Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Primary Colours

From the 2009 album Primary Colours, which I pulled out yesterday and instantly regretted not having listened to in... a very long time. Fantastic record.

I don't know any other records by The Horrors, but this one is fantastic start to finish. These guys obviously got a big push marketing-wise in the wake of Interpol's success, but they are their own band. 

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NCBD:

So what did Wheeljack find in issue 33? My guess: Dinobots!

Every issue of any Shaolin Cowboy series is a gift. Loving Staying A.I. Live.

I've literally been thinking about Of the Earth more days than not since reading issues 2 and 3 last month. I adore this book! Condon's "The Thing meets Blood Simple" is so spot on, and being that those are two of my all-time favorite films, this feels made for me.

One more after this and I'll need to re-read everything that came before. It has been a minute since The Nice House on the Lake was on my radar; looking back on the last few release dates shown on League of Comic Book Geeks, it appears this went bi-monthly after returning from its "mid-season" hiatus. That's fine; not giving anyone sh*t, just saying, October's final issue will be a good prompt to re-read both The Nice House By the Lake and this second act. A quick search tells me Tynion has not announced a third act, but I guess that will depend on how this current arc ends.

So, while I'm still digging this current chapter of ARAH, I have space constraints that are weighing on me a bit. I recently bought a new long box (I phased out all but two long boxes before my move from LA; took a tip from my friend Chris Saunders and switched everything to short boxes. Way more manageable. The two I did keep were out of necessity: TMNT and X-Men. There's easily a long box of both. Coming to the end of my TMNT box has a lot to do with why I just canceled the series from my pull. Now, I'm closing in on the end of my ARAH box (which admittedly also includes the IDW run; the Energon stuff is all in a short box) and I have to consider if I'm going to stop. 

Talk about first world problems.

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Watch:

A few months back, Vinegar Syndrome ran a sale on Kim Stim's Blu-Ray edition of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2016 film Creepy, which I had never even heard of, let alone seen. I'm fairly new to Kurosawa's work, but what I've seen thus far - Cure, Chime and Cloud - have all blown me away, so I figured, what the hell? Let's give it a blind buy.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I did. This one really messed with me, in the best possible way. There is something so alien and yet relatable about Kurosawa's work that has really steeped into me over the viewing of these last four films, and I feel now as though I have to set out on a mission to see everything. There's a level of banality to Creepy that manages to create an unease that is slow, methodical and unexpected at times. The lighting in the Nishino house borders on what I think of as Cyber-Industrial-Gothic, with Tetsuo and Eraserhead immediately coming to mind. 

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Playlist:

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Various - The (S)hit Factory Disc 2

Various - The (S)hit Factory Disc 3

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.

Mary Anne Hobbs Final BBC Broadcast: Burial and Kode 9 (Sept. 8, 2010)

The Horrors - Primary Colours

Pigface - Fook

Carpenter Brut - Leather Temple

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Shapes of Midnight (pre-release singles)

Lisa Bella Donna - Reach for the Light (single)

Mascara - Hla-11Tf (single)

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Eight of Swords

• XVI: The Tower

• Ace of Swords

A lot of strife, which can be a struggle, especially when paired with The Tower, a paradigm either in flux or ruling. This leads me to believe something I adhere to - probably a plot point in Shadow Play 2, or something I hold as an absolute with the characters- will change drastically. I'll resist it at first, then realize the change is needed.

New Music from The Ocean!

From The Ocean's forthcoming record Solaris, out September 25 on Pelagic Records. Pre-order HERE in the States or HERE elsewhere. 

I knew there had been a bit of an exodus from the band within the last year or two, but hadn't seen the new line-up until this weekend when I stumbled on the pre-release singles. Nothing against those who left, but this is the most excitement I've felt for an Ocean release since 2013's Pelagial.

