The Fractal Hall Journal

Dead Space

Holy crap, is this game terrifying. And that’s just the intro. Sure, the creepy nursery rhyme theme is a little derivative but I think that’s something computer games are actually really good at. You take the really good bits from genre work (films mostly) and you squish it all together (see Halo, amongst many others). It’s not art, but it’s fun. And this game is packed full of blood-squirty dismembering fun.

The only possible hiccup is that like Condemned and Call of Cthulhu before it, it may be too scary to finish.

Why yes, I am a scaredy cat.

Fallout 3

Depending on what mood I’m in, I could well call Oblivion my favourite computer game. It’s certainly the game I’ve spent the most amount of hours on, by a hee-uge margin. I got it years ago, and because of the finding time thing, I still haven’t completed it. So I’m very much in the target market for a post-apocalyptic version.

Not spent loads of time on it yet because I really do want to finish Dead Space, but I should imagine a lot of ‘09 is going to spent on this one. And, hopefully, Elder Scrolls V in ‘10.

The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire

I’ve been meaning to get this one for a while. The follow up to Deadly Genesis (reviewed here previously), and like the previous story an entertaining yarn. Brubaker’s an excellent writer, and very good at doing a Claremont-style story in the modern Marvel house style. I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but that’s not the intention. To be honest, it’s nice to read a superhero comic that doesn’t irritate me on any level.

Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror and Cthulhu Tales

Sorry, that last one got a bit catty.

A couple of Mythos comics were added to the haul this year, and although I haven’t had chance to read them yet I’ve skimmed through. The MAX title is the hardcover of Richard Corben’s straightforward Lovecraft adaptations, and looks gorgeous. The second is the first paperback collection of BOOM! Studio’s ongoing anothology title. BOOM! Haven’t made a single misstep yet with their Cthulhu titles, and I doubt they’re going to start here.

Arkham Asylum 15th Anniversary edition

Really needs a post to itself. In short: brilliant, better than I remember it. Unfortunately the good bits were all left in Morrison’s original script, so this is the first version I’ve ever read that makes a damned bit of sense. A flawed masterpiece.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Late to the party on this one, as I’ve only just upgraded to a graphics card that can handle the game. I assume we’re all geeks here, and we’re all familiar with the Games Workshop property that is, perhaps, nerdness incarnate.

Let’s just say, if Fallout 3 doesn’t suck up all of my time, then Dawn of War will be getting the rest. Hoo boy, I hope you’re all ready for another dip in productivity. Damn shame I’m fucking awful at RTS games.

The Steel Remains, by Richard Morgan

Britain’s best SF writer tackles fantasy. Half way through this, and it’s very good.

The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom

Picked up at random for being a haunted house book on the cheap at Asda. Last book I got from there was Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box, and that one was fantastic.

Again, only half way through it. Good points and bad points and I haven’t made my mind up about it yet, but it’s entertaining and it cost about three quid so I shouldn’t really complain either way.

That’s that faint praise thing again, isn’t it?

Anyway, turns out there’s a competition running in connection with the book, and the first prize is a weekend in that haunted hotel in Ludlow (Ludlow?) that’s been mentioned here before, more than once. The town’s obviously cornering the market in this kind of thing.

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To this day, these incidents remain barely reported. There was a flurry of news coverage in the British media during the time, but curiously almost no-one in the media picked up on the alleged occult connections, or even the rumours regarding a possible relationship between Agosto and Winfield.

What is known for certain is that following an ill-fated second week of filming and facing the inevitable abandonment of filming, Winfield did not show up to the final day on set, and it was the early evening when Agosto found him hanged in the cottage where she had been staying. Several days later, on Christmas Eve, Agosto herself was killed in a collision on the M25. She had been returning to London, and was found with several boxes of research material on Daniel Morgan that had been collected by Harry Grant and passed on to Winfield.

The story that later emerged indicated that the two had been having an affair. Both were married, things had likely gone sour, no doubt exarcebating an already stressful production. As a result Winfield took his own life, and though the coroner found no intoxicants during post-mortem it was generally accepted that Agosto’s accident had probably occurred while she was under the influence.

The timeline of events preceding their deaths is unclear for several reasons. Many of the crew were never interviewed during the short inquiry that followed, several refusing point blank to talk to investigators. It remains a mystery why this was never pursued up by anyone in authority. Much footage had been rendered unretrievable. Mirroring the earlier accidental destruction of White Ship Films’ negatives, most of the tape used degraded during transport back to the company’s offices in London. Quality control may have been an issue for one set of tape, but the documentary segments of the shoot had been recorded on a different type and different brand. It seemed an odd coincidence that both would types degrade within the same narrow time frame.

