The Laughing Reindeer

'Da Hell?

2012-02-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

After all this time, you probably thought I had quit this blog stuff...

Actually, the Laughing Reindeer will be riding off into the sunset but not too soon. Something else will be taking its place. Don't worry, when that times comes (and probably weeks before it), I will give you all the details.

One thing I can say is that the Agents of Peril strip will continue. I've gotta show all those installments I continued working on after the old computer crashed ages ago. Also, a few things I had been giving hints on will be revealed.

That's all for now. In the meantime, be good to each other.

Paul’s Dead: The Paul Lynde Halloween Special

2010-10-31T04:14:00.000-07:00

Most of you don’t really know me. You’ve never met me. You probably have no idea what I look like or where I live, but you owe me…

You all owe me big time. Why?

For all of you, I dared to look a demon in the face and spit in its eye. Nay, nay, worse than that… I actually watched the Paul Lynde Halloween Special, shown on the ABC TV network on October 29, 1976. More recently, this program was actually released on DVD.

Now, I’m going to give you a small taste… and a very small taste is all you dare try, because this thing is too terrible to believe.

Okay, I’m no dope. These days Paul Lynde as an entertainer is more a punch line himself than a teller of jokes. This holiday special takes all the worst aspects of the man, crams it into an hour long special, tosses in a few bizarre guest stars, and ends up with a cocktail that is all bad 70’s. In fact, it is so much a part of its era that when you see the title of the program with narration, you may find yourself thinking this is all some ingenious SCTV bit.

I should also note that there is a strong connection to TV kid vid creators Sid and Marty Krofft. Though they are only mentioned in the end credits regarding Witchiepoo as being their creation, almost every guest is involved with a Krofft production of that era.

But how bad is it? It’s so bad that when watching it you may find yourself closing all the curtains, putting towels under the door and whatever else is necessary to avoid letting friends and neighbors know that you’re actually watching it.

So, what’s so bad? Let’s go…

The program opens with a short series of bad jokes wherein Paul dresses up for Christmas, Easter and Valentines Day, pretending to ignore the fact that it is Halloween. His housekeeper, Margaret (played by Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West) chides Paul, until he admits that it is Halloween. Cut to Paul on stage, telling bad jokes and dancing and singing. The dancers (including Donnie and Marie Osmond) finish the number by putting Paul in a garbage can, which explodes.

After the commercial break, we see Paul and Margaret driving to her home out in the country, which happens to be a creepy castle. They ring the doorbell and Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes) from H.R. Pufnstuf answers the door. She’s actually Margaret’s sister. Margaret then assumes her real self, the Wicked Witch of the West. Loads of bad jokes follow, plus a cameo by Betty White (for no particular reason) during which Paul is granted three wishes.

His first wish is to be a truck driver with a big 18 wheeler. Tim Conway appears in the awful sketch as a couple of different truckers doing jokes with Paul through their CB radios. As it ends up, they’re both supposed to be getting married to a waitress at a seedy café. The waitress is played by Roz Kelly… who was the very short-lived Pinky, Fonzie’s girlfriend from Happy Days. She’s attractive, but can’t act or sing at all… which is proved in a singing and dancing number to finish the bit off.

Back at the mansion, Paul does more shtick with the witches… which results in introducing KISS in their TV debut appearance. They do a couple of songs but remain removed from the show’s star.

Next up, comes a second wish from Paul that will challenge anyone with an upset stomach. Paul wishes he was sheik in the desert a la Rudolph Valentino. He’s trying to woo Florence Henderson. Their scenes of kissing and hugging strain the very fabric of sanity and the ability of my stomach to hang on to whatever I just ate.

After a commercial break, we see a small unfunny bit with Margaret and Billy Barty. Paul returns and decides to let the witch sisters use his third wish for themselves. Touched (in the head) by his kindness, they decide they want their home to be a disco. A disco dance number follows, with Florence Henderson singing a song and Roz pretending she has any talent at all (she still doesn’t).

Paul wants KISS to return, this time having them actually talk to the program’s star. Peter Kriss sings (or more correctly, lip synches) “Beth.” The band does another song, but there are still a few more jokes from Paul, Roz, the witches left to be squeezed out. The show ends with the cast dancing and this TV viewer drooling from the mouth while bleeding from my eyes and ears.

This I have spared you. If you think I’ve been exaggerating, check it out for yourself. I dare you…

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

The Aztec Mummy Gets Lethargic For Halloween!!!

2010-10-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

The Aztec Mummy is back like you've never seen him before... through the miracle of Lethargic-Vision.

The amazing and often mysterious Greg Hyland and I have teamed up in this spooky month, working together on Greg's weekly online Lethargic Lad comic strip... something we've wanted to do for years. Just in time for Halloween, we dare reveal the TV special you never asked for: Mexican Mad Monster Party.

Check it out right now (and I mean NOW, no dilly-dallying) by going to http://www.lethargiclad.com/.

Meanwhile, after months of real world adventures & challanges (yep, Dad made it okay through the triple bypass operation) I've been working hard on my Agents of Peril strip... which will finally explain what happened in that most recent installment featuring a vaguely weird world Agent Frankenstein found himself in when last time we saw him. That will be popping up soon on these Blog pages, true believers (I really dig writing like Stan Lee).

Meanwhile, the house is looking very Halloweenish. I love this time of year!

Confessions of a Monster Kid: 10 Guilty Pleasures -- Part 3

2010-08-16T16:20:00.001-07:00

The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy
In the last few years, it seems like a lot of people have begun taking notice of the really inspiring weirdness of the Mexican horror film. This one, though certainly not the best, was loads of fun.

I remember when I first saw it. It was a Saturday afternoon. I was still a high school kid. I saw that goofy title in the TV Guide and thought I would put in on. What I saw blew me away. Here was a film that was actually 3 films in one, packed with extensive flashbacks to the first two movies and a fast finish in this last one. After I saw it, all I wanted to do was create a movie that Some Kind of Monster Vs. Some Kind of Monster, the cheesier the better.

Afterwards I sought out more Mexican horror, learning there was so much more truly great stuff to see, but this is the one that paved the way.

Just a quick final note on this movie. Years later, working for a publishing company, I took part in an interview with Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy about the MST3K Movie hitting theaters at that time. I asked Mike what the worst film was that they ever had to watch for their show. Mike said it was The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy. I meekly asked, "Really?" He said, yes, it was by far the worst. I was stunned.

I still like it!

Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster
There may have been two movies that no self-respecting Godzilla fan of the first series of films was likely to admit they actually liked. The first one was Revenge of Godzilla. Well. that sucked... despite Gabera. No matter how you try to rationalize it, it's awful. Now, relax and accept it. Okay, the other film was Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster.

I won't speak for others, but there are those among us Godzilla fans who love this film, as they should.

This was a film that I and some buddies tried to catch at a summer matinee showing at the Plano Theatre but it was actually sold out. It had received a huge write up in Famous Monsters. Years later I caught it on TV and thought it was awful... and of that I had no doubts, with its juvenile preaching and that damned annoying little kid.

What happened to change my mind? Well, other than taking loads of drugs and drinking way too much, I flipped it on one day and saw something amazing... I think it may have been exposure to other films with an air of surrealism about them, intended or not. Within a short period, I discovered I liked Godzilla films like Son of Godzilla, Godzilla Vs. Gigan and Godzilla Vs. Megalon... okay, maybe not the last one.

GVSM had loads of oddball elements and astonishing imagery, including a wild theme song ("Save the Earth") sung by a hottie, Hedorah (the Smog Monster) sliming into a night club and leaving behind a muck covered kitten mewing pathetically, Hedorah flying through a construction site, his acid mist turning the workers into skeletons, strange animated portions, a nihilistic hilltop rock and roll party and Godzilla on the verge of talking but still getting his gruff point across, anyway.

So sit back and watch it again. If you're lucky, you might just scare your significant other.

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism
Could a film with as lurid a title as that possibly be as gruesome as my brain imagined it could be, even showing on television.?

It was my good buddy Eric that turned me on to this one. He had a knack for seeing some truly edgy films first in our group of young monster fans... like, for example, Night of the Living Dead. He saw it before he was 12 at a theater or drive-in, meaning his parents actually took him to see it. As luck would have it, Svengoolie (a.k.a. Jerry G. Bishop) hosted the TV debut of the movie on his Screaming Yellow Theatre late night film fright program. We watched it and were scared shitless. We stayed awake and watched the second film, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, but even fantasies of gorgeous Allison Hayes' giant, swinging breasts couldn't wipe out the flavor of NOTLD... and we ended up staying up all night. That was the first time I had ever done that.

So, if Eric told me that I should see a particular scary movie, his advice carried a lot of cache. So, when he suggested Dr. Sadism, I watched...which was probably showing on Son of Svengoolie, played by Rich Koz.

Okay, it's not really scary... but it is mesmerising. The film is a period piece packed with lurid imagery telling the story of Count Frederic Regula, a nobleman who had been working on an elixir for immortality until the royal guard caught on, hammered a spiked mask to his face, and had him quartered. Christopher Lee plays the fiend and dubbed in his own voice in English for this production that was shot in German language.

Years later, his surviving henchman captures the descendants of two of his accusers who takes them to his sinister weird-ass castle. Within the film's narrative there are some startling images, like a great scene that has a carriage ride through the forest near Regula's castle, which has corpses hanging from the tree tops and various limbs protruding from around tree limbs, etc. That's one example. I don't want to give too much away, because if you haven't seen it I'd rather not wreck it for you.

For me though, it wasn't just a fun, gruesome story, but it also grabbed me the way something else inspired by horror films did. By that I mean it reminded me of what kind of film you might have if you took one of those sleazy old Eerie Publications comic magazines covers and tried to make a movie out of the bloodbath. These were bottom of the barrel magazines with a unique sleazy charm about them. You didn't mind getting caught reading Creepy or Eerie, but how on earth could you explain a typical issue of Tales of Voodoo or Witches' Tales? Check out a huge load of cover images from these sleaze gems by clicking on the Tremendous Thing Blog link in the right column on this page. Then, let the sleaze wash over you, letting it kick your sense of good taste out... Then, you'll understand The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, but that's my opinion.

Those are my top 10...which are subject to change at any time. For example, I was thinking about Dr. Sadism and...

Ah, well, all good things and all that... But, hold, (as Roy Thomas might have written for a Thor comic long after Stan and Jack were gone) you want more? That is for another day... another list for another time. I must rest, let my mind's eye scan over visions of things perhaps better left unsaid...

More Guilty Pleasures? Perhaps someday...

Confessions of a Monster Kid:10 Guilty Pleasures -- Part 2

2010-08-16T16:16:00.001-07:00

(Read Part 1 of this article by hitting the Older Post link at the bottom of this page.)

The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow
The writing was on the wall, the 50s style monster movie churned out by AIP was going to cease to exist... and it was AIP itself who sent a message to its audience of drive-in attending teenagers for those paying attention.

It's a silly film that starts with a newspaper reporter doing a story about teen hotrodding, initially very straight but gradually letting its eccentric characters take over the movie, including an elder aunt with a smart ass talking parrot, a big brain custom car building Poindexter-type and his gorgeous long legged girlfriend, and even AIP master monster creator Paul Blaisedell playing himself, wearing the last fragments of the She Creature costume. Toss in some late in the story haunted house hi jinks and you've got a movie that feels like a surf film, before Frankie and Annette, before color and before Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films broke new ground for the exploitation studio resulting in big changes in the kinds of horror movies they made.

It's the end of an era, and you know it is.

The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters
The older I get the more Ray Dennis Steckler's idea of how to make a movie makes more sense. Basically, if there was ever a script, Ray would toss it out and improvise the whole thing. In doing so, he made some truly unique films, maybe not realizing what the end results would be. Though most of the fans of his films enjoy The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies, I find myself drawn more often to The Lemon Grove Kids.

I realize now that if Steckler had been a bit more canny or had realized what he had here, he might have created something loads more people would look back at nostalgically. The film is actually made of three or four different short films, improvised, filled with Steckler friends and family and goofy Bowery Boys inspired wackiness. When I first saw it, I imagined the big potential there and that Steckler could have easily turned it into a syndicated kid program shown on local TV kid programs in 5 minute chunks, like on Chicago's Garfield Goose (which ran a serialized version of Karel Zeman's amazing Journey to the Beginning of Time). It could have been another Funny Company, and actually funny.

Ah, well, missed opportunities. Show it to your kids, and maybe they'll actually watch it.

My Bloody Valentine
There's nothing poetic about this slice and dice Canadian gore film. It is just what it is.

It tells the story of a man who went crazy in a mining town when the mine he was in caved in on Valentine's Day, and were ignored due to the big yearly holiday dance. When he finally got out, Harry (that's his name) went on a killing spree, wearing his mining outfit, gas mask and wielding a pick axe to tear out the hearts of those who didn't care.

Years later, he breaks out of the asylum and the Sheriff thinks he's headed home to stop the first Valentine Dance since Harry went crackers. Of course, much carnage follows, with a nice twist.

There's also some soap opera aspects when the Sheriff's son, who went away to California without letting anyone (including his girlfriend) know where he went. A highlight of their tormented discussion is sabotaged by the young man's thick Canadian accent. "I'm so soorrry. I'm soo dammm soorrrey."

Okay, to be fair, with the exception of this lesser acting, the rest of the film's thespians are actually pretty good. Still, we're not talking about aperformance of Hamlet here.

What stands out for me on this film is that the production level is elevated by the authentic locations used to film in, including a real operating mine. Low budget films usually had to work with Friday the 13th style campsites back then. This movie has thousands of dollars worth of sets.

Also, as this stuff goes, the killings are particularly unique and gruesome. What would a person look like left in an operating laundromat dryer. Hmmm, par boiled? I guess that I wasn't alone in liking this flick, because an unnecessary remake was made in 2009 in 3D. No, thanks, I'll stick with the original.

Next: The Last 3 Guilty Pleasures!

Confessions of a Monster Kid: 10 Guilty Pleasures Part 1

2010-08-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

When, like Edgar Allan Poe, my world and sad life crashes down upon me ...wearing someone else's clothing, drunk, squished by madly out of control coach wheels... my last thoughts may be, "Damn, I really liked The Brain Eaters." A sad demise, with even sadder thoughts? Okay, maybe getting left in the gutter is sad, but thinking of The Brain Eaters? Nay, nay, my friends... it's only one of my many guilty pleasures.

When it comes to horror or scifi films, the so-called "Guilty Pleasure" may not exist as it once did. These days, canny video manufacturers slap a "Cult Classic" sticker on any old Jess Franco film, and it's acceptable to like that film. Forget that noise... this list is for films that existed before such marketing techniques became status quo, before anything you liked could be downloaded via a torrent file.

Sadly, dear reader, there was a time when certain films were recognized by everyone as being not just a cut below, but perhaps even the worst of their kind... embarrassments agreed upon by arrogant know-it-all film pundits that no one with any taste or knowledge of film would dare champion. For a few of these I defy the critics and provide my ever so weak reasons for liking them steadfastly, in no particular order.

I ask you, is a film bad if it is also entertaining, regardless of how or why?

"Hello, my name is not Laughing Reindeer (sadly). I'm Frank."

"Hi, Frank."

"...and I love..."

The Brain Eaters
Let me tell you one of those annoying name dropping stories. In a galaxy far, far away, I was once editor of a magazine called HERO Illustrated. Every year, we were at the San Diego comic convention, hooking up with comics guys, doing interviews, writing news stories, etc. Part of the festivities was that the comic book publishers (and later, film studios) previewed stuff we at HERO had to cover. One such publisher, Big Entertainment, was debuting a line of comics created by big, non-comic industry, names... one being Leonard Nimoy. They hosted a luncheon, and Nimoy was there to say hi to us.

