Tales of Syzpense #31
The Time Harlan Ellison Ran Me Down, Coming in '24 from Syzygy, and the Ghost of Christmas Spinner Racks, Part 2
I was thinking about Harlan Ellison recently.
Which isn’t exactly a recent thing: I greatly miss Harlan and his wife Susan. In fact, in the same way people reference George Carlin whenever anything he postulated in a past routine is proven to have been prescient, I think of Harlan. Both were guys who saw through the bullshit and raged against the machine, and both would no doubt be profoundly disappointed but not surprised by the goings-on in today’s world.
But none of that is what got me thinking about Harlan this past month. Rather, it was a good remembrance, thinking about the fifteen or so years I spent in the company of he and Susan. What got me reflecting on this was writer J. Michael' Straczynski’s recent announcement of the release dates for the new editions of Harlan’s two Dangerous Visions anthologies, as well as plans for the long-promised-but-forever-tied-up third volume. Along with a Greatest Hits collection, 2024 looks to be a great year for getting Harlan’s works back in front of people in a big way.
Here’s an interview with JMS from November where he talks about the Greatest Hits book as well as the Dangerous Visions collections.
So all of this got me thinking about Harlan again. And one thing in particular…
…the Time Harlan Ellison Ran Me Down.
I accompanied Harlan to Las Vegas for a Star Trek convention in 2014. He hadn’t done a Trek con in a long time but we’d recently published the adaptation of his City on the Edge of Forever script, and he wanted to go sign copies.
Vegas cons can be pretty exhausting for anyone — just walking from hotel elevator banks to convention ballrooms can take an hour. And Harlan was old and not in the best of health. So the hotel provided an electric Rascal scooter for him to tool around on.
He and I were sharing table space at the con. He brought a lot of his hardcovers and paperbacks, and I had plenty of Star Trek comics and graphic novels. The Saturday of the show, I arrived at the table far ahead of the show opening so I could organize our books.
I laid everything out, making displays with the piles of books, adding the signage, and generally organizing everything nicely on the table. I wanted it presentable when Harlan and Susan rolled in.
As I worked, the doors opened and the line of fans waiting to see Harlan started to grow. And grow.
I took a seat behind the table, talking to people and keeping an eye on the aisle for Harlan.
An hour after the show started, there was a buzz. Here he comes.
Now, Harlan was never really a morning person and certainly not in Vegas after our late night on Friday with Penn & Teller after their show. He appeared a bit groggy as he scooted down the aisle. He didn’t yet have his convention “game face” on.
He pulled up in front of the table. Not perpendicular to it, facing it, like his Rascal and our table were going to play a game of chicken.
Harlan needed to back up a bit to then angle the scooter toward the gap between our table and the vendor next to us. A simple thing, really—just throw the scooter in reverse, give it a little bit of throttle, and then he could come join me.
Which would’ve worked great, had he put the scooter in reverse, and also if he’s just gently throttled the thing.
Instead, he mistakenly put it in drive, squeezed hard on the throttle and Harlan shot forward, the front of the Rascal impacting the table. Knocking it into me. Knocking me and my chair over backwards. The table continuing to fall forward, its edge slamming into my chest, a fraction of a second before all the neatly stacked and arranged books dumped off the table and onto my head.
Which would’ve been enough of an indignity. But making it all worse, I was trapped on my back, still basically contoured to the now-prone chair, the table pinning me to the ground.
A few fans stepped forward, mostly just to gawk. I said, “any of you reach for your phones rather than helping me up aren’t getting a goddamn thing signed.”
They helped me up. Luckily, I never did see any pictures from this collision, so it’s hopefully faded into peoples’ memories in ways it’s never left mine.
Harlan, a bit unsteady, didn’t seem fully awake enough to put all the pieces of what just happened in place. He backed up the scooter with Susan’s help, and then he came around the now-righted table, took his place next to me and started signing books as Susan and I worked to reorganize the stacks of books. And so the day went on. Harlan never referred to the collision. He never had a chance to, the line of fans was long.
