Flashback Weekend 2026 Costume Contest: A fun ride that went off the rails!

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Flashback Weekend 2026 Coverage Continues…

I awoke refreshed and straightened up the hotel room for Svengoolie & crew. Both they and Mayor Don were kind enough to let me stay there that night, which was great considering I’d been without power due to a tornado (see my last post). With a larger event in my near future, all my available cash for Flashback Weekend was reserved for autographs – no Hyatt breakfast buffet today. With the Svengoolie crew slated to arrive at noon, I went downstairs as soon as the convention doors opened to get as many as I could before their arrival. I’ll discuss those interactions in my next post, as this blog will focus exclusively on Svengoolie’s appearance.

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2026 Flashback Weekend Svengoolie Talk Show!

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Less than two weeks after G-FEST, Flashback Weekend, a.k.a. my favorite horror con, set up shop in the very same hotel. Despite the short time between these events, however, it felt like a lifetime. Just that previous Monday, strong tornado-producing storms plowed through the Midwest, and my humble town of Homewood, Illinois got slammed by an F-1. My entire neighborhood was strewn with busted trees and electric wires. Nobody was hurt, thank God, but despite ComEd’s best efforts, we had no power all week and still hadn’t when I arrived at Flashback Weekend on Friday. This made for one rotten week! The heat was so unbearable that at one point I attempted to sleep outside on my deck (until two raccoons got into a dispute below me). Fortunately, my friend Jason Lucas, whose power returned that Wednesday, invited me to stay with him for a couple of days. Regardless, I had very little sleep that week and admit to being a bit ill-tempered at the beginning of this event.

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I almost had to ‘Runaway’ from Lita Ford!

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The seeds for attending the 2026 New Jersey Horror Con were sown back in March and after I saw the original KISS drummer, Peter Criss, would be in attendance. My friend, Jason Schoolcraft, in Rhode Island, isn’t so much a KISS fan but has done Flashback Weekend and Days of the Dead (Chicago and Indianapolis) as well as Horrorhound Weekend with me. Since he lives closer to this event than I do, I thought it would be a nice opportunity for us to meet up. The last time I saw Jason was when he flew out to Chicago for Flashback Weekend 2024. He agreed, and I started making plans.

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V.N. Thompson’s “Deadly Nature” …  Harmful Humans Making Mutant Mongrels!

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I finally got around to re-reading an ‘80s horror paperback I’ve had in my collection for years, V.N. Thompson’s “Deadly Nature.” As with most books from this era, it was the cover that initially drew me in, and I remember purchasing it at local Crown Books when I was in high school, spending $4 of my hard-earned money bagging groceries at a local store. Cut to nearly forty years later, I now own two copies of this book: a nice, crisp collector’s copy, along with my old, worn one that not only qualifies as a “Paperback from Hell” but effectively looks like Hell. In fact, it’s so beaten up, I used one of its fallen pages as a bookmark.

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Joliet “KISS Expo” More Like a Peck on the Cheek

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On Sunday, May 3rd (the day after FREE Comic Book Day), I joined my friend, Jason Lucas, for a KISS Expo in Joliet, Illinois. This event should not be confused with the much larger KISS gathering that took place last month in Indianapolis and featured the band’s frontman. Paul Stanley, as a guest. Although we had both planned on attending that event, we bowed out at the last minute. For my part, I have a road trip coming up in a couple of weeks where I’ll be meeting up with yet another Jason (Jason Schoolcraft) in New Jersey, which also has a bit of a KISS theme. More on that later, as today we’ll be focusing exclusively on our “poor man’s” KISS Expo, instead.

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The Ins and Outs of FREE Comic Book Day

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Last Saturday, the nerd world celebrated FREE Comic Book Day, an event I’ve participated in since my kids were little. Now they’re all grown up and have sufficiently outgrown me, so what was once a family outing has morphed back into solo ventures. No worries, I’ve been collecting comics on and off since before they were born and can now take part without worrying about what’s ‘kid friendly.’ Thanks to YouTube, I can also approach things strategically, armed with a specific list of what I’m looking for. FREE Comic Book Day kicked off in May of 2002 and has been observed every first Saturday in May since then. I haven’t done all of them, but I did this past one, and here’s how it went…

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