Time to get out there and win the War on Christmas. With any luck it will be vanquished!
As we kick 2017 in the pants and say goodbye it is time again to stuff your stockings with some terrible cover GIFts you can’t return. Time to start my shopping and pink slip the elves who won’t be needed again until this time next year. I think the North Pole is above the Arctic Circle in some EU country so Brexit was going to give them the boot anyway.
Have a happy holiday and we’ll see you in a couple weeks with our Old Year Sum Up!
And click here to read the back cover
Good Show Sir Comments: A Holiday Play in Four Acts:
Act 1. Incoming sled and reindeer, missiles ready, prepare to intercept!
Act 2. Don we now our gay apparatus!
Act 3. Slay bells ring!
Act 4. Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1939!
December 22nd, 2017 at 8:37 am
If I knew more about guns, then I could be OUTRAGED that the artist for “Christmas Slaughter” had either got Gun X not quite right, or drawn something generic instead of accurately reproducing a specific gun.
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:34 am
#1 “Aim this sucker right and Santa will kiss his ass goodbye!”
#2 OK, who spiked the punch?
#3 “No, no, you’ll have to redo it, the title’s actually Christmas Laughter!”
#4 Satan’s parents didn’t have high hopes for their son’s morals when they named him.
December 22nd, 2017 at 1:18 pm
1. “We’ve been shooting Reds and Yellows all day (oh boy am I sleepy) …”
2. Here comes Santa Claus, Here comes Santa Claus, Here comes Santa Claus …
3. I’m telling you … Die Hard is a Christmas movie!
4. Kathy Griffin’s New Year’s gig after Anderson Cooper fired her.
Merry Xmas to all!
December 22nd, 2017 at 1:38 pm
The Man from C.A.M.P. . Goodreads. 10 books. Merry XMAS.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/86401-the-man-from-c-a-m-p
December 22nd, 2017 at 2:05 pm
Gay meant something different back then. It meant festive, as in: “You have a pair of really gay balls there, Don Holliday.”
@fred – Oh no. It’s part of a series. I’m afraid we’ll have to disqualify this cover.
@THX 3. Good one! Same problem happened with Vonnegut’s Laughterhouse-Five
December 22nd, 2017 at 2:17 pm
1. The book was originally called ‘Not This August’ and the US satellite involved only ‘defeats’ the Reds after America had been occupied for a decade or so. Topical. And worth every penny of two bob.
2. You can’t exactly get them on false advertising charges.
3. Again, making it ‘August Bank Holiday’ wouldn’t affect the story one bit. Except he’d have a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hat.
4. Who goes to a strip-club and says ‘Miss, you’ve lost one of your shoes’.?
December 22nd, 2017 at 3:37 pm
#1 we’re gonna take down Santa Claus, CAAAAANN YOOOOOUUU DIGIIIIIIIIIIT!?
#2 This is one instance when it is okay to say, “that is so gay”
#3 Fallout 4 Xmas mod?
#4 “Hey Buddy! My eyes are up—-oh, nevermind.”
December 22nd, 2017 at 4:20 pm
1: When you have to stay late at work on a holiday . . .
2: “Don we now our GAY apparel . . . Fa-la-la, fa-la-la, fa-la-la!” Well, that is without question the gayest Christmas-related thing I have ever seen.
3: So, evil alien dressed as Santa on a killing spree? Reminds me of something I saw on TV.
4: That is one wild New Year’s party.
December 22nd, 2017 at 5:50 pm
1. “Hello? Hello? Where the fuck is Santa? What? Drunk again? But the rocket sled is loaded and ready to blast off. What? Santa’s loaded too? Very funny. Don’t tell me Rudolph is gonna have to pilot again this year!”
2. I’m forever blowing bubbles . . .
3. “Stupid humans. Think I’m Santa Fucking Claus because of the suit until I walk up and just blow their fucking heads off!”
4. Sigmund Freud discovers symbolism.
Happy Krimble, GSS!
December 22nd, 2017 at 6:54 pm
When I peruse this site, I often consider whether I would want to read the books. The “Christmas Eve” cover and blurbs made me think that this would be the book I would be least interested in.
Then I scrolled down. “Christmas Eve” started to look pretty good.
As for “Christmas Slaughter,” I’m not one of those people who enjoy reading slice-of-life stories about their childhood Christmases.
And from the link that fred posted, it looks like “gay” did NOT mean something else back then.
