Just in time for the holidays, I wrote a rather cogent Plenitude Magazine review of Adam McOmber's Jesus and John, from Lethe Press, a horror novel riffing on Gnosticism, their possible love affair, and scads of cosmic horror.
Not to go all Jerry Garcia about this interesting religious horror novel (yes, you read that correctly), but the book's a trip, and reviewing it required looking into Gnosticism, which I was happy to learn about finally.
Here is another arguable exception to the idea of the time of the zombie film having passed, The Battery from 2012. It does fresh things with the zombie premise. Ballplayers Ben (Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) are thrust together due to the zombie apocalypse breaking out during the middle of their baseball game. Ben is a catcher. Mickey is a pitcher. The odd couple must survive together, traveling in quietude and deserted campgrounds, Gardner's bearded survivalist is a great foil to Mickey's sensitive and introspective character. It's a quite post-apocalyptic trip whose environs include deserted vineyards and endless empty domiciles. It is also an indie flick, sort of a low-rent hipster zombie movie and a character study, at that. Imagine a beat writers' zombie novel, and you would get something like this. Credit goes to Pete at Movies 'n Stuff for ordering it.
Trailer is here.
While I agree with Toronto horror writer David Nickle that the time of the zombie film has passed, here is one notable and rather remarkable recent exception I found, One Cut of the Dead. Ostensibly, it's a horror flick, but like a matryoshka doll, it has layer upon layer built in and is meta-meta. A delight!
Trailer's here.
Here are more comics I recommended reading for October and Halloween time in 2020.
LGBTQ+ Horror
Panel from Justin Hall's "Full Moon", a randy werewolf yarn...or tail?
Getting through as best I can. My partner just returned on Sunday from a near-two-week stay in Alberta due to a family crisis. We are all trying to settle into a normal routine (or whatever we can consider normal under Covid-19).
Autumn, for me, is the most beautiful and in some ways, the saddest, season. I'm in the same school as Ray Bradbury and Jack Kerouac on this one. While I certainly don't subscribe to everyone Kerouac suggests, I did journey through a significant Kerouac phase. Bradbury I have never fully recovered from. In fact, I am currently reading Jonathan R. Eller's Bradbury Beyond Apollo, the third biography in the astonishingly well-done series, the first being Becoming Bradbury and the second, Ray Bradbury Unbound.
For me, inspiration runs to a fever pitch even as the leaves turn, fall, and the, heady wine-like smell seems to pervade the world. I used to always pen a Halloween story, from grade six or so onward, up through university, and afterward. It is no coincidence that my first novel, Town & Train, was literary horror. So, I am always seeking out Halloween viewing and reading.
Over the years, on this blog, I have made the strong case for Hallowe'en films and comics and books. You can find links to all of these posts below:
While I continue the revisions on my second horror novel Monstrous, I have admittedly begun to despair as I valiantly attempt to stave off depression, anxiety, lack of focus, anger, and the general feeling that either the world or the walls are closing in.
The continually bizarre adjustments one must make during Covid-19 are wearing me down. Everything seems complicated. I'm talking about adjustments besides the necessary sensible ones like wearing a mask when you pass someone on the street or staying distant in all interactions. I am working progressively more at home, trying to juggle family life and being cloistered on the home front amid a lack of in-person socializing. The news out of the U.S. just getting stupider all the time.
Managing my bad habits has become a task, as my habits have developed their own bad habits. I call them bad habit barnacles, or B.H.B.'s. They are often words that begin with the letter 'P'. In fact, I have a holy trinity of bad habit barnacles, the three P's; one stands for 'pints'. You can draw your own conclusions about the others, but they all get along very well in a room.
Trying to focus on the revisions to Monstrous. Admittedly, between family estate law research and talking to a nice customer service rep at Greyhound in Missouri, this research has had an inevitable ripple effect of consequence on most events in the book in terms of realism or verisimilitude from this point onward (this point being chapter four). I am over a third through the manuscript in terms of revisions, and cutting significantly to make the story the best that it wants to be, but I am mired in doubts of completion date, readership or potential audience.
