Book Review: Black House

By Stephen King and Peter Straub

 

Summary:

Jack Sawyer returns years after his initial adventure. He is thirty-one and retired, worn-out from being a LA detective. He doesn’t want to chases killers, in spite of his talent for finding them. He moves to a rural town, just as a serial killer starts snatching and eating children. Jack wants to ignore the killer, allow the FBI and French Landing’s Police Department handle the case, but everything about this case has Jack’s name written all over it. This killer, the Fisherman, may be getting help from an otherworldly being born in the Territories. Jack may be the only one who can solve this case and stop the murders.

 

Impression:

This novel, in my opinion, is a great improvement on the first novel, The Talisman. I did appreciate the stronger ties to the Dark Tower, but the novel felt closer to home. This novel was written about ten years ago and all those weird notions of pedophile homosexuals and cartoonish black people seem to have all gone away. I was also captivated by the otherworldly villain, Mr. Munshun. He’s this one-eyed monster man with a mouth full of shark’s teeth. He’s been riding on the Fisherman’s back, guiding him toward special children. Mr. Munshun lets the Fisherman eat all the mundane kids, but woe be on his head if he lays a finger on those special children.

COMIC MANUSCRIPT: DOG BOY- ISSUE ONE: How We Begin. P. 4

PAGE  4

Panel1:

 

DOG BOY INTERNAL THOUGHT: Teach him good.

 

Panel 2:Dog Boy leaps off the roof and toward the pair. The man releases the woman in surprise.

COMIC MANUSCRIPT: DOG BOY- ISSUE ONE: How We Begin. P. 3

PAGE 3

Panel 1: Continued in the alleyway.

 

DOG BOY (whispering):                              Teach him good.

 

He wipes the tears from his eyes and stands

 

 

Section 2

 

 Panel 2:Dog Boy sits atop a five-story building, surveying the streets below. His eyes track an attractive woman. She brushes her hair back and peers down at a notebook. A man approaches her and says something in her ear.

 

Panel 3:She says something back and walks away at a slightly hurried pace. The man pursues. The woman looks back and walks a bit faster.

 

Panel 4:She turns a corner and the man catches up and grabs her wrist. She tries to wrench her wrist free but cant.

Evil Tom Hanks

Sgt. George Tucson is escorted into a cold, nearly-unadorned room by two stony-faced MP officers. Tucson sits in a metal chair and rests his elbows on a scuffed, metal table. The room smells like bleached steel, like blood scrubbed clean with Clorox. The two MP officers shuffle out the door, slamming it shut behind them. There’s a crackle cutting through the air and Tucson flinches. Tucson can hear a mild buzz humming through the room and then, he can hear a man clearing his throat.

 

“Hello, Sgt. Tucson. How are you today?” The man sounds old. Possibly, he’s in his fifties. Possibly, he’s in his sixties. Tucson isn’t exactly sure.

 

“Really? I’ve been sleeping on a metal cot for the past two weeks. I’m pretty sure you’ve been feeding me dog food.” Tucson says, staring at a blank wall. He isn’t sure where he should be looking.

 

“The U.S. Government isn’t known for its hospitality, Sgt. Tucson.” The man says.

 

“You should tell someone to rip that plaque off the Statue of Liberty. ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your yearning masses hoping to breathe free…’” Tucson says.

 

“Yeah, but nowhere did you say, ‘We’ll be nice about it.”’ The man says.

 

“That’s fair. Want to get this show on the road. Ask me what you’re going to ask me. I got a cold bowl of Alpo waiting for me.” Tucson says.

 

“Okay. Tell me about E.T.H.” The man asks.

 

“E.T.H. or Evil Tom Hanks was an Underground Governmental experiment gone wrong. E.T.H was an attempt to turn Tom Hanks in inherent trustworthiness and every-man charm into a weapon.”

 

“Are there practical applications for Every-man charm?” The man says with a dry sarcasm.

 

“Fuck you. That Every-man Charm led to the death of every man in my platoon.” Tucson spits out onto the room’s cement floor.

 

“I’m listening…” The man says.

 

“The U.S. Government, you guys, illegally obtained Tom Hanks’ DNA when he cut his hair after Angels & Demons wrapped. From his hair, government scientists isolated the ‘Hanks’ gene. From there, they cloned Tom Hanks, removing everything that they perceived as weaknesses.” Tucson says. He runs his fingers through his hair and close his eyes, holding back tears.

