Interviewed Queer Canuck poet Amber Dawn about Buzzkill Clamshell collection for Plenitude Magazine

This just in! Interviewed Canadian novelist, poet, editor and fire-starter Amber Dawn about Buzzkill Clamshell, her new Arsenal Pulp Press poetry collection, for Plenitude Magazine. 

It's here.

Very satisfying to talk shop, having followed fab Amber Dawn since finding her superb story “Here Lies the Last Lesbian Rental” in Arsenal Pulp Press’s 2009 anthology Fist of the Spider-Woman (which she edited), reviewing it for Xtra Magazine (née Capital Xtra) and Rue Morgue Magazine: Horror in Culture and Entertainment.

Strange Horizons review of Ottawa expat Matthew James Jones' novel Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures

Recently filed a Strange Horizons Magazine review of Ottawa expat Matthew James Jones's rather stunning genre-defying war novel Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures (Double Dagger Books, 2025). My editor let me (perhaps foolishly so?) include pertinent endnotes about the revered 1970’s and 1980’s TV show M*A*S*H and literary and cinematic depictions of ... Bigfoot?

Many thanks, Reviews Editor, Dan Hartland. This was a fun one, where fun could be had.

(Spoiler alert: what a fine novel.)

Comic Books I Loved in 2025

Since absolutely nobody demanded it, but I wanted to produce it, here's my list of my favourite monthly comics or floppies, as the iindustry once called them, from 2025.

Disclaimer: my list is purely subjective, subject to my tastes and reading habits. And, of course, I didn't read every comic published last year. Walk into any specialty/direct-market/comic-book store and you'll see why. Hundreds of monthly compete for your attention on the racks.

All of my picks I felt so strongly about that I purchased them.

Mini-Series

Late out of the Gate Debut 

Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia (DC Comics)

Gabriel Hardman (writer/artist), Romulo Fajardo Jr. (artist)

A four-issue mini-series which debuted late November.

This noir comic showcases Hardman's gritty enjoyable style and pulpy but modern script, inspired by Mike Grell and Denny O’Neill from the 1970's and 1980's. The three loners (including my fave The Question) unite, in refreshing portrayals (such as disillusioned, single Oliver Queen picking up at a bar) to solve a corporate mystery.

Favourite Treatment of an Established Beloved B-character

Black Canary: Best of the Best (DC)

Tom King (writer), Ryan Sook (artist)

A six-issue mini-series.

King's heartful script toggles between Dinah Lance's past, enduring grueling training at her mother's hands that would shame Bruce Wayne, and now, in here highly publicized bout with Lady Shiva. Sook's kinetic, compelling, immersive art foot-sweeps readers. 

Well, that was a Weird-Ass Comic but Very Smart 

Godzilla: Monsterpiece Theatre 

Tom Scioli (writer/artist)

Three-issue IDW series.

Comics ingenue Scioli disarms with a rudimentary style while peppering and layering his absurd story with literary references and historical figures.

Favourite Reunion of Beloved Writer and Artist 

Batman & Robin: Year One (DC)

Mark Waid (writer), Chris Samnee (artist)

Twelve-issue mini-series.

Masterful neoclassical character writer Mark Waid, teaming with neoclassical artist Chris Samnee once again after their clever, sunny Daredevil tenure, answer the year-one foster care questions that fans didn't know needed answering. A triumph of storytelling, showing what comics are meant to be, and defiantly sunny, once again.

And That was a Weird-Ass Comic Too, but So Much Fun

Moonshine Bigfoot (Image Comics)

Four issues.

Mike Marlowe (writer), Zach Howard (writer, inker), Steve Ellis (penciler)

Ostensibly the tale of a Bigfoot and his hippie girlfriend getting into shenanigans, resplendent with pop-culture cameos in a zany action-filled script with much heart and ... muscle cars? It's a vastly overlooked book in terms of year's best list mentions, in my opinion.

New Ongoing Seriesa

One featuring one of my fave Contemporary Artists

Absolute Martian Manhunter (DC)

Denis Camp (writer), Zavier Rodriguez (artist)

It's the Martian Manhunter, but with a story that sees the protagonist able to see everyone's human condition. Rodriguez's next-level trippy art has pulled in a new generation of readers, according to the owner of my local, The Comic Book Shoppe. Panels warp, explode, pop. Pedestrian's anxieties and fears are laid visually bare. Ever since Rodriguez tripped me out with his two Defenders mini-series, about a motley crue of B-and-C-list antiheroes navigating cosmic conflict, and Time itself, penned by Al Ewing, I have been a devotee.

