Tagged: Mike Baron

Joe Corallo: Mine @ NYCC & #ComicsGate

This past week or so has been about getting ready for NYCC. ComicMix has a panel for our successfully funded comics collection, Mine!, which benefits Planned Parenthood. I’ll be there with fellow ComicMix team members Molly Jackson, Mike Gold and Mindy Newell as well as Mine! contributors Tee Franklin, Gabby Rivera and moderator Sheilah Villari. We’ll be at room 1A02 from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm on Saturday, October 8 at the Javits Center on Manhattan’s mid-town west side. If you’re at NYCC, please come on by – we’ll have a sneak peek at some new art from the book!

This past week or so, there has also been more than a little turmoil in the comics community.

Since I wrote my piece about the Aubrey Sitterson incident a couple of weeks ago, events surrounding #ComicsGate have escalated. From blocking and doxxing to accusations and deplatforming, things are really intensifying in the lead-up to NYCC as followers and subscribers keep going up after these conservative comics critics involved. Because of everything that’s been going on I feel that it’s important to discuss this further.

As I stated last time, part of what’s been going on has been that comics critics on YouTube and social media who lean conservative (or libertarian, in this instance) are calling out specific creators for their content; being Social Justice Warriors (SJWs); and are, in some cases using direct and targeting language that attacks a creator for their minority status. Often in cases like this, and #ComicsGate is no exception, some followers end up taking things to the next level and using even more divisive and hurtful language and carrying out acts of targeted harassment and doxxing.

A video one comics critic released last week specifically targeted one comics journalist. The video ended up being flagged, then deleted by the uploader. Not long after, more videos were flagged on this comics critic’s YouTube account, leading to the account in question being suspended. Tensions have risen as accusations of attempted deplatforming of comics critics by comics journalists are being raised. As in #GamerGate, we are seeing similar arguments of “It’s about ethics in journalism,” whether or not that’s the actual issue.

Whenever issues like these come up or any other divisive politically driven issues arise you often hear the same things. You hear people talk about how the other side is horrible, how we shouldn’t even attempt to understand them and how we need to focus on beating them back and diminishing them. But in my case, I usually like to at least understand how things have come to be how they are.

Many of these conservative-leaning comics critics do more than provoke harassment of comics professionals to whom they are opposed: They’ve built a community. Like-minded comics fans who have similar issues with the direction that mainstream comics are going in get together for online hangouts, talk about the comics and creators they like, and more. Some of what they talk about I can even get behind, like how Black Bolt is one of my favorite books that Marvel is putting out right now. It’s easy to paint everyone involved as a troll, and that’s not to say there aren’t any trolls involved, but there are a lot of others who are fans of comics that want to see changes made and get riled up and moved to action when they can rally against perceived hypocrisy and calls to violence from the left.

Look, I’m an unapologetic liberal and political activist — I’m working on a Planned Parenthood benefit anthology, after all. That said, comics is not an exclusively liberal or conservative space and we have to exist without this level of conflict. There are plenty of conservative voices in comics who have put out quality work over the years including Chuck Dixon, Mike Baron, and Frank Miller. I (and others) am not advocating for an eradication of conservative thought from the comics medium.

With that in mind, there are things that cannot be tolerated. Transphobic language and personal attacks targeted at comics professionals and journalists cannot be tolerated. Using a creator’s’ background and minority status to attack them and their work cannot be tolerated. Allowing followers to go unchecked in their further attacks on comics professionals cannot be tolerated. Creators are getting death threats. We need comics professionals to feel safe.

Conservative voices in comics aren’t ever going to go away. If these comics critics, or anyone for that matter, want to be taken seriously by the comics industry that they’re criticizing then they need to drop the bigoted language and personal targeted attacks, and lead by example and call out the increasingly abusive behaviors of some their followers.

 

Martha Thomases: Of Milkshakes and Men

This column is not for the lactose-intolerant. Or for the anything-intolerant.

