Yesterday's Paper's - Vampirella

"Hi there! Welcome to the coolest girl meet ghoul mag on the market..."

And with those words so started Vampirella, a title created by J Forest Ackerman. The vampire myth always had a sexual subtext but Vampirella brought this to the fore.Vampirella first appeared as a horror-story hostess in Vampirella #1 (Sept. 1969), continuing in that capacity through issue #8 (Nov. 1970) when she was "revamped" as a leading character.

Of the character's origins the WIKI tells us that, Vampirella was originally presented as an inhabitant of the planet Draculon, a world where people lived on blood and where blood flowed in rivers. Draculon orbits two twin suns that were causing droughts across the planet, marking certain doom for Vampirella and her race. The race of which Vampirella was born, the Vampiri, were able to transform themselves into bats at will, sprout wings when required, and drink blood.
The story begins with the inhabitants of Draculon dying slowly due to the drying up of its blood. The last few lie dying when a spaceship from Earth crashes on the planet. Vampirella, sent to investigate, is attacked; retaliating, she discovers that the astronauts have blood in their veins. In order for her race to survive, she manages to pilot the ship back to Earth where her adventures begin. Vampirella becomes a "good" vampire, and devotes her energy to ridding our world of the homegrown "evil" kind.

Harris Comics revived Vampirella in the miniseries Morning In America, written by Kurt Busiek. Soon thereafter, Vampirella was established as being brainwashed by her sister and brother (in the story "Mystery Walk") and led to believe she was from the planet Drakulon. She learned that she was, in fact, the daughter of Lilith, whom popular medieval Jewish lore depicts as the first wife of Adam. Lilith would not submit before Adam and was cast out of Eden. She mated with demons in hell, giving birth to vampires who would kill the offspring of Adam and Eve on Earth. Later, she sought redemption from God and gave birth to Vampirella, whom she sent to Earth to kill all evil vampires. According to this account, Drakulon was a part of Hell where Lilith lived and ruled.

When I was a kid the Vampirella magazines were always placed on the top shelves with the dodgy magazines with titles like Rustler, Mayfair and Razzle, and because of this I never got to buy a copy, but the artwork on some of the covers were stunning and I used to wish I could get my grubby hands on a copy. The magazine seemed like forbidden fruit and my mates in our comic book gang used to speculate on what lay between the covers. Every now and then someone would claim that they had actually read a copy and the tales they would tell were...well, lurid.

 Of course now, as an adult, not only have I seen a copy but I own maybe a dozen of the Warren issues. And you know what,...they contained some fine comic book writing.

Yep, that Vampirella remains one hot bird.

The Ballad of Delta Rose

A calm, reflective trailer which I think suits the feel of the novel -  THE BALLAD OF DELTA ROSE      pre-order now

To my mind a ballad is a sad song, and that's just what this novel is.

After more than twenty years of living a life on the road, Delta Rose returns to the ranch he once owned with his fiancee, Etta James.

A bullet wedged close to his heart has dealt Delta the dead man's hand. He soon discovers Etta has a secret: they have a son who, by now a young man, is in trouble.


He is charged with both robbery and murder. Can Delta redeem himself for a past ill spent and save the life of the son he never knew he had?

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

I've been baffled by several tributes on Facebook stating that I have passed on - one wrote, Writer, author Gary Dobbs best known as Jack Martin Rest in Peace. And another told me, I will be missed.

And whilst I appreciate the sentiments, I'm definitely not dead - maybe this online notice is the reason for the confusion. -

Gary Dobbs, 60, of Jackson died Sunday. Memorial service, 2 p.m. today, Sherrell Funeral Home.

The Black Horse eBooks riding high

Ian Parnham tells us - "The first collection of 4 Black Horse Westerns to be published as eBooks has now hit the Kindle charts on Amazon. It is currently the 32nd bestselling western Kindle title as well as the 88th bestselling western title in all formats. More details at Amazon.co.uk"

Buy the eBook folks and check out Ian's Black Horse Express for all the western news

For an earlier report on the bundle go HERE

THE COMPLETE LITERARY 007 - Fleming Index

Clicking this Link will bring up the complete postings in the Ian Fleming section of the Complete Literary 007.

