Joe Bob Briggs Brings His Drive-In Horror Swagger to Ben Percy’s The End Times Omnibus

The apocalypse just got a whole lot more drive-in.

Bad Hand Books has announced that legendary horror host, author, critic, and all-around genre icon Joe Bob Briggs will write the introduction for the omnibus edition of The End Times, the post-apocalyptic newspaper epic from Ben Percy and Stephen King.

Yes, you read that right. Joe Bob Briggs is stepping into the end of the world, and honestly, who better to welcome readers into the madness?

Known to generations of horror fans as the sharp-witted voice behind Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater, MonsterVision, and The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, Briggs has built a career around celebrating the weird, the wild, the bloody, the strange, and the beautifully unhinged corners of genre entertainment. He is not just a horror host. He is a community builder, a midnight-movie philosopher, and one of the most recognizable champions of exploitation, horror, and cult cinema.

That makes his addition to The End Times feel like more than a cool bonus. It feels like a perfect fit.

The End Times: Volume One takes readers into a reimagined Midwest rebuilding in the aftermath of a deadly pandemic. Written as a post-apocalyptic newspaper, the project blends horror, social collapse, survival, and community into something that feels disturbingly close to the world outside our windows. This is not just about the end of civilization. It is about what people do when the systems fail, the ground shifts, and humanity has to decide whether it still knows how to hold itself together.

Doug Murano, founder and CEO of Bad Hand Books, praised Briggs as the ideal voice to introduce the collected edition, pointing to his long history of creating community through shared art. That idea sits right at the center of The End Times, where Percy and King explore what happens when people are forced to rebuild, reconnect, and survive in a world that has been cracked wide open.

Briggs’ involvement brings an extra layer of genre credibility to the omnibus. His career spans decades of television, film appearances, documentaries, and horror commentary, with credits connected to everything from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 to In Search of Darkness, American Scary, Horror Business, and Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore. Wherever horror history is being discussed, Joe Bob Briggs is usually somewhere nearby, probably holding court with a cold drink, a sharp line, and a body count breakdown.

For horror fans, comic readers, Stephen King collectors, Ben Percy followers, and lovers of strange literary experiments, The End Times omnibus is shaping up to be one of those releases that lands with serious cult-energy. It has the names. It has the concept. It has the end-of-the-world flavor. And now, it has Joe Bob at the front door, welcoming everyone inside before the whole thing goes gloriously sideways.

Bad Hand Books also noted that $1 from each copy of The End Times: Volume One sold directly through the publisher will benefit mutual aid efforts in Minneapolis as the community continues recovering from the impacts of recent ICE activity in the region.

So buckle up, horror faithful. The end is coming, the newspaper is printed, and Joe Bob Briggs has the mic.

The drive-in will never die.

The End Times: Volume One will be released in early 2027 and is now available for pre-order from the publisher.

Author Profile

Al Mega: I'm Al Mega the CEO of Comic Crusaders, CEO of the Undercover Capes Podcast Network, CEO of Geekery Magazine & Owner of Splintered Press (coming soon). I'm a fan of comics, cartoons and old school video games. Make sure to check out our podcasts/vidcasts and more!