The Cosmic Courtship Progress and Future Project Update

Haven’t backed The Cosmic Courship by Julian Hawthorne yet? There’s still time!

This is just a quick update that we wanted to make since it has been a bit since our last post here.

First of all, wow, thank you all again for all of your support! 

Michael and I have taken a look at some boxes and shipping options, and I think we’ve figured out what boxes we’ll be using for most of our shipping. We’ve got a game-plan for how we’ll be boxing and labelling, but with our piece-count, there’s a chance this could take us several days to get all of the boxes out when everything DOES arrive.

Our printer is being really stingy with setup codes at the moment, so rather than spend several hundred dollars setting up pre-proof copies that we know we’ll have to make changes to [re-uploading the files updated with backer information in the acknowledgements section], we’re going to wait until we have the final interiors, just in case they don’t waive setup costs. 

The only real reason to have done a pre-proof run was judge how best to ship the books, but since the dimensions are fairly close to books we’ve already published, we were able to make our selections based on those. 

So, here is what needs to happen to ensure a speedy fulfillment of this project:

• After the kickstarter ends, we will send out surveys right away
• You will have 7 days from the time the surveys go out to respond with how you would like to be acknowledged; if you do not reply within 7 days, we will use your Kickstarter handle on the acknowledgements section. 
• We’ll get the book plates to Robert when the Kickstarter payment is processed so we know how many to send him. He’ll send them back and Michael and I will sign them.
• As soon as payments are successfully collected and we’ve added names to the acknowledgement page, we’ll upload the final files.
• We’ll order one proof set to make sure everything is a-ok.
• We place a massive order of books and start boxing.
• Once the last box goes out, we’ll send out a link to all backers for the digital copies.
• Once that link goes out, we’ll upload the text file of The Cosmic Courtship to Project Gutenberg.

At that point, the project is more or less “done” and out the door.  We’ll be able to get started on the next Cirsova Classics titles just about as soon as this goes out [be sure to keep an eye out for the Cirsova Summer 2021 issue and Jim Breyfogle’s The Paths of Cormanor in the meantime].

The contracts are signed for the next project, and we’ve actually got the text for the first volume in the can.

New Anthology Project Edited by Misha Burnett

Misha Burnett has recently announced a new anthology project through Cedar Sanderson’s new Sanderley Studios imprint which he will act as editor for.

The focus of the anthology will be stories for young readers. I’m guessing and hoping this means classic boys adventure in the vein of RL Stevenson with some rip-roaring swashbuckling of Dumas and relatable levity of Twain. And maybe the princesses and aliens of Burroughs and Kline.

Submissions are looking for stories that will appeal to both teen boys and girls.

I am looking for exciting adventure stories that showcase (but not preach) virtues, suitable for boys and girls in their teens.

Submissions open on Mar 15th and will run until May 15th.

The ideal story would be between 5,000 and 10,000 words and be action oriented. All genres considered, but exotic settings preferred–Science Fiction and Fantasy, but also Wilderness Survival and Historical Fiction.

For details, see the post on Misha’s website!

Also, be sure to check out Misha Burnett’s Endless Summer, out now in print, ebook, and audiobook!

Comic Review: Otis Stein

Recently, I was sent a review copy of Matthew “Skinny” Vealey’s indie horror comic, Otis Stein.

Otis, a strapping young redneck, is the husband of Mary, a reformed cultist. Their daughter tragically died of cancer, and her medical expenses have left them ruined.

They’re about to be foreclosed on, Otis blows himself up in a moonshining accident, and Mary’s old “associates” come looking for her!

Mary’s attempt to use her occult arts to resurrect her husband is interrupted as the cultists close in. The cultists have their own designs on Otis to use him as a host for dark supernatural powers! Will the evil forces hold sway or will love triumph?

Otis Stein is a book that I appreciated more on subsequent reads. At first, it seems rather rough and simple, but there’s actually some nice depth and nuance that you’ll catch reading it more than once. The art is ugly, but in a way that is suited for the genre and story; “grotesque” may be a more accurate term. It gives the book a throwback vibe to some of the more obscure black & white indies of the 80s. The art does what it needs to for the story, and it does it well enough.

