* The next best thing to being there: Tom Spurgeon has posted his utterly epic annual guide to attending the San Diego Comic-Con. Updated and hilarious, it will really, really make you wish you could go.
* A different kind of guide: Cryptomundo’s Loren Coleman has complete coverage of a controversial recent Bigfoot-expert conference at which analyst M.K. Davis more or less asserted that the specimen seen in the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage is a) human b) wearing a braid c) the victim of a gunshot to the leg that was inflicted by one of the filmmakers. Yes, seriously.
* B-Sol at Vault of Horror takes a look at the modern zombie movie’s famine years, the 1990s.
* At her blog, actress/eccentrix Bai Ling reviews Andrew Lloyd Weber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Yes, seriously.
* Curt Purcell takes a whack at the wack notion that the only really scary fiction is about stuff that can actually happen, preparing to argue why supernatural horror is the sine qua non of the genre. The post is also a slight walk-back from his position regarding the overvaluing of fear among horror fans–worth a read if you’ve been following Curt’s thoughts on that matter.
* By the way, I owe Curt a response to his post on my “monumental horror-image” theory.
* Go, look: Mat Brinkman art at the Stairwell Gallery (via Monster Brains.)