Category Archives: Aliens

Book Review: ‘Day for Night’ by Stacey E. Bryan

Illustration by Henry Chamberlain

Damien Hirst, the bad boy of art famous for displaying sharks in art galleries, once asked his 6-year-old son which he would prefer in his bed, a girl or a zombie. The boy instantly replied, “Zombie!” That is a crude and random example, I know. But perhaps it makes a bigger point about our collective fascination with the macabre, the unknown…and sometimes that is made most clear from a child’s point of view. That brings me to “Day For Night,” a new novel by Stacey E. Bryan. It has zombies of a sort. And it even has a shark! Like my example, there’s a fine-tuned crude and random vibe to this book.

This is very much a Los Angeles tale. Bryan indicates any pause as a “beat,” reminding us we’re in Tinseltown, full of daily theatrics and scripts coming out of everyone’s ears. We also get a lot of local flavor with characters living out in Brentwood, Culver City, and Marina Del Rey. There’s much talk about the well-hidden Toluca Lake. Everything seems to converge for a time at Sepulveda Boulevard. Plus numerous movie references not the least of which is Francois Truffaut’s “Day for Night.” An old tattered poster for the film decorates the apartment laundry room our main character, Rae, finds herself in at the start of the book.

At first, we don’t know if Rae is caught in the throes of an anxiety attack but she readily declares she is experiencing the end of the world. Is she perhaps an aspiring actress? Yes, she is. But what she describes next leaves much room for further speculation. Rae witnesses her neighbor Annie levitate up above the tile floor. Annie blacks out just as Rae throws her yellow bra at the glowing force surrounding her friend. By the time that Annie wakes up, it’s too late to rationally explain to her that something most supernatural (thwarted alien abduction?) has just occurred. Annie completely missed it. Rae experienced the whole thing!

And so our story unfolds alternating between typical Angeleno angst and unexplained phenomena. It’s a wonderful balancing act that Bryan maintains. Basically, half the novel favors events more grounded in reality and then, as the weird stuff pushes its way to the foreground, you get a more mature version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Rae is in her thirties and, like her counterparts has had time to become more hardened and jaded than Buffy. Rae is a tough cookie recovering from quite a lot of rough scrapes, especially the day a tiger shark got too close and chomped off some of Rae’s fingers.

Bryan is totally in command of her story and has fun teasing out moments for her main character, Rae. Funny internal monologues give way to sudden outbursts followed by the latest development in Rae’s bumpy journey. Along the way, she encounters romance ranging from comical to intense. Throughout, Rae discovers a tapestry of connections that sustain her and help her grow ranging from the mundane to the sublime.

“Day for Night,” a novel by Stacey E. Bryan

Bryan has mastered that same melding of the everyday with the supernatural that has appealed to legions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans. The pithy exchanges between Bryan’s characters crackle with hard-won insight. It is insight mixed with harsh reality…and the movies. This is L.A., after all. It’s a mix of gumption that just might be enough to take on vampires and space aliens.

“Day for Night” is published by Vagabondage Press. You can find it on Amazon right here. And you can find Stacey at her website right here.

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Filed under Aliens, Book Reviews, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Horror, Los Angeles, Satire, Supernatural, Vampires

Advance Review: ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT #1 by James Stokoe

JAMES STOKOE’S ALIENS

The much anticipated Aliens comic book by James Stokoe, published by Dark Horse Comics, will release on April 26th. ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT is going to be one of the comics highlights for 2017. Let’s take a look.

Page from ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT

James Stokoe has a way of drawing with his light and curved lines gathering up an intoxicating level of details. You could very well tell a whole story just from one panel: the way the wrinkles hug a young woman’s flight suit; the curious waft of steam rising from her cup of coffee; and, no doubt, the cryptic slogan emblazoned across the mug she holds. Now, that means something. Is it here just for irony or perhaps more? We’ll just have to see. Welcome to the first issue of ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT, story, art, and lettering by James Stokoe, published by Dark Horse Comics.

GEOF DARROW VARIANT

Dark Horse provides us here with a shining example of their inventive and daring approach to creating work for a franchise. With Aliens, it’s a dance we readers want to engage in before we get to the monsters. The whole look and feel has to settle into place. We want to gradually get to know the characters. With James Stokoe (Wonton Soup, Orc Stain, Godzilla: The Half-Century War) we have an artist/writer with the passion to engage with each trope and build up something totally enthralling and new.

As we begin this issue, we have the classic set-up of a lone survivor on a rust bucket of a space station. Who is he? What happened? What happens next? Where’s the monster? All valid questions and we get to a lot of them. Wassy, short for Wascylewski, is a chain-smoking hardened soldier. He is willing to keep his head down and do his job. That’s a good plan until things get complicated. Suffice it to say, there’s an incident. Oh, it starts out small but then it builds.

Page from ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT

Character development is really fun and solid here. This is a young crew. Our Captain Hassan comes across as impulsive, sort of a scruffy version of Captain Kirk. Well, sort of. Hassan seems to be on unsteady ground. There’s definitely a lot of unpredictable energy here. This is a crew that seems to already be on a short fuse to begin with. Any of the crew members we meet, perhaps with the exception of one, could prove to be Hassan’s equal, and rival. At least, that’s the sense I get from this dynamic.

I think Stokoe is a total natural at what he does. This is a guy who just loves to draw and to tell stories. The colors are gorgeous. The palette of light blues and oranges is a refreshing alternative to brooding dark greens that we usually associate Alien stories with. I also really appreciate the lettering. Word balloons have a nice organic feel. The lettering itself could actually be hand-drawn. It sure has that nice crisp look that a pro at hand-lettering can achieve. This whole first issue is quite a beauty and no reason to believe the rest won’t be just as stunning. Can’t wait for more!

ALIENS: DEAD ORBIT #1 is available as of April 26, 2017. For more details, visit Dark Horse Comics right here.

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Filed under Aliens, Comics, Comics Reviews, Dark Horse Comics, Ridley Scott, Sci-Fi, science fiction