GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #951: 2025 DOES NOT BODE WELL

 For the past few days I've been getting ready to take this mantle up again, and I thought I'd jump right into politics before January 20 comes along, but fuck that. Because big picture? That's terrible for everyone, even the unsuspecting MAGAs. Besides, small picture (but fucking huge for me) is what I'm looking at this year.

I can't imagine I'll end 2025 with two feet. Gotta be honest, today I had a bad feeling about The Foot. A lot of drainage came out of it today, and it is super swollen. I could not get my shoe on this morning. I had to go back to the medical shoe with the velcro strips. Often times today I thought maybe I should just go to the ER. But if these are going to be my last days with the foot, I want to get the most out of them. I also want to start planning to fuck over the corporations who are going to swarm me when I no longer have money because my second prediction for the year is I'll be out of a job. First and foremost is jailbreaking my car so the dealer can't brick it from afar. The plan is to also . . . I'm a little crazy right now, so I'll hold off on that.

(I did message my podiatrist. He asked me if there was any redness, and there isn't. He doesn't seem worried, but now I'm thinking about how cold I was on Friday. That is also a sign of infection.)

There are a few things that are probably going to come up this year on my Reasons to Start Drinking Again list, but those two are the big ones. So to top it all off I'm probably going to drink again this year. My life has been a constant downward spiral, but I may be reaching the end. It angers me that I won't get to beat Mom's high score of 53, much less Dad's 59.

I hope this is just the paranoia speaking, but last night I thought about all the things I wanted to do with the new year, about all the life changes I would incrementally make over time. I have a little notebook half-filled with my ideas and how to implement them. But whenever I start making big plans for myself, the universe shoves the Fickle Dick of Fate right up my ass. It's been probing me all day, but I hope it doesn't make me drink during the first full week of the year.

I thought maybe I should go to the ER anyway tonight, but I have a plan of action. I see Wound Care on Thursday, but I have some antibiotics (they accidentally gave me two packs, and I'm not going to just return one) in case I have an infection, and I have tons of ice to kill the swelling. It went down a little today, but maybe by my appointment, I'll have fixed this. Or they'll highly suggest I go to the ER, so I might want to pay a bag on Thursday . . .

The really fucked up part of this is, I started looking forward to losing my foot so I could drink again. That, my fine fuckers, is the very definition of addiction. I killed that horrible thought as soon as I detected it, but I can't deny it was there.

I'm hoping tomorrow's better. And hey, this was mighty depressing. You should check out the new issue of The Cocaine! Bros.

THE COCAINE! BROS. 2025 JAN 666

 They're baaaaaaaack.

THE COCAINE! BROS. ARE BACK!

 Indeed!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #223: JOWLS

I pride myself on very few things, but the one I hold in the second highest regard is my ability to have a story for just about anything. Name a topic, and I've got something for you. Granted, it might take me a moment to shuffle through my brain. There's a lot of alcohol up there. But there's always something. I feel like Kup from the Transformers sometimes. I'm not an old war beast, but I've been around the block. I've been around most of the blocks. Something always reminds me of something else.


Recently Bradley Sands, the author of the great RICO SLADE WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, commented on one of my GF posts that I should write about jowls. That threw me for a loop. Off the top of my head I couldn't think of a single instance where jowls specifically came up in my life. But I like a challenge, and I thought about it for a long time. I thought maybe I'd write a humorous piece about jowls and my appreciation of them (especially on Mitch McConnell, who for some reason reminds me of this guy). Or maybe I'd talk about how my jowls are starting to make themselves known, and how I remember having a clearly defined jawline. I don't know. That sounded kind of like cheating.


And then it hit me. It usually does. If I'm having trouble with something, I put it on the back-burner. Let it simmer. It usually works itself out, usually just in time. Today, as I was driving through an area I used to hang out in (but no longer do), I came upon a house I used to be in on a regular basis.


Rob Tannahill, my fellow creator on THE COCAINE! BROS. and current jailbird, has a habit of getting into friendships with a group of people and dragging me into it. Then he does something that gets the group to despise him, and he starts all over again with other people. Most times I don't like anyone in that group of friends. They're not people I want in my life on a long term basis. But I'll give him this: he always found him some fucking characters to hang out with.


