Month: November 2024

Personal / Website News

Scholars From the Edge of Time

A brand new Scholars From the Edge of Time vidcast is online!

For the spooky month of October Michele and I revisit the world of sword and scary with a horror-filmed Neo-peplum film, The Head Hunter!

The episode can be viewed on YouTube here – check it out!

Panthans Journal #330

The newest issue of the The National Panthans Journal has been published. This issues contains a re-print of my convention coverage of the Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. panel at Wondercon 2019.

Paraphrased from the zine: The National Capital Panthans Journalis a monthly publication issued as a .PDF file on the Saturday before the first Sunday of each month. Contribution of articles, artwork, photos and letters are welcome. Send submissions to the editor: Laurence G. Dunn at laurencegdunn@gmail.com in a Word document for consideration.

ECOF 2025

In September of 2025 there will be an Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) event down in Willcox, AZ. This event is to celebrate the 150th birthday of Burroughs while also honoring him with a plaque in the town due to his stationing with there the 7th U.S. Calvary in the 1890s. (Note: another ERB convention was held in Willcox back in 2019 and an event recap of that can be read at ERBZine #7059).

Here is a flyer for the 2025 event:

I’ll share more information about the event as I find out more on my website updates. There currently is a fundraiser going on to raise funds for the ERB plaque, and details for that can be found in the QR code in the above graphic, or by checking out the donation page at the Sulphur Springs Valley Valley Historical Society. 3.5K of 5K has been raised already.

Michele and I will be in attendance for this convention, so I’ve added it to the appearances section of my website as well.

Publishing Recap

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

A side note, I’ve done some organizing on my bibliography page. The magazines/zines/etc. section was getting rather long so I broke it up into a section for Exotica Moderne, a section for Panthans, and a section for the rest. In the future, when a particular outlet starts to appear more than a few times I’ll parse it to its own area as well.

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.

Metal Music Studies Retrospectives

In celebration of the 10^th year of Metal Music Studies, we (Ross Hagen and Edward Banchs) are compiling a section of short retrospectives on foundational and important publications for the reviews section. We are aiming for a mix of titles that includes books aimed at general audiences in addition to academic monographs and edited collections. We are looking for short retrospectives of around 1000-1500 words that would address the following threads of inquiry: 

• What is the significance of the work?
• What did it contribute to Metal Studies?
• What aspects of the book still seem most relevant today?
• Are there aspects of the book that you are critical of? 

The tone of the writing does not need to be rigorously academic; we are looking for more personal sorts of reminisces about these publications. 

If you are interested in writing a retrospective, please reply with up to three titles you are interested to write about. We’re operating on a “first-come, first-served” basis so it will be good to have some alternative titles in case your first choice is already spoken for.  We would like to have the first drafts by Dec. 1 – it’s a quick turnaround but since these will be short and less academic hopefully that won’t be too much of a discouragement.

We have reviews lined up already for the following:

• Christie, The Sound of the Beast
• Dawes, What are You Doing Here?
• Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal
• Moynihan, Lords of Chaos
• McNeil, Please Kill Me
• Clifford-Napoleone, Queerness in Heavy Metal Music
• Roccor, Heavy Metal. Die Bands. Die Fans. Die Gegner. 
• Hein, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal: Histoire, cultures et pratiquants

We would like to get 5–10 more pieces to round out the section. We’d be particularly interested in reviews of some of the early collections like Scott & von Helden’s Metal Void: The First Gathering (2010) along with other edited collections and special issues of journals.

Please send replies and any questions to both ross.hagen@uvu.edu and edwardbanchs@gmail.com.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Some fun things and shout outs from these past few weeks.

Autographed Crawlspace

The folks at RedLetterMedia recently did a two-part episode on Full Moon’s Puppet Master series of films. They briefly brought up Puppet Master one’s director David Schmoeller and how he did a movie called Crawlspace with Klaus Kinski who was a nightmare to work with – so much so that Kinski became the inspiration for the Blade puppet.

Back in the late 2000s I contacted Schmoeller and asked him if I could post him my copy of Crawlspace to be autographed and he said sure! So, pictured here is my copy of Crawlspace, signed by Schmoeller (and producer Charles Band), along with a copy of “Please Kill Mr. Kinski” that Schmoeller sent as a gift.

Art of Michele Brittany

Michele has started a Facebook Page devoted to her crafting and art. If you want to check out her projects or purchase some of her journals, give the page a like and follow!

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565895377463