Midnight Graffiti by Jessica Horsting

Midnight Graffiti Reviews

• 
  Yael

  Reprinted from the pages of the magazine Midnight Graffiti comes this spine-chilling collection of stories of horror and terror from the most acclaimed masters of the genre. These 20 tales include some of the most gripping fiction I've ever encountered. Consider, for example, David J. Schow's "Bad Guy Hats," a detailed study of intraspecific predator-prey relationships and social ecology that will have you scrutinizing even the kindest-seeming of people with suspicion for years to come. Or Stephen King's "Rainy Season," first published in this collection, a tale of small-town mores and a warning to travellers that even the most picturesque of towns may turn out to be lethal traps. Or Dan Simmons' "The River Styx Runs Upstream," a story of resurrection -- with a ghastly difference. Midnight Graffiti offers these and 17 more stories that will curdle your blood. Caution: Do not read at night. And be sure to sleep with a nightlight on after reading the stories in this collection.
• 
  Chris

  I used to read a lot of anthologies, and since I ride the train daily, I figured maybe I should resume this habit, seeing as that 15-50-page stories are perfect for my rides to and from work, and for my crappy lunch break, where I have nothing better to do than sit on a cold metal bench, alone, smoking and reading (occasionally interrupted by shoving some food down my gullet). I briefly perused my anthologies one morning after making the decision to start re-reading these oft-ignored volumes, and immediately knew which one I would kick this endeavor off with: ‘Midnight Graffiti’, the perfect choice for a lifelong poseur and elitist prick.
  
  Just knowing that this was tucked away in my laptop bag brought back a flood of memories from my angst-ridden high school days, pitifully eking out an existence as the typical underachieving, uninspired white kid in Suburbia, USA. I recollected how I’d spend my idle time (not building beeramids, not laying the wood to some skank) by ignoring the whims of my folks and sitting back smugly contented that I was reading ‘Midnight Graffiti’ while all those other chumps were busy actually reading garbage assigned to them by some nimrod or another. They could blissfully continue to struggle through joyless slop like Dickens, I was getting a little taste of Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, J. Straczynski, and Nancy Collins. Could I possibly be any more slick, digging the ‘cutting edge’ of contemporary fare while my foolish, conformist peers wasted their time scrutinizing some 100-year old, irrelevant piece of shit? Well, I certainly didn’t think it was possible.
  
  I hunkered down in the uncomfortable confines of the stairwell in my usual train-car to distance myself from the bustling cretins of the world and whipped the relic known as ‘Midnight Graffiti’ out. Here it was, tangible proof that not only do I kick ass, but have been kicking ass since back in ‘the day’. Just look at the cover of the book, with that badass Giger work adorning the cover. Wait a second, that’s actually pretty crappy; if Giger committed this abortion he’d have set it aflame before it could leave his premises and tarnish his reputation. So what the hell is that flabbergastingly poor work? It turns out that the cover illustration is actually by some total fraud named Martin Cannon, just some unfortunate slob without an original style of his own, proving he’s capable of producing something as derivative as possible of the style of Giger, sans talent. This was perhaps the first thing I noticed as I sat down to read the book, and this wasn’t very promising. Come to think of it, there must have been a pretty good reason to quit reading anthologies in the first place, right?
  
  ‘Midnight Grafitti’ is, quite possibly, that reason.
  
  I’ll try to start with the positives, mainly because that really isn’t going to take very long. Like many early/mid 90’s anthologies (see ‘Shock Rock’, ‘Prime Evil’, and ‘Night Screams’ from my small sample alone), the ever-present Stephen King has a seldom-published contribution in ‘Midnight Graffiti’, and editors Jessica Horsting and James Van Hise unwisely decide to shoot their wad immediately out of the starting gate by opening it up with “Rainy Season”. While I don’t personally consider this a very good sampling of King, I can understand why they might use this, almost anything else ‘The King’ has written would blow all other entries so far out of the water that you couldn’t realistically expect anyone to read beyond the first story. Following King’s lead, J. Michael Straczynski does a pretty good job clearing the relavtively low bar which has been set, with “Say Hello, Mister Quigley”, which doesn’t really break any new ground with the creepy-doll-comes-to-life-and-menaces-somebody plot, but at least managed to hold my interest.
  
