CHICANONAUTICA MEETS MARVEL MEETS MAYA

Modern corporate pop culture collides with the Maya at Chicanonautica over at La Bloga.

It’s about the Marvel Cinematic Universe:

Prince Namor, the Submariner:

The shaky Maya/Atlantis connection:

Luchadores:

And more luchadores:

BLACK EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

This is as much a note to myself as to all of you. A new edition of George S. Schuyler’s Black Empire is out! It’s fantastic! The earliest example of pulp science fiction written for a black audience. It’s the great granddaddy of Afrofuturism, NeoHoodooism, and chock full of dangerous visions. Not only that, it’s badass sci-fi like no other! I’ve got my copy and am wallowing in it now.

 

What are you waiting for?

FIGHTING SLAVERY WITH THE CUBAN AMERICAN JULES VERNE

 

Luis Senarens, the Cuban American Jules Verne, keeps amazing me. Not only has he turned out to be a Latinoid pioneer of both science fiction and pulp fiction, but he introduced interesting ideas that were ahead of his time and were not what you’d expect from well over a century in the past. His Frank Reade Jr. Exploring Mexico in His New Air-Ship had me thinking about strange variations on steampunk.

So, when I saw that he had a book called Fighting the Slave Hunters; Or, Frank Reade Junior in Central Africa, I had to get it. And I was not disappointed.

It begins with a man named Van Dyke showing up in Readerstown, “No prettier town in all America,” where Frank Reade Jr. has workshops where he manufactures his inventions. Van Dyke tells the inventor that slavers are capturing a tribe in Central Africa and asks for help in ending their plight.

Frank, as always, brimming over with idealism, agrees to do it, bringing along Vendetta, an armored land vehicle that bristles with weaponry.

Could this be a prototype for Afrofuturism? We’ll, not quite, after all it was written in 1903 . . .

When they arrive in Africa, they have to use electric weapons against the M’bokis, “a fierce and warlike set who are hand in glove with the villainous Portuguese.” Rather like the cannibals Dr. Belsidus faces in George S. Schuyler’s  Black Empire. (Holy synchronicity! It’s about to be reprinted! Get it! It’s a real synapse scorcher!) 

However, they are not the people who Van Dyke wants to rescue. That would be the Mamboulis, who have “attained a point nearer to civilization than any other African tribe.” And are “far from being black. Indeed, their skin is almost as white as my own . . .”

Yes, we have here one of those mythical, light-skinned African tribes that were common in the works of H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a lot of other adventure fiction. They can also be found in movies made as late as the 1950s. The reason for this melanin adjustment is probably similar to why Senarens wrote these stories under the pseudonym “NONAME.”

If this all wasn’t enough, they come across a new colony that are menaced by the M’Bokis. They are Irish. Their “New Erin” is described as an “Irish utopia.” Africa is seen as the Dark Continent, an unused, undeveloped void open to colonization.

When Frank’s Irish sidekick kids Pomp, his black counterpart, about what Africans would think about all these Irish crowding them out, the black man shoots back with: “All the educated culuhed people gwine stay back in the United States. We jus’ leaves our cast-off things fo’ de Irish people.” 

You’d think Pomp and Barney would have more to say about the situation, but the publisher–and the readers–were more interested in an epic battle between the slavers’ armada of pirate ships and Vendetta’s electric and pneumatic guns.

Barney does admit in the end, “I jes’ likes Africky, I does!”

And I can’t help but wonder, how the New Erinites, the M’bokis, the Mamboulis, and the descendants of the slavers would have gotten along over the next few generations. What kind of Central Africa would develop? What brave new worldbuidling . . .

CHICANONAUTICA HELPS CHICANAS AND AZTEC GODDESSES INVADE POP CULTURE

Chicanonautica celebrates V. Castro, over at La Bloga.

She wrote a novel about Tlazolteotl, the Goddess of Filth and Depravity:

 

And one about everyone’s favorite gal from Aliens:

Because a little Santa Muerte goes well with your dystopia:

Haven’t you noticed?  This stuff is taking over the world:

ANNIVERSARY JAUNT 2023

We started at Kiss the Cook. I had the special, a chili and beans omelet. Delish.

Having survived our Covid Christmas, we headed north. Snow dusted the mountain tops as a bomb cyclone closed in on the California coast, bringing rain that would catch up to us soon.

