Art: Does it itch?

The monster mash-ups of writer Tim Hall and artist Jen Ferguson combine lovely visual tributes of classic creatures with deadpan gag dialogue. Above is my fave, the wolfman.

Wolfie and more will be on display at Bergen Street Comics, Brooklyn's finest comic shop, Saturday, the 30th. Free grub is likely. Shindig starts at 8:00. I'll be there. I'll the ravishingly handsome motherfucker who answers to the name of Joe Slick. I'll be wearing a white suit with a purple carnation. Do say hi.

Music: Monster Parties: Fact or Fiction?

When experts disagree, you decide!

You decide by watching this Mr. Show clip.

Than, after the clip, you decide!



Thanks to amigo Raggedy Andy in Sac Town for pointing me to this clip.

Comics: One if by land, two if by werewolf.

As regular readers of ANTSS know, yours truly has got a serious soft-spot for that most wonderful of horror genres: the mash-up. Tell me you've got a movie about a zombie outbreak, and I may give it a look if I'm not otherwise engaged. Tell that your movie take place in the 1800s and features zombie cowboys fighting zombie Indians, and you've got my attention. Tell me that the zombie outbreak was caused by the mad experiments of an in-exile Dr. Frankenstein and it is up to Billy the Kid and the Wolf Man to save the day- well, then, amigo, I'll be there.

Today's mash-up de jour is Revere: Revolution in Silver. This four-issue mini is now available in a high-quality hardback collection by Archaia Studios Press. Archaia has been responsible or some of the more interesting titles on the fringe of the caped-do-gooder besotted comic biz. They brought out Lone and Level Sands, a graphic novel that retold the story of Exodus from the point of view of Pharaoh. They're also the cat who published the strangest breakout title in recent memory: Mouse Guard.

Revere continues Archaia's tradition of putting out high-quality stuff that avoids treading the same ol' masked superduper hero territory. The debut series for both writer Ed Lavallee and artist Bond, Grant Bond, Revere takes the opening days of the American Revolution and filters them through a horror/action lens. Set in Ye Olde Colonial America, the titular hero is none other than the Paul Revere of the famous midnight ride. Only, in this alternate reality, Revere belongs to a secretive society of adventurers called the Order of the Silver Star. Apparently, beginning with the mysterious disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, there's been a curse on the colonies. The members of the Order are dedicated to fighting this supernatural evil. Think of them as the 18th century predecessor to Hellboy's BPRD.

As the story begins, Revere is frantically hunting down a pack of ravenous werewolves responsible for a hundred or so victims throughout the Massachusetts colony. Because werewolf hunts are one of those human endeavors that just seems to attract complications, Revere's work gets derailed when he finds himself swept up into the opening battles of the American Revolution. More trouble comes on black wings when one of the revolutionaries, the Reverend Tobias Hodge of Old North Church, is suddenly and inexplicably beset by a flock of bloodthirsty Harpy-like creatures.

The plot of Revere is a bit overpaked. Lavallee has to juggle redcoats, werewolves, revolutionaries, the Battle of Lexington, swarms of harpies, and the characterizations of a cast of eight significant characters and dozens of bit parts. He also manages to weave in historical allusions and excerpts from the writings of Longfellow, Emerson, and Poe. And all this in just four issues! This isn't to say that Lavallee does a bad job. In fact, I think he does a swell job. The crux of the problem is that the job is simply bigger than four issues.

Bond's art is also pushed to its limits. It seems some times that a sort of photo-reference driven hyperrealism is slowly taking over the comic world. It is good to see artists like Bond still working in a cartooning medium and working it all so effectively. Bonds characters are vivid, his splash pages (especially the one depicting the "shot heard round the world") are exciting, and his werewolves are excellent. Seriously: Bond's werewolves are these enormous, bristling, pissed off things the size of bears with mouths like blood-spattered steel traps. These are werewolves that could well tear their way through entire colonies! The colors are moody and somber. Without the restraint the coloring provides the action and violence would seem almost-too cartoony. The mist-shrouded backgrounds occasionally make everything feel a bit muddy and confused, but overall the effect is suitably grim.

For a first-time outing, Revere is a strong debut. A one-page add in the back promises a second series: Revere: Salem's Plot (a pun on King's Salem's Lot perhaps). I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Comics: Avengers disassembled . . . with a chainsaw.

