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NEWS AND VIEWS - JULY 2019
WRITING NEWS Not much new this month. I'm still working on the new flintlock fantasy (which has a title now: The Demon in the Metal), and I'm still making pretty good progress: I added about 15,000 words this month. If I can keep up this pace, I think I've got a pretty good chance of finishing it by October. I've also uploaded a PDF of The Signal City Visitor's Guide to the Jack and Miracle Girl website, if you're interested in that. * * * * * * * * COMIC BOOK BREAKDOWN A few weeks ago I went on eBay and spent $30 on a mystery box of fifty random comic books, to fill out a spin rack I picked up a while ago. The seller claimed the titles would range from the '60's to the modern day. So what did I get? 
Well, there's some good stuff here. Five issues of Daredevil from the late '80's (post-Frank Miller), a handful of early '80's Superman and Action Comics titles, the first issue of the rebooted Captain Atom from 1987, etc. But most of it was disappointing. About half of the fifty issues were either Valiant, Malibu, or Image comics from the '90's, of middling quality; I also got five issues of Lobo (don't care about Lobo), five issues of The 'Nam (don't care about The 'Nam), and some really amateur-looking stuff from Lightning Comics and Capital Comics. Nothing from the '60's at all, and I think only one issue from the '70's. So overall, about ten or twelve decent comics, and a lot of filler. Kind of what I was expecting, although I was hoping for a few more older Marvel titles. * * * * * * * * WHAT I'M READING I finished Greg Keyes's latest, The Kingdoms of the Cursed, this month (the second novel in his High and Faraway series). I liked it better than the first book, but I'm still not totally sold on this series. It's really weird, with a lot of dreamlike imagery and random happenings. I also read the first volume of Hataraku Maou-sama! (aka The Devil Is a Part-Timer!), a light novel comedy/fantasy about a defeated demon-lord who goes to work at a MgRonalds (a McDonalds stand-in) after he's exiled to Japan. The translation was fine -- better than average, I'd say -- and the premise was amusing, but these kinds of books are basically written with the expectation that they'll be turned into anime, so they have tend to have a lot of lamebrained anime tropes (tsundere girls, guys pratfalling face-first into cleavage, magical spells and attacks that sound like they came out of a video game, and so on). And this book was no exception. I've also been reading Colin Woodard's The Republic of Pirates, and just a few days ago I started in on a big collection of Tomb of Dracula comics. Gene Colan's artwork in these books is just incredible. * * * * * * * * REVIEW: THE GALAXY INVADER Here's an old review/recap I wrote a while ago of The Galaxy Invader, a really bad, low-budget aliens vs. rednecks movie from the '80's. I watch stuff like this. The film begins at night. Our ostensible hero, the wimpy, pimply David, is driving along some deserted road when he sees a cartoony fireball crash into some trees a few miles away. An alien emerges from the fireball and begins wandering around the forest (we're treated to its POV and some sounds of labored breathing, but we're not given a good look at the alien itself yet). David doesn't see the creature either, but he suspects the fireball was something interesting, and so calls his old college professor, Dr. Tracy, the next morning. Dr. Tracy, apparently, is into UFO's. He's also into hideous Ron Jeremy-style mustaches. Anyway, Dr. Tracy agrees to come to Harleyville (a five hour drive, he says) to get a look at the presumable meteorite -- I guess he didn't have a whole lot to do that day. The conversation between David and Dr. Tracy, as with all of the film's dialogue, is cringe-inducingly bad. The alien, meanwhile, has wandered into an inhabited area. A couple eating breakfast in their home hear a noise coming from somewhere offscreen (later revealed to be the basement) and, without a word, head off to investigate, armed with kitchen knives. This seemed about right; I know the first thing I do when I hear a vague mysterious noise in my house is to make a beeline for the cutlery. (Incidentally, more people rush off to investigate vague mysterious noises in this movie than in just about any other movie I've ever seen.) The couple, of course, encounter the alien in their basement (how did it get down there?), and we get our first look at it: basically, it resembles a stocky, green swamp-monster with the warty complexion of Toxie, the Toxic Avenger. Oh, and it's wearing suspenders, and a belt. Virtually no attempt is made to artfully conceal the sad costume with clever lighting, or to keep the audience guessing as to what the beast really looks like. It's all out in the open from the get-go. The man struggles with the alien and is killed instantly, while the woman is eventually swatted down after trying to (I guess) tackle the thing. Weird synthesized sound effects assail the ears any time anyone touches the creature. Following this, the alien leaves, its grim work done. The rest of the film's major characters, with the exception of a couple who show up later, are introduced in the next scene. A family is shown having breakfast. Family members include the father, Joe, a wizened hick (who never, ever changes out of his scuzzy white shirt with the giant hole in the chest); JJ, the spineless son; Carol, the scrawny, independent-minded older daughter; and Annie, the younger daughter who might as well not even be in the film. Joe's frumpy, apron-clad wife also appears, but I never caught her name, so the heck with her. 
