"I Dreamed Unhappy Things!"

And Once Again... Manly P. Hall on the Winter Solstice

 

Here's a rare opportunity to sit in the front row of the lecture hall at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles while Manly P. Hall, the twentieth century's foremost expert in the occult (and author of such comprehensive masterpieces as THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES and THE SECRET DESTINY OF AMERICA), delivers an illuminating lecture about the esoteric symbolism of the Winter Solstice. 

Click HERE to listen to Part One.

Click HERE to listen to Part Two. 

Nuclear Fusion Synchronicity

1) From Tim Nazzaro's 12-19-25 WCVB report entitled "What We Know About MIT Nuclear Physicist Nuno FG Loureiro":

Community members and friends alike remain stunned days after Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a nuclear physicist, was shot and killed at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.

Loureiro, 47, was shot at his home on Gibbs Street around 9 p.m. Monday night and died the morning after.

Neves Valente was found dead inside a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire on Thursday night following an extensive manhunt. An autopsy from the Chief Medical Examiner's Office determined he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and may have died on Tuesday [...].

Loureiro was a faculty member in the departments of Nuclear Science & Engineering and Physics, as well as the director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, according to an MIT spokesperson. He joined the prestigious institution in 2016.

A theoretical physicist and fusion scientist, Loureiro was appointed to lead the Plasma Science and Fusion Center in 2024. It's one of MIT's largest labs, with more than 250 full-time researchers, staff members, and students.

He is recognized for advancements in plasma behavior, according to the institute. These include turbulence and the physics of solar flares, along with other astronomical phenomena. Loureiro also had a focus in the fusion domain, where his work enabled the design of devices that can more efficiently control and harness energy.

Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, it said [...].

"It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems," Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. "Fusion energy will change the course of human history." 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

2) From Reuters' 12-19-25 news report entitled "Trump Media Merger with Nuclear Fusion Firm Raises Questions":

On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump's social media company announced an unusual $6 billion merger with TAE Technologies, a Google-backed nuclear fusion firm.

The news that Trump Media, which operates Truth Social, was getting into the nuclear energy business...

...came just days after fusion industry leaders met with representatives of the U.S. Energy Department asking for more federal funding.

And that rings some alarm bells says Peter Loge - a professor who heads up the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at The George Washington University.

"Any time the president's name is on a commercial enterprise, it raises ethical questions. Any time a member of the president's family's name is on a commercial enterprise, it raises ethical questions. Are people buying the thing because the president's name is on it? Are people buying Trump branded products because they think it'll help him get close to the president or that the president will like them more?"

The growing electricity needs of the technology industry have revived interest in nuclear power.

However, despite decades of efforts, nuclear fusion, often seen as a potentially cleaner and more reliable energy source, has yet to produce a commercially viable reactor.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Dr. Future Returns to CONSPIRINORMAL

I recommend checking out the 501st episode of the CONSPIRINORMAL podcast, featuring Adam Sayne's latest interview with J. Michael Bennett (AKA Dr. Future), author of TWO MASTERS AND TWO GOSPELS (2020), an in-depth historical analysis of the extreme cognitive dissonance that has afflicted the evangelical community during the past several years. The book shines a spotlight on such strange disparate characters as Rev. James Fifield Jr. ("The Apostle to Millionaires"), Gerald R. Heard (author of IS ANOTHER WORLD WATCHING?: RIDDLE OF THE FLYING SAUCERS and many other books), William C. Mullendore (president of Southern California Edison Company), Leonard Read (founder of the Foundation for Economic Freedom), and Gerald L. K. Smith (founder of the Christian Nationalist Party). The political intrigue extends from the secluded woods of Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California to the evangelical hamlet of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, home of the 340-ton "Christ of the Ozarks." It's an eye-opening read packed full of essential details laying out exactly how Christians have allowed themselves to be led astray from their own beliefs thanks to the twin temptations of greed and political expediency. 

You can listen to my previous appearances on CONSPIRINORMAL alongside Dr. Future by clicking HERE and HERE.

Happy Winter Solstice! 

Conspirinormal 501- Dr Future 16- 2025: A Strange Year Ends:

Lovecraft's "The Festival" (Redux)

Click HERE to listen to a reading of H.P. Lovecraft's 1925 winter-solstice-themed short story, "The Festival" (originally published in the January 1925 issue of WEIRD TALES).

 

"Efficiunt daemones, ut quae non sunt, sic tamen quasi sint,
conspicienda hominibus exhibeant."—Lactantius.

I WAS far from home, and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me. In
the twilight I heard it pounding on the rocks, and I knew it lay just
over the hill where the twisting willows writhed against the clearing
sky and the first stars of evening. And because my fathers had called
me to the old town beyond, I pushed on through the shallow, new-fallen
snow along the road that soared lonely up to where Aldebaran twinkled
among the trees; on toward the very ancient town I had never seen but
often dreamed of.

