Anime Review: Young Black Jack

Anime Review: Young Black Jack Black Jack was a manga series by Osamu Tezuka, about a renegade doctor who performs miraculous feats of medicine, but demands outrageous fees.  (Unless he decides to do it for free or a token.)  As Dr. Tezuka was an actual M.D. before he chucked it to become a full-time artist,… Continue reading Anime Review: Young Black Jack

Book Review: Justicariat

Book Review: Justicariat by Nathan Bolduc In an alternate history, the newly-formed United Nations created an extra-national force called the Justicariat.  Its members, the Justicars, hunt down and kill those they believe to be criminals, not bound by any authority or law higher than themselves.  They have absolute immunity from local laws or regulations, though… Continue reading Book Review: Justicariat

Book Review: Jewish Noir

Book Review: Jewish Noir edited by Kenneth Wishnia Many of the themes of noir fiction, alienation, hostile society, darkness and bitter endings, resonate with the experience of Jewish people.  So it’s not surprising that it was easy to find submissions for an anthology of thirty-plus noir stories with Jewish themes.  (Not all of the authors are… Continue reading Book Review: Jewish Noir

Comic Strip Review: Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 14: 1951-1953

Comic Strip Review: Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 14: 1951-1953 by Chester Gould Another of the fine IDW reprints which are trying to cover the entire Chester Gould run of Dick Tracy, moving into the early 1950s.  As mentioned in the Max Allan Collins introduction, the stories shifted focus a bit.  Dick Tracy is a full… Continue reading Comic Strip Review: Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Volume 14: 1951-1953

Book Review: The Island of Dr. Moreau

Bela Lugosi as "The Sayer of the Law" in "The Island of Lost Souls", a movie based on this story.

Book Review: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells Edward Prendick, a young man of independent means, decides to take a natural history sea voyage (ala Charles Darwin) aboard the Lady Vain.  Somewhere in the Pacific, that ship crashed into a derelict and was lost.  Prendick and two other men managed to escape in a… Continue reading Book Review: The Island of Dr. Moreau

Book Review: Bring Back Yesterday|The Trouble with Tycho

Book Review: Bring Back Yesterday | The Trouble with Tycho by A. Bertram Chandler and Clifford Simak, respectively. This is another Ace Double, two short novels printed upside down from each other.  Very nostalgic. Bring Back Yesterday stars John Petersen, a merchant ship’s second mate.  Or he was, until he decided to have a night of… Continue reading Book Review: Bring Back Yesterday|The Trouble with Tycho

Book Review: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy Second Annual Volume

Book Review: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy Second Annual Volume edited by Judith Merril This 1957 volume contains speculative fiction stories from magazines published in roughly the previous year, hand-picked by the editor to represent the best the field had to offer at the time.  (I’ve previously reviewed the fifth annual, which switched the… Continue reading Book Review: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy Second Annual Volume

Book Review: Infinity Two

Book Review: Infinity Two edited by Robert Hoskins Infinity was a series of paperback science fiction anthologies from Lancer Books in the early 1970s.  Its primary draw was that all the stories were new, not having been previously printed in magazines.  By this point, science fiction writers were allowed to mention sex and other controversial… Continue reading Book Review: Infinity Two

Manga Review: Fragments of Horror

Manga Review: Fragments of Horror by Junji Ito Junji Ito is one of Japan’s top horror manga creators, whose famous works include Uzumaki (spirals are scary!), Gyo (landshark!) and Tomie (the girl who just won’t die.)  He’s slowed down some in recent years, so this collection of short stories has been brewing for a while. Mr. Ito does… Continue reading Manga Review: Fragments of Horror

Book Review: Fresh Fear

Book Review: Fresh Fear edited by William Cook Horror anthologies are like a box of chocolates.  One story might be crunchy frog, another spring surprise, while a more disappointing one is just maple cream.  (Seriously, maple cream?)  This is because horror tends to be a balancing act between what the writer finds scary and what… Continue reading Book Review: Fresh Fear