I particularly enjoy songs that can be described in a movie shorthand:

“This is such an ending credits song.”

“This is the part when the hero stands in the rain.”

“This is the scene when they walk through the club.”

It becomes a game, akin to Mad Libs – string enough of those songs together and you have an entire movie of your own, ready for its own Spotify playlist. That’s the basic idea behind our new series of mixtapes, Soundtracks to Imaginary Movies. I had the pleasure of putting together the first, “Whiskey & Bullets,” and thought I would flesh out the story here.

This, of course, is the narrative I hear. You should listen to the mixtape before you read on and see how your own story matches up.

Laughing Sal from The Musée Mécanique / “Goodnight,” by Pleasure Forever

The opening credits, during which our hero walks through night streets.

“Isle of Dogs,” by Firewater

Our hero arrives at a bar and takes stock.

“God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” by Johnny Cash

A violent altercation.

“Burning Hell,” by Tom Jones

Time to settle the score.

“Song for Wolfie,” by Clutchy Hopkins

Our hero enters a den of thieves and meets a beautiful woman.

“Bad Luck,” by Tom Rothrock

And ends up in a seedy motel.

“Flash Pan Hunter Intro/Murder in the Red Barn,” by Tom Waits

It becomes apparent that our hero should probably leave town.

“The Wrong Kind of Love/Borrowed Wings,” by Jim White

Instead, he opts for some dark doings.

“Empty Box,” by Morphine

Hell hath no fury like a femme fatale scorned.

“Fuego!” by Murder by Death

Maybe “scorned” is the wrong word.

“Eros,” by Ludovico Einaudi (mixed with Charles Bukowski reading “The Genius of the Crowd”)

In which most of the supporting characters wind up murdered. 

“Something Wicked This Way Comes,” by Barry Adamson

Our hero races to the bottom of a bottle.

“Grounds for Divorce,” by Elbow

With a hangover comes renewed purpose. Also, guns.

“Just My Luck,” by The Heavy

A risky gambit.

“Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Go!!!” by Trentemøller

Everyone gets shot.

“Every Shitty Thing,” by Murder City Devils

Our hero finds a new bar and takes stock.

“I had a Wonderful Night (It Just wasn’t This One),” by Whitey

Ironic end credits.

———

The Burnt Offering is a semi-regular column detailing Stu Horvath’s strange notions. They make sense to him, anyway. He is drinking whiskey on Twitter right now @StuHorvath. 

There’s a long list of writers, directors, artists and musicians who have influenced me. Recently I wrote about how the science fiction author Douglas Adams helped lead me down the left hand path towards atheism. But I would have never read Adams or countless others if not for one woman. My mother had more to do with me becoming the person I am today than any teacher ever did. And she did it behind the wheel of a faded fire-engine red Ford Fairmont station wagon.

Sure, my mother was loving and supporting. The unconditional love of a parent is not always a given, so I don’t take that for granted at all, but as I look back on my childhood I am more impressed by how far my mom went out of her way to make sure I spent my youth immersed in the things I love. By all accounts, she was a single mom, so she gets points for simply keeping my sister and me alive and off of drugs. But my mother went above and beyond the call of duty.

Once a month we plowed through South Florida traffic to buy comic books at my favorite shop. My first buy was Marvel’s G.I. Joe revival, but my interests eventually branched to manga, horror comics and myriad other pulp oddities. My mom never balked or turned her nose up at the books. If anything she’d read one just to make sure I wasn’t reading something really repugnant. And even when the stuff was a little harrowing, she’d just kind of frown and say, “Darn you for making me read that.”

Once, as we were driving down Federal Highway, she pulled into the parking lot of a cineplex. Unbeknownst to me the Fort Lauderdale film festival was in swing. She bought me a pass and let me spend the day wandering from theater to theater. I saw two of my favorite movies for the first time that day – The Day the Earth Stood Still and Carnival of Souls.

What so impresses me, now that I’m old enough to think about such things, is that my mother saw a listing for the film festival in the paper and thought to herself, “That seems like an environment where Gus would thrive.” Then she acted on that germ, doing the tough work of loading shitty teenagers into a car and hauling them across miles of South Florida’s steaming asphalt.

The list of such plots is endless. There were model rocketry classes, science fiction conventions, library runs, afternoons at the arcade and countless opening-day movies. If I recall correctly, she even held me out of school so that my buddy Randy and I could go see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That’s not to mention all the concerts. Mom ferried me and friends between Fort Lauderdale and Miami so we could see The Monsters of Rock show at the Orange Bowl. And there were more than a few times that she sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic to the edge of the Everglades to see metal shows at the Hollywood Sportatorium.

I’m impressed that she’d do so much just so my friends and I could go lose our hearing listening to stupid music. But I’m also incredibly grateful to her for allowing me to be an adult at 13. Because if you saw all the scumbags and miscreants that attended South Florida metal shows in ‘88, you’d think twice about leaving your child amongst them. But my mom knew I was no idiot. And she knew, deep down, that all those longhairs were decent at heart. Drug-addled, maybe, but not bad people.

Now I’m a father. And when I look at my son, Halford, I hope that I can find in myself the selflessness, trust and thoughtfulness that my mother had for me. I hope I can find an iota of my mother’s imagination and wisdom to let Hal blossom, rather than try to mold him in my image. My mom could have tried to force me to be a good Christian, a straight-A student or countless other things she wished for me. Instead, she let me be Gus. And that’s the best gift anyone has ever given me.

———

Pretension +1 is a weekly column about the intersections of life, culture and videogames (and music). Follow Gus Mastrapa on Twitter @Triphibian.

