Freaks, Heaps & Spider Baby

New Bissette Work Now On Sale or Pre-Ordering

On top of teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies, working away at S.R. Bissette’s How to Make a Monster (coming in 2014 from Watson-Guptill!), and living it up and down, I’m always working away at something or other. A few of those something-or-others have just seen, or are about to see, light of day!

* Tom DeHaven‘s Freaks’ Amour is among my all-time favorite novels, and I’m not only overjoyed that there’s finally a collected edition of the Tom DeHaven/Dana Marie Andra/Phil Hester/Ande Parks 1990s comics adaptation—I’m overjoyed I’m part of the collected edition, too!

I wrote the expansive introduction to this brand-new collected edition, which will tell you all you need to know about Tom DeHaven, Freaks’ Amour the novel (and its legacy), the genesis of the comics adaptation, and the creative team that made this graphic novel a reality.

The book also sports a hefty menu of bonus goldfish eggs: the original covers to the Dark Horse miniseries by Charles Burns, Mike Mignola, and James O’Barr; the first-ever Freaks’ Amour comics excerpt/adaptation by Gary Panter (from the celebrated underground comix series Young Lust); an original never-before-published prose sequel by De Haven; and an amazing afterword by Dana Marie Andra, who scripted this ambitious adaptation and shepherded it lovingly through years of development until landing a home for it at Dark Horse. I should know: Dana and I were the original co-conspirators of a hoped-for/dreamed-of Freaks’ Amour comics adaptation (my pitch art is included among the illustrations for my introduction; read on!) back in the mid-1980s. That this book exists at all is a real testimony to Dana‘s dedication, sweat, inspiration, and tenacity, as well as Tom’s.

The factoid not reported in my extensive introduction to the hot-off-the-presses collected edition is that this book also exists because I pushed Tom last May to pursue a collected edition. It was during a delicious shared repast with Tom, his wife Santa, my wife Marge, and yours truly during Tom‘s Center for Cartoon Studies visit last spring (Tom was our keynote speaker for the Class of 2012 graduation) that I really leaned hard on Tom to track down and contact Dana, Phil, and Ande and make a collected edition of their collaborative adaptation a reality.

So. Please forgive what may seem my own inappropriate pride in this venture—other than the introduction and inclusion of my pitch illustration for a never-sold adaptation of Freaks’ Amour, this isn’t my handiwork.

But I was the midwife, so to speak, and I’m happy as can be that it’s finally been born!

Highly recommended! Click on the cover graphic above to order your copy from amazon.com, or use the ordering link provided at the very end of this post—and enjoy.

* Shameless hucksterism: while your at it, think about ordering

• your own Freaks’ Amour print of my original portrait of Grinner (below), originally worked up for Dana‘s and my unsuccessful pitch to various publishers back in 1986—this limited-edition print is co-signed by Tom DeHaven (!!!) and myself,

and it’s now available exclusively from the SpiderBaby Store. This first printing is signed & numbered (225 print run), measures 11″ x 17″ and is printed on a durable textured 2-ply stock. Get ’em while you can—or before Grinner gets to you!

 

* FYI, I’ve continued writing introductions for select Dark Horse reprint volumes over the winter. Freaks’ Amour collection editor Brendan Wright was happy enough with my work to ask for more, so we kept going. Along with Freaks’ Amour, the first of those scholarly essays will be seeing print shortly in Korak Son of Tarzan Volume 2 later this summer.

It was my great pleasure to interview the great Mike Royer as part of this introduction. Mike is perhaps best known in some circles as one of the best-ever inkers of the late great Jack Kirby‘s pencils, but Mike had earlier worked as art assistant to the late great Russ Manning (Magnus Robot Fighter, Tarzan, Korak Son of Tarzan, etc.). Mike and I met and enjoyed talking at the Cincinnati Comics Expo last September, and also found plenty of common interests beyond comics. We kept in touch thereafter, and thankfully when the invite to write something for the Korak project popped up, Mike agreed to talking on the record about his work and friendship with Russ Manning. We ended up covering a lot of ground, and Brendan was happy enough with our labors for Mike and I to do it again for a forthcoming Brothers of the Spear collected volume (more on that down the road, later this spring/summer).

Per usual, I also incorporated into the introduction further research into Edgar Rice Burroughs, Son of Tarzan, Russ Manning, and the entire Gold Key Edgar Rice Burroughs legacy and beyond. If you enjoy my more in-depth essays here on Myrant, you’ll find much to savor in the Korak Son of Tarzan intro—all of which takes a back seat to the Russ Manning/Mike Royer artwork and terrific Gaylord DuBois storytelling in the volume, gathering what remains one of my favorite adventure comics of the Silver Age into one handsome book.

PS: I’m providing ordering links to both Dark Horse books, below, or you can click on the cover images above to order your copies via amazon.com.

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* Also seeing print this coming month of June: my first work for PS Publishing, specifically a painted cover for the third (and final) volume of the Roy Thomas Presents complete collected Heap tomes.

