Perry Rhodan NEO #3: School for Mutants

 “If you don’t believe in your own vision, who else is supposed to?”

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Days after Perry Rhodan invited the world to join him in the new city of Terrania, the Chinese siege intensifies, even scoring a success by shooting down Rhodan’s only spaceship, the Stardust. In an attempt to get around the Arkonide shields, General Bai Jun cuts off humanitarian aide to refugees flocking to Terrania. But the Chinese government has other ideas, and smuggles nuclear weapons into the Gobi Desert.

Meanwhile in Ireland, the mutant Sid Gonzalez is unconscious, trapped by his fears in visions of the past. John Marshall and Sue Mirafiore, with the help of other mutants such as series favorite Ras Tschubai, must dive into the young man’s mind to save him. But what they find in Sid’s past may be the key to understanding the man who now holds the Arkonide Crest da Zolral prisoner. The man who now knows why the Arkonides visited the Solar System.

Clifford Monterny.

The revisioned adventures of science fiction’s longest running hero, Perry Rhodan, continue in Perry Rhodan NEO #3 with School for Mutants by Michael Marcus Thurner and The Dark Twins by series veteran Frank Borsch. And while both novels push Perry Rhodan forward towards inevitable conflicts between his Terrania, China, and the United States deep state, the heart of each is the creation of two rival schools for mutants. One, by Homeland Security agent Clifford Monterny, who seeks to develop mutants into a sort of Hitlerjugend for Homeland Security, and the other, by wealthy billionaire Homer Adams, who seeks to marry the emerging potential of humanity to Perry Rhodan’s vision of the stars. And Sid Gonzalez, once a street urchin in Nicaragua, has at various times been in the care of both.

Flashbacks from Sid and the anti-Xavier Monterny flesh out the motives, formation, and atrocities behind the blackest of black Homeland Security projects. As a result, both men receive more characterization than Perry Rhodan himself. This does weaken the fire behind Rhodan’s vision, especially when realpolitik, ideology, and nationalism are so thoroughly condemned. And while the stars might be reason enough for people to unite under one banner, someone still has to sell that idea to people. Oddly, it is Sid’s zeal that does more for that than Rhodan’s actions. It is also as a shame, as Sid and Monterny’s flashbacks, with all the pain and grief involved, catch the reader’s attention more than the stalemate in China.

Thurner explores Sid’s trauma as the boy lives a life that’s a mix of Locke Lamora, Harry Potter, and The Promised Neverland, one that is as eventful and adventure filled as any child hero’s. Borsch tackles the harder job. European science fiction, such as Valerian and Laureline, is fond of avoiding simplistic portrayals of good and evil, and instead resorts to more a clash of differing factions. Borsch gives virtue and vice to Monterny’s creation of Homeland Security’s school for mutants, making the man’s misguided quest somewhat sympathetic. The old saw of a villain being the hero of his own story is true here. Unfortunately, the major motivator so far for all characters is pain. Not virtue, ideology, philosophy, just pain. And that fixation wears on the reader.

Allusions to The X-Men are unavoidable, although Perry Rhodan’s mutants were arguably introduced before Marvel’s heroes. Rhodan’s mutants are developments of the Campbelline fascination with psionics, and carry a high metabolic price. Sid once was a chubby teenager, for instance, before constant use of his powers turned him thin and sinewy. Other mutants are left exhausted by the use of their powers. And the refrain of ordinary people with extraordinary gifts resounds throughout both novels, as old favorites, both allies and enemies, surround Sid. At the same time, it is hard to avoid resonances with Professor Xavier and his students. Adams and Marshall combined fill a similar role to a team with analogues to Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, and others.

Perry Rhodan NEO is transitioning in these stories from Ringoesque worldbuilding to full-blown adventure. Some of this is due to consolidating a full year of the initial run into eight books. Some is also due to the initial setting mattering less, which couldn’t happen soon enough. The view ahead to 2036 looks different in these post-Corona, post-ISIS days as it did back when the European Union still mistook influence for power. But once we get to races against nuclear timers, psionic fights, and the chess match between generals, the story picks up, not just in pace, but enthusiasm. And the child protagonists of Sid and Sue provide that enthusiasm and zeal when cooler heads may dither.

As long as Perry Rhodan NEO concentrates on the stars, it soars. When the series focuses on the Earth, it stumbles. However, as long as Monterny holds Crest captive, Perry’s attentions will remain Earthbound. Fortunately, Crest is not the only Arkonide remaining, and Thora still has her part to play. Perry Rhodan will not remain shackled to mere worldly concerns for long.

Perry Rhodan NEO #2: The Teleport and Ellert’s Visions

“You are the first Arkonide who has ever set foot on this planet. In your body there are literally two worlds colliding.”

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When last we left Perry Rhodan, the astronaut had landed in the Gobi Desert, announced the presence of the Arkonides to Earth, and invited the world to come help found the new city of Terrania. Instead of the world, a Chinese army arrives to lay siege to Rhodan and his city. As bullets fly and bombs fall around him, Crest da Zoltral’s leukemia continues to ravage his body, and the only hope of a cure requires a daring escape from Terrania and its Chinese besiegers.  Meanwhile, a gangland shootout in Houston has sent John Marshall and his young mutant charges on a panicked flight across the Mexican border, pursued by police and mysterious men from the kids’ past. 

As if the stakes were not high enough, Great Russia and America both send astronauts to the Moon in hopes of salvaging the ruined moonbases and making independent contact with the stranded Arkonide ship. Each expedition hides a suicide bomber with a nuclear bomb–in case the other team wins the Arkonides’ attention. If such a gameworld-addled crew might deign notice anything outside of their simulated worlds. And the world is answering Rodan’s call to join him in Terrania. A hardy mix of visionaries, zealots, and engineers are flocking to the new world-city’s banner, but crafty Chinese generals hide schemes of their own amidst these idealists.