December 22nd, 2017 at 7:38 pm
It looks like The Man from C.A.M.P. has his own Wikipedia page:
The meaning of the acronym C.A.M.P. is never given, but the series’ protagonist, Jackie Holmes, a gay, seductive and capable international secret agent, allows that “the C might stand for sucker.”
In any event, have a Merry Christmas all, and as the Flintstones used to say:
“Have a yabba-dabba-doo time
A dabba-doo time
We’ll have a gay old time!”
December 22nd, 2017 at 9:41 pm
1. What IS the yellow blorch in the background? And, seeing as this is from Digit Books, is the digit in question the middle finger?
2. I uh. Um. Truth in advertising. That is quite literally gayer than the San Francisco Pride Parade.
3. When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles go bad. And that back cover blurb is somewhere beyond histrionic. Did the copywriter’s head cause that explosion?
4. That guy wants an even closer look at those impressive thighs, which he’ll regret if she’s an assassin, IYKWIM.
——————————–
@fred: That link indicates they were actually written by Victor J. Banis; sadly the link to his website has been taken over by straight Asian pron. However, Wiki has a nice entry on him, “the godfather of modern popular gay fiction”, which you can get to through @Alice’s link.
Here’s a DELIGHTFUL interview with him: http://efanzines.com/EK/eI6/index.htm
Several SF links mentioned therein.
The books sound like breezy pop fun, and Banis seems to be a nice fellow who’s still writing both gay and straight books.
December 22nd, 2017 at 11:34 pm
Christmas greetings to one and all from the overlords and minions here at Good Show Sir. Thanks to all of you who take the time to stop by and have a go at it every day. This place wouldn’t be the same without you!
December 23rd, 2017 at 4:41 am
@TW and thank you for giving us this, the best place on the interwebs
December 23rd, 2017 at 7:32 am
Happy festive season to all. I’ve had a swell first year here at GSS.
Looking at this post again (as no doubt we all will the next couple weeks), I note that the more salacious covers have much better quality of art than the other two supposedly srs bzness covers.
I’m not sure about the face of the Saucy lady, but everything else is realistically rendered. And the Gay is perfectly 50’s-60’s pop style except for the content; had the couples been mixed-gender, it’d look right at home in Playboy of that era. Straight participants and a bit less naughty and it would have been used in a magazine ad for Scotch or cigarettes or something else extremely “Mad Men”. (Minus the creepy elves, which oughtn’t to have been in this version either!)
December 24th, 2017 at 6:26 pm
Here it is, Christmas Eve, just like the cover. Well, not that things are blowing up outside my window while I peruse the internet with headphones on. But otherwise just like the cover.
Wishing everyone a merry Christmas. I have one question. If you troll the ancient yuletide carol … would you get banned?
December 25th, 2017 at 11:14 pm
Well, I got the perfect GSS Christmas gift, the recent book Paperbacks from Hell, about the horror novels of the 1970s-80s. Loads of crazy covers, a lot of them sci-fi because there was plenty of crossover, and I recognised some from here (The Little People gets a glowing recommendation). If you got a gift token and are wondering what to buy with it, you could do a lot worse – the text is witty and informative, too.
And please – someone send in William H. Hallahan’s Keeper of the Children! Won’t somebody think of the Keeper of the Children?
Hope you all had a nice festive season…
December 25th, 2017 at 11:19 pm
Also, horror novels of that era were wont to do fancy things with the covers that might have trouble showing up here: cut out bits that reveal another cover behind it, lots of foil, even 3D covers! I’ve learned/remembered a lot reading this today.
December 26th, 2017 at 6:41 am
@Tor M—Might be better just to deck us all with Boston Charlie.
December 26th, 2017 at 3:06 pm
@THX – Some gift-giver knows you well.
December 26th, 2017 at 11:25 pm
@BC: Walla Walla Wash, and Kalamazoo.
@THX: Clearly a book that would be well-loved here. Hopefully someone can find more tomes you’ve read about. Good Show to whoever gave you that.
For some reason, back in that time, the cutout/foil/embossed covers appeared mainly on horror and romance. Why? Answers on a postcard.
I’ve just read the Amazon reviews for Keeper of the Children. Love the one-star review. Even a 5-star review says “I also think the picture of the mad bear on the cover is hilarious”. Although all I’m seeing on the two covers listed there are cats who are evidently angry because they no haz cheezburger.
Oh wait, I’ve found one with a teddy bear who seems to have beheaded himself and is now ax-murdering a rat! And one with evil dolls. This is another book that got several terrible covers.
