Dune Book I, Graphic Novel 2021 By Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson, Frank Herbert Art by Raul Allen and Patrica Martin

  Dune Book I, Graphic Novel 2021

By Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson, Frank Herbert

Art by Raul Allen and Patrica Martin

Welcome back to our second review in Dune month. Where I, living in the deserts of Phoenix (Got your still suit squared away for summer?  If you need one, talk to the furries, theirs are superior to even Fremen designs. {I'm good bro}), review the many adaptations of the novel Dune, as well as the novel itself, which takes place in the deepest of deserts. Will I provide a good review or go mad with desert sickness? Will I disappear into the sands or finish the tale? Stay tuned folks and find out!

This is the latest adaptation and continuation of the Dune saga by the duo of Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert. Both of whom are successful authors and have written a lot of Dune material, which I won't be reviewing. I did read some of their work way back when I was in the Marines and bluntly I felt it would have worked better if the story had taken place in its own universe. That's not to say I think they're terrible writers, just that their work that I have seen doesn't feel like the original Dune to me. That said, this will be the first time I return to their work in decades so I'm going to try and keep an open mind.

Patrica Martin and Raul Allen are Spanish-born comic book artists. Ms. Martin has worked for a varied client list including DC Comics, Valiant, Dark Horse Comics, and others. Mr. Allen has also worked for DC Comics and Valiant. He also had his art exhibited in the United States and his native Spain. This isn't the first time they've worked together, as they also paired up for the Valiant comic Livewire.

The Graphic Novel covers the first part of the novel itself. When House Atreides takes possession of the planet Dune (Arrakis) under the orders of the (Padishah)Emperor (Shaddam IV). The planet, while a wasteland, is a vital one because of the production of Spice, which makes everything from FTL to seeing the future possible (It’s actually the same phenomenon in both cases.  Their space-folding drive requires prescient vision to use safely. They can do FTL without it, technically, but something like ten percent of shipments made sans a Guild Navigator don’t arrive at their destinations). In large part, the spice makes the civilization that our characters live in possible so whoever holds the spice holds massive economic and political power. The fact that the planet is being taken away from House Atreides’ greatest enemies the House Harkonnen should be a cherry on top of this impossible to resist sweet, but instead, it only stresses that this whole thing is a trap.

This is because the Emperor fears the rising power of Duke Leto. For example, the Duke is wielding great power in the Landsradd, the council that represents the interest of the Feudal houses that rule the universe under the Emperor. To the point that the Great Houses see him as their spokesman, which kind of makes him an unofficial Prime Minister in a system that doesn't really have room for one. Then there is also the rumor of his soldiers being equal to the Imperial Army, the dreaded Sardaukar. So the Emperor will use House Harkonnen to wipe out House Atreides because the simple fact is that a wealthy and powerful House Harkonnen is less of a threat. After all, no one trusts them and no one in their right mind would want a Harkonnen Emperor. (It is worth noting that The Emperor cannot be seen doing this, because the greatest fear of the houses of the Landsradd is that he picks them off one by one, and if they unite against him, even his Sardaukar cannot save him.)

So why is the Duke sticking his head in the trap? Well, first he has no choice, deny an order from the Emperor and you're in rebellion. Second, Leto knows he's walking into a trap, which gives him a chance to avoid it and turn it around.  Because if he can win, if he can become the Lord of Dune in fact as well as in name? Then the Emperor will have made his fear a reality (Especially because Leto has not under-estimated the Fremen and thinks he can ally himself with them.  And as we’ll find out… they’re scary.).  Vastly more important to Duke Leto is that he can end the feud with House Harkonnen (by ending House Harkonnen) and create safety for his family at long last. There's an interesting buried commentary here on feudalism I think, that those who are the most powerful are the least safe. Even the most powerful Senator's family doesn't have to live in constant fear of poison and assassins like the royalty of House Atreides and the story does a good job showing how the constant paranoia and scheming eats away at the humanity and relationships of those same people.

Because this part of the story is a tragedy. This is the story of the fall of Duke Leto.  A man who strove to be a decent, fair, and just ruler as best he could and was destroyed because of that. The graphic novel focuses a lot on Leto and Jessica and their relationship. Which grows more remote and distant despite the love they both feel for each other due to political maneuvering and the need for plots within plots to fend off the agents of the Harkonnen. Of course, it's not just Dune that introduced that tension and distance, although the graphic novel makes it clear that the stress of the move into what is basically a battleground has only made it worse (There is always the fear of raids or assassins, even on Caladan.  But moving to a place that is not in the least bit secure that your enemies were able to prep in advance to receive you… No Fun.). For example, Duke Leto never married Jessica because by keeping her as a concubine, he could dangle the hope of a marriage alliance to the other houses. I'm sure in her head, Lady Jessica agreed with the move and considered it good politics but who among us would not feel some rankling in our hearts over something like this?

The graphic novel mostly focuses on Jessica and Leto because this part of the novel is about them. It does a good job of letting us get into their heads and see their relationship with each other and the relationship they have with their servants and Paul. While Paul is definitely a major character, choices are made through the graphic novel to focus more on his parents. This is an interesting choice because Part I then changes from the coming of age amid a disaster that the 2021 film tells, to the tragic fall of a family and the aftermath. Leto is written as a man of admirable qualities and gifts who is just in an impossible situation and knows it. Jessica as a woman desperate to save what she can from the ruin wrought by politics and ambition.

