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Nancy A. Collins

Author of Midnight Blue: Sonja Blue Collection

206+ Works 4,205 Members 80 Reviews 16 Favorited

About the Author

Image credit: Uploaded to Wikipedia by the author - 2004

Series

Works by Nancy A. Collins

Sunglasses After Dark (1989) 481 copies
A Dozen Black Roses (1996) 343 copies
Right Hand Magic (2010) 262 copies
Dark Love (1995) — Editor, Contributor — 251 copies
In The Blood (1992) 210 copies
Vamps (2008) 209 copies
Wild Blood (1993) 138 copies
Darkest Heart (2002) 138 copies
Dead Roses for a Blue Lady (2002) 134 copies
Left Hand Magic (2011) 113 copies
Paint It Black (1995) 112 copies
Night Life (2009) 110 copies
Tempter (1990) 99 copies
Angels on Fire (1998) 83 copies
After Dark (2009) 79 copies
Dead Man's Hand (2004) 72 copies
Magic and Loss (2013) 57 copies
Knuckles and Tales (2002) 45 copies
Forbidden Acts (1995) — Editor; Contributor — 43 copies
Dhampire: Stillborn (1996) 39 copies
Gahan Wilson's the Ultimate Haunted House (1996) — Editor; Contributor — 19 copies
Swamp Thing by Nancy A. Collins Omnibus (2020) — Author — 17 copies
Vertigo Jam #1 (1993) — Author — 14 copies
Nameless Sins (1994) 14 copies
Lynch: A Gothik Western (2015) 12 copies
Red Sonja: Vulture's Circle (2016) — Author — 11 copies
Search and Destroy (2011) 11 copies
Vampirella: Feary Tales (2015) 8 copies
Cold Turkey (1992) 7 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #110 (1991) 6 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #129 (1993) 6 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #130 (1982) — Author — 6 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #136 (1993) — Author — 6 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #121 (1982) 6 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #137 (1993) — Author — 6 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #114 (1991) 5 copies
Final Destination 2 (2006) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #115 (1991) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #118 (1982) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #131 (1993) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #132 (1993) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #123 (1992) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #124 (1992) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #127 (1992) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #133 (1993) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #138 (1993) — Author — 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #128 (1993) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #135 (1993) 5 copies
Return To Hell House (2012) 5 copies
Swamp Thing Annual #6 (1991) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #134 (1993) 5 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #125 (1992) 4 copies
Bloedmooi (2010) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #122 (1992) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #120 (1992) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #119 (1992) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #113 (1991) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #117 (1992) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #112 (1991) — Author — 4 copies
Aliens Special (1997) 4 copies
Calaverada (2012) 4 copies
Swamp Thing vol. 2 #111 (1991) 4 copies
Red Sonja: Berserker (2014) — Author — 3 copies
Absalom's Wake (2018) 3 copies
Judgment Night (2012) 2 copies
Rounds (2013) 2 copies
Vampirella: Prelude to Shadows (2014) — Author — 2 copies
Demonlover (2012) 2 copies
The Love of Monsters (2012) 2 copies
Sunglasses After Dark (2016) 1 copy
Vampirella (2014) #100 (1981) 1 copy
Verotika #3 1 copy
Verotika #4 1 copy
Verotika #11 1 copy
Seven Devils 1 copy
The Ice Wedding (2012) 1 copy
Voodoo Chile 1 copy
Aphra (2012) 1 copy
Population: 666 (2013) 1 copy
Kitsune (2012) 1 copy
Charity (2012) 1 copy
The Reflected Ones (2012) 1 copy

