Drinking w/ Comics #43 - Special Guest Dusty Grave

Co-owner of Batcave Records, Singer for Stellar Corpses, secret member of Bat! whose debut album is forthcoming on Cleopatra Records (when they're not fighting the forces of darkness!) - Dusty Grave joins us to talk Dylan Dog, Cemetery Man, The Sandman Universe, Unholy Grail and much, much more!

2018: August 24rd

Psyched to have Dusty Grave from Stellar Corpses and BAT on Drinking with Comics later tonight. Tune in around 9:30 PM PST for the show, which will be streaming live on our FB page. This little tune's been knocking around in my head for a few days, so I thought I'd throw it up here to pave the way for this evening.

Playlist from 8/22:

Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
My Bloody Valentine - MBV
Various Artists - Twin Peaks Season 3 OST
Second Still - Equals EP
Chris Connelly - Artificial Madness
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
John Carpenter/Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST

Playlist from 8/23:

Tennis System - Technicolour Blind
Radiohead - Kid A
Fear - Live... For the Record
Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing
Glenn Gould - Bach: Goldberg Variations
Second Still - Equals EP
John Carpenter/Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST
Carl King - Guns A' Blazin' Suite
Cocksure - TVMALSV
The Carpenters - Greatest Hits

Card of the day:

Five breaks stability and causes at worst strife, at best competition. There's some strife in my life right now, but it's background radiation, throbbing in the distance, lighting up my brain for a moment or two here and there, and inspiring competition for sure. Which is good - DRIVING FORCE.

Drinking w/ Comics #42

With special guest all the way from the Philippines, Karen Kunawicz! We talk Robert Kirkman, Scott Gimple and Chris Fucking Burnham's new book Die! Die! Die! and opinions are divided - I LOVED the first issue of this unannounced series, Chris and Karen... not so much. Other topics of discussion include but are not limited to Imaginary Fiends, which has some fantastic creature designs (see below), Her Infernal Descent and Holly Interlandi and Sally Cantirino's Last Song.

2018: July 21st

I just realized Tennis System has a new E.P. out the other day, and not long after Keller messaged me to ask if I was down to see them at a Part Time Punks show at the Echoplex next Sunday.

My response? Fuck. Yes.

Per my previous blog, we watched Triangle on Friday night. Fantastic film. I was a little worried that the thumbnail image on Shudder - which was the widespread poster image for the film - had ruined the twist of the film for me (I was so concerned about this that I doctored the thumbnail I posted here the other day, so as not to ruin it for anyone else), but the good news is that particular twist is inevitable right from the start and not at all the point of the film. So definitely worth a watch.

Oh! And speaking of Shudder, one more reason to love these folks - they surprised me with a free 30 days! How great is that? So, let's check the boxes on why Shudder is awesome (and, btw, not an affiliate):

1) They Sponsor Beyond Fest every year.
2) Great selection that grows every week
3) Hosting the Joe Bob Briggs Last Drive-in and leaving it up in perpetuity
4) Their live-streaming Shudder.TV channels are awesome and remind me of how I discovered horror back in the day (John Carpenter on WGN channel 9's nightly movie).

Playlist from Friday, 7/20

Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
Daughters - Satan in Wait (Pre-release single)
Beak> - L.A. Playback
Lake Trout - Another One Lost
Ministry - Dark Side of the Spoon
Converge - The Dusk in Us
Emma Ruth Rundle - Fever Dreams (Pre-release single)
True Widow - AVVOLGERE
Uniform - The Walk (Pre-release single)
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Johnny Marr - Call the Comet

I spent about twelve hours yesterday editing, uploading and post the new episode of DwC. Possibly the fastest turn-around I've done on my own, but it cost me my Saturday. I mean, I didn't do anything else, as reflected by my playlist, which was what we listened to while we made and ate dinner.

Playlist from Saturday, 7/22:

Footloose - OST
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

I watched Slither last night for the first time since my initial viewing, many years ago. Great little horror flick. Between that and Super - which I loved - I'm pretty sure James Gunn will have no trouble re-acclimating to making movies again. I'm sorry for the loss of such a huge contract and opportunity at the hands of adolescent-like immaturity, and I'm even more sorry for those MCU fans that will be subjected to GoG without Gunn at the helm, but I'm excited Mr. Gunn will once again be making movies that I will actually see.



Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "All troubles and disruptions have been necessary to grow. That growth is a Victory, as not everyone makes it out of the strife and chaos of the fives."

The story I've been working on, "Please Believe Me" is so far outside of what I've done before, as far as character and overall tone, that my writing sessions have been strife and chaos. It can't be underreported, the feeling of sitting down during my daily ritual space for writing and coming away two or three hours later with nothing useable, or merely sketches of the tone and ideas that I want. Please Believe Me is meant to be a contemplation of Dread, which is far and away a different tone and emotion than horror, and finding the parameters of that tone inside of how I would normally write, how I would move a character or set a scene to progress, it's just not easy.

But it's rewarding, I'll tell you that.

Is today the day I finish it? Maybe.