The art is fantastic here and the artists made a clear choice to avoid having the characters look like any of the actors who have portrayed them on the big screen.  This really helps the graphic novel stand on its own two feet. In fact, the artist went all out in giving a very different view of what Dune looks like compared to any film I've seen and I really appreciate it. There's a use of warm colors and shading to emphasize the environment even in scenes that are indoors that worked really well! Meanwhile, the character designs are distinct and clear that you easily tell everyone apart with a glance.

As you might guess the graphic novel gets two grades as it is an adaptation. As an adaptation, I'm giving it a B+ as it focuses on giving us a streamlined view of the novel but ensures it keeps scenes that reinforce the traits and relationships of the characters in the story. For example, keeping the scene where Duke Leto and Lady Jessica argue over where to put a painting of his father and the head of the bull that killed him (preserved with his blood still on its horns!), foreshadows the distance in their relationship later. As a stand-alone, I'm giving it a B, as I feel it leans very hard on you having read the novel. It's not that it can't stand on its own but it's so very much a streamlining of a longer story that there's no real moment where I can tell you that the graphic novel escapes the simply massive shadow of Dune the novel. But maybe I'm asking too much there.

        I hope you enjoyed this review, if so you should consider joining our ever-wise patrons at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Our patrons get to vote on upcoming reviews and theme months (they approved last month's fangsgiving and choose the vampire theme for example) as well as other benefits for as little as a dollar a month.  Next week, we're going to look at David Lynch's Dune and then we will finally tackle the novel itself the week after.  Until then, stay safe and as always keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Dune 2021 Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Dune 2021

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve was born on October 3rd, 1967 in Becancour Canada. The eldest of 4 siblings, his brother Martin also became a filmmaker. Denis grew up within view of a nuclear reactor and used to joke with people as a child that it was going to give him superpowers. This might have been reinforced when an aunt came by and gave him a couple boxes of European Science fiction, which kickstarted his own interest in the genre. I can relate to this since it was an older cousin handing me a box full of Conan and Sonja comics that really pulled me into Sword and Sorcery at a young age. Never underestimate the impact your handing off some old books or comics or movies will have on your younger relatives folks. 

This led him to American science fiction films, which I would argue is actually the weakest expression of American science fiction but I'm known for being snobby on this. That said, one film he kept coming back to and re-watching the many, many versions of? Blade Runner. While he flirted with actually studying science at the University of Quebec. He ended up attending the university's film school instead. After that, he would create several short films covering a wide variety of subjects. This was interrupted when he took a 9-year break to help care for his children but he would surge back into filmmaking. His two films released after his break Polytechnique and Incendes were independent films but got him Hollywood attention. At first, he was hesitant since Hollywood has something of a bad reputation when it comes to the treatment of foreign directors. However, he decided to roll the dice. 

His first Hollywood film was Prisoners with Hugh Jackson and Jake Gyllenhaal. After that, he filmed Sicario and the science fiction film Arrival. His own words were that finally getting to shoot a science fiction film was like a dream come true. It was then he felt ready for his big shot, shooting the sequel to Bladerunner 2049. We reviewed Bladerunner 2049 way back in 2019 and gave it a C+ better than average but kinda flawed. I stand by that grade, as I think the flatness of K and the slow pacing of the film held back what was otherwise a great movie looking at what it means to be a person and a number of other themes that made it worth the watch. But that's not what we're here to talk about, we're here to talk about Dune. 

Since I'll be reviewing the book soonish, I won't talk about Frank Herbert here or get to much into it. Here are the basics you need to know. Humanity is united under the throne of the Padishah Emperor and is utterly dependent on a material known as Spice. No Spice, no FTL travel, no FTL travel, and civilization collapses. That would be enough but taking Spice also grants certain abilities and powers to people. Everything from longer life to a limited ability to see the future. Spice can only be found on one planet, Arrakis aka Dune the desert planet. So while it's a wasteland, it's also the most valuable planet in the universe. Under the Emperor powerful Noble houses do most of the day-to-day work of ruling and maintaining the Empire, this includes making sure the Spice is harvested and transported off Dune and into the waiting hands of... Everyone. 

This brings us to our main character of Paul Atreides, only son and heir of Leto Atreides, Duke of House Atreides. Duke Leto's fortunes would seem to be on the rise, not only is he considered one of the most trustworthy men in the Empire but the other Great Houses increasingly look to him for leadership when they're having disagreements with the Emperor. He's got pretty decent relations with the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, a group of women with skills and powers beyond that of mortal men, who act as spies, aids, and councilors to the nobles. In fact, he's actually sleeping with one, as the Lady Jessica, officially his concubine but in reality, his wife in all but name is a member in mostly okay standing with the sisterhood, but we'll get back to that. His army is powerful and skilled and his people love him because he's not a dick and rewards loyalty and skill. However, Duke Leto and therefore Paul, and everyone else is walking into danger and most likely death. Because the Emperor has taken Arrakis away from Duke Leto's mortal enemy Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and given it to Leto. 

