A little background; I was already a keen comic reader. I’d read Starlord, and 2000ad after the two of them merged (“Exciting news for all readers!”) so was familiar with the medium. However, my only exposure to American comics had been through UK reprints - where they’d invariably release the original material at the wrong size, in the wrong colours and in no particular order.

On this one occasion in this mysterious unnamed arcane magazine emporium, one particular comic nestled amongst the newsprint-scented magazines caught my attention.  Covers of American comics tended to be dynamic, a freeze-frame of a superhero caught mid-super-heroic action. This, however, was different. It showed a couple standing shoulder-deep in the stagnant waters of a swamp, both their eyes closed as the two embraced. She was naked, long flowing white hair draped in the water. He was – something else. Monstrous, yet humanoid, a strong vine-encrusted hand holding her tightly, lovingly.
It was more Renaissance painting than comic panel, something very different from the typical four colour tableau I was used to.

A butterfly sat there, perched on the comic’s title.
​
Swamp Thing.
​

With hindsight (with the benefit of graphic novel collections) this particular issue (#34; The Rite of Spring) is a really odd place to start the series with. There aren’t really any horror elements to speak of, unless you’ve got a phobia about a combination of vegetables and sex. The issue focuses on the relationship between Abby and the eponymous Swamp Thing, the two of them finally admitting their love for one another. In this issue, in lieu of being able to have sex, they experience a communion of sorts. Abigail eats a tuber from Swamp Thing’s back which – through its hallucinogenic qualities – allow them to connect in a means way more powerful and spiritual than mere physical contact can provide.

It wasn’t so much the pull of vegetable sex that attracted me to the comic (although I haven’t been able to look at broccoli in the same way since. Damn you, sexy cruciferous plants), but the surprising fact that Swamp Thing was the hero.


Swamp Thing - since its inception at the hands of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson back in 1974 – told the tale of Alec Holland, a scientist transformed by lab sabotage into the titular Swamp Thing. Over the course of the issues, we would follow his attempted revenge on the people who’d doomed him and killed his wife. Eventually cancelled due to poor sales figures, the title was given to British writer Alan Moore to invent as he saw fit. Moore had already cut his teeth in the comics industry with his work on 2000ad and on various Doctor Who and Star War comics – he’d end up being the first of the vast wave of writers who went on to take the US dominated comics industry by storm in a British invasion of sorts; Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, et al.

Swamp Thing had always been a horror title, but Moore took this to the next level. He ripped the title out by the roots and reinvented it from the ground up.

We begin Moore’s run with some proper existential horror. Holland discovers – almost to the cost of his sanity and what little that remained of his humanity – that he’s not Alec Holland at all. Whereas he’d always believed himself to be a scientist transformed by a combination of swamp water and experimental chemicals into the Swamp Thing, he finds that not to be the case. Alec Holland is long dead. We learn that the chemical soup in the swamps created a unique new organism, one which ended up imbued with the memories of the dying Doctor Holland.
​
Swamp Thing never was Alec Holland. He’s a vegetable who thinks he was Alec Holland.

Pretty mind-blowing stuff, especially in a title which – to be fair, prior to Moore – had often reverted to a “Swamp Thing beats up the monster of the month”.

Moore’s American Gothic storyline (running between issues #37 and #50) saw Swamp Thing travelling across the United States, encountering various horror tropes along the way, all given a unique Moore twist.

Vampires were presented as unbreathing water-dwelling monsters; feral predatorial leeches and bloated egg-laden abominations, and zombies were returned to their voodoo roots, vengeful dead plantation slaves returned from the grave.
​
The Werewolf myth was presented as feminist allegory, a woman freed by transformation from male tyranny. It’d be another fifteen years before Ginger Snaps would revisit the same territory linking menstruation to lycanthropy, but to think that these concepts were being presented in a medium still effectively believed to be the domain of children.

American Gothic also saw the first appearance of John Constantine, the Sting-inspired Magus, who’d spin-off into his own incredible horror title.

“American Gothic” was all building to a big event, a (sort of) crossover with the world/universe/reality shattering Crisis that happens in the DC Universe each summer. Whilst Superman and Batman and their leotarded and spandexed ilk were saving the physical realm, Swamp Thing, John Constantine and DC’s array of magical characters were challenged with defending the metaphysical one.

The Brujeria, a secret society of warlocks, were seeking to bring back primordial Darkness back into the universe – the sentient absence of everything that comprised all of existence before the introduction of God’s divine light. What lingers in my memory from this storyline is the Invunche, the Brujeria’s assassin, and how one is created.

You steal a six-month old child, disjoint the – I can’t go on. You should find out for yourselves and be forced to have that memory too.

