Stories by @salvatoremartusciello

Paradise Lost

The poem follows the epic tradition of starting in medias res, the background story being recounted later. Milton's story has two narrative arcs, one about Satan and the other, Adam and Eve. It begins after Satan and the other fallen angels have been defeated and banished to Hell, or, as it is also called in the poem, Tartarus.

Dracula

In 1462, Vlad the Impaler returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his wife Elisabeta committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. A priest tells him that his wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He then drives his sword into the chapel's stone cross and drinks blood that pours from it, becoming a vampire. In 1992 gangster Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a arms dealer from his superior R.M. Renfield, who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's insane asylum. Jonathan travels to Transylvania to arrange Dracula's drug and weapons acquisitions in London. Jonathan meets Dracula who finds a picture of his fiancée Mina Murray and believes she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be fed upon by his brides, while he sails to England with Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey. In London, Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. Mina begins to develop feelings for Dracula, accompanying him on several outings. When Mina finally receives word from Jonathan — who has escaped the castle and recovered at a convent — she travels to Romania to marry him and defeat Dracula.

Hokuto no Ken

A worldwide nuclear war sometime in the 1990s has resulted in the destruction of most of civilization, turning the world into a desert wasteland. The remnants of mankind fight over whatever supply of food and uncontaminated water still remaining as the strong prey on the weak. Kenshiro is the successor to Hokuto Shinken, an ancient martial art of assassination that trains its practitioners to kill from within an opponent's body through the use of hidden meridian points. Kenshiro wishes to live his life in peace, but after he is separated from his fiancée Yuria by a jealous rival, he begins his journey to become the savior of the post-apocalyptic world, defending the weak and innocent from the many gangs and organizations that threaten their survival. Along the way, Kenshiro meets a young thief named Bat and an orphaned girl named Lin, who join him as his traveling companions and bear witnesses to Ken's many battles.

Martin Mystere

Martin Mystère is an art historian, archaeologist, anthropologist, adventurer, writer, television producer and collector of unusual objects. Based in New York City, where he was born Martin Jacques Mystère, he spent much of his early life studying in Italy, where many of his adventures take place. After the unexplained deaths of his parents in a plane crash (1965), he started to devote his studies to the most enigmatic events and places of human history. He also helps the New York police and a United States secret government agency in their investigations, as well as anyone who comes to him for help and gets him curious. He is assisted in his adventures all around the world by Java, a mute and very strong Neanderthal man he discovered in the hidden City of Lucid Shadows in Mongolia.

Nathan Never

The title character Nathan Never is a special agent in a semi-dystopian near future where crime-fighting is shared between the police and corporate detective agencies such as Never's employer Alpha Agency. Stories typically merge classic urban crime, noir, and drama, with occasional forays into political thriller, survival horror, and space opera. Many issues quote classic science fiction film and literature, for example in names, locations, technology, etc. Primary sources of inspiration are Blade Runner and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. While most plots are self-conclusive within one or two issues, some storylines span five, ten, or even twenty issues, such as Alfa's quest to capture arch-villain Aristoteles Skotos, the Mutants' struggle to obtain equal rights, and the Earth's war with the rebelling space stations over food supplies. Continuity is a cornerstone of the series, with the effects of previous storylines accounted for and considered in subsequent plots.

Dylan Dog

The series features the eponymous character, a paranormal investigator who takes on cases involving supernatural elements such as ghosts, demons, vampires, undeads, werewolves and other creatures, but also horrifying sociopathic criminals and serial killers. It defies the whole preceding horror tradition with a vein of surrealism and an anti-bourgeois rhetoric. Dylan is supported mainly by his trusty sidekick Groucho (a Groucho Marx lookalike) who adds humour to this grisly genre and Dylan's sombre temperament. The series is mainly set in London, where the protagonist lives, though he occasionally travels elsewhere.

Interview with the Vampire

In modern-day San Francisco, reporter Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, who claims to be a vampire. Louis describes his human life as a wealthy plantation owner in 1791 Spanish Louisiana. Despondent following the death of his wife and unborn child, he drunkenly wanders the waterfront of New Orleans one night and is attacked by the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat senses Louis's dissatisfaction with life and offers to turn him into a vampire. Louis accepts, but quickly comes to regret it. While Lestat revels in the hunt and killing of humans, Louis resists his instinct to kill, instead drinking animal blood to sustain himself.

Forbidden Colours

Aging, cynical Shunsuke is one of postwar Japan's most respected authors. While vacationing at an exclusive Japanese resort, he meets Yuichi, a stunningly gorgeous young man of limited means and intellect who is engaged to a prim, conventional young woman from a very well-to-do family. While he needs the marriage for financial reasons, Yuichi innocently confides to the older man that he feels no real physical desire for his bride, or for any woman. The crafty Shunsuke senses an opportunity to mold the malleable, gullible young man into an exquisite weapon of revenge against the female sex as a whole. He tells Yuichi that his inability to feel desire for women is not a weakness but potentially a tremendous source of strength. He advises the young man to go through with the marriage and gain financial security, but also to omit no opportunity to experiment with the emotions of others, and to have as many affairs as possible with both women and men.

Bastard!!

Four centuries ago, Earth suffered a cataclysm caused by the demon Anthrasax before she was slain by the Dragon Knight, plunging the world into a new dark age. In the present, the Kingdom of Metallicana is attacked by the Dark Rebel Army who seek to resurrect Anthrasax. This prompts the high priest to ask his daughter to awaken Dark Schneider, a dark wizard and founding leader of the Dark Rebel Army who reincarnated himself within the body of 14-year-old Luche Renren. In time, Dark’s allies learn of his true nature and ties to the calamity that befell the Old World.

1Q84

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 “Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.