Last week Heather Antos, an editor at Marvel, went out with a bunch of her colleagues for milkshakes at a nearby Ben & Jerry’s and posted a selfie on Twitter. She said, “It’s the Marvel milkshake crew! #FabulousFlo.” The hashtag refers to Flo Steinberg, who had just died.

So, you know, a Friday after a long week, Heather and a group of her pals went out to remember a woman who was their friend and mentor. They didn’t go to a bar. They went for ice cream. They posted a photo on Twitter because that’s what the kids do these days. I don’t know what could be more wholesome.

Naturally, there was an upset. To some, this photo represented everything that was wrong with Marvel today. Women and people of color in editorial offices apparently is a menacing concept to them, and they menaced back. Ms. Antos received threats of rape and other kinds of physical violence. Others chimed in to say these women weren’t attractive enough to rape.

I feel like this shouldn’t be necessary, but I’ll say it anyway: The photograph does not contain any comic book images. It supports no candidate nor ideology. It is a group of women affectionately remembering their friend.

(In the 1990s, there were a group of us at DC who used to go to women’s night at the Russian Baths in the East Village to sauna and steam. I’m very glad that the Internet wasn’t a thing yet, or we would have probably made it nuke itself.)

The comic book community rallied in support, which makes me so happy. We are, in general, thoughtful folk, and we are frequently very funny about it. The hashtag#MakeMineMilkshake was trending all weekend.

I’m still entirely gobsmacked that this happened. I know we are a polarized country today, and a lot of us feel scared and threatened by people with whom we disagree. Sometimes it doesn’t feel good when things change, especially when these are things we love. We want someone to blame so we don’t have to take responsibility ourselves. I get this. Really. I’m still pissed that the Carnegie Deli is gone.

My inner two-year old wants to scream and yell and break things when the world doesn’t do what I want. Over the decades, I’ve learned that when I scream and yell and break things, nothing gets better and sometimes change so that I like it even less. It’s much more effective to use my words (and, when appropriate, my money) to try to change minds to agree with me, or at least take my feelings into consideration. That’s not what happened to Heather Antos. Instead, a bunch of two-year olds screamed and yelled and threatened to break things. We can disagree with each other without all this other dribble-dribble.

Writer Mike Baron

Mike Baron and Kyle Chapman announced they were making an alt-right comic and somehow, I have managed to control myself enough so that I haven’t publicly appraised their physical appearance or whether I think they should be stabbable.

I’ve been part of some horrified private conversations among people who disagree with Baron and Chapman. These are just that – private. No one taking part in these conversations said anything about committing physical violence against any of the creative talent. We mostly just said that the book didn’t sound like anything we would want to read.

Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Chapman and Baron will create the next Maus and we’ll all be knocked out by their insight and artistry. I don’t think they will, but that’s my bias and I would love to be proven wrong.

And if they want to post a picture to Twitter of them having a milkshake or even (horrors!) a beer, I’m cool with that. I bet Heather Antos is, too.

Deadman: Lost Souls by Mike Baron and Kelley Jones

DC Comics thought it was riding a horror revival in the early ’90s, when it turned out they just had the good luck to hire Neil Gaiman to write Sandman. (Sure, the rest of the early Vertigo lineup, and the Vertigo precursors like the Alan Moore Swamp Thing, had a strong horror flavor in their superhero gumbo, but it was always a flavor rather than a main course, and it died out pretty much in parallel to Sandman wandering further and further away from horror.) But, along the way, they put out a bunch of comics with horror flavors — from vampire Batman to the creepiness of Shade the Changing Man — and revived a number of characters with horror in their DNA.

Deadman is one obvious example. He’s one of DC’s third-tier heroes, who’s had an ongoing series a few times but never long enough to really deserve that “ongoing” name. But he is dead, and his power is possessing people so he can use their bodies to do whatever he’s doing at the time, and he was definitely available, so he got scarified and sent off to see if he could attract that Sandman lightning. (Actually, given the timing, I suspect it was Swamp Thing lightning — the bigger bolt hadn’t hit DC yet.)