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Watch:

I say this as someone who checked out on Marvel's MCU pretty much with Civil War, which I wasn’t a very big fan of. I’ve liked some things about a few subsequent films (of which I’ve only seen a few), but overall have been saddened to watch a carefully planned, confident approach to a blockbuster universe become tiresome, meek and rudderless. 

I LOVED Brand New Day and consider it the first Marvel movie I’ve actually liked - one that gave me repeated chills - since Age of Ultron (I really dug Raimi’s Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness, but not as a Marvel movie, as a Sam Raimi movie. Regardless, even that didn’t come close). 

I’d go so far as to say Brand New Day is the second best MCU movie thus far, coming in right behind the original Avengers film. Was it long and prone to indulgences? You betcha. But I was here for all of it. Best of all, almost none of the cameos were fan service - they all (mostly) played a role in the overall story. Which, after the exhausting (but not un-fun) Deadpool Loves Wolverine, was nice. I'm still all about street-level Marvel, which basically, at this point, means DD, Frank Castle and Spidey. Would be nice to see something else added to that list eventually, but for now, I'm happy keeping up with this little corner of things.

There are a couple huge ideas/plot points this film intentionally leaves hanging, and I'm a bit bummed that I'll have to wait until all the Avengers: Apocalypse Now Buddy B.S. is over before we likely get another proper Spidey flick. I find myself begrudgingly curious about Dr. Doom and Battleworld, so maybe I'll eat my words and watch that simply to stay in with Spidey's adventures in the "big potatoe" tier of the still hobbling overall MCU. I'd love it if they just left Peter alone and firmly entrenched at street level, but I guess that was never going to happen, so...

All right, Doom. Thrill me.

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Playlist:

Quicksand - Bring on the Psychics

Face to Face - Don't Turn Away

Firewater - Ponzi Scheme

Justin Hamline - This Machine Kills Music

Show Me the Body - Alone Together

Zeal and Ardor - Devil is Fine X

Pigface - Gub

Pigface - Welcome to Mexico Asshole

SOD - Speak English or Die

Anthrax - Cursum Perficio (pre-release singles)

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

The Ocean - Precambrian

Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album

Various - The (S)hit Factory: Disc 1

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.
Sepultura - The Cloud of Unknowning EP

The Ocean - Pelagial (Instrumental)

The Ocean - Solaris (pre-release singles)

Bohren and the Club der Gore - Sunset Mission

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Four of Wands

• Six of Pentacles

• Knight of Cups

Completion and success, but at a cost. 

It's been quite some time since I've really gotten into Ween, which breaks my heart because at one time, and in some perpetually occluded way, they are and were one of my favorite bands ever. 

It started with Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween)'s Freeman album and hearing his side of the rift that had torn the band apart a few years prior. I wouldn't say I ever took Gene's side over anyone else's, but there was just something so disturbing about hearing the behind-the-scenes shit on this band known for reveling in intoxication that broke something in me. I wouldn't say anyone was at fault but Freeman himself - we all take responsibility for our choices - but it just left me cold. Then, when the band eventually reunited, I don't know, it just felt like the old, 'Ya can't go home again' rang true. 

Yesterday, a message from Mr. Brown about the new three-disc anniversary edition of 12 Gold Country Greats set something in motion, and I started listening to Ween and found I couldn't stop. I feel like I reconnected, but what's more, I realized something important.

Ween takes me to a place - a state of mind that I believe I share with my two best friends in the world - Mr. Brown and Sonny Vee. We all live in different places and can't see one another nearly as much as we would like (I could definitely make more of an effort), and so listening to Ween makes me reflect on missing our friendship in the day-to-day, as something I could experience in the flesh, and that leaves me sad. So, while I may be over whatever bullshit I had due to Ween's breakup (finally), I don't think it's likely I'll be doing more than what I did yesterday - the occasional freefall back into a state of mind that just doesn't gel with the world of 2026. Or, at least for the moment it doesn't.

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NCBD:

Another light week, thankfully...

Glad to have Jeff Lemire's Minor Arcana back. Love this book, and I've been in the mood for Seaside Horror, even if this book is really more Horror adjacent. 

