Paperback 364: Cycle Fury / Reggie Car (Chevron 124)

Paperback 364: Chevron 124 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Cycle Fury
Author: Reggie Car
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• They don't look very "frenzied." They look pretty laid back. I mean, that one dude us calmly enjoying a smoke. Also, it appears he bought his kelly green Nazi t-shirt at Old Navy. Old German Navy.
• Take away the Nazi paraphernalia and the bike and put him next to Annie Lennox and the guy in the foreground really looks like Dave Stewart from Eurythmics.
• That girl's outfit is kind of cute.
• Is that a *black* Nazi biker in the background??? This must be from some future time when the Nazis get big into the idea of diversity.

Best things about this back cover:

• Given the front cover, I would not have expected whatever kind of abstract painting is going on up top there on the back cover. The subtle interplays of blue and gray do not exactly scream "lust-crazed motorcycle gang!"
• There's really no reason for type this tiny.
• "Zipper Hardy" — is there a pun in there that I'm missing? Also, I think his description is missing a dash between "mob" and "and"...
• "Ham!" That's the name of the "giant Negro!?" Oh, that's not racist at all.
• If you merged "Cycle Fury" and the musical "Cats" into yet another musical, "Cycle Cats," I would be first in line to see it.
• This back cover has the word "pedagogical" on it!!!!! I thought only academics who think the word "teaching" is too declassé used variations on the word "pedagogy." Now it appears those academics and trashy novels about Nazi bikers have something in common. Did Not see that coming.

Page 123~

Then she remembered the aphrodisiacally-centered cigarette she had shared with him.

I literally cannot pronounce "aphrodisiacally."

~RP

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Paperback 358: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers (Bantam A1091)

Paperback 358: Bantam A1091 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Author: Carson McCullers
Cover artist: Uncredited [faint signature on crease in bottom right corner looks like that of Mitchell Hooks]

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, that guy is selling it. Least appreciative audience Ever.
• I read this book twenty years ago and though I largely forget the plot I remember really liking it. I do, however, remember the first line, verbatim. "In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together." I think those are the mutes there: Tevye and the Undertaker.
• Little girl demonstrates that peculiar paperback phenomenon whereby people appear to be looking at things they could not possibly see from that angle—that man is both behind her *and* blocked by a man's belly.
• I like how the human beings are painted naturalistically but the surroundings are kind of surreal. I mean, look at that gray and white smear of a sidewalk. And that fire&brimstone sky.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Easy, girls, there's enough of me for both of you."
• LOVE her "Holy F*&^" expression.
• Not generally a fan of the multiple-scene cover—pick a scene and depict it, dammit, don't try to cram so much action into such a little space. Here, however, the paintings are discrete enough, and large enough, that there's not the usual feeling of chaos.
• No Pasadena Star-News blurbs here. All top tier publications.

Page 123~

"No. There was some definite thing you did that for. We been knowing each other a pretty long time, and I understand by now that you got a real reason for every single thing you ever do. Your mind runs by reasons instead of just wants. Now, you promised you'd tell me what it was, and I want to know."

~RP

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Paperback 357: Night Train / Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) (Lion Library LL40)

Paperback 357: Lion Library LL40 (2nd ptg / 1st thus, 1955)

Title: Night Train
Author: Kenneth Millar
Cover artist: Samson Pollen

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• I think there is a single scene in this book that is set in a jazz club. Why they have completely de-crime-fictionized this cover, I don't know ("A Bold Story of Fierce Desire"??), but I'm glad they did—the painting is fantastic: vibrant and chaotic. You rarely see a black woman in the position of sexy dame on these covers—very nice.
• I like the guy right behind her—the guy you are very likely to miss if you're sucked into either the playing/dancing or the steamy glance between Ms. Bar Lady and Mr. Ne'er-Do-Well. The guy behind her—he's the one I want to know. He's either tailing that guy, or he's just thinking "Really? That guy? She must be working some angle..."
• Love the guy in the foreground with the cigar! He is sooo happy to have that cigar!
• What is up with the letter spacing on the tagline? Letters get closer together as title moves left to right. It's like a 3rd grader wrote it by hand and ran out of room as she approached the right margin
  