So the team of Mike Baron and Kelley Jones — Baron one of the more inventive and interesting mainstream comics writers of that generation, with excellent work from Badger and Nexus and a fine run on Punisher at roughly the same time; and Jones an impressionist of the comics page, a heir of Bernie Wrightson with a great eye for grotesques and extreme situations — relaunched a Deadman serial in Action Comics Weekly in the late ’80s, which eventually led to two short “Prestige Format” miniseries in 1989 and 1992.

Those two miniseries — each one was two 48-page issues long, under the titles Love After Death and Exorcism — were collected in Deadman: Lost Soulsin 1995, which stayed in print some time after that. (DC didn’t including printing numbers or dates during this era — in fact, I’m not sure if they do that now — so I can’t tell precisely how old my copy is. Comics publishers are about fifty years behind prose publishers in some very basic putting-books-together stuff.)

The two are discrete stories, but this book tries to disguise that by running them together without separation — it’s a bit jarring to go from the Love After Death “deadend” page immediately to two pages of Exorcism that quickly retell that story and the rest of the Deadman backstory — and they are related, since Love After Death basically breaks Deadman and Exorcism puts him back together. (Well, he actually breaks after the end of Love After Death, but that’s just quibbling.)

So we begin with Deadman sour and unhappy and frustrated — he’s been bodiless for however long its been since his first story in 1967, fighting to keep the cosmic balance for the vague goddess Rama Kushna, and his angst over that is rising. Deadman hears a rumor of a haunted house out in the Wisconsin woods, the abandoned home of a circus owner from decades before, supposedly haunted by the spirit of his aerialist wife. Deadman was a circus performer and aerialist in life, so he’s intrigued and goes to investigate. And he does find the ghost of the beautiful aerialist, who does have the power to touch living people at will — but she’s not the only ghost, and her dead husband is still around and powered by a nasty demonic spirit.

Does Deadman defeat the evil ringmaster and his demon overlord? Well, what do you think? Does he get the girl and (after)live happily ever after? You really haven’t read many mainstream comics, have you?

And so Exorcism begins with Deadman having gone crazy — comic-book style crazy, the kind that’s very demonstrative and can be snapped out of with a bit of help — and roaming around some other woods (in Vermont this time), where he runs into a heavy metal band and a pair of young lovers. The band is quickly possessed by three ancient, and very different, nasty spirits, and the young lovers are quickly in danger. Since Deadman is comic-book crazy, he basically caused that, and capers about gleefully. Meanwhile, Madame Waxahachie — a comics character who makes Amanda Waller look svelte and demure and non-stereotypical — finds the circus booking agent in Boston that Deadman has been possessing to beat up gay men — this part of the plot doesn’t entirely make sense — and drags that man and his regular therapist up to the abandoned church in Vermont where the possessed band is, in time for a guest appearance by the Phantom Stranger (who is as clear and helpful as he usually is).

And then things all go to hell, of course. But, in the end, Deadman is not-crazy again, and the evil spirits are banished back to wherever, and most of the good people are still alive. And, most importantly, Deadman is back to his standard status quo and available to show up in big crossovers and other superhero bumf for another couple of decades. As he did.

These two stories are more than slightly over-the-top; I suspect Baron was out of his usual comfort zone in this supernatural milieu, and he doesn’t deliver his best work here. The art is the real standout: Jones revels in the opportunities to draw cadaverous Deadman in tortured poses (often floating in mid-air) and all of the horribly fleshy monsters that Baron can think up. This is not a pretty comics story, but it’s full of excellent creepy art, and Jones’s inky blacks are well-supported by an equally spooky coloring job by Les Dorscheid.

I’ll be honest: this isn’t a lost masterpiece or anything. But it does collect two decent stories with great art from one of the quirkier characters in the DC Universe. If you have a fondness for DC’s supernatural characters — I know I do, and I don’t think I’m the only one — this could be a fun find.