Afterwards we each had pictures taken of ourselves with Nimoy and spoke quickly about his comic project. He was very nice, and I was a tad bit fanboy, because, hell, here was a guy who I grew up watching on Star Trek (admit it, naysayer, you did too). Then I surprised him... I told him that of all his films, I really liked The Brain Eaters. He moaned. Then, I added, "No, really!" I quickly followed that there was a nicely crafted scene in the film that helmer Bruno VeSota had created that George Romero would have been proud of with the film's hero and his girl in an old shack, with possessed townspeople outside. I think by bringing up VeSota's name, Nimoy clicked and realized I was on the level.

As most of you know, Nimoy has a cameo part in the film's end under a phony white beard. I asked him how he got involved in the project. He said, "Ed Nelson was a friend of mine and he told me about this film he was in and asked me to play that part." We joked a bit about the film's title creatures and their furry slipper looks. I told him I had a copy on video. He was surprised, and then he surprised me. "Could you send me a copy?" Sure, I said. I made a mental note to do so... and forgot to do it.

Nevertheless, despite some bad moments, some of the night scenes are eerily effective and worthy of credit... not to mention being a pleasant memory for Leonard Nimoy.

Creation of the Humanoids
Here's a film its creators must have been dying to make, packed with ideas about the nature of life, love, artificial life, the soul and more... so packed that, for the most part, they stand around and talk about it. And then they talk about some more and more and more...

No, this isn't a Jerry Warren film (thank goodness). However, it is a virtually actionless film about the future, where post-atomic war radiation is quickly diminishing mankind's ability to procreate. Meanwhile, man's own creation, the humanoids; android slaves with agreeable personalities; are up to something that may involve blowing out man's light.

The film is acted out on minimal but colorful sets by decent actors (including Dudley Manlove still doing his Eros the alien act from Plan Nine From Outer Space). A lot happens in a short time, mostly off screen. When I watched this film as a kid, I was amazed by its nothingness. Now, I find myself amused by long close-up shots where the character is talking to someone off screen, geetting a response back without cutting away, the sound recording of which has not been mixed correctly to match the ambient sound of the shot. Did they lose some ADR dubbing cuts and those actors would not return to do them again? Perhaps that forced them to attempt to bring out the dialogue that they could barely hear on the master shot sound. Who knows, but I think it adds to its charm.

The Humanoids themselves, are nicely created with quality make-up, showing what can be done with a little money and some skill. Honestly, I think much of the body stiffness of these creatures is the result of an inability to see through their metallic contact lenses.

I also like the film's breaking-the-fourth-wall finale. I leave that to you to see for yourself what I mean.

Dracula Vs. Frankenstein Vs. Dracula Vs. Frankenstein
Okay, I'm actually talking about 2 movies here... two ineptly bad movies that defy my critical eye, leaving me awed and entertained.

The first one is director/producer Al Adamson's classic take on the two traditional old monsters, shot in the Venice area under the pier. It features a final, sad performance by Lon Chaney, Jr., channeling Lenny from Of Mice and Men... wielding an axe. Angelo Rossito, J Carrol Naish, Anthony Eisley, Jim Davis and Russ Tamblyn appear as well, providing entertaining if not acting stretches for each of them, though Angelo's rants as a barker of sorts for Naish's house of horror are appropriately crazy. The title creatures are played by Adamson stock actors or friends. In fact, his accountant (who was given the stage name of Zandor Vorkov) hams it up big time as Dracula, one of the film's charms. Oh, and Adamson's wife, Regina, well, you can't deny that cleavage.

When I was a kid reading Famous Monsters of Filmland, Forry reported on this movie, partly because he appeared in it. After Uncle Forry hyped it big time, we all had to see it... and it was bad.

Okay, so it's bad... but why do I like it? I saw it show on local TV many times through the years, and despite my mind telling me to ignore it... it grabbed my heart. It was awful and laughable. It was also melancholy (mostly due to Chaney), and just plain weird. That still doesn't explain why I like it.

How much did I like it? When it came out on video, I bought it. When it came out on laser disc, I bought it. DVD? Yep, I bought it. I had to. I'll keep buying it, too.

Why? Well, despite his moneymaking intentions, I believe Adamson made a movie that was, yes, awful, but also immensely entertaining... something a kid might have made, making it up as he went along. I wish Adamson were still among us rather than #43 of the E! channel's 50 Weirdest Showbiz Deaths. Of all of his films, though not a fan of horror movies himself, Adamson managed to create a naive goofy monster movie, something kids would enjoy. One of those Monster Kids was me.

A few years back, I stumbled upon a video for sale with the title Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, thinking it was a reissue with new box art of Adamson's film. I was wrong. It was a Paul Naschy monster - scifi film which originally had the title of Los Monstruos del Terror, which I had seen years before on a local UHF channel (WSNS, channel 44) wherein Naschy's immortal werewolf character Vladimir Daninsky is part of an evil space alien's plan (along with the Frankenstein monster, a vampire and a mummy) to take over the world. The alien mastermind is played by Michael Rennie, of The Day the Earth Stood Still Klaatu fame. He and a few of his space buddies take on the lives and forms of dead humans and soon sabotage their own plans because of the human emotions that intrude on their insidious thoughts. Heck, they never really explain how their plan works, anyway. The video print was crummy, but I loved this silly mixed up thing. I still do.

I have to admit that for myself, Paul Naschy was an acquired taste. While the subject matter appealed to me, it took awhile for me to come around to liking them. Prior to seeing Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, I thought they were awful. As it ends up, they're certainly cheap and those jarring stock footage shots of Naschy's werewolf culled from a few earlier films with the make up done in obvious different ways eventually became part of my amusement.

Oh, and Rennie's voice is terribly dubbed, which I presumed either he had passed away by the time this film was done and could not dub, his final work marred by an unfortunate vocal substitute. Or maybe he was still alive and chose not to.

Next: More Guilty Pleasures, of course!

The Real Late Show

2010-07-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

Remember the so-called good ol' days when local TV stations would show movies (with commercial breaks) into the late hours instead of reruns of sitcoms and infomercials? I've always been a person who woke up in the night and would turn on the tube and watch a film clunker or gem, get tired and fall back asleep again.

Very often this was when films that would become favorites of mine would be shown.

Here are a few...

When I first saw The Blob, it was on WGN Channel 9 in Chicago. I was familiar with what the movie was, thanks to Famous Monsters of Filmland, but when I finally saw it... well, it was better than I thought it would be with its snappy color, wacky theme song, great low budget FX and Steve McQueen... and The Blob, itself.

Hot Rods to Hell was a regular late night feature on WGN. Dana Andrews gets into a car accident on Christmas Eve and retires to run a motel in a desert town. There, he is forced into tussling with young hot rodding punks fearing that a back injury has weakened him too much. He gets the balls up at the end and just about pounds a kid's head in with a tire iron. Blisteringly bad in a boffo way. Word has it that this flick was originally shot as a TV movie, but the end product was so lurid compared to banal shows like My Three Sons, MGM tossed it out to drive-ins... but, of course, it ended up back on TV.

The Severed Arm was on the nearly forgotten WSNS Channel 44, when it was an English language channel. It's a dreary but effective 70s horror flick, heavy in late night quiet creepiness and low in budget. It's typical 70s trash with no humor (I think) and even less hope of a happy ending. It may have been the first sort of gore movie I ever saw.

Is The Vulture really all that bad? Most of the film is an entertaining little horror flick with the story of a giant vulture killing people, including a boozed up Broderick Crawford. It all has something to do with an atomic experiment and a wacky mad scientist played by Akim Tamiroff. I was a sucker for the film even though the ending was so goofy it had me laughing. Heck, I still am!

Sadly, this film is not on You Tube... but here's the movie poster.

They Came From Beyond Space was a lot like The Vulture with enough to keep you awake until the end ... and an end that was so goofy you wish you hadn't. Hey, hold on there... both films also star Robert Hutton, who starred in a lot of these marginal low budget flicks as a hero, including Invisible Invaders (a rare cowardly, unlikable role) and The Slime People. If I stumbled onto any of these films, I left 'em on.

Anybody out there still awake? Speak up, everyone! What are those late night gems you stayed up watching through bleery, bloodshot eyes? Let me hear from you!

Are there any TV stations out there still showing movies at night? Thank goodness, Svengoolie is still at it in Chicago. It would seem to me that there may be a market to put together a package of low budget junk ready to feed late night fiends like me.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Blog...

2010-06-11T02:52:00.000-07:00

There I go making all those elaborate plans and then nothing. Life catches up and makes you take notice of what a great time and full life you're having without noticing it.

1) Colette and I went to Tristan Dollinger's wedding for the Memorial Day weekend. I introduced her to lots of old friends and caught up with others, including my daughter... who's is growing up too fast, thank you! My wife says she doesn't dance, but I got her up there for a few slow dances!

2) The Avon In It to End It breast cancer marathon was beyond anything that I could have expected. My sister-in-law Chris was in it along with about 4000 other participants, walking through the city of Chicago on a gorgeous Memorial Day weekend. It was genuinely, emotionally moving. I've gotta get back in shape again, because I may take the walk next year (with Colette), despite my Parkinson's. Gotta get rid of my middle-age, chocolate created tummy.

3) In the midst of the marathon, Sunday morning I tagged along at 3 a.m. to go with my sister-in-law Patti to take her husband, Chuck, to a ComEd facility in Bellwood. The reason: the tornados that tore through the towns of Streator and Dwight earlier on Saturday night left lots of debris and all the power out. Chuck and a bunch of his other coworkers had to very quickly get some semi-truck size generators to those towns, pronto. I don't know how he woke up so fast but I knew why.

4) The Blackhawks. I've gotta admit that I had never been a big fan of hockey. Its rules defied me. Colette shed some light on them because of her soccer experience. So, for the last few months, I've been hockey crazy (easy to do when your baseball team is playing so bad... Darn those Cubs!). The final game of the Stanley Cup was a white-knuckler, particularly the 3rd period full-tilt back and forth skating. That final shot by Kane though, was one of the strangest moments I've ever experienced in watching sports. Kane knew he had made that shot into the net when he threw his gloves off on the ice and started celebrating while his teammates and the Philly Flyers looked on confused... and the refs woke up and made the final score a done deal. Today, there's a paarde in downtown Chicago to celebrate.

5) My brother calls me last week and tells me my dad is going into the hospital for an angiogram. I've had one of those from back in 2003 when I had a heart attack on New Year's Day, resulting in the one (and hopefully only) stent I have in my chest. Then, he calls me yesterday and says that Dad's gonna get a double bypass. WTF! So I go to the hospital and dad's in bed with about a million tubes in him, but he's okay and talking, joking, etc. This morning, my brother, sister and I are meeting at the hospital to get the nitty gritty on what's going to happen. He may have the operation today or they may let him go home until next week or the week following.

Whew!

To paraphrase John Lennon, life is what happens while you're making plans. The comics and editorial that you've come to expect here will return very soon (probably sooner than I thought I could do). Meanwhile, I've got a lot of life to live.

Is This Really Agents of Peril #29!!?

2010-05-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is... and that's all I'm gonna say for now.

Also, Nightmare City is back with the 7th page of the comic's first story.

As for Creepsville... well, I hate making excuses after posting what I hoped to do with this Blog, but here's the deal: I'm still coloring the page that would have gone up today. I'll post it next week. My excuse is life... working the day job, being a dad, working around the house, and hanging out with my wife. It will be done and posted here next week. After that, I'll just cross my fingers.

In fact, two weeks from today, the page will take a break, because the whole family is participating in the Avon Breast Cancer marathon walk in Chicago. Colette's sister, Chris, is in the walk. We'll be making sure she has water and food along the way.

As usual, click on the images on this page and the much larger versions will appear as if by magic before your bedazzled eyes.

See you next week on Memorial Day weekend. And as H.R. Pufnstuf said, "Keep those cards and letters comin'."

Creepsville Toy Pirates #3 and Agents of Peril #28 -- Pretty Much Says It All...

2010-05-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

Here are this week's installments of Agents of Peril & the Creepsville story "Destroy All Toy Pirates."

Rat and Percy make the break into 4 colors in Creepsville, while Frank and Dick are still out of it. On the latter point, I'll just say this for the last time, next week it's gonna get weird in AoP. For how long I cannot say, mainly because I don't want to say.

As usual, click on the images here and they will appear on your browser at the right size to read 'em. If they still look small, hold you cursor over the image and click once. Hopefully that increases the size for you.

What's that? Oh, yes, something is missing...

Nightmare City is taking a one week break due to pesky technical difficulties. It will be back, picking up where it left off.

At Last: Agents of Peril #27 -- Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Maybe a bit later than I would like it to be, but here, finally, is the 27th installment of the latest Agents of Peril comics strip.

Maybe it's appropriate that the strip be presented by itself (at least this week). What I mean is that I'm now journeying into unknown territory with the strip. This installment is the first of the newly wrought installments in an attempt to finish a story that has waited over a decade to get done. (I've made a habit out of doing this... for example, the movie Carnivore I worked on took over 10 years.)

I have to admit that given my Parkinson's condition, I feared that I would no longer be able to draw the sort of detail-obsessed, ink crazy type of work I loved doing years ago... and still do. What do you think?

After this story, there will be more. I'm looking forward to it!

Click on the image above to see the larger scan as it should be seen. I've noticed that my browser tries to shrink the image to fit the window. If you're having that issue, click on the image once and it should grow to full-size.

Oh, and have a great Mother's Day!

Creepsville "Toy Pirates" #2... and Where the Heck is Agents of Peril?

2010-05-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday and time for this week's strips: Creepsville, Nightmare City and Agents of Peril... Hold on, where's Agents of Peril?

Ahem... there will be slight delay in this week's AoP update due to minor technical difficulties. Hopefully, later today, this week's strip will be posted. In fact, I'm holding it in my hand... there are Frank and Dick on the moon and that weird alien spacecraft... oops, best keep my yap shut and let you see for yourself later this weekend.

Meanwhile, the second page of the full-color Creepsville story, "Destroy All Toy Pirates" is here... including cameos by a few characters you'll see more of in the future.

In addition, I have page 6 of Nightmare City, featuring Dick Protozoa.

As always, click on the small images on this page to see the larger, correct-size versions.

Also, have a great Mother's Day. Thank your mom for bringing you into this world and being there when this world knocked you down. Give your mom a hug and help her around the house. I'm sure that she has hundreds of flowers to be planted.

What's that, Colette? My wife says thousands. She's a Mom, too. I had best get my work clothes on.

Blathering Self-Indulgence -- The 1st Anniversary of the Laughing Reindeer

2010-05-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Just out of curiosity, I went back this last weekend to see when my first blog entry happened here at Laughing Reindeer World Headquarters, learning (much to my surprise) that it was one year ago today. At that time, I very quietley signed up to Blogspot and posted a nothing bit of smoke about the new site.

In the year that was, I wrote articles devoted to the Mexican Aztec Mummy movies and my favorite 70s TV horror films, brought back my Agents of Peril online strip, relaunched Creepsville (in color) this last weekend, talked monsters in my irregular Confessions of a Monster Kid columns, started teasing about something called Secret Project #1 (still working on it), actually got my wife to read a few things here and there on the blog, wrote about the creative motivation of real-life close brushes with death, corresponded with new and old friends and had general good monster-oriented fun, despite the unusual title for the Blog.

Here's to year 2 and beyond... I can hardly wait to see what happens.