It was the Yuletide, which men call Christmas, though they know in
their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than
Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to
the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in
the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had
commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the
memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten. Mine were an old
people, old even when this land was settled three hundred years
before. And they were strange, because they had come as dark, furtive
folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and spoken another
tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue-eyed fishers. And now
they were scattered, and shared only the rituals of mysteries that
none living could understand. I was the only one who came back that
night to the old fishing town as legend bade, for only the poor and
the lonely remember....

David Brooks & The Jeffrey Epstein Experience

From Jeremy Barr's 12-18-25 GUARDIAN article entitled "New York Times Columnist David Brooks Appears in Latest Epstein Photos":

The New York Times columnist David Brooks appeared in multiple photos from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein that were released on Thursday by the House committee on oversight and government reform [...].

The timing of the release is notable. Last month Brooks published a column in the Times saying that he was not interested in the long-unfolding Epstein scandal.

“Why is Epstein the top issue in American life right now?” Brooks wrote. “Well, in an age in which more and more people get their news from short videos, if you’re in politics, the media or online it pays to focus on topics that are salacious, are easy to understand and allow you to offer self-confident opinions with no actual knowledge.”

He also likened the fascination with the Epstein story to the QAnon conspiracy theory, arguing that Americans were irrationally convinced that a cabal of elites was scheming and doing horrible things behind the scenes.

The photos released on Thursday raise questions about why Brooks did not disclose his attendance at an Epstein-attended event when writing about his lack of interest in the case.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

UFOs Over Wyoming

From Jack Toledo's 12-18-25 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Mystery as Flock of UFOs Seen Hovering Above Power Station for More Than a Year":

A small town sheriff has admitted he is perplexed by a series of mysterious flying objects which have been bewildering locals in his Wyoming community for more than a year.

Unidentified flying objects [UFOs] have been regularly spotted for 13 months above the Jim Bridger Power Plant and Sweetwater County's Red Desert.

John Grossnickle, the Sheriff of Sweetwater County, saw lit-up, drone-like objects as recently as December 13, his spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily.

Mower said they've worked with everyone they can possibly think of to try and solve the mystery in the sky.

'We've done everything we can to figure out what they are, and nobody wants to give us any answers,' he said.

Locals are now so accustomed to the strange sightings that the Sheriff's office has stopped receiving calls about them, the spokesman told the outlet.

'It's like the new normal,' Mower said.

He also noted that the objects are thousands of feet above the earth, making them too high to shoot from the ground.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

"When Lolita Met Xenu": Scientology's Surveillance and Harassment Techniques

Here's an illuminating excerpt from Chris Owen's 9-15-25 Underground Bunker article entitled "When Lolita Met Xenu: How Scientology Targeted Nabokov’s Publisher," which details the complex surveillance and harassment campaign the Church of Scientology mounted against Maurice Girodias, the publisher of Robert Kaufman's 1972 book, Inside Scientology:

[A]ccording to [L. Ron] Hubbard’s estranged son L. Ron Hubbard Jr – better known as Nibs – [Maurice] Girodias had only bought the rights to the book [Inside Scientology] because he had heard that “Scientology had a great deal of money and they didn’t like anything published about them.” Nibs claimed in a September 1972 letter to the US Internal Revenue Service that the publisher saw the books as leverage to obtain money from the church that would resolve his financial difficulties in the UK and US.

According to Nibs, Scientology learned of the book – likely from Girodias himself – and it offered him $25,000 to delete particular passages or not publish it at all. This was too low for Girodias, who made an unsuccessful counter-offer of $200,000. He went ahead and published the book, though “only… as a last resort,” in Nibs' account.

The decision to publish Inside Scientology proved catastrophic for Girodias and Olympia. Although Girodias had plenty of experience in dealing with outraged moralists, unpaid authors, and censorious authorities, he had never faced – and almost certainly never anticipated – dealing with a self-styled intelligence agency that pursued its enemies with relentless malice and flagrant disregard for the law. He had numerous vulnerabilities in his business and personal affairs that the GO [Guardian's Office] ruthlessly exploited, ranging from his indebtedness to the controversial nature of his business and his shaky immigration status in the US.

When the forthcoming publication was trailed in a publishers’ trade newspaper, Kaufman found himself confronted by James Meisler, a New York GO staffer, who demanded a copy of his manuscript so that Scientology could make ‘corrections.’ Kaufman refused, whereupon Meisler told him: “It’s your neck. We’ve got you covered on all fronts.” Kaufman soon found out what Meisler meant. Soon afterwards, Girodias informed him that proofs of the book had been stolen from Olympia’s printer in Connecticut. A man posing as an Olympia editor from New York had bluffed his way past the night watchman and took the proofs with him. The GO did not attempt to hide its involvement. Soon afterwards, copies of the stolen pages were sent back to Olympia from Scientology’s Los Angeles headquarters, annotated with ‘corrections.’

