GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #681: BOOK SNIFFING THE LANSDALES

 

I am an inveterate book sniffer. And you'd think that we'd have a technical term for that by now. I know I'm not the only one who finds comfort in putting one's nose into the middle of a book and taking a deep whiff. There seems to be some traction for the word "bibliosmia," but it's still not technically a word for what I love to do.

The older the book, the better the smell. There is just some kind of spice in those pages that is perfect for the ol' olfactories. But sometimes it's a newer book that will do the trick.

Like the one in the picture above. I just finished reading it last week, and while I carried it around in my backpack, it really classed up my joint. Usually my backpack smells of the cologne I accidentally spilled back there years ago, but while this book was in there, it smelled like fresh leather.

Thunderstorm puts out good quality books. I mean, physically. And this one by Joe R. Lansdale and his daughter Kasey is perfect. I kept sniffing the cover every time I held it. Sometimes at work, if it was a particularly bad day, I'd smell the book. Whenever I was getting ready to go somewhere, I'd take a whiff of my backpack because the fresh leather left its scent behind.

It's a shame that my backpack is back to its old self. It was good while it lasted.

Oh yeah, the book is pretty good, too. Writing-wise, I mean.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #536: SIX DEGREES OF KEVIN BACON

 

So last week there was a thing going around social media about people trying to play the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon using themselves to see how close they can get. It turns out that I'm actually pretty close to him. A lot closer than I would have expected. Dig it:

I, John Bruni, wrote a story called "Family Man" in an anthology called A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre.

I could use any number of authors in that one, but the easiest and fastest is Joe R. Lansdale. He wrote a Richard Matheson tribute story for He is Legend.

Richard Matheson wrote the book A Stir of Echoes.

That book was turned into this movie starring who? That's right. Kevin motherfucking Bacon.

Pretty neat, eh?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #418: LOOK WHAT ARRIVED TODAY

 

When I got home from my adventures today I was very pleased to see the new Lansdale had arrived. I took a look at that cover and thought, huh, that style looks very familiar to me. It took me a moment to think about my own books. STRIP and POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS in particular. And then it came to me.

Luke Spooner! I'd know his work anywhere! I'm glad to see that he's getting great work. I remember a while back I saw his work in Cemetery Dance, and now here he is working for my favorite living author! That's a hell of a gig, Luke! Congratulations!

Here's something very few people know right now. I can count the number of people on my fingers, in fact. Luke did the cover for my next book, too. One that has not been announced yet. One that some know I've been working on, but they have no idea that it's almost upon us.

I'd wanted it out in time for Printers Row, but things got in the way. I no longer had as much money as I was supposed to have due to surprise expenses, so I had to backburner the book. I'm going to try to get it out by Christmas just in time for the sick fucks on your shopping list, but in all likelihood it will probably be out early in 2022.

I can't wait to show you what Luke did for this one. It's an amazing cover, and you're all going to love it! Stay tuned . . .

THE JOHN BRUNI MUSEUM OF MEDIOCRE (AT BEST) SHIT #23: REVIEW OF FLINCH #11

[One would wonder, if I didn’t like the first issue, why would I continue reading to issue eleven? I love horror comics anthologies, and this was the only one back then. They got much better over the course of their run to the point that I was sad when it got canceled. Anyway, I got to curse in this one, proving that no one was reading my reviews. Later, one of my Primitive Underbelly columns (with Jesse Russell, the GonZo to my STRAIGHT) cursed, and it brought management down on us. Those were the days! From the Elmhurst College Leader March 13, 2000.]

It’s finally happened—with the eleventh issue, Flinch has finally found its stride. The first issue had been terrible, and as the months passed by, an occasional good story would pop up, like Garth Ennis’s (Preacher, Hitman, Punisher) version of Titanic called “Satanic” (issue 3) which put forth the idea that everyone on board the Titanic deserved to die because they were all hedonistic Satan worshippers who sacrificed the third-class passengers. There was Joe R. Lansdale’s (Jonah Hex, Dead in the West, Blood and Shadows) “Betrothed” (issue 5), in which a man digs up the fresh corpse of a woman so he can marry her (the guy ended up getting hit by a car driven by the man who killed the woman, at which point the killer said, “Torture and murder is one thing. But messing with a corpse . . . you got to be sick for that kind of thing”).