Creepsville Is Here! Plus Agents of Peril #26 & Nightmare City

2010-05-01T05:16:00.000-07:00

The Saturday morning line-up of comics here at Laughing Reindeer World Headquarters has just increased. As promised, this week starts what I hope will be a long run of my original Creepsville comic strip.

I have to add that this week is actually the first page of a story originally published as a back-up in the first issue of the second Trollords comic series (ooh, I'm getting dizzy). The story was originally printed in black and white. Starting today and serialized here each week will be that story... but this time in color.

As I was looking at this story, it occured to me that maybe a few of you have no idea what a "Toy Pirate" is. Back in the day (and I suppose there are still some who do this), the action figure toy market was infested with a number of dealers who specialized in high-desire collectible toys, specifically those hard to find chase figures... or short supply figures in cases delivered. Initially, the chase figure might be the toy the company thought might be the least desirable of the line, very often female characters because action figures were considered boy toys. Later, seeing the chase phenomenon evolve into madness, the toy companies might release a short figure deliberately to induce insanity among the toy collectors who just had to have that Punch-Himself -in-the-Head Lex Luthor. Serving this market were Toy Pirates, who did things like buy toys out the back door of large toy chains only to sell them at much higher prices via mail order or toy and comic conventions. They found that some desperate completists (an all too common disease of comic book collectors) would pay the big bucks just so they could show they had Malebolgia.

Now, I'm sure some of you are just thinking, "What in hell is he talking about?" Before you dismiss this outright, Toy Pirate wheeling and dealing had such an effect on the big biz of toys that even the Wall Street Journal looked at the phenomenon in a front page story. In fact, it was that WSJ story that prompted and inspired me to do this draw the story at that time.

Okay, now that I've let the Creepsville genie out of its bottle, what am I gonna do? Well, once I get done posting this story, I will start putting up page-by-page something you Creepsville fans have never seen (with the exception of a teaser piece of art I posted here last year), a complete issue of the original series that was never published with the intriguing title of "Dangerous Spooky Theatre." If that sounds familiar to some of you, go back to some of my previous blogs here and check out the Johnny Ruckus/Monster Patrol story I posted here last year.

Running at about 40 pages, it is the longest story I have ever done in the series. When that finally starts here, I'll provide my usual background info and liner notes on the creation of the comic.

Okay, let us not forget that this week also sees the latest installment of the Agents of Peril online comic strip. I've mentioned in the past that the story is going to get very weird (as if it wasn't already) in the weeks ahead. Even as I worked on the all-new upcoming pages (for the first time in years on this strip), I wondered if I had gone too far.... Hmmm... Nah!

Last but not least, here's this week's latest page from Nightmare City featuring AoP's own Dick Protozoa.

As usual, click on the artwork here and check out the much larger, easier to read and more satisfying scans for fans of insane inking textures that you've come to expect here.

After you've done that, have a great weekend, which carries you through to a great week, great month, great year, great life... and a new era of world peace and stability. Noble Peace Prize administrators should now consider me nominated.

Agents of Peril #25 - Way, Way Out There ... Plus Nightmare City Page 4

2010-04-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning again, which means this week's installment of Agents of Peril... which finds our creepy crimefighters going where no cop has gone before.

As has been the case here at the Laughing Reindeer, this week also sees the 4th page of the Nightmare City comic, featuring an early version of Dick Protozoa before he teamed up with Agent Frank.

Click on either of the scanned images here to see them at their appropriate large size.

Meanwhile, coming next week: Creepsville in color! Yep, I said it. Be there, aloha!

Saturday Cartoons - Agents of Peril # 24 & Nightmare City Page 2

2010-04-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

The weekend is here, which means that we all have to get to work on our weekend projects...

Oh, it also means the latest installment of Agents of Peril as well as the next page of Nightmare City featuring Dick Protozoa. As usual, click on the images to see the full-size scans.

But, wait, there's more: I mentioned last time that I would be offering 2 new Agents of Peril shirt designs. The first one is an image taken from this week's strip. The second is an image of everyone's favorite Fed, Agent Frankenstein. Click on the link below each shirt design you like, and you will be taken to a page on Cafe Press where you can buy them if you like.

Agents of Peril - Fear in the Woods

Agents of Peril - Agent Frankenstein

In the meantime, have a great weekend and mow the lawn, willya!?

This Week's New Comics: Agents of Peril 23 - Cripes! -- Nightmare City

2010-04-10T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here are this week's new comics: the 23rd installment of the first Agents of Peril story and the 2nd page of Nightmare City. Click on each graphic to see the preferable large scan that makes it all readable.

Also, next week I will be offering up 2 new Agents of Peril shirts via Cafe Press. More on them next Saturday.

Have a great week... and hold someone you love, and let 'em know you do!

Agents of Peril #22 - Shoosh! -- Plus Dick Protozoa In Nightmare City

2010-04-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here is this week's Agents of Peril comic strip.

As always, click on the small image above to see the strip at a larger, easy-to-read see-all-the-stippling size.

Also, starting this week, I'm going to go back to an Agents of Peril prequel, of sorts.

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you a one-off gag strip featuring Dick Protozoa, but this week the story is more complex than the gag strip. I've also mentioned that the character of Joe, from an earlier installment of Agents of Peril, wasn't just a throwaway character. He was Dick's partner in a comic that I had been working on called Nightmare City.

Nightmare City was created before Creepsville and was a Dragnet-style take off packed with monsters crawling about the city at night. The most obvious Dragnet connection is the narration on the splash page and Joe's name, Joe Monday. In my own way, I was also trying to draw Joe to look like Dragnet creator and star, Jack Webb. Okay, maybe not the most innovative idea, but I was looking to draw a series that was packed with monsters and loads of dark shadows.

The first piece though, was a cover with a familiar creature (particularly if you're from West Virginia) menacing our heroes. There is no story wherein that happens... at least not until Agents of Peril, years later (I never outright dump an idea or character... Agents of Peril and Creepsville are "Green" comic strips, because I never waste an idea and, instead, recycle. Okay, kidding.).

Anyway, the contents of what was going to be Nightmare City #1 were two stories. The first, which I will post here for the first time, a page a week starting next week, was completed. The second story was never finished, and I'm not sure if I want to attempt to do it so many years later. Regarding what that second story is, I'll discuss it in more detail when the time to post it comes up.

As is the case with the Agents of Peril strip, click on the images below to see the larger versions. And before anyone asks, the cover piece was done totally by hand... not a dot of Zip-a-tone was used. Yes, I am that anal.

So, check out the comics. Oh, and have a great holiday weekend!

Agents of Peril #21 - Catfish -- Plus Before Creepsville... Crazy Larry #1

2010-03-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

Here's this week's installment of the Agents of Peril online comic strip which find Frank and Dick stumbling onto something unusual... Click on the image above to see the larger artwork rather than the small not meant to be read piece.

After that, take a look below, if you dare, at an oddity from the past that ties in directly with my Creepsville comic books series short years afterward.

I've mentioned previously here that the character of Joe in Agents of Peril online strip was not just a throwaway character but was actually a part of Dick Protozoa's comic book past. Regarding that, in the near future I'll show exactly what I meant by that.

Such was also the case of a few of the prominent characters in Creepsville. This last week, my daughter, Molly, told me that a friend of hers having read that comic series, liked Rugface. I've had a number of people tell me they like him despite his odd name and even stranger face... or maybe because of that. Rugface is a bizarre character but his first appearance was not in Creepsville. That happened in my mini-comic Crazy Larry #1. That comic also introduced Ruggie's girlfriend, Zelda, and the title character, Larry, who would become a part of the Creepsville cast as one of Specs Malone's best friends.

Regarding the comic, Larry is crazy only because I said he was. He's kind of a jerk, too. In fact, I have to admit that I think the comic has a slightly misogynistic air about it I don't care for, which is gone by issue 2 (thank goodness).

Looking at the art, I think I must have inked the whole thing with a #3 tip technical ink pen or a Flair pen. It's kind of sloppy, but I present it here just for its connection to Creepsville, which will be returning eventually to this Blog as well as on my back-up-and-being-updated Roadside Horrors website.

Once again, click on the pages to see them in their full-tilt ugly size. I promise that issues 2 & 3 (coming here soon) are a bit more like the Creepsville comic book that was to come.

Jason and the Argonauts - The Rest of the Story

2010-03-27T02:19:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not going all Paul Harvey all over for you. I'm posting the rest of the Dell Comics adaptation of the classic Ray Harryhausen action-fantasy film, Jason and the Argonauts.

Later today, the latest Agents of Peril online comic strip.

Agents of Peril #20 - Krahh!!! + Dick Protozoa Solo Shenanigans

2010-03-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here's this week's soaked-in-alien-blood installment of Agents of Peril. Click on the small image above to see the whole violent tableau in full-size.

In addition, yesterday I was looking through a pile of photocopied artwork and found some pre-Agents of Peril comics featuring Dick Protozoa, without Frank. If you thought Dick's old partner, Joe, was just a throwaway blown up alien character, you would be incorrect. Keep an eye out for seperate postings and info on a comic project I called "Nightmare City."

For now though, howzabout a Dick Protozoa one-pager? Click on the image below to see the larger version of this throwaway gag page. You may need to print it out for the gag to work... or prepare to read upside down.

Dare I say more Dick Protozoa to come? Oops, I just did.

Confessions of a Monster Kid – Ray Harryhausen

2010-03-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

With the coming release of a CG remake of Ray Harryhausen’s last film, Clash of the Titans, I thought I’d focus on the great man’s works, which I and many of you other Monster Kids grew up watching.

As a boy reading Famous Monsters magazine, one person’s name that kept recurring in regards to some of my favorite films was Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen’s films were class acts, loaded with imagination, fun, action and cool monsters. In FM, I read about how he worked alone, creating some of the coolest creatures brought to seeming life on film, one frame at a time. But before I had ever heard his name or knew what he had done, I was a fan.

As I mentioned here previously, my mother watched scary movies all the time (still does). She was never worried that I may become traumatized… and, with one exception, I never was while watching them. (The exception was George Pal’s War of the Worlds… which I’ll get around to writing about someday.) So, I caught a lot of monster flicks very young, remembering only small bits of having done so.

I didn’t know what stop-motion animation was, but there was something about those films using the technique that hit me just right... weird, smooth movement and actually character despite their rubbery origins. I noticed the style when I was a wee lad on such things as Karel Zemen’s amazing Journey to the Beginning of Time (which was serialized in 5 minute chunks on the Chicago kid show Garfield Goose) and the very loud Black Scorpion, created by Willis O’Brien.

Not even knowing who had done the effects, Harryhausen’s films were rubber heads and metal armature shoulders over all others, even the man who trained him. (Sorry, gang, while I recognize O’Brien’s genius, Harryhausen took the technique into greater heights than O’Brien was ever allowed to… but that’s my opinion.)

As far as Harryhausen was concerned, I strongly recall small but memorable bits I caught on the tube that I never forgot as I got older, seeking them out. I remember watching the giant octopus, from It Came From Beneath the Sea, wrapped around the Golden Gate bridge, stretching out a tentacle beyond reason, squishing some of the locals in San Francisco. Cool but also creepy.

Another film was 20 Million Miles to Earth, featuring one of Harryhausen’s greatest creature creations, the reptilian Ymir from Venus, right up there (or pretty close) to Kong in the pathos department. The scene I remembered as a kid was when the Ymir is almost cornered in a barn. I remembered the creature’s screams. Boy, did it ever scream a lot.

Only short years later, another of Harryhausen’s films became the one I must have seen more than any other. It was Mysterious Island. The film was a regular part of WGN-TV Channel 9’s Family Classics movie library on Sunday afternoons (provided there was no Cubs game). Because the film was shown on that program, it was almost more like a legit movie because of its classic book origins, rather than just a monster movie. The odd thing was that in the period of watching the film, I had read (probably in FM) that there was a giant chicken in the story, besides the giant crab, bees and octopus. To fit its 2 hour slot, with commercials, that chicken was cut out. Strangely, later in the film, the characters mention a mystery gunshot killing the bird… “Bird? What bird?”

I also recall one Saturday night going to visit my Aunt Irene and Uncle Roy in Aurora. We got there just in time for me to catch a portion of an unusual film they were watching. The scene I walked in on showed a giant merman holding some shakey rock walls from crushing a ship attempting to pass through. I remember seeing most of the rest of the film, with the great skeleton sword fight at the end. Of course, the film was Jason and the Argonauts, which is probably my favorite Harryhausen film of all. While I was college years later, I finally got to see the film on the big screen in a theatrical re-release.

As I grew older, I saw more of Harryhausen’s work on the WLS-TV Channel 7’s afternoon film, in its 90 minute slot. The film, which I quickly came to love, was Mighty Joe Young, animated by Willis O’Brien with his protégé, Harryhausen. I loved the ending when Joe rescues some kids from a burning orphanage. I dug it when the monster made the transition from misunderstood monster to lovable lug. The film was usually shown as part of the station’s theme weeks, in particular Gorilla Week. The other films which were almost always shown were King Kong (O’Brien at his best… it blew everything else away), Son of Kong (a little too cute for my tastes), King Kong Vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes.

I remember one Friday night out of many, when two of my buddies, Eric and Fish, came over for what was an impromptu stop-motion film fest. At 10:30pm, CBS’s late night movie slot ran The Valley of Gwangi. This is Ray's western dinosaur movie, which is loads of fun.

Then, a half hour past the end of that film, one of the local channels ran Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers. Earth is, of course, totally unique in Harryhausen's body of work, creating the flying saucers very effectively. It's loads of fun, particularly the attack on Washington at the end... including the Washington monument falling on a crowd a la the giant octopus' tentacle.

After that, we had to wait over an hour for Willis O’Brien’s The Giant Behemoth. I have to note here that this took place in the days before VCRs or cable TV, so alternatives to watch what was on TV were, well… none. We attempted to stay conscious for an hour of Soul Train. I always thought the girls were hot on that show, but I barely stayed awake for Behemoth. In fact, I don’t think I made it all the way through that film, anyway…

Right around that time, my interests were diversifying, besides the wonders of the female gender I had also become obsessed with comic books… but I remained a monster kid, err… teenager. One day, I was over at Fish’s house and he showed me a comic he had just bought. It was an issue of Marvel Comics short-lived scifi anthology comic series, Unknown Worlds. He bought the first part of a two-part story that were also the last issues of the 4-color comic. The story was an adaptation of the upcoming Harryhausen film, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

Immediately I was determined to see the movie. Soon afterwards, I saw that it was coming to the Plano Theatre. I had to see it, but having no drivers license I had no way to get to a theatre 2 towns away. In addition, my parents were indifferent and couldn’t grasp why I was so excited about this Sinbad movie.

I had to see it, but how? Well, back in the early 70s, there was still an attitude about long hair. I had long, crazy hair that was like Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees. Don’t get me wrong, I get along with my stepfather as an adult, but when I was a headstrong kid, I could be a real pain in the ass. Meanwhile, my stepdad hated long hair and was always trying to get to me to cut it.

And in a moment of weakness, fearing I might not ever see Golden Voyage, I set aside my righteous Billy Jack attitude and told “The Man” that I would cut my hair to see the movie. He was stunned and agreed. I got the worst haircut I had ever had in my life (no kidding at all there, really) and I saw the movie. It was better than I hoped. I loved the monsters and, of course, Caroline Munro. My Dad liked Caroline, too.

My crazy hair soon grew back… but I had seen Golden Voyage in a theatre. It was worth it.

I just noticed that I didn't mention The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. For reasons that could mean that Chicago TV didn't show it very often, I rarely saw it, and when I did I came in after it had started. Without a doubt, the Cyclops was one of the greatest monsters brought to life by Harryhausen, not to mention the swordfight with the skeleton... before he kicked that idea up a few more notches for Jason and the Argonauts. Of course, I did finally see the whole thing and liked it quite a lot.

