Categories
Essays

Just Here for the Boo!s: Becca Boo Issue Two

Becca Boo, the ditzy bombshell who awoke one morning in a grave and deduced that she was a ghost, finds herself as an actual ghost when she is hit by a truck. Though Death comes for Becca, he becomes distracted at the prospect of hooking up with a talented lady, and takes off. Becca looks through Death’s book and reads that she is bound for Hell, and uses the opportunity to flee. 

Over the next few months Becca finds herself haunting mirrors, where adolescent men summon her by repeating her name. However, urban legend icon Bloody Mary takes umbrage at Becca infringing on her turf. Bloody Mary’s anger is short lived as Becca Boo is able to charm and bed her. As the two undead ladies become acquainted with each other, a knock as the door announces someone sinister has arrived for Becca. 

The ending of issue one put Becca Boo in a narrative crossroad. The story of Becca Boo could have continued with the idea of Becca not actually being dead, but maintaining her insistence that she is a ghost, and interacting with the world accordingly. The second option is to have Becca become a ghost and influencing the living world in comedic ways, going the route of movies such as Beetlejuice (1988), Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), and Frighteners (1996). The former would have been much more challenging to write but it would have kept the comic exploring an iteration of ghost-comedy that is not often done. The latter is the safer and easier option, so it is understandable that the writers of Becca Boo decided to go the route of making Becca a ghost. 

Issue two of Becca Boo maintains the comedic tone of issue one with some fun delighters. Becca Boo dips into parody territory by having a Ringu-esque Bloody Mary, covered in blood and tattered clothing, becoming an erotic apparition. Becco purrs to Mary “You know what happens when you change a few ingredients in a Bloody Mary? You get a cosmopolitan.” She is technically not wrong, (take out everything but the vodka and replace with cranberry juice, Cointreau, and lime juice), she just has a different grasp on what “few” means. But in a strange, Becca Boo sort of way, there is some insight to be had in her proverb. 

The cast of characters in the second issue is broadened with the introduction of Bloody Mary and Death, providing Becca more opportunities to interact with others, be them living, dead, or undead, providing more venues for comedic dialogue and situations.

The art maintains the same consistency as with issue one, with all the characters looking fleshed out and detailed. The majority of issue two takes place indoors, but attention has been paid to make sure the rooms, walls, et al. look interesting and not generic. Where a time-pressed artist would simply have an empty wall to save time, Bloody Mary’s flat is adorned with weird-circular art pieces (gold records?) and plants. Unlike issue one, issue two of Becca Boo only contains one scene of sexual intercourse, but it is stretched longer over more panels, adding an underscored element of intimacy between Becca and Bloody Mary.

As with issue one, issue two of Becca Boo was a crowdfunded endeavor. The campaign met almost all the stretch goals of cards, magnets, etc., but the publisher, Obscura, failed to include the bonus items with my pledge, so I unfortunately cannot comment on them as I typically do with these indie comic reviews. Fun comic, but terrible fulfillment, which is waved away under the risks of pledging to a Kickstarter, and that these items are simply “extras.”

Disappointing fulfillment aside, the product proper of Becca Boo is what matters. Becca Boo continues to be fun and sexually playful. Despite Death’s notes indicating she has lived a “vapid..drunk..driven by libido” life, Becca’s heart is in the right place, giving readers a worthwhile character to latch onto and worry about what will happen to her as she negotiates the afterlife looking for redemption. 


More information on Becca Boo can be found at the following websites:

Categories
News

Biweekly News Roundup 2024-07-28

Personal / Website News

Fred Phillips Interview

Back in 2018 I did an interview with poet Fred Phillips that was published at the Witch Haunt. However the website has been shuttered.

Because of this, I have republished the interview here at my website. It can be read here.

Panthans Journal #327

The newest issue of the The National Panthans Journal has been published. This issues contains a re-print of my review of Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond #2.