One of these guys lived in the aforementioned home. He was one in a group of Satanists. No, not the animal sacrificers. I mean the real ones. Their favorite thing to do? Go to Denny's so they can smoke, drink coffee and play Magic, the Gathering. I've never cared for Magic, but that's what they did, so that's what I did. It was fun.


This guy once told me a story about how a friend of his was doing anal with his girlfriend, and she farted when he came. As a result something broke inside of him. Whenever he pissed, he came. Whenever he came, he pissed. It doesn't sound very likely, but I humored him.


He was a skinny motherfucker. He also looked a lot older than he was. When I saw him I figured him for 35. He told me he was 22. I couldn't believe it, and when I questioned him on it he said that it was easy to explain. "I used to be a fat ass. I weighed 300. No shit."


I couldn't believe it. He was so skinny I could have grabbed him around the waist with one hand and have my fingers touch my wrist.


"I'll prove it," he said. "Check it out."


With both hands he grabbed each side of his jawline and pulled down. I was surprised by the elasticity of his skin. He pulled down nearly all of his face. He had so much loose skin I thought maybe he'd been wearing a mask the whole time I'd known him. I'm not kidding when I say that I could have grabbed those jowls and wrapped my entire fists in them. I have very thick hands. I wouldn't be showing off a single finger.


He didn't look like he had jowls, but holy fuck. They were the biggest I've ever seen. If he'd pulled up instead of down he would have covered his face up to his eyes. It's fucking crazy.


When I was in high school I weighed 245 lbs. When I saw my graduation video I looked like Chris Farley. I found that unacceptable, so I got myself down to 205. I ran into some horrible setbacks (in particular a romance that went wrong very badly), and I rocketed up to 305. I found my way and cut back down to 215, but then another horrible romance drove me up to 270. I'm down to 250 now. But no matter how much weight I lose there is one fact that always remains: you will have loose skin.


That dude had so much loose skin it didn't look human. I don't know how he managed to make it look like nothing. If I stretched it out from his face, I could probably cradle a baby in there.


So yeah. Jowls. If you have any further suggestions let me know. I'm confident that I can find something about anything in the rotten, booze-soaked folds of my brain. I consider it a challenge. I love a challenge. Hit me with your best.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #74: ERIC FLEMING

Those of you who have followed me a long time know that GUNSMOKE and MAVERICK have had a major influence on not just my writing but also my life. There are a few others, namely HAVE GUN-WILL TRAVEL and WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, but there is yet another . . .


RAWHIDE is one of the best written western TV shows in history. It's not my favorite, but I have to admit that a lot more writing went into these episodes than any other show, at least in the first five seasons. After that, things went downhill, even though there were still great episodes.


That's not what I'm here to talk about, though. I want to discuss the unsung hero of RAWHIDE: Eric Fleming.


Most of you know me from my horror writing, so I'm pretty sure you'll mostly recognize Fleming from his work in a movie called CURSE OF THE UNDEAD. It was one of the very first Weird Western movies EVER. It was shit. I'm sorry, but it was. Yet it was the first outing of one of my favorite sub-genres.


To those of you with longer memories, you'll remember Fleming as the star of RAWHIDE. He played Gil Favor, trail boss. Clint Eastwood was equally billed, but let's face it. He was second fiddle to Fleming, the real star of the show for seven seasons.


Again, that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Fleming, not Favor.


I knew he'd had a shitty life, but I didn't realize how shitty it was until I read the recent history of RAWHIDE by David R. Greenland. But before I get into that, let me give you my impression of Fleming as Favor.


When I was a kid, I hated him. I always sided with other drovers because I thought he was being unfair. He's the boss, and fuck him. But . . . watching the series as an adult, I understand him a lot more. Yes, he was stern, but he had very good reason to be. If he couldn't get these crazy drovers into line, he would never succeed at getting these steers to market. As an adult who wants to succeed at things, I totally get that. Fleming had the right stuff when it came to portraying a firm leader. He had a human side, but he didn't tolerate disobedience. He was fair, but he didn't let shit go. You had to do what he commanded, or you were out. Fair enough.


Fleming was an unlucky son of a bitch. Seriously. You'd think a TV star was in a good position, but he wasn't. Let me explain.


