Lionel Fanthorpe & 'Supernatural Stories'

[ripper]

I notice that quite a few of the Badgers are now available on Kindle. All the ones I have seen listed are the SF and horror books, so not sure if any of their war, western, adventure etc. titles are also available. I haven't as yet read a Badger so I am tempted, but will probably download a few samples and see how I get on.

[dem]

M. S. J. Trenton - The Blazing Torch (Badger, 1956)

November, 1942, and the tide of war is beginning to turn in favour of the Allies. In the desert, the Eighth Army under Montgomery are hunting Rommel's Afrika corps northward into Tunisia, and all along the coasts of Algeria and in Morocco the minions of Vichyite France are beginning to look uncertainly out across the placid waters of the Mediterranean.
On November the 8th the Allies struck. Operation "Torch," the greatest amphibious. operation of the Second World War, bore down upon the coast of Algiers.

This is the story of the battle for the port of Algiers. In these pages are depicted the gallant dash of the destroyers, "Broke" and "Malcolm," through the hell of the French shore batteries to gain the enemy harbour.

And, at the last, the attempt by the members of the German Armistice Commission, aided by Vichyite sup­porters, to destroy the military arsenal in the vaults of the French H.Q.

This invasion was one of the turning points of the war, and the torch of freedom which blazed into life that night upon the shores of Algiers was destined to burn until the terrible threat of Nazism was finally erased from the face of the earth.

It never registered with me that there was a Badger World War Two sideline as, unsurprisingly, its not covered in Mike Ashley's indispensable fantasy index, but turns out the series ran to at least 147 issues - Supernatural Stories only achieved 109 - before Badger Books went to the wall. Have checked Debbie Cross's book and doesn't seem Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe was involved in any capacity. No sign of Joan the Wad, but otherwise the ads are identical to those at back of Supernatural Stories #109, published eleven years later.

[kooshmeister]

So as noted over in Latest Finds II, I've become ensnared in the treacherous web that is Badger's sci-fi and horror output. I swear I only ever wanted Rodent Mutation and the (until recently) highly elusive Slime ripoff Night of the Black Horror, but then I started thinking, y'know, The Intruders looks interesting. Now here I am with thirteen (!) of the dang things either already in my hands or on the way, and I'm already eyeing a fourteenth and fifteenth - John Glasby's Alien (written as "John E. Muller") and Lionel Fanthorpe's (?) The Negative Ones (again using the Muller pseudonym; it seems he and Glasby shared it - I think?). They're all just so bat-fuck insane with such enticingly, awesomely stupid covers (and some genuinely awesome ones) that I can't resist.

It helps that, aside from a few titles, they can be had for virtually nothing on the secondary market. So far Rodent Mutation has been the most expensive at $154, followed by Night of the Black Horror at $57, $86 with shipping from Australia, but that was part of a six-book lot so it was still a steal vs. what some of the Amazon sellers (who didn't even end up having it, as I've complained elsewhere) were asking for. Every other Badger book, even with shipping, I've been able to procure for less than $50 apiece, so it's an ideal series to collect.

Which is good for me because although it seems like I'm well off if I'm able to randomly drop $80+ on a lot of vintage books, I'm not... I'm just terrible with my disposable income and tend to snatch things up without thinking. As noted, I'd been after Mr. Norwood's Black Horror for a while now, so despite the shipping costs, getting that lot on eBay was a bargain in the end.

Of course, in a final, crowning irony, watch me end up hating it.

But so far Rodent Mutation and The Intruders, the first two I'm working my way through, are not disappointing me. The good Reverend's writing style is fast-paced and a little clunky at times, but he writes with an enthusiasm and buoyancy I find quite infectious and appealing. We'll have to see if Glasby and Norwood can match him.

[Dr Strange]

Nov 26, 2008 14:37:54 GMT dem said:

Supernatural Stories #24 (April 1959)

Pel Torro - The Poltergeist
Lionel Roberts - The Hypnotist
Bron Fane - The Green Cloud
Leo Brett - The Drud
R. L. Fanthrope - Quest For Atlantis

The bloke in the red cape is Donald Rudd, psychic investigator, and those eyebrows are not his own. When the corpse of embittered old Miss Amelia Millicent Hautbois is found, drained of blood and dumped in the street, Rudd realises that the culprit is Count Estolak, vampire. Rudd allows himself to be lured to the sinister Slavonian's lair, and the gloating undead prepares for another blood-feast. But something's wrong: why is his victim so laid back about his dreadful predicament?

You can read The Drud here - www.peltorro.com/drud.htm

There's also a load of short stories and full-length novels (in pdf) featuring recurring characters "Val & La Noire" here - www.peltorro.com/stearman.htm

And I was worried that I might be running out of things to read...

[helrunar]

This looks like fun! Thanks, Dr Strange!

cheers, Helrunar

[Dr Strange]

Nov 28, 2008 16:00:09 GMT severance said:

The funniest thing I've ever read was a piece of Fanthorpe's padding where a woman spends an inordinate amount of time cleaning her teeth.

And here it is - www.peltorro.com/dc_txt.htm

Other examples are linked to from this page - www.peltorro.com/intro.htm

LATER EDIT: I've just noticed that Sev's post above actually had that first link embedded in the word "teeth".

"Old age never comes alone", as my mum would say.

