Author Archives: steven

Happy Valentine’s Day, Count Dracula!

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Hey, lovers of vampire fiction and supernatural romance, did you know that it was 95 years ago—on Valentine’s Day, of all days!—that the 1931 screen adaptation of Dracula made its theatrical debut? It’s true!

Directed by Tod Browning (Freaks, London After Midnight), with a screenplay by Garrett Fort (adapting the Bram Stoker novel and the then-popular stage play written by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston), and starring Bela Lugosi as the count, Dwight Frye as his crazy minion Renfield, Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing, David Manners as John Harker, and Helen Chandler as Mina Seward, the film proved to be a major box-office success and made Lugosi a household name.

Still, it’s not really a romance—Dracula’s interest in Mina is more along the lines of a predator stalking its prey than a love story; he’s a monster in human form. But maybe it works in a tainted love, psycho-stalker, Lifetime Movie sort of way? Whatever it is, and however you look at it, you do you, Cupid…

So, what’s the best way to celebrate this special Valloween occasion if you’re a horror fan? Well, you could read Dracula, of course, or have your own movie marathon of horror flicks starring the count, starting with the Bela Lugosi classic (or the Spanish-language version, released the same year, starring Carlos Villarias and using the same sets!) and leading all the way up to the most current screen adaptation, Dracula, written and directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), and starring Caleb Landry Jones and Zoe Bleu as the count and his love interest, Mina Murray.

Or you could purchase a book that helped to inspire Bram Stoker in creating the count’s unforgettable debut—especially when it came to the presentation of his vampirie “brides.” In fact, it’s been ranked a “Best of #BookTok” title!

Carmilla is J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century classic vampiric tale of love gone wrong. Laura is so desperate for a friend that when a young woman named Carmilla practically turns up on the doorstep of the castle owned by Laura’s father, she thinks her prayers for companionship have been answered. But as she comes to realize, Carmilla isn’t as interested in making friends as she is in spilling blood…

Regarded as the one of the earliest female vampire tales—if not the first—Carmilla was an influence on Stoker’s Dracula, and remains a popular character in fiction to this day. Our special Illustrated Classics edition contains six exclusive illustrations by the super-talented Eliseu Gouveia (Lorelei: Sects and the City, A Princess of Mars, The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1).

“With a cover that looks like it belongs on the paranormal romance shelf in a bookstore and half a dozen illustrations provided by Eliseu Gouveia, this edition stands a good chance of tempting some younger readers to pick up this classic vampire tale…. I wish I’d picked this book up in seventh grade instead of slogging through Dracula.”—The Gothic Library

Carmilla is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.

Happy Take Your Child to the Library Day 2026!

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That’s right, book lovers young and old, it’s the return of Take Your Child to the Library Day.

Founded in 2011 by librarians Nadine Lipman and Caitlin Augusta, this annual event is held the first Saturday in February and encourages librarians to reach out to their communities and show folks just how wonderful reading can be.

Before the Internet, libraries were the source for information and reading, and these days they can use our support. So head out now, introduce your children to that big brick building with all the free books to borrow, update the library card that’s been stuck in the back of your wallet for all these years, and renew your acquaintance with a vital partner in the ongoing literacy campaign.

For more information, including the list of participating libraries, visit the TYCLDwebsite.

Beast Wishes for the New Fear!

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Looking for something to watch as you recover from last night’s festivities? Well, here’s a horror movie that might help you get through the day—or make it worse!

Bloody New Year, if you’ve never heard of it before, is a 1987 British horror film about a group of teens who become trapped on an island where it’s New Year’s Eve every day.

If you think that sounds like there’s a time loop involved, you might be right. (I mean, it worked for Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, didn’t it?) But hey, there are zombies involved, so at least the movie poster is somewhat accurate! It’s a low-budget kind of sci-fi thriller that skirts the edge of so-bad-it’s-good territory, so if you want to watch a weirdly festive movie, you could add it to your to-do list of terror flicks.

(If you’re interested in checking it out, head on over to the Flick Vault at Youtube and watch it for free.)

Hope you have a great 2026!

Talking Comics with J.D. Calderon

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[*Update note: My appearance date has been changed. See the revised post.]

Hey, comic book fans! On Sunday night, December 28th, I’ll be making a return appearance to J.D. Calderon’s YouTube interview series Indy Comics Explained, on the latest installment of his ongoing panel-chat series “Talking Comics on a Sunday Night.”

(J.D., by the way, is the writer/creator of the fantasy series The Oswald Chronicles and the anthropomorphic fantasy comic series Tall Tails; the latter is currently being serialized in the pages of Antarctic Press’ anthology comic Furrlough. He’s also been a friend of mine since we met back in the 1990s’ days of the indie comics explosion.)

My last appearance on Indy Comics Explained was back in December 2022, when the topic was editing in comics and otherwise (I’ve been a comic and book editor for over three decades), and I joined J.D. and former Marvel Comics editor and writer Gary Barnum—who writes under the pen name Alin Silverwood—for a lively discussion.

