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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: October 2020

Episode 444: TDO vs. The Curator of Schlock #4

31 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Episode 444 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Photo by Leslie Salas

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss Jordan Peele’s Us, and a lot of other things, too.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

Scribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Check out Jeff’s column, The Curator of Schlock.
  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Episode 444 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).


The Curator of Schlock #330: The Blood Spattered Bride

30 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #330 by Jeff Shuster

The Blood Spattered Bride

More lesbian vampires. Why not? 

Jervis invited me to a special dinner last night. The guest of honor was the descendant of Wallace Jameson Volkasin III whose name is Wallace Jameson Volkasin VIII. It’s so funny. He looks exactly like the guy in the portrait. Anyway, Jervis says he’s the new Master of the House. Not to worry, Wallace has big plans for me, but he wouldn’t tell what those are. Then Jervis served us some extra salty tomato bisque as the first course. I love tomato bisque.

schlock mansion

Tonight’s movie is 1972’s The Blood Spattered Bride from director Vicente Aranda. From the looks of it, the movie appears to be an adaptation of the classic horror novel Carmilla by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu. It stars Simón Andreu as the husband and Maribel Martín as his wife, Susan. For the remainder of the review, we will refer to Simón Andreu’s character as Susan’s husband. Any of you remember Simón Andreu? He played the creeper in The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. Remember that one? Good times!

The movie begins with Susan’s husband driving them to a hotel. Susan is still in her wedding dress and plans to get changed, but as she enters the hotel, she notices a mysterious blonde woman (Alexandra Bastedo) starring at her from afar. Yeah, it’s probably a lesbian vampire out to seduce her away from her creepy husband. Susan imagines a rapist jumping out at her from the hotel room closet and decides she doesn’t want to stay at that hotel. So the newlywed couple go straight to the husband’s ancestral home where she catches a glimpse of a strange woman in a white veil that we all know is the same mysterious blonde woman from earlier.

Susan wonders why there are only portraits of the men of her husband’s family hanging up for all to see. Her husband says all of the portraits of the women of the family are tucked away in the basement. Susan investigates the basement and finds one curious portrait in particular. The face is cut out of a portrait of a regal woman with several rings on her fingers, but stones on each ring are turned on the inside of her hand. Very curious. Turns out her name was Mircalla Karnstein, an old ancestor of her husband’s.

Later on, Susan has vivid dreams of murdering her husband with a crooked dagger while under the influence of the mysterious woman we’ve seen. Speaking of said mysterious woman, Susan’s husband finds her buried underneath the sand at the beach. She’s naked except for a snorkel she was breathing through the sand with. Naturally, he brings her home to be their dinner guest for the evening. She says her name is Carmilla and she wears the rings on her fingers in the same manner as the faceless woman in the portrait.

It’s not long before Carmilla is seducing Susan and dragging her off in the middle of the night to drink her blood and pollute her mind with more suggestions of murdering her husband in a violent manner. This is why you can’t invite vampires over for dinner. Soon they’ll be seducing your wife and plotting to murder you.

The Blood Spattered Bride was released as a double feature with I Dismember Mama. I need to hunt that one down.


Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, and episode 443) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #94: Bad Island

29 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Tags

bad Island, Drew Barth, Stanley Donwood

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #94 by Drew Barth

A Quiet Island

Silence in a graphic novel is oppressive. We as readers must face the images directly. This directness is what we see throughout Stanley Donwood’s Bad Island. But his latest work is more than just a directness of images—it is a sweepingly haunting work of cyclical disasters and unspoken horror. Without a single word, Donwood is able to evoke a near constant feeling of unease and dread throughout with only 170 woodblock carved images.

Bad Island, for the most part, is a graphic novel about disasters on a single island in the middle of the ocean. We’re witness to the island giving birth to new life—large creatures with sharp teeth not unlike dinosaurs—before the island splits open with a great volcano and swallows them whole. But there are survivors. Smaller animals and people rebuild. Houses and kingdoms rise from the ground, large buildings and power plants follow before they’re bombed into ruins. But another cycle of rebuilding and survival brings them back from destitution before the final atomic disaster decimates whatever is left of the island. All of this story is presented as stark black and white images similar to the cover and without a single word besides the title.

These images are what make Bad Island such an evocative story. Each full-page image reads like a tarot card predicting disaster. And there is a disaster lurking somewhere on nearly every page. The shadow of humanity looms large across the images, hidden between trees and waves and clouds before it ensnares the island fully. Even if we don’t see an actual person on the page, we see the void humanity creates in just a silhouette and two little dots for eyes. But we see what that humanity does to the island—cuts down forests until nothing remains, builds until the animals disappear, harvests energy until the clouds blacken, and bombs until the island is just a skid mark across the ocean.

