Tales Of High Adventure
Winter 2011
Thrilling pulp adventure fantasy returns with Tales of High Adventure, a quarterly book of prose stories and illustrated tales as published in the pulp magazines of the 1930's and 1940's such asWeird Tales, Astounding Stories, Spicy Mystery Stories, Amazing Stories and Startling Stories!
This issue features works such as:
At The Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Beginning one of the original science fantasy adventures from the fantastic mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Homeworld by Paul J. Fini
The thrilling illustrated tale of Hamilton West and his astral journey to Homeworld!
Dagon by H. P. Lovecraft
A suicidal morphine-addict recounts his encounter with an ancient blasphemy from the sea!
The Lost Valley by Mike Moran
A Midnight Eagle illustrated tale with Jack and Tosh searching for the missing Dr. Saint!
The Peruvian Report by Max Lieberman
The discovery of a horrific tribe in South America worshiping an ancient idol!
Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard
Tales of High Adventure is proud to present the tragic tale of R. E. Howard's pirate she-devil of the Hyborean age!
Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allen Poe
A short poem by the master of the macabre!
READ these pulp style fantasy adventures as they were meant to be read!
HOLD in your hand and flip through the pages of thrilling adventure!!
52 EDGE OF YOUR SEAT PAGES!!!
Paul sent me a print copy of Tales of High Adventure #1, to review. So, let's get to it!
It's a digest-sized, saddle-stitched POD product, printed by ComiXpress. 52 pages, B&W, illustrated. Color covers, the front of which can be seen in the first picture, above. The interior front reproduces this in B&W. The back cover is a color advert for ComiXpress, the interior back cover features a B&W advert for the next issue, with a nice illustration, I believe by Mr. Fini.
This issue contains three Original tales and four Public Domain reprints. Let's look at the original tales, first.
Homeworld by Paul Fini is a Comic and kicks off a Sword & Planet story, that I rather enjoyed. It's an entertaining take on the classic tropes of the genre and I'm interested in seeing where Paul goes with it. By the by, the Mormon ruffians kind-a look like droogs - just wondering if that was intentional. :)
The Lost Valley by Mike Moran is another Comic, also kicking off a longer story, with mysterious goings on, Nazi's, etc. It was ok, but honestly didn't leave me with much of an impression. I'll have to see where it goes, from here. One thing I found kind of jarring, was the author's insistence on not using contractions. I don't know if he was maybe emulating an old, pulp author's style, or if this was just an affectation of the writer.
The Peruvian Report by Max Lieberman is a short story, which pays homage to the "English scientist/explorer writing a letter to the Esteemed Gentlemen of the Royal Society" device. The writer does a nice job of telling his tale in the first-person, "Englishman dealing with a horrifying, savage reality" style, common to those hoary tales from years ago. Overall, this was my second favorite piece in the issue, probably because the author managed to creep me out just a little. No mean feat! I was reading horror and watching R rated cable nightmares by the time I was 7, so I'm pretty inured to weird fiction. It's a rare thing, when I find any sort of media to be even mildly disturbing. Nice, Mr. Lieberman!
The re-prints:
I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention one thing. I'm used to early genre writers making the occasional insensitive remark. I choose not to let it bother me. I didn't let Mr. Burroughs bother me here, either, but there's a doozy of a passage in chapter 2, which may induce some discomfort, or embarrassment. I just rolled my eyes and continued reading.
Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allen Poe. This poem closes the issue and like all of Poe's poetry I've read, induces feelings of melancholy, death, and loss. Nice one, Mr. Poe!
Dagon by H. P. Lovecraft. Not my favorite HPL tale, but the author handily conjures up an oppressive, nightmarish atmosphere, reminding me why he's still read, today.
The Queen of the Black Coast by R. E. Howard. Having an occasion to re-read this story was nice. I once thought of it as a bit over-rated, but when re-reading Howard a couple of years ago, found a new appreciation for the tale! And was reminded why someone (Tom Moldvay, I think) listed Belit's alignment as Chaotic-Evil in the old Giants in the Earth, Dragon article. A great story, well worth any Sword & Sorcery reader's time. And, the best story in the magazine, in my opinion.
There are some good illustrations, throughout. I especially like the one reproduced above, on the first page of Mr. Howard's tale. It's true to Howard's description. The text in the non-comic stories is two-columned, save for at the beginning of a couple of the stories. ComiXpress did a fine job, save for several places where words had some spacing problems with the letters. Particularly, after words starting with F. They were still readable and I don't know if this is a common problem for the publisher, or just a fluke with my copy.
I enjoyed Tales of High Adventure #1 and consider it a good value for $4.00 in Print! Some may find the ratio of original tales to re-prints to be off-putting, if they already have copies of those older stories in other collections. Even so, while I have two other copies of the story, I kind of like having Queen of the Black Coast in a digest, with the illustration above and one of the winged ape-creature, who features prominently in the tale. I do think a higher ratio of original tales to re-prints is needed for future issues and Mr. Fini is accepting submissions, so I would expect that to be his plan. Tales of High Adventure has a lot of potential to turn into a nice, regular treat for fans of pulp adventure! Congratulations on you're first issue Paul and I'm looking forward to seeing more from IndieOnly!
Thanks for the review! There will be more original tales in the upcoming issues. I just wanted to get things started with the 1st issue plus I thought it would be fun for one to be able to read a Howard story and a Lovecraft story in a single digest format. We've got some interesting stories coming out in the 2nd issue and Homeworld continues as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks, James! I'm flattered to know that The Peruvian Report got to you. I love genre fiction, and it's exciting to see Paul and IndieOnly comics give the pulp format another day in the sun.
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