of his neck, with a violence which left no need of pursuing the question further. Not till he had examined each of the bodies carefully, and tried them with his knife, did he turn again to the wounded Lascar leaning against the wall.

Laurvik is given a map to a sunken junk containing a fortune in pearls. To avoid a possible assassination, he copies the map, introduces an error into it and puts it back in the pirate's pocket. The adventure has begun! Avoiding competition, Jan assembles a crew on a little scow called the Sarawak and follows the map to the treasure. There he uses his diving suit to locate the sunken ship. Unfortunately for him a giant squid has made a home of the derelict. The fight between man and squid is one of the best I've ever read.

Who is the author of this adventurous brawl? Is it one of Robert E. Howard's Pulp tales for Top-Notch? Is it a Talbot Mundy yarn for Adventure? No, it is the work of "The Father of Canadian Poetry" and author of the private lives of animals. Shades of Bambi! What is going on?

The story is "The Terror of the Sea Caves" from Everybody's Magazine (January 1907), predating Howard's punch ups by twenty years, and Mundy's by ten. The author is Sir Charles GD Roberts who included it in his The Haunters of the Silences (1907), a collection of animal stories featuring a polar bear on its cover. Of this adventure yarn and a few others, he writes in the Introduction:

But when I write of the kindreds of the deep sea, I am relying upon the collated results of the observations of others. I have spared no pains to make these stories accord, as far as the facts of natural history are concerned, with the latest scientific information. But I have made no vain attempt at interpretation of the lives of creatures so remote from my personal knowledge; and for such tales as "A Duel in the Deep," "The Terror of the Sea Caves," or "The Prowlers," my utmost hope is that they may prove entertaining, without being open to any charge of misrepresenting facts.

This explanation makes sense for in the story the author dedicates what feels like a long time on the squid's thought processes, allowing us to see the underwater world from his view. In most Pulp tales this would not happen. But the tone of Haunters of the Silences is not that of pulse-pounding adventure tales but another genre altogether, the Naturalist movement of the turn of the century. Authors like Roberts, Ernest Thompson Seton (Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) and James Curwood (The Grizzly King, 1916) paved the way for books like Felix Salten's Bambi: A Life in the Woods (1923). None of which reads like a Disney movie. These authors wanted to show animals in their real habitats, doing what they really do, without Victorian sentiment or inaccurate science.

So why did Roberts write "The Terror of the Sea Caves" instead of another installment of Red Fox or another poem like "Canadian Streams"? Not all of Roberts work is dedicated to poetry and animal tales. He wrote several books about the men and women who live in the wilds like Around the Campfire (1896), The Forge in the Forest (1897) and The Backwoodmen (1909). Like Jack London in America, Roberts work goes in many directions but his fame lies in only some of these. To academics Roberts is a poet. To popular readers he wrote animal stories.

Still, this only partly explains why he'd write an adventure yarn for an American magazine. The other half of the explanation is the world of magazines between 1880 and 1920. Many Canadian writers penned stories like this for British and American magazines, which flourished during that forty year period, before the coming of the Pulps. The Strand, Pearson's, The Pall Mall Gazette, The Idler in the UK, The Atlantic, Colliers, Munsey's, Argosy, and many others in America furnished markets to hungry writers. The animals of Roberts' fiction may have lived in the Canadian wilds, but their publishers did not. Many Canadians wrote for these publications (though they usually ended up moving to either London or New York); writers such as Sue Carleton, Robert Barr, Grant Allen, Hulbert Footner, Sir Gilbert Parker, RTM Scott, WA Fraser, and Frank L Packard. Even the Governor-General of Canada and British peer John Buchan wrote adventure novels; The Thirty-Nine Steps being the most famous.

Charles GD RobertsSo it was for money. And why not? If Roberts wanted to do something more elevated he had his poetry. If he wanted to write something more in line with his interests he could pen the tale of lynx or a salmon or a grouse. If he wanted cash, he could write a yarn with pirates and diving and all manner of things he knew nothing about. He probably included it in Haunters of the Silences as filler. He was a successful author by 1907 and he moved to Paris that year. He would not return to Canada until 1925.