It isn’t until you see the whole of earth’s history in a microcosm throughout Donwood’s carved images that the effect of his wordless work hits. Bad Island reads like an enigmatic poem—its desolation recalling The Waste Land—with only the imagery to speak for its story. As readers, we flip through each page expecting revelations on this island and why it is continually meeting disaster. But we never get those answers outside of what we make ourselves. We only see the world revolting and humanity destroying and are left wondering where the island could go afterward.

In the end, Bad Island will occupy many shelves with many readers over the years digging further and further into its thick lines and negative spaces. As far as wordless works go, it is easily one of the strongest to fully embrace the visual nature of comics and create images that speak more than words could.

Get excited. Get silent.


Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 443: TDO vs. The Curator of Schlock #3

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Color Out of Space, HP Lovecraft, Nicolas Cage, Richard Stanley

Episode 443 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Photo by Leslie Salas.

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss Richard Stanley’s recent film of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space.

TEXT DISCUSSED

NOTES

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out Jeff’s column, The Curator of Schlock.


Episode 443 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

The Curator of Schlock #329: Vampyres

23 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #329 by Jeff Shuster

Vampyres

Sometimes characters deserve to die due to their own stupidity. 

You know, I noticed a huge portrait above the entrance to this stately mansion I’ve been residing at for these past few months. The painting is of a southern aristocrat with wispy raven hair, a pasty complexion, and a stern countenance. A black cape adorns his broad shoulders and he grips a cane adorned with a silver skull at the head. I asked Jervis about that man and he told me his name was Wallace Jameson Volkasin III, the master of this estate some two hundred years ago. I’m sure none of this information will be of any importance to events I will describe on next week’s blog.

schlock mansionTonight’s movie is 1974’s Vampyres from director José Ramón Larraz. Did any of you see Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Remember that scene where Keanu gets seduced and sucked dry by Dracula’s beautiful brides? Now imagine they made a movie out of that scene and presto, you’ve got Vampyres. If I learned anything from this movie, it’s that regular people are really stupid when it comes to dealing with vampires.

We begin with two women, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka), getting shot to death in bed after an explicit lesbian love scene. Not long after, we’re introduced to a young British couple, John (Brian Deacon) and Harriet (Sally Faulkner), driving down down an isolated highway with a camper in tow. John and Harriet notice two young women in long flowing coats hiding in trees on the side of the road. Wouldn’t you know it? It’s those two young women that were shot to death at the beginning of the movie. How can they still be running around?

John and Harriet decide to drive down an unkempt road and park nearby an abandoned gothic mansion. I’m not really sure why they do this as this mansion is creepy as all get out. Next, we’re introduced to Ted (Murray Brown), a proper English gentleman that’s traveling on business or some other unspecified reason. He picks up Fran, one of the aforementioned strange women in the woods, and drives her to the abandoned gothic mansion. She offers him some fine wine and it’s not long before their clothes are on the floor and the two of them are having a torrid affair.

Ted wakes up the next morning to find a huge bloody gash on his arm and some broken glass with his blood on it. He visits Harriet and John, who give him some first aid and a fresh cup of coffee. You’d think Ted would get the hell out of dodge, but he turns the car around and heads right back to mansion. Sure, it’s likely that Fran sliced his arm open with some broken glass in order to suck on his blood, but the sex was just that good.

Still, the Darwin Award goes to Harriet and John. It’s one thing to camp outside a vampire infested mansion for an evening, but to stay there day after day? They should have driven a hundred miles away from there at the first sign of anything unusual. Like when Harriet decides go inside the mansion to do some exploring just to find those strange women holed up in the basement, sleeping in contorted positions in the middle of the day. Or when Harriet wakes up in the middle of the night due to one of Fran and Miriam’s victims banging on the camper window only to disappear a moment later. John, of course, dismisses Harriet’s alarm, saying she just imagined it. The two of them are going to die horribly, but they had plenty of opportunity to escape. Vampyres is another creepy one, worth checking out.


Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, & episode 442) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #93: A Sunless Legacy

21 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #93 by Drew Barth

A Sunless Legacy

What is a legacy? In monthly comics, it’s usually a character taking up the mantle of a hero that has passed on or passed out of the popular lexicon. This new character dons the mask, the famous name, and the responsibilities that entails. The heroics and mistakes of the past hang over this character’s head throughout their life. But this is an optional legacy—no one has to take up a mantle. Unless, of course, you’re family. Familial legacy is at the heart of The Sacrifice of Darkness by Roxane Gay, Tracy Lynne Oliver, Rebecca Kirby, and James Fenner. Hiram Hightower flew a craft into the sun and threw the world into darkness and his son, Joshua, has to contend with the legacy that has been carved out for him before he ever had a chance to say otherwise.