  Also managing to entertain was John Shirley’s “‘I Want To Get Married!’ Says the World’s Smallest Man”, which chronicles the disastrous love life of a little person following in the footsteps of the esteemed Herve Villachaize; and “Rant” by Nancy Collins, which I’ve always liked due to its complete intolerance, madness, and otherwise nonsensical nature. Granted, “Rant” has lost some of its luster of the years, probably because I’ve seen it reprinted in at least three other volumes (including the lackluster “Splatterpunks II”, which in terms of sequels, goes over about as well as Gremlins 2). Rather shockingly, Neil Gaiman, who I usually couldn’t care one way or the other about, actually has one of the few worthwhile reads within, with “Murder Mysteries”, a roundabout indictment of God’s alleged Master Plan and borrowing heavily from the once-popular mythos of something referred to as 'heaven' and ‘angels’. Sadly, of the nineteen stories collected herein, these are the only five I’d even care to bother with again.
  
  As for the other fourteen stories: generally weak.
  
  Some of them are decent: the Gil Lamont yarn “Sinus Fiction” begins promisingly until falling apart in some misunderstanding-between-the-sexes codswallop, and the usually-reliable Dan Simmons and Harlan Ellison both offer up stories which are well below their standard, with “The River Styx Runs Upstream” and “Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World”, respectively. This might be the lowest point of the book, that two authors expected to deliver the big hits are poorly represented.
  
  After that, the remainder is really bad: very short tales “Cattletruck” by Cliff Burns and “Salvation” by Lawrence Person are both rather pointless and lame while striving to be meaningful and thought-provoking, and Joe Lansdale’s attempt at comedy with “Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland” falls flat. Somewhere in the middle, David Schow tries to shock with the pseudo-hardcore, borderline tortureporn story “Bad Guy Hats” and Rex Miller bored the tits off me with his zombie/voodoo/ghetto-life tripe “Spike Jones and the Reverend Sister Claudine”. R.V. Branham is generously allowed to contribute two pieces of garbage with “The New Order: 3 Moral Fictions” and “Heaven, Heaven is a Place”, and to conclude this parade of mediocrity, co-editor James Van Hise stinks it up with the dawdling vampire tale “Dark Embrace”.
  
  Let’s not forget to hand out the Suck-Ass award for the Worst Story Within for this anthology, and the nominees are:
  “Emerald City Blues” / Steven Boyett. The author uses the time-honored crutch of borrowing established characters (the inhabitants of Oz) and endlessly perverting their well-intentioned natures, only to have them caught up in a boneheaded nuclear catastrophe.
  “Heaven, Heaven is a Place” / R.V. Branham. Both of Branham’s stories sucked, but allowing him to dominate at something is unthinkable (even if that something is having the most shitty stories included in this colelction), so I had to flip a coin to determine which travesty got a shot at the ‘honors’.
  “The Domino Man” / Phil Tiso. This story absolutely blows. Years of abusing inhalants couldn’t possible do the damage that this alleged story manages to do in a few ridiculous pages, even with the women cooing ‘Mmmmm’ for their cherished Domino Man.
  And the winner is: “The Domino Man”. It did not make me go Mmmmmm.
  Why haven’t I mentioned “Blue on One End, Yellow on the Other” by K.W. Jeter? You don’t want to know, trust me.
  
  I don't think that the Anthology Experiment went over too well; back to reading something slightly more worthwhile, maybe some letters to the editor from back-issues of Club, if I can manage to pry the pages apart somehow.
  
• 
  Donald

  I picked this up because it had two of my favorite authors in it - Stephen King and Joe Lansdale. King's story is great! It's that genre of a small town with a secret/tradition and what happens when outsiders get in. If I "toad" you more, I'd ruin it! As for Lansdale, well I didn't like his entry. It just didn't work for me, but I still love him! The other stories run the gamut! You've got a weird story with Oz in it, a midget with a crack head, and frog rain! I really liked "Say Hello, Mister Quigley" and "Bad Guy Hats"! I couldn't stand "Sinus Fiction" and, in fact, did not finish it. Still, "Rainy Season" is my favorite, and I'm glad I read this!
• 
  Grace Bonifatti

  I'm not giving this book 5 stars only because of the stories I didn't really enjoyed that much. There were some stories that I just wanted to read as fast as I could to move on to the next one. I didn't skip them only because of my OCD.
  
