Hey, I've never said so but the banner image is an artist's conception of the Death Pit at the Royal Tombs of Ur, excavated by Sir Leonard Wooley in the 1920s and featured in a newspaper story of the time. The Death Pit was the site of human sacrifice on a massive scale, with before …
Who’s the Leader of the Club? Reflections on cute propaganda in the age of creeping fascism
I once thought the combination of propaganda and crowd control was never practiced more effectively in this country than in the lead up to the Patriot Act. We live in a brave new world in which our bodies, our possessions, and virtually everything we say and do are under a microscope whenever we travel by …
Black Panther, Black Mane, and Retributive Justice
I ended "Captain America's Boise Tea Party" by quoting the philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). The once lowly comic book is an example of “politics by other means” with the emancipatory potential Benjamin saw in mass art. The blockbuster status of the film Black Panther best demonstrates how that continues as comic characters are successfully translated from the printed page to film, and are …
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The Legend of Hell House – Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts hosted the exhibition Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters on March 5-May 28, 2017, dedicated to the film director's collection of movie props, art, books, and comics that populate his home like the set of a 1940s Universal horror movie. The exhibition glosses Famous Monsters of Filmland’s editor Forry …
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The Coming of–King Kull! Bernie Wrightson, 1948-2017
The phenomenal Bernie Wrightson passed away in March at age 68. Wrightson “lived the life” as a comic artist. He became a professional at age 18. During his highly influential stint on DC’s Swamp Thing, he and Len Wein elevated the comic book horror story to a higher standard than it had enjoyed since …
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Beyond the Valley of the Worm
There has been wide interest in H.P. Lovecraft's thoughts about life beyond this mortal coil, the paranormal, and experience beyond everyday bodily existence since Kenneth Grant’s The Magical Revival (Muller, 1972), associated writing like a piece on Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley in Lovecraft Studies (Barry Leon Bender, “Aleister Crowley and H.P. Lovecraft: The Occult Connection,” …
Multimedia Barbarian Part 2
Thulsa Doom says "Read the blog. Watch the video. Or else." This is part 2 of 2 of a YouTube video. A number of sources were drawn from in making parts 1 and 2 of the video that are credited at the end of part 2. If you missed part 1, look for Multimedia Barbarian-a video …
Barbarians in Fiction and Fact: Robert E. Howard and V. Gordon Childe
Barbarism, the natural state of mankind?
A Catcher in the Pictish Wilderness
Most people are aware of Robert E. Howard through his character Conan the Cimmerian, even if they don't know the author's name. When I was young I was obsessed with learning about the hidden recesses of popular culture like other kids were about professional sports. It was a way out of the morass of public …
Captain America’s Boise Tea Party
This is an updated version of a blog published earlier on Daily Kos and a talk given to the Anthropology Department Colloquium at Idaho State University. The truth is stranger (or at least uglier) than fiction. This is as true in the Intermountain West of Idaho and Utah as anywhere else. If you doubt it, see …
Whispered in Stygia 