Assorted Crisis Events (Image Comics)

Denis Camp (writer) and Eric Zawadzki (artist)

In the year of Denis Camp, the writer takes the premise of worlds ending and focuses right down to the individual level. It's Ray Bradbury with harsh nihilism or Crisis on Infinite Earths for the everyperson. Zawadzki messes with panels, with splash pages, with, well, the whole medium. Sci-fi at a criminally cerebral and humanistic level.

9

FML (Dark Horse Comics)

Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), David Lopez (artist)

DeConnick's thinly veiled self-portrayal, intergenerational Stranger Thingsesque drama, and 'zine culture promulgation in the back matter is well matched by Lopez's at-once realistic and then bombastically expressive and cartoony pencils. This one speaks to me personally like no other comic has about parental angst, being young, getting into trouble, and yearning for supernatural shenanigans.

One Shots of Note
Batman Deadpool (DC)

Grant Morrison (writer) et al.

A mixed antho, as one expects, but Morrison's titular match-up is intertextual, metatextual and metafictional and really quite fun, trumpeting their return to comics.

DC's Zatannic Panic! 

(A Halloween Special that arrived a few weeks late, really)

Various contributors

It's another mixed antho, but wondrously populated with DC's macabre characters. Batman is the sole A-lister. Ambush Bug, Raven, The Demon, Plastic Man, Swamp Thing, and Zatanna tussle with supernatural beasties. 

Andrew MacLean had the audacity to write, draw and letter the stand-out spooky tale, "What A Horrible Night to Have A Curse", a clever yarn featuring my faves John Constantine and Swamp Thing. A werewolf maims the shifty bi street mage. MacLean's opener swept me away, yet drew me in. So stylized. Got some serious Samurai Jack vibes. Will look for more of MacLean's work now. Lee Bermejo's drop-dead outré and gorgeous cover features an unusually chaste Zatanna.

Stranger Things season 5: Further Spoilery Thoughts 5

Episodes five to seven

There are a lot of suspicious nail-biting  scenes due to misleading red herrings. 

There's the plaster of Paris goop; Max & the little girl repeatedly running to the cave where we known damn well Vekna can't get them; the wormhole sucking everyone in and ... stopping? 

And Topper and Elle getting dragged in and then ... magically returning from the Upside-Down? 

I found/find the whole eleven-kids-in-Vekna's-fantasy-house stuff tedious; that and seeing Max and Holly Look at The Horrifying Landscape Yet Again. I got very impatient with the repetition.

Don't get me wrong; loving this season. But they keep dangling that proverbial baby over lava, and then suddenly there's no threat. It's an old movie-serial (and 1980's TV) trick.

I find the Holly and Max under the thrall of Vekna stuff stuff a wee bit tedious.

Points, though, for some serious kick-ass scenes:  Robyn's revelatory monster scene with her gal Vickie; Lucas heroically kicking a demigorgon to save him and Max; hot mom with bad hair Karen Wheeler blowing up three demigorgons; Dustin telling the Steve The Hair that that the ladder won't work and he can't lose him like Eddie; Nancy and Joathan finally hashing things out because they don't want to die with regrets.

Spoilery thoughts on Stranger Things season five so far

Spoilery thoughts on the pop-culural  phenomenom of Stranger Things season five

The Janice Byers character finally gets to step up and do something. Oh, thamk gods...she's not just worrying anymore, but fighting!

The requisite ginger character, fan-favourite Max (Sadie Sink) gets to go full wild Irish, grow her hair out and talk with more of an Irish lilt. Big fan. Only so much Kate Bush we can hear as a refrain, though.

Turns out Will Byers' constant weeping in often-flabby season four is actually purposeful, as his role is clarified and developed beyond simple abductee. 

Supersweet dork Maya Hawke's character Robin gets to show her brainy superpower and have a Big Gay Team-up with Will Byers!  

Maya is a fascinating hybrid of her folks, Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman (just learned this). Quirky, awkward, she acts more like a teenager than the whole lot.

The main kids get to all hero up, as mentors, and even all the parents get a moment to show their courage. 

Many heroic moments, even for fat bully kids and newer characters. 

Full-tilt boogie horror at one plot point. Yowzer! 

