…and so we reach the final movement of this year’s danse macabre. It was a bit skeletal as far as content went, but my real purpose was to see if I still had it in me to stick to a daily schedule, even if only for a month. I apparently do, though I have no […]

I grew up in an era where trashy low-budget horror flicks had a marketing presence in newspapers and television. With cable and VCR tech still a ways from becoming ubiquitous household staples, and my peers and I being a little too young (and chicken) to sneak into R-rated movies, these ad spots were the sum […]

It’s like my grandpa used to say: “The only thing worse than a haunted muscle car is a haunted racist muscle car.” Multiple problematic aspects aside, this episode (“The Ghost of General Lee,” 10/29/1979) creeped the heck out of me as a kid, even though it was clearly established as a hoax out of the […]

In Search of… has to be near the top of my personal list of formative TV viewing experiences. The syndicated series covered all manner of topics under the expansive rubric of “strange phenomena,” which was quite the cultural obsession during the uncertainty and turbulent 1970s. The legend of Dracula one week, Amelia Earhart the next, […]

One of the happier events to come out of the pandemic lockdown period was discovering a full run of Our World on YouTube. The short-lived ABC show was a favorite of my teenage self, and its weekly wide-angle coverage of particular historical moments had a tremendous impact on my own academic development. It racked up […]

One of the bigger events that happened during the hiatus was the passing of Ollie Dog last spring. He is much missed, but he had a grand life, was much loved, and left this world peacefully. My opinion that we should maybe wait a bit before getting another canine companion was vetoed by the wife […]

About five years back I caught some fortunate breaks which increased what the beancounters would call my “discretionary income.” Being a sober and pragmatic middle-aged man, I used that windfall to chase down various childhood artifacts of deep personal significance. This was not some wild spree, however. Taking a page from my renewed record collecting, […]

The goal of my ongoing binding project was to create durable and easier-to-shelve collections of funnybooks which, for various reasons, haven’t and most likely wouldn’t see an official trade paperback or hardcover release. Most of these fall into one or two year runs from a single title — Atari Force, Young Heroes in Love, the […]

Apparently today marks thirty-four years since the debut issue of the post-Legends “Bwah Ha Ha” incarnation of the Justice League. It’s a day I remember well, though for more personal reasons than its significance within funnybook history. My paternal grandmother had moved out of our house the month before, returning us to nuclear family status […]

My plans to come roaring back after the Halloween Countdown didn’t pan out, but the time wasn’t entirely wasted. The world is awash in ill-conceived takes forged from bullshit and claims of unearned authority. Instead of joining that yowling chorus, I’ve decided it’s better to speak only when I have something to say. (On this […]