Out Next Week

The Milestone Compendium Four, a nearly 1300 page collection of material published by Milestone Media in the 1990s, and roughly a third of that was written by me, including the second half of my original run of Xombi (the first half is contained in Milestone Compendium One) as well as the remaining issues of Kobalt, and the arc of Hardware that I did with Eric Battle. With the exception of a couple more issues of material, this Compendium concludes the work I did for Milestone back during its original incarnation. This volume hits stores on June 17, 2025. 

Here's some additional information pulled from Amazon: 

Static, Hardware, Blood Syndicate, and more. Read the original stories of the characters that became Milestone icons in this massive compendium.

The iconic Milestone line that helped define the 90’s are now collected in a beautiful compendium. These brilliant and daring writers and artists brought their own experiences into comics that changed the game forever. Milestone ushered in a culturally diverse mix of superheroes, set in the fictional setting of Dakota, and ushered in the comics that inspired the hit TV series Static Shock. Read the original stories from the Milestone Universe today.

Collects: Blood Syndicate #28-32; Hardware #29-38; Icon #28-37; Static #26-31; Xombi #12-21; Shadow Cabinet #14-17; My Name is Holocaust #1-5; The Long, Hot Summer #1-3.

Midnight, Mass. Trade Paperback Collection Now Available

 

Collecting the entire 8-issue series, Midnight, Mass., written by me with pencils by Jesus Saiz, inks by Jimmy Palmiotti, colors by Noelle Giddings and Kevin Somers, lettering by Ken Bruzenak and John Costanza, and edited by Heidi MacDonald is now available at your local comic book store and book store. 

The series follows the exploits of paranormal investigators Adam and Julia Kadmon as they take on a variety of monsters, strange cults, ghosts, and a new personal assistant. 

Scooby-Doo's Greatest Adventures

 

Scooby-Doo's Greatest Adventures, a 424 page trade paperback collection of a variety of Scooby-Doo comic book stories will be available on October 29, 2024. You can preorder a copy through your local comic book store, or bookseller. 

I assume, but could be wrong, that this is the same collection that was originally published in 2019. If so, the stories included which I wrote are "A Wolf in Creep's Clothing" and "Yankee Doodle Danger."

Midnight, Mass. Trade Paperback Collection Coming In Fall 2024

 

Through it's Black Label imprint, DC Comics will be releasing a 208 page trade paperback collection of the 8-issue series, Midnight, Mass. on October 1, 2024. It will sell for $16.99 retail. You should be able to pre-order it through your local comic book store in the next few months. 

Midnight, Mass. follows the adventures of paranormal investigators Adam and Julia Kadmon from their home in Midnight, Massachusetts. It was written by me with pencils by Jesus Saiz, inks by Jimmy Palmiotti, colors by Noelle Giddings and Kevin Somers, letters by Ken Bruzenak and John Costanza, and covers by Tomer Hanuka. It was edited by Heidi MacDonald and Zachary Rau. 

Here's DC's press announcement:

The Best Cryptozoology Books 0f 2023

 

Loren Coleman has released a list of the best Cryptozoology related books of 2023 which included issue #121 of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You. You can see all of the books on the list here. 

The Milestone Compendium - Volume 3 Now Available

The third huge volume collecting all of the Milestone Media comics from the 1990s is now available. Among the varied chronological contents are issues 1-14 of Kobalt,a series I created and wrote, with art by Arvell Jones, Eric Battle, Jamal Igle,and others. You can order the Milestone Compendium Book 3 through Amazon, and a percentage of that sale will come back to me, by clicking here: Milestone Compendium Book 3 .

Milestone Compendium Book 1 which contains Xombi 0-11, also written by me and drawn by Denys Cowan and J..J. Birch is also available here: 

Milestone Compendium Book 1

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Book

Ghostland by Edward Parnell. William Collins. 2019 This is not a travel guide to haunted England, but a travelogue of the country and of personal history. Edward Parnell who has loved ghost stories from an early age, traverses the country to sites connected with various authors of ghost stories, the stories themselves, and even BBC and cinematic adaptations. His travels often intersect with places that he'd lived, or visited on familiy excursions, and the memories associated with those trips often entangles with those of the ghost stories. Not all of the ghosts are literary. Parnell has suffered devastating loss, and this book is as much a love letter to those who left him as it is to the stories that inspired him. This was a very engaging read. Even if, like myself, you've read countless ghost stories, this book will make you want to return to old favorites as well as seek out some you may have missed. I'm also really dying to see all those BBC adaptations, especially of the M.R. James stories. I've known about them for ages but have never seen any. The trick for me with Ghostland is not knowing where to shelve it. I actually have a number of regional ghost tour books, but I'm not sure this belongs with them, or with my collections of ghost stories.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 28 - Book