This generic knock off phenomena can be applied to movies as well, especially those that follow in the wake of a blockbuster fantasy or science fiction film. In the 80’s it was Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian, and I watched my fair share of derivative versions of both.

Recently I wrote about how fantasy author Robert E. Howard’s creation (Conan) inspired many, in bad ways as well as good. There are a lot of terrible, bizarre, hilarious and simply “just good enough” films that followed in the wake of Conan the Barbarian. Some carved out a place of their own in cult movie fandom, some are simply film equivalents to dollar store toys like the Tolkien-inspired King of the Magical Jewels.

You can’t blame Howard either. The man had been dead for about 50 years by the time the film adaptation of Conan the Barbarian released in 1982. It took place in the world of Hyboria, borrowed  elements from some of his stories and had the visual flair of Frank Frazetta’s Conan illustrations. Still, the film was its own creature. It was an introduction to Arnold Schwarzenegger with a vicious dose of Nietzsche philosophy, courtesy of director John Milius and then-unknown writer Oliver Stone.

The film had lots of bare skin, swords, gore and a wizard or two thrown in for good measure – the same ingredients for the knock offs that followed. Conan itself was basically an exploitation film in its own right, just not as exploitative as what was to come.

As a kid I remember the Beastmaster movies, WPIX channel 11 staple The Sword and The Sorcerer, an unintentionally hilarious Hercules film starring Lou Ferrigno (who fights a robot dragon and in one scene as well as throwing a bear into outer space), Red Sonja, starring future reality show mess Brigitte Nielsen and a non-Conan Arnold playing a different barbarian and of course Dolph Lundgren’s Masters of the Universe movie.

What I didn’t get around to until I started researching the topic were films like the Deathstalker series (with all of its sequels and spinoffs) and bottom of the barrel C-movies like Ator, The Fighting Eagle and Conquest, a fantasy film by Italian horror director Lucio Fulci.

This is probably due to the fact that most of these films were too gore and sex-ridden for me to watch in my pre-teens. Thanks to the internet, Netflix streaming, and limited edition DVDs I can finally “enjoy” them. They’re all fun to a degree, but unfortunately (due to a variety of factors like budget and lack of ideas) the bad ones tend to come to a grinding halt at some point halfway through. Fortunately when things start to lag the best of these movies will throw in gratuitous nudity or ridiculous puppets and gore.

That said, few things piss me off more than when fantasy movies would take the action to earth or the modern day due to a small budget. I saw Masters of the Universe back in the day and was so pissed when the action shifted from Eternia to Earth within the first ten minutes. For the rest of the movie He-Man and his crew were eating fried chicken and fighting stormtroopers in a keyboard shop.

Ditto Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time, which makes the earthbound adventures of He-Man seem like Blade Runner. At the time the concept of budget eluded me, so the forced scripting reasons for these changes were just silly, even if there is some hilarity to be taken from this scenario.

Ator and Conquest are Italian films meant specifically as cash-ins on Conan the Barbarian. There are many, many more, but that’s another topic entirely. Ridiculously slow pacing, bad voice overdubs and acting, low budget monsters and special effects, bad fight choreography and convoluted plots are the order of the day here.

In Conquest a very Link-like hero sets off on a quest with his big Italian barbarian friend to free their land from an evil sorceress. This sorceress is topless (wearing only underwear) and dons a Destro-like gold mask for the entire film. While Conquest is a fun novelty for Lucio Fulci fans, it can’t maintain its pacing throughout. (It picks up a little bit towards the end when a demon robot shows up ­– not kidding.) Like many Fulci horror films it features an ample supply of nudity and gore, which is unfortunately utilized in this case to distract from the lack of anything happening.

Ator fares much worse. It’s for fans of bad movies only – sluggish pacing, an anti-climax and a lack of abundant gore and nudity does it no favors. Nevertheless, the plot follows Ator (played by C-movie veteran Miles O’Keefe) must go on a quest to rescue his bride (and sorta sister) from the villainous High Priest of the Spider.

He is joined by an Amazon thief along the way and learns the martial arts. Despite this it remains surprisingly boring, with the sole highlight of the movie being Ator’s cute black bear cub sidekick that follows him around everywhere.

Ator managed to spin off into a series of sequels, although really just in name only. Ator III: The Hobgoblin is notable for featuring a companion for Ator who wears the laughably awful Troll costume from midnight movie “classic” Troll 2. In German Ator III is even called Troll 3, as Deutschland seems to have invested more value in the Troll franchise than Ator’s plodding adventures.

It’s interesting to note that Conan the Barbarian only has one official sequel with Arnie to date, Conan the Destroyer. This film manages to resemble the Conan knock-off movies more than the original film. (Meanwhile, due to lack of concern about budget, a lot of knock-offs themselves have about four or five sequels.)

This includes the Argentine-American Deathstalker series, produced by longtime b-and-c-movie collaborator Roger Corman. Out of these the first Deathstalker is legitimate trashy fun, with the first Beastmaster and Sword and the Sorcerer being the only movies to best It as far as budget fantasy films go. It’s not a great movie by any means, but manages to be escapist entertainment while embracing its identity rather than pretending to be anything better.

The giant blonde Deathstalker sets out on his quest and meets a puppet ghoul who he transforms into a guy who looks like Elliot Gould, another warrior who is going to a fighting tournament held by an evil wizard and an eternally topless woman warrior. It’s a mess of enjoyable cuts stuffed with naked people, blood, puppets, and a villain who looks like a character from Mortal Kombat. There’s even a pig man thrown in for good measure.