Speaking of Jason, here are the first 10 pages of the DEll comic book adaptation (don't worry, I'll show the rest of the book soon enough...).

Agents Of Peril #19 - Lights.

2010-03-13T04:49:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's latest installment of my Agents of Peril online comic strip. Collect 'em all!

As usual, my advice is that you click on the image above to see the full size piece. Otherwise, you miss all that ink I used.

Creepsville Esoterica - Print Background

2010-03-07T03:04:00.000-08:00

Back in the days when I was able to publish a print version of Creepsville, I created pieces of art that you may have seen but never realized you had.

What I mean is that I created spot illustrations, background images and character model sheets to fill empty space if needed.

For example, the piece before you now was what I called a background piece. I used this image, literally, as a background image behind the table of contents of the second Creepsville series, which I published under my Laughing Reindeer imprint. As published, I added a gray layer over the whole piece to make the text boxes jump out.

This is the first time I've just presented the artwork as a stand alone piece. One thing I do know is that you probably don't know who a lot of these characters are. The reason for that is that they were coming in future stories (I had a lot planned, to say the least).

As usual, click on the image above to see a much larger version.

Agents of Peril #18 - ...Limbs!

2010-03-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry about last week's no show for the Agents, but we were doing some rearranging here in the house. I wasn't sure if I would even be able to get to the scanner to get some Agents prepped. I usually like to scan four strips at a time, keeping them on my computer. When I run out, I scan the next 4. Oh, and though it is crucial to what I'm doing here... I hate scanning, because it is so boring.

Like I said 2 weeks ago, the strip is going to get even weirder. I hope you enjoy the ride as we get closer to the bottom dropping out (did I say that?).

Click on the small image above to see the larger image that can be thoroughly enjoyed in all of its gorey glory.

Confessions of a Monster Kid – Rescuing Famous Monsters #80

2010-03-01T18:14:00.000-08:00

Famous Monsters not only thrilled me as a kid, but it also made me do something I never thought I would ever do – more brave, more foolish or more crazy an act I had never done before that day. No, I didn’t shoplift one… not quite. Hear me out, this is not a confession of a crime but the story of a rescue and a young man who wouldn’t allow an injustice to happen.

Look upon it if you dare: Famous Monsters of Filmland #80. Obviously, Beneath the Planet of the Apes was the cover story, and was I ever excited to see it. I loved seeing Planet of the Apes at the Plano Theatre… one of the first movies I ever saw in a theatre with cussing in it: “Damn them all to hell!”... or “Take your stinking paws off me, you Damned dirty ape.” I loved the over the top action… and Nova was pretty easy on the eyes, too.

Within the pages, there was also an article about the Al Adamson film to come, Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, before it had been given that name. I have to admit that I wasn’t impressed by what I saw. I thought the Frankenstein Monster was pretty awful. Years later, I finally saw it. It was awful. I loved it!

There was also an article on the Return of Chandu serial, starring Bela Lugosi. It didn’t impress me… no monsters (he said rolling his eyes).

Unfortunately, that’s all I can remember of what’s inside (thanks to the cover blurbs). It’s ironic, really, but let me explain why…

When this issue came out, I was in 6th grade and my buddies and I were monster crazy. We watched Creature Features every Saturday night at 10:30 pm. Throughout the week, we discussed monsters and drew monsters in our school tablets.

We also first started seeing ads for something called Screaming Yellow Theatre on WFLD channel 32 in Chicago, Friday night at 10:30 pm. I wanted to stay up and watch it, but I thought it might affect my ability to watch Creature Features. I imagined I would be given a choice, one or the other but not both. I decided Creature Features was what I wanted. A couple of years later, I finally caught SYT… and well, I’ll get to that in a later Confession.

Anyway, back to FM #80…

My 6th grade teacher was a guy named Mr. Cook. Mr. Cook was one of the few male teachers in the P.H. Miller Grade School in Plano. He was an easy going guy but not in particular very warm. He quietly would laugh when we did something amusing. I remember the time the boys and girls were split up to watch some basis Sex Education films, he laughed out loud at the animated explanation on how the penis worked.

Mr. Cook also never had a problem with us bringing comics or monster magazines to work. He probably was thrilled that we would talk quietly among ourselves rather than being loud and annoying.

So, thinking nothing of it, I brought my just purchased Famous Monsters #80 to school to show to my buddies. As luck would have it, Mr. Cook was out ill for the day and we had a substitute teacher in his place. I don’t remember her name, but I wasn’t concerned about her. Suns don’t rock the boat. That morning my friends were passing around my FM when this sub came up. She wanted to know what we were looking at. We showed her… and she took it… and she wouldn’t give it back. She said the classroom was no place for something like that. I remember telling her that Mr. Cook let us bring it in, and she told us something like, “I’ll talk to him later about it.”

Then, she took it and opened a drawer in Mr. Cook’s desk and dropped it in there and closed it. It might as well have been in the cave of the 40 thieves. I was damned angry, too.

Now, I have to explain that I was one of the kids who was just a good kid. I got good grades. I didn’t fight. I played baseball. I watched monster movies.

I was mad as hell.

Even in 6th grade we had recess. An idea formed in my little head. I took a lot of stuff out of my desk and put on top, cluttering my desk. The morning recess bell rang and everybody got up to go outside. The sub wanted us doing so in an orderly manner. I delayed, taking my time putting away my stuff. She ignored me and went with the kids out onto the playground.

My heart was beating. Should I really do this?

I waited until everyone was gone, and in the quiet classroom, I stealthily went to the desk and opened the drawer… that drawer. I found my magazine quickly and grabbed it. I took it to my desk and stuffed it into a spiral bound notebook. I shoved that into my desk and quickly ran out of the room and onto the playground.

All day I worried after that. What if she checked in the drawer? What if she was planning on giving it back? What if I got caught?

At the end of the day, I grabbed the notebook and got the hell out of that school, pronto!

I was free, holding my notebook to my chest. I had done something I never imagined I could or would ever do. Fortune favors the bold.

Ironically, a year or two later, my parents got divorced. In the midst of the madness of moving out with my mom, my sister, and my brother, I lost some of my Famous Monsters magazines, including my trophy, #80. I never got that issue back again, years later when I was buying back issues. It was as if I was never really meant to keep it.

Down For a Couple of Days, Maybe...

2010-02-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry about this, but because we're rearranging a couple of rooms in the house, including the office I'm in now, I may not be able to update the Blog this weekend. If I can though, I certainly will. That means Agents of Peril as well as a new Confessions of a Monster Kid. Check back, and thanks for your patience.

Confessions of a Monster Kid – Ghost of Frankenstein, Creature Features & Famous Monsters of Filmland #67

2010-02-22T16:55:00.001-08:00

If you hadn’t already guessed it, I was (and am) a monster kid. I grew up in the Chicago area on a steady diet of monster movies, horror and sci-fi TV shows, monster model kits, and monster magazines.

I should note here that it was really my mother’s doing… Mom was a fairly young parent back when I was a kiddie and she cultivated my appetite for monsters. She liked scary movies and was often watching them. Of course, as a result, I was very likely to encounter these frightening phantoms on the tube, sooner rather than later.

Way, way back when I was about 3 or 4 years old (yes, I do remember things from that time), I awoke and went into the living room where she was watching TV. She was watching Ghost of Frankenstein. She let me sit and watch it with her for a bit. I was scared by the monster (played by Lon Chaney, Jr.). My mother took swift action. No, she didn’t say, “Oh, that’s just a guy in a costume. It’s fake.” Instead, she made sure the fantasy was left intact by saying, “The reason he is so angry is that everyone is so mean to him.” Very quickly, a scene in the film took place where Lon Chaney sees some bullies picking on a little girl, throwing her ball on a roof top. Lon scares the boys away and picks up the girl. Instead of throwing her into a pond somewhere, he takes the girl up to the roof and gets her ball.

“See,” Mom said. “He’s actually really nice and likes kids.” This was something I understood. From that point on I started to understand these deformed or misshapen creatures for what my mind had determined were simply misunderstood beings.

This being the 60s, monsters were everywhere… especially on TV, courtesy of programs like The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Lost In Space, and other great genre programs. My enthusiasm really started to take form at the furthest tail end of the monster boom in 1970 when WGN-TV Channel 9 in Chicago launched their Saturday night (at 10:30pm) horror movie program: Creature Features. Week after week, the program initially showed classic Universal horror films, often with double features. My parents would only allow me to stay up for the first film, but that was okay. I slowly began to learn the pantheon of the monsters one-by-one.

All my friends were watching it, too. Mondays often had a lot of talk about the latest monster movie we saw. While the movies were creepy, the truly scariest part of the show was the program’s opening. It started with a loud screech of a coffin opening coupled with a slo-mo shot of a bat flapping its wings (culled from Dracula), followed by Ray Mancini’s theme to Experiment In Terror playing over a slickly edited (for its time) opening featuring the Universal monsters. There were quick cuts, some in slow motion and even one shot played backwards that had Bela Lugosi as Dracula moving back behind a tree. There was no horror host, per se, but a drawing of Lon Chaney’s vampire in London After Midnight would be superimposed on the screen along with the CF logo. WGN-TV newsman Marty McNeeley (or announcer Carl Greyson) provided a whispering voice enhanced with an echo, reading a poem, as follows:

“Gruesome ghouls and grisly ghosts,
Wretched souls and cursed hosts,
Vampires bite and villains creep,
Demons scream and shadows sleep..
Blood runs cold in every man,
Fog rolls in and coffins slam,
Mortals quake and full moon rise,
Creatures haunt and terrorize..."

After that, he gave a short intro to the film, usually with minor puns. During commercial breaks, I seem to recall that the host would speak over a title card, but I’m not totally sure on that point. Apparently, WGN lost this opening in the years since, because the only version I see of it these days is a fan re-creation that is pretty good but unfortunately not the real deal.

– []

Though the monster craze may have withering elsewhere, it was strong in the greater Chicago area, thanks to Creature Features and WFLD’s Screaming Yellow Theatre (where Svengoolie was born… which is a story to focus on in the future). Ignoring the passing of a national fad, I watched the monster movies faithfully while keeping an eye out for all things scary. Then something amazing popped up. It was Famous Monsters of Filmland. I was at the Colonial Drug Store looking for the usual comic book super hero fix when I stumbled on Famous Monsters #67. “What is this odd thing?” I grabbed it fast before it could vanish and looked through it, finally seeing the familiar Universal monster faces that I knew from week after week of Creature Features viewing. This other stuff on the cover about “witches and witchcraft” didn’t really grab me, but this magazine was about MONSTERS. I bought it, ran home, read it from cover to cover again and again. Each time, I stopped on the usual back issue selling page, where I was stunned by how long this mag had been around… and wondering why I had never seen it before… and wanting every single back issue. Maybe the drugstore didn’t carry it before, or it got hidden on the large magazine rack the store had, or maybe I had found some 80 page giant-size comics that I just had to have. I do also recall Vampirella #1 was there, too, but I decided it was too weird for me and left it. Anyway, my allowance at that time was only 50 cents a week.

Thereafter, I haunted the magazine rack, too, grabbed an FM whenever I saw a new issue. Not only did the magazine talk about these great movies I caught on Creature Features, it also showed there were many, many more I had never seen.

For example, there was Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, which I saw pictures from in FM… and that great cover from #42. I went monster gaga when an ad in TV Guide proclaimed that the film would be on this coming Saturday night. This was as exciting as catching the summer matinee screening of King Kong Vs. Godzilla at the Plano Theatre. Who could win this battle? I liked Frankenstein, but the Wolfman was my favorite monster. We all know what happened… that damned dam.

Anyway, let’s look at FM #67. Though it was published after what I consider the true Golden Age of Famous Monsters’ publishing history in the 60s (and 100-page issues), it still is a pretty slick package at 64 pages.

A lion’s share of the contents was appropriately devilish witchcraft films as it says on the cover. Interesting, but at 9 to 10 years old, all I really wanted was monsters. The article on the German silent film, The Golem, did the job and showed me a “new” monster. My favorite article of the issue was about film sets of the Universal classics… which had photos of those sets, often with a monster planted firmly in its midst.

There was also a Filmbook of The Black Cat, one of the darkest films ever created by Universal. I do have to admit that even though I knew who Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were, I had absolutely no interest in it… no monsters here. I had to get older to grasp what was going on to enjoy its dark depths.

I really dug the You Axed For It section, with page after page of monster pix.

Oh, and I was mesmerized by the Captain Company pages in the back with all of its various monster stuff for sale, including (gulp) 8mm films. I could actually own my favorite films and watch them any time I wanted to… though I never bought a single one directly through Warren’s Captain Company.

All combined, this unusual issue got me hooked. The joy I had buying it, lasted for years. Though I would eventually leave it behind me while I pursued girls, parties and whatnot, I kept my old tattered issues.

As a kid, though, I took it very seriously, actually saving up my nickels, dimes and pennies to do what I had never done before: I subscribed to FM… but that’s also a story for another day.

Okay, as you can see, I posted a number of pages from this issue here. Click on them to see the larger versions. Or you can actually download the whole issue by right clicking http://www.roadsidehorrors.com/dst/fm67.cbr. It is in compressed rar format, but the tag says cbr to make it readable through the CDisplay program (which can be downloaded through Download.com). CDisplay will allow you to take the whole document and read it clearly, page by page on your computer. It can still be opened up using Winrar, too.

I must note that the images from Creature Features in this blog article came from an incredible website devoted to the program. Check it out for an amazing amount of info, graphics, video and audio by clicking http://wgncreaturefeatures.tvheaven.com/cfmainmenu.html. You’ll be glad you did!

Coming Soon: More Confessions of a Monster Kid!!!

Agents of Peril #17 - Itching...

2010-02-20T05:26:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's Agents of Peril comic strip. Hang onto your seat, kiddies, it's going to get bumpy, messy and even stranger from here on. "Well, I warned you."

As always, click on the small, unreadable art above to see the clearly visible full size artwork.

Agents of Peril #16 - Tree

2010-02-13T07:26:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's latest Agents of Peril comic strip installment. As usual, don't wreck your eyes trying to read that small graphic above. Click on it and see the much larger, intended to be read version.

Have a great Valentines Day and week to follow! Oh, and the Monster Patrol is returning very soon.

Agents of Peril #15 - Him Faw Down, Go Boom!

2010-02-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's latest Agents of Peril comic strip. As always, click on the image to see the much larger, clearer version. (I hope no one out there is attempting to read the small images on the page!)

In addition, rather than stay mum on things I am working on, I'm making a commitment to getting more material up on my blog in the near future. Coming very soon will be a never before seen, full color Monster Patrol story. I'll give you the details of the creation of the story at that time, though I will mention it is an origin story of the individual team members. I will run it in weekly doses like Agents of Peril but I won't post them on the weekend to clash with Agents' usual slot. I'm thinking of Thursday nights. Any input would be appreciated.

In addition to that, this last weekend my wife, the kids and I worked on the basement, particular two backrooms... one of which has been piled high with boxes of my stuff. By stuff, I mean lots of comics art. Among the objects found there were 3 pages of Chris Ecker's Knight Watchman comic that he asked me to ink (I can now honestly say that the pencils were so beautiful that I was damned scared to ink them), 3 more variations of the Agents of Peril opening splash page (I probably won't show those), a "lost" Creepsville story published in the back pages of Trollords (I'm coloring it now), a single page of art from the never published Christmas issue of Creepsville that I thought was long lost (which means I hope that I finally have the whole story intact and let you all see it), and lots more. In the weeks (or years) ahead, I'll be posting a lot of this material.

Nevertheless, just to whet your appetite, here's a look at the upcoming Monster Patrol origin story splash page in glorious black and white.

Agents of Peril #14 - Foosh!

2010-01-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's installment of my online comic strip, Agents of Peril.

Sorry I was late this week, but we've been hard at work in our basement, primarily digging through box after box of my stuff (some of which hasn't been seen in nearly 8 years). There has been some material we found that I'm really pleased with. They'll be popping up here sooner rather than later. (Shout out to Chris Ecker: I am honing in on something we corresponded on!)

As usual, click on the image above to see the full size scan.

Agents of Peril Strip #13 - ZZZZZ!!!

2010-01-24T03:54:00.000-08:00

Even though I posted the article on 70s TV horror films yesterday, I didn't forget this weekend's Agents of Peril strip.

As always, click on the image to see the larger, much clearer version.

Kolchak's Back: More TV Movie Terrors

2010-01-23T02:49:00.000-08:00

Last month, in the midst of a headcold, I woke in the night and dragged myself to my computer to impulsively write about what I called the Golden Age of made for TV horror films, the 70s. Even as I posted my take on a handful of some truly scary movies, others started popping up in my head that I thought were also worthy of attention.

In the days before cable or satellite TV, the 3 major TV networks, ABC, CBS and NBC still showed movies as part of their broadcast schedules. Initially, these were films previously released theatrically. There must have been a demand in general for films, because each of the networks started producing their own relatively low budget movies, often featuring then popular stars known more for their TV series work, including Robert Culp, William Shatner, Andy Griffith, etc. At times, these flicks (even a few here) were actually pilots to possible TV series (Charlie's Angels was one). The films were often bare bones, b-movie productions (in the original sense of that designation) relying on suspense and rudimentary atmosphere to carry the story rather than special effects. Also like the B's, each film actually had pretty short running times of about 70-80 minutes minus commercials.

As a young monster movie fan, I was excited that original horror, suspense and even science fiction films would pop up in these TV movie slots, sating an appetite for such material between issues of Famous Monsters or the weekend's regular monster movie programs. In Chicago, that included Creature Features (almost always classic Universal horror films) and Screaming Yellow Theatre (the cheapest of the cheap films, hosted by Jerry G Bishop as the original Svengoolie), and Channel 7 WLS doing a regular prime time Saturday movie program, featuring mostly Hammer films, which bucked the ABC network programs on that night.

Rather than simply update my original blog column, I determined without saying so that eventually I would get around to talking about this subject again. My criteria at that time remains the same: I must have seen the film when first shown so I could provide my impressons of these low budget productions upon a very young mind. There are some worth getting attention that I didn't see until I was an adult, thus the extremely creepy Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and the laughable Killdozer as examples which are not in my list.

So, without further adieu and in no particular order, here are more of my faves:

The Dead Don't Die (1975)
George Hamilton starred in the homage to the b-movie horror films of the 30s and 40s, set in that era. It has been ages since I saw this film, but it featured a mystery, which Hamilton's character is trying to resolve in the underworld of crime and the supernatural. The absolute best part of this film which remains strongly etched in my mind was disfigured character actor Reggie Nalder, playing an extremely creepy zombie, definitely someone you didn't want to see in the night... which is what played on my youthful brain later that evening in bed.

The Norliss Tapes (1973)
Even then, I had a feeling that this film was a pilot for a TV series... which, of course, I wanted to see happen. Roy Thinnes plays the title character, who is investigating the mysterious return of a woman's dead husband as a savage, blue-skinned, yellow eyed zombie. This was a take no prisoners, fast moving zombie with a plan... including a sculpture of Sargoth, sculpted in clay mixed with blood, which comes to life. Dan Curtis served up the Carl Kolchak (if he was on tranquilizers) riff, which wasn't at all lost on me. Unfortunately, no series was to come.

The Night Strangler (1973)
Darren McGavin was back as Carl Kolchak, this time on the trail of a killer living in the Seattle underground (the first time I had ever heard of it). Though this film was more strongly tinged with humor than the original Night Stalker, it still had me on the edge of my seat as the mysterious strangler hunts for his victims, which serve in extending his unnatural long life. Once again, Carl goes into the killer's lair all alone (again!)... only to find a refined, intelligent killer played by Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man TV series) who's willing to talk even as he attempts to manuever himself into a position in which he can easily kill Kolchak. Crazed killers I could deal with, but urbane, educated deathdealers was relatively new to me. I know I hoped for more Kolchak movies after this, little realizing a TV series would be the eventual, wonderful result.

Ghost of Flight 401 (1978)
The 70s were also a time of a dubious films devoted to the paranormal, mostly in a exploitative manner (particular Sun Classic's films, including the classic Legend of Boggy Creek). This one stands out in my mind as being pretty darned creepy, because it was supposed to be true. It told the story of an ill-fated airline flight 401 that crashed in the Everglades, killing 103 people. Later, parts of the aircraft were taken and used on other aircraft... and that's when it got strange. People started seeing an unusual passenger on their flights, particularly the pilot of the craft, who died. Ernest Borgnine played the stone-faced, monotoned ghost, warning the flight crews of possible death. Okay, he was a good ghost, but, damn, he was creepy. I think I'll get off here and take the bus...

The UFO Incident (1975)
Here's a definite classic TV film featuring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons as a couple abducted by alien beings on a dark road at night. Based on the true story of Barney and Betty Hill, all the emotional bases are hit by the accomplished actors... and the alien stuff they recall is downright creepy. This is the first film to feature alien abductions and the outright fear and horror that an abductee might feel. At that time, my family lived in a house in the country removed from the safety of having neighbors close by. I don't know if I believe in that stuff these days, but I can't deny that back then I went to bed thinking of what might come calling in the night... and probably got very little sleep.

Night Gallery (1969)
Okay, okay... it's from the late 60s. I don't care. The Twilight Zone was a regular part of my TV viewing as a kid, even though it scared the hell out of me quite a few times. I remember watching this pilot film and really only the first part with Roddy McDowall as a rotten creep who killed for family inheritance money. With quick cut away and back shots, this EC Comics type story effectively ends with revenge crawling right out of the grave... as depicted in a painting of a cemetery on the wall, which changes from cut to cut showing Roddy's late victim coming back to get revenge. When the later Night Gallery TV series came on, I was so creeped by the opening title's music and distorted human faces that I could barely watch it... regardless of a lack of true scares in the stories.

The Demon Murder Case (1983)
Okay, okay, I'm really pushing it here, with a film produced much later than the Golden Age. The reason I'm doing so is just because it scared the heck out of me and is one of the few on this list or the previous one that still catches me off guard truly creeping me out big time. Basically, it's the so-called true story of a kid who's accused of murder who claims he is being told to do so by a demon. This is where it gets really creepy, gang. The kid describes the demon as looking like a kid who has been horribly burned, his skin blackened like an overdone hot dog on a grill. If my memory serves me right, the demon wears a hat and a t-shirt. In one scene, the kid is asked if he can see the demon. He points away and says he's over there, smiling. The one damned thing I never want to see is that friggin' demon sitting there all crispy, smiling at me. I haven't seen this film in awhile, so it may be awful... but it scared the shit out of me, and to this day, still does. [I start muttering the Lord's Prayer.]

Okay, you've read my take on these films. I left some faves off (Snowbeast from 1977... lots of fun but not an iota of scary). What are your faves? Am I out of line with my opinions? What films got you all creeped out? Let me know.

The Space Giants Preview - The Monster Times Collectors' Issue #1, 1973

2010-01-18T17:48:00.000-08:00

Not to step on my buddy, the Shonen King aka Roy's toes... but I was looking through some old Monster Times issues and stumbled upon a fun little article that previewed a then upcoming, syndicated TV series called The Space Giants.

I really love this series, though I have to admit that my initial reaction was underwhelming. I saw bits and pieces of it when it debuted in Chicago on Channel 44 in the afternoon, along with Ultraman and Johnny Socko and his Giant Robo. I was familiar with the latter two series but I had never seen Goldar and company. I thought Rodak was kind of cartoonish and the robot family stuff was childish.

I held on to this opinion until one day when I was talking about these shows to my buddy, Fish, whose opinion on pop culture (like Marvel Comics) I respected. I brought up The Space Giants and Fish sat up and said how cool it was, noting its contiuing storylines. Well, I started watching it, and very soon afterwards, I found myself a fan (for life, so far... at least until 2012).

So, here's a two-page preview that appeared in the one-shot tabloid sized, newsprint Monster Times Collectors Issue #1, that was primarily devoted to Star Trek, but had articles on other great SF TV series, like UFO... maybe I'll post that, too... and the original Outer Limits. Within the article, there are some minor errors or material that would have been altered along the way to bringing Magma Taishi to North American TV screens. I leave it to Roy to write about the details when he eventually covers the series in Black Sun. Click on the pages to see the larger versions.

Agents of Peril #12 - Ambush!

2010-01-16T05:16:00.000-08:00

Here's the 12th installment of the Agents of Peril online comic strip. As always, click on the image to see a much larger and easier to read and see version of the artwork.

Meanwhile, coming soon (in serialized digital comic strip form): The Monster Patrol origin story and an unpublished Creepsville epic adventure, "Dangerous Spooky Theatre." Hmmm, why does that sound familiar?

Agents of Peril Strip #11

2010-01-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

Here's this week's installment of the Agents of Peril strip.

Click on the image to see the larger version.

Enjoy!

Another Way To Read Monster Patrol

2010-01-09T18:14:00.000-08:00

Much earlier today, I posted the story of Johnny Ruckus teaming up with the Monster Patrol. Here on The Laughing Reindeer, we must abide by the rules of Google, which are fine by me and incredibly generous. However, I knew that eventually some of my plans for the site must be done offsite due to space considerations.

What I'm getting at here is after having provided a story I created for Big Bang Comics for the first time in full-color story posted page by page this morning... that same story is now online in one trim package to be read like a comic book. Basically, I bound the whole story together using .Rar, but instead of the file saying .rar, it says .cbr. That tag will allow you to use a nifty freeware program in the Internet called CDisplay, which works with PCs, but not Mac OS (sorry Mac users... I'll keep my eyes open for one for you, too.).

The great thing about CDisplay is that you can read my story just like reading a comic (okay, maybe not in a bathroom). This program can be found myriad places, including Download.com or go ahead and Google for it. Once you download and install, it's easy to set it up so that you can read my comic story (and others available online). As an FYI, in the future, as my stories finish up, I will also provide these "bound" versions online to download... gratis.

I'll have more details for you later, but these stories (and more) will be available (at least until 2012, when the world comes to an end) on my Roadside Horrors website (http://www.roadsidehorrors.com/).

I'm currently extensively updating that creepy travel website, but the new section I envision will be accessible from the home page. Don't get me wrong, I'll still continue to debut my comics work here on Blogspot.

For the moment, you can download the Monster Patrol team-up story by right clicking this link Right Here, and save the 4M document to your desktop. Once you get CDisplay, you can read it, too. [Please note that it still is a .rar file and can be opened via that program the usual way.]

Coming next: the latest Agents of Peril strip... and perhaps more.

Are You Ready For Monster Patrol?

2010-01-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned about a million times that I'm the midst of working on quite a few projects these days, one of which involved a seemingly one-off appearance by an oddball team of creatures called Monster Patrol.

The Monster Patrol was conceived by me years ago after the first Creepsville series went to temporary rest in cancelation land. For those few of you who never saw it, Creepsville was my homage to cheesy, low budget horror films... particularly the rubber suit monster types. Monster Patrol went one step further in my manic desire to draw monsters, this time having them as the central characters in the comic.

I had a goofy idea. Suppose you took a handful of those great old monsters drawn by Jack Kirby for Marvel in the late 50s - early 60s and I made them the good guys... fighting crime. I thought of the fun of drawing a story with a huge monster tip toeing through city streets chasing bad guys. I started designing them, getting an idea of what types of creatures would make up this group.

The breakdown was a 4 creature team led by a scientist named Dr. Malone along with a robot woman named Martha. If you noticed that Dr. Malone shares the same surname as the family in Creepsville, there's a reason for that... which will be revealed sooner or later.

Without giving too much away, the monsters are Dr. Bigfoot, Neptus (a sea monster), Kona (a living statue of the Easter Island variety) and Xarkorr (a giant space invader). I set to work creating an origin story of this team when along came Chris Ecker.

Chris Ecker was one of my co-workers at the late HERO Illustrated magazine, but I already knew him from years of working in the comics retail biz... I owned a comic store and Chris was working at Moondogs. When I got the gig of editor at HERO, one of the best moves that Sendai Publications ever did was to hire Chris. At that time, Chris was also one of the creators (with Gary Carlson) and creative forces on a comic published by Image, called Big Bang Comics. Big Bang spun stories told in retro style, for example the Knight Watchman drawn in an uncanny Dick Sprang style of the great, old Batman comics. It says Tom King drew it, but I've gotta give Chris his credit for drawing some gorgeous work. Somehow or other, Chris gave me the greenlight to do a homage to those great old Brave and the Bold DC team-up comics of the 60s that would appear in a future Big Bang.

I created a 9 page story (including a fake cover) for a series called The Free and the Brave. Rather than doing a Batman riff, I used an oddball character I had laying around called Johnny Ruckus; a co-creation with a very talented guy named Ron Murphy of Tor Love Betty fame (published by Fantagraphics under their Eros Comics imprint). A future blog will cover Johnny more in depth, but basically he was a take on the 60s Captain Action toy line. I think of him as sort of a boy scout-like Superman with no powers.

Even though I had been working on the Monster Patrol origin story, here was an opportunity to debut the team. I decided to not to tell how they came to be, but drop in hints from the bigger story in a seeming one-shot comic story. This was just the established team, operating more like DC Comics' Metal Men than anything King Kirby created. Published in Big Bang Comics #16, the story also teased at the end that the Patrol would be back next year... which didn't happen.

I get the feeling that a lot of people weren't sure what to make of the story. It was deliberately humorous in style, whereas most of the Big Bang comics were played straight. One review of the story flattered me greatly saying something like the comic was "more Kurtzman than Kirby." That reviewer really seemed to like it, though the cover of that issue doesn't even hint at the story inside.

Let's jump way ahead to today. What you have here is that story presented for the first time in full color. Though it's intended to be a part of a larger project (Secret Project #2), I decided some time ago to reprint the whole story right here. Click on the images below to see the larger versions.

I hope you enjoy it. I had a lot of fun drawing it way back when and more fun now coloring it. Oh, and click on the images to see the larger versions.

Oh, and I promise that this time, there is more Monster Patrol fun ahead. I am hard at work coloring the Patrol's origin story and will be posting it here... one page at a time, sort of like my Agents of Peril strip.

Enjoy the story, and as Neptus says, "GROWWF!"

Agents of Peril Strip #10

2010-01-02T12:54:00.000-08:00

This week's update is the 10th part of the Agents of Peril story.

In addition, I created an official Agents of Peril shirt design, which is available on Cafe Press. I used this piece of art to create 2 different designs. There's a full color version and another in light green. The links for the 2 shirts are below:

Agents of Peril Full-Color Version

Agents of Peril Green Version

As usual, click on either pieces of art above to see the larger versions.

This Week's Agents of Peril Strip

2009-12-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

I took a little break this last week because of Christmas to devote my time to family. Now, the good day has gone by again, family has returned to their various homes, the cookies are gone, and it's snowing outside like nobody's business.

It's also time to get back up on the comic making horse and ride this beast... which I'm excited about, because that's what this Blog is (mostly) all about.

Oh, and for this coming week, I hope to have something else to show for my work these last few months... in defiance of the delay causing -- frustration creating, now over virus war.

But that's for later, here's this week's Agents of Peril. As always, click on the image to see the larger version.

Remembering Made For TV Terror

2009-12-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just because I have a cold and couldn't sleep, but my headcold addled brain kicked in making me think of, dare I say it, the Golden Age of TV movies.

What's that I'm talking about? Way back when, I was a kid trying to watch anything that was remotely horror or terror, at times these TV network produced Movie of the Week flicks filled in the need for scares until the usual weekend monster flicks... in my case, in Chicago, that was Creature Features and Screaming Yellow Theatre (as well as the Saturday-Sunday channel 32 afternoon Sci-Fi slots, usually home to AIP flicks and their kin). This was in the days when everybody had less than 10 TV channels and the video tape recorder was something we couldn't even imagine.

It was, at least in the 70s, when network television realized they could churn out their own movies... which were definitely low budget and reminiscent of B movies in the 40s. The makers of these films seemed to do wonders with their meagre budgets, creating inventine and, at times, compelling and damned scary fare. The big thing, though, was due to the limited channels we had, just about everyone caught The Night Stalker, for example.

Now, I know I'm gonna miss some, probably some of your favorites, only because I'm talking about what I actually saw then, not later. Here are some of my faves in no particular order:

The Night Stalker (1972)
I was 11 or 12 when this hit our TV screens. You've all seen it , but maybe aren't aware what a groundbreaker this film was. I had seen vampire movies before, particularly the Universal stuff and some Hammer films, but this gritty vampire movie set in the underbelly of Las Vegas struck a cord. For years it was one of the highest rated TV movies ever... and it scared the heck out of me. In particular the ending wherein Kolchak (Darren McGavin, perfectly cast) goes into the vampire's house (alone! WTF!!!), bumping around, making noise... and then the blood sucker gets home. Is there anything more creepy than Barry Atwater's growling, inhuman vampire? Not on that night there wasn't.

Duel (1971)
Scary and still exciting after all these years. Back then, my youthful brain was trying to understand what bug was up the truck driver's ass. Dennis Weaver was great as a guy caught up in a deadly cat and mouse game with a monster truck (it was a monster, after all) and he was the mouse. Is it a happy ending when the film's lead goes coocoo, laughing in the desert dust?

Trilogy of Terror (1975)
I have very little memory at all of the first two stories in this film... but we all remember that crazy ass wooden doll (the Zuni Fetish) running around screaming his gobbledygook, chasing Karen Black with a steak knife. I had a hard time going to sleep after this one, my friends.

Moon of the Wolf (1972)
After a few of those TV movies that had a twist ending wherein the supernatural death dealer was actually just some crazy human killer, this flick had my young brain on edge. Squinty-eyed, seemingly digestive plagued, David Janssen, ends up being on the track of a real Lawrence Talbot-like werewolf. This film also deals out some anti-readneck angst, so popular in its era.

Gargoyles (1972)

Okay, maybe they spent some money on this one, with the budget going to make all those nifty gargoyle costumes. Cornel Wilde and his daughter are writing a book on the paranormal when he is drawn to a desert town (the desert is a strong factor in a lot of these movies) with some ding dang gargoyles hiding in the caves outside of town. Bernie Casey played the gargoyle leader, but Vic Perrin provided the dubbed in voice. Still a great, fun monster movie... though not as scary as it was when I was a kid. I dug this movie so much when I first saw it that I ripped off the gargoyle leader design and drew comics about him.

A Cold Night's Death (1972)

Nevermind the Beatles-inspired title... This flick is an almost forgotten gem that scared the shit out of me. Scientists Robert Culp and Eli Wallach are working on a project that involves using monkeys in a distant snow bound arctic base (and I lived in the midst of snow bound countryside outside of Chicago). Strange stuff starts happening and you begin to wonder if one of them has gone crazy killer nuts. The answer is provided in a single scary as shit final shot of a window on a door. Lemme tell you, kiddies, I had a very tough time going to sleep after this one. Damn, it still creeps me out!!! I only saw it one time, though. Anyone got this on video? [SPOILER ALERT: The video clip below does show the end of the film]

That's my off the top of my head, awake in the middle of the night list. Let me see yours.

Making Christmas: And Now For Something Completely Different...

2009-12-14T04:12:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the opportunity to do a piece of artwork for my church's weekly bulletin pertaining to the season's Advent ceremonies (covering Joy, Hope, Love, Peace and the Birth of Christ). Before doing it, my mother-in-law, Ula, and sister-in-law, Chris, had mentioned Where's Waldo (as in find him or, in this case, the five aspects). So, I went... Where's Waldo... even including Waldo. If you're a Chicago area person, there's at least one gag that you might catch that others won't (I just thought of one that I wish I had used with Chelvaston the duck).

Anyway, I thought I'd post it here, too. What do you think, sirs?

Creepsville & Aztec Mummy T-Shirts

2009-12-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

It's the holiday season and... you know that means some kind of plug. Okay, but this year you can give something that may well completely confuse someone you love. At the very least, they might say, "Where on Earth did you get that?!"

So, I'm serving up 3 swell shirt images to wear proudly: 2 different Creepsville designs and... dare I say it... yes, I'll say it... the Aztec Mummy. These shirts (and other stuff) are being offered through Cafe Press, which I've seen good work done with my stuff previously.

Click on the images here to see the larger versions. If you're interested in buying them, click on any of these links below.

Creepsville

I'm From Creepsville

The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy

Meanwhile, I'm interested in getting some feedback. The Laughing Reindeer is primarily a focus point for my creativety, but I also believe in the idea of "Find something you really like doing and then find a way to make a living doing it." Honestly, I don't think just selling t-shirts will do that, and I'm actually having some fun regardless.

Fear not, this page is not a catalog, but from time to time I will be serving up some other shirt ideas (among other things) I've been thinking about and put together.

"New" Agents of Peril Strips Begin!

2009-12-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

I'm finally back after the battle of the computer viruses.

I'm also glad to say that with this posting I've caught up and surpassed where I was with my Agents of Peril rescans. This posting has the 7th installment rescan, which is the last of the replacement scans of the old low-res strips I had already posted here.

This posting also picks up where I left off with a new scan of the 8th installment, previously and only seen in a tiny scan years ago. Click on the images to see the larger versions.

Glad to be back, and I hope you enjoy them!

Are We Still Here...? War Is Over!!!

2009-12-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

It took all day for it to finally happen. I took my antiquated custom created harddrive out into the cold, cold day. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating... it was actually nice and sunny but still a bit brisk. Anyway, forget the battles, it looks like the war has been won. Roy Ware (his excellent Black Sun Blogsite is linked in the right column) called me up and ordered me to bring my 'puter over and he'd take a stab at getting rid of pesky viruses.

I won't bore you will the details, but it worked! Okay, I'll bore you. We ran the machine through a number of anti-virus/anti-malware programs which took the whole day, because at first there were plenty. Soon enough though, there were none. No more virus problem. I was actually able to get back on my Blog again.

The war is over (crossing my fingers big time). A big thanks goes out to my buddy, Roy (Thanks to Don Simmons also, for his great information). Gotta get back to work!!!

The War Goes On

2009-11-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

This whole month has been particularly frustrating because I've been battling and losing a war with computer viruses. The latest wound to my computer has been an inability to get on the Internet at all. So, I guess I'll just have take it in and have it worked on... which drives me even more crazy! I'm in a particularly creative mood and I'm getting lots of stuff done. Okay, the computer issue has nothing to do with my creating artwork, but there's things I want you to see. I have no idea how long it will take to get fixed, but it's better than wanting to take a hammer to my hard drive.

Let me be honest here... my friend Roy Ware (creator of the Black Sun Blog) has offered to post my stuff for me, which I will most likely do. It's just the loss of convenience that's taken out. I miss the ability to write and post anytime of the day or night.

Meanwhile, I've been working away at my Roadside Horrors website... but am currently unable to update it, too. RH is fun but also lots of work. I do a lot of research, part of which involves using the Internet. Also, my brother and a buddy of his did a video piece for the site, the first of which I hope will be many (as well as some of my own creation).

Boy, am I being a whiney baby or what? Maybe I am. Oh, well... back to work on that Creepsville stuff or Monster Patrol or Secret Project #1 or... The battle continues, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna lose the war!

Agents of Peril: The Rescans Continue

2009-11-19T06:24:00.000-08:00

Here are two more rescans of the Agents of Peril online comic that are much larger and much more clear than the original scans I had posted. These are numbered 5 and 6. Click on the images to see the larger versions.

I’ve also gone back and taken out all those inferior scans I had posted previously. If the Blog entry had material that I felt was important, meaning in the text, I left that up but noted that the art has been taken down.

Very soon now, I will be posting artwork that many of you haven’t seen… starting with #8. Hope you enjoy them!

Laughing Reindeer At War Update

2009-11-19T06:17:00.000-08:00

I’m still dealing with virus problems, I guess. It seemed like everytime I thought it was over with, I connected to something and my Avast program kicked in with a siren and a voice telling me something like, “Warning! Warning! Avast has detected a Virus!” More often than not, it was a pain-in-the-arse, friggen Trojan virus that I can’t seem to beat, no matter what anti-virus, anti-malware programs I try. This virus has beaten Search and Destroy and Malwarebytes programs, either stopping them from operating at all or just evading their system scans.

But all of a sudden today, I was able to reconnect to Blogger. Is it possible? Will it work? It seems so. I hope so!!!

So, this also gives me a chance to give a shout out to one of my best buddies in the world: Roy Ware. If my virus issues start again, Roy’s going to help me post my stuff. If you haven’t seen Roy’s Black Sun site, check it out via the link in the right column of this page.

In fact, check out Roy’s story on his son Christian’s encounter with Toho film legend Kenji Sahara. It’s a story that any Monster Kid will dig… and you might even get a little misty-eyed.

Laughing Reindeer At War

2009-11-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

I knew it was coming, but what a pain in the arse. My computer is fighting a losing battle with viruses. As a result, I'll be down for a bit taking care of this momentary problem.

On a positive note, this time will be used in getting ahead offline on the Secret Projects (all 1012 of them... just kidding, make that 1009), Agents of Peril, scans of stuff you may have never seen, and more.

I'll be back!

Happy Halloweenland From Creepsville

2009-10-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Halloween, I've decide to repost the entire 5th issue of my Creepsville comic book series.

A few years back I had a website called Monster Shindig.com. The site featured articles, comics (including the Creepsville and Agents of Peril online strips), and Roadside Horrors, my spooky online travel guide. One Halloween I got ambitious, scanned Creepsville #5 and post it online... wherein Rat Malone released creatures from an otherdimensional world called Halloweenland into his home town. I had a great time drawing it.

"Halloweenland" was the last story published in the 5 issue run of the Creepsville GoGo Comics run. There are two more issues drawn: a Christmas story that takes a loving jab at the classic The Thing From Another World and the previously mentioned "Dangerous Spooky Theater" story. Both stories will eventually see the light of day... in color.

Okay, never mind my hot air. Read the comic! (click on the image to see the larger version.) Have a great, safe and Happy Halloween.

Agents of Peril 4: Rescan

2009-10-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

Here, again, is the fourth Agents of Peril strip, rescanned at a size that allows the artwork to shine. I'm thinking I may remove the posts that had the original, much smaller scans. What do you think?

Regarding my other projects... some time back I showed you all a colored version of the Johnny Ruckus/Monster Patrol comic story from Big Bang Comics. I'm just about done with that. When I do finish, I will be posting the entire full color version here. I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Meanwhile, Secret Project #1 is making large strides. I've been doing lots of inking... and the pages are begging to be colored. All will be revealed soon. Thanks for your patience!

I have to add again that I'm having the most fun I've had in a long time doing comics! The more I do, the faster I seem to be getting.. without a loss of quality.

My biggest fear in the years of my creative "break" had to do with the fact that I have Parkinson's Desease, something I've mentioned before. I feared that my anal craziness in inking, particularly evident on my Agents of Peril work, would no longer be possible. Self doubt is a terrible thing, but my urge to draw plus encouragement by my wife and family made me pick up the brush and pen again. It was a shakey start (literally) but I learned that I really had nothing to fear. I also learned that when I get down to drawing, the shaking stops (not that I shake all that much, really). Even if there's no cure, I'm beating the desease.

Having said that, I wish I could show you all that I've been doing. Of course, I will.

Agents of Peril Rescans 2 & 3

2009-10-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

In the midst of all this Aztec-Mummy-Roadside-Horrors stuff I've been posting of late, I haven't forgotten my comics work.

I'm still working hard on the various Secret Projects (numbering about 27 of them... just kidding). I can hardly wait to let 'em loose, but wait I must until I have enough done to breath a little easier... or so I hope.

Meanwhile, here's two more of the larger scans of Agents of Peril that show so much dinky ink details on them that I've just gotta have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder... or I'm just really anal. retentive.

I hope you like them!

Coming Sooner Than I Thought - Pull Over For Some Roadside Horrors

2009-10-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the Roadside Horrors section of my old Monster Shindig website earlier today, and then something unusual happened...

It's coming back faster than I expected.

Here's what's up: My brother, Dave, and I were on a long roadtrip this last weekend to help our our folks at their retirement farm in Kentucky. On the way there, we got to talking about Roadside Horrors. Okay, RH was my online travel guide to weird and spooky spots across the USA and Canada, packed with links and, perhaps more importantly, maps to get to these spots. My bro thought it was pretty cool and strongly encouraged me to bring it back with an offer I couldn't refuse.

Based on the website traffic logs I was getting at that time, that section was the most popular part of the Monster Shindig website. It came to an unfortunate temporary end due to my health issues a few years back. But it's coming back. And when it does, I'll post the new URL. In a short amount of time, pages will reappear. Initially, the pages will seem like they're the old ones from before, but I've already done weeks of rewrites, link checking, some slight redesigning and more.

I'm also hoping to get back previous contributors. (Are you up for telling your story of the asylum, Greg?)

Having said that, my plans are to expand the format slightly. This is something I wanted to do before the site fell... something focusing on the readers' own true-life spooky stories. Do you have a really creepy, true story to tell that happened to you? Tell me about it, and it will become a part of RH.

I'm even toying with doing some original (non-fiction) comics for the site.

I hope you enjoy the Roadside Horrors relaunch as much as I think I'll have doing it, again.

And, no, I haven't forgotten Secret Projects 1 & 2 (and 3?). I've been working hard on those as well. To say the least, I'm having a great time!

Just in time for Halloween... Cool.

Kangaroos Invade Illinois - It Really Happened (Or Did It?)

2009-10-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

This month is the 35th anniversary of a notably bizarre, if not particularly spooky phenomenon that happened near where I live.

Just for the fun of it, and it being Halloween season, I thought I’d drop this little paranormal tidbit in just for the heck of it. The story turns up again and again on the internet, mainly because of Loren Coleman’s books on cryptozoology and unusual phenomenon, my fave being Mysterious America. This bit was from my late website’s Roadside Horrors section (by far the site’s most popular feature at that time). Roadside Horrors was devoted to telling about and providing directions to paranormal or oddball locations in the US and Canada.

RH, which I’m also working on updating, will be back in the near future (but not for Halloween this year). Here’s what I wrote:

Mystery Kangaroos of Illinois

Plano, IL

October-November of 1974 saw a truly peculiar series of sightings taking place simultaneously from inner city Chicago on out to the far west small town of Plano, IL. On October 18, Chicago police officers encountered an angry kangaroo. Cornered in an alley with a fence in the back, the out of place beast hissed at police officers attempting to subdue it. The animal took flight, easily hopping over the fence and disappearing physically though remaining a part of Chicago’s weird lore.

In subsequent days, the kangaroo, or others of its ilk, popped up around the city and in the suburb of Oak Park.

Finally, in November, a kangaroo was sighted by a local police officer heading home late on a country road outside of Plano, IL. The animal hopped off into the dark woods. In days following, a group of teenagers claimed to have seen it, though the beast(s) turned up simultaneously in Chicago.

By November 6, the kangaroo flap moved over to Indiana, though Plano remained in a strange spotlight with locals trying to figure out what sort of animal it was if it wasn't a kangaroo. I lived in the area at the time and still remember the brouhaha over all this. The local radio station, WSPY, was talking about it all the time, putting forth their opinions (mostly hallucinations) and generally making fun of it.

Creepsville, The Aztec Mummy, and the Comic That Almost Was

2009-10-03T05:15:00.000-07:00

While digging through the tombs downstairs last week, looking for my Agents of Peril original artwork, I stumbled upon some interesting artifacts. Appropriately, there were some interesting items related to the Aztec Mummy and Creepsville. Therein lies a story of sorts.

Years ago, Greg Hyland (creator of the great Lethargic Lad comic strip) and I came up with a scheme. We both had an odd affection for a series of ultra low budget horror films made in Mexico about Popoca, the Aztec Mummy. If you haven't seen them... and you have an affection for atmospheric, creeky old black and white horror with some interesting dubbing... they're representative of how much fun Mexi-horror can be. Anyway, the plan was that Greg would have Popoca dragging his crumbly behind through a series of adventures in Lethargic Lad searching for his stolen gold breastplate. Eventually, his adventure there ran its course and at some point, Popoca would appear in the Creepsville strip continuing his search. We actually did this in our individual strips, with my Creepsville portions running for a short time on my now defunct Monster Shindig website.

Creepsville, for those who don't know my stuff that well, was my loving tribute to those great, old, low budget monster movies of the 50s and 60s, featuring the Malone family living in the titular town where all those monster movies really happened. I have a confession to make. For a period of time there, I was tired of drawing the comic, thinking I had run out of ideas, which in turn prompted me to create other comics like Agents of Peril and Monster Patrol. I simply stopped working on the online strip, and that was that.

It's weird how you can turn your back on something and then it comes back and kicks you in the butt. Creepsville did that to me. Years later, I was contemplating taking the Monster Shindig website editorial and doing a print edition one-shot, featuring articles and some comics. An idea popped into my head of doing a few pages of Creepsville, just for fun... and wait a minute... what about that Aztec Mummy story... and, hey, there's an idea that I hadn't thought of... what if Popoca fell in love with Betty Malone... I've gotta draw this. I penciled an 8 page story like that. I have to admit that the inking has gone very slowly, mainly because at the time I was struggling with a number of health issues. It's in the vaults, and I have it... and I'm planning on eventually posting the story here.

In the meantime, I thought I would not only post the old Creepsville strips with Popoca but also some pencil roughs I did for one Monster Shindig cover concept featuring the story. It's actually one of my favorite pieces, because rather than taking a shot at the typical cringing helpless heroine images of this era, my characters are just having fun. All of a sudden, I feel very Footloose.

And if you like the Aztec Mummy, there's more... aw, never mind. You'll see...

PS. After looking at the strips again, I have to mention that I was also doing parodies of Mexican wrestler movies and, in particular, a film called Ship of Monsters. The latter was never dubbed into English and is a monster, sci fi, comedy, western musical. Really!!! Check it out!!!

Agents of Peril: Done Right!

2009-09-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

I finally located my original artwork for my unfinished online comic strip: Agents of Peril. In doing so, I also found a bonus of sorts.

One thing I hadn't mentioned when I started reposting these strips from my old website was that my original intention was to do it as a regular sized comic book. I had finished a few pages when the Internet option came to me, which prompted me to take most of the artwork and literally cut it up and repaste together to fit a square format that seemed to fit my computer screen at that time.

Still, I couldn't cut up the splash page I had drawn, so I redrew it, adding some additional text and dialogue. So, to pave the way to the beginning of my posting the rescans, I'm also including the splash page here with the first strip for you to compare.

As for the future, I will keep rescanning until the artwork is gone, and, yes, I will get back to work to finally finish this story after all these years. Hope you enjoy them.

Oh... and 31 days to Halloween!

Agents of Peril 7... and Rumblings of Halloween

2009-09-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

(I have removed the image due to inferior quality.)

This week, I was digging around in the vaults downstairs looking for the original artwork for Agents of Peril (among other things), realizing quickly that my previous attempts to organize myself had failed. Still, I found some very interesting things that I'll share with you in the near future. [Here's a blatant hint: The FUPOS Agents... for those who knew me when I had hair.] The really good stuff is still down there even deeper. I'll get up the guts to push aside the iron maiden and that dusty old rack... hopefully today... and wrest that artwork from that mummy's grasp down there.

Meanwhile, work continues on my two Mystery Projects. I want to make sure I have enough done in advance before I start posting material here. The reasoning, of course, is that even if I take a break, it doesn't seem like I had.

I also have to mention that one of those things that happens when you're being creative all the time, happened to me. Yet another new idea jumped up and grabbed me. I won't let it cause me to stray, but... nope, must stay focused! I'm not sure if the world is ready for a Secret Project #3 (or me, for that matter).

Oh, and Halloween is coming quickly. I finally accepted that this pagan celebration is my fave "holiday," with Christmas a close second. I just love trying to create a spooky atmosphere. I already have some stuff waiting in anticipation of that. My initial idea was to post something Halloweenish every day of October, artwork or ephemera, but that won't happen. I want to stay on track with the new stuff while serving up tasty treats from the past. Still, October looks very promising on a number of different fronts.

Agents of Peril 5 & Conversations at Night

2009-09-12T05:36:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd post a couple of things this week...

(The Agents of Peril art has been removed due to inferior quality. It has or will be replaced by a much better scan of the artwork.)

First of all, here's the fifth installment of my Agents of Peril online strip. With this strip, the story finally kicks in while also introducing one of my oddest creations: Dick Protozoa, the one-celled detective. Honestly, the reason the leads of this strip; Dick and Agent Frankenstein; are even there is because I liked drawing them. They were also lots of fun to write. It's an old cliche, but still true, that they would very often write themselves. More correctly, when I'm creating comics, I'm also role-playing to a certain extent, providing each of my characters with life... of a sort.

Let me add that I wasn't using any Zip-A-Tone or computer to texture Dick's clothes. That was good, old fashioned stippling (incessantly tapping my technical ink pen to get a texture and/or shade). I'm still a sucker for this technique because of the organic quality it provides... though I have to admit that I must have been a lot more patient when I drew this than how I am today.

After that, I've put up a little one-shot strip, which appeared in slightly different form than when I posted it on my old website. Rather than build the page layout with HTML, I put it all on a single jpeg graphic this time. The influence here may be underground comics or slice-of-life stuff that was prevalent after Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. There's some slight foul language and adult themes.

The character in the start and end of the strip was something I kept coming back to. He's another fun-to-draw type and I eventually used him in the second Creepsville comic book series, issue #2, as a creepy, unspeaking peeping tom called Doctor Nothing.

One More... Wait, Make That Two More Teaser Images

2009-09-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

Still hard at work on my comic projects... despite some completely exhausting situations resulting from my "Day Job." I find that doing some comics work when I get home from a long day is just perfect for relieving stress.

I have to admit that I like giving glimpses of what's happening... particularly from what I've been calling Secret Project #1. Honestly, the images I've shown are being used but are totally misleading. That's all I can really say right now.

In addition, I think this will be the last of the teases before I have something really solid to show you.

Good luck trying to figure out how these two images relate to each other. They do, though. I should also add that I am aware that the artwork on Foxy's is unbalanced, squiggley, whatever. That was done on purpose.

In the meantime, have a great and safe Labor Day weekend.

It's Late, and I'm Feeling Lucky!

2009-08-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a very creative day. I accomplished quite a bit, getting another page colored from the Johnny Ruckus/Monster Patrol team-up story that was published all those years ago in Big Bang Comics.

Meanwhile, that Secret Project #1 I keep teasing about gets better and better. I'm working on it like a fiend.. like back in the days when I was doing Creepsville. I don't know if anyone will like it, of course, but it's going to be my most personal piece. Having said that, it's not about me.

As the days go by and my 50th birthday looming (Sheesh! How the heck did that happen?!!), my thoughts go in myriad directions. Still, one thing keeps coming back to me.

A couple of years ago, a brick flew off a construction truck and shot through my car windshield while I was driving and only just missed my head by less than a foot. I was driving with a huge hole where the glass once was, the interior of my car totally covered with tiny shards of glass (yet, as luck would have it, none went into my eyes or mouth). I could taste the dirt on the brick as if flew through.

I drove by a police officer, and he waved me to follow him. At the police station, I was shaking (I have Parkinson's and shake anyway). The officers were trying to get me to relax, giving me water, asking what they could do for me. The officer who had me follow went through my car and found the brick, sitting in the backmost area of the car (I was driving a Toyota station wagon at the time). All he could say was, "Man, you must have had an angel watching over you." I could have easily freaked out, but I kept a thought in my head that rather than being almost killed I was very much alive.

The thing I'm getting to here is that that moment of intensity served to pick me up off the metaphorical ground of self-pity I had been going through due to illness and other things. It kicked me in the ass. It was like God saying, "What in hell are you doing? I gave you these skills. Get to work, because the next time you might get that brick between your eyes."

That's when I finally let the bad things that had happened to me in my life fall by the wayside. I can't ignore health issues but I'm not dead yet, either. Once I got back on track, good things happened to me over and over again. Now, I'm working on something I love, and my wife, Colette, is being very understanding putting up with having the Tasmanian Devil drawing comics all over the house. Yesterday was our 1st anniversary. Love you, Colette.

So, I guess that in an odd way, the new secret project is about life, mine and those before me. It's about following your dreams, no matter how odd they may seem. If you don't try you may find yourself years later wondering why you didn't go for it. I'm lucky that way... I have gone for it a number of times. Though it hasn't made me rich, it has served to give me a great life.

Now, get up off your ass and get to living!

Another Mystery Project #1 Teaser & a "How To..."

2009-08-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

I can't help myself. I'm getting very excited at how my two as yet unnamed comic projects I'm working on are going. Okay, okay, I've given 'em names but haven't shared those with anyone... except my wife, Colette, and my daughter, Molly.

Once again, like the vampire girl piece I recently posted, I must caution that this piece of artwork is very misleading. It's also not quite done. Also, there is virtually no black on it, though the original piece was inked.

I feel I must add that this unknown fellow will have a prominent part to play in the new comic... which I'm intent on launching here very soon.

Also, a few weeks back, I showed you a color piece featuring Monster Patrol that had been originally published in Big Bang Comics in black and white. At that time, I also wrote a "How To" for the way I color my comics... which I didn't publish, because I thought I had lost it. Thank goodness, the folks here at Blogspot thought ahead and always save documents while you're working on them, without you having to do so.

So, weeks later, here's my hopefully lucid explanation on how I color comics:

I learned how to do this from my good buddy, Mark A Nelson, artist of Dark Horse Comics' first Aliens series, Epic's Feud and the Crab Boy strips that were in my Laughing Reindeer Press Creepsville series. I use Adobe Photoshop. In my instructions below, I presume that you have Photoshop and know how it operates, especially the various Windows.

How's it done? First thing I do is get a good photocopy of my artwork shrunk to fit a regular size sheet of paper. Photocopying can actually get rid of pesky pencil lines while retaining the strong inked work. I usually (but not always) scan the black and white artwork in high res (300 dpi) Bit Map, the reason being that Bit Map scans in black and white only, eliminating grays... which provides the cleanest form to color in.

Once scanned, I change the image mode to RGB. Then, bringing up the Layers window, you'll see that your scanned image is named Background. I create a Duplicate Layer, which I allow to have the default name of "Background copy." It's actually in this duplicate that I will be coloring.
Go to the Eye icon on your Background Copy and click it, which momentarily removes that scan, but does not delete it. Then, click back on Background, and go up to the command items at the top of the Photoshop window, clicking on "Select" and then pull down to "Color Range." A window will open with a mini version of your artwork. Using the eyedropper, click on a white area of the artwork and press Okay. Your scanned image will then have what Mark calls "marching ants" running around the black areas of the image. Then, select your Eraser tool and click on a white area on this piece. The area you clicked should show a checked background (white and gray). If it does, then press your computer's Delete button, and all the white will disappear, replaced by that checkered background. This creates a transparency which will retain the line art while you color below it. At this point, I save the artwork, which it will do as a PSD document (aka Photoshop), retaining the layers.

Now, back on the Layers window, click the eye on the Background copy, turning it back on, restoring the white that was erased. Now, make sure that you have the Background copy selected on the right side of the box. As a test, select the brush tool on your toolbar and make a big streak across the page. If you have selected correctly, your swipe of color should show up while the lines in front remain fully intact. Because you're not going to keep it that way, you can do a Ctrl-Z to remove your test... or just color over it as you do the real coloring work.
For coloring it, you will just have to experiment with the tools. See what you can do. I use the Lassoo, Magic Wand, Brush, Gradient and Eyedropper quite a bit when coloring.

Once I'm finished with my piece, I go to the Layers window and Flatten Image, merging the two (or more) pieces of art (transparency and color) into one. I then save it in JPG format to save space, but I also retain the original high-res layered PSD document.

Be warned: if you convert the artwork to CMYK format to save, it can make drastic changes in the way your colors come out. To avoid this, you could start coloring the project using CMYK or Lab Color. Usually CMYK format (or EPS) is used for printed materials. JPG is best for digital media, like the Internet or CD-ROM.

Good luck! I find that I enjoy doing the coloring almost as much as the original artwork. It's a different challenge and, when finished, very rewarding.

Teaser Image From Mystery Project #1

2009-08-08T19:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being so mum regarding the name of one of the projects I'm working on right now. Still, I have to admit that I can hardly wait to show it to you. So, I will now, sorta...

What I've posted here is a teaser from the project, a piece of art that is slightly misleading... though I won't say why.

It's also a piece that isn't quite finished yet. Just like I do with my inks, I like to go in and tighten things up. There's lots of tweeking left to do, but I wanted to give you all a little taste. What may surprise those of you who've seen my earlier stuff is a lack of inks. Okay, the black suit was inked and, honestly, so was the whole thing... but not the whole thing.

That's all I can show for now. Just a little bit more time and you can see what I've been up to.

Meanwhile, feel free to give me your 2 cents on this unfinished piece.

McHale's Navy & Death From Above

2009-08-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me what prompted this,but while working on some artwork, I got to thinking about something from my childhood wholly disconnected from what I was doing.

I've mentioned the Plano Theatre, which was in Plano, Illinois... but now long gone with a Casey's covenience store sitting there. It was at this theatre that I saw one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. It always brings at least a smile to my face, sometimes I still laugh out loud about it.

As I mentioned in my post on King Kong Vs. Godzilla, the theatre had a summer matinee series in the mid to late 1960s showing flicks on Wednesday afternoons. There were loads of scifi and horror films screened, which isn't surprising due to the audience being made up almost entirely of kids (I pity the adults who tried to actual watch the movie with their kids).

There were also lots of comedies including Jerry Lewis movies, Munster Go Home, Batman (with Adam West) and McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force... the latter of which was the memorable screening. Hold on, I'm not talking about the movie itself. That was mostly unfunny. What happened during that showing could have happened to any film.

As luck would have it, on that day we had one of our summer thunderstorms. The kid audience was having a tough time paying attention to the movie while they heard the thunder from the storm that came along while the movie was on. This was a nervous bunch of kiddies, probably a great number of them still scared of storms (obviously they hadn't got the "Angels are bowling" talk like my mom gave to me).

The storm, very obviously, was getting worse outside... and then the power went out. The whole crowd screamed. For only a moment, the lights came on and then went back out. In that brief moment I saw something hilarious. I don't know who he was, but there was this little blond-haired boy in jeans and a t-shirt. He was out of his seat and running down the aisle waving his hands yelling with a smile on his face. In the last moment, he deliberately fell down and rolled on the floor, still waiving his arms. Then, darkness, with renewed screams. Soon, they got the power back on, and it was determined that the rest of the film would not be shown. To appease us, they still had their regular matinee finale, giving away one girl's and one boy's bicycle. It was very wet but sunny when we got out, as if the storm was a dream.

I didn't care if I saw the end of the movie (and I've never seen or wanted to see it since), I got my entertainment for the day. In the midst of madness, one unknown kid defied fear and the possibility of horrible tornado death and had the time of his life. He did it laughing.

To that kid, I've just gotta say: Thanks for the laugh!

Agents of Peril

2009-07-30T02:13:00.000-07:00

(I have removed the image from this entry due to inferior quality.)

Sorry for being so quiet of late, but my life has been very busy. Nothing bad, just busy.

Part of that is my ongoing work on those mystery projects I keep mentioning. I'm pretty happy with the way they are developing, though I must admit I'm a bit slower than I used to be... in part because I'm no longer the solitary, work all night bachelor I once was (thank goodness). Family is very important to me, so I don't mind being slower.

I also have to admit that this pace is providing me with a bonus, of sorts. I'm finding that I keep coming up with ideas to add to the developing work that I hadn't thought of before. In the long run, I think (hope) that this will make what is to come some of my best work ever.

Anyway, here's the second of the Agents of Peril strips. I have to admit that their small scanned size bothers me, meaning I wish I had scanned them larger than I did way back when. In addition to all the other stuff I'm working on, I may actually dig into the vault and rescan from the original art at a larger size so you can see the detail.

From the Past and Back to the Future, Again...

2009-07-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was working on a few new comic book projects, which included showing a piece of artwork from a comic story published in Big Bang Comics (Image). This story will appear in a full-color comic I'm working on at this time, the name of which I will reveal later when it's done and available. Aren't I secretive?

I'm pretty happy with this color version, which brings out my characters. Click on the image above to see a much larger version.

Hope you like it! I had a lot of fun doing it.

Who Are the Agents of Peril?

2009-06-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

If my memory serves me, between the Creepsville first series (published by GoGo Comics) and my self-published second series, I spent a lot of time working on another series called Agents of Peril.

Agents of Peril told the very odd story of the Frankenstein Monster working for the FBI, sent on a mission to a small town to investigate UFOs. There, he hooked up with a local equally strange plain-clothes police officer, Dick Protozoa. Together, this oddball team encounters loads of weirdness, bizarre hallucinations, mothman, and more strangeness.

The series was eventually posted on my website, Creepsville Online and evolving to Monster shindig.com at least as early as 1999. After an extended period, Creepsville would follow with its own strip. I did a lot of work on AoP, but (unfortunately) never finished the story I was working on, because of health issues forcing me to close the site.

Looking at it now, I really like it. It's obvious (to me, anyway) that I was heavily influenced by Black Hole comic creator Charles Burns' work, whom I still enjoy a great deal. Like Burns' works, it is really a series that works best in black and white, due to my heavy use of ink.

You can decide for yourself, because I've decided to gradually repost those strips, in order. Maybe, by the time I get to the end of what's done, I'll take some time from the other stuff I'm working on to finish this story.

Please, let me know what you think.

The Past, the Present and the Future...

2009-06-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

I've been a very busy boy these days, somehow sneaking in some time on my comics projects while dealling with the important stuff at home. So, I thought I'd tease you all a bit with some of what's coming while explaining how I work.

Let's start with the future: I'm hard at work on two seperate comic projects right now. One involves Creepsville and other things (which I'll get to in a bit here). I thought I'd show you a very early stage in how I work on my comics... from my second project using a name with which I'm going to keep mum about for now.

The panel here will give you an idea how loose my pencils are initially. I prefer that looseness in rendering figures, which I think helps big time in the body language area of my characters. In the panel I'm showing here, I've actually started inking, which is not unusual for me. I ink what I like, what works... and then I may even go back and erase some of the pencils and redo them, changing elements or tightening them up. For example, the camera on the left side will be replaced. This project is a period piece set in the 50s and the camera looks too modern. I need to get some reference and will redraw it.

When I'm finally satisfied with the pencils, I'll ink it in full, erase the pencils and then tighten up with the ink. I don't know if that's normal, but it's how I work.

That same technique was used on the second piece of artwork here, which is a fake cover of a 60s era Brave and the Bold team-up type comic series. This piece and the story it belongs to actually first saw print in Big Bang Comics (#12, I think) published by Image. I'm going to be coloring that whole story for the project that includes Creepsville, which I mentioned earlier. I figured that a lot of you may not have seen this.

Regarding the Monster Patrol, much more lies ahead for them. I have a full comic story finished featuring the origins of this unlikely team as well as a penciled and half-inked follow-up. There's even a short team-up story where the titans momentarily hook up with Greg Hyland's Lethargic Lad that is fully penciled, except for some areas left open for Greg. Gotta get that one done, because not only is it a chance to work with Greg (one of my best buddies in the comics biz), but the story touches upon my affection for the Chicago Cubs. Monsters and the Cubbies? You'll see...

Creepsville Is Back?

2009-06-13T06:11:00.001-07:00

I have to admit that my more recent work has not been on this wacky old comic book series, but there is a lot of unpublished material that I created that I'd like to see the light of day.

What you see here is the cover of what could have been Creepsville #7 or a stand alone Special. (Creepsville #6 was a never published Christmas story... but that's a tale for another time.) At about 40 pages, it is the longest story I ever did for the series.

I should also add that despite all that work already done, when I published Creepsville under my Laughing Reindeer imprint, I ended up not using a bit of this material. I crafted the second series of Creepsville along the lines of a serialized adventure-horror-comedy series; very influenced by Osamu Tezuka's work, particularly Astro Boy. For this second series, I redesigned a couple of the characters, most important being Rat and Percy. So, the older style stuff wouldn't work.

Years later, I'm back looking at it and thinking I should do something with it 'cuz it's actually a lot of fun. I've been scanning in the artwork for this issue and have started coloring it on the 'puter. Yes, Creepsville in color. When I feel like I have enough done, I'll start serializing on this site.

Who Was That Reindeer I Saw You With?

2009-06-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

That was no reindeer. That was my life.

But seriously, folks... This blog thing started somewhat impulsively, posting bits and pieces of material mostly about other people's stuff. It's been a nice way to get back into the swing of things, creatively speaking. Now, I'm kicking it up a notch, sorta.

I'm at work on a few projects right now, and the bubbling pot of my brain is positively boiling over. I'm having a great time doing comics again, and I want to share it. So, on this page, I will be posting teasers, sketches, finished works (or links to such because of space limitations on this blog site) and whatever else I feel the need to pass along.

Hope you enjoy them.

The 2 Best Reviews of Carnivore I Have Seen (So Far)

2009-05-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

I was stumbling about on Amazon and came upon the movie I made with Ken Mader: Carnivore... which I guess Fox Home Video has finally stopped making. What follows are two of the best reviews of the film that I’m pretty sure are written by people I don’t know.

Here’s the first one:

Star Rating for Film Only, Not DVD, January 25, 2004
By
Farffleblex Plaffington (Parnybarnel, Mississippi)
Version reviewed: "Key DVD" distributed by 20th Century Fox, 2002, 80 minutes

My personal enjoyment rating: 8 out of 10

My recommendation rating OF THE FILM ONLY: 8 out of 10. Explanation of recommendation rating: "All genre fans should see this film. Others should consider giving it a chance, as they will probably like it or find it interesting. More casual film fans might be indifferent towards it."
Recommendation rating for this version: 2 out of 10

=====================================

Let's get the bad news out of the way first, then I'll explain my high rating of the film. The DVD box art says that Carnivore is a widescreen presentation that is "digitally mastered". The film is NOT in widescreen, and "digital mastering" can only mean that either the master exists on some kind of digital medium, or worse, that the film was "mastered to digital" in the sense that DVDs were made from the master (obviously, since the product is a DVD).

The transfer is one of the poorer ones that I've seen (unfortunately it isn't the worst). It is extremely grainy (it looks like it was recorded from a VHS tape that had been rented about 300 times in the mid-80s, and then stored in a mildew-filled basement for 10 years), The sound has a lot of hiss and was equalized with far too much bass--you have to crank up the treble, crank up the volume, and you still can't hear dialogue in some scenes. I don't know what aspect ratio directors F. Joseph Kurtz and Kenneth Mader filmed in, but the framing suggests that it _wasn't_ filmed in "full-screen" (1.33 : 1), which is the aspect ratio on this disc.

Additional bad news is that the box art also promises a director commentary, a featurette called "Carnivore Kills!", a trailer, and optional Spanish subtitles. None of these are on the disc. Instead, the disc has two menu options. One for "Play Movie" and one for "Scene Selection"--which gives you access to only eight chapter markings. This is either a serious case of false advertising or an equally serious screw-up on the manufacturing end. And in both cases, it would probably be best for everyone to send their copies of the DVD back to 20th Century Fox and demand a refund plus a free copy of the DVD when the corrections are made. Even if some of the problems (such as the sound) are rooted in the source material, these can be fairly easily rectified in a moderately-equipped recording/engineering studio, especially with a distributor like 20th Century Fox.

And why might you want a copy of the DVD in anamorphic widescreen with remastered sound, a director's commentary, and other special features? Because this is a very fun and entertaining little horror film. At least if you have a taste for camp, and you're not one of those philosophically-challenged folks who conflates "horror" and "scary". Carnivore is more likely to be enjoyed by someone who thinks that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a masterpiece. Someone who thinks that two of the most underrated films of the 70s are Daddy's Deadly Darling and Carnival of Blood. Someone who has actually memorized a number of lines from Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. and is proud of it. Someone who thinks that one of the biggest tragedies in filmdom is that Frank Henenlotter has only directed five films since 1982 (and none since 1992). If you have no idea what I'm talking about, and you're looking for scares only, do yourself a favor and pass this one up for now.

Carnivore is one of those "genetic experiments gone wild" films, with touches of the X-Files and an 80's slasher flick mixed into the stew. Yes, it has narration by a woman with a heavy Midwestern accent who is obviously reading. It has (sometimes intentionally) ridiculous performances. The monster is obviously a guy in a suit. For long periods of time, everything in the film is blue. However, as difficult as this may be for some people to understand, all of these elements are assets in a film like this, especially because it's obvious that Mader and Kurtz harbor no delusions that they're making something in the vein of Gone With The Wind. Instead, Carnivore plays like an impeccable, hilarous spoof of its influences, sometimes approaching a spoof of a spoof, and at the same time seems like a lost horror gem from 1985 (its authenticity in that respect is incredible). It pokes fun at the clichés and conventions, and yet embraces them at the same time--a feat only serious fans of the relevant eras of horror could achieve. There are serious aspects. There is plenty of tension. Some of the blue shots (and some others) are beautiful. The gore effects are well-done and well-shot. The sets are excellent, and even more impressive when you realize they were built in the basement of the director's rented house. It is clear that Carnivore is a low-budget affair, but the artistry and dedication apparent enables it to transcend any budgetary limitations.

But please, give us a release on DVD that does the film justice! This would have been a perfect candidate for Troma, Lucky 13/Program Power, Something Weird, or anyone comparable. But the Key Video/20th Century Fox edition is horrible.

And here is the second one:

Connie!, July 29, 2003
By A Customer
While Carnivore may appear to be a less than perfect film, a close analysis will reveal its true brilliance. I happen to be a Carnivore historian and thus am privy to facts that previous misguided reviewers may not have caught. For instance the man who played Connie - Jay Cunningham, is the same man who played the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Cunningham made the Carnivore suit out of a toothbrush and a copper wire while fighting communism in Vietnam. True story. So say what you will about Carnivore, but to hate this film is to hate AMERICA.

Never were more true words written…

PS. If Mike Vraney is out there, let me know if you'd like to do a better DVD.

I Was There: King Kong Vs Godzilla

2009-05-05T17:32:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, they used to show Godzilla films in theatres just like any other film. One of the great memories of my youth was catching a screening of the classic monster slugfest King Kong Vs Godzilla way back in the late 60s.

At the time, I was living in a small town in Illinois called Plano that had a very small theatre called, appropriately, the Plano Theatre. In the summertime, every Wednesday afternoon would be their "Summer Matinee" series of movies: a hodge podge of flicks for the kiddies (though some were definitely not so) : from 5 Million Years to Earth to Thunderbirds Are Go or The Ghost and Mr. Chicken to The Nutty Professor. A regular part of the films shown there were Toho's giant monster films. If my memory serves me KKVG was the first one I saw in a theatre.

The house was packed with excited kids ready for a big fight (or maybe just hoping they would win a bike at the end of the show... 2 each week, one for a girl, the other for a boy).

You all know the film and how it plays. It probably won't surpise you to hear that right from the get go, the crazed kid audience was gung ho for Kong. We knew Godzilla was cool, too, but he was the bad guy. Kids were yelling and screaming as the movie progressed, but at the final battle, we all settled in like wrestling fans. This was real, and we had to encourage our hero, Kong, to beat the daylights out of the big lizard. So, everytime Kong got in a good hit on Godzilla, we cheered with joy. Everytime Godzilla got Kong, we booed. We almost thought all was lost at one point, with Kong unconscious, buried in rocks, getting wacked in the head by Godzilla tail. Fortunately, a very quick storm moved in and recharged our ape hero with lightning power. We didn't even care that that made no sense at all as our hero rose up and kicked lizard butt.

We were nervously quiet again though filled with hope when the leviathans rolled into the ocean... and cheered again when King Kong came up, swimming for home. The movie stopped abruptly. Still, all was well in our kid world as we walked home with dopey smiles on our faces while our stomachs were stuffed with popcorn, some kind of sour Starburst-like candies that came in a box with a small monster pin or ring, and super sweet soda.

...well, except I never won a bike.

Just For the Heck of It: A Movie Poster

2009-05-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm intrigued by how lurid this poster looks for Al Adamson's Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. Initially when I came upon it, I thought it was that Jess Franco flick also known as Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein. I don't remember any "Love Tramps" in the movie...

I found myself unable to sleep last night (unfortunately, a very common thing with me as I get older), and I put on my DVD for this film. I know it's awful, and poor old Lon Chaney looks really bad... but it's a pie slice out of time that reeks of atmosphere reflecting its creation era better than any of the Hollywood A picture stuff at the time. I know that American film in the 70s is looked upon, generally, as one of the last great periods of domestic filmmaking, but don't get me wrong. With Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, I get that oozing, uncomfortable atmosphere of a real, trash-strewn, run down dump sort of place that current horror films seem incapable of doing. I'm a sucker for atmosphere.

Just a thought...

Oh, Yes, Hello... But What Is That Crawling on the Floor Behind You?

2009-05-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm stepping into it. It feels strange... sorta cold. What's that? Go ahead and get my head down in there? Okay. Here goes...

GLUB!

Sputter!

I'm okay. Is my cigar still lit?

Hmmm... what do I see?