Merry Christmas! This is Our 1000th Post!

Peter: Close to 12 years ago now, John Scoleri talked me back into resurrecting bare•bones as a semi-regular blog. That initial dip in the pool lasted exactly five posts and then I was embroiled in a bit of personal business. Two years later, I was more than ready to try again and this time it stuck good. At first, most of our material was made up of reprints from other sources I'd written for and other little bits and drabs but, very soon, we were producing all-new material at a frightening clip. Our "Week of Sleaze," featuring sleaze expert Lynn Munroe, was a huge hit and first planted the seed in my brain that the print version of b•b had to come back sooner or later. Yes, I know it took another ten years to see that dream realized but...

Scoleri in his Star Wars tie-in room

John: If not for A Thriller a Day, bare•bones as a blog would never have had a second life. Doing that blog, and our subsequent TV-A-Day blogs, led to Marvel University, and with each new stake in internet turf, our readership grew. Those blogs, and the readers who were taking the time to read and respond to us, were in large part responsible for us giving bare•bones another go. And lord knows that Peter and I didn't run out of odds and ends we felt were worth writing about.

Peter: With all the work we were doing over at Marvel University and A Thriller a Day, we knew we would need some outside help very soon and, thank goodness, that help arrived in the form of Jack Seabrook. Jack had been leaving messages in the comments section of the Thriller blog and his name had rung a bell. I googled and discovered Jack was the best-selling author of Martians and Misplaced Clues: The Life Work of Fredric Brown and Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney. A real live expert on stuff was reading our blog! Jack and I began corresponding and I suckered him into becoming part of the gang. On December 10th, 2010, Jack's first bare•bones entry, "Fredric Brown: The Deadly Weekend," went public. The rest is history.

Seabrook on the estate he bought with his royalties

Since then, Jack and I have collaborated on discussions about Batman in the 1970s (67 posts, Jan 2012-April 2013), DC War Comics (179 posts, April 2013-April 2020), DC Horror Comics (72 posts, May 2013-Feb 2016), EC Comics (75 posts, March 2016-Jan 2019), Warren Comics (Feb 2019-current), and Batman in the 1980s (May 2020-current).  More important, on March 10, 2011, Jack began his exhaustive overview of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a series of posts that will someday make up the definitive book on AHP/AHH.

Enfantino in his blessed mess

Jack: I can't believe that this is the 1000th post already! I have really enjoyed working on this blog for all these years and hope Blogger holds on and keeps giving us a free platform to explore our pop-culture obsessions. It remains a mystery why certain posts take off. Here's hoping 2021 is a better year for all of us than 2020!

John: The good news is that I think it has to be. And allow me also to second Peter's recognition of how Jack has been the backbone of the bare•bones blog. Anyone who follows the blog knows that my posts have been erratic at best (I'm referring to the frequency of my posts, though I will pause for Peter to point out that the content of them is erratic as well). With the re-launch of our print zine, that has taken up most of my time, so I've made even fewer contributions in the last year, but rest assured I will continue to drop the completely random post from time to time, as warranted. And while I know why certain posts attract a larger audience (gee thanks, Google Image Search), I do hope that whatever brought you to bare•bones provided a welcome introduction to the variety of treats to be found within.

Peter: It's tough to sum up 999 posts in only a few hundred words. I've doubtless missed a few highlights and omitted a few very important people (Jose Cruz, take a bow) but I'm proud to be able to look back on a strong body of work, a library that has attracted nearly two million "visits!" Speaking of which, here's a listing of our twenty most popular posts of all time:

  1 The Hitchcock Project-Stirling Silliphant Part Three: A Bottle of Wine 

  2 The Annotated Index to Gunsmoke Magazine 

  3 In Search of... In Search Of: An Index to the Alan Landsburg Book Series

  4 20 Great Vintage Sleaze Reads

  5 The Caroline Munro Archive: Hot Hits 11

  6 Ray Bradbury on TV Part Six: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour "The Jar"

  7 Richard Matheson - The Original Stories: The Playboy Years

  8 2019 in Review - Some of our Favorites

  9 Ray Bradbury on TV Part Seven-The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "The Life Work of Juan Diaz"

10 A Tangled Web: The Annotated Index to Web Detective Stories Part 1 

11 John Collier on TV Part Six-Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Maria"

12 The Hitchcock Project-Roald Dahl Part One: "Lamb to the Slaughter" [3.28]

13 Kitten on the Cover: The Ann-Margret Paperback Tie-ins

14 Shatner Meets Hitchcock Part One: Alfred Hitchcock Presents "The Glass Eye"

15 The Caroline Munro Archive: Oui, April 1973

16 The Annotated Index to Tales of the Frightened

17 The Hitchcock Project: Henry Slesar Part Four-"The Right Kind of House"

18 Robert Bloch on TV Part Seven-Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "The Gloating Place"

19 John Collier on TV Part Eight-The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "The Magic Shop"

20 The Ballantine/Del Rey Paperback Covers of Ralph McQuarrie: A Checklist (1976-1987)

Stay tuned to this channel in 2021 for some incredible surprises along with 26 new episodes each of Warren Horror, 1980s Batman, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents! And perhaps even a "Best of the Blog" print collection! Have a very Merry Christmas!