The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  Other film tie-ins included Constantine and Doom by John Shirley, Serenity by Keith R. A. DeCandido, Aliens: Original Sin by Jan Michael Friedman and Underworld: Evolution by Greg Cox. Matthew Stover’s novelisation of Star Wars III: The Revenge of the Sith reached #2 in the British best-seller charts, and Yvonne Navarro’s 2005 novelization of Elektra was re-issued as a hardcover by the Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC).

  Vampire Hunter D and Raiser of Gales, both by Hideyuki Kikuchi, were the basis for the Japanese anime film series. Translated by Kevin Leahy and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano, they were published as trade paperbacks by Dark Horse Comics/DH Press.

  The first titles in the Dark Horse “Universal Studios Monsters” spin-offs series included Dracula: Asylum Book One by Paul Witcover, in which the Count exerted his influence over Dr. Seward’s Sanatorium, and Michael Jan Friedman’s The Wolf Man: Hunter’s Moon, in which the cursed Lawrence Talbot found himself pursued by a cult of werewolf hunters.

  The biggest publisher of film tie-ins was British imprint Black Flame/BL Publishing, whose deal with New Line Cinema resulted in a number of different franchise series. Hockey-masked serial killer Jason Voorhees found himself competing against a couple of moralistic murderers in Jason Arnopp’s Friday the 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat, and the series continued with Scott Phillips’ Friday the 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopath and Paul A. Woods’ Friday the 13th: Hell Lake.

  Pat Cadigan adapted the futuristic sequel Jason X, and followed it up with Jason X: The Experiment. In the same spin-off series, a sinister doctor attempted to clone Jason in Nancy Kilpatrick’s Jason X: Planet of the Beast, but he was back for Jason X: Death Moon by Alex S. Johnson.

  Sharp-fingered dream-killer Freddy Krueger was the subject of A Nightmare on Elm Street: Suffer the Children by David Bishop, A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dreamspawn by Christa Faust and A Nightmare on Elm Street: Protégé by Tim Waggoner.

  New Line’s Final Destination films, about teens trying to cheat Death, were the inspiration for Dead Reckoning by Natasha Rhodes, Destination Zero by David McIntee, End of the Line by Rebecca Levene, Dead Man’s Hand by Steven Roman and Looks Could Kill by Nancy A. Collins.

  Aimed at younger children, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl: The Movie Storybook by Robert Rodriguez and his eight-year-old son Racer Patrick Rodriguez featured illustrations by Alex Toader and was apparently better than the movie that inspired it.

  With the TV show finally coming to an end, Mystic Knoll by Diana G. Gallagher, Changeling Places by Micol Ostow and Picture Perfect by Cameron Dokey took the Charmed series over thirty titles.

  Lost: Secret Identity by Cathy Hapka was the first volume in the inevitable TV tie-in series.

  The Triangle by Steve Lyons was a novelisation of the Sci Fi Channel miniseries about the Bermuda Triangle, and Roger Carman’s Dinocroc by Thompson O’Rourke was based on the TV movie from the legendary producer.

  Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver was the first tie-in novel based on the Sci Fi Channel’s highest-rated series ever, while Battle-star Galactica: Redemption by actor Richard Hatch and Brad Linaweaver was inspired by the original 1970s TV series.

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spark and Burn by Diana G. Gallagher showed that there was still life in the spin-off book series, and Nancy Holder’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Queen of the Slayers was set after the show had ended.

  Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein Book One: Prodigal Son by Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson was based on the author’s original concept for the USA Network pilot that he disowned. Ed Gorman collaborated with Koontz on the second volume, City of Night, and Charnel House published a 750-copy signed edition of Koontz’s unused script, along with twenty-six lettered editions costing a cool $1,600.00 each.

  Published as part of the Black Flame/New Line Cinema deal, The Twilight Zone: Upgrade/Sensuous Cindy by Pat Cadigan, The Twilight Zone: Chosen/The Placebo Effect by K. C. Winters and The Twilight Zone: Burned/One Night at Mercy by Christa Faust each contained adaptations of two shows from the 1980s revival of the series.

  The success of the BBC’s revival of Doctor Who saw three new hardcover novelisations, Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole, The Clockwise Man by Justin Richards and Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner, all enter the UK best-seller charts.

  Hellboy: On Earth as It Is in Heaven by Brian Hodge was based on the comic book series created by Mike Mignola.