Earlier this month, Marvel trotted out their bestselling zombie-variant heroes again for an unusual team-up. After trying to eat the Fantastic Four, and chomping down on Galactus, the undead anti-heroes face off against one of pop cultures most prolific zombie slayers: Ashley J. Williams, better known as Ash, the S-Mart sales clerk turned Deadite killer (re-killer?) from the Evil Dead franchise.

Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness is one of the more promising monster mash premises of late. The set up is simple: Ash, tumbling between various planes ever since the Necronomicon knocked him out of dimensional whack, gets dropped into the alternate Marvel continuity where the Marvel hero population is zombified. For those true comic geeks, the crossover even fits into the general continuity of both comic companies. This mash occurs after issue 13 of Army, but some time before the Fantastic Four discovered the zombie-plagues dimension. He arrives right as a mysteriously infected Sentry begins to contaminate the rest of the world's super-powered beings.

Now it is impossible to pretend that this mini-series is anything but stupid fanboy fun – but what great stupid fanboy fun it is! The key to the whole Marvel zombie shtick is watching the noble heroes we've grown to love doing absolutely horrific stuff. This is what allowed the Marvel franchise to stick out from the current glut of zombie products. And, in this, Marvel vs. AoD doesn't disappoint. We get several panels of the rotting Avengers chewing up innocent civilians, including one of Hawkeye chomping directly into some nameless zombie-fodder's head.

It is hard to imagine that Marvel was completely comfortable with this idea. After all, you can't imagine Disney putting out some product in which we see an undead Mickey Mouse ripping apart Donald Duck with his teeth. That said, Marvel seems perfectly content to keep cranking these monstrous gore-fests out so long as they make money.

On a strictly fanboy level, the concept of a Marvel universe full of zombies does raise some questions. Comic dorks, like myself, want to know how it is that certain Marvel characters are even eatable. Wouldn't zombie teeth just break on the rocky body of the Thing? Are gods like Thor edible? What about aliens like the Skrull member of the Runaways? Can they get turned? Sadly, the authors don't seem too interested in exploring such issues. For example, issue 2 promises us a scene with a zombie Howard the Duck (a being that doesn't even have any teeth) and, as much as I like that idea, it does suggest that they decided to skip the details in favor of getting as many character cameos in as possible.

(Actually, even more puzzling, what about Marvel's already undead characters? Can the half-vampire Blade be only half-zombified? Wouldn't Dracula – who interacted with several heroes during his run in Tomb of Dracula - have to take action against this threat to his food source? And what about the Simon Garth, the Zombi? Does he get doubly zombified if bitten? Or, perhaps, it un-zombifies him? And Ghost Rider and Morbius and . . . It is enough to drive a comic nerd insane!)

But enough geeking out – basically, we're going to get Ash pitting his chainsaw, boomstick, and clumsy wit against rotting versions of Earth's mightiest heroes. It is hard to imagine you need more inducement than that.

Comics: This doesn't royally suck.

Recently, at the New York Comicon, I got the chance to ask the gents at the Silent Devil booth just what happened to their Dracula vs. Capone series. The first of three issues came out several months ago and, since then, nothing. The bad news: the date for issue two is still uncertain. The good news: the series, despite setbacks, is still very much alive and Silent Devil intends to get the series completed as soon as they can.

On getting this bit of info, I thanked the dude at the booth and started to walk away.

"You ever read the first one?" he asked.

"What first one?"

"Before Capone, we did this thing."

He held up the trade edition of the 2001 and mini-series Dracula vs. King Arthur.

Of course, I bought it.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I've got a weakness for the monster-mash formula of taking two well known characters and ramming them together into a single story. Admittedly, the results are almost always heavy on the cheese and weaker than a strong outing of each character on their own. But I can't help it. It is just too damn fun. How does one maintain a proper critical stance when you're talking about, say, Billy the Kid trying to gun down Frankenstein's monster? If you can, you're a better critic than I – but you're also a joyless bastard that hates happiness and all that is good and true about life.

Dracula vs. King Arthur is actually about as low on the cheese factor as you can get and still have something called Dracula vs. King Arthur. Sent back and time and vampirized by Satan, Dracula tears through the traditional Arthurian legend killing or turning minor and major characters with ludicrous abandon. Arthur and his knights, being completely unfamiliar with what a vampire is (actually, one of the nice touches in the book is that Dracula doesn't know what a vampire is either and most test and explore his new powers and limitations), are routed. Eventually Merlin figures out what they are facing and, armed with water from the Holy Grail, Camelot goes on the offensive. This leads to a wonderfully apocalyptic conclusion that at once subverts and satisfies the Arthurian themes of the work.

The writing is filled with details from the stories of both legends (with Drac built heavily from historical sources rather than Stoker's source novel). The story moves at a brisk pace, quickly dispensing with the exposition and launching into the action. The characters, especially those drawn from the Arthurian legends, stay mostly true to type; but the writers wisely avoid in slavish loyalty to the traditional narrative, happily having such key characters as Lancelot and Guinevere go all bloodsucker on us.

The art is bold and communicates the story well. It occasionally feels thick and cumbersome, but the action is well-handled and the artist even manages to slip in some allusions to prior vampire comics (specifically some references to Marvel's Tomb of Dracula).

I should also mention that Silent Devil continues is welcome tradition of reasonable pricing. The most recent trade of DC/Vertigo's critical and commercially successful Fables collected four 22-page stories (only three of which carried any story arc, one being a semi-disposable one-shot). It padded this offering out with script pages, a few goofy maps, a cover gallery, and several advertisements. For this package, Vertigo wants you so shell out $18.00. Silent Devil's trade of Dracula vs. King Arthur collects four 32-page stories, and includes several pages of completed story not featured in the original comics, a cover gallery, character sketches, and not a single advertisement. Silent Devil's book costs a buck less.

A fun, smart, affordable book – what more do you need?

Movies: Trying too hard to prove we're smarter than the dudes who cooked up "Alien vs. Predator."

The idea of a sci-fi monster mash betwixt the acid-blooded aliens of the Aliens franchise and the dreadlocked great invisible hunters of the Predator franchise is one of those seemingly obvious ideas that, in fact, contains a hidden flaw that the finished flick makes obvious.

Two flaws, actually.

First, the franchises are, if you think about it, in two different leagues. Aliens, if you count strictly the canonical flicks, has run through four films. Each flick was helmed by a major directorial talent (Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and the French guy whose name completely escapes me, you know, that guy), each flick featured at least one big name actor, and all of them were major productions. The Predator franchise, however, has spawned only two flicks. The first built around the rock-stupid action character persona of Arnold, the second around the tired Lethal Weapon persona of Glover. Neither had an A-list director at the wheel – the firtst being the product of the workman-like John McTiernan, the second being the work of Stephan Hopkins fresh from Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, his incomprehensible addition to Kruger franchise. In short, as fun as the Predator franchise is, it simply doesn't play in the same league as Aliens. It is somewhat like teaming up Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter with Chucky – sure they're both serial killers from horror movies, but there's a qualitative difference that would make such a team-up more of a joke than a genuine fright fest. In this flick, the aliens felt diminished and wasted because they'd been shoehorned into a lesser product.

Second, the Predator was the star of his franchise. Though Arnie was perhaps one of the most bankable names at the time the first flick was shot, the reason why we still remember Predator was that it took a forgettable, typical Arnold actioner and flipped it. The soldier boys of Predator purposefully seemed like they wandered in from the jungles of any of a hundred 80's shoot 'em ups. It is the presence of the alien game hunter that brings the film to life. The aliens of the Aliens series, however, have always been more like the zombies in Romero's Dead franchise. They are the stars of the flicks, but the real drama comes from watching humans deal with them. They are not, themselves, particularly interesting, from a cinematic point of view. They look cool, but they tend to just hiss and bump into one another and crawl on the walls aimlessly until you give them some astronauts or space marines to chew on. Then they become this force which puts humans under pressure and gives us a classic "trapped and surrounded, will they band together?" plot. The aliens make for good film because of what they make humans do.

AVP, as the cool kids call it, places the aliens and predators front and center, losing what makes the aliens cool and concentrating way more attention to the Predator than it can take. The film is a silly, pointless romp that never gives viewers enough of anything to really make it worth its hour and a half running time.

That said, I'd like to turn my attention to perhaps the best thing one can say about this flick, and that is that the film inspired some truly delightful reviews on Netflix.

The best of which comes from a dude who calls him- or herself "The Astrodart." The Astrodart (like The Cheat, I think you need to include the The whenever you mention The Astrodart) gave the flick one star and then proceeded to provide a series of questions meant, I think, to poke holes in the plot of movie that centers around giant space bugs fighting a race of aliens who, like interstellar gun-nut rednecks, have based their entire culture on recreational hunting. Unfortunately, The Astrodart's efforts are as funny as the movies flaws. The Astrodart begins the "deconstruction" thusly:

Rather than give a straight review of the steaming pile that is "AVP," I'd like to critique the movie by asking several relatively spoilerless questions. Why would there be a whaling station in Antarctica in 1904?

Well, the filmmaker probably thought they could feature an Antarctic whaling station from 1904 in their film because there was a really a whaling station on Antarctica in 1904. Before the creation of factory ships, whalers need Antarctic whaling stations to help process their catches. The first processing station went up in 1904, on Grytviken, South Georgia. Now, to be fair, this isn't something I knew off the top of my head. I had to Google it – but, presumably, anybody who can post a review on Netflix can Google "Antarctica whaling stations" and not begin their clever assault with a utter dud. Astrodart, The, then launches into a series of probing questions:

Why does no one's breath steam in the sub zero temperature of the south pole? Why don't the predators in this film use stealth and intelligence like the other movies? If the predators' weapons are acid proof, why not their armor? Why do the chest burster aliens pop out of people's bodies in a few minutes rather than incubate for a day or two? How do said chest bursters fully mature after another ten minutes or so?

The first one seems fair; though, to me, a question like "how could aliens have evolved in such a manner as to be perfectly adapted to incubate inside what appears to be an infinite number of host species?" seems like a considerably stickier wicket. Or, perhaps, more interesting, "how is it that aliens never have to eat?" They turn many of their victims into egg hosts; but even when they don't, they usually leave their corpses behind or so vastly outnumber potential food species that they'd burn through the population and starve to death. As for why armor would melt, but not weaponry, perhaps they're made of two different materials like, oh, I don't, modern weapons and body armor. Finally, do we have a timetable for alien gestation and development? Is it any less absurd that a creature with an exoskeleton would mature in a day, sans shed shells, than it is that such an animal would be lethal in minutes? Basically, my point is that the whole concept is fairly absurd, so this outrage at perceived plot holes strikes me as bizarre. How you can set your personal absurd-o-meter high enough to accept the aliens and predator species, but still sweat this crap is beyond me.

Still, for all The Astrodart's quirky questions, he or she didn't take the lazy way out. There are several reviews which basically use this construction:

I could systematically dissect this movie and give a detailed breakdown of exactly how awful this movie is, but honestly, it’s just not worth the effort.

This is just a tease! Either unleash critical Hell or don't, but this "I could kill, but you aren't worth my time" thing is lame. How valuable can your damn time be that you're leaving a review of Aliens vs. Predator on Netflix?

I knew this kid when I was young – Richard Fellman – who swore he knew karate, but could never show us anything because he was only supposed to use the deadly art in self-defense. Nobody believed him. He was, in fact, a big lame-o. I have a proposal. From now on, when somebody posts a review where they suggest they could demolish a movie with their keen critical insights, but do not because it would not be worthy of them, we call that "posting a Fellman."

Did people do this before the Internet era, when anybody could instantly preserve their weird hissy-fit for all eternity? I reckon they did.

Lord Waddleneck: Verily, Lady Macbeth claims she knows what 'tis like to nurse a child, but 'tis made clear their marriage is a barren one. Odd's blood! For sooth, such lapses logickal are apt to throw me into a most intemperate rage! And a child born of a section de Caesar is not born of woman? The groundlings may enjoy such contrivances inane . . .

Sir Autumnbottom: By my troth, t'would serve if I did raze this foul drama with mine bodkin sharp wits – but gross combat with one so unfit t'would be unseemly.

Music: But, seriously though, what did happen to his Transylvania Twist?

The Bonzo Dog Band (originally the Bonzo Dog Dada Band and then, briefly, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) was the creation of a group of Brit art-school students in the mid-1960s. Their sound was a deliberately comical and awkward mix of jazz, pop, rock, and out-of-date vaudeville influences. Part corny joke and part art house provocation, they are either the laughing fringe of the psychedelic crowd or the visionary forerunners of the post-punks, depending on how you like to take your rock history.

Most importantly, they were good, goofy fun. Here’s their cover of the novelty classic “The Monster Mash.”



The Bonzo Dog Band got some mainstream attention when they hooked up with the Beatles. Paul, under the Bonzian pseudonym “Apollo C. Vermouth,” produced the BDB’s “Urban Spaceman.”



The BDB also appeared in the Beatles flick Magical Mystery Tour, performing their tune “Death Cab for Cutie.” Sadly, this tune also provided the name of certain emo outfit, revealing that, in this fallen world, there are no human acts of unalloyed good.



The BDB broke up in 1969. Members of the group later collaborated with Monty Python, including writing the music for the Python’s Beatles parody The Rutles.