The Life Eaters...The Upturned Stone

[Ted the dog]

any RI'ers read this?<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401200982/002-4474402-9660058?v=glance&n=283155">www.amazon.com/gp/product...e&n=283155</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>it's a graphic novel titled "The Life Eaters"...I bought it a few months back, read it, liked it, and I haven't had a chance to pick it up again. Basically the book is about an alternate history of WW2 where right before D Day, the allies suddenly come face to face with the living embodiment of the norse gods. <br><br>yeah, it's pretty trippy.<br><br>To make a long story short, the Nazis figured out, by occult means, how to summon the norse gods into our reality and use them against the allies. so the story kinda spans a few decades, up into the 60's I believe. it's pretty interesting...a lot of creepy implications towards the end of the book about mass ritual sacrifice being the explanation as to how the gods came into our reality....a few lines in there where one of the main characters is sitting on a submarine with Loki (who is the one norse god that decided to side with the allies), and he's kind of looking him up and down and he mentions something like, "...a lot of people say they're not real gods, that they're fake...some people even say they're aliens..."...pretty much right up the alley for a lot of folks on here, IMO.<br><br><br><br><br>The illustrator of The Life Eaters, Scott Hampton, who is an amazing water colorist, also did a book a long while back (maybe early 90's?) called "The Upturned Stone"...where a group of boys living in the 1960's come across a giant pumpkin that grows from the grave of an unnamed child. Basically 10 years prior, a hunter found a dead child in the woods near whatever town it was that these kids lived in...the child had been stripped, tortured and then killed...if I remember correctly, he was beheaded. So the people in the town bury the child, not knowing who he is, where he came from why he was dead and how his body ended up in the woods.<br><br>Eventually, this giant pumpkin sprouts from the grave of this dead unnamed boy....all the boys in the particular group of boys featured in the story feel it's bad luck to take the pumpkin for jack-o-lantern purposes (the whole thing takes place during halloween), but they do it anyway.<br><br>The father of one of the kids, carves the pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern, and the mom bakes the insides into a pie. the children eat the pie while watching an old horror movie....and then all of them start to have vivid nightmares that seem like fragments of a bigger story. <br><br><br>looks like it might be made into a movie...although I suppose this could be a completely different story called "The Upturned Stone":<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455825/">www.imdb.com/title/tt0455825/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

[Sepka]

I vaguely recall reading a science fiction story like this once, long ago, which IIRC was told from the viewpoint of one of Odin's ravens as they flew throughout the world gathering information. The Nazis had gained power through mass sacrifices of the Jews, Slavs and Africans, pretty much depopulating those parts of the world. <p></p><i></i>

[Ted the dog]

Sepka-<br><br>yeah I think the comic is based on a short novel from the 70's or 80's....because what you described about the mass sacrifices is pretty much how the comic goes. you must've read that same novel. <p></p><i></i>

[Rigorous Intuition]

The Amazon link made me look up the author's website. He's posted his short story upon which it's based, entitled "Thor Meets Captain America":<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.davidbrin.com/thor1.html">www.davidbrin.com/thor1.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=rigorousintuition>Rigorous Intuition</A> at: 12/1/05 4:49 pm<br></i>

[Ted the dog]

Jeff-<br><br>Yeah when I saw it, I thought of RI right away...had to get it. <br><br>If you can find the other one, "The Upturned Stone", it's worth picking up as well.<br><br>The Upturned Stone has hints of pedophilia and torture (not in a glorifying way or anything like that)...I wouldn't say it's about RA, necessarily....but it gives off that kind of a vibe when viewed through a "high weirdness" lens. <br><br>it's a very unsettling book.....and Scott Hampton's kinda loose, yet tight water color style suits it perfectly. <p></p><i></i>

[banned]

...Thor and Odin are hanging around Valhalla chatting about the good old days when Thor says he's going to go back to Earth and see what's been happening since the twilight of the old gods.<br><br>He ends up in New York City and wanders into a kinky sex club where his unusual garb is a big hit, especially with one woman he thinks is totally hot. They drink, they dance, then without even speaking to each other split for her place where they screw all night. Before dawn, off goes Thor back to Valhalla.<br><br>When he tells Odin, Odin says it wasn't really fair to this poor girl, she had no idea Thor was a god and that's why he could keep it up all night. Now she'll keep going back to the club looking for him or someone like him, it'll ruin her life.<br><br>So Thor goes back to Earth, to her place. When she opens the door, still tousled from their romp, he says "Look, there's something I have to tell you--about last night--I'm really Thor."<br><br>She says "Thor? Tell me about it! I can't even thit down!"<br><br><!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :rollin --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/roll.gif ALT=":rollin"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>

[rapt]

Woooo - Hooo Banned that is a goodun. I'm howling - thanks for improving my mood. Gotta memorise it so it rolls off the tongue in a droll manner. <p></p><i></i>