BUD PLANT SELLS HIS WEBSTORE

Bud Plant, owner of Bud's Art Books announced last year that he was retiring in 2026 at the age of 73. In a recent blog post, Plant wrote that he had sold his business to long-time friend Bill Schanes.

I have been a customer of Bud's fine establishment for many years and I'm sad to see him go. I hope that Mr. Schanes doesn't decide to re-invent the wheel after he takes over which happens so often when a business changes hands.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Bud's Art Books, it is one of the most valuable sources for books about art, comics and just about anything else that is printed regarding the topics we all enjoy. Visit the sight by clicking on the sidebar on the right column of this blog.

This message was published on his blog:

A press release has just gone out announcing that this business, as of February 1, will now be owned by a new corporation co-owned by William “Bill” Schanes and Sasha Fera-Schanes, who currently co-manages Pop-King Inc., an eBay store, with her father Steve Schanes, Bill's brother.

Our staff will remain the same. New to us is Marty Grosser, former 37-year head editor of Diamond Previews, stepping into my duties here. He’ll be choosing new items to handle, editing descriptions, recommending items, putting together the weekly eblast, editing the print catalog and so on. I (Bud) have been working with Marty to get him up to speed for several weeks now.

I will remain on board on a part-time basis over February and March to see that the transition runs smoothly and to help out wherever I can.

Many of you will know Bill Schanes; Bill was Vice President of Purchasing for Diamond Comics for 30 years; he retired 13 years ago to take time off and travel. Bill and the Schanes family started and ran the legendary Pacific Comics—publisher of comics, portfolios and books, and an early comics distributor. I (Bud) acquired their distribution arm in 1985. You may recall they were first to publish Dave Stevens and The Rocketeer, Jack Kirby’s creator-owned titles and much, much more.

Bill has no lack of experience in this industry, and he and I have been friends since he started out in the industry in the mid-1970s—he’s several years younger than I am. Bill was also integral in the sale of my own distribution business to Diamond Comics in 1988, after which I went back to direct-to-customer retailing which is where this brings us to today. – Bud

LISA LORING, TOADZILLA, WOKE HWA

This edition's newsbites are headlined by the passing of Lisa Loring, who played Wednesday Addams in the original THE ADDAMS FAMILY TV show, ironically not long after the film about her character was released.

If you remember Tippi Hedren from Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, you'll get a surprise when you find out who she lives with. Here's a clue: they're not human.

I couldn't help but add the story about Toadzilla, the giant amphibian recently found in Australia. Unfortunately, the big guy didn't last long, as he and his kind are considered invasive species.

Finally, another instance of woke politics, this time festering under the surface of the Horror Writer's Association. Longtime writer and member, Thomas Monteleone was summarily tossed from the PC club for his "inappropriate" comments. Apparently he has a history of "controversial" comments, but to be banned from all HWA activities?

Lisa Loring, original Wednesday Addams actress, dead at 64

Lisa Loring, best known as the first actress to play Wednesday Addams in the original “The Addams Family” sitcom, has died at the age of 64.

Loring “passed away on Saturday surrounded by her family,” longtime agent Chris Carbaugh told CNN in a statement on Monday.

“She brought to life one of the most iconic characters in Hollywood history that is still celebrated today,” Carbaugh said. “Lisa loved sharing her memories and meeting all her fans across the world.”

The former child star was a mother and grandmother, her agent added, saying: “She will be missed dearly.”

Laurie Jacobson, Loring’s friend, also reported her death on Facebook, saying she had “suffered a massive stroke brought on by smoking and high blood pressure.”

“She had been on life support for 3 days. Yesterday, her family made the difficult decision to remove it and she passed last night,” Jacobson wrote. “She is embedded in the tapestry that is pop culture and in our hearts always as Wednesday Addams.”

Following news of her death, fans flocked to social media to pay tribute, with one person writing on Twitter: “Farewell to Lisa Loring, the person who DEFINED Wednesday Addams at a time when she was just a frowning newspaper drawing.”

Loring was the blueprint for the pale, pigtail-wearing Wednesday after being cast in the sitcom “The Addams Family” in 1964. She took on the role when she was six years old and played the death-obsessed character until the show ended two years later.

In 1977, she appeared as Wednesday Sr. in the television film “Halloween with the New Addams Family.”

Loring’s deadpan delivery of the character, based on the New Yorker cartoons by Charles Addams, paved the way for other actresses, including Christina Ricci, who starred as Wednesday in the 1991 hit movie “The Addams Family” and its sequel, “Addams Family Values.”

Jenna Ortega said her version of the pop-culture icon was also inspired by Loring, following the premiere of Tim Burton’s Netflix comedy horror “Wednesday,” last year.