The Sacrifice of Darkness is an adaptation of Gay’s story “We Are the Sacrifice of Darkness” and with Oliver, Kirby, and Fenner in tow, she’s able to create a story that soars even higher than the original. This is a story that centers on family and legacy—what our parents leave behind for us and how we deal with it. The majority of this story centers on the Hightower family and how a legacy of working underground in their town’s mine and never seeing the sun or his family has left him wanting to show the rest of the world how he feels. So he flies a craft into the sun to extinguish it. But more importantly than that is what his son, Joshua, experiences as the son of the sun killer. He’s ostracized by his town and lives in isolation with his mother, until a girl, Claire, begins to talk to him.

This expansion of Gay’s original story is something that could really only be done within the medium of comics. Through Kirby’s art can we see the extent of Hiram Hightower’s legacy of sunlessness. And it is through her art as well that we see the five years Hiram had spent underground without seeing his family or the sun. Her lines resonate perfectly with Gay and Oliver’s words throughout. From the closeness of the Hightower family to the sparseness of a nearly sunless sky to streets crowed with artificial light, the original story can breathe so much more into its distances and silences.

As an adaptation, The Sacrifice of Darkness is one of the best the medium has produced this century. It takes its source material and expands upon it with the original author to create a new take, but the same feeling. As a graphic novel, it exists with the legacy of the original story over it and, at time, surpasses the original. Gay, Oliver, Kirby, and Fenner have created an evocative story of family and legacy between them that can only exist within comics and I hope this isn’t the last time they work together.

Get excited. Get the sun.


Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 442: TDO vs. The Curator of Schlock #2

17 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 2 Comments

Episode 442 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Photo by Leslie Salas.

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss the genius of Richard Brake, the superior sound design of Rob Zombie’s films, the paradoxes of carnie victimhood, the nightmare underbelly of The Great Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, mere survival as an inadequate story-goal, likable characters, all while talking about Rob Zombie’s overlooked brutal 2016 masterpiece, 31.

TEXT DISCUSSED

NOTES


Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out Jeff’s column, The Curator of Schlock.


Episode 442 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

 

The Curator of Schlock #328: Daughters of Darkness

16 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 2 Comments

The Curator of Schlock #328 by Jeff Shuster

Daughters of Darkness

Lesbian vampires…and why not. 

Since last I blogged, I’ve been busy sharpening a stake of wood, which isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies. I figured it was time I put Celestial out of her misery, put her soul to rest, and rid her of the curse of vampirism. I had to hurry as the sun was setting. I crept into her bedroom while she was fast asleep. I leaned over with bated breath, ready to pierce her heart. Then Celestial opened her eyes. I freaked out, dropped the stake, ran into my room, and locked the door. Tomorrow’s another day.

Tonight’s movie is 1971’s Daughters of Darkness from director Harry Kümel. This is a Belgian vampire movie from the early 70s and it feels like a Belgian horror movie from the early 70s. Not that I’ve ever seen any Belgian vampire movies from the early 70s so what do I know about them. It’s in English for those of you out there that worry about having to read subtitles and hearing strange foreign tongues.

Speaking of tongues, the movie opens with a couple of young newlyweds making sweet love in their train compartment. The young couple are Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie Chilton (Danielle Ouimet). The train gets stuck on the tracks in the middle of Ostend. While Stefan and Valerie had intended to go to England to meet Stefan’s mother, Stefan convinces Valerie to stay overnight at a seaside hotel. Valerie insists that Stefan call his mother and tell her about the good news, but Stefan bribes the concierge into saying he couldn’t get reach his mother. We later learn that Stefan’s mother is more like a creepy old man who may be his pimp or some other sordid occupation. It never gets explained.

The young couple are enjoying a meal of white fish when in walks the elegant Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Delphine Seyrig) and her young traveling companion, Ilona (Andrea Rau). The hotel concierge swears he saw Countess Báthory at the hotel forty years earlier when he was just starting out as a bellboy. Countess Báthory says it must have been her mother. She takes a keen interest in the hip, young couple staying at the hotel. Countess Báthory is particularly fixated on Valerie.

