Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

From the same publisher, Denis Meikle’s The Ring Companion looked at the Japanese film cycle about a cursed videotape and the novels that inspired it.

Celebrating its subject’s 80th birthday, Alan Silver and James Ursini’s Roger Corman: Metaphysics on a Shoestring looked at each of the director’s films, with commentary by Corman himself.

Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather: The Illustrated Screenplay included the shooting script by director Vadim Jean and Pratchett, who also contributed separate Forewords.

From Baylor University Press, Kim Paffenroth’s study Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth looked at the Christian imagery in the director’s series of zombie movies.

In Irwin Allen Television Productions, 1964–1970: A Critical History from McFarland, Jon Abbott discussed the disaster movie producer’s successful TV output, including such shows as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants .

The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy by Paul Kane covered Clive Barker’s seminal 1980s movie and its sequels and spin-offs, with a Foreword by Pinhead himself, actor Doug Bradley.

Also from McFarland, Michael Klossner’s Prehistoric Humans in Film and Television looked at nearly 600 dramas, comedies and documentaries made between 1905 and 2004.

Vampire fans could choose from Matthew Pateman’s study The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Tim Kane’s The Changing Vampire of Film and Television and Lyndon W. Joslin’s updated 1999 study Count Dracula Goes to the Movies: Stoker’s Novel Adapted, 1922–2003 . Also of interest was James Bernard, Composer to Count Dracula: A Critical Biography by David Huckvale.

Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio was an impressive full-colour showcase of the award-winning artist’s work, published in hardcover by MonkeyBrain Books with an Introduction by Michael Moorcock and an interview with Picacio by Joseph McCabe.

Best known for his many Doc Savage paperback covers, James Bama: American Realist looked at these and much more of the artist’s work. Brian M. Kane wrote the text, and there was an Introduction by Harlan Ellison and a Foreword by Len Leone.

The subtitle of Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock’s Wally’s World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World’s Second-Best Comic Book Artist pretty much summed up the life of its subject. A deluxe hardcover edition included an extra sixteen-page portfolio.

Amphigorey Again collected a number of previously unpublished illustrations and unfinished work by the late Edward Gorey.

Origins: The Art of John Jude Palencar featured more than 100 paintings and drawings by the artist with a Foreword by Christopher Paolini and an Afterword by Arnie Fenner, who edited the volume with his wife Cathy.

As usual, the Fenners also edited Spectrum 13: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art , which contained more than 400 pieces of art by some 300 different artists. Among those represented were Michael Whelan, Bob Eggleton, Brom, Leo and Diane Dillon, Donato Giancola, Adam Rex, Todd Lockwood and Thomas S. Kuebler, along with a profile of Grand Master Award winner Jeffrey Jones.

Ray Bradbury’s classic story The Homecoming was issued as a picture book, profusely illustrated by Dave McKean.

The Illustrated Dracula featured artwork by Jae Lee, and included Bram Stoker’s missing chapter, “Dracula’s Guest”, plus various non-fiction appendices by Marvin Kaye.

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and Other Stories You’re Sure to Like, Because They’re All About Monsters, and Some of Them Are Also About Food. You Like Food, Don’t You? Well, All Right Then was the full title of Adam Rex’s beautifully illustrated children’s book featuring poems about all the classic creatures.

Mommy ?, written by Arthur Yorinks with art by Maurice Sendak, was a pop-up picture book about a little boy searching for his missing mother who encountered many of the classic monsters.

Poet Laura Leuck teamed up with artist Gris Grimly for Santa Claws , a frighteningly festive tale about two boys at Christmas.

From Fantagraphics Books, Beasts! was subtitled A Pictorial Schedule of Traditional Hidden Creatures . Conceived, designed and edited by Jacob Covey, the attractively-produced hardcover volume collected artwork from ninety of the best visual artists from the worlds of comics, skate graphics, rock posters, animation, children’s books, and commercial and fine art.

London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, which still holds the copyright to J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in the EU, protested at the publication of Lost Girls , an erotic graphic novel by Alan Moore and artist Melinda Gebbie featuring the sexually explicit adventures of Alice from Alice in Wonderland , Wendy from Peter Pan and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz on the eve of the First World War.

The hospital, which was bequeathed the rights to his books by Barrie, claimed that Moore’s title would need their permission or license to publish. In response, the author told the BBC that “It wasn’t our intention to try to provoke a ban”. Lost Girls was subsequently issued as a three-volume deluxe hardcover set in the US by Top Shelf Productions. When pre-orders exceeded the 10,000-copy first printing, the book went into a second edition before publication. However, following discussions between the publisher and Great Ormond Street Hospital, publication of the book in the European Union was delayed until 2008, when the Peter Pan copyright expires.

Avatar’s George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead comics series launched with a special introductory issue, “Back from the Grave”, written by original creators Romero and John Russo and set in 1968, prior to events in the first movie. The launch edition was available in six variant editions with alternate covers by artists Jacen Burrows (“Regular” and “Splatter”), Sebastian Fiumara (“Rotting”), Juan Jose Ryp (“Terror”) and Tim Vigil (“Gore”). A special “Foil” edition came packaged with a poster signed by Romero and was limited to just 600 copies.

Many of Marvel’s superheroes turned up as the walking dead in writer Robert Kirkman’s Marvel Zombies five-issue series, with gruesome covers echoing classic comic book images of old.

Dark Horse Comics’ Universal Monsters: Cavalcade of Horror contained reprint graphic versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Creature from the Black Lagoon , along with a new painted cover by Eric Powell.

The Dark Horse Book of Monsters featured a new “Hellboy” story by Mike Mignola, Kurt Busiek and Keith Giffen presented a tribute to Jack Kirby’s creature comics of the 1960s, while Garry Gianni illustrated William Hope Hodgson’s “A Tropical Terror”.

IDW Publishing adapted Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show as a twelve-part series. Designed as a homage to the old Warren comics magazines, IDW’s Doomed featured graphic adaptations of stories by, amongst others, David J. Schow, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson and F. Paul Wilson.

Reprinted by Headpress as a large format paperback, The Complete Saga of the Victims by “Archaic” Alan Heweston and Suso Rego originally appeared in the early 1970s in the Skyward horror comic Scream. A tale of two sexy women kidnapped and tortured by all kinds of monsters, the graphic novel included the previously unpublished sixth episode.