Every year when I cobble together some best-of-the-year list from half-remembered this and that, I always end up remembering stuff from the last few months instead of the whole year, and feeling like that’s all unfair. So, in an effort to work around that, and trusting that I actually come back and LOOK at this in five months, but mostly because I’m just now thinking of it, here’s my favorites so far:

Comic Book:

Everything here is just working so well: the wo…

Cool Mongrels project:

https://sites.google.com/view/werewolves-are-real/home…

[ I keep forgetting to do these the day-of. So, at least this one’s the week-of . . . ]

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Matthew Vaugh on It Came from Del Rio, The Ones that Got Away, and Growing Up Dead in Texas—and this is from . . . 2012, maybe? Just showed up on Twitter, anyway. Or showed up again, not sure. Either way, very kind, much appreciated:

My triple Stephen Graham Jones Review

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Man, just like with Ready Player One, Wolf in White Van, and a lot of others from the past . . . four, five years? this one’s also kind of “of my age group.” Meaning: I was twelve in 1984. So of course I’ll see this—I mean, I think I’d be there just for the content—but, too, I wonder what role nostalgia is playing in it. Pynchon in V says that we all have a certain homesickness (maybe that was his word? been a while) for the decade we were born in. Dude̵…

It’s Becky Spratford, star librarian, laying down all the horror:

https://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2018/06/best-of/best-genre/fear-not-genre-spotlight-horror/…

Was a good time last night. My first time at the Mercury Cafe, too (Boulder people don’t get to Denver too often—it’s weird, I know, but neither do Denver people trek out here to Boulder much either). Meaning, I didn’t know what door to use, meaning: of course I ended up circulating at a wedding for a few minutes before finally asking the photographer where the horror reading part of all this was going to be.

One redirect later, I found my people:

Or, rather, in a …

I did not know this about Appetite for Destruction. Fucking CDs I tell ya. pic.twitter.com/pZ6Pt8Z9rP

— Ben Robertson (@BenRobertson) June 29, 2018

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It’s of a world without Harlan Ellison, yes. It’s all different because of him. And, no, I never met the guy, or, I only knew him on the page, but, too, I kind feel that that’s where you can know someone the best.

Anyway, here’s my favorite two Ellison write-ups, one from before yesterday, one from the day-of, I think, neither pulling any punches, but neither did Ellison:

Don’t Let Harlan Ellison Hear This

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This originally ran on Spinetingler back in 2012, when Growing Up Dead in Texas was new. Now Spinetingler’s gone gone gone, though, and somebody got hold of me, asked where was this, and . . . I’m not so sure, really. But I did dig this up from an email. It’s some version of what went up at Spinetingler lo those many years ago. From a. URL I found for it, the first part of the title, evidently, was “That Pink Light at the End of the Tunnel,” but then some U…