Michele and I has our monthly appearance on the Scholars from the Edge of Time segment of the Voice of Olympus podcast. This month we discuss the toga and sandal film Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). Great discussion and keep an eye out on a write up about the film here at my website. In the meantime, the episode can be downloaded/streamed at BlogTalkRadio.
Screen capture from the Eclipse release of Caesar and Cleopatra. Pictured is Claude Rains as Caesar and Vivien Leigh as Cleopatra.
This upcoming Tuesday we will have a mini episode on Voice of Olympus as well.
General Neo-Peplum News
Polis Part 2 Comic
Jave Galt-Miller informs via Kickstarter that the second part of his Polis: The Trail of Socrates has been printed and in his possession. He expects to ship out to backers in the next couple of weeks. Historic info about the project can be found on Kickstarter.
Cover art of issue 2. Copyright by Jave Galt-Miller
Of note, back when I wrote for Fanbase Press, I did a review of issue one of Polis. It can be read here.
There is a cover reveal and a product page for The Many Lives of The Twilight Zone: Essays on the Television and Film Franchise over at McFarland now! There’s no publishing date yet, but I am imagining it will be out late spring/early summer. To refresh, I have an essay in this book titled “Strange Realities: Twilight Zone-sploitation in Encounter with the Unknown” which does a deep dive into the 70s horror anthology film Encounter with the Unknown that Rod Serling narrated.
Issue 11 of Exotica Moderne has a cover reveal as well! In this issue I conduct an interview with Miss Pinup Miami.
Podcast News
Michele and I recorded a brand new episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast. In this episode we discuss William Eubank’s 2020 film, Underwater. Check it out on Buzzsprout or on your podcast platform of preference. Side note: we are finally on Pandora now!
General Neo-Peplum News
Sword and Sorcery Sketchbooks
Sword and Sorcery artist Gilead is selling sketchbooks of his fantasy art. If you’re in the US you can purchase them via PayPal for $12.00 at gilead@cox.net. More info in Gilead can be found at his Patreon.
Art copyright by Gilead.
Imperial Age to Debut New Song
Russian symphonic metal band Imperial Age, whose modus operandi is a melding of lots of different aspects of antiquity/mythology, has released a statement they will be debuting a new song on 2021-04-09 across all streaming platforms along with a music video on YouTube. The band is not doing preorders, and releasing the song’s title or cover art, though other things are being revealed via the band’s Facebook page and emails: screenshots seems to show the music video being vampire themed and Jane sings 100% of the vocals on the song.
Screencap of the new music video, promotional image made available on the band’s Facebook page.
Along with all of this, the band is working on a brand new album as well called New World.
The Midnight’s Horror Show Releases
Horror Show, the newest release from synthwave act The Midnight, was released this past Friday. The physical versions will be released later, but for now fans can enjoy digital incarnations at the project’s Bandcamp page. The release contains the track “Neon Medusa” which contains shades of mythology. Hope to dive into that track for a possible article.
Last week the CFP for the neo-medieval project came to an end. I’ve spent the last week juggling the project and came to the decision to shutter it for the simple reason that I did not receive enough abstracts to justice the project to any publisher. The medieval project is officially dead. However, keep an eye out here later in the year for a CFP for a different project. Thank you to all who submitted.
Podcast News
New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is live! In this episode Michele and I discuss “The House on Curwen Street” and “The Watcher from the Sky” both from August Derleth’s The Trail of Cthulhu. The episode is available on our Buzzsprout website or via the Podcast application of your preference.
General Neo-Peplum News
Swords, Sandals, and Synthwave
It’s not often the synthwave genre dives into subject matter older than the 80s, let alone into antiquity, yet The Midnight (retro wave band) is releasing a new LP called Horror Show that contains a track called “Neon Medusa.” The LP is available for pre-order on vinyl, cassette, and digitally at the band’s Bandcamp page and will be released March 19th.Ā
Clash of the Titans 2010 on HBO Max
Article at Looper praising Clash of the Titans 2010 remake and encouraging folks to check it out on HBO Max.
Peplum Erotica Gaming
Ubisoft isn’t the only publisher/developer that has the market cornered in sword and sandal gaming, with their Assassin’s Creed series and Immortals Fenyx Rising. There is a WIP game on steam called Slaves of Rome that takes an erotic approach to the genre.
