Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  Written by Grady Hendrix with Will Errickson for Quirk Books, Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction was a superb compendium of information and images spotlighting many of the authors, publishers and artists working in the genre during the horror boom of thirty and forty years ago.

  Sir Christopher Frayling’s Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years was a fascinating look at Mary Shelley’s monstrous creation in fiction, media and popular culture, beautifully illustrated with many rare and fascinating images. It also included a facsimile reprint of the earliest-known manuscript version of the creature’s creation scene.

  Based on a series of columns he wrote for the Independent on Sunday newspaper, Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors featured insightful mini-essays on ninety-nine forgotten authors and their forgotten books. Although the author’s definition of “forgotten” might have been open to question, the attractive hardcover included compact biographies of such genre-related authors as Virginia Andrews, Pierre Boulle, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, John Dickson Carr, John Christopher, Edmund Crispin, Jack Finney, Graham Joyce, Thomas Nigel Kneale, George Langelaan, Michael McDowell, Richard Marsh, Simon Raven, Thomas Tryon, Edgar Wallace, Dennis Wheatley and T.H. White, amongst many others.

  Leo Margulies: Giant of the Pulps: His Thrilling, Exciting, and Popular Journey was written by Margulies’ nephew Philip Sherman and published by Altus Press in both softcover and hardcover. During the 1930s and ’40s, Margulies was editor of more than seventy different magazine titles.

  From the University of Minnesota Press, Zombie Theory: A Reader edited by Sarah Juliet Laura contained twenty-three essays about the popularity of the walking dead.

  The Written Dead: Essays on the Literary Zombie edited by Kyle William Bishop and Angela Tenga, Romancing the Zombie: Essays on the Undead and Significant “Others” edited by Ashley Szanter and Jessica K. Richards, and Chase Pielak and Alexander H. Cohen’s study Living with Zombies: Society in Apocalypse in Film, Literature and Other Media were all published as part of McFarland’s “Contributions to Zombie Studies” series.

  In The Irish Vampire: From Folklore to the Imaginations of Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu and Bram Stoker from the same publisher, Sharon M. Gallagher took a critical look at the work of the the three authors in the title.

  Thomas Phillips’ T.E.D. Klein and the Rupture of Civilization: A Study in Critical Horror included an interview with its subject, while James Arthur Anderson’s The Linguistics of Stephen King: Layered Language and Meaning in the Fiction from McFarland looked at the way King structured his stories.

  Clive Barker, Richard Chizmar and Bev Vincent were amongst those who contributed essays about why they loved the author’s work to Reading Stephen King, edited by Brian James Freeman for Cemetery Dance. It was limited to 1,000 copies signed by most of the contributors, and a twenty-six copy lettered and leatherbound traycased edition ($200.00).

  From PoD imprint Hippocampus Press, Varieties of the Weird Tale collected nineteen essays (three previously unpublished) by S.T. Joshi that looked at writers from the “golden age” of weird fiction like Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, E. Nesbit, M.R. James, Lord Dunsany, Sax Rohmer and Irvin S. Cobb, along with more contemporary authors such as Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti and Caitlín R. Kiernan.

  Scholastic’s Harry Potter: A Journey Through a History of Magic was an official companion to the British Library Exhibition and featured unseen sketches, manuscript pages from J.K. Rowling and illustrations by Jim Kay.

  With the third volume in 2016, Phil and Sarah Stokes’ The Clive Barker Archive took over from Century Guild as publisher of the stunning Clive Barker Imaginer: The Visionary Art of Clive Barker series of oversized hardcovers. Volume Four: 1993-2012 was limited to 1,000 trade copies and a 100-copy slipcased edition, and included a brief Afterword by the author and painter.

  Edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and the late Robert Weinberg, The Art of the Pulps: An Illustrated History from IDW Publishing was a visual celebration of pulp magazines in all genres adventure, crime, Western, war, sport, romance, hero, spicy and, of course, horror and science fiction. With a Foreword by F. Paul Wilson, and contributions from Tom Roberts, Mike Ashley and Will Murray, amongst others, the only disappointment was that there was so little original artwork included amongst the more than 400 superbly reproduced magazine covers.

  Edited by publisher John Flesk, Spectrum 24: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art included a profile of Grand Master Award-winner Bill Sienkiewicz.