This time, all three stories are great. Lansdale kicks off the issue with his story, “Red Romance.” Like his last Flinch story, it’s a love story. While Billy’s clubbing some old lady dead for her money, he watches a beautiful woman slitting some guy’s throat, also for his money. It was love at first sight. In typical Lansdale fashion, they fall in with each other after Billy shows his love to her by slaughtering a couple of kids for a quarter (yes, they fuck in the blood of the corpses). They have a fun time killing people, but after a while they start cutting each other while in the throes of passion. They got bored with that after a while, and, well . . . anyone who has read Lansdale’s work can tell where this is going. This is dark comedy pulled right to its splatterpunk limit, and then some. Even Bruce Timm’s artwork is askewed. Sometimes it looks like art for comics directed at children, but there’s other times, like when Billy’s getting his teeth pulled out and his girlfriend is grinning with a mad gleam in her eyes, screaming, “HURT HIM! HURT HIM!”

The punchline? When Billy’s watching the hit man he hired rape his girlfriend, the hitman turns and knocks Billy unconscious. When he wakes up, he says, “We hired the same man!”

John Rozum’s story, “Travellers Lodge Emergent,” is weaker than “Betrothed,” but it emphasizes the horror. Working from a plot similar to Stephen King’s “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands,” a convict volunteers for experiments to get his sentence cut. He gets out of prison, finds a wife, finds a happier life than he’s ever had only to find that the experiments had messed up his internal organs. He started growing new ones, in addition to having toxins filtered out of his system like sweat. This results in what he calls the Anti-Midas touch: everything he touches dies. Needless to say, that screws up his life, and he naturally loses the good life that he had built, including his wife. In the end, he finds himself pumping his body with drugs and alcohol in hopes that he’ll manage to kill himself. The story, like bare bones artwork of Cliff Wu Chiang, is nothing earth-shattering, but it’s nice to see Flinch is actually trying to get the horror element into their monthly horror anthology.

The third story is simply insane. Dave Taylor’s artwork is, like Darick Robertson’s work on Transmetropolitan, brain candy. Every time you look at it, you notice something new, especially in the beginning. More often than not, the plethora of images are disturbing, particularly when depicting pivotal moments in the plot. Not only that, but he doesn’t stop at using speech bubbles—he mixes the lettering into the artwork.

It’s perfect for Ian Carney’s Woody Allen-esque story. Lawrence Keyhoe is love’s bitch—always forlorn and desperate for a woman. His pinched face and balding head reflect how pathetic he feels. What is the natural thing to do? Buy a Boil in the Bag Girlfriend, of course! He puts the sack in a tub filled with boiling water and soon, he has a girlfriend just like instant rice. She doesn’t have hair or features that identify her as a woman yet, but she develops pretty fast (except for her speech—at one point, she says, “you work. i sleep. develop. Tonight fuck fuck.”).

Naturally he comes home from work to find that she ran off with a Boil in the Bag Boyfriend. At least it’s not a whole loss; as Keyhoe says in the last panel, “Hey! I’ve got an ex!”

To cap it off, the cover by Phil Hale is disturbing as usual, showing off a man holding a dog with a woman’s face, which looks suspiciously like a blow up doll’s face.

Comic book horror anthologies are great ideas, and they have been great ideas since the Crypt-Keeper, Vault-Keeper, and Old Witch entertained readers of the ‘Fifties. It’s good to see Flinch finally give itself a facelift and start telling good stories.

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #35: MY PULP ADVENTURES FROM THE 'TWENTIES TO THE 'SIXTIES

As many of you are aware, I'm a big fan of classic pulp magazines. I'm sure I don't rank with most collectors, but I have a sizable personal collection, more than anyone else I know. I've got some very good books, too. I have the first appearance of "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," the seminal short story by Robert Bloch. I have the first appearance of HP Lovecraft's "The Terrible Old Man." (Both of these are in issues of WEIRD TALES, by the way.) A couple of years ago, I decided to actually read every issue I had.