Girodias’s own office was also infiltrated. Visiting the company’s New York offices, [Robert] Kaufman was startled to recognise a new receptionist as a young female Scientologist whom he had previously met. Girodias was insouciant, telling Kaufman that “any self-respecting place of business has to have at least one Scientology spy,” but soon afterwards the receptionist disappeared along with Girodias’ file on Kaufman’s book and several hundred dust jackets. Soon afterwards, the US State Department received an anonymous letter from “A Patriot” tipping them off about Girodias’s plans to publish a satirical work of erotica caricaturing Henry Kissinger [...].

Olympia’s printers, Oxley Press Ltd, were convinced that their offices in Soho were regularly being broken into. Girodias issued a statement saying, “Someone or something is trying to force Olympia into bankruptcy. The persons responsible for this unprecedented conspiracy are powerful and well organised. They have gained access to our files, they are out to destroy us, and they have plenty of money to achieve that result.” Suspicion naturally fell on Scientology, which denied any involvement. The GO’s head of PR, David Gaiman, claimed that Olympia’s troubles were merely “the greatest publicity stunt for a non-selling book this century.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

If you have any interest in this subject at all, I highly recommend reading my 2019 short story "The Detective with the Glass Gun" (originally published in BLACK DANDY #3) which you can find in my debut short story collection entitled CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES... signed copies of which are now on sale directly from Cryptoscatology.com!!!

 

THE HILL on Dan Bongino's Sudden Resignation

From Brett Samuels and Rebecca Beitsch's 12-17-25 THE HILL article entitled "Trump on Bongino Leaving FBI: ‘I Think He Wants to Go Back to His Show’":

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino said Wednesday he will step down from his role at the bureau in January, departing less than a year after he took the job [...].

Before joining the bureau, Bongino used his platform [as the host of a conservative radio show and podcast] to praise Trump and echo conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Bongino has reportedly had misgivings about the job since at least July, when he clashed with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Epstein files. Bongino reportedly weighed quitting at the time amid frustration with the lack of transparency in the case.

Talk of Bongino’s exit picked up again in August when then-Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was brought into the FBI to serve as co-deputy director.

A longtime critic of the FBI during his years as a commentator, Bongino also at turns seemed deflated by information he learned once inside the bureau.

As deputy director, he backed away from some conspiracy theories he previously pushed, including that Epstein didn’t kill himself.

“The evidence we have in our files clearly indicates that it was, in fact, a suicide,” Bongino said in June.

“There’s nothing there in the file at all that indicates anything other than in fact a suicide.”

And in previous musings, he had suggested the FBI’s inability to catch the suspect who planted pipe bombs in D.C. was due to a “massive cover-up” that could be concealing an “inside job.”

Bongino backtracked while indicating “one day” he could go back to his role as commentator.

“Listen I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions,” Bongino said during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity earlier this month. “That’s clear. And one day I will be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

The Turtle Island Liberation Front

1) From a 12-15-25 ABC7.com report entitled "4 Charged with Plotting New Year's Eve Attacks in Southern California, Prosecutors Say":

Audrey Carroll, Zachary Page, Dante Gaffield and Tina Lai, all described as members of the anti-capitalist and anti-government group known as the "Turtle Island Liberation Front," face charges of conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device in connection with the alleged plot.

They were taken into custody last week in Lucerne Valley, near the desert city of Twentynine Palms, California, home to a Marine Corps base. 

 

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

2) From Erin Lowrey's 12-18-25 WDSU.com report entitled "Border Patrol Attack Revealed in Messages Sent by Person Arrested in Louisiana, Records Show":

 

A person arrested in Louisiana who was tied to a terrorist group behind a thwarted New Year's Eve bombing attack had plans to attack Border Patrol agents in New Orleans, according to new court documents.

The person arrested by the FBI New Orleans Office in New Iberia was identified as Micah James Legnon.

Legnon, who is a former Marine with military combat experience, went by the alias "Black Witch" in a group chat with four others connected with the failed bombing attack planned for businesses across California.

According to the court documents, Legnon was a member of the terror group called The Turtle Island Liberation Front. Legnon was also part of a more extreme group within that organization called The Black Lotus.

Legnon indicated in a social media post that they "wanted to recreate Waco" on Border Patrol agents.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

3) From Noah Hurowitz and Trevor Aaronson's 12-16-25 THE INTERCEPT article entitled "Longtime Paid FBI Informant Was Instrumental in Terror Case Against 'Turtle Island Liberation Front'":

An FBI investigation into an alleged terror plot in Southern California bears the familiar hallmarks of the bureau’s long-running use of informants and undercover agents to advance plots that might not otherwise have materialized, court documents show.

News of the plot surfaced Monday morning in a Fox News report that ran ahead of court filings or official statements. Within minutes, FBI officials amplified the story on social media.