From the few written accounts available, it’s clear that the incidents on the set increased in severity over the final week. The predicted bad weather caused most of the delays, and contributed to the damage that continued to happen to the crew’s equipment. During the daylight hours no apparitions were reported, but items would go missing and more than one person reported hearing strange banging noises coming from the empty buildings they worked around.

Towards the end of the week, a replacement generator had to be brought in after an engineer was injured by the equipment they had been using. The injury he received was never specified. The new item arrived in time for the last session of night shooting.

The final night was the worst for the production. Many of the crew who were present that night did not return the next day, contributing to the delay in discovery of Winfield’s body. No records remains of the exact events, but several strange things were seen, and much audible phenomena was recorded. Needless to say, everything captured on tape was lost when the storage media degraded.

To date, no-one has attempted to adapt any of Daniel Morgan’s work. The rights are still available, though both White Ship and Conrad Media are no longer ongoing concerns. Most of the crew involved in both attempts at filming have since left the industry, and the ones who remain are clear in their belief that another attempt should not be made. They are not alone in believing that Morgan’s work is cursed.

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Time, I think, for a Christmas ghost story.

During the winter of 1996, Conrad Media began filming a television series and documentary based on various pieces of Daniel Morgan’s short fiction. The BBC had subcontracted the work to them following the acquisition of the licence from Harry Grant.

Conrad were a dependable firm made up of veteran film and television producers, and were seen as a safe and budget-conscious option for a production with an already disastrous history. Filming was almost stopped due to the somewhat superstitious views widepsread at the BBC. Corporate gossip had tagged the endeavour as doomed from the outset.

Bad luck was one thing, the prospect of financial failure another. Not one of the naysayers came close to predicting the extent of the tragic events that followed.

Principle photography started on December 9th, and was to continue until the weekend of the 21st. Various locations had been chosen in and around the Rhondda and Rhymney Valleys, not far from the colliery where Morgan had once worked. Particularly convenient for the production was an extensive plot of land that sported a disused textile factory in surprisingly good order and various buildings, including a modestly-sized farmhouse. The land had once been owned by an industrialist who had made his fortune in the area, before losing it all following the Second World War. The reason it had remained relatively untouched by local vandals soon became apparent.

Filming proceeded to plan during the first week, despite several significant technical glitches. Equipment malfunctioned on-set, and a number of different vehicles were unable to be restarted after parking outside the factory. Despite the hitches, the crew were just about able to keep schedule. A forecast of poor weather in the following week convinced Adam Winfield, the director and one of the main stockholders in Conrad, to bring the night shoots they had planned to do during the final couple of days forward to that weekend.

Delyth Agosto, the actress playing the main character in the series, was the first person to report seeing strange activity on set. Within minutes of beginning the first scene, outside the ground floor of the factory, she complained of seeing people inside staring out through the windows at her. Winfield sent several people inside, but they found nothing. Throughout the first couple of hours, Agosto became more and more agitated, certain at first that the crew were playing a practical joke. Matters became worse after the production manager convinced her it wasn’t their doing, as it was at this point that she started to believe that the events were of unnatural origin. The shoot ended when the portable generator that powered the camera set-up shorted out.

The next day Agosto told Winfield of her intention to quit. She had endured a restless sleep during what was left of the night, convinced that a presence had followed her back from the set to the holiday letting that had been provided for her, an old miner’s cottage not far from the shoot. Winfield was able to talk her round by agreeing to limit the rest of the filming she would have to do at night, and putting it back to the end of the following week.

On the Sunday night, the crew had prepared to shoot without Agosto at the old farmhouse. Whether provoked by her previous behaviour or due to an actual increase in unexplainable activity, this time others reported seeing movement within the house, and in the surrounding area. Winfield struggled to keep order during the long night, as piece after piece of equipment failed and more people claimed to see figures watching them. Winfield was able to cap the rising levels of panic until the end of the scheduled shoot, an achievement made all the more impressive following his admission the next day to his DoP that not only had he too been seeing indistinct figures throughout the site, but had also heared someone whispering behind his shoulder more than once during the night, when there was no one there to be making a noise.

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I think it’s probably time to take some of the assertions I’ve made in the delineations and try and explain what I mean. Gibbering about core genres and a character’s engineering can only take us so far, and I really should attempt to prove that I’m not talking completely out of my arse. Batman was the first character we looked at, and he’s as good a character as any to start with again.