Whoa, I hear you say. Did you actually open these issues up and read the stories inside? Are you mad?! Those magazines are falling apart. Just reading them lowers the value!

Maybe that's true. I remember showing one of my favorite issues of WEIRD TALES to a friend. And then I opened the mylar sleeve it was in to show him the contents. He was horrified by this. Here's the thing, though: as beautiful as these magazines are, they're essentially worthless without the stories inside. If I didn't read them, they would hardly be worth owning.

This is the issue I showed him.

(As a side note, many years ago I ordered a few hard-to-find books by Joe R. Lansdale from the man, hisownself. I wanted TEXAS NIGHT RIDERS, which was a special edition Cemetery Dance did of an old book Lansdale had published under the name Ray Slater. However, by the time I inquired about it, he didn't have it anymore. He gave me a call to let me know that he didn't have it, but he did have the earlier edition. I told him that I would be happy with that because I'm not interested in how the book appears. It's the story inside that matters.)

(I just read back that paragraph, and I realized I made it sound like Lansdale and I are close friends, and we hang out all the time. That is not the case, even though it would be supercool if it was. I didn't want to give you the impression that he and I know each other and are on first name basis, or anything like that.)

Now that I've read my way through the entire collection, I've got a few interesting observations I'd like to share with you all.

1. There were a lot of regular writers in these magazines, and they were all very popular in their day. However, they're all but forgotten now. There were some writers who appeared in almost every issue of several titles, but I've never heard of them before. And I'm very good with classic horror, SF and mystery authors.

There's an unfortunate reason for this: these writers weren't all that great. They filled a few cheap pages with the requisite amount of words, and that was it. I don't want to call them hacks, because that's unfair. I don't know them or the rest of their work, but I'll just say these stories did not interest me.


2. Aside from these authors, there are a lot of others who wrote one or two stories and just vanished off the face of the earth. Again, these writers were not that great in the first place, but every once in a while, I found one  whose disappearance confused me. It's a rarity to find such a diamond in the rough, as they say, but I cannot describe the high I felt whenever this happened. Remember the first time you read your favorite author? That's the high I'm talking about.


3. Points 1 and 2 lead me to this: we remember the greats for a reason. The Blochs and the Heinleins and the Kuttners and the Sturgeons and the Lovecrafts and all of their ilk are remembered today because they were fucking awesome back then. Every time I found a piece by them in my pulps collection, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. I rarely ever was. (Because no one is perfect. Bradbury let me down with one story, for example, but he was just a kid back then.)


These three points make reading the pulps kind of aggravating. I'd say a quarter of my collection was good. However, there is one thing I can say with utter confidence about every issue: no matter how bad the stories might have been, the art was always incredible. Virgil Finlay was in just about every one of these magazines, and he is probably the greatest artist of his generation. I'd put him up against anyone in the museums. Even some of his lesser known colleagues were fantastic. When you got to the late 'Fifties and early 'Sixties, the overall quality of the artwork went down a bit, which might have been a contributing factor to the extinction of the pulps.


The long and short of it: I'm glad I read them all. I would feel like a phony if I hadn't. More often than not, I was disappointed with the stories, but I was rarely disappointed by the artwork. I'm glad I've packed it all in my head, and if you ever get the chance to read an old pulp, especially from the 'Thirties and 'Forties, I highly recommend it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #59: ADDICTIVE VOICES

As I'm sure some of you are aware, I read the new DICKS tonight. Garth Ennis is more widely known for writing PREACHER, HITMAN and THE BOYS. There are a few readers, however, who know him for DICKS. It is an incredibly obscene book, so many of you might not know about it. I've been a fan ever since I got back into buying comics in the 'Nineties and discovered #3 at Graham Crackers in Wheaton. (This was back when Caliber published the book.)


Here's the thing, though: as soon as you finish reading an issue of DICKS, you can't help but be affected by the voice of the series. Everyone--and I mean EVERYONE--is Irish in the book. Shakespeare is Irish. Michelangelo is Irish. Even the fucking devil is Irish. (There are exceptions. Texan Dubya makes an appearance, as do UVF soldiers, who HAVE TO BE British.)