Best things about this back cover:

• This is (pretty much) the cover of the original Lion edition of this book (which I own ... hey, wait, I've already blogged it—it's here! Check out the art parallels)
• Ross Macdonald was (understandably) saddled with the "Chandler/Hammett" mantle early on in his career, and despite a period of phenomenal fame (peaking around 1970), he just wasn't the artist either Hammett or Chandler was, and hasn't had their longevity. I know I am in the minority here, but I'm not a big Macdonald fan; I especially don't care for the Lew Archer stuff. Archer's just a smarmy, dull, self-righteous Marlowe. A Not-Marlowe. A Marl-faux. Sadly, he's also the model for virtually every P.I. that came after him.
• There is more than a "trace" of Freud in Macdonald's work; when reading Macdonald, I often feel like I'm reading a novel whose sole purpose is to illustrate some concept from Psychology 101. If I remember correctly, though, this pre-Lew Archer stuff is pretty tight and entertaining.

Page 123~

Mrs. Tessinger was extraordinarily vivacious. Her bosom seemed higher than ever, and her waist tighter.

That's a nice, lecherous eye the narrator has there.

~RP

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Paperback 353: Blue City / Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) (Dell 363)

Paperback 353: Dell 363 (1st, 1947)

Title: Blue City
Author: Kenneth Millar
Cover artist: Uncredited (a shame)

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• I'm not sure there is a cover out there that better expresses the idea of "noir." The grimy fatalism of the urban jungle perfectly expressed by that pollution/hand working all the lowlifes like marionettes. That woman's right boob is freaking me out a little, and the gangster's proportions are all wrong, but all the classic vices are on display, and that hand is going to give me nightmares. The skin on the knuckles, my god ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Whoever designed that city Really liked right angles.
• Nice detail on the buildings [/sarcasm]
• This book is in a plastic slipcase. I would have taken it out, but I feared I might harm the book in doing so, so parts of the back remain obscured somewhat by the thick plastic strip down the middle. And the ID tag.

Page 123~

"You won't sing," Kerch said, "if what we do to you shuts you up for good. Come along, Floraine. You'll need a coat."

"You'll need a coat" makes me laugh. Cold-blooded hitman worries you might get chilly.

~RP

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Paperback 345: Devil Ray, Devil Woman / Seymour Shubin (Beacon 167)

Paperback 345: Beacon 167 (PBO, 1960—Australia ed.)

Title: Devil Ray, Devil Woman
Author: Seymour Shubin
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: not for sale (gift of Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• "Do you like my hair up, or ..." "Yeah yeah, sure, now are you gonna get naked or not?"
• OK, which is it? A Flaming Story or a Sophisticated, Dramatic Tale. I got no time for this wishy-washy in-between crap.
• "To Most" is my very favorite part of the cover copy. I mean, "in search of forbidden excitement" makes so much more sense, but any reasonably qualified copy writer could come up with that. It takes a true master of whatthefuckery to rephrase it so that we're left wondering not just what the excitement is, but for whom it is not "forbidden" but entirely licit.
• She has a nice figure. I'm just sayin'...
• I hope she's standing well away from the bed, bec. otherwise she is a giant or that smoking (!) hot guy is criminally diminutive.
• That's one slab of a bed.
• Worst title! "The woman, she is a like a Devil Ray, in that she is devilish, and ... Devil Ray has the word "devil" in it, so ..." Imagination!

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh. It's a text bloodbath back here.
• So this is an ordinary soft-core sex novel, with stock footage from a Jacques Cousteau special? I can't wait.

Page 123~

"Sure no one a beer?" and now Tony was in the doorway.

I swear to you that I have typed that exactly as written, character for character.

