Haunted houses, werewolves, demons, Dracula, and lots and lots of zombies: Genre-based fictionblogging is where it’s at. Lately I’ve found a couple of sites to add to that roster:
Velvet Marauder, a long-running semi-parodic superhero blog run by David Campbell, proprietor of the deservedly popular comics humor site Dave’s Long Box;
and Siege Mentality, a new zombie blog by Crobuzon that appears, if Crobuzon’s comment at my zombie blog The Outbreak is any indication, to be operating in the fictional world I’ve already established. Neat! I’m curious to see where he goes with things–most zombie blogs tilt to a far more survivalist slant than I’ve given my own, and indeed the mechanics of the zombie outbreak I’m chronicling were designed to reflect this preference.
Finally, on an unrelated topic, David Edelstein at Slate defends the right of Steven Spielberg–of genre, really–to tackle real-life tragedy. (He also rejects screenwriter David Koepp’s interpretation of the film’s politics. (Hey, the horrorblogosphere today, the poliblogosphere tomorrow!)) In one passage he echoes what I’ve been telling people who ask about the movie:
[War of the Worlds] has more in common with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan than with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park.
And he even throws in the horror-fan CW that Night of the Living Dead is one of the best depictions of late-’60s turmoil ever made. We’ve come a long way, baby!