Of all the panels at this past weekend's New York Comic Con, the most earnest and most historically fascinating was the Weird Tales discussion. Deep in the bowels of the Javits Convention Center, a motley crew of fans and curiosity seekers were privy to stories about the magazine's first eight decades. Armed with a slideshow of the best of those lurid, monster-filled covers featuring semi-nude women, editorial director Stephen H. Segal talked with insight about the magazine that launched the careers of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

Weird Tales even was the first magazine to publish the fiction of Tennessee Williams, when Williams was just 17. "It was the first magazine devoted to fantasy, horror and science fiction. In fact, it was launched three years before the phrase 'science fiction' was even invented," said Segal.

Continue reading "Weird Tales' 85th Anniversary Makeover" »

Politics and horror? It's certainly happened before in the movies, especially when the Cold War was in high gear. While horror and politics don't often mix so well in film unless it's in a post-apocalyptic setting, former Dimension executive Richard Saperstein is willing to give it a try. According to Fangoria, Saperstein has optioned Snaked, the odd, dangerous and witty graphic novel from Clifford Meth in which the lead character is able to change into a reptile in order to deal with a world of nasty politics, backstabbing friends and unfaithful women. It's quite a coup for creator of the horror series, which has had only two issues to date.

In an interview with Horror Yearbook, Meth says of his main character, "Timmons is an honest man working in the political mainstream who finds himself dysfunctioned by the dishonesty of politicians. Everyone around him is a bit of a snake... but he's the real deal insofar as he must shed his skin from time to time, and he can swallow your whole head if it isn't ridiculously large." Recalls Meth about Timmons' origins, "I snapped at some idiot one day and they said, 'You don't have to bite my head off,' and I thought, 'How cool would that be if I actually could?'" And so, an option-able horror comic was born.

The world's prevailing authority on vampire slaying has just gotten even worldlier. Fans who have followed Buffy off the television screen and onto the pages of her "Season 8" comic book series will be rewarded with a new wrinkle in the slayer's personal life. The new issue (#12) follows Buffy into the arms, and bed, of another slayer-- and it's a woman!

Creator Joss Whedon reassured the New York Times that this new character development has been well planned out, but not overthought. ""We're not going to make her gay, nor are we going to take the next 50 issues explaining that she's not." Whedon clarified. "She's young and experimenting, and did I mention open-minded?" The lucky (or unlucky, based on Buffy's track record) lady in the picture is Buffy's protégé, Satsu, whose feelings were revealed in recent issues. The coupling bodes poorly for Satsu's health, however, as Buffy herself noted: "People who love me tend to ... oh, die." But in the meantime, says Whedon, "It puts Buffy in an 'Oh my God, what did I just do?' moment," that the readers get to participate in. Is it too much to hope for that the couple who slays together will stay together?

Drew Goddard has rarely been in need of a gig in Hollywood. After Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the scribe had stints on Angel, Alias and Lost. Most recently, there was a 'little' film called Cloverfield, which Goddard penned. With all that work and all that Hollywood money piling up, you'd think Goddard would spend his spare time relaxing, or on some nerdy delight like collecting action figures. But any writer knows to strike while the iron is hot -- because you never know when the gigs will dry up.

Maybe that's why Goddard is keeping busy with a new mini-series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics. According to Cinematical, "In his 4-issue arc, called Wolves at the Gate, the vampire slayer heads to Tokyo to fight not werewolves, but the fanged ones." Arigato, Mr. Goddard! All this prompts Cinematical to muse upon the possibility of a new Buffy movie. That's not going to happen any time soon. The comic book, however, looks fetching.

Coreys Feldman and Haim may only turn up in Lost Boys II: The Tribe for a couple of scenes, but someone finally found a way to catch us up on what their characters have been doing since the original 1987 vampire brouhaha -- and it mercifully circumvents the necessity of having the Coreys act it all out for us. On May 14th, the comic series Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs will arrive, filling in the gap between the two films. Shock Till You Drop has the whole cover, as well as a note from Wildstorm about the series. So is this comic all about the Frog brothers, then? I'm a little concerned about whether Haim's character, Sam Emerson, gets to come out and play -- and whether we're due for another tearful scene between the Coreys over it. Fans are sure to be mollified either way; Reign of Frogs has more old-school awesomeness on the cover alone than anything we were expecting from The Tribe.