Unless something huge happens - and I mean HUGE - this is probably the last regular issue of MASK I'm picking up. I just don't really care about this end of the EU. I know at some point I'll at least partially regret this decision; these titles are all so tied together, after all, that we've seen Scrap Iron working for Miles Mayhem and Matt Trakker build his vehicles from Cybertronian technology. So logic dictates that 'crossing of the streams' will continue. That said, I did not have any MASK toys as a kid; I never saw the cartoon (that I remember) or read the comics. So I think I can let this one go.

Event Horizon: Inferno is the Event Horizon story I've wanted for thirty years. Destined to be in my top of the year. 

With all the crossover stuff happening around this book, I am very happy that Fraction and Jimenez appear to be keeping that from infecting the regular book. Because I really dig everything happening in this one. Issue 5 is still probably my favorite comic so far this year. So I'm invested. I just don't care about Commissioner Vandal Savage, Mayor Poison Ivy and the whole police angle. It feels too beholden to what Marvel just did in Daredevil: Born Again. I know this always happens with the big two: they share concepts like this. It's fine. I haven't minded what we've gotten of this so far in the book, and actually quite liked the idea of the police hunting the Bat-Family. Now that this plot point is turning into a full-on "Event," I just want it to stay the hell out of the book so it can focus on other things.

Like Minotaur, who my cohost Mike Shin pointed out is almost definitely an AI crime boss. Now that's not something I've seen anywhere else. You?

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Watch:

Monday night, K and I hit the Regal Mystery Movie: Horror Edition and were thrilled with an early screening of Eli Roth's Ice Cream Man.

This movie is f*cking bonkers!

Weapons meets Terrifier is my elevator pitch. Weapons, because there are children running around constantly causing mayhem; Terrifier because their mayhem consists of brutally murdering every adult they encounter in some of the most graphic ways I've seen on a big screen since Terrifier 3. This is not for everyone - I can't tell you how many people walked out of the theatre Monday night - but if you have a sick sense of humor like I guess K and I do, I think this will really make for a fabulous night at the theatre!

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Christmas, Bloody Christmas

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - La Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomimi

The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST

Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats

Ween - Featuring the Shit Creek Boys: Live in Toronto Canada

Ween - Live at Stubbs (Disc 2)

The Black Keys - Magic Potion

Alice in Chains - Sap

Alice in Chains - Dirt

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Gatta Merta - Black Hall (single)

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Four of Pentacles

• King of Swords

• XVI: The Tower

Holy Fawn - Drag Me Into the Woods

I knew nothing about Holy Fawn before last week when I stumbled across them on Apple Music. Listening to their 2018 album Death Spells, I was pretty blown away. The band's Wikipedia page lists them as Black Gaze, which I won't exactly contest, but there is a lot more than that going on here. This entire record is fantastic, and I'm looking forward to digging into their follow-up, 2022's Dimensional Bleed. 

Fantastic album names that completely fit their sound, too. 

Check out Holy Fawn's Bandcamp HERE.

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NCBD:

Shortest haul in a while. Enjoy, wallet - you've earned this!

Loving this series, thus far. Not sure how long a trip we're in for on Red Roots - the solicitations on League of Comic Book Geeks stop next month with #5. Hope that's just a "seasonal hiatus."

DeMatteis back to do a What If...? Based on the greatest Spider-Man story ever written? And it's a one-shot? Sign me up!

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Watch:

I haven't seen I Sell the Dead since it first hit DVD, back in 2008/2009. Probably watched on a through-the-mail DVD rental from Netflix. So I was super excited when I saw Vinegar Syndrome (or one of their partner labels) had it.

 

My copy arrived yesterday, so by the time you read this, I've already revisited this one. In a weird coincidence, Writer/Director Glen McQuaid had just ended up on my radar again via one of the more recent issues of Fangoria, where they did a piece about his new film, The Restoration of Grayson Manor, which is making the festival rounds now.

