Poison Flowers & Pandemonium

by Richard Sala

Just a couple of months before his tragic passing in May 2020, cartooning master of the macabre Richard Sala completed his final book — or, actually, his final four books. Poison Flowers and Pandemonium collects all four of these original graphic novellas in one beautiful hardcover worthy of Sala's legacy.

First up in Poison Flowers is "House of the Blue Dwarf," a 125-page thriller featuring master criminal the Bloody Cardinal, who leaves a wake of mayhem and madness everywhere he goes. "Monsters Illustrated" is a fun, 64-page monster movie riff that showcases Sala's visual imagination. A young woman in a dusty bookstore reads a strange bestiary — the "book within a book" showcases a series of Sala's gorgeous watercolor and ink drawings. But when she gets to the end, she finds the bookseller drives a hard bargain. "Cave Girls Of The Lost World" is a campy, 60-page romp about a team of young women whose plane crashes in a land forgotten by time and rife with dinosaurs, carnivorous plants, and apemen — but these intelligent, brave, and resourceful women are ready to rumble! Rounding out the book is "The Amazing Adventures of Fantomina Fantomella," a 45-page graphic novella of violence and non-stop action. Priest and his mob thought Fantomina was dead. So how is it that she's come back with a vengeance? Poison Flowers & Pandemonium is a perfect showcase of Sala's gorgeous watercolor artwork and his love of B-movie horror, silent film-era archetypes, and femmes fatale.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Horror, Fantasy, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Mystery

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2021

About the author

Richard Sala grew up with a fascination for musty old museums, dusty old libraries, cluttered antique shops, narrow alleyways, hidden truths, double meanings, sinister secrets and spooky old houses. He has written and drawn a number of unusual graphic novels which often combine elements of classic mystery and horror stories and which have been known to cause readers to emit chuckles as well as gasps. Although most of his books are written with teens and older readers in mind, his book, CAT BURGLAR BLACK, can be enjoyed by younger readers as well.

To view current art and activity, please visit: http://richardsala.tumblr.com

Note: I am new to GoodReads ~ and I am happy to have a place dedicated to sharing my love of books with other book lovers. Please be patient with me if I seem rather slow and clumsy! Thanks to all my readers over the years!

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poison Flowers and Pandemonium is the last book by Richard Sala, published posthumously following his death in March 2020.

This omnibus includes: The Bloody Cardinal 2: House of the Blue Dwarf, Monsters Illustrated, Cave Girls of the Lost World (the only piece here previously published), and Fantomella. I’d like to say this was an excellent final book but unfortunately Poison Flowers and Pandemonium was actually pretty bad.

I wasn’t a fan of the first Bloody Cardinal book - a campy OTT superhero spoof - and the second one didn’t do much for me either. There are too many characters and a garbled plot which makes little sense or impression. Sala’s art, colours and lettering are the best they’ve ever looked though, and elements of the story are amusing, if random. Here’s a vampire! Did somebody say psychic powers? And how about a mad scientist?? I don’t think much of the Bloody Cardinal himself, either as a hero or anti-hero character. He’s just a dick who wears a bird mask and kills people left and right!

Monsters Illustrated is just a series of pin-ups where monsters are scaring young ladies. The framing device is a comic though as Sala’s recurring character Peculia visits a mysterious bookshop and picks up the book of pin-ups. Unlike most pin-up collections, you can imagine a story for each one, so there’s something going on in each - although that story is a basic one with monsters scaring young ladies!

I reviewed Cave Girls of the Lost World back in 2019 so I won’t go into it here - suffice it to say I think it was the worst thing Sala did.

Fantomella is another Sala heroine fighting costumed baddies in a twilit netherworld. Like The Bloody Cardinal 2, it’s confusing, campy, pointless, instantly forgettable, and gratuitously violent (which describes the majority of Sala’s later output).

The problem with this book, and others like it, is that Sala created two types of book: camp and straight horror. His camp books were largely terrible while his straight horror stuff was brilliant, so it’s a shame there’s only campiness in this book.

While I wouldn’t recommend Poison Flowers and Pandemonium, if you want to read some great Richard Sala books, I would highly recommend Delphine, Cat Burglar Black, The Hidden, and the Peculia books instead.