Deathstalker II and Barbarian Queen, on the other hand, are just bad movies. Deathstalker II is basically a poor man’s version of Kevin Sorbo’s infamous Hercules tv series, with boobs and somehow worse special effects (it literally recycles scenes from the first film). While the unintentional humor of Deathstalker is priceless, this film tries to wink at you the entire time (with two leads that look like teenagers who were plucked from the local arcade). If there’s anything I can say in its favor it at least manages to be light, the lead actors are charismatic, making it less offensive than Barbarian Queen.

A movie that manages to lose steam like its Italian counterparts – even sooner, no less – Barbarian Queen features Lana Clarkson (that’d be the eternally topless woman warrior from the original Deathstalker) as, you guessed it, a barbarian queen. Together with her sister and two friends, the queen must save their fellow imprisoned villagers from an evil guy. (For once he’s not a wizard.)

That’s about the only thing I can get excited about in regards to this movie. There’s not even a barely charismatic actor or actress to latch onto, so you’re basically just watching a bunch of random people wearing reused costumes and running around on the reused sets from the first Deathstalker. That Roger Corman knew how to save a buck or two!

Though the idea of watching a lot of ridiculous low-budget fantasy movies I missed as a kid seemed exciting at first, I’ve now watched enough dollar store knock-offs that I can stand to take a break. While I would not recommend most of these to the average viewer, I would say that genre fans and fans of bad movies will love Deathstalker. Even Deathstalker II will entertain some.  Fans of Lucio Fulci and Italian exploitation should check out Conquest.  Unless you’re a completist or a glutton for punishment like myself then stay away from the other films.

There is a rise in fantasy and Sword and Sandal shows on TV. Despite being based on books, mythology, and historical sources there’s no denying a borrowing of the aesthetic of some of Conan the Barbarian and its bastard offspring in shows like Game of Thrones, Spartacus, and Vikings to name a few. Not to mention the continuing influence on books, comics, video games, and movies.

It will be interesting to see how the influence of outside-of-the-box films – rented based on the outrageous and totally misleading covers of various VHS boxes by kids of the ‘70s and ‘80s – will influence all media in the years to come. If anything they will always exist to be marveled and laughed at, like that random Spader-Man figure you find in a box in the attic.

The climax does not come with a gun fight or a chase or explosions of any kind. It begins, actually, in stark silence:

…Smiley sat still as an undertaker; nothing, it seemed, could rouse him.

He does eventually rouse himself, however, and what follows is a methodically manipulative conversation between himself and a Soviet agent. It is an appropriate culmination – the action of both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People is concerned more with people talking about spy craft rather than employing it.

It is easy for the quiet of John Le Carré’s novels to be overshadowed by all the Burn Notices and Bourne Whatevers that have come to dominate the espionage genre. A line was crossed, perhaps irrevocably, in the 80s, thanks to movies like Red Dawn, Rocky IV and just about everything starring Chuck Norris. The cartoonish exploits of James Bond were far easier for an audience to digest that the real moral murkiness of the Cold War. In the movies, the solution to the communist problem was almost always a bullet. Even the most recent film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy boasts a surprising uptick in gun play and action in comparison to the source material.

That kind of anti-communist entertainment was meant to be comforting in an uncertain time. George Smiley’s world, however, is anything but. With the quiet comes a fraught tension. People become unmoored in a stormy sea of ideologies. The greatest danger these spies face is not to believe in the wrong thing, but to cease believing in anything at all. Lofty political goals are generally secondary to merely maintaining a status quo – be it one as a diplomat or a pimp.

Videogames can learn from this. The Smiley books embrace a kind of language of play even as they deal with heavy subjects of patriotism, morality and duty. Le Carré dubs the central office of MI6 the Circus and populates it with groups like the Lamplighters, Scalp Hunters, Babysitters and more. They are all after treasure, their jargon for valuable intelligence, to get an upper hand in against the Russian’s master spy, codenamed Karla. The long term rivalry between the British Empire and Russia is even, historically, called the Great Game. All this lively vocabulary is like nervous laughter over a menacing soundtrack – it is all the more threatening for the pauses between the notes.

The natural inclination of developers to creating increasingly fine-tuned mechanics for shooting things tends to ignore the potential to create moments geared to inspiring or delivering complicated thoughts. There is a distrust of quiet in videogames. When the bullets stop flying and the explosions die down, there is inevitably someone squawking in your ear, or the music is swelling, or an automatic door is rumbling open. Games are constantly demanding that you pay attention and get to the next objective. It is rare to have an uninterrupted of stillness.

Most of the time, I love the din. With it comes an irrepressible energy that draws you back in. No matter how frustrated or tired you may be, you know that there is always another thrill around the corner. And yet, lately, I crave quiet. I want time to think.

Dead Space 3 is partly to blame – it never knew when to shut up. Every time I wanted to look out a window at the vastness of space, or soak in the grim atmosphere of a ransacked room, or stand in a blizzard to be chilled by the isolating cold, a necromorph would inevitably leap at me. About a third of the way through the game, you leave the safety of your ship to maneuver in open space. When the airlock releases, the game is finally, blessedly, silent. It is awe-inspiring. That is, until you glide too close to a piece of wreckage and its resident monster starts shooting at you – a monster that isn’t even a threat, just a pest. There is a dark beauty in Dead Space, but the game seems too self-conscious of its scars to let players see them for any longer than a moment.

BioShock’s Rapture also suffers from this. With the exception of Sander Cohen’s Fort Frolic, exploration largely takes a back seat to shooting wave after wave of howling splicers. Why can I not walk among the corridors without disturbance, a man in an inside-out aquarium? A similar problem occurs in roiling dust of I Am Alive – the mechanics for bluffing opponents with an empty gun are brilliant at first blush but quickly become tiresome. The tension in the gamble loses meaning in repetition.

