July has flown by and many of my projects had to rest this month. There is a move to plan! I will move to Bonn next month and there are a lot of things to prepare. I may have also fallen into a deep hole called “Resident Evil” and in the last few weeks I’ve blasted through the PS4 remake of the first part, the prequel game Resident Evil Zero as well as the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2. But enough of that – let’s take a look at what there is to report from the last few weeks in the monthly roundup!
Writing Projects
This month, raptor published two fancy publications that I contributed to. VIRUS #102 contains many exciting articles and reviews as well as a 12-page feature by me on the topic of “Queer Horror”. I write about the relevance of queer representation in horror, outline its history, discuss with queer monsters (vampires, werewolves, psychopathic transvestites), and address what constitutes as “good” representation and which films are extremely problematic.
The supplement SuperVIRUS #24, written by me, was released as well. Here, I celebrate the 40th anniversary of the horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu on 18 pages. Among other things, I discuss what makes this pen & paper role-playing system different from other systems, what a bumpy but ultimately extremely successful history Call of Cthulhu can look back on, and which expansions and scenarios are recommended for role-playing fans with an affinity for horror.
By the way, my next big VIRUS article is already in the works: If you’ve always wanted to know more about the current retro and nostalgia trend as seen in Stranger Things, Fear Street and numerous remakes of popular horror classics, you can look forward to an exciting read.
In the month of July I published three reviews at Zauberwelten-Online:
- Comic: “Horizon Zero Dawn 1: Sonnenhabicht – Postapokalyptisch, postdystopisch, post-playthrough?” (16.07.)
- Magazine: “Cthulhu Libria Neo Nr. 2: ‘Horror in Eisenbahnen’ – Der Insider-Tipp für Fans des Düsteren” (28.07.)
- Comic: “Infidel – Haunted House trifft auf Alltagsrassismus” (30.07.)
You can find a full list of my publications and reviews here.
Other Projects
At the German Lovecraft Society, work on the essay volume Kulturelle Spiegelungen zwischen H. P. Lovecraft und Deutschland (“Cultural Reflections between H. P. Lovecraft and Germany”) continues. We have received numerous top-class abstracts, which will result in an exciting and heterogeneous collection of papers.
At the moment I am knee-deep in research work for my own contribution. The working title of my contribution is “Von der Kurzgeschichte zum Comic: Reinhard Kleists Lovecraft-Adaptionen” (“From the Short Story to the Comic: Reinhard Kleist’s Lovecraft Adaptations”) and already gives an indication of what the topic of the essay will be. With Lovecraft (1994) and Das Grauen im Gemäuer (2002), the German comic artist Reinhard Kleist has published two volumes that adapt a total of six of Lovecraft’s stories in a very idiosyncratic manner. I intend to approach these comics with the help of adaptation theory and (transmedial) narratology.
Outlook
Next month my monograph The Supernatural Media Virus: Virus Anxiety in Gothic Fiction Since 1990 will be published by transcript. In it, I discuss virus-like, media-related monsters, such as those we know from the film The Ring (2002) or Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves (2000). If you want to know more about virus metaphors in horror and Gothic literature in times of the real Covid 19 pandemic, feel free to take a look.