Does this make "Terror of the Sea Caves" a bad story? Not at all. It is written as an adventure story should be, with brash fights and hidden dangers and growing excitement. If Roberts hadn't become the godfather of Bambi or the Father of Canadian Verse, he would certainly have had a career in the Pulps. He probably preferred being Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (and that wonderful moustache) to the gritty urban streets and a penny a word grind. How would that compare with getting the cover illo for Thrilling Adventure or a three-part serial in Blue Book with John Hamberger illustrations? Tough choice. Fortunately, Chuck doesn't have to make it.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

The Navigator (1924)

Who's In It: Buster Keaton (Sherlock Jr, The General) and Kathryn McGuire (Sherlock Jr).

What It's About: A couple of rich kids are stranded on an empty ocean liner that's lost at sea.

How It Is: Hilarious. I've seen it a few times now and there are still bits that get me rolling every time. A while back I decided I wanted to experience all the classic silent film comedians like Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd, but I started with Keaton and have never been able to move past him. It's hard for me to make time for Chaplin and Lloyd when there are still Keaton movies I haven't seen. His physical ability combined with that deadpan face and just good, solid gags make his films a joy to watch and my whole family is hooked on him.

The Navigator of course combines Keaton with my love for the sea, so it's one of my favorites. Kathryn McGuire is amazing in it too and it's remarkable that she's able to keep up with Keaton. No one's going to upstage him, but she's a great partner for him and The Navigator showcases her talent better than Sherlock Jr (though I love that movie, too).

Here's an early scene, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies. This particular version is missing any music, but it's still a nice taste of the film:



Rating: Five out of five silly, sailing scions.

Manly Banister's Werewolves [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

At the age of 13, Manly Banister (March 9, 1914 - June 1986) like many Science Fiction writers began in the fanzines. In the 1950s he wrote for Science Fiction standards like Astounding and Thrilling Wonder, but a decade earlier his output was exclusively for Weird Tales. Manly wrote seven stories for WT from September 1942 to May 1954. Of these seven tales one theme dominates: werewolves.

Pulp werewolves are a strange lot. Unlike in earlier fiction, the werewolf was no longer bracketed with solid rules. Pulp writers wanted to explore their boundaries. So, a traditional lycanthrope might appear in Manly Wade Wellman's "The Werewolf Snarls," but the same rules might not apply in a Seabury Quinn story like "The Blood Flower." The movie The Wolf Man in 1941 might have curtailed this experimenting, but writers like Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, and GG Pendaves put the shape-changers to their own purposes.

"Satan's Bondage" (September 1942) is an unusual debut for Weird Tales. The story got the cover but instead of the title and author by-line it bore the words "New - Utterly Different - A Werewolf Western." This is a bit of a misnomer if you are expecting a High Noon-ish tale. The story is set in cattle country, but in the present. (Perhaps more surprising, Banister has a scene with a very naked werewolf girl, but she does not appear on the cover, though this was after Margaret Brundage's day.)

Kenneth Mulvaney comes to the town of Wereville because he finds his mother's diary. He discovers a community under siege, for the ranchers outside the valley war with the town. Mulvaney also meets Joan Jordan, attractive but possessing the same weird quality as the other inhabitants of Wereville: strangely flat colored eyes. Mulvaney goes to his family's old home and soon learns the secret. It is the full moon and Joan comes to him naked. Taking him to a pond close by she shows him how to transform himself into a wolf. In wolf form, Kenneth attempts to defeat Bock Martin, the black wolf who rules the valley. He learns that Martin is no man-become-a-wolf but a demon from Hell, who holds all the inhabitants in bondage because of an ancient deal between the demon and their witch ancestors. Martin has summoned Mulvaney back to Wereville to lead the wolf people to greater evil.

Mulvaney wishes to find some way to save the souls of his kin, but is powerless. He takes the werewolves out into the nearby cattle herds to feast. Unfortunately for the lycanthropes, Sam Carver and the other ranchers have taken up with a French Canadian priest who has armed them with holy water and silver bullets. The ranchers block the wolves from the creek where they must transform before daylight. Mulvaney sees his chance and leads the werewolves to their doom.

In his debut, Banister is offering up some pretty familiar werewolfery. The man who returns to the old homestead was a good, mysterious start but the name Wereville is much too obvious. A town full of lycanthropes is not new. Algernon Blackwood had a town full of were-cats in the John Silence tale, "Ancient Sorceries" (1908). H Warner Munn had written his tales of a clan of werewolves lead by a dark demoniac figure in "The Werewolf of Ponkert" (Weird Tales, July 1925) and this must have been familiar to long-time readers of WT. But Banister's biggest problem is that the story is structurally weak. He brings Mulvaney to Wereville, sets him up as leader quickly, has him go on his first adventure, then kills him off almost as the story feels like it is beginning.