ALL PULP’S EBOOK BEST SELLER LIST FOR WEEK OF FEBRUARY 15, 2013!

  • News
  • February 15, 2013

Welcome to All Pulp’s New Pulp EBook Best Seller List, inspired by the work of Barry Reese! Before we get to what you’re all waiting for, here are the rules by which this little list comes together.

1)    This list only tracks Kindle sales through AMAZON. It does not keep track of sales through Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, or anything else!

2)   
This list only tracks DIGITAL sales. Exactly how Amazon calculates these things is mostly a trade secret and they vary wildly from day to day. If I checked this tomorrow, the list could be very different. This list reflects sales ranks as of Friday morning, February 15, 2013. 


3)   In order to keep the focus on new releases, eligible works must have been published within the last three months. So, since this list is being done on February 15, 2013, we are only looking at books published since November 15, 2012. Please keep that in mind before complaining that Title X is not listed. Also, keep in mind that for the most part, we are tracking sales from smaller and mid level press publishers who actively publish New Pulp material. We won’t generally track sales from Simon and Schuster or places like that — they have the New York Times Bestseller List for that. If one of the major publishers starts doing The Shadow or something, we’ll track that, but some publishers will not be listed here in order to keep the focus on the publishers actively working to produce and promote New Pulp.

4)   
Like the name suggests, we’re tracking “New” pulp —not sales rankings for reprints of classic material. In order for something to qualify for this list, it has to be at least 50% new material that has not been printed in book form before.


5)    We are human. If you are aware of a title that should be listed below (keeping in mind all the rules above), please let us know and we will make sure to remedy the situation.


6)    This information is garnered mostly from All Pulp, New Pulp, the Pulp Factory mailing list and a few other sites. If you think we might miss your release, let us know in advance — drop All Pulp a line and tell us when it’s being released.

Without further ado, here’s the completely and totally unofficial New Pulp Ebook Bestseller List as of right now (title, then publisher, then release date, then sales rank):

1) The Cestus Concern by Mat Nastos (Nifty Entertainment, December 28,2012) 2,731

2) Finn’s Golem by Gregg Taylor (Autogyro, January 10, 2013) -63,637

3) Whack Job by Mike Baron (Mike Baron, December 25, 2012)- 66,170

4) Fight Card Against the Ropes by Terrence McCauley (Fight Card Books, February 11, 2013)-66,970

5) Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, Volume 4 by Various (Airship 27, January 19, 2012) – 75,826

6) The Detective, The Woman and the Winking Tree by Amy Thomas (MX Publishing, January 22, 2013) – 81,190

7) Tier Zero by Henry Brown (Virtual Pulp, January 13, 2013) – 101,021

8) Sherlock Holmes and Young Winston: The Deadwood Stage by Mike Hogan (MX Publishing, November 19, 2012) – 120,456

9) Monster Earth by Various (Mechanoid Press, January 13, 2013) – 133,118

10) Legion I- Lords of Fire (The Shattering) by Van Allen Plexico (White Rocket Books, January 26, 2013) – 193,627

Just missing the list were: Fight Card : The Knockout by Robert J. Randisi (Fight Card Books, December 1, 2012) – 213,403, Prohibition by Terrence McCauley, (Airship 27, December 15, 2012) – 241,449 Fight Card: Rumble in the Jungle by David Foster (Fight Card Books, January 8, 2013) – 243,473, and Sentinels: Metalgod by Van Plexico (White Rocket Books, December 10, 2012) – 244,801.

There’s definitely some shifting of numbers, but Mat Nastos hangs onto the top spot for two weeks in a row with extremely impressive numbers.  New titles enter into the mix, making this list, much like its sibling- The Bestseller Print list- a Holmes list with three titles featuring the classic detective. Terrence McCauley’s Fight Card entry enters the list at number 4, a good showing.   Every book on this list came in under 200,000, so that says quite a bit for how well ebooks sell.  

