On the whole AI assisted writing controversy, I can honestly say that, for better or worse, I subscribe to the AM method to writing: All Me.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
AM, Not AI
Month: July 2025
“The Man Who Laughs,” an analysis of The Joker by Crazy 8 Press
I’ve been champing at the bit to dive into this grab from Shore Leave since last Philcon where I moderated a panel on DC Comics movies and television shows and had Keith DeCandido and a stellar panel rockstar the whole thing. Easiest panel ever with that professional firepower.
At the panel, I’d spotted Keith’s copy of The Man Who Laughs, released by Crazy 8 Press, which not only houses some of the finest writers on the scene, but a Justice League of comic book writers and journalists. They flood this fantastic book with essays dissecting more than celebrating decades of the Clown Prince of Crime. The de facto supervillain most people peel from their mouths when asked for their favorite. Joker is certainly up there for me, though I am just as quick to answer The Scorpion from Spiderman, at least the bronze to early modern age era.
This book presents point and counterpoint for the definitive Joker in comics, films and cartoons (for me, Starlin writing, Ledger, Hamill and Romero), debates of sexuality and a historical overview of the Madman of Mirth’s exploits.
Also contributing to this crime clown’s compendium are legends such as Michael Jan Friedman, Aaron Rosenberg, Steve Englehart, Jo Duffy, Robert Greenberger, Rich Handley, Glenn Hauman, Bob Rozakis and many others. Keith’s essay on the Joaquin Phoenix Joker and connecting it to the Bernhard Goetz subway shootings in 1984 was my big “A-ha!” takeaway, considering I dwell on the fact it hiked from Taxi Driver. Jo Duffy positing the character has lost his fun and funny factor is spot-on. I am already chuckling at Zach Galifianaks’ outrageous “human farts” quote from the hysterical Lego Batman Movie in support of her point.
I am a comic book lifer and wannabe script writer whose love of Batman began with Super Friends and reruns of the Batman ’66 show, which I pulled out my ultimate Blu Ray box for a few dips into some BIFFS! POWS! and ZOWIES! Cesar Romero, man, ’nuff said.
Banging work here, Crazy 8 crew. Thank you, Keith, for hightailing to the dealer room to snag my copy during the Meet the Pros sesh.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Ray Interviewed by Todd Severin at The Ripple Effect
I was interviewed by Todd Severin at The Ripple Effect, a longtime brother in the metal trenches whose Ripple Music label bands I gave a lot of press love to for years. Todd and his partner Pope John are two of the savviest dudes in the heavy underground.
In this interview for The Ripple Effect’s Ripple Library Author Series, I get into Bringing in the Creeps, Behind the Shadows and behind the scenes of my next novel, “October Rust,” which I am hoping to land a publisher soon.
Todd’s creative questions got me rolling and I even share some insight to my 16 years as a metal, punk and horror journalist. Thanks, Todd, for a banging chat!
Also, go hunt down Todd’s acclaimed new medical thriller novel, Deadly Vision under his pen name, T.D. Severin!
Link:
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Thursday Throwback Jam – Ozzy Osbourne – “Believer,” Live at Budokan 2002
This one’s my very favorite Ozzy track from Diary of a Madman, hooked at age 12 by those sinister bass slides and chilling guitar twangs first laid down by Rudy Sarzo and the late, great Randy Rhodes. I was converted from pop kid to metalhead on this song along, though Iron Maiden’s Killers certainly put the nail in the coffin to my prior self.
This is a stellar live rendition of the cut at Budokan 2002 with one of Ozzy’s most formidable later-year lineups: Zakk Wylde on guitar, Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies bassist Rob Trujillo and Faith No More drummer Mike Borden.
Horns up, all the way…
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Wordless Wednesday – 7/23/25 – R.I.P. Ozzy Osbourne
–Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhodes photo courtesy of the public domain
A Story from the Road Dogging Days
One of my treasure photos nearly 20 years ago already in 2006. On the tour bus with the Queen of Metal, Doro Pesch. I was a bit chunkier back then from all the road dogging I was doing in the music industry then, covering 10-12 shows a month, sleeping 3-4 hours a day and working full time. A terrible diet, usually eating on the road to shows. Before I got on my fitness crusade.
A story behind the picture and I was telling it to a new friend the other day. The night before I went down to Virginia to cover Doro’s gig on a Sunday, I was in NYC, assigned an on-site interview with industrial rock legends, Skinny Puppy, at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. Hiccups behind the scheduling forced my interview to be postponed to a phoner two days later, but it was still an amazing trip. I think I covered an easy 40 blocks on foot that day. Saw Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City dashing with a companion into a car in Greenwich Village. Had a terrific dinner with a label friend from the old Roadrunner Records, Jen Bryan. Caught the SP show and got some decent pics before I hightailed it on the yellow line back to Battery Park, which dumped us out early about 10 blocks. Saw some illicit stuff going on in Wall Street with no fuzz around at 12:30 a.m. The ride home on the Staten Island Ferry and driving back to Baltimore in the middle of the night was an adventure as well.
Per usual, I got very little sleep between events and I was back at it the next day to interview Doro. I was treated like gold by her drummer and tour manager, Johnny Dee, and Doro had Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Savatage guitarist Chris Caffery in her band and as an opener. I have a separate pic in my archives of the three of us. I’d interviewed Chris a couple times, had good rapport, had a blast with him and Doro all night at this gig. Chris remembered me later at a TSO meet-and-greet, just good stuff.
Enough of the bragging. I left Doro’s gig close to 1:00 a.m. with a three-hour haul back home, already exhausted, but exhilarated from my time spent in the court of the Queen. It had been my fourth time interviewing Doro. Everything you hear about her is true. The kindest, most down-to-earth person in the scene. Legend. So I’m driving in my truck and quickly fading on a back road in Virginia. Suddenly I wake up with my chin resting on my chest. I’d passed out behind the wheel, miraculously with my foot on the brake and in my lane.
