The Whole Bloody Affair

Last week, I took in Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair at the theater. This is combined version of Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 (from 2003 and 2004, respectively). This version, which supposedly fits better with Tarantino's original conception of the film screened at Cannes in 2006, but this is the first time it got a wide release.

This version removes some material made extraneous by it being one film and adds an additional anime sequence, further detailing the background of O-Ren Ishi. Beyond that, it feels like there are some scenes that are cut differently in minor ways and perhaps some use some slightly different takes, though since I haven't seen the original films in a decade probably, I may misremember.

If you really liked Kill Bill, you should see this one, particularly if you haven't seen it in some time. The runtime is long, but there is an intermission, and honestly sitting through this one felt less of a chore than sitting through several of the merely over 2 hours Marvel installments or the theatrical cuts of the Lord of the Rings films. The scenes tend to be short enough not to overstay their welcome and what is going on is interesting. Actually, I feel like the pacing is better here even compared to other Tarantino works like Django Unchained or The Hateful Eight.

Seeing this move on the big screen again in 2025 made me nostalgic for another era in cinema that wasn't really all that long ago. Before the financial pressures of streaming left the studios chasing increasingly formulaic and assembled by committee franchise blockbusters.

Comics-Related Gift Guide

 Looking for a gift for a comic book fan you know (even if that fan is yourself)? Here are my recommendations for you to consider.

Absolute Martian Manhunter vol 1: Martian Vision

In the only one of the Absolute books that really caught me interest, Martian Manhunter is re-envisioned as a sort of memetic lifeform that invades the mind of FBI agent John Jones in a psychedelic story about alien invasion and family, among other things, by Camp and Rodriquez. This is, unfortunately, only the first 6 issues of the series, so not a complete story, but worth it, if only for Rodriquez's artwork.

Avengers: The Veracity Trap

I reviewed this gorgeous volume by Kidd and Cho here. The Avengers brawl with a host of Kirby-style Marvel monsters, courtesy of Loki, but soon develops in an even more metatextual direction as Thor pursues Loki outside the realm of the comic. The Avengers soon must come to terms with the sense-shattering reality of their existence and the fictional counterparts of Kidd and Cho finding the story becoming all too real!

Bug Wars Book One: Lost in the Yard

Teenager Slade Slaymaker, son of an entomologist who died under mysterious circumstances, finds himself shrunk and thrown in among warring tribes of diminutive insect-riding humanoids having epic battles in his unkept backyard!

Ad copy calls this "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Conan," but I feel like Aaron and Asrar are fulfilling the promise of Sword of Atom or the Hulk stories set in Jarella's world in a gritter, modern way. The thought but into the various cultures of the yard is one of my favorite parts.

Drome

This one has got a fair amount of buzz online, and I think with good reason. Check out my review here. Lonergan weaves a creation myth in a world part Kirby's New Gods and part Metal Hurlant in a unique style.

Hobtown Mystery Stories

The release of volume three "The Secret of the Saucer" just this week has given me the only excuse I need to put this series on the list again this year. Bertin and Forbes created a series that is sort of "Twin Peaks meets the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew" as teens in a small, coastal Canadian town uncover weirdness.

Marvel Age of Comics

I wrote about the Mighty Avengers volume in this series here. It's the only one I've read so far of these 33 1⁄3 explorations of Marvel history, but it got me interested in reading more.

The Seasons Vol. 1

Young Spring Seasons is the last hope to save her sisters and parents from the grip of sinister carnival that invades their home town. This series by Remender, Alzaceta and Lopez has been called a "dark fairytale" and "whimsical horror," which seem apt descriptors. Remender has said The Adventures of Tintin and the works of Miyazaki were inspirations, which I can also see, particularly the former as it seems a very "European style" comic to me

The Mighty Avengers Vs. the 1970s

When I saw the announcement for the Marvel Age of Comics series, I said to some friends of mine that they seemed like the comics-related version of the 33 1⁄3 series, and apparently, I was more right than I new. They are published the same publisher (Bloomsbury), and I came across a press release that that says they were "inspired in part by Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 books."

Where the 33 1⁄3 books gave an author's idiosyncratic take on an album, the Marvel Age of Comics seem to cover a notable storyline or era in Marvel history. I decided to sample the series with The Mighty Avengers Vs. the 1970s by Paul Cornell. I suspect that, like the series that inspired them, these books will vary in how they are written and the insight provided, but on the basis of this one, I plan to check out more.

