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Alan Robert Talks “The Beauty of Horror” and Adult Coloring Books (Interview)

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The world of adult coloring books is ever evolving and expanding. What used to be seen as an activity for children to keep them occupied for a few hours while parents got some much needed rest has now evolved into an opportunity for adults to show off their vibrant talents. Hell, we posted about one themed around Alien just the other day, not to mention the one created for “The Strain“.

But the one we’re focusing on here is Alan Robert’s “The Beauty of Horror“, which we wrote about just a couple of weeks ago. The book features 80 pages of unique, original artwork that have themes ranging from sinister carnivals, the zombie apocalypse, serial killers, and a whole lot more.

Here to tell us more about “The Beauty of Horror” is Robert himself, who dives into why he thinks adult coloring books are a big thing, some of his personal favorite paintings, the possibility of a new coloring book featuring IDW characters, and more!

The book will be available this October and is already up for pre-order.

Adult coloring books are making a big comeback. Why do you think this is?

Coloring books for grown-ups are so popular now, it’s almost impossible to escape them. They’re everywhere… supermarkets, clothing stores, you name it. Last summer it may have been a growing trend, but now it is absolutely mainstream. And I think it’s a good thing. They allow people to forget about their daily stress and get lost in their own heads for awhile. It’s healthy. I think the popularity of them also inspired a whole new wave of colorists. More and more people are getting into them, mostly because the books are getting more diverse. That’s why there’s been such a positive reaction to The Beauty of Horror: A GOREgeous Coloring Book. It’s something very different. For coloring fans with darker, edgier tastes, there seems to be a real demand for it.

Coloring isn’t just a solo pastime either, it’s also become an activity to do with friends for fun. Coloring book clubs have been popping up in virtually every state and there are some great groups on Facebook like Coloring on the Darkside and Adult Coloring Worldwide where coloring fans share their creativity with like-minded people. It’s really cool to see and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Do your illustrations in The Beauty of Horror tell a story or are they just one-off images?

With The Beauty of Horror, I set out to illustrate the ultimate horror coloring book. As a diehard horror fan myself, I wanted to create a book that I personally would want to color. In my mind, of course, it needed to include vampires, werewolves, zombies, creepy clowns, serial killers, and all that. But along the way, I also created a character – a young undead girl named Ghouliana Belie. I began to flesh out her backstory and wrote a poem about her that appears in the start of the book. I hid certain items inside the drawings that Ghouliana left behind. I began to include her in more pages and along the way, I gave her undead pets and ghoulish relatives. I see great potential for Ghouliana in more books and possibly games down the line. She’s become the face of The Beauty of Horror.

IDW is known for having some amazing titles connected to their name. Do you think there will be a time when you release a coloring book with various characters from their comics?

IDW has been an absolutely great partner. They allow me the creative freedom to write and illustrate my books as I see fit. I’ve never worked on any licensed books for them, though. Only properties that I’ve created. I’m completely open to working on their other titles, in fact, I happen to be a huge TMNT fan from when I was a kid. The original black and white Turtles books were some of my favorites. That would be a lot of fun.

What are some of your own favorites comics? How about paintings?

favorite comics… Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and The Amazing Screw-On Head, Mike Zeck’s Punisher limited-series and his Amazing Spidey Kraven’s Last Hunt, and Ben Templesmith’s 30 Days of Night and Welcome to Hoxford. Favorite paintings… Anything Menton3 paints is incredible, I’m a huge fan – he did brilliant covers for my Crawl to Me comic series and I have his artwork tattooed on my leg. Check out the NY Ink episode “Kings of NY” where Megan Massacre inked Menton3’s art on me.

What’s next in your world?

I’m really looking forward to seeing what coloring fans will do with my illustrations inside The Beauty of Horror. It’s very exciting. Plans are in place to have a book release party in NYC this October. I will also be appearing at New York Comic Con, Rock and Shock Festival, and more to support the book.

Outside of that, the new Life of Agony album “A Place Where There’s No More Pain” is sounding killer. That comes out early next year through Napalm Records. We have a bunch of tour dates lined up starting Sept 30th that will take us through December. We just announced our brand new coffee line “Red River Roast” and that’s a lot of fun, because we’re all big coffee drinkers in the band.

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Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

Interviews

“I Don’t See Retiring from This” – Joe Bob Briggs Talks New “Last Drive-In” Format and the Show’s Future [Interview]

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Hey everybody, have you heard the news? Joe Bob is back in town!

The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs has returned for its sixth season on Shudder. While the show’s format has been slightly revised adopting a new biweekly schedule with one film instead of a double feature the beloved horror host’s approach is much the same.

“It didn’t really change anything,” Briggs tells Bloody Disgusting. “We were crowding all of our movies into 10 weeks once a year and then having specials, and we found that people would rather have more weeks. It’s actually more movies than we had before.

“And some of the people on the East coast fall asleep in the second movie,” he laughs. “It’s about a five-hour show when it’s a double feature because we talk so much. Also, it’s hard to get thematic double features every single time. So our specials are still double features, but our regular episodes are single features.”

The season kicked off last week with The Last Drive-In Live: A Tribute to Roger Corman, celebrating the legendary filmmaker’s first 70 years in Hollywood with a double feature of 1959’s A Bucket of Blood and 1983’s Deathstalker. The special was filmed live in front of a fervent audience of Briggs’ fan base lovingly dubbed the Mutant Family at Joe Bob’s Drive-In Jamboree in Las Vegas last October.