In Perry Rhodan NEO #2, which contains the novels “The Teleporter” and “Ellert’s Visions”, these plots start weaving together into a web, as the national, commercial, and secret factions attempt to resolve the most important question of their time: who controls space now that humanity is not alone. Perry Rhodan represents an idealist globalism infatuated with the stars, the Chinese, a corrupt yet enlightened national self interest, the United States, a degenerate, hypocritical, and tyrannical nationalism, and the growing collection of mutants with esper powers, the combination of commercial and hidden factions. None yet hold the upper hand, but all threaten to bring more chaos and death to the Earth, and all are set on a collision course with Terrania.

So far, so good. Intrigue and action in exotic locations are pillars of pulp fiction. But science fiction’s infatuation with Wellsian social commentary in not restricted to English and American stories. As mentioned in previous reviews, Perry Rhodan NEO is a retelling of the original, attempting to become more relevant geopolitically and technologically than the original. This means that the story is trapped in a 2010 understanding of the world. Before COVID, before the immigration crisis, before ISIS. Before Europe started to understand the difference between influence and power. Leo Lukas is fond of repeating early 2000s jabs at America in “The Teleporter”, complete with El Norte-inspired takes on immigration and American arrogance. To say that these attempts to be relevant have curdled like milk in the wake of the turbulent 2010s would be an understatement.

But the social commentary in Perry Rhodan truly fails because it lacks vision. “The Teleporter” is a heavy-handed crack at the perceived hypocrisies of nationalism. “Ellert’s Visions” takes Arkonide gaming escapism to task. But neither posit an alternative. While Perry Rhodan is supposed to be the way out of the decadences of both alternatives, there is no vision as to why or what may inspire people to follow him. What comes across is an application of the Great Man theory and Chosen One plotting. We are given Rhodan as a model as to what we should look up to, but never an idea of what motivates him. Without a vision, the people perish–just like the Arkonides on the moon. Fortunately, the pulpy stories of alien fugitives, mutant espers, and daring space rescues shine through the thick Wellsian film. 

To harp on the politics present is not to complain about the presence of politics in science fiction. After all, the chess match between Rhodan and the Chinese generals over the Gobi Desert is one of the delights of the series. Rather, the complaint is that the politics and commentary present breaks immersion, and readers will only tolerate such breaks for a limited time before abandoning the book. Perry Rhodan NEO fires on all cylinders when it comes to the intrigues and mysteries that fill its pages. It is a shame to see exposition interrupt these plots, especially when it is service to making Perry Rhodan NEO cleave closer to a “reality” that never was.

Fortunately, in Perry Rhodan NEO #3, one of the series’ best writers returns to introduce many of the original series’ most beloved characters. Whether or not readers get there depends on the tolerance for eye-rolling asides.

Perry Rhodan NEO #1

 “My name is Crest da Zolral.” The alien was waiting for them by the inner hatch of the airlock. “I am an Arkonide. In your terms, I’d describe myself as the scientific leader of this expedition.”

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As tensions rise in 2036 between America, Greater Russia, and China, an American moon base goes dark. NASA attempts a rescue mission by sending the Stardust, commanded by Perry Rhodan. But when Rhodan and his crew find a giant metal sphere on the far side of the moon, their problems–and those of the entire human race–grow far more complex. And getting back home is no certainty as there is a bomb hidden on the Stardust.

Meanwhile, in Houston, John Marshall valiantly attempts to keep his children’s shelter running–and the street children away from each other’s throats. Marshall has always had an intuitive knack for reading people, but nothing prepared him for when one of his problem children suddenly teleports the two of them to Nevada Fields so that they can see the Stardust’s launch.

Thus begins Stardust, the first episode of Perry Rhodan NEO, a retelling of the world’s most popular science fiction series. Introduced to the world at WeltCon 2011, NEO updates the geopolitics and technologies from the Cold War and punchcards to a 2010 multipolar world, transistors, and information technology. Perry Rhodan NEO is published concurrently with the original Perry Rhodan series and is written by some of the same authors. Frank Borsch, the author of the first book in the Perry Rhodan: Lemuria series, revisits Rhodan’s first adventure in Stardust.

Rhodan is a veteran American astronaut of German descent who has won fame when his quick reactions saved a lunar shuttle from crashing. Who else should NASA send on a high-profile rescue mission? Rhodan is a mix between an old naval captain and a test pilot from The Right Stuff, although without all the Yeager-isms expected of such. He has an easy camaraderie with his crew akin to that of a Doc Savage or a Buck Danny, and serves as the competent leader of an equally gifted crew. As such, Rhodan’s an idealized pulp hero on a collision course with proud aliens and sinister governments–including his own.

The impending First Contact avoids the colonial mishaps that serve as the model for most science fiction. Technological sophistication is not confused for moral superiority While the American Stardust is more primitive than the Arkonides’ ship, Rhodan’s quick wits and keen insights keep him on equal footing with the humanoid Arkonides. These space invaders are a decadent people, wrapped up in the obsessions of their game worlds. Despite their mechanical sophistication, Rhodan has one bargaining chip: human medical technology that can treat the cancer wracking the body of their leader, Crest da Zolral. With that alliance secured, Rhodan must return home to a world filled with nations eager to deprive their enemies of whatever bounties Rhodan may have secured.

The second episode, Utopia Terrania, finds Rhodan and his crew in the Gobi Desert surrounded by the Chinese Army. Meanwhile, the world deals with the whispers and realizations of alien contact. While Rhodan verbally fences with the Chinese commander, the disgraced agents who told him about the bomb on Stardust are trying to reach him with information urgent to his survival. If Stardust was part pulp opera and part The Cross and the Switchblade, Utopia Terrania is more conventional–and cynical–science fiction with a sprinkling of X-Files’ paranoia and the author’s own…fascinations. Hopefully, the third episode will bring the action back out of the bedroom into the boardroom—and the focus back to Rhodan.

Compared to The Ark of Stars, the translation is cleaner, without some of the awkwardness that plagued the 2004 Perry Rhodan release. Some of the sentence complexity has been swapped out for clarity, but those seeking a more robust prose than Perry Rhodan NEO’s publisher’s Japanese light novels will not be disappointed. 