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST

Ministry - Animositsomina

Ministry - Amerikkant

Spotlights - Love & Decay

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Oz

Carlos Rafael Rivera - They Will Kill You OST

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ten of Cups

• VII: The Chariot

• XIX: The Sun

Only thing I'm interested in knowing right now is if I'll end up in the ER again - the stone I thought passed apparently did not, because yesterday was ROUGH. The cards don't really work that way, but I'll take these three as a nod to happiness, determination and success as a nod that I will be able to weather the storm on my own.

Ozzy Osbourne!

One year ago today.

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NCBD:

My comics pull for Wednesday,, 7/22/26:

Despite not caring for the "Quintesson War" storyline very much, I'm liking where everyone landed in the fallout from those events. I think Darak and Solila off the Great Ring and in cahoots with Pythona.

My final issue! All the way to 300 with these guys. Hats off - still the best reboot of anything I've ever experienced. 

I finally caught up on this earlier in the month and spoke about it HERE. As I ready myself for this final issue, I'll just say this is also a contender for best of the year. So nice to travel back to the Vertigo 80s with ol' tall, green and swampy.

The penultimate issue before whatever #50 is going to do to change the series. Loving these "young Erika" stories, but ready to get back to the here and now.

The final of Chris Condon and Jacob Philips' first Ezra Cain mystery. Hoping there will be more down the road, although these will undoubtedly read better as trades, so I may refrain from buying any more of this particular series monthly.

 

I dug the atmosphere and overall storyline for Brutal Dark, and I've said it before and will continue to preach - we need more stories to remind the world that nazis and nationalism are bad. Especially now, when there's a growing number of people in our culture afraid to talk about the unpleasantness of the past. 

Another that will easily ride out the year in my top five. 

The finale of this wonderful aquatic horror mini-series! Oni still going strong.

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Watch:

I'll admit I watched this trailer not expecting to care one way or the other about this flick. It feels a bit like that strain of Horror that includes titles like Afaid and Megan 2.0. That said, there's a jump scare here, though, that made me laugh out loud. In a good way!

Also, what I did not notice at first - this is directed by Rob Savage, and I quite enjoyed both Host and The Boogeyman, so I'm in.

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Shapes of Midnight (pre-release singles)

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal

Carlos Rafael Rivera - They Will Kill You OST

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - La Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomimi

Pilot Priest & Electric Youth - Come True OST

Zombie - Shape Shift

Boris/Merzbow - 2R0I2P0

Mastodon - Marrow Deep (pre-release singles)

Spotlights - Alchemy for the Dead

Holy Fawn - Death Spells

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Seven of Swords

• Knight of Pentacles

• XIII: Death

Big change brought about by successful ambition. No idea where to apply that in my life, unless it's telling me my ambitious trek to abstain from beer until at the very earliest November 5th to help my liver recover will pay off. And by pay off, I mean grant me the rest of my lifetime happily drinking pints (maybe not every night anymore, though...).

M83 - Beauties Can Die

From their 2003 second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which I'm not sure I had ever listened to before, despite my obsession with this band starting with Saturdays = Youth and culminating on the follow-up Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. Great record, but it takes a little getting used to. You can steam the entire thing "Officially" on their YouTube page HERE (or just any of the streamers).

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Read:

Last week I picked back up on the re-read of Terry Moore's Rachel Rising that I started on New Year's Eve, 2025. I don't know how I got away from it for so long, because although I'd left off on issue 15, I re-read the entire rest of the forty-two-issue series in about a day and a half. 

I read this monthly, so while I have all the floppies, there are seven trade volumes collecting the full series and a recently released omnibus. This one is so worth your time. I mean, I think this is, in my humble opinion, the greatest Horror comic of all time. It's that good, and it's all down to Terry Moore's insanely relatable style and, the flip side to that coin, his absolutely nefarious approach to Horror. There are some insanely dark and disturbing themes, images and ideas in this book, but they never feel like they've gone too far. The overall story starts small and becomes brilliantly biblical, and those are two "B" words that usually do not go together in Shawn's world. 