It's horror, creeping, supernatural horror with a dramatic core, a literary sensibility, full of characters I have not published before, including protagonist Sara Jasmine, now a university instructor, and John Newman, a longtime werewolf character. Love the characters, but I just can't see the other end of the process right now.
Despair has gripped me, after failing to sell short fiction these past six years. Maybe my spec-fic is too literary or maybe my spec-fic should go to literary markets. Regardless, my short fiction isn't placing, which has knocked me back significantly in terms of confidence.
My time on the Monstrous revisions has also continued well beyond what I expected. I thought I would complete them in summer and turn over the manuscript to beta readers (trusted first readers who look at a manuscript and give ,writer hopefully invaluable feedback). Instead I was delayed, yet again, in the faint hope of having the book in shape by the late fall. Well, it's early October and I do not see the revisions ending even by November.
So between the pandemic and the arduous, intense revisions, I am going through a lot of emotions a lot of the time. I know that it is unbecoming to complain. I am not fighting for my life in the streets or lying near-death in hospital or fearing for my life if a cop pulls me over or stressing about balancing tele-schooling on top of teleworking or wondering if I will have a roof over my head in the future.
Still, it is hard to see any darkness in this light, and even the possible finish line for the revisions. I will try my best to muddle through, I guess, and keep going and try to get enough sleep at night, but I feel leaden as I continue.
Another revision breakthrough with my second horror novel Monstrous occurred as I talked to a family law expert and discovered that a codicil is a change or addition to a last will and testament. Also, I discovered that a will, under Canadian estate law, does not have to be read aloud to the family or or other beneficiaries. More later. And I know that in a different life, I could probably talk to a friend who has intimate knowledge about some aspects of Canadian family estate law but, alas, I can't, hence the call to our lawyer.
In my book, I already have a videotaped testament that is separate from the reading of the will, and occurs months after the bulk of the estate has been divided among family, friends and employees. So, I have inadvertently written this verisimilitude into the story quite by accident. My characters need to be shocked and surprised by this new information. Further, a significant plot point hinges on this videotaped confession. The story beat, luckily, remains intact, because it is crucial to the infrastructure of the book. Fortunate novelist!Yesterday, I had the pleasure of discussing Canadian estate law with Ottawa lawyer Ted Mann as part of my research and revisions to my horror novel Monstrous.
While wearing my book reviewer's hat last night, reading Jonathan R. Eller's Bradbury Beyond Apollo, I discovered this passage on p. 29 about Bradbury trying to adapt his stories for film.
"Both men had a point, but the uneasy relationship became even worse when Ted Mann bought into the project.
Mann was the dynamic cinema-franchise owner and entrepreneur who would soon buy one of Bradbury's favourite Hollywood landmarks, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and place his own name on the marquee. He had also moved into film production, and his first producing credit was Warner Brothers' 1969 production of The Illustrated Man-a project where Bradbury felt as if he were an outside in all aspects of production."
This is simply the kind of startling coincidence that I cannot make up, but it certainly looks like I have.
And then, while riding the ghost train in my imagination, boom!, there I saw yet another solution. As I rewrite Monstrous, I see that a scene shouldn't be occurring in a store just down the road from a retrofitted inn. I guess I wanted to work in some ginchy, scary bits like in the film Splinter, where the characters are trapped in a convenience store. Only, in my work-in-progress, I wrote the nearby store as, alternately, a park store and a convenience-store-type setting. Thing is, neither choice makes sense, because a park store would be closed for the camping season by mid-October (when the book is set), a convenience store wouldn't be zoned commercially and allowed to be built near either a campground or retrofitted inn.
So, my settling doesn't makes sense, legally or simply, realistically. So I mulled this over, talked with my fellow writer partner about it, and they asked why must the setting be a store? What do the characters need there? And, in answering her, it dawned on me that they need a particular item in the store in order to fight seemingly supernatural entities. So she suggested that I simple move or change the setting to a tool shed or equipment shed.