The dialogue here is worse than cringe-inducing; it's gag-inducing. Carol and Joe bicker about coffee and about Carol's boyfriend Michael, of whom Joe does not approve. Carol finally throws some water in Joe's face, calls him a drunk, and runs away into the woods. Joe responds to this outburst by grabbing his shotgun and chasing her, against the weak protests of everyone else at the table. At this point, Joe's murderous instincts (we eventually learn that this is the fourth time he's chased after Carol with a shotgun) are treated more as an eccentric, somewhat quirky aspect of his character than as something to be seriously dealt with by law enforcement; it isn't until the end of the film, when he starts actually killing people, that his kin begin to grow alarmed. Carol manages to lose her father, and meet up with her beau Michael (a generic flannel-shirted bozo) at a crusty old shack a few minutes later; meanwhile, Joe stomps angrily through the woods, and encounters the alien. The alien is now wearing a gun of some kind in his belt, along with a strange white orb. Murderous redneck policy being quite clear on the subject of what to do when confronted with aliens (or spacemen, as the movie invariably calls them), Joe immediately opens fire. The alien is apparently hit, as the blast causes the orb to drop from its belt. But it runs away, seemingly uninjured. Joe checks out the orb, assisted by his son JJ, who had earlier entered the woods to try to calm Joe down. JJ catches a glimpse of the creature. "What kinda man was that?" he asks. "Why, I don't think it was any kinda man at all, JJ!" Joe responds. "But it don't matter! This thing [the glowing white orb] could be worth a lot of money!" Greedy redneck policy being similarly clear on the subject of what to do with oddball devices left behind by aliens, Joe orders JJ to get a shovel and a wheelbarrow so's they can haul it back to the house and hopefully fence it for some extra booze-money. Michael, hearing about Joe's crazy behavior from Carol, marches off to face him. He makes a bunch of threats, but as soon as Joe raises his shotgun, he puts up his hands and flees, looking like a total wuss. Joe and JJ proceed to hide the orb in the garage. Joe then calls his buddy Frank Custer, who duly shows up with his gal-pal Vickie (the movie wants us to think Vickie is some kind of Southern sexpot, but her looks are...well, pretty ordinary). Custer is a drunken blowhard in a floppy hat, who always has a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other (when it's not hanging lopsidedly out of his mouth, of course). Custer is awed by the orb, but quickly develops a plan to score even more cash: he's heard about the fireball and he figures the "spaceman" Joe saw might be worth a lot of money itself, if they can capture it alive. (He claims that there are "certain parties" in "town" who might be interested in acquiring the alien before the government does. The assumption is the alien could be sold to the Soviet Union, which was still extant when the film was made in 1985. How redneck drunk Frank Custer managed to acquire contacts that could put him in touch with the Soviet government is left -- perhaps mercifully -- unexplained.) So. Joe and Frank head to the local redneck bar to rustle up some cannon fodder for the alien -- folks who might be willing to hunt the damn thing to get a cut of the cash. Even though these rednecks seem to have nothing but contempt for Joe and Frank (who grandly and theatrically tells the assembled rednecks about the cash-making opportunity without ever actually telling them that they'll be hunting a bulletproof alien in the dead of night), they are swayed by Frank's sharp redneck logic and blunt appeals to their greed and agree to meet up with them later. Meanwhile, back at the house, the alien zaps JJ and takes back the orb. JJ wakes up later and receives a scornful lecture from Joe when he returns from the hick bar. 