Cornell gives a compelling overview of the decade, breaking it up into the runs of the various writers (Thomas, Englehart, Shooter, and the fill-in writers), and examining how their approaches and concerns influenced the title. In centering the narrative on the writers, the artists are perhaps given short shrift, though George Perez is singled out for a good deal of praise. Cornell his talent for scene composition and character expression likely influenced writers both working with him and thereafter on the title.

Cornell's description of the series and its virtues is personal, reminding me at time of Morrison's Supergods, but is more concrete and informative rather than speculative. The complete Marvel neophyte will be confused, probably, but and the Avengers scholar might find it shallow. It appears to be gauged for the familiar, but not the expert, which is probably the right approach.

Hardwired

Recently, I decided to fill a gap in my cyberpunk awareness and check out Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired (1986). I've sampled Williams' short fiction before: his contributions to the Wild Cards shared universe, "Wall, Stone, Craft" from my years subscribing to the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy; and "Red Elvis" and "Prayers in the Wind," stories that left an impression even among other worthies in Dozois' Years Best Science Fiction collections. I figured I was long overdue to read what is perhaps his most famous novel.

In the near future of Hardwired, the Earth has lost the Rock War (a kinetic orbital strike) with the Orbital stations in the control of various corporate blocs. The territory that was formerly the United States has fractured into the rival states, scrambling to hold onto what they can in the face of environmental degradation and exploitation by the Orbital blocs. The novel has two protagonists. One is Cowboy, a cybernetically enhanced ex-pilot, now a panzer (a hovercraft or ground-effect type vehicle; storywise a futuristic truck) driver, running contraband from the relatively more prosperous West to the beleaguered East Coast. The other is Sarah, an enhanced street tough and bodyguard in Florida, trying to keep herself and her prostitute brother alive after she becomes a "loose end" following a job she took for a corporation.

Hardwired seems clearly post-Gibson, but Williams crafts a cyberpunk future all his own. No Blade Runner-inspired Sprawl here really or heavy Japanese overlay. Hardwired sets much of its action in rural areas, even more rural in his future than today, on lonely, roads, or in smaller cities like a partially drowned Tampa that becomes an evocation of the developing world under the colonial boot heel.

William's Cowboy has a much more on-the-nose name than Gibson's console cowboys. The callbacks and parallels to the Old West of reality and of celluloid myth are much stronger. Hack science fiction of the past was often derided for utilizing plots cribbed from horse operas and given a futuristic veneer, but William's work recalls the Western in a way that gives it resonance similarly to how the work of Leigh Brackett so often does. In fact, Cowboy reminds me more than a little of Brackett's outlaw protagonist in "The Citadel of Lost Ships," even down to their "the family lost their land" backstory.

Beyond the Western, the run down and discarded nature of Hardwired's America has a very 70s feel. There are echoes of car movies like Vanishing Point, but also 70s Neo-Noir. It prefigures Cowboy Bebop a bit in some of its worldbuilding and influences.

I enjoyed the novel a lot. It's fairly pulpy, I suppose, though that's never been a downside to me. It is very 80s, too, in how it is written. It's prose in interesting enough and quintessential early cyberpunk: Chandlerian simile and metaphor with a science and technology obsession. The occasional snippets of news or ad copy go for black satire at times similar to Robocop, still a year away. It's themes, though, are just as relevant, today, perhaps even more so. 

Flashback Radio: "The Dark"

For the month of October and the Halloween season, I thought it would be fun to revisit some classic Old-Time Radio horrors. My friend and former podcast co-commentator, Jason, was up for it. We started with "The Thing on the Fourble Board."

For this our last episode of the season, I wanted us to return to Lights Out in the Arch Oboler era. "The Dark" aired (possibly, there is some disagreement) on January 19, 1938. In this story, a ambulance crew responds to a routine call and finds something decidedly nonroutine. 

The episode as it aired is lost today, though it was remembered well enough to form the basis of a segment in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror V." This likely came from a truncated vignette that appeared on the Oboler's LP Drop Dead! An Exercise in Horror in 1962. That 7ish minutes version is on YouTube and elsewhere.

How could we listen to a lost episode? Well, a group did a recreation based on the existing script. If you want to see the actors actually doing the recording, that's on YouTube:

Trey: Jason, did this episode make you afraid of the dark? Or at least steer you away from a second career as an EMT?

Jason: I don't know that I am permanently scarred by the experience, but I was again surprised by the intensity of this program's fright factor, and just how outré such a mass media production managed to get in it's short run time. 

Events were skewing fairly mundane, if horrific, until the climactic minutes, when all bets were off and no holds were barred in terms both of graphic (or should I say sonic?) violence and a sharp turn into the unexplainable so profoundly weird that it gives Lovecraft a run for his money. 

