Book Review - The Night's Neon Fangs by David W. Barbee

The Night's Neon Fangs is a book containing four novellas by David W. Barbee: The Night's Neon Fangs, Noah's Arkopolis, That Ultimo Sumbitch, and Batcop Outta Hell. Each one is an inventive take on a classic story theme. 

The titular work is a story about a man that has been bitten by an electric werewolf. The story is a vivid and well thought out version of the original werewolf story with a modern, unique twist. Can this electric werewolf learn to control his affliction?

In Noah's Arkopolis the Ark never reached land. After the flood, solid ground disappeard forever. Centuries later, Arkopolis has become a city floating on an endless ocean whose citizens are mutated ancestors of humans and animals. It is an alternate history story unlike any other.

The third work, that Ultimo Sumbitch, continues Barbee's theme of traditional story types with his own bizarre stylings. This novella has a western base with a cyborg as the protagonist, zebras and ostriches alongside horses, and a saloon that serves liquor in a gaseous state.

Barbee finishes this collection strongly with Batcop Outta Hell. At first glance, it has the appearance of the ever-popular police/detective story. McNulty’s family was killed. He wasn't able to protect them. Now he has returned from Hell to avenge them. Did I mention that he is a bat?

The Night's Neon Fangs, in its entirety, is entertaining and cohesive. It is hard to find a werewolf, western, detective, or biblical story that hasn’t been written the same exact way a hundred times. David W. Barbie creates worlds within your favorite genres that will change the way you view…well, everything.

Bizarro Coat of Arms

If you are here, odds are, you read Bizarro. And that is great because Bizarro books are great. They take us away from the daily grind of life. They take us to worlds of milk seas and worlds inside vaginas and worlds where walruses can be astronauts. Thank you Bizarro for taking me to places that even my dreams don't take me.

Bizarro has been here (well the word has been used) for a decade. It has gained a lot of momentum. There are novels (of course), collections of short fiction, podcasts, music, movies, and more. We have become something more than a genre. We became a community. 

Then, that community communicated and found out that some of them/a lot of them/most of them had other things in common.

A personal example: My (now) wife and I went to Indianapolis with our son for a week last March to get married. After being there for a couple days, I noticed that one of my Bizarro social media friends lived in Indianapolis. We messaged back and forth a few times. He ended up inviting my family to a dinner at his house one night. We arrived that evening and met his family; wife, kids, and even parents. 

Bizarro is like that. We become more than people that read the same books. We become family. And, like any family, we need a symbol of where we came from. So here it is. 

I made a Bizarro coat of arms topped with none other than a logo of the father of Bizarro himself, Carlton Mellick III. It then goes into the shield. The shield division of the checkerboard at the top and the color at the bottom symbolizes authority. The checkerboard pattern symbolizes both the wisdom and sincerity of the white and the resistance from the black showing that we can use our wisdom to resist traditional paths and still create sincere art. Purple symbolizes majesty and justice. The floating blue shapes represent truth and loyalty. These are all held together by the golden chevron, the core values of understanding and respect that we show our brothers and sisters. It is surrounded by an image of a fat cat (guess who) drawn by David Barbee. The cat on a coat of arms symbolizes liberty, vigilance, and courage. And, finally, it ends with the great publishing house that brings us some of the best Bizarro that eyes have ever read: The Eraserhead Press logo.

This is the Bizarro coat of arms. It can be used by anyone in our family (as long as Eraserhead Press does not mind and as long as you are not directly making money from it). If anyone would like, I can send you a much higher quality PDF.