House Harkonnen has been locked in a mortal feud with House Atreides for generations and every attempt to bring peace has been an utter disaster. In a lot of ways the Houses are mirror imagines of each other, Duke Leto is known as honorable and even-handed. Baron Vlad is known as brutal and grasping. The armies of House Atreides are skilled and possibly rival the Emperor, House Harkonnen is known for having enough wealth that they can drown most of their enemies in resources. The traditional homeworld of Atreides is a lush ocean world that fed entire star systems with a carefully maintained environmental balance. Geidi Prime is an over-industrialized hellhole focused on heavy industry with a wrecked environment and a population made up mostly of slaves. In short House Harkonnen, are the bad guys and Dune makes sure you can't dance around that fact. 

On the surface, the Baron losing Arrakis is a heavy blow to his ambitions and a victory for Leto. Everyone with two brain cells however knows this is a giant trap that Leto and his family have no choices but to stick their heads into. This pulls Leto and Paul out of their ancestral homeland where they are unassailable and dumps them into a strange new world where they are foreigners come to extract wealth. A world that equates foreigners with House Harkonnen oppression. This leaves Leto and his entire family exposed and a target for overt or covert attack because if all the Atreides are wiped out... Well, there's nothing to be done at that point.

Leto's counter-strategy is to enlist the native Fremen, if he can make allies of them then he can turn the deep desert into a stronghold that even Imperial forces will not be able to overcome. Paul has to come of age in this tense minefield of power politics, shifting loyalties and ideologically charged moments. Because the Fremen have their own agenda and it's one that the Bene Gesserit have been subtly molding for years. Just in case someone like Paul needs it. Because Paul isn't just heir to one of the 10 most powerful men in the Empire. He's also a man who has been trained in the Bene Gesserit disciplines giving him abilities and powers that most men can't access. This also makes him unique in an unkind universe and he has to struggle to come to terms with his identity and what role his upbringing and abilities play in that. As well as what his relationship with the Bene Gesserit sisterhood and other organizations is going to be. 

Because he's not supposed to have these powers. In fact, he's not even supposed to exist. Lady Jessica was supposed to bear only daughters for a secret Bene Gesserit breeding program.  Instead in defiance of her order, she not only bore the man she loves a son but taught that boy secrets that men were not supposed to know. These secrets mean that Paul if he chooses to can manipulate the Fremen into following him because his powers let him assume the role of the promised Fremen Messiah. As the jaws of the trap swing shut on the Atreides family Leto, Jessica and Paul must make life or death decisions under increasingly bad conditions.  Here, the Fremen might become the difference between life or death. Will Paul embrace his powers and through them subvert Fremen society on a quest to win a generational feud and finally bring safety to his family? Can they even survive the closing of the trap and confrontation with not just House Harkonnen but even more powerful forces? Well, odds are you already know the answer to that but if you don't gentle reader, I encourage you to go watch the movie and see. 

Mr. Villeneuve gives us epic visas and powerful music to accompany an almost laser-tight focus on Paul and his family. This is different from other film adaptations which have tried to show the scope of the Dune universe. Mr. Villeneuve however doesn't seem entirely interested in that compared to his interest in the choices that a 16-year-old Paul has to make. Which to be fair, these are choices that drive the plot and are going to be important to... Every human being that lives at some point. This means in real part Dune Part 1 is a character study of Paul Atreides and an attempt to get inside his head during a stressful and pivotable moment in his life. This is also the moment where he has to decide to grow up and what kind of man is he going to grow into? Most of us don't have to make that decision all at once. Nor do we have to do it under the stress, or for the stakes that Paul does. It's a new and honestly refreshing take on Dune, marking itself out as very different from Lynch's film or the Science Fiction channel miniseries. 

There are drawbacks to this, however. We don't get to see the Imperial maneuvering or the scheming of the Bene Gesserit first hand. Even our exposure to the brutality and industrial savageness of House Harkonnen is limited. This intense focus on Paul reduces the scale of the epic and makes the universe of Dune feel, smaller. Which I honestly don't care for. I also worry that we lose context that people who haven't seen earlier works or read the book won't have. I suppose the box office will tell the tale on that. For myself, as usual, the movie will receive 2 grades, as an adaptation, I'm giving it a B. What it shows us is fairly true to the book and the heart and soul are in there, but man is a lot of meat chopped out here.  Gone is the mentat training for Paul, in fact, mentats are just, in general, shoved to the side.  This honestly bothers me because mentats are one of the most fascinating ideas in Dune.  There are several subplots that are just gone as well which is deeply unfortunate and leaves me feeling like they cut very close to the bone here. 

  As a stand-alone film, I'm giving it a B+. It's beautifully shot, wonderfully scored, strongly acted, and written well. There's a lot I could quibble with but in the end, it gives us a very well-done film. However, several shots could be cut and traded for better scenes.  I feel as Mr. Villeneuve for example spends to much time with long lingering shots of his lead actor staring off into the middle distance. You could have used that time to at least give me the dinner party or the conservatory! Seriously see this movie, see it in theaters if you can do so safely because I'm not sure the small screen can convey the sheer amazingness of the film. 