Re-reading Moore’s run, some of it feels less successful now than it did back then. Whereas the fifteen-year-old me was thrilled to see a guest appearance by Batman, it feels weaker now. Swamp Thing worked best when operating in its own reality, lessened by the occasional enforced use of the DC Universe. I’d feel the same later in life seeing John Constantine frequently interacting with regular DC Characters.

What remains as strong, however, is the writing. Without ever lapsing into pretention, Moore hit the comics world with prose of a quality that it had barely seen before. Villains were as well-developed and written as the heroes, and it felt like you were reading something new, something important.

And this stuff was genuinely scary. Some of the imagery in The Saga still clings to the periphery of my consciousness, decades on. The first appearance of the Invunche, Swamp Thing’s raw and bloody resurrection in The Anatomy Lesson, Phoebe’s transformation into avenging she-wolf in The Curse – all powerful horror imagery to me, rivalling Danny Glick tapping on the window in Salem’s Lot or the first appearance of the Pod People in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Moore is leaving the industry for good, and it’ll be poorer without him. I can fully understand why he’s leaving -exasperated with an industry that rarely gives the proper respect to creator’s rights – but it’s something to be commended that he’s created such an incredible body of work.

So, farewell, Alan Moore. Our sole interaction might have been you telling a teenage me to “Fuck off” at a comic convention (Disclaimer: You did look very tired and grumpy when I approached you), but, here’s the important thing;

I tell people I got into writing horror through Stephen King, but …pssst…. I think it was because of you, so thanks, I guess.
​
But no thanks for the Invunche haunting my dreams.

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Issues #20-64: Obviously. Later writers picked up the Swampy mantle with varied success, but I’d also recommend the Nancy A. Collins run (Issues #110-138) and – to a slightly lesser extent – the Grant Morrison and Mark Millar run (Issues #140 onwards).

Hellblazer Issues #41-46: Garth Ennis’s run on Hellblazer is, equally, as good a horror comic as you’ll find. The Dangerous Habits storyline chronicles John Constantine’s battle with cancer and is amazing.
​
Swamp Thing Pilot Episode 2019: Cancelled after just one episode but showed great promise. There’s a bit of body horror in it that’s as visceral and brutal as anything from John Carpenter’s The Thing, and it looked like it might be a great adaption. Sadly, this is why we’re not allowed to have nice things.

​David Court is a short story author and novelist, whose works have appeared in over a dozen
venues including Tales to Terrify, StarShipSofa, Visions From the Void, Fear’s Accomplice
and The Voices Within. Whilst primarily a horror writer, he also writes science fiction, poetry
and satire. His last collection, Scenes of Mild Peril, was released by Stitched Smile Publications and his debut comic writing has just featured in Tpub’s The Theory (Twisted Sci-Fi).
 
As well as writing, David works as a Software Developer and lives in Coventry with his wife, three cats and an ever-growing beard. David’s wife once asked him if he’d write about how great she was. David replied that he would, because he specialized in short fiction. Despite that, they are still married.
 
Website: www.davidjcourt.co.uk
Twitter: @DavidJCourt

The last incredible zombie book on our must-read list is called “Breathers” and it is written by S. G. Browne. This zombie novel is unlike any other novel you will probably ever read. It’s gory, it’s incredibly dark and gruesome, and yet it also manages to combine really sweet romantic elements that somehow harmonize together perfectly. This story revolves around a man named Andy, who recently died and became a brand-new zombie. His friends and family do not accept the new him and don’t like his new existence at all. So, Andy is going to his first ever undead anonymous meeting where he meets a beautiful zombie woman, falls in love, and discovers the joy of human flesh. It is packed full of intensely creepy, but also heartwarming moments.

​These zombie books are sure to entertain you for hours and leave you feeling both creeped out and maybe even inspired. So, go and check out your local bookstore today and start a new zombie book. It is sure to spook and thrill you.

For more reading recommendations this list of zombie apocalypse books​ has so many great books 

Today marks the release of Duncan P. Bradshaw's comic horror masterpiece Cannibal Nuns From Outer Space! (yes that exclamation mark is needed and totally justified.), and to celebrate it's release Duncan has written an article on the five main influences on the book.  

I absolutely loved Cannibal Nuns From Outer Space, it's a glorious mix of over the top comedy, shaggy dog stories and well over the top horror.  If you are on the fence about reading this book (shame on you) you can read our review of it here. 

What a film! Sure, like most from that era it hasn’t aged the best, but the impact it had when I watched it for the first time, is immeasurable. I think what hit me the most was that of helplessness, of knowing that these people are wrong and evil, but you’re utterly powerless to prevent it. If you manage to find someone who isn’t a pod person, how the hell are they going to believe a word you’re saying? Then, what if the person you confide in about something being wrong is a pod person? That feeling, that sensation, where you have to try and look beyond what you can see, and uncover the truth of these mysterious people, and then somehow deal with it? That’s the true stuff of nightmares.
 
