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It is an odd and interesting thing: the biography of someone whose life is badly-recorded and full of gaps. It’s even more quirky when that person didn’t really do anything in his life, and even the records of where that person was are messy and often missing.

But Bill Griffith, cartooning king of all things pinhead-related, wanted to tell the story of Schlitzie the Pinhead, the second-most famous real-world pinhead [1], even though Schlitzie’s origins are disputed and his life basically consisted of being dragged around the US so people could gawk at him for fifty-plus years.

The result is Nobody’s Fool , a graphic novel about a person who may have been born Simon Metz around 1901 in the Bronx, and definitely was buried as Schlitzie Surtees in 1971 in California. Schlitzie was male, but the characters he “played” on stage were more often than not female — because that made...

Finally, we take a breath, clear the cobwebs of mourning and peek out from beneath the shadows to find out how the late Forrest J Ackerman continues to do us good. At genre conventions from coast to coast, fans and friends pay tribute to the grand old man who made us monsters!

Ken-tucky? Yep, they Ken!

Any horror fan, young or old, who’s in it for the scare-making arts, crafts and monster makers, Must experience Wonderfest. I flew over the cool greenery and picturesque graveyards of Louisville, Kentucky to attend the first Con I’ve been to without Uncle Forry by my side. While most travelers rushed to the baggage claim to pick up luggage and trot off to watch horses run some derby, I was there for the monsters!

In its 20th year, Wonderfest is a gathering place for modelers. Make that “Super-modelers.” Builders, sculptors, painters, collectors, you name it!