...And not just the one about breeding with monsters.

I grew up in Lovecraft country, born in Salem, Mass. (Arkham) and reared in Ipswich (Innsmouth), before leaving New England for the greener (sometimes greyer) pastures of Portland, Oregon in 1991. Since 1995, I’ve been enjoying, and increasingly involved in, Portland’s HP Lovecraft Film Festival. I remember going with Mike Mignola the very first time, just catching a few short films. The Festival has grown quite a lot over the years, and I’ve grown more involved, providing some comics for the Festival newspaper The Daily Lurker, and speaking on panels about horror comics and film adaptations of printed work.

This year it was looking like it was not going to happen — Festival founder Andrew Migliore had to focus on other things, so while some friends organized a fest in LA, Portland was going to have to go without.

[But you can’t keep Cthulhu down]

Today is the birthday of Jane Espenson, writer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Torchwood, Warehouse 13, Dollhouse, Game of Thrones, Dinosaurs, Andy Barker PI, Caprica, Tru Calling, Gilmore Girls, The Inside, The OC, Firefly, Something So Right, Deep Space Nine, Ellen, and Nowhere Man. If you’re on this site and you haven’t seen a few of Jane’s shows, you probably don’t watch TV. Good for you. She’s also written a pile of comics, to my great delight....

[How to celebrate Jane Espenson’s birthday]

The great comics legend Gene Colan passed away yesterday at the age of 84, just days after the anniversary of his wife Adrienne’s death. I hesitate to eulogize him, afraid it’ll look like I’m trying to hitch myself to Gene’s legend, to validate myself in his shadow. I just want to use up a little corner of the internet, maybe take a few minutes of some readers’ time, to add to the sentiment of love and tribute to this amazing talent. 

In the 1990s I was bored with most of what was coming out in comics, so instead of walking away from the shop empty-handed every Wednesday, I put my money toward reading old stories. Gene’s phenomenal run on Tomb of Dracula, with writer Marv Wolfman, wasn’t yet available in a collected form, but this was when you could find back issues pretty reliably. I got the first three issues of Tomb of Dracula one Wednesday, and for the next couple months, every week’s trip to the comic shop meant another few issues of the greatest horror series of the 1970s. The story and art were so good my appetite increased, more comics per trip, more trips per week. If my regular store, Excalibur Books and Comics on Portland’s Hawthorne Blvd., didn’t have a particular issue—a rare hurdle—I’d run to Future Dreams, or Things from Another World, and seldom had to go farther than that.

[Read more]

Portland is one of the more interesting place to live in this country, especially if you’re into the genre stuff that gets lumped into geek culture. My girlfriend runs a biweekly event called Geek Trivia, held at an old school that’s been converted into a microbrewery and a movie theater. Prizes include a trip to San Diego Comic Con. Portlanders mean it when it comes to getting your geek on.

[The celebration of Bruce Campbell’s birthday you missed!]