There you go, five references (hidden or so bloody obvious that you eye roll yourself back to 2016) from the book. When you read it, I’d love to know what things you spotted, and which were your favourites. Hit me up on Facebook or Twitter. Now please, enjoy the rest of your day, but be careful of the nuns…you never know where they’ve truly come from.

To find out more about Duncan and his books please follow the social media links below 

Website 
http://duncanpbradshaw.co.uk/
Goodreads 
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9276063.Duncan_P_Bradshaw 
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/duncan.bradshaw.37 
Twitter 
https://twitter.com/DuncanPBradshaw

The summer blockbuster book! Probably.
With an encyclopaedic knowledge of cake, and exclusive access to the church’s stockpile of holy weapons, the Order of the Crimson Rosary are on the frontline in the eternal war between good and evil. Whether it’s repelling demonic possession, judging the authenticity of supposed miracles or having the final say on the colour of bunting at church fetes, the organisation's members sacrifice their own freedom to keep the world safe.
Father Flynn, the top operative in the UK, has been responsible for a number of recent high profile gaffs. Given an ultimatum, he must choose between returning to his old job of preserving the last microfiche machine in the church’s library, or submit himself for rehabilitation.
Yet evil doesn’t take a ticket and wait in line, as the dreaded cannibal nuns from outer space land to begin their annual harvest. Can Flynn get himself sober enough to repel their evil machinations? Or will another idyllic British village become the nun’s latest buffet?

One thing’s for certain, to beat them, Father Flynn is going to have to kick the habit.

Book two in the GoreCom series, this time it's highly trained priests facing off against the titular cannibal nuns from outer space. Can the finest Crimson Rosary operatives in the UK thwart the nefarious plan to reduce another population centre to compote?

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING 

I don’t know if I’d say “book.” When I was a kid,(takes out cane, starts waving it about) we did short stories. My mom would read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” every Halloween. We also had Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” in the house. It might explain why I tend to think of horror as a short story format. The first big ol’ hunk of glossy covered paperback horror I remember reading was “Halloween III” by Dennis Etchison (Jack Martin)  

THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING  
Dracula (1931) we used to watch it every year at Halloween, my family still watches some version of the Count every year.

THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

Man, for all the temptation to say something modern, I still do adore Mary Shelley’s original “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus” There is an amazing amount of depth there. Plenty of stuff that has been more viscerally appealing since then, but it’s rare to find one left you thinking more.

THE GREATEST HORROR FILM  OF ALL TIME 
​
Impossible question, too many genres that all have their top of the food chain.  But I’d have to go with “Bride of Frankenstein” here. So many amazing performances, so much beautifully shot stuff in there. The cemetery scenes alone…..

(full disclosure, my one cat is named Elsa The Bride of Kittenstein, she showed up on the street near our house abandoned on Elsa Lanchester’s birthday)

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

Could have named a classic like Camus or the like, but I’m going to say Terry Pratchett. To put that much humanity into those books, so much wisdom, and to still be laugh out loud funny.

Critics everywhere are having heart failure, but, whatever, my runner up was going to be Dostoyevsky, and third would have been Poe

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

Any of the first run of the Necroscope series, Bob Eggleton’s covers sold that series so hard, they were so beyond what anyone was doing at that exact moment in the mainstream.

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

Oh, so many good ones to choose from, but I’m going to have to say the posters for the Giant Claw. Wait! Hear me out here. Those posters are the main reason anyone even watches the thing to this day. It has some of the silliest special effects ever, but those amazing art-deco posters make you give it a shot in spite of yourself. Most films have great source material to work with, they don’t have to try so hard, but whoever did those had to sell a muppet Jim Henson created while drunk on tequila.

THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Well I’d like to think the one I have out right now, “I Never Eat…Cheesesteak” It’s got chills, it’s got lots of jokes (really, lots of them) and it has my home town of Philadelphia PA as the center piece. I moved away long ago, but it’s nice to pay homage to the place. Horror-Comedy is at the same time one of the more popular, and yet still completely underserved sub-genres in the field. I hope I hit my goal, doing to horror what Douglas Adams did to sci fi.

THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Well probably have to go shorts here, since that’s mainly what I’m known for. No author is likely to say, “Oh god this one” but I know that my more experimental pieces can leave some people cold. That’s OK, I like to occasionally drop a story you have to think about a lot, and not everybody is looking for that in their horror. So, a story like “Heart of the Town” or “Country Roads” might leave some going, “WTF did I just read? What even happened?”  While I dig existential writings, Camus, Sartre, and the new wave of Sci Fi, I’m fully willing to acknowledge that some people open a horror anthology looking for popped eyeballs or their pissed. I write that too, but sometimes you have to write for yourself.  As long as a few people get it that’s fine.