I don’t believe all games need to embrace this kind of quiet. The best example of it currently is Dear Esther, which is an interesting but ultimately unfulfilling experiment. I merely suggest game developer not be afraid of the quiet. Hopefully forthcoming games like Gone Home and The Vanishing of Ethan Carver can use their lack of combat to give players cause for reflection. After all, as thrilling as they can be, shoot outs very rarely give way to weighty philosophies.

No, the way lies with George Smiley. Out of shape, pale, dressed in ill fitting clothes – he sits entirely still, pondering, contemplating, illuminating the outside world with the light of deeply internal insight. And it is all born from silence.

———

Shhhh. Follow Stu Horvath on Twitter, @StuHorvath.

For many years, my family owned a dog in some capacity or another, from when I was a baby until I was twenty-one. Because of this, I’ve always been uncomfortable with malicious harm coming to dogs in TV shows, movies, books, videogames and comics. As for outer space, I became fascinated with it pretty like any other kid alive during the 70s and 80s from watching Star Wars, Star Trek, the NASA launches on TV and stock footage from the moon landings, not to mention eating astronaut ice cream.

One thing that burst that innocence bubble was The Challenger explosion in 1986. This was around the time that my elementary school class was doing our unit on outer space, and it was a grim reminder that outer space is not a friendly place. The concept that people could be trapped and perish in the tomb of a shuttle craft or just a space suit in the cold empty void was terrifying, and potentially not something  an elementary school teacher wanted to address. During this space unit my class covered the history of space travel, and early on I learned about Laika.

Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth. She was launched on November 3, 1957. The sole occupant of Sputnik 2, she became one of many footnotes of the Cold War space race between the USSR and USA.  After the success of the Sputnik 1 satellite, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wanted to push the launch of the follow up mission to coincide with the 40^th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The craft launched would also be carrying an animal passenger so that the way could be further paved for human space flight. This is the part I cared about as kid, the part about a dog in space!

It was a mind blowing concept to think about. There they were in the textbook, black and white photos of Laika in her space suit. This really happened!  In my imagination, I thought of a dog piloting a ship, going on space walks and getting into crazy adventures with aliens and moon rocks. Upon touchdown and her arrival home, she must have been a hero to not only the Russians but to the world, having proved that dogs can wear space suits and have adventures beyond chasing their tail. Parades must have marched down the main avenue of every major city in the world in her honor. This was my conclusion to the story because we were never really told what happened to her. It was a blip in the history books for children to marvel at and for adults to think of as cute.

As the years went on and the Cold War died down, I became aware of the true nature of the space race and how it was just a piece in a very large puzzle. I was still fascinated by outer space and space travel, but was discouraged by how little progress we had made since the early 70s. When I realized that much of the progress and funding given to NASA from the 60s to the 80s was a result of political one-upmanship between two world superpowers – and not the need for the people of Earth to explore and better themselves – I was disappointed, but what crushed me was when I discovered the fate of Laika.

For various political reasons, Laika’s experience in the Sputnik 2 was always kept vague by the Soviet government. It was known that she perished in the craft but, according to government representatives, it was supposedly a humane, euthanasic death. In fact, the death occurred because of the cabin overheating to extreme temperatures due to a malfunctioning thermostat. Because of the desire to make this a victory for the USSR, the newspapers of the time played down the death and celebrated the feat. For decades, the scientists and people who worked on the project stayed quiet about the details, for fear of their government.  In the late 90s, the facts finally came out that the project was rushed and the result was a shoddily constructed craft. There was never any intention of Laika’s retrieval.

In 1998 Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists who worked on the project, had this to say about the regrets he had about the rushed Sputnik 2 project, and the death of Laika:

“Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it… We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”

Various animal rights groups reacted strongly after Sputnik 2 and future space flights were stricter on the animal passengers being treated fairly, with mandated tests to prove that the equipment was functioning properly. With human flight becoming more common in the 60s, the need for animal astronauts was less apparent. Now, even humans don’t go up much anymore.

A statue and plaque memorialize Laika in Star City, site of the Russian Cosmonaut training facility. Much like the illustrations from the 1950s and 60s that depict space travel and the future, it is a landmark to the realization of dreams, and to the harsh truths and sacrifices that sometimes accompany them.

———

Two books I recommend that relate to the topics that I’ve brought up are the graphic novel Laika, by Nick Abadzis, and Packing For Mars, by Mary Roach. The former is a beautifully illustrated tale about the three years of Laika’s life and the many people she was in contact with in that brief time, from the little girl who reluctantly had to get rid of her, to the scientists and workers who were touched by the plucky mutt. The latter is a non-fiction book factually and humorously written by Mary Roach about the trials and tribulations of human space travel.  It touches on the history of the various space programs and the mundane unpleasantness and awe of space travel, as recounted to her by various astronauts. It also goes into the recent retirement of the space shuttles by NASA and what the future holds for manned space travel.

Writing about Laika for this piece made me think back on the dogs in my life. Ebony ran away when I was born, Vincent was a black standard poodle and evil super genius who merits an article entirely about him. The last dog my family owned was Murphy, a black terrier mutt who was incredibly easy going and loving, and we loved him back. He touched our lives in the way that only those special pets can. After his passing we could never adopt another dog again, in memory of our furry family member. When I was younger I used to dream about being an astronaut and traveling amongst the stars. Not so much anymore, though I still dream about Murphy.

-Robert E. Howard on his inspiration for Cimmeria, home of Conan

It is on an appropriately gloomy day that I write about the sullen barbarian hero Conan, and the other creations of his equally sullen creator Robert E. Howard. With The Hobbit still somewhat fresh in my mind and a new season of Game of Thrones around the corner, it’s easy to forget about one of the first examples of the modern sword and sorcery genre. Unlike the professorial majesty of many of Tolkien’s stories (or quaint Hobbit whimsy), Howard wrote in a pulpy manner, freely imbuing horror, graphic violence, swordplay, nudity, magic, epic battles and humor into his tales.

