The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Like the two genres to which so many of their films pay homage, it’s the dialogue — snappy, rapid-fire, off-kilter — that strings together the dark screwball comedy noirs of the COEN BROTHERS. From Gabriel Byrne’s smart talk in Miller’s Crossing to the yah-sure-yer-darn-tootin of Fargo, the words take center stage. Well, words and White Russians and wood chippers and hair jelly and hula hoops and extortion and blackmail and kidnapping. Always with the kidnapping.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Oh, ALAN MOORE (1953- ), how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. 1. V for Vendetta. 2. Watchmen. 3. Promethea. 4. Lost Girls. 5. D.R. & Quinch. 6. Voice of the Fire. 7. All those “Future Shocks” for 2000 A.D. back in the ’80s. 8. The simple fact that he’s held the title of Most Revered and Respected Creator in Comics (By Pros & Fans Alike), de facto, for more than two decades. Need we say more? Okay: 9. Devotee of Glycon, a snake-deity-slash-sock-puppet that probably never existed. 10. Performance art involving same. There: a veritable decameron of strangeness.

What’s new: While Moore has disowned all the Hollywoodizations of his work, it will nonetheless be of interest to many that the trailer for the film adaptation of Watchmen, the seminal “deconstructing superheroes” graphic novel, has just been unveiled today.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days! Today we resume after a two-week break with the legendary STANLEY KUBRICK (1928-1999).

Dairy-based Beethoven-fueled ultraviolent rape-a-thon? Acid trip space pregnancy? Thermonuclear protonazi doomsday over precious bodily fluids? Mask-clad Cirque du Scientologist orgypalooza? Vietnammy soap-sock blanket party Pyle-on? Humberty Humberty cross-country lollipopping? Snow-induced secluded-hotel indoor unwelcome lumberjacking? Who is Spartacus? I am Spartacus. No, I am Spartacus. No, I am Spartacus.

What’s new: Warner Bros. releases DVD documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Eraserhead‘s deformed baby. Blue Velvet‘s severed ear. Twin Peaks’s nested mysteries. The Elephant Man‘s freakshow redemption. DAVID LYNCH (1946– ) has redefined modern cinema by exploring the concepts of good and evil in his own, uniquely unsettling style. He challenges his viewers’ perceptions of reality with the stories he tells; he’s an iconoclast who refuses to compromise his strange and unique visions.

The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Like a brain surgeon who falls in love with the tumor, DAVID CRONENBERG (1943– ) sets out to explore the mind and winds up exploding some heads — sometimes those of his characters (Scanners), usually those of his viewers. Each film is a sci-fi psychology dissertation written in hallucinatory gore, where men transform into flies (The Fly), grow vagina-like maws in their belly (Videodrome), or fornicate with the leg-scars of car accident victims (Crash). Foul but fascinating, and never without a purpose.

What’s new: Cronenberg testified this week before Canada’s Senate, criticizing a proposed change in tax legislation that filmmakers fear could be used to stifle artistic expression.