The Aughts are the New Nineties

The '90s were a dark time for comics with all the speculation that went on. Publishers were creating product for the "collectors" and convincing retailers to order way too much in order to meet the supposed demand. I'm not saying that the book business is that bad, but there's definitely a collectors market for limited edition books. Normally that wouldn't bother me as long as there's an inexpensive version for me to get. I like hardcover books as much as the next guy, but I don't need numbered print runs or autographed copies (unless I met the author and got the autograph myself) or "lettered" editions (whatever those are).

But here's a story that sounds perfectly fascinating and I don't know if I'm ever going to get to read it. She Loves Monsters is a novella by Simon Clark about a guy who inherits a share of a famous, lost film named Vorada (sort of like Lon Chaney's London After Midnight). The guy (Jack Calner) tracks down the filmmaker, a director named Christopher Lake who's a cross between Chaney, Tod Browning, and H.P. Lovecraft.

According to the publisher's website: "As Jack Calner approaches the remote country house where Lake has exiled himself his car strikes a naked woman. The body he expects to find vanishes... Christopher Lake isn’t what he expected. Neither is the famous lost Vorada."

There's also a mysterious handy man whom the website describes in a very clichéd way, but I won't hold that against the author. His combination of mystery, horror, and history is exactly the kind of thing I love to read.

The problem is, it's a limited edition, hardback novella. It's sold out, but even when they still had copies available, they were asking $35 a pop. $35 for a novella? Hopefully, someone will include it in an affordable collection at some point.