ANYONE can vote in the Rondo Awards! My latest novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, has been nominated for "Best Classic Monster Fiction." YOU CAN VOTE FOR DEAD MONKEY RUM IN 3 EASY STEPS....
1. Copy-and-paste the ballot below into an e-mail. 2. Choose DEAD MONKEY RUM in the BEST CLASSIC MONSTER FICTION category. 3. Then email to David Colton (taraco@aol.com) by midnight on April 16th, 2024.
Don’t forget to include your name in the e-mail!
--START COPYING--
BEST CLASSIC MONSTER FICTION:
— DEAD MONKEY RUM,by Robert Guffey (Planet Bizarro, softcover, 192 pages, $12.99). Cryptozoic beasts race adventurers in Los Angeles. --END COPYING--
In case you missed my recent appearances on Seriah
Azkath's radio show WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, then feel free to head on over to YouTube and check out Part Two of this three-hour interview. Topics include CHAMELEO, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, SPIES & SAUCERS, psychic youth, drones, UFOs, They Live, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Whitley Strieber, Terence McKenna, True Hallucinations,
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris, Aleister Crowley, John Dee, John Keel and the New
Journalism, The Mothman Prophecies, The Eighth Tower, Wilhelm Reich, Contact With Space, Trevor James Constable, They Live in the Sky!, cloud busting
machines, Jack Kirby, Kenn Thomas, William S. Burroughs, Charles Fort,
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, David Paulides, infrared light and cameras, advanced
electronic military camouflage in Ukraine, high-tech camouflage and the
Geneva Convention, Richard Schowengerdt’s recognition by the U.S. Navy, VICE News, and other matters of High Weirdness!(Note: This interview was recorded back on March 16th.)
On today's episode of the FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE NEWS podcast, Chris Mathieu and I discuss esoteric cinema, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, UFOs, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, H.P. Lovecraft, SPIES & SAUCERS, my latest book, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, and related High Strangeness!
Yes, it's true, ANYONE can vote in the Rondo Awards! My latest novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, has been nominated for "Best Classic Monster Fiction." YOU CAN VOTE FOR DEAD MONKEY RUM IN 3 EASY STEPS....
1. Copy-and-paste the ballot below into an e-mail. 2. Choose DEAD MONKEY RUM in the BEST CLASSIC MONSTER FICTION category. 3. Then email to David Colton (taraco@aol.com) by midnight on April 16th, 2024.
Don’t forget to include your name in the e-mail!
--START COPYING--
BEST CLASSIC MONSTER FICTION:
— DEAD MONKEY RUM,by Robert Guffey (Planet Bizarro, softcover, 192 pages, $12.99). Cryptozoic beasts race adventurers in Los Angeles. --END COPYING--
MAHALO, FRIENDS!!!
PRAISE FOR DEAD MONKEY RUM:
"A remarkable rush of entertainment and thrills."
--Alan Moore (V for Vendetta and Watchmen)
"Robert Guffey's
fantastic novel, DEAD MONKEY RUM, will at least bring your brain out of a
coma, if not get your imagination off the couch. This is a thinly
masked tribute/adventure to the late Stanislaw Szukalski and his
boundless imagination. This book is a mental gymnasium." -- Robert Williams (Visual Addiction, Hysteria in Remission, and Through Prehensile Eyes)
"A fantastically rich and entertaining piece of work with an original sharp edge."
-- Jim Woodring (writer/artist of Weathercraft, The Frank Book, and One Beautiful Spring Day)
"Stanislaw
Szukalski would love DEAD MONKEY RUM. This novel is addictive like a
heavy drug. Make space in your calendar to read it all."
-- Irek Dobrowolski (director of the Netflix documentary, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski)
"Yetis,
Tiki Gods, Cryptozoology, and rum-filled adventure! Sign me up and tell
me when the ship sails! I'm recommending this Robert Guffey novel to
all my friends, family, and foes to take their minds completely off
whatever they are thinking about. Wonderful."
