"Face."

I seriously don't recall if Moon Knight could use his ankh for anything, or if Sat and Kurt are right and I'm thinking Thundercats. I do think he could use it like a crucifix against vampires maybe? Can he use it for exorcisms? "The power of Khonshu compels you! THE POWER OF KHONSHU COMPELS YOU!" Read more!

I suggest reading this, then logging off for the day?

This wasn't my favorite issue--the book was hitting solid at the time--but there's a moment this issue that stuck with me and might be important today. From 1982, Star Wars #58, "Sundown!" Plot and script by David Michelinie, plot and pencils by Walter Simonson, inks by Tom Palmer.

While Chewbacca, Luke, and Lando head for their adventure on Bazaar, Princess Leia was readying a dangerous plan to hide the Rebel fleet from Imperial patrols, by hiding it in that system's sun! It's a rather Star Trek plan if you ask me, and hey, it uses "Kerts-Bhrg field generators" for the shields--Kurtzberg, after Jack Kirby!

While dramatic, the insertion goes without a hitch, and most of the Rebel personnel make their way to the specialized shuttle to head back to base, leaving a smaller maintenance crew behind. Threepio scolds Artoo to hurry, or if they miss the shuttle, they would be stuck there for a weeklong shift, but Artoo dawdles, checking something, and finding a fault in an absorption circuit, that was about to explode! Oh, and the shuttle just left, and burning circuitry created noxious fumes, knocking out the maintenance crew!

Threepio gets communications out to Leia on the shuttle, which just barely made it through: the force-field protecting the fleet was fluctuating, and TIE Fighters had just entered the system...c'mon, those aren't long-range ships! That's from the first movie! But, Artoo has a plan, and it's a doozy: run a cable from one of the Rebel ships, out to the force-field generators, to keep it going. He and Threepio have to make a spacewalk, with Threepio wearing a jetpack, and Artoo wrapped in a reflective blanket with an eyehole poked in it. (Threepio's gold coating apparently protected him from the heat!) This hits a snag pretty quickly, when the temperature's hot enough to melt the jetpack, and their momentum was going to carry them out of the force field, into the sun!

After the TIE Fighters leave the system, Leia's shuttle had managed to get their heat shields back up for another trip into the sun, but by computer calculations, the fleet would've already been destroyed, thirty seconds ago. (That also feels more Trek than Wars.) For maybe five seconds, it seems like this was going to break Leia: while they wouldn't have lost a lot of people, without those ships, the Rebel Alliance would have largely been whatever they had in their pockets at the time. Well, if that's where we have to start, that's what we'll do...but of course, things weren't as bleak as all that: Artoo had used his fire extinguisher as an emergency propellent, which got them to make the connection in time. But, that scene still sticks with me: even at the absolute worst-case scenario, you still can't quit. Keep fighting until you can't.

Also this issue, along with the start of the fun Bazaar plot, we also see smoking hot Rebel pilot/possible love interest for Luke, Shira Brie, a couple times; and she makes a strangely "oh no! Anyway..." tinged remark at the news of the possible destruction of the fleet. It'll make sense later! Read more!

I hate when I do this; I feel like Homer after the fish restaurant...

I've mentioned before, I usually end up with like a short box full of cheap comics every toy show, but, it's been crazy rainy, so there might have been some reluctance to drag long boxes for me to paw through. I did hit, um, two comic shops after the show; but didn't get the massive pile I'm used to. I kinda felt like I needed to stock up a bit, since it could be a stretch before any other big opportunities. (I did get a stretch of Man With No Name comics for my dad: I think he enjoyed the stack of Lone Ranger books I got him; if he was just being polite, well...)

I had also hit up EntertainMart last Friday, but only got trades for Fanboy and Punisher MAX: Girls in White Dresses. I scanned the cover of the latter, since it wasn't in the GCD; but that was the first storyline post-Garth Ennis. Still, it wasn't bad! There were some bits that were appropriately dark, the bad guys are horrible, Frank is suitably tormented; and the return of one of Frank's main recurring villains that I don't think had appeared in the MAX series before. (Frank has like two recurring villains; I know you can guess!)

But, we did get some toys at said toy show! The other day, we saw Hallow's Eve with a Batman mask: that mask was from the DC Direct Batman: The Animated Series Creeper; and I picked up another in package. Haven't decided on opening him yet, since he broke before, and I know McFarlane has a new one coming...that won't have accessories. I also got an Amazon-exclusive, green-shirt Captain Kirk with chair: the package was pretty beat, but worth grabbing for me. And remember when I said I probably wouldn't be completing Blackheart? Show of hands, who knew I probably would? I got Lilith and Castlevania--I mean, Dracula; so I just had to order the other two to finish him. I've never had a Blackheart, so that'll be something. Oh, and I got another Guardsman and Sharon Carter from EntertainMart: the Sharon's I swap heads for, to build a little S.H.I.E.L.D. crew; and that's five Guardsmen now. Also, while I was driving home from EntertainMart; this song from Linda Scott came on from my flash drive of music. I have absolutely no idea where I got it from...it is catchy, though. Ah, thank you, YouTube comments...is not a sentence I use very often; but that song was used in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. Probably before something just awful happens, but still.    Read more!

Look, I still had one in the pile!

"One," he says. Ha! From 1973, the Twilight Zone #53, cover by George Wilson.

"The Yesterday Window" would probably have made a middling episode: a G.I. returns from Vietnam, but doesn't want peace and quiet, he wants to live in Greenwich Village! He gets a crummy attic apartment, but that's fine; he wants to paint, and that seemed like the place to do it. Then he has bizarrely vivid dreams about New Amsterdam (why they changed it I can't say) and finds a walled-off window that seems to look into the distant past there. Of course there's a pretty girl there, trying to talk her father out of sailing on a ship the G.I. knows is going to be lost; so he has to go back to help, which involves committing suicide in the present out the boarded-up window. But because this is an older Twilight Zone, he still gets a happy ending. (Art by Frank Bolle.)

"The Manuscript" is a period piece, where a hard-working doctor is killed before he can finish his life's work, so his wife picks up the ball, working herself to death to finish it, with his help. Uh...yay? "Time on His Hands" is far more fun, and could've made a memorable episode with the right casting: an officious efficiency expert is making everyone miserable at a factory, until he receives a handwritten note to "leave our section out of your survey." He traces the note back to the oldest section of the factory, where he finds a secluded, private section of cheerful, lackadaisical screwballs; who seem to work on their own schedules, with their own systems, and their own side projects. Also, there doesn't seem to be any exits, which doesn't seem to bother them? Maybe they're better workers than anyone would give them credit for. Still, not a good time for the efficiency expert, who is almost physically ill dealing with them. (Art by Jack Sparling.)

Finally the cover story, "Telephone from the Tomb," with art by Al Williamson. This features a type of character that might be somewhat unfamiliar to modern readers, a gossip columnist: Ramona Powers had been the power behind the throne in Hollywood, able to make or break young wannabes with a mere phone call. And her calls had continued after her death! She had actually had a phone line installed in her tomb and prepaid like a hundred years of service; which should be a hilarious parting shot, but an actor keeps getting calls from her. A private investigator works the case, which seems to point to Ramona's secretary; but there's more to it than that.

Man, that guy would stroke out in my house...For some reason, I hear "Inefficiency! RAMPANT INEFFICIENCY!" in a Dalek's voice. Read more!

Happy Halloween!

Four day weekend! I feel like I've done little all month except sleep and watch horror movies, although I'm momentarily pressed to say if I saw any good ones. Let's think for a moment. 

 The Series is on as I type this, but Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula are on Pluto now. I'm not sure either are very good, but they're distinctive. Udo Keir just gave a seeming 10-minute dying soliloquy...Pluto's Universal Monsters channel has alternated between its regular schedule, relatively recent horror movies, and long marathons of the Munsters. I did like Cry Wolf, in which some private-school brats make up lies about a murderer, that maybe lead to some murders. The Atticus Institute was a 70's-flavored faux