I always thank the divine for protecting me that night. I might not have lived to tell this tale.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
My Eddie Murray Ball is Back
In my former life, we were often so broke I sold many of my material things to help pay the bills. Comic books, drum kits, percussion instruments and a baseball autographed by Baltimore Orioles legends I got to meet at a charity event in 1983, the last championship year. Cal Ripken, Jr., Gary Roenicke, Sammy Stewart, Al Bumbry, Jim Dwyer and my baseball hero, Eddie Murray. A magical day back then meeting the man. It killed me to sell that ball decades later and it remains the only thing I regret selling. You do what you’ve gotta do when the chips are down.
Today, fate delivered me an autographed Eddie Murray baseball through my beautiful parents. Feeling shell-shocked. Grateful is hardly the word to describe this. Thank you, Mom and Pop. Just wow.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Retro Ad of the Week: Yoo-Hoo, the Action Drink of Baseball Legends
Who doesn’t love a Yoo-Hoo? Okay, maybe it’s not for everyone, but next year will be the 100th anniversary of the classic chocolate drink if you can get your head around that. At one time in the long-popular beverage’s history, it was marketed as an “action drink,” long before there was such a thing as Gatorade, Frog Fuel, Liquid I.V. and BodyArmor. The consistency between them all? All huckstering a sugar-based drink as muscle fuel.
Way back in the day, Yoo-Hoo went to such lengths as employing glittering personalities from Major League Baseball, in particular New York Yankees legends such Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Elston Howard. Yoo-Hoo, the drink of champions, even the chocolate milky choice of Washington Senators first baseman, Moose Skowron. You remember those Senators, right? Well, you know them now as the Minnesota Twins.
The pitch coming with not-so-subtle mandate that baseball and Yoo-Hoo drinks are part and parcel of the American way of life. America’s conjoined pastimes. Baseball is still called that today with certain degrees of skepticism with the encompassing sports rating thefts by the NFL and NBA. Those leagues don’t tug on Yoo-Hoo unless an athlete shooting hoops or tossing around pigskins are caught guzzling one in the locker room. Or if they’re given a paid endorsement to do so. Yoo-Hoo obviously these days backs their play more on reputation and word-of-mouth nostalgia than hard money advertising dollars.
Baseball was once broadcast as an all-American lifestyle filled with transistor radios (no other sport can be recounted over conventional radio with the same passion and chess match acumen as baseball), hot dogs, apple pies and Chevrolet (remember that corny old Chevy jingle?) and of course, beer and cigarettes. Don’t forget your Yoo-Hoo, though. Not the cosmopolitan drink of choice, but the regular Joe’s. You know who you are, and you know you want that damn chocolaty goodness. Resistance is futile. So is trying to drop an inside on Mickey Mantle, who’d just as soon put the twined ball into the bleacher seats. Getting paid by Yoo-Hoo to endorse the stuff as the drink of a champion.
So grab a Yoo-Hoo bottle from the cooler, shake it, pound it and swish the stubborn chocolate dregs from the bottom of the bottle for the classic finish. Generations before you have been doing the same. Unless you’ve got one of those box drink versions that are just as fun to squeeze and squirt down your gullet.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Every Day
Every single day is that one day I hope for the “big one.” My fellows in the author community know what I mean. Every day is a win and a loss. Every day is outward joy and hidden agony. Every day is filled with the potential of every person becoming a new friend, until they’re not. Every day is filled with words that want to gush with a hopeful continuous ebb.
Every day is a burst of energy and ultimate fatigue. Every day is one where a helping hand may come as often as facing a tundra of radio silence from those you ache to not only reach but impress. Every day your heroes inspire you and at times befuddle you. They’re human too. Every day I face a white emptiness and give praise to the divine when I fill it with black icons, cutting and editing as needed. Sieving my lifeblood from a proverbial vein and feeling incredible release only lovemaking provides better.
Every day I show my soul with some guardedness while wanting to stand upon the highest summit and scream. Every day I network in some fashion, the same way I rose as a music journalist, having the wherewithal to cold contact heritage artists for private conversations that led to where I am now. A-list knocked back down to base in the same long upward march. Every day I remember the thrill when the ether of obtuseness blows into my nostrils.
Every day I seethe with jealousy just as much as I cheer on, support and push my fellow writers. My brothers and sisters know that which I speak. It’s the highest form of ecstasy to earn a publication, to sell a book from your table, to make a new contact with someone who gives a damn about your journey. It’s lonely no matter what level of success you are as an author, unless you’re fortunate like I am to have another author as your mate and biggest advocate. Every day I see the best of myself in my woman, a fellow warrior of the word, and every day I fight that much harder.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Thursday Throwback Jam – Wanda Jackson – “I Gotta Know”
A true maverick of her time, the Queen of Rockabilly, Wanda Jackson. She carried the swagger, the attitude, the rhythm guitar and the country swill shoved with confidence into the new brand of rock ‘n roll music which blossomed then caught like madfire in the 1950s. Seldom few women were given the leverage Jackson had in her time, at least to throw down with a snarl and a hint of trifling with her comes with a wicked price. She was girl power before such a thing ever existed.
One of Wanda’s bigger hits from the day, “I Gotta Know” appears in the opening scene of my story “Chickeerun” from Bringing in the Creeps. A game of vehicular death set in 1957 for which I culled an entire soundtrack of tunes from the day. I set out to make Rebel Without a Cause meets American Graffiti meets Stephen King’s Sometimes They Come Back, and Jackson’s twang and bangs her way over the outdoor dancing of the teen populace in my story.
–Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Roads Lesser Traveled 