Armed to the Teeth with Lipstick, a 1998 detective cult classic by Blag Dahlia

For a prolonged Halloween treat, the online Freezine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has been reprinting all 31 chapters and the original artwork from the 123-page, cult classic novel Armed to the Teeth with Lipstick (1998), written by underground punk legend Blag Dahlia and illustrated by the late “mad” Marc Rude. Starring Lucifer Doolan, “a well-hung Sam Spade-styled detective from Mars hooked on amphetamines, violence, and a ‘six-foot subatomic gash’ named Natasha Romilar, who shoots nerve gas from her nipples,” here are the opening lines of Armed to the Teeth with Lipstick:

Saturday morning. I rose from a night of chemical revelry and cursed the day I was born. Doolan's the name, the heat gone cold loco and paying in spades. Jungle beat -- Mars, the Red Planet, a sleeping giant with one foot on the gas pedal and one on Lovers Leap.

They said you couldn't keep it down once I'd seen some action and I guess 'they' were right. In twelve long years with the Korps I'd tasted enough senseless carnality for a lifetime, and truth be told I couldn't tell the black hats from the white anymore. In my business that meant trouble.

Cut to a park bench sunrise. I'm pissed to be taken away from my dreaming, cold in the dry heaving sunlight. A breath of fake fur and lipstick eased up from the gutter. Eyeballs red as a streetwalker's labia flashed on the daytime world and thought…

Author blurbs for Armed to the Teeth with Lipstick were provided by Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Carlos Casteneda, Studs Turkel, and Ernest Hemingway.