This time around, the topic will be…well, could be anything. Christmas is coming up next week, and holiday-themed comics have been making a comeback (DC’s Christmas with the Super-Heroes treasury-size reprint, Marvel’s Spider-Man Holiday Special, Dynamite’s Vampirella Helliday 2025 Special, Image’s gruesome Spawnverse tie-in I Saw Santa, for example). The slow-motion death of Diamond Comics Distribution is still going on, with its new owners dragging its bloated carcass across the landscape, knee-deep in lawsuits and somehow still managing to have a harmful effect on indie publishing. Marvel and DC are friends again and have gone full-tilt cash-grab into the crossover business (Deadpool/Batman, Batman/Deadpool, Thor/Shazam, Flash/Fantastic Four) as they close in on the 50th anniversary of the greatest comics team-up of all time (in my opinion), 1976’s Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, this coming January. And Kickstarter continues to be the safe haven for indie publishers who can’t get comic-shop distribution (one of those harmful Diamond effects).

So, be sure to tune in at 7:30 p.m. (East Coast time) on Sunday, December 28th,for “Talking Comics on a Sunday Night,” where we’ll all find out just exactly who will be on hand and what we’ll be talking about, as we wrap up 2025!

DriveThru’s 2025 Black Friday Sale Is Underway!

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The Christmas shopping season started back in October, and Black Friday—the biggest shopping day of the year—is soon upon us, when stores discount prices to generate sales, with Cyber Monday to follow, when online retailers do the same.

With that in mind, e-book distributor DriveThru Fiction—along with its sister sites DriveThru Comics and DriveThru RPG—has already jumped in with its annual Black Friday/Cyber Monday Weekend Sale, during which you can purchase a ton of digital books and comics at special prices. It runs from now through Monday, December 1—and yes, you’ll need to set up an account (it’s free) to take advantage of this promotion.

Included among the many participating publishers is StarWarp Concepts (of course), which means you can take advantage of some sweet discounts, on such titles as the graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings and the full-color comic The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1; the popular how-to book for writers and game masters, Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination; the Illustrated Classics Carmilla and King Kong; and the nonfiction comics history From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures.

So head on over to SWC’s DriveThru Comics and DriveThru Fiction pages now and get to cyber-shopping!

It’s Alive! Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein Makes Its Netflix Debut

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Halloween might be over, but the Spooky Season never completely goes away, if you’re a horror fan. And there’s no better evidence of that than today’s Netflix debut of Frankenstein, the latest creation of Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak, Hellboy), who not only wrote the screenplay but designed Frankenstein’s Monster as well (with some inspiration from the late artist—and Swamp Thing cocreator—Bernie Wrightson’s acclaimed illustrated version from the 1980s of Mary Shelley’s novel).

Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight, Star Wars) as Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) as the Creature, Mia Goth (MaXXXine), and Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained), and with del Toro assembling a cast like that, I know what you’re thinking: Is it worth chacking out?

Well, I had the opportunity to watch Frankenstein during its limited, one-week theatrical run in October (here in NY, it was at the Netflix-owned Paris Theater, in Midtown Manhattan), and I’d have to say…yes! The cast is fantastic, the characters engaging (no “Fire…bad!” one-note approach for the Creature, here he evolves into a thinking, eloquent being, just as Shelley intended), the makeup and effects are top notch, and the look and pace of the film show that del Toro is still at the top of his game.

So, if you’re a fan of the mad doctor’s Monster, or if you’re feeling Halloween withdrawal symptoms, head over to Netflix and give Frankenstein a watch. It’ll be a great way to pass the weekend!

Discussing Marvel’s X-Men on the Graymalkin Lane Podcast

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Here’s a blast from the past about an old writing project I never thought I’d be discussing these days—but there’s a good reason for it…

This past September, I was contacted by Chad Anderson, the host of Graymalkin Lane, a podcast series dedicated to exploring the past and present of the X-Men, Marvel Comics’ hugely popular group of superhero mutants. The reason he reached out? To discuss X-Men: The Chaos Engine, a trilogy of original novels that I wrote between 2000 and 2002 for BP Books, a branch of the publishing company I was editor-in-chief for at the time, ibooks, inc.

Spoliers ahead: In case you’ve never heard of the project (and why should you, the books have been out of print for over 20 years), the trilogy involved the X-Men returning to Earth from an outer space mission, to find it’s now ruled by Doctor Doom, the Fantastic Four’s archnemesis—and he’s married to Storm of the X-Men! Worse yet, he’s made all this happen by taking possession of a Cosmic Cube: a device that alters reality to match its owner’s wishes. (Fans of the Marvel Studios movies know it better as the Tesseract—the glowing blue box that was one of the Infinity Stones, as seen in Captain America: The First Avenger, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.)

