The witch (or warlock?) and Grim Reaper scream loudly when you shake them, and their eyes light up. Witches and skeletal Grim Reapers appear to be the cat’s meow when Halloween rolls around. Green’s the preferred color for witches as far as I can tell from experience. The Grim Reaper almost looks like the one in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
Sure, they're cutesy, but in a cartoony way. So there!
This is one of my favorite finds for Halloween a few years ago. I can't put my finger on it, but the design is fun and stylish. The translucent head serves function while adding to the overall design.
I thought I had a witty comment to make on this one for Curse of the Crimson Altar, but really, I think it speaks for itself. Don't you?
Attack of the Giant Leeches is better than critical consensus gives it credit for. The locale and the monsters (concept more than execution, mind you) create an effective atmosphere; I'd love to see this one remade.
These little beauties stand 8 inches tall, and scamper around like mad when you press the button. The facial scults are priceless.
This is a neat series of Halloween tissue decorations from Eureka, though I'm not sure of the date. The reverse side is also printed, but you can see the witch's eyes instead of the glittering plastic one's she's showing on this side. Note the large creepy hands. The Mummy in the series is more cutesy, making its glittering eyes less effective than you see here.
When I went with my mom to see Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, we both knew it was a well-basted turkey, but had a lot of fun anyway. Besides, I liked the gratuitous bikini babes scene a lot. Hey, I was a kid. The theater didn't hand out those cool space shield eye protectors mentioned in this double bill pressbook, though. Darn. Being a kid, I would have liked those more.
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Double Bill Pressbook:
Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster
and Curse of the VoodooRead More »
Zombos Says: Good
The problem I have with Vertigo's The Unexpected anthology of 9 stories is its cover: the illustration has nothing to do with any of them.
I'm not sure if it's the high-heeled pumps, the knife in the head (at least I think it's a head), or the bloody mace provocatively poised, but how can you not write a story about this? The cheeky titillation, the schizophrenic weirdness, and the outright sleeziness is nowhere to be found inside. Bummer. You'd think a better approach would have been to use this illustration as a springboard, to see what stories might percolate from it.
Double bummer.
The Great Karlini by Dave Gibbons leads off The Unexpected's stories–that have nothing to do with such an inspiring cover–but Gibbons ends his story in a familiar way, making it one of the weakest stories included here. G. Willow Wilson and Robbi Rodriguez's Dogs, and Alex Grecian and Jill Thompson's Look Alive pick up the pace by merging their visual styles to the familiarity-skewing plots involving a lot of fed up man's best friends, and a feed-in-need zombie's creativity in finding her next meal ticket.
The Land by Josh Dysart and Farel Dalrymple is quietly compelling. It's tilt toward more narration, less dialog, and it's picture-book style of illustration create a mood that unfolds the story unemotionally, but it's undertone is meaningfully familiar about ancient monsters and prejudice.
I don't get the point of A Most Delicate Monster by Jeffrey Rotter and Lelio Bonaccorso, and Brian Wood and Emily Carroll's Americana left me bewildered. Neanderthals created from fossil DNA cause cultural consternation in Monster. A scientist takes a sizable brute to a water theme park to prove his point that Neanderthals and more recent humans shouldn't mix, but mixed results lead to a quick termination of the experiment. It's funny to a point, but whatever that point is, I can't say. Ditto with Americana, which also reads the most indie-prone of the bunch in story and art.
Family First from Matt Johnson and David Lapham provides an unexpected twist ending and sufficient gore that comes closest to the cover's potential. A brother and sister do indeed put their family first when an apocalypse presents those annoying live or die hunter and gatherer challenges we're all familiar with. They also keep the BBQ smokin' hot for guests. I don't quite know why, but I felt this story could have gruesome-twosome series potential.
The last story, Blink…Le Prelude a La Mort is more confusing than entertaining. This prelude from Selwyn Hinds and Denys Cowan brings us into the middle of an ongoing story continued in Voodoo Child No. 1. Promotional gimmicks like this waste precious space in comics; space I'd rather see filled with stories pertinent to the issue at hand.
A courtesy copy for this review was provided by DC Comics.
Zombos 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.
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.