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in episode 101 of Wednesday. 

Finding a star for 'Wednesday' who embodies 'Family' values with her own kooky twist

“I paid homage to Lisa Loring, the first Wednesday Addams. I did a little bit of her shuffle that she does,” Ortega said during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in December.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Loring was born Lisa Ann DeCinces in the Marshall Islands and was given her stage name when she started modeling at age 3.

Following her stint as Wednesday in “The Addams Family,” Loring joined Phyllis Diller’s sitcom “The Pruitts of Southampton.” She later landed a recurring role in “As the World Turns,” playing Cricket Montgomery.

Her acting credits also include shows “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.,” “Fantasy Island” and “Barnaby Jones.”

[SOURCE: CNN.com]

Thomas Monteleone Ousted By Horror Writers Association

The Horror Writers Association Board of Trustees today expelled author Thomas Monteleone from membership, condemning his “recent words and actions” which violate their anti-harassment policies. Monteleone, an HWA Lifetime Achievement Award winner (2017) is also barred from attendance and participation in StokerCon 2023, banned from future HWA events, and his benefits as an LAA winner have been revoked.

Within the past week Monteleone, alleging that “gatekeepers” at the Horror Writers Association websites were keeping his post from appearing, had taken to Facebook ostensibly to nominate Stuart David Schiff for an HWA Lifetime Achievement Award. However, before sharing the reasons Schiff should receive the recognition, Monteleone made known his real agenda: “…That said, and despite the last few LAA years looking very much like a very obvious DEI project, I am compelled to nominate a smart, old white guy: Stu Schiff…” Before it was taken down the Facebook post drew over 800 comments, some approving what he said and adding their own feelings about “virtue signaling” and “wokeness”, while others called for him to apologize. The worthiness of two of the 2020 LAA winners was also belittled.

Then, two days ago, YouTube’s Hatchet Mouth posted a “Tom Monteleone Interview” where Monteleone delivered more remarks in the vein of his Facebook post. Telling an anecdote about a World Fantasy Award winner who expressed ambivalence about receiving the Lovecraft bust, he slurred them in derogatory racial terms (while making every effort to assign the wrong ethnicity to the person being insulted), and gave the same treatment to the woman who called for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to be renamed (as it was). The video is no longer online.

A number of HWA members posted calls in social media for the organization to remove him from membership.

The Horror Writers Association explained its decision in the “Thomas F. Monteleone Statement” posted on the HWA Blog.

The Board of Trustees for the Horror Writers Association does not condone hate speech in any way, shape, or form. We stand in support of our members’ right to feel safe, welcome, and above all else, respected. The Horror Writers Association condemns the recent words and actions of Thomas Monteleone and in accordance with our anti-harassment policies, The Board of Trustees has voted to ban Mr. Monteleone from attendance and participation in StokerCon 2023.

Furthermore, in respect to those same policies, the Board of Trustees has voted to ban Mr. Monteleone from attending our future events.

Lastly, the Board of Trustees has voted to expel Mr. Monteleone from membership in the Horror Writers Association, thus revoking the benefits of his Lifetime Achievement Award, per Horror Writers Association Bylaws Article III, section 24:

“The Board may, by a vote of 80% of the officers and trustees then in office, expel any member for good and sufficient cause. For avoidance of confusion, 80% of the officers and trustees then in office must vote to expel the member in order for such expulsion to be effective. In the event of expulsion, the expelled member’s dues, if paid, shall be refunded on a pro-rata basis. An expelled member shall be reinstated if the Board shall receive a petition for reinstatement signed by a number of Active members equal to no less than two-thirds of the Active membership as of the date of receipt.”

Members of the Board of Trustees were unanimous in this decision-making process and are also pursuing other options available under the bylaws of the organization.

We are dedicated to making our StokerCons, other HWA-sponsored events, and official HWA online spaces safe and comfortable for all participants, as per our anti-harassment policy available at horror.org/hwa-anti-harassment-policy/.

[SOURCE: File770.com]

90 Year Old American Actress That Still Lives With 14 Lions & Tigers Puts Joe Exotic And His "Tiger King" Status To Shame

If you didn't watch the 6 unhinged episodes of Tiger King during the dark ages (the time of which we will not speak its name), you're missing out. You met "Joe Exotic", self-proclaimed Tiger King, who got into a bunch of legal trouble and started drama among the big cat-lover community. But one incredibly famous woman was left out of this dramatic tale, are her name is Tippi Hedren.

