October 2024 Newsletter

The chill air and falling leaves inaugurate this most terrible time of the year, the horrible month of Halloween, aka "Witch Christmas" and forerunner to no other notable days we might dread. More on that later, because boy howdy, is Ranged Touch still at it!

For our Patreon treat last month, MICHAEL ON MICHAEL returned as Michael Lutz offered his thoughts on Michael Bay's second feature film, THE ROCK (1996), which you might say… ROCKS? Hahaha. But seriously the movie is really cool, sets the template for Marvel films, and (less good) somehow played a part in getting the UK to join the war in Iraq. Sound flummoxing? Take a listen, and all shall be made mostly clear.

GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES, last in release but first in our hearts, covered a pretty incredible book, Douglas A. Guerra's SLANTWISE MOVES: GAMES, LITERATURE, AND SOCIAL INVENTION IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA. If you've ever wondered what the best-selling tabletop game in 1850s America was, this book has you covered, and if you've ever wondered "Was that game part of a fairly baffling transmedia event?" the answer is "Yes!" There's also a lot of stuff in there about Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and the adventures of a young P.T. Barnum visiting an island covered in wasps. Next month, we'll be paying homage to the recently departed Fredric Jameson by discussing his long essay from 1984 (not the book of the same title!) "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," freely available online in many forms, if you want to read along. Because of that, it will not appear on our GSSB Bookshop list, but, you know, plenty of other things are already there?

Meanwhile, JUST KING THINGS began its rapid journey to the end of Stephen King's epic Dark Tower cycle with THE DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF CALLA, a rip-roaring cowboy adventure yarn that veers at the last second into an elaborate metafictional cliffhanger that leads into next month's read, THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF SUSANNAH, which will somehow have even more metafictional cliffhangers. I set my watch and warrant on it. For the Bonusode last month, we were joined by Dark Tower SUPERFAN Patrick Klepek of Remap Radio to discuss the absolutely bizarre, truly in-shambles Dark Tower film adaptation from 2017. It's not good, but there's a lot to think about. Next month, the Bonusodes will embark upon their own mini-event with A LOT OF 'SALEM'S LOT, as we discuss the 2004 TNT miniseries adaptation of SALEM'S LOT starring Rob Lowe.

Over on SHELVED BY GENRE, Austin stuck around for our Patreon-exclusive bonus Q&A on the Junji Ito unit before we all took a breather with the absolute weirdest Hallmark movie ever made, a body horror alien invasion epic called THE FINAL DAYS OF PLANET EARTH. That was followed up by the first episode in our new unit, covering the first half of MAGIC'S PAWN, the initial volume in Mercedes Lackey's THE LAST HERALD MAGE TRILOGY. Along with that, we dropped a NEW SHIRT design in the store to announce it loudly and proudly: that Gay Wizards Are Going To Get Us Through the 2024 Election! This shirt will be discontinued at the end of the month, so grab it while you can. Speaking of shirts, did you know our lovely producer Jordan Mallory, who is integral to make gestures all this happen, has his own merch store? Check it out!

That's it for this month, but as a final sendoff for this most unsettling of months, Michael would also like you to know that (after a big website crash this summer) he's finally reconstructed and is rehosting some of his classic internet horror comedy chillers, two interrelated stories about people in the early 2010s posting about scarecrows and posting about corn mazes. Hope you enjoy them!