-- Loren Coleman (Mysterious America, The Field Guide to Lake Monsters and Sea Serpents, The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Curious Encounters, and 40 other books - Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum)
"DEAD
MONKEY RUM succeeds at being a pursuit thriller, with suspense and
tension as the monkey and Stephanie evade their cryptid enemies, and
comedy as the two exchange jabs at each other. It is cinematically fast.
DEAD MONKEY RUM should be adapted to a [...] Ralph Bakshiesque animated
film where both the zaniness of the narrative and the latent satire
would really flourish."
To the casual reader, Ed Piskor's RED ROOMmight at first appear to be little more than an exercise in
splatterpunk excess; for the more discerning reader, it turns out to
be a clever, insightful, McLuhanesque satire about the effects of technology on
the human condition and vice versa. Here’s the plot synopsis that appears at the beginning of each issue:
The DARK WEB provides means to use
the internet ANONYMOUSLY, free from consequence. CRYPTOCURRENCY transactions
lack a detectable paper trail, providing further obfuscation. These tools are
being abused to create a NEFARIOUS subculture of MURDER for ENTERTAINMENT in real
time via WEBCAM. WHO would participate in such a sick enterprise? WHO are the
VICTIMS? WHO are the CUSTOMERS? WHO are the MURDERERS?
Throughout each issue, the reader is not
only shown the extreme violence being streamed in the Red Room but also the
ongoing thread of comments from the viewers paying to watch (and critique) the
violence. From the way the comments are written, the reader begins to form a
mental picture of the type of person who would shell out an excessive amount of
money to witness something as bloody as this unfold before their eyes. The
perverse chatroom comments, particularly the ones that appear in RED ROOM: TRIGGER WARNINGS #3, are eerily
similar to what I’ve read in QAnon chatrooms while researching my latest book,OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP.
If you think comparing a story about a cult of snuff film
enthusiasts to the followers of QAnon is way off the mark, consider the fact
that soon after Joe Biden’s certification as president, QAnon followers began
enthusiastically sharing doctored photographs and videos on social media that
appeared to show scaffolding near the White House on which human beings were
being hanged. The QAnon cultists couldn’t have been more elated. They thought
this was proof that Trump was still President, had declared martial law, and
was now following through on “the Plan” to execute Satanic Democrats—in public
view. When it became obvious to even the most gullible QAnon follower that
these photos and videos were fake, the sigh of disappointment was heard around
the world. These Christian Patriots were inconsolably upset that they had not been watching genuine snuff
films.
Though
not explicitly about QAnon, the hypocrisy of MAGA Trumpism, and the
radicalization of the evangelical right, RED ROOM nonetheless holds up a
distorted mirror to its audience
that successfully unveils the ugliest Jungian shadows of early
twenty-first
century America. If "splatterpunk satire" isn't already a recognized category of fiction, perhaps RED ROOM will put it on the literary map.
Of course, aficionados are well aware that humor has always been an important component to splatterpunk. From the top of the
literary strata (e.g., the dark elegance of Clive Barker's BOOKS OF
BLOOD or the Boschian onslaught of historical violence depicted in
Edward Lee's THE TELEVISION), all the way down to the pulp madness of
Rex Miller's SLOB or Guy N. Smith's CRABS ON THE RAMPAGE, one finds
gallows humor interwoven with the very DNA of violent horror; however, Ed
Piskor's RED ROOM series takes this marriage of humor and horror to new
heights. RED ROOM: CRYPTO KILLAZ!, the third and final volume of the
series, is the apex of splatterpunk as social satire.
What might at first seem to be an exploitative horror story about
"murder for fun and profit on the dark web" (the comic's official
tagline) ends up being a multilayered examination of the marriage
between dehumanization and technological evolution, fragmentation and capitalism, reality distortion and identity
displacement. The bloody story spans generations, establishing
unexpected connections throughout the decades, linking the dawn of
cinema to the Jack the Ripper murders, Charles Foster Kane to snuff
films, Quentin Tarantino to Quantico, crypto coins to human sacrifice. As media theorist Marshall McLuhan (who was somewhat of a satirist himself) wrote in 1970, "When identity disappears with technological innovation, violence is the natural recourse.” If
McLuhan were writing UNDERSTANDING MEDIA in the twenty-first century,
he would no doubt devote a whole chapter to Ed Piskor and RED ROOM.