In the initial post, I noted the character’s four most important factors as being his distinctive costume, fighting skills, detective skills, and gadgets. And as Friend Plok pointed out in comments, Bruce Wayne’s practically limitless fortune should also be noted. I don’t know about anyone else, but I always find it difficult to pick a ‘favourite’ of anything, be it music, film or comics. There’s just too much great stuff in the world. But if I had to pick one Batman story, it would have to be “Gothic”, Grant Morrison’s contribution to the old “Legends of the Dark Knight” title, and one of the main reasons why everyone looked forward to his run on the main book (and, unfortunately, probably one of the main reasons why everyone was disappointed when he took a different approach to his earlier one).

I suppose you could argue that the story edges too far to the horror/supernatural end of things, and too far from the crime/noir core genre. But then it is called Gothic. Plus, it’s meant to be a Year One era tale, and back during Batman’s actual first year of publication the book touched on a lot of these themes (something that Matt Wagner has more recently extrapolated to great effect in his Batman: Dark Moon Rising series). Besides, gangsters and organised crime play a large part in the story, so we’re never that far away from typical Batman territory.

There are a few other things we could poke holes in too, if we were enclined to. Bruce Wayne’s childhood connection to the bad guy is a little too coincidental, but Morrison uses it to such disturbing effect that we should probably let it slide. After all, it doesn’t break the mechanism of the story. There’s also the matter of Thomas Wayne, which we’ll look at next.

Detective skills: Essential for a Batman story, and the character’s fairly well-served here by Morrison. It’s important to note, I think, that we don’t need a carefully crafted Agatha Christie mystery every issue. A fair-play ‘tec yarn is a bit much to ask every single time out. But showing a little of Batman’s legendary powers of reason shouldn’t be. As it is, it’s enough that Batman is able to figure out that at least one murder was due to a double-crossing crook.

I may be reading more into this next bit than I should, but bear with me. At more than one point, Thomas Wayne points his son in the right direction, through dreams and the accidental use of a misfiled audio recording. This will likely annoy those who dislike supernatural overtones, and in terms of story is the second use of coincidence which is usually regarded as bad form (you can maybe get away with one bit of luck in lieu of plot progression, but no more). On the other hand, the use of the subconscious in deductive reasoning is a well-established theme, which may have guided the Batman’s hand. I suppose it is a bit of a stretch, but Morrison’s recent Batman stories show us that the operation of Batman’s subconscious is something the writer considers important to explore, and there’s no reason to think this wasn’t his first go at it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Gothic is obscure about whether or not demons and ghosts are involved. It’s explicit that they are.

Bonus Batman cleverness:

Fighting/acrobatic skills: Well, this is Batman we’re talking about. You really need the pictures?

Gadgets:

You know, it’s the bat-gyro that recently tipped me off to something I’d never realised in god knows how many years of reading this story. Long before Wagner’s recent retelling, ‘Gothic’ was Morrison’s take on Detective Comics #31 and 32’s ‘Batman versus the Vampire’. Mad Monk: Check. Creepy European setting: Check. Improbable Bat-Gyro voyage across the Atlantic: Absolutely.

Oh, and before I forget:

Costume: Present and correct. And a good ‘un too, thanks to veteran artist Klaus Jansen.

Rich-boy Bruce Wayne: Well, the manor house, gadgets, and several mentions of attending private school takes care of that. Plus the man servant. Speaking of which-

At least one essential member of supporting cast: Ladies and gents, Alfred the Butler.

Batman as raving nutcase: As I’ve noted before, I don’t see it as essential myself, but it is a popular take and Morrison gives us plenty here. Apart from the crazy dreams and, for that matter, dressing up as a bat, here he is relaxing in a room full of stopped clocks.

What’s the importance of these elements? For it to be a Batman story, these Batman-specific elements have to be engine. They have to drive everything forward.

Let’s accept that stories, certainly superhero stories, are all about conflict. And let’s say that the conflict here is made up from two types of interaction, the first being Batman’s method of locating the villain, the second being his method of dealing with the villain. The first type requires no direct interaction, as by definition this occurs during the second of the two types of interaction.

Batman’s one of the easiest heroes to use for the first part, because he is, famously, the world’s greatest detective. I think this is why he’s one fo the most enduring of these characters. His villains are as fascinating as he is, and we learn all about them through his use of detective work. I think this may be why he’s generally more engaging than, say, Superman. He has better tools to analyse his world, and as he’s the main character with whom we identify with, by extension we as readers are better placed, too.

Magic expository Thomas Wayne dreams aside, in Gothic Batman fully explores the history and circumstance of Mr Whisper, the primary antagonist, in detail before he ever faces him. We find out Whisper’s backstory, his connection with Gotham, and eventually the ins and outs of his evil plot, all via Batman’s observations. Batman is well equipped to place Whisper into context.