I'm once again avoiding spoilers because the big reveal really must be heard to be believed.

My only criticism lies in the challenge of reviving a piece of media from a bygone era. The performances make an admirable attempt at reproducing period acting styles, which lends an air of goofiness a bit at odds with the tone of the events portrayed, until the bitter end when the viewpoint character is left alone to face existential terror. 

But man, that last 5 minutes!

Trey: Yes, no slight to the recreation voice actors who do a great job, but I would like to hear the original crew because there would have been a "naturalism" for them in some of those lines and those performances.

Flashback Radio: "Evening Primrose"

For the month of October and the Halloween season, I thought it would be fun to revisit some classic Old-Time Radio horrors. My friend and former podcast co-commentator, Jason, was up for it. We started with "The Thing on the Fourble Board."

“Evening Primrose” first aired on Escape on November 5, 1947. It proved so popular it was repeated on September 12, 1948 and August 25, 1949.  This dark fantasy story of a poet who, fed up with the modern world, goes to live in hiding in a department store, only to find there's already a whole wainscot society living there. I society who employ the shadowy Dark Men to keep their existence hidden.

The teleplay is based on a 1940 short story by John Collier. It was also adapted into a musical by Stephen Sondheim, starring Anthony Perkins, in 1966 as an episode of ABC Stage 67.

Trey: I first encountered the story in Dennis Hartwell's seminal 1987 horror anthology The Dark Descent. It's perhaps less pure horror story than some of the others we've listened, but I think suitably uncanny for the season. What did you think?

Jason: Suitably peculiar! The story's atmosphere of strangeness was enhanced by the now-distant cultural norms of decades long gone, the past being a foreign country, as they say. 

The elements of world building presented were, for me, the most interesting aspects of this tale. 

This society of nocturnal free-loaders is noted as accumulating in their secret havens following periods of economic upheaval and seem symptomatic of modernity. Their cultural enforcers, the mysterious dark men, could plausibly have been with us since about the same time as the proliferation of department stores in the US, with the funeral industry becoming a widespread phenomenon at approximately the same time in the late19th century. 

I particularly enjoyed the revelation that the society of store-dwellers were socially stratified by the perceived status of their home shops. 

The next time convenience or necessity drives me into a Walmart, or some similar purveyor of goods, I will have a close look at the nooks and crannies. I have joked in the past about Walmart adding a funerary department to its extensive list, so it can truly provide cradle-to-grave services, but if such a thing should ever come to pass, I'll know what's really going on.

Trey: Keep us updated! Yeah, the worldbuilding was good. I particularly liked the hints that the store-dwellers had become something other than completely human, much in the same way subterranean peoples tend to change or "degenerate" in the works of Machen, Lovecraft, or Howard.

Flashback Radio: "Poltergeist"

For the month of October and the Halloween season, I thought it would be fun to revisit some classic Old-Time Radio horrors. My friend and former podcast co-commentator, Jason, was up for it. We started with "The Thing on the Fourble Board."

"Poltergeist" was the October 20, 1942, episode of the series Lights Out. The series was created by Wyllis Cooper (who we mentioned previously in regard to his later series Quiet Please) but was eventually taken over by Arch Oboler. Lights Out was one of the earliest radio horror shows and was perhaps the first to gain a large following. It ran from 1934 to 1947 and eventually transitioned to television.

In this episode, three young women discover that the dead expect a certain deference from the living and to transgress these limits can bring their vengeance down on you.

Trey: I think the opening to Lights Out is perhaps my favorite in old time radio: the foreboding drone, then the monotone voice, "It...is...later...than...you...think..." This episode feels more modern than some of the others we've heard. It could be translated into a horror film--but then I think seeing it on film would diminish the horror of the particularly visceral sound effect that accompanies the deaths. What did you think of the episode?

Jason: I very much enjoyed this surprisingly effective tale. I was skeptical at first, again owing to the condensed nature of the short form storytelling. As events began to unfold, one of the character's immediate and extreme reaction challenged my credulity, but everything that followed assuaged my concerns.

I agree with your thought about the possible diminishment of effect if this tale was presented visually. Could a talented director pull it off? It's possible, but as you suggest, and for me, the biggest strength of Poltergeist is the images it provokes in the mind of listener. 

I'm thinking of course of the sticky ends met by the characters, but particularly of the horrific moment at the very end, when listeners had every right to expect a denouement that ties things up in a nice bow. What is delivered instead is a description of a final, nightmarish image so effective that it stuck with me long after my morning commute listening time.

If I were a child listening back in the day, I would have had to contend with unpleasant and intrusive thoughts once consigned to bed!