For at least an hour after reading a new issue, I can't help but THINK with an Irish accent. Everything is "ballacks this" and "yer head's cut, mate" and "up ye" and all of that. And the next thing you know, I'm using the word "cunt" as punctuation. Hell, as I wrote this paragraph, I couldn't help but write it in my head using an Irish accent. Jaysis and shite.


It got me thinking about other addictive voices in fiction. Right off the bat, because he comes from neighboring Scotland, is Irvine Welsh. It takes a while to get into one of his books, but once you do, you can't help but think in a Scottish accent. Unbidden, without having read a Welsh book lately, I've shifted gears in my head. Now I'm hearing my thoughts with a Scottish accent. Fitba and cuntybaws.


Closer to home, we have Joe R. Lansdale, my absolute favorite living author. He's so laid back with his East Texas style, it seems EASY. Obviously, it's not, but it just settles into your mind, and you'll find it hard to not speak with a drawl and use colorful phrases like "hotter'n two rats fucking in a sock."


The most addictive voice in the world, however, is Hunter S. Thompson's. Not only did he change the way I think, he also changed the way I act. That's an incredible thing to do. Those of you following the reruns of my DUI Diary are probably not surprised to discover that HST was a main influence on them. Without his suggestions, I would have crumpled and let the Man fuck me in the ass instead of fighting and rolling the dice. Even beyond that, I find myself talking about "stomping the terra" and "killing like a champion" all the time. It's hard not to finish my letters and emails without a grim "mahalo." I even got into the habit of ominously muttering "omerta" when someone needs to keep a secret. Everyone else on this list? You can get them out of your system, at least until the next time you read something by them. HST? He's there to stay. He's laid eggs in my head, and they're constantly hatching.


Don't take any guff from the swine. And you can't stop here. This is bat country.




















































YOUR TONGUE BELONGS TO SATAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C2E2 2013: MEETING MENTON3

Well, technically it’s not Meeting Menton3.  I actually met him at Wizard World Chicago last year.  He went out for a smoke break with Jon Lennon and Leo Perez, and I went outside with them and hung out while listening to him tell a story about hanging out with Johnny Cash during the shooting of the “Hurt” video.  This guy is full of awesome stories about hanging out with famous people.  He even worked with my favorite writer, Joe R. Lansdale.

But it seemed pretty clear that he didn’t remember me.  That’s all right.  How many people does one artist meet over the course of a convention?  I don’t really stand out.  Besides, while most people would call me a loudmouth, I keep my mouth shut when geniuses are talking.  I absorb their stories, and a lot of times, I learn something.  I didn’t say a word while Menton3 told his stories in the smoking area.

This time, I saw him at the 44FLOOD booth.  I asked him if he would mind signing a few books he’d done with Lansdale based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft.  (THE DUNWICH HORROR, as you can see in the picture above.)  As he signed these, he told me that the person who owns the Lovecraft Estate is either a great-grandson or great-nephew of the man himself, I forget which.  However, he said that this guy saw Menton3’s work on this very book, and he said that his ancestor would have very much enjoyed it.  For those who don’t remember, Menton3 did the backup story for each issue, which was based on Lovecraft’s “The Hound.”  You might remember that I featured the book on Cool Shit a few times, and I gushed on about how awesome the artwork for the backup story was, even though the word adaptation was only okay.

To hear that Lovecraft himself would have liked Menton3’s work is perfect.

We also talked a bit about MONOCYTE (which I reviewed as part of my coverage for last year’s Wizard World Chicago, and he mentioned that he was working on a new book for IDW called MEMORY COLLECTORS.  I don’t even have to see it to recommend it.  Keep an eye out.  You can bet your ass I’ll be among the first to buy it.

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #12: THE STATE OF THE HORROR GENRE

Heh. Just kidding. I’m not going to talk about the state of the horror genre. Too many people have already done that, and many of them are far more qualified than me. But there is a question that has been plaguing my mind since I read Brian Keene’s thoughts on this subject. Before continuing, you should read it if you haven’t yet. Here’s the link. Go ahead, I’ll wait.


http://www.briankeene.com/?p=9691

Ready? Okay. Are we all in agreement that it is important to know the history of one’s chosen genre? (And it’s okay if you don’t want to be identified as a horror writer. As far as myself, I write whatever the fuck shows up in my head, be it horror, SF, mystery, or something completely unclassifiable. Anything except romance, although I have kind of an idea for a gothic romance novel. Regardless, I generally consider myself a horror writer. It’s where my heart is. It’s what I like the most. But I’m not married to it.)


