Click here for the Alhazred Heights archive page. Fonts from Blambot.
More strips over at the Toybox, which will start back on its Tuesday/Thursday schedule tomorrow.
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.
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 Alhazred Heights archive page.
And before I forget, the fonts used in the strip are all from the indispensable Blambot.
Click here for the Alhazred Heights archive page.
Edit: Hmm. Where there should be an image, there is none. Not sure what’s going on here, but the server’s been a bit funky over the past day or so. I won’t get a chance to fiddle around with it until a little later on. Summer events, eh. There’s always delays.
Later Edit: Ok, looks like it’s fixed now. Don’t have a clue what the trouble was, but hopefully it won’t reoccur tomorrow.