In this story, Whisper’s context is, in escalating levels of importance, Plague-era Austria, Gotham Town, Gotham City, the Gotham criminal underworld, and finally Bruce Wayne/Batman himself (we could also, I suppose, throw in the Devil). Batman uses his detective skills to reason all of this out, with help from his gadgets (Bat-Gyro transport is apparently a lot more efficient that you’d likely believe) and, in the strongest twist of all, his own wealthy background. Had he not been rich, he likely would not have gone to private school, and his past connection with Mr Whisper would not have existed.

Finally, the culmination of all of this how Batman deals with his villain. And Batman deals with all his villains pretty much the same way. By beating the shit out of them.

I mean, he intimidates them first; this is where the costume, of course, plays its part. The panel I use above, from when Batman goes after Whisper, is a real fuck yeah moment. But essentially, he gives them a kicking.

Whisper is immortal, so Batman doesn’t take him out, or even get to send him to Arkham, but I think that’s ok within the context of this story. He saves Gotham (er, spoiler), and in doing so ensures that Whisper’s soul is forfeit. It’s implied that Whisper is finally dealt with by the spirit of an abused woman who cannot rest until he’s been taken care of, and really that’s a good enough resolution for me.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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Ah, the long delayed Hulk post. This was meant to be the next delineation, and then The Incident happened. So this may not be the post as it was originally envisioned.

Core Genre: SF or Horror? Bruce Banner is, next to Reed Richards, the Marvel U’s most significant scientist (if we accept that until the film, Tony Stark wasn’t as well known and besides, he’s more of an engineer), and the Hulk has very few ’supernatural’ elements seen in other titles. On the other hand, the Jekyll/Hyde character is a horror archetype. I suspect the Hulk is mostly SF; the more straightforward ‘horror’ take Bruce Jones wrote a few years ago wasn’t very well received, after all, although I thought it was an interesting premise that was worth a shot. But it’s the Original Star Trek/Forbidden Planet kind of SF, packed with sinister overtones and dangerous, alien beasts.

The Bad: Definition of a tricky character. Not in story terms, mind. Banner’s life is tailor-made for drama. The problem is that, as far as popular culture is concerned, the Hulk is one of the characters that everyone knows about. DC’s Trinity, then Spider-Man, then the Hulk, just ahead of Captain America and Aquaman. As a result, the twists and turns taken in the Hulk comic have often been completely at odds with the greater understanding of what the character is. Isn’t he a scientist, on the run with a brutish, superstrong, green alter ego? Well, sometimes his alter ego is smart, sometimes he’s a space-king, and sometimes he’s, er, grey. Or red.

Thing is, it’s easy to roll our collective eyes at some of the creative decisions made where other characters are concerned. Superman shouldn’t be blue and electric, Batman shouldn’t be anyone other than Bruce Wayne, and so on. And it’s crazy to think that these things are limitations on story. We are no where near the point where we’re out of stories to write for these characters. We don’t need to make these dramatic changes in order to create a compelling story.

The problem with the Hulk is, his status quo may well be that limiting. I think this is why so many of his stories move away from the ‘lonely man’ perspective. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately for the true-blue old-school Hulk fans), eventually we do return to that kind of story, because that’s what everyone believes Bruce Banner’s story is. He runs from those that hunt him, even as he runs from himself.

The Good: The Hulk is an absolute classic character. Hulk stories, when done well, can have both a satisfying emotional element and lots and lots of violent punchings. What I find particularly interesting is how the prevailing storytelling tendencies of the 2000s so far have served many otherwise simplistic characters well by providing a certain psychological complexity (take almost every recent depiction of super-villains at either of the Big Two as an example); and yet, the modern take has diminished the Hulk. Super-villains have been elevated, in story terms, while the Hulk has been reduced and, by the same process, become a super-villain. Simply put, Ultimate Hulk, the Hulk in JMS’s Fantastic Four run, and the Hulk that Brian Bendis shot into space are boring. A sub-par Godzilla, with nothing better to do that property damage. And property damage is interesting for about five minutes, if done prettily enough.

The idea that the Hulk has never killed anyone may be laughable and ‘unrealistic’ (unreality in a comic? Surely not), but it makes Bruce Banner more interesting. Personally, I quite like Greg Pak’s take, that because the Hulk is an aspect of Banner, on a subconscious level he was ensuring no-one got hurt. Besides, if the Hulk is going around murdering hundreds on every rampage, then Banner is a coward for not taking himself out, and who wants to follow that guy’s adventures?

Characteristics:

A) Transformation…
B) …into a big, green, superstrong invulnerable monster
C) Mad science

Is the Hulk a superhero? Well, I’ve already claimed he shouldn’t be a villain, so I have to say yes. But what kind?

If he’s not a bad guy, then within his story, who is? Can we claim that, like Spider-man and Peter Parker, the two identities are each other’s enemies?