The characters are fantastic and, again, so likable and relatable. Anyone who's read Moore's seminal Strangers in Paradise knows how great his characters are and make no mistake, Rachel, Jet, Zoe, Aunt Johnnie and Earl all feel like one fucked up branch of my interior family now, and I'm having a hard time letting them go. 

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Playlist:

Bauhaus - Gotham (Live)

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Bauhaus - Go Away White

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

3Teeth - Eponymous

M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

Russian Circles - Gnosis

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)

Melvins/Helms Alee - Controlling Data for a Better Feeling Future

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Pinebender - Working Nine to Wolf

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Queen of Pentacles

• Six of Cups

* Ten of Pentacles

Emotion makes it difficult to rule the Earthly matters. A direct reference to spending money frivilously, of which, I have recently been guilty of. On a good path now, but have some make up work to do. 

Mastodon - Jaguar God

 

Thinking about this guy a lot lately.

 

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Watch:

Rewatched Richard Bates, Jr's Excision last night:

Still hits just as hard as it did the first time.

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Read:

Last week, I mentioned I'd begun a reread of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series for upcoming episodes of Drinking with Comics. I spoke of the pleasure I've found in realizing this doesn't just hold up, but surpasses my initial response upon reading it monthly upon release circa 2005. I also mentioned my surprise that, unlike last time when my favorite titles in the series would have skewed toward the more Occult-based characters (Zatanna, Klarion), this time, I found the two books I'd "tolerated" before now at the top of my favorites list. One of those is Manhattan Guardian; the other is Shining Knight. Shining Knight, in particular, has blown me away this time through, and nowhere is that more evident than in the third issue:

The issue begins with an FBI agent leading a specialist into the lock-up where the LAPD are holding Justin, the titular Knight, last of Arthur's Round Table, flung forward in time after a melee in Castle Revolving. They talk a bit about the Knight's Sword, which the expert classifies as coming from Deep Time, essentially confirming the Arthurian aspect, and then this happens:

I'm only really remembering some of the finer points in the series as I go, so this whole Civilization Iteration angle surprised me. I've always been fascinated by the idea that human civilization has come and gone in great swathes over the history of this planet, and to see Morrison so eloquently tie this idea into this series really made everything about it resonate even more than it already has. 

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Playlist:

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Sisters of Black Mountain - Amdusias (single)

Sisters of Black Mountain - Spirits of the Dead (single)

Mastodon - Your Ghost Again (single)

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Johnny Jewel - Ageless E.P.

Silencio - End of the Glass (single)

Chryta Bell - Sycamore Trees (single)

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Mastodon - Leviathan 

Metallica - Garage Days

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE and Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• VI: The Lovers

• Seven of Swords

• 17: The Star

Collaboration opens up new vistas that lead to enlightenment. 

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

I spent a lot of time with The Caretaker yesterday. From reading an old interview in an issue of The Wire from 2009, to listening to the entire Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia boxset, which is waaaay OOP but available on Bandcamp HERE. 

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NCBD:

Wow - seems like every week's pull has been a doozy, and I've been cutting back. So many great creator-owned titles hitting the market lately. Here we go...

I did not love the six-part Quintesson War storyline, though I liked it more rereading it the other day than I did as it came out. Big shake-ups, HUGE really, so I don't know why I was left feeling... underwhelmed. 

I really should have waited for this one to hit trade, but I guess after DC holding it on for so long, I wanted to make sure I actually got my hands on it as soon as I could. 

The first issue of Red Roots had me. I mean, had me. Second issue was great, but also introduced an element of what miiiight be high fantasy? Let's see how #3 shakes out. I'm hoping for more of a Seven to Eternity than Tolkien vibe. 

The twists and turns in the new Condon/Phillips Weird Fiction/Mystery are great. Can't wait to see how this all comes out. 