  Overall it's a great collection though, amazing characters, great storytelling. I liked that some of the characters were just ordinary people and others amazing beings.
  
  These are my favorites, I would read them over and over again:
  
  Rainy Season
  Say Hello, Mister Quigley
  Sinus Fiction
  Bad Guy Hats
  'I Want to Get Married!' Says the World's Smallest Man
  Rant
  Murder Mysteries
  The River Styx Runs Upstream
  Dark Embrace
• 
  Michael Tildsley

  A mostly good set of horror short stories with some stinkers in the bunch. I had never heard of the publication "Midnight Graffiti" before, but I wish more publications like it existed now. I'm kind of sad this set ended, actually. I was really enjoying reading this.
  
  My "five star" favorite stories from this set include:
  
  - "Rainy Season" Stephen King
  - "Say Hello, Mr. Quigley" J. Michael Straczynski
  - "Emerald City Blues" Steven R. Boyette
  - "Bad Guy Hats" David J. Schow
  - "Rant" Nancy A. Collins
  - "Murder Mysteries" Neil Gaiman
  - "Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World" Harlan Ellison
• 
  Amanda

  Not my favorite horror short story collection. I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's story "Murder Mysteries." I think that was my favorite of the collection. King's "Rainy Season" and Simmons' "River Styx Flows Upstream" were also gems. I enjoyed Lansdale's story and Branham's story regarding Heaven... both had unique characters.. even though not quite typical horror stories. There were quite a few stories that I didn't enjoy, so kind of neutral on recommending the book.
• 
  Sheila

  I absolutely love short stories. This book was well put together. Like any other short story compilation, there were ones I liked more than others. I was thrilled about Stephen King's Rainy Season included. I've read that story dozens of times, and each time it's still wonderful. Also, there is a story about OZ that is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend this book.
• 
  Nicole

  Mixed bag of stories. Some of them were really great; some of them just weren't my thing. A couple were downright bewildering (and not in a good way).
  
  My favorites:
  
  -"Rainy Season" by Stephen King
  -"Say Hello, Mister Quigley" by J. Michael Straczynski
  -"Salvation" by Lawrence Person
  -"Murder Mysteries" by Neil Gaiman
  -"Dark Embrace" by James Van Hise
• 
  Tony

  This book contains one of my favorite short stories of all time "Emerald City Blues". A nuclear attack on Oz, truly disturbing. The book is a fiction collection in relation to the short lived magazine of the same name. There is some really great horror fiction in here.
• 
  Brian Sammons

  I really miss Midnight Graffiti magazine, it was all kinds of awesome. If you never had the chance to read it back in the day, this book collects some of the best stories to appear between its covers.
  
• 
  Meen

  I bought this book originally b/c there was a Stephen King story in it, but I read one story in it over and over again: "Murder Mysteries" by Neil Gaiman. It is HEAVENLY! ;)
• 
  Charles

  An excellent collection of horror shorts.
• 
  Ashley

  great collection, in spite of copious embarrassing intros by jessica horsting.
• 
  Laura

  I enjoyed this collection. Good mix of authors, and the Stephen King inclusion is one of my favorites!
• 
  Terry Maltos

  LOVED it.
• 
  Kevin Lucia

  Quite a wide variety of stories here - horror, spec fic, ghost stories, splatterpunk - and for the most part, definitely well written. An excellent cross-section of speculative fiction.
• 
  Helen

  This book was considered horror, but I consider it short stories of dark sci-fi. One story was excellent, with great moral values portrayed: Cattletruck. Several were interesting in portraying the point of view of part of society: Rainy Season, Say Hello Mister Quigley, Emerald City Blues, Rant. Others were just OK, but worth reading.
• 
  Austin Gilbert

  The stories vary between gripping and borderline unreadable, sadly primarily the latter. A good number of the stories rely too heavily on Reagan/Bush-era shock factor, which is horribly dated and uninteresting in 2018.
• 
  ColleenIsBooked

  DNF after 51 pages. Just not feeling it and lost interest in reading the other stories.
• 
  Carlos Ceballos Méndez

  Wonderful, marvelous!!