If you’re interested in receiving copies of Panthans, contact Laurence Dunn at laurencegdunn @ gmail dot com (sans spaces).

Scholars from the Edge of Time

For the July episode of Scholars from the Edge of Time Michele and I decided to look at a film that is pretty new: She is Conann (2023) by Bertrand Mandico.

The episode can be streamed on YouTube.

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2024.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #326.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond #2″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #327.

From the Archives

This following podcasts episodes and articles were published from 7/8 to 7/28:

Calls for Papers/Proposals

Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my paths. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.

Occult Detectives

Edited by Michael Goodrum, Kris Mecholsky, and Philip Smith

The occult detective has a long history. Depending on how one defines the genre, occult themes coincide with the earliest detective fiction and theatre, 公案小說 (gong’an, or crime-case) stories from the Song dynasty (13th-14th century), which often featured supernatural appearances and interventions. To Anglophone audiences, however, the figure is, perhaps, most closely associated with the decades that followed the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882. While Sherlock Holmes dedicated much of his efforts to exploding notions of the supernatural, most famously in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), other detectives both drew on and fought against the occult. Making his debut in 1898, Flaxman Low is perhaps the first to fit the (inevitably) loose model of the occult or psychic detective. Driven by a late Victorian interest in the occult and ghost-hunting, though, Low was rapidly followed by a stream of successors, a connection that continues to the present with new detectives appearing well into the 21st century in a wide variety of media (including novels, short stories, comics, theatre, television, film, games, and more). Horror and crime fused in weird fiction in the pulps; in comics such as Hellblazer and Dead Boy Detectives; in video games such as Alan Wake and Alone in the Dark; in TV shows such as Twin Peaks and True Detective; and in films such as The Exorcist III and The Sixth Sense, to name just a few.

The editors seek essays of ~4,000 words. Topics should include occult detectives and any text which sits at the intersection of detective and horror narratives. Texts can be of any medium or time period. Some possibilities include, but are not limited to, the following figures, genres, or texts:

  • Gong’an (Judge Dee and/or Judge Bao in any medium)
  • Abraham Van Helsing (in any medium)
  • Flaxman Low
  • John Silence
  • Luna Bartendale
  • Carnacki the Ghost-Finder
  • Fantastic/horror noir (e.g., Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Angel Heart)
  • Hellblazer and John Constantine (in comics and film)
  • Hellboy (in comics and film)
  • The Exorcist series (in novels and film)
  • Stephen King (in any medium)
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (in television, film, and comics)
  • The X-Files
  • Twin Peaks
  • Supernatural
  • Alan Wake
  • Ed Brubaker’s Fatale

Essays should be accessible but touch on big ideas, using a single text, author, artist, or director as a lens to comment on the genre(s) and themes at play. We particularly encourage contributions that take an international, cross-cultural perspective, and/or touch on topics of queerness, ethnicity, gender, and disability.

Proposals of up to three hundred words due by 29 September 2024 to occultdetectivesbook@gmail.com Final drafts for accepted proposals will be due by 30 March 2025. Each essay will be subject to editorial review; authors should expect to undertake at least one round of revisions before final acceptance.

Genre and Video Games

We are seeking short chapters of approximately 2,500-2,700 words for an edited collection on literary genres in video games. We invite submissions for all five of the genres: Fantasy, Historical fiction, Romance, Horror/Gothic, and Science Fiction, that the collection endeavours to explore.

The collection fits into an ongoing genre studies series and will examine how literary genres function in video games, thereby bringing video games into the existing literary canon of genre studies. Each subsection will explore key themes in the existing canon while expanding on the interactive elements of video games that update and/or alter existing conversations about genre. The essays will be educational and accessible in nature with the aim of producing a comprehensive teaching companion for future courses in game studies, game development, or the digital humanities.
This call addresses all five general genre areas the collection seeks to address. These are meant to be general categorizations, but we encourage submissions that also move into inter- or cross-genres, as many of these genres overlap and share different features in both games and literary studies.