Can we also agree that every writer has influences? Because let’s face it, even those cave artists Keene mentions found their inspiration in something else. I wear my influences on my sleeve. Stephen King, obviously, as well as Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, Richard Matheson, and a number of others. Richard Laymon’s been lurking around in my head of late, too. As far as my non-fiction goes, it’s pretty clear that I follow the same path Harlan Ellison, Thomas F. Monteleone, and Keene himself have blazed. If you want, go down to the comments below and throw on a bunch of your influences. I’ll bet that every one of us will know every writer on that list. (Because I tend to keep the company of intelligent people.)


Now, here’s the question I have, the question that started this whole column. Those horror writers who don’t know their genre history, who don’t know who Robert Bloch is and why he’s significant, WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY READING?! They have to be inspired by someone, right? And they want to be horror writers, so chances are good the authors they’re familiar with are also horror writers. I’ll grant that no matter how bad at genre history they are, they’ve probably read King, Lovecraft, and Poe at the very least. But horror’s a big fuckin’ genre, man. They’ve got to be reading something else. And do not argue with me on this: all writers have to be readers. If they’re not readers, then what’s the point? Why do they want to be writers? Why do they want to produce something they would never use themselves? It makes no sense.


So who are they reading? To quote Jello Biafra, “I’m not telling you, I’m asking you.” Any ideas? Or is it possible that these guys are just kids? That they haven’t wandered too far in their reading? Let’s face it, that could be anyone posting on Shocklines. Maybe they’re not even old enough to shave yet.


But that’s not really an excuse. When I was in high school, I knew who the fuck Robert Bloch was. I knew why Ramsey Campbell was significant. I knew how important John Farris was to my own development as a writer. Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, I really didn’t care much for them, but I respected their relevance.


A while ago, Monteleone wrote in one of his MAFIA columns about the time he met Mickey Spillane. This was around when Spillane died. It impressed me so much that I wrote to Monteleone to express how jealous I was of him. He wrote back saying that he had hope for the new generation if young guys like me know who someone like Spillane is.


Go back over Keene’s speech again. Think back on all the authors he mentioned. I feel it is important for all of you to know who each and every one of them is. (Hell, it’s a challenge even for me; there were two names I didn’t recognize, but I assure you that I will become knowledgeable about them in the near future.) If you miss a few, don’t worry. No one is perfect. But do your homework. The fate of the genre—or any genre—depends on it.

COOL SHIT 11-10-11

THE DUNWICH HORROR #2:  Fuck, I forgot to write this one up.  I'll have to do it from scratch.  You know how I mentioned in my review of issue one how Lansdale was bringing HPL into the 21st Century?  Well, as any true Lovecraft fan knows, the Mistkatonic University has a copy of the dreaded Necronomicon.  However, it's falling apart, so they scan it into their computer system and put it online for anyone to read.  Lovecraft himself would have found that ghastly.

JENNIFER BLOOD #6:  Yep, my Garth Ennis streak continues.  You know how Jennifer's been killing all of her questionable uncles in very extreme, nasty ways, saving the worst for last?  Well, she's at the last one, and all he gets is a mere shot to the guts.  Jennifer sits nearby and tells him the entire story of how she got to be the way she is.  Ennis has pulled a KILL BILL on us with this one.  But the true star is Jack, Jennifer's neighbor, who has followed her to the scene of the crime with intentions of fucking her.  Boy, is he in for the surprise of his life!

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #5: JOE R. LANSDALE: AN APPRECIATION

Hands down, my favorite writer of all time is Joe R. Lansdale, and if you’ve never encountered his work, then you probably don’t know why. Anyone who has delved into his stories can’t deny the power of his mojo storytelling. And now is the perfect time to be a Lansdale fan, considering how many tales he’s already put out this year.