Sala was a unique comics creator with his own original style and I’m grateful that he produced the books he did and gave us the chance to enjoy his rich imagination and stories while he was here.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s Richard Sala’s website where you can take a glimpse at his colorful, campy style:

http://hereliesrichardsala.blogspot.com/

I had only read a couple short books from Sala in the past and gave two stars to each of them. This book is a collection of four such short books and is a beautiful production by Fantagraphics, and I feel like I have gone almost one-eighty about his work in the past several years. This book features fifties-style pulpy/campy stories featuring girls as lead characters, facing monsters. A couple of the books are just basically pin-ups of these girls with monsters. I would say the depictions of the girls is simple, colorful, with few backgrounds, whereas the monsters are more detailed and elaborate.

The stories are just escapist monster fun. I read this book now because I am rereading My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, clearly a more serious enterprise, but both share a love of monsters and comics from the same period. The first tale in the book, The House of the Blue Dwarf, features a psychic, telekinetic girl and a bunch of villains planning to kill The Bloody Cardinal. Lots of occult references in this one.

The second entry, Monsters Illustrated, is basically just that, a series of (clothed) pin-ups with monsters. Sala likes all the genres, sci-fi/fantasy, but he mostly likes pulpy horror and I would call it horror lite. Fun. No real story here.

The third tale, Cave Girls of the Lost World, is also mostly just a pin-up collection of cave girls vs. dinosaurs and monsters. Fewer clothes here, maybe just enough to pass the censors?

The final entry is more of a story, Fantomella, a tale of vengeance. With lots of cartoon killing.

My description of this makes it sounds like it is maybe YA, because of the bright colors and simple paintings, but Cave Girls features mostly half-naked (with grass skirts) girls that might just push it into the adult category. Sala has one woman reader of the tale (within the tale) comment: “It’s unbelievable, all right. It’s the dumbest thing I ever read. It’s like it was written by a thirteen-year-old boy who wanted to fantasize about half-naked chicks.”

Bingo, but you know, in every man lurks that thirteen-year-old boy. Is that enough to justify this? It’s not porn, it’s light fun in homage to a time of comics escapism where girls-in-peril were the norm. In this one, however, the girls generally take the lead, and win their own battles.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poison Flowers and Pandemonium contains four tales written and illustrated by Richard Sala.

My first exposure to Richard Sala was a pinup in Madman Adventures #1 about a thousand years ago. I didn't know what to this about his minimalist, somehow unsettling art then and I'm still not precisely sure I like it. Anyway, I picked this up sometime in the past year or so.

The first tale in the book, The House of the Blue Dwarf, features a psychic girl and a bunch of villains gathering in a house in order to take down former super hero and now homicidal killing machine The Bloody Cardinal. Weirdness ensues and a lot of people catch machetes to the brain courtesy of the Cardinal. Sala's minimalist, almost coloring book style gives the violence an unsettling feel.

The second tale, Monsters Illustrated, has a framing sequence of a girl in a bookstore but it's really a collection of one page pinup parodies/homages to '50s and '60s sci-fi and horror movies and tv shows.

The third tale, Cave Ggirls of the Lost World, features one page pinups of cave girls battling dinosaurs and monsters interspersed with text purported to be found in a bottle on a beach somewhere. Both Monsters Illustrated and Cave Girls make me think Sala had a bunch of pinups lying around and decided to wrap stories around them.

The final tale, Fantomella, is a revenge tale about a masked girl looking for vengeance. Killing ensues.

At the end of the book, I have to say I enjoyed it. It makes me want to read more Sala and also read more about him. I have no idea who his influences are but they certainly aren't the usual suspects.

Poison Flowers and Pandemonium is a bizarre collection of stories. I need more Richard Sala! Four out of five cave girls.

[Δημήτρης Μπ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Poison Flowers and Pandemonium" is a collection of four books created by the late Richard Sala and it's the first time I read something of his. His artwork is great and I was surprised by the depth of the drawn details, despite their simplicity.

"House of the Blue Dwarf" is the second part of the Body Cardinal storyline, which I haven't read, so I lack the general context. From my current point of view, it looks more like a series of random fantasy themes (special-powered people, ancient spirits, vampires etc) thrown together in a violent mix, rather than an actual story. However, I will, at some point, read the first part too and come back with an update, if my opinion changes.

"Monsters Illustrated", as the name suggests, is a simple series of illustrations based on some famous -and not so famous- monsters.