“PROTECT THE HOMELAND and CRUSH VIOLENT CRIME,” wrote FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, a former podcaster. “These words are not slogans, they’re the investigative pillars of this FBI.”

What followed, however, painted a more complicated picture.

The limited details available suggest an investigation that leaned heavily on a paid informant and at least one undercover FBI agent, according to an affidavit filed in federal court. The informant and the undercover agent were involved in nearly every stage of the case, including discussions of operational security and transporting members of the group to the site in the Mojave Desert where federal agents ultimately made the arrests.

The informant, who has worked other cases on the FBI’s payroll since 2021, had been in contact with the group known as the Turtle Island Liberation Front since at least late November, just two months after President Donald Trump designated “antifa” a domestic terrorism organization.

On the morning of December 15, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrests, calling the plot “a credible, imminent terrorist threat.”

Yet the case had the familiar markings of FBI terrorism stings that stretch back more than two decades — hundreds of cases that have disproportionately targeted left-wing activists and Muslims, and, less often, right-wing actors.

Since the September 11 attacks, the FBI has relied on informants to identify and build terrorism cases. The structure has created perverse incentives for potential informants. Their cooperation can get them out of criminal cases of their own and lead to handsome monetary compensation. The FBI’s call is simple: Bring cases, get paid.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

BOB BURNS, R.I.P. (1935-2025)

Legendary "Monster Kid" Bob Burns passed away on Friday, December 16th at the age of ninety. Burns was the co-author of two books: IT CAME FROM BOB'S BASEMENT (2000) and MONSTER KID MEMORIES (2005/2013). He was the subject of at least two documentaries: Lindsey Keith Jackson's HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN (2009) and Frank Dietz and Trish Geiger's BEAST WISHES (2012). HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN is a fascinating film that focuses on the impressively elaborate haunted houses Burns and his wife constructed every October in Burbank, California for several decades. The first eighteen minutes of the film can be seen HERE. (Unfortunately, the remaining six parts don't appear to be available for the time being.)

Back in the early 1990s, Burns was also responsible for co-creating (with Donald F. Glut) a wonderfully weird documentary about the history of cinematic apes entitled HOLLWOOD GOES APE! You can see Parts One and Two directly below...

Hollywood Goes Ape! (1994) - Tape 1 | COMPLETE VHS:

Hollywood Goes Ape! (1994) - Tape 2 | COMPLETE VHS:

Bob Burns Collection: Halloween Home Invasion DVD Promo:

Rest In Peace, Bob Burns! 

 

HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD on... WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?

I recently returned to Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO? to discuss my latest book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS. Such films as THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921), MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932), IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953), CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN (1955), THE GAMMA PEOPLE (1956), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962), WINTER KILLS (1979), THEY LIVE (1988), JFK (1991), and POSSESSOR (2020) are all placed under the microscope as I analyze how cinema has wrestled with cultural taboos for the past one hundred years or more. You can listen to the entire interview on YouTube...

Hollywood Haunts the World with Robert Guffey - Nov 15, 2025:

And you can order HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD HERE or HERE!

PRAISE FOR HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: 

"In HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, Robert Guffey takes his readers for a trip behind the magic curtain to reveal the true Wizards at work - those behind the lenses, making magic and moving the secret levers. To this end, Guffey plays the role of Toto, tearing the curtain aside to reveal these flesh and bone Wizards of the military-industrial-entertainment complex, and the occult role they play in influencing our inner dreams and everyday realities."

--Adam Gorightly,  

author of SAUCERS, SPOOKS, AND KOOKS
and THE SHADOW OVER SANTA SUSANA: BLACK MAGIC, MIND CONTROL, AND THE MANSON FAMILY MYTHOS

"Hollywood has truly haunted the world. So too should this book, one of the best ever written on American cinema."

--Gary D. Rhodes,

author of THE PERILS OF MOVIEGOING IN AMERICA and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA, 

from his Foreword

 

Synchro-necrosis: Synchronicities & School Shootings

From Ashifa Kassam's 12-14-25 GUARDIAN article entitled "Two Survivors of Brown University Attack Escaped Other School Shootings":

As the deadly attack unfolded at Brown University, leaving students hiding under desks and reeling as gunshots rang out, the scene was eerily familiar for at least two students.

Years earlier, Mia Tretta, 21, and Zoe Weissman, 20, had both survived school shootings. “What I’ve been feeling most is just, like, how dare this country allow this to happen to someone like me twice?” Weissman told the New York Times.

Two people were killed and nine others wounded on Saturday after a man dressed in black opened fire during final exams at one of America’s most prestigious colleges. Hundreds of police spent the night scouring the campus and nearby neighbourhoods as the suspect remained at large [...].

On Saturday, Tretta and Weissman said they had assumed they would never have to live through another shooting.