Matters quickly spiral out of control, leaving Betsy Braddock, the ninja warrior known as Psylocke, the sole X-Man who’s tasked with saving the world—not just from Doom, but from Magneto, mutant master of magnetism, and Captain America’s Nazi enemy, the Red Skull! What kind of realities do each of the villains construct? What effect do their authoritarian visions have on other dimensions? How is Psylocke supposed to put the pieces of a fractured multiverse back together? You’d have to read the books to find out!

What Chad wanted to discuss is “Fascism in Science Fiction,” a topic he’s covering all this month, and given my X-books involve a trio of dictators who bend the world, and the subjects they rule over, to meet their diabolical needs (especially the Red Skull)…well, considering the current shape of the country these days, with its constant attacks on science, intellectualism, books, sexual orientation, and race, the topic is certainly a timely one…unfortunately.

But we also touch on lighter subjects: my history with the Marvel Novels program of the 1990s and early 2000s; some behind-the-scenes tales of the creative process behind the Chaos Engine project; and my background as a comic creator and author. So, come for the discussion on the X-Men and fascist superheroes, stay for the dirt on my adventures dealing with the Marvel Licensing division.

Plus: the Graymalkin Lane Players perform an audio-drama adaptation of X-Men #99!

Check out and/or download the Graymalkin Lane episode by clicking this link to Redcircle. I had fun being on the show; hopefully you’ll have just as much fun listening to it!

Horror Street: Happy Day of the Dead 2025!

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

A couple weeks back, I hopped on the #7 subway line and headed out to Flushing, a well-known Queens neighborhood in the eastern part of the borough, to visit Flushing Town Hall. My original goal was to check out a comics-themed exhibition, Comics in the City: Sequential Art Is… (which closed October 20), but then I learned there was another exhibition running—one that might be of interest to horror fans…

MexFest 2025: Day of the Dead/Rituals of Resistance is an art exhibition that, according to FTH, celebrates “Mexican culture in NYC—present visual works for a multidisciplinary exhibition honoring Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This year’s MexFest theme, Rituales de Resilience (Rituals of Resilience), centers around memory, cultural ritual, and ancestral connection.”

There were, of course, other pieces than what you see here—some poetic, some spooky, some subtly political, and all worth giving a look to.

MexFest 2025—which is free to attend—ends November 30, so visit the Flushing Town Hall website for more information.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, a Beetlejuice sighting, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and the Demon Door!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

Happy Halloween 2025!

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It’s Halloween! And celebrations can be found everywhere, including in Pan’s home neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens, where I took this spookily decorated window in a local thrift shop. Gee, some of those items might look pretty good in the StarWarp Concepts home office…

It’s also this year’s celebration of Frankenstein Friday, which is observed on the last Friday in October—and fortuitously enough, that just happens to be today! As to the origins of this unusual holiday, according to the calendar site Checkiday:

“Frankenstein Friday was created by Ryan MacCloskey of Westfield, New Jersey, in 1997, to celebrate the birth of the Frankenstein monster, and its creator, Mary Shelley. He created it on a Friday because of the alliteration the name makes, and because it’s easier to be festive on a Friday.”

Works for me! After all, with writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein having had a limited theatrical run a couple of weeks ago (before it heads to Netflix on November 7), who’s to say it’s not a great time to celebrate Mary Shelley’s legendary novel—especially on Halloween! (I got to see the movie during its recent limited theatrical run—definitely watch it when it debuts on Netflix, it’s a fantastic adaptation!)

So while you’re devouring all those sweet treats tonight, spend some time with Frankenstein’s Monster—he’s certainly got enough movies and cartoon appearances to keep you occupied beyond the midnight hour!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

Horror Street: Pennywise’s New York Adventure

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Check it out—three Horror Street entries in the same month! Well, with Halloween just a week away, and things like the Spirit Halloween Subway in town for the Spooky Season, the timing seems perfect for my latest NYC discovery, even if it doesn’t involve street art.

This week, my wanderings took me north along Manhattan’s prestigious Park Avenue, home to the headquarters of megacorporations and the apartments/condos/town houses of the ultrarich. And it was while I was waiting for a red crosswalk signal to change on a corner in the East 60s that a flash of red caught the corner of my eye. I looked toward one of the pedestrian islands that run along the center of Park Avenue and saw…

Well, now. Looks like someone’s a long way from Derry, Maine…

In case you’re not in the know, Derry is the fictional stalking ground of Pennywise, the evil, murderous clown who inhabits the town’s sewer system in the pages of Stephen King’s classic novel It, and later portrayed by Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard on film and TV.

Has Pennywise grown tired of Derry? Has he set up house in Midtown Manhattan? Can he even afford the rents in New York—I mean, what does sewer space go for these days on Park Avenue?

Or maybe it’s just a very sly, very low-key way of promoting the clown’s upcoming TV series, It: Welcome to Derry, which premieres on HBO Max this Sunday?

Whatever the red balloon represents, it might be best to just avoid the area’s sewer gratings for a little while—unless, that is, you’re curious to discover if you can float down there…

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and Beetlejuice himself!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)