"Cave Girls of the Lost World" is a part graphic-novel, part illustrated story of some girls stranded after a plane accident on a fantasy land, home of dinosaurs, prehistoric men and other fantastic creatures. The story is decent enough and is accompanied by some really nicely-drawn naughty sketches.

Lastly, "Fantomella" is a short story of a hero that goes by the same name, or anti-hero (I didn't quite get that part), that fights against a totalitarian regime (or so I think), although not a lot of details are shared with us concerning the context of the world she lives in. The story is simply the mean to portray a lot of graphic, violent killings and nothing more.

[Erin Cataldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The illustrations are fantastic - they jump off the page and are so effortlessly retro and vintage looking. The storyline however... is just ok. Poison Flowers and Pandemonium is a graphic novel omnibus that contains the following stories: The Bloody Cardinal 2: House of the Blue Dwarf, Monsters Illustrated, Cave Girls of the Lost World, and Fantomella. I've never read any of the work by Richard Sala so I was unfamiliar with the the Bloody Cardinal not having read the first one. Honestly that one is a bit jumbled and nonsensical and is my least favorite in this collection. Monsters Illustrated is cool - it's a bunch of pinups and monsters - many of them I'd like to have hanging. Cave Girls of the Lost World was fun and ridiculous - it seemed as if it was written by a middle school boy that like boobs and dinosaurs. Fantomella was short and sweet with a cool ending. I would definitely read more by this illustrator - supremely unique.

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy the grotesque and beautiful style of Sala’s work in general, and specifically, I always appreciate the implicit world-building; the backstory is never quite laid out. I think this collection does a little too much in being self aware of that technique by either offering too much exposition or incorporating meta elements into the plot, and perhaps it only bothers me because of how much I appreciate the minimalism otherwise.
Regardless, it’s cool, it’s stylish, it has all the ghoulish fiends and heroic vixens that his other books do, and it’s a charming, fun set of adventures.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was all over the place and didn't know until I started this that's it's a sequel. Kinda weird and not for me.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick read, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to look for more by the author.

[Brady Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I miss him so much. Gone too soon.

[Wendell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sala's final work came out posthumously several months ago--he died towards the start of the pandemic (though not, I believe, from COVID)--and it's basically more of the same: a mix of Grand Guignol flavor and midcentury horror aesthetics with several stories featuring plucky (and facially interchangeable) heroines and dastardly, grotesque villains. Discussed this before, but while I was a big fan of his earlier work (The Chuckling Whatsit still holds up pretty well, I think), the shortcomings--especially in how he treated female characters--really glare towards the latter period of his career. Cave Girls of the Lost World--included in said collection and can stand for most of his work at this point--is a gorgeously composed and colored series of single panels that... feature a stranded bunch of barely-clad, privileged "coeds" (I use the old-fashioned term advisedly, as I suspect it was in his mind all the while he was making this thing) fighting off Harryhausenic terrors on a lost tropical island (points deducted for Sala's lame, cutesy meta self-criticism). My mixed feelings have just about run out and this was a depressingly fitting end to "our relationship."

[Jenna Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the first story but the rest of it... one section was literally just paintings inspired by old pin-up horror, and one was just paintings and paintings of women topless. This dude had a real obsession with women and throughout this entire thing always made them look the exact same. He could make some great monsters with diverse features, but every single woman had to be skinny, white, have perky boobs with hard nipples, a high ski-slope nose, full lips, thin brows, and mid length orangey or brown hair. Every single one. And he put a LOT of women in here. He made all the men look different and all the monsters look different (even if there were 5 of the same monster, they had unique features), but the women? Only his fantasy of what a woman should look like, copy and pasted about 300 times. There was one Asain woman that I noticed, maybe three black women, and the rest were white and pink. This was literally shit for that. You can't expect someone to read a graphic novel with bad art and just be fine with it.

[Luke Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's sort of fluffy and silly and gestural, and contains one I didn't really care for (the prehistoric cave women one), but overall, Sala is exactly my jam to the same degree as Edward Gorey, which is the highest praise I can give. Seems like this isn't regarded as one of his best, and I've only read a few others, so I'm looking forward to digging into the greatest hits. A masterful illustrator and a spectacularly charming writer.