As far as Publishers are concerned, MX Publishing has two books in the debut EBook list, with Virtual Pulp, Nifty Entertainment, Mechanoid Press, Autogyro, White Rocket, Airship 27, Mike Baron, and Fight Card Books all checking in with one.  But remember, readers, take it all with a grain of salt. 

MARS MCCOY BLASTS OFF INTO COMICS!

  • Uncategorized
  • January 9, 2013
Art: Eric Hurley

New Pulp Publisher Airship 27 Productions has announced their 2013 Mars McCoy Space Ranger plans. The second volume of the pulp prose anthology series featuring the character will be available in early 2013 as well as in comic books. There is an 8 pg. Mars McCoy comic strip in development written by Mike Baron with art by Eric Hurley, as seen above.

Mike Gold: Funny Books

Gold Art 130109It used to be, when I was about to go home from the San Diego Comic-Con or some other show that required a stupidly long plane ride, I’d drop by the dealer’s area (you know, that ever-shrinking portion of the main floor where people would actually sell comic books at a “comic book convention”) and I’d blow about twenty bucks on stuff to read on the return trip. These purchases were almost exclusively of “funny” comic books.

Sadly, we have come to the point where, in the world of contemporary comics, the phrase “funny comic books” has evolved from a redundancy to an oxymoron and the funniest comic around these days is Deadpool – a title with a death count high on the Tarantino scale.

No, the funny books I’m referring to were, well, funny. One of my favorites was Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye, a somewhat maligned title because the Snoots insist upon comparing it to E.C. Segar’s newspaper creation. Whereas Sagendorf was Segar’s assistant on said feature, they were produced at different times for different audiences and they occupied different landscapes. You tell a story differently in a newspaper strip, usually ending each day with both something resembling a punch line as well as a hook or a cliffhanger to bring the reader back. In comics back in those ancient times, stories were self-contained with a beginning, a middle and an end.

And Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye was brilliant. He certainly got the characters right, employing Segar’s entire cast and adding a few great characters of his own. The stories were as compelling and entertaining as anything on the stands at the time – and we’re talking about a period that encompassed Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge, John Stanley’s Little Lulu, and Shelly Mayer’s Sugar and Spike.

Yes, I just compared Sagendorf to Barks, Stanley and Mayer. If you don’t like that, well, in the words of Mike Baron, you can bite my Twinkie.

Our pal Craig Yoe has brought this stuff back to the masses in IDW’s Classic Popeye series, and I see they’ve begun to anthologize their “early” issues (I think they’ve published six issues so far, so “early” is relative only to Doctor Who fans).

But that’s not why I’m writing this. Fooled you, didn’t I? Opening with a 385-word digression. My journalism teachers would plotz. No, I’m writing about a one-shot comic released last week that, on the face of it, seems like a cheesy exploitation gimmick or, in other words, my kind of comic book.

The aforementioned folks at IDW possess the Mars Attacks license as well as the Popeye contract. People think this is because IDW’s Chief Operating Officer Greg Goldstein was a honcho at Topps, the bubble gum people who created and own Mars Attacks. I don’t think that’s the reason. I think it’s because Goldstein has the same strain of arrested development that I do and, instead of growing up, we got into the comics business.

So IDW is doing what every other publisher does with such a property: they’re squeezing the licenses until their eyes pop. Which is why we’ve now got, of all things, Mars Attacks Popeye.

The effort of writer Martin Powell and artist Terry Beatty (yep, the guy who draws The Phantom Sundays and Ms. Tree and Batman and stuff) and edited by the professionally unusual Craig Yoe and Clizia Gussoni, this is one funny, clever and well-produced comic book. It didn’t have to be that; it easily could have been a stupid cheesy exploitation gimmick. No, in the finest American tradition, it is a solidly amusing and entertaining cheesy exploitation gimmick.