Originally published by Hillman Periodicals back in the Golden Age, this is the first-ever reprint collection of that first of all comicbook muck monsters and swamp things, and it was a real treat to tackle a proper portrait of the Heap. My cover painting evokes the many muck men and monsters to follow, and PS Publishing also prepared a handsome full-color signature plate of my Heap portrait that Roy Thomas and I personally co-signed for the limited edition (read on, below).

This third volume wraps up The Heap’s adventures (originally published between December 1950 to May 1953) from Hillman Periodicals‘ Airboy comic, and it’s a gem. Along with Dick Briefer‘s Frankenstein, these are the first true American horror comics, making this three-volume reprint set a real treasure for genre fans, buffs, devotees and scholars, and not to be missed.

Here’s the details, from PS Publishing‘s own announcement earlier this month:
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About Roy Thomas Presents… The Heap Volume 3

Available in two fantastic editions, featuring a brand new collaborative intro from original Heap contributor and American comic book artist Ernest Schroeder and penciler, inker and cover artist Jim Amash.

This third volume also features a specially commissioned new ‘Heap‘ illustration by American artist Stephen R. Bissette.

Now available for pre-order!

Limited to just 2000 copies and split across two editions, this book is now available to preorder directly from the publisher.

SLIPCASE EDITION

288 Page Hardback book housed in full color slipcase. Featuring exclusive signed art print by Stephen Bissette. Limited to just 125 copies worldwide.
ISBN: 978-1-84863-521-0

• Order the slipcase edition directly from PS Publishing here (£69.99/$119.99).

BOOKSHOP EDITION

1875 bookshop copies available. Unsigned Book only. 288 Pages
ISBN: 978-1-84863-520-3

• Order the bookshop edition directly from PS Publishing here (£29.99/$47.99).

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* And that’s not all! Arrow Video has just announced for pre-order their DVD/Blu-Ray edition of Jack Hill‘s 1960s black comedy gem SPIDER BABY, with an exclusive text essay I contributed to their edition:

• here’s the Arrow Video link.

My article begins:

“The Merrye family and Spider Baby (1964/68) were chronologically and genetically fixed somewhere between the near-feral Tobin clan of Anthony Mann’s Man of the West (1958) and the cannibalistic Sawyer family of Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Where the Tobins had the crazed patriarch Dock (Lee J. Cobb), and the Sawyers had the elder son “Cook” Drayton (Jim Siedow) and nearly-mummified Grandpa (John Dugan), the Merryes had the loving caretaker/chaffeur Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr.) tending to their needs.

You see, Spider Baby is all about being as close as family can possibly be—so close—and it’s all about love.

Back in 1964, American stages and screens were bursting with families at one another’s throats (Suddenly Last Summer, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, The Chase, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, etc.), but the incestuous Merryes took it further. Tucked away in their off-road, seen-better-days hilltop mansion, the inbred trio of Merrye siblings—Ralph (Sid Haig), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), and Virginia (Jill Banner), the titular Spider Baby—slid into increasingly bizarre, savage misbehavior due to the inbred family affliction “the Merrye Syndrome.” They mentally regressed once they hit puberty, becoming more and more erratic, dangerous, and unmanageable in a cruelly satiric variation on Alzheimer’s and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease).

Still, Bruno loved them and was absolutely devoted to their wellbeing. As Jack Hill once said, Spider Baby was and is really “about unconditional love,” and love didn’t and doesn’t come any more unconditional than Bruno’s…”

If you want to read the rest—and, best of all, see the single best Spider Baby DVD/Blu-Ray edition on planet Earth (I kid you not, the bonus extras alone set this above and beyond all previous editions)—be sure to pick up the Arrow Video Spider Baby! Highly recommended!

[Addendum, June 4, 2013: Since I’ve now been asked via email and via Devlin’s comment, below, I’ll add here: There is a Region 1 release of Spider Baby from Dark Sky. Excellent transfer from Jack Hill‘s definitive print, plus extras—”The hatching of Spider Baby,” a feature about composer Ronald Stein and his score, visit to the Merrye House, still gallery, the alternative (original) opening title sequence, and the one “extended scene” that distributors had cut from the film (a dialogue between the sleazy lawyer and Bruno)—but that’s the current Region 1 alternative.

The items unique to the Arrow Video UK release, alas, aren’t an option over here—no first-ever short film by Hill (starring Sid Haig), no Bissette liner notes, etc.—though if just seeing the film is what you need, the Region 1 will satisfy.

I can whole-heartedly recommend the Region 1 DVD to any and all who want the definitive Region 1 Spider Baby, sans the Arrow xtras—it’s the most complete version ever available here, and it’s a gorgeous transfer. To buy it, click on this link: Spider Baby (Director’s cut)

Still, if you can play all region discs, the Arrow Video UK release looks to be the definitive international DVD/Blu-Ray option, once it’s out, based on the superior extras alone.]

PS: I’m also painting cover art in 2013 for one of their upcoming releases—shhhhh! The title is secret just now… announcements to follow, when Arrow is good and ready.

And that, folks, is that. Have a great weekend.

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