Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

854 stories

Bio

Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com

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Frank Miller's Ronin
Frank Miller, like Alan Moore, R. Crumb, Neil Gaiman, and a few others, is a titan in the reinvention of comics—the reboot into a new, adult-ready state of cultural being—insomuch as he literally reinvented the kooky, quirky Batman and redefined him for the world not as a wisecracking Adam West doing the “Batusi,” but as a brooding, cyberpunk anarcho-vigilante cum morally conflicted crime fighter in The Dark Knight Returns—the reverberations of which would be felt down through the decades and into the new century, the new millennium. Now, Batman is horror much, much more than humor—and even more human.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Geeks
Marquis de Sade's "The Ghost"
Note: The following is a retelling of "Le Revenant" ("The Ghost") by the Marquis de Sade, from the small book Short Histories, Stories, and Fables, which he wrote in La Pelagie prison between 1794-1795. It is uncharacteristically a tame, even bourgeois tale. We have remained faithful to the original in that regard. C'est la vie.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Fiction
The Man Who Married a Turnip. Top Story - October 2025.
Once, in the long-ago time, when the world was younger, but still far from its childhood, a man, a lowly cotter, lived in the crumbling remains of an old keep, which had looked out over the hills and valleys since time out of mind.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Chapters
That's My Bad Motherf*cker
When Pulp Fiction arrived in 1994, it didn’t feel like just another movie—it felt like a shift. Tarantino’s vision fused grindhouse grit with pop-cultural wit, and in doing so, he reshaped what American cinema could be. Thirty years later, the film still resists fading into nostalgia; it plays like myth, endlessly looping, endlessly alive.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Criminal
Night of the Blood Beast
I’m going to preface this by saying there’s one genuinely cool scene in this otherwise 67 minutes of dreck that sticks in the brain. Astronaut John Corcoran, recently back from the dead, is asked what else the team should be aware of. He replies something along the lines of, “…and this.” The camera pans from his face to the door at his right shoulder. And in stalks THE BLOOD BEAST.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Horror
Things are Better When They're Ugly
Call it "Shit I Could Watch Over and Over and Do # 14.0000000000". I could watch this shit over and over again. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Beat
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Abysmally wretched yet curiously well-known, and somewhat loved, this movie has the best opening titles sequence and song going. It’s much, much more memorable than the picture that follows. (The song is by John DeBello, who directed from a screenplay by himself, Costa Dillon, and Stephen Peace.)
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Humor
The Future Was and Wasn't. Top Story - September 2025.
Shatter is the first comic created entirely using a computer. It premiered around 1987 or 1988, and I remember standing in what used to be the Waldenbooks at the old North Park Mall in Marion, looking at the rough, digitized artwork with a strange, childish mixture of wonder and disgust. It captured the eye. But what could a computer possibly bring to the world of comic art, I wondered. A child operates from childish prejudices. Forty years on, the rough, low-res (yet still incredibly gripping) artwork by Mike Saenz, done on an old IBM* that utilized those humongous punch cards, still carries a wallop.
By Tom Baker3 months ago in Geeks
Desperate Teenage Love Dolls
Punk rock, like other massively impactful human inventions, such as fire and the wheel, has its ultimate and Divine Purpose—but also, alas, its limitations. The A-Bomb has its limitations too, insomuch as it cannot create anything new except a better breeding ground for giant-sized roaches. Desperate Teenage Love Dolls, like the nukes, could also have, at one time, given birth to a new breeding ground for mutant vermin. Alas, the time when it could have wiped out an entire city has long since passed.
By Tom Baker4 months ago in Beat
Dawn of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead is one of the most tedious horror films ever made—at over two hours, it seems like an interminable experience, shambling along like (if you’ll forgive us) the walking dead until the inevitable apocalyptic conclusion.
By Tom Baker4 months ago in Horror
Countin' Flowers
I sat at a long white table. At the head of it — dotted with dishes of food, all of them suspect. Was the stuff infected? Beside me, my grandfather — cold and dead in his grave for a vast number of years — sat oily and unshaven, wearing the suit they buried him in. He sweated into his plate but grinned nonetheless at me, as I watched something squirm beneath, on the bone-white china.
By Tom Baker4 months ago in Horror
Textbook Assassin
To read my first essay on Videodrome, written six years ago, click here: The (Old) New Flesh "The cathode ray becomes the fallopian tube of the retina." — Brien O'Blivion, Media Prophet "In the future, everyone will be living in a TV studio." J.G. Ballard, 1982.
By Tom Baker4 months ago in Futurism

Tom Baker

Bio

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Filter by community

Frank Miller's Ronin

Marquis de Sade's "The Ghost"

The Man Who Married a Turnip. Top Story - October 2025.

That's My Bad Motherf*cker

Night of the Blood Beast

Things are Better When They're Ugly

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

The Future Was and Wasn't. Top Story - September 2025.

Desperate Teenage Love Dolls

Dawn of the Dead

Countin' Flowers

Textbook Assassin

Stories (854)