And so the epic battle concludes! This book has been just the right kind of crazy, schlocky, video game fist-fight punch-em-up I'd hoped for when I signed on. Sad to see it go. 

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Trailer Punk Podcast - Torture Gallery Interview

John Carpenter - Lost Themes Vol. 1

Leather Strip - The Pleasure of Penetration

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Algiers - The Underside of Power

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE AND his Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Two of Wands

• 05: The Hierophant

• Five of Wands

My point of view is my dogma. Break it in half and learn something new.

New Music From Sleep!

 

Big Sleep news. Matt Pike is out, replaced by Bubba Dupree of Void. Also, Dale Crover from Melvins on drums? This new track is interesting, but there's a lethargy here that feels a bit ominous. I'll have to wait for the full album. In the meantime, this is being released as a flexi disc along with a Sleep comic book, put out by Third Man Records. You can pre-order the comic HERE. The link to the bundle that includes the music comes up 404, so it's probably sold out.

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Watch:

From Writer Robert Bolesto and Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the team that gave us the delightfully messed up film The Lure (which The Horror Vision and Projexploitation crossed over to cover in great depth HERE):

I can only hope this hits theatres by me, even if it means driving to The Nuart in Nashville. I love that this feels a bit like The Lure, but also strikes me as having similar DNA to Ryan Kruger's Street Trash! There's so much energy on screen, and again, we have someone at work making a trailer who knows how to show us enough to whip us into a frenzy of expectation, but give nothing away.

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Read:

I finished the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. Still one of my favorites of the series, but it took me longer to read than I anticipated. Next up: Wizard and Glass, the last of the books in the series that I've previously read more than once. 

Once we get past this one, it's all first-time re-reads and not since Wolves of Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower each released. This endeavor has been a long time coming, and I've still got a pretty good head of steam. 

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Playlist:

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Tomahawk - Oddfellows

Melvins/Helms Alee

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Boards of Canada - Inferno 

Perturbator - Age of Aquarius

Final Light - Eponymous

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

All Them Witches - House of Mirrors

Converge - Hum of Hurt

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

* Seven of Wands

• Page of Cups

* Eight of Wands

Positive results are the result of good communication. That said, it can be difficult to say what needs to be said to achieve those positive results.

As is often the case, I'm not picking up what the cards are putting down at the moment, so this one will sit on my desk until morning, just as a reminder.

Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 2: It's Martini Time

Well, thought I forgot about the whole "Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat," eh? That's because I 100% DID forget. 

The one that started it all for me. True, Mr. Brown and I had seen the Rev years before opening for White Zombie on the Astrocreep tour (along with Melvins!), but it wasn't until 88.3 WXAV St. Xavier University played "It's Martini Time" that I fell in love with the Rev's guitar sound and overall aesthetic and bought an album.

I still think this track's guitar is among my favorites ever. 
 

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NCBD:

Great list today. 

Continuing on as my favorite of the Energon Universe books, this cover to Transformers 33 sends shivers of great joy through my body. I still can't get over all the massive changes Kirkman has added to the book - Optimus giving over Prime leadership to Elita One, Thundercracker ditching the 'cons and becoming a 'bot, and hey, let's not forget, what the hell is going on with Megatron? Hopefully, we'll see this issue. 

The finale of this fantastic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep. This story has gotten maybe more traction than any other HPL story in a while, so it's been interesting to see the different takes. Pretty sure Birks/Roberts is my favorite (though I can't help my forlorn wonder at what Richard Stanley's would have been like).

I have zero idea what is going on with this family reunion from the afterlife storyline in TMNT. I mean, I'm following the story just fine; I'm just not sure what this means for the series going forward. I guess one thing to keep in mind is, I don't think this was ever done before. For now, I'll hold my reservations close to my chest and trust in the creative team, as we're almost 170 issues into the relaunch continuity that began back in 2012, and the book has been fantastic for most of that run.

