New podcast episode: Ray Bradbury and EC Comics

Time for a new episode of Bradbury 100!

This time I review the new book Home to Stay: The Complete Ray Bradbury EC Comics Stories, and dig into Ray's connection with the famous EC Comics. Click here for a preview of the contents of Home to Stay, courtesy of publisher Fantagraphics.

Ordering links for Home to Stay: Amazon US - Amazon UK - publisher page.

In the episode, I also refer to Jerry Weist's Bradbury an Illustrated Life. You can find that one here: Amazon US - Amazon UK.

And learn about TheAutumn People here - and Tomorrow Midnight here.

You can find the old Ray Bradbury Comics in lots of places, such as this one.

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 38 - Ray Bradbury and EC Comics

 

 

 

 

Please subscribe to the Bradbury 100 podcast - it's totally free on all platforms. Where to find it:

 

 

Main platforms:

 
Apple Podcasts  - Google Podcasts - Soundcloud - Spotify

 

 

 

Other platforms: 

Audible - Bullhorn - Castbox - Deezer - Listen Notes - Player FM - Podbean - Podcast Addict - Podcast Index - Podchaser - Podfriend - Podlink - Podtail - Stitcher - TuneIn

Bradburyesque... 2

Some current and forthcoming books with a touch of Bradbury about them:




Old Mars, edited by George R.R. Martin and Garner Dozois, is an anthology of new stories set on the old red planet. Not, Martin says, the pre-Mariner real Mars, but the pre-space age, science-fictional Mars. The book is released in October from Bantam... and a sequel, Old Venus is already in the works.

Contributors include Phyllis Eisenstein, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian McDonald, Michael Moorcock, Melinda Snodgrass and Howard Waldrop.

On her Facebook page, Melinda Snodgrass wrote "It's a very retro book. It's Mars as it was imagined by the pulp writers. Oddly, I ended up writing the Bradburyesque story." So there you have it: while some of the stories might be more aligned with Edgar Rice Burroughs or even H.G. Wells, at least one of them is officially Bradburyesque!

Another book with some Bradbury content is "50 Girls 50" and Other Stories from Fantagraphics. This collects a number of comic strips by Al Williamson, originally published in the old EC Comics. The contents include Williamson's adaptations of  Bradbury's “I, Rocket” and “A Sound of Thunder”. It's not the first time these have been published in book form, but it's good to see them being made available again.

Found on the Web

The blog Panel Patter has an interesting short review of the comic book collection series Ray Bradbury Chronicles. These are largely re-collected and re-assembled adaptations of Bradbury stories from the Topps comics, which in turn were a mixture of new material from comic artists such as Richard Corben, and old material taken from the 1950s EC Comics.







The blog Book Aunt reviews the Leo & Diane Dillon-illustrated edition of Bradbury's Switch on the Night, along with other illustrated children's books that might be considered "thoughtful".




It's not often that I would bother to post a link to a religious website, but ironicschmozzer's weblog has an interesting sermon built around Dandelion Wine!



Bradbury is listed at number 3 in this top ten of writers who have published fiction in Playboy.



Finally, Canadian-Armenian actor Garen Boyajian, best known for a role in Ararat, has announced that he is developing a film based on Bradbury's Death is a Lonely Business.

RIP Al Williamson (1931-2010)...and Ballard on Bradbury

You have probably heard by now that Al Williamson has passed away. Williamson was a legendary comic artist who first came to prominence through EC Comics, which is where he did some great work with adaptations of Ray Bradbury stories.

If you do a Google search, you will find plenty of obituaries of Williamson, but I found this one the most interesting because it is full of illustrations chosen from across Williamson's career. There's even a Bradbury in there.



Over on Ballardian.com is an essay by James Pardey on J.G.Ballard's early SF novels and illustrator David Pelham. It includes Ballard's thoughts on Ray Bradbury as a pioneer of "inner space", a label which is frequently attached to Ballard's own works.



And finally... Fahrenheit 451-style book-burning in the age of the iPad...

Les Longues Annees, et autres

The French-language website Mars & SF has some details of a 1984 French publication called Planete Rouge, which seems to be a collection of French editions of the old EC Comics adaptations of Bradbury stories. The site carries a few page reproductions, from which I recognise the stories "The Dead Towns", "The Million-Year Picnic" and "The Long Years" (see left), among others.

If your French is as weak as mine, you might appreciate this Google translation of the page.



The website Conceptual Fiction has an insightful review of Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.

And further to my earlier post about a Fresno, California, stage production of Fahrenheit 451, here is a review of that production.

Speaking of stage productions, Terry Pace is staging three Bradbury productions in Alabama this year, as announced in this news story. The productions by his Pillar of Fire company are by way of celebrating Bradbury's 90th birthday. Other 90th birthday plans are firming up elsewhere, and I hope to post news of some of these in the coming weeks.