Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog, page 6

Every month in my newsletter, I curate a list of fine links for your enjoyment. Stuff I found online that interested me…and I thought might also interest you.

Check it out:

I never managed to afford an Atari 5200 as a kid, much less a 7800. Now there’s a new one being put out there…and it can play your old Atari 2600 cartridges!!! I had a Flip Camera, back in the day, and recently dug it up for my kids to play with. It was a great little piece of tech for the time, but once smartphones could shoot decent video, the writing was on the wall. “The Story of the Successful Life and Abrupt Death of Flip Video Cameras”I swear, this McSweeney’s piece was written just for me!: “Bruce Springsteen or Stephen King?”Man, I love meta…and this video delivers in spades!

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What am I enjoying these days? Let me tell you…

I played the original Dishonored years and years ago when it first landed on Xbox 360. The story itself was a little wonky, but the gameplay mechanics were pitch-perfect and the worldbuilding/design were amazing. It was the closest I’d come to replaying my beloved Thief: Deadly Shadows in years. (Please, let us not discuss the 2014 Thief reboot…)

I never upgraded that old Xbox 360, so I couldn’t play Dishonored 2 when it came out, but I recently picked up a Fire TV stick and realized that I could stream games on it. So I’ve been playing Dishonored 2 and loving every minute of it.

Once again, the story is a little wonky (I mean really, some of it just makes no sense at all), but the mechanics are still solid and the stealth action is so so so fun!

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You don’t regularly see the phrase “Norwegian-American serial killer,” but when I went to Wikipedia to double-check something on Belle Gunness, that’s the description of her.

Born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth (a serial killer’s name if there ever was one!), Belle moved to the States and took up the fine old art of serial murder in Indiana. She used newspaper personals to lure men to her house, where she would kill them and take all their money. Pretty good work, if you could find it.

(Translated into 21st century: She catfished dudes on Craigslist and stole their stuff after killing them.)

I have a soft spot for Belle for a couple of reasons. First of all, I used her (sort of) in the I Hunt Killers series as both a nom de murder and a red herring. She was a very prolific female serial killer, a rare example of the breed, and thus served as at least a partial inspiration for the grotesque Crow King.

Second of all, she purportedly died in a house fire in 1908, but…they never found the body. C’mon. I’ve read enough comic books to know that this means she faked her own death and probably escaped somewhere out west…and kept killing.

That’s a scheme worthy of Billy Dent.

Here’s a good site if you’d like to learn more about Ms. Størseth.

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Every month in my newsletter (sign up!), I list some cool or funky or cool and funky links I’ve collected from around the interwebs. Check some of these out…

Fifty years after the publication of his first novel, Carrie, Stephen King writes “What I’ve Learned” for Esquire, including this very King-esque gem: If you ask what I learned from my accident, it would be: Number one, stay on the sidewalk.AI. You can’t flick your phone to scroll without hearing about it. Neven Mrgan writes about the time he got an AI-generated email from a friend of his. Spoiler alert: He didn’t like it.An electric spoon that “enhances salty taste of food and promotes healthier eating?” What? In Japan. Of course.The Parable of the Sofa — a lovely little anecdote about fixing things instead of replacing them.84-24 is a stunningly, sumptuously designed website that walks you through the process of restoring an original Macintosh from 1984. Even if you’re not interested in the subject matter, you should still check this site out just for the design of it.Wally “Famous” Amos passed away in August. Here’s a lovely little story about the man from Mark Evanier.This dude has way too much time on his hands: Man Sets Record For Most Gaming Consoles Connected To A Single TV

This month, we’re back to some tidbits from the I Hunt Killers vault!

Originally, the Impressionist was called the Finger. Because, well, he was cutting off people’s fingers. But then my editor pointed out that a killer called the Finger might be unintentionally humorous because of, you know, the finger.

Around the same time she said this, I was already considering the artistic school of impressionism and the nature of copycat killers. It was a pretty seamless transition from the Finger to the Impressionist, and I like to think that I would have gotten there even without her gentle nudge, but who knows?

In any event, in the two bits below, “the Finger” refers to the serial killer later known as the Impressionist…

First up, Jazz talking to G. William…

“We think it’s the Finger.”

“Just because he took a trophy? There have been four Finger copycats—“

“And they all took their trophies post-mortem.”

“You mean…this guy took his while the victim was still alive?” “Yeah.”

Jazz couldn’t help it — he shivered for just a moment, hoping that G. William wouldn’t notice. Or that if he did, he would think the shiver came from revulsion or disgust, not from the sudden, magical moment of imagining the spurt — the absolute gush — of blood that would follow severing a finger from a still living, breathing human being. The pain would be…exquisite.

