The Shroud Underground

Tom Piccirilli wrote:As usual, I too have several going at once:

BLAZE by King...oh sorry, I mean Bachman.
CRUEL POETRY by Vicki Hendricks
THE INTRUDERS by Michael Marshall (Smith)
& rereading Ken Bruen's incredible AMERICAN SKIN

I'm about 1/3 of the way through BLAZE... love it. It's a very emotional read and I really sympathize with the main character, flaws and all.

Anyone read graphic novels? I highly highly recommend <i>The Walking Dead</i> by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. It's just a really excellent, in-depth story about a small band of survivors following a zombie outbreak. I stayed up until 2am reading it one night, and it really messed with my head... goes way beyond what movies can do!

As for TBR, I have to reread <i>On Writing</i>, need to get into some Charlie Huston, and am reviewing several books that probably no one here would be interested in (unless you include parenting in the horror genre ). I really wish I could read more - I do read a lot for my job (freelancing), but I miss reading for pleasure!

I'm a big fan of Charlie Huson's crime ficion. His Hank Janson and The Shotgun Rule were all terrific. And his run on MOON KNIGHT was amazing too.

I read all kinds of comic books... I mean "graphic novels" . I read mostly Marvel and DC, but do read some independents. I love everything by Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. I haven't gotten around to reading Walking Dead yet, but I have the first volume. Kirkman's Marvel Zombies is great, but I really love his Battle Pope.

I'm reading "NOIR" by Richard Matheson. I've never read much of this kind of fiction and so far am pleasantly surprised.

Burrough's NAKED LUNCH

Dude, that's one trippy book. If you like it, check out "Howl."

I'm about to read "Queen of Blood." I've heard some good things and some bad things about this one, so I'm curious to see who's right and who's wrong.

Natalie L. Sin wrote:I'm reading "NOIR" by Richard Matheson. I've never read much of this kind of fiction and so far am pleasantly surprised.

I loved "Noir." Which is your favorite story?

Reading Smith's RUINS. Gotta say, it's not living up to all the hype.

Just finished the "Shadows over Baker's Street" collection this week. So very cool, I really would have loved seeing Doyle writing a mythos story. The collection is as close as it will ever get, and I highly recommend it.

And I love the marvel zombie stuff, the hellboy comics are some of the best horror comics ever made if you ask me, but I'm a sucker for the old school hero books. I love Captain America, and I'm really into the Secret Invasion story for marvel. However, DC has really just made me sad with the countdown stuff. Normally Superman is my number one book and comic character, but they've just basically forced all the campy stuff from the 70's back down our throats after giving us a nice 20 years without having to worry that superman would be fighting a super-kryptonian horse with 8 kinds of kryptonite floating around.

Enough of the comic rant. I promise. Anyway, I picked up a really cool collection of stories the other day. It's called the "Book of Dracula" and it has a horribly cheesy dracula cover, but the book itself only has one drac. story written by Stoker, and the rest is from the gothic horror period, a lot of old vampire stories, and the second half of the book is a catch-all of horror with mostly ghost stories. Despite the campy cover and name, the book is a GREAT collection. A lot of MR James stuff that I was having a hard time finding before.

I seem to be one of the few people that likes DC's Countdown. I like a lot of the stuff they are bringing back from Jack Kirby's Fourth World, which admittedly has a very thin line between genius and camp. I am really looking forward to Morrison's Final Crisis. And I love colored kryptonite. The only time I can stand Superman is when he goes apeshit.

A few years ago, before I got robbed, I had nearly all of the 70's issues of superman, flash, and green lantern, and as a kid I grew up with the post crisis DC continuity. Having read a lot of the pre-crisis stuff, I was even happier with the books I'd come up reading.

I would have enjoyed countdown and all the other stuff more had they not totally mucked up Superman's continuity with the "We'll explain what all we changed later on, but not today, instead we got stories about superman and the legion!". It really puts a damper on collecting since so many of the books will have no connection to the overall story. I'm looking at my collection of post-crisis superman stuff and if I get really OCD about it and take out all the stuff they "deleted" with the countdown and infinity crisis stuff, then I'll only have 4 issues before the death of superman, then that, then maybe most of reign of the supermen, and maybe most of the Loeb run from 2001 to 2004. Other than that I have no clue what they're doing to Superman and won't till they decide to fill us in. That's really the only thing that bothers me about the stories, is the deletion of stories without really letting you know what's what anymore.

I feel the same way about the recent Spider-man fiasco, where the devil waved his freakin hoof and wasted 20 years of continuity. For some reason, every time comic book companies try to reboot a book to appeal to new readers, they take the route that pisses off the most old readers.

I'm hoping that was all done by a Skrull, that's my explaination for every bad story in marvel history now.

About halfway through with 20th Century Ghosts. I don't like how they did the pages for the hardcover, but the stories are great.