[Dr Strange]

I've just read the first of the "Val & La Noir" stories (The Seance) and I actually quite enjoyed it. Not sure about the green font on a black background, but there's plenty packed into the story. It reminded me a bit of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin stories (which I'm not really a big fan of). I am going to try a couple more, but expect there will be diminishing returns. Not sure about tackling any of the "novels" - though maybe the short stories will work as a vaccine.

[Dr Strange]

Mar 3, 2013 19:39:06 GMT dem said:

Debbie Cross's take on the blanket, tapes and typewriter process adopted by the Rev. during his Badger years.

"The process began with the cover art which would be sent to him. He would return the cover art with several alternate titles and a cover blurb. He then wrote the story, usually in less than a week, by dictating into a battery of tape recorders. He would often do this huddled under a blanket to enhance concentration. The tapes would then be transcribed by a team of typists who would notify him when the required page length was near."

From Down The Badger Hole (Wrigley Cross Books, 1995)

And this, from the man himself almost exactly 1 year ago -

"When I worked for John Spencer & Co Publishers, the directors, Mr Assael and Mr Nahum, would send Patricia and me a rough sketch of a cover and ask for a list of titles and blurbs to go with it. We would send back a dozen titles like Forbidden Planet, Into the Unknown, Parallel Universe, and a dozen blurbs. The reply would be, ‘We would like title number three and blurb number seven by Friday.’

Now we would get this on a Monday, so we had to write fifty-thousand words in four days. That’s why we got the tape recorder, which is now part of the Cardiff Metropolitan University archive. I would get into bed with this tape recorder and fold the blankets over my head, so I was in a small black cocoon. I could then view the action unfolding in my imagination as if I was watching it on a cinema screen and dictate as the story developed.

My very hard working and long-suffering lovely wife, with whom I have just celebrated a sixty-first wedding anniversary, would do the typing herself or take it to one of our team of typists. We are sometimes, justifiably I feel, accused of having rushed endings, and I will explain why. We had to write fifty-thousand words to fill two-hundred pages. If I was feeling energetic, I would dictate four-hundred words per minute. When I was tired that would drop to thirty words per minute. Until the tape had gone around our team of typists, I couldn’t know how many words we had left. Sometimes I would plan for a great space battle, only to find I only had five pages left to finish the story. I would suddenly have to give an astronaut or a fleet of spaceships an incredibly powerful weapon to end the battle quickly. Hence the rushed ending. It was a little strange after you had read through a hundred and ninety-five pages of detailed writing." www.walesartsreview.org/talking-to-lionel-fanthorpe/

[helrunar]

There's something somehow terrifying abut Rev Lionel Fanthorpe. 

The Rev's description of the first murder victim in "The Druid," amusingly retitled on a web page as "The Drud":

[Miss Agatha Millicent Hautbois'] thin aristocratic face was deeply etched with the lines of three score and ten years' experience. Her eyes, sharp and beady, sunk deep into their sockets, like two jewels that had fallen to the bottom of a jewel tray. She was thin, angular and acidulous - both in tongue and temperament. Her anachronistic mind longed for the days when - as she phrased it - one could get reliable servants at their proper price.
She was prim and proper to an unbearable degree. A withered old prig of a woman for whom few people had any time. Her experience was limited to the malicious vindictive gossip of the circle with whom she spent her bridge evenings and afternoon 'soirees.' They lived in a narrow, mean, shallow world of back-biting hypocrisy, and it had left them as callous and soul-less as the sands of the desert.


I'm imagining him now viewing all this from under the blankets and dictating madly away into his tape player... mind-numbing.

H.

[dem]

Apr 27, 2020 17:25:16 GMT helrunar said:

The Rev's description of the first murder victim in "The Druid," amusingly retitled on a web page as "The Drud":

No retitling involved, Steve. In vampire mythology, the Drud is among the species' most deadly predators. They gorge on the blood of the undead. There's another example in Alvin Taylor & Len J. Moffat's god-awful Chetwynd-Hayes'-alike Weird tale, Father's Vampire.

[helrunar]

LOL! Thanks for the correction, Dem!

cheers, H.

[Dr Strange]

And then there is the Crud, which drinks the blood of the Drud. And so on. Like the fleas. Or the turtles.

[helrunar]

Hilarious! I feel as if I've dropped into a scene from Monster Club.

So far I think the Rev is a much more entertaining potboiler than Dan Ross. Maybe Dan needed to try writing with a blanket pulled over his head. I wonder if Dan's wife Marilyn did have a role after all--keeping track of the total word count.

H.

[kooshmeister]

Apr 27, 2020 20:30:13 GMT Dr Strange said:

And then there is the Crud, which drinks the blood of the Drud. And so on. Like the fleas. Or the turtles.

[Dr Strange]

Apr 27, 2020 21:27:10 GMT helrunar said:

Hilarious! I feel as if I've dropped into a scene from Monster Club.

So far I think the Rev is a much more entertaining potboiler than Dan Ross. Maybe Dan needed to try writing with a blanket pulled over his head. I wonder if Dan's wife Marilyn did have a role after all--keeping track of the total word count.

And Fanthorpe would have only been about 22 or 23 when he started writing this stuff at the tail end of the 1950s. The idea that the publishers would do a pick-and-mix of covers, titles, and blurbs, and then say "have the book written by the end of the week" seems like madness.