~RP

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PS I *thought* I'd seen this cover somewhere before. Well, I hadn't, but here's something close: Paperback 63, Variation on a Theme:

Paperback 340: Youth Against Obscenity / Sharron Michelle as told to Rex Nevins (Saber Books 106)

Paperback 340: Saber Books SA-106 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Youth Against Obscenity
Author: Sharron Michelle as told to [!!!?] Rex Nevins
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25

Best things about this cover:

• All this female flesh and I'm somehow obsessed with the driftwood (!?)
• These ... I'm gonna say 'triplets' ... have very nice bodies but scary alien faces.
• Love the cross-legged guy—just havin' a cig, checkin' out the view...
• "As told to" is perhaps the richest, awesomest thing about this cover. "Mmm, authenticish."

Best things about this back cover:

• If you made it through that second sentence (let alone the whole description) with even a fingernail still clinging to the main idea, you're a better (wo)man than I am.
• How is this description simultaneously massively detailed and exceedingly vague?: Crusading against "something?" Selling photos to "a segment of the public?"
• "Of whom..." It's like an earnest 14-yr-old wrote this.

It should be said that there are hand-written / cursive marginalia all over this book—2nd page has the beginnings of a detailed synopsis (breaks off mid-sentence [!?]) and first page has one-line rating: "VVVG perhaps the best of my 30 books"—seriously, this book's owner Really liked this book. Like the person who wrote the back cover copy, this book's owner also comes across as an earnest 14-yr-old.

Page 123~

Danny looked at Betty again, only this time his eyes took in her hair, breasts, legs, and buttocks, all at once.

It's an well-seasoned leerer who can take in breasts *and* buttocks "at once."

~RP

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Paperback 336: The Case of the Daring Decoy / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 6001)

Paperback 336: Pocket Books 6001 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Case of the Daring Decoy
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• The bottom 1/2 inch is horribly soiled; otherwise, this copy is close to perfect, and words can't describe how much I love this cover painting.
• Well, maybe they can. I think that if you look up "Hot Mess" in the dictionary, this picture is there. Sexy dissolution personified. All that orange, and the booze, and the smokes, and the stairway to nowhere, just add to the smoldering hotness of the whole scene. First rate cover art. Just wish I had an artist credit!

Best things about this back cover:

• Perry Mason looks like somebody's grandma. Pancake make-up much, grandma?
• Random orangeing of words. That's a new tactic.
• "Hell's bells!" is a great way to lead off your back cover copy.

Page 123~

"You knew her rather intimately, I believe."
"Are you making an accusation?"
"I'm asking a question."

Technically, you were making an insinuating statement, Perry, but ... I'll allow it.

~RP

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Paperback 332: The Cruel Dawn / Alfred Viazzi (Popular Library 440)

Paperback 332: Popular Library 440 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Cruel Dawn
Author: Alfred Viazzi
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "I said, I'm gonna wash that gray right out of your hair! Hold still!"
• "Demon, I cast thee out!"
• Gloria liked to end every dance with a vicious take-down.
• Normally I find things like garter belts and cleavage quite hot, but between the dowdiness of that nightgown and the oddly porcelain quality of this woman's skin, this lady just isn't doing it for me. Also, maybe it's just me, but she seems a bit standoffish.

Best things about this back cover:

• Her body is blonde? That's more info than you usually get in an opening description.
• Oooh, a "lusty bordello." Not one of those Puritanical bordellos you see from time to time. Those are sooo annoying.
• A decent, non-wanton actress would, of course, have taken the time to get properly dressed before shielding a man with her body. Pfft. Whore.

Page 123~

The last thing he remembered was the thud and pain of a boot kicking hard into the side of his head.

~RP

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Paperback 306: High Sierra / W.R. Burnett (Bantam 826)

Paperback 306: Bantam 826 (1st ptg, 1950) (ex-lib)

Title: High Sierra
Author: W.R. Burnett
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover

• "Yeah, so, I like to grab the shaft real tight with one hand, like so, and then rub the tip back and forth with the other hand, real slow, like so, you see? And then ... what? What're you mugs starin' at? Ain't you never seen a guy polish his gun before?"
• I *love* the expression on her face. It's like she's saying, quietly, out of the side of her mouth: "Uh ... are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Clearly the dude with the cards is as stunned as she is ... staring intently ... clawing the chair arm ...
• In other news about the guy stroking his rod: those are some high pants. Tie-swallowing pants. And the girliest suspenders imaginable.

