I knew that private dick John Shaft — as immortalized by Richard Roundtree in the 1971 blaxploitation classic — was a multimedia character; what I didn’t know was just how wide his net reached! Shut your mouth and get schooled with The World of Shaft: A Complete Guide to the Novels, Comic Strip, Films and Television Series, Steve Aldous’ examination of the groundbreaking hero. With the trade paperback being published by McFarland & Company, it shouldn’t surprise you that Aldous has done his homework; the aforementioned Shaft film figures heavily, as do its two sequels, the short-lived (and near-emasculating) TV series and the 2000 Samuel L. Jackson remake. But it seems like anyone could discuss that; not so with Ernest Tidyman’s 1970 novel that started it all and the six subsequent crazy-sounding adventures (an actual title: Shaft Among the Jews), each detailed here. And who knew that Shaft did his thing in the funny pages, too? His brief life as a syndicated comic strip is covered (with examples, thankfully), which brings us full circle to the present day with the current run of Shaft comics penned by BadAzz MoFo zinester David F. Walker, who provides this book’s intro.

In respect to Tadhg Taylor’s Masters of the Shoot-’Em-Up, calling his subjects “masters” may be overstating the case. This is, after all, a book about “would-be Don Siegels,” as he lovingly dubs them, but that’s not to deny their contributions or the project at hand. Subtitled Conversations with Directors, Actors and Writers of Vintage Action Movies and Television Shows, it gives both voice and due to those journeymen helmers of the 1950s to the 1980s who kept busy cranking out hours of studio-backed entertainment without ever breaking big (or at least to household-name status). For perspective, one of the biggest names among Taylor’s two dozen or so interviews is arguably Jeff Kanew, director of Revenge of the Nerds, but he’s here to talk Eddie Macon’s Run and Tough Guys (yet not, oddly, the gun-toting gal pic that effectively halted his career, as well as that of its star, Kathleen Turner: V.I. Warshawski). Kanew’s recollections of studio interference and dueling egos are told with candor — a refreshing theme carried out by others, perhaps most notably actress-turned-screenwriter Leigh Chapman, who seems awfully dismissive of her own work, ranging from “black flick” Truck Turner to the Chuck Norris vehicle The Octagon. This is a breezy, fact-packed read for fans of Hollywood’s fringes.

To paraphrase one of the iconic cable channel’s early jingles, great movies were just the beginning at Home Box Office, now known (and beloved) as HBO. For years an employee in its departments of marketing and consumer affairs, Bill Mesce gives readers an insider’s view of its roots and ultimate revolution in his brand bio, Inside the Rise of HBO: A Personal History of the Company That Transformed Television. As someone who remembers the days when if HBO wasn’t airing a movie, it was a boxing match, I was seated and safely buckled in for the trip back in time as soon as saw the cover. Mesce gets off to a rough start, rehashing the narrative of the medium’s birth before even reaching the realm of pay TV and specifically HBO. Once he does, however, it’s a hoot to recall such ill-fated tries at “original” programming as the footballs-and-tits sitcom 1st and Ten — a long, long way from current fare like Game of Thrones, which somehow has found critical acclaim and Emmy love and kept the tits. Ironically, the things I found most interesting are found in the appendices, in which Mesce shares the job details of those who select the movies to show and then put the schedule together like a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. —Rod Lott

Get them at Amazon.

Think back to the beginning of summer 1999, when Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace was about to hit the American multiplex with the fervor of an Ebola outbreak: In just one of untold marketing tie-ins, everyone from Anakin Skywalker and Mace Windu to (shudder) Jar Jar Binks adorned specially designed cans of Pepsi — a lot of cans of Pepsi.

So many, in fact, that there were more of those cans on the market “than there were people on the planet,” according to Chris Taylor, author of How Star Wars Conquered the Universe. I share that statistic to let you know Taylor isn’t fooling around with his book’s title. George Lucas’ little 1977 tribute to the beloved Flash Gordon serials of his youth was so unloved by its own studio that embarrassed 20th Century Fox execs considered the “kiddie” movie second fiddle to the Sidney Sheldon adaptation they just knew would be the season’s surefire smash.

As we now know, it wasn’t. Instead, Star Wars was the film to which moviegoers flocked, making it the hit by far (and far, far away). From legitimizing science fiction as a box-office draw to making a mint off something called action figures, cinema was never the same. Before The Force Awakens this Christmas, you owe it to yourself to read how it came to be and what all it has done.