90 year-old grandmother of Dakota Johnson, Tippi Hedren, was an American actress and animal rights activist, best known for her roles in the films "The Birds" (1963) and "Marnie" (1964). She was also the subject of director Alfred Hitchcock's obsessive interest and was cast in several of his films. She fell in love with big cats after filming two movies in Africa and began rescuing them in 1972. In 1983 she founded the Roar Foundation, the mission of which "is to educate the public about the dangers of private ownership of exotic animals."

Pictures that have resurfaced show that she would let the tigers and lions actively roam around her home, which she later admitted was "stupid beyond belief". At least someone here has brain cells! Anyway, seeing these pictures of lions and tigers in a kitchen is pretty wild (no pun intended). You've seen them before in zoos, or in cages, but something about seeing them climbing through a kitchen window makes you understand just truly how big and beautiful they really are. 

Weighing Almost Six Pounds, Australian ‘Toadzilla’ Breaks Records For Largest Toad

Park rangers in Australia made a discovery this week that shocked viewers and broke records: a nearly six-pound cane toad now dubbed “Toadzilla.”

The toad was found during a routine trail check in Australia’s Conway National Park, when park ranger Kylee Gray stopped her vehicle for a passing snake. After exiting her vehicle, Gray looked down and gasped at the sight of a monstrously large toad.

“I reached down and grabbed the cane toad and couldn’t believe how big and heavy it was,” Gray said in a news release from the Queensland Department of Environment and Science. “We dubbed it Toadzilla, and quickly put it into a container so we could remove it from the wild.”

“Toadzilla” weighed in at a record-breaking 5.95 pounds (2.7 kilograms), and is believed to be a female due to its size, as female cane toads grow larger than males.

A typical cane toad weighs an average of about three pounds, according to National Geographic. They can survive in the wild for up to 15 years and produce 30,000 eggs every breeding cycle.

NEW OWNER OF FAMOUS MONSTERS!

Big news, Monster Kids -- looks like the venerable FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND will once more be dragged out of its moldering coffin, dusted off, given a new face and hit the magazine racks sometime soon. You have to admit, FM has been passed around a little like a cheap date since Warren and FJA pulled the plug on it in 1983. The new owner is Cory Taylor. lead vocalist for the heavy metal band, Slipknot. Turns out the 42-year-old Mr. Taylor has been a life-long monster fanatic and he might have had his eyes on this deal for a long time. In any event, it will be interesting to see exactly what he plans to do with it, how it will look, etc. I'm hoping it becomes a regularly-published, affordably-priced 'zine. I just can't seem to open my wallet wide enough to cough up the twenty bucks for an issue of the recently-resurrected FANGORIA.

From ROLLING STONE:

WHEN COREY TAYLOR was five years old, Buck Rogers changed his life. If the Slipknot frontman hadn’t seen the 1979 film,Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, he never would have seen the trailer for John Carpenter’s genre-defining slasher flick, Halloween.

Taylor, now 48, still has total recall of the moment he first saw masked killer Michael Myers: “I can’t tell you one thing about the Buck Rogers movie, but I can remember everything about that trailer,” he says over Zoom, looking relaxed in a surprisingly brightly lit kitchen. “I can remember where my mom and I were sitting in the theater. I can remember what it smelled like. The preview was so fucking cool. It obviously explains the appeal of Slipknot for me.”

The trailer sparked Taylor’s lifelong obsession with horror movies. As he got older, he started buying every issue of Fangoria, Starlog, and the last few issues of the original run of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the pioneering fanzine that helped build the iconography of Frankenstein, actor Vincent Price, and homespun ghoulies like Vampirella. He eventually lost his magazine collection as his family moved around the country, but his love of horror zines endured.

Now Taylor doesn’t worry about missing issues. Earlier this year, he bought the rights to the Famous Monsters brand and will be relaunching the magazine, as well as using the name for making toys, producing films, and hosting festivals. Taylor announced his acquisition on Friday at Burbank, California’s Son of Monsterpalooza convention.

“Our job is to build a foundation to bring Famous Monsters into the modern age, while also honoring the legacy that came before,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It’s the whole reason that we were fans to begin with.” In addition to Famous Monsters, Taylor and his business partner, Eben McGarr (owner of Mad Monsters magazine and convention), also bought the rights to Captain Company (the Famous Monsters “store” that sold rubber masks and sea monkeys before becoming a real retail enterprise), and the life story of Famous Monsters founding editor Forrest Ackerman.

