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Post by Steve on Dec 23, 2007 13:59:12 GMT
I'll be getting back to the jungle - urban, blackboard, asphalt or otherwise - in just a moment, but I thought this might be worth a mention in passing. While I was reading up a bit on Hal Ellson, author of Jailbait Street and others mentioned above, I noticed his name cropping up in a few other places which may be of interest. He was a regular in the digest size mystery magazines such as; Web Detective, The Saint Mystery Magazine, Keyhole Detective Stories, and particularly Manhunt. Perhaps not especially noteworthy for us in itself, but it means that he was also a regular in the 'Alfred Hitchcock' anthologies we're always on about. He had stories in This One Will Kill You, Hard Day At The Scaffold, Once Upon A Dreadful Time, Death Can Be Beautiful, Bleeding Hearts and possibly others. And even better than that; Fear!, Vol. 1 No. 1, Great American Publications, 1960 Deux Ex Machine by Martin Weingarten Dust To Dust by Alfred Sneider Josephus by Arthur Porges The Vandal by Evelyn Goldstein The Black Sadhu by Theodore Mathieson Nightquake by Pat Rogers The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins The Rainy Night by Hal Ellson Of Hilary Sankes by Pat Remlisk The Girl Who Was God, by Newel Bixley Haven For The Damned by Robert Caddiday Vortex by William Jukes If I Die Before I Wake by Peter Gund The Strange Paintings of Felix A. Orth by John Jakes And this little beauty; Yay! It's the practically legendary Spring 1957 issue of Tales Of The Frightened. Alongside Michael Avallone's "The Curse of Cleopatra", stories from Ellson, John Wyndham, John Christopher, John "Brak the Barbarian" Jakes and others. Go on, you might as well have the full list; "The Curse of Cleopatra" by Michael Avallone "The Malignant Jewel" by Sidney Porcelain "The Glass Thread" by Elsie Milnes "Incident in a Flying Saucer" by James Harvey "Cat Woman" by Gerald Gordon "The Stop at Nothing" by Mark Dane (Michael Avallone) "Alias Napoleon" by John Jakes "Faith Killer" by Winston Marks "Mistaken Identity" by Ralph Williams "Old Snagglebuck" by William G. Weston "Scorpion" by Hal Ellson "But a Kind of Ghost" by John Wyndham "The Gardener" by John Christopher "The Unwatched Door" by Richie McPherson "The Frightened" (Michael Avallone) "The Singular Occurance at Styles" by Alan Henry
I haven't got a copy of this so I don't know if Ellson's story, "Scorpion", is actually about marauding scorpions but, you know, if there's any good in the world...
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Post by redbrain on Dec 23, 2007 14:02:41 GMT
I suppose I should really try and unentangle myself from Kylie Minogue's lingerie, and post something a bit more on topic. If you've succeeded in tangling yourself in Miss Minogue's lingerie, it seems a pity to disentangle yourself! Love the good girl art - like most of the best good girl art, it depicts bad girls. I love bad girls!!
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Post by Steve on Dec 23, 2007 15:32:35 GMT
If you've succeeded in tangling yourself in Miss Minogue's lingerie, it seems a pity to disentangle yourself! True, but with the greatest will in the world, I can't spend the rest of my life in Kylie Minogue's underwear. Sooner or later I'm going to have to move on... It's yet another sign of madness I'm sure, but I do like it when threads converge. You may remember that I posted something elsewhere about the introduction of the Comics Code in the States as an attempt to counter the corrupting influence of comic books on the innocent minds of America's youth. Ade raised a good point in reply; ...there was a little mentioned witch hunt of comics here in the UK too ( at the same time). I've just been having a browse through A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign by Martin Barker (Pluto Press, 1984) which deals with this same witch hunt. The Comics Campaign Council - whose campaigning eventually led to the passing of the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act of 1955 (still in force, by the way) - was begun by a group of teachers concerned that 'American-style' horror and crime comics were turning their pupils into juvenile delinquents. "Some time ago Mrs Peggy Middleton, a teacher from Greenwich, found an 11-year-old in her class reading a 'comic' book. It pictured a drug addict flogging a naked girl to death with a bicycle chain. Mrs Middleton discovered similar books in nearly every desk in the classroom. 'I felt,' she says, 'as though all the ideals I had worked for were being destroyed by the kind of depravity I never expected to find outside a madhouse.'" Among those involved with the Comics Campaign Council was former teacher turned author, Edward Blishen, who wrote his own Blackboard Jungle type autobiographical novel, Roaring Boys (Thames & Hudson, 1955), based on his experiences working in a secondary school not in the Bronx, but Holloway Road, north London. There was also a sequel, the splendidly titled; This Right Soft Lot. Roaring Boys (Panther, 1968); This Right Soft Lot (Thames & Hudson, 1969)
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Post by Steve on Dec 23, 2007 15:59:16 GMT
I'm not fussy myself; good, bad... sadly most of the ones I meet these days seem to be completely indifferent... A Sweet Sweet Summer, Jane Gaskell (Sphere, 1971) Nobody was safe anymore. Huge ships from outer space hung over major British cities and took command by sending orders (disobeyed at risk of death) in strange bubbles. Anarchy is encouraged in an England totally isolated from everywhere else in the world, and the streets are battlefields for communist and fascist bands. Yet it is a summer of wildflowers on the railtracks when Pel's strange and wild cousin Frijja comes to stay and everyone has to battle against a mob of hoodlum fascists who try to take over the house...Not sure anything with aliens in it strictly falls within our remit here, but you can't argue with that cover, can you?