I don’t think so. I think we can certainly take that viewpoint, and I know I’ve read more than one story that does. But I think that, really, the better take is seen in the last film. That eventually, Bruce Banner and the Hulk must accept that they aren’t separate beings, but aspects of the same one, and in doing so may be able to do some good against monsters that are far worse than they are.

These worse monsters are the Hulk’s villains, the characters he must put into context. They can be other gamma-mutants (the Leader, the Abomination, et al), or evil bug-eyed space aliens. But, as in almost every classic creature story, the arch-fiend, the greatest monster of them all, is humankind.

The Hulk is chased, harrassed, and prevented ever from finding peace or solace by us. In a reversal to the other delineations, it’s not the Hulk who locates his villains via any of the above factors. It’s these factors that allow humans to locate him. His transformation reveals himself to people otherwise unaware of his presence. His search for a cure (via factor C) puts him in a position where he can be located. And factor B ensures that when he does appear, he can’t go unnoticed. The Hulk doesn’t so much interact with his villains, than ends up in a situation where he cannot avoid interacting with them. That’s the difference between the Bendis/Millar/Ultimate type Hulk. That Hulk goes looking for trouble, as he’s nothing more than a psychopathic beast. The real Hulk wants to be left alone.

Conclusion: There’s so much more to say about Banner and the Hulk. I’ve limited myself in this post by talking about the archetypical Hulk. Needless to say, Peter David did some very, very good work during his long run, and by necessity wandered down paths that won’t match with the ‘lonely man’ take. It would take a far longer post to discuss the twists and turns of the various Hulk personalities, and I suspect we’ll be returning to this character at some point in the future.

By the way, I very much recommend Planet Hulk to almost anyone. It’s a really, really good story, and far better than I ever expected it to be.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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Harry Grant was a Scottish television producer, who started his career working on popular dramas during the 1970s. He had scripts filmed for episodes of Hammer House of Horror and The Professionals, and was briefly a producer on Doctor Who. In the early 90s, Grant started a production company, White Ship Films, with a view to producing low-to-mid budget horror movies.

Grant’s plan was to create a movie based on Daniel Morgan’s Uni-Mortal strip, anticipating that it would be a straightforward matter to secure funding for a superhero film in the wake of the worldwide success of Batman and Batman Returns. With Uni-Mortal, he would also be able to explore the subject matter via weird fiction, a genre he was fascinated with.

The initial attempts to buy the film rights were a disaster. Believing that White Ship were clear to begin production after paying a fairly large sum to an American media conglomerate, Grant sank a substantial amount of time and money into developing the Uni-Mortal feature. He was forced to put his plans on hold after a Swedish company claimed they held the rights to the character outside of the US. As soon as the first matter was put to rest, it became clear that the legal issues were far more complex than initially suspected. A competing interest was declared by “Universal Adventure Holdings”, causing Grant’s production to once again come to a halt. Facing the possibility of having to wait for the outcome of years of litigation, Grant pulled the plug, almost bankrupting himself and his company in the process.

His last-ditch plan was to make a minimal-budget feature out of what could be salvaged from the Uni-Mortal debacle, using Morgan’s early pulp stories as a source. In the course of the legal maneuverings, White Ship had ended up owning the copyright to a fair amount of Morgan’s prose work when it became easier to buy them outright rather than negotiate a licencing fee. Grant saw an opportunity to avoid ruin.

Instead, he sailed right into it.

Additional filming was never started due to the small crew Grant had hired all falling ill with food poisoning. No other crew could be hired due to the union dispute that followed, and much of the material that Grant hoped to re-use was rendered useless after being stored incorrectly at the office facility where White Ship were based.

Deciding to cut his losses, Grant licenced the property to the BBC. Though Daniel Morgan’s work was not widely known outside of cult fiction devotees, Grant still had friends at the corporation willing to help him who saw potential in the pre-production work already work, and the possibility of an accompanying documentary series that would illuminate an otherwise obscure individual.

The events that followed are a tale for another time, at the next of the spirit nights. For the moment, it’s worth noting that despite the failures to bring Morgan’s stories to the screen, it would have been a medium that the writer would have been more than happy to see his work translated to. And when we consider the global reach of the cinema, perhaps we also see the form which Morgan’s final prophecy will take. Perhaps this is how Morgan will finally open the doors between worlds.

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Daniel Morgan found himself unable to find further work after Universal Adventure Press ceased publishing. The stories he wanted to tell had become too lurid and obscure to be used in other comic titles, and he had long since burned his bridges with previous employers such as Weird Tales.