I was an abused child. You know that. I've also surrounded myself with people who were abused children. You probably also know that. However, Fleming was so abused that there's only one person I know who had it worse: Robert Tannahill, my partner on THE COCAINE! BROS. Rob had it rough, worse than anyone I know which is why I give him a lot more latitude than I'd give anyone else. I love him as I've loved no other male human being in my life. We've had our rough patches, but, well, you get it.


I don't know what Rob would be OK with me talking about, so I'll skip it. Instead, I'll talk about what Fleming had to go through. Fleming, who was born as Edward Heddy Jr., was once beaten by his father so bad it kept him in bed for a few days. Young Fleming got stuck with a bone disease when he was a kid, and his father didn't visit him in all the six months he was in the hospital. However, when Fleming came home, his old man had no problem beating the shit out of him, even though he needed crutches to get around. Could you imagine beating the daylights out of a kid who got around on crutches? Me, neither.


Fleming's dad was such a cunt that Fleming tried to shoot him once when he was nine. According to Greenland, the gun jammed. He doesn't explain the momentous beating Fleming must have gotten due to this attempt. I know my stepfather would have at least cut my balls off for something like that. Regardless, Fleming hopped a train to get away from his family and wound up in Chicago, working for gangsters during Prohibition. The poor kid wound up getting shot for his troubles, and the authorities decided to return him to his father. This happened AT THE AGE OF 11.


Luckily for him, the cops saw how afraid he was of his old man and left him with his mother instead.


Six years later, he ran away from his life of poverty to join the Navy. It was during this time that he wound up getting terribly injured in an accident. Two hundred pounds of steel fell on Fleming's face, completely destroying it. I'm surprised he survived such an accident. It took four plastic surgeries to reconstruct his face, including an eye he thought he was going to lose. From all accounts, he was ugly before, but this actually made him look better. Hollywood better.


Did I mention that he had a club foot that he had to wear a brace for? That would probably explain his life of going barefoot, since shoes tended to fuck with him pretty badly.


He gave acting a shot and got reasonably good success at that. However, I think he would have been happier being a writer. Whenever he wasn't in front of the camera, he was reading a book, which understandably put off other actors on RAWHIDE. Clint Eastwood was wrestling with the other actors--literally--and pulling pranks and generally having a good time, but Fleming was too busy reading. He wrote a couple of episodes of the show.


Fleming clashed with the supposedly creative forces of RAWHIDE often, but it wasn't for his own betterment. It was for all actors. At one point, he made some labor deals which benefited everyone on the cast.


He hated working in front of the camera. He wanted to write novels, and he was planning on doing just that. He had a few contracts to work through, and then he could retire to the home he'd built on RAWHIDE money. All he had to do was get through one last movie role, which he'd scored after being fired from the show that had made him a big name.


(Wrongly, by the way. Even Clint Eastwood, who had publicly feuded with Fleming many times, said that the network was making the wrong choice by firing Fleming and promoting Eastwood to the star of the show. It should be noted that Fleming was approached by Sergio Leone, who wanted an American actor for FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, the first great spaghetti western to ever be made. Fleming, along with other American actors, turned Leone down. However, unlike others, Fleming suggested that Leone might want Eastwood for the role. As all of you know, even my non-horror fans reading this now, Eastwood accepted the deal and became an international star because of his involvement with Leone. (For $15,000, no less!) Because of this moment, we have Academy Award-winning director Clint Eastwood. Instead of getting Eric Fleming as the Man With No Name--who really did have a name, by the way--we got Clint Eastwood, who really was the best choice. However, Eastwood wanted to get out of his CBS contract for RAWHIDE in order to make movies, which is why he suggested that CBS should fire him instead of Fleming. It didn't work out that way.)


Which brings us to the final moment in Eric Fleming's life. You'd think that a guy who suffered as badly as he did would get some sort of reward, right?


According to Charles Marquis Warren, the creator of RAWHIDE, Fleming was "a miserable human being." Greenland goes so far as to say that Fleming agreed with this assessment, calling himself "bitter" and "twisted."


Shortly after being fired from RAWHIDE, Fleming got a job for a movie being filmed in South America. He was filming a scene that should have probably been performed by a stunt man when his boat capsized, and he was dragged down by the undertow.