The pacing of the book is a steady launch ramp, starting with a slow burn setup, but never really wasting time getting where it’s going. The turns from mundane to macabre to monstrous in the three acts of the book are nicely done and reminiscent of Swamp Thing’s origin in House of Secrets [though much more grisly]. Much of the last section of the book is pure grisly action-horror, where the art style really has a chance to shine.

To be honest, at first I wasn’t impressed by Otis Stein, but I think I just didn’t know what to expect and failed to appreciate it on its own terms. I think it’s easy to read a single issue comic and not really appreciate it on the first read and then toss it aside and forget about it. But with Otis Stein, the more I come back to it, the more I find that I really do like it and the more it grows in my esteem.

If you enjoy horror comics or gore comics or even romance comics, you might consider picking this one up.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SkinnysComics

Also, if you haven’t already, there’s still time to back The Cosmic Courtship on Kickstarter!

Reggie Byers to Resurrect Shuriken

You heard it here first, folks!

Reggie Byers just stopped by the Cirsova blog to let us know that he plans to digitally reprint the first four issues of Shuriken and intends to launch an ongoing.

I hope that Marvel/Disney does not fight him over the rights to the character. While Malibu/Eternity owned the character, the Shuriken in Ultraverse/New Exiles was an entirely different character [Brittany Chien; chinese instead of japanese; some superficial similarities, but otherwise a distinct character], and Byers’ Kyoko Shidara never appeared in any Marvel titles.

It’s kind of strange… Shuriken is a property that I called “mediocre,” [and admittedly, the art and writing are sufficient but not great], but there’s something about it that spurred a fervent interest in it. I’ve got ALL of Shuriken now [except for #9], multiple copies, even, as I tracked it all down.

Contrast that with Billy Tucci’s Shi, which I checked out because of the Kickstarter and picked up a bunch of back-issues from a bargain bin. While it’s VERY similar and better technically in almost every way, it just leaves me feeling ‘eh…’

But this girl? I love her.

One of the few pieces of comics “memorabilia” I own and am incredibly proud of is an original portrait Byers did of Shuriken. It was listed only as “anime girl” and I got it for a song. I’ll have to scan and post it one of these days.

Meanwhile, I would be remiss to not mention that Cirsova Publishing is reprinting another cool black & white 80s indie comic, Badaxe. The first issue is reprinted in our spring issue and we’ll be serializing it over the next two issues later this year.

Quick Review of Soulfinder: Black Tide

Recently got in my copy of Doug Ernst’s newest installment of his Soulfinder series, Black Tide.

With everything Tim Lim has going on, Doug had to switch artists, but with Matt Weldon taking over pencil duties, it still has excellent artwork.

The core of Black Tide is a nautical horror/monster story; a cultist in the navy absconded with a nuclear sub and its crew and is looking for an incorruptible who sank to the bottom of the ocean. Without offering up too many spoilers, they go out to sea, encounter the cultist, fight the monster.

The most impressive part of Black Tide may be its gorgeous packaging; I don’t think I’ve EVER seen a comic presented as nicely as this–multi-textured casewrap hardcover, heavy-stock pages, gold-foil leaf, sewn in ribbon. It’s REALLY nice.

The comic itself was good, but I don’t think it was quite as good as Demon’s Match. This might just be a matter of taste, but the first Soulfinder delved a bit deeper into the characters, and I think that’s where Ernst’s work really shines. In Black Tide, the characters are there but the circumstance of their mission has to carry the book, because there’s not much new that we see in regards to their backgrounds.

If I had any real complaint about Black Tide, it’s that the story didn’t have enough space to properly breathe and unfold. The setup is one which should allow for a greater buildup of menace and suspense. But I also understand that there’s always the fear with the graphic medium that decompression not only leads to pacing issues, it inflates costs. That said, I think that Black Tide needed more pages and more time to let the tension between the Soulfinders and the crusty old sea captain simmer. I also think that a longer story would have better suited the ultra-deluxe presentation of this volume. Strangely, while both Demon’s Match and Black Tide are 56 pages (I actually had to check), Black Tide felt substantially shorter.

Fans of the first Soulfinder will enjoy this–I did–but I don’t know that Black Tide is a good jumping on point for new readers, particularly at its price. The production values certainly justify the price point, but some readers may want more story for their money.

You can get Soulfinder: Black Tide direct from Iconic Comics.

Review of Spring Cirsova from Castalia House

Nathan over at Castalia House has a review up of our new Spring 2021 issue! Be sure to check it out!