During his time working as a comic creator, he had been involved in several drunken altercations with other pulp writers. His mental state had declined sharply during 1940 and 1941, evidenced by long rambling letters he would send to people he barely knew, and incidents where he would turn up at the homes of magazine editors to rant at them about the state of the publishing industry. Police records show that they had been informed of Morgan’s behaviour, though they considered him harmless.

In Morgan’s view, pulp magazines had fallen from the lofty pedestal he had once elevated them to. Comic books had replaced them as the medium that held the key to unearthly power, should the stories reach a wide enough audience.

Needless to say, following a period of near-destitution, Morgan was committed to psychiatric care, where he remained for the rest of the decade. Accounts suggest that he was released in the early 50s, although many records from that period have since been lost. It is likely that Morgan had suffered from a post-traumatic disorder for a long time, his illness rooted in survivors guilt from not one but two incidents: the accident at the Windsor Colliery, and the sinking of the ship that brought him to America.

During the voyage to New York, Morgan was once again the victim of the hideous luck that plagued him throughout his life. He travelled aboard the SS Zennor, which sank in rough seas  fifty miles off the coast of Massachusetts and a hundred miles off-course. Dangerous weather conditions, including severely limited visibility caused by thick fog, delayed the rescue attempt. Morgan was one of several dozen people who escaped the shipwreck in the Zennor’s lifeboats, and following treatment for dehydration and exhaustion suffered no further ill effects from his ordeal. Of the others rescued, a high proportion later reported an unusually high incidence of bad dreams, dark moods, and other symptoms identified at the time with a marked similarity to shell shock.

The cause of the wreck is still unclear. Many of the surviving passengers reported that the Zennor had been struck by another ship, though no other vessel was known to be in the area at the time and has never been subsequently identified.

Morgan died on April 23, 1952, during a fire at his apartment building. He was the only fatality, with the other residents escaping easily. The reason he did nothing to save himself is unknown. Of all his previous acquaintances, only Jacob Hoffeman attended his funeral.

In the years following his death, there have been many reports of individuals passing around copies of the original artwork for the final Uni-Mortal story, despite Hoffeman’s claim that work was never started on it. From time to time, reports have surfaced of instanced of vandalism at the site of Morgan’s grave, and at the office building that stands in the place of the building where Morgan lived.

Most intriguing of all is the curse attributed to Morgan’s work, in particular the incidents that occurred during the filming of a BBC series based on his stories.

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Daniel Morgan was born in the town of Rhydaman, Carmarthenshire, on June 30th, 1908. He was born into a large family, the fifth of seven children. Little is known about his parents, William and Rose, or what became of his siblings. His father was known locally as Bill Pengam, the meaning behind the nickname unclear. It could indicate he was originally from the village of the same name, or it could be derived from the Welsh word for “wrong-headed”. Some sources have claimed that Daniel was in fact the product of an affair between Bill and an unknown woman, and that his father forced his wife to raise Daniel as her own.

At the age of 13, Morgan moved to Abertridwr, in the South Wales Valleys, to work underground at the Windsor Colliery where several of his cousins were already employed. Some time later, on January 3rd, 1925, Morgan was trapped by a cave-in following a localised gas explosion. Five other miners were killed instantly, with Morgan and one Thomas Jones the only survivors. Jones later died of his injuries.

In 1926, Morgan was involved in industrial action related to the General Strike, but along with his comrades was forced back to work in November of the same year. This event provided the impetus for him to leave Wales for good, emigrating to the United States in January 1927. America wasn’t an unusual destination for the Welsh during that era, or for any other nationality for that matter. But Morgan’s motives were fairly unique.

During 1925, the barely-educated collier began what became a long series of correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft, author of some of the most influential ‘Weird Fiction’ of the 20th Century. How exactly Morgan discovered Lovecraft’s work is unclear. Contemporary records from the Abertridwr Miner’s Institute Library, where Morgan was known to spend the bulk of his free time, show that they stocked little if any of the pulp magazines that carried Lovecraft’s writing. Lovecraft’s biographers frequently disagree on whether Morgan could be considered one of the author’s inner circle; the former was famous for the amount of letters he sent to various people, and despite Morgan’s later claims there is no convincing evidence that Lovecraft placed any special weight on the Welshman’s communication with him.

After several years of living and working in New York, Morgan had gained a reputation as a solid, though not particularly brilliant writer. Despite a series of humble day jobs, he spent the rest of his time creating short stories for pulp magazines. He became known for lurid, grotesque tales with a distinctive, pessimistic tone, though he was employed more for his ability to meet deadlines than storytelling skill. As with many of his contemporaries, his work has been better appreciated by later readers than audiences of the time.