Best thing about this back cover:

• Only the Cincinnati Times Star really appears to be tapping into what I'm seeing on the cover.

Page 123~

Roy was appalled at the change in Big Mac's appearance and sat studying him covertly. Mac had lost a lot of weight and the skin under his chin hung in pale folds. His hands shook and he kept drinking glass after glass of straight whisky.

I can't help but picture a haggard, embittered, world-weary, alcoholic Mayor McCheese.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 30 and 31

Don't ask me why, but these two seemed to go together...

Title: The Old Man and the Boy — Crest d555 (1st ptg, 1962)
Author: Robert Ruark
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: $5

• Imagine a simpler time ... when a book with a title like this wouldn't scream "pedophilia"
• Hey, look, it's the highly unasked-for and unauthorized sequel to "The Old Man and the Sea"
• "Long story short, I shot that boy and his head now hangs over my fireplace."
• "Straight from the exciting experiences ..." — please, please don't tell me.
• The real title of this book is "Tomatb Hlanho Edndey," which is Swahili for "White Man In Silly Clothes Thinks He's a Hunter"

• Please tell me that the guy with the spear is not "The Boy"
• Two things I don't want my reading material to be — "homespun" and "salty"
• "Smells?"
• "Everyday living" — imagine the kind of balls you'd have to have to use that phrase above that picture.
• Deciding his quarry was too fat and stupid to bring him honor, the warrior turned and walked slowly home.

Page 123:

The Willie was about half coaled out, and he was flopping and spluttering in the water.

I don't even know where to begin ...

*****

Title: How to Work with Tools & Wood — Pocket Books 1057 (1st ptg, April 1955)
Author: Fred Gross (ed.)
Cover artist: photo (Meyer Studios)

Yours for: $10

• I believe this is the sequel to "The Old Man and the Boy," wherein the old man takes the boy to see his dunge-... I mean, workshop.
• "Have you ever ... worked with wood, Billy?"

• This back cover is a relief, as it is mercifully dull instead of nightmarishly suggestive.

Page 123~

As the bottom is accessible from the end, it may be sawed out and then trimmed to line with the chisel if necessary.

That's some good handyman porn.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 16

Title: The Education of a Poker Player (Cardinal, 1961)
Author: Herbert O. Yardley
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: SOLD (11/21/09)

• I love this book. Design is impeccable. Vegas/neon-style font = total WIN.
• All poker players should look like this guy. Those douchebags on ESPN2 make me want to stay as far away from the game as possible, but I would sit next to Fred Mertz here.
• "Lusty!?" — not a word I would have associated with this guy, but OK. Good for him.

• OMG it's an interactive quiz cover!
• "One Big Pair" — see "Lusty," front cover.

Page 142 (page 123 is a buncha technical poker stuff) ~

The only kibitzers were Maria, Bing, who spied on foreigners, and a Polish girl who broadcast Chinese propaganda — for what reason I could never understand, but then most foreigners managed to get on the Chinese payroll.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 12

Title: You're A Riot, Andy Capp
Author: Smythe
Cover artist: Smythe

Yours for: SOLD 9/18/10

The follow-up to the hugely successful "Andy Capp Sounds Off," "Andy Capp Strikes Back," and "Andy Capp Beats His Wife Into a Coma Then Has a Pint of Stout and Watches Rugby"

Page 123 (or thereabouts) ~


~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 3

Title: The Green Wound Contract (PBO, 1963)

Author: Philip Atlee

Cover artist: Well it hardly matters...

Yours for: best offer

• "Black magic! White Slavery! And blue diamonds!"
• "Green Wound" has to be about the grossest phrase you can put in your title
• "Formerly The Green Wound" — whoa, bold title change!