This review was posted a week ago on https://www.patreon.com/posts/dune-2021-by-57828169 for my patrons.  My ever-wise patrons vote for what gets reviewed and what theme months we pursue.  If you'd like a voice in that join us at the website for as little as a dollar a month. This Friday I'll be reviewing the Dune Graphic Novel Part I and I hope you'll join us for that.  Until then stay safe and keep reading!

Video: Vampires final thoughts.

Vampires vs The Bronx guest review

Vampires vs The Bronx

Privet Tovarischi!  For this guest review, in honor of Fangsgiving, we’re going to be looking at a lovely little film called Vampires vs The Bronx.  Now, this will not be a traditional review, where I talk about how good (or not) the movie is and give it a grade.  I wouldn’t be doing this if the movie were terrible, because unlike Frigid, I don’t hate myself {I don’t hate myself, I just have a very honest relationship with myself}.  I am possessed of Millennial Death Drive on occasion, but I don’t hate myself.  Instead, I am going to be using this film to talk about themes, in my usual openly communist way {Quick note: While I fully support freedom of speech and my editors right to believe as he does, his statements and beliefs are not reflective of the review series as a whole and should only be taken as his opinion :P}. 

The movie takes place in a thriving neighborhood in The Bronx, where a close-knit community, mostly people of color, actually live and work. 

Very early on, we are introduced to our main character, Miquel Martinez, who is called Little Mayor by his neighbors.  Honestly?  He’s a great kid.  He’s smart, a bit impetuous, cares about the community in which he lives, and is well-liked in his neighborhood precisely because he gives a shit.  His nickname is an endearment, not derision.  Which does not stop some shit-giving!  Oh no.  His mission in life is to try to keep the Prima Bodega open, because it’s fallen on hard times, and he practically grew up there.  See, the owner, Tony, basically opens his door to neighborhood kids and keeps them out of trouble, giving them a supervised place to hang out, provides  life-advice, and is basically the neighborhood omnibus uncle.  To do that, Little Mayor went and organized a block party to raise funds, basically to help Tony pay rent.  In the brief introductory period, Little Mayor notices that more and more of his neighborhood is being bought by a single real estate investment firm, and at the same time, people are just straight up going missing.  It should come as no shock at all that it’s vampires doing both things.  They are buying up all the real-estate, and they’re eating people.  

So that’s our basic set up.  Now, what this movie is really doing is talking about gentrification using the lens of vampires.  This shouldn’t come as a shock.  Vampires have, if you’ve been paying attention to prior Fangsgivings, often served as a stand-in for whatever social ills the author of a particular work had an axe to grind about {A common role for monsters but vampires seem rather flexible in this regard}.  Sometimes, this has taken the form of The Other (In various forms, from queer people to “savages” from other places), and have tapped into social anxieties surrounding those things.  However, in this late-capitalist hellscape we live in, housing security and the preservation of communities has become something of a problem.  

So, what is gentrification?  Well, gentrification is the process by which a poor area becomes rich, not because the people there become rich (that would be a different process called un-slumming), but because the poor people who live there are replaced by rich people.  This happens when, for whatever reason, the area becomes more economically desirable.  Maybe a stadium gets built, or a tech company buys up an office.  Property values increase, and when property values increase, property taxes go up and price the people who own their homes and businesses out.  In addition to this, rents respond to property values and not the actual costs of maintaining property because landlords are parasites who do no socially necessary labor but instead suck the lifeblood out of their tenants able to charge more for more desirable rental space in the local market.  This forces more people out.  Old buildings get torn down to be rebuilt into luxury condos, starbucks moves in where the bodega used to be, the smoke shop becomes a vegan cafe, the dive gay bar gets turned into an upscale gay bar with no leather night or gets colonized by straight people etc.  

In this film the vampires (who are all, hilariously and appropriately, white) are buying up the neighborhood to create a kind of feudal estate, like the old days, where they have control over the local government and economy and are thus able feed and reproduce at will.  Basically using the process of gentrification to settler-colonize a neighborhood “where no one [important] cares when people disappear”.

Now, Little Mayor is joined by two of his friends.  I’d say that his friend Bobby isn’t the brightest crayon on the box, but that would be unfair.  See, he’s poor, and he wants to not be poor, and in economically depressed communities with limited opportunities, this can lead to recruitment by gangs that offer quick cash and social status, and he’s starting on the road down that path {Which is interesting in and of itself because the research shows that most drug dealers make about minimum wage, it’s the dealers boss who makes bank.  So even drug dealing is a pyramid scheme in a lot of ways much like AMway or other comparable schemes (That is true, and most gang members have day jobs, but it’s fast and in cash.  Psychological trick.)}.  But in his heart of hearts, he’s a sweet kid.  Luis is basically the polar opposite of Bobby.  He sees his way out: through hard work and education, basically looking to Get Out rather than Get Paid Within the community.  He’s risk averse and bookish, and really doesn’t approve of Bobby’s tendency toward more immediate gratification {Which has its own risks}.

While hanging up flyers, Little Mayor ends up getting chased by a gang member named Slim, who is in turn killed by a vampire who had been stalking Little Mayor through the night.  Seeing this, Little Mayor runs to Tony’s Bodega where he feels safe and there’s a big strong dude with a baseball bat, and is followed in by the vampire (presumably still hangry or anxious about discovery).  This is when the other boys notice something is up, because the vampire doesn’t leave a reflection in any of the mirrors.  So they do what every young boy should do when confronted by landlords vampires… They read Mao watch Blade to figure out how to kick off a protracted people’s war and end up with a wikipedia article about the mass-killing of landlords with their name on it  kill vampires {Which is ironic because Blade disposes of a lot of the folklore regarding vampires, in order to provide more satisfying action}.  

Now, I am not going to spoil the entire plot here, that would be unfair, because you really should watch the movie.  However, there are some pretty obvious problems that these kids face.  The first is that there are three of them and they are all of thirteen and ill-equipped to overthrow the bourgeois state and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat hunt capitalists vampires who  control the government have bought the courthouse and appear to be a perfectly normal real estate investment firm, who have the backing of what Lenin called Special Bodies of Armed Men police on their side.

That means they have to convince their neighbors that capitalism is a system built on the exploitation and immiseration of the working class vampires are real {To be fair to the adults, once evidence is provided they don’t spend a lot of time refusing to believe but mobilize pretty quickly (Definitely, yes)}.  This is something of a tall order, because everyone knows that capitalism is just human nature vampires aren’t real.  The adults can see what’s going on with the gentrification, and they don’t like it, but for them, that is just the way the world is.  It’s just their turn to get screwed. They don’t have the context to realize that there are better alternatives and that the way of the world can be changed evidence necessary to convince them that the destruction their community faces is caused by rentier bourgeoisie vampires.

So of course, the three amigos try to prove their case and find evidence of what is going on, but this backfires and gets them in trouble.  Friendships start to fray, they split the party over the best way to cope with their economic and vampire situation.  So the question is, can they do it?  Can they overcome their differences and the deck stacked against them and be the vanguard party of the revolution that educates the working class into achieving class consciousness and rising up against the bourgeoisie convince their neighbors that they need to rise up and purge the vampire menace from their midst?  Or will they die martyrs of the revolution fail and end up at best watching their neighborhood get the life-blood sucked out of it literally and figuratively?  You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.  

I really enjoy this movie, obviously.  Marxism is only subtext because no one is hanging around reading Das Kapital, and it takes aim at not just at gentrification itself, but the white-supremacy that normalizes it like Lyudmila Pavelchenko taking aim at fascists in the Crimea.  However, my communist rambling aside, it is also a fun and strangely light-hearted romp with enjoyable well-acted characters who feel like real people.  That’s the really amazing part. Everyone involved in this production put on performances that made their characters feel like real living people, in a neighborhood that feels actually-lived-in.  

Green Text is your usual reviewer Garvin Anders

Black Text is your guest reviewer Dr. Ben Allen

Vampire Hunter D By Hideyuki Kikuchi

 Vampire Hunter D

By Hideyuki Kikuchi

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born on September 25, 1949, in Choshi, Japan. He attended Aoyama Gakuin University and trained under Kazuo Koike, best known in the west for writing Lone Wolf and Cub. Hideyuki Kikuchi released his first novel in 1982, Demon City Shinjuku which was adapted to animation in 1988. His greatest successes are most like the Wicked City series, Darkside Blues, and of course the subject of today's review Vampire Hunter D. He is considered one of Japan's leading horror writers and is certainly a prolific writer. Vampire Hunter D for example has 27 novels in the series, as well as anime, manga, art books, and various guidebooks, and more. Today we're looking at volume one. 

According to Hideyuki Kikuchi, Vampire Hunter D is heavily inspired by the Hammer Horror movies, specifically, the idea for D first occurred to him when watching the movie Horror of Dracula starring Sir Christopher Lee (May his Nazi-hunting soul rest in peace.). Which is another impact that Sir Lee has had on the world, which makes me sad to think we will not likely see someone of his caliber anytime soon. In fact, the first book is dedicated to Sir Lee, as well as Peter Cushing and the entire cast of the Horror of Dracula. Vampire Hunter D doesn't just draw inspiration from the Hammer Horror films but also from gothic films, westerns, science fiction, and folklore. Let's take a look at the setting and you'll see what I mean.

The year is 12,001 AD, sometimes 10,000 or so years ago humanity almost destroyed itself in a nuclear war (We’re still not through that filter, kids!). The vampires, seeing it coming, withdrew to bunkers deep beneath the earth and once the worst of it was over, they emerged, swept away what pathetic resistance the ragged remains of humanity could offer, and took over the world. For thousands of years, Vampires ruled unchallenged, calling themselves the Nobility and reforming the world as they saw fit (I swear on Lenin’s cat…). Through the use of dark science and magic, they created or summoned forth various creatures and beings from mythology and unleashed them on the world just because they could. They created marvels of super science beyond the hope of humanity to understand and even reached out into the dark void of space. They even rewrote humanity's genetic code to make it easier to prey upon us. They engineered us to forget the powers of garlic (one would think that they would have driven the garlic plant into extinction instead) and the cross, and if anyone rediscovered it, they were forced by genetic conditioning to forget it.