And then another moment in the conversation, as Jazz and G. William discuss the actual methodology…

“There’s a contusion on the back of the head. Like with the other victims.” “He knocks them out.”

“Yeah. Figure it’s easier to cut off the finger if the victim’s unconscious.”

Jazz shivered. No. “No,” he said. “That’s not what he does. He knocks them out for some other reason. Maybe to incapacitate them. But he cuts off the finger while they’re awake.”

“How do you figure?”

“That’s why he does it. It’s not just the gush of blood. It’s the look in their eyes. The expression on their faces. The terror. The screams. The anguish. There’s no other reason to do it, G. William. The blood’s not enough. Might as well do it post-mortem. It’s the look. It’s the fear.”

“You sure about this?” G. William’s eyes had narrowed and he was trying to hide his concern, but that was impossible to hide from Jazz.

Jazz pretended not to notice. “I’m sure. That’s what drives him.”

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Hopscotch, by Brian Garfield, is an old, old book. Published in 1975 (yikes!), it’s the story of a CIA agent who is retired against his will and decides to get revenge on the Agency by publishing a tell-all memoir of all its dirty tricks.

The book was made into a wonderful, hilarious movie starring Walter Matthau back in 1980. My dad was a huge fan of it and rented it often. I watched it with him and really enjoyed it, which is why I recently decided to track down the book and read it.

And oh my God. It is so good! For a thriller, it is gorgeously written. I mean, I was absolutely blown away by the prose. If you like beautiful writing, I urge you to check out Hopscotch. Yes, it’s an old book, but it feels timeless and relevant, and the writing will have you rescanning every page, just to drink it in again and again.

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Arthur John Shawcross was one of the serial killers I researched in-depth when writing I Hunt Killers. He was…a pretty sick dude. The thing that sticks in my mind the most is that he used to tell his victims to take off their clothes and then told them to fold the clothes neatly and set them aside. It’s a twisted bit of psychological manipulation. Someone tells you to fold your clothes and put them aside, well, you assume that’s because you’ll be putting the clothes back on at some point, right?

Not.

It was all bull. But it made the victims more compliant because they figured they’d be surviving the experience as long as they obeyed. But they didn’t. Not a one of them. He killed fourteen, including two children.

He also used to stuff his victims’ orifices with grass and weeds. I mean…OK.

That little datum was too much for Bethany, the lovely young woman who was my editor’s assistant on I Hunt Killers. When Jazz thinks about Shawcross, he originally contemplated the stuffing business. Bethany asked me to please take it out — it was too much.

Out of deference to her sensitivities, I removed that bit. And then proceeded to use it in Game. 😈

(By that point, reading my stuff had thoroughly desensitized her to the point that she was OK with it by now. Sorry for traumatizing you, Bethany!)

Anyway, Shawcross was a real piece of work. Dude had two out of the three of the Macdonald triad (bed-wetting and starting fires), but c’mon — you and I both know he was torturing animals somewhere and just never got caught.

Shawcross was imprisoned at one point early on and many lives probably would have been saved, but there was a prison riot and he helped a guard…so he was let out early. And people died.

He was caught again, sentenced to something like 250 years. Never made it that long, obviously — he died of a heart attack in prison in 2008.

You can read more about him here.

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Over in my newsletter (are you subscribed? If not, why not???), I posted my never-before-seen Karate Kid1 proposal for DC Comics, written way back in 2007 or so.

But I just had to share it with the world. So here you go, fellow Legion geeks. Click here to read what could have been and what never was…

I’m going to put in a link to more information at the end of this…but I really, really advise you not to click on it. Because Albert Fish was one twisted mf-er, OK? For real.

This guy ate children.

More than that — he wrote to the parents and described exactly how he cooked them. In one instance, that involved bacon slices cooked on a dead child’s buttocks. Like, really — this guy is beyond disturbed, right?

Fish was absolutely fascinated by pain and the
limits of the human body. He did not reserve this fascination for his victims, either. He was known to inflict pain on himself, and when he was finally captured and X-rayed, it was discovered that there were 29 needles embedded in his perineum. Why? Just to experience it.

It’s not typical for serial killers to abuse themselves in such a manner, but Fish was no ordinary monster.

Fish was executed in the electric chair in 1936. Good riddance.

Here’s that link. Again, don’t click it.

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Every month, I do a little feature called “Links for Your Enjoyment.” Here you go for August…

Oh, man, I really like this YouTube video that animates the most popular computer operating systems from 1985 to the present. Then again, I am a gigantic nerd.Speaking of gigantic nerds… I love Dr. Fate, so this upcoming toy is right up my alley. My birthday is September 11, in case you’re wondering…And last but not least, my pal Paul Levitz reminisces about the old days of comic book coloring over on his blog..

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