Topics that might be considered (but are not limited to):

  • Fantasy
  • The Prominence of Fantasy Games and Nostalgia
  • Fantasy Race and Colonization
  • Non-Western Fantasy
  • Resource-Gathering and Digital Landscapes
  • Pseudo-Medievalism in Fantasy Game World
  • Historical Fiction
  • (Pre)Industrialism & economy and/or class dynamics
  • Feudalism
  • Monarchy and/or Empire
  • Colonialism
  • Myth and Storytelling (written, oral or otherwise)
  • Gender and/or sexuality
  • Disability
  • Romance
  • Player Character (PC) and Non-Playable Character (NPC) Agency
  • Queer Romance Routes
  • LGBTQ2IA+ Representation
  • Digital Sex, Consent and AI Romance
  • Romantic Subplots Across Genres
  • Horror/Gothic
  • Queer Horror and the Monstrous ‘Other’
  • Gothic Games and the Undead Past
  • Haunted Digital Landscapes
  • Consumption Horror: Parasites, Vampires, and Cannibals
  • Speculation and Apocalyptic Horror
  • Science Fiction
  • Digital Posthuman Landscapes and Mitigating Climate Nihilism
  • Human/Technology Interactions and the Rise of Artificial Intelligence
  • Space Exploration and Colonization
  • Speculative Dystopias and Projected Futures
  • Alternative Futurisms

Particular interest will be paid to pieces that engage with Indigenous and Non-Western perspectives in the chosen game or through the chapter’s proposed scholarship.

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words alongside a brief (100 word) bio to genreandvideogames@gmail.com by the date below.
Abstract due by: August 15, 2024

Prospective draft due date: December 15, 2024

(Re)Animating the Middle Ages: Adapting the Medieval in Animated Media

Co-organizers Michael A. Torregrossa, Karen Casey Casebier, and Carl B. Sell

Sponsored by Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture


56th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

Philadelphia Marriott Downtown (Philadelphia, PA)
On-site event: 6-9 March 2025

Submission Instructions

In this panel, we seek in particular to build upon the pioneering work of medieval-animation scholar Michael N. Salda and provide additional insights into the ways medieval-themed animation has impacted our contemporary world. Presenters might explore anime, cartoons, films, games, shorts, and videos produced through traditional ink-and-paint, stop-motion, claymation, or computer-generated imagery. Selections should represent and/or engage with some aspect of the medieval, such as artifacts, characters, settings, themes, etc., presented as central to the narrative, tangential, or appearing solely as cameos.

For ideas and support, please see our list of representative texts and resource guide devoted to studies of medieval-themed animation.

All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system by 30 September 2024. You will be prompted to create an account with NeMLA (if you do not already have one) and, then, to complete sections on Title, Abstract, and Media Needs.

Notification on the status of your submission will be made by 16 October 2024. If accepted, NeMLA asks you to confirm your participation with the session chairs by accepting their invitations and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2024.

Thank you for your interest in our session. Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com.

For more information on the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, please visit our website at https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com

The Dark Side of Lego: The Gothic Fantastic, and the Uncanny Pleasures of Lego

Lego is everywhere. The ubiquity of the children’s building is both a marvel at its popularity but also the kinds of financial muscle and cutthroat business practice that has seen Disney approach, what sometimes feel, as world domination of the entertainment and leisure industry — there’s no surprise that the Lego and Disney frequently work together.

Unsurprisingly Lego is not all fun and play and whilst much of the “dark side” of Lego can be seen to come making toys for all ages of “children” with no age restriction on who buys or plays
with them (other than a “age suggestion” on the box) there is much of it that purposely Gothic in tone and intent. In part this comes from the other franchises that Lego partners with such as Star
Wars, Jurassic Park, DC Superheroes, and Harry Potter, but they also have their own dedicated series using such themes as Ninjago, special Halloween and monsters series, as well as those promoting villains and even shark attacks in the crossover brands.

