From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror genre fan with a blog. Scary.

Comic Book Review: Batman The Brave and the Bold 12
Trick or Treat

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340px-All-New_Batman_The_Brave_and_the_Bold_Vol_1_12Zombos Says: Very Good (for young readers)

Everything has rules, Batman. Even Halloween. — Zatanna

In Trick or Treat, Batman and Zatanna investigate a break-in at the House of Mystery on Halloween night. With only a few rolls of toilet tissue left behind, and Abel turned into deadwood, they don't have much to go on. Cain isn't much help, either, since the house's comings and goings make it impossible to determine if anything is missing. 

In this tale for the younger reader, the mystery is who would dare treat Cain and Abel this way, and what nefarious purpose is behind it? Sholly Fisch and Ethen Beavers keep the colorful action simple and fast-moving toward the solution as Zatanna resorts to magic and Batman resorts to more practical methods of investigation, with both approaches necessary.

After a couple of dead ends involving Dr. Destiny putting the moves on Zatanna, and Mr. Mxyzptlk tying the strings on both of them, the investigation forces a resolution involving a lot of good and bad supers squaring off to reveal the true villain. 

My only regret is the cover price: I wish it were a lot cheaper. I'd have loved to give this to the many trick or treaters coming to my own house of mystery on Halloween. Now, if only I could get Zatanna to show up, too.

Comic Book Review: The Dunwhich Horror 1

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Zombos Says: Fair

To be accurate, this is not H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, it’s an adaptation of it by Joe R. Lansdale and Pete Bergting. To be querulous, this first issue doesn’t do a good job of making me want to read more.

In 15 pages, past the opening brief other-worldly encounter, Lansdale gives us a lot of dialog from a small group of young people worrying about the future, some half-hearted denials that anything’s wrong, and a final conclusion that there’s no denying It is testing It’s boundaries, and will find a way in–completely–before too long. They’re part of a paranormal club doing it all for a lark, and somehow the lark’s gotten bigger than they expected; more deadly, too.

This is the de rigueur impetus for nearly every Lovecraftian pastiche, cosmic apocalypse-cooking recipe, botched adapation, and mythos melodrama.

And yes, it’s getting long in the tooth.

What keeps it still compelling is a suspenseful narrative delivered through a gothically-charged atmosphere. This first issue has neither. Bergting can’t generate a visual sense of brooding and dooming in his minimal strokes, and Lansdale bores with unnecessary exposition, freezing the story with pretty talking heads and no movement. Sure, if this were a graphic novel I might be more lenient, but it’s not. Dare to use H.P. Lovecraft’s name to sell the comic and I’ll double-dare you to justify using it.

It’s not much of an entertaining comic book, either. The title story is supplanted by a second one, the first part of The Hound, comprised of a few full-page illustrations by Menton3 and scripted by Robert Weinberg. The narrative appears as handwritten, in flourishy white script, and the illustrations are similar to the cover’s charcoal-like hazy obscurity and ominous moroseness. The static nature of the presentation–it’s like reading a children’s picture book in format–is not what I expect or want to read here. This is my personal preference because it amounts to a cop-out from the more demanding panel and narrative structure a comic book demands.

The remaining pages are filled by IDW’s promotions, including an 11 page preview of Memorial by Chris Roberson, and the first part of Weinberg’s essay, Who Was H.P. Lovecaft? My answer would be, Why Not Google It?

So all of this is underwhelming.

Halloween Ultimate Mailbox

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halloween devil mailboxMe and Max the Drunken Severed Head were driving around in Butler, PA. Max now writes for Famous Monsters Magazine so he's all hoity-toidy and wanted to eat at this Italian restaurant located somewhere down a long and winding side road. We don't find it. So instead, he suggests the Beacon Hotel restaurant located on another long and winding side road in the opposite direction. I sort of leaned toward it myself given the hoity-toidy sounding name: I mean, we could tell everyone at the Monster Bash we ate at the Beacon, and wait for all those admiring and envious smiles. Well, searching for the Beacon Hotel, we saw this huge brown, must-be-another-chainsaw-sculpted bear–we're thinking–given we're in Pennsylvania, so don't pay it too much mind.

We drove past it and eventually find the Beacon Hotel restaurant. We both wished we drove past that, too. But that's another short story. All I'll say for now is if I ever did an Indie horror movie situated in a 1970s redneckish bar in the middle of a corn field, waiting at the end of a dustry gravel road, well, this place would be it. The coffee even tasted like it was brewed in 1974, too. The waitress was nice, though. I asked her about the Halloween haunted house attraction mentioned on the sign. She told me it was in the basement. But she had to think about it first, like no one ever asks about it. Right, I thought to myself, where else would it be in a place like this.

halloween devil mailboxOh, right, getting back to my point. Gladly back on that long and winding road again, Max said to pull over and check out the big brown thing when we come to it again because he noticed this large daisy sticking out of it's head. It's a short few hundred feet on our left, the big thing and daisy, so I headed over the small bridge and pulled up on the opposite side of the road.

It wasn't a big, brown, chainsaw-sculted bear.

We're not quite sure what it might be. Here are the cell phone photos I took of it. Get off my back right now because I don't want to hear how dark these photos are, okay? I don't have an iPhone yet, so don't even go there.

I think it's a hairy devil holding a mailbox. It's made out of sheet metal. It's eyes are sort of non-committal and it's face forlorn, but I'm still thinking it's a devil. Holding a mailbox. Freudian analysis would take too long and I don't have the time for it, but I'll just snicker and point a finger at the position of the mailbox, and leave it up to you to figure it out. 

Maybe Max and me should have checked out who'd weld sheet metal together into the shape of a lumbering devil standing about 10 feet tall, with a large daisy stuck in its head, all just to hold a mailbox. But times there are, when weird stuff like this, found on a long and winding side road in PA, should stay mysterious. 

halloween devil mailbox

Halloween Eureka Haunted Castle

/ Halloween Paper / 2 Comments

This 23 inch 3D Halloween Haunted Castle decoration from Eureka has entertaining accents like the alligator in the moat, the sinister eyes staring at you, and if you look closely at the left tower window you'll see a pair of green hands holding onto the bars. 

eureka haunted castle decoration

Monster 50’s Rock n Roll for Halloween

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HalloweenpumpkinHere's a shakin' mix tape from Professor Kinema for Halloween, for you old timey rockers like me. 

Click to play or right-click to download:

Side A (28 minutes):
Monster Rock n Roll Mix Side A

Side B (20 minutes):
Monster Rock n Roll Mix Side B

 

Songs Side A:

  • Graveyard —  Leroy Bowman
  • The Monster — A Pair of Kings
  • I'm the Wolfman — Round Robin
  • Caveman — Tommy Roe
  • Gila Monster –Joe Johnson
  • Witch Doctor's Wedding — Tommy Holmes
  • The Gorilla — Bert Convy
  • Haunted House — Chris Kevin
  • The Skeleton Fight — Mack Allen Smith
  • At the House of Frankenstein — Big Bee Kornegay
  • Monster Hop — Bert Convy
  • Mad House Jump — Daylighters
  • Split Personality — Jim Burgett

Songs Side B:

  • Nightmares — John Sowell
  • Horror Show — Sharkey Todd
  • Igor's Party — Tony's Monstrosities
  • Nightmare Hop — Earl Patterson
  • Frankenstein Rock — Eddie Thomas
  • Screaming Ball — DuPonts
  • Dinner With Drac — Lee Kristopherson
  • Son of Dracula theme

    Why Write for a Living?
    By Scott M. Baker

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    WritersblockScott M. Baker tackles the age-old question every writer has…
     
    Why would anyone in their right mind want to write for a living?

    Nobody wants to write for a living. We do it because we have to. Once we’ve put pen to paper that first time, we’re addicted. The only fix is to type out a few pages of a short story or novel.

    Those of you who have a passion for writing know exactly what I’m talking about. You carry a pocket-size notebook everywhere you go to write down your thoughts. You carefully observe people for unique mannerisms that then make their way into your characters. You listen in on conversations, not because you’re nosy, but because you study how people talk so your dialogue sounds realistic. You can’t watch the news or read a newspaper without getting an idea for a short story or novel. To you, a personal crisis is when you find out that the really awesome scene you thought of last week was already used in another book or movie. For you, writing is not so much a profession as it is a calling.

    The reward is not the paycheck. Most writers will be lucky if they make enough money to pay the bills. The reward is seeing your name on the book cover. It’s the thrill of having people read the story you have to tell. It’s hearing from your fans about how much they enjoyed reading your work. It’s going to conventions and book signings. It’s watching that one story or novel slowly become a long bibliography.

    If you’re nodding your head while reading this, then you’re one of the lucky ones.

    Lucky ones?

    Yes. You’re lucky because you’ve answered the call. The road ahead will not always be easy. You’ll have frustrations. You’ll have doubts. You might even abandon writing for awhile, only to go back to it soon. Writing is addictive, but the rewards are worth it. So if you answered the calling, I wish you the best in your endeavor. You’re going to need it.

    If just one of you finds enough inspiration from these postings to write a novel or short story, or picks up some advice that helps you get published, then my efforts were not wasted. Just remember me when writing the acknowledgment page of your book. 

    Now get to work.  As my good friend Clint says, “Write or die.”