The section will start with the most recent and simply scroll down to read the others.

THE COMPLETE LITERARY 007 - Wrapping up on Fleming

And that brings us to then end of the first part of The Archive's look at the complete literary OO7 - all that is left is to mention the short stories Fleming wrote about the Bond character, eight of which were contained in the anthology Bond titles, For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy. Fleming also wrote the short story, 007 in New York which was originally published in 1963 in The New York Herald Tribune.

For Your Eyes only contained:
From a view to a kill
For your eyes only
Quantum of Solace
Risico
The Hildebrand Rarity.

Octopussy Contained:
Octopussy
The Property of a Lady
The Living Daylights

Currently all of the stories, including 007 in New York are collected in the Quantum of Solace collection.

Ian Fleming has always been a favourite writer of mine. I devoured the books when I was younger, and continue to dip into Fleming's world from time to time.

The books, although by Fleming's own admission, were pot-boilers, they represented a level of sophistication, or at least suggested sophistication, not found with other action adventure books

The Bond character was a superb creation, which is why he still lives on in popular culture today. Someone, maybe a critic, once said something like, "Bond is the man every man want to be and the man every woman wants to be with". And you know there just might be some truth in that.

Rest in peace, Ian Fleming for even now, many years since your passing, you still provide readers with many hours of pleasure. A fine legacy indeed.

He truly was an outstanding writer - and maybe because of the massive popularity of the film series, he has never been granted the full respect he deserves for his part in the development of the popular novel. The Bond books were easy to read but that's not to say they were shallow. Far from it and Fleming carried on a long tradition of adventure fiction that went back to John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson and beyond.

Next up in this series we start on the second stage of 007 literature, those Bond books not written by Fleming.

THE COMPLETE LITERARY 007 - THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN 1965

Ian Fleming, arguably the greatest pure-thriller writer the UK has ever produced, was dead. His creation James Bond had been left amnesic and floundering in Russia, and with the film series based on the books having gone crazy after the previous year's Goldfinger, he public were screaming for more James Bond.

There was still one more Bond novel to go but the problem was Fleming had left it unfinished when he passed away. The book was apparently mostly complete but had not been revised and polished to Fleming's high standards. The executors brought in a ghost writer (still rumoured to have been Kingsley Amis) to finish the book and it was eventually published in 1965.

Because of this the novel is generally considered Fleming's weakest - I'm not so sure of that though. Each time I've read it I've become engrossed in the story and although it's not as detailed as some of the books, I think that on time it makes the story move faster. I've always thought of this book as the most pulpish in style of all Fleming's books, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

There are several high points in the novel - Bond's attempted assassination of M for one thing. And of course it does tie up all the plot points left open after the previous novel. By the end of the book, Bond seems to be his old self again.

"James Bond,in the full possession of his senses, with his eyes wide open, his feet flat on the linoleum floor, stuck his head blithely between the mink-lined jaws of the trap. He said, and meant it, 'You're an Angel,'

At the same time he knew deep down that love from Mary Goodnight, or from any other woman, was not enough for him. It would be like taking 'a room with a view'. For James Bond, the same view would always pall."

Fleming went all out for boy's own style action, adventure with this book - in one section he has Mary Goodnight tied, virtually naked, to a railway track. There is a chilling moment when Scaramanga, Fleming giving another nod to his childhood favourite Dr Fu Manchu with this character, announces to everyone on the train that the woman up ahead is Mary Goodnight.

Good, bad or indifferent - make of this book what you will. I, myself, am of the opinion that it is a damn good thriller and whilst not the best of the series, I do not think it is the worse. In fact there's not a truly bad book in the entire series, and I'd take Man with the Golden Gun over any of the short stories Fleming wrote about Bond.