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Guy's often talked about his influences, which stem primarily from the boys papers of the fifties. He was also influenced by pulps and comics, though, and even produced one issue of his own comic, Adventure Strip Weekly back in 1976, the year he'd become a household name with Night of the Crabs It was a photocopied black and white A4 affair with Guy writing the stories, each a two page beginning to a bigger effort, and Peter Knifton contributing the artwork. It's hardly a professional effort, but it's actually rather interesting within the context of Guy's career. Most of the strips have meaning in Guy's wider career, because they featured characters who appeared in published novels and short stories, along with others who appeared in work that remains unpublished. Guy certainly cared enough about it to reprint it in 1992. The only differences are that he printed on both sides of the paper and added publishing details at the end. Here's a scanned copy with commentary. Just click on each image to open a larger copy. Alternately, here's a higher quality Adventure Strip Weekly PDF (25 MB). And just because he's dedicated enough to do it, here's a review (dlsreviews.com) of Adventure Strip Weekly by Chris Hall. Bamboo Guerillas
Bamboo Guerillas was Guy's only published foray into the war genre, at least in novel form. New English Library published the book in September 1977 and there are two variant covers. It's set in Japanese-occupied Malaya, where 'Jungle' Carter and his band of Chinese guerillas aim to rescue a group of nurses from the sadistic Colonel Sika. Guy pitched a sequel, Bamboo Traitor but it never got past the synopsis stage. Presumably his horror novels were selling too well for further distractions. In Search of the Hairy Giants
Given how many animals Guy has pitted against mankind in his many horror novels and his well-publicised interests in hunting and cryptozoology, it's perhaps odd that he hasn't yet combined these into a cryptid horror novel. Obviously, the closest he's got has been the set of werewolf novels which began his career, Werewolf by Moonlight and Night of the Werewolf, the latter initially only published in Germany. However there are obvious connections between novels like Caracal and non-fiction works like Hunting Big Cats in Britain. Just no bigfoot horror. Yet. The Case of the Flying Corpse
The Case of the Flying Corpse is a detective story featuring Raymond Odell, a character Guy used in a number of short stories that he published in his first book catalogue, Caerlaverock. Odell was a knock-off of Dixon Hawke, whom Guy also wrote short stories for in The Sporting Post throughout the seventies and during a return in the late nineties. Rebel Star
Rebel Star is a story about Chris Fox, a football mad teenager whose unlucky enough to go to a public school where rugby is the game of choice and football is banned. This was an adaptation of Guy's second novel, which exists in manuscript form and as typescripts but which has not yet been published. So far, these are the only two pages the public has to remember Chris Fox. A Man Called Saton
Guy's known for his horror novels only because that's what publishers were buying in the seventies. If he had a choice, he'd have written westerns and I own an intriguing piece that sort of suggests he did, though I believe it's a fictional piece. It's called An Ill Wind and it was apparently intended for Blackwood's Magazine, which published both fiction and non fiction. I'll write a separate piece on this 'story' but it appears to be autobiographical and relates the unnamed narrator's adventures as a freelance writer working for the Alpine Publishing Company, where he turned out eight western novels in as many months, before the receivers close the place down. He leaves with the eighth in his pocket in lieu of pay. Why do I mention this? Those eight western novels featured a man called Saton. Assuming An Ill Wind is fiction, only in the late nineties did Guy actually get the opportunity to actually publish one, when Pinnacle bought The Pony Riders. Then again, that didn't feature characters called Tortilla and Saton. Rat Mania
And talking of dubious character names, welcome to Rat Mania and Tom Katt. It would be easy to read this either as another animals on the rampage horror story or as a light-hearted dig at James Herbert's The Rats, which had begun the trend in 1974 from which Guy was about to benefit with Night of the Crabs. However, this is a graphic adaptation of the story, Ratmania (originally called The Rats), which appeared in Guy's self-published anthology, Pulp in 1972! Or is it? It's been thirty plus years since I've read Pulp and the name may be coincidental. By the way, the first speech bubble on the second page is unreadable. The dialogue is, 'This is a job for you, Solomon. A state of emergncy has been declaired in most countries of the world. This man rat must be found and destroyed at all costs. Your code name will be Ratmaster.' |
Last update: 4th June, 2019