Slave of Rome banner provided by the developers
The game appears to be a BDSM simulator that allows players to create, train, trade, and have sex with enslaved persons in an ancient Roman setting. More info about the game can be found on the developer’s Patreon, Twitter, and Reddit.
SPQR Comic Ships
After a few minor setbacks and misprints, Riley Hamilton’s Kickstarted comic SPQR issue #1 has begun being shipped. If you didn’t contribute to the Kickstarter, no worries, the comic is available for purchase at Hamilton’s website.
I contributed to the Kickstarter so I reckon my copy will arrive in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for some sort of write up about it.
Rest in Peplum
British actress Nicola Pagett passed away at the age of 75 from a brain tumor. She played Messalina in an episode called “Claudius” in the 1968 miniseries The Caesars and Talia in The Viking Queen (1967).
ICYMI in the wake of Fry’s Electronics closing down, I penned a short article about the Roman-themed Fry’s that was in Costa Mesa, CA.
Call for Papers – Closed!
The Call for Abstracts for the collection of neo-medieval media is now closed. I’ll be assessing the submissions over the next couple of days to determine if the project is go/no go. But in advance, thank you to all who have submitted.
Podcast News
Our newest episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is live! In this episode we dive into the anthology Cthulhu Deep Down Under Volume 2 and look at three stories: “Dead End Town” by Lee Murray, “The Island in the Swamp” by J. Scherpenhuizen, and “Depth Lurker” by Geoff Brown. The episode can be streamed at Buzzsprout or your favorite podcast program.
Also earlier this week Michele and I had an episode of the Scholars from the Edge of Time podcast. In this episode we interviewed Dr. Jeremy Swist on ancient worlds and heavy metal. That episode can be streamed/downloaded at Blog Talk Radio.
General Neo-Peplum News
Peplum Children’s Book
Children’s author and classicist Annelise Gray will have a new fiction book titled Circus Maximus: Race to the Death published by Head of Zeus on March 4th. It’s elevator pitch is Ben-Hur meets National Velvet for 9-12 year olds.
Rest in Peplum
Italian director Giancarlo Santi passed away at the age of 81. He was an assistant director on the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films: Hercules (1983) and The Adventures of Hercules (1985).
After a prolonged illness, British actor Ronald Pickup passed away at the age of 80. He played Orpheus in the Atlantis (2013-2015) television series, played King Sharaman in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), and an appearance in the biblical peplum In The Beginning (2000).
Acclaimed sound editor Alan Robert Murray passed away at the age of 66. He worked on:
We’ve flipped things around this December for HP Lovecast. Usually the fragments is the third Sunday of the month, however due to other obligations going on, we’ve bumped our interview with Nick Mamatas to the first Sunday. This episode can be listened to at Buzzsprout or your podcast app of preference.
ICYMI
In case you missed it, my review for Jason Parent’s new novella, Eight Cylinders, is online here at my website. Stay tuned for next month were we will do an episode on this novella along with an interview wit Parent on HP Lovecast.
Call for Papers
The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.
Apologies, I missed putting out a news roundup for 11/22, so this post will cover both weeks.
Podcast News
Michele and I interviewed Michael Oden (creator of the Elysian Fields comic) on the Scholars from the Edge of Time segment of the Voice of Olympus show. Episode has been added to the podcast index and can also be streamed here.
For H. P. Lovecast Podcast, the upcoming schedule is going to look like this:
2020-12-06 – Wonder and Glory Forever
2020-12-20 – Interview with Nick Mamatas (already recorded)
2021-01-03 – Eight Cylinders
2021-01-17 – Interview with Jason Parent
Call for Papers
The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.
General Neo-Peplum News
Rest in Peplum
David Prowse, better reknown as the actor who portrayed Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, passed away at the age of 85. His contributions to the sword and sandal genre include:
Dr. Who “The Time Monster” (1972). He was a minotaur
Up Pompeii (as an muscular extra)
Jabberwocky (1977, Terry Gilliam)
Daria Nicolodi passed away at the age of 70. She was known for her many contributions to Italian cinema in the 70s and 80s and her collaborations with Dario Argento. She appeared in Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989, Enzo G. Castellari)
Miscellanea
The folks at Comicon have quite a few articles that have gone up in the past two weeks:
Dr. Claire Elizabeth Greenhalgh sites myself, Hannah Mueller, and Jerry Pierce from The New Peplum in their PhD thesis, “The Depiction of Slavery in Ancient World Television Drama: Politics, Culture and Society.” The thesis can be read here and the citation has been added to The New Peplum page.