Equally unsurprising are the various compromises and missteps that have occurred over gender and ethnicity within the franchise with concerns over inclusion, the “yellowness” of the toys, cultural appropriation, and sets such as Jabba the Hutts’ Mosque/Palace. Some of this can be seen to stem from an under appreciation of the kinds of troubling identity and inclusion issues that are part
of the franchises they choose to deal with and the fandoms that follow them — Lego too has it’s more extreme fandoms amongst the faithful.

With this is what we might term real-world Lego in terms of theme parks (Legolands), shops, conventions and the parent company itself. The kinds of aggressive sales models that power Lego’s increasing global reach often pays little regard to those who work for them, other local businesses in the areas they move in to, or legal action against those deemed to be infringing on their copyrights.

This collection is interested in any aspect of the above or the suggestions below:

  • Gothic aspects of any of the series such as Harry Potter, DC Superheroes, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Disney Princesses, Mario Brothers (Luigi’s Haunted House), Lord of the Rings, Marvel Superheroes, Ninjago, Scooby Doo, etc.
  • The story arcs of any characters within those Batman, Joker, Lord Garmageddon, Darth Vader etc.
  • How any of the above play out over different platforms, bricks, books, games, accessories, theme parks, conventions, etc.
  • Gothic aspects of standard sets, Lego City, Creator, Dots and portraits, special editions etc.
  • Special sets/figures of vampires, monsters, Halloween, picture books of Dracula & Frankenstein, gothic castles, villains, dinosaurs, sharks etc.
  • Gothicism and play, mash-ups, and fluid Identity in self-creation.
  • Inappropriate Lego or fan interventions: The Simpsons, Lego Rifle, terrorist figures, Lego death camp, Breaking Bad, etc.
  • Lego fandom — Brickipedia, Legopedia, Wiki-Lego — and intersections with toxic fandoms from other franchises (ie Star Wars).
  • Issues around gender and ethnicity.
  • Ihe gothic nature of the company itself.
  • Any other areas that seem gothic in nature or outcome.

Send ideas and/or 300 word abstracts for a prospective collection of essays by 30th November 2024 to Simon Bacon: baconetti@gmail.com

Categories
Lovecraft

Bubbled Up from the Cauldron: Interview with Fred Phillips

Back in 2018 I conducted an interview with weird fiction poetry author Fred Philips that was published at The Witch Haunt. This website, however, has gone defunct. The interview can be read at a Wayback Machine cache of it, but for better posterity, I’ve republished the interview verbatim below. Enjoy! 


Fred Phillips is a poet, scholar and a bibliophile who has lived an adventurous life within various fandoms. He has two collections of poetry from Hippocampus press: From the Cauldron (2010) and Winds from Sheol (2017) and operates his own amateur press periodical, Sercon, for the Sword & Sorcery and Weird Fiction Transit (SSWFT) APA. 

Fred, would you be able to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your background?

I was born in the same year Lovecraft died, 1937, in a Manhattan maternity hospital near 181st Street near the George Washington Bridge. I was an unwanted child; my father prospered as a hardware-man; my mother was able to afford to hire a wet nurse for me. My mother had one year of high school; in those days the youngest daughters of immigrant middle class Jewish households were expected to work their fingers to the bone to put their older brothers through college. My Uncle, Abraham Herbert Rothman, graduated from the School of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University. He married a girl who had her B.A. from CCNY and he opened a pharmacy on Hill Park Avenue, Yonkers, bought a house on King Ave. near the Yonkers Reservoir. They flew and took ocean liners all over the world and changed their car every two years.

My mother was an ignorant Ukrainian mouzhik (peasant). All she wanted was that I earn enough to satisfy the three basic needs of existence: food, clothing, rent. She was so stingy she refused to allow me to have birthday parties since she knew I’d invite my playmates who would have to ask their parents for money to buy me birthday presents. Thus, I was never invited to any of my friends’ birthday parties.