It seems that mutilated bodies of young women are found in ever city the countess visits. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, just as it’s a coincidence that this Countess Báthory bears a striking resemblance to her ancestor, a Hungarian countess that murdered two hundred maidens and bathed in their blood to retain her youth. This Countess Báthory knows about all this in great detail and seems to get turned on when talking about the various ways her ancestor tortured and killed those young women.

Countess Báthory starts using head games to drive the young couple apart. Ilona manages to seduce young Stefan, but dies soon after in a bizarre bathroom accident after Stefan tries forcing her to shower with him. Countess Báthory helps them dispose of the body and it’s around this time that Stefan wants himself and Valerie to get away from there. But it’s too late. Valerie has fallen under the spell of the Countess. Don’t be expecting a happy ending with this one, folks. No one gets what they want. Damn vampires!


Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, and episode 441) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #19

16 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Disney, Sozzled Scribbler

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The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #19

Transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

16 October 2020

In the 199th year of this my mortal life, I find me in Altamonte Springs, Florida, waiting for Little Lord Pantsleroy—otherwise known as Mr John King—so that I may capture him and torment him to my heart’s content.

For he hath offended me most high when he interviewed my pasty faced amanuensis Deutoronomy Katalapsycon, or whatever its name is, for a modern convenience called the invasion of the podcast people, and banished me from the room.

‘That man is a menace,’ Little Lord Pantsleroy declared. ‘He is banished.’

Banished, moi! Banished!

And so here I sit in that valley that pierces my heart with dread, and I look aloft and see his shoulders broad approach, awaiting him that is mine enemy so that I may entrap him and inflict punishments upon his conceited corse that he will not forget.

So overcome with fury am I that I risk being seen by stepping forth upon the perilous wide waste, strike a Napoleonic pose, and quote my good friend, God.

‘For vengeance is mine and I will repay. His day of disaster is near and his doom rushes upon him.’

My prize is almost upon me, sauntering at the bottom of the prominence upon which I stand, whistling a happy tune, carefree as Mariella Frostrup sans brassier.

‘Fly high, mine silvered snare,’ quoth I, as I cast a net into the air, ‘and bring my quarry like a fish from fathomless depths unto me.’

‘What, ho?’ cries the Shakespearean dolt as the latticework settles around him.

I step forward so that his eyes can look upon my bedazzled form for the first time.

‘What are you?’ says he. ‘That looks not like the inhabitants of the earth and yet walks upon it. Speak if you can. What are you?’

For although he publishes my world-wide hit column, he has never seen me before.

‘Hail, Little Lord Pantsleroy.’

My prey freezes.

‘Hail to thee, Thane of the Drunken Odyssey,’ I wheedle.

He trembles. Fear is in his eyes.

‘Surely it can’t be you,’ he gasps.

‘Tis I,’ I say, advancing. ‘And none other.’

‘Say why upon this blasted heath you stop my way with such horrendous greetings.’

On and on he goes, like a cold bum, quoting Shakespeare as if he’s John Gielgud. A quick application of ether knocks him out. Now to my secret laboratory and to execute my dastardly plan. But boy is he heavy. And badly dressed. First, I strip him of the rags he wears and burn them. Then I hire a crane to lift him.

Hours later, the victim returns to consciousness, strapped to an operating table in my eyrie.

I gloat in my white laboratory coat, made exclusively pour moi by none other than Issey Miyake.

‘It’s alive,’ I scream maniacally, raising my arms to the heavens. ‘It’s alive.’

Little Lord Pantsleroy is so frightened he almost poops his pants.

‘Where am I?’ he says. ‘What do you want?

‘For there is nothing covered,’ I quote, ‘that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.’

Little Lord Pantsleroy struggles in his bonds, but it’s useless. He is in my power.

‘Why I am covered in bandages?’ he says, looking down the length of his body. ‘What have you done to me?’

‘Tell me, my little friend.’ I stand over to him. ‘What is your favorite place in the world?’

‘Disneyland.’

‘And who is your favourite Disney character?’

‘Donald Duck. But Joe Carioca from The Three Caballeros is a close tie.’

‘And how would you like to be these characters?’

I let my pronouncement sink in.

‘What do you mean?’ he squawks.

‘This!’

I rip the bandages from his body with a grand flourish, and move a suspended mirror above the operating table so that he can see his body.

At first there is stunned silence. Then the eyes grow wide with shock and disbelief. And then the mouth (or rather the beak) opens and a prolonged quack of dismay is emitted.

‘What have you done?’

‘I have turned you into a half-duck, half-parrot.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh,’ I say, pretending to be perplexed. ‘I thought you wanted to be Donald Duck and Joe Carioca.’