The CFP for the Ann Radcliffe Academic conference is still open until the end of November. It can be viewed at the StokerCon 2021 website.
General Neo-Peplum News
New Netflix Show
Netflix premiered a new neo-peplum miniseries on Friday called Barbarians. The brief description reads: “Torn between the mighty empire that raised him and his own tribal people, a Roman officer’s conflicted allegiances lead to an epic historical clash.”
A demo for Immortals Fenyx Risingis available to play online via the Stadia service. Access to the demo ends on 10/29.
Rest in Peplum
Marge Champion (better known as a model at Disney on many of their animated features) passed away at 101. She was in Jupiter’s Darling (1955, George Sidney).
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949, Tay Garnett)
Serpent of the Nile (1953, William Castle)
The Queen of Babylon (1954, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia)
The Revolt of the Slaves (1960, Nunzio Malasomma)
Polish actor Ryszard Ronczewski also passed away at the age of 90. He was in the historic epic An Ancient Tale: When the Sun Was a God (2003, Jerzy Hoffman)
Spanish actress Marisa de Leza passed away at 87. She was in Alexander the Great (1956, Robert Rossen)
Emily Anctil’s essay “Not a Bedtime Story: Investigating Textual Interactions Between the Horror Genre and Children’s Picture Books” from Horror Literature From Gothic to Post-modern: Critical Essays has been referenced in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Fall 2020 Vol 45 No 3.
McFarland Book Sale
McFarland is doing their yearly October sale for their horror books. If you use the code “HORROR” (without the quotation marks) you will receive 40% off the order from now until Friday, October 16. There are numerous horror books I am a part of that you can purchase: Horror in Space, Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern, and Uncovering Stranger Things. If you want to support my academic endeavors, purchasing copies of Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern benefits me greatly.
New Episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast
New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is now online. In this episode Michele and I talk about two short stories from the Swords Against Cthulhu anthology: “Modu” by Mark Sims and “The Sword of Lomar” by Jason Scott Aiken. The episode has been added to the podcast appearance index.
General Neo-Peplum News
The book, Xena: Their Courage Changed Our Worldwas recently published by AUSXIP Publishing. The large book is a collection of essays from the Xena fandom and the impact of the show on their lives. The book can be ordered from the AUSXIP web store or Amazon in a variety of formats: e-copy, soft cover, hard cover.
Per Deadline, Netflix looks to be developing a live action Conan the Barbarian series.
Here is a news round up for weekending September 20th, 2020. On these weekly posts, I’ll list not only personal and project news, but I’ll be rounding up neo-peplum news that has occurred in an attempt to aggregate and promote the genre.
This upcoming week I’ll be on a sword and sandal cinema segment on Hercules Invictus’ Voice of Olympus program on Tuesday the 22nd followed by Michele’s and my monthly Scholars from the Edge of Time segment Thursday the 24th. For that episode we will be interviewing cosplayers Tiffany Carmel Lake and Steven Lake. Links will be added to the podcast page when they are live.
The next episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast will be on stories from the Swords Against Cthulhu anthology.
General Neo-Peplum News
Ubisoft, publishers of the historic epic/neo-peplum video game series, Assassin’s Creed, announced two titles later this year that are in the sword and sandal genre: Immortals Fenyx Rising (trailer) and a remastered version of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (trailer). This is in addition to the prior announced next entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (trailer). I’m saddened that Kassandra’s storyline from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is officially at an end, but happy to see Ubisoft continuing to pump out neo-peplum video games. I look forward to writing about these titles after they are released.
Late last week I received my copy of issue 0 of Elysian Fields by Michael Oden and published by 9 Realms Publishing. I’ll be interviewing Oden and doing a write up about this comic in the very near future. More info about the comic can be found at the 9 Realms Publishing Facebook page or at the Indiegogo campaign page for the comic.
Issue one of the neo-peplum/Lovecraft comic Isidora and the Immortal Chains by G. A. Lungaro just concluded their Kickstarter campaign.
I’ve also backed a neo-peplum comic on Kickstarter that takes place in the Mesoamerican period that is called Aztlan. I’m always excited for sword and sandal that is outside traditional antiquity.