Now available from Basic Books in a trade-paperback edition that’s been expanded and revised to include information on that upcoming J.J. Abrams film, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe is not a rehash of countless making-of narratives. Had Taylor just stuck to telling that story, the book still would be good, because the way he tells it is unlike any I’ve read before. While he harbors reverence for the original trilogy, he’s not beholden to fan worship/service; Lucas’ early drafts are, with evidence, rightly dismissed as “ponderous,” and Taylor is able to remain his journalist’s objectivity: “We tend to go overboard with hindsight when examining the history of something successful. We build creation myths out of the creation of myth. The creator himself … is often more than happy to help in this deception.”

Where this project really succeeds is, again, in keeping with the book’s title. In every other chapter, Taylor examines in depth the franchise’s penetration into — if not impregnation of — our pop-culture consciousness. It’s one that exists even within people who never have seen the movies, and the initial chapter finds the author attempting to find a Star Wars virgin. Other side routes introduce the reader to cosplay groups, the unwitting viral-video star known as the “Star Wars Kid,” the cottage industry of Del Rey novels, Jedi as a religion, taking lightsaber-duel classes, the Kenner action figures, the parodies (including Ernie Fosselius’ still-brilliant Hardware Wars), the rip-offs (including Luigi Cozzi’s still-hysterical Starcrash) and the or-all-the-wrong-reasons-immortal Star Wars Holiday Special.

Its sheer comprehensiveness and galaxy-wide scope make it a must for lovers of film and, in particular, the business of film. Star Wars fanatics might be put off by the occasional brusqueness; no better example exists than marketer Charlie Lippincott’s recollection of his then-unique strategy of spreading word and prepping the masses by saturating comic-book conventions: “What I did led to something I’m appalled at.” I don’t take such comments as a negatives.

But the errors, certainly. Although Taylor writes in his new introduction that this 2.0 version corrects the boo-boos of last year’s hardback, some big ones were missed. Referenced on seven pages, special-effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey) is misspelled as “Trumball” every single time, and twice, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner somehow acquires an extra “F” in his last name. More than once, you’ll find the book’s very subject listed as “Stars Wars” — a perfectly understandable typo, but one easily remedied by a find/replace search in your friendly desktop/laptop word-processing program of choice.

Maybe the third edition will see those mistakes fixed, because we know with certainly that even after Lucas’ retirement, the story of Star Wars is far from over. One suspects it’s only just begun. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Truth is, every hopeless film addict has a story like comedian/actor Patton Oswalt shares in Silver Screen Fiend. The difference is we’re not famous, so who wants to hear it?

Okay, okay, so Oswalt’s knack for making an anecdote as compelling as it comedic may have something to do with it, too.

Because of this, anyone who has experienced the near-orgasmic, adrenaline rush (don’t deny it) of a movie projector flickering to life as the lights fade away — along with your disbelief — will find themselves in lockstep with a kindred spirit …

… who’s way funnier than you or I.

Although Oswalt indeed presents himself more than worthy of the title, the slim volume is really only half about the movies. This is a memoir of a four-year span in his life in the late 1990s, when he worked as hard honing his stand-up skills on the stage as he did at catching whatever double features L.A.’s storied New Beverly Cinema revival house had programmed.

What Oswalt admittedly didn’t work so hard at? Churning out sketches for his actual day job as part of the MADtv writing team. Why do that when he harbored big, shiny dreams of becoming a director? Mainlining movies — new and old, classic or crap — was, he reasoned, the most direct path to calling “Action!”

Chapters of Silver Screen Fiend open with visual evidence of this, reprinting calendar grids of Oswalt’s filmgoing exploits, from Billy Wilder and William Castle to Hammer horror marathons and whatever big-budget blockbuster happened to open at the multiplex that week. The anal-retentive cineasts among us can and will relate; same goes with his devotion to the sacred texts of Danny Peary and Michael Weldon, whose pages Oswalt not only pored over, but decorated with checkmarks as he saw the movies they celebrated.

This book is not like those books, meaning you will not find reviews per se, although the pages are rife with the author’s blessedly unfiltered opinions. Yet it rightfully earns shelf space next to those works of reference, as Oswalt’s sprocket-holed memoir is often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking and always, always of immense interest.