I'll admit I'm a bit confused as to why the cross would still injure vampires, as Christianity has been completely forgotten (Maybe it has nothing to do with the religious symbol, but the right-angle?  Like, the high-contrast right-angle raised in relief over a background behind it that is actually three-dimensional causes a processing problem in their brains or something.{Considering they live in squares and artificial environments where right angels abound… I’m thinking blindsight is not the answer here}). I mean, I'm a practicing Christian, I believe in the death and resurrection, and I would tell you that a cross is simply a 't' shape if you don't have any faith in it. The power of the symbol comes from the belief and faith of the people who use it. The Almighty could just as easily manifest himself in a common river rock for as special as the symbol is without faith. Also, if it's just the shape of it? Wouldn't that mean Vampires could be repelled by books or even wooden blocks with the letter t on them? They're just not as terrifying if they flop over every time they see the word the or tree or so on are they? 

However nothing lasts forever, eventually, humanity was able to create a rebellion that stuck. Slaying enough vampires to cause the majority to either flee, place themselves in deep hibernation in the dark bowels of the earth or withdraw to the wild frontiers of the world. There on the edge of human civilization, the last outposts of vampiredom squat in a collection of petty fiefdoms in hollow imitations of the dark glories of ages past. Immortals lost in crushing boredom and strutting in boastful vanity in the ruins of their own empty crumbling monuments of horror and savagery (Good.  Time to finish them off.{Still a bunch of them in space}). Unable to let go of the past or build a new future;  they instead slowly but surely become prey to a new breed of humanity, the hunters who roam the Frontier as mercenaries, lawmen, or even heroes seeking out the monsters that prey on humanity. These men and women slowly but surely push back the borders of degenerate inhumanity and make the world safe for a new human civilization. One that struggles to understand the scraps left behind by the predators it bested. 

Count Magnus Lee is one of the last members of the nobility stubbornly holding his sector from his castle fortress with his daughter Larmica as his only real company. Driven by boredom and perhaps something like loneliness, Magnus Lee decides not to kill a teenage girl he comes across one night. Instead, he'll do worse, he'll drain her slowly and turn her into a vampire and then force her to marry him. The lady in question, Doris Lang is less than thrilled with this idea, she hasn't been fending off the mayor's thuggish son, keeping her father's farm going and raising her little brother only to become the plaything of a thing 3000 years her senior. So she hires the strongest hunter she can find, a beautiful young man dressed entirely in black who only gives the name D. 

The novel takes us on a surreal journey through a world that has been utterly reshaped by the mad whims of a predatory upper class and driven to ruin and regeneration. As D, Doris, and Dan, the little brother in question, struggle to not only fend off Magnus Lee, but super-powered bandits, angry village mobs, the mayor's son, and the various monsters and supernatural creatures left littering the landscape by the nobility's cruel wholesale rewriting of the ecosystem. Through this, we see that D is a Dhampir, the son of a vampire and a human and an incredibly powerful one at that. While not invulnerable, he's so powerful that his father may have been the most powerful vampire of them all... Let's go ahead and talk some more about Dhampirs, shall we?

The word itself comes from Albania (Land of a quarter million bunkers.) and was originally applied to the children of vampires, and vampires, without distinction. The idea of vampires having children seems to be mostly from the Balkans among the southern Slavic peoples and there's a lot of variation in the myth. Some say that Dhampirs can practice sorcery or are born without bones, and others grant them various powers that can be passed from father to son. In popular culture Dhampirs usually have a lot of the strengths of vampires and few of the weaknesses; such as being able to roam about in the daylight and not having to fear the menu of an Italian restaurant. D is a lot like Blade in that he has all the powers of a predatory ruling class but instead chooses to use it for the good of humanity and the common people, even in the face of disrespect and bigotry. In D's case, his taciturn and stoic manner may also spring from the fact that he seems to have inherited his father's lifespan, which means he'll be riding his mutant horse and hunting monsters when everyone else has been dust for a thousand years (That would be a very lonely way to exist…{I’m not sure he has much of an alternative}). Well, unless something kills him first. 

I really enjoyed the novel, it has a strange but heady mix of bleak gothic tragedy and wild west style action. Hideyuki Kikuchi takes some pains to let us see this world as both an emerging human civilization pushing back the darkness and a crumbling civilization of vampires who can only remember a glorious past. That said he doesn't pull any punches about the vampire's predatory nature or try to romanticize the fact that they bloody eat people! Magnus Lee may be a person who is bowed under 3000 years of life and struggling with ennui, but he's also a monster who treats everyone else around him as an object for pleasure and amusement. This may be why he's suffering such deep ennui and boredom. Larmica is herself a bit of a tragic figure but she's also a bigot who's more offended by the idea of her father turning and marrying a human girl than his many crimes against the people around them (Gotta end her too.  Full Romanovization. {For the record I don’t condone murdering children because of their family name.  In Larmica case, it would because she literally eats people}). It's their very flaws that led them to their destruction, with D just having to be the active but inevitable agent of their doom. That said, there's a lot of telling when it comes to history and the book is heavy on exposition, which I'm not really a fan of. Because of that, I'm giving the novel a B+. 

I hope y’all enjoyed Fangsgiving, tomorrow our editor will be providing a guest review for us and next week I’ll wrap up with a video.  If you enjoy these reviews consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you’ll get a vote on upcoming reviews, events like a david lynch Dune watch together and other benefits for as a little as a dollar a month.  Hope to see you there, until then keep reading!