A Texan fascinated with history, Howard traveled around the state in his youth working various jobs and even talking to Civil War veterans in old age homes to get inspiration for his stories and characters. These included Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and Irish characters like Turlogh Dubh O’Brien. His first entry into sword and sorcery was the Kull story “The Shadow Kingdom,” published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1929. Still, of all Howard’s creations, Conan has had the biggest impact on popular culture, with movies, comics, video games, toys, a cartoon and a live-action TV show made about the man from Cimmeria. (In fact, it is said that early attempts at creating a Conan the Barbarian toy line based on the movie led to the creation of He-Man.)

My history with Conan begins, like many of my generation, with the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies in 1982 and 1984. The first of these films made a huge impact on me, while the second bewildered me with Grace Jones and Andre the Giant stumbling around in a rubber monster suit. I discovered the comics later, as I was devouring any kind of familiar comic book property that I could find. Eventually I bought albums by Danzig and others with cover art by Conan cover artist Frank Frazetta. By the late ’90s I was pretty burned out on the franchise and barely gave the TV show a thought; in the last five years I finally read the original stories, and since then my interest in the Hyborian Age has been renewed.

Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth under his sandaled feet.

– The Nemedian Chronicles (taken from Conan literature)

Much like Tolkien, Howard created a world and mapped it out. There was a history that included both Kull and Conan, and also borrowed from the work of Howard’s friend through correspondence, H.P. Lovecraft – it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for Howard to include references to The Ancient One or for Conan to be attacked by some sinister slimy beast from the dark bowels of the Earth. While it bore similarities to our world, it was quite obvious that it was a world sprung from the fertile imagination of Robert E Howard; it’s very likely that Conan’s warrior god Crom even probably fought Cthulhu at some point.

It’s been amazing to look back and see how vast an influence the unfortunately small output of Howard has had on the fantasy genre as a whole, for better and for worse. Howard committed suicide in 1936 after a bout of depression brought on by the death of his mother, and it hasn’t been until recently that all of his work is now in publication. I’m optimistic that some faithful adaptations will be released either in movie or TV form, and although the recent Conan movie had its problems, talk of an elderly Schwarzenegger picking up the sword again leaves me cautiously optimistic. The stories have been around for almost a hundred years, and even when they were not in publication there were still comics and various adaptations keeping the character alive (my favorites of these are the Dark Horse comics written by Kurt Busiek). Here’s to another hundred years of high adventure.

We here at Team Unwinnable love pulp! We have our own pulp book club, after all. My own relationship with it begins with The Shadow.  Growing up, my dad used to listen to reel-to-reel recordings of the 1937 radio drama with Orson Welles. The story details are a little fuzzy, but I will never forget that laugh – it was damn haunting! The first time I saw The Shadow was at a flea market, where a dealer was selling some 1970s DC comic series. I loved the clash of red on black, as well as his blazing 45s. Those early impressions of The Shadow, combined with my love of Batman, led me to my love of pulpy crime fiction.

I’ve been following Francesco Francavilla’s work since Frank Frazetta’s Dracula Meets The Wolf Man. I then followed him to Dynamite’s Zorro, DC’s Batman: The Black Mirror and Marvel’s Black Panther: The Man Without Fear. His black shadows, clever composition and deft storytelling grew better with every comic I read. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Mr. Francavilla was working with top-notch writers like Steve Niles, Matt Wagner, Scott Snyder and David Liss on those books. However, he’s tackling the scripts solo with this book and the quality of writing on Black Beetle #1 is on par with his previous collaborators.

The Black Beetle: No Way Out #1 is a gorgeous and compelling comic book. Francesco Francavilla’s heavy inks and autumn color palette pull the reader into Colt City’s underworld like two bruised and calloused fists grabbing you by the shirt collar. The world Francavilla builds with his writing and panel design evokes a nostalgia for big cars, giant Zenith radios and glass-jawed gangsters. The Beetle himself has a car reminiscent of Batman’s original ride (pre-Batmobile, Dear Reader), a nifty dart pistol, stylish goggles and of course, a helicopter strapped to his back! The Black Beetle takes me back to that first image I saw of The Shadow – his guns drawn and his coat flowing in the wind – and Colt City screams the same kind of lurid danger.

The first issue begins with Black Beetle on a stakeout. Two of Colt City’s most notorious gangsters are having a sit-down, and Beetle wants to crash the party and haul them off to jail. As the Beetle collects evidence, the building suddenly explodes, killing not just the Beetle’s quarry, but a sizable chunk of both crime families and their flunkies! The determined Black Beetle then sniffs around the underworld’s remains to find out just who took out the scum of Colt City. Was it a power play or a less scrupulous vigilante?

At its heart, this is a mystery. Francavilla spends the first issue building the world through a series of intricately designed panels. There are four beautifully drawn double-page splashes in this issue, but they convey a lot of information about the Black Beetle’s world and service the story and tone of the book. Colt City is a pulpy metropolis, trapped somewhere between the 1920s and the 1940s. There isn’t an ounce of cynicism or parody in this book. It’s clear that Francesco Francavilla is pouring everything into The Black Beetle: No Way Out. The book is a sincere love letter to pulp and noir.

———

Sometimes, @IanGonzales wants to punch Twitter like it’s Crime.

Good thing no one does that anymore.