Here’s one, plus many other eye-poppers:
http://picssr.com/photos/85385780@N03/page6?nsid=85385780@N03
Best review: https://www.tor.com/2017/02/10/terrorist-toys-william-hallahans-keeper-of-the-children/
Am still a bit wibbly-wobbly after last night. “Laugh hard, run fast… be kind.”
December 27th, 2017 at 1:14 am
@GSS-xn: It’s the headless teddy bear I meant! He looks furious! Furry-ous?
According to this book, cut out covers became “a thing” after Virginia Andrews’ publishers started using them. I suppose they’re kind of romance novels in a sickening way.
Last night: “Oh, ber-illiant!”
December 27th, 2017 at 1:16 am
Just checked out the link to the Keeper of the Children review: Grady Hendrix also wrote Paperbacks from Hell. He knows his stuff, and he’s an author of fiction too… wonder what the covers are like?!
December 27th, 2017 at 10:14 pm
@THX: I think we were all supposed to be scared of Headless Teddy, but it didn’t work. You can practically hear his head saying “Oh bother”.
Grady Hendrix wrote several bad book reviews in that series (at the Tor link). They were good. I read 3-4 of them, and recommend them to tide GSS members over till we get new stuff here. He’s obviously spent a lot of time in the trenches of awful paperbacks.
He’s got a review of http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=2217
“Black in Time” https://www.tor.com/2016/03/18/race-riot-in-the-time-stream-going-black-in-time/
I looked at his Amazon page and his covers are a delight. Check out the one that looks like a cheesy 80s VHS tape. A friend has HORRORSTOR to lend and I think I’ll take her up on it. And the early-Peanuts-style “Li’l Wimmen” looks swell.
Thanks for bringing all this to our notice, THX! Grady sounds like quite the kindred spirit. (one. of. us.)
December 30th, 2017 at 4:37 am
@BC (#19) and GSSxn (#21):
o/~ Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alley-ga-roo! o/~
(Yeah, I’m an old guy. What of it? 😉
December 31st, 2017 at 3:09 am
@Hammy — Geezers unite!
I’ve been reading Grady’s horror book reviews at tor.com. THX, do any of those overlap with the content in your Xmas gift?
They definitely have the same spirit as GSS. I’m reading about 5 a day, trying not to binge the lot. He’s got some swell turns of phrase. At least one had author in comments.
January 1st, 2018 at 6:26 pm
@GSS-xn: Yes, there are mentions of many of the titles online at his pages there in the Paperbacks from Hell book, though it’s more of an educated overview alighting on books and authors he finds entertaining (apart from the “true” Satanist ones, which he finds deplorable).
I think it’s worth getting the PfH tome if the subject captured your interest, but if you just want to casually dip into the realm then his site is probably best.
January 2nd, 2018 at 10:53 pm
@THX: Maybe I’ll find a used or library copy when I’ve the attention span for cogent analysis. I’ve been working my way backwards through the reviews at Tor and those were in fact what got him the book contract; makes sense that a book would be more in-depth than blog posts.
In the meantime, I do encourage all here to look at the blog reviews tagged with “Freaky Fridays”. They are extensively “footnoted” with related links. He knows how to do research. And they’re ever so snarky, with excellent similes. Even the tags at the bottom are funny, reminiscent of our own Tag Wiz.
January 4th, 2018 at 1:42 am
@B’mancer (3): It was CNN what fired her, not Anderson.
So this year holding down the fort with Mr. Cooper was his pal Andy Cohen.
Twitter called it Hashtag AC 2.
Less crude, but considerably gayer.
The Man From C.A.M.P. would have loved it.
I’ve run out of Grady Hendrix posts. Hurry back, GSS!
Oh wait, I only read the ones on tor.com
There’s more on his site.
Huzzah!
January 4th, 2018 at 5:36 am
I don’t want to nit pick on this but wouldn’t “Happy Holi-gays.” Be a better title?
January 4th, 2018 at 8:29 am
The beyond awful copy on the CHRISTMAS EVE cover wins the prize in this bunch.
“Truly amazing story of the future!!”
– Billy, 7 years old
January 4th, 2018 at 2:18 pm
@GSS ex-n00b –
Back tomorrow!
We’re just too busy playing with our Christmas presents! 😀
January 6th, 2018 at 8:22 am
Grady Hendrix actually commented here at least once, long before my time, on
http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/?p=4340#comments
on the crab cover later seen in the re-enactments!
GSS is everything, and everything is GSS.