I remember when I first stumbled upon him. I was in college at the time, and I was looking to expand my horizons a bit. Back then, I had only read horror classics, like Lovecraft, Poe, and the like. I’d also read a lot of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice, but that was about as modern as I got. I wanted to know more about what was happening in the genre here and now, so I went to Borders and perused their horror section. I bought a number of things (all of them were excellent purchases), and one of them was MUCHO MOJO by Joe Lansdale, hisownself.


I didn’t know it was part two in a series. If I had, I would have gone for SAVAGE SEASON instead. But as things turned out, I soon found myself lost in the world of Hap and Leonard. When you got down to it, the book was more of a crime novel than a horror book, but who fucking cares? All I knew was shortly after finishing MM, I went out in search of more Lansdale.


One way or the other, I probably would have encountered him. Because of his stint on JONAH HEX, which I read shortly after MM, I would have undoubtedly found him. But I’m glad it happened this way.

I found it all. Every book he’s ever written. Most of his stories. I can’t tell you how much time I spent at his website, reading his weekly free stories before I tracked them all down in print form.

It is a surprising body of work. He’s dipped his brain in just about every genre there is. His SF work is few and far between, just the same as his fantasy, but believe it or not, he’s even written military novels and pornographic material (under pen names, of course). I’m not going to make the bold statement that he created the weird western tale, but he sure as shit made it a popular thing to write.


Some of you who are unfamiliar with Lansdale are probably wondering who the hell he is, as you are probably the kind of person who pays more attention to movies rather than books. To you, I say, “Who do you think wrote BUBBA HO-TEP?” Oh yeah. And if you know about the short-lived Showtime series, MASTERS OF HORROR, he wrote “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road.”


Now that we’re on the same page, what is it that makes him so special? It could be his batshit crazy stories. Take a look at ZEPPELINS WEST and all three DRIVE-IN books and tell me that a sane mind was responsible for these things. Maybe it’s his startling imagery. Back in the ‘Eighties, he was known as a splatterpunk. I’d disagree with the label, but considering stories like “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” and novels like THE NIGHTRUNNERS, it’s a position not easily defended. Perhaps it’s his sense of humor. “Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program” and “Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland” stand out as testaments to this. He can also be a nostalgic guy. Think THE BOTTOMS and A FINE, DARK LINE.

One thing it definitely is, is his voice. It can’t be mistaken. Take his name off of a piece of work, and I guarantee you can identify him as the writer within the first page. In fact, it’s a lot like Hunter S. Thompson’s voice, in a way. Once it gets in your head, you start thinking with it. How many writers have tried imitating both of these guys? I know that Lansdale had an effect on my own work for the first few months after I first discovered him.

So . . . to the new Lansdale disciple, where does one begin? It’s hard to say. I’ve never been let down by the guy, and I can’t say that about a lot of writers. You’re good jumping in at any point. Let me tell you about his newer stuff, since that’s probably the easiest to find.

There’s a movie being made out of CHRISTMAS WITH THE DEAD, so you’ll probably want that one. Calvin has survived the zombie apocalypse, and he’s been getting by in the world, working hard at surviving and trying not to think about the family he lost to the undead. But dammit, he wants some normalcy back in his life. This year, he doesn’t care about the zombies. Nothing’s going to stop him from putting up the Christmas decorations. The movie is being adapted by Lansdale’s son, Keith. (On a side note, Lansdale’s daughter, Kasey, is a country singer well worth looking up.)

Want something a bit crazier? Look up CLASSICS MUTILATED, edited by Jeff Conner. Lansdale’s story, “Dread Island,” is a continuation of Huck Finn . . . if Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and Jim wound up facing off against monsters on a haunted island.

But I know one thing for sure: everyone loves Hap and Leonard. You should probably start with SAVAGE SEASON, but I started with MUCHO MOJO, and nothing bad ever happened to me. Hap and Leonard can’t possibly be any different from each other, but they’re closer than blood, and they kick ass through several gut-wrenching mysteries. In HYENAS, they get hired by a guy who wants to save his brother from getting involved with the wrong people. It sounds simple at first, but as with most things when it comes to Hap and Leonard, things get complicated fast, and everything goes off the tracks by the end. But HYENAS is a bit hard to find, so you might want to go with DEVIL RED, their most recent mass release. This time, our unlikely duo finds themselves pitted against the most deadly assassins in the world, and to make matters more ridiculous, Leonard has taken to wearing a deerstalker cap.

Then, to top it all off, he also edited a book this year called CRUCIFIED DREAMS. His taste is impeccable as displayed by these reprints. Some are tried and true classics, like King’s “Quitters, Inc.” and Harlan Ellison’s “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” but there are a lot of hardcore winners in here. My favorite is David Morrell’s “Front Man,” followed very, very closely by Tom Piccirilli’s “Loss.” Norman Partridge and Lewis Shiner also contribute incredible tales, but would you expect anything less from them?


What more can I say about Lansdale? I think I’ve said it all. Well, there’s one more thing. While I’ve never met him, I do have a bunch of signed books by him. The most money I’ve ever spent on a book was for the lettered edition of FOR A FEW STORIES MORE. I think it was $150. That should tell you a lot about my regard for this man.


There’s one more thing to say. When I first started hunting down his harder to find stuff, I discovered that a friend of his, a guy named Dale, was selling some of his books. I got in contact with him and ordered a metric shit-ton of them, including some instructional videos he made (he created Shen Chuan and teaches this martial art in his hometown of Nacogdoches). Then, one day I got a phone call, and the caller identified himself as Joe R. Lansdale. At first I thought it was a joke, but he started talking about the books I’d ordered from Dale and I realized this was the real deal. He said that he no longer had some of the books I was looking for, and he wanted to find some suitable replacements for me. One of the books in question was a signed, limited reprint of TEXAS NIGHT RIDERS, which he’d written under the name Ray Slater.

When my package arrived, I saw a first edition of TNR, signed with both real name and pseudonym. On the inside cover, I saw the stamp of a used bookstore. All of a sudden, I realized that he’d gone through the trouble of going to this store and buying a copy of his own book so he could send it to me. There were also a lot of other goodies in there, stuff that would make any collector very happy.


So not only is he very accessible, he’s very interested in making his fans happy. And over the years, he’s made me very, very happy. For example, many of you know that I wound up in the hospital for three days recently. I would not have made it through if I didn’t have DEVIL RED on my night table. Hap and Leonard kept me sane through a very difficult period of my life.


Mr. Lansdale, I thank you. You have increased the quality of my life, and I can think of no better compliment to give.


So . . . how about all of you? Who’s your favorite writer? Doesn’t matter if he writes books, songs, comics, plays, or even if he is a he. Let me know in the comments below.

COOL SHIT 6-16-11

THAT HELLBOUND TRAIN #1: Holy shit! The Lansdale brothers have teamed up to adapt another iconic Robert Bloch story to the comic book medium! Last time, they tackled “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” with varying degrees of success. This one is all winner, though, especially since they have a much better artist this time. Dave Wachter’s stuff just rocks right off the page. And the train itself? Fucking shit, man. It’s creepy as, um, hell. You gotta’ see it to believe it.

CROSSED: PSYCHOPATH #3: As if the previous issues haven’t been grotesque enough, our favorite psychopath, Lorre, finally gets down to killing people in his group. He splits them up, and while everyone is hiding from the Crossed he has lured into following them, he gets down to getting nasty. Jesus, what he does to one of the characters is downright awful. As always, David Lapham does an over the top job, and Raulo Caceres, an artist with balls of steel, does a disgustingly filthy job. If you’re not reading this book, you’re missing a lot. And you probably have a soul, but whatevs.

HELLBLAZER #280: Ah-ha! Now we’re finally getting back to that missing scene from issue 275. You might remember from my review of that one, I complained about how the pivotal scene of the story wasn’t depicted. Here, we get what we were missing, and now we know the full extent of what Constantine’s double has done to Gemma. This is most definitely her story. It’s been a while since we’ve seen her in action, and it’s good to finally get inside her head. And hey! Check out that cover! Look familiar? If not, then you’re not a longtime Hellblazer fan. Look up issue 93 and compare. I just wish they’d stop pimping the shit out of the Green Lantern movie on their Vertigo books. It looks cheap.