At 14 I joined a Scout troop, #191,District Two, N.Y.Councils. In three years I rose from Assistant Patrol Leader to Assistant Scoutmaster. My Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmaster were about to recommend me to be promoted to Scoutmaster because they said I had “charisma,” the ability to inspire devotion and enthusiasm among the younger Scouts. When they met me in mufti (civilian dress) they would snap me a salute to how me respect. At Open School Week in junior high school, my art teacher told my mother, “Mrs. Phillips, if Freddy keeps going this way one day you’re going to see his name lit up in lights.” In high school, because I wasn’t six feet tall, didn’t wear expensive clothing, didn’t drive my own car, and displayed no upwardly mobile expectations, I almost never got a date.

After earning my academic diploma my marks were too low for me to qualify for anything except for city college. I clerked at the Bronx branch of a city-wide chain of retail bookstores, Bookmasters, where I met Dorothea [Dee] Nissen and began courting her. Her father had died of cardiac arrest when she was ten. She and her younger sister, Joan, had to work early; their mother licked stamps for the Democratic Party. I took her to the Bronx Zoo, to concerts, to films. I shared my extensive book collection with her. My destructive witch of a mother tried to persuade me not to marry her.

At sixteen I suffered the first of a matched set of nervous breakdowns and was sent to the Psychiatric Observation Ward of Jacobi Hospital on Pelham Bay Parkway. I was given chemotherapy, recreational therapy, occupational therapy, and psychotherapy. My first psychiatrist was the Chief Psychiatric Resident of Jacobi. My second, Dr. Robert Langs, was a colleague of Dr. John Rosen, the “God” of American psychotherapy. In our recreation room, I played through several Beethoven symphonies on the piano, entirely by ear. When I was in the throes of a serious depression, my mother visited and said my Grandmother, who had doted on me, had died, which drove me deeper into depression. My psychiatrist had to forbid her to visit me till I recovered from my depression.

While clerking at Bookmasters I had taught myself so much the other clerks used to call me “Professor.” Dee (whom I married) persuaded me to register at the SGS (School of General Studies), the night school at Lehman College. As a Bookmasters employee I was given a 40% employees’ discount. When I knew which course I wanted to take, I’d buy the finest book on the subject, take it home and read it until I memorized it. In my “survey” course, Introduction to Anthropology, I raised my hand and asked our teacher, “Would it help if we read Kroeber and Malinowsky?” Excitedly she wrote their names on the blackboard. The kid sitting behind me punched me in the shoulder and hissed, “Shaddup schmuck or she’ll assign them!” I turned coolly around, looked him directly in the eye and replied “You’re taking this course to earn an extra three points. I’m taking it because it’s my major.”

My next anthropology teacher, Prof. Ethel T. Boissevain, arranged for me to address the college’s Anthropology Society, for which she was the faculty advisor. She selected me with a group of her leading students to attend the annual conference of the American Anthropology Society, held that year at the University of Toronto, a leading Medieval study center in North America. She arranged for me to present a paper, “Aspects of the Science Fiction Fan Subculture in Metropolitan New York City, 1965-1971,” which was duly accepted as a formal part of the proceedings (the records of the convention) by the chairman because it was brand new material. In this way I brought a description of fandom to the attention of academia. I won a debate against Dr. Margaret Mead. Some of the girls who came with us asked me if I planned to teach anthropology. I replied “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