  Lucien Soulban’s World of Darkness: Blood In, Blood Out and Greg Stolze’s World of Darkness: The Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness were both based on the White Wolf role-playing game Vampire: The Requiem.

  From HarperCollins imprint William Morrow, MirrorMask: The Illustrated Film Script of the Motion Picture from The Jim Henson Company by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean was a hefty oversized hardcover that included material from the fantasy film of the same title. The UK edition published by Headline/Review had some subtle differences and was, if anything, even more attractive.

  Published by BenBella Books, King Kong is Back! edited by David Brin was subtitled An Unauthorized Look at One Humongous Ape and contained nineteen original articles about the King of Skull Island by Adam-Troy Castro, Keith R. A. DeCandido, David Gerrold, James Gunn, Robert Hood, Paul Levinson, Steven Rubio, George Zebrowski and others, including Bob Eggleton, who also contributed the illustrations.

  Edited by Karen Haber for Pocket Books, Kong Unbound collected fifteen essays about the original film by Jack Williamson, Richard A. Lupoff, Esther Friesner and others, along with a Preface by Ray Harryhausen and an Introduction by Ray Bradbury.

  From Titan Books, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding was a beautifully produced, full colour behind-the-scenes guide to the stop-motion animated film, with text by Mark Salisbury and a brief Introduction by Burton himself.

  The Art of Batman Begins: Shadows of the Dark Night by Mark Cotta Vaz was a nicely-designed but overpriced showcase from Titan, featuring concept designs, storyboards and stills from the latest attempt to revitalize the Batman franchise. Denis Meikle’s The Ring Companion looked at Hideo Nakata’s original film, the sequels and remakes, and its influence on other J-horror titles.

  Also from Titan, The Art of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a look at the making of the Aardman Animation film by Andy Lane and Paul Simpson, while Brian J. Robb’s Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film explored the many and varied adaptations of the troubled science fiction author’s work.

  The British Film Institute continued its series of “BFI Film Classics” with a look at Carl Theodor Dreyer’ silent Vampyr by RSC dramatist David Rudkin. Telefantasy by Catherine Johnson studied the place of fantasy, SF and horror in British and US television, and “BFI TV Classics”, celebrating key television programmes and series, was launched in December with critical readings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Anne Billson and Doctor Who by Kim Newman. Both small-size paperbacks included notes, episode credits and indexes, and were profusely illustrated with stills.

  From Tomahawk Press, Tony Earnshaw’s Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon was an in-depth look at the making of Jacques Tourneur’s classic 1957 film, based on M. R. James’ “Casting the Runes”.

  Alec Worley’s Empires of the Imagination: A Critical Survey of Fantasy Cinema from Georges Méliès to The Lord of the Rings was an illustrated guide to fantasy films from McFarland & Company, with an Introduction by Brian Sibley. Also from McFarland, Earth vs. the Sci-Fi Filmmakers was a further collection of twenty interviews with veteran personalities conducted by Tom Weaver. The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography was a useful compendium from Robert Michael “Bobb” Cotter, while Bonnie Noonan’s Women Scientists in Fifties Science Fiction Films was perhaps aimed at an even more exclusive readership.

  From Telos Publishing, Back to the Vortex: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who was a hefty reference book by J. Shaun Lyon with a very brief Foreword by TV producer Philip David Segal, while The Handbook by Dav
id J. Howe, Stephen James Walker and Mark Stammers was an unauthorised guide to the production of the original Doctor Who series.

  David Mclntee’s Beautiful Monsters was an unofficial guide to the Alien and Predator film series from the same imprint. Unfortunately, because these titles were unauthorised companions, the books suffered from not having any licensed illustrations.

  British publisher Chrysalis sold its books group in 2005, which included fantasy art imprint Paper Tiger, to a management group. The new company was called Anova Books.

  Nicely produced in a square hardcover format, Arts Unknown: The Life & Art of Lee Brown Coye from NonStop Press featured more than 350 illustrations by the legendary regional and pulp artist, beautifully reproduced in colour and black and white, with text and a selected bibliography by Luis Ortiz.

  Spectrum 12: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art was, as usual, edited by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner for Underwood Books. Among the 273 artists featured were Donato Giancola, John Picacio, Dave McKean, Brom, Gary Gianni, Michael Whelan, Charles Vess, Leo and Diane Dillon, Todd Lockwood and Kent Williams, along with a comprehensive review of the year and a profile of Grand Master recipient H. R. Giger by Harlan Ellison.