2018: Happy Friday 13th! New Deafheaven Streaming via Anti-

Well, it's 12:27 AM. I've officially called out from work tomorrow. Mental Health day. AND the new Deafheaven just dropped! and their awesome label Anti- is streaming Ordinary Corrupt Human Love in it's entirety. I'm a little pissed that the vinyl copy I pre-orderd the day the album was announced has not shipped yet (or King's Road Merch/Anti- hasn't updated the order status on their website), but I've got it digitally and now I've got all night and all day to listen to it!



There's a Drinking w/ Comics live streaming on our Facebook page tonight at 9:00 PM Pacific Time. Check it out - we've got Karen Kunawicz as a guest. She's the entertainment columnist for the Manilla times and a good friend of Mike's so I'm psyched to talk geek shop with her.

And a BIG Also, Joe Bob Briggs is hosting a 24 hour horror marathon on Shudder starting at 6:00 PM Pacific (that's 9:00 PM Eastern Standard) and other than listening to Deafheaven and doing my show, I'll be watching that.

Comics I will (Try) to talk about tomorrow:

Earlier this evening I watched a flick on Shudder I'd not heard of before. Described as a modern Giallo, Cold Hell defied ALL of my expectations and proved to be a fabulous film. A Giallo that is not content to just hail the flags of the genre, Cold Hell is a story of violence, but more over it is a story of the human heart. That might sound a bit heavy handed, but it's not. Absolutely, positively recommended:



Followed that up with this classic:



Card of the day:

Balance. Kind of feel like that's what I'm doing now, by not going to work tomorrow. Sometimes you have to do that; call it a mental health day.

Drinking w/ Comics 41: Special Guest David Lucarelli!!!

New issue went up today after a lot of hard editing work. It's worth it, even though I totally blanked on adding a theme song for the new, apparently monthly segment titled, "What Stupid Thing Did Chris Buy This Time?"

Also, check out who gives us a bumper at the start of the episode! None other than Garth Fucking Ennis!

Next time.



And just because I dig Mr. Lucarelli and his work so much, here's the previous episode we had him on, back when his awesome new book from Alterna Comics, Tinsel Town, had just begun formulating for him:

New Issue of Drinking with Comics is up!

And I'll be damned, we talk about comics THE ENTIRE TIME!!!

2018: March 10th 11:05 AM

Starting today with Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral because Katie did it for the Joup Friday Album last night and I didn't get a chance to listen to it then.




Filming for Drinking w/ Comics #40 went fantastic - our little comic book reading session at Mike's the night before helped facilitate a show where for an hour and some chance we actually spent pretty much the entire time talking about comics! Should be up in about a week.

Playlist from yesterday:

Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Second to last party ever in my pad will happen tonight as I host a birthday party for two dear friends. Next week is my annual St. Paddy's, week after I turn 42 and move for the first time in 11 years and 11 months (remind me to tell you about my 111/1111 thing sometime).

Card for the day:

Strength, stability. Stable material balance. All good signs of things to come based on the outcome from our endeavors (K's more than mine - she really busted her ass on getting us the new place). 

2018: March 9th 7:37 AM

Wonderful night last night. After our move, we will live extremely close to both Mike and Chris from DwC, and in celebration of that we implemented a new, Night Before the show Reading Circle. Mike had us all over for a wonderful dinner and then we sat around and traded off the comics we were itching to talk about on tonight's show. This is a first and Mike gets full credit for the idea  - we always bring a bunch of disparate books to the table and that helps lead the discussions astray. Hopefully this will put us all on the same page. We'll be live on the Drinking with Comics facebook page tonight at 9:00 PM PST, so if you're not doing anything, drop by. One of the books we'll be discussing is a last minute edition to the stack and in two days turned into my most eagerly anticipated book so far this year:

From Image Comics.com:

"The lives of a reclusive young man obsessed with a conspiracy in the city's trash, and a washed-up Catholic priest arriving in a small town full of dark secrets become intertwined around the mysterious legend of The Black Barn, an otherworldly building that is alleged to have appeared in both the city and the small town, throughout history, bringing death and madness in its wake. Rural mystery and urban horror collide in this character-driven meditation on obsession, mental illness, and faith." From Image Comics.com



Sounds very "weird fiction" and that's my current wheelhouse, so I'm very much in.


Playlist from yesterday:

Converge - The Dusk in Us
Monolord - Rust
Teenage Wrist - Chrome Neon Jesus
Queens of the Stone Age - Villains
Ludwig van Beethoven - King Stephen Overture OP 117
Joseph Haydn - Violin Concerto #4 in G

Card for the day:

"The Path to Enlightenment is about to become easier." - hanging out in my new neighborhood last night gave both K and I an enormous sense of happiness. There will now be time for so much more, Art, Love, and definitely Enlightenment. Another card tapping me on the shoulder, letting me know I'm on the right path. Accordingly, I can't help but also draw the juxtaposition with Crowley's maxim: "Every Man and Every Woman is a Star." Crowley had his more than fair share of BS, but he was a prophet to some degree, a human who communed with great, cosmic truths (when, to paraphrase a quote by Peter J. Carroll, he wasn't trying for your arse and your wallet) and that, well, that's one of his most important sentiments.