Here's an excerpt from Christian Holub's 4-2-24 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY article entitle "Ed Piskor, Comic Artist and YouTube Host, Dies at 41":
Ed Piskor, the writer and artist behind ambitious comic books like Hip Hop Family Tree and X-Men: Grand Design, died Monday at 41.
A death notice posted by the Savolskis-Wasik-Glenn Funeral Home
of Munhall, Pa., remembered Piskor as a "gifted artist and cartoonist"
and said he "passed away unexpectedly." Piskor's sister, Justine
Cleaves, also addressed his death on Facebook,
writing, "It is with the most broken heart that I share my big brother,
Ed, has passed away today. Please just keep our family in your prayers
as this is the hardest thing we've ever had to go through."
A cause of death was not disclosed. On Monday morning, Piskor posted a lengthy note to his Facebook page,
in which he addressed and denied allegations of inappropriate sexual
conduct from multiple women. "I'm helpless against a mob of this
magnitude. Please share my side of things. Sayonara," he wrote, linking
out to a five-page document that ended with "1982-2024."
Piskor broke through in comics with his 2012-2016 project Hip Hop Family Tree,
which documented the early years of hip-hop culture and portrayed
iconic figures like DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Public Enemy.
In 2017, Piskor took a similar all-encompassing ensemble approach to Marvel superhero mythology with X-Men: Grand Design, an attempt to synthesize the complicated history of mutants in a cohesive narrative. In an interview with EW at the time,
Piskor explained how he tried to blend multiple different comic art
styles in his work. "I'm a fan of all comics," he said. "I like manga, I
like French European albums, I like a lot of newspaper comic strips.
The storytelling method I use is a pastiche of all that stuff."
Since then, Piskor wrote and drew a horror comic series called Red Room, which occasionally inspired controversy. He also launched a YouTube channel called Cartoonist Kayfabe, in which he and fellow cartoonist Jim Rugg would interview other comic artists and share their thoughts on the art form.
Following Piskor's final wishes, Jim Rugg (his CARTOONIST KAYFABE co-host) has begun posting the banked episodes. You can see the latest one directly below....
CARTOONIST KAYFABE: EC Comics vs US Air Force! Are UFOs Real? Was the Comics Code Payback?
In
case you missed my recent appearances on Seriah
Azkath's radio show WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, Part One of this new three-hour interview is now available directly below....
Robert Guffey Part 1 - March 23, 2024:
Not only do Seriah and I discuss my latest book, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES (as well as a panoply of CHAMELEO-related topics), but we also delve into lucid dreaming, Flannel Men, Freemasonry, UFOs, Glimmer Men, eyeless stone dogs, psychic warfare, and more!!!
I just finished reading Jack Skelley's FEAR OF KATHY ACKER, a darkly comedic stream-of-consciousness rant that's half dirty realism and half Joycean monologue. This unique experimental novel would make a fantastic one-man show. Highly recommended!
"Deft, deadpan, dreadful, deliberate, delirious. Perfect adult bedtime reading." —Jane Rankin-Reid, White Hot Magazine
"Fear of Kathy Acker is one of the great lost masterpieces of ’80s experimental fiction. That it’s no longer an inaccessible legend is huge." —Dennis Cooper
"Jack Skelley pours it on like sometimes blam blam blam like the riff in 'Death Valley '69' but mostly with a surfer’s rhythm like the cool throb of his guitar, his writing the poetics of pink love and punk pool splash action, the sound I adore." —Thurston Moore
"Despite the dislike of seeing my own name, you’re really a good writer—never what’s expected." —Kathy Acker
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