On the plus side, Banister combines much of the folklore of vampires with the werewolves. They cast no shadows in the light of the full moon; in a silver mirror, the wolves appear as their human selves; and last, they can not endure sunlight in their enchanted forms. To a stickler on previous werewolf lore these might seem like transgressions, but they actually make the story more interesting because they are novel and less predictable. Banister also has the werewolves transform using water which is different and a key element of the story.

"Devil Dog" (July 1945) is very much a tale of its time, which was the end of WWII. Set in the Pacific theater, it follows soldiers who use dogs to sniff out Japanese traps and machine gun nests. But something is killing the dogs, ripping their throats out. Lieutenant Barkis is in charge of the dog squad and goes to investigate one of the dead animals. He is attacked by a large, black, wolf-like beast and receives a bite in the arm. He knows he shot the creature point-blank four or five times but there is no blood at the scene. Later, while recuperating from his wound he finds that the dogs whimper and cringe in his presence. He receives the army chaplain, Father Murphy, with a sudden, new hatred.

Meanwhile Sargent Stranger approaches the priest and they make preparations to deal with the werewolves. Barkis goes to a pool at night and transforms. The original werewolf, probably a shipwrecked sailor long ago, comes and Barkis and he have a duel to the death, with Barkis winning. The Sargent and the priest lie in wait and put holy water in the pool. This traps Barkis in wolf form as the sun rises. Stranger kills his officer with a silver bullet and the two men cook up a tale of a Japanese patrol to explain the two corpses.

Like "Satan's Bondage," Banister has his werewolf requiring a pool of water to transform and again the light of morning is lethal to the creature. Better written that the previous story, "Devil Dog" has as its central conflict the same idea, that of werewolves being trapped away from water. This time Banister sets it up better and plays it for all the emotional value it deserves. As with "Wereville," calling his main character "Barkis" is an unfortunate giveaway. Banister's tale may have influenced later war-werewolf tales such as "Best of Luck" (1978) by David Drake or The Wolf's Hour (1989) by Robert R McCammon. Like Drake (who served in Vietnam), Banister saw real warfare in Guam during WWII. He wrote this story shortly after his return. I had hoped that Barkis would become a good werewolf (as Michael Gallatin does in McCammon's novel) and use his powers to fight the Japanese, but in Banister's world lycanthropes are always intensely evil.

"Loup-Garou" (May 1947) changes tone entirely. A men's club has a visitor who regales them with an ancient tale of a French governor who is faced with the problem of the loup-garou. Hubert du Montreuill is a man of power and his passion turns to a beautiful woman named Clarisse, whom he finds naked in the road. She spurns his advances until Hubert discovers her secret. She is the lycanthrope that is savaging the countryside. He arranges with the commissioner of police to ambush her then falters and tells her that he saw her change form in the fountain. She bites his lip when they kiss, infecting him with lycanthropy. Now they can be lovers for all eternity. They transform then set off into the night. Hubert has forgotten his ambush and Clarisse is shot with silver bullets. He will have to endure eternal life alone. The stranger leaves and the club members think his tale is a fiction, but the narrator sees a wolf leave the building.

This tale is perhaps Banister's least interesting and is certainly his most predictable. The club frame is traditional and the tale of old France is pretty standard stuff. Unlike the jungle, which he knew from his service in the Pacific, there is nothing about this setting that makes it special. Hubert is unlikeable and Clarisse only become fascinating moments before her death, as we see her loneliness within her curse. Like the previous two stories, Clarisse has to use the water to transform, but no one traps her away from it this time.

"Eena" (September 1947, only five years after "Satan's Bondage") is without doubt Banister's most famous tale, often anthologized. The story portrays a werewolf sympathetically which was not usual in the Pulps. It is also filled with other unconventional ideas. Eena begins life as white wolf (Banister's female werewolves are always white). She is a foundling pup raised by Joel Cameron, who comes to the woods in the summer to write and hunt for bounty money. Eena escapes into the woods when he leaves to go back to the city. She becomes the scourge of the area, leading the wolf pack with an almost human cunning. Cameron is cursed out for allowing her to live.

