ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

DC House of Horror and Resurgence of Horror in Comics

DC Comics reached out to eight popular horror authors to write DC House of Horror Vol1, which is an 80 page comic that they are hoping will be the resurgence of horror to comic books. My guess is that they reached out to me because the American Library Association honored me by labeling me one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. That and my recent literary success, I suppose. And probably because Clive Barker and Stephen King were too busy. Still, they picked me to be a part of it and I'm stoked. Also writing in the comic are Edward Lee, Brian Keene, Mary SanGiovanni, Bryan Smith, Nick Cutter, Wrath James White, and Ronald Malfi. We were paired with artists Rags Morales, Bilquis Evely, Howard Porter, Scott Kolins,  Howard V. Chaykin, and Dale Eaglesham. It also features the maniacal Keith Giffen riding herd over us all. If I told you some of the conversations I had with Keith you'd crack up.




You see, back in the 1950s, EC and Eerie Comics had titles like Tales from the Crypt, Tales of Terror, Weird Tales, etc. Then came a resurgence in the 1970s when DC published supernatural fiction and occasional horror stories in such titles as Ghosts, The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, Secrets of Haunted House, Secrets of Sinister House, Swamp Thing, Weird Mystery Tales, Weird War Tales, and Tales of Ghost Castle. I broke my eye teeth on those when I was a kid. By the late 80s, though, these titles were all gone with the exception of Swamp Thing. Then in the 90s, Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics began to bring it back. Then comics like Jonah Hex, Ghost Rider, and Constantine made horror in comics even more popular.

DC House of Horror is an attempt to bring horror back to DC. This is Vol 1 and if it's a success, then we might see Vol 2 and some resurrections of their old titles. I'm personally hoping that Weird War Tales comes back because of my military background. You know I could write some bad ass weird war scripts.

In DC House of Horror, all of us were given a DC franchise character and told to put our own spin on them. I was given Shazam and I placed the events in the 1970s. Others were given Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, etc. What makes this great is that we were pretty much told to do with these characters what we wanted to. The stories wouldn't be cannon, so the sky was the limit. We had a load of fun. And I got to bring in the movie The Exorcist and a quote from Hunter S. Thompson on the first page of my piece to start the party off. See if you can spy The Exorcist movie posters on the subway wall.


This isn't my first foray into comics. Many of you stalwart fans might remember that I had a short story in the back of several IDW comics, including The Keep, CSI, and several others I don't remember. But this is my first time writing a comic script and having it published. I'm beyond honored.

So how can you help? Have you ordered a copy? Then go to or call your local Comic Book store. If you don't have one, then call Liz Scott at Phat Collectible in La Habra, CA at  (714) 680-3760. Tell her Weston sent you. I know they ordered a bunch of extra copies.


 

1 comment :

  1. Shazam written by Weston Ochse? Awesome. Shazam written by Weston Ochse and illustrated by Howard Chaykin? Beyond awesome! Chaykin is one of my favorite creators. I'm not ashamed to admit that I signed the name Dominic Fortune to my paintings, in high school art class.
    I pre-ordered this on the first possible day, and have been waiting with bated breath, ever since.

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