[Kez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun art style and campy horror aesthetics, I just wish the women didn't all look exactly the same. There's such a great variety to the men, even the regular non monstrous ones, but the women all have the same face making the same bland expressions no matter what the scenario.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me for plenty of reasons including the fact I'm not a needless violence (especially when the plot is killing) story fan but also the fact that every woman looked the same while the men/monsters were incredible varied.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[Al McCarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Sala’s ink and watercolor, his gorgeous babes, creepy creatures, and hideous villains. One of a kind.

[Leew49 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Sala, who unfortunately passed away in 2020, was an accomplished graphic artist known for his eerie, atmospheric cartoons which this reader views as fond parodies of horror and science fiction film traditions. POISON FLOWERS & PANDEMONIUM, his last work, is a collection of four stories illustrated in Sala's pleasing ink and water color style. His approach as always is tongue-in-cheek, but occasionally a darker vision lurks beneath the whimsy.

"House of the Blue Dwarf" is vintage Sala, featuring ESP; telekinesis; a seance; inter dimensional travel; heavily caricatured villains of the Chester Gould/ Bob Kane school; and a conspiracy of plots, counterplots, constantly shifting alliances, and over-the-top graphic violence.

In "Monsters Illustrated," Sala resurrects Peculia, a seemingly innocent but surprisingly resourceful young woman from his earlier stories, who wanders into a curious old book store. In a story-within-a-story plot device that recurs several times in the collection, Peculia begins reading an illustrated book of famous monsters, only to discover that the final illustration is of real monsters who inhabit that very store. But Peculia is far more formidable than the cliche alluring female victims who populate the illustrations.

"Cave Girls of the Lost World" uses the manuscript in a bottle plot device, allowing the storytelling to proceed with accompanying commentary from a skeptical modern female observer. Drawing on movies like "One Million Years B.C." and "The Lost World," it tells the story of young women stranded in a remote location who encounter dinosaurs, Neanderthals, carnivorous plants, and other monstrous threats while moving toward what seems to be an inevitable apocalypse. No lost world cliche is spared, but the dubious female commentator is more rooted in a modern reality: "I'm not convinced it's a good idea . . . to be fantasizing about naked chicks riding around on dinosaurs. You don't want . . . to have silly, unrealistic fantasies . . . Women are real people."

"Fantonella," the final and most ambitious story in the compendium, is a dark parable of politics and human psychology, equal in ambition to Sala's earlier inverted fairy tale "Delphine." The eponymous heroine, in a plot similar to the Bruce Lee movie "Game of Death," slowly ascends a tower populated by hideous villains, violently avenging some undisclosed crime from the past. She makes it clear that she is after vengeance, not justice. The villains have been in control of the local population for several generations, ruling with an iron fist. Near the base of the tower an idealistic boy exhorts a crowd to resist the criminals. Though viewing him as a "useful idiot," the thugs decide to give him a beating. "I don't understand," the bloodied victim says later, "Why didn't anyone help me? Some of them (the crowd) were cheering." While ascending the tower in her bloody reprisal, Fantonella encounters The Writer, who all but breaks the fourth wall with his cynical commentary on her character: "There should be more shading, more depth to your character . . . We need to make you more likable . . . Perhaps you could risk your life to save a child." "You realize, of course," The Writer continues, "that it is not enough for those in power to simply kill the restless and rebellious. More may come along. We must destroy their yearning and desires. We must murder their imagination and originality, crush their creativity. That way they are satisfied with whatever we give them." Later in the story the tyrant declares, "The people love me . . . let's declare martial law!" As Fantonella nears the top of the tower, another character advises her, "Above us, in the highest room in the tower, above all this, is a special room for the person who really runs everything." Fantonella ascends the final stairway . . . "But the room was empty. There was no one there but her. She hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do. Then she walked over to the window and looked out. It was a nice view." The chilling ending leaves us wondering what Fantonella will do with her hard-won power.

The prologue to "Fantonella" is equally dark. "When you are young," Sala tells us, "you imagine you are going to be the hero of your own movie." Then as we age, we are willing to accept a supporting player role, commenting on the actions of others. Older still, we realize we are more like the villagers in an old horror movie: "superstitious, unlucky, suspicious and doomed." Finally, "you see . . . that the movie is continuing on without you."

The compendium has structure, moving from a typical Sala escapist tribute to horror movie traditions, to a story within a story, then to a story with skeptical commentary by an outside observer, and finally to a dark Orwellian allegory with cynical advice to its principal character, who may become a rescuer or just another tyrant of a superstitious, unlucky, suspicious, and doomed population.



previous - next

[Robert Bussie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This trade collects several enjoyable stories from writer and illustrator Richard Sala. The first and last story in the book is a wonderful throwback to the action packed serials from the 1940s that would play before the feature film. The sometimes confusing plot, stereotype characters, and pacing of these stories just drips with 1940's serial retro goodness.

The "Monster Illustrated" story is a bunch of full page panels with fun art work parodying actual movies and themes. These would make beautiful movie posters. The opening and closing sequences of this section turns it into a story with a surprise ending that would fit nicely into a modern horror anthology story.

Last is the junior high version of topless college girls on an island lost in time with dinosaurs and monsters. Silly, violent, and immature? Yes. Fun and Entertaining? A resounding Yes! This is aimed at the action crowd looking for some boobs mixed with jungle adventures.

The art work is Beautiful. It has simple lines mixed with water color washes. It is very charming.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection contains 4 separate stories, The Bloody Cardinal 2: House of the Blue Dwarf, Monsters Illustrated, Cave Girls of the Lost World, and Fantomella. Bloody Cardinal 2 was my favorite. It's the most Richard Sala like with a girl with psychic powers infiltrating a cabal of killers that are being murdered by the Cardinal who use to be a hero. Monsters Illustrated is all pinups of teenage girls fighting vintage monsters. Cave Girls of the Lost World is illustrated prose and it sucks. The girl reading this found journal even jokes about how this seemed to be written by a 13 year-old boy. It's images of topless girls fighting dinosaurs and the writing is really poor. Fantamella is a straight up, bare bones revenge story.

[Jacob Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuinely just want to give this four stars off of me liking the first story a lot, it was very twin peaks that had a cast of super villains & left the reader with unanswered questions but ended in way that was very realistic & with a sentiment that a lot of people shared online or in real life. The Second Story is just a clever art book section with a wrap around story to the very unique art work of the author. I honestly didn’t read the third & fourth story so please take this review with this information & a gallon of salt.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Richard Sala’s drawings and colourful style is really fun, but the narratives in these stories really lack plot. It’s got everything going for it though with monsters, adventures, spies, magical books, but it just came across as campy without a narrative structure. I just picked this one out from the library since it was new, but apparently this is Sala’s last collection published posthumously, so I’ll try reading some of his other comics next.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know how this happened, but Sala is one of those authors I discovered after he died. And I have to say that I really don't like those 120 page trade paperbacks that we usually would get. Here we have the nicest collection that Fantagraphics ever turned out for this author. Here's to hoping that they can work something out with his estate and collect a few more out of print stories in another hardcover omni some time in the not-too-distant future.

[Richard Burley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this at the local library. The art is rather amateurish looking (intentionally?) and the stories have a kind of pulp vibe with very brutish villains and lots of violence and sophomoric nudity. I liked the last story the best with the female assassin who basically killed baddies en masses with daggers. Fairly lacking really.

[Alistair · Rating 2 out of 5]

the pictures nice, quite simple and childish with an abundance of bear breasts and bloodshed?
stories basically 'borrowed' from other places
but the pictures were nice, and that's what got the stars.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to tell certain characters apart across stories as many are similar. Did appreciate that the women drawn in the book are not stick thin and are realistically pretty. Stories are a bit loose, so I focused more on the wacky creatures.

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Campy and pulpy at the same time, this throwback to stories of old is a fun but somewhat disjointed collection that is a bit uneven. If you can handle some heads being split open and silly and superficial monster fun, you'll probably find something to enjoy in this one.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is this the best work Richard Sala did? No.
But it is his last work. And, as I've loved everything I have read by him before his death, I am rounding high.

May you be in the after life watching a Poverty Row horror movie and sketching away, Richard. You will be missed.

[Al Capwned · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final book by Richard Sala, published posthumously. The art and colours are incredible but the stories are kinda messy and sometimes it feels that they're just a way for Sala to demonstrate his art. I really hoped I would like this book more.

[Bart Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, fun, fun.

[Poptartk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and delightful, as expected with anything from Sala. Sad there will not be more. I love a good graphic novel where bad guys die exclaiming "Gah!" and there is at least one defenestration.