Vic and Blood

November 1, 1989
Noted fantasy and science fiction writer Ellison ( Angry Candy ) and Corben (the Den series) form an ideally matched team in this forceful adaptation of Ellison's novella A Boy and His Dog. Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood, struggle to endure in the aftermath of nuclear war. But when Blood sniffs out Quilla June--a girl who has come disguised as a boy to the womanless nuclear wasteland from an underground world (to which the population has fled from destruction)--Vic discovers love while Blood sees his own survival threatened. Quilla June's haunting question, ``Do you know what love is?,'' envelops the ending in a poignant irony as Vic must choose to save the life of one--Quilla June or Blood--at the expense of the other. As always, Corben's visuals are a dramatic blend of bold linework, light and color. He's as convincing in depicting a violent clash as he is in creating a scene of limpid eroticism.

October 6, 2003
Admirers of Ellison's Nebula-winning novella A Boy and His Dog
(which was the basis of the cult film of the same title) will undoubtedly embrace this perplexing look at the creative process. The author disavows the film's misogynistic conclusion, but he realizes the strength of its characters: teenaged Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood, who are trying to survive in a post-WWIII wasteland. With this basis, Ellison wrote two more short stories about Vic and Blood (after A Boy and His Dog
), explaining more of their prickly but trusting relationship, and showing the emotional consequences of Vic's actions in the original story. Now, Ellison says he's finished telling the overall story by writing Blood's a Rover
as a screenplay that he'll later convert into a novel. In the meantime, this worthwhile book collects the texts of all three existing stories, along with some commentary. Unfortunately, a comics adaptation by Corben precedes each story, detracting from what Ellison is doing. Corben is best when depicting extremely grotesque situations, such as his version of Hodgson's The House on the Borderland
. But that's only one aspect of Vic and Blood's world. When, for example, Vic is trapped in a "downunder"—one of the huge fallout shelters where WASP America has tried to preserve its way of life by severing ties to the survivors on the surface—he is nauseated by its banal wholesomeness, but Corben's inability to execute subtle exaggeration fails to suggest this. Still, an Ellison performance is always fascinating.