I recently found a beat-up old copy of Classics Illustrated #90, Green Mansions, at a flea market and decided to give it go to see how it handled the source material.
Ultimately, this version of Green Mansions manages to be the worst of both worlds. It follows the plot of the book more accurately, but is shallow and matter-of-fact, so you lose the romantic beauty of Hudson’s prose and just end up with “white girl burned alive.”
They manage to turn it into a “Well, THAT was a thing that happened!”
Green Mansions is one of those stories I’m deeply ambivalent about. The Nestor Redondo comic is one of the most beautiful works of sequential art ever created.
Hudson’s book is beautiful, too, verging on sublime, but it’s also savage, ugly, and cruel. About what becomes of a man when he has the sublime at his fingertips and it’s taken away from him.
The primitives and savages are primitive and savage for a reason: they are less than human; they cannot understand the sublime; they are faithless and treacherous, cowardly and superstitious.
But when he loses Rima, Abel himself becomes savage, and less than human. He goes full Little Ralph: they had to be taught a lesson. Even the old woman who was friendly with him to the end.
Anyway, the art of the Classics Illustrated version isn’t good enough to make up for the fact that you’re losing beautiful prose. The “If you enjoyed this, be sure to read the book!” at the end of Green Mansions felt hilariously tone-deaf. While Redondo managed to capture the beauty and allure of Rima and the world of Green Mansions, I don’t really see anyone walking away from this comic feeling the need to read the book.
By the way, there’s a week left on Ken Lizzi’s Cesar the Bravo! If you want some swashbuckling action with a smidgen of romance and big heapings of intrigue, you won’t want to miss this fantastic book!
That means we can begin fighting for our stretch goal, which is to add artwork from Jesse White as interior illustrations.
Also, those of you following on X may have noticed that we’ve been announcing a lot of sales and giveaways as we have been pulling our titles out of the KDP Select program.
We have some really big news coming down the pipeline that will explain this, but suffice to say for now we cannot offer Amazon exclusivity on our digital titles going forward.
Magic isn’t what it used to be… Forget robes and staffs and incantations out of dusty old books. This is the modern world, and magic is big business. Industrial magic has revolutionized every aspect of life in Dracoheim, from the cars we drive to the power that lights our homes.
Magic, which was once a novel and mysterious force, has been systematized, standardized, and turned into a vocational science, necessary for day to day commerce with the realms of Nightmare. It is the job of Magus Leonid Vetch, one of the last of the old breed of “wizards,” to prepare young men attending Leeshore Technical College for careers in magic.
And as magic has become part of everyday life, so too has it become a part of commonplace criminal activity. Erik Rugar, a special agent for the Committee for Public Safety, is tasked with investigating crimes involving magic and denizens of Nightmare visiting or residing in Dracoheim County.
The retail edition of Dracoheim Confidential will be hitting Amazon on 7/15. Also, Brandon is working on the audiobook for Dracoheim Confidential and Small Worlds, so it will be available to backers who got them as add-ons soon, we hope. We got the first 5 chapters of DC in; we’re just waiting for the final three stories and front and back matter.
Michael Tierney is on Substack, now, so if you want to follow along for Wild Stars news, that’s one of the best places to do it. I myself have just recently finished my first round edits on the final Wild Stars novel, Wild Stars 12: The Star Harvesters, and I can assure you that he sticks the landing. Once Cesar the Bravo is wrap, we’ll be putting out the collected edition of The Superior Griefs, along with Omnibus Volume 2.
We have art roughs in from Anton Oxenuk for the cover of Adrian Cole’s Dream Lords Legacy that will be out in 2026 to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the New Dream Lords, and they look gooooood!
At the start of this month, we began accepting submissions from past contributors; we will hopefully have money to at least put together a 10th Anniversary issue for 2026, but based on recent sales numbers, we see very little reason to continue the magazine beyond this milestone other than for our own edification and to support a few of the series we’ve been publishing in its pages. Our last three issues still haven’t cracked 100 sales yet; used to be the 100 number was pretty easily cleared in the first month or so, and then there’d be a long tail, but last year’s fall issue has just broken 100 this month, and that’s with a cover story and interior art by a living legend. I’ve always been pretty open that ~300 units is our minimum break-even mark on the magazine, so I think we’re past an “If you believe in fairies, clap your hands” moment. Uh, anyway, if you were a past contributor who DID NOT receive an invitation to contribute and you want to send us something, please reach out. If you are not a past contributor and did not receive an invite, sorry.
Don’t let that gloom and doom about the magazine get you down, though. We still have a LOT of plans going forward:
Mighty Sons of Hercules Vol 2, Various
Dream Lords Legacy, Adrian Cole
Wild Stars 9-12, Michael Tierney
Untitled JD Cowan Horror/Thriller
prospective manuscripts from a number of regular Cirsova authors
Cirsova 