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Post by dem bones on Dec 23, 2007 16:28:05 GMT
It's yet another sign of madness I'm sure, but I do like it when threads converge. In my head it's all related anyway and i'm guessing it's the same with you. Even the Fall thread ropes M. R. James and Machen into the proceedings which is exactly as it should be although it makes the forum a nightmare to navigate. You never know what's gonna spring out at you. It seems a shame to mention Martin Barker's exceptional study of the Brit campaign versus the horror comics minus a cover scan although it's surely worth a thread to itself and i'm sure we'll get around to it eventually. Perhaps the most telling comment is anti-EC campaigner Joe Benjamin confession; "We looked - it is almost wicked to say this - with eager anticipation for a story in the press of a child who had done something so that we could point to the [horror] comics. And if one had done something, then this supported our case. And we called this research." Thanks for the instant gallery, steve. I've not seen any of 'em before, including the - as you quite rightly enthuse - legendary Tales Of The Frightened. Avallone certainly put together an all-conquering line up for that one, didn't he? I've a copy of the july 1960 issue of Fear: a bit ropey, i thought. from the old board: Fear: Tales Of The Terror-Filled Unknown #2 (July 1960) James Harvey - Confession David Mason - Account Closed Larry Bearson - The Veiled Woman Bryce Walton - The Cage Donald Honig - End With The Night Mark Richards - Still Life Irving Schiffer - The Persuader Joe Mackay - The Idol Albert Bermel - Bourbon On A Champagne Carpet Robert Hichens - How Love Came To Professor Guildea Published by Henry Sharf and Great American Publications Ltd. Despite the striking cover (uncredited, as ever: looks like the work of the same fellow who worked on the later Bizarre), the original stories are instantly forgettable with 'The Veiled Woman' - "She ate not flesh nor drank of blood yet slowly drained his life away" - the pick of a poor bunch. What Hichens' classic is doing slumming it in this company is anybody's guess.
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Post by redbrain on Dec 23, 2007 20:31:22 GMT
Not sure anything with aliens in it strictly falls within our remit here, but you can't argue with that cover, can you? In fact, it's the kind of cover with which you wouldn't dare to argue.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 31, 2007 0:41:17 GMT
I know these gents are a bit ancient for a teen agro thread but you probably wouldn't want to argue with them either. Bill Bavin - The Extortionists (Tandem, 1973) At first I thought this was another rip-off of The Sweeney but on closer inspection it's actually another rip-off of the Krays versus Richardsons turf wars. Opening line is "Macey was as pissed as a newt".
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Post by lynnielynn on Feb 1, 2008 0:12:46 GMT
Wow, loving the covers, more, more!!
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Post by phantomrider on Mar 19, 2008 22:02:27 GMT
The Wanderers was a massive influence on my juvenile delinquency in the late 70's - chewed matches for weeks until my sister accidently set fire to her bed Didn't have you down as a Horrorpops fan Pete - Hell Yeah!
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Post by phantomrider on Jun 2, 2008 21:04:02 GMT
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 4, 2008 17:48:17 GMT
Put the boot in! It's all going off dahn the East End (and all points north, south east and west) between '67 and '75. 'A mob of 1,000 skinheads running along a road is a frightening sight. Into the tube gates we rushed. On the tube there was the usual knees-up Mother Brown, with the whole carriage full of skinheads jumping up and down, the train rocking from side to side. Mile End and all out...want some aggro?' Pic Jill Furmanovsky/Rockarchive. John Blake publishing 2007.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 4, 2008 17:58:06 GMT
Casual - Gavin Anderson. Low Life Press. 1996 To anyone who has stood their ground on the terraces'..the Chelsea firm burst through and shoved past the police and straight into the Red Army. A flare was fired from the Chelsea mob into the tightly packed opposition, instantly scattering them in all directions. The air was thick with bricks and bottles as running battles filled the street.' Ruckers delight! Hats off to George Marshall for his one-man mission to bring Richard Allen to the masses in the Naughty Nineties. Not content with republishing all eighteen Allen masterworks, he also put out a few contemporary efforts to recreate those glory years - and failed miserably. 'The kids' had moved on. Ah well. Steve - apologies if this disturbingly homo-erotic Steve Player cover brings back some nightmare chandeliers-the-size-of-melons flashbacks.
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Post by pulphack on Jun 7, 2008 18:09:11 GMT
Tony White's Road Rage was another Low Life - great book about crusties, magic and agg - no, really. Looked like a Howard Baker Zenith/Five Star clone, which is what made me pick it up in the first place.
But Cass Pennant - oh dear, despite the cover just footie hoolie porn. I confess to reading a few, but it gets a bit reptitive after a while, but not in a good way... great cover, but I bet it's a crap book.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 7, 2008 18:32:52 GMT
But Cass Pennant - oh dear, He's a bit woah, he's a bit whey, he's a geezer! And appears as a 'policeman' in the hilarious teen comedy Green Street aka Frodo joins the ICF. I had to pick up Congratulations! You Have Just Met ...to see if the one incident they were involved in that I knew about was in there - and it was!
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 15, 2008 18:16:05 GMT
Some spawn of Richard Allen...
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