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Preview Of Douglas Clegg’s Hotly Anticipated ‘Neverland’!

Published

14 years ago

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Douglas Clegg has been referred to as the Godfather of the ‘E-Book’ movement having made a name for himself in with his E-Published serial titled ‘NAOMI’ that garnered him high praise among readers and critics alike. Since then he has written several horror classics such as “THE MACHINERY OF NIGHT”, “ISIS”, “BASTARD SON”, “THE NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES”, and many others earning himself a Bram Stoker and Shocker award along the way. Now Doug is at it again as he looks to release his newest story ‘NEVERLAND’ this April. Read on for the skinny.

Here’s The Full Press Release,

“Douglas Clegg, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Shocker Award, returns this April with NEVERLAND (A Vanguard Press trade paperback original; on-sale: April 13, 2010; $15.95), a southern gothic tale of family secrets and childhood games gone awry.

Advance buzz is already building about NEVERLAND, with authors such as Bentley Little comparing it to the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird “as a classic modern novel that illuminates the human condition through the eyes of a child,” and New York Times bestselling author F. Paul Wilson hailing NEVERLAND as “a powerful and thrilling tale, Douglas Clegg’s best novel yet.”

Clegg, drawing on some of the events from his own life and a long-ago visit to an island much like Gull Island, brings us the story of a family vacation gone terribly wrong, a novel about the lies adults tell and the destruction they wreak on the innocents around them.

Says Clegg of writing NEVERLAND: “This novel, my favorite of anything I’ve written, is about absolute innocence embracing the wildness—and darkness—of the imagination. I was able to explore the destructive nature of family secrets, and how children sometimes create rituals of power as an escape from the world their parents have made.”

But imaginative games are not always innocent . . . and when Beau travels to the Retreat, his grandmother’s forbidding home on Gull Island off the Georgia coast line, resigned to a boring family vacation, he finds that his cousin, Sumter, has other plans.

Sumter has found a run-down shack hidden in the woods, a place “where you ain’t supposed to go,” a place forbidden to them that smells of socks, dead sea creatures—and dread; Sumter christens it Neverland.

Fascinated and terrified by Neverland but thrilled to have made a secret life for themselves in a shack full of old Playboys, smuggled beers, and forbidden words, Sumter and his cousins create a hallucinatory world of dark fantasy, a world ruled by a god of shadows, who Sumter calls “Lucy.”

But the shack is the key to a terrible secret, and the world the children create away from their parents, bound to each other by blood oaths, is anything but innocent. As tensions build at the Retreat and the adults start on their gin and tonics earlier each day, Sumter’s games begin to invoke a nightmarish presence that cannot be contained within the bounds of imagination any longer . . .

Featuring stunning interior illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, illustrator of Stephen King’s Secretary of Dreams, NEVERLAND brings to mind author greats such as Ray Bradbury, Thomas Tryon, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams as Clegg explores the darkness of man’s soul while giving us surprising glimpses into the complexities of the human heart…”

Keep it locked here at Bloody-Disgusting as we bring you exclusive content from Doug regarding the upcoming project as well as our review and my one-on-one interview with the author!

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‘The Toxic Avenger’ Returns with Cover Artwork for First Issue of New Comic Book Series [Exclusive]

Published

4 days ago

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May 13, 2024

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With a remake on the way and a new 4K restoration of the original classic now streaming, it’s a good time to be a fan of Troma’s The Toxic Avenger. Additionally, Matt Bors — the founder of The Nib and a political cartoonist who has twice been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist —and acclaimed artist Fred Harper (Snelson) are collaborating on an all-new 5-issue comic book series starring the satirical superhero of the Troma Films cult classic films!

TOXIC AVENGER #1 will land in stores on October 9, 2024.

While you wait, you can exclusively check out the issue #1 cover art from Fred Harper below, along with a set of emojis designed by Harper for the extremely online teens of Tromaville.

“The Toxic Avenger delivers what Troma fans want,” said AHOY Comics Editor-in-Chief Tom Peyer. “The series has violent action, gross mutations, bursting pustules, eye-popping visuals, and trenchant humor.” 

“If there was ever a superhuman hero for these toxic, miserable times, Toxie is the one!” said Lloyd Kaufman. “Only AHOY Comics and Bors & Harper could pull this off…er…mop this up! Toxie and the Troma Team can’t wait ‘til you read -no, experience – the art and stories that the Toxic Avenger Comic Book will explode in your brain, your soul, and your heart. Above all, remember – Toxie loves you and so do I.”

“This series will combine elements of the original films with the Toxic Crusaders cartoon and characters in familiar ways, updated to tell a story of environmental devastation, corporate control, and social media mutation,” said Bors. “The Toxic Avenger is first and foremost an environmental satire, one about a small town and its unremarkable people trapped and transformed by circumstances they don’t control. The story Fred Harper and I are telling is about people frustrated by authorities telling them not to worry about their life, that things are fine, even as their dog mutates in front of their eyes. And at its core it is about a powerless boy, Melvin, who finds out he can be incredibly strong, hideously mutated, well-admired, and incredibly heroic… but still ultimately powerless over human behavior.”

In The Toxic Avenger, teenager Melvin Junko helps run his parent’s junkyard in Tromaville, a small town in New Jersey where nothing much ever happens — until an ill-timed train derailment of toxic waste transforms Melvin into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength: the Toxic Avenger!

Under a media blackout imposed by Biohazard Solutions (BS) and their PR-spewing Chairwoman Lindsay Flick, Melvin emerges as a hero fighting against BS and the mutated threats that keep popping up around Tromaville.

Eventually Melvin uncovers a vast conspiracy more far-reaching than he could have ever imagined — but he knows if everyone is simply made aware of the crisis, they’ll act to stop it. Right?

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