On June 28, 2026, noted science fiction and horror film maker Mel Brooks turns 100 years old. To celebrate and honor his long career, Steven H Silver has joined James Bacon and Christopher J Garcia as co-editor of Journey Planet issue 95 focusing on Brooks’s achievements.

The issue, which runs to more than 150 pages, not only looks at his horror films, such as Young Frankenstein and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and his science fiction works, such as Spaceballs: The Animated Series and Get Smart, but also looks at his forays into other genres, such as Blazing Saddles, The Twelve Chairs, High Anxiety, The Producers, and Silent Movie.

Brooks, has not only conquered the film world, but also the stage (with shows like Shinbone Alley and All-American), television (The Nutt House and When Things Were Rotten), and recordings (The 2000 Year Old Man). He was not only the eighth person to earn an EGOT, but is the only person to have earned the elusive NEGOTH (Nebula, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony, and Hugo).

Brooks was born in Brooklyn as Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926.  He served as a combat engineer during World War II defusing land mines, including seeing action during the Battle of the Bulge.  He began working as a busboy and, eventually, an entertainer in the Catskills before working as a writer for Sid Caesar. Trying his hand at writing for Broadway in the early 1960s, he won an Oscar for the script of his first feature film, The Producers.  Brooks helped define movie comedy in the 1970s and began appearing in his own films and, eventually, on television and doing voice work.

On this occasion of his centennial, Bacon, Garcia, and Silver are joined by nearly thirty authors exploring what it means to be a Mel Brooks movie or a Mel Brooks fan in 38 articles.

The contents of this issue includes

• My Introduction to Mel Brooks, by Steven H Silver
• In the Beginning, There Was Your Show of Shows, by Janice Gelb
• The 2066 Year Old Man, by Henry Herz
• Review of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, by Steven H Silver
• Criticizing The Critic, by Steven H Silver
• The Cone of Laughter, by William S. Higgins
• The Spy Who Came in Through the Phone Booth: How Get Smart Influenced a Generation, by Julie Barrett
• Mel Brooks and The Producers, by Daniel M. Kimmel
• The Twelve Chairs, by Jeff Cohen
• How My Mother Stole Mel Brooks’s Spotlight, by Steve Davidson
• Blazing Saddles, An Appreciation of Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, and Cleavon Little (with Special Guest Star Louis Gossett, Jr.), by Chris Barkley
• “That’s Hedy!” by Robert L. Rede
• The French Mistake, by Helena Nash
• From Shelley to Brooks: The Path from Frankenstein to Young Frankenstein, by Brenda W. Clough
• Rotten Robin Hood, by Gillian Polack
• The Ones No One Talks About, by Christopher J Garcia
• Silent Partner, by Jody Lynn Nye
• Marathoning Mel Brooks, by Danny A. Miller
• History of the World, Part I Retrospective and Part II Comparison, by Jean Martin
• My Analog Youth and Discovery of Mel Brooks’s Comedy, by Andrew Swift
• To Be Or Not To Be, by Bonnie K. Jones
• Springtime for Mel; or, Professor Little Old Man Goes to Broadway, by Tom Smith
• The Elephant Man and The Fly, by Danette Sills
• Melvin in Shadowland, by Matthew Hahn
• I Always Cry When a Bookstore Dies, by Steven H Silver
• Are Mel Brooks’s Fans Their Own Worst Enemies? by Zev Winicur
• The Nutt House, by Barbara Barnett
• When Things Were Rotten vs. Robin Hood: Men in Tights, by Bonnie K. Jones
• Turning Over in His Grave, by Henry Herz
• All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, by Mel Brooks: A Review, by Steven H Silver
• “King of Broadway”—Mel Brooks’s Musicals, by Laura Frankos
• I Got It, I Got It, I Got It…EGOT It. by Robert L. Rede
• Spaceballs: The Animated Series, by Steven Pitluk
• Mel and Max, by Robert L. Rede
• Mel Brooks’s World War Z Project, by Helena Nash
• The Day I Kissed Mel Brooks, by Heidi Hooper (as told to Michael A. Ventrella)
• How the Schwartz Binds Us Together: A Beginner’s Yiddish Primer, by Valerie Estelle Frankel
• A Look at Novelizations of Mel Brooks Movies, by Steven H Silver
• Journey Planet Review, by Christopher J Garcia
• Enditorial, by James Bacon

The editors apologize for the fact that the Mel Brooks centennial issue is Journey Planet 95. We had hoped to get it to be issue 100, but Mel refused to move his birthday for our convenience.