  Edited and written by J. David Spurlock, Grand Master of Adventure Art: The Drawings of J. Allen St. John was a stunning collection of black and white drawings, many of them based on the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  Available from Rizzoli as an oversized art book, Clive Barker: Visions of Heaven and Hell contained more than 300 drawings and paintings with commentary by Barker and an Introduction by Joanna Cotler. A deluxe slipcased edition was also available for $250.00.

  The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island used designs from the new movie to create a nature guide to the many strange creatures that inhabited Kong’s home. Weta Workshop also produced a 500-copy print of New Zealand illustrator Gus Hunter’s concept art from King Kong as a signed full-colour lithograph, matted and framed with a brass plate and shell cases fired by actors during the filming.

  IMAGO was a disappointing selection of colour artwork and previously unpublished drawings and preliminary sketches by Jim Burns, issued in an interesting hardcover format by Heavy Metal and Titan Books.

  A group of toys defended their young owner from The Pluckier in the first illustrated novel by artist (Gerald) Broom.

  Grips Grimly applied his macabre artwork to “The Black Cat”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, “Hop-Frog” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness, while Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales of Terror collected four stories adapted by Richard Margopoulos and illustrated by Richard Corben.

  Compiled by Doug Ellis for his Tattered Pages Press imprint, Virgil Finlay: The Art of Things to Come was a spiral-bound portfolio of rarely-seen illustrations that the legendary artist produced for the Science Fiction Book Club’s bi-monthly newsletter between 1959–70. It was published in an edition of just 100 numbered copies, of which fifty-five were distributed amongst the Comic and Fantasy Art Amateur Press Association.

  Published in compact hardcover format by Fantagraphics Books, Muzzlers, Guzzlers and Good Yeggs collected four true crime stories by cult artist Joe Coleman, whose work has been described as “a blend of Breughel and the E. C. horror comics of the 1950s”.

  Although disappointingly not compiled in chronological order, Batman: Cover to Cover was still a superb full-colour selection of more than 250 of the greatest comic book covers featuring the Dark Knight, from DC Comics. It also featured written contributions from Brian Bolland, Neil Gaiman, Chip Kidd, Denny O’Neil, Alex Ross, film director Christopher Nolan, 1960s TV Batman Adam West, and the voice of the animated Joker, Mark Hamill.

  In an effort to combat falling sales and escalating costs, both DC Comics and Marvel revamped their lines, bringing in new creative teams to work on high-profile titles. DC once again tinkered with its whole universe with its Infinite Crisis series, while Marvel did much the same for X-Men with its House of M sequence. Marvel also got Stephen King involved in a Dark Tower spin-off, while Lost’s co-creator Damon Lindelof scripted a Wolverine/Hulk team-up.

  In January, Stan Lee won his lawsuit against Marvel Enterprises, Inc. for breach of contract, after the company rejected his claim for a 10 per cent share of earnings from film and TV spin-offs featuring the characters he helped to create. The 82-year-old Lee was set to earn millions of dollars from the US district judge’s ruling. However, Marvel announced that it planned to appeal the court’s decision. Around the same time, the company entered into long-term publishing deals with four book imprints to exploit Marvel characters.

  Grant Morrison’s revisionist Seven Soldiers miniseries featured a group of DC Comics’ lesser characters, such as Zatanna, Shining Knight, Klarion the Witch Boy and Mister Miracle.

  The Matrix creators The Wachowski Brothers scripted the third issue of Doc Frankenstein, illustrated by co-creator Steve Skroce and published by Burlyman Entertainment.

  From Dark Horse Comics and based on the Sci Fi Channel movie, Man with the Screaming Brain was a horror-comedy miniseries by Bruce Campbell and David Goodman, with variant covers by Mike Mignola, Eric Powell, Humberto Ramos and Phil Noto.

  Based on Rupert Wainwright’s remake of the John Carpenter film, The Fog from writer Scott Allie and artist Todd Herman chronicled the Chinese curse that set in motion the events in the new movie. Mike Mignola again did the cover.

  The Dark Horse Book of the Dead contained nine horror strips by Mignola, Kelley Jones, Pat McEown and others, along with Robert E. Howard’s 1933 story “Old Garfield’s Heart”, illustrated by Gary Gianni.