It is irrefutable that Eric Fleming was devoured by piranha. However, no one knows if he drowned first or was eaten alive.


I desperately hope that he drowned first, but from all accounts, he was very athletic. He was an able swimmer.


I personally think the piranha killed him.


I hope for his sake that I'm not right. I can't stand the idea of someone like him, abused from his earliest moments on this planet, dying in such a hard way.


He was forty-one and the first RAWHIDE actor to die.


I feel a great deal of kinship toward him. I hope his passage from this world wasn't as hard as I think it was.


But I know his luck was shit. From what I could tell . . . I can't say it.


If there's an afterlife--and I highly doubt there is--I hope Eric Fleming has found some kind of reward there.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #68: INTERMISSION

Whenever I finish the first draft of a novel, it always leaves me in a weird position. I take a few days off from writing, and then I have to figure out what I want to do next. I can't just launch into the next draft, because I'm just not ready for it yet. I need to let it cool down. I need to become unfamiliar with it, so I can edit the fuck out of it later. I'm a hard-ass when it comes to editing other people's shit, but when it comes to my own? Not so much. I have to wait at least a month before I can do the next draft because when I become unfamiliar with it, I can pretend it's someone else's book. And then I can be a hard-ass again.


I always work on short stories in that time, but right now, I have so many ideas, I don't know what to work on. There's an army of them marching through my mind. I've got notes on all of them, but wrestling one of the fuckers down is always hard for me. I never know if I'm feeling one of them when I start. If I lose interest quickly, I've chosen poorly, so I have to make sure that I'm right the first time.


Oddly enough, I have a shit-ton of ideas for novels right now. That never happens after I've finished a first draft of a novel. I'm almost tempted to start work on one of them instead.


I've been writing since I was a little kid. I've been writing professionally since high school. You would think by now, fourteen years after I graduated college, my idea mill would have slowed down. But no, it's only going faster and faster. Sometimes, I wonder if I'll survive long enough to get these ideas out of my head and onto paper (or my computer monitor; fuck, you get the idea). Not only that, but I'm juggling so many things aside from writing, like Strange Story Saturdays, Forced Viewing, The Cocaine! Bros. and so much more.


And then? Then there's the lazy side of me that wants to sit back, relax and let shit work itself out. That works for some writers, but looking back on my own life, it really doesn't work for me. I have to stomp that odd compulsion out like the insect it is.


I won't be writing tomorrow. Instead, I'll be working on what I'm going to write the next day. Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #42: DWINDLING, YET BUSY

Wow. I talk deeply about depression, and I get everyone's attention. I switch gears to cheer everyone up a bit, and everyone abandons me. OK, fair enough. Two posts ago, I wrote about a duck crossing the highway. The last post was about me killing a fly, and I suppose that's about as entertaining as watching paint fuck and flies dry. I tried to give it some oomph, but I guess no one gave a shit.


It's weird how vast the drop-off was. Maybe it's just the constant saturation of these blogs. I am, after all, up to #42. That's a lot to read every night, I guess. If I had such low numbers on any other regular post, I would probably cancel it. This one? I think I'll soldier on. It's more of a writing exercise for me, anyway. If it entertains someone out there, then double points for me.


After I got my required word count out of my head tonight, I spent a lot of time gearing up for things. Wizard World Chicago is this weekend. I'll be there Friday, and it's going to be a hell of a day for me. After the show, I'm doing the Forced Viewing podcast (hopefully), after which I'm going to (hopefully) hang out with some Artists Alley friends. I don't know how I'm going to live through it all. Plus, that's the day THE COCAINE! BROS. returns. I intend to have the new post up by noon that day, so keep an eye out for it.


I am really fucking busy these days. You'd think my insomnia would have shriveled and died. No such luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #30: SOMETIMES I DISGUST MYSELF

Many of you may be aware that I'm working on a story called DONG OF FRANKENSTEIN for MonstErection, an imprint of StrangeHouse Books that publishes monster porn. Tonight, I wrote a scene for this one that kind of rocked my brain. I couldn't believe I was doing something like this. There are a few times I had to wonder if I was crossing a line or not (and if *I* have to wonder that, chances are good that I'm crossing a line). But then again, some of the images are so incredible, I can't help but pat myself on the back.

