Gil Kane was a comics artist specialising in superheroes who had drawn every major character from Suprman and Spider-Man to Green Lantern and Conan. In 1974 he created 'Blackmark', his attempt to go independent. The first volume of this sword & sorcery/heroic fantasy narrative has been out of print for 25 years, and the completed second valume was never published. Now both volumes are available in a single trade book format, larger than the original paperback size to better showcase Kane's elegant art.

It is the year 2130 and the sporting entertainment business has changed dramatically. Gone are the days of basketball, baseball, and even boxing. All traditional sports have disappeared and in the mass technological age, the only interest in the public’s eyes is Arena. A no holds barred fighting championship, Arena has spread throughout the earth like wild fire. The Arena Empire is run by the new owner General Drober, an ambitious and avaricious man who wants to change the face of the industry. He believes the viewing public wants to see more intense fighting; there is a real blood lust. But Drober’s plan could not easily come into fruition. Standing in his way is the ageing champion, Zodiac. A contract between the two of them also seems to be a stumbling point. Zodiac needs to complete his one hundredth fight; General Drober needs him to lose and he needs to eradicate anybody in the industry that knows about ‘the contract’, as well.A fighter with very few allies—only his chief medical officer Millie gives him any real support—, Zodiac must be determined in fulfilling his destiny and make the contract come to light. Will the strength of his body, wisdom of his mind, and sincerity of his heart be able to do this? Or will the tyrannical reign of General Drober become the reality of the future? Readers will find out as pulse-racing, heart-stopping events unfold in the pages of ARENA: End of an Era.

He couldn’t save his reputation, his marriage, or his career—but he’s dead-set on saving a friend framed for murder . . . Divorced, disbarred, and broke. That’s where former defense attorney Mick Ward found himself after a drug-fueled collapse, and now all he wants is a quiet life. But when he discovers a body on his friend Elliott’s property, Mick has to get involved. Because the body belongs to a rival from Elliott’s criminal past, and someone’s planted a gun in his house. Currently a Black Lives Matter activist running for Portland’s city council, Elliott suspects he’s been targeted by vengeful cops. But the worst is yet to come, and with Mick unable to practice law, he’ll have to work around the system any way he can to help his friend . . .

Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn, more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art. In Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American speech played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn. Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how the voices of African-Americans have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature. Fishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckleberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature. A slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying"--satire in an African-American vein--when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well--but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized. Was Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon. American literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices." Was Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.

A pivotal time in the career of John Grimes. A fateful journey in the vessel Discovery, bearing an uncanny kinship to the legendary vessel the Bounty. The big black mark on his service record.

The phrase “The Black Legend” was coined in 1912 by a Spanish journalist in protest of the characterization of Spain by other Europeans as a backward country defined by ignorance, superstition, and religious fanaticism, whose history could never recover from the black mark of its violent conquest of the Americas. Challenging this stereotype, Rereading the Black Legend contextualizes Spain’s uniquely tarnished reputation by exposing the colonial efforts of other nations whose interests were served by propagating the “Black Legend.” A distinguished group of contributors here examine early modern imperialisms including the Ottomans in Eastern Europe, the Portuguese in East India, and the cases of Mughal India and China, to historicize the charge of unique Spanish brutality in encounters with indigenous peoples during the Age of Exploration. The geographic reach and linguistic breadth of this ambitious collection will make it a valuable resource for any discussion of race, national identity, and religious belief in the European Renaissance.

In the early 1990s, Swedish death metal revolutionized the international music scene. Suddenly, the mild-mannered Scandinavian country found itself at the forefront of a new movement with worldwide impact thanks to bands such as Entombed, Dismember, and At the Gates. The birth of black metal drove the culture to even greater extremes, featuring a rawer, darker sound and non-ironic death-worship. Soon churches in both Norway and Sweden were aflame, and be- fore long Satanism emerged as more than just an image. But how did it all start? Why did Sweden become a hotbed for such aggressive, nihilistic music? And who are the people and bands that brought it all about? Blood, Fire, Death: A Swedish Metal Story recounts the evolution of the genre from the massive amplifier walls of 1970s rock, through the church-burning Satanic 1990s, to the diverse and paradoxical manifestations of the scene today. This book focuses on the phenomena that have propelled the scene forward in an evolution that has not only been musical, but aesthetic and ideological as well. This is a story about grotesque logos and icons that invoke death and darkness, but also a story of dedication, friendship, community, and a profound love for music.