Armed with that solid idea, I revised part of the scene in the store (still in-progress, in fact) and I realize the characters must enter a different setting and meet the same character, but all that can be done in a toolshed. A ranger or groundskeeper could, theoretically, be there doing maintenance and they could seek out his help. And he is so much fun, this salty, should-be-retired park ranger. He is in utter disbelief and outraged to be placed in a weird and horrifying situation.
In fact, the whole scene could have a whiff of 1950's horror, with younger characters trying to convince an older character that something terrible is happening.
So, bam!, indeed. This scene does play out quite differently. Oh, and a hint about what my characters are up against. I've got a werewolf, a ghost-fighter and a warlock. What are they looking for? Salt, of course. For the badness that is about to descend on them.
Binging on The Deuce, a three-season HBO series focusing on the rise of the porn industry in New York City in '71-'72 (s1), '76-'77 (s2) and '84-'85 (s3) produced by James Franco (in a double role as a twin brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (as sex-worker-cum-porn-director Eileen "Candy" Merrell). While The Deuce is not the most uplifting show, it is realistic, a fascinating and at many times mesmerizing fictionalization of pimps, hustlers, cops, club managers and the mob gangsters among the proliferating porn industry. Complex characters figures, and many queer ones, figure in the story, even if they are not always redeemable, and aging with each season. The show is quite historically accurate, as far as I can tell, and my knowledge of porn history is considerable. It's also a vicarious trip through Times Square at the height of its decadence and danger, so it's fascinating voyeuristic stuff. Franco and Gyllenhaal are astonishing, as is most of the cast.
Season one is a slow-burning lover, but transfixing.
Thanks, Pete, of Movies 'n Stuff for providing season 3.
Gretel & Hansel is kind of a solid piece of revisionist filmmaking. Shot like The Witch or Beyond the Black Rainbow. Mesmerizing soundtrack a la It Follows. Solid acting. Neat reframing, but still same fairy tale, explaining what happened before and after the witch. Lush with mature shots, which I am admittedly a sucker for during pandemic.
I went into the car-camping wilderness, endured over 24 hours of on-off downpours. We went through it all―leaking tents, failing rain gear and blow-up mattresses (for those who had them; I used a single foam mattress), soaked gear, crushed spirits, and misery. All of our modest plans, for hiking, walking to the beach and swimming, dissolved.
But, thanks to my resilient party who re-rigged the tarp to give us cover during the deluge, we stuck it out, rewarded by a clearing sky on mid-Saturday evening and a waxing moon with clouds scudding past, playing perk-a-boo, and glimpses of sharp constellations.
There was beer, wine and whiskey and other drugs of choice around the fire, of course, including pre-rolls and drops, but we also shared coffee and food, potatoes; carrots, beans, beans, pork, spinach and all sorts of potato chips, two-bite brownies and even lemon cake. We also shared jokes and memories and grievances and passions to raise each other's spirits.
I went looking for epiphanies and found them, pinned them to the notebook page in the morning of Sunday, the only sunny, temperate day we had. The view of the three-quarter moon and the Sunday weather felt like recompense after our grim uniting experience. Some of us have camped together since 2002. I am exhausted but grateful. This was one for the books.
These healthy coping mechanisms helped me through early on in the pandemic, and I should be talking about them (consider them recommendations.):
- Positive Lists: A regular list of positive things - daily, weekly- all things count, both banal and monumental, from cleaning the kitchen to checking something off my list to getting through a day to leaving the crossroads I reached in revising my second horror novel and the ensuing weeks of blocked agony
- Physical: stretching every morning, working out, doing push-ups and sit-ups
every other morning, dancing spontaneously, walking around the neighbourhood
when weather permitted
- Watching movies and shows, from Movies 'n Stuff but also free
from the Ottawa Public Library and kanopy, and itunes, Netflix,
DisneyPlus, as well as YouTube for virtual panels (ComicCon@Home 2020,
TylerCon, the KGB Fantastic Fiction series out of Manhattan, run by Ellen
Datlow and Matthew Kressel)
- Listening to podcasts, primarily John Siuntres’ Word Balloon outta' Chicago, my go-to podcast for in-depth, sportscaster-style interviews with
comics creators. I found Sasha Wood's Casually Comics on YouTube hilarious,
irreverent, pithy and sexy.