While reimaginings have recently soured the idea of a reboot, a technical refresh of Perryvese technology is welcome, especially since 50 years has wrought modern marvels unexpected when the first series has written. However, the geopolitical update is already quaint. We may yet be heading into a multi-polar world with uneasy relations between America, Russia, and China, but ten years of popularism, nationalism, and mass immigration have eroded 2010’s cosmopolitan globalism and trust in the soft power of influence. So the utopianist assumptions of how the Perry Rhodan NEO world works ring more hollow than punchcard spaceships. Mix in Elon Musk and the commercial space revolution, and NEO is just as dated as the original series. Contemporary events, after all, move faster than those of fiction.

That said, Perry Rhodan NEO offers an alternative to space operas cluttered by Star Wars, Horatio Hornblower, and Starship Troopers tropes. And it allows readers an easy entry point into the vast and nearly 3000 volume Perryverse, the world’s most popular science fiction series. Again, if Perry Rhodan NEO is successful, it may open the door to the main Perryverse returning to English audiences as well as the introduction of more European pulp series.

John Sinclair: Demon Hunter

On a cold November night, a grieving father picks up his hunting rifle and shoots his only daughter in the head. The police are mystified. Why was the girl even at the house? Why wasn’t she at the mortuary, awaiting her burial? After all, Mary Winston had been declared dead two days earlier. When John Sinclair goes to Scotland to investigate the gruesome murder, he finds a town in the grip of fear.

1973 introduced John Sinclair, Demon Hunter, to German audiences. Sinclair is a Scotland Yard investigator with ties to King Solomon, Henry Sinclair, and Knight Templar Hector de Valois. He also has a penchant for finding undead and other monsters. A weekly pulp serial penned almost exclusively by “Jason Dark”, John Sinclair: Demon Hunter quickly established a reputation for inventive plots and a rich vocabulary. In 2015, the series was rebooted for English audiences, with twelve ebook episodes written by Gabriel Conroy. J-Novel Club is re-releasing this latter series as part of their new pulp fiction imprint.

In “Curse of the Undead”, the first of Sinclair’s English adventures, we find the inspector in 1977, with a stint in the British Army and a lifetime of occult strangeness under his belt, including a personal history with a monster known as the Gaunt Man. But while he does everything in his power to forget what he has seen, a new case is thrust upon him. A string of bloody maulings center around Argyle Castle, now newly owned by a Dr. Ivan Orgoff. Some claim the doctor is actually a necromancer. It is up to Scotland Yard’s Special Division to determine the truth.

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“The Devil is in Middlesburgh. He’s punishing us for what we did that night…”

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John Sinclair has a droll wit, but fails to fit nicely into extreme credulousness or skepticism. Sinclair follows the clues he finds to their logical conclusion, even if that means supernatural origin, but he does not seek to reject or embrace the supernatural or paranormal akin. The impartial rigor of the investigation is preserved. And when the investigation turns into action, Sinclair proves himself as skilled with his Baretta as he is with observation. In many ways, John Sinclair occupies the middle ground between Weird Tales‘ occult detectives and Larry Correia’s Monster Hunters, incorporating the better parts of each while leaving behind the excesses. While Sinclair is capable in a small fight, even he can be overwhelmed. Fortunately, the cavalry is on call. More correctly, an entire British Army armoured brigade trained to fight the undead and the supernatural, and, more importantly, trained to restore order when all Hell breaks loose.

“Curse of the Undead” heightens the horror, and not just in a period setting where instant communication is rare compared to today. Rather, it relies on the time-old method of telling, not showing. While Conroy does not shy away from violence and gore, he does not revel in describing it. Rather, he quickly tells what happened and then uses character reactions to heighten the horror of the off-screen events. For nothing is scarier than what the reader can imagine, and the indirect approach is a classic technique of true horror. And there are plenty of horrors when the dead rise once more.

But perhaps the greatest achievement of “Curse of the Undead” is Conroy’s ability to tell what’s essentially a zombie story without resorting to the bloated, distended, and rotting corpus of Hollywood zombie movie clichés, or the “perhaps humans are the real monsters” social commentary. What we get is a tense pulp thriller that is as much a clash between heroes and villains as it is a disaster movie. And while the heroes aren’t sure that good exists, they’ve seen Evil, and they act decisively to try to foil it. Because someone has to.

Even when the world is no longer rational.

Or, more likely, because the world is no longer rational.

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Having now read the other three episodes in the first book, my enthusiasm is a bit dampened. Here are my quick notes on the remaining stories.

Ep 2, "Lord of Death", takes Sinclair to a common pulp horror setting, Aztec ruins, gods, and atrocities. It starts to unite Sinclair with what will later become his team. Good, quick heroic pulp horror that unfortunately starts playing an unearned skeptic card with Sinclair.

Sinclair, by this time, has already seen enough Wrong and supernatural to have certain illusions stripped away. But here he's plunged backwards in character development because tropes... or something. The effect rang hollow.

Ep 3, "Dr. Satanos", felt like showering in sewage. Not sure if it is because this evil was 100% natural man's depravity instead of supernatural monster, or if the author reveled too much in the depravity. Much of the off-screen horror technique was abandoned here.

Ep 4, "A Feast of Blood", gets more Gothic, combining Poe and vampires for an excellent monster mash. Sinclair starts shedding the unearned skepticism and the continued slow burn of who he really is intensifies. Who is this "Son of Light?"

The scene with the cross not working because "You are not a believer" was eye-rolling, as it is a common trope these days, but then the Bible has "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?" so, it works? Maybe? Still way too many current-day tropes.

But then this version of John Sinclair is an English-language reboot written by an American, and it reads like American pulp horror, not German. The mood is different.

Perry Rhodan NEO English version announced

 Year 2036: Humanity is in a crisis. Overpopulation, climate change and terrorism are increasing the risk of war around the world. In this situation, the American astronaut Perry Rhodan is sent to the moon with three comrades – there he surprisingly meets human-like aliens…

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On April 9th, Perry-Rhodan.net announced that they have partnered with J-Novel Club to bring the reimagined Perry Rhodan NEO series to English audiences. Additionally, J Novel Club will be releasing stories of demon hunter John Sinclair and occult investigator Jessica Bannister under the imprint of J-Novel Pulp. This represents a new effort to bring long-running European pulp serials to English audiences.

The Castalia House Blog has discussed Perry Rhodan before, specifically the ACE paperbacks and the Lemuria arc. Both arcs represent the briefest glimpses into the 50-year old serial sometimes nicknamed the Perryverse, as well as the majority of what has made its way to English audiences from Germany. That the most successful science fiction book series in history has such a minimal exposure in English is criminal. But 50 years of continuous lore surrounding the first man on the moon and his galactic adventures is a daunting hurdle, especially when publishers fear that the Cold War fears and punchcard technology may not resound with today’s resurgence of China and digital streaming. So, in 2011, Perry Rhodan was reimagined into the alternate universe now known as Perry Rhodan NEO. Both Perry Rhodan serials continue to this day.

Perry Rhodan NEO moves the initial point of contact with the greater galaxy from 1961 to 2036, and redefines the near future geopolitical setting and technology to a level more familiar to 21st century audiences. More importantly, it represents a new introduction to Perry Rhodan and a way for new readers to get in on the ground floor of the Perry Rhodan “Neoverse” instead of tackling fifty years of continuity all at once. Hopefully, if J-Novel Club’s venture is successful, it may open the door to the main Perryverse returning to English audiences as well as the introduction of more European pulp series. To appeal to a wider audience, the J-Novel Club version will use the illustrations from the 2017 Japanese light novel version.

Currently, J-Novel Pulp is offering an introductory preview of the first chapters of Perry Rhodan NEO, as well as John Sinclair and Jessica Bannister. Subscriptions are available to read chapters online, with weekly releases planned. But for those who want to read the first book, Stardust, in one shot, it will be released to the usual ebook platforms on June 8th, 2021. Expect a review soon after, as well as one of horror icon John Sinclair.

The Black Incal

No, John DiFool, you understand nothing! I am not a computer. I am alive, just like you! And destiny has brought us together to restore justice to the universe. – The Incal

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The 1980s saw the pages of Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal filled the strange allegorical journey that is The Incal. Writer Alejandro Jodorowsky and artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud mixed together Dune, dystopia, and Californian pop spirituality to create a cosmic opera. From the first moment when readers plunged into the tale alongside John DiFool’s first fall into Suicide Alley, The Incal has influenced literature, comics, and the silver screen, even influencing the visuals of Star Wars.

The Incal is divided into six issues. The first, The Black Incal, starts with mystery and peril. Who threw John DiFool over the Suicide Alley railing and why? John is rescued mid-fall, not because of any intrinsic worth, but because he has utility to the police. Through a series of flashbacks through the seedy future-noir City Shaft, John reveals he has made petty enemies. What he doesn’t tell the police is that an alien gave him the crystal entity known as the Incal. After John returns to his home to find his pet bird suddenly giving messianic sermons to crowds, the Incal charges John with a mission:

Confront the Black Incal.

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Whooaa! Slow down, Buddy! I’m just a Class “R” Private Detective. I’ve got nothing to do with justice!

Yes, John DiFool, which is why you must now let me transform you.

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Certain ideas get hammered home with all the subtlety of a brick. Duality. Light Incal and Black Incal. DiFool and the Metabaron. City-Shaft and Technocity. It is an endless string of foils and resonances in service to pop-philosophy masquerading as spiritualism. John DiFool starts as nothing more than a cowardly appetite amusing himself to death in an uncaring city, unknowingly participating in his own emasculation and consistently flirting with suicide. The Incal’s enlightenment sends him on a New Age version of Pilgrim’s Progress, transforming the future bugman into something more human in the process. Along the way, DiFool faces a constant stream of enemies, including the heroic and noble Metabaron, the universe’s most famous mercenary and a mixture of Superman and Doc Savage. It’s a clumsy allegory worn on the sleeve, with names like DiFool not bothering to hide the parts each character plays. Worse, it is in the service of a discredited and ridiculed spirituality long discarded, akin to a modern scientist extoling the virtues of phlogiston. The result is a story that is more goofy than profound, paired with excellent comic art, complete with the ideal that dualism is an error and embracing both sides instead of the extreme is true virtue.

The Black Incal begins to rise above this with the arrival of the Metabaron, a hero straight from the pulps, who must apprehend DiFool or watch his son be killed before his eyes. Compared to to the swirling seas of Californian crystal madness, the melodramatic trap the Metabaron finds himself in is an anchor. Yet the theme of the obliteration of dualistic distinctions is placed on the board in the Metabaron’s androgyne “son”.

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I dreamed I was flying in intergalactic space. A cosmic being formed by two superimposed pyramids, one black, the other white, was calling me. I moved toward it and found myself submerged in the center. We exploded. And that’s how my subconscious mind introduced me to “El Incal.” –Alejandro Jodorowsky

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I have hammered hard on the 1980s New Age silliness. To be fair, The Incal is not alone in science fiction in treating spiritual and religious matters with irreverence and goofiness. Valerian and Laureline delved into similar shallowness with its take on the Holy Trinity. But The Black Incal reads as the first book in a transhumanistic gospel intended to be paired with the dystopian world our elites are trying to create. And the stench of “As above, so below” is upon it.

As for the art, Moebius is worthy of his reputation as a master. In The Black Incal, he was in his pulp speed phase, churning out a complete page every day, as opposed to the far more leisurely pace of most bandes dessinee artists. The result is an inconsistency in regards to character models that works to the benefit of each panel. And the Suicide Alley plunge had set the standard for every hive city and megapolis since. For once, a BD looks like a comic book instead of a sequential painting, and while I am appreciative of the high artistry in bandes dessinees, Moebius plays to the strengths of the comic style.