We broke in late afternoon to get a bite to eat. It was only then, six hours after the incident, that Harlan looks me in the eyes and goes, “hey, kid… did I actually run your ass down this morning?”
I had to tell him that yes, you did. “I wasn’t sure you noticed,” I added.
He just gave me a sly smile. But then he paid for my meal, so all was forgiven.
Anyway, that’s part of what I’ve been thinking about Harlan Ellison recently. And thinking about that weekend has me missing him all over again.
The Ghost of Christmas Spinner Racks, part 2
Last week, I profiled one side of my office spinner rack and its plethora of Christmas-related covers. Since then, thanks to Jordan Hart at the Los Angeles Comic-Con, my array of holiday-themed covers has grown by a couple more comics, too. We’ll get to those in later installments. But here’s side 2 of the rack as it’s currently sitting:
I always appreciate a good mix of cover approaches, from a skull-faced Santa on the cover of my favorite issue of Bizarre Adventures (beautifully painted by Joe Jusko) to an all-ages Rudolph cover from the first half of the 20th century to a gun-totin’ Santa on the Spectacular Spider-Man cover and beyond. And if Santa was real, the EC Comic included here would be an original and not a reprint, but alas. Then again, the original EC comics were too wide to fit in this rack anyway, so maybe I’m better off…
Syzygy in 2024
Well, in the first quarter, anyway.
In January, my 100-page The Colonized will be out. Final Order Cut-Off for this one is Monday, December 11, so anyone looking to grab a copy from your local comic shop can give them the Lunar order code 1123IM229 and they’ll order you one.
It’ll be in stores on Jan. 17. If you prefer a signed copy, I can help you with that as well.
February sees the launch of The Cabinet. Issue 1 is up for pre-orders now, and the below ad for issue 2 will be in next month’s catalog, but you can let your retailer know to pull the whole series for you, too.
Also in March, the trade paperback collection of Tales of Syzpense, featuring all four chapters of Ashley Wood and TP Louise’s Les Mort 13, as well as the 4 parts of Dreamweaver by Nelson Daniel and me.
And then coming in April is a new&old series by TP and Ash, presenting some new stories and past stories alike on the same great newsprint paper as The Enfield Gang Massacre. The perfect paper for Ash’s art and colors. More about this one to come but for now, We’ll just say that it’ll be an ongoing series called 7174AD, and here are the first covers:
And for May? The launch of a new series we’ve been working on for quite a while, one I’m very excited about finally getting out in the world since it’s something special. More on that one and other such plans in early 2024…
As the year-end lists flow steadily right now… I’ve not yet done. I don’t know that I will. If you need a solid recap of music, movies, and books from the past year, Joe Hill’s most recent Escape Hatch newsletter has some great picks.
So while I may or may not dig deep on all the things I enjoyed this year, I can say that it wasn’t until December that I saw my Movie of the Year.
Oh, there were some great ones throughout, but nothing else I saw had the emotional resonance of… Godzilla Minus One.
Before I caught it, nearly everyone I trusted had seen and raved about the film. Which usually sets expectations too high and leads to an inevitable sense of “ehhh, it’s good but not that good.”
However, this one really is that good. While the Godzilla scenes are amazing, filled with power and energy and chaos in ways none of the recent Godzilla movies have been, they’re also not the best parts of the movie. The human characters are so human, and the movie isn’t a big monster movie at all, it’s a meditation on the folly of war and post-traumatic stress and duty versus sacrifice, and the palpable sense loss so many characters experience brought me to tears three separate times.
Which isn’t to say that it isn’t also a big monster movie and, in scenes like the above shot, a blatant but effective riff on Jaws, but the humans matter in this one in ways they never have in a Godzilla movie. The action scenes are jaw-dropping. The emotionally wrought personal moments, even moreso. It’s a stunner that fully rewards the big-screen viewing experience. A great way to end the year.
I saw Minus One last night. So good!
And when we catch up imma have to run a Larry Niven Harlan story by you...ah!