Month: March 2018

Stephen Franck’s Silver Coming to Free Comic Book Day!

Posted on by

May 5, 2018 is Free Comic Book Day.  Dark Planet is making Stephen Franck’s Silver #1 available.  Franck summarizes Silver as…

… an original universe built around Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, and it begins 40 years after the events of the novel, into the noir/pulp era of the 1930s. You meet James Finnigan, who is the most notorious conman/gentleman-thief of his day, as he teams up with Rosalynd “Sledge” Van Helsing (granddaughter of the original Van Helsing, and altogether the last of the Van Helsings), to steal a mystical treasure hidden in Dracula’s castle. Finn, of course, brings his known associates—a fun assortment of conmen and grifters of all kinds—as well as the kind of amoral attitude that puts him immediately at odds with Sledge. Lastly, the team enlists Tao Leu (or more accurately, he enlists himself), who is a 10-year-old boy with the gift of second sight and who might be the biggest scoundrel of them all.

If this sounds like something you’d like or you’d like to see more click over to Free Comic Book Day’s Interview with Stephen Franc or to see a bigger preview of Silver.

Jonathan Maberry’s Favorite Horror Movies!

Posted on by

Jonathan Maberry recently requested…

Name your favorite:
1. Vampire Movie
2. Werewolf Movie
3. Zombie Movie
4. Monster Movie
5. Haunted House Movie

And he listed his…

1. Near Dark
2. Dog Soldiers
3. Dawn of the Dead 2004 unrated directors cut)
4. Aliens
5. The Haunting

So here’s mine…

  1. Dracula (1931)

  2. Curse of the Werewolf

  3. Night of the Living Dead (Romero Original)

  4. Aliens

  5. The Changeling

Yours?

Deep Silence: A Joe Ledger Novel by Jonathan Maberry is Coming!

Posted on by

The next Joe Ledger novel, Deep Silence, is set to drop on October 30, 2018.

The twelfth Joe Ledger novel in the New York Times bestselling series.

Terrorists-for-hire have created a weapon that can induce earthquakes and cause dormant volcanoes to erupt. One terrifying side-effect of the weapon is that prior to the devastation, the vibrations drive ordinary people to suicide and violence. A wave of madness begins sweeping the country beginning with a mass shooting in Congress. Joe Ledger and his team go on a wild hunt to stop the terrorists and uncover the global super-power secretly funding them. At every step the stakes increase as it becomes clear that the end-game of this campaign of terror is igniting the Yellowstone caldera, the super-volcano that could destroy America.

I’ve read all of the Joe Ledger novels and there’s not a misfire in the batch.  Of course that’s no surprise because every Jonathan Maberry short story or novel (Yeah, he writes other things besides Joe Ledger) has been a winner.  Let me put my pre-order in now.

CROSSROAD BLUES: A NICK TRAVERS GRAPHIC NOVEL

Posted on by

CROSSROAD BLUES: A NICK TRAVERS GRAPHIC NOVEL by Ace Atkins and Marco Finnegan is set to drop May 1st and I can’t wait.

After a New Orleans college professor goes missing while searching for the rumored lost recordings of bluesman Robert Johnson—who, as legend has it, sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads—Nick Travers is sent to find him. Clues point to everyone from an eccentric albino named Cracker to a hitman who believes he is the second coming of Elvis Presley.

I first discovered Atkins writing when he was tapped to continue the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels.  I was so impressed I searched out more of Atkins work and this led me to his other novels as well as the first Nick Travers graphic novel, Last Fair Deal Gone Down.  Needless to say, I was hooked.

Source: Comicosity.

11 Dizzying Facts About “Vertigo”

Posted on by

Tara Aquino and Mental Floss present 11 Dizzying Facts About Vertigo.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. ALFRED HITCHCOCK BLAMED JIMMY STEWART FOR VERTIGO’S FAILURE.
Marred by mixed reviews, the $2.5 million Vertigo did comparatively less than Hitchcock’s previous movies, and was widely recognized as a failure. Frustrated with its reception, Hitchcock partly blamed star Jimmy Stewart’s aging appearance. At the time of filming, Stewart—who had starred in Hitchcock’s three previous films—was 50 years old which, according to the director, was too old to convincingly play then-25-year-old Kim Novak’s love interest.

5. AN UNCREDITED CAMERAMAN CAME UP WITH THE FAMOUS “VERTIGO EFFECT.”
According to associate producer Herbert Coleman, it wasn’t Hitchcock who came up with the film’s famous camera technique (which essentially involves zooming forward while pulling the camera backward); rather, it was an uncredited second unit cameraman, Irwin Roberts. “He didn’t get screen credit on Vertigo because they gave the screen credit to another close friend of ours [Wallace Kelley] who did all the process work on the stage,” Coleman said.

9. ALFRED HITCHCOCK CHANGED THE SETTING FROM PARIS TO SAN FRANCISCO.
The French source novel, D’entre les Morts, was set in Paris, but Hitchcock believed that San Francisco was more interesting. As noted by Auiler, with the city’s vertiginous streets and hilly landscape, the location perfectly matched the film’s themes. In a city where there were such extreme physical highs and lows, awful for anyone with acrophobia, Scottie’s vertigo became a character in and of itself.