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THE TRIUNE MAN

 

by Richard A. Lupoff

 

 

 THE TRIUNE BOY -- An Introduction

 

Being the son of a science fiction author in Berkeley, CA in the 1970s made me the envy of every nerdy kid in town. And being the son of the guy who wrote that book on comic-books (All in Color for a Dime) was truly the icing on the cake, making me nerdy-cool enough to hang out with Berkeley’s local comic shop owners (who were at the time all pushing the ripe old age of twenty five!).

Being my father’s son, I had more than my fair share of comic books by Jack Kirby and Robert Crumb and everyone in between, Prince Valiant Sunday comic pages, and book-upon-book on the history of horror films. Hey, it was the 1970s after all! In my later teenage years I brought my comic loving esthetic to the soul records I bought—the Isley Brothers in their black-Elvis jumpsuits, the comic book art of Pedro Bell and Overton Lloyd on the covers of George Clinton’s Funkadelic and Parliament albums.

Those were the days when parents thought little about letting their children walk across town to the comic shops and record stores of Berkeley’s then-thriving Telegraph Avenue. Saturday nights were reserved for Creature Features hosted by suit-wearing-cigar-smoking Bob Wilkins, whose day job consisted of selling TV ads for the local non-network TV station. Wilkins’s shtick was to tell the audience upfront how truly dreadful that night’s movie was going to be, an invitation that I found irresistible.

And then there was The Triune Man. The copyright on my copy reads 1976; I was fifteen then. But I seem to remember discussing the book with my father at a much younger age, while he was writing it, standing in the kitchen-nook-turned-study, while he was seated at his desk with his IBM Seletric III (the Mac Book of its day, I might add). On a superficial level, I understood the plot: comic strip artist has multiple personality and gets involved with space aliens. I, of course, didn’t want to read the actual book, I wanted to see the Diamond Sutro comic strip published as a monthly color comic book, if not by Marvel or DC, then perhaps by one of the local Underground comic book publishers. And, of course, the Sutro Heights reference went right over my foggy teenaged head.

Flash forward some thirty-plus years, I’ve “retired” from my own career in book publishing and transitioned to a profession that actually pays enough for me to pay my mortgage and raise a family of my own. During this time of career-transition, I’ve been reading some of my father’s older books from the early and mid-’70s, one of which is The Triune Man. And as I read it, I discovered that it is not science fiction at all! The Triune Man is actually the story of a young boy who survives the Holocaust, his only possession being a beat-up Captain Marvel Jr. comic book. As a result he develops multiple personalities, one of them being Diamond Sutro who manifests himself through Buddy Satvan’s work as a writer, and also in Buddy’s mind where he thinks that he actually is his own superhero creation.

Whether you think that The Triune Man is mainstream fiction or science fiction—sit back, read and enjoy the ride! And remember, you won’t find The Triune Man on your Amazon Kindle.

 

Ken Lupoff

Oakland, CA

July, 2008

 

Selected Works by Richard A. Lupoff

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965)

The Case of the Doctor Who Had No Business (1966)

One Million Centuries (1967)

Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971)

Into the Aether (1974)

Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Martian Vision (1976)

The Triune Man (1976)

Sandworld (1976)

Lisa Kane (1976)

The Crack in the Sky (1976)

Sword of the Demon (1977)

The Return of Skull-Face (with Robert E. Howard) (1977)

Space War Blues (1978)

Nebogipfel at the End of Time (1979)

The Ova Hamlet Papers (1979)

Stroka Prospekt (1982)

Circumpolar! (1984)

Sun’s End (1984)

The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick (1985)

Lovecraft’s Book (1985)

Countersolar! (1986)

Galaxy’s End (1988)

The Forever City (1988)

The Black Tower (1988)

The Final Battle (1990)

The Great American Paperback:

An Illustrated Tribute to Legends of the Book (1990)

The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle

and His Incredible Aether Flyer (1991)

Night of the Living Gator (1992)

Hyperprism (1994)

Before 12:01 . . . and After (1996)

Claremont Tales (2000)

Claremont Tales II (2001)

Terrors (2005)

Marblehead: A Novel of H.P. Lovecraft (2006)

The Compleat Ova Hamlet (2007)

The Organ Reader, ed. (2008)

Quintet (2008)

 

The Hobart Lindsey/Marvia Plum Mystery Series

The Comic Book Killer (1988)

The Classic Car Killer (1992)

The Bessie Blue Killer (1994)

The Sepia Siren Killer (1994)

The Cover Girl Killer (1995)

The Silver Chariot Killer (1996)

The Radio Red Killer (1997)

One Murder at a Time (2001)

 

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