- Reading books such as Oscar Wilde's The
Picture of Dorian Gray, Sonya Taaffe's Forget the Sleepless Shores: Stories, Adam McOmber's Jesus and John;
comics; John Allison's wonderful and life-full Giant Days recommended by Amal
El-Mohtar, Gail Simone's Clean Room,
a vast conspiratorial number reminiscent of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, if that's possible...;
anything by Tom King (thanks, rob mclennan, for recommending!), Chip
Zdarsky, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Jerry Ordway, Alex de Campi)
- The Headless Man, Peter Dubé's new poetry collection
from Anvil Press.
These Lethe Press titles:
- Sonya Taaffe's Forget the Sleepless Shores: Stories.
- Adam McOmber's novel Jesus and John (review copy).
- Daniel Braum's short-fic collection Underworld Dreams (review copy) and
Braum's mummy-themed antho, Spirits Unwrapped.
Also - very excited to review:
- Jeffrey Round's new Dan Sharp mystery, Lion's Head Revisited, from Dundurn Press.
- Jonathan R. Eller's Bradbury Beyond Apollo, the third and final
installment in Eller's rather brilliant Bradbury bio trilogy
(The two above titles are advance review PDFs, and not depicted. Know anyone
who wants a review of either one?)
This is an edited copy of my transcript and images I used for the talk I gave to the Bi Arts Festival on June 18, 2020 about independent publishers having a renaissance, opening up new opportunities for creators to tell more personal visions and often create bi or queer creations.
The Creating Worlds Panel is archived online here. I am at the 46-minute mark.
In an independent publisher renaissance for comic books and graphic novels, artists and authors can tell more personal visions and sometimes make bi and queer creations.
A lot of this started with Allison Bechdel, who paved the way for so many queer creators with Fun Home. She wrote about growing up in the funeral home family business, realizing she was queer, how she had OCD, how her father was closeted and may or may not have committed suicide. But I will show you my favourites.
In decades past, creators used to start in the indies with the ambition of breaking into the Big Two, Marvel and DC. Not so anymore.
John Siuntres has hosted Word Balloon, the Chicago comic-book
podcast Chicago, for 15 years.
“For years the pinnacle of a comic book career was to get hired by DC or Marvel Comics and make superhero stories,” Siuntres said.
“Today it's a mid-career stop to make a big audience aware of your name and work, then take them with [you] to read and support [your] creator-owned comics.”
“Robert Kirkman did this by getting exposure while writing Marvel comics including a popular mini-series called Marvel Zombies, then creating the Walking Dead, which has become a pop-culture game changer.”
But you might not know about a lot of the independent publishers because you have to find them in a crowded market.
Marvel and DC are flooding the direct-market comic shops with books, overcrowding the shelves.
Single-issue sales are also down. It is hard to make money with them. Trade paperback sales are up; trades usually collect at least five issues of a comic. They are more economical and spine better on the bookshelf.
Superhero comics sales have been slipping for years. Marvel and DC want to hold onto older fans and woo new fans. About every five years, the Big Two revitalize their characters by reframing and modernizing their origins, usually in an event storyline spanning many titles in order to boost sales.
Danica LeBlanc, co-owner of Edmonton’s Variant Edition Comics, said it is a renaissance of independent publishers for customers and readers - but not for retailers. So the sales aren’t there and the big companies could be headed for trouble unless they streamline, particularly in this pandemic.
During the late 1960’s, the heyday of comic-book sales for Marvel and DC, the Big Two accounted for about 95 % of comic book sales in North America. For an exceptional and insightful rundown of the history of this legendary comics-industry rivalry, see Reed Tucker's Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC. For a focus on Marvel, with the necessary contextual allusions to DC Comics, I strongly recommend Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story. In fact, I consider these two well-researched and fascinating books companion volumes. They're must-reading for any curious comic-book aficionado who wants to brush up on their industry history.