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Blade (1998 film) Directed by Stephen Norrington

Blade (1998 film)

Directed by Stephen Norrington 

It's the late 90s and Marvel is struggling, having declared bankruptcy and having several of its initiatives to rekindle the business fail. On the movie front attempts at using characters to gather a wider audience have led to three legendary failures, the 1989 Punisher film (which was described as boring!), the 1990 Captain America movie (which we will never talk about), and the legendary failure of Howard the Duck. Marvel gathered itself together for one final toss of the dice; both in comics by launching the Marvel Knights line, and in movies by making a deal with New Line Cinema for a film starring a little-known character known as Blade the vampire hunter. Let me talk about the comic book Blade before we get into the movie. 

Blade was created in the 1970s as a supporting character for the horror comic Tomb of Dracula, which Marvel created when the ban on Horror comics in general and vampires in specific was relaxed (Comic self-censorship follows a similar path as movie censorship.). Marv Wolfman created him in 1973 and he appeared in the 10th issue. Blade at the time dressed in bright colors sported an afro and was known for leading an all-black squad of vampire hunters and wielding knives made of carved teakwood (Okay, that’s actually pretty boss.). Now the teak wood blades make sense because you need to use a wooden stake in the comics. The rest of the vampire hunters didn't last long, however, as Dracula did what he usually does to vampire hunters, drain them dry. Which only served to intensify the battles between him and Blade (You killed obvious cannon-fodder friend number 2!  Noooo! {All things considered buddy under the current rules of fiction, you’re the cannon-fodder friend, are you sure you wanna invoke that trope?}). 

Despite his solo comics never really lasting, Blade proved to be the longest-lasting contribution of Tomb of Dracula to the wider Marvel Universe, outlasting even Dracula himself. Despite Marv reigning in Blade appearances, he kinda overshadowed the main characters as a rival for Dracula. Interestingly enough he wasn't a Dhampir but a well-trained mortal man, having been trained from a young age by a number of mentors who drifted in and out of his life (Oh come on!  Why can’t these kids have stable home lives and mentors?  This is not healthy. {Healthy people don’t decide to hunt monsters as their life’s work}). Despite his lack of superpowers he would go on to serve on superhero teams, show up in the Spider-man cartoon and always, always be on the hunt for vampires. 

The film re-imagined Blade from the ground up, with a lot of the input coming from Wesley Snipes and David Goyer. Blade was given a more 90s aesthetic, wearing a black overcoat and ballistic armor, his origin was reworked to let him stand toe to toe with super-powered beasts of the night. This also let him tap into something else but we'll get there. Instead of leading a team of hunters, he worked alone, as long as we didn't count his aging mentor Whistler, who was created wholesale for the film (Who is totally awesome BTW, and finally someone stable in poor Blade’s life.). This re-imaging was so successful and popular that it led to Marvel overwriting the comic character in favor of the film character; even having Morbius, another vampiric character, bite Blade in the comics to turn him into a Daywalker and grant him the powers of the film version (Wait, how does that work? Is this a kind of half-transformation thing where he either has to kill someone giving into his blood-lust, have sex with a vampire post-bite or in lieu of it [hot], or drink the vampire’s blood to go fully vamp? {Keep in mind that Morbius is a vampire created through SCIENCE! And not traditional means so the rules are different for him}). 

 Deacon Frost also appears in the comics but as an old man who killed Blade's mother after he was born. In the comics, he's a scientist who turned himself into a vampire via experiments with vampire blood, which only reinforces the need for an ethics committee (Where the hell is the IRB in comic universities?!  WHERE IS IT!? {Eaten by vampire scientists clearly}). He would duel with Blade and appear to be killed several times only to return each time through the powers of dark science or magic. The film re-imagines him as a young and hungry vampire resentful of how the elder “purebloods” of vampiric society keep trying to lock him out of political and economic power (And before anyone says anything, this is new bourgeoise vs old bourgeoisie, they should all get the choppy choppy {Normally I would find this debatable but they are all literally bloodsucking monsters here}). His plan is simple: he's going to use the leaders of pureblood society to ascend to godhood and become a vampiric god on earth. Then he'll use his vampiric powers to turn the majority of the population into vampires, overtaking pureblood society through a combination of divine might and sheer numbers. The film also comes up with the idea that some people are born vampires, which raises the question of how come there aren't more Dhampirs running around if vampires can sire offspring? (My guess is that when vampires fuck, they create vampires.  When a vampire fucks a mortal, or maybe someone who isn’t turned yet, it will create Dhampirs. {Which means all a Vampire has to do to create a squad of superhuman soldiers is seduce a couple of women and raise the children. Am I supposed to believe that vampires and humans just never have sex together?  Because Blade is presented as a singular event!})

The film itself was Marvel's first box office success and made a profit, making 131 million against a budget of 45 million. I know that by today's numbers that doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind this was almost 30 years ago and the market was very different then. Blade proved that Marvel heroes could be successful on the big screen, which would be reinforced in 2002 by Sony's Spider-man. It also began to kindle ambitions in Hollywood and within the halls of Marvel comics but that's a story for another time. Now, this almost went the other way, there were executives in New Line who were convinced that a serious action horror film couldn't work and wanted to rework Blade as a parody. With one group of executives actually going so far as to ask why not make Blade white (Fucking. White. People.). However, Norrington, Goyer, and Snipes managed to convince everyone to hold the course and we're probably better off for it (If the alternative was white-washing, yes.  Yes we are. {Or a parody, which was not something we needed}). 