If you head to your local comic book store this week, you'll find a brand-new four-issue horror series from Marvel called Dead of Night. Over at Comic Book Resources, you can read an in-depth interview with the series writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who says, thought it would be nice to tell a Man-Thing story but what I really wanted to do was sort of my own take on those '70s style mutant horror films, like The Hills Have Eyes." It's not the only tribute going on either. The first Issue is a tribute to the EC style of comics whereas Issue 2 resembles the old Eerie and Creepy mags of the '60s, and Issue 3 nods to '70s-era cannibal tales. The final installment is an ode to James Cameron's Aliens. Check out Comic Book Resources for the full-page artwork.

This morning, Variety has word that The Weinstein Co. has optioned "Evan Kuhlman's Wolf Boy: A Novel, published in 2006 by Crown. Irwin Winkler and Jill Cutler will produce the feature through Winkler Films. Says Variety: "The novel concerns the Wolf family, which loses a son in a car accident. The other son channels his grief into the creation of a comic book superhero based on his brother called Wolf Boy."

Actually, it's a graphic novel that's being written by the novel's main character, Stephen, and a fairly frightening one at that -- with not only monsters but superheroes that look like monstrosities as well. Said the author last August, "I've long thought that Wolf Boy could be an incredible movie, something along the lines of Ordinary People meets American Splendor." If they do it right, they'll have us tearing up while also enjoying some monsters.

Before cable and VCRs revolutionized movie-viewing, people had to watch whatever was on the tube. Local stations would spice up the programming with low-budget hosted segments. The best Chicago-based shows have been collected in the new book, Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie.

This is the kind of history book I love -- it covers the business side of how movie-packages were sold to stations, and how the overworked creative teams would make a weekly horror program while also producing children's shows and local news. Readers can devour the live-TV antics of hosts like Mad Marvin, Svengoolie and Cleveland's Ghoulardi (who was, in fact, the father of Paul Thomas Anderson). The hosts honed their schtick while introuducing films like Son of Frankenstein, The Devil Bat and House on Haunted Hill, and eventually viewers were tuning in to see the wrap-arounds and not the movie.

Continue reading "New Book About Horror-Movie Hosts" »

Before there was a Comics Code Authority, nothing stopped the makers of comic books from pushing the envelope of fear. If these mad editors, writers and artists could dream it, they would print it. Samuels Design has collected many of these terrifying covers for an online museum of horror.

Click on each cover and you'll find not only a larger version of the artwork, but a well-written nugget outlining the contents of each issue. On one page, you'll find more than 70 covers filled with moss-encrusted sea creatures, crawling ghost muck that will eat you up whole, radiation from a battery that melts your face, and a motley crew of monsters taking aim at a man dumb enough to enter a dark, creaky attic. Nonetheless, judging from the graphic novels and horror video games of today, some of these covers look somewhat tame by comparison.

What if serial killing started with a virus, a bug that bit you and made you rip flesh at random? That's part of the premise of Infected, Scott Sigler's upcoming horror meets science fiction tome to be released by Random House/Crown on April 1. Rogue Pictures has already optioned the novel -- along with its sequel. Back in May, The Hollywood Reporter said, "The book follows a CIA black ops specialist and a Center for Disease Control scientist who team to contain a rapidly spreading parasite whose bite turns ordinary people into crazed serial killers. The trail of corpses leads to an infected man who is fighting a bloody battle for control of his own mind and body." They then proceeded to call the book "Infested." Ah, journalism.

Sigler has been talking up the book on his Web site, which is also notable for its release of Nocturnal, the free episodic horror audio book, read by the author himself. You can become one of Sigler's fans, whom he rightly calls Junkies, but you have to be ready for some seriously violent horror.