Drinking w/ Comics: Nick Cave Mercy on Me by Reinhard Kleist

A short clip (that was all I could cull from the massive cluster of the previous DwC, short clips. If you're curious why, follow us on facebook, scroll down a few posts from the present and see how much of the 3 hour feed from that night you can get through. Hint: Shit gets really bizarre about an hour and seven minutes in. Just saying.) wherein I talk about Reinhard Kleist's BRILLIANT Nick Cave Graphic Novel Biography, Mercy on Me:



New episode coming this Friday, March 9th at 9:00 PM PST. Topics I'm going to attempt to discuss:

Saturday, Oct 28th DwC Invades Stan Lee's LACC!!!

Drinking with Comics - Giant-Sized Con Edition!

Saturday, October 28th we will be invading Stan Lee's Los Angeles Comic Con and coming at you live to talk comics while knocking back some sweet suds courtesy of King Harbor Brewing Company. It's going down at 2:00 PM in room 306 A/B. More info HERE.

The Genesis of Preacher: Discussing Preacher Sn 2.1

My good friend and fellow Drinking with Comics host Chris Saunders and I decided to do a discussion show for the second season of AMC's Preacher. I'll admit to being something of a skeptic on the first season - Preacher is my all-time favorite comic and holds a very dear place in my heart; the formula for its incredibly powerful story is a nuanced one, and I've always been fairly afraid that adapting it another medium would 'miss the heart' of Jessie, Tulip and Cass's journey. Preacher season one had it's ups and downs - I fully expected to hate it (AMC has already tarnished my second favorite comic of all-time with their TWD so my prejudice is not without basis) but ended up liking it enough to continue with Season Two. Imagine my surprise when I LOVED the first two episodes. And Chris - also a huge fan of the book - did too. Why? Click play and let us tell you.

Drinking with Comics on... Preacher

The first in the new DwC "after hours" shorts.

We've had trouble drumming up views lately and of course this is, as so many people tell me, because the regular version of the show is too long. Okay, I get it; we always functioned better as an iTunes podcast anyway, as longer content often does. That said, I've always wanted to make Drinking with Comics more akin to a late night show, specifically Lettermen. But people don't really watch that kind of content on youtube, or at least not the audience we're most naturally speaking to. So what to do?

Well, Chris has an amazing home and as I think is proven by this video, his reading room makes a fantastic backdrop for soused discussion. So we thought, why not start shooting some shorter bits, putting them up and see what happens? So, here's the first one, wherein we discuss Preacher, both the comic and the AMC adaptation. You'll notice the sound and lights are quite there, but we felt the content was strong enough to go ahead and post. Next one of these should be considerably better in the production department, though I'm definitely not knocking Chris's skills in putting it together. I edit most everything else and it is both a pleasure and a relief to have someone so talented to back me up.

So raise a glass and let's talk about Preacher. If you agree, disagree, whatever, leave a comment on the video. And if you're into it, please subscribe to our channel - more goodness coming!

Evolution of the Arm - Twin Peaks: The Return Episode #6

What an episode! Here are my thoughts...

Drinking with Comics #34

Topics of discussion include but are not limited to Marvel's Secret Empire and the ideological tom foolery of making Captain America a nazi, DC's imminent appropriation of the Watchmen into the DCU and Mike's reason for hating superstar comic book artist Alex Ross!

Drinking with Comics Issue #33

The new episode is up!

The Return...

"It's been a while..."

Food For Thought - Election Comic Kickstarter

Back in the early episodes of Drinking with Comics we had an episode that overlapped with one of the many local creator meetings that take place at Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug and brought one Cassidy James up to speak on behalf of a comic he was kickstarting, Gun Up Paintball. I hadn't seen Cassidy in a while and ran into him a month or so ago during an event at the shop. He told me about a new comic he had waiting in the wings called Food For Thought and it sounded like a lot of fun to me; I'm so disgusted by the entire election but can't seem to stop following it (for the record I don't consider myself a liberal or a conservative - I don't want any of 'em in office, btw) and a book that poked fun at any of the candidates sounded right like it might be just what a lot of us need to blow off some steam at the seemingly endless campaign trail shenanigans that we've been choking on for months now. If this sounds good to you too give the video above a watch and contribute to the Kickstarter HERE if you can. I'd really like to see this book get up off the ground. With Cassidy's words and Livan Ivan Cornejo's art I think this could be a truly entertaining and timely book.

Drinking w/ Comics Special Guest: David F. Walker

Luke Cage all the rage? Can't wait for Danny Rand? Well, watch Mike and I talk to the man writing 'em in Marvel's Power Man and Iron Fist. And check out Mr. Walker's website for a whole boatload of goodies!

Drinking w/ Comics Issue #31

Special guests Kat Rocha and Josh Finney of 01Publishing! Featuring Saint Archer Brewery's unbelievable Tusk & Grain ale!