 

“It worked. It worked too well. They were cautious. They held him in a cell. Monitored him day and night. They kept him muzzled and in chains. And they were surprised that he went crazy. I saw the security footage. I saw him tapping his fingers against his cell window, staring out at his guard. I couldn’t quite see the look E.T.H. gave the guard and that’s why I’m here today. The guard broke protocol. He opened up the cell and undid the muzzle on E.T.H. The two of them were shaking hands. E.T.H. had his hand on the guard’s shoulder. The two of them started walking down the hallway. E.T.H. fell back a step and then wrenched the guard’s neck, snapping it. Nobody would shoot him. People were actually stepping over their fallen friends, looking for an autograph. E.T.H. actually took the time to take photos and sign scraps of paper before he smashed their skulls in, or gored their eyes out. E.T.H. is out there, in the world, killing. I’m only here because I hid. I hid with my eyes closed and my hands clasped over my ears.” Tucson puts his head down on the table and tears pearl down onto the surface. 

COMIC MANUSCRIPT: DOG BOY: ISSUE ONE- How We Begin P. 2

PAGE 2

Panel 1:Flash to reality

 

DOG BOY (loud cry of horror): No!

 

Panel 2:He sits shivering wide-eyed and wary.

 

COMIC MANUSCRIPT: DOG BOY - ISSUE ONE: How We Begin P.1

PAGE 1

 

Panel 1: Dirty Urban streets of Delvon City.

A young man crouched and slumped along side a Dumpster, dirty and riddled with number of cuts and bruises, with a wild ferocity about him, lays asleep. He winces in fevered dreaming.

 

Panel 2:Flash to his dreams

. A man with a deranged look in his eyes stalks a younger version of the young man through a dimly lit house, a liquor bottle in hand.

 

THE DERANGEED MAN: (muttering to himself) Son of a bitch, Dirty bastard, I’ll teach him. I’ll teach him good. 

 

Panel 3:Flash to reality

 

The young man cries out and a tear escapes his closed eyelid.

 

Panel 4:Flash to his dreams

 

The deranged man tosses the liquor bottle at the boy. It cracks him square in the back of the head and he collapses in a heap.

 

THE DERANGED MAN: (shouting)                    where the fuck you think you’re going.

 

The deranged man flips the boy on his back and lays his weight on the boy’s chest with his muscular arm. With his free hand, he clutches the boy’s face.

 

Panel 5: Close up the man’s face

THE DERANGED MAN: (slightly louder than a whisper )      Teach him good.

Book Review: The Talisman By Stephen King And Peter Straub

Book Review: The Talisman

By Stephen King and Peter Straub

Summary:

Lily Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Bs, is dead. Her body is eating itself and her son, Jack Sawyer, is helpless to stop it. The two of them flee to New Hampshire during Lily’s last days. Held up in a lonely hotel room, Lily smokes pack after pack of filter-less cigarette, poisoning her rotting lungs. Jack wanders the boardwalk before the hotel, not wanting to watch his mother die. He meets an old African-American Maintenance man in the shadow of a wooden Ferris wheel. This man claims that Jack can, indeed, save his mother. There’s a world beyond this one that has magic like we have physics. A magical talisman from that world can burn the cancer out of his mother’s body. This man, Speedy, sends Jack on a journey across America on this side and the Territories on that one. Jack’s Uncle Morgan seeks this Talisman as well. Uncle Morgan may have killed before and may kill again in his such for this powerful artifact.

 

Impressions:

The Talisman has the flavors of one of my favorite series, The Dark Tower. In Black House, they adopt the Dark Tower openly. I wondered if this novel qualified as a Young Adult novel, considering that Jack, the protagonist, is twelve-years-old. On his journey across America, Jack encounters things that the YA genre would run, screaming, from. Although Jack is in danger of being murdered a number of times in the novel, it pales in comparison to the fact that he was almost raped by what could only be described as a crazed Were-goat. This novel takes place in the 1980’s and to be honest, it does feel a little dated and possibly offensive. While hitch-hiking, Jack encounters a number of adult, homosexual men who inevitably offer Jack money for sexual favors. It’s presented as more of an annoyance than something truly horrific. Possibly, it was common for homosexual men to proposition twelve-year-old boys in 1981, but it reads truly strange to my 2013 eyes. I also had a problem with the characterization of Speedy Parker, Jack’s mentor. I think they were going for an old Blues singer feel to Speedy, but it read a little like a Southern Black cartoon. I still feel that this remains a good novel in spite of these flaws. When the novel is good, it’s really good and when it stumbles, it hits the ground hard.