• I do love the many faces of Joe Gall
• Probably the only place you'll find the phrase "a pornographic book in Trinidad"
• "... the Streets of Laredo ..." — hey, I know that song
• Rock me Uncle Tom Asmodeus!

Page 123~

Sitting up, I touched the knot on my forehead gingerly and winced; it was a beauty. I had never known a nun could swing a blackjack that hard.

~RP

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Paperback 301: Behind Every Door / Julius Horowitz (Belmont L522)

Paperback 301: Belmont L522 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Behind Every Door
Author: Julius Horowitz
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, the cover painting looks cool. If they'd bother to make it bigger than a !@#$ing postage stamp, maybe I could appreciate it a little more.
• "Hey, baby, we're two tall, thin, cool people standing in the middle of the street ... the world is our oyster! What say we ..." / "I said 'twenty dollars,' mister"
• Remade 11 years later as "Behind the Green Door"
• Really, you're going to asterisk "The Way Between the Sexes" as something the N.Y. Times said. That's not a blurb, that's an arbitrary phrase capture.

Best things about this back cover:

• What's that title again? I forgot.
• "Guys who want to buy your pants ..." — I did not see that coming.
• "The real test is when you come up against your problem." — Words to live by, if your goal is to live as vaguely as possible.

Page 123~

He saw that these kids, the oldest of them only ten, had a vocabulary of definite opinions and many of their inculcated ideas were quite opposed to his own.

Two things — one, this is a very odd, very creepy thought for a grown man to have about children; and two, I can tell from this one sentence that this guy is a terrible, terrible writer. The phrases "vocabulary of definite opinions" and "their inculcated ideas" make me wince. Editor!

~RP

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Paperback 298: Call Me Deadly / Hal Braham (Graphic 152)

Paperback 298: Graphic 152 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Call Me Deadly
Author: Hal Braham
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Nearly everything — this is late 50s paperback gold. Love the weird cropping provided by the ornate frame, and then again by the beaded curtain! Then there's Fabulous Girl Art (killer dress), jazz guitar, mystery hand w/ gun, Broderick Crawford lookalike with fat cigar ... all in a tight, barely read paperback.
• The title is awesome in inverse proportion to the cover painting's awesomeness, i.e. the title is a sad, unimaginative rip-off of a Mickey Spillane title (movie version of which came out just a couple years before this novel). Paint brush font on "Deadly" is kind of cool, though.
  
• Love Graphic Novels for their (frequent) crediting of the cover artist on the publishing info page, though here you can actually see the artist's signature (right under "25c").
• Gun/vagina proximity here is oddly common. Here's a variation. There will be more. Maybe I should make "guncrotch" a label... oh, wait, it already is.

Best things about this back cover:

• See that red dot separating the paragraphs? It's like it was drilled into the cover with a bore. Deeply embossed. Weird as it sounds, it's the first thing about this cover that caught my eye.
• Love their dockside dancing! Put any energetic music on your iTunes and then look at this painting. They are totally dancing. Nothing else can explain what she's doing with her left hand (mysterious hand gestures ... seems like a recurrent theme).
• I love how the cover copy starts out campy and ends up in nearly incoherent lunacy.
• "... between them, an unholy shadow murmured: 'There's no way you can tightrope walk in that dress, Gini ... Go on, I dare you ...'"

Page 123~

She said finally, "So this is the lion's den. What do you do with your spare time, Dillon?"

I shrugged. "I have the television for sport, there are books and records. It depends."

"Gets a bit monotonous, doesn't it?"

"It does," I admitted.

This is like the "Don't" column from a 1950's "How To Pick Up Hot Chicks" manual.

~RP

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Paperback 291: The Maltese Falcon / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 268)

Paperback 291: Pocket Books 268 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Maltese Falcon
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Leo Manso / Stanley Meltzoff

Yours for: Hell no

The following is so self-evidently awesome that I refuse to sully it with my usual commentary:

Here's the original 1944 cover:



And now here's the cover of the DUST JACKET (you heard me) they issued several years later (this image went on to grace the cover of a later Permabooks edition)



Page 123:

"Morning, Sam. Set down and bite an egg." The hotel-detective stared at Spade's temple. "By God, somebody maced you plenty!"