  From Parallel Universe Publishing, The Art of Jim Pitts: Rolling Back the Years…featured the work of the veteran British artist and was limited to a numbered and signed edition of just 250 copies. It also included tributes by editor David A. Riley, David A. Sutton, Nick Caffrey, Stephen Jones, Ramsey Campbell, Adrian Cole, Brian Lumley and Peter Coleborn, and pre-ordered copies also came with four signed art prints.

  Arcturus published The H.P. Lovecraft Colouring, Dot-To-Dot and Activity Book which was described as containing “sanity-shredding imagery and puzzles from the Cthulhu Mythos”. Nigel Dobbyn created the impressive line artwork.

  The first nine-issue series of American Gods: Shadows from Dark Horse Comics was adapted by P. Craig Russell from the novel by Neil Gaiman, with art by Russell and Scott Hampton.

  From the same imprint, Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes was a genre mash-up that also threw in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ lost world of Pellucidar.

  Dark Horse’s Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea was a welcome collaboration between Mike Mignola and Gary Gianni, inspired by the work of William Hope Hodgson. Flesk publications issued a Kickstarter-funded oversized hardcover “studio edition” signed by Gianni.

  Anno Dracula 1895: Seven Days in Mayhem was an original five-issue series from Titan Comics, written by Kim Newman and illustrated by Paul McCaffrey (with a bewildering number of variant covers by McCaffrey, Tom Mandrake, Brian Williamson, Jeff Zornow, Mike Collins and Martin Stiff). In an original story set ten years after Dracula came to power, undead journalist Kate Reed joined up with a secret anarchist group in an attempt to end the vampire’s rule. Titan subsequently released the five volumes as a graphic novel, with an additional Foreword by Mike Mignola, a cover gallery, some examples of McCaffrey’s sketches and an Afterword by the author.

  The first title in Titan’s new Hammer Comics imprint was the five-part The Mummy Palimpsest by Peter Milligan and Ronilson Freire, which was set in present-day London. It was followed by Dan Abnett and Tom Mandrake’s Captain Kronos, inspired by the 1974 film.

  Some of Titan’s other comics included Penny Dreadful by writer Chris King and artist Jesús Hervás, which was set directly after the events in the third season of the cancelled TV show, and Sherlock: The Great Game, based on the BBC-TV series.

  From PS Publishing’s PSi imprint, Some Notes on a Nonentity: The Life of H.P. Lovecraft was a hardcover graphic novel biography by Sam Gafford, illustrated in black and white by Jason C. Eckhardt.

  Emil Ferris’ beautifully illustrated debut graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, was about a 10-year-old girl who loved horror.

  With its “Rebirth” line, DC Comics decided to update its key superheroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and The Flash yet again.

  Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine took on Steve Gerber’s Man-Thing for a new series from Marvel, while Marvel Horror: The Magazine Collection was a Halloween compilation of reprints from Marvel Preview, Haunt of Horror, Monsters Unleashed and Bizarre Adventures that included fiction by Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffrey, Ramey Campbell and others.

  A new series of the classic EC title Tales from the Crypt was launched under the Papercutz inprint Super Genius, and writer Nathan Carson and artist Sam Ford adapted Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 story The Willows over two issues for Floating World Comics.

  The movie novelisations for 2017 included Resident Evil: The Final Chapter by Tim Waggoner, Kong: Skull Island by Tim Leb
bon, The Great Wall by Mark Morris, Alien: Covenant by Alan Dean Foster, Wonder Woman by Nancy Holder, War for the Planet of the Apes by Greg Cox, Ghost in the Shell by James Swallow and Abbie Bernstein, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets by Christie Golden.

  Edited by Rich Handley and Jim Beard, Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone featured sixteen original stories set in the world of the movie series by Greg Cox, Nancy A. Collins and others.

  Meanwhile, Planet of the Apes: Omnibus 1 contained the 1970s sequel tie-ins Beneath the Planet of the Apes by Michael Avallone and Escape from the Planet of the Apes by Jerry Pornelle, while Omnibus 2 comprised Conquest of the Planet of the Apes by John Jakes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes by David Gerrold, along with William T. Quick’s 2001 reboot tie-in, Planet of the Apes.

  Aliens: Bug Hunt edited by Jonathan Mayberry contained seventeen original stories and Predator: If It Bleeds edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt featured sixteen original stories, both set in their respective cinematic universes.

  Greg Cox’s The Librarians and the Lost Lamp and The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase were both based on the Syfy TV series.

  The X Files Origins series featured the young adult novels Agent of Chaos by Kami Garcia, about a seventeen-year-old Fox Mulder, and Devil’s Advocate by Jonathan Maberry, about a fifteen-year-old Dana Scully.

  Other TV tie-ins included Supernatural: The Usual Sacrifices by Yvonne Navarro, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead: Return to Woodbury by Jay Bonansinga and The 100: Rebellion by Kass Morgan.

  Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet was a novelisation by James Goss of Douglas Adams’ draft script for the second unproduced “Key to Time” sequence, with notes and Adams’ original treatment.

  Doctor Who: Plague City by Jonathan Morris, Doctor Who: The Shining Man, and Doctor Who: Diamond Dogs by Mike Tucker all featured Peter Capaldi’s twelfth Doctor.

  Doctor Who: Myths and Legends featured thirteen original stories by Richard Dinnick inspired by Greek mythology and set in the Whovian universe, while Doctor Who: Tales of Terror was an anthology of twelve original stories by Paul Magrs and others.

  Doctor Who: Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse included fifty-one Whovian poems by James Goss, illustrated by former showrunner Russell T. Davies.

  Both The Flash: Hocus Pocus by Barry Yga and Supergirl: Age of Atlantis by Jo Whittemore were based on The CW superhero shows.

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Official Grimoire: A Magical History of Sunnydale was credited to series witch “Willow Rosenberg” (A.M. Robinson) and collected the spells cast during the TV shows’ seven seasons, with annotations by the other characters.

  Edited by Stephen Jones with a Foreword by John Landis, The Art of Horror Movies: An Illustrated History from Applause/Hal Leonard was a companion volume to the award-winning The Art of Horror from the same editor and publisher. It featured chapters written by Sir Christopher Frayling, Tom Weaver, Barry Forshaw, David J. Schow, Kim Newman, Jonathan Rigby, Lisa Morton, Anne Billson and Ramsey Campbell, along with more than 600 rare posters, lobby cards, advertisements, promotional items, and tie-in books and magazines. Amongst the many artists featured were Ivan Albright, Rolf Armstrong, Vincent Di Fate, Les Edwards, Basil Gogos, Graham Humphreys, Mark Maddox, Dave McKean, Lee Moyer, Doug P’gosh, Sanjulián, William Stout and Drew Struzen.

  The Thing Artbook from Printed in Blood celebrated the 35th anniversary of John Carpenter’s movie with more than 375 original pieces of art by, amongst others, Gary Pullin, Dave Dorman, Godmachine, Tim Bradstreet and Bill Sienkiewicz. It also featured an Introduction by film director Eli Roth and an Afterword by Carpenter himself.

  Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon: The Collected Reviews was a hefty paperback from Titan Books that included more than 500 themed movie reviews inspired by the author’s Empire magazine column of the same name.

  Into The Unknown from Headpress was a revised and expanded paperback edition of Andy Murray’s biography of Nigel Kneale. It included extracts from interviews with Kneale himself, along with such admirers as John Carpenter, Ramsey Campbell, Grant Morrison, Russell T. Davies, Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson.

  Originally set to appear from another publisher, PS Publishing picked up We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale edited by Neil Snowdon. The hefty tome looked at the life and career of the maverick British author and screenwriter with essays by, amongst others, Tim Lucas, Stephen Bissette, Ramsey Campbell, David Pirie, Kim Newman, John Llewellyn Probert, Richard Harland Smith, Jonathan Rigby, Stephen Volk, Jeremy Dyson and Mark Gatiss, who supplied the Foreword.

  The PS signed and limited hardcover came in a slipcase with a hardcover edition of Kneale’s unproduced 1965 TV script for The Big, Big Giggle, which was published under the Electric Dreamhouse imprint.

  Limited to 500 hardcover copies apiece and also issued under the Electric Dreamhouse banner, series editor Neil Snowdon’s “Midnight Movie Monographs” series of slim hardcovers included Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me by Maura McHugh and Death Line by Sean Hogan, who at least attempted a different approach with his volume. As always, the one annoying point about the series was that the formatting was not consistent from book to book.

  Universal Terrors 1951-1955: Eight Classic Horror and Science Fiction Films from McFarland was the first of a two-volume set by Tom Weaver, with David Schecter, Robert J. Kiss and Steve Kronenberg. It featured in-depth essays on the studio’s It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, Revenge of the Creature, Cult of the Cobra, Tarantula, The Strange Door and The Black Castle.