Associated Works

The Sandman: Book of Dreams (1996) — Contributor — 2,036 copies
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (1995) — Contributor — 943 copies
999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense (1999) — Contributor, some editions — 616 copies
Michael Moorcock's Elric: Tales of the White Wolf (1994) — Contributor — 391 copies
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women (2001) — Contributor — 286 copies
Hellboy: Odd Jobs (2003) — Contributor — 270 copies
Vampire Sextette (2000) — Contributor — 234 copies
Shudder Again: 22 Tales of Sex and Horror (1993) — Contributor — 231 copies
Midnight Graffiti (1992) — Contributor — 219 copies
Under the Fang (1991) — Contributor — 186 copies
He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson (2009) — Contributor — 178 copies
Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror (1976) — Contributor — 165 copies
Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (2013) — Contributor — 159 copies
Shock Rock (1992) — Contributor — 152 copies
Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror (1991) — Author, some editions; Contributor — 146 copies
Book of the Dead 2: Still Dead (1954) — Contributor — 133 copies
Killing Me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1995) — Contributor — 129 copies
Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge (1993) — Contributor — 119 copies
Tombs (1995) — Contributor — 114 copies
Dark Destiny (1995) — Author — 100 copies
The Best of Cemetery Dance, Volume 2 (2001) — Contributor — 99 copies
The Fantastic Adventures of Robin Hood (1991) — Contributor — 94 copies
The Best of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine (1991) — Contributor — 90 copies
Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women (2015) — Contributor — 75 copies
Best New Horror 3 (1992) — Contributor — 73 copies
Legends of Red Sonja (2014) — Contributor — 71 copies
100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment (1998) — Contributor — 63 copies
Confederacy of the Dead (1993) — Contributor — 61 copies
It Came from the Drive-In (1996) — Contributor — 54 copies
Zombiesque (2011) — Contributor — 51 copies
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror (Mammoth Books) (2012) — Contributor — 47 copies
Narrow Houses: Tales of Superstition, Suspense, and Fear (1992) — Contributor — 45 copies
Curse of the Full Moon: A Werewolf Anthology (2010) — Contributor — 37 copies
100 Tiny Tales of Terror (1996) — Contributor — 33 copies
Zombies vs Robots: This Means War! (2012) — Contributor — 30 copies
Shivers (2002) 29 copies
Love Bites (Anthology) (1994) — Contributor — 29 copies
Extreme Zombies (2012) — Contributor — 28 copies
Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone (2017) — Contributor — 26 copies
Louisiana Vampires (2010) — Contributor — 23 copies
Wild Women (1854) — Contributor — 23 copies
Tales Out Of Dunwich (2004) — Contributor — 19 copies
Noirotica: An Anthology of Erotic Crime Stories (1996) — Contributor — 14 copies
Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor Issue 3 (1995) — Author — 14 copies
Peel Back the Skin: Anthology of Horror Stories (2016) — Contributor — 13 copies
Fear Itself (1995) — Contributor — 12 copies
Cold Blood (Anthology) (1991) 12 copies
21st-Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000 (2010) — Contributor — 11 copies
Exotic Gothic 5: Forbidden Tales from Our Gothic World (2013) — Contributor — 9 copies
Zombies vs Robots: Women on War! (2012) — Contributor — 8 copies
Thrillers (Anthology) (1993) — Contributor — 8 copies
Emblemes 1 : vampyres (2001) — Contributor — 8 copies
Exotic Gothic: Forbidden Tales from Our Gothic World (2007) — Contributor — 7 copies
Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo (2008) — Contributor — 6 copies
Women Writing the Weird (2011) 5 copies
Dead Detectives Society #1 (2023) — Contributor — 3 copies
Οι κυρίες του τρόμου (1994) — Contributor — 2 copies
Science Fiction Eye #07, August 1990 — Contributor — 1 copy
Science Fiction Eye #08, Winter 1991 — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

anthology (1,103) collection (90) comics (176) dark fantasy (60) ebook (121) erotica (68) fairy tales (163) fantasy (1,121) fiction (1,051) first edition (31) graphic novel (74) graphic novels (38) hardcover (64) Hellboy (32) horror (1,383) Kindle (36) Nancy A. Collins (33) Neil Gaiman (49) novel (50) own (32) owned (33) paperback (71) paranormal (62) read (129) sandman (146) science fiction (124) series (38) sf (86) sff (75) short fiction (39) short stories (831) signed (53) Sonja Blue (97) speculative fiction (56) supernatural (66) to-read (581) unread (117) urban fantasy (128) vampire (217) vampires (403)

Common Knowledge

Members

Reviews

I was looking forward to this novel, having truly enjoyed the animated series.

And man was I disappointed. It seems that main comic Blade Runner series will remain the flagship for a long time to come.

Art is interesting, slightly on a cartoonish side of things, but OK. Most important it is consistent throughout the volume. Coloring is also beautifully done. So graphically very well done work.

Problem is in the story. Story must be the most bland story I read in a while (including comics and prose fiction, even poetry I might add). It is just that story goes from A to B to C to D, even after first issue I knew exactly where this story will go. There is no dramatic element, no place where you wonder if our heroes will survive, will they manage to overcome the next hurdle. There is nothing because from the start it is visible there is no danger to our heroes. Yes, people will die but this happens in the background, almost noiseless because these characters are there just to show how bad things are but we could just as well be without these characters. They add no ..... weight?..... to the story, they are just part of the set, basically nothing.

Don't get me wrong, this is comic, I do not expect some high level of story presentation. But let us look at the stories like Conan, various crime stories (pulp fiction) and even let us go to the main story line of Blade Runner comics - we all know our heroes will survive, but these comics kept me interested to see what is going on, what is lurking behind the next corner, how will our heroes handle it, I mean some kind of progress of both characters and the story, some hint of challenge. This is what makes good story. Otherwise we could all read phone books or political pamphlets for entertainment.

All of this is missing from this volume. Everything is just straight forward, everyone is highly knowledgeable, highly capable that basically there is no ..... story. Two panels could have made the whole volume - Elle coming into the town outside LA on one panel and Elle leaving the city with all dead bad guys in the background on another panel.

Hopefully author's will improve in follow up stories about the Elle. Animated series was great, I truly enjoyed it, I just wish they build up the equivalent story-wise in graphical format.

And one thing that is so cringy and you cannot miss it on pages of this comic, is political messaging. I understand that this is now trendy and everything but it just makes the entire story blah - Russian mafia leading the fracking company that looks like Sauron's lair with all the smoke and towers, good guys living in, for all means and purposes, Eden with enough propellers on all the wind turbines to be able to elevate few miles above ground. Living in such a clean condition and in harmony with nature that I was ..... huh? I mean, what, in else completely polluted world few miles outside LA you basically have equivalent of zero pollution area, clean beautiful blue sky (as opposed to dark, ridiculous smoke area of fracking company) where you can grow food without any problems to feed hundreds o people (in bloody desert)? Not to mention that hover bikes that noone saw for decades, oh yeah they can be fixed in couple of days by only changing the circuit board in mechanic shop in the middle of nowhere (whaaat?). And this Eden of course is built and led by the best and brightest from all over - scientists, engineers, medical personnel etc. I mean in any apocalyptic, dystopian story this would be the Holy Grail for all people to find and live there and it exists just outside of LA, few days ride away. I mean, what? I could just see common sense (and I mean it in terms of fiction story) going out the window.

As I said, this political element and preachiness just kills of the story.

In summary, interesting. But nowhere near the quality of the main Blade Runner series.
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Flagged
Zare | Jan 23, 2024 |
Stylishly dated, somewhat slight vampire fiction from the late 1980s. After ‘Salem’s Lot (1975), Interview with a Vampire (1976), The Delicate Dependency (1982), and Fevre Dream (1982) but before Lucius Shepard’s The Golden (1993). Unfortunately, Sunglasses After Dark isn’t comparable to any of these other, better novels. So, what does it have to offer (other than its vastly superior cover, by Mel Odom: seriously, look at that lusciously stark cover art, and imagine it coolly regarding you from a wire stand in an Ohio airport in the first year of George H. W. Bush’s only term)? The novel follows the lurching story of Sonja Blue, once an heiress with a bright future and now virtually orphaned after being brutally attacked and cast aside. Much of the novel (its best passages) sketches out the trajectory of Sonja’s second maturation. She moonlights as a prostitute in Europe, befriends an occult scholar, learns how to kill (there's a striking scene where she kills a vampire who's been snaring his prey by pretending to be the ghost of Jim Morrison, near the singer's grave in Paris), and makes new enemies in the largely disguised society of “Pretenders,” which consists of various creatures of the night, both vampires and otherwise. Here you can see gritty urban fantasy in its middle years, halfway between Fritz Leiber’s “Megapolisomancy” and Mike Mignola‘s weird fairytale underground. Collins brings a resolutely punky black-leather-and-mirrorshades sensibility to complement the grunginess of the urban vampire tale (as opposed to the gothic-historical flair of Rice, Talbot, Martin, and Shepard). Partly this comes out in the novel’s surprisingly graphic violence, which borders on splatterpunk, even by paperback horror standards in the 1980s. Partly it comes out in Collins’ ability to translate native gothicisms of the subgenre into spiky, modern prose that wears its cool factor on its sleeve without irony or self-consciousness. An irritating subplot involving a televangelist’s demonic widow (probably modeled after Tammy Faye Baker, whose involvement in Jim Bakker’s downfall was highly mediated from 1987-1989) adds nothing. An excellent taste of Collins’ language: “They were Siamese twins, joined at the groin by a traitorous piece of meat.”… (more)
 
Flagged
mothhovel | 5 other reviews | Oct 25, 2023 |
A long time ago, in a land far away... I was a teenager during the vampire craze. Vampires were EVERYWHERE. And I mean everywhere. Every book store pushed vampire books and you just couldn't escape them.

Vamps was one of those books I was eying down but I never got the chance to pick up. I was fortunate to find it on sale at a local book outlet store so I decided that now was the time! I would pick up this book and see if it held up to what my expectations were back in ye olde high school days.

Honestly, the book was what I would have ATE UP in high school but it didn't interest me as much now.

It was dramatic. It had gossip. It was essentially the soap opera/"reality" tv but in vampire YA form. While I had my issues with it as an adult reader, I was glued to it as it brought back that nostalgia from my high school days. I definitely didn't enjoy the whiny and mean lead character, but I also REALLY wanted to find out what was going to happen... It's like binging reality tv. You just HAVE to know.

So, will I be holding this book up as the best book of all time? No. Am I still going to try to find the rest of the books in this series and finish them to bring back the memories of my youth? HECK YES. It's messy, but I don't care. I came for an escape with this book not for some theme filled message essay writing fuel.

Two out of five stars.
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Flagged
Briars_Reviews | 9 other reviews | Aug 4, 2023 |
I was expecting this to be more in the vein of her comic book fiction, but was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a more than acceptable anthology of Southern Gothic fiction based on Collins’ roots in the Deep South.

Enjoyable and not too schlocky.
 
Flagged
Maddz | 2 other reviews | Feb 5, 2023 |

Lists

Awards

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Associated Authors

Edward E. Kramer Editor, Contributor
Ed Gorman Contributor
Dave Acosta Illustrator
Paul Lee Illustrator
Fritz Casas Illustrator
Sean Phillips Illustrator
Steve Dillon Illustrator
Duncan Fegredo Illustrator
Mike Allred Illustrator
Kevin Nowlan Illustrator
Eric Shanower Illustrator
Mark Buckingham Illustrator
Christopher Golden Contributor
Kathe Koja Contributor
Lucy Taylor Contributor
Douglas E. Winter Contributor
Karl Edward Wagner Contributor
John Shirley Contributor
Kim DeMulder Illustrator
T. E. D. Klein Introduction, Contributor
Melissa Mia Hall Contributor
Scot Eaton Illustrator
Norman Partridge Contributor
Stuart Kaminsky Contributor
Kathryn Ptacek Contributor
Stephen King Contributor
Michael Blumlein Contributor
Basil Copper Contributor
Michael O'Donoghue Contributor
Bob Burden Contributor
Richard Laymon Contributor
Ramsey Campbell Contributor
George C. Chesbro Contributor
David J. Schow Contributor
Wendy Webb Contributor
Robert Weinberg Contributor
John Peyton Cooke Contributor
John Lutz Contributor
David Aaron Clark Contributor
Philip Nutman Contributor
Mike Lee Contributor
Howard Kaylan Contributor
Rex Miller Contributor
Marie Landis Contributor
Douglas Clegg Contributor
Brian Herbert Contributor
Alan Moore Contributor
Brooks Caruthers Contributor
Don Webb Contributor
Steve Rasnic Tem Contributor
Danielle Willis Contributor
Rob Hardin Contributor
Barry N. Malzberg Contributor
Steve Antczak Contributor
Wayne Allen Sallee Contributor
Gregory Nicoll Contributor
Anya Martin Contributor
Shepherd Hendrix Illustrator
Tom Yeates Illustrator
Charles Vess Cover artist
Dennis Cramer Illustrator
Phillip Hester Illustrator
Jose Gonzalez Illustrator
Earl Geier Illustrator
Alan M. Clark Cover artist
Mel Odom Cover artist
Michelle Prahler Cover designer
Les Edwards Cover artist
Thom Ang Cover artist
J. K. Potter Cover artist
Arnie Fenner Cover design & handlettering
Billy Tan Cover artist
Emanuela Lupacchino Cover artist
Glenn Fabry Cover artist
Clyde Caldwell Cover artist
Jay Anacleto Cover artist

Statistics

Works
206
Also by
67
Members
4,205
Popularity
#5,980
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
80
ISBNs
155
Languages
9
Favorited
16

Charts & Graphs