The Incal is one of a short list of comics that serve as the high water mark of the medium. Yet it is dated by its spirituality. If your tolerance for such things is high, the full Incal saga is available on Kindle Unlimited for free. Otherwise, to read a more palatable collaboration in the same setting, check out The Saga of the Meta-Barons instead.

Pursuit of Life!: The Mongoose and Meerkat and Slayers

 “Then let us pursue without asking what we chase, and when we catch it, let us chase again.”

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Mangos is the Mongoose, a skilled, boastful, and hotheaded swordsman, while Kat is the Meerkat, a beautiful yet mysterious woman who favors the oblique approach to her well-chosen blade. Together, they’ll take on any job to keep their purses full and their cups overflowing.

Pursuit Without Asking, by Jim Breyfogle, collects the first five Mongoose and Meerkat stories, of which “The Battlefield of Kerres” and “Brandy and Dye” have been reviewed here in-depth. Also included are “The Sword of the Mongoose”, where Mangos learns of the location of a rare masterwork sword, “The Valley of Terzol”, in which Kat and Mangos guard an archivist through the jungle ruins of a fallen empire, and “The Burning Fish”, where they are commissioned to recover a rare animal sacred to a goddess. The non-Mongoose and Meerkat “Deathwater” and appendices of Mangos and Kat-inspired role-playing modules and character sheets round out Pursuit Without Asking.

As mentioned before, the introduction to Mangos and Kat in “The Battlefield of Kerres” is serviceable, but thin compared to later stories. Fortunately, the characters and prose grow more complex with the next story. By the time the Mongoose and Meerkat face off against a giant serpent in “The Valley of Terzol”, the two have the light and breezy banter of long companions who have risked their lives together on countless occasions. Yet for all the time together, Kat still surprises Mangos. Each new story teases out another detail of this secretive adventurer. Scholarly yet skilled with a blade, beautiful yet unapproachable, always attacked first by monsters, each new revelation only adds to the mystery around Kat, making her more exotic.

And Breyfogle has a knack for the exotic. Jungle ruin, tropical islands, mountainous canyons, magic-ravage battlefield–each new tale thrusts Mangos and Kat into a new setting with strange people and stranger challenges.

Breyfogle has mastered small-scope fantasy, keeping the constant string of odd jobs fresh. Where some authors lean too heavily on the sword and sorcery standby of hacking through evil cultists, Mongoose and Meerkat find themselves more as hired muscle for many mercantile schemes. This thrusts them into different intrigues than just secret societies, and it also requires a bit more thought in solving mysteries and getting paid than just swinging a sword. Yet there is action to spare, as varied as the settings: mountaintop chases on crumbling paths, swims through piranha-filled waters, and the inevitable crossing of blades. The perils are all immediate and local, but brief glimpses of wider events can be seen.

Fortunately, there are more exotic settings and revelations in store for Mangos and Kat, as new volumes of Cirsova magazine feature the follow-ups to the tales in Pursuit Without Asking.

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Beautiful. Genius. Glorious. The list of adjectives used to describe sorceress Lina Inverse is limitless…

…or so Lina says about herself. Most of the people who get to know this bandit-robbing sorceress just think she’s just in love with her own voice. But there is magical talent to Lina, and she’ll need it. An idol she recently “recovered” from a bandit stronghold holds the key to reviving the dark lord, and trolls, chimeras, and a suspicious wandering priest all want it. And they’re all prepared to take it from Lina, along with her head.

I haven’t come across as strong a 1st person character voice since Kei’s in The Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair. Sometimes a little too strong, as you may have guessed if you’ve seen the anime. But translation hasn’t dampened Lina Inverse any, nor has it tempered her self-absorbed attention-seeking. It’s curious that those aspects tend to get cranked up in male-written light novels, and suppressed in female-written ones. Guess the obsession with the manic pixie crosses cultures. Your tolerance for the narrative voice of the Slayers, by Hajime Kanzaka, will vary, depending on how willing you are to tolerate attention-seeking teen-aged girl.

Slayers is humorous sword and sorcery, at turns poking fun and embracing the conventions of fantasy and swashbuckling action. The narration is heavy on the banter, whether it’s between Lina and the reader or Lina and her self-professed guardian, the swordsman Gourry Gabriev. Gourry tends to get Flanderized into idiocy in later adaptations, but the original is perceptive and witty when he’s not being used as a device for Lina to explain the magical chess matches she gets wrapped up in. Besides, Lina is the definition of an unreliable narrator.

As for the conventions, Slayers seesaws between peril and comedy. The peril is always real, whether from unkillable trolls to the resurrected Dark Lord. If anything, the anime tended to tone down the stakes to life, limb, and virtue. The humor comes from the responses, usually played against type. Lina is the type of action girl to save herself, but, given the right rescuer, she’ll gleefully scream like a damsel-in-distress–and love every minute of the change in pace. It’s these surprise reactions, consistent with characterization, that keep the gristle and gloom at bay. And by keeping the humor to banter and response, the peril does not get undercut by irony. The sincerity of pulp fantasy is preserved.

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Mongoose and Meerkat and Slayers are often mentioned together in PulpRev circles for their similarities. And for more than just the wandering duos of male swordsmen and female magic users. And while Mangos and Kat do not indulge in the rapid manzai comedic wordplay of Lina and Gourry, both duos bring an enthusiastic swashbuckling flair to their travels. These carefree adventurers embrace the adventuring life freely, relishing equally in the clash of blades and the draining of cups. And sometimes quick wits and a quicker tongue are needed to extract these pairs from the latest town’s plots. And when one adventure is done, they dust themselves off and set out over the horizon to the next.

Or more simply put, Mongoose and Meerkat and Slayers overflow with the celebration of life and living.

Black Moon Arcana: Ghorgor Bey

Of all the terrifying warlords to wreak destruction across the empire, few can match the savagery of Ghorghor Bey. His name alone can cause even the bravest of soldiers to tremble in their boots, and noble lords and ladies throughout the land pray that he never comes knocking at their castle doors in search of gold, booze, and maidens. But few know the tragic story behind this fearsome warrior’s rise to power. From his harrowing childhood to his first love(s), his devastating heartbreaks and crushing victories, read on and discover how a naive young half-ogre would go on to become Ghorghor the Terrible.

I've been rather taken with the Black Moon Chronicles, the French dark fantasy comic from François Marcela-Froideval, Olivier Ledroit, and Cyril Pontet that uses humor to disarm the horrors of a decadent Melniboné-style empire falling to the apocalypse. At turns aiding the fall and resisting is the half-elf Wismerhill, the unwitting pawn of the evil Black Moon. But how did fate draw Wismerhill's companions to him? And who better to start with than the jovial giant, the fearsome half-ogre warlord now know as Ghorghor Bey?

The first of The Black Moon Arcana serves as a direct prequel to The Black Moon Chronicles: The Sign of Darkness, detailing the rise of Ghorghor Bey from outcast to the scourge of the Empire as he is in the days before he meets Wismerhill. While the prequel sheds little new light into the twists and turns of the Black Moon's world-dooming invasion or Ghorghor's revolving door relationship with death, it is a welcome insight into a beloved character who tends to get only a panel to two to mug in each new volume.

However, this prequel checks the boxes on the standard villain's back story. A half-ogre child born from rape and unwanted pregnancy cruelly shunned by his adopted father and the rest of the village. When his mother dies, the half-ogre is expelled from the village and forced to live on his own--

Yes, I thought so too.

The boy, Ogur, falls in with the circus, where he finds acceptance and love among the freaks and performers. He learns the strongman routine and finds the loves of his life in a pair of Siamese twins. Here, he has the family he was denied. 

Until a lord double-crosses the circus. The lord enslaves most of the circus, and drives Ogur and the rest of the freaks into the swamp. While there, a Divorak swamp kraken attacks, devouring Ogur's loves. Ogur slays the monster, and swears a blood oath to avenge his friends and lovers. And when he slays the leader of a band of highwaymen, Ogur has the opportunity he has sought. Now calling himself Ghorghor Bey, the half-ogre raises his standards, and rogues, orcs, and ogres rally to him. The new warlord scourges the local nobles, returning the brutality that the lords had visited upon him. Yet he never loses the whimsy that surrounds him, a whimsy that never turns to cruelty.

Finally, the warlord returns to the lands of the lord who wronged him. Ghorghor Bey single-handedly breaches the castle and, one by one, pitches the defenders over the walls. No quarter will be given until he frees his friends. After the lord is slain and the chains on the circus performers broken, Ghorghor Bey turns his fury against the nobility, scourging the Empire in the first of many apocalyptic invasions that will tear it apart. And, along the way, he runs into two bandits, the mad elf Heads-or-Tails and magic-touched Wismerhill...

As I said, standard villainy fare. But the Black Moon Chronicles tries to make a distinction between being bad and being evil, between falling and fallen. Ghorghor Bey is undoubtedly bad, driven to his own cruelty by the cruelty of others, but he never crosses into the demonically evil. That terror is saved for Wismerhill. And for unrepentant, soul-devouring evil? Wait until we meet Haazel Thorn.

There is a rough honor to the brutal and cunning Ghorghor Bey, who later becomes Wismerhill's trusted lieutenant. There's also the bit of the clown, of intelligence, whimsy, and the subversion of expectations, including a surprising gentleness. The performer never left the warlord, as he can be found mugging in the background of many a panel. But the one thing he is not is the dullard brute that many ogres are portrayed as in fantasy. That Ghorghor Bey is given a chance to shine once more outside Wismerhill's shadow is welcome. I just wish there was more meat to these formulaic old bones.

So, at the start, The Black Moon Arcana is for the fans already invested in the signs and portents of the Black Moon. But maybe when we get to the true holy knight Parsifal, the story will pick up. In the meantime, please check out the more palatable Elric-type story that is the Black Moon Chronicles.

All Routes Lead to Doom: The Princess Improvement Genre

Somewhere in the vast multiverse that makes up the worlds of fiction, a spoiled brat of an eight-year-old princess is about to bump her head. The blow knocks more than a little sense into the girl, for it will gift her with knowledge of her impending execution as an adult. This may be granted through isekai shenanigans or strange forms of reincarnation, but one thing is certain. If the princess is going to see her eighteenth birthday, she is going to need to change. Slowly, the self-absorbed little brat opens up to others and discovers that she can make a better fate by growing involved with and helping others around her.

It's a simple premise, but one of growing popularity in Japan. These princess improvement stories also serve as a strange contrast to the everpresent "The Princess Saves Herself in This One" titles common in American stores. For in these light novels, the girls learn the soft power of inspiration, devotion, and persuasion as opposed to the sword and other accouterments of the action girl. After all, who is more powerful, the one who acts or the one who can move a hundred to act in her place?

Yes, these princess improvement fantasies are still feminine power fantasies. But they are fantasies of feminine power, of living up to the stories of fairy tale princesses, of persuasion instead of fists, and selfish girls faking virtue until they make it.

There's a strange undercurrent to recent Japanese light novels, both those aimed at boys and at girls. Compared to the many idealized young women in these fantasies, the portrayal of Japanese girls is almost disparaging. Readers could be forgiven for mistaking these brash, immodest, and self-absorbed girls who turn the attitudes of all around them against them for Americans. One could chalk this up to a form of frustration in the male-aimed light novels, but the portrayal exists in girls' shoujo light novels as well. Perhaps the princess improvement novel came about with trying to figure out how to make a selfish wastrel into a good girl. But how to get through to a character who only pays attention to herself?

The threat of death does focus the attention wonderfully. But, as in all fairy tales, that dragon eventually gets slain. Even if the plans are overcomplicated and occasionally obsessive.

Generally, the main characters of a princess improvement story are comfort seekers so caught up in their own delights that they lose their security--and then their lives. But by concentrating on their security, they find even greater comforts than sweets and soft clothes. And by helping others, these girls help themselves. These books are illustrations that no woman is an island and of C. S. Lewis's "First and Second Things" wrapped up in a fairy tale package that owes more to Cinderella than to The Tale of Genji.

Of course, such feminine fantasies are full of romantic misunderstandings. Your tolerance for such may vary. And the girls tend to no longer act like children after they first get some sense knocked into them. So it is more than a little disorienting to watch a child act like an adult.

The best known is My Next Life as a Villainess, by Satoru Yamaguchi, thanks to a recent anime adaptation. Katarina's naivety is charming, but her misadventures in a magical academy are too quickly resolved. As the genre codifier, My Next Life as a Villainess inspired many imitators, such as Deathbound Duke's Daughter and I Refuse to be Your Enemy. Each one has pushed the genre further into its Western fantasy trappings. Deathbound Duke's Daughter, for instance, features detailed and loving descriptions of magical wands that could only be written by a Harry Potter fan.

The best of the genre, though is Tearmoon Empire, by Nozomu Mochitsuki, which completely removes the story from the previous trappings of the anime/manga/light-novel sub-culture. Its heroine Mia might not change her spots that much, preferring the fake-it-until-you-make route to Katarina's more Damascus-style moment. However, there is a surprising amount of depth unexpected in a light novel, and little snippets of wisdom for the reader to glean. Tearmoon Empire masters the old adage that before you can educate, you first must entertain, so the smuggled proverbs and misunderstandings in Mia's favor never seem like the dreaded lecture one expects in a self-improvement book.

It is good that the princess improvement novels are displacing the tales of burned-out salarywomen. And if they inspire a reader to improve herself, so much the better.

Nikolai Dante: Too Cool to Kill

“I was trained in the arts of war by the finest military commanders in the empire.”

“And I learned to fight in the sleaziest bars of the thieves’ world. Let’s get it on!”

---

In 1997, Robbie Morrison and Simon Fraser introduced the readers of the 2000 AD comics anthology to a future where Russia never had its revolution and the Tsar’s power stretches not just over all the Earth but across the stars. There, just as now, an underworld flourishes in the shadow of the corrupt and debauched oligarchs. There, in the collision between the gangsters of the underworld and the gangsters of the nobility, flourishes the self professed man Too Cool to Kill.

Nikolai Dante.

Captured by the Tsar after seducing an imperial courtesan, Nikolai is given a choice between losing his skin or investigating a crash. Dante wisely chooses the latter, but lands in even hotter water when a Romanov Weapons Crest bonds with him. The Tsar wants the secret of the Crest, the Romanovs want the Crest back, and two other families just want him dead for honor’s sake. Only fast talking, fighting, and even faster running let Nikolai Dante keep his head when everyone else wants to take it from his shoulders.

This first volume of ten showcases seven stories. “The Adventures of Nikolai Dante” bonds Dante with his Weapons Crest. “The Romanov Dynasty” has him earn his place among his new family. “Moscow Duellists” introduces Nikolai to the cutthroat world of the Russian court, while “The Gentleman Thief” shows that his new station in life has not affected Dante. “The Gulag Apocalyptic” reveals the terrible secret behind the Romanov Weapons Crest while uniting Dante with his iconic rifle. The less said about the short “Russia’s Greatest Love Machine” and “The Full Dante”, the better.

The art of Nikolai Dante: Too Cool to Kill varies based on the artist. Simon Fraser has the definitive art for this, giving Dante the disarming charisma needed to give a dashing rogue that two second opening to dash away. The other artists in the volume have a tendency to forget the handsome part to a handsome rogue, and the glamour that should accompany him. It is fortunate that most of the other artists pick up the short fan-service one shots.

What remains consistent is the use of seven or more panels per page. Nikolai’s exploits in escape, fighting, and amore require more space to properly depict. The Russian rogue loves to leap, fly, and fall, after all. The extra panels are almost required to fit the high-flying action in the limited pages allotted in a 2000 AD programme. As a result, even the shortest five page one-shot delivers as much story as can normally be found in twice the page count.

If there is an annoyance to Nikolai Dante, it lies in just how fanservice filled the book can get. Sure, this seducer’s story oozes with déshabillé and nudity, although one can find more flesh in even the tamest peekaboo high school manga. What rankles, however, is how dated and pop-culture-laden the dialogue gets. The clever one liners of the swashbucklers that inspired Nikolai Dante are replaced by 90s song lyrics, cheerleader chants, and jeers at Bill Clinton’s White House scandal. And those more familiar with 2000 AD than I have pointed out the cameos and crossovers. These already threadbare references date the otherwise timeless anachronisms of a Russia that should never come to pass.

So, is Nikolai Dante indeed a man too cool to kill? Let’s be fair, this bastard son of the Romanovs believes his own boasts, and Morrison and Fraser delight in throwing Dante into situations where his mouth writes checks he cannot possibly cash. But Nikolai proves he can live up to his boast that he can out-drink, out-fight, and out-love any man around him. And that’s fine for slums and bars of the underworld. But the halls of power demand more.

Along with bioblades and a battle computer, the Weapons Crest gives Nikolai Dante the wealth and position of a Romanov son. With it, he becomes a pawn in the power games of his previously unknown father Dimitri Romanov and the Tsar. Absolute power corrupts absolutely in this Russia, and both men spill blood, even family blood, as though it was wine. Quick reflexes and quicker wits are not enough when pitted against the best assassins the galaxy can offer–especially when they are kin with the matching cheat codes that are the Weapons Crests.

What sets the dashing rogue apart from the blood-drunk degenerates that are the rest of his family is motive. Heroism in Dante’s world is a matter of honor and power. Nikolai Dante cares little for either. Empathy be damned. Both the Romanovs and the Tsar feel your pain–and want more of it. Honor and power grind most of the serfs of the Russian worlds under the Tsar’s heel. Instead, Nikolai acts out of compassion. Another’s tears may compel Dante to acts of defiance against the powers-that-be–warlords, thugs, and Romanovs alike–that cause ripples throughout the Russian space empire.

The wounds of Dante’s past, still unrevealed, provoke a rarity almost unknown among the powerful–selfless service. And that, indeed, makes Nikolai Dante too cool to kill.

Just remember, he will never be a plaster saint.

Perry Rhodan: Ark of the Stars

At over 3000 novellas and nearly 1500 novels and spin-offs, the Perry Rhodan series is the longest-running science-fiction serial. For fifty-nine years, these adventures have followed the eponymous American astronaut to the moon and beyond. With amazing adaptability, quick wit, and dry humor, Perry Rhodan united Earth and led humanity across the stars. Despite its international popularity, precious few of Rhodan’s adventures have been translated into English. (For a quick overview of the publishing history of Perry Rhodan, please check out both Kevyn Winkless’s introduction to the series and the comments). However, in 2015, the complete six novel Lemuria series was released in English as ebooks, representing the first new English Perry Rhodan adventures in almost twenty years.

As always, there is an asterisk to such a sweeping statement, as 2015 was the second publication of books in the Lemuria series. Ark of the Stars, by Frank Borsch, was first published in English in 2006, but those few lucky readers to purchase it would have to wait until 2015 for the rest of the story.

Published in German in 2004, Ark of the Stars leads the third set of self-contained Perry Rhodan novels published by Heyne-Verlag. While the adventure would fit snugly in between volumes #2200 and #2364, the Lemuria novels would also shed light on the ancient galactic civilization of Lemur, founded on the mythical Pacific continent of the same name. For Perry Rhodan’s Terrans are not the first wave of human settlers from Earth in the galaxy, and many of the star nations in the Milky Way trace their ancestry to the upheaval and fracturing of Lemur’s empire. Of these, the Akons and their allies have clashed repeatedly with the upstart Terrans and their claims to succeed Lemur. This fierce rivalry would define the galactic history of the “Perryverse” for over 2200 years–and beyond.

Ark of the Stars takes place in one of the lulls in the clashes between Terrans and Akons, where the main competition in the galaxy is no longer war, but exploration of the few remaining frontiers in space. Perry Rhodan hitches a ride on the mining ship Palenque as a cover for a diplomatic mission to Akon. But his mission is disrupted when one of Palenque’s shuttles suddenly vanishes, smashed into dust by the relativistic wreckage of a shuttle matching no known design and with markings written in ancient Lemurian. After tracking the trajectory, Rhodan and the Palenque discover a 50,000-year-old generation ship from ancient Lemuria fleeing from a race known as the Beasts. Rhodan also finds an Akonian cruiser who is willing to enforce Akonian claims on the relic spaceship.

Meanwhile, aboard the failing generation ship Nethack Achton, Denetree is a fugitive. Her star-mad brother pirated a shuttle in defiance of the generation ship’s laws. This act of rebellion led to the death of 43 peace officers and the loss of irreplaceable air and resources (as well as the later death of a Terran mining shuttle’s crew). The Net demands justice for the traitor’s actions, which means death for all of his friends and family. The Net’s search tightens slowly around Denetree, until strangers appear without warning aboard the Nethack Achton. Will these strangers rescue Denetree or are they Beasts come to destroy the last known Lemurians in the galaxy?

And, unknown to all, the chance meeting between Terra, Lemuria, and Akon will awaken dangerous threats and an ancient foe.

For a novel bearing his name, Perry Rhodan avoids the stage in Ark of the Stars. Denetree and various Palenque and Akonian personnel are the viewpoint characters throughout the novel. Their various expertises provide the basis for the exposition needed to fill 50,000 years of history. Rhodan provided the right input at the right time to cut through the various impasses, thanks to his ability to think just a little faster than most. His legendary status as one of the few Immortals in the galaxy also makes him a measuring stick against which the captain of the Palenque consistently measures herself against. His dry humor is often the only bridge across the remove he keeps between himself and the crew.

Denetree serves as the reader’s eyes into a slowship that has yet to devolve into the generation ship horrors explored in Galaxy’s Edge: Imperator and Gods and Legionnaires. Although such suffering is around the corner as machinery breaks, resources become increasingly scarce, and genetic damage accumulates. Her flight is not her choice, neither is her protection, as she is adrift on the winds of other peoples’ whims. There’s not much to her character except a shocked woman caught up in grief and terror. Yet, without her viewpoint, Ark of the Stars would lack the human drama to what is essentially an archaeological mystery.

The English translation of Ark of the Stars is well-done, reading like contemporary American science fiction novels in style and vocabulary except in one vital way. Ark of the Stars is optimistic space opera written at a time when much of science fiction was turning grim. Like in Valerian and Laureline, there is a belief that through reason, understanding, and negotiation, a better outcome can be made–although blasters are ready if needed. So far, the soft power approach has worked for the Terrans of Palenque, even if the magic of friendship might occasionally require unorthodox methods such as booze, blunts, and air guitar. (Battlestar Galactica was not the first science fiction series to use “All Along the Watchtower” as a story device.) But as ancient Beasts reawaken, will the Terrans continue to rely on such methods or will they meet force with force?

The self-contained format helps make the sudden plunge into the Perry Rhodan universe navigable. Hundreds of stories separate the Lemuria series from where Wendayne Ackerman last translated the series. In that time, Terran rose to a superpower and declined to one among many. Ark of the Stars does grow a bit exposition-heavy as it explains the important twists in galactic history, but it never overwhelms the reader nor grows tangential. While my appreciation might be greater if I had read any of the preceding 2200 issues, I never felt lost in Ark of the Stars for jumping straight into the Lemuria series without any prior Perry Rhodan readings. 

At the end, there are enough hints at the mysteries surrounding the launch of the Lemurian generation ships to keep my interest in a series that bears many similarities so far to Doc Savage in Space or a pulpier Count to the Eschaton. Thankfully, there are five more books in the Lemuria series for these strands of mystery to grow and bear fruit.