~RP

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Paperback 281: Dead Pigeon / Robert P. Hansen (Bantam 1188)

Paperback 281: Bantam 1188 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Dead Pigeon
Author: Robert P. Hansen
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Step 1: shred my shirt and stun her with my awesome torso. Step 2: beat her to death with a dead pigeon
• Am I supposed to believe that that is an ordinary white dress shirt. Because I do not believe that that is an ordinary white dress shirt. On his left side, it all looks normal enough, but on his right ... where's the sleeve? Is it a vest? Some kind of crazy modern Swedish Eurovest?
• I normally find smoking girls with guns and cleavage and gams to be quite hot. Not so this one. She looks bored. Or spellbound by the torsal grandeur of her captive.
• Something weird is going on behind her head. There's a lamp ... but it sort of disappears somewhere around the "B" in "Robert," as if its right half is invisible.

Best things about this back cover:

• Words cannot describe how much I love the iconic "Hand of Guy in Suit Holding Pistol" — I want a T-shirt with that image and that image alone on it.
• The original cover image of this book pictured here is goofy but clever — a reader's POV depiction of a pigeon-shooting carnival game.
• The cover copy — front and back — is terrible. Pure cliche, and not even superawesomeshameless cliche. Just yawn. Like it was written by the Hardboiled PatterBot 3000.

Page 123~

"[...] Parker was the cruelest man I've ever known, a sadist in an extremely controlled way. He's done several things to me that are unbelievable. [...]"

~RP

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Glick!

R.I.P. Budd Schulberg (1914-2009)

Here's a British paperback of Schulberg's best-known (and probably best) novel:

[A hot cover of a hot book, sent to me by a reader with a good eye and good taste]

Click here to see Budd Schulberg's The Disenchanted ("Pop Sensation" Paperback 246)

~RP

Paperback 267: The Man Who Said No / Walt Grove (Gold Medal 120)

Paperback 267: Gold Medal 120 (PBO, 1950)

Title: The Man Who Said No
Author: Walt Grove
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Despite the fact that the man appeared to be happily enjoying a cigarette, Rachel could not find a heartbeat, and so pronounced him dead at 7:45 a.m. EDT.
• "Oh Steve, let's get out of this squalid basement flat and run away together." Steve did not answer "Yes." [actually, he tried to reply "No," but since he was a character in a mystery that was "faster than sound" (!?) the story was over before Rachel ever heard his response]
• I love that her blouse matches the matchbook. All the detail in the lower left corner of the cover is awesome.

Best things about this back cover:

• "There was a warm liquid feeling in his legs" — that's one letter away from saying he was drenched in his own urine. Nice.
• What did he say 'No' to? He clearly never said 'No' to a drink.

Page 123~

"Stand by for the fireworks," McMahan said. "I'm going to go off like a roman candle."

And then there was a warm liquid feeling [o]n her legs...

~RP

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Paperback 265: Look Behind You Lady / A.S. Fleischman (Gold Medal 223)

Paperback 265: Gold Medal 223 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Look Behind You Lady
Author: A.S. Fleischman
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• All I can say is: there'd better be a comma underneath her head.
• "For the last time, fella, I'm not 'lost.' I work in this here Mexican restaurant and I'm just takin' a smoke break. And I already looked behind me, and there was nothin' but a newspaper vending machine. Now beat it!"
• Strangely the rainy street tableau in the background is far more interesting / beautiful to me than the Lady in the foreground.

Best things about this back cover:

• Damn, no comma.
• I am currently waiting for the perfect opportunity to use the line: "I'm probably signing my death warrant, baby, but I'm going to listen to you."
• Oh, SHANGHAI FLAME, you don't say ... is that ... something?

Page 123~

"I was licked in Macao."

Well, we've all been there.

~RP

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