Stylistically, Mars Attacks Popeye is done as a Popeye comic in the finest Sagendorf tradition. It employs almost all of the Popeye cast going back to 1919 (not that I really should give away Olive Oyl’s true age) and they take on the advancing army of bubble gum card fame – this time, under the provocation of Popeye’s very own Doctor Doom, the Sea Hag.

Look, you’ve probably got an extra four bucks on you, but if you don’t roll a school kid or something and check it out. It’s about time we got us a funny funny book.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil Gets In A Crossword

 

NEW PULP’S TOP TEN

  • Uncategorized
  • January 7, 2013

White Rocket Books leads the pack this week on New Pulp Author Barry Reese’s weekly New Pulp Top Ten Bestseller List. Get the full story here.

1) The Golden Age by Jeff Deischer (White Rocket Books, October 2012) – 216,583
2) Prohibition by Terrence McCauley (Airship 27, December 2012) – 440,544
3) Prophecy’s Gambit by Nancy Hansen (Pro Se Press, January 2012) – 502,801
4) Sentinels: Metalgod by Van Plexico (White Rocket Books, December 2012) – 537,175
5) The Spider: Shadow of Evil by C.J. Henderson and J. Anthony Kosar (Moonstone Books, October 2012) – 868,197

6) Pro Se Presents # 15 by Various (Pro Se Press, November 2012) – 1,104,914
7) Horror Heroes by Various (Pulp Empire, October 2012) – 1,631,633
8 ) Helmet Head by Mike Baron (November 2012) – 1,755,536
9) Sha’Daa: Pawns (Volume 3) by Various (Perseid Publishing, October 2012) – 1,995,613
10) Monster Aces by Various (Pro Se Press, October 2012) – 2,144,926

Just missing the list were: Secret Agent “X” – Volume Four by Various (Airship 27, October 2012) – 2,244,756, Pro Se Presents # 14 by Various (Pro Se Press, October 2012) – 2,287,193 and Doc Claus by Various (Pulp Empire, December 2012) – 2,636,944.

Congratulations to those who made the list.

Mike Gold: Bite My Twinkie

Some 30 years ago DC and Marvel produced a series of ads featuring their characters (except Superman) in one-page adventures hawking Hostess products. That campaign ran forever, so when we relaunched E-Man at First Comics I thought it would be fun to get people to do Hostess ad parodies featuring their creator-owned characters. John Byrne did Rog-2000, Max Collins and Terry Beatty did Mike Mist, Lee Marrs did Pudge Girl Blimp, Reed Waller did Omaha The Cat Dancer, and so on.

A few years later I was at DC Comics where I edited (interm-ly; Marv Wolfman was moving to the west coast and had some health issues) Teen Titans Spotlight. Mike Baron wrote a story featuring The Hawk (of the original Hawk and Dove) wherein the lead character uttered the epitaph “Bite My Twinkie!” Whereas it was completely in character, one of DC’s top-most executives took great offense at this. In an act of astonishing courage, our young photocopy-kid – who later became a full editor – demanded said executive to point to his Twinkie. That, I felt, was more salacious than Baron’s original line.

Twinkies became a metaphor long ago. Those childhood memories are exceptionally powerful: we all grew up on Twinkies and Ding Dongs and Zingers and those of us who were baby boomers routinely rediscovered that ancient passion around 2 AM after giving the nation of Columbia a boost in their GNP. In fact, Chicago’s hippie district bordered a Dolly Madison thrift shop (before the company was bought out by Hostess) and, to the best of my knowledge, it was the only said thrift shop to have overnight hours. It was a great place to meet up with friends.

So it is no surprise that last week’s sudden closure of Hostess has traumatized so many people. No matter how unhealthy the product was, those childhood attachments more than compensated. Millions of us who hadn’t eaten much of that stuff in the past four decades felt a genuine loss. My daughter is upset about the prospect of having Wonder Bread-less peanut butter sandwiches and she’s right: it will not be the same.

Sure, there’s a handful of Food Nazis who have been quoted as saying “well, now people can eat vegetables and other healthy stuff.” These people are dangerous lunatics. People who think somebody who can no longer procure a Ho-Ho will now reach for broccoli should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery.