The dismal quack is followed by a cacophonous squawk.

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you did not to put me in your invasion of the podcast people thingy.’

And then the mad creature begins to laugh.

‘Why laughest thou, oh Caliban?’

‘Because,’ he says, half sitting up and staring at me with maddened eyes, ‘now I can work in my favourite place in the world, Disneyland.’

But I have one more nasty card up my sleeve.

‘That’s what you think, my little canard.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are sold.’

‘To whom?’

‘To Fraulein Elsa Mars.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She, my beaky little perroquet, is the manager of the Cabinet of Curiosities, a freak show, in Jupiter, Florida. Why here she is now.’

A divine creation right out of the Weimer Republic saunters in, half Marlene Dietrich, half Consuela Cosmetic.

The half-duck, half-parrot parody gapes at the miraculous apparition.

‘What are you staring at?’ Elsa Mars snaps, with that fake German accent of hers. ‘Do you value your job around here?’

Le canard et perroquet anomalie nods, knowing he is her slave forever.

‘Then get out there and make people laugh. Schel!’

Elsa Mars cracks her whip and l’homme canard et perroquet is carried away by assorted aberrations never to be seen again.

And now, dear reader, I am in charge of the Drunken Odyssey.

À bientôt, mes amies.


The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker (his father) and a Greek bear wrestler (his mother). He has lived in Istanbul, Rome, London, New Orleans and is currently stateless. He partakes of four bottles of Bombay gin and nine packets of Gauloises cigarettes a day.

Dmetri Kakmi is a writer and editor. His first book, Mother Land, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia, and his new book, The Door, will be released in September 2020.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #92: Hey, Demon, It’s Me, Ya Boy, Jason Blood

14 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Tags

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Drew Barth, Jack Kirby, Jason Blood, The Demon

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #92 by Drew Barth

Hey, Demon, It’s Me, Ya Boy, Jason Blood

The creative force of Jack Kirby is the lifeblood of modern comics. His influence can be felt in every monthly comic coming from DC or Marvel and in nearly every superhero movie in this century. His aims were cosmic in scale and even grander in ambition, but at no point did his work ever escape the core humanity that was imbued within his pencils. And while we can wax poetic about Kirby’s galactic and superhero work, it is Halloween season, so it’s time to dive into one of his spookier creations that has become a staple of the DC Universe: The Demon, Etrigan.

Who is this Demon? Etrigan was spawned from the words of Merlin as Camelot fell to the sorceress Morgaine le Fey. This Demon would be the protector of Merlin and Camelot as Merlin’s magic entombed himself and his Eternity Book away from le Fey so that her magic would fade with time. But, of course, that doesn’t happen. We’ve passed the time of ancient kingdoms and into the 70s where demonologist, Jason Blood, is researching the origins of a mysterious piece of parchment that has been in his family for hundreds of years and how it affects his fate. And so the words on the parchment help to bring forth The Demon, Etrigan and Morgaine le Fey is still around searching for Merlin’s Eternity Book. All of this, as is typical of Kirby’s work, is only in the first half of the first issue of The Demon series.

Kirby’s The Demon came at a time when Kirby was deep in his Fourth World series. DC, at the time, were looking to expand into some more weird adventures like The Phantom Stranger and House of Mysteryand asked Kirby for his best takes. Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earthand The Demonleapt fully formed from his imagination onto the page—the latter over dinner with his wife and assistants one night. So much of The Demonis steeped in Kirby’s endless imagination—from stories playing off The Phantom of the Operato the twisted magics of Klarion, the Witch Boy, every issue feels as though it could have been its own series. They wanted weird adventure, and Kirby gave them great adventures in the medium.

The Demon stands as one of Kirby’s greatest storytelling achievements. As characters, Etrigan and Jason Blood fit so seamlessly into the fabric of the DC Universe it’s hard to imagine the canon without them. And even with a series and a character born from the from the fires of hell, our protagonists still carry with them that essential Kirby humanity and compassion. At his scariest, at the most gruesome, it’s hard to be scared reading through a Kirby comic because there is that ever present feeling of safety in his panels. He believed in the triumph of heroes, no matter their origin, and The Demon is one of Kirby’s greatest triumphs.

Get excited. Get gone, form of man.


Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

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Recent Posts

  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #118: Swamps & Things
  • Episode 467: Ciara Shuttleworth!
  • The Curator of Schlock #349: Greyhound
  • Aesthetic Drift #29: Chewing on the Words of Miami’s Incarcerated
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #20: Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (2020)

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