Pictured above is a typical day’s haul from my PO Box. A Kickstarter fulfillment and assorted things I spent money on, usually off eBay. I want to concentrate on the novels for today’s post as they are all novelizations of movies, something I discussed in Interlude 1. Let’s cover them one at a time.

Another 48 HRS. I recently rewatched this film for a future episode of the podcast. I remember this being on heavy rotation on cable channels back in the day but didn’t remember the plot having so many holes! I know that a number of scenes where cut from the film. I also know the novelizations are often based on the early scripts so I’m hoping by reading the novel I’ll be able to get a little more insight in what they wanted to achieve with this film.

Dragonslayer is based on the script for the 1981 movie that was highlighted on Movie Monday over on the Keep Off the Borderlands podcast in February 2024. I am hoping to find the answer to the biggest question to come up during that episode, how was the agreement with Vermithrax reached where the dragon agreed to spare the countryside in exchange for sacrificial virgins?

The Black Hole is one of those movies I remember seeing in the theater when it came out, Maximilian scared the crap out of me! I have since rewatched it and still feel it is a pretty great film, even with the trippy ending. I’m very curious to see how the book handles the ending as well as the story in general. It is a novelization by the great Alan Dean Foster so I have pretty high hopes for this one.

Finally we have Batman Returns, this is an example of you win some, you lose some. Tim Burton’s Batman got a full novelization written by Craig Shaw Gardner and was pretty good so I had high hopes this might be the same. Sadly this is more of a young adult version of the story, only 92 pages long. I now need to research to see if a real novelization was ever done for this wonderful film. Interestingly enough the version I did get doesn’t shy away from the Dark Knight killing clowns, take this paragraph for example:

“Batman was about to take off when he glanced into his rearview mirror to see the Fire Breather stagger up behind him. The Fire Breather inhaled deeply — and Batman gunned the engine. Before the Fire Breather could exhale, he was wrapped in the Batmobile’s exhaust flames.”

Well that’s about all for this week. Next we’ll the blog will be back to the solo actual play. Until then, be excellent to each other!