Taylor’s foremost goal with relaunching Famous Monsters is to reconnect the brand, which inspired everyone from Stephen King to punk band the Misfits, with horror fans. He doesn’t see Fangoria or any of the other fests that have emerged in the decades since Famous Monsters launched in 1958 as competition; he sees it as its own thing that can fit into the current horror ecosystem. “It was the first real place where we, as horror nerds, could feel safe and feel connected feel like we weren’t alone,” he says. “The internet has made it easy for us to connect, so I want to kind of make this another viable place for them to come.”

Step one for Taylor is digitizing every issue of Famous Monsters and making them available to read for free. After seeing DVDs containing PDFs of all the issues on Amazon, he figured the least he could do is save collectors some money. The title’s first issue, which came out in February 1958 and featured a blonde making eyes at Frankenstein’s creature, is the first installment available in the “Ack-Hives” (a play on Forrest Ackerman’s name).

Next, he wants to reestablish a Famous Monsters convention, where he hopes to pay tribute to Ackerman and founding publisher Jim Warren and celebrate the title’s history. “We do that by celebrating them at the conventions with special Famous Monsters setups, almost like a moving museum of sorts, trying to recreate the ‘Ackermansion’ in a weird way,” Taylor says. Finally, he plans to relaunch the magazine as an annual or biannual publication, using editorial concepts from past issues in new ways.

Where the original Famous Monsters venerated horror’s first golden age — Universal monsters like Dracula and the Creature From the Black Lagoon, as well as Lon Chaney’s legacy — Taylor hopes to use the magazine to trace horror’s evolution. “As a fan who has loved all of it, there’s no one corner of the genre that I subscribe to,” he says. “I can watch Karloff as the Mummy, or I can fucking root for Brendan Fraser in the remake that now seems like a classic in retrospect. There are things to celebrate, going all the way back and going all the way forward. We’ll be looking at the monsters that I grew up with, which is Jason, Michael Myers, Freddy, although as the modern-day versions of these Universal Monsters and portraying them and having people play with how they look or how they pertain to the past, as well.”

Taylor is also excited to make up monsters of his own. Citing Ackerman and Warren’s characters like Vampirella and Eerie, he’d like to create his own and turn them into toys, which the Captain Company would sell. He also plans to use the Famous Monsters brand as his studio for filmmaking. “I’ve been writing my own scripts now for the last five, six years. And I’m trying to get some of my stuff into production right now,” he says. “There’s a handful that are very, very close. So anything that I put out is instantly going to get the Famous Monsters logo on it, just to build that brand recognition.” He pauses a second. “I fucking hate that term ‘brand,’ but that’s what it is.”

His idea for a convention would be something that roams around from city to city and year to year “almost like the Super Bowl or WrestleMania.” He also hopes to launch a Famous Monsters cruise that blends music and horror. “I would perform,” he says. “I would get some of my friends who lean into that side of it. And really put something cool together.”

So why is Taylor so into horror? “There’s the obvious reasons,” he says. “There’s something cool about a scary movie; there’s something cool about a monster. There’s something cool about the underlying metaphor of ‘It doesn’t matter sometimes if you aren’t the strongest one, you can win and conquer your fears.'” For Taylor who survived abuse as a child, horror movies also give him hope. “It’s like, ‘Well, if they could get through that I can get through this,'” he says. “It makes you feel like you can be your own hero.”

Now Taylor just needs to channel his determination into making Famous Monsters all he believes it can be. “I’m terrified,” he says, “but I’m also fucking excited because you anything worth doing is worth going to the limit for it.”

The Press Release at the new Famous Monsters website:

BURBANK, CA (Oct 13, 2022) - For nearly 65 years, Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine has inspired generation after generation of artists, writers and filmmakers from Stephen King to Steven Spielberg. It remains the hallmark of horror and sci-fi.

Famous Monsters is back to entertain and inspire future generations! From print to film and everything in-between, we invite you to celebrate pop-culture, monsters and more with your fellow Monster Kids!

The Mad Scientists responsible for resurrecting this Monster are non other than Corey Taylor (CMFT,Stone Sour, Slipknot) and Eben McGarr (filmmaker, creator of Mad Monster). Two life-long Monster Kids, now the caretakers and owners of the definitive monster brand.

Aside from his well-known work in music, with Slipknot, Stone Sour and his solo work, Corey Taylor has also started carving out a name for himself in the horror world, with contributions including parts in various horror features like ‘Fear Clinic’ and ‘Bad Candy’, and lending his knowledge to horror documentaries such as ‘In Search Of Darkness’ pts 1, 2 and 3. He’s also involved in production with his first feature, ‘Zombie vs Ninja’, which he also co-wrote, in development.

Eben McGarr has over 30 years experience producing horror entertainment. In addition to being a writer and director, his company Mad Monster has pioneered innovative interactive horror experiences with some of the biggest names in the genre.