When he returns the next summer, he feels obliged to spend his time trying to hunt down the she-wolf, which he fails to do. But Eena returns to him, for she remembers him kindly, coming back in the form of a beautiful, naked woman (like Joan and Clarissa before her), and becomes a woman by the power of desire and moonlight. While Cameron hunts the she-wolf, he is also falling in love with the wild woman of the woods. The tale ends when a thousand dollar bounty brings hunters to the area. Hunters dog her every step and she only wants the man who has finally taken her in. Wounded, she flees across Wolf Lake back to Cameron's cabin. Joel, not quite understanding, takes up his gun and kills the white wolf. She transforms into her human self just as night falls and Joel is devastated to see the truth.

"Eena" does several things the three earlier tales did not. Banister reverses the wolf-human relationship, making it a tale of a wolf that becomes a woman. Bruce Elliott would use this idea seven years later in "Wolves Don't Cry" (Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1954). Banister also eschews the folklore of lycanthropy, the need for water to transform, the silver bullets, etc. Instead he focuses on the powerful emotions of the two lovers: Eena wanting the man she was raised by, and Cameron falling for the beauty from the woods. He makes Eena's transformation by moonlight into a woman feel orgasmic while her return to wolfishness is painful. Like Peter Beagle's "Lila the Werewolf" (New Worlds of Fantasy #3, July 1971) twenty-four years later, Banister shows the emotional power of the human-wolf conflict. It most likely took Banister's writing of "Loup-Garou" to show him the way to "Eena", for we have a small, tantalizing glimpse of the werewolf experience just before the death of Clarisse. The two stories were only three months apart and it is not hard to imagine Banister jumping from one tale to the other with a flash of inspiration.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Kill All Monsters reviews at Bag and Bored, Oh My! Omaha, and Geeks with Wives

There's a small backlog of Kill All Monsters reviews that I've been meaning to post, starting with a beautiful one from last July. Kim is a mom in Ohama, Nebraska who writes the Oh My! Omaha blog, a parent's guide to happenings in and around her hometown. She also runs a Little Free Library and when someone took all the books out of it, my friend Jay - who runs the Library of Justice here in Minnesota - helped her restock with a bunch of stuff, including a copy of Kill All Monsters.

Kim tells the whole story on her blog, but the short version is that her son claimed the comic as his own and "[devoured] this book every chance he got." Jason and I both have sons and one of the things we wanted to do with Kill All Monsters was to be sure it was accessible to kids. So month's later, Kim's story still makes my day whenever I think about it. Thanks to Jay for sharing the book with her and to her for sharing her story and the photos.

Going back even farther to June, I don't think I ever shared this fantastic review from Bag and Bored. Brad Gischia calls Kill All Monsters "the greatest Monster vs. Robot story since Godzilla vs. Megalon" and praises the human elements of the story while noticing the enormous task Jason has of "not getting lost in the fight scenes," something that he says Jason does "with rocket boots on." Thanks so much, Brad!

Most recently, Cory Anderson from Geeks with Wives included KAM in his "Introducing Indies" series. He writes about being drawn in by Jason's style and then hooked by some of the plot revelations. So, thanks to you too, Cory! We're very glad you enjoyed it and we're hard at work on broadening the Kill All Monsters world and continuing the story.

After the Storm (2001)

Who's In It: Benjamin Bratt (Demolition Man, Miss Congeniality), Mili Avital (Stargate, Dead Man), Armand Assante (Judge Dredd, The Odyssey), Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The Bride), and Stephen Lang (Avatar, Terra Nova).

What It's About: A scavenger (Bratt) and his girlfriend (Avital) form an uneasy alliance with a boat captain (Assante) and his wife (Simone-Élise Girard) to salvage treasure from a sunken yacht. Beals has a small role as a passenger on the doomed yacht and Lang plays the British sergeant major who leads the local law enforcement.

How It Is: Based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway, After the Storm is really good, old-fashioned noir set in the Bahamas. It's easy to imagine the same story being shot in the '40s with Humphrey Bogart in the lead role. All of the characters are complex and none of them are completely trustworthy, so it's a lot of fun seeing the events that force them together and then trying to predict who's going to double-cross whom.

The only drawback is a CGI shark that protects the sunken yacht. I wish director Guy Ferland (Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights) would've filmed a real shark instead, but other than that the movie looks great and makes excellent use of its scenery in Belize.

I really don't want to say more than that, but fans of classic noir should check it out.

Rating: Four out of five treacherous treasure-hunters.