I drifted into SF fandom in NYC in 1965 when I was invited to attend a bi-weekly Friday open house, FISTFA (Fannish Insurgent ScienTiFictional Association) held on 13th Street, near 1st Ave, Manhattan. There I met the names many of whom would soon be raised to prominence among the professional ranks of SF writers: Ted White, David van Arnam, John Boardman, &c. The next year I was invited to serve as Chairman of Publications for the CCNY Science Fiction Society. As such I became editor of the society’s newsletter and changed its name to Durendal. When the other members asked, “What does it mean?” I explained “It was from a Chanson de Geste (Song of Deeds) beginning before the advent of the 7th century. This was from the Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland) and referred to Count Roland’s magic sword, Durendal. When he fell, mortally wounded at the Battle of Roncesvalles, two legends arose about how he disposed of it: one that he threw it into a poisoned stream, the second that he laid it under him beneath a tree and sat on it, his face towards the foe, the standard ‘heroic death’ of many renowned European heroes through the 17th century.” In 1968 I was invited to attend the first Crown Tournament of the NYC branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism; you saw The Fred Phillips Issue of the Swords & Sorcery Weird Fiction Terminus Amateur Press Association, edited by my friend, Leigh Blackmore, current President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. 

In 1972 I was appointed Poet-in-Residence for the Fantasy & Science Fiction Society of Columbia University. In 1973 at the first Meistersing (Poetry Contest) held in the Royal Province of the Eastern Kingdom, against formidable competition, I became first Poet Laureate, initiating a chain of annual Meistersing events leading to the establishment of the Honourable College of Bards of the Eastern Kingdom.

Fred Philips photo provided by Hippocampus Press.

Fred, you’ve become quite well read in the study of witchcraft. What got you into witchcraft scholarship? What are the primary texts you’d recommend on the subject?

In 1971 my wife tried to persuade me to have the credits I earned at Hunter College transferred to Lehman College (also known in those days as “Uptown Hunter”). She informed me of a student seminar slated to discuss witchcraft that would be held in Lehman’s teachers’ lounge. I came up with a handful of titles that at that time represented the “cream” of witchcraft scholarship: H. R. Trevor-Roper’s essay “On the Witchcraft Hysteria of the 17th Century”; George Lyman Kittredge’s Witchcraft in Old & New England; the 1981 3rd printing of the Iceland Review Library edition of Ghosts, Witchcraft, & the Other World from the series Icelandic Folktales I; the 1968 Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London) edition of The World of Witches by Julio Caro Baroja; the 1970 Harper Torchbook TB 1539 edition of Witchcraft in Tudor & Stuart England by A. D. J. Macfarlane; the 1985 Aquarian Press edition of The Devil’s Workshop by Christopher McIntosh. These, in essence, are only part of my collection dealing with the history of (Occidental) witchcraft. The others inhabit my occult shelf and include Transcendental Magic by Eliphas Levi (aka Abbe Luis Constant), the 2009 Oxford University Press edition of Grimoires:A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies, (especially in reference to chapter 8, “Lovecraft, Satan, & Shadows”), the1970 Citadel edition of The Book of Ceremonial Magic: A Complete Grimoire by Arthur Edward Waite (originally entitled The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts). The key to my collection is the 1989 University of Toronto Press edition of A Razor for a Goat: Problems in the History of Witchcraft & Diabolism by Elliot Rose (professor in the Department of History, University of Toronto) which is probably the best of the lot.

To more clearly understand witchcraft, one must be conscious also of the history of religion. Two titles I can heartily recommend to insure that end: the 1982 Chapel Hill/University of North Carolina Press edition of Messianism, Mysticism, & Magic: A Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements by Stephen Sharot (associate professor of sociology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), and the 1989 Oxford University Press edition of Religion, Science, & Magic in Concert & in Conflict, edited by Jacob Neusner (visiting professor at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, distinguished research professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida), Ernest S. Frerichs (professor of Religious Studies at Brown University),and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher (professor of the History & Literature of Religion at Northwestern University. But these are only drop in the bucket, my resources embrace many more reliable studies of both Occidental, African, and Oriental witchcraft.

What is something you’ve learned about witchcraft during your studies?