“The one thing that gave me comfort was, like, statistically, it’s practically impossible for this to ever happen to me again,” said Weissman. “And clearly, we’re getting to a point where no one can say that any more.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

For more information regarding equally odd synchronicities, check out Loren Coleman's 11-14-18 TWILIGHT LANGUAGE blog post entitled “Survived a Mass Shooting, Killed at Another,” in which Coleman analyzes the peculiar pattern of mass shooting survivors dying not long afterwards under equally tragic circumstances: “It is like a bad script from a horror movie," Coleman writes. "You find yourself at a mass shooting, survive that tragic event, and then die in another one. Sounds like urban folklore. But it has happened. And it has occurred again.”

FILM INTERNATIONAL: The Secret History: Introduction to Hollywood Haunts the World

An excerpt from my latest book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS, has just been published by FILM INTERNATIONAL. If you want to read "The Secret History: Introduction to HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD," then click HERE!

You can order the book HERE or HERE!

PRAISE FOR HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: 

"In HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, Robert Guffey takes his readers for a trip behind the magic curtain to reveal the true Wizards at work - those behind the lenses, making magic and moving the secret levers. To this end, Guffey plays the role of Toto, tearing the curtain aside to reveal these flesh and bone Wizards of the military-industrial-entertainment complex, and the occult role they play in influencing our inner dreams and everyday realities."

--Adam Gorightly,  

author of SAUCERS, SPOOKS, AND KOOKS
and THE SHADOW OVER SANTA SUSANA: BLACK MAGIC, MIND CONTROL, AND THE MANSON FAMILY MYTHOS

"Hollywood has truly haunted the world. So too should this book, one of the best ever written on American cinema."

--Gary D. Rhodes,

author of THE PERILS OF MOVIEGOING IN AMERICA and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA, 

from his Foreword

 

The Cryptoscatology Top Ten: The Best Comic Books of 2025!

1. TALES OF PARANOIA by Robert Crumb, with contributions by Aline Kominsky-Crumb (published by Fantagraphics):

A curious amount of comic books released in 2025 deal with paranoia, metanoia, hyperawareness, conspiracy theories, High Strangeness, and the breakdown of consensus reality. TALES OF PARANOIA, Robert Crumb’s first comic book in far too many years, is perhaps the most intense and deeply personal examination of these themes. Though one might describe these “tales of paranoia” as unhinged rants, Crumb’s innate talent for cutting through unnecessary artifice lifts these diatribes above the status of mere propaganda. Interwoven with fiery tirades directed against multinational pharmaceutical companies, cradle-to-grave religious indoctrination, the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program, rampant censorship of transgressive ideas, and the potential manipulative power of Artificial Intelligence, we also find profound lamentations about death and dying. On one page Crumb is fulminating over the seemingly insurmountable terror of the Deep State, and in the next he’s hunched over a stove, cooking dinner for one while the memory of his deceased wife hovers over his shoulders inside a ghostly thought balloon. In Crumb’s claustrophobic world, broadsides tackling the predatory nature of the universe exist in uncomfortable harmony with dread-inducing images of an octogenarian Crumb lying awake in the middle of the night, surrounded by nothing except impenetrable darkness as he attempts to wrestle with fears about alienation and the human condition. If they gave out awards for the most powerful existential comic book of the year, Crumb’s TALES OF PARANOIA would take home the trophy.

2. ALIEN DISCLOSURE by Jim Rugg (published by Jim Rugg):

 

Jim Rugg’s latest independently published comic book, ALIEN DISCLOSURE, presents a series of questions as statements, eschewing the question mark in each sentence. This simple rhetorical technique successfully lulls the reader into a near-hypnotic trance, almost as if one is being subjected to a series of enigmatic, iconoclastic mantras. It’s a fascinating effect that underscores the central theme of the book: that we can no longer trust our senses when it comes to evaluating objective reality, particularly in regard to phenomena presented to us as wholly numinous in nature. The dividing lines between religious dogma, governmental decrees, popular fiction, and outright propaganda are growing very thin indeed, and Rugg appears to be intensely concerned about the serious implications of these radical paradigm shifts in human consciousness.

3. HOLY LACRIMONY by Michael DeForge (published by Drawn and Quarterly):

In this Vonnegutesque science fiction fable, the saddest man in the world (a popular musician named Jackie) is abducted by aliens and exploited as an indispensable natural resource. Like the extraterrestrial “Strangers” in Alex Proyas’ 1998 film DARK CITY, these supernal beings know nothing about human emotion and therefore need to study it up close and personal. There are hints that these shapeshifting creatures are akin to the otherworldly residents of the Black Lodge in David Lynch and Mark Frost’s TWIN PEAKS, in the sense that they appear to feed off pain and suffering above all else. They’re not interested in Jackie’s music; they’re interested in him as a person only as long as he remains depressed. The uncomfortable dynamic between Jackie and his abductors emerges as a metaphor for the parasitic relationship between audience and artist. At what point does the audience begin to dictate the output of the artist? Do the audience members merely consume what the artist chooses to create or do they have a far greater impact on the artist’s output than one might suspect?