The Cirsova Spring 2021 issue is out now in ebook, paperback, and hardback!

$10k Stretch Goal Met! + Sneak Peek at Scenes of Hawthorne’s Romances

Thanks to everyone’s support, we’ve hit our $10k goal and will be starting a Cirsova Classics imprint focused on bringing previously unscanned and uncollected Public Domain pulp works back into print in modern formats. I know that Michael and Robert are already chomping at the bit to get started on the next project. We may even be able to begin as early as this fall [roughly as soon as we get The Cosmic Courtship out the door]. Most likely the next work we get out will be the uncollected Hawthorne novel, Sara Was Judith, and with the novella A Goth From Boston as a companion volume. We’ll try to get both of those by mid-2022. 

Hawthorne was fascinated by the concepts of astral travel, out of body and out of time experiences, hypnotism, and clairvoyance.  These play a central role in several of the short stories of his that I have read and is the means by which the heroes travel to Saturn in The Cosmic Courtship.  While I have not yet had a chance to read Sara Was Judith, it’s not hard to guess from the pitch that it will be about some form of clairvoyant astral discorporation. 

We’ve got an idea or two for the third project/fourth book, but haven’t quite settled on it just yet.  We’ll let you know when we do.

A few people have asked about illustrations–unfortunately, The Cosmic Courtship, like many stories published in All-Story, did not have accompanying illustrations [many of the well-known later pulps that were fully illustrated tended to be monthly or quarterly]

We are, however, including a facsimile reprint of Scenes of Hawthorne’s Romances in all formats but the pocketbook [it’s just too small, sorry!], which IS lavishly illustrated.

Below is just a small sample of the work, and you’ll understand why we went with a facsimile approach–also why, even though the text is extant, we felt it worth including in its original presentation, as it is available nowhere else. 

Guest Post: God’s Teeth! A Review of David Quammen’s Monster of God, by J. Comer

Larry Niven’s masterpiece Ringworld includes a conversation which alludes to SF world-making in a mildly funny way. Louis Wu’s shipmate Teela Brown objects to the idea that the makers of the Ringworld would bring only “safe” animals to their artificial world; she asks “What if the Ringworld Engineers [who built the huge Ring] liked tigers?”

In Monster of God, the science writer David Quammen, author of Song of the Dodo, travels through five landscapes seeking the last large predators and comes to what he calls a “science fiction ending”. 

Most readers of Cirsova don’t come here for the science, and some will question the review of a zoology book on this site.  Nevertheless, worldbuilding for fantasy, gaming, and SF authors usually includes descriptions of animal life, as well as the role played by predators in myth, art, and the story itself. 

Good world-makers, such as Hal Clement, craft all from top to bottom; some more careless authors simply throw a slew of carnivorous beasts at their heroes without wondering who eats whom. On Earth, the top predators which have survived the end of the Ice Age are central both to ecology (as keystone species) and to myth (as gods, as beings created by God, or as the enemies of gods or heroes).

The four ‘monsters’ of the title are lions in India, crocodiles in Australia, bears in Romania, and Siberian tigers. In each case we look both at the beasts and at the humans who have to deal with them: avoiding them, fighting them, hunting them, worshipping them.

The book reflects on the past as well as the future: like the makers of the Ringworld, we are building a habitat which is more and more artificial.  In our future, will we like tigers? Will we like them enough to give them enough space to live freely in the wild? And will we like them enough to tolerate them occasionally killing us?             

What can we make of this sojourn through lions, and tigers, and bears (and crocodiles!)?  On one level, the travel story is light reading, like a Bill Bryson story with more science asides.  The careful reader will note that the science is a very readable introduction to topics like trophic collapses and keystone predators (this section could make a whole fantasy campaign in a setting such as Nicholas Eames’ or Lois McMaster Bujold’s worlds, where losing one species, even a mightily nasty one, causes all heck to break loose).  On another, the SF writer could see here a reply to Niven’s question.  Well, what if they liked grizzly bears? Heinlein’s dragon-infested forest in Glory Road is an example of a good use of these concepts; there are many others. 

The book is a lesson, an enjoyable one, in how to use animals such as Burroughs’ banths or the “grezzen” in Buettner’s novels.  The thoughtful author or GM will profit from reading it.  Recommended.