If you didn’t purchase Silver Screen Fiend in hardcover when it came out back in January, good thing you waited, because the book has gained extra content on its way to this paperback debut: nearly 50 pages of Oswalt’s early film writing, including five reviews he pseudonymously penned for Ain’t It Cool News — a website whose creator and audience seems incongruous to Oswalt’s voice and taste for the likes of Philip Kaufman’s Quills and Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar.

Also in this welcome bonus section are an introductory post to the (sadly) now-defunct The Dissolve, an attempt at aping David Thomson’s Suspects exercise of hashing out bios for fictional film characters and, hilariously, an anti-AFI list of his own 100 favorite movie moments (i.e. “Blade’s entrance at the blood rave”). —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

With one of the ’90s’ most iconic television series just a few months away from returning to the tube, now’s the time for The X-Files FAQ. (The jury, however, is still out for that subtitle: All That’s Left to Know About Global Conspiracy, Aliens, Lazarus Species, and Monsters of the Week — I mean, what the hell is a “Lazarus Species”?) John Kenneth Muir, who also penned 2013’s Horror Films FAQ for Applause’s ongoing pop-culture line of guides, has the unenviable job of distilling a decade-plus of content into a single trade paperback, yet rises to the challenge by refusing to do what the average reader might expect: give an episode guide. Although Muir does tackle many episodes, he tends to do so in thematic groupings while exploring what made The X-Files click (and sometimes not). Later chapters tackle the guest stars, the two movies, the official spin-offs, the countless knock-offs and, yep, even the porn parodies. The truth is in here.

A sequel to 2013’s Great Showdowns: The Return (itself a follow-up to the previous year’s The Great Showdowns), Scott C.’s Great Showdowns: The Revenge features dozens upon dozens more of drawings of depicting some of pop culture’s greatest adversaries. That’s it: They just stand there facing one another, whether “they” are the characters of Fatal Attraction, Child’s Play, Road to Perdition — heck, even the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon foodie comedy The Trip! And that’s fine, because Campbell — that’s what the C stands for — is a wonderful illustrator; his drawings radiate with immeasurable charm, even when they’re of some of the most evil A-holes the screen has seen. But not everything is decipherable, and there are no words, no captions, no legend at the end to let you know who was who. Not knowing can be frustrating, even if the unknowns number few. To be technical, not everything is a showdown, either. I’d hardly call Jiro dreaming of sushi anything approaching conflict.

Given that its subject is alive, kicking and ridiculously prolific, the St. Martin’s Press trade-paperback release of The Stephen King Companion: Four Decades of Fear from the Master of Horror marks the third edition of George Beahm’s work, and he’s clearly in danger of busting through the page count of what publishing technology currently allows; as is, it stands at a mighty 624. Although it bears some resemblance to Hans-Åke Lilja’s 2010 brick from Cemetery Dance, Beahm’s is far better written and better packaged, thereby transcending what could have been merely a reference title to pluck off the shelf only if Google failed you. Instead, Beahm’s book can be consumed as an actual narrative or in pieces; it works both ways. Supplemented with a wealth of essays, interviews, sidebars, photos, Glenn Chadbourne’s illustrations and a gorgeous, full-color section of Michael Whelan’s paintings, this Companion resides in a netherworld of not quite a proper biography and not exactly a trivia collection, yet it should satisfy King’s fans looking for either or both. No stone in King’s career path — books, movies, van accidents — appears to have been left unturned.

From title alone, your first instinct is to make fun of something like Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story — Second Edition. Then you realize that, dammit, author E.J. Fleming has done so much research and homework that snark turns to respect. Although the 17 of the title doesn’t sound like a lot of stops, note that those are “tours” — a term Fleming doesn’t take lightly. Arranged between district groupings like Sunset Strip, Brentwood and The Palisades are some 650 sites! The generally curious and the downright morbid can maneuver their way through Fleming’s succinct and exacting instructions, fully fleshed out with the historic, tragic details about the site in question, be it a home in which a celebrity expired or a spot marking one’s murder. From superstars and up-and-comers to everyone I could think of (Rebecca Schaeffer? Dominique Dunne?), they’re all here. It’s not quite as macabre as you’d think it to be; sorry if that disappoints you. —Rod Lott

Get them at Amazon.