Perhaps his most influential work, however, wasn’t anything he had published, but a kind of manifesto that circulated amongst the pulp community. It was unclear if it was purely a deliberate work of fiction, or whether Morgan honestly believed what he had written. The document set out a belief that should enough people become exposed to the ideas and themes of power and horror in the tales writers like Morgan told, a doorway would be opened between this world, and the world that lay beyond.

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The end of October approaches, bringing us closer to the day the Welsh call “Noson Calan Gaeaf,” the night before the first day of winter. It’s traditionally remembered as a Celtic spirit night, a time of ghosts and visitations, of lighting fires to ward off the coming darkness.

In short, it’s an appropriate time to speak of a controversial but little known Welshman who had a small role in the development of modern popular genre fiction, first during the pulp era, and later at the dawn of the superheroes.

By the end of the 30s the early superhero comic books were selling at a rate unthinkable by today’s standards. Within a short space of time following the introduction of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman, the market was flooded with dozens of different titles published by companies eager for a piece of the profits. In many cases, publishers turned to the writers of pulp magazines in order to keep up with the demand for new material.

Comic books owed a lot to the inexpensive, disposable form of entertainment they would later replace. Many of the pulp sensibilities of characters like Zorro and Doc Savage were transplanted to the likes of Batman and Green Lantern. Comics were easy to dismiss as children’s entertainment, but even so some people saw a great potential in them. Daniel Morgan was one of them.

Morgan had emigrated to the United States in the late 1920s. He worked various menial jobs, never holding one down for any long period of time. He was a fairly nondescript individual, and researchers would later find very few people who remembered working with him. Those that could recalled him only as a quiet man of low intelligence. He showed no sign of literary skill or ambition.

Yet during his free time, he wrote for several different magazines and publishers. His work was exceptionally dark, with many editors turning down some of his more grotesque stories. He was known to be in contact with various creators of ‘weird’ fiction, although it’s telling that even they weren’t overly keen on him.

Universal Adventure Press was one of the many short-lived ventures that were birthed by the initial comics boom. Jacob Hoffeman was employed as Editor-in-Chief, following decades-long experience in the pulps. He had worked with Morgan in the past, and offered the Welshman work on the new company’s titles. Morgan jumped at the chance.

It transpired that Morgan had become obsessed with these superheroes, collecting every single comic he could find since buying a copy of More Fun Comics at random from a newsstand. Despite never showing any previous interest in illustration, Morgan created, wrote and drew the character “Uni-Mortal” for Hoffeman, starting in Universal Adventure Comics #6. Morgan became preoccupied with Superman, idolising his creators, and poring over all the stories that featured the character. In later interviews, Hoffeman would recall that Morgan was particularly interested in his mysterious origin, of powers derived from elsewhere, and of parents and civilisations that, at that point, had never been shown.

His Uni-Mortal work followed the same template, with a child discovered in unfortunate circumstances (in this case, discovered adrift in a boat in icy seas by an Antarctic expedition) who grew up to develop superpowers. His adventures became increasingly odd, and less than altruistic. Morgan decided to finish the series once and for all with a sinister, down-beat ending, with Uni-Mortal driven mad and turning evil upon the return of his monstrous father from a distant plane of existence. It was a direction Hoffeman attempted to talk him out of, and according to the editor’s account Morgan never started work on it. The matter was made irrelevant when the company folded in 1942, leaving the character’s story unfinished and the rights tied up in various legal complications.

These stories are of considerable interest to scholars of the period, though Uni-Mortal has over time faded into the background as one of many heroes whose adventures never continued past the 40s. Morgan’s odd, atmospheric style has proved more influential in terms of technique, with the horror titles of the 50s and 70s and the work of the ‘British Invasion’ in the 80s following in the footsteps of both his comic and prose stories.

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Halloween’s a-coming, and it’s getting a little creepy here at the Hall. So today’s subject is appropriate to the season.

Core Genre: Horror

In some ways, Ghost Rider represents one part of a triumvirate that emerged from Marvel’s horror titles in the 70s. The most enduring, maybe, iconic enough to see interest in him renewed every few years before it ebbs once more. Ghost Rider’s tales were based around themes of hellfire and damnation, an overtly religious (or, perhaps, Christian mythological) approach also seen in companion titles such as Son of Satan. While still under the horror banner, Tomb of Dracula took a more classic, Gothic approach, overlapping with Werewolf by Night and other traditional monsters, while the final corner held the archetypical shambling nightmare of Man-Thing.

The hell-based Marvel titles were edgy by the standards of the time. In some ways, they’re still controversial today; after all, Essential Son of Satan was marketed as Essential Marvel Horror, presumably from fear of offending people’s delicate sensibilities with the smallest mention of Old Scratch.