It’s no coincidence that DeForge’s aliens resemble the figure in Edvard Munch’s 1893 oil painting, THE SCREAM. Perhaps the idea for this graphic novel emerged from a realization on DeForge’s part that the image of the “alien Gray” made iconic by the cover of Whitley Strieber’s bestselling memoir COMMUNION eerily resembles Munch’s famous shrieking figure. Or, conversely, did Munch create the spectral image in order to mimic these creatures? Is Art dictated by Reality or the other way around? Like the Möbius strip relationship between artist and audience, it might be impossible to distinguish between the two...

4. RED BOOK by James Tynion IV and Michael Avon Oeming (published by Image):

This series is a follow-up to Tynion and Oeming’s previous collaboration, BLUE BOOK, in which classic Cold War-era investigations into flying saucer sightings and alleged alien contacts were examined in a docudrama manner from the perspective of the United States. RED BOOK, a thematic sequel, explores the flipside of post-WWII UFO-mania by delving into mysterious phenomena based in the Soviet Union and China, including such perennial enigmas as the infamous Dyatlov Pass incident of 1959 and the Meng Zhaoguo abduction of 1994. The cool, haunting blue tones used by Oeming in the previous series have been replaced by an eye-searing red palette that reminds one of the constructivist Soviet propaganda posters of the 1920s, lending these strange tales a striking visual style unlike any other series now on the stands.

5. ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez (published by DC Comics):

Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez’s ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER is the most innovative comic book DC Comics has released since Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ MISTER MIRACLE in 2017. Rather than subvert or upend classic comic book tropes like many revisionist superhero extravaganzas, Camp’s sophisticated script instead embraces these timeworn clichés for the express purpose of pushing them outward to such distorted extremes that overly familiar archetypes seem to morph into brand new forms while the cerebral plot unravels and explodes beyond the borders of the panels. Inspired by darkly comic postmodern novelists such as Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, and Don DeLillo, Camp and Rodriguez have created a case study in mass paranoia, holding up a dark mirror to the chaos of our current socio-political environment in which average human beings are so often maneuvered into working against their own best interests due to the influence of highly paid persuasion engineers in the deep pockets of politicians, militarists, businessmen, and theocrats (sociopaths all). In Camp and Rodriguez’s world, such rampant psychic manipulation is symbolized by an invisible extraterrestrial (or interdimensional) (or ultraterrestrial) being known only as “the White Martian,” which is intent on infecting the collective unconscious of the human race with negative emotions amped up to eleven. Reminiscent of Golden Age science fiction novels such as Hal Clement’s NEEDLE (1950), as well as later reinterpretations of Clement’s highly influential plot such as Nathan Juran’s THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957) and Jack Sholder’s THE HIDDEN (1987), an opposing—and empathic—otherworldly force soon emerges on Earth to combat the nefarious “White Martian,” but it can only manifest in the material world by binding itself to a human being, in this case FBI agent John Jones.

The epic battle between these two entities plays out wholly on the psychic plane, a la Harlan Ellison’s 1956 short story “The Silver Corridor” and numerous issues of Steve Ditko’s DR. STRANGE, and yet this well-trod science fiction scenario of mental combat is reimagined by Rodriguez’s artwork in such a stunningly imaginative way that the images almost seem to be on the verge of spilling off the page and taking up residence in the real world. Though this duel is invisible to the human eye, nonetheless it’s rendered with revelatory clarity by Rodriguez’s masterful use of vibrant colors that appear to emanate from another dimension somewhere next door to our own. Rodriguez’s unique art style merges the fluidity of 1920s surrealist posters from France, the psychedelic incandescence of 1960s rock ‘n roll flyers from San Francisco, and the hyperkineticism of Kirbyesque superheroics. If one described this alien-themed police procedural as “day-glo noir,” one wouldn’t be far off the mark.

6. TRUE-MAN: THE MAXIMORTAL COMICS #2 by Rick Veitch (published by King Hell Press/Sun Comics):

In what might very well be the sine qua non of post-postmodern superhero tales, a living idea known as The Maximortal is weaponized by the military-industrial-entertainment-complex during the early 1970s for the purpose of winning the Cold War on behalf of the Richard Nixon administration, establishing the global supremacy of the United States once and for all. According to industrialist Preston Panache, the head of a mysterious intelligence operation called Project Truman, this living idea is “a higher dimensional creature with god-like powers” that he and his subordinates plan to brainwash by subjecting it to the techniques of notorious MK-ULTRA scientist Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb is exploiting ideas established by Golden Age American comic books to reshape the creature into a being that perceives itself as a superhero who fights only for American values. Ironically, it soon becomes necessary for Project Truman to hire a premier advertising executive named Don Draker (who looks suspiciously like Jon Hamm) to adjust Gottlieb’s programming, for it soon becomes quite clear that the patriotic values being programmed into this creature will, if left unchecked, inevitably bring it into conflict with the polices of the United States.