Death isn’t what it used to be

Virtual pets don’t die anymore, laments Wired’s Nate Lanxon in his piece “My Horse is Immortal: Free-to-Play is Killing Death in Gaming.” Looking to the Tamagotchi, the pet simulator toy from the nineties, Lanxon argues that one of the explosively popular toy’s main appeals was the real possibility of death. “Kids became so emotionally invested in their pets they would habitually return to check on their well-being, to go truant in the name of animal safety,” he points out. “No doubt the ability of these digital animals to die from neglect or old age was fundamental to their success.”

Tamagotchi was paid for in advance. It didn’t matter if it died – Bandai had already cashed in, and kids could hatch a new pet anyway. The landscape, thanks to the internet, casual games, Facebook and iPhones has entirely changed this for new businesses. Moshi Monsters, although a free-to-play game, has a paid-for membership model for gamers who want a richer experience. My Horse, also free-to-play, sells perks using in-app purchases on the iPhone. Why would you let your customers kill the only reason they have to give you money?

For Lanxon, removing the threat of death cheapens the gaming experience (even, ironically, as it thickens the developers’ wallets). Is it the tie with reality – i.e. death – that makes our fantasy meaningful, at least with regard to our virtual pets?

Functional immortality in gaming at large is nothing new, of course. Otherwise, how many of us would still be playing…anything? Multiple lives, and the chance to try and try again, is the main mechanic of almost every videogame ever. It’s what makes videogames playable to those of us who aren’t secret agents, supersoldiers or magical beings. It’s also what makes an ‘actual’ death in a videogame so strangely affecting.

In the turn-based strategy game Fire Emblem, characters who fall in battle suffer “permadeath,” a curious term that is nevertheless necessary in the world of videogames. When the characters, units in your army, fall in battle, players don’t fail the level; they merely lose that character for the rest of the game. No Phoenix Downs or good night’s sleep will revive them; they’ve ‘died’ in that playthrough continuity, and other characters may comment on or discuss their death throughout the rest of the story.

Even permadeath, though, can be undone by restarting the level. Not so Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII. The videogame world was rocked in 1997 when a member of the player party – who by all appearances still had skills to unlock and levels to grow just like the rest of the cast – was killed off in a cutscene, with no way to bring her back (if you play by the rules, that is). Players spent hours looking for the secret to reviving Aerith, rumored to be hidden in the game’s code, and failing that they hacked the game to reinsert her into the party. Turns out that if you do, long-buried dialogue code for Aerith is reactivated, in which she comments along with the rest of the party on events that occurred after her death. Apparently the decision to kill her off came later in development, and her posthumous dialogue was left buried in the game code.

“…And pray for a resurrection.”

For how many years now has Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. the Dark Knight, a.k.a. Batman, been a thirty-something crimefighter? First introduced in 1939, the character has been seen fighting Nazis in World War II, swinging through 1950s-style suburbia, wooing women with crazy 1960s hairdos, using computers that printed out data onto pieces of paper, and brooding on the coming of the new millenium. He’s even been killed a time or two, and yet there’s still always a Batman – and even a Bruce Wayne – running around the pages of our comic books.

Superheroes die and return all the time, so much so that even within the world death is no longer considered a permanent state. Alan Moore ripped on this trope in his Top 10, where a funeral for the superhero known as Girl One looks more like comedy and fourth-wall cracking than tragedy.
But even in the main comic book worlds, where writers depend on our love of their characters to ensure our continued support, the characters have acknowledged that death is not what it once was. At Martian Manhunter’s funeral in Final Crisis issue #2, Superman solemnly eulogizes: “We’ll all miss him. And pray for a resurrection.” Having experienced it firsthand, Superman knows that even death is not necessarily the end.

The world is not enough

It’s not just in the world of comics that we see characters wade untouched through the decades. Case in point: James Bond. But in this case, Bond’s literary immortality is not for a lack of effort on his creator’s part. Ian Fleming’s 1957 novel From Russia, with Love, on which the movie is based, ends with Bond “Feel[ing] his knees begin to buckle…Bond pivoted slowly on his heel and crashed headlong to the wine-red floor.”

Really, Fleming wanted to stop writing the character and move on to other projects. He wasn’t the first author who grew tired of his iconic creation and tried to end him. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to do the same to Sherlock Holmes, penning the short story “The Final Problem” in 1893 which saw Holmes face off with an abruptly introduced arch-nemesis and apparently die with him in the famous face-off at Reichenbach falls. Doyle wanted that to be the end of Sherlock’s adventures, because even though each story brought him a fat paycheck, he wanted the freedom to focus on more “serious” literary projects. “I think of slaying Holmes in the last and winding him up for good and all,” he wrote in a letter to his mother. “He takes my mind off better things.”

Fans, however, had other ideas. In 1901, Doyle bowed to the pressure and wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, an adventure set before “The Final Problem.” But it wasn’t enough; in 1903 “The Adventure of the Empty House” recounts Holmes’ ‘miraculous’ survival at Reichenbach and return to England, and was followed by thirty-one more stories. Ian Fleming had no more success ending his hero as Conan Doyle; From Russia, With Love was but number five in twelve novels. And both Sherlock Holmes and James Bond outlived their creators; other writers have continued to pen, film and animate adventures for the characters, even into 2012, with Skyfall and the second season of the BBC’s Sherlock.

These are the most famous examples of extraordinarily long-lived characters, both within their own stories and in the pop culture zeitgeist, but very few others have seen the same success. Even the most beloved characters and stories outlive their welcome: Some TV shows like 24 or Supernatural, or manga like Naruto and Detective Conan, popular though they were (and still are), become infamous for running too long. Oftentimes, the accusation is that a work’s artistic integrity suffers when the creators try to forestall an ending. Other times, it simply becomes unbelievable that the characters are still alive. Resurrections, alternate timelines, and other tricks of the comic book trade aren’t as readily accepted here.

