Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Paperback 749: Satan's Child / Peter Saxon (Lancer 73-764)

Paperback 749: Lancer 73-764 (PBO, 1968)

Title: Satan's Child
Author: Peter Saxon
Cover artist: Jeff Jones (Jeffrey Catherine Jones)

Yours for: $15

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Best things about this cover:
  • Can't a girl rub her naked bottom on dandelions in peace around here!
  • No need for pepper spray or a handgun when you've got Smoke-jaguar.
  • Is that behelmeted guy out walking his Smoke-jaguar or shape-shifting into a Smoke-jaguar?
  • It's like Rosemary's Baby. Only with more orange. And a Smoke-jaguar.
  • One of my all-time favorite fantasy paperback covers, despite/because of its looniness. Love the orange, love the enigmatic man/jaguar/smoke hybrid, love the not-all-that-worried sunbather.
  • Only just learned that Jeff Jones was (later in life) Jeffrey Catherine Jones (a trans woman). Fascinating story. She died in 2011. Comics Journal obit here.

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Best things about this back cover:
  • That is a pretty great use of empty space—like a womb holding the embryonic "Seedling From Hell." 
  • Ooh, terrible vengeance! That's my favorite kind!
  • You're gonna have a hard time finding a greater name in all of literature than "Pricker Gill.

Page 123~
"All of it!" Finlay cried hoarsely. "I wager it all."

Silently his companions met his wager—and threw down their hands. They were identical—and identical to his own.

Finlay's mouth dried and he gave a little groan of despair. "I … I thought I must win."

~RP

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3 comments:

Random White Guy said...

Honestly, that's not a very appealing woman. Satan can do better.

Tulse said...

"Iain Malcolm would leave that Scottish village, develop Chaos Theory, and then crack wise while dinosaurs ate his companions..."

DemetriosX said...

I'm deeply bothered by the right side of the woman's back. Is that a shadow, some sort of armor? Is she a cyborg? I can't tell.

Peter Saxon appears to have been a house name (like Franklin W. Dixon or Victor Appleton). This particular book was written by Wilfred McNeilly, who seems not to have written anything under his own name, but did contribute to the Sexton Blake series and The Specialist by Errol Lecale.