Once again, totally forgot this book was even out there. Going to need a full re-read before getting into this, and I'm wondering if I should just wait until this second chapter runs its course. 

Will this actually come out today? This final chapter of Rafael Grampá's Gargoyle of Gotham has been pushed back so many times, I lost count. Still, these are unbelievably gorgeous books that must take a lot of Grampá's heart and soul to produce, so I'm not complaining. 

The Energon Universe tightens its stranglehold on my wallet with another book! I never had any of the toys as a kid, but I was always intrigued then and am still now. I've loved the introduction of these characters in the other books, so this feels like a natural evolution.

Looking forward to more of this weird Snake Eyes conundrum. I love that they went all the way back to the first two years of ARAH to show us something Dr. Venom did that we never saw until now. That kind of callback really shows that Hama continues to function at the top of his game, even after 329 issues. 

The first issue was solid, and I'm curious what this title will mean for the evolution of SIKTC. 

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Read:

I'm still working through Stephen King's third novel in The Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. This is my favorite book, so it's a bit amazing to me how long it's taking me to read. I sailed through up to the Doorkeeper in the house on Dutch Hill, where he crosses over into Roland's world. Amazing scene that sort of serves as an act break. After, it's been a bit slower going. Part of that is various other things grasping at my attention - lots of comics to read for DwC, etc. Part of it is also something I only just realized this morning, as I blew through the chapter where Gasher absconds with Jake, leading him into the detritus tunnels of east Lud. This entire post-Jake's section is where the evidence of Roland's world having moved on grows to include people.

Sure, in book one, The Gunslinger, we had the town of Tull, but this is early on in the saga, and Tull feels like a town in a Western, which is what that first book purports to be for it's early chapters, only slowly peeling back the curtain and revealing Roland's world is actually very similar to our own, only a thousand or so years down a timeline where we destroy ourselves with, what I've always assumed, was warfare.

"The ancient, rusty hulks of what had once surely been automobiles stood at intervals along both curbs... There were no tires on any of these eerie hulks; they either had been stolen or had rotted away to dust long since. And all the glass had been broken, as if the remaining denizens of this city abhorred anything which might show them their own reflections... beneath and between the abandoned cars, the gutters were filled with drifts of unidentifiable metal junk and bright glints of glass. Trees had been planted at intervals along the sidewalks in some long-gone, happier time, but they were now so emphatically dead that they looked like stark metal sculptures against the cloudy sky. Some of the warehouses had either been bombed or had collapsed on their own, and beyond the jumbled heaps of bricks..."

The passage above switched on a fairly bright lightbulb when I read it yesterday morning. This is our world. We're not quite there yet, but the fact that, over the intervening roughly two decades since I last read The Wastelands, our world has become an eerily identifiable 're-echo' of Roland's. The key 'tell' here is the fact that the deeper Gasher, Jake, Roland and Oy descend into East Lud and the Tick Tock Man's domain, the more we get a sense that the people who inhabit this land enjoy living amongst the ruins of the old world. That's the thing I always get hung up on when contemplating, "could we actually take things too far?" in our own world, the operative idea being that, at a certain point, all of our in-fighting and disassembling of the mores, conventions and general social reform is going to leave our world covered in detritus and despair and that no one wants that. Only, maybe some people do want that. Maybe some people, to quote Michael Caine's Alfred in Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, "want to see the world burn." We know those people have always existed; however, maybe they're not fringe, ineffectual nothings who can only damage small portions of our society. Maybe they are the people in charge. The same way late-stage Capitalism has seen the advent of destruction economics, maybe there's a big-picture advantage for those in power in destroying everything we've built.

"He thought he was at last beginning to fully understand what that innocuous phrase - the world has moved on - really meant. What a breadth of ignorance and evil it covered."

Jesus Christ. No wonder King hates trump so much - literally the Ticktock man of our world, and he predicted him over thirty years ago.