The antagonist even gets fleshed out. Looks a little like an Alan Moore Swamp Thing, though.

Enjoyable! Bad hair, great action and fine character development. Expected blend of action, mystery, humour, horror. Tighter by far than season four. How about them suburban moms and dads staring down danger?  Features adults obviously too big to play kids, but hey—call it the Harry Potter Franchise Effect and move on? Still, quite dug it.

I have always had a complicated  relationship with this show, as it occurs in the early eighties and my first horror novel Town & Train is set in summer 1990 but has few nostalgic trappings, being at the end of that decade. 

I wrote (and rewrote) my novel long before Stranger Things became the reason to get a new entertainment platform called Netflix. 

There are similarities, for sure. Small-town horror. Kids researching microfiche at the library, and also a library with bannisters out front and old staircase leading to the entrance. A teenager lying to the parent of a kid they know won't be coming back. Bullies tormenting high-high school kids (although my bully Christian "Cutter" Hartley is a metalhead. The use of pop music to describe a character's state of mind. 

I am fairly certain that unless the Duff brothers read Town & Train, and found inspirations there, that they also grew up in the suburbs, gobbled up Stephen King at formative slage, are about my age, and wanted to make some great horror about small-town life. 

What the show lacks that my novel does not lack is including Indigenous characters. My guys, Tommy Two Rivers and Bruck Naticoke, hail  from Akwesasne Reserve. As welll my minor players include Francophone characters such as Sergeant Leroux. I infuse the tale with characteristic Canadian feel in terms of the idioms my characters use, and some of their prevailing attitudes refflect living im a down-on-its-luck Canadian town.

Notes on the doc, A Flash of Beauty: Bigfoot Revealed

Almost embarrassingly enjoyable, the doc, A Flash of Beauty: Bigfoot Revealed. 

Interesting seemingly heartfelt accounts of sightings. Requisite expert talking-heads. Sweeping landscale cinemtography. Great use and mining of established Sasquatch lore.  Almost ... spiritual, really. In short—great fun.

Can-Con 2025 notes

In Mid-October, we tabled at Can-Con, Ottawa's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Convention at the Brook Street Hotel in Kanata with fab co-pilot AJ Dolman and fab Christian Baines, writer of urban queer paranormal novels, down from Toronto. Attending, tabling and sometimes paneling this con has been our little tradition for several years. We compare notes afterwards ovet supper, perhaps commiserating over a drink. Or four, depending on how things went.

I was selling my novel Town & Train and collection Fear Itself. Or, rather, trying to. Read on.

On the upside, we had some great chats. Looking atchoo', Christopher Shorewick, K. M. Greyburn, Derek Newman-Stille, Dwayne MacKinnon, of the Out Of The Basement Podcast, and the other James by our booth. Our table also talked to other writers and vendors and attended some interesting panels. Heck, I even chatted with a friendly spectacled attendee with the elfin ears at the giveaway table. She read an entire chapbook by Renaissance author R. Haven instead of taking it because it was the last copy. 

However, on the downside, book sales hit a record low, perhaps because of the con's move to Kanata, in Ottawa's far-flung west end.  Also, a noticeable absence was staple Can-Con shutterbug James Coughlan, a professional who volunteers his time each fall. 

As someone who pens hotror, fantasy, sci fi, lit, poetry and book reviews,  I find that the SFF set doesn't quite know how to handle talking with me beyond the niceties of attending a conference or quite what panels to invite me on, save the usual horror-themed and writers''group-themed ones. 

My usual trusty tactic, to redeem myself of the oil-and-water mix vibe of the con, is to pitch a particular publisher a project idea. Three times in a row (and two years running), I have successfully pitched projects. Not so, this time out. The publisher I usually talk to canceled its pitch sessions without explanation, save for a note on the sign-up sheet. I tried to sign up at the last minute with another publisher. However, the list was full. Although I added my name to the sign-up sheet in case of a cancellation, nobody cancelled. 

So, with my mood thus affected, the abysmal sales didn't help.  The lack of takers crushed the morale at the table, and our spirits. The lengthy daily commute was often over 30 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 417.

If the con returns to downtown, as has been the case for over a decade, we might reconsider attending. For now, though, our trio made the tough call afterwards. We will not be returning next fall. The cost of the booth, registering for the con (about $90 each for the weekend; panelists must, in fact, register), as well as gas and food expenses, all mean that attending this con, at least for us, has cons that far outweigh the pros.