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Life is about balance. After last week’s screed on my personal health journey, it’s only fair I balance things out with a very gluttonous listing of my most favorite meals whilst being an indie creator. You see, a life in comics — part time, at least — find folks assembled around a table to break bread more often than you’d think. When logging in considerable hours at a convention, creators often will nibble here and there, and then run out of the expo hall in a mad dash for food when the con floor closes. Great minds have met over bowls of pasta and pizzas, whilst inking deals on Batman or the X-Men. Here are, in no particular order, five meals that remain stuck in between my teeth:

Miller’s Pub with Mike Gold

The first time ComicMix honcho Mike Gold asked Unshaven Comics to meet him for a meal,...

For me, the most interesting thing about horror maestro Tobe Hooper’s storied career is he takes chances. He always swings big; from his landmark second feature The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), to Lifeforce (1985), to even The Mangler (1995), he pushes the genre into the absurd through concept and execution, audiences be damned. It’s an admirable trait in a filmmaker, and one that’s on full display with Eaten Alive (1976), probably his most bizarre film to date. (Which is saying a lot.)

After a limited stateside release in October of ’76, EA was given a wide release in May of ’77 by Virgo International Pictures to theatres and drive-ins across the land. The start of the ever undulating arc of Hooper’s career, it was met with a resounding “Whaaaat?” by the public and critics alike. This was not the follow up to the cultural explosion that was Chainsaw people were expecting. And to be honest,...

The Dream Killer series continues next week.

I was attending The Pratt Institute and needed all the bank I could get. Pratt’s one of the world’s great art schools and cheap it was not. I had to come up with most of the tuition because no one talked to me about how financial aid went away if grades fall below a C.

I was a poor black kid from the projects talks like that rarely happen in inner cities. Those lucky enough to raise above our assigned station in life have to fend for ourselves. Our talks revolve around staying away from drugs, gangs, and cops.

American families middle class or above think nothing of seemingly little things like dad or mom talking to them at dinner about their college life.

Mum: My dear sweet Reginal you’ve many things to look forward to while at college!

Reginal:...

Following the unprecedented success of his monolithic sophomore feature, 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which would forever immortalize director Tobe Hooper in the annals of great horror filmmakers, he would return to the Southern Fried grindhouse realm with 1976’s Eaten Alive, another ‘based-on-a-true-story’ effort featuring a set of original backwoods kooks. Though the film failed to attain the same attention, Hooper managed to obtain a higher profile cast for a film arguably less off-putting thanks to its more comedic moments.

Opening with a line that would go on to be famously recycled by Quentin Tarantino, ornery redneck Buck (Robert England) assails Clara (Roberta Collins), a reluctant prostitute in a bad blonde wig. Kicked out of the brothel by the no-nonsense owner, Miss Hattie (Carolyn Jones), Clara stumbles through the swampy Louisiana bayou and comes upon a dilapidated motel run by Judd (Neville Brand). The lonely, repressed old coot gets overexcited...

Shaggy maniac Neville Brand was born on the bayou. He lives by his high morals and so just can't resist feeding random visitors to his gargantuan crocodile. If they resist that idea, he uses a giant scythe for a persuader. Tobe Hooper's sopho-gore feature boasts several name stars, plus, in this new edition, a brightly colored, picture-perfect transfer. Eaten Alive Blu-ray + DVD Arrow Video (U.S.) 1976 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 87 min. / Death Trap, Starlight Slaughter, Horror Hotel / Street Date September 22, 2015 / 39.95 Starring Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Marilyn Burns, William Finley, Stuart Whitman, Roberta Collins, Kyle Richards, Robert Englund, Crystin Sinclaire, Janus Blythe, Betty Cole. Cinematography Robert Caramico Special Effects Robert A. Mattey Makeup Effects Frank Gluck Confirmed Original Music Wayne Bell, Tobe Hooper Written by Alvin Fast, Mardi Rustam, Kim Henkel Produced by Mardi Rustam Directed by Tobe Hooper

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Tobe Hooper is an odd duck...

Damn, it’s 1963 all over again in Missouri.

The police are using tear gas and billy clubs to control a group of peaceful protestors. All that’s missing is German Shepards and fire hoses but hey, rubber bullets more than make up for that.

I often wonder seriously, once so seriously, someone asked me to “Please stay here,” if I should take a gun and just end me before Lapd does.

The ‘here’ she was referring to was Earth.

Bet that fucked you up.

A bit over a year ago, in a restaurant two drunken white people thought they could use me as a punching bag.

They attacked me.

They hit me.

They were two, I was one.

I defended myself, they punked out.

I was the one arrested.

There is videotape evidence of my innocence.

I took a plea deal on the criminal charge.

W H Y?

Why would...