As of 2017, their share was closer to 65. Nowadays, independent publisher, kid-oriented fare and Japanese (or Japanese-inspired) Manga, account for the remaining 35 %.
An independent comic book publisher is viewed as being smaller and free of editorial constraints that come with preserving the value of an established brand. It also worked as a marketing brand. Labeling a comic publisher as an “Indie” differentiated it as David from the Goliaths of Marvel and DC.
Independent publishers offer many advantages by encouraging original creator-owned books.
For
artists and editors, this means a lot more freedom.
Artists
do not have to worry about renewing copyright on a character such as
Spider-Man, who must remain alive so the copyright remains active.
They
can kill their characters.
They
can tell stories with a beginning, middle and end.
They
can be more personal.
Creators can tell stories with non-cookie-cutter heroes- heroes of colour, queer heroes, trans heroes, bi heroes. Here are examples of these characters, and publishers.
Artist Sanford Greene and writers David F. Walker and Chuck M. Brown are part of the all-black or African-American creative team behind Bitter Root. The premise is that the Sangerye Family holds a longstanding tradition of fighting monsters, monsters fuelled by hate, and it’s set in the Harlem Renaissance.
It is no surprise that this monthly series is now selling out, given the current political climate in the U.S. They take up arms and fight in the street and are clearly the protagonists in this dynamic. The Red Summer Special occurs during the Tulsa race massacre.
Bitter Root is published by Image Comics.
Image was founded in 1992 by a group of young, disgruntled male artists including Todd McFarlane, who left Marvel Comics to start their own company. It’s bigger now, but arguably still retains an indie spirit. About half of what they produce is quite good, and usually creator-owned.
 |
| SFSX #3 cover by Alejandra Gutierrez. |
Image publishes a monthly called SFSX written by former sex worker Tina
Horn and drawn by Jen Hickman. In this dystopic future, all sensual pleasure is
outlawed or regulated. SFSX features
sex of all LGBTQ+ flavours, non-monogamy polyamory and topical essays in the
back of each issue.
Tina Horn’s story “Barrier” with artist Jen Hickman appears
in Theater of Terror: Revenge of the
Queers! from Northwest Press.
Edited by William O. Tyler and Justin Hall, Theatre is a wonderful queer grind-house/Tales from the Crypt-style horror anthology featuring a frightful cover by gay artist Phil Jimenez - perhaps best known for his Wonder Woman and The Invisibles work.
Robyn Adam’s story “Dead Name No More!” features Lorelei Fontaine, transgender ghost hunter! I really hope to see more of her.
Northwest
Press, in Seattle, was founded in 2010 by comics
writer and LGBT comics activist Charles “Zan” Christensen, and is dedicated to publishing the best comics collections
and graphic novels and celebrating the LGBT comics community.
Anything That Loves a bi-focused anthology from Northwest Press, which won the Bisexual Book Award for Bisexual Non-Fiction and for Bisexual Biography/Memoir in 2014.
Fantagraphics Books, another remarkable indie, started in 1976.
Perhaps the most remarkable series to come out of Fantagraphics is Love and Rockets created by the Hernandez brothers, Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario in 1981.
Comics creator Justin Hall says, “Arguably the most important bisexual in comics is Maggie from ... Love and Rockets.”
A mainstream comics writer of note is Greg Rucka, who co-created Batwoman, an openly gay heroin, now with her own T.V. show.
 |
| Gorgeous postmodern panels and artwork by J. H. Williams III. |
Here she is with her beau at the time, Maggie Sawyer head of the Special Crimes Unit, Gotham PD. Sawyer is one of my early favourites. She was originally introduced as a supporting character in the Superman title in 1987 as Captain Sawyer, of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.
Rucka also wrote the hell out of Detective Renee Montoya, also openly queer. The character was created preemptively by Bruce Timm, Paul Dini and Mitch Brian for Batman: The Animated Series before it debuted in 1992.
 |
| Pencils by Michael Lark. |
Montoya was outed against her will in the Line of Duty story line in the gritty Gotham Central, which focused on the cop characters and back-grounded the superheros or 'capes'. She soon resigned from the force, disgusted by the rampant corruption.
 |
| Pencils by Mike Perkins. |
But while Renee was down, and outed, she was certainly not out. She eventually became the beloved legacy character, the Question, a gumshoe detective into Zen Buddhism and martial arts. Here, Montoya (aka the Question) appears in the current Lois Lane title, issue #1.