To the future readers of this story (should MonstErection publish it, of course), I'd like to say that there have been things I've chosen not to write. That may sound hard to believe, but it's true. There have been some pretty nasty ideas in my head over the course of my life, and there are some that are so vile that not even I will write them. For example, I thought I might want to do a story about an alternate universe, in which NAMBLA actually stood for North American Monster Boy Love Association. OK, so it's easy to see a guy like Freddy Krueger being a member, but think about Jason and Leatherface and Chucky and all those guys wanting to fuck boys because they love them. Yikes.

Speaking of fucked up shit, I got confirmation tonight that Robert Tannahill completed a new COCAINE! BROS. strip. I haven't read it yet, but from what he says, I'm pretty sure it will be depraved. I don't know when we'll post it, but I'll let you all know.

PS: there is a very gleeful part of me in regards to that DoF story I'm writing. Mary Shelley would do a spinner in her grave. Percy Shelley might like it, but Mary? [pulls collar nervously]

THE COCAINE! BROS.: The Final Post

This is the last thing from THE COCAINE! BROS., a strip by myself and Robert Tannahill, and I hope you enjoy it. It's the very first illustration of Tucker and Hunter. Check it out here.

COOL SHIT 8-22-13

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD:  AFTERMATH #10:  Noooooooo!  Writer David Hine lived up to his threat from last issue.  They took my favorite character and injected him with the zombie serum.  Many of you may remember me saying they should have given Vic his own spin-off, but I guess that’s not happening now . . . .  However, he’s not out of the picture yet.  It seems that this new version of the serum has let him retain some of his intelligence.  I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’ll definitely wait it out and see where Hine is going with this.

THE LAST ZOMBIE:  THE END #3:  The shit has hit the fan.  Dr. Ian Scott’s secret is out.  Everyone knows he’s slowly becoming one of the undead.  Now Planters and company have to figure out what they’re going to do with him.  In the meantime, Frankie turns out to be just like her other incarnations.  For those who don’t know, she’s appeared several times in writer Brian Keene’s novels, usually alternate universe versions of her.  Very few of them turn out to have good luck.  They’ve also made a odd choice with the new artist, Ben Dunn.  In fact, looking through this issue kind of reminds me in moments of my webcomic with Robert Tannahill, THE COCAINE! BROS.  When the guys finally make their escape from Chicago, two of them finally get to deal with Harrow.  As they descend upon him, I get a definite Tucker/Hunter feeling from them.

G.I. JOE:  THE COBRA FILES #5:  Finally, we get a look into Clockspring’s past.  He’s easily one of the creepiest members of the Joe team, and not the cool kind of creepy, like Freddy Krueger.  No, this is creepy like the guy who follows you home at midnight.  Still, it’s great to see him finally fleshed out.  We now see what makes him tick.  When I was at C2E2, writer Mike Costa promised a lot of emotional damage coming in the near future.  I think this might be the calm before the storm.  Writers don’t always deliver on such promises, but Costa usually does.  It makes my ballsack shrivel just thinking about it.  I think things are about to get fucked the fuck up.

CROSSED:  BADLANDS #35:  If there was any doubt that Amanda has finally lost it completely, it should be gone by now.  Lorre really got into her head pretty badly, and now she’s murdering regular people, pretending that the Crossed got to them.  So, you know, she had to mutilate the bodies and cut their dicks off, and all that stuff.  How much farther can writer David Lapham push her?  I guess we’ll find out next issue, when this story arc concludes.  (Oh yeah, and Candy has gotten pretty weird, as I’m sure you can tell from the sample above.  That’s the prelude to the strangest face-fuck in comics history.)

KICK-ASS 3 #2:  This is a low-key story for Kick-Ass himself.  No, the star of this one is Rocco Genovese, the most recent member of this scumbag mobster family to enter into play.  He is infinitely scarier than any of his brethren.  I can’t wait to see more of this guy in action.  This is also quite the issue for the Motherfucker’s mother, who toys with the idea of taking her son out of the world to atone for bringing him into it.  Things get mighty strange by the last page.  (OK, Kick-Ass does one thing that’s really cool in this issue.  Check out his BATMAN YEAR ONE plan to see what I mean.)