Canon, Fanon and Alternate Universes
The truth is, a story has to end sometime. And for those in the entertainment industry, when a story ends the money ends too. But the desire to turn a steady profit isn’t the only reason for the end of endings. Often, the people who drag out stories aren’t the ones who make money on them, but the ones who pay money for them. Sometimes these fan-driven projects involve the original creators, as with the multiple efforts successful and unsuccessful on the part of Firefly fans to resurrect the 2003 show. But most often they take it into their own hands. Yes, I’m talking about fanfiction. For some, consumption of fan-related content can outweigh the official material, not a difficult feat when multiple novel-length expansions, prequels, and alternative treatments of franchises like Harry Potter, Final Fantasy and Avatar: The Last Airbender are freely available online. Fan creativity has become a force to be reckoned with, and even a subject of study and scholarship.

Worlds without end
Why are fans able to continue stories that the writers had intended to be over? Why do they even want to?

It’s partly due to a shift in the way that we perceive fiction. Both fanfiction and videogames stem from an understanding of fiction as world-building, as the creation of a persistent imaginary realm that has past and future even beyond that which the narratives about it care to share. Worlds aren’t constrained by introductions, rising actions, climaxes, denouements and conclusions.

Stories were always worlds first, but in the heyday of print and paper authors could regulate our access. The first chapters of books were our passports, the epilogues our deportation papers, and there was little we could do outside our own minds to linger in a beloved world. But now, not only are fans more able to rip open new holes in that curtain, due in part to mass media delivery technologies and accessible online publicatio – they’re encouraged to.

We don’t look at stories as linear narratives anymore. We look at them as excerpts from a longer and wider fabric, as portals into a persistent, if fictional, world. No longer do we experience stories as simple trajectories, as rides with a beginning, a middle, and and an end. Today, stories of all kinds come with sidequests, websites, mods, fanfiction communities, spinoff titles, miniseries and more. Between the “official” content and the fan-produced material, our fictional worlds have become functionally infinite.

Stories have endings, and will always have endings, but “the end” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. Maybe it never did. Because the worlds have no end.

———

Follow Jill Scharr on Twitter @JillScharr.

Well, perhaps the characters did, but it is rare that a viewer, reader or player is overjoyed by an ending.

Beginnings are full of mystery and promise. Middles are where all the action and drama lay, the meat of a story. Endings, though, are like a blank wall. They represent the moment we have to leave the fictional world we engaged with and have to find something else to do. There is also something disturbingly impenetrable about an ending. Like death, we cannot see beyond it – we can only wonder.

Sequels don’t count. Each fiction has finite borders and while a sequel may continue a story, it has its own beginning, middle and end. Moving from one volume to another creates a kind of dissonance – a new beginning is not the same experience we would have had if we continued walking along with those characters into the sunset.

For most stories, the joy is in the telling, but since the end is our exit, it can infuse the whole concoction with a note of bitterness. For some people, a bad ending can be poison. For me, this happens more often than not with Stephen King’s novels – how many just simply stop, or resolve with a convenient explosion of cleansing fire? Despite the fact that The Stand and ‘Salem’s Lot are gripping for the vast majority of their lengths, their awful endings invalidate the entire experience. Don’t even get me started on Lost.

Gamers have it slightly better; because games are interactive, there’s potential for a variety of endings based on happenstance or a player’s choices. They come in three basic flavors: success, failure and some mediocre middle ground between the two. Earlier this year, BioWare’s epic space opera Mass Effect 3 ran afoul of fans who thought its three possible endings didn’t adequately reflect all the choices that were made over the course of three very long games. Still, three possible endings are two more than you get with a book, movie or television show.

There are exceptions. The bleak uncertainty of John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of horror cinema’s most unsettling finales. Red Dead Redemption was about as perfect a revenge story as has ever been told. I count the conclusion of Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories, The Bane of the Black Sword, as the very best. Moorcock is an uneven writer and his Elric stories are no exception as they drift from dynastic dramas to psychedelic interludes and beyond. The very end, though, in a single line of dialogue, is so shockingly unifying – and satisfying – I have yet to find its equal.

Because a good ending is such a rare find – I can scarcely think of another worthy of mentioning – their approach is terrifying. There are only eight episodes of Breaking Bad remaining – what if they fail to thrill? There are two more volumes left in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire – what if they leave more questions than answers? I can hear the howls of despair already.

Why do we wail so? Are we so sensitive to absence, is finality so grim, that a single page can outweigh the hundreds that preceded it? If on a hike we come to a cliff and don’t appreciate the view, we don’t rage at nature. We shrug and move on in another direction – and a new journey begins.

———

Stu Horvath still occasionally bitches about the way Lost turned out on Twitter @StuHorvath. You can’t always be thoughtful.

Are you pondering DJing your company’s holiday party? Are you aching to read about Donald Duck saving Christmas? Do you miss Avatar: The Last Airbender? Maybe you’re looking for something more perennial, like a DVD combo pack of Silent Night, Deadly Night and Silent Night, Deadly Night 2?

Here we go…

———

I always love to get books as gifts – there is nothing better than lounging around on Christmas day, tearing through a good, thought-provoking book (or flipping through, just looking at the pictures). Here, then, are some that will feed brains and entertain!

Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard – Essentially a chronicle of the making of Jaws, this book stands out for two reasons. First, it is immensely detailed. Second, it focuses on the local participants in the film, a viewpoint that has been overlooked until now. Flip through it while watching the Blu-ray remaster of the movie.

i am 8-bit: Art Inspired by Classic Video Games of the ’80′s – A collection of game-inspired artwork from L.A.’s amazing i am 8-bit gallery. This, and just about everything else in their store, is the stuff that nostalgic dreams are made of.

The Lands of Ice and Fire – If you’ve read George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, you’ve practically memorized the map of Westeros that is at the front of each of the other books. But what about the rest of the world? This collection of poster maps is the answer. Since it will be eons until the next book comes back, I will take any new material I can get.

How to Do Things with Videogames – Ian Bogost’s collection of short philosophical essays on videogames remains one of the best books I’ve read on the subject. For a gamer, to expand their mind, or for a non-gamer, to show them what they are missing.

Stu Horvath

As Unwinnable’s resident DJ, my pick is Numark’s iDJ Pro. This device could re-revolutionize DJing. The iDJ Pro is a twin platter DJ interface for an iPad and works seamlessly with Algoriddim’s DJ app. While this is a bit larger than Numark’s iDJ Live and Ion’s iDJ2GO, it is a hell of a lot sturdier. It also has all the knobs, bells and whistles one would expect from a more professional device. If you’re looking to step up your game, then this is the digital DJ device for you.

Ken Lucas

The first time I heard about Carl Barks, I was working Wizard World 2001 in Chicago. One of the panel theaters was named after the famed cartoonist but I had no idea who he was. So, I asked my boss. He then schooled me on just who Carl Barks was and scrounged up a couple of Gladstone Uncle Scrooge reprints for me to read. I was in awe of Mr. Barks’ storytelling (and excited to find out just where Duck Tales came from).

To know Carl Barks’ work is to know how great comics can truly be. Last year, Fantagraphics released the first in their Carl Barks Donald Duck hardcovers with Lost in the Andes. This year, their collection is a bit more seasonal, but no less classic. A Christmas for Shacktown is the third published volume of Carl Barks’ collected works from Fantagraphics. The book is full of some of Barks’ best adventure strips like “The Golden Helmet” and the first appearance of Gyro Gearloose. If you grew up loving Duck Tales, this is the chance to see where it all came from and to admire one of the most celebrated comic book artists of all time.

Ian Gonzales

Nostalgia is a funny thing. It clouds our memories, makes us remember things more fondly than they were. Often, when we revisit things we’re nostalgic about, they’re just not the same. It’s extra special, then, when we can go back to something and have it recall all of the fond memories and feelings we had the first time we experienced it. That’s the case for me with Power Rangers, specifically the first several seasons. That’s why I’m super excited about Time Life’s Power Rangers: From Mighty Morphin’ to Lost Galaxy, a two-box, 40-disc, seven season, 338-episode colossus of spandex-clad martial arts insanity.

The show calls back to a simpler time, when I didn’t have to worry about struggling to pay rent or gaining weight or pulling my back lifting something heavy. When you watched Power Rangers, you felt awesome. After all, the Rangers were teenagers, just like you and me! Chosen for greatness, like so many of us wished we could be. If you can handle the heavy-handed moral lessons and the ridiculous schemes that the big bads come up with, there’s a lot of simple, mindless fun to be had with a massive box of DVDs about kids riding in giant robots and punching monsters to death.

Michael Rousseau

Despite the inroads made by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google and Apple (among others) in trying to convince us all that a 7” tablet is ideal, it’s still the 10” tablet that’s king. And with the help of Samsung, Google has produced a tablet worth sharing: the Google Nexus 10 Tablet (available in both 16GB and 32GB models). Built on Android 4.2 Jellybean with support for multiple users, with a desktop resolution and processor both well ahead of the iPad, it looks like the king is dead; long live the king (provided it stays in stock, anyway)!

Don Becker

The three-part graphic novel series Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise was one of my highlights this year. Sure, it’s not as good as the series itself, but for Airbender fans, especially ones who were a little disappointed by The Legend of Korra miniseries that aired last spring, The Promise is a welcome return to the original Team Avatar. I found that the series’ attempt to be political was stifled by its need to remain kid-friendly, but it still manages to capture the characters’ personalities and conflicts, even drawing lovebirds Katara and Aang into opposite sides of an increasingly muddled war. Plus, Toph kicks ass, Zuko has another emo coma, Mai is a flawless bitch and Sokka manages to be both brilliant and idiotic at the same time. You can buy The Promise as three separate paperbacks, or now as a complete hardcover edition, and the best part about it is the third teases the start of another graphic novel series, The Search, which will apparently answer Jinora’s question from Legend of Korra, episode 1: “What happened to Zuko’s mother?”

Jill Scharr

The best gift you could give to your Mac/PC/Linux tinkerers is that awesome hard drive upgrade. Regardless of your platform, the OCZ 512GB solid state drive screams! It’s simple and it is the wave of the future. Gaming, coding and just general use on your computer choice will be faster and more reliable. People are always looking for that practical thing that you’ll use every day, right? Look no further. Merry Christmas.

Erik Weinbrecht

Habibi, by Craig Thompson, is one heckuva graphic novel for a gift. It’s massive, it’s beautifully drawn and it obsesses over gender roles and slavery/domination throughout the history of Islam. Ideal for Christmas. But truly, this novel is as dense in script and dialogue as it is in imagery.

And if your ideal gift recipient already has that comic and every other comic you can think of? Get the galoot some nice shoes. Shoes, I tells ya! Shoes make the man, and most men can use a shoe upgrade. My blanket vote for good men’s shoes is Steve Madden. Long-lasting materials; lovely, understated style; reasonable price. Start with these if you’re lost…they DO have the word “gamer” in the name.

Sam Machkovech

While we don’t actually endorse buying the Silent Night, Deadly Night/Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 DVD combo pack, we do recommend watching one of the worst scenes in cinema history. Behold!

There, we just saved you some three odd hours and ten bucks.

Happy Holidays!

Love,

Team Unwinnable

———

@TeamUnwinnable will gladly provide team members’ Amazon Wish Lists upon request. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.