THE MOST UNDERRATED  FILM OF ALL TIME

Bedlam (1946) Karloff gives a master class in the genre, and he’s not even the creepiest thing happening in the film. The trial scene is AMAZING

THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME

Weirdly, it’s hard to think of any King as “underrated” but, I really enjoyed Cell. It was quick, concise, good characters, real world modern fears, great pace in the beginning. Shame about the ending they tacked on the film though.

THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

Brian Lumley. Maybe not when he was appearing in Weirdbook all the time, and the Necroscope series was being produced, but bookstores don’t carry back catalogue and classics the way they used to. Since then he’s been fading in the public eye. But really those Necroscope books were stunners when they dropped, the first three with their James Bond meets Dracula plotting were top of the food chain. Also, what he’s added to Lovecraft lore is endless.


THE BOOK / FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST

Well, none that really scare me, not since I was a kid. When I was a kid the opening sequence to “Dracula Prince of Darkness” scared the hell out of me. Now if you want to go, “creeped me out and left me uneasy” that’s easy, “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.” That film was revolutionary. John McNaughton knows all the rules of film, all the little things we just assume are going to happen in a film, and he makes sure none of them do, to really devastating effect. Amazing that he never touched the level of that film again in his career.

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT

Well, there’s a snippet of my next novel in the back of “Cheesesteak” called “Cult of the Gator God” that should be out this winter. I’ve got a short in the punksploitation horror anthology from St. Rooster “Kids of the Black Hole” coming out soon, and I am currently buried in editing. I wrote faster than I edited and I’m trying to get three novels ready to send out. Still writing, but the pace will pick up a lot once that is done. Speaking of which, last answer and, I have editing that needs doing.

​On Saturday the genre lost one of its shining lights, Sam Gafford was an inspiration to many and a selfless supporter of so many more, as well as a hugely talented writer.  However, he was sadly one of those writers that not enough people knew about.  Today we welcome John Linwood Grant, a long time collaborator and more importantly a close personal friend of Sam's to Ginger Nuts of Horror with a deeply personal tribute to man whose memory should never be forgotten.  Please read John's moving tribute, and please share this article far and wide, we may have lost Sam, but we can't ever forget his contribution to the genre. ​

This isn’t a biography – others knew him better than I did - but I had nearly five years of close friendship with him, and many shared projects. We co-founded Occult Detective Quarterly, and it was typical of him that he wanted it as a paying market – he would dip into his own limited pocket to support any Ulthar books which should have, but didn’t, break even. Writers should be paid. He found publishing stressful, and unremunerative, and yet days before his death, he was planning new works. He believed in small presses. Only in the last few months he published two imaginative new anthologies - ‘Machinations and Mesmerism: Tales Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’ (edited by Farah Rose Smith) and ‘Hell’s Empire’ (edited by John Linwood Grant), and he had more on the way.
 
He was and is, I believe, underrated as a writer, never mind his other activities. He didn’t feel comfortable with the fuss and falseness of marketing, networking and all that exhausting jazz. He didn’t show off like so many of us do. Yet his novels ‘The House of Nodens’ (Dark Regions) and ‘Whitechapel’ (Ulthar) - a Lovecraftian horror, and a weird Arthur Machen/Jack the Ripper tour de force respectively, were both superb. His sole collection ‘The Dreamer in Fire’ (Hippocampus) is a wonderful selection of stories both dark and strange; his collaboration with artist Jason Eckhardt, the graphic novel ‘Some Notes on a Non-Entity: The Life of H P Lovecraft’ (PS Publishing) is fascinating. These are just some of his fine achievements.
 
Sam wouldn’t have said most of that. He would have worried, and hoped that someone would pick them up and maybe give him the nod, say what he’d done wasn’t bad at all. He was more likely to tell you how good your own work was, or ask you if you had anything which fitted Ulthar’s list.
 
I am diminished, and we are diminished as a field. We should remember him, and all his works...
 
‘Machinations and Mesmerism’ is available through Lulu. ‘Hell’s Empire’ and Sam’s own books are available through Amazon UK and Amazon US. John Linwood Grant and Dave Brzeski will continue producing Occult Detective Quarterly for the immediate future, under one name or another, as a tribute to Sam’s enthusiasm and ideas. It will be dedicated to him.
 
John Linwood Grant, July 2019

John was also invited onto the Lovecraft ezine podcast to talk about Sam, you can watch this by following the link below 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLre-f_ba6k