That night, Frank explains the plan to the (now armed) rednecks, and in the process lets them know what exactly it is that they'll be hunting. Some of the rednecks are dubious, but one of them speaks up: "Joe and Frank ain't the most reliable men in town, but even they aren't fool enough to drag us out here in the middle of the night!" This quickly shores up Joe and Frank's support. When subsequently asked for a description of the alien to facilitate its capture, Frank replies, "It don't matter what it looks like! It ain't like us, that's all you needs to know." David and Dr. Tracy, meanwhile, have just arrived at the redneck bar after coming up empty in the search for the meteorite. They hear Vickie blathering on about spacemen and take off for the woods to stop Joe and Frank's gang from injuring it. They arrive in the woods just in time to see Joe and Frank and all the rednecks whooping and hollering while shooting at the alien, who shoots back with what appears to be a flare gun. Several rednecks go down, but Joe and Frank manage to sneak up behind the alien and "lasso" it. Frank then chokes the alien with a tree branch until it passes out. I guess you can do that to aliens. Dr. Tracy is indignant. "But...the alien was shooting back," David says warily. "It must've been provoked!" Dr. Tracy retorts, with an air of professorial authority. Here begins the film's attempt to elicit some sympathy for the alien, despite the fact that it's been killing people all over the place, including that couple at the beginning of the movie. Joe and Frank put the creature in Joe's garage, while the remaining rednecks stupidly wonder if they shouldn't go back and bury their comrades' bodies. The next day, David and Dr. Tracy sneak into the garage to free the alien. Even though the alien has killed or attempted to kill nearly every human it has met so far (while nearly every human has attempted to kill it in return), it does not attack them. Joe and Frank appear while they are all still in the garage, so Dr. Tracy is forced to formulate a getaway plan: he tells them all to simply make a break for it. They do, and the trio are chased back into the woods (the alien's gait is quite comical) by the pistol-wielding Frank. Dr. Tracy is shot dead. Before Frank can finish off David as well, the alien intervenes and shoots Frank dead. Then Joe shoots the alien and steals its orb and gun again (he figures he can still sell it to the Russians, though I doubt the Russians would have much use for a flare gun). Ugh. 
The rest of the movie follows the machinations of David, Michael, Carol, and pretty much everyone else in Joe's family, to wrest the gun and orb away from him and give it back to the alien. Joe is treated not as a slow-witted, frail drunk who takes frequent naps, but as a cunningly brilliant tactician who could easily physically overpower anyone who got in his way. Vickie, looking for Frank, shows up at Joe's house. He starts getting handsy, so she runs off, but before she can get very far, Joe kills her with the alien's flare gun. Wow, thanks, movie! Just what I wanted to see! Finally, David and Michael and the rest get the gun away from Joe while he's sleeping, and enter the woods to try to give it back to the alien. Joe wakes up and follows them with his trusty shotgun; the alien ends up dead, and Joe himself is knocked into a chasm by his own matronly had-it-up-to-here wife. (The dummy thrown into the chasm has to be seen to be believed.) The end. It's really hard to describe just how terrible this movie is by way of writing about it -- it is impossible to convey, in simply recapping the story, how existentially bad the writing and the acting is, and how irritating the rednecks are, and how cheaply done everything is. The Galaxy Invader is an undeniably bad movie (and, truth be told, not even as unintentionally humorous as I've made it out to be here; this sort of schlock is really more depressing than funny). Consider yourself warned!
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