The Ricochet Reviewer: Books, Movies, and Comics

  by Alan Burt Akers (AKA Kenneth Bulmer) Dray Prescot is called to the planet Kregen once again for unknown purposes by the mysterious Star Lords.  There he becomes involved in conflict between two religious groups that are committed to each other's destruction.  "The Suns of Scorpio" (Italian) As always, he pines for his beloved Delia.  "The Suns of Scorpio" (German) Kenneth Bulmer (Alan Burt Akers's real name) writes a lively Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche, though it tends to be rather unfocused.  Kenneth Bulmer There are plenty of action-packed adventures, but it suffers from the lack of narrative drive. However, it's still a fun, quick read and Bulmer is good at world-building.

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Writer: Steve Gerber Layouts: Rich Buckler  Artist: L. Dominguez Morbius gets a triple whammy: The sun is rising, a burly cat demon has him pinned, and he has just learned that his beloved Martine has turned against him. Morbius makes his escape. Or, at least, he thinks he does. Balkatar resumes the attack but, responding to a mysterious summons, departs with Morbius as captive. Taken to meet the king of the cat people in the Land Within, Morbius receives a surprising offer. King Gerark explains how his people were created from house cats for the amusement of sorcerers. They have built a culture but are threatened by the crisis of overpopulation. Refusing the king’s command for him to cull the population, Morbius flees, but his thirst compels him to do what his morals would not allow. The response he gets suggests that King Gerark’s plan was not well thought out (not that it made much sense to start with). Morbius is left for dead as he drifts into the...

Halloween Reviews 2026 by Max Brooks A collection of survivor testimonies compiled by a United Nations investigator after humanity has narrowly survived a zombie plague.  Author Max Brooks consciously borrows the oral history format from Studs Terkel’s The Good War, using that structure to provide a scope that a conventional narrative novel probably couldn’t manage.  Max Brooks Instead of following a small group of protagonists, the book moves across continents, cultures, and institutions, creating the sense of a much larger historical record.  Soldiers, refugees, bureaucrats, and politicians each contribute fragments of a bigger picture.  Brooks thinks through the implications of the scenario seriously.  "World War Z: The World War of Zombies" (Italian) Different political systems, cultures, and geographies respond in very different ways, turning the novel into a thought experiment about institutional failure, bureaucratic inertia, and how societies handle unco...

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Director: Tod Williams Writers: Michael R. Perry and Christopher Landon and Tom Pabst, story by Michael R. Perry Stars: Sprague Greyden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Seth Ginsberg, Vivis Cortez, Jackson Xenia Prieto, William Juan Prieto When their home is ransacked, the Rey family (Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, and Molly Ephraim) installs a security system with video cameras in every part of the house just in time to capture the paranormal events centering on their young son, Hunter.  I love the shaky-cam, docudrama genre, and I enjoyed the first film, but this one fumbled the ball.  It's not a complete disaster; the way its story dovetails with the plot of the first is quite clever.  Unfortunately, this one is too much foreplay without enough payoff.  It also stretches credibility too much at times in order to put certain events on screen; I don't think a teenage girl would talk into a camera the wa...

  HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2026 Writer: Steve Gerber Artist: Gil Kane Inker: Vince Colletta  Letters: Tom Orzechowski Sent as a bloodsucking assassin by an occult priest who has taken hypnotic control of him, Morbius is shocked to discover the identity of his target. Although outrage over the atrocity he has been commanded to commit allows Morbius to break the spell, his own intrinsic bloodlust cannot be so easily dismissed. (Although the addition of Gil Kane to a book’s creative team almost always improves it, I must say that Paul Gulacy in the previous issue depicted Morbius’s hunger with a desperate savagery that Kane doesn’t even approach.) His prey, however, is not as helpless as he thought. She is able to manifest a future version of herself. Defeating (and feeding on) the warrior woman seems to cause injury to the child. Before Morbius can rush her to a hospital for a transfusion, a group of mysterious cowled figures intercept him with promises that they are her only hope. The...