  In Laird Cregar: A Hollywood Tragedy, author Gregory William Mank looked at the brief career of the talented Hollywood actor who died at the age of thirty-one, while Robert Michael “Bob” Cotter’s Ingrid Pitt, Queen of Horror: The Complete Career featured a Foreword by the late Hammer actress herself.

  Roberto Curti’s Riccardo Freda: The Life and Works of a Born Filmmaker looked at the life and career of the cult Italian director best known for his Gothic horror movies starring Barbara Steele and others.

  Apocalypse Then: American and Japanese Atomic Cinema, 1951-1967 by Mike Bogue was split into three sections: ‘Mutants’, ‘Monsters’ and ‘Mushroom Clouds’, and featured a Foreword by Allen A. Debus.

  Giant Creatures in Our World: Essays on Kaijū and American Popular Culture edited by Camille D.G. Mustachio and Jason Barr included chapters about ‘Observations on Religious Elements Seen in Ultraman’ and ‘Narrative and Neutrality in King Kong Escapes and Frankenstein Conquers the World’.

  Count Dracula Goes to the Movies: Stoker’s Novel Adapted, Third Edition was an expanded version of Lyndon W. Joslin’s reference work, while the first volume of Midnight Marquee’s Classic Horror Movie Scrapbook: 1930s was filled with rare clippings, articles and images from the period.

  Edited by Michele Brittany, Horror in Space: Critical Essays on a Subgenre looked at such movies as Event Horizon, Planet of the Vampires, Ghosts of Mars and, of course, the Alien series.

  Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs, and Special FX was the first volume in a five-part Kickstarter-funded autobiography by visual-effects artist Steve Johnson, published by Montauk Publishing.

  From BearManor Media, Monster Squad: Celebrating the Artists Behind Cinema’s Most Memorable Creatures, journalist Heather A. Wixson looked at the careers of twenty special effects pioneers of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, including John Dykstra, Steve Johnson, Bob Keen, Todd Masters, Phil Tippert, Steve Wang and Tom Woodruff, Jr., amongst others. The book also featured hundreds of behind-the-scenes photographs.

  In Hollywood’s Pre-Code Horrors 1931-1934, Raymond Valinoti, Jr. explored the sex and violence in movies from Dracula (1931) to The Black Cat (1934), before the production code was rigidly enforced.

  Tom Weaver’s “Scripts from the Crypt” series from BearManor continued with the sixth book, Gary D. Rhodes’ informative look at the 1936 sequel Dracula’s Daughter. As with other volumes in this series,
the book contained all kinds of fascinating extras, including earlier treatments and DeWitt Bodeen’s 1953 treatment for a version of Carmilla, which might have starred Marlene Dietrich!

  Scripts from the Crypt volume #7 was dedicated to the obscure 1958-59 anthology TV series The Veil, hosted by Boris Karloff. Tom Weaver supplied his usual thorough history of the Hal Roach Studios’ production, but as usual the fun was in the extras including three of the original scripts and a look at a further six that were never made, while Dr. Robert J. Kiss’ essay was probably the last word needed on Karloff’s various hosting duties on TV.

  Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier was told from the point-of-view of agent Tamara Preston’s reports, which filled in the years between the two TV series, and Jay Steven Rubin’s The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia was a guide to the TV show.

  Slayers & Vampires was an unauthorised look behind the making of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, while The Anatomy of The Walking Dead was a look at the popular TV show with recaps of each season by journalist Paul Vigna.

  Edited by Carey Fleiner and Dene October for McFarland, Doctor Who: Critical Essays on Imagining the Past explored how the BBC-TV series engaged with historical events, while Doctor Who: Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe was written by George Mann, Justin Richards and Cavan Scott, with contributions by Terence Dicks, Paul Magrs and others.

  Published by Canadian imprint Spectacular Optical on heavyweight paper, Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television was an anthology of twenty-five critical essays edited by Paul Corupe and Kier-La Janisse. Given the somewhat limited scope of the title, the number of topics covered was eclectic and ranged from the obvious (A Christmas Carol, Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night and the M.R. James Ghost Story at Christmas) to more esoteric subject matter (Hammer’s Cash on Demand, The Evil Touch, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and the “Krampus” myth). Contributors included Stephen Thrower, Amanda Reyes, Kim Newman and the two editors, and there were plenty of photographs (including a colour section) and a useful ‘Compendium’ of Christmas-related titles.