As Mr. Draker says, this particular hero must be “more in sync with the strategic needs of the government and the capitalist system.” Rather than bringing “politicians and arms manufacturers to justice,” this superhero will instead “eradicate the scourge of communism and ensure the primacy of American power” by using its powers to dominate supervillains that don’t even exist.

Veitch’s narrative is as much a commentary on the degradation of the “living idea” of the American experiment as it is about the devolution of the comic book medium itself. TRUE-MAN: THE MAXIMORTAL is without a doubt one of the most intelligent and literate superhero comic books being published today.

7. SWITCHBLADE SHORTIES by Ed Piskor (published by Zoop):

A strange mixture of Jack Hill’s 1970s cult classic exploitation film SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, Jack Kirby’s various and sundry comic books about kid gangs (e.g. THE NEWSBOY LEGION, THE BOY COMMANDOS, THE DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET, etc.), and Charles Schulz’s PEANUTS, Ed Piskor’s SWITCHBLADE SHORTIES stars a crew of five latchkey kids—Pinky, Charlene, Sheena, Sodapop, and Foster—who are forced to abandon their aimless pastimes involving sleepovers and videogames to solve a local mystery. Like such television shows as TWIN PEAKS and STRANGER THINGS, the main conflict is set into motion due to the sudden disappearance of a child, in this case a neighborhood boy named Petey Wheatcakes. At first the gang’s main motivation to solve this mystery is to collect the $5,000 reward money, but as the narrative unfolds the Switchblade Shorties find themselves risking life and limb to save an alien that’s been kidnapped by one of their initial suspects, a Vietnam vet living in a trashy trailer park. Though the five friends must contend with increasingly absurd obstacles such as the aforementioned psychokinetic Gray alien, wild lycanthropes, and murderous sasquatches, very often the worst threats they face are human in nature: violent hillbillies, relentless FBI agents, and hired assassins.

The world of SWITCHBLADE SHORTIES is outlandish in nature, and yet its many gritty details anchor the narrative firmly in a very human world. When the kids while away the hours by watching a FACES OF DEATH marathon, encounter a fellow classmate who habitually smokes weed given to him by his own mother, flip through random issues of HUSTLER, or nab free rides with pads of bus transfers pilfered from the Port Authority, one feels as if the protagonists are actual delinquents of the mid-1990s thrust into a fantastical situation, not an idealized version of children dreamed up by clueless adults (which describes most of the kids who inhabit mainstream comic strips and comic books).

8. DIMWOOD by Richard Corben, with contributions by Beth Corben Reed (published by Dark Horse Books):

Though Richard Corben’s final graphic novel does not concern itself with extraterrestrial beings or insidious conspiracies per se, it certainly evokes a similar sense of enigmatic dread one encounters in several other comic books on this list (particularly TALES OF PARANOIA and HOLY LACRIMONY). Corben’s most important influences are on full display in this posthumously released gothic horror tale. Indeed, the ghosts of Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, and H.P. Lovecraft hover over the narrative like omnipresent shadows. At the story’s outset, we see a young woman named Xera returning to her ancestral home, Dimwood Mansion, to attend the funeral of her mother, which soon leads to the painful exhumation of a wide variety of ghosts, literal and otherwise. By and by, Xera’s journey from innocence to awareness brings her face to face with certain agonizing truths involving her faintly remembered childhood at Dimwood.

As in Carl Jung’s psychoanalytic theories, Corben seems to believe that refusing to acknowledge one’s shadow self can only lead to repression, insanity, and self-destruction. In the dark world of DIMWOOD, the consequences of decades-long mysteries, subjugated memories, and spore-based madness all collide inside the confining, twisted corridors of a deteriorating haunted house only Corben could draw, creating a grotesque and arabesque metaphor for familial guilt and genetic trauma that’s heavy on foreboding and atmosphere. Many families harbor deep secrets and uncomfortable truths they’re urged to ignore at a very early age; however, even families who seem to revel in such dysfunction would have a hard time dealing with the horrors of cannibalistic patriarchs and mutant mycologists. That Corben is able to bring such wild improbabilities to life with his uncanny artistic renderings is a testament to his unique style. Without a doubt, DIMWOOD is an important farewell gift offered up by an absolute master of the form.