Don't Turn Out the Lights - Edited by Jonathan Maberry. Harper Collins. 2020. In 1981 a thin book of creepy campfire-type stories aimed at young readers appeared. The stories were very short and set up almost like jokes with macabre punchlines. There was a premise, a set up, and a dark finish. Characters were thinly drawn. No matter, this book was extremely popular (and followed by two more) and hgave many kids nightmares, no doubt fuelled by Stephen Gammell's unsettling illustrations. The book was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz. I was too old to be the target audience for these books when they came out. I was aware of them, but would noy investigate them until many years later. Jonatahn Maberry was also too old for them when they first hit the scene but took a copy camping with him and recognized the power of those stories whie out alone in the middle of nowhere. Don't Turn Out the Lights is a tribute anthology to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It contains 35 stories by some of the top spooky YA authors out there. Like the books this is in tribute to, most of the stories are very short, though a few run a bit longer. They also typically foow the format of the original's tales, joke-like in structure with more attention paid to the details than to the characters, though typically, the inhabitants of these stories have a bit more meat on their bones. The stories here are all quite good, and are entertaining, even though, I'm quite a bit beyond the age of the intended audience at this point. each story is accompanied by an atmospheric illustration by the amazing Iris Compiet who is going to explode in popularity soon. If you are a fan of the Scary Stories books, this is a worthy successor.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17

Vincent Price, the master of menace, kept himself relevant throughout his career by constantly reinventing himself and taking raoles that would appeal to young viewers and gain him a new growing audience. Outside of acting he was a well known art connoiseur and cook. He has three cookbooks to his name, and appeared in a multitude of advertisements for food products. These ads often contained recipes. If you're looking for some food ideas for your Halloween party, Vincent Price is about as much an icon of the season as witches and Jack O'Lanterns. Why don't you try some of these recipes? If you do I'd like to hear about it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 14 - Books

Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London by Anonymous. CreateSpace. 2014.

I couldn't really tell you anything about the origins of this book. It's cover is taken from a series of  penny dreadfuls published in the 1860s, so presumedly the included text is also, but I don't know that with any certainty. Spring-Heeled Jack was a mysterious figure who appeared on the outskirts London in the 1830s frightening people and impressing them with his uncanny leaping ability. In this book, speculation is made on the author's part that Sporing-Heeled Jack was in fact a Robin Hood-like character; an aristocrat cheated out of his title and holdings by an unscrupulous relative. He uses the guise of Spring-Heeled Jack to win back his birthright and to bring aid to those indebted to his ruthless relation. As an eyewitness account, even thirty years after the events themselves, this is a useless volume that sheds no light, nor encapsulates the actual sightings. As a photo-superhero story, it's at best a curiosity.


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Spirits of an Industrial Age by Jacob Middleton. CreateSpace. 2014.

Spring-Heeled Jack wasn't the only mysterious figure terrorizing England in the 1800s. There were quite a number of 'ghost impersonators" as Middleton refers to them. Here he meticulously documents the various sightings and reports of these frightening encounters, which, in one notorious case, ended up with an innocent man being murdered because he was believed to be a ghost. More interesting than even the mysterious figures, are Middleton's examinations of the metamorphosing form that ghosts took on in their depictions in folklore, story and the customary beliefs of the public. He also does a really nice job at depicting what the living conditions of the time period covered were like and how they lent themselves to a belief that these pranksters could cause so much terror and could be believed as being genuine. If you are looking for something that allows for even the slimmest possibility that mysterious figures, such as Spring-Heeled Jack, might actually have some sort of otherworldly origin, then this book will completely crush that. As a very niche examination of a strange cultural phenomenon, it's an interesting read. 

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32 Days of Halloween - Day 12 - Book

The Resurrectionist by E.B. Hudsbeth. Quirk Books. 2013

Dr. Spencer Black was a renowned surgeon and anatomist in the late 19th century, but his studies in teratology led him to bizarre beliefs, and his undoing. According to Black, mythological creatures were real, and when a person, or animal was born malformed, it was due to the body attempting to revert to one of those hybrid mythical forms. Dissections and mutilations led Black on a mad quest to attempt recreating numerous mythological species through surgery rather than genetics.

The Resurrectionist is divided into two parts. The first section contains a biographical overview of his life and work. The rest of the book is devoted to his notes and precise anatomical drawings of his mythological recreations. While an initial perusal would suggest this as slight reading material created to support Hudsbeth's finely rendered drawings, there is something unsavory about the book as a whole. Another book that was created to serve as a biological and anatomical field guide to mythological creatures using the same illustrations would come off as fascinating, but after reading the disturbing account of Black's disturbing experiments, those same illustrations come across as grotesque and unsettling, like something you really shouldn't be looking at. This is a strong recommendation.










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31 Days of Halloween - Day 9 - Book

Rick Baker: Metamorphosis by J.W. Rinzler.   Cameron Books, 2019


I have avidly followed the career of Rick Baker since King Kong (1976) and have been waiting for this book since I was in high school, later contenting myself with the issue of Cinefex devoted to Baker and his work. Finally, as of a year ago, this book arrived and it did so in a big way. It is a massive two volume set. Seventeen pounds of beautifully designed paged crammed with photos, drawings, text by J.W. Rinzler who is simply one of the very best writers on filmmaking out there. The book is pricey, but well worth every penny. Even for someone like myself, who considers themselves something of an expert of Baker's work, I learned so much that I did not know.

Baker and Rinzler also did what everyone tells you to do, which is to leave your audience wanting more. I was more than satisfied with what's between the covers here, but would happily pick up a third and fourth volume, which I hope will be coming since Rick Baker says there is so much material that had to be cut.

If you have any interest in film, make-up effects, or true artistry this book is a must have.




 


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31 Days of Halloween - Day 8 - Book

The Tribe by Bari Wood. Signet . 1981.

A group of Jewish men save themselves inside a Nazi concentration camp by bringing to life a golem, a legendary monster made of clay and brought to life through magic. Nearly forty years later in Brooklyn, then on Long Island, death comes to members of their families and once again they create a golem to act as a tool of vengeance, but that vengeance takes a wrong turn.

The Tribe is truly a great read. Full of mystery, dread and horror, it's also an immersive experience into parts of a culture that, even in 1981, was mostly alien to most of America. The characters are richly conveyed and sympathetic, even when at odds with each other, and even when things start to go bad. This book was completely engrossing and there was a tremendous build-up to the reveal of the golem. For much of the book we only knew its strength and terror through the aftermath of its actions, and the dread fear that the protagonists felt as they approached their inevitable confrontation with the monster was real, and tremendous.

I highly recommend this book, which is now again available through Valancourt's Paperbacks From Hell collection.




 


Ordering through the link above will generate earned income through me, which goes back into purchasing books and movies, which I will also share as content on this blog.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Book

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud. Small Beer Press. 2013.

I'd never read anything by Nathan Ballingrud before reading this collection of short stories. Having read it I am now an enthusiastic fan of his. This book collects nine of his stories. There are vampires, werewolves, the walking dead, the titular lake monster, hauntings, Lovecraftian horrors, but not like you have ever read them before. Ballingrud has taken traditional narrative expectations, not just genre tropes, but how stories are told in general, and done away with the rules and created fiction that delivers the goods with a punch in a way that never goes the way you think it will. He doesn't care about answering all the questions he calls forth, or even ending where you think a story should end, but that's okay. These stories are powerful and powerfully told. I don't know if it's an odd coincidence, or a theme that Ballingrud prefers to play with, but each story also features a character who represents the different faces of toxic masculinity, but in ways that are non-preachy and often sympathetic. The combination of these broken men who don't know how to love, or can't, or won't makes for a potent combination with the fantastical elements.

I know I'm only at day 7 here, but I don't expect I'll read another book of fiction for this countdown that is so fresh and so good.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Book

Tom Sutton's Creepy Things edited by Michael Ambrose and Donnie Pitchford. Yeo Books, 2014.


When I was a kid, before I got into superhero comics, I was into the monster and horror comics published by Marvel, DC, and Charlton. I actually found the Charlton ones the most disturbing of the batch, and one of the reasons was the organic art of Tom Sutton.

As part of Yoe Books' The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics series, the volume dedicated to the work of Tom Sutton features some of those stories I fondly remember, and a bunch that I hadn't seen before. There are over a dozen in total and a good introduction to the man and his art by Michael Ambrose, along with a bunch of covers Sutton produced.

This is the perfect comic book anthology for the season. I hope that Tom Sutton gets a volume 2.










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31 Days of Halloween - Day 4 - Book

The Morbid Anatomy Anthology edited by Joanna Ebenstein and Colin Dickey. The Morbid Anatomy Press. 2014



Built around lectures given at the now defunct Morbid Anatomy Museum, these essays cover topics such as death and morning, les diableries, teratology, wax venuses, the European witch trials, spiritualism, the soap lady, the personification of death in Mexican culture, taxidermied humans, books bound in human skin, anatomy, human zoos, macabre theaters, grave robbing, and other fascinating topics, this beautifully bound and illustrated volume is a must have for anyone with any curiosity regarding any of these subjects. Engrossing and enlightening, I highly recommend this and any books from the Morbid Anatomy Press.

This post contains affiliate links, which means that John Rozum receives a percentage of sales purchased through links on this site. Thank you for your support!

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 - Book

When Darkness Loves Us  by Elizabeth Engstrom  (Tor. 1986) is made up of two novellas also including Beauty Is... Both stories are about young women growing up on farms in rural America with isolation and sex being a big part of what are really only coming of age stories in the broadest sense.

In the first story a sixteen-year old newly wed woman is accidentally sealed into a series of pitch black caverns and eventually discovers she is pregnant. What's most shocking in this tale is not what she needs to do in order to survive, but Engstrom's spare storytelling controlling the amount of time that passes in the woman's subterranean life. The story has a peculiar feeling to it and is entirely engrossing.

The second story is about Martha, now in her fifties and living alone on her family's farm while the people of the community, out of thanks to Martha's mother who was a local healer, care for most of her day to day needs. Martha was born without a nose, and while corrective surgery, more or less, fixed that, a traumatic experience in her youth made her something of an imbecile. Now as she finds someone in the community who genuinely cares for her, her intelligence slowly starts to re-emerge and she also develops a confidence that wasn't there before. There's one member of her community who is a real bad seed and has it in for Martha and her new friend and his confrontation with her leads to a dark conclusion. While the ending is abrupt, and not entirely unexpected, since Engstrom does plant the seed for it early on, the story itself is very engaging, and again Engstrom's spare style somehow emphasizes the dread and isolation that provide so much of what makes these stories successful.

This book is a real gem. It somehow wound up in my collection decades ago and remained unread until now. Apparently long difficult to get ahold of, it's now easily available as part of Valancourt's Paperbacks from Hell series cultivated from Grady Hendrix's outstanding book of the same title.







This post contains affiliate links, which means that John Rozum receives a percentage of sales purchased through links on this site. Thank you for your support!

Ghosts Now Available

From the Yoe Books website:

There's an eerie moan on the midnight wind from just beyond the cemetery gate. A crypt door slowly creaks open, and a strange shape emerges from the darkness within.

It flitters across the cold, foggy night, eyes ablaze with hate--and now glaring in your direction! You're too paralyzed to move. It's coming towards you... closer... closer... closer...

From the terror team that curdled your blood with Haunted Horror, Zombies, Return of the Zombies, and Haunted Love, GHOSTS is the latest and ghastly greatest in the Classic Monsters of Pre-Code Horror Comics collection, which includes Mummies and Swamp Monsters. 

128 pages of appalling apparitions, formidable phantoms, shuddery seances, shivery spooks 'n specters, and evil wraiths with much more than just revenge on their murdered minds!

Featuring hair-raising precode '50s horror gems and a ghostly gallery of classic cover creeps!

Series: Classic Monsters of Pre-Code Horror Comics
Paperback: 128 pages
Release date: October 8, 2019
978-1684055494
7 x 10 inches

31 Days of Halloween - Day 23

I love monsters. All kinds. Here are my favorite monsters of the movies, fiction, and folklore. Monsters have appeared throughout my work in vast numbers, most of them I make up, but often times I'll take one from mythology to craft a story around. For my 2013 Halloween Countdown I showcased many of the monsters that appeared in stories I wrote. You can find them here.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 22

If there's any one author who embodies the Halloween spirit, it is this man here; Ray Bradbury. To me he's as much a part of the season as Jack O'Lanterns, ghosts and the colors orange and black. For years he was centrally represented in my outdoor yard decorations in the form of Jack O'Lantern filled Halloween Trees. Sadly, the house I'm currently occupying does not have any trees in our front yard, so that tradition has stopped until my next move. To learn more about Ray Bradbury's connection with Halloween read here.