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Playlist:

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST

sunn O))) - Loser

Pilot Priest & Electric Youth - Come True OST

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Boy Harsher - Careful

Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP

Revocation - New Gods, New Masters

Sinoa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Six of Cups

• Queen of Pentacles 

• Four of Pentacles

Emotional Balance takes a steady hand on Earthly concerns, something I'm struggling with at the moment, which makes feel isolated. 

Slide 2 Me

I saw Drug Church at Nashville's Basement East this past Saturday. Fabulous show! I'd been to this venue once before, back in 2023, and I forgot it's one of the easier Nashville locations to get to, so I'm going to stop being so gunshy about hitting shows there. 

The driving here is really prohibitive. There's so many exchanges to get to some locations, and traffic is as bad or worse than LA (believe it!), so there have been a few events I purchased tickets to in the last year that I ended up not going to, simply because, on a week night after a day's work, the thought of doing these drives is daunting, to say the least. Good to know The Basement East is pretty painless. 

Anyway, great show, great crowd. I watched a bunch of younger dudes doing full-on stage-dive cartwheels from the stage back into the crowd, and it was amazing. At a high-energy show like this, I miss the pit, but I especially miss surfing. I learned quite some time back, though, that the ramifications to those activities now can be pretty substantial. At 50? Maybe I'm buying my own pity story, but it's best to err on the side of caution, lest I remove myself from the flow of my daily life with crutches or a cast. 

"What a drag it is, getting old."

Yeah, but also, I'm mostly okay with it. I mean, I did all that shit when I was younger (never stage dove - it's far more acceptable today. Back in the Aragon Brawlroom days, bouncers would throw your ass out of the show for that shit), and it's cool to see the younger gen do it while I sit back, bang my head and drink my beer.

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Watch:

After 8 years, I canceled Shudder. It wasn't easy, because I've really been a huge supporter of them since I signed up back in the spring of 2018. But they had it coming after canceling The Last Drive-In. Ultimately, I understand that Shudder and the folks that run it aren't to blame, that it's the parent company AMC. I also understand that by canceling that and taking the $30 AMC+ deal for a full year, I basically just made the opposite statement I wanted to make. 

Here's the deal, though: I've known for a few years that AMC is shitty to Shudder. I mean, you can pay for Shudder, or you can pay for AMC+, which includes Shudder. Not only that, but the Shudder portal on AMC+ actually has more Shudder material than Shudder does. 

That's just messed up.

 This has been stuck in my craw for a while now. I want to watch a particular movie with Joe Bob, it's not on Shudder, but it is on AMC+'s Shudder. WTF? I held off as long as I could, but by doing that, I've already made my statement. Now, I'm looking at my pocketbook. So it's backward, but it's what I need to do at the moment. 

And the first movie I watched on AMC+'s Shudder portal? Nothing I couldn't see on Shudder, but still... Oily Maniac had been on my list for a while, so I dialed up this batshit crazy Shaw Brothers Horror flick and fell down a rabbit hole of whatthefuck.

So really, not much has changed, except I saved myself $69. I would have rather not canceled Shudder, but this is where we are.

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Read:

I blew through Brian McAuley's latest novel, Breath In, Bleed Out, over the weekend and loved every twist and turn!

Equal parts a Slasher and a Mystery, this book had me guessing and wincing almost all the way through. The writing is crisp and lean - no fat here, so the plot pulls you right through. The characters, too, who are fantastic, are a great mix of folks you root for and folks who, well, maybe deserve the awful deaths they get. And the deaths? Breathe In, Bleed Out has some diabolical kills. One in particular, which I'll just say involves heat and a rattlesnake, really impressed - and disgusted - me.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

Converge - The Dusk in Us

Converge - Love Is Not Enough

Nun Gun - Mondo Decay

Drug Church - Hygiene

Drug Church - Prude

Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk

Drug Church - Paul Walker

Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury - Drokk

Vitalic - OK Cowboy

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Three of Swords

• Five of Cups

• Five of Pentacles

Not gonna lie, I'm a little freaked out by this pull. We'll see.