9. THE CABBIE: DEFINITIVE EDITION by Martí (published by Fantagraphics):

Since 2025 marks the first time that the concluding volumes of Martí’s classic Spanish graphic novel THE CABBIE have been translated into English, I think it definitely deserves a place on this list. Created as a direct response to Franco’s fascist dictatorship in Spain, THE CABBIE melds the existential grittiness of Martin Scorcese’s TAXI DRIVER (1976) with the quasi-surreal expressionism of Chester Gould’s decades-spanning comic strip DICK TRACY to create a stark, black-and-white, crime-ridden world filled with ultra-violence, unfettered greed, and political conspiracies galore. THE CABBIE Volume Two focuses on a plot by organized crime that involves trafficking underage females to wealthy businessmen who are videotaped having sex with the kidnapped girls and subsequently blackmailed. The titular character, a rightwing vigilante who tools around town in an armored Panzer-86 taxi cab, soon uncovers this “diabolical scheme,” is overcome with moral revulsion, and attempts to hunt down the perpetrators. The fact that we’ve seen our “hero” receiving fellatio from the very same underage female (whom the Cabbie deemed to be a “depraved devil-child”) in the previous volume only underscores the Cabbie’s extreme self-blindness and utter hypocrisy. In Martí’s near-dystopian world, nobody—even the characters being victimized—are seen to be wholly innocent. And the less innocent the characters, the more righteous they behave.

As comics critic Hagai Palevsky recently wrote in THE COMICS JOURNAL:

Martí’s protagonist is a perfect conservative in a catch-all city — he is a God-fearing man, and a staunch believer in law and order. A rare splash page, early on in the first arc, demonstrates his worldview: “With his squad car (the taxi) he helps clean up the trash that gathers [in the city’s ‘shantytown’]… to dump it [in the city prison]… or [in the cemetery].” Though an obvious comment on Gould’s own simplistic moralities, with the righteous arm of the law replaced by a vigilante backing the boys in blue, I cannot help but think of Fletcher Hanks’ fire-and-brimstone paranoia as well: the unwavering belief that cruelty and conspiracy lurk behind every corner, and that a messiah-figure is not only desired but necessary (this is underscored several times over by the sequences where Cabbie receives religious visions courtesy of St. Christopher, the patron saint of motorists) […] [Cabbie] experiences religious delusion, to be sure, but in truth he has no lofty ideals besides those handed down to him by the system, nor do his actions help maintain any grand order […] More than anything, the reader sees the fatal pointlessness of his actions at every moment. And what does he do with that knowledge? Absolutely nothing, because it never dawns on him.

In the unfinished (and previously untranslated) third volume of the series, we see the Cabbie driving around in the twenty-first century in his brand new vehicle, which is equipped with “an onboard internet-connected computer, a satellite GPS system, and permanent access to forty channels” with which he can perpetually view rightwing television news broadcasts. We see the Cabbie encounter an ex-president who’s on the lam after having been charged with “high treason and graft,” a secret society known as “Totus Tuus” that’s described as “a network of cardinals, businessmen, politicians, military leaders, and journalists who are bent on controlling the Vatican’s vast indoctrination operation and economic resources” (obviously a stand-in for Opus Dei), a crotchety old blind cardinal (the “future pope”) who appears to spend his free time performing mysterious electrical experiments on fetuses pickled in glass jars, and a gang of gay pride parade revelers dressed like devils who hijack the ex-president, stuff him into a diplomatic pouch shaped like a cross, and toss him into a garbage dump… and that’s all in eleven pages. I thought for sure this aborted third volume had been created during the last few years in response to the post-Trump political landscape, but it turns out that Martí actually released this “preview” way back in the early 2000s! Though it’s a shame this third part of THE CABBIE trilogy was never completed, the first two volumes stand as a testament to Martí’s skills as a masterful and darkly humorous countercultural satirist.

10. MY GORILLA FAMILY by Iijima Ichiro (published by Living the Line):

Never before published in English, the manic tales in Iijima Ichiro’s collection, MY GORILLA FAMILY AND OTHER STORIES OF HUMAN HORROR, read as if they were conjured up by a deranged but precocious thirteen-year-old boy suffering from intense fever dreams: pissed-off spiders lay eggs in a young woman’s uterus; indestructible carnivorous fish from outer space multiply like tribbles (with far more disastrous results); a working class woman is pressured by her boss into marrying a gorilla for the health of the corporation; an embittered woman who hungers for a better life asks Satan to regress her into a voyeuristic, sex-starved, cigar-smoking adolescent with money to burn; an idyllic summer resort reduces its visitors into skeletons; a housewife inadvertently kills her husband with a rolled-up newspaper; an insurrectionist goes on a murder spree after being condemned to solitary confinement by the Supreme Ruler of the C+Q Planet Empire; a slew of dead babies begin popping up in the middle of a forest for no apparent reason; a science fiction writer is tasked with photographing a reptilian astral form as it sheds itself from a man’s physical body; a “pain in the ass” named Umeda begins slaughtering women merely because his mother ditched him when he was a child; a horde of “ugly women” are “driven to murderous hysteria caused by sexual frustration after being repeatedly spurned by men,” and that’s not even all of the stories included in this volume! If the word “bizarro” didn’t already exist, it would have to be invented to describe Iijima’s lunatic imagination.