It always gets quiet around the Black Gate offices at Christmas time. It’s a good time to let go of the daily hustle and bustle of running an online magazine, and reflect on the really important things. People frequently ask me what Black Gate is all about. There’s so much to the story — fifteen issues of a terrific print magazine, hundreds of original stories, the new writers we’ve discovered, nearly 4,000 blog-posts since 2007 — but none of that…
The lights are dim at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters, and there’s a light dusting of snow on all the desks. I dropped by to pick up the leftover egg nog from the Christmas party and discovered a rare thing: a deserted office. Even Goth Chick’s minions seem to have slipped their chains. The only noise I hear comes from deep in the comic archives, where the tireless Mike Penkas is scribbling a Christmas Red Sonja post, muttering “For the love of…
It’s Christmas morning. A mantle of crisp white snow blankets hill and dale. You rise from your bed and patter down the stairs to find . . . what? What is your fondest Christmas morning memory? Mine goes back to when I was fourteen years old. That summer, I’d boldly announced to my parents that I wanted to be a writer. This pronouncement was met with stony silence. “But Scott,” my mother said at length, “how will you be able…
If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” Ebenezer Scrooge A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, published first in 1843, is nearly two hundred years old, and nothing remains to be said about it, it would seem. Charles Dickens’s fairy tale has become…
I don’t think it could have escaped anyone’s notice that Christmas is just about a week away. Is anyone prepared? I know I’m not (Don’t panic, Sonia. Don’t panic). Many of you might have a creative in your life that you’re struggling really hard to come up with meaningful gifts for. I get it. It’s really tricky. I figured I would put together a small list of gift ideas that perhaps you can draw inspiration from while shopping for the…
A Holmes Christmas Carol – By Bob Byrne It is with a certain sense of misgiving that I relate the following tale, which took place during the Christmas season of 1902. I had moved out of our Baker Street lodgings earlier that year, having married only a few months before that most festive of holidays. I now had rooms in Queen Anne Street and was quite busy with my flourishing medical practice. A newly married man, I once again found…
I opened the door to our rooms at 221 B Baker Street and entered, careful not to jostle the package I carried. I was immediately engulfed in the warmth of the crackling fire that blazed in our hearth. Sherlock Holmes was in his favorite chair, looking half asleep. Opening his eyes, he turned his head and greeted me lazily. “Ah, Watson, you have finished your rounds and holiday shopping and returned too late for Mrs. Hudson’s evening repast. However, I…
Happy Labor Day! Here you are, (hopefully) enjoying a well-deserved break from labor to spend some time on the down low at the Black Gate. For this Labor Day edition of Oz’s ramblings and my (if I’m counting correctly) thirty-first blog post, I’m going to kill two birds with one blog by covering issues seven and eight of DC Comics’ Arak, Son of Thunder. And I’ll keep it brief. My rationale? Series creator Roy Thomas penned neither issue of this…
Twas the night before Christmas, with manuscripts read, The staffers at Black Gate all crouched in their beds. The cell phones were silent, not one keyboard clicked, And all there played possum, awaiting St. Nick. Good children slept soundly, with wish letters written, Sure Santa would make with that puppy or kitten. But the staffers at Black Gate were naughty it’s said So they set up an ambush for Santa instead. But what had they done, what virtues did lag,…
Christmas was the most fun when I was a little kid, and when I had a little kid. Since neither applies these days, the lights don’t burn as brightly anymore. I’m not entirely a bah-humbugger, it’s just that, well, the magical feeling the holiday used to instill just isn’t there anymore. As a non-believer, the magic I’m referring to is rooted in that of the imagination of fairy tales and Old St. Nick, not the sacred version; although I recently…