Novelist Grady Hendrix, most noted for Horrorstör and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, casts a nostalgic eye on his forebearers with Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction. This was the generation that spawned Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, and Clive Barker. Hendrix doesn’t spend much energy on those gentlemen, […]
Over the past two years, my comic-reading habits have shifted to titles featuring female leads. I can’t get enough of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Velvet, Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Lazarus, James Robinson and various artists’ Scarlet Witch, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk’s Mockingbird, and my favorite female superhero of all time, the Black […]
An ongoing debate over steampunk’s viability has been underway for some time. In 2013, an IBM algorithm, the Social Sentiment Index, predicted that by 2014 steampunk would become a major force within the retail industry, a dominant influence on clothing, jewelry, and accessories. Well, not so much, as time has shown, except for those dedicated […]
During an interview at the most recent Marvel Retailer Summit, David Gabriel, Vice-President of Sales, blamed declining sales of Marvel’s titles on people who were “turning their nose up against” diversity in Marvel’s titles. This inspired a storm of online articles by commentators disagreeing with Gabriel, most of whom cited instead Marvel’s glut of crossover […]
To augment a special issue of the popular fanzine Journey Planet dedicated to Batman, co-editor Christopher Garcia asked fans to name their first memories of that hero. To answer, I shared about how at four-years old I wandered into my two oldest brothers’ shared bathroom to peek at their stag magazines. What confronted me instead was a stack of half-ruined […]
The fourth season of Orphan Black is underway and over the years the show has garnered a solid fan base. As of this writing, 727, 809 individuals like the official Orphan Black page on Facebook, and 132,666 have shown support for the page dedicated to the show’s star, Tatiana Maslany. Message boards, a wiki, and […]
While a psychology major at San Jose State during the mid-1980s, I interacted with a group studying psychopathology with Sheila Bienenfeld, a professor famous for using biographies of noted writers to teach diagnostic methodology. Here assigned selections included Louise DeSalvo’s Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work and […]
How embarrassing to admit that until recently I had not read anything by James Tiptree, Jr. The realization about this gigantic hole in my reading came when Christopher J. Garcia asked me to review Letters to Tiptree edited, which forced me to answer, “I can’t until I’ve actually read Tiptree’s works,” because a simple […]
Since 1978, Gavin de Becker and Associates has been providing worldwide protective security and logistical consultations for celebrities, media figures, politicians, athletes, and other high-profile individuals and organizations at risk for violence. A senior fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, de Becker himself has been twice appointed to the President’s Advisory Board […]
On March 26, 2015, more than five hundred years after his death, Richard III again was laid to rest at Leicester Cathedral. This time, the Archbishop of Canterbury presided, and days before thousands of English had lined the streets with white roses, the symbol of the House of York. Most are familiar with the […]