Because the film itself is, in a lot of ways, the grand evolution of the 1980s action movie Snipe's Blade is unrelentingly stoic, expressing himself mainly through one-liners and physical action. The action is brutal and gory with blood and dismemberment everywhere. Blade tears through humans and vampires alike with a grand disregard for anything but achieving damage to his targets. This is summed up very nicely in the opening where Blade basically conducts a mass shooting at a vampire rave (In fairness, they were dancing in blood that was raining down from the sprinkler system.  They needed that mass shooting. {See next sentence}). The movie literally opens up with our hero attacking an unarmed group of dancers at a rave but gets us to cheer for him by showing that all of these people are brutal predators who are literally dancing in the blood of innocent people when he shows up. Subtlety is not one of the virtues of this movie. 

What it is profoundly good at is combining dialogue and visuals to tell various stories. By using Dr. Karen Jenson, a hematologist who Blade rescues on a whim, as our viewpoint character, we can be drawn into Blade's world by degrees. Each new revelation showing that elements we thought were innocent in prior scenes were actually rather sinister. I encourage everyone to watch the movie carefully, twice and realize that familiars (human servants of vampires) and vampires are hidden in the background of several scenes. Which creates a sort of feeling of initiation into a secret world while increasing the tension in the film. We also get a sense of various supporting characters' stories and histories this way, which is a very streamlined and efficient way to tell a story. 

The biggest complaint I have with that approach is that it limits the amount of characterization we can effectively do, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. There are several supporting characters who we're left asking “wait who was that person?” For instance, the teenage African American girl who appears in several scenes and then just disappears partway through the movie. We're left wondering if she had some relationship to Blade, just what her relationship with Frost was, and what is she even doing here? For that matter, much of the dynamics of Frost's minions are underdeveloped, like why does Quinn work for Frost? What's the relationship between Blade's mother and the blonde vampire heavily implied to be Frost's current lover? None of these are really important to the main story, so they're never gone into, left for the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own imagination (Which, for my money, is fine.  A movie is a kind of simulation of a real set of inter-relationships; and one that cannot always be fully explored in the run-time of the film.  It is after the movie is released that it can take on a life of its own in all of our heads and become more of a simulacra. {It would still be nice to know who the hell that girl was supposed to be!}). 

Everything that isn't about advancing the main plot is left pretty bare bone. The movie relies heavily on archetypes and brief interludes to provide characterization to the various relationships. For example, Whistler’s and Blade's relationship on the surface seems fairly 1980s macho; two badasses united only by a shared purpose, but is given more depth by scenes such as Whistler holding Blade's hand (Which is pretty much unheard-of intimacy for two unrelated men in the 1990s.) while he suffers through the application of the serum that keeps his bloodthirst at bay. Even the action tells the story of the plot, Blade can raid any part of the vampire world he likes and slay dozens of vampires with impunity but he can't clear or hold territory, always having to flee before the overwhelming numbers of vampiric servants mass in enough numbers to pull him down. While each vampire he kills likely saves hundreds if not more lives, the problem is there seem to be plenty more vampires to replace the fallen and Blade is locked into a war that has no end-state until the end of the film where the good doctor suggests that a cure is possible for turned vampires at least, which would allow a massive thinning of their numbers. 

Blade works on several levels that would later be tapped into by other heroes and that we see powering the ideas of various characters throughout vampire fiction. There is of course the standard wish-fulfillment element and power fantasy. There is also the idea of a monster that chooses to protect humanity instead of preying on it. The vampires of Blade continue the themes first set up in The Vampyre, Carmilla, and Dracula: being able to move through our society as privileged members of it (the 1% if you will) and use that very privilege as a camouflage for their predation. Wouldn't it be nice if some of them used that power for the good of society instead of stating their own selfish hunger? (Gee, it would be nice, but art imitates life, and it doesn’t happen.) I think that's what gives the Dhampir myth its legs and fuels a number of other heroic archetypes. 

Blade isn't a cinematic classic, but I do think it has an important place in history and occupies an interesting place in vampire mythology where, like Buffy, the hunter overshadows the monster and becomes the driving force of the story. If vampires tell us that we do not own the night and that there are dark forces both out in the night and within our own society that sees us as nothing more than cattle to be drained; Blade, Buffy, and other fiction in the same vein tell us there are those with strength and determination who can push back such forces and allow a better type of society to thrive. Which is a very modern way of looking at it perhaps. Since the film is an adaptation, it's gonna get two grades. First, as a stand-alone film, I'm giving it a B. The stark and bare-bones character work and world-building prevent it from reaching A status but the action, efficiency of the plot, and great pacing of the film propel it above average I think. Second as an adaptation... I'm actually going to give it a B-. While it did reimagine its main character from the ground up, it did so in a way that kept the core of the character intact and frankly improved and modernized Blade in a lot of ways. Either way, if you haven't seen it, give it a watch. 

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders