Posted inNonfiction

“Svengali of Sex!” — Detective World Magazine

Expose of Carnival Hypnotism Racket
September, 1948

When I awoke I found myself in bed in a trail­er, and some­one had tak­en my clothes. The door opened and Rein­hardt entered. 

Thus begins a lurid tale of the exploits of a car­ni­val sideshow hyp­no­tist as told by the woman he swept away from her life, among the many oth­er women he sim­i­lar­ly seduced and stole away and pressed into ser­vice at the car­ni­val, man­ning the booths, with no way or no desire to return. 

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Posted inFiction Movies

“The Devil’s Night” — David Jacobs

[amtap book:isbn=0425178609]

They only come out at night

Cloth tear­ing, she spread-eagled her arms and legs, taut­ening the leath­ery folds of swelling batwings. The wings were part of arms, grow­ing out of the shoul­ders, attached to the long thin­ning skele­tal arms and legs with scal­loped leath­ery black bat membranes. 

Batwings beat the air fran­ti­cal­ly, try­ing to stop or at least slow the fall. 

Among the Undead, only the most pow­er­ful vam­pires can muster the occult force need­ed for shapeshift­ing, to become a giant bat, a wolf, or mist that can drift through sol­id walls. 

Such a queen vam­pire was Marya Zaleska. 

Count­ess Marya Zales­ka, Drac­u­la’s Daughter. 

The Uni­ver­sal Mon­sters: Drac­u­la, Franken­stein’s Mon­ster, the Wolf­man, Drac­u­la’s Daugh­ter. All return­ing, just as they returned in so many Uni­ver­sal hor­ror movies, this time in fic­tion­al form. 

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Posted inComics, Comic Books, Comic Strips or Manga Fiction

Fa Lo Suee — “Master of Kung Fu”

Daugh­ters of Evil World Con­querors real­ly have only two options in life: be their father’s ador­ing min­ion who ulti­mate­ly falls for the Hero and helps him defeat her father, or strike out on your own and try to out-con­quer him. Fah Lo Suee, daugh­ter of the inscruitable Man­darin Fu Manchu, is entire­ly the lat­ter. But while Fah Lo Suee in the nov­els was more the for­mer, only once real­ly act­ing in the role of con­queror in place of her father, in the Mar­vel com­ic “Shang-Chi, Mas­ter of Kung Fu”, she was a re-occur­ring char­ac­ter with her own agen­da who bat­tled her father as much as she bat­tled her own half-broth­er Shang-Chi.

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Posted inFiction

The “Deryni” stories by Katherine Kurtz

They have men­tal and phys­i­cal pow­ers beyond the human norm: they can entrance with a glance, cre­ate light, heal wounds, and even tele­port long distances. 

They are mutants. They live among nor­mal humans, dis­tin­guished only by their pow­ers, oth­er­wise undis­tin­guish­able from any one else, dis­trust­ed and even hat­ed by both the gen­er­al pop­u­lace and peo­ple in author­i­ty because of their gifts. Some try to use their gifts for good, oth­ers for evil: some just try to exist. 

But they’re not the X‑Men and they’re not super­heroes: they’re the Deryni, a fan­ta­sy race and the sub­ject of sev­er­al books and short sto­ries by author Kather­ine Kurtz.

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