In addition to his usual hosting duties, Briggs conducted a career-spanning interview with Corman and his wife, fellow producer Julie Corman. They were also joined by one of Corman’s oldest friends and collaborators, Bruce Dern. In a heartfelt moment of mutual admiration, Briggs and Corman exchanged lifetime achievement awards on hubcaps.

“I’ve known Roger for about 35 years, so I’ve only known him for half of his career,” Briggs chuckles. In his long history of reviewing, interviewing, and talking about Corman and his legendary work, one emblematic encounter sticks out to Briggs.

“I remember the very first time I went to the Corman studio, which was a lumber yard on Venice Boulevard. He had a standing set for a spaceship control room, a standing set for a strip club, and I think he had one other one, and then he had all of his editing facilities there, but it was still a lumber yard. They had not really changed any of the buildings or anything.

“He’s showing me around the studio, and we were walking past a pile of debris, and I said, ‘Roger, is that the mutant from Forbidden World?’ It had just been thrown over in a corner. And he just said, ‘Yes, Joe Bob, I believe that is. He was apparently no longer needed.’ I said, ‘Roger, you gotta get with it! That stuff is worth money.’ But he was like, ‘When the movie’s over, the movie’s over.’ That was Roget to a T.”

At least part of Corman’s longevity can be attributed to his shrewd business practices and pragmatic approach to the industry, which has included working in every conceivable genre of cinema. “I couldn’t think of a single genre he has not made,” Briggs says.

“When we did this interview at the Jamboree, I said, ‘I’m gonna name the genre, and you tell me what you love about that genre,’ and every comment that he made involved money and box office performance,” he snickers. “None of it was involved with love of cinema, although I did get him to say that his favorite genre is a genre that he didn’t dabble in much other than his first movie [1954’s Highway Dragnet], and that was film noir.”

While the fourth annual Drive-In Jamboree is still in the planning stage, Briggs is delighted by the event’s continued success. “The Jamboree is something that we literally just threw together. We’ve had three of them now. It’s something where we just show up and try to come up with programming for each day.

But I really think the Jamboree is more about the mutant family meeting the mutant family. It’s more about people who know each other online gathering and partying with each other in person. It’s not so much about what movies we have. I mean, we always have an anniversary movie, and we always have some special guests and everything, but it’s more about the gathering of the mutants. It’s fun from that point of view. They’re exhausting, I can tell you that.”

The zeal among Briggs’ audience has only grown over the years, from hosting Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1996, to MonsterVision on TNT from 1996 to 2000, and The Last-Drive-In on Shudder since 2018. “I’m amazed, having been in the business for this many years, that I still have a show at this time, because they say you can’t repeat TV,” Briggs notes.

“Nobody wants to see old TV, and yet I’ve done the same show three times on three different networks, and every time I try to change it everyone says, ‘No, no, don’t change it! That’s the part we love.’ I always want to do something new, and I’m always told, ‘No, you’re the CEO of Coca Cola who went to New Coke.’ You can’t do that. People will revolt. So we’re still doing it.

“It’s one of the few shows that I know of that’s just sort of grown organically over, gosh, almost 40 years. We’ve just added elements to the show. We try things. If something doesn’t work, we throw it away. If something works, we do it forever!”

The mutant family will be happy to know that Briggs plans to continue hosting and writing about movies for as long as he’s able to. “I don’t see retiring from this or retiring from writing. I’m primarily a writer, and the good thing about writing is long after they don’t wanna see you on TV anymore you can still write.

“The difference today, though, is I was pretty much the only guy doing genre films when I started. Now, there are academics that do it. There are entire books written about Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper and even lesser names than those, and there are, of course, a massive number of websites, including your own, so that when something comes out today, there’s immediately a hundred reviews of it; whereas in 1982, I was sort of the only guy, because the movies were considered disposable trash. So I have been surpassed in my deep knowledge, because who can keep up with all that? It’s impossible!”

Diana Prince, who serves as Briggs’ co-host Darcy the Mail Girl and was instrumental in getting him back in the hosting chair, has been promoted to an associate producer this season. “She was sort of always the associate producer, but I guess they finally gave her the title,” Briggs explains.

“Diana Prince is in on all the decisions about programming. I always listen to Austin Jennings, the director, and Diana Prince, the mail girl, because they come from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of movies they wanna watch, and we try to strike a balance between. You know, she’s not gonna vote for Possession, and he’s not gonna vote for Mountaintop Motel Massacre,” he chortles.

“They’re probably the principal advisors, as far as what we show. Of course, [Diana] has a lot of social media clout, and she’s extremely knowledgeable about pop culture. Wow! She has seen everything. She’s seen more than I’ve seen!”

While surprises are part of the fun of The Last Drive-In, Briggs previews some of what’s in store this season. “The place we normally live is the neglected ’80 slasher, and we still live there,” he assures. “But we’re gonna pay a lot more attention to the ’70s especially. I’ve always thought the ’70s are more interesting than the ’80s anyway. And we’re gonna pay attention to some really recent stuff.”

He teases, “We’re gonna bring back Joe Bob’s Summer School, which is something that we used to do at MonsterVision. And we may have a marathon. There’s a possibility of that. But I’ll be digging this new format of being on every other week between now and at least up to Labor Day.”

While Briggs’ hosting format hasn’t changed much across four decades, the world around him certainly has and that’s why The Last Drive-In remains relevant. He points out, “In the era of streaming, where everything is menus and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of choices, we are that thing called a curator that can direct you to the fun places on the spectrum of streaming.

“Streaming is very confusing for people, and a lot of people don’t like it for that reason. I hope what we’re doing is cutting through the weeds and bringing things into perspective. And, you know, it’s just more fun to watch a movie with us!” he concludes with a Texas-sized grin.

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