We’d like to think that in comics we’ve progressed past the nostalgia connection, and to a certain extent we most certainly have. But the power of those childhood memories is so great that it would be ridiculous to assume they are no longer relevant. I got over the loss of Ipana toothpaste, but our culture is worse off for the absence of Shinola. It is no surprise to me, at least, that we started making “serious” comics movies when those who grew up with comics as a vital part of their childhood lives started working behind the camera.

So when I went to the local Stop and Stop Saturday afternoon and noted how the joint was totally cleared out of Hostess/Drakes/Dolly Madison products, I chuckled. Loudly.

And then I went over to the comics rack to see what was still on sale.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Michael Davis: The Baron Of Comics

One of the best writers the comic book industry has ever seen is Mike Baron. He created two of the greatest comic book properties ever, Nexus and the Badger. Mike has written for all of the major comic book companies and handled some of the biggest characters in comics. Mike has won two, count ‘em, two Eisners and has been nominated for a slew of awards including a Harvey.

On a personal note, Mike is also one of the few people I’ve given a painting to. That may not be a big deal for you but I don’t give away art so it’s a big deal for me.

Mike is a comic book treasure.

Mike is a fantastic writer.

Mike not only writes comics, he writes kick ass novels.

Mike is also a major pain in the ass.

Yeah, Mike is one persistent pain in the ass motherfucker.

In his role as major pain in the ass, Mike wants me to read two of his latest novels, Helmet Head and Whack Job and has been on me like the KKK on Obama to do so. I have not been able to read them as of yet, just as I have not been able to produce a long promised drawing for a fan, more on that completely unrelated to this article later.

Mike bugs the shit out of me and I take it because Mike is not only a great talent he is a dear friend who I love like a brother. Yes, Mike understands that I’m swamped like a bitch with my workload and understands as much as I’d love to read one of my favorite writers latest work I need the time to do it justice but Mike could give a fuck.

It’s a great problem to have. One of the best writers the industry has ever produced wanting my opinion on his work is so damn cool I pinch myself sometimes at the sheer coolness of it. Yes, I could garb a few hours during the week and fly trough the books but I simply cannot read a Mike Baron story like that.

A Mike Baron story you have to sit and enjoy and if it’s a Mike Baron horror story you have to take the extra step of making sure you are not alone in the house while reading. That’s because it’s a certainty that at some point the story will be so scary and/or brutal you will long for the comfort of human contact.

Clearly it’s not just my lack of time preventing me from reading the two novels it’s all the prep that goes into reading a Baron novel. I just don’t want to read it, I want the time to read, enjoy and prepare for it.

Those are not excuses, they are facts. That persistent pain in the ass motherfucker is that good.

Really.

Mike, I know you are reading this so know this, I plan on reading at least one of your books during the Thanksgiving holiday this week. So stop sending me emails with the subject line; What the fuck are you doing that’s more important than reading my books?

Nothing, Mike. Nothing is more important than reading your books, please no more dead cats nailed to my door.

On a completely unrelated yet somehow I see a parallel so I’m working it in here note, I owe a fan a drawing and I have every intention of doing that drawing but if said fan keeps posting shit on Facebook trying to shame me into doing it then he is in for a rude awakening.

Mike’s not the only guy who can nail a cat. Hell, now that I think of it I’ve nailed quite a lot of pussy in my life…

Blam!!! Rimshot!! I’m here all week! Try the chicken! Read Mike Baron!

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

 

MIKE BARON’S WHACK JOB

  • News
  • November 6, 2012
Cover Art:P Jeff Herndon

Whack Job, the latest novel from author Mike Baron is now available for Kindle.

When world leaders burst into flame like a string of Lady Fingers, the President calls on a renegade former agent with a history of mental problems. Otto “Aardvark” White possesses a unique quality. He’s lucky.

Whack Job features a cover by Jeff Herndon.

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