  The Dweller in the Pool and Other Stories, Brothers of the Blade and Other Stories and Riders of the River-Dragons and Other Stories were the seventh, eighth and ninth compilations in Dark Horse Books’ The Chronicles of Conan series. Each volume reprinted more original Marvel strips (including one based on a Gardner F. Fox “Kothar” novel) with remastered colour and more fascinating Afterwords by original writer Roy Thomas.

  Inspired by Robert E. Howard’s sword-wielding heroine, Dynamite Entertainment launched Red Sonja: She-Devil with a Sword with five variant covers by Michael Turner, Paolo Rivera, Joseph Michael Linsner, John Cassaday and Alex Ross. Also from Dynamite, Re-Animator Returns! was based on the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired film series.

  Del Rey Books brought Richard Corben’s Werewolf and Edgar Allan Poe graphic novels back into print, along with Spanish artist Fernando Fernandez’s Dracula.

  From Heavy Metal came an all-new version of Dracula, while dark forces conspired to raise the Count from his unholy slumber in Castlevania: The Belmont Legacy, written by Marc Andreyko and illustrated by E. J. Su for IDW Publishing. Jason Henderson’s Sword of Dracula set the Count up as a target for the military.

  Angel: The Curse was a five-part story from IDW, set after the finale of Joss Whedon’s now-defunct vampire TV series. Spike: Old Times was a one-shot spin-off featuring the undead Brit, released in August, while the three-part Serenity filled in the gap between Whedon’s cancelled Firefly TV show and the movie version he directed.

  In June IDW added a comic book of Shaun of the Dead to its already busy line-up. The four-issue series was scripted by editor-in-chief Chris Ryall and illustrated by Zach Howard. Titan Books collected the strip as a “director’s cut” graphic novel.

  Silent Hill: Dead/Alive was a new five-part miniseries from writer Scott Ciencin and artist Nick Stakal featuring an evil eight-year-old attempting to gain power over the eponymous haunted town.

  Clive Barker’s Thief of Always was a graphic novel compilation of the three comic books scripted by Kris Oprisko and illustrated by Gabriel Hernandez.

  Masters of Horror was a new title from IDW Publishing to tie-in with the Showtime anthology series created by Mick Garris. The first issue, based on a Joe R. Lansdale story, featured two variant covers, and the book was also available in an e
dition signed by director Don Coscarelli.

  Steve Niles’ Frankenstein was the first volume in IDW’s Little Book of Horror specially-sized hardcovers, with Scott Morse illustrating the prose adaptation. A new translation of Alex Baladi’s graphic novel Frankenstein: Now and Forever, first published in France in 2001, appeared from Typocrat Press, while Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel was adapted by Gary Reed and Frazer Irving from Mary Shelley’s novel, from Puffin.

  Brian Pulido scripted the first issues of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jason X from Avatar Press and New Line Cinema’s “House of Horror” imprint.

  Still trading on his credit as co-creator of Night of the Living Dead more than thirty-five years later, John Russo’s Escape of the Living Dead was a five-issue series from Avatar with artwork by Dheeraj Verma. The book came with regular and wrap covers or terror and gore covers, as did Species Special #1 written by Brian Pulido.

  Titan Books continued its reprints of Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdaway’s black and white newspaper strips with Modesty Blaise: Bad Suki, with a new Introduction by artist Walter Simonson. Spanish artist Enric Badia Romero took over the strip in 1970 and the first full volume of his work was collected as Modesty Blaise: The Green-Eyed Monster.

  From the same imprint, the series of full-colour hardcover reprints of Frank Hampson’s Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future strips from the 1950s UK comic Eagle continued with Marooned on Mercury, Operation Saturn Parts 1 and 2 and Prisoners of Space, with Introductions by Queen guitarist Brian May, Philip Pullman, Steve Holland and Sir Tim Rice, respectively.

  Titan also began a series of welcome hardcover collections of black and white strips from the classic 1960s British boy’s comics, Lion and Valiant. The Spider: King of Crooks by Jerry Siegel, Ted Cowan and Reg Bunn showcased the first three adventures of the brilliant megalomaniac and his paralysing gas guns, while The Steel Claw: The Vanishing Man by SF author Ken Bulmer and Jesús Blasco chronicled the exploits of invisible man Louis Crandell.