This is Spaltterpunk: The John Skipp Primer - SIGNED

This is Spaltterpunk: The John Skipp Primer. 2025 softcover. 264 pages, very nice condition. SIGNED.

Horror legend John Skipp was one of the original splatterpunks, pioneering a fresh style of literary horror that was smart, savage, sexy, cinematic, unbelievably gory, wickedly subversive, and fiercely fun.

If you want to understand what makes splatterpunk so different from the horror that came both before and after, your best bet is to read the authors who pioneered the form. It wasn’t just the visceral intensity of their literary assaults on convention. All the key writers — Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, David J. Schow, and John Skipp & Craig Spector — were ferocious stylists, with original voices that completely stood out from the crowd.

Here, you’ll find 15 of Skipp’s most powerful, passionate, unbridled, and influential splatterpunkian short stories, from his early years in Twilight Zone magazine to the present day. There is a definitive essay, by Skipp, on the history and core elements of the movement — which he defines more as a “spontaneous eruption of the arts” — with additional notes on each story, for context. Also included is the short story, Art is the Devil, based on the Charlie Sheen exhibit that we did at Hyaena back in 2011. The exhibit was a landmark achievement for us and still ranks as one of my favorite experiences in the art world. Skipp’s story is ridiculous, gory, and beautiful…just like the man himself. I rank it slightly below Dante’s Inferno on the literary scale of short stories written about art galleries in Burbank.