The Johnny Gruesome Death Mask has gone on sale; we counting advance orders, we sold 6 right off the bat. I'm jazzed that there will be at least 6 people walking around wearing a mask based on my character, and I expect to sell a lot more at upcoming conventions. Other than a set of trading cards featuring artwork from the novel, the complete Gruesome Package is now available for order or pre-order: the Novel, the CD, the Mask, and the freebie Mini-Movie and comic. Now I have to get a job, because this stuff is just too expensive and time consuming toproduce, and it's devoured a year and a half of my life. Anyway, here' the PR:
July 25, 2007 – Filmmaker and novelist Gregory Lamberson (Slime City, Personal Demons) announced the next step in his multi-media marketing campaign for his novel upcoming novel Johnny Gruesome: The Johnny Gruesome Death Mask is now available from his website,
www.johnnygruesome.com.
The deluxe, limited edition mask (only 500 copies will be produced) based on Lamberson’s heavy metal zombie character was sculpted, cast, and hand painted by Matt Patterson of Matty Mask,
www.mattymask.com.
“Matt contacted me in response to a casting ad for the Gruesome short film I placed in a Buffalo newspaper,” Lamberson says. “He discovered he had a talent for sculpting and mask making when he was on temporary disability from his job. He sent some stills of custom masks he made of comic book characters. I was impressed, but the masks were based on copyrighted characters, so he couldn’t really promote his work. I said, ‘Why don’t you make a mask of Johnny Gruesome? It will be an official, licensed property, so you can actually promote it.’ He saw the potential and said yes.”
Lamberson provided with Patterson with illustrations by Zach McCain and Eric Mache’ for the upcoming limited edition hardcover, which is now available for pre-order from Bad Moon Books (
www.badmoonbooks.com), and made one other suggestion: he wanted Patterson’s mask to pay homage to Dick Smith’s underused make-ups for the film adaptation of Peter Straub’s classic novel Ghost Story, which Lamberson read in high school when it was first published.
Patterson, who lives about 20minutes from Lamberson, says, “Being handed the keys to a multimedia juggernaut is daunting but I think we’ve hit a nerve judging from the reactions. I hope everyone enjoys my part in it.”
Lamberson says, “I spent hours as a kid staring at the ads for the Don Post Studio masks of the Universal monsters advertised in Famous Monsters of Filmland. Johnny is my attempt to create a classic monster character, and I figured if nothing else, the mask would look cool on my desk or on a horror convention table. As Matt progressed on the sculpture, I started to believe people would buy the mask. When I saw the finished product, it became a viable project in my eyes. When people see this at conventions, they’re going to want to own it. We already sold one and took orders for three more before the thing even went on the market, a nice surprise.”
The Johnny Gruesome Death Mask costs $45, plus shipping and handling. The Gruesome rock CD is available from the same website, where horror fans can check out the short film starring Erin Brown (“Misty Mundae”).