In Old English, there was a town meeting called Witenaġemot (meeting of the wise). In the 7th century, when England (Angle-land) converted to Christianity, if someone could be found who professed to having converted to Christianity but persisted in worshipping the former Anglo-Saxon deities, he was called a “Waer-loge,” or oath breaker. This evolved into the term “warlock,” a man accused of violating his oath to the “White Christ.” The word “witch” is descended from the Old English term “Wicce,” wise-woman, that in large part gradually evolved into the term used today. Its contemporary definition is “a woman believed to have evil magical powers,” not unusual in a male-dominated culture.

You have two collections of poetry published with Hippocampus Press: From the Cauldron and Winds from Sheol. Can you tell us a little about these books and what you’d like to accomplish with your poetry?

To describe through the eyes of a Lovecraftian reader/collector a medieval milieu, a reflection of the works of renowned writers such as William Hope Hodgson, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Lovecraft himself; to immortalize in print close personal friends I made in the SCA during the decade of 1968-1878; to exhibit my abilities in literary compositions in verse based on unusual or fantastic circumstances composed in an innovative way. I also wanted my family and friends to be proud of me. Regrettably, during the 20s, the modernists, such as Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot, abandoned rhymed and metered poetry until it and other branches of aesthetics were condemned to irrelevancy. In the rest of the world, rhymed and metered poetry still sells like hotcakes. If Shakespeare was alive in the U. S. today, he’d starve to death in a month. This represents a serious decline in American culture.

It was not only one main thing I wanted to reflect in my poetry, but several. I made close friends from around the world [such as] Ann K. Schwader (recently appointed Grand Master for the Science Fiction Poetry Association) [and] Leigh Blackmore (member of the Society for the Academic Study of Magic). My work appeared in the Hippocampus Press annual Spectral RealmsWinds from Sheol was nominated for the Elgin Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.


Sincere appreciation to Fred Philips for his time for this interview. More information on Philips’ works can be found at the below links:

Categories
News

Biweekly News Roundup 2024-07-07

Personal / Website News

Samson Writer Interview

Brand new interview up at this website!

I talk to writer Ben Lacy about their neo-peplum adjacent comic book, Samson. The interview can be read here.

Fan2Fan Podcast Appearance

The cool kids over at the Fan2Fan Podcast are continuing their marathon of episodes devoted to iconic horror director John Carpenter. They just published an episode on the Lovecraftian In The Mouth of Madness, with myself and Joshua Pruett as guests.

The episode can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn page, in the embedded player below, or in your podcast app of preference.

John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness Fan2Fan Podcast

Sincere appreciation to Bernie and Pete for having me on. In case you missed it, Michele and/or I were on a few other Fan2Fan John Carpenter episodes, (Christine, The Fog, Prince of Darkness), so please check those episodes out as well.

Panthans Journal #326

The National Panthans Journal is a monthly PDF zine of Edgar Rice Burroughs-related reviews, essays, articles, artwork, news, etc.

Laurence G. Dunn, the editor/compiler of the Panthans Journal, has been gracious to give the many Edgar Rice Burroughs comic book reviews I penned in the late 2010s a second life. Issue #326 (pictured here, with artwork by Jim Burns) contains an updated version of my review of Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond #1. Sincere appreciation to Laurence!

If you’re interested in contributing to Panthans or receiving copies of the publication, contact Laurence at laurencegdunn @ gmail dot com (sans spaces).

Scholars from the Edge of Time

June’s episode of Scholars from the Edge of Time is now online! In this episode we conclude our retrospective of the pepla career of Bella Cortez by discussing the final sword and sandal film she made, Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens.

Poster for Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens from Wikipedia.

The vidcast can be watched on YouTube here. Check it out!

Michele and I have also planned out the next two episodes of Scholars from the Edge of Time. For July’s episode we will be discussing She Is Conan (2023) and in August we will be talking about Pilgrimage (2017). Stay tuned!

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2024.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venue: The Flames Beyond #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #326.

From the Archives

This following podcasts episodes and articles were published from 6/24 to 7/7: