PRESS RELEASE - GORE WHOM THE BELL TOLLS!

THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER!!!  After six long years, Rough House Publishing announces the release of the FINAL ISSUE of their trilogy of 1980’s horror comic book anthologies with, GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS VOLUME THREE! Rough House Publishing and Fantaco Enterprises ensures that THIS IS THE ONE YOU’VE BEEN SHRIEKING FOR!   And if you thought the “Resurrection” was a shocker …just wait until the funeral being released on OCTOBER 2025!

PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE NOW (CLICK HERE)

GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS VOLUME THREE, scheduled for release OCTOBER 2025, promises to be a darker and dirtier affair, but not in the way you might imagine.  It’s a very traditional, black-ink style, full analog comic book experience.  It’s got all of what the entire series made great about holding an indie horror comic in your hands for the very first time. Yes, THIS issue certainly lives up to its title, but these stories hold an incredible amount of weight, poignancy, relevance and sometimes a howl-and-a-half of dark humor.  It’s not just sheer exploitation as the title would suggest. Much like other contemporaries of the ilk (Slow Death and Deviant Slice comix) , there have always been sociopolitical messages if you are looking for them, otherwise, you can make good use of the barf bag we made for ya’, and bring a mop for whatever is left after the spill!

Like the previous two entries, Gore Shriek Resurrectus Volume Three will be available with two separate covers, both drawn by Rough Master General, Derek Rook, coined the “Oh-My-Gory” Cover A and the equally pulpy, “Yep, Still Gory” Cover B. So if you thought we forgot what you came for, Rough House is making things as clear as the warning banner that graced the lower right hand corner of every issue of Gore Shriek since the very beginning - WARNING! Contains disturbing material and is not intended for children! (However, it is intended for anyone who were once children!)

JUMP IN THE FIRE!

So what can you expect from this last romp?

For one thing, there is more SPLASH for your STASH!  Clocking in at a whopping 56 Pages, this is the largest of the three volumes (the first being 48 and the second being 52 pages, respectfully). There is zero filler here! This book is PACKED to the brim, especially with art! We missed no opportunities to make this book a visual nightmare!

And another thing, the EXTRAS are CRAZY-INSANE ovah here! But don’t take our word for it!  Check out all our Limited Edition Pre-Order offers for yourself:

PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE NOW (CLICK HERE)

ULTIMATE EDITION (LTD 50 Offers) = $79.99

• EXCLUSIVE TO THIS OFFER - Two Copies of Gore Shriek Resurrectus Volume Three, Covers A and B (Signed)

• EXCLUSIVE TO THIS OFFER - A personalized-to-you Death Certificate with unique cause of death (Signed)

• EXCLUSIVE TO THIS OFFER - Package of 7 Oversized 6”x9” Collectible Cards

• EXCLUSIVE TO THIS OFFER – “STRAY” Short Film w/Extras (BluRay)

• EXCLUSIVE TO THIS OFFER - Rough House Signature Hot Sauce (6.7oz)

• Reversible Slip Cover, Numbered out of 1000 copies (art by Derek Rook)

• Double-Sided Centerfold Poster, stapled into comic book (art by The Gurch)

• Official Gore Shriek “Medical Grade” Barf Bag (art by The Gurch)

• Gore Shriek Resurrectus Three/Ravenous Double-Sided Guitar Pic

• The “Balun Gorezette” 4-page Tabloid Newspaper (by Steve Van Samson)

• Double-Sided Post Card (art by The Gurch)

• Gore Shriek Resurrectus Three 11x17 “Movie” Poster (art by Jeff Zornow)

• Three Stickers (One Sticker EXCLUSIVE TO THIS OFFER)
  

  PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE NOW (CLICK HERE)

ORIGINAL SKETCH CARD EDITION  (LTD 20 Offers) = $49.99

• Specify which cover (A or B) upon purchase (If the front cover is not chosen upon purchase from buyer, Rough House Publishing will default to “Cover A”)

• All the extra content associated with the front cover (A or B) that you choose.

• Original sketch drawn on reversible slip cover (Separate item from the book)

  PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE NOW (CLICK HERE)

COVER A EDITION (LTD 450 Copies) = $14.99

• One copy of Gore Shriek Resurrectus Volume Three (Cover A) Signed

• Reversible Slip Cover, Numbered out of 1000 copies (art by Derek Rook)

• Double-Sided Centerfold Poster stapled in comic book (art by The Gurch)

• Official Gore Shriek “Medical Grade” Barf Bag (art by The Gurch)

• The “Balun Gorezette” Tabloid Newspaper (Written by Steve Van Samson)

• Two Stickers

PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE NOW (CLICK HERE)

COVER B EDITION (LTD 450 Copies) = $14.99

• One copy of Gore Shriek Resurrectus Volume Three (Cover B) Signed

• Reversible Slip Cover, Numbered out of 1000 copies (art by Derek Rook)

• Gore Shriek Resurrectus Three 11x17 “Movie” Poster (art by Jeff Zornow)

• Double-Sided Gore Shriek Resurrectus 3/Ravenous Guitar Pic

• Double-Sided Post Card (art by The Gurch)

• Two Stickers

CRASH COURSE IN bRAIN SURGERY!

So for those unruly beasties out there who are just tuning in, the backstory goes like this:  GORE SHRIEK was/is a B&W splatterpunk horror anthology comic book series that was sold at finer comic book shops from 1986 to 1991 courtesy of series creator TOM SKULAN and FANTACO ENTERPRISES. A short time later, the title went dormant.

Fast forward to 2016, Rough House Publishing contacted Tom about “resurrecting” the title for its 30th anniversary - and BOOM! GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS was born!  It was so much of a bloody good time that we made another one in 2019 and now …we’re doing it AGAIN!  Only this time, it’s the LAST time! And we did save the best for the last!

The idea was always to pay homage to the great eras of the series through their flagship artists. With Resurrectus Volume One, it was about original Gore Shriek artist, BRUCE SPAULDING FULLER. Volume Two conjured THE GURCH. With Volume Three we wanted to give a nod to the great and infamous CHAS BALUN who sadly passed away of cancer in 2009. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to obtain any artwork or writings from his estate, but we did dedicate our Gore Shriek newspaper to him with the title “The Balun Gorezette” in the stylings of his old “Gore Score” fanzine that predates all of the horror movie review podcasts of today by literal decades. Chas was one-of-a-kind human being, and one of the first horror influencers WAY before it was cool, …and one of the greatest!

THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE!

Originally, Gore Shriek Resurrectus was envisioned as a two-parter that would both be released in the same year (2016). Rough House CEO and Artist, Derek Rook recalls that time with fear, loathing and ultimately …reverence.  “I will never forget the series of misadventures leading to the release of GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO (2019).  We had hired an amazing group of people for that second issue, including series favorite THE GURCH and for a time, we were going full steam ahead.  There was a series of unfortunate incidents that will mercifully go undocumented …but by the end of that ugly comedy of errors, the Italian in me was about to go full tilt John Fucking Wick.”

“Ultimately, Volume Two was a great book, in spite of all of the technical difficulties and obstacles.  We exceeded expectations in many respects, including a bigger book, tons more extras, lots of accolades from the fans and articles in Rue Morgue, Horrorhound and Fangoria magazine.  Problem was, I got into this business to be a comic book artist, and I was wearing so many hats at the time, that I inadvertently benched myself almost completely out of that issue. That, and the entire series just felt - unfinished. There was a lot of flourishes that went by the wayside - even one story (“Lil Darling”) ended up on the cutting room floor. There’s no doubt that Volume Two hit the shelves kicking and uh, …SHRIEKING!”

“During the years that followed, Tom (Skulan) and I had a few hear-to-heart conversations that finally led to the genesis of this final issue. A proper close out not only to what we all considered the “Classic” era of Gore Shriek, but the triumph that we all sustained under some pretty extreme duress. Death, health scares, a global pandemic, the collapse of the convention scene, a writers strike…for a while, the struggle was very real and everyone in the Rough House and Fantaco families felt the crippling weight of that dark time almost to the breaking point.”

The term “Resurrectus” that was coined originally by Mike “Corpse Monger” Wasion back in 2015, now takes on a MUCH different and more poignant meaning.  This book IS the collective victory lap of not just us, but our Roughian fans that have believed in us, fought with us, struggled with us and ultimately lived to fight another day with us!

DISPOSABLE HEROES!

Rough House wanted to keep pushing the needle forward, so we decided to go with a new (and smaller) batch of talented artists including Alex Sarabia (New York Ripper 2), Michael Harper (I See Monsters) and Puis Calzada (Metallica Merch artist).  Jason Moore (The Dead) And to add a little flavor of issues past, we had Jeff Zornow (Escape from the Beyond) and The Gurch (Art Most Foul) return in a guest star capacity to provide their artistic flair for a few pages and extras.  And Derek Rook’s art is in a LOT more of the book, victoriously.

Rough House Author/Designer, Steve Van Samson had just joined the team in time for the last issue, which included his first-ever comic book story called, “No.Ware.Man.” which was based on a concept by Tom Skulan himself.  This time, his contributions to the book were much more substantial with three brand new stories, including “Reservoir Bogs”, “Ravenous” and “Clash of the 21st Century”, …the last of which featuring some surprise kaiju cameos from your favorite infamous schlock films of decades past.  It’s a fucking hoot.  Wait til you see this! And on top of all that madness, Steve was the brainchild for the aforementioned, “The Balun Gorezette”, which he wrote exclusively. It’s a parody of those old supermarket tabloids that gossips and lampoons old Gore Shriek stories from issues past, while effectively writing new ones, all the while, dropping Easter eggs for the hardcore fanbase to discover and decipher along the way!

Monster scribe Mike Wasion, who has since moved on to other publishing projects including “Slaughtered Kingdom” and the forthcoming “Death Mask” courtesy of Bloody Gore Comix, returns with a tale inspired from a story concept by Mario Bruni (Mars Attacks) and Bruce Spaulding Fuller titled, “This Slaughterhouse Earth”, which promises to send the series off with a loud, earth-shattering, motherfucking FAZOOM!!

Wanna get a feel for what’s coming? READ ON!

KILL ‘EM ALL!  (Gore Shriek Resurrectus Three - story synopses)

LIL DARLING – Predators are everywhere.  And we mean, EVERYWHERE!  But even for Apex scumbags in wait, there is a home where they can be properly pampered, cared for and loved.  Written and drawn by DEREK ROOK.

RESERVOIR BOGS – Young love knows no bounds, nor boundaries.  When three former besties return to enact a reunion of their pre-college years, secrets are revealed that promise purge the depths of their own lurid past.  Written by STEVE VAN SAMSON, drawn by DEREK ROOK and inked by JASON MOORE.

RAVENOUS – Nothing says Saturday night like local rock bands, beer, babes and …mysterious creatures that snatch fans into the sky before they fulfill their meet and greet packages?  The truth is stranger than fiction …even THIS fiction.  Written by STEVE VAN SAMSON, penciled by ALEX SARABIA and inked by DEREK ROOK.

CLASH OF THE 21st CENTURY – Canada better have upped its property insurance to include “Acts of Kaiju” because when they decide to settle a grudge match in downtown Vancouver, it becomes an unofficial sequel to three schlock films of decades past!  Written by STEVE VAN SAMSON and drawn by PUIS CALZADA.

A SMALL SACRIFICE – Birth is always painful.  Written and drawn by DEREK ROOK.

THE DEVIL WHO STRAYED – When a serial killer is released back into the wild after a botched mistrial, he soon realizes that the court of public opinion comes in many forms.  Written and Drawn by DEREK ROOK (and is a prequel to the short film titled STRAY) with characters created by DAN BLACK.

THIS SLAUGHTERHOUSE EARTH – This finale episode ends the only way that it logically could after three issues of carnage candy – With a nice, peaceful Midwestern visit to Sunday Mass.  If you have any sins to confess, now is the time.  Written by MIKE WASION and drawn by MICHAEL HARPER.

CREEPING DEATH!

Gore Shriek Resurrectus Volume Three is being worked on day and night to meet an OCTOBER 2025 release! PRE-ORDERS ARE LIVE RIGHT NOW (CLICK HERE) , so if you are a Gore Shriek or just an indie horror comics fan, now is the time to come and support one of the greats! We expect many tiers to sell out FAST so be the first in line when pre-orders open! Til then, here’s blood in yer eye!

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 11: NIGHTMARE CITY - HAITI (Monstaworx Entertainment)

BY DEREK ROOK

Hey, does anyone remember that bombastic remake of Umberto Lenzi’s NIGHTMARE CITY?  You remember, don’t you?  A hoard of starving undead threatening to take over the world with only the stoic might of LOU FERRIGNO (The Incredible Hulk), NOAH HATHAWAY (Neverending Story) and JUDITH O’DEA (Night of the Living Dead) to stop them? Throw in the Director of Photography DEAN CUNDEY (John Carpenter’s Halloween, Escape from New York) and Director TOM “Sex Machine” SAVINI (SFX - Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th, Creepshow)! Sill not ringing any bells??

If the answer was a resounding “NO”, you’re in good company ‘cause neither did we, or the rest of the universe. And it’s a shame too, because among the lower budgeted indie films that are produced, this one had an inspired conceit and a bullseye of a pop culture cast and crew ta’ boot! This BLOOD CLOT episode serves as a cautionary tale about how a movie is never officially greenlit unless you’re actually seeing it on the silver screen (or streaming service). So what was the fate of this feature film and our involvement with it?

Buckle up kids, we’re going for a ride.

Before we begin I would like to state that the information expressed in this article is for journalistic purposes only. The opinions expressed in this article are those of Derek Rook and may not be otherwise associated with the views and/or opinions of Rough House Publishing, LLC and/or staff. All information associated with the film project “Nightmare City” is sourced from publicly released promotional articles. All artwork, photography and/or video clips are property of their respected copyright holders and are intended for review purposes only. No infringement is intended.

So the paint was barely dry on the brick shithouse that was yet to be known as ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING LLC, and already we’re hopping on planes to Chicago and driving to New York to fortify publishing deals with our favorite independent publishers, and bringing their defunct properties, THE DEAD and GORE SHRIEK back to bloody life.

During this time, I had worked on some art pages that would eventually end up as the impetus for our “HOSPICE” story in GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME ONE.  I had posted them online in color (the published work ended up in black & white) and thus caught the eye of a producer working for the company that was spearheading the remake and asked me if we were interested in producing and publishing a comic book that would serve as the PREQUEL to the film, and would effectively explain how the zombie outbreak began before leading right into the film. Hmm, lemme think about this…

UM, …FUCK YEAH WE DO!

And just like that, we were off to the races! The prequel book would eventually be titled, NIGHTMARE CITY - HAITI and it took zero time for us to slate this in as our third and most ambitious effort to date.

For the uninitiated, the original movie NIGHTMARE CITY (AKA - CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD) was part of a massive, but relatively short lived onslaught of Italian zombie/cannibal films that followed in the shambling footsteps of George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD upon its stateside release in 1978.  Eventually the craze would return to the grave for about two decades (although you’d never know it now), but not before delivering to us, some of the most wacky-ass, over-the-top brand of low-budget exploitation that only the Italians would have the brass balls and audacity to commit to celluloid. 

The plot was simple enough:

A rogue military plane makes an emergency landing after flying through some type of nuclear radiation with no one able to be contacted aboard.  News of this planes landing catches the attention of air traffic control, the police, the military and local news reporter, DEAN MILLER, played in painful rigidity by Mexican actor, HUGO STIGLITZ, doing his very best impression of a body snatcher from space doing an impression of Ron Burgundy.

The plane doors finally open and a flood of zombified humans emerge to wreak havoc across the countryside.  The movie even has a Shyamalan-style twist ending that suggests that the horrors of the film were all just a horrible Stiglitz nightmare ….OR IS IT?!!!

Ironically, the original NIGHTMARE CITY has MUCH more in common with 28 DAYS LATER than the garden variety zombie fare, despite being released a full 22 years earlier.  The “zombies” were less living dead and more “infected” humans decomposing from being dosed in toxic radiation and needing fresh BLOOD to regenerate their dying cells …and they RAN like hell! These zany fuckers do just about anything to get a splash of warm red viscera, including cutting women’s areolas off  and “breastfeeding” like bosses, to wielding garden tools, axes, scalpels, knives, fire pokers and even guns, all while looking like they jumped out of a 1970’s Sears Fall Catalog after being blasted in the face with horse shit.

2014 arrived and it’s announced that an Indiegogo campaign has been launched to raise money for the remake with original Director, Umberto Lenzi attached as Associate Producer, to deliver the goods in a much more traditional “Romero Style” zombie fashion with it’s own feel. The campaign would go on to raise $138,857 dollars over several months with several donation levels, incentives and stretch goals, that continued to raise the bar, even so far as to offer higher level donors an opportunity to act in the feature film itself. HEY NOW!!!

They say that art imitates life and what more inspiration does one need for a tale like this than a gnarly flesh eating virus that threatened to take over the world? At this same time in history, there was an actual Ebola virus outbreak that eventually killed over 30,000 people and shook the population of West Africa to its very foundation. As the virus furiously spread throughout Haiti and surrounding areas, there was a mounting fear that we were facing what could become a global pandemic (how interesting of what pandemic would come six years later).

Mike “Corpse Monger” Wasion, Rough House’s then resident Scribe, crafted what we thought would be the perfect jumping off point for our woe-ridden tale.

Our pitch went something like this:

“In a small village in Haiti, a new strain of the Ebola virus had taken hold and was rapidly wiping out the local population.  The virus had mutated and become impervious to any forms of treatment or cure.  With the virus aggressively claiming victims at wholesale, the fear of an airborne strain was slowly becoming a reality.

A military quarantine was erected along the boarders of the isle and in desperation, a team of doctors were assembled from around the globe specializing in unorthodox experimental medicine.  The idea here was that we would subtly pay homage to the MAD doctor’s of Italian Zombie cinema by naming them DR. MENARD (Zombi2), DR. OBERTO (Zombie Holocaust/Dr. Butcher MD) and DR. BARRETT (Hell of the Living Dead/Night of the Zombies).  Italian Cinematic Horror Universe anyone?

The Doctor’s Three, develop a serum that when injected into the infected patient, decreases the heart rate slowly to the point of essentially “killing” them, at least long enough for the Ebola strain to die without a living host.  The serum then infuses the cells with a self-sustaining antibody that effectively “kickstarts” the patient back to life, assuredly virus free. 

At first the experimental drug seems to be a success, but like any good dystopian terror tale, things don’t stay very awesome for very long, and eventually the patients come back to life, but not as originally intended.  Hell ensues, and it becomes an all-out war between the living and the living dead as the military desperately fight to maintain the perimeter and eliminate the threat before the dead flood into neighboring villages, and eventually the planet.

End Pitch.

Mike had a very particular “death-cycle” designed for this particular brand of Zombie, beginning as traditional living rotted corpses, but then mutating in stages into walking versions of the Ebola virus itself.  So without further ado, here’s the CORPSE MONGER himself, and what he had to say of his experience with writing the treatment for the fated, NIGHTMARE CITY – HAITI:

 “Alright, so...the thing I remember most from my ill-fated time in the NCH salt mines, was my self-imposed mandate of reinventing the zombie, and without supernatural means at that. So how exactly was I to do that, whilst ALSO making it seem ‘CLASSIC’?  Always a tall order.  I had a visual hook in my head that kind of kicked off all the ideas and tied it all together like the dropping of so many fetid dominoes.

That hook - an immediate knee-jerk memory of ONE zombie in particular from the original NIGHTMARE CITY, a crusty, pan-blackened ghoul who resembled nothing so much as a bug-eyed burnt marshmallow in a tailored suit.  I thought, ‘This fucker looks like a straight up blood blister after Sunday services.’ “

 “So I thought alright...let's push that to the Nth degree...how far can I take that look/idea? And from THERE, my mind instantly went to the final form of BRUCE WILLIS from the GRINDHOUSE film’s (superior segment- sorry, QT) PLANET TERROR (which on its own could have been a remake of Nightmare City).  A postulate abomination so over-the-top, that it seemed like a boss monster from a video game.  But there were also shades of the vampire, with all the blood drinking, the slasher, with all the stabbing, and even the CLASSIC zombie, with our shift to Haiti...so how in the ACTUAL HELL do I blend such dissonant yet vitally important motifs? “

 “Welp, …our zombies had to CHANGE, like ever-worsening stages of a beyond-terminal illness. So I thought, they'd start off as wide-eyed, weapon-wielding, blood-guzzling killers ...then devolve into brain-addled, throat-ripping, flat-lined, undead killers ...and finally, arrive at a living embodiment of the disease itself, barely humanoid berserkers, and more tumor than human. These creatures could kill not only with brutality, but also by proximity. Fucked no matter what.”

 “I pitched all of this, only to be met with feverish enthusiasm from Derek...and general confusion from the Powers-That-Be. We asked for specifics as to what to change, or do differently...and were met with ‘directives’ vaguer than the MPAA handing notes on HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.”

 “It simply was not to be.”

In many ways, Mike was dead on. Our pitch was in radical contrast to the film that I think they were trying to make, which sounded much closer in tone to the Ford Brothers’ film, THE DEAD (2010) and not to be confused with the comic book of the same name by Arrow Comics. Eventually though, …the wheels of that puss fueled, Ebola-ridden husk were about to rot right the fuck off …and seemingly, no one survived the crash.

It’s now almost a decade later. The production companies Facebook page hasn’t been updated since 2016. The companies website is now defunct. That Indiegogo campaign has long since closed and the once flourishing news has yielded to radio silence. Many a financial backer was left with unanswered questions and empty pockets with nothing to show for it. “Production Hell” is NOT always a death sentence for would-be films, but it does have it’s own department on the Hollywood walk of shame.

In retrospect, NIGHTMARE CITY - HAITI, became the first “dead body” of a project to lay at our then, unscathed foundation. This happens more often than documented (especially with licensed IP’s) and is generally accepted as the price of doing business. Thicker skins have prevailed.

So what ever became of those "ULTRA-ZOMBIES" we planned to unleash?  I don't think they're quite done feeding quite yet. ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING has a strict policy that absolutely NOTHING awesome will remain on the cutting room floor, so keep watching the trash cans, kids. We CAN say that it was an honor having been asked to the party in the first place and if the ghouls in golden corduroy rear their stove-topped, scabby faces again, we’ll be ready to give THE ROUGHIANS something to dismember!

Until the next BLOOD CLOT, don’t forget to keep your cardigan tucked into your plaid, bell bottomed pants! It’s going to be a cold one this season.

The great Umberto Lenzi passed away on Thursday October 19th 2017 at the age of 86.

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 10: HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADDONFIELD (2003/Xmachina)

BY DEREK ROOK

HAPPY HALLOWEEN roughians, and welcome to what will be the oddest ROUGH-TROSPECTIVE for arguably THE MOST SCARCE comic book (or any Halloween movie franchise collectable) in existence.

Nowadays it feels like there’s more merchandise associated with Michael Myers than the band Kiss (although I don’t think they’ve made a Myers Casket quite yet. However, there’s just about anything else that that your blackest eyes could desire including action figures, Halloween costumes, t-shirts, snow globes, Pop figures, plushies, highway signs, comforters, young adult novels and COMIC BOOKS! CHAOS! Comics did a run back in the early 2000’s, followed by a string of books written by the talented and dedicated Stef Hutchinson a few years later through Devil’s Due Publishing and others. But among every batch of glorious, gory franchise goodies lies a black sheep (he had the blackest sheep, the devil’s sheep) that comes along under the cloak of darkness….a darkness so incredibly pitch, that most fans, can never even fucking see it.

Lucky for all of us, the internet has spent countless research hours tracking down and reviewing not one, but all of these books in detail, and these fine folks at SCREAMING SOUP! have outdone themselves in that regard, …including an impressive in depth (and honest) review of the book were here to deconstruct, HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADDONFIELD. If you’ve got 48 minutes and 15 seconds to kill, treat yourself to the entire thing, but if you are aching to find out all there is to know about THIS tricky publication, feel free to jump ahead to the 22:03 minute mark and pregame with us here!

So you’ve often heard me say that ROUGH HOUSE is not my first romp into publishing comics (and other collectables).  If we go back a little over two decades now, you’d have seen that there were extremely few outlaw comic book publishers doing what would be considered “the Lords work”.  For those of you who remember, there was BLACKEST HEART MEDIA (who would later go on to helm the famed EIBON PRESS) and it was from a fateful series of events that I got involved with their graphic novel production of Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE.  And even though this was not my first time as a published artist, it was one of the books I became known for to this day.

Due to a series of issues (that I was not directly involved with) the writer and I decided to branch off from Blackest Heart and start our own indie publishing imprint with the purposely misspelled title, XMACHINA (derived from the Latin phrase “Deus Ex Machina”, meaning “God from the machine”.)

Through Xmachina, we published a PHANTASM sequel comic book along with a reprint of the original PHANTASM movie pocket novel, both of which were sanctioned by original Director Don Coscarelli.  Then in short order, we printed our first issue of THE GATES OF HELL (a radically different version of what would come later courtesy of Eibon Press).

Things were ramping up extremely fast and in those days. It didn’t take long for one project to give opportunities directly to another.  Among properties we “almost” locked down were George A. Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD and BUBBA-HOTEP, both of which we produced artwork for, but ultimately they fell through.  Point being, the phone was ringing and it was a glorious time.  Even though we were two kids just figuring it all out, there was excitement in the air, none the less.

Of those aforementioned phone calls, I received one around midnight my time in late summer of 2003 (The call came from California) and it was a person who was the liaison for Joe Wolfe, one of the financiers for the original JOHN CARPENTER’S HALLOWEEN.  Due to the crazy buzz Xmachina had generated through shameless self-promotion (with more than a little help from FANGORIA magazine) this person was vehemently interested in having us producing a new Halloween comic book series.  The catch was, we had to produce (and be on the hook for) 40 thousand copies regardless of sales.  I remember trying to give them a quick lesson on the comic book solicitation process but they weren’t having it.  It was very much a “do or don’t” proposition.  After some time to think it over, we ultimately declined, BUT still wanted to negotiate something for their upcoming HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADDONFIELD 25th ANNIVERSARY CONVENTION (a title they would ultimately shorten as the con went forward in the years ahead), a convention this person on the phone was also a partner of producing and promoting.

 Ultimately, we agreed that Xmachina would produce their first convention magazine, appropriately titled “HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADONFIELD Official Souvenir Magazine”, to be sold exclusively at the convention.  It was the first Michael Myers convention of its kind and it was going to take place at the original filming location of Pasadena California.  The one caveat that I slipped in to the deal was that I could create a Halloween comic book story within the pages of the magazine itself, as I was a GIANT Halloween fan at that time and even though we weren’t going to be doing a Halloween comic book proper, I wasn’t too proud to back door one into the convention magazine.

We as Xmachina only had basically two (2) months to produce the entire magazine, get it printed, and have it convention ready, and with that impossible deadline, we produced a “magazine” (basically a comic with loads of other stuff inside) that included:

• An 13 page original Michael Myers story originally titled “Halloween – Demystifying the Devil” but was later changed to “Halloween – Retribution and Descent”.  I wrote the original script and my writing/publishing partner heavily reworked it from the source material into something more formidable for a comic book type story.  Derek Rook, Stephen Romano, Mike Flippin, Ricardo Bernardini.

• A six (6) song soundtrack CD was written and composed that included a soundtrack to the comic book portion of the magazine, an original song about Michael, Laurie and Judith, a “sequel” soundtrack song to Escape from New York titled, “After the Escape” and reworking’s of Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Near Dark.  Stephen Romano, Rock Romano, Christian Lee Dukes.

• A map of Haddonfield with all the key locations from all eight (8) films (at that time). Jim Means.

• Halloween Alumni Yearbook.

• Halloween Movie Trivia.

• Rare Production photos (that can be seen everywhere on the internet now).

• Donald Pleasence Remembrance Page, with quotes from – John Carpenter, Charles Cyphers, Kathleen Kinmont, Danielle Harris and more.

The magazine was highly ambitious but with the help of several talented and willing participants, we were able to pull off a very handsome and attractive chunk of pulp.

For those who don’t own a copy (and/or have never read it) the big question asked by fans is …”What’s the Michael Myers comic book story all about?”

Basically our original story, HALLOWEEN – DEMYSTIFYING THE DEVIL was of the conceit that the Halloween movies were based on a true story as told by Dr. Samuel Loomis (from his autobiography), the doctor who treated, and later hunted down Michael Myers.  The movies all exist, but most are fabricated sequels and not accurate to specific key incidents. What was considered “real” and what was “fabricated” was left somewhat ambiguous, but certain elements, both realistic and supernatural, exist in our “true” story.

Still confused?  No worries, so am fuckin’ I.  I can’t tell you what I’d rather do than write my way out of eight (8) movies that already had three (3) split timelines by the time I got to it.  Somewhere out there is a crucifix with Daniel Farrands stapled to it, and I’m going to hang it over my bed one day as his passion truly did not go unpunished.

Alas, we’re going to go through it for the very first time, but basically what you need to know is that Dr. Loomis is at the end of his life.  His autobiography has long since come out and the movies have all been made.  However, the real Michael Myers is still very much alive and very much a threat, and Loomis knows more than most as to when and why Michael will strike next.  Due to a series of wrongful death lawsuits from the victims against the town of Haddonfield, a new district attorney (Daniel Atkins) has been appointed to the case and considers Loomis to be the real threat.  He will learn differently, but his first order of business is to discredit Loomis by any means possible.

So let’s start off with a (fake review) of Dr. Loomis’ book and I’ll unpack the rest of this nest of hornets the best I can as we move our way through the heavily troubled story of HALLOWEEN – DEMYSTIFYING THE DEVIL!

Demystifying the Devil

Author: Dr. Samuel J. Loomis

Type: Non-Fiction

Sub-Type - Autobiography/Memoir

Published: September 23rd 1994

Publisher: Compass International Press

 Review: Published in the New York Times; October 31st 1994

“Perhaps once in a journalist’s career are they plucked from the bullpen of the mundane to venture out and uncover what critics are referring to as the best Roman Polanski film never filmed. Speaking of, the film rights for this #1 best seller five weeks running has already been sold for an unprecedented $400,000,000 so we may be finding out as early as next year if Hollywood turns out the next great American classic.

In this case we’re referring to the autobiography, “Demystifying the Devil”, an unwavering memoir of a man’s journey into the heart of darkness, mental illness, retribution and descent. 

For those uninitiated with the author’s pedigree, Dr. Samuel Loomis, was the psychiatrist assigned to Michael A. Myers, committed at the age of six, after stabbing his older sister with a kitchen knife on Halloween night.  While under Loomis’ care, Myers had two highly-publicized escapes which resulted in multiple murders, several law suits and the derailment of both Loomis’ career and ultimately, his sanity. 

The first third of this narrative briskly traverses through the formative years in Loomis’ life, from his youthful upbringing during the great depression to joining the British Armed Forces as a medic during World War II.  We are captured in a through line of faith overcoming adversity to the point where you can almost smell the lead permeating off of the Norman Rockwell-eque  tapestry being painted for us here in these pages.

I was particularly taken with the story of how Loomis met his wife Angela in medical school, and leading to the birth of their first and only child Benjamin in 1957.  The events that transpire in the years to come makes this set up all the more tragic.  But even while untwining this tale of woe, Dr. Loomis never misses that flair for the dramatic.

For the first 150 pages, it becomes very easy to forget what type of story we are reading, but make no mistake. This is a cautionary tale of just how bleak and dark the book ultimately becomes.  Not since “Searching for Mr. Goodbar”, which was mercifully fictional, have I read something that left me with a pit of despair so large.

Then much like the narrative itself, we enter a tonal shift readers may not likely recover from.  Like a hurricane that comes without warning, destroying everything in its path, enters Michael Myers.  The stories of Myers’ exploits are well documented, but even for a comparatively mild middle-American tragedy, Loomis stands firm in the center of Myers’ shadow until all he too can see is total darkness.  And without an alternate point of view, in darkness we all drown.  Darkness that accuses his colleagues of conspiring with a killer, darkness that forces his wife and child to flee without warning, darkness witnessed through the “blackest eyes, the devils eyes”.  That’s a direct quote, people.

And this all happens before Myers escapes and returns to Haddonfield in 1978.

As gripping as this was to read, there were times I felt Loomis’ repetitive rants were testing my ability to soldier on.   It bears to question if he himself is aware of how detached his mind wanders as the theories of Myers’ murdering spirit become more metaphysical than medical.  There is a sad point in the climaxing pages where we have to respectfully dismiss ourselves from the hand we’ve been asked to hold.  Our narrator is well past unreliable, and although still entertaining, it almost feels like we are condescending mental illness, and this journalist can’t help but feel a little filthy by exploiting a sick man …who’s exploited a sick man.

With so much emphasis on Michael Myers as “the embodiment of evil”…all we have left to ponder is the erosion of the wonderful opening chapters that brought us here.  Much like the real life of Dr. Samuel Loomis, the epilogue of “Demystifying the Devil” suggests that Loomis may have left out one of the most truly heart-wrenching casualties in the mythos of Michael Myers …that causality being himself.”

The Halloween Movie Timeline in our story:

(Note - All the movies were based, in part, from the stories, theories and research as presented in the autobiography, “Demystifying the Devil”, written by Dr. Samuel Loomis.)

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1995) – This is the first movie based on the true story of Sam Loomis and Laurie Strode, one of the only two living victims of Michael Myers.  The movie suggests that everything you see actually happened. When Loomis’ book was released, the movie rights were sold as well.  Many partially to completely unrelated sequels followed.

Halloween II (1996) – Is the fictionalized sequel to the movie “Halloween”. A story was built around the last 3rd of Loomis’ book, which chronicled how Michael followed Laurie to the hospital where she was treated and how Loomis attempted to kill both himself and Myers in an explosion.  Both survived but were critically injured. The movie depicted their “deaths” and for a time, ended the series.

Halloween III (1997) – Is a fictionalized self-contained story based around the manufacturer responsible for creating and selling the mask Michael wore on his original killing spree.  The company, Silver Shamrock, was suspiciously tied to a series of deaths related to their products, but the company was abandoned upon investigation.  Several shipments of masks were “displaced” and have re-surfaced in retail stores sporadically around the country in the years that followed the incident.

Halloween 4 (1998) – Loosely based on Michael’s 2nd escape and murder spree in Haddonfield.  It was theorized in Loomis’ book that Laurie Strode was Michael’s biological sister, and that in her “death”, Michael would attack her daughter, Jamie Lloyd.  After the events of that night, and the questionable “disappearance” of Michael, Jamie began displaying violent behavior, stabbing her step-mother before being arrested.

Halloween 5 (1999) – Nothing in this sequel is based on the real-life events that took place in Haddonfield the year prior.  In reality, Jamie Lloyd was institutionalized into a juvenile rehabilitation facility by reason of temporary-insanity. She remained there until her 18th birthday and was released.  Her current whereabouts are unknown.

Halloween 6 (2000) – A fictionalized sequel based on a very small chapter in Loomis’ book where his research lead him to believe that the origins of Michael’s evil may have begun with a druid cult.  This was a delusion that carried over into Loomis’ later years when he attempted suicide by slicing his wrist insisting that he was removing the “mark of Thorn”. This mark was never discovered and deemed all part of Loomis’ increasing psychosis.

Halloween 7 (2001) – A sequel of the fictional scenario where Laurie Strode returned to face Michael Myers one “last” time.  The failing Halloween movie series benefitted from the return of the original film actress to portray Laurie Strode, Jamie Lee Curtis.  The real Laurie Strode left Haddonfield soon after the original incident and is now presumed dead.

Halloween 8 (2002) – The last movie sequel, completely fictionalized and unrelated to the original incident.  At this point, Loomis’ book was completely purged from, and no connective tissue used to helm this film. Among fans of this film series, the movie is considered to be a farcical representation of the source material and is largely maligned by fans. As a result, this remains the last will and testament to a failed franchise.

Ok!  Now that you’ve been fed this heaping exposition dump, scroll below this paragraph to view the actual pages of the story as they were originally presented in HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADDONFIELD Official Souvenir Magazine. Use the scroll arrows to advance the pages (there’s 15 all together) and prepare to read perhaps the most peculiar Michael Myers story never realised:

Alright did you actually use the scroll arrows or did you just stare at the contents page for 15 minutes and tell me that you did? Well for those now finally initiated, go ahead and read on to see what was in store if in fact this story was allowed to continue until the end.

THE STORY AFTER THE STORY:

Haddonfield, Illinois October 31st, 2003 Night:

Michael Myers is back!  As night falls, Michael begins his murderous killing spree, going door to door without remorse and with reckless abandon.  This time he doesn’t have a mission. He’s there to kill.  Indiscriminately. No one knows he is there, and no one is there to stop him, except….Reverend Jack Sayer.  Sayer is on the hunt for evil itself and there is an exchange between the two, but Sayer is no match for Michael and he is made to be the “example” for the people of Haddonfield to find in the morning, and they do.  Sayer is found in a pumpkin patch, strung up like a scarecrow, his body hallowed out and stuffed with hey.

Police arrive far too late, and with them is Dan Atkins to witness the bloody aftermath.

November 1st, 2003 Samhain 11:45pm

Elysium Fields Rest Home

Atkins arrives to see Loomis once again, only this time, his arrogance has been replaced with despair.  He needs to see Loomis right away but is informed that Loomis has entered the Hospice wing and is not expected to live through the night.

Atkins insists and is finally allowed to see Loomis one last time.  Loomis is in a hospital bed, there is no one else there.  Atkins is the only visitor.  Atkins admits to Loomis that he was right all along and that all he wanted was to save those people in Haddonfield.  He also admits that the man in the cell at Ridgemont was NOT Michael, but instead another violent mental patient who let Michael out. But how?  Atkins is a mess.  He asks Loomis if he knows how to stop Michael for good.  Loomis tells Atkins that Michael’s killing spree was a message and Atkins is the messenger. 

Loomis tells Atkins that his curse has ALWAYS been to ENDURE Michael’s wrath as punishment for getting to close to him.  For trying to figure him out.  A reminder of how insignificant Loomis’ influence has always been. To crush his soul.  “As you can see, hehe, …he won.”, admits Loomis.  “Everything you need to stop him is there”, and points to the book.  “Find the little girl before next Halloween. His essence is still inside her.  He lives through her.”  Atkins thanks Loomis and takes the book.  He says his final goodbyes and goes to leave.  Loomis grabs his wrist suddenly and states one last cryptic message, “Please, …don’t leave me here unarmed.”  Atkins gives Loomis his revolver to which Loomis replies, “It’s your game now, Mr. Atkins.” As he says it, Loomis lets go of Dan’s wrist.  “Thank you Sam.” And with that final exchange, Atkins leaves and Sam is all alone.  Sam looks at his right wrist.  The mark of Thorn is no longer there.

Loomis raises the revolver to his temple as a tear rolls down his cheek.  As Loomis prepares to pull the trigger, Michael appears out of the darkness with a scalpel in hand, slowly approaching the bed.  Sam stares back at Michael with disgust and pauses to assess how impossible the situation has become for him.  Sam begins falling into cardiac arrest, Michael raises the scalpel to strike and Sam begins to pull the trigger on the revolver..

At the very last second, Loomis points the gun at Michael’s masked face. “It’s time, …Michael.” And pulls the trigger.

BOOM!

CUT TO BLACK

The story cuts to a montage of the changing of the seasons, and with it we see Atkins reading Loomis’ book, taking notes, looking more grizzled and becoming more savvy to what has driven Michael this entire time.  Of the many investigative missions Atkins goes on, one is into the origins of Silver Shamrock, a company that was believed to be involved in foul play regarding the nature of five (5) mask prototypes that when used in conjunction with a radio wave signal broadcasted through electronic devices, caused harm to the wearer.  Of the five masks were The Witch, The Pumpkin, The Skull, The Clown and The Shape.  The last of which was the mask Michael chose to steal on his original rampage.

Alas, the plot details were never fully fleshed out into an actual script, but I had an outline of plot points and story beats that I wanted to take place through the story.  For instance:

• New reveal of Michael.  Mask blown apart on one side, revealing skeletal teeth.

• Dan Atkins begins scratching his wrist which eventually reveals the mark of thorn.

• Atkins learns that Michaels mask (manufactured by Silver Shamrock) keeps him from dying of his wounds, hence why he always wears it.  This is a byproduct of the mask’s programming, but not its main function.

• Atkins tracks down Jamie Lloyd, now 25 and learns that as long as she’s alive, Michael is alive. The mask no longer is needed. She’s been surviving in a halfway house because Laurie Strode (who did in fact fake her own death) has been sending care packages.

• Laurie, Jamie and Dan eventually team up.

• Atkins dies in a battle with Michael in the third act.

• A struggle ensues where Jamie is falling prey to the curse once again.  Michael is in pursuit of Laurie who is trying to activate the original Silver Shamrock signal from a cable tower. Michael catches up and there is a struggle.  In the end, Laurie switches the power on and seemingly nothing happens.  Laurie then rushes Michael and they both fall from the tower.  Laurie hits the bottom and is fatally wounded.  Michael returns to his feet, his ankle is broken but he still is going for Jamie. Jamie has some fight in her but ultimately she is losing to Michael.

• In the end, the signal finally plays the Silver Shamrock recording and Michaels head explodes with snakes, maggots, bugs and other foul vermin, killing him permanently.

• Jamie’s curse is lifted in the wake of Michael’s death. Jamie has an exchange with Laurie right before she dies.  Mother and daughter reconcile.

• Last scene.  Its Winter.  In a house somewhere in a faraway neighborhood, a family celebrates Christmas.  Through the picture window from the outside, we can see a big family inside enjoying the holiday and gift exchange. Suddenly they hear the doorbell ring and a middle aged man answers.  No one is outside.  There is a gift wrapped on the doorstep, in the shape of a book.  The man picks it up and takes one last look around.  From the inside a woman comes to the door, “Hey honey, whatya got there?.”  “Looks like a secret Santa gift.”  From inside the house an older woman shouts, “Benjamin, close that door, you’re letting the heat out.”  “Yes mom”, he says as he smiles at his wife. They close the door.  From further away, Jamie looks on. She takes it all in one last time, then walks away into the snowy night. THE END.

And that was, my friends, the basic premise and plot for Halloween – Retribution and Descent, for better or for worse. A sincere THANK YOU for sticking with it.

When I say this was a herculean effort on all parts to make this book happen, I’m not even kidding.  I was literally inking my last page of art in the car, on my way to the nearest FedEx hub.  Stephen Romano was literally living in a recording studio for a month while trying to provide art direction for the book at the same time.  The colorist had to stop before he was 100% finished because we had to send the files to China for printing.  And probably the most nerve wracking of all was that the entire shipment of 3,000 books (even though it said 2,000 copies on the back cover) had to be shipped from the printer in China, directly to the Xmachina booth at the Pasadena Convention Center floor, ONE DAY before Steve and I arrived by plane to attend the convention.  We didn’t even know for sure if the books would be waiting for us when we arrived, OR how they would look.  FUCK!

The show went off “OK” for a first time convention.  It had the CHILLER THATRE Convention happening the very same weekend on the East coast, and there were some monumental wildfires happening all over the area which prevented many of the guests from being able to attend.  There was however one of the best ensembles of Halloween cast members from any of the Halloween conventions that occurred since.  Almost everyone was there, and happy, healthy and alive to boot.  Some friends came in from California and Las Vegas and the weekend went underway.

Historically, our HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADDONFIELD book sold relatively well at the convention, but when you have 3,000 books to sell in one weekend, the sales seemed sizably smaller by comparison.  What didn’t help was that once the convention was over, we had no other way to sell the book.  For a small amount of time, it was sold on the Halloweenmovies website, but that deal quickly went away, leaving us with boxes of books to wipe our collective asses with. 

It wasn’t until around 2007 when they announced that the Halloween series was being rebooted by Rob Zombie that I received a call from a friend who promptly told me that our book was selling at above $200 bucks on ebay and that I should partake in the sales considering we didn’t make a dime off the book when it originally came out.

The years that followed I’d released small batches of books at conventions and online, as “Special Editions”, with a brand new slip cover, signed and numbered and usually with an original sketch to make it a special purchase for fans.  I would sell them at a lower price than the secondary market and guaranteed them to be brand new (versus a used copy that everyone else was selling).

This Halloween story was meant to be the DARK KNIGHT RETURNS of the HALLOWEEN series, which took into account every official storyline, every movie and ultimately I created a world where they could all co-exist in some fashion or form.  The idea was to build interest among Michael Myers fans, enough for us to be allowed to create our “Ultimate” Halloween story. 

Yeah, that never happened.

Incidentally, HALLOWEEN RETURNS TO HADDONFIELD was the last book that Xmachina ever published.  Soon after, the core crew disbanded and went on to different projects, to live different lives and the company itself went belly up.  I quit the publishing/Illustration industry all together, and for almost a decade, I dedicated myself to Corporate Security Management where I stayed until returning to the biz in 2010.  But that’s another story.

Even though the road to this books creation was tumultuous and ultimately ill received, there’s no denying that in spite of the big swing and miss, that in the end, a couple of guys with a LOT of talent and a TINY publishing company was fortunate enough to have the franchise holders calling us, …not the other way around. 

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t, kids.  Because the truth is, “You Can’t.”  So do it anyway and let the naysayers struggle to unfold your haphazardly put together piece of middle finger origami. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN one and all! 

See you in the not-so-funny books!

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 09: ALICE COOPER (1979/MARVEL PREMIERE #50)

BY DEREK ROOK

Before we get into the Comic book you all showed up for, we have to address the album that all of this clinical insanity was tied into.  For those blissfully unaware, “The Alice Cooper Group” was a band before it was a solo act, and all of it was predicated on the lead singer, Vincent Damon Furnier, who shared the namesake of the band as his stage name, “Alice Cooper”.

When the band broke up shortly after the lackluster release of the album, “Muscle of Love” …Vincent Furnier changed his name legally to ALICE COOPER and from then on, became a one man show…buuuut not really.  There were an insane amount of musicians (most notably the great DICK WAGNER), songwriters, producers (most notably the great BOD EZRIN), and only one manager, (the legendary SHEP GORDON) who heavily contributed to the continued success of Alice Cooper, who’s boisterous personality, quick-whit, gravelly voice , gallows humor and vaudevillian stage show, projected him into a household name status by the mid-1970’s. “Alice goes Hollywood” era, as I say.

But like many musicians of the era (many of whom died in the 27 Club), Alice struggled with his own demons, mostly in the form of alcohol.  By 1977, his new wife, SHERYL GODDARD, who was a dancer in his live performances, was already feeling the strains of sharing a life with an addict. As a result, Alice committed himself to the Cornell Mental Institution in New York to “Dry out”, and it was during his month-long stay at the institution that the seeds were sewn for the concept album, FROM THE INSIDE.

There was a big marketing push for FROM THE INSIDE (released on Nov. 17, 1978) and in usual fashion, the record album itself had “special features” to boot.  This one had Alice’s face juxtaposed over a set of double institutional doors, that when opened, revealed a triple gatefold interior, introducing us to the many characters that appear in the songs lyrics.  In the picture, there is a door labeled “The Quiet Room” that when opened, revealed Alice Cooper himself, sedate and looking uncharacteristically pensive.   On the back cover of the record, doors opened up to reveal Alice and his merry band of inmates, running out with their “Release” papers waving away! 

Shortly after, MARVEL COMICS would introduce us to the very first comic book incarnation of ALICE COOPER back when they would dare to do such a thing (being the super cool, un-corporate, independent publishing  company that they once were…hard to believe now, I know). And with it, taking on subjects of mental illness (duh), substance abuse, murder, shellshock, sexual misconduct (and innuendo) and somehow delivering it in a package of slapstick humor that would harken back to the type of situation comedy you would get from episodic television of the era….and not offend a damn soul in the process.  I was actually offended that they were NOT offended that I was NOT offended.

But I digress…

MARVEL PREMIERE #50 FEATURING ALICE COOPER WAS BORN (FEET FIRST, …OUCH!) Released 1979!

The story set up is a direct tie in to the lyrical content and themes of the album itself with the subtitle, STAN LEE PRESENTS: ALICE COOPER (written in the cool Welcome to my Nightmare Era logo) FROM THE INSIDE.  There’s something that just made me giddy as fuck seeing Stan Lee introduce such a story!

Immediately we are treated to Alice goofily attempting to escape from the insane asylum before getting caught red-handed by the ominous (and extremely sexy) NURSE ROSETTA.  Quickly we are serenaded by Alice’s one-liners and antics that fool absolutely no one.  Alice is quickly apprehended by a coupla’ thug orderlies and lead by the Nurse Ratched-Like  Rosetta,  as they drag Alice kicking and screaming to the dreaded “QUIET ROOM”.  Along the way, we are introduced to some of the other asylum (and album) alumni including JACKKNIFE JOHNNY, a shell shocked Vietnam veteran who does his best to stop the apprehension with a red plastic machine gun, and the questionable DR. FINGEROTH who in addition to being the shadiest doctor this side of Dr. Giggles, sports the most gigantic Art Garfunkel afro ta’ boot.

Alice is harshly deposited on The Quiet Room floor and locked in for good measure.  At this point he breaks the fourth wall and talks to us, dear readers, about how he got into this SERIOUS pickle in the first place.  Aaaand here we….GO!

As it were, Alice was getting “Coop’ed Out” from the perils from the road (much played down from the actual reasons associated with severe alcoholism) and checked himself into a clinic to “Dry up” (ahem).  Alice has the unfortunate luck of sitting himself next to” a certified paranoid schizo with a radial tire fetish” by the name of ALEX Cooper, and in the name of egregious mistaken identity, the cops show up (looking strangely like Fred Gwynne and Joe Ross from Car 54, Where are you?) and mistakenly apprehend ALICE Cooper instead (because of course they did).

Once taken to the insane asylum, Alice is scrubbed down (with Namor as a shower buddy), subject to electro shock therapy, forced into ice water baths, MORE electro shock therapy (all of which have in real life been deemed cruel and unusual, and criminal by medical standards) before having his hair involuntarily cut short, all in attempts to make him look and behave “normally”. 

Alice’s pet boa constrictor is a character in this story, and is even given the name VERONICA, which is a retcon from one of the characters who once committed, pines for his pet dog, Veronica, who is going to get euthanized if he can’t get to her in time, featured in the song FOR VERONICA’S SAKE.   The snake Veronica, is quickly booted out the back door of the asylum when Alice is committed….more on her later.

Now “normalized”, a sedate Alice is wheeled into the main recreation hall where we are introduced to the rest of the album’s main characters.  TIFFANY SLEEK, the delusional, entitled, debutante from the song WISH I WAS BORN IN BEVERLY HILLS, JEROME, the sexually psychotic “priest”  who’s narrative drives the song NURSE ROSETTA (and not too funny anymore about priests being sexually deviant, huh?).  MILLIE and BILLIE sit in mutual admiration, seemingly unaffected by the chaos all around them…and you already met the rest.  If you look closely, keen eyes will notice J. Wellington Wimpy, Bluto, Popeye and The Hulk of all characters, huddling up in the background, working through their therapy sessions.

The next chunk of story comes from Alice’s point of view as he begins socializing within his new found group of inmates.  These are all played out in mini-vignettes as we further delve into the personalities of these mentally ill characters (information that serves absolutely no narrative within the story).   Strangely within the few minutes it takes for Alice to work the room, his hair magically goes from short, back to long…if this was to signify the passage of time, I didn’t get the memo.

Alice accidentally smashes through a fellow inmates paint canvas and decides to use the paint to re-apply his trademark make-up to his face, while exclaiming that he is NOT CRAZY!  This is followed by a zany, One-Flew-Over-The-Choo Choo’s Nest style botched escape attempt that lands him another night in the Quiet Room.  This time, Alice is strapped down tight to his bed with leather belts, which is really for nothing when Nurse Rosetta comes in later and mercifully takes them off to make him more comfortable.

Of course, Alice makes haste and uses a bunch of tied sheets to shimmy his way down the asylum wall.  Once at the bottom he bumps into a small red box and when he opens it….VERONICA!!!!!!  Now reunited with his beloved Boa, Alice makes his way to the outer containment wall.  Then, like something out of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Alice uses Veronica (or Veronica uses herself) as a whip to catapult Alice over the wall and onward to freedom.

Alice runs far away to a town called Millville, seemingly far away from the asylum.  There a parade of some kind seems to be taking place, but upon closer inspection we learn that this is all just a giant rally because, wait for it, …ALEX Cooper is now running for Governor!!!  Of course, ALICE Cooper is now suffering from PTSD and tries to warn everyone that ALEX is just a psychopath dressed as a politician.  This info flew like a frozen piece of shit, and the cops quickly apprehend Alice once again.

For his troubles, Alice (now with Veronica) is re-committed to the insane asylum, where they are deposited back into the Quiet Room to contemplate all that’s transpired.  Alice breaks the fourth wall yet again to tell us what’s up.

Essentially this story is paper thin on plot and heavy on shenanigans and plays MUCH better as a companion piece to the album than it does as a self-contained story or a launching pad to its own series…at least as far as this one issue was concerned.  Marvel by their own admission was hoping that there would be enough interest to launch an ALICE COOPER ongoing series, as was the forum that MARVEL PREMIERE provided.  As it turned out, fans were happy enough with this standalone outing …at least until Marvel tried again 15 years later.

I’ve gotta say, I absolutely LOVE this comic book just the way it is.  Clunky editing, outdated humor, one note plot and all.  Nothing that came after, so perfectly captured the essence and the tongue-in-cheek irony that in essence IS Alice Cooper.  This played out like a skit from THE MUPPET SHOW (of which he was once the host) and who doesn’t love that?

Strangely, this comic book was devoid of Writer/Artist/Editor/Letterer/Colorist credits from cover to cover.  I have no idea why that important information was left out, as it was NEVER left out of any Marvel book to my estimation.  Anyway…..

The Art was fantastic in this book and provided by TOM SUTTON (Pencils) and TERRY AUSTIN (inks), drawn in a classic satiric style that one could harken back to a spoof strip in the magazine, CRAZY.

The Script was written by several peeps (not sure this story needed that many) ED HANNIGAN, JIM SALICRUP, ROGER STERN and Mr. ALICE COOPER himself.

The Colors were provided by the multitalented MARIE SEVRIN with Letters provided by TOM ORZECHOWSKI. 

This was the very first comic book appearance for Alice Cooper, but certainly far from the last.  There was an issue dedicated to Coop’ in ROCK AND ROLL/Revolutionary Comics #18 back in 1990, which acted as a “ VH1 Behind the Music” episode, before there was such a thing.  This would be followed by award winning writer Neil Gaiman’s take, as a tie in to Alice’s then newest record release THE LAST TEMPTATION, also by Marvel Comics in 1994.  This one followed the continuing story of “Steven” who reprised his role from Alice’s debut solo album WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE.  Next up, Dynamite Entertainment took a boa constrictor swing in 2014, which I admittedly have NOT checked out at the time of this writing, but it has a second volume slated for release in October 2023, from what Cold Ethyl tells me.

As the years went on, ALICE COOPER remained a constant in my life.  Much like how his later comic book incarnations would infiltrate the lives of living, from an unspecified anti-world, where nothing was safe, nothing was real, and nothing was off limits.  Alice was like a spiritual father figure to me…paving the world with four (4) albums before I was even born, and another twenty-five (25) at the time I release this Clot.  Until recently, I was unsure if Alice would outlive even me, which would have been interesting within its own rite. 

But he, along with my artist Uncle Tom and his posthumous deep, dark artistry had created a somewhat morbid, often times insane, second nuclear family for me for me to reside and be influenced within.  I would grow up to become a misunderstood artist/musician amalgamation of my own, possessed by rockstars and gilded by ghosts. 

Good old boys and girls.
Congregating, waiting in some other world.
We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy.

We're all crazy….

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 08: THE PLANT PEOPLE (1977/Laurel Leaf/Dell Publishing)

BY DEREK ROOK

Greetings Roughian Readers of all things Fun and Mental and welcome to another episode of Blood Clots! The black scab on the ass of the internet that dares to delve into the underbelly of outlaw pop (or not so pop) culture in all of its devious incarnations.

This time around, I'm turning the fucking cat around once again to talk about one of my favorite subjects.  The darkest form of literature the world has ever known … CHILDREN'S BOOKS!  That's right kids, nothing says trauma like a good scholastic panic-inducing read.

Don't believe me? I dare you to read any unabridged Grimm fairy tale to your freshly minted bundle o' love then join them in prayer with a George Orwell crucifix over the bed and see how many DSS infractions ensue. Hell, it's 2023 America. Your lightly enjoyed copy of Captain Underpants is being thrown into the same bin of contempt as Animal Farm and Catcher in the Rye...and remember, the latter two were required reading in High Schools across America back in the 80's.

Ah the 80's - when you didn't have to fuck off to your safe place just to get through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

But alas, I'm not here to soliloquize about the impact of high-brow, provocative reading material such as the aforementioned titles above. 

Instead, I want to zero in on one single, 96-page, chunk of pulp from the sadistic folks at Dell Publishing and their selection from the "Laurel Leaf Library" that might as well been the Gorgon Video of young adult literature back in the 1970's.  

As the tagline warned: "When the fog came with its tiny dancing lights, the terrible things began..."  And of course with that, I'm talking about Dale Carlson's THE PLANT PEOPLE!

Now interestingly enough, the title is listed as a "young Adult" novella (barely more than a short story to be fair) but it was solicited in grade school libraries across America back in 1977 so that those in kindergarten through 5th grade could enjoy the level of trauma usually reserved for their adult counterparts.

As it were, this book awaited me in my 2nd grade school library which was right off of the lunch room and thus transforming it into the equivalent of a video stores "adults only" section. With all the hyperbole presented so far, you're probably thinking that someone snuck in a novelization of Dawn of the Dead and slipped it between copies of Where Do Babies Come From and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth....but to a seven year old like me at that time, The Plant People might as well have been.

On the surface, this is a straight up clean cut narrative that offers nothing new to the genre, but keeping in mind that little junior is the intended demographic, one can't help but notice how incredibly nihilistic the tone of this story was. 

Someone over at Dell Publishing must have figured that the fastest way to a kids nightmares would be to add pictures to accompany this narrative, and its really what anyone talks about who digested this tale of woe way back then. The photographs provided by Chuck Freedman made you feel like you were reading a novelization of a movie that didn’t exist, …but should have!

Here we go, kids…the ill-fated tale of The Plant People.

Our story opens in the town of Cactus, Nevada, a half empty town of less than 200 civilians, out in the middle of a sprawling desert called Dry Valley. The inhabitants seem to have settled into their lives, never daring to be anything at all.

All that is, but one teenage boy who wants nothing more than to make Cactus a memory in his rearview.. Mike Ward aspires to be an Ethologist as he has a deep fascination to study animals in their own habitat, much to his father Paul's chagrin. 

Paul Ward is depicted as an angry head-of-household type, and it's more than implied that he is emotionally abusive to his wife (and perhaps physically too). His wife Nancy barely speaks above a whisper to express her own feelings or opinions, even to the defense of her own two children. Mike’s little brother Jimmy on the other hand, has no problem encouraging his older brother to follow his dreams in spite of what anyone in Cactus may think.

Mike spends much of his time at the local horse stable, oblivious to the signals of Jenny, who pines for Mike's heart and attention. It's also of note that even though the author spends the time establishing that Jenny and Mike are a budding "thing", Mike spends the entirety of the story coming across as A-sexual. Even before the terror ensues, there’s no time for love, Dr. jones.

One random day while riding his mare across the barren landscape of Dry Valley, he sees a mysterious fog descend on the town of Cactus up ahead. The fog behaves as a sentient being, with cloudy tendrils that extend and augment seemingly with purpose. Inside the fog are described as tiny dancing lights. Unnaturally, the fog then crawls across the sky away from Cactus to parts unknown, cutting through Mike and his mare in it’s wake.

Though random and uncanny, there seem to be no other ill effects from the event. Dr. Peters, the only apparent doctor in Cactus, insists that medically, everyone is 100% fine. That is until, …THE FIRST CHANGE.

The next day, Mike wakes up and goes downstairs to find his mother and father at the breakfast table, acting less like themselves and more like something out of The Stepford Wives. Most of the townsfolk begin to change before Mike’s very eyes. Fist it starts with euphoric behavioral changes that appear to make day-to-day living more strangely pleasant, …especially considering Mike's home life.

Soon after, the townies begin a haunting pantomime routine of their former lives, almost in blissful mockery of their old routines and mannerisms. Smiling blindly as they do. Every so often a townie will stop to lovingly admire a random plant in the ground.

Mike and his friends, consisting of Sam Pearson, the stable owner, Charlie and Jonsie, the rattlesnake wranglers and Jenny, the cucked love interest, begin raising awareness of this catastrophe and their desire to seek help from the neighboring Carson City, a city described as much more equipped and prepared to handle a happening of this magnitude.

A town meeting held by Mayor Fletcher and Sheriff Carter dismisses the incident and determines that Cactus can handle their own problems with no outside help from "big city folk".

Mike and friends aren’t having it and secretly call Carson City from an abandoned sheriffs office. They talk to a detective, who deploys a helicopter to investigate, but upon arrival see that the townsfolk are all “happy” and “cooperative” and deem the visit a false alarm. As the helicopter leaves Cactus behind, all hope departs with it.

Things rapidly go from bad to worse as the townsfolk begin falling into a catatonic state. Staring out windows at the greenery outside and little else. Most have stopped talking or eating. It’s then that Mike notices the most horrific evolution when he gazed at his own mother’s hands and face - dark green veins, like that of a plant leaf, strewn across the changing texture of her skin as we enter, THE THIRD STAGE.

Why have only most of the town fallen prey to this infection but not everyone? Why were no animals effected? Where did the fog come from? Where did it go?

By now, all of the infected were wandering the town aimlessly, stopping at the sight of plant life. Their skin encrusted with dark veiny markings of a plant. Mike watched on as he felt someone grab his shoulder. It was Larry Borden, a friend from school. He was also infected, zombified and motioning for Mike to take him into Dry Valley. It was there that Larry knelt by a cactus plant and placed his hands upon it, and began to FEED. They feed from plant life. All of the infected - Now including, Mike’s little brother, Jimmy!

In desperation, Mike takes Jimmy to Carson City to meet with the doctor there (who goes nameless). Seeing Jimmy’s condition in the flesh prompted the doctor to contact Dr. Joe Blake, a friend from Washington who deemed the outbreak in Cactus a full blown epidemic , now coined “Cactus Disease”.

Jimmy’s blood samples yielded results that arrested the scientific community. His blood cells were transforming to those of a plant. The government was informed that “Cactus Disease” could not have been caused by anything on our planet. Finally, the situation was being taken seriously, but not in time to save THE LOST.

Back in Cactus, many of the infected begin to go missing. The few who were not effected by the disease formed search parties to find their loved ones. Mike and his friends pondered the events that had transpired. They feared that the town of Cactus was “attacked” by an alien force and that the fog infected certain people for a yet unknown reason, that there was a final stage to this occurrence that had yet to reveal itself.

Soon after, Mike discovered a cactus growing on the front walk. A slingshot dangled from its thorns. Jimmy’s slingshot.

That night, Mike, Jenny and friends raced to the outstretches of town, where the desert began. And it was there that they made their discovery. Jenny’s grandmother was standing there motionless. Her feet were already rooted into the ground. Rapidly she began to change. Her body stiffened, her skin turned cactus green, thorns sprouted from everywhere and then it was done. The final stage complete. This was the fate of all who had been infected and gone missing. They all became “Plant People” in the end.

In Washington, A state of emergency was declared and a race for a cure commenced. Many theories were abound. Perhaps Aliens were planning a fully fledged attack on our planet, but the oxygen levels were not high enough to sustain this alien race. Perhaps they used the town of Cactus as a “testing ground” to perform their experiment. By turning humans into plants, the oxygen levels would rise, deeming it safe for the aliens to attack.

Back in Cactus, Mike also had his theories. Perhaps only people who were negatively effecting the environment were targeted. His friends and he took care of animals, cared for the environment. Perhaps that’s why they were spared.

Mike followed what was now national news on television. Tsukuhara, Japan was attacked by the mysterious and deadly fog. Then England. Paris. Moscow. The world leaders settled their differences. The arms race halted. Enemies worked together in a race only for a cure for this growing pandemic.

A special news report interrupted all stations. A CURE HAS BEEN FOUND. Dr. Blake and his team of scientists have discovered “a simple remedy” that could cure everyone, as it was reported. “Just take - “ …

A fog covered the screen. In the fog were tiny dancing lights.

The screen went dead.

The end.

Yep. Storytime’s over, Kids. Time to go to bed. Sweet dreams n’ shit.

In 2023 I went on a search for this book, and eventually found an original print, lightly used softcover copy with the front cover image of a hand reaching high into the hot Nevada desert, while the lower half of the arm has turned into what looks like a rooted tree.

Considering it was 43 years since last I held this book in my hands, I was immediately surprised at how small this book was, both in dimension and in length. With pictures included, it was 93 pages long, and the extra-large print size was closer to what would cater to those with bad eyesight.

I was able to read The Plant People very quickly - barely 30 minutes cover to cover, and it was apparent that the book was written with little in terms of style or substance. It moved forward at a breakneck pace, never lingering on the impact of the horror. A very matter-of-fact narrative that literally completes the entire third act in about 5 pages.

Truth be told of this haunting affair, EVERYTHING about the impact of this book was predicated on how young and impressionable I was at the time I first read it. With the nostalgia removed from the influence of this review, it's a story that feels like it was also written by a seven year old as well as being intended for one.

But only in 1977 could someone write an apocalyptic tale of aliens taking away our humanity by turning us into Plant People by way of Night of the Living Dead, and pepper in the terror of loosing your entire family at a young age to malevolent forces beyond your control. Throw in subtext about emotional and physically abusive households, dirty politics and misinformation (that still goes on to this day), and ad a cherry on top of this hell and let everyone die on a global scale at the end via The Day After...

Then sell it to a kid the age of six, and call it education.

Somewhere out there in the universe, someone's father or mother, aunt or uncle, sister or brother may have read this cautionary tale of woe waaaay back when.  And like me, they may have succumb to the doom and gloom that was presented in this prepubescent masterpiece (of ruling kids minds through abject terror).

On the bright, at least mom didn't give birth to a cactus and name it after you, kids! …OUCH!

See you next Clot!

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 07: NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES (1980 - Beatrice Film)

BY DEREK ROOK

t all started back in 1983.

Little did my poor, single-parented ass know it was about to be traumatized beyond its ability to recover. Our town was getting cable television for the very first time, followed soon by our first VCR and access to a video store less than 100 feet from our home. All together, this trifecta would end up propelling me from being forced to watch seven channels of swill on a console TV with rabbit ears, to blowing the doors open to a dark labyrinth of movies that would blow my mind like tinfoil origami in a microwave.

Soon after that, I began overhearing the ramblings in the schoolyard about the cable movies my peers had watched the weekend before.  One movie in particular was especially disturbing to hear about - so much so that I convinced myself that the kids were embellishing it just to freak me out. There was absolutely NO WAY that even a horror movie would actually SHOW all of that carnage they were gloating about…ON SCREEN!. Surely all of this hyperbole was just embellishments from the novice mouths of babes, right?

After thumbing through the cable guide after school, I finally found a listing. The movie they were talking about was called “NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES”, and it was on Cinemax Friday night at 10pm. How bad could an unrated (then considered X Rated), renegade, cannibalistic, zombie movie be for an eleven year old who thought he was post-pubescent just because he had seen A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and HALLOWEEN II? Well here we go!

WHY THE LONG FACE, … SOMTHIN’ EATIN’ YA?

Immediately following my doom-fated, maiden voyage into the lower colon of Italian exploitation cinema, my nerves were so shot that I was afraid to move. I was petrified of the very house I lived in. I saw zombies EVERYWHERE!  And for the next 15 years, my fear of the living dead would become my Kryptonite, beating out ANY movie monster. Full Stop!

I’ll go into the specifics on just how low this movie travels to deliver you the shlock that it does, but before we rummage through the guts, …check out the trailer for yourself!

“Hold up, Rook! …’HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD’? You said the title was…” Ahem. First of all, “Thinking” won’t do you any good here. Hang that diploma of yours over the toilet and take a seat, because explaining the convoluted ball of diverticulated intestine that is the Italian movie industry is worse than passing a kidney stone. Italian films of that era were almost exclusively made to sell to outside markets around the world, hence why most of them were rip-offs of popular American films, cashing in on a built-in audience. In this case, George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD, the movie that launched 1000 zombie films. These films were usually shot silently with all sound effects added in post. Part of the marketing deals allowed other countries to ADR their prints in their own respective language, and to re-edit, or re-title the films to comply with censorship laws …and this movie has more titles than Daenerys Targaryen. Check out some of these doozies!

I go with NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES (not to be confused with the Joel M. Reed film), because that was the American title when it was released in the States, and you never forget the first time you were made to wear a blazer to your own assault and battery.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN SEEING THIS FILM FOR THE FIRST TIME, DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT. I’M GOING TO SPOIL THE WHOLE DAMNED THING! SCROLL DOWN UNTIL YOU SEE THE EYEBALL POPPING GIF (you’ll know it when you see it)…then you can read on. If this article is the closest you ever want to come to this breached birth of a movie, I’ll spare you the Hour and 40 minutes of screen time and synopsize the entire movie for your reading displeasure. Gather ‘roud the camp fire with a shot of your favorite voodoo liquor, kids! “Angry” D’s gonna’ tell you a story…

THAT’S NOT POLITE, … I GET THE FIRST SHOT!

NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES (AKA HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) opens at an industrial compound off the coast of New Guinea, later coined as “HOPE Center One”.  We open with the structure already on high alert with scientists and emergency personnel, spearheaded by Lead Professor Barrett, scrambling against time to stop a dangerous chemical leak with grave consequences if not soon contained. 

Down in the bowels of the building, two hazmat-suited technicians find a dead rat “in the most sterile sector of the module”.  As he’s holding it, the rat springs back to life and attacks one of the technicians which (for reasons) results in a full breach and release of an ominous green poisonous gas that engulfs the entirety of the facility – killing most of the inhabitants instantly.

Professor Barrett and a rag-tag team of survivors don gas masks and begin an impromptu tour of the HOPE Center, to inspect the damage and loss, and to search for any survivors.  To their dismay, they soon discover that all the dead employees have now become bloodthirsty zombies, infesting the entire plant and preying on human flesh.  Barrett’s team is murdered one by one but Barrett manages to dodge the ghouls and make his way back to the head office. He manages to record one final cryptic message before the gas engulfs the rest of the sectors and escapes into the atmosphere. 

Barrett - “Experimental project, “Operation Sweet Death”, must be considered a complete failure. Some kind of degenerative process has begun which may be catastrophic for everybody.  May God forgive us for what we have produced here and pardon us for this evil we have created.” And with that verbal epitaph, the gas takes him too.

Meanwhile, at the US Embassy in Barcelona (where everyone curiously speaks English in an American accent) an Echo - activist / terrorist group has held a slew of Consulate members hostage, demanding that all HOPE Centers (how many we are unaware) are shut down with a confirming statement to be delivered from the UN.  Outside, news reporters and law enforcement surround the building in a stand-off.  A crack team of commandos (Zantoro, Osborne, Vincent and Lt. Mike London) are deployed to dispatch the terrorists and save the hostages.  They make short business of the terrorists, but not before the leader delivers (another) cryptic message on his dying breath.  Terrorist Leader – “You’re all doomed to a horrible death. Doomed to be eaten up.  First they’ll kill you, then afterwards, you’ll be eaten. Be Eaten - devoured by men like you.  Your brothers.”

After the Embassy incident, the commandos are dispatched to Papua, New Guinea with a trajectory to HOPE Center One.  Mission Classified.  At a nearby abandoned village, a team of news reporters, sent by American news centers to investigate increasing reports of violent attacks amongst the natives, have stopped to contemplate their situation. (Lia Rousseau and her cameraman / fuckboy Max, Josie, her husband and young son) argue in a jeep over the health and welfare of the child, who was bitten - “wounded by a native lunatic”.  The child is barely conscious and fading fast. Outside the sun beats down hard on the wary crew.

As Lia and Max search the area for water, Josie explores the empty buildings while her husband tends to his now unconscious son.  Josie is attacked and killed by a zombie priest, while Max and Lia are pursued through the woods by a group of zombies, who they mistake for drunk-drugged-lepers.  When they arrive back to the jeep, they are met by the arriving commandos who quickly split up to secure the area.  Max peers into the news jeep to discover that the little boy has killed his father and is devouring his flesh.  Vincent extracts the boy from the jeep and shoots him several times to no avail.  The child will not die. Osborne and Zantoro figure out that the ghouls can only be killed by shooting them in the head (information that is conveniently forgotten for the rest of the movie).  The pursing zombies, including the zombie child, are put down by the commandos. Lia and Max team up with them and the two vehicles drive off to the next destination on the trip into a seeming hell.

Meanwhile stateside, Lia’s news station broadcasts that “certain sources have reported an increase of incidents involving cannibalism but the government has denied this, categorically”, implying that the number of incidents are rapidly increasing throughout the country. A TV executive laments - “You understand what happened in the American Consulate tends to confirm our worst suspicions.  And everything going on down there (in New Guinea) – the frightened natives – the mass hysteria, is further proof.  You know, in their last ultimatum, the terrorists demanded the dismantling of the HOPE Centers, and that request was suppressed. We’ve got far beyond idle speculation now.  The HOPE Centers are working towards something that bridges on genocide.”  If Lia can just make it there first, they can break the world on a major catastrophe.  One that the Executive retorts (yet another cryptic message), “a catastrophe so great, there may be no one to report it to.”

Back in New Guinea, Lia and Max arrive at an indigenous village with the commandos in tow.  London tells Vincent in confidence that he plans to ditch the reporters there and continue on their mission to the HOPE Centers.  Vincent, who has magically become smitten with Lia, argues this decision but is shut down by London.  The caravan stops just outside the village where Lia insists to go on ahead of the team, as she has studied and lived amongst this tribe before. This involves Lia getting naked and prancing into the village bearing similar affectations of the natives in order to bond with them and earn safe passage for the team.

The team is welcomed by the tribe, and for the first time, our protagonists are allowed to rest. As day falls into night, It’s soon revealed that the natives, incapable of understanding what’s happening globally, have not buried their dead. Instead, they’ve strewn the bodies among the village like ceremonial décor.  The realization comes too late, and the village is overrun by the resurrected dead. Lia, Max and the commandos barely escape in their vehicles into the uncertain night.

The next morning, Lt. London commandeers Lia’s news jeep after the engine seizes in their own. He orders that all news equipment and film reels be discarded so there will be room for everyone.  Max fights back to protect their compiled film and records but is quickly beaten down by London.  Lia steals London’s gun in the scuffle and discloses that she suspected the commandos plans to abandon them all along.  Her gun is taken away and she and Max are taken, now as prisoners, until they can properly be discarded at the next available village.

In their travels through the jungle trails, the team is held up by the evidence and threat of zombies up ahead.  As the zombies emerge out of the jungle, Max attempts to film the creatures in action. Zantoro begins to behave erratically – throwing himself into a heard of zombies and taunting them repeatedly before shooting at them wildly.

At a United Nations summit , it grows apparent that neighboring countries are slowly spiraling into chaos over the growing threat of a pending apocalypse. 

Back in New Guinea, the commandos, with Lia and Max in tow, come across a seemingly abandoned Plantation and decide to investigate.  Zantoro, Osborne, Vincent and London split-up to secure the house room by room, leaving Lia and Max to explore the on their own. On the basement level, Osborne lets his guard down (by wearing a woman’s dress, a top hat and cane while doing a Gene Kelley impersonation … not even kidding) and is accosted by several zombies who begin to feast on him.  Upstairs, London opens up a room door to reveal a dead elderly woman in a rocking chair.  Her stomach ruptures and a cat rips its way out …distracting London.  The old woman’s corpse opens its eyes and attacks him to the floor. After a short scuffle, London shoots it in the head, killing it.  On the central floors, Lia notices that the house is being surrounded by a hoard of zombies and the remaining team go on the offensive. The zombies are flooding in from every window and entranceway in increasingly overwhelming numbers.

Again the team flees to the jeep, but not before Zantoro further begins taunting the zombies and taking unnecessary chances with his life and the lives of the remaining members of the team.  Together, they narrowly get away and escape into the night.

By morning, the team is experiencing the extreme fatigue and stress of their experiences.  The jeep is running low on fuel, provisions are fleeting, ammunition is running out and still they are relentlessly pursued by the persistent hoard of the undead.  Our protagonists decide to abandon the jeep, and manage to haul an inflatable motor boat to the ocean and escape out to sea.

At nightfall, London, Vincent, Zantoro, Max and Lia make it to their final destination.  The place that both parties have suffered through their entire trip to achieve.  The boat docks at HOPE Center One, “where it all began…the whole thing.”

The team stays close together, making their way from the outside into the heart of the plant.  Although seemingly abandoned, the building reeks of impending doom.  The team makes their way through the hallways to a service elevator, but when the doors open, a heard of zombies grab Max and pull him into the elevator and begin eating him alive.  What’s left of Zantoro’s sanity snaps at the sight and he begins shooting randomly into the pile of zombies (no headshots).  The zombies grab Zantoro too, but before he can retaliate, the elevator ascends upward, trapping him inside with the living dead.  The elevator shaft begins echoing screams and raining blood down on Lia, Vincent and London, ensuring that Max and Zantoro are doomed and their journey ends.

The remaining trio makes their way to the upper floors of the facility. London is attacked and bitten on the jugular by one of the zombies.  Vincent kicks the zombie off and bludgeons its skull in with the butt of his rifle, but he is too late to save London, who persists on going through with the mission. Still alive but fading fast, London is escorted to the office of Professor Barrett with the help of Lia and Vincent. London goes in alone, while the two wait for him outside the door.

Inside the office, London plays the recording of Barrett (from the beginning of the film) confessing to the chemical spill and the root cause of the zombie outbreak.  After doing so, a dying London proceeds to burn the tapes and the all recorded materials pertaining to “Operation Sweet Death”, and in doing so, reveals his true mission:  To protect the integrity of the HOPE Centers and assist in the government cover up of the catastrophe it caused. Humanity be damned.

Outside the office door, Lia overhears the recording which confirms what she suspected all along.  Defeated, she begins wandering aimlessly to the subterranean levels of the facility.  Vincent, soldiers on next to her while she theorizes aloud. 

Lia Rousseau – “All these high-powered installations, like a factory from a future world, safely hidden on an island, isolated and remote. It all begins to make sense. Now I can piece together the whole puzzle.  They were called HOPE.  They were centers of chemical research for the good of mankind. To help countries that are still under developed.  That was the cover. The official story, while the reality was terrible.  Unbelievable.  They were working on a solution to the problem that most torments the industrialized countries – the overpopulation of the world.  Dispose of the weak elements, the most defenseless, the most numerous in the simplest possible way.  Just cause them all to eat each other.” (One last cryptic message.)

While lost in thought, neither Lia nor Vincent notice that they are being flanked on both sides by hoards of the HOPE scientists and technicians – now zombies, and led by Zantoro and London, who were now walking corpses as well. 

As the sea of living dead closes in on them both , Lia lets out one last hopeless, blood curdling scream! Vincent is taken by hungry hands and is slowly turned into broken bone and torn meat.  While in mid-scream, zombified hands reach into Lia’s mouth and pull out her tongue, leaving a vacuum of tattered flesh along with the hiss of escaping air.  The sound leaving her invites the rest of the dead to reach in and dig up into her upper palate and pull out food, eventually dislodging her eyes from their sockets from inside, before devouring the rest of her completely….along with her unreported secrets as well.

EPILOGUE: On an evening soon after, the television programming in a New York tavern is interrupted with news reports of the dead coming back to life.  A couple leaving in a drunken stupor mocks the news report and patrons who believe what they think is a hoax.

Once outside, the couple begins to make out under the streetlights.  The woman turns cold, opting to have a cigarette instead.  She asks for a light but he says, “No”, out of spite.

Being coy, she teases that she’ll just “go ask that guy over there”, pointing to a figure sitting alone on a bench in the adjacent park.  The boyfriend encourages her to leave the guy alone, as “he’s probably drunk …or sleeping”, but the woman insists.  She walks up and taps the figure on the shoulder, trying to get his attention.  The figure slowly turns around (like Mother in PSYCHO) to reveal the partially devoured face of a corpse, before slumping over, lifeless on the bench. 

The woman screams as she is taken at all sides by several zombies who begin biting chunks out of her flesh while her boyfriend looks on from afar.  He attempts to run away in cowardice, but is tackled by more zombies that begin appearing out of the night.  As an army of living dead flood the streets, we freeze-frame on one zombie who has set it’s gaze, and making it’s way right towards YOU!

And THAT, my roughian friends, is the story of NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES!

GODDAMNED ROTTEN GHOULS! THEY’RE EATING HIM LIKE PIGS!

So let’s talk cannibalism, …of the ironic variety.

Apparently, not even fellow Italian filmmakers in the biz were safe when this fucking picture rolled into town. NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES would steal the fillings out of your teeth if you let it. I don’t know what the trademark and copyright laws were like back then, but today I’m sure that anyone involved with this film, without plausible deniability, would face the death penalty for the monumental counts of sheer thievery that this one movie left in it’s wake.

Let’s start with the plot. “SWAT” team bands together with rogue news reporters to survive an increasing zombie apocalypse. Sounds a lot like “DAWN” to me, complete with loose cannon Zantoro, who’s basically Roger, …if you bought him off of WISH. Next, they try to unravel a phenomenon of the dead returning to life on a third world island in the Pacific. Smells a lot like Fulci’s ZOMBIE, and with a sorta’ rival eyeball trauma scene for it’s troubles.

The scene where the elevator shoots upwards at the climax of the movie was “lifted” from the Canadian / Italian Dino De Laurentiis KING KONG (1976) send up, YETI - GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY (1977) …another gem!

Wait just a minute here! How come there is so much stock (passed off as actual) footage in this movie? Never fear,… the footage was provided (unbeknownst to them) by the two beloved family-friendly documentaries, NUOVA GUINEA, I’ISOLA DEI CANNIBALI (1974) and DES MORTS (1979). Huh! So THAT’S where the elephants in New Guinea came from.

If the incredible music score gives you deja vu, it’s because it was stolen from the Italian rock band GOBLIN from not one, not two, but FOUR different film soundtracks. The aforementioned DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), BUIO OMEGA (1979), BLOOD AND DIAMONDS (1977) and the Italian ALIEN rip-off CONTAMINATION (1980).

Does that movie poster zombie below look familiar? Well, that’s because he was plucked right out off the American movie poster for Lucio Fulci’s THE GATES OF HELL (1980).

How could this even be allowed to happen, you ask? How do I put this into words, …Did you ever have that one crazy uncle that hated his sister but came to every family event she hosted just because of the free food and booze? Do you remember how he’d talk outta’ school and make all the other adults squirm in their seats at the dinner table? But he’d tell you about all the awesome bands and craziest movies …he was kinda’ cool, wasn’t he?

Well with NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES, it gave us TWO “Crazy Uncles” of the Italian movie making industry in the form of CLAUDIO FRAGASSO who wrote other timeless classics like MONSTER DOG (1984) with ALICE COOPER and the infamous TROLL 2 (1990). National Treasure, BRUNO MATTEI (who went under more aliases than FLETCH), along with this beautiful shit fest, directed the last word in post-apocalyptica in RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR (1984) and everyone’s favorite summer blockbuster, CRUEL JAWS (1995).

But that’s just it about all movies of this genre and era. NONE of the filmmakers set out to make a bad movie, they just didn’t have enough time or money or talents to make a good one. It’s all in the execution, right? You can play one song in five different styles and it will completely change the sound and feel and mood of the song itself. These cats just decided to play Sargent Pepper, when all they could afford was wash boards and trash can lids instead of Les Pauls and Ludwig kits. I bet the food on set was delicious though.

DON’T LET IT WORRY YA! I THINK WE’LL ALL MEET AGAIN, … IN HELL!

So it’s now 2023!  This putrid hunk o’ celluloid has now been rotting in the ether for over 40 years and counting. The youngest member of the principal cast , MARGIT EVELYN NEWTON, now aged to a beautiful 60 years old, while the oldest now resemble some of the creatures in this film. Just how has it held up against the changing cultures, political landscapes, and how has it aged against its maggot-stuffed peers through the passage of time?

LIKE A VINTAGE BOTTLE OF HOME-MADE LIMONCELLO!

Forget how in spite of itself, this movie has a relevant message about the growing distrust between country and government and a global pandemic whos origins have been swept under the rug so that the powerful can continue to devour the weak. …But I digress.

As a kid, none of that mattered. All I was back then was DEATHLY AFRAID! A good horror movie isn’t going to hold your hand and tell you everything’s going to be alright. It’s not going to remind you it’s only a movie! A good horror movie is supposed to leave you unnerved, unsettled, and scared to death! And THIS movie did that to me in escrow.

The zombies in this film weren’t just walking corpses. These zombies would get excited when your death was on its way. They’d smile at you with a piercing gaze at the thought of ripping you limb from limb…..and they HISSED! Remember in the old LAND OF THE LOST TV show, when the Sleestaks were approaching, you could always hear them Hissss for a good ten seconds before they came into frame? Same chill factor here.

Look, you won’t find this movie preserved at the Smithsonian. It’s NOT high art (unless by “high”, you mean “as a fucking kite"). This movie is BONKERS! Legit Whack-a-doodle-fuckin-do! Buy it knows what it is, and it does what it came here to do. Some will laugh right in it’s face, some with wince in disgust. Either way, it’s guaranteed entertainment!

Let’s put it this way.  If you took away my nostalgia for this film and the exploitation movement of films from this era …you wouldn’t even get me to press play on this dirty bitch today. But as luck would have it, I have plenty of both, and I’m here to tell you, THIS movie is the very definition of a FUCKING GRINDHOUSE MOVIE! 

Not your Hobo with A Shotgun, Not your Terrifier 2 (although it comes closer), and not even your Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE. Those movies are fucking Casablanca compared to this. There is ZERO SAFETY to be had anywhere in or around the aura this flick….and the amount of contempt the Italians have for their horror movie characters (and sometimes the actors that portray them) is downright impressive.  Women, Children, the Elderly, the Holy, the family Pet…..NO ONE is safe in an Italian horror flick….especially not this one.

LEADING BY EXAMPLE, WHEN THERE’S NO MORE ROOM IN HELL, MATTEI WILL STEAL FROM HIMSELF.

NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES was even late to is own party, clocking in at the eleventh hour of the original heyday of the zombie / cannibal exploitation craze. It was almost a relic by the time it hit US shores. We were approaching the mid-1980’s, and our horror movies were about to become iconic, instead of ironic. Stylistic, instead of nihilistic. Whitty, instead of shitty (albeit an awesome kind of “shitty”). After the 80’s we’d have to wait almost 15 years for another resurgence of the zombie sub-genre proper, and we are enjoying it to this day.

Still though, there is a charm that is very specific to a sweet spot in time, where guerilla filmmaking was at its peak and the run and gun creators of these films had more passion, more persistence, more perseverance and break-neck ambition that soared well above the size of their production budgets. There will always be a special place in my heart for these glorious abortions, where law and order dies in favor of jaw dropping, sheer audacity.

Alas, I’ve dug through the dark and cluttered basement of my childhood fears long enough. It was enlightening to take the trash out with you for this episode of BLOOD CLOTS. I’m tired now. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sleep like the dead, ….with all the lights on.

I think we’ll all meet again, ….in HELL!

PRESS RELEASE - IT’S ALWAYS HONEY IN CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS!

ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING (under the Rough House Pulp™ novel imprint) launches their newest title….BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things!

BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things™ is the second literary Rough House slab of creator-owned nightmare fuel, and the first to collaborate the fantastical writings of novelist, STEVE VAN SAMSON (Mark of the Witchwyrm, The Bone Eater King) with the horror laden art of DEREK ROOK (Gore Shriek, Gates of Hell) to produce one bloody/sweet collection of “horrific short stuff” to help keep that Halloween vibe going well past its expiration date!

For this latest release, ROUGH HOUSE has returned to its horror roots, …and those roots are firmly woven down into the cold bitter end with eleven stories of Monsters, Malice, Murder, Madness and did we say Monsters?  Yes, …lots and LOTS of (different types of) MONSTERS!

BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things™, is available in Standard, Premium and Ultimate Editions satiating the bitter tastes of the casual reader, all the way to the ultimate collector of pulp media!

As with all of ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING’s honeycomb of “tangible awesome”, BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things™ is available in a variety of formats to suit any budget, with more Limited Edition collectable extras than the number of stingers on Jonny Knoxville’s scrotum after humping a hornets nest.

CATCHING AN EVENING BUZZ!

Here is the rundown of all you have to choose from when you order these oddities:

That’s right kids, lock up your beekeeper, because these softcover and hardcover editions will scare you harder than a 1980’s Special News report about Africanized Killer Bees flying all the way to Ozark, Missouri just to pop a deadly stinger right in your bitch-ass mouth!

With a title such as BLACK HONEY, and the imagery that accompanies it, one might assume that this was some pulpy blacksploitation shlockfest about an insectistisized madame seeking sweet revenge by sticking it to the MAN, one venomous barb at a time! Although such a theme is far from above the Rough House brow, … acclaimed writer STEVE VAN SAMSON is instead delivering a bounty much more ambitious than just ONE single tale of woe, but rather multiple stories that exploit horror from all corners of the globe, with evil beyond all of its many manifests! The story “BLACK HONEY” being but one, and sets the hellish tone for what’s to come!

Says VAN SAMSON of this new TERRORific night table companion:

“The nightmares in this collection were written in between my novels over a span of just about five years. Some have been published in previous anthologies, others have never before seen the light of day.  Lurking within BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things are eleven diverse horror tales. Stories of monsters and madness that will whisk the reader from a cursed village in old Massachusetts to an arcade in the 1980s and even to the plains of a post-apocalyptic Africa. These accounts are sometimes sweet, often unsavory and, if I’ve done my job correctly, are going to leave a sting.”

 THE BEES KNEES (on the road to black honey)

CEO and Rough Master General, DEREK ROOK while soliloquizing of the onset of this project shared this piece of BLACK HONEY history:  “It was Winter of 2021.  We were just about a year into the lockdowns and restrictions brought on by the dreaded pandemic, …the same pandemic that brought forth our newest (at that time) release, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™.  It was our “Fuck you” in the face of the great reset and it showed our fans that we weren’t afraid to take chances, be ambitious and make something creative and special even if only out of spite. 

Perhaps ironically, although filled with monsters and intrigue, Witchwyrm also contained a strong message about honor and hope,  something that was on back-order at that time, much like the mothballed supply chains across America.”

“It was around then that Steve pitched me the idea of a collection of his short horror stories, …some previously released through other publishers, and others that were in various stages of completion in his brain.  At the time he was calling it DEAD ENDINGS: Tales of Monsters, Madness and of the Cold Bitter End (talk about a mouthful of words a’la negative.)

I wasn’t immediately receptive to it, mostly due to the fact that we already had a comic book property (Gore Shriek Resurrectus) that was essentially an anthology horror as well.  But while we were driving up the icy back roads of Cumberland, RI, Steve started telling me about one of the stories …“Black Honey”, and about the Grendel Hive - this image of a woman who was essentially a human surrogate hive hybrid to these mutated bee-like creatures.  Her hair was described as dripping and tar-like with these images of trypophobia inducing honeycomb holes encrusting and infused with what’ left of her skin. I was riveted.  I couldn’t get the image of her out of my head.”

 “As time went on, it became more apparent that this was not an anthology, but much more of a collection….a horrific memoir of oddities past and present with no real connective tissue.  Coupled with the idea that Steve and I could work directly on this project with no outside collaborators really cemented the idea.  This was after all, the main reason we began this partnership – to marry the art forms of writing and physical illustration into a much more immersive reading experience.  I’ve always used Stephen King’s novella, Cycle of the Werewolf as the template for how a Rough House book should look and feel, while adding all the extras that have made our books unique and special to our audience. “

“Fast forward to Spring of 2022. We changed the title to the more ambiguous and palpable, BLACK HONEY, …then we went back to work.”

“This time around, we wanted to present a more straight-forward  approach to our marketing campaign while keeping what makes our product special to the Limited Edition collector amongst our brethren.”

Rook continued, “While we’re always looking for fun new ways to present our products onto the unsuspecting public, we wanted this project to be slightly more organic and intimate for the roughians who have stuck with us going all the way back to the beginning.   

We sent out a bunch of advanced reader copies to our peers in the biz and allowed BLACK HONEY to be reviewed on its own merits, good or otherwise. The results of that exercise were staggeringly positive.  Read them for yourselves!”

“I just finished reading BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things. Steve Van Samson’s collection is both wildly satisfying and perfectly balanced in its diversity of narrative styles and settings. Every story is a lovingly-crafted nightmare waiting to be discovered. I’m greatly looking forward to seeing this young author’s career take off in epic proportions.”

— Peter N. Dudar, author of The Goat Parade

"This is a masterful collection of horrors and you absolutely need this book in your life! Keep your guard up when reading—the contents inside this collection will leave you right where horror means to take you."

 — Ashley Greathouse. author of Lily and Hen House

“The stories in this incomparable collection comprise a crash-course into the immense talents of its author, about whom I should expect to hear much in the coming years. Van Samson is a tremendous writer and Black Honey is one of the finest selections of weird and horror fiction I have ever had the pleasure to read.”

— Ed Kurtz, author of The Rib from Which I Remake the World and the Boon trilogy

"BLACK HONEY is one of those collections that offers pieces of everything we love about horror. There are shades of King and Barker in here, but Van Samson also takes us to the dark shadows of Victorian England, to post-apocalyptic madness, and to quiet horror of one's own back yard, with his own fresh twist. “No God But Hunger” and “Letter To Evelene” were my personal favorites, but every story brings something to the table. Top notch!"

— Morgan Sylvia, author of Abode

…TELL ME WHATSA’ HAPPENIN!

The stories presented in BLACK HONEY and Other Unsavory Things read like the back cover of a British heavy metal album!  In keeping with VAN SAMSON’S penchant for diversity in location, culture, setting, tone and feel permeates in this body of work and the darkness that lies therein.  Take a sneak peek at the synopses below: 

BLACK HONEY - A period piece following a young couple as they cross western Massachusetts by stagecoach. While Stewart sleeps, Missy notices an ominous buzzing sound in the distance and becomes obsessed with finding its source. Soon they will both learn that some secrets are better left undiscovered.

NO GOD BUT HUNGER - A PREDATOR WORLD story, starring the woman in the elephant mask. As Rè and her partner Nico stalk a leopard across the moonlit Serengeti, there is something much worse stalking them.

GROWING JUST BENEATH - An unfortunate tale of gardening gone awry, proving that even the most mundane tasks can lead to obsession and eventually, madness. This one really gets under your skin.

THE ROOT OF ALL NOISE - Marcus Wade has just been through a nasty breakup. Now, all he wants is to rekindle his old love of running and be alone. Just him and the mountain trails, the open wilderness …and the voice?

MONSTER FINANCING AVAILABLE - The specimen was installed in a quiet lake, somewhere in Missouri. It was supposed to get itself spotted by some locals, get its picture in the papers and hopefully kickstart the tourist trade. Unfortunately, the creature had other plans.

OFF ROAD - Tino has had a rough couple of months and to top it off, Gavin Labeck and his crew are currently chasing him on their bikes with murder in their eyes. The mountain road is narrow and dangerous and Tino is peddling for his very life. Worst of all, he’s fresh out of friends.

ZANDAXAAR - Working a lame job in a dead end town has set Bert in something of a downward spiral. All he really has are some impressive high scores on the hardest game at the arcade, ZANDAXARR. If only he could get that creepy guy in the red hoodie to leave for the night so he can work on beating that high score.

THE TERROR OF LONDON - In the dark, John Covington contemplates days long past from the confines of a wheeled chair he has occupied for decades. Though an old contract is nearly due, he wonders if a bargain might be reached with the devilish debt collector. If so, perhaps there is a chance for one last adventure.

LETTER TO EVELENE - On the run, Roman stumbles upon an old house in the woods. At first, he’s just happy to be indoors but before long, a mystery begins to reveal itself. At its center is a strange boy who appears in the yard–always at night and alone. Over and over, he calls out to the malevolent dark, a single repeated question. Who looks for you?

SALTWATER TEARS - Just like the nursery rhyme says… off the coast of Barrowbrine, lies something that was once a woman. A sad young mother called Molly Maeve who gave herself to the ocean long ago. Now, all know to keep their young ones far away from the shore, lest Molly try to replace what the waves once stole from her.

NIGHT FISHING - Beckett can hardly believe his luck.  After wanting to go night fishing for so long, his mother has finally decided to take him and Katie to do just that, even as the night itself keeps a cruel secret.

BLACK HONEY and OTHER UNSAVORY THINGS, available in Three Limited Edition tiers and promises to attract unsavory insects if left out in the dark…

…and guarantees to kick you right in the hive!

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 06: FRIGHT NIGHT (NOW/AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY)

BY MIKE WASION

When it comes to vampire movies of the 80s, two titans stand tall above the throat-rending pack...and to pick one or the other as your partorn bloodsucker flick, is to draw battle lines that cut straight to the marrow, etch fightin’ words in stone, and leave life-ending street brawls with friends and loved ones a very, very real possibility, for the rest of your accursed life. I speak, of course, of THE LOST BOYS and FRIGHT NIGHT (and before you come running in here screaming “hah, fuck that - NEAR DARK!!!”, just know that you’re bringin’ the same energy as the guy who says “I don’t HAVE A TV!” when someone asks you what your favorite show is...we  get it, Near Dark is awesome and you’re a badass, needle dick.

I go back and forth on the subject - I love both, for very different reasons - but you’ve come to the CASKET for COMICS...and in that fight there is one, very clear winner, …Ladies and Gentlemen, WELCOME TO FRIGHT NIGHT…..FOR REAL!

Published from 1988 to 1993 by the infamous NOW COMICS (home to, among other things, RALPH SNART ADVENTURES, a title you’ll be hearing a LOT more about right here in days to come), FRIGHT NIGHT began as a two-part adaptation of the hit 1985 flick (starring...well come on, you know, if you don’t have the flick within arm’s reach, you’re a pud), before spinning out into a full blown, ongoing sequel.

The first near-year trucked along well enough, with Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent becoming full-fledged monster hunters, fight random beasts like parasitic brain-bats, octopus guys, some big weirdass spider, and yes, some vampires along the way...perfectly serviceable stuff. I could tell you who wrote it, who illustrated, what the hell happened to Amy along the way...but if we’re being perfectly honest with each other, I don’t feel like it. I have just about the entire run in a nice, fat stack right here next to me, all it would take is the slightest effort, but I can’t be bothered. Why? For starters, I’m too sober for that shit (a mistake I will NOT make again), but more importantly, we’re building to something. And that “something”, was and is, NEIL VOKES.

Now Vokes might immediately trip some triggers amongst the...two...three?...of you that read this; the cat has landed gigs at every hut from Comico, to Marvel and DC, to Dark Horse and Image. This guy has been EVERYWHERE in the back issue bins you scumbags regularly haunt, trying to find that reasonably priced copy of Verotika #4 (oh you ARE dirty little kids, aint’cha?). But the only title that can unlock this entire article, is a little something called FLESH AND BLOOD.

Put out by the ill-fated-but-well-intentioned MONSTERVERSE imprint, and written by one Robert Tinnell, “Flesh” is basically a Hammer horror epic told in pulp, blood, tits, and vibes intact. ONE glance at this series, and the canny amongst you will surely say “golly goshes, this fellow would certainly be gangbusters on a FRIGHT NIGHT comic!” And indeed, he VERY much was.

To put it plainly, Neil Vokes brought personality to the series. Measurable, identifiable, feral PERSONALITY to an IP that quite simply DEMANDED it from the outset. Vokes IMMEDIATELY scars Fright Night, just by walking through the front fucking door, and for nine solid issues, Fright Night is not only HIS, but Fright Night is REAL...on your radar, something you wanna read, something that forces itself into your reality as a real-deal sequel, something that is...well...a lot, I say A LOT better than the actual, honest-to-God FRIGHT NIGHT PART II.

Ah, yes. Fright Night PART II. About that. Guess we should get into it.

Unleashed to an appropriately-dismissive reaction that Christmas season, Fright Night PART II was a black eye to mainstream fans, plain and simple. The plot sucked, the payoff sucked, the whole thing was a Johnny-come-TOO-late, unsatisfying sequel that simply checked off too few of the required boxes to justify its existence. We wouldn’t even be talking about it, were it not for the fact that the eventual remake, and the direct-to-DVD “sequel”/remake OF THAT, were so ass-fuckingly insulting, that the OG 80s sequel wound up looking KIND of respectable by comparison. And that, boils and ghouls, can be summed up in five, simple points. So let’s hit ‘em and quit ‘em, gang!

One, it still has a BIT of that cool 80s vibe hovering over it that feels like a warm blanket in a childhood bedroom, so while it’s precious little in the grand scheme of things, it SHOULD be mentioned. Two, it’s got the insanely hot Traci Lind running around in it (again - later, Amy!). Three, the final “boss fight” form of the otherwise ridiculous head vamp Regine (Jerry Dandrige’s sister, for some reason) is an insanely cool Greg Cannom monstrosity that deserves all the love you can hose it with. But MOST importantly, reasons four and five - BOZWORTH and LOUIE (or “Bug Boy and The Wolfman”, as I like to call ‘em) two of Regine’s thugs (played with bottomless wells of charisma and charm by Brian Thompson and Jon Gries, respectively) who steal every scene they’re in.

Alright, enough fuckin’ Fright Night Part II. It may be better than any of the shit flicks that came after it, but as steered by Vokes, the comic book sequel beats its cinematic counterpart’s ass and takes its lunch money.

So…here’s the deal. ( Pregnant cracked knuckled pause) ...EVIL ED IS DEPICTED AS A MAN-BAT ROCKSTAR WITH A HAREM OF VAMPIRE GROUPIES. I could stop this article RIGHT GODDAMN NOW, and I’ll have said the most important thing you’ll hear all week. All that shit I wrote about Fright Night Part II, you can print this article up, rip that section out, crumple it up and throw it at your fuckin’ mom, because at no point in that limp pretender to the throne does it feature EVIL GODDAMNED ED as a man-bat rockstar , so it can piss right off (although Louie was, initially, written as Evil Ed, which is probably why the character is so goddamned freakin’ rad).

Listen, we all know Stephen Geoffries is a rockstar in real life, with such immortal roles as Hoax (976-EVIL) and Sam Ritter (if you know, you know, baby!) under his belt, but Evil Ed is without question the character that firmly places him on Mount Olympus, and he is ALL OVER this thing. His face peers out at you from the covers (in both illustrated and live action form!), his man-bat form lurks up by the little NOW logo, and his rise to power in a (temporarily) Jerry Dandrige-less world is a central through line in the ongoing story. And thank GOD, because if you didn’t pretend you were Evil Ed after watching Fright Night as a kid, you were PROBABLY one of those kids that was, you know...not overly worth playing with. I said what I said.

Oh, if only Vokes had illustrated the whole series. If only there was even MORE Ed. If only the best-written issues were more representative of the series as a whole. If only...if only we could hit reset, and do it perfectly...do it NOW.

Wait, what’s this? Oh...oh, holy shit. HOLY SHIT.

Sometimes, our foul prayers are answered, and this very November, publisher American Mythology is unleashing TOM HOLLAND’S FRIGHT NIGHT, a real-deal canon sequel to the original masterpiece...FINALLY!

Authorized and overseen by Holland himself, and written by American Mythology Pres’ James Kuhoric (who knocked it out of the park with Wildstorm’s FREDDY vs JASON vs ASH some years back), the 1986-set sequel sees the gang return for more vampiric monster slaughter, just as God intended, seems to promise more Ed (how could they not?), and is set to be illustrated by none other than NEIL MUTHAFUCKIN’ VOKES (along with one Cyrus Mesarcia, who appears more than up to the task). This Thanksgiving, the armies of the night are coming...and you will ABSOLUTELY find me on the dancefloor.

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 05: GUTWRENCHER (IMAGE/SHADOWLINE/IDW)

BY MIKE WASION

Slashers, by and large, are creatures of the cinema. And cinema breeds many things…trends, fads, new genres and subgenres…but beyond all else, cinema breeds fans. Fanboys, fangirls….nerds. Cinema breeds nerds, let's not mince words. Hey, I’M a nerd, and I’m damned proud of it. And as many of you already know, nerds do more than just watch movies; where there are nerds, there are comics.

And so it goes, the slasher has spread far beyond the confines of its cinematic birthing place, and into the realm of four-color slaughter. We’ve covered a few already here in the Casket, and there is plenty of fuel in the tank to keep that goin’ for a good, long while. All the heavy hitters have had comics of their own…Freddy, Jason, Michael (appearing in easily the best of the lot, I might add), Leatherface, even Chucky….but some real treats, as it so often happens with this genre, can be found in the off-brand entries in the slasher sweepstakes.

GUTWRECHER (great goddamn title!) was a three issue mini-series created by the usually awful Steve Niles (look, someone had to say it, don’t fucking lie to yourself) & Kieth Giffen, written by Shannon Eric Denton, and illustrated by Anthony Hightower, which quietly debuted in 2008 by Image/Shadowline to little fanfare or acclaim. Announced some years before it was ever completed or released, it seems to have been forgotten by the time a single issue had ever even come out. Which is a shame, because it’s a great little subversion/love letter to the classics of the slasher genre.  

Coming off as a modern reinvention of Slaughter High, our story focuses on a bitter young man (who goes nameless), who grows more bitter still over having not been invited to the high school reunion. Typically, this right here is enough to launch a vengeance-fueled murder spree, culminating in our pariah baring supernatural invulnerability and mowing down just about everyone who ever looked at him wrong. However, things are a little different here. Turns out, back in Ireland in 798 A.D., a murderous leper-priest, and worshiper of foul earth gods, is captured and taken to the village “truth tree”…endure the tree, you earn your trip to Valhalla. 

Unfortunately, enduring the tree involves being disemboweled and having your organs nailed to said tree to receive judgment. Well, our rotting priest does survive, calling down the wrath of his gods in front of the horrified Celtic warriors who mistakenly thought they’d just taken out the garbage. The priest grabs the sword (with which he was supposed to kill himself with, thereby earning his status as an innocent – remind me never to commit a crime in Ireland) and a pitched massacre ensues, ultimately ending with the bandage-wrapped fiend slaughtering the entire village, and hurling himself and his entrail-enwrapped chunk o’ truth tree into the ocean.

Funnily enough, our pissed off anti-hero, strolling in the woods to cool off after being snubbed for the high school reunion, finds the accursed log in a logger jam. In modern times. In America. Huh? Anyway, running his fingers along it’s nail-and-rune studded contours, he cuts his finger…proving to be very unfortunate indeed. Surging with rage and a centuries-in-the-making curse, he abruptly butchers his girlfriend (and just about any other living thing in his path, as these things go), raids a fish & game shop for weapons, and sets off for the reunion to settle some old scores. With that for a set-up, you can hardly go wrong.

Our protagonists are a typical lot, to be sure; a cast of Big Chill hangers-ons who reunite to relive past glories and rekindle past romances, they’re nowhere near as interesting as our crazed ”hero”, rapidly turning into modern mirror of his bandaged Celtic prototype, tossing out acidic wisecracks and shedding more plasma than your local blood bank, and turning the secluded (really damned secluded…as in, surrounded by miles of forest and dwelling in the shadow of a cliffside lighthouse secluded) reunion grounds into his personal killing fields. In yet another interesting twist, it’s ultimately revealed that the maniacal slasher was hated for a reason, having virtually assaulted a girl who shot him down for a date, and getting expelled in the process. Conversely, the brutal beating doled out by the “good guys” over the incident was needlessly savage in its own right, eliminating any clear-cut heroes or victims. Nuance...in a slasher potboiler. Like a drop of water in a desert, or a Steve Niles comic you remember after five minutes (okay, I’ll stop...for now).

Full of surprises, unexpected character twists, a killer set-up and enough gore to satisfy its target audience and then some, Gutwrencher, in the right hands, would make a damned fine movie in it’s own right. As it stands, it’s a damned fine, already unjustly obscure (though that’s strangely kind of appropriate) bit of illustrated slasher horror that’s currently rotting in the back issue bin of your local comic shop. And happily, the fine folks at IDW collected this unjustly neglected beast in 2011, complete with some groovy supplemental material, including bitchin’ pin-ups and the like.

Look, you’ve really got nothing to lose on this one; You can get this shit cheap, and you’re honestly kind of missing out if you don’t dip your toes in it.

So if Prom Night or Terror Train gets your temple throbbing, and if the very thought of Return To Horror High gives you a nostalgia boner for the days of mom n’ pop video stores, Friday nights, family-sized bags of Doritos and USA Up All Night, …AND if you’ve got yourself a short box of horror comics with a good three or four spaces left to fill...track down some Gutwrencher…

…You’ll be happy you did!

PRESS RELEASE - THIS WINTER, ROUGH HOUSE EATS THE WYRM!

On OCTOBER 30th 2020 at 8pm EST, Rough House Publishing will launch Pre-Orders for their debut creator-owned full length novel, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™, written by newest roughian keeper of the Veld, STEVE VAN SAMSON, and promises to be the first in a new line of novellas, anthologies and novels offered by the independent publishing outfit. 

“Rander Belmorn is far from home. He searches tirelessly for the one man who might be able to cure his dying son, but time is running out. The road has led to a frozen waste at the very edge of the world. But what Rander Belmorn never learned on that long, lonely road was the answer to the last question…The only question…How do you kill a witch?”

And with that slogan begins a bold new journey for ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING as they expand their catalog from comic books and graphic novels, into other forms of pulp media beginning with their debut full length novel, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™, a first for the company, being released in the DEAD of Winter 2021.  And with all Rough House infernal offerings, Artist/Publisher DEREK ROOK promises, “We have widened our bandwidth in formats and genres, but assure you we’re bringing every bit of our sensibilities with us into the veld. Steve crafted an amazing story. This is definitely a dark fantasy, …Rough House Style!”

EARLY BIRD GETS THE WYRM

As with all of ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING’s payload of “tangible awesome”, MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™ will be made available in a variety of formats to suit any budget and with more limited edition collectable extras than you could throw a moderately sizable battle axe at!

Here is the rundown of all you have to look forward to when the Pre-Sale goes live:

As per usual, the ULTIMATE and PREMIUM editions of MARK OF THE WITCHYRM will come with a bunch of signature EXTRAS that will make for a monster of a purchase for the die hard Roughians worldwide! Here is the breakdown of all you have to look forward to!

• STICKERS

  THE ROUGH HOUSE/WITCHWYRM STICKER - 4x5.5” Inches. This Rough House logo is going to need an electric heater to get through this frozen hell.

  THE OUROBOROS STICKER - 5” Inches in Diameter, featuring the “Mark” as it appears throughout the novel.

• DOUBLE-SIDED POSTER - Folded 11x17. Full Color. Side A features the incredible artwork of RENE AIGNER with additional artwork by author STEVE VAN SAMSON, designed in fine style into a 1950’s “movie” poster (shown).

The flip-side of this poster features a full color stylized “comic book” front cover illustrated by DEREK ROOK (not shown).

• ENAMEL PIN - 2” Inches in Diameter. Go Team Witchwyrm! This hardback embossed enamel pin will complete the look of any uniform made of burlap and/or blood-stained steel.

CAST ILLUSTRATION CARD - 4x5” cardstock B&W illustration of the entire principle cast of MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM penciled by author STEVE VAN SAMSON and inked by DEREK ROOK.

SLEEPING WITH THE WITCH

Author STEVE VAN SAMSON has spent the last year and change getting plenty dirty in the Rough House sandbox, but his writing street cred was well-travelled before taking the roughian plunge.  Not only did Steve contribute his scribing skills to last years, GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO in a story titled, “The No.Ware. Man” (click here to get yours), but he is featured in a brand new Vampire Noire anthology entitled, SLAY, featuring a direct tie-in story to his ongoing Predator World series, which will also see a Rough House edition beginning in 2021. To read more about Steve’s other notable works, (Click here).

Of WITCHWYRM, Van Samson said this of Rough House’s newest offering. “MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™ grew from an idea I’ve had in me for over twenty years. The goal was to have my own wandering, (Conan the Barbarian) type character that could have a series of adventures across a bleak, plague riddled world. I knew it would be a period piece, but wanted to go for more dark ages than high fantasy. Alchemists and plague doctors over wizards and elves. But from the beginning, I also knew that there had to be monsters.”

And monsters there are aplenty in this harrowing read as we find our lead character (Rander Belmorn) in a desperate race against time as his journey takes him (and us) deeper and deeper into a doom-ridden frozen hell where even the most benign of settings can kill you and everyone and everything is a potential threat.  In a world where every circumstance has conspired to make waste of his journey, the only thing Belmorn has to look forward to seemingly is death itself, …and that’s all before the discovery of the title character….and once you wear it’s mark, DEATH is a mercy.  Something wicked stalks the Veld. A creature which had earned its death many times over….and it cannot be killed.  

Regarding the constitution of his main protagonist, Van Samson shed some very dark and relatable light, “The challenge with my hero was to make Rander Belmorn come off as this mythic, heroic type character, but one who was far from invincible. Sure, he had to be big and mighty and wield some big axes, but he also had to be able to bleed. Superman types are all fine and good, but I always prefer the ones who screw up and have to really fight their way to the bitter end.”

EVERY JOURNEY IS A DAMNED CIRCLE

Regarding the approach he took to bring the world of the Witchwyrm to life, Van Samson explains, “As the concept grew, I liked the idea of using this world as a dark reflection of our own. Pulling certain things that would be familiar and twisting them. I wanted the reader to wonder if the story were taking place on Earth or perhaps the Earth of another tangent universe, but I also wanted to push the setting so far back that it didn’t matter. The main thing was to mix invented names and ideas with things that the reader would find familiar.”

With shows like “Game of Thrones” and to a lesser extent, “The Witcher” and “Vikings”, what was once targeted for a very intimate niche audience, is now in the forefront of the pop culture zeitgeist and the subjects of water cooler conversations for all walks of life across the globe.  With the advent of streaming services and a slew of new, cutting edge programming, viewers have an E-ticket to more (and more diverse) genres of storytelling from contemporary to otherworldly and has injected new life into tired genres that a decade ago wouldn’t have lasted a single season on network television.  And with consumers rediscovering their identity through physical media, the ground could not have been more fertile for Rough House to make its mark with this new story, in this format.

AS THE WYRM TURNS

“The idea from the start was to expand into producing creator-owned properties in and outside of just comic books”, says Rook of his vision for the Rough House product line(s), “but being such a small company, once the train leaves the station, you’re either on it or chasing after it. It wasn’t until Covid that we were forced to stop with the rest of the world. I knew immediately that once we shut down, that it would be for a long stretch, and it felt in very poor taste to try to continue promoting and selling new products when people were losing their jobs, livelihoods and people were dying.  So during that downtime we planned our next project, and this organically came out of that experience.” 

Much like the characters and their ultimate fates in MARK OF THE WITCHWYRM™, Rough House Publishing is compelling roughian fans to embark into uncharted territory, where no roughian has ventured before. …and at the end of it all, Rough House Publishing will be leading the charge when it exclaims, that every journey is a damned circle.

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 04: BODY COUNT (Aircel)

BY MIKE WASION

Welcome back, Casketeers! After a borderline comical string of life-shattering tragedies laid your crypt-keepin’ host low for a good couple’a months there, licking his wounds in a dank cave like Michael Myers in between Halloween 4 and 5. But, after an ersatz Four Loko transfusion performed by Derek Rook in a rusting Midwestern barn under the influence of peyote, I am off the bench and ready to give you the hot, stinky, wet goods.

Sooooo, where the fuck to begin on this one?

I suppose a little background is in order before we dive into the autopsy. Back in the 80s, at the height of the black and white indie comics boom, a handful of publishers had established themselves as the premier purveyors of the form. This included Dark Horse (making a splash with Aliens, now set to be published by the beast that is Disney-Marvel), Mirage (the immortal Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, natch’), Fantaco (Gore Shriek, you may have heard of it), Arrow (The Dead. you, uh, may have heard of it), and the startlingly eclectic Aircel Comics. Aircel prolifically put out comics from all conceivable genres, with a soft spot for weirdo, blood-soaked horror comics. They adapted H.G. Lewis. They had a comic called The Walking Dead 15 years before Image. And in late 1989, they unleashed the four-part slasher send-up Body Count!

Written by Barry Blair & illustrated by Dave Cooper, Body Count comes off as a freakish hybrid of Killer Party, Student Bodies, The Toxic Avenger, and any 50s monster-on-the-loose flick you faintly remember playing somewhere behind Elvira’s heaving, pendulous...wit.

Our protagonists, such as they are, are Professor “Prof” Chill, & his outlandish sexual caricature girlfriend Becky (who indeed has some heaving, pendulous witsa). To call these characters stereotypes would be both a massive understatement, and massively redundant. Every character in the story is a stereotype turned up to 11, and deliberately so. Prof Chill is so stiff, naïve, and verbose it’s a shock he’s not constantly screaming “God save the Queen!” through pipe-clenched teeth. His chiseled good looks and perfect blond hair call to mind someone who should always be clutching a tall glass of milk. Speaking of milk, Becky, on the other hand, looks like she’s constantly posing for a wet T-shirt contest. She alternates between screaming and giggling. I wanted to rip Prof’s face off with a cheese grater. Becky can stay!

The REAL hero of the book is the gawky college janitor, lovingly dubbed “Wanker” by the hateful student body (and faculty, for that matter). I’m sure you’ve connected the dots long before you arrived at this sentence, but for posterity’s sake, the inciting incident goes something like this: Prof Chill is working on a serum for shits & giggles, the point of which he’s not even sure (though he randomly assumes that it could turn nerds into jocks, because….well, why the hell not).

Some stoners break into Chill’s lab after hours looking to steal anything that might get them high, tip over a beaker of Chill’s super-slime, and ol’ Wank shows up to clean up the mess. And eats it! Yes; decides to taste some, right off the floor.

Within moments of declaring it tasty stuff, Wank swells into a hulking, screaming, seeping Hideshi Hino reject, and stumbles backward into a diving suit Chill just picked up for a romantic nautical getaway with good ol’ Beckers. What emerges is a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength, ready to do some Killer Party-ing with anything that crosses his path. And party he does.

His first order of business is to pop out of nowhere, ambushing the two stoners who got him into this mess (who are naturally startled by the sudden appearance of a diving-helmeted phantasm), shove his, mop – head first – into the mouth and out the back of the skull of one, and ram a lab microscope through the eyeball of another.

Wasting no time, he wanders to the school pool and fries some revelers by tossing a little live cable into the pool, then tracks down the cruel dean of the college (who gets to see what Wank looks like under his helmet….we don’t, but I have to assume he looks like a pissed off Madball) and force-feeds him a can of drain-o!

From here on out it’s a relentless, brainless bloodbath as Wank murders any and everything in countless gruesome ways, much to the chagrin of many innocent bystanders.

He crushes the head of a fisherman in a swamp with his hands (sending his eyeballs flying into the air), and at one point leaps out from behind a tree and knocks a motorcyclist’s head off with a fish(!), sending his female companion to splatter against a nearby tree. Eventually Wank comes across the redneck sheriff and rams himself face-first into his back (Jesus Christ!)! Slapping his helmet onto the sheriff’s carcass, Wank uses his body like a vile puppet, almost resembling a perverse version of two guys in a horse costume. With his new, powerful body, wank goes about simply tearing people’s heads clean off with extreme prejudice.

So what’s the point of the story, and where does it go?

Nothing & nowhere, friend.

It’s all about watching Wank slaughter innocents in increasingly bizarre, ghoulish and ridiculous ways (at one point he mounts an assault on a barber shop), as the good guys scramble about ineffectually trying to stop the beast, cracking an endless stream of mega-lame jokes along the way.

Eventually the super over-the-top military joins the fray and drop a nuke on Wank (hell, slashers don’t go down easy…why take a chance?), and we’re left wondering what radiation will do to the already wildly mutated body of our once gentle janitor. And Finito!

So, how does all this moist nonsense LOOK?

Dave Cooper has a very unique style, at times reminding me of a cross between the work of Marc Hansen (Ralph Snart Adventures, another B&W indie classic from the 80s) and the packaging art from the old Mad Scientist toys Mattel put out around the time. Unlike a lot of said indie classics, Cooper’s work would have looked a lot better in vivid color. With some hues it would have resembled something like a segment of Heavy Metal, and it would have benefited the book greatly. All the same, I gotta say I like Dave’s style, though I’m sure it’s not for everyone.

Every damned bit as stupid as the dreck it’s aping – and every bit as fun – Body Count is a lost mini-classic that fans of this site would be a perfect audience for. They’re gonna get it the most, and definitely have the most fun with it. Just put on your bootlegs of Commander USA’s Groovy Movies in the background, grab a 40-count bag of pizza rolls, and enjoy!

PRESS RELEASE - SHRIEK AND SHRIEK AGAIN!

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO SPLASH IN THE SPLATTER!!!! 

 Rough House Publishing announces the long-awaited comic book SEQUEL, GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO! THERE’S A WARNING RIGHT ON THE FRONT COVER KIDS! THIS ONE DELIVERS!

The first ever promotional poster for GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS; 2015. Artwork by PUTRID MATT CARR!

 On MAY 24th, 2019. Independent comic book juggernaut, ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING opened up their online pre-orders for the sequel to their FantaCo Enterprises licensed GORE SHRIEK® property, appropriately titled, GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO, and this time they firmly promise that all “heads will roll” with this epic second installment in their “Resurrectus” line of the of the horror anthology series!

As usual, this new GORE SHRIEK® series is NOT a reprinting of the past, but a BRAND NEW ongoing comic book reading experience, with veteran GORE SHRIEK® artists paired up with new blood to compose a splatterpunk comic book that will hearken back to what’s been deemed the “Fangoria Age” and the glorious B&W indie comics BOOM of the 1980’s.

 “We left no sharp object unburrowed for this new issue”, claims Rough House head artist/founder, DEREK ROOK of this latest effort.  After re-releasing their inaugural issue earlier this year as an ONGOING series, ROOK made a point to ensure their rabid gore hound audiences that a sequel wasn’t just inevitable, but that it was actively in development after what appeared to be a long and indefinite hiatus.

 “We never stopped, but we did have to pump the breaks in order to deal with some personal business and life changes. Once we were ready to rock and roll again, we decided to organize a soft re-launch of the company, beginning with RESURRECTUS ONE as an ongoing series. In retrospect, we were so much stronger for having done so.”

 And if this sophomore issue is any indication of a Rough House with a more fortified brick-shithouse foundation, then new and seasoned GORE SHRIEK® “Roughians” (Rough House appropriation for “fans”) are going to let go of all their guts in gory matrimony over this new installment!

To this bold statement, ROOK promises, “We’ve recruited the most widely talented super freaks from all four points of the globe to ensure the true long-term GORE SHRIEK® aficionados get their devils due!  You’ll be a LOT of things after reading this issue.  Disappointed will NOT be one of them!”  And to ensure that all promises hold true, said “super freaks” included Rough House’s mainstay scribe, MIKE “Corpse Monger” WASION along with newest Rough House brethren, STEVE VAN SAMSON (see article HERE) and the runaway talents of TOM SKULAN, MARK BLOODWORTH, WILLIAM SKAAR, J. PAOLO YU-ASENSI, DAVID JAMES RAVENNA, PUTRID MATT CARR, KARL DAHMER, ALEXANDROS PYROMALLIS, with JEFF ZORNOW, ALEX HOEY and DEREK ROOK!

 CONJURING UP THE BIG G!

 GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO is MORE of everything you loved about the first issue, only with more diversity, more audacity and more WTF moments than you can shake a gnarled Clavicle at.  With the first issue ushering original GORE SHRIEK® artist, BRUCE SPAULDING FULLER back off the bench after almost 30 years, then for this newest issue, the RH crew had to travel out a bit further in the ether to bring home another classic GORE SHRIEK® superstar, …the one, the only, … THE GURCH!

 To the uninitiated, the name, “GURCH”, sounds like a character in the very horror comic that we are trying to sell, but in reality, he is an astute and extremely talented gent from across the pond.  For those who are in the know, his unique and kinetic style of artwork was most widely associated with the classic Gore Shriek® Vol. 2 which ran from 1990-1991, and included an “All Gurch” issue #2 ½.  That may have been where his initial run had ended, but THE GURCH’s artwork was popping up as early in the series as Gore Shriek® Vol. 1, in the rare and coveted digest/ashcan #6 ½.

 And now he’s BACK!

 THE GURCH received the first GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS issue in the mail and was immediately taken with the accuracy and attention to returning the series to its bloody roots, and as such, jumped all in for this newest installment.  THE GURCH provided two brand new stories, a full color-centerfold poster, pin-up artwork and extras.  He’s not fooling around, kids, GURCH came back to kick some good ol’ fashioned, steel toed ass and assures fans that he is 100% all in for this Rough House ride!  We have so much more planned for him as this series unfolds, but you’ll just have to wait and see what we have in store for future issues!

So what can Gore-Heads expect from this latest parlay into the blood fields of gore and swill?

 For one thing, the book is clocking in at an epic 52 pages (parred up from the originals 48) which includes of course, more stories and also more commentary.  As the classic GORE SHRIEK® series progressed, largely after legendary comic book artist STEPHEN R. BISSETTE  took over as Managing Editor, the book became increasingly more of a “magazine” complete with articles, artwork and stories mixed together almost in a fanzine style format. This new issue tests those waters a little as well.

In addition, GORE SHRIEK®RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO features not one, but TWO incredibly disturbing GURCH covers for the die hard’s to sink their chompers into!

COVER A (dubbed “Bird Brain”) was drawn up specifically for this Resurrectus Volume, while COVER B (dubbed “Cheeky”) was originally drawn years ago for an issue of GORE SHRIEK® that never materialized, once again “resurerected” specifically for this series.

Regarding the feel and tone of the new installment, ROOK shed some dark light over the proceedings. “We want the book to feel “lived-in”, like pulling on an old pair of Doc Martins.  We don’t just want a bunch of random horror stories smashed together in some garden variety horror anthology. This is GORE SHRIEK®, and once you’ve experienced the roller coaster ride of pure hardcore horror, strange humor, bizarre occurrences and deadly consequences, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and ….well, you’ll fucking SHRIEK!”

Each artist is hand-picked based on not only their personal style but knowledge of title, and series creator, TOM SKULAN approves all of the scripts to ensure that we’re giving our audiences something that is unabashedly, and uniquely, GORE SHRIEK®!

SNAPPING OPEN THE SPINE

Here’s a breakdown of the stories featured in this issue!

100 STORIES TO READ BEFORE YOU DIE - Just because you have irrational fears doesn’t mean they can’t kill you, or can’t they?  A swift reintroduction to the madness of Gore Shriek favorite, THE GURCH!

IMAGO DEI - How many times does the universe have to tell you, when travel abroad, DON’T–TOUCH-ANYTHING!  Make sure your passport is in good shape, because you definitely WON’T be!  As told by Gore Shriek® newcomer, ALEXANDROS PYROMALLIS!

NO.WARE.MAN - Did you ever wake up from a nightmare and quickly try to write it down before you forgot?  Really?  So did TOM SKULAN, and the result is the FIRST EVER Gore Shriek® story based on a treatment from the series creator himself.  Polishing off this tale of easily-sold settlers is Gore Shriek’s newest scribe, STEVE VAN SAMSON with artwork provided by MARK BLOODWORTH and DEREK ROOK!

DEJA WHO? - You didn’t think THE GURCH was done with you yet, did you?  He’s far from done with rattling your cage as written and rendered in this Twilight Zone-style tale of mistaken identity, or identity mistaken!

ROTTEN APPLE - New York City traffic can be the death of you.  Throw in a heat wave and a flat tire on top of it, and you’d certainly be eating your crap sandwich with a rotten apple.  What else could go wrong?  Well that’s just the first panel.  A little tale of bad luck brought to you by writer/artist, DEREK ROOK and artist DAVID JAMES RAVENNA!!

 LIL DARLING - Predators are everywhere.  And we mean, EVERYWHERE!  But even for Apex Scumbags in wait, there is a home where they can be properly pampered, cared for and loved.  Written sand Drawn by DEREK ROOK!

GORE BEAST - This little embellishment about how bullies are dealt with will have you saying, “Well, that escalated quickly!” as told by writer, MIKE WASION and artist, J. PAOLO YU-ASENSI!

TRASH COLLECTING - Remember what happened to the boy who got everything he ever wanted …NO! He didn’t live happily ever after!  This is a Gore Shriek® yarn!  What we can tell you is this is by far the DIRTIEST story we’ve ever run!  You might need a shower after reading this one!  Written by MIKE WASION and drawn by KARL DAHMER!

PIZZA BY THE SLICE - You may have seen every over the top road trip movie in existence, but we guarantee you’ve never seen a rubber and asphalt, bare-knuckle, acid trip, horror ho-down like THIS in your whole putrid existence!  Writer MIKE WASION and artist, WILLIAM SCAAR closes you out of this episode with a little Alabama heat, pigsploitation, boobs and braces galore!  Grab a slice of the works, buckle your safety belts and enjoy the shit show!

 AN APPROPRIATE SERVING OF EXTRA SPLATTER, …PUNK!

The comic book market is dying (don’t worry, kids.  This story has a happy ending!)

 However, the nostalgia and collectible market are continuing to thrive and as such we continue to offer you a phrase we coined, “TANGIBLE AWESOME”! What does that mean to you?  Welp, for one thing, you’re not going to ever read this book on a tablet or any other digital format.  We want to give the roughians a real comic book reading and collecting experience that you’ll enjoy as much 30 years from now as you do today.  With the last issue of GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS, our readers received special lobby cards specific to the three covers they chose from along with commemorative stickers and shameful self-demoters (Rough House stickers to boot).

 This time we exhumed a new SLEW of extras that have been divided between the two GURCH front covers that we are offering with GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO (please see included extras HERE).  Because they’re so lofty this time around, we’re gonna’ give you a play by play of everything we’re offering up this go-around for your viewing and purchasing displeasure!

TWO STICKERS

With every purchase of GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO (COVERS A or B), readers will receive a Rough House Publishing sticker and a GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS promotional sticker with at by THE GURCH!

 FULL COLOR DOUBLE-SIDED CENTERFOLD POSTER

With every purchase of GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO (COVERS A or B), readers will receive  a Double-Sided Centerfold poster, suitable for display and/or framing.  One side features art from DEREK ROOK from the story “ROTTEN APPLE” and the other side provided by THE GURCH!

 THE MANIAC BANSHEES DEBUT 11 SONG CD

Brother Marlon and Dante Motta served as Associate Producers for the original crowd-funded version of Gore Shriek® Resurrectus Volume One back in 2016.  Together they are the horror metal outfit, MANIAC BANSHEES, and their music was heavily inspired by the horrors provided by GORE SHRIEK®!  As a super special limited edition extra, we are including this Full-Length debut Compact Disc with every purchase of GURCH COVER A!  CD artwork by DEREK ROOK!  Limited to 250 copies!

THE GURCH POSTCARD

THE GURCH wants to keep in touch with you!  So he’s gone ahead and drawn up this handy double –sided “faux advert” Post Card so you can pen pal your new goul friends from coast to bloody coast!  This will be included with every purchase of GURCH COVER A! Limited to 250 copies!

 THE VOMIT BUSTER™ GORE SHRIEK® BARF BAG

This medial grade barf bag is made to withstand your weak ass stomach and the vomit inducing stories we have offered up to our readership!  Love us or hate us, this “VOMIT BUSTER™” will serve both purposes! Available with GURCH COVER B!  Limited to 750 copies!

 THE 12-PAGE GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS TWO ½ ASHCAN

This digest sized ashcan contains two added GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS stories specifically for this volume!  Not for sale or available in any other format.  Artwork and stories provided by JEFF ZORNOW and ALEX HOEY!  Available with GURCH COVER B!  Limited to 750 copies!

 THE INDECIA

GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME TWO is available for pre-sale NOW with shipping expected to begin mid-July!  GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME ONE is available immediately, in limited volume while supplies last! ORDER YOURS HERE!

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 03: TOOL (Northstar)

BY MIKE WASION

One tends to think of the 1980s as a particularly special time for “mature readers” horror comics, with madness like Faust, Deadworld, Twisted Tales, and of course Gore Shriek running absolutely wild across the tall racks of local comic shops (and finding their way into countless trash cans courtesy of puffy-shouldered moms). R-rated splatter had finally come into its own, and broken free of any real form of industry-enforced censorship, and it was a goddamn party.

So much so, that it can be easy to forget that some of the goriest, most perverse comics ever actually came out in the 1990s, a decade known for its overall vanilla wafer blandness. But it wasn’t all a PC buzzkill; for every Hansen there must be a Manson, and so it was in the world of comics.

Enter the infamous Northstar, publisher of the aforementioned Faust, and the notorious (and pretty damned good) adaptation of Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. Along with Hart Fisher’s Boneyard Press (publisher of unrivaled controversy magnet Jeffery [sic] Dahmer: An unauthorized biography of a serial killer), and the ever dependable Fantaco, Northstar was the premier publisher of naughty-ass horror comics. Chief among the in-house line was Splatter, a splatterpunk anthology with a little bit of a nastier edge than many, leaning in to themes of urban violence and nightly-news-born horrors over rubber monsters and slasher slaughter. Well...for the most part.

After Tim Vigil (and more about him in a bit) took his creation Faust to his own company Rebel Studios, Northstar thrashed about trying to groom their own, company owned horror stars to rival their former superstar tenant. It, um...didn’t go super well. Arguably the most pushed of these characters was Klownshock, a character basically based on Tommy Pons’ mascot for forgotten metal act Dangerous Toys (sorry, guys). A cool looking character for sure, Klowny was basically just Evil Ernie with greasepaint, and while fun, was justifiably relegated to the dustbin of history. Then we have Miseroth, who resembles a Satanic Derek Rook (hey, don’t kill the fakkin’ messenger; that’s more presentable than me, who just comes off as a real life Trevor Philips), and he’s a...punishing demon or something, I don’t know, I don’t really know what the hell is going on with Miseroth. But easily the most interesting, and by a substantial margin...was Adam McDaniel’s Tool.

With Klownshock, you have a killer clown. Fair enough. With Miseroth, you have a demon who very likely listens to Type O Negative. Fine. But Tool...Tool was something else entirely. Debuting as the final, self-titled short in 1994’s Splatter Annual, Tool comes across as a Monkey’s Paw Pinhead, with a teeny bit of Predator just for style...a creature from beyond our reality, from a place not unlike our interpretation of Hell, an unfathomable avatar of human agony (shades of Joe Landsdale’s God of the Razor), who nevertheless can enter our plane and act on our behalf - so long as something bleeds, and suffers, and what we consider “good” is defiled in the end. Think Wishmaster if Wishmaster didn’t suck and was exec’ produced by Clive Barker, and designed by Bernie Wrightson. No, seriously, this is some crazy shit, and it’s a damned shame it didn’t catch on.

So, our debut tale begins on a chilly note, with narration from a freshly murdered boy about what led him to his current state, and as it so happens, it was unpleasant. After watching his stepfather smash his mother’s brains in with a claw hammer during an all-too-familiar argument, he soon winds up curled up in his jammies, with blood from his tiny skull soaking into the floorboards.

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But that uplifting intro is only the beginning. Soon, rising from the carnage, arrives Tool (the unfathomable cosmic monster, not the industrious prog band), and he is displeased with our hammer-wielding bad dad...but not because he slaughtered an innocent, not quite. Tool feels robbed of the pleasure of administering a lifetime of suffering to the boy himself, so now naughty daddy has to pay the toll, the Frank Cotton way. And oh, does he ever. Imagine Warlock from The New Mutants erupt out of your body like a chestburster, …and you get the idea...sorta.

Whatever the case, our hapless narrator is mercifully spared Tool’s razored clutches. He’s moved on to a peaceful little plot of land, right next to his mother, six feet down where murderous stepparents and cybernetic hellbeasts can no longer harm them. Don’t cha love happy endings?!

The following year saw the eponymous fiend get his own one shot, reprinting the original tale and following it up with new installments, that take things in some...interesting directions. Read on!

Meat follows the unlucky tale of a young couple whose car breaks down near the shack of a human-skin-wearing axe murderer (living in Wisconsin, this is as common as being drunk by noon). Set up by the maniac, hubby is chopped into cold cuts, and his lady love flees the scene (and right into the killer’s body-strewn lair, in typical slasher fashion). At this point, our old pal Tool once again rises from the gore puddle, and grants our victim the “gift” of revenge from beyond the grave...reconfiguring the heap of body parts into a twisted hulk that sets out for a little eye-for-an-eye justice. Unfortunately, he Kool-Aid-Mans his way into the dilapidated cabin, just in time to find the axe man burying the hatchet in his beloved’s brain. He leaves the killer in pieces, of course, but with nothing left to live for, he shambles into the nearby forest, forever cursed, like a Swamp Thing made of overripe deli selections. Just then, the axe man’s severed head wakes up, promising god-knows-what. Will these two undead abominations have a rematch? Are there just two murderous beasts forever loose in these woods now? Who knows? Whatever the case, I’m sure Tool’s just happy to have made an even bigger mess of things.

Our trilogy of terrors concludes with The Milk of Human Suffering, and boy oh boy, brothers and sisters, this is the reason you’ve shown up. Look, I’m gonna cut straight to the point - a guy is executed for fucking his favorite cow. There’s now no way to dress this up; this guy’s been slippin’ the long pig to his favorite side o’ beef, and the townsfolk are none too happy about it, so it’s lynching ahoy. Popping in to check out this little incident, Tool is bemused to grant the dying cow-fucker’s final, deranged wish. And what might that be? Why, to forever merge with the object of his adoration, resulting in a Cronenbergian mass of twisted flesh, part man, part cow, all horror. Once again, our story ends as the udder-loving freak’s warpath begins, leaving us to wonder just what the fuck could possibly come next. Well, we do get a taste...what would be the following scene is the cover to the goddamn book. Tool himself doesn’t even warrant a cover appearance on his own one shot, but Brundlecow? You bet your ass! I’ve spent the fewest words discussing this tale, because McDaniel spends the most, with Milk being the longest in the tome. Clearly, he was invested!

And that brings me to my final thoughts on the whole fetid affair...I still don’t really know anything about Adam McDaniel. Aside from a handful of other gigs around Northstar throughout the 90s, there simply doesn’t to be much of a footprint. Did he get headhunted by Marvel? Did he get headhunted for real? His laser-sharp art style might remind one of, say, a cross between Kyle Hotz and Tim Tyler, so he’s sure to have a lot of books under his belt and a cult following, right? Right?! This is where I start to grow worried. You see, McDaniel belongs to that gang of artists like Jim Somerville, Matt Roach, Jerry Beck, and the aforementioned Tim Vigil, guys with an insanely sharp black and white style, a clear love of Wrightson, and a realistic-yet-expressive style, that burst onto the indie scene in the 80s and 90s and made a huge scar on the horror scene. But that’s why the beads of sweat begin to form on my temples, my heart murmurs, and I feel that cold clench in my quivering rosebud. Matt Roach became a Bible-thumping loon, and dropped out of sight altogether. From what I hear, Somerville became an outright minister, and turned his back on comics entirely. Jerry Beck became a rabid anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, and vanished from the public eye. Tim Vigil became one of the titans of the indie scene, and is still very much around...but he’s a xenophobic, anti-mask, alt-right asshole (aw, a sacred cow! Yeah, they’re fucking delicious medium rare). I truly hope that, whatever his fate, Adam McDaniel hasn’t joined the rest of his ilk, screaming about a recount somewhere, whilst carving passages from Ephesians into his chest. Maybe he’s just doing more square work these days, like graphic design, or portraits. Or maybe I’m just a dipshit, and didn’t realize he’s had a gig at DC or like 30 years.

Maybe...just maybe...he’s a part of Tool.

GET IN THE VAN, …SAMSON!

STEVE VAN SAMPSON - ROUGH HOUSE’S NEWEST DEVIANT!

As the “scrappy take-no-prisoners publishing brand” (snicker) rolls into a new release this Spring and a Summer/Fall tour to follow, ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING is planning to kick the teeth out of the convention circuit and initiate some new roughian brethren along the way!!

2019 marked a slew of new beginnings, starting with a re-brand of our company so soft, that most roughians didn’t even feel it on their leathered, battle-worn skins. While we were at it, we relaunched our GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS line as an ongoing series to amazing success and have been working on several new projects concurrently that we are fighting against the chain to share with the “Rough and the Curious”! With several new acquisitions and releases pending, we did manage to stop the van long enough to hit a truck stop bathroom, a seedy 3rd rate drive-thru, paid a Worcester hooker to get bent, …and brought on a new permanent member of the ROUGH HOUSE ARMY!

Join us in welcoming Rough House’s newest recruit, STEVE VAN SAMSON!

Steve met Derek Rook and Co. at last years, SCARE-A-CON New England Convention as their booths (The New England Horror Writers and Rough House Publishing, respectively) were forced to stare each other down as the likes of Tom Savini, Jason Lively and Dee Snider perused back and forth between the two. Steve, being the friendlier of the two, took a break from selling himself and his team of writers long enough to drop by and introduce himself.

Man, did he pick the WRONG TABLE!!!!!!

Little did Van Samson know that Rook was searching for a new member of the Rough House team on the sly, ….a Swiss Army Knife of a roughian, who when told we were going out to pummel some major ass under heavy return fire without the benefit of a safety net, would reply simply by asking, “Who’s car we takin’?!”

Rough House Publishing’s Owner/Artist, Derek Rook had this to say regarding his eventual decision to bring on a new team member to the coveted Rough House role, that over time he’d become extremely protective of. Said Rook of what led to his talent search:

“Rough House Publishing, LLC was originally a label I created to “shelter” my creator-owned material back when I returned from comic book retirement back in 2010. My original plan was to keep it small, manageable and largely just mine, but as luck would have it - no good deed went unpunished.” Rook said half-jokingly about the extreme highs and lows of the Comic Book and/or Entertainment industry.

With time, the idea naturally evolved with the inclusion of partners Mike “Corpse Monger” Wasion and Rook’s then girlfriend, Sarah Michelle. “There was a point when the amount of work exceeded the talent we had available and I found myself being pulled away from the drawing table more often than I was comfortable with. I was succeeding at being everything except a full time artist, which was my whole reason for existing in this industry. Something had to change.”

Over the months that followed the con, Van Samson and Rook took a few meetings and before long, groundwork was being forged for Steve to join the Rough House crew.

Steve’s one of us, people, but don’t take it from us! Here’s Steve Van Samson himself on Van Samson, giving you a little free Intel on all things Van Samson:

“Steve Van Samson is a graphic designer, artist and author of the vampires in Africa books "The Bone Eater King" and "Marrow Dust". His writing tends to be on the pulpy side--intermingling genres like horror with dark fantasy and adventure. He believes that character is king and there should always be little seeds planted between the lines, that the reader will only discover in subsequent readings. 

THE PREDATOR WORLD SERIES (BY STEVE VAN SAMPSON)

THE FINAL SUMMONS (2019)

In 2019, Steve's short story "The Terror of London" appeared in "The Final Summons" by the New England Speculative Writers. In addition the forthcoming anthology "Wicked Weird" by the New England Horror Writers, will feature another of his short stories, "A Feast of Flies". His long running column Monochrome Manor (new reviews of really old movies) appeared monthly on the now defunct movie review site Cinema Knife Fight which was run by acclaimed horror author, L. L. Soars. 

Steve is also the singer of the classic heavy metal band "Enchanted Exile" (who released their second album "Bloodwork Scriptorium" in 2018) and is a founding member of the nostalgia podcast "Retro Ridoctopus". He lives in Lancaster, Massachusetts with three amazing girls and one smallish dragon.”

Steve will be immediately contributing his design and layout skills to existing and future projects, some of which you will see right here on this website. He’ll also be a large part of out sales and promotional campaigns in print and social media going forward, with some major writing projects being announced later this year. No official title has been given to his particular skill sets at this time but it’s certain that he and the rest of the Rough House clan will be hard at work, making sure you have plenty of “tangible awesome” to sink your teeth into within the next year.

“Now has NEVER been a better time to take a trip with us down the Rough House Road”, Rook threatens to the roughian public at large. “If you dug what we were up to out of the gate, you’re going to go crazy for what comes next!”

So pack your Tijuana Bibles, down a handful of Xanax (only as prescribed by an actor posing as your preferred medical professional) get your 90’s combat boots on and…

GET IN THE VAN!

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 02: R.I.P. (TSR)

BY MIKE WASION

The figure that immediately draws your interest is the man in the business suit, staring with his one good eye back at you, his head emptied by the power drill still firmly lodged in what’s left of his brain. The fact that he’s holding a bandaged, grasping human torso like a brother-at-arms on a battlefield only intensifies the pull the hellish figure has on your helpless eyes. But try as those eyes might to hold on that striking, nightmare image, something else pulls at them, small and unassuming down in the corner. A little, blonde-haired boy of no older than five or six, head-to-toe in blue jammies. In one hand is a dead cat, held by the scruff of its neck. Tongue protruding, both sets of paws are bound with tape. In the boy’s other hand, is a baseball bat.

That there are other ghoulish figures populating the scene hardly seems to matter at this point. We’re in Hell. And it’s only the cover…

Welcome to R.I.P. (TSR, 1990), a ‘comics module’ from the fine folks who brought you the witch-hunt-inducing Dungeons & Dragons role playing game.

How this wholesome publication never instigated bonfires and overheated sermons is a mystery…I guess elves and orcs are more dangerous to the impressionable minds of our nation’s youth than pet-torturing toddlers and serial-killer-induced violence. Penned by Marv Wolfman (scribe of Marvel’s classic Tomb of Dracula), the curtain rises as our protagonist wakes up to find himself looking like he woke up on the wrong side of the butcher shop.

“It’s been about six minutes since the axe cleaved through the base of his neck and into his spinal column. The second chop sliced through the jaw, past the brain and out the other end. There wasn’t much pain. Death was instantaneous…problem was, … it wasn’t eternal.”

I’ve had a few hangovers like that.

 Yes, our protagonist starts the show dead…and it only gets worse from there. His first order of business is to stand up trying to get his bearings, only to spill his entrails to the floor. You know your day’s going to be bad when that’s your wakeup call.

From there, it’s an E - ticket tour through Purgatory and an unending parade of lost souls in various states of dismemberment and decay as our hollowed-hero tries to make sense of his ‘situation’, and discover who killed him…so he can exact a horrific revenge, and move on to his final rest. And, as these things tend to go, his search leads him to a cabal of murderous vampires in the process taking over the country from the inside out. 

But are they actually involved with the events surrounding his savage homicide?

 This comprises the first four-part After Death storyline, which plays like a cross between Fright Night Part II and the cadaverous hi-jinks of An American Werewolf in London, only from the perspective of the corpse.

After the initial storyline wrapped, it was followed by the multi-part Brasher storyline, a similarly-themed but less tongue-in-cheek tale of a young man murdered by a roving serial killer (prone to running large spikes into his victims’ heads) who seeks to put an end to the slaughter from beyond the grave. 

At one point, the spectral Brasher finally tracks down the isolated home of the murderer, seeping beneath the floorboards to discover a heap of rotting victims’ bodies beneath the cabin. This stark image left an indelible mark on your humble reporter in his youth, blood-chilling and fascinating all at once (one of the earliest glimpses at the true horrors of the world around us I can recall, and one that never left me).

 Mixed in with all this carnage were serialized backup stories like Junkyard Dog ( a great little nihilistic siege piece about a family trapped by a raging mutant canine threat that marked its territory with a stream of pure, caustic toxic waste), and built-in horror RPG scenarios to further the gaming tie-in (as was a common feature of all of TSR’s comics). This was a truly unique feature, and a killer addition to an already very worthwhile package.

 Bleak, morbid, gore-soaked and immersive, TSR’’s R.I.P. is a hidden gem worth rolling the dice on.

PRESS RELEASE - A RESURRECTION IN GORE!

ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING announces GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS, THE ONGOING SERIES which promises a return to the “Fangoria Age” of America’s most infamous horror comic book property!

Originally released in 2016 as a 30th Anniversary issue of the title, Gore Shriek® Resurrectus Volume One was specifically printed, packaged and released to the ravenous Gore Shriek® fans who participated in a crowdfunded campaign to resurrect the title after almost 25 years of dormancy.  For the chosen few, it was a welcome return to form, but many others were left Shrieking for more due to an extremely limited print run (less than 300 copies) which now are considered highly collectible.

DRAWING FROM THE PAST

GORE SHRIEK Vol. 1 #4 52PP RELEASED 1988.

For the uninitiated, GORE SHRIEK® was originally published back in 1986 and with its trademarked cautionary banner, “WARNING: Contains disturbing material and is not intended for children!”, knocked the independent comic book circuit on its severed head with a contemporary, splatterpunk horror anthology that kept teens bloodthirsty for more and sent parents reeling in collective disgust. GORE SHRIEK® was also responsible for breaking artists like BRUCE SPAULDING FULLER (Hollywood FX Artist) and GREG CAPULLO (Batman) with heavy contributions from legendary artists, STEPHEN R. BISSETTE (Swamp Thing) and the late, great CHAS BALUN (Deep Red) before ending its run in 1991.

Now in 2019, all incantations will be answered when ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING releases the officially licensed, GORE SHREIK® RESURRECTUS ongoing series, beginning with a newly minted VOLUME ONE complete with brand new extras to boot!  Each issue will be limited to 1000 copies and are expected to be devoured as fast as they are printed.  And once gone, they are gone! The Resurrectus series is all about the future of the series, while honoring it’s past and the creators who made it all possible. While the old issues that fans remember are still out there to be sought after, Rough House Publishing is more interested in adding to Gore Shriek’s incredible legacy!

“Once again, the fans have spoken!” states comic book artist and Rough House CEO, DEREK ROOK, who reassures that, “No one’s going to bed hungry with all the Gore Shriek® goodness we have in store!  Between what we and Tom have cooking, it will be a Gore Shriek® smorgasbord of gory-gluttony for everyone! The fans are in for a real treat.”

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: GORE SHRIEK CHRONICLES (2017); GORE SHRIEK DELECTUS II (2019)

 And by “Tom”, Rook is referring to FantaCo Enterprises and series Creator, TOM SKULAN, who in addition to licensing the main Gore Shriek® series to Rough House, is producing his own Gore Shriek® Special Editions, beginning with last year’s GORE SHRIEK® CHRONICLES and following up with GORE SHRIEK®DELECTUS 2 in 2019.  Both can be purchased at the official FanaCo Enterprises website, WWW.FANTACO.NET.

 A SHRIEK INTO THE FUTURE

And keeping with the “Resurrection” theme of GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS, VOLUME TWO and THREE are also slated for a 2019 release and will feature the “back from the grave and ready to party” return of fan favorite Gore Shriek® artist, …THE GURCH!!!!! Gurch is 100% on board for Volume Two and far beyond!

GORE SHRIEK®RESURRECTUS VOLUME ONE is the premiere issue of the ongoing series and available in three separate, highly collectible front covers by original Gore Shriek® artist, BRUCE SPAULDING FULLER, PUTRID MATT CARR (Deep Red) and DEREK ROOK (Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell).  Volume One is a 48-page premium “Silver Age” cover-to-cover splatterfest, featuring additional artwork from ERIC ROT(Deep Red), MARK BLOODWORTH (Deadworld), JEFF ZORNOW (Godzilla), MICHAEL BROOM (Lucio Fulci’s Zombie) and AUSTEN MENGLER (Black As Your Soul – NIN) with MIKE “CORPSE MONGER” WASION (The Dead Omnibus) and STEF HUTCHINSON (Halloween - Nightdance) writing their way directly into your worst (or best) nightmares!

GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME ONE will also be shipped with these awesome extras:

• A Full Color, Double Sided 10” x 13.5” Centerfold Poster.

• A Collectible Lobby Card (Three Different Designs; One per cover design).

• A  Double-Sided, Signed and Numbered Slipcard.

• 2 Commemorative Stickers.

2019 will be a GORE SHRIEK fans, bloody wet dream that you don’t want to miss!

What makes GORE SHRIEK different from the lot of horror anthologies that have paved the way before lies within its own unapologetic commitment to be what it is. It doesn’t rely on the old mcGuffin that the malevolent of this world will be punished, even if by forces much darker than themselves. It doesn’t wink at it’s audience to remind them that it’s only a comic book. GORE SHRIEK doesn’t play by the rules, and as a result, no one is safe. One minute it can have you laughing, the next it could be ripping your heart out so you can see it better. GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS is the real deal and the one promise it guarantees is that you WILL always SHRIEK and SHRIEK again!! 

PRE-ORDERS for GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME ONE begin

FRIDAY JANUARY 11th 2019. 7PM EST. 

EXCLUSIVELY AT: WWW.ROUGHHOUSEPUBLISHING.COM

ROUGHTRAX EPISODE 01: TALES OF THE DEAD (Visual Anarchy)

BY MIKE WASION

The living dead are everywhere these days…in our cineplexes, on our TVs, in our Xboxes, on the Miami beltway…and definitely in our comic bins.

But it wasn’t always that way.

In 1994, it was a far different world. It had been a few years since Romero had made a living dead picture, and it was a couple of years yet before Resident Evil hit the scene and changed the game. Zombies were not in the public eye, and they sure as hell weren’t in comic shops.

So it was quite the surprise when VISUAL ANARCHY Presents TALES OF THE DEAD emerged from out of the blue.

Written by Cry for Dawn co-creator Joe Monks, Tales of the Dead was intended to be an eight-issue mini-series that chronicled the fall of mankind to hordes of the hungry, hateful dead. While other comics of it’s kind had focused on a single (if fluctuating) group of characters on a single, long and horrifying journey. But Tales of the Dead took a different approach, that was and still is unique.

Told in three ongoing scenarios, it allowed the apocalyptic events to unfold from three separate viewpoints at once, with each one exploring different aspects of the dawning nightmare, and each one maintaining it‘s own distinct look and feel.

 In THE PARTY CRASHER (illustrated by Batman‘s Ed McGuinness), a pack of bikers camped out in the deep woods are barged-in upon one night by a mangled stranger. After biting up some of the members, the crazed individual is brutally put down, earning a roll through the campfire and a bullet through the brain for his actions. Only he was dead when he showed up…and he has no intention of staying down. Things go from bad to worse, as the area’s history as a dumping ground for a murderous local farmer comes back to haunt the present.

BIZARRE FUNERAL MARCH (illustrated by Tom O’Connor) opens in the wake of  a tragic bus crash that left forty-four citizens of a small community dead. In the wee hours of the morning before the town’s mass funeral, those forty-four dearly departed neighbors - along with their friends in the graveyard - return to their loved ones…with less than loving results.

As EARTHLY RUMBLINGS (illustrated by Chuck Regan) begins, a young couple with psychic abilities awaken to the feeling that something has gone terribly wrong. The feeling seems to emanate from a sprawling cemetery, out in the county…where the two arrive in time to feel the gate between life and death being violently pushed open.

The various serials come together to form a tapestry, of the Armageddon that’s being presented…with different elements and clues scattered throughout.

THE PARTY CRASHER hints at the horrifying notion that these zombies won’t necessarily go down with a headshot. BIZARRE FUNERAL MARCH paints a portrait of the dead full of hate, coming back to murder their “loved” ones, and murder them again when they come back as zombies. Earthly Rumblings treads into almost Fulci-esque territory, with hanged priests, gates to the other side, and a ‘prelude to Hell’ feeling of dread that points to the true weight of the horrors yet to come.

TALES OF THE DEAD ISSUE #2 features a standalone story called MUTATION (written and illustrated by Frank Forte and R. Murdock), that actually presents the situation from the zombie’s point of view. Taking place in a power-tool-strewn gallery of defiled human victims, it splatters across the page like a Cannibal Corpse album cover with a narrative, revolving around the slow torture of a human captive at the hands of a zombie with an almost racist hatred of the living.

Tales of the Dead was the dark and twisted beginning of a grand and hellish tale…but alas, what it was building up to, we may never know. Several schedule-crippling setbacks ultimately put Tales of the Dead into the grave after a mere two issues. A “Collector’s Pack” was released sometime after, a limited edition binder containing the two printed issues, a signed sheet of promo trading cards, and a mysterious diskette entitled “Sacrifice”…which crashed my computer when I finally got my hands on a copy a few years back. It’s contents remain a mystery.

WE'RE AN EQUAL OPPORTUNIST EXPLOITER!

THE FIRST ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING LOGO SKETCH. DECEMBER 2011. BRICK & MORTAR INCARNATE!

Hide anything that’s not stuck to the seat because America’s favorite EQUAL OPPORTUNIST EXPLOITER has finally made its way to the interwebs, … ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING is in the, um, …HOUSE. Heh.  You’d better up your antivirus software now because when we’re done with you,  you’ll be highly entertained, semi corrupted and probably dead broke. We have a tendency to become addictive when indulged.

Read on!

SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE WORLD!

ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING is a brick and mortar, do-it-yourself production company of “Not-So-Funny Books, Music & Pulp Media”, launched in 2011 by Comic Book artist DEREK ROOK.  Here we invite you to kick off yer stinkers and make yourself at home.  And while you’re here,  ...blast our ORIGINAL MUSIC,  read our NEWS,  watch our VIDEOS,  listen to PODCASTS,  keep up on our CONVENTION APPEARANCES and purchase all the ROUGH HOUSE BOOKS, PRINTS, ORIGINAL ARTWORK and all other SURPRISES you can get your dirty little digits on.  Interlope at will!

PASS THE GUN AROUND!

So who are these bastids, and why should we care?

Welp, ...DEREK ROOK was born and raised on comic books, 70’s exploitation films and has been working as a professional artist since 1997. He’s either slashed pencil marks, strewn ink or published (in no particular order) for such notable intellectual properties such as THE OMINOUS REPULSIVES, ZOMBIE, GATES OF HELL, PHANTASM and HALLOWEEN and has a side hustle delivering vigilante justice in his hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts.

After an eight year hiatus, ROOK launched his new publishing label, ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING, with fellow pariah and former FANGORIA writer and HORRORHOUND contributor,  MIKE “CORPSE MONGER” WASION after both did a short but memorable stint with CALIBER COMICS Publisher GARY REED providing art for his newest title, VOICES FROM THE DEADWORLD.

To round off this rogue trio of comic book outlaws, was the “SO MUCH MORE THAN THE GIRL NEXT DOOR” Model/Actress SARAH MICHELLE, who's sales and promotional prowess made even the most stingy of convention mainstays stand up and scream, "TAKE MY MONEY!”

And speaking of money, ROUGH HOUSE began it’s mighty crusade literally with none. Not a dime. Not one penny. (Even this website that you gaze your filthy stare upon was made from scratch, in house, without any outside assistance or prior knowledge on how to build the fucking thing … in short, we winged it!)

With their first acquisitions, ROUGH HOUSE utilized social media and crowd funding crusades and knocked down the doors of every magazine, website or podcast that would help spread the word, making their first publications rare gems.

Each project was produced with a very organic DO-IT-YOUR-EFFIN-SELF type of business model, effectively demonstrating to fellow artists, writers and creators, a new approach to comic book entrepreneurship.  

And like with any other punk rock outfit, they got in the proverbial van and made their way down the ROUGH HOUSE ROAD!  Parts Unknown.

LOOKS THAT KILL CALENDAR 2014.

2012 provided a warm up gig for the newly formed breach birthed, self-publishing entity, when ROUGH HOUSE teamed up with independent film studio, FAT FOOT FILMS and PICK YOUR POISON, to produce a uniquely disturbing, psycho-erotic all demonic pin-up girl calendar, appropriately titled, LOOKS THAT KILL, which regardless of the day, month or year, has been the bludgeoning gift that keeps on giving for many collectible fans worldwide!  Don’t believe us?  Check out the accompanying video produced by FAT FOOT FILMS, entitled “BEFORE YOU DIE”, performed by the lunatic progressive, metal band, HELLITOSIS, and featuring many of the deadly calendar beauties in all their go, go, gory action glory!  CLICK BELOW and don't get any on ya!

FRONT COVER THE DEAD-OMNIBUS

In 2015, ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING released their first official title, THE DEAD-OMNIBUS, a GIANT 296 page epic graphic novel, deemed by fans and detractors as THE MOST VIOLENT ZOMBIE COMIC BOOK EVER MADE!  THE DEAD-OMNIBUS was a compilation of 8 issues of the critically infamous comic book series, THE DEAD, originally published through ARROW COMICS back in 1993, by series creators RALPH GRIFFITH and STUART KERR (of DEADWORLD fame).  It remains ROUGH HOUSE's most ambitious and sought after release after quickly selling out of its initial print run.

And that was just the beginning!

Hot off the release of THE DEAD-OMNIBUS, ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING continued its resurrection brigade of old indie comic books with the notorious 80's horror anthology series, GORE SHRIEK, with a 48-page brand new volume appropriately titled, GORE SHRIEK RESURRECTUS, released in 2016 under license of original series creator and FANTACO ENTERPRISES founder, TOM SKULAN!   This eviscerated volume would eventually kick off a NEW ONGOING SERIES of the same name, with all new stories, all new (and some returning) artists with the same splatterpunk feel that made the series famous over its 30 year print run. 

The one/two punch of 80’s comic book revivals has compelled the ROUGH HOUSE to open up the attic and sic the rest of the creator-owned bats onto an unsuspecting public!  All of which you will see blacken the sky in the very near future!  Sorta.

ROUGH HOUSE IS IN YOUR FIST!

ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING is a different kind of comic book company …mainly because we’re not just comic books.  We make "TANGIBLE AWESOME", in all shapes, sizes, genres and formats.  Every one of our products will have its own unique look and feel and will fit grudgingly under your basement mattress (dead hooker’s aside) or up on the top shelf, pressed between a stolen hotel bible and your copy of “What Your Poo is Telling You.”

ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT! …ALL FOUR FEET OF IT.

Most of all, we want to show everyone that in an age where all forms of of artistic expression have become increasingly devalued, defunct, defiled and ultimately digitized and downloaded for free,  ... WE came out of the rubble to remind everyone that when the rubber hits the road,  ...NOTHING beats that hard to find, limited edition collectible, made by fans, for the fans, ...or more appropriately...

For the ROUGHIANS!