Rucka
created Dex Parios, a P.I. in the Stumptown
series set in Portland, Oregon, now an ABC show. Parios is a funny, quirky hellraiser and the show has successfully captured the feel of the book.
Parios is openly bi. The comic, Rucka admitted, is a direct descendant of The Rockford Files.
Stumptown is published by Oni Press, another independent publisher based in Portland, since 1997.
In British writer Alan Moore’s 12-issue Providence, from Avatar Press, Moore posits that a queer, male, Jewish protagonist confronts H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos.
 |
| Pencils for both covers by the amazing Jacen Burrows. |
In doing so, Moore subverts the xenophobic, racist and homophobic beliefs of Lovecraft. All of the mythos is explored, with lushly detailed artwork by Jacen Burrows and the scrutinizing eye for detail for which Moore is comic-book famous.
There are many great indies out there including. But I can't mention indies without giving a shout-out to the Canadian Drawn & Quarterly, founded in 1989 by Chris Oliveros in Montreal. It has published a long list 0f oustanding comics creators, including Lynda Barry, Daniel Clowes, Seth, Chris Ware, Kate Beaton, Joe Ollman and an international roster. They do beautiful creator-owned books and I'm proud Drawn & Quartely is a fine Canuck indie.
John
Constantine is the openly bi street mage in Hellblazer. The current creative team, writer Simon Spurrier and artists Aaron Campbell (Campbell's panel below) and
Constantine with another beau, post New 52, a re-configuring of DC's characters.
 |
| Riley Rossmo and Vaness Del Rey and various artists penciled the Going Down story arc. |
The Immortal Hulk features a trans scientist character. Dr. Charlene McGowan, who recently came out in issue # 32 as trans. She gave a speech about self-identity. Immortal Hulk writer Al Ewing is doing remarkable things, here, including describing Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in the Hulk/Bruce Banner character himself. So the book's protagonist is struggling with a mental illness, while the trans character is well-balanced.
 |
| Pencils by the ever-talented Joe Bennett. |
Charlene is not the first trans character in mainstream comics, however. No Mercy, writer Alex de Campi's and artist Carla Speed McNeil's 2015 Image Comics series, featured a mainstream trans character. The protagonist is Charlene and, as of issue # 9, they are Sebastien.
In issue # 9, de Campi dares to examine troubled teen programs, brutal aversion therapy camps designed to traumatize and brutalize kids into acting good and straight.
Disclaimer: I like everything U.S. comics writer Alex de Campi does in comics - sci-fi, horror, grindhouse, fantasy, thriller and drama. Lately I like No Mercy. de Campi's work is particularly important in a business often criticized as cis-male dominated.
The first trans comic character credit goes to Rachel Pollack (an openly trans writer and Just Hall’s writing mentor). Pollack created the trans superheroine Coagula in the pages of Doom Patrol way back in 1993.
Also, Neil Gaiman's character Wanda from the A Game of You storyline in Sandman also pre-dates No Mercy.
The Incredible Hulk, under the tenure of fan-favorite writer Peter David, featured other queer characters. These include Hector of the Pantheon super-team.
Jim Wilson, a longtime sidekick, whose sexuality identity was not made clear, contracted HIV/AIDs and died from AIDs-related complications back in 1994 when no one had tackled the topic in mainstream comics.
 |
| Cover by Gary Frank. |
Here the good trans Dr.
McGowan is objectifying Doc Samson. Doc has been a recurring secondary character since The Incredible Hulk # 141 (vol. 2) in 1971. It is amusing, then, to see Charlene cruising such a longstanding, musclebound, and intellectual, character.
Thank you for all listening to me talk about my passion today.
There are so many indie publishers out there. If I have encouraged one of you to go out and pick up a book and discover a passion for yourself, I will feel like I have done my job.