Well, I say edgy. They really aren’t. The liberal use of satanism and satanic imagery is perhaps a little jarring to see in a (for want of a better word) ‘mainstream’ comic book, particularly a 70s superhero title, but overall it does come across as tame after the video horror boom of the 80s. The 70s Ghost Rider really hasn’t aged well, with his origin as a daredevil biker dating him badly. There’s a lot here that’s cheesy as hell. While other comic book films can be criticised for straying too far from the original material, the biggest mistake in Nic Cage’s Ghost Rider was in staying too close to a story that just didn’t hold a lot of water.

That said, there are still some fantastic ideas here, and an iconography far stronger than the stories that initially delineated them. There’s something intriguing about supernatural Westerns (just look at Ennis and Dillon’s Preacher), in the image of a modern-day cowboy with a flaming skull and a motorbike. Or maybe I’m mixing up ’story-worthy imagery’ with ‘makes a cool belt buckle’.

Let’s not discount the elements that came later, during the 90s revamp. We can disparage the Image era for a lot (a whoooooooole lot) of crap, but the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider had a far better design than the somewhat odd jumpsuit they stuck Johnny Blaze in, even if it was a little overly spikey. And having said that, it wasn’t until Garth Ennis and Clayton Crane’s recent miniseries that they finally gave him a decent bike. Even so, we should remember that 90s Ghost Rider was hugely popular.

We can see how the Rider is a constantly updated, imperfect character. A title with a hell of a lot of unfulfilled potential, a protagonist who gets dragged to viability by a series of increments over a long period of time.

The nuts and bolts:

A) The Spirit of Vengeance
B) Supernatural powers (hellfire/chain weapon/penance stare)
C) Flaming skull
D) A bike with flaming tyres

A bit of explanation may be required here, the character’s popularity being what it is. For a character with a relatively simple initial origin (son sells his soul to save his adoptive father, father dies anyway and he’s stuck with the curse), Ghost Rider’s story arc has become enormously convoluted over the various series. The reasons for his transformation have changed, the specific demon that empowered him has changed, the specific spirit his soul was bonded to has changed; he’s even had more than one host, and seen more than one host die. And with a supporting cast that includes Johnny Blaze, Noble Kale, Crash and Roxanne Simpson, the book has some of the stupidest names devised for a Marvel comic. I hope the purists will pardon me if I generalise a little here, because while (despite everything) I’m quite a big fan of the guy I don’t quite understand all the ins and outs myself. It’s probably best to highlight all the best bits from the various incarnations.

Factor A is important to understand, in particular should we chose to differentiate between vengeance and revenge. An odd thing to do, maybe, if we consider them synonyms, but in general usage (and feel free to argue against if you think I’m barking up the wrong tree) ‘revenge’ suggests spite and vindictiveness, which isn’t quite right as applied to the Rider. By the same token, he isn’t the Spirit of Justice, either, as that suggests a more balanced approach. To see justice done does not mean someone has to be punished, and Ghost Rider is most certainly all about the punishment.

Take the penance stare, one of the best ideas to come out of the 90s run. A way of inflicting the pain of innocent victims on those who prey on them. A perfect way to contextualise villains by their own actions. The theme of fire, of burning, but also of cleansing, is obvious in Factor C and D, with C also a mark of death and mortality. As far as locating his enemies goes, it’s interesting to see in the original series how the transformation was initially governed by the arbitrary change of day into night and back, but later became triggered by the presence of evil.

Personally, I prefer Danny Ketch as the Rider’s host rather than Johnny Blaze. The teenager-with-secret-powers is a little derivative, certainly, but it’s hard to see what there is left to do with the original host. His history has become a little tangled, and God knows what’s happening in the current run. And speaking of God, while I enjoyed Ennis’ miniseries, the ongoing took its lead from his brand of Heaven-bashing, full of corrupt angels and both sides being as bad as each other. Which is all very well, but it’s a tired angle these days. It’s one thing to be a pale imitation of Ennis, another to be a pale imitation of Spawn. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a little tired with comics writers working out their Magic Invisible Sky Daddy upbringing in print.

Short version: angels are boring. If anything, Ghost Rider is more interesting in a corrupt kind of world where heaven is irrelevant if non-existent, as he’s better defined by demons and hellfire. A little bleak, perhaps, but more faithful to the few decent elements of his 70s origins. One approach he may well benefit from would be an ongoing theme to tie him to Lovecraftian horror. That was one of the best angles taken in Ennis’ series, and come on, who doesn’t want to read a story where Ghost Rider comes to Arkham? Not as a complete redefinition of the title, but certainly a limited run that owes something to Boom! Studios’ Fall of Cthulhu.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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