We stopped at Walnut Canyon. It was cold and snowy. The Island Trail was closed. No climbing down into the Sinagua cliff dwellings this time.

Then on to Sedona, which was below the snow line. Low clouds gave it a Shangri-La feeling.

Breakfasted at the Coffee Pot. Three buckwheat pancakes are enough for me these days.

Then it was to Prescott and the Hassayampa Inn. The clerk told us that our room was on her favorite floor, the fourth, where the ghost of a woman who killed herself in 1927 “lives.”

Down Whisky Row, I got a T-shirt at The Palace (“The Oldest Bar in Arizona”) where the likes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday used to hang out.

No visit from the ghost that frosty night.

In the morning we had coffee in the lobby while Cab Calloway played on the overhead. We had the whole, spacious Art Deco joint to ourselves.

Soon we were back home, which, as usual, looked different in the new year.

CHICANONAUTICA GETS CAUGHT IN THE CHICANO/LATINX CROSSFIRE

Chicanonautica unloads about the whole Chicano/Latinx pendejada over at La Bloga.

Because Chicanos ain’t what they used to be:

And Latinos are everwhere:

And what’s with these Hispanics?

And then . . . Latinx:

EPILOGUE FOR 2022

Do viruses have souls?

I like to take pictures of text in this time when we text each other pictures.

Another year like being shipwrecked.

Weird shit makes the world go round.

Sometimes everything I do becomes a Buster Keaton routine.

Dreamed of a giant truck with a new tiny engine, opening up living space under the hood.

Or course, we should realize that the weirdness has just begun.

CHICANONAUTICA STUMBLES FROM COVID CHRISTMAS TO THE NEW YEAR

 

Kinda different at Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga.

Kinda because I got Covid:

So, Christmas was weird:

And the new year . . .

 

2022: AN ERNESTO ODYSSEY

December is always strange for me. So far, I’ve had a promising business opportunity, gotten lost driving home (I really need new glasses), and got stuck in a traffic jam. 

The morning I wrote this, my wife Emily tested positive for Covid, so I took a test. It was negative. Now the two of us are cozy in our casa, both wearing masks. Her symptoms are mild, and we’ve both had all the shots and boosters, and my immune system had kept from as much as a cold for about fifteen years now, but then that means that some time something will come along that will kick your butt.

That which does not kill you, mutates and tries again. Viruses are nature's way of weeding out us old folks. And I’m getting old.

I got through 2020 without submitting anything. I was busy with Zyx; Or, Bring Me the Brain of Victor Theremin. Still made over $340.77 (book royalties and the reprint of “Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus” in Black Cat Weekly #24 from writing, glad I have the day job. 

 

Hey, writers, working as a library page (the folks—usually a lot younger than me—who check in, sort, and shelve things) is a great way to get money. I wish somebody had told me about a few decades earlier . . .

Zyx is finally finished. Em is going over it. Going to try for a big time publisher, because making a wad of cash that allow us to retire to something other than a life of poverty would be nice. I’m nervous about it, like a bullfighter preparing to go into the ring. I may experience the psychological equivalent of being gored. And I’ll write about my adventures here and in Chicanonautica at La Bloga.

 

Ever year I resolve to draw more. Weird. Like giving yourself permission to masterbate more. I’ve never been able to make much money from art, but what making it does to my brain . . . Better than any drug, really. As Em works on the house, she keeps uncovering more of my old stuff. And Xochiquetzal replaced my broken scanner/printer, which makes doing art biz easier in our era. Come to think of it, I still haven’t scanned a lot of those old collages that resurfaced last year . . . 

Lately, I’ve been going into the new year with no idea what’s going to happen. This year I’m daring to hope good things happen. Maybe I’m crazy. Then I also can’t shake that we’re in for more, well, like the last few years.

No matter what, I’m looking forward to running wild at 67 . . .

 

Update: Covid finally got me. Thanks to all vaccinations, it's mild. I'm quartantining, and watching a lot of wacko movies. Getting ready for whateverthehell . . . 

CHICANONAUTICA WALLOWS IN KITSCH, STEREOTYPES, AND MEXICAN RESTAURANT DECOR

 Chicanonautica is about and inspired by Sancho's Tacos, at La Bloga:

It's a Mexican restaurant:

Also, a work of art:

That brings up the relationship Mexicans have with their stereotypes: 

Because bad taste is in the eye of the beholder: