It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That is, the time when my kids have gone back to school, the weather gets chillier and I inject unhealthy quantities of horror into my veins. Last year, I went way too big with a project that might change into something else, so this year I’m keeping it somewhat simple when it comes to the horror films, books and comics I’ll be putting in my eyeballs.

When it comes to books, I’m staying pretty loose. You can see the unseemly stack of novels in the picture above. I dug those out of the To Read boxes in the garage. I’ll get through some of them as well as some non-fiction offerings on the way from the library. Right now I’m making my way through Grady Hendrix’s HorrorStor on my iPad, a softcover of Mary Higgins Clark’s Stillwatch and Vincent Price: The Art Of Fear by Denis Meikle. That’s already about half the number of books I’ve finished this year, but I’m feeling more motivated!

From there, I decided to stay somewhat more focused when it came to my comic book reading. Inspired by my almost-done read-through of the fantastic House Of Mystery series by Matthew (now Lilah) Sturges, Luca Rossi and a host of others, I figured I’d stay in that arena and only (or mostly) stick to Vertigo titles. This will also be a nice way to pay tribute to the imprint that went kaput earlier this year. Some of my all-time favorite series’ came from there and I’d like to honor that. With that in mind, I went through both my shelf and To Read boxes and pulled some comics. It’s an eclectic mix, but one that will nicely showcase how incredible that line was for decades. I may even get into some of the comics that were clearly inspired by Vertigo (or lead into it).

Finally, let’s talk movies. Initially I wanted to keep it very simple and alternate between movies I’ve seen and those I haven’t. That morphed into an idea of doing double features in that vein that were connected. Now, I’m thinking that I’m going to try to keep a nice mix of new and old, but go a step further and try to find connections between the films. It could be something simple like the same director, writer, actor, or series. If i get stuck, I might dig a little deeper into themes and whatnot. I have this wacky idea of doing some kind of visual component to go along with this, but it might turn into a digital version of a detective’s pin board in a movie. After perusing my movie shelf, I decided to start with Return Of The Living Dead 3, so we’ll see where we go from there!

It’s been years since I’ve been even remotely consistent writing here on UM, but I’m hoping to write updates and reviews here. If you want to follow my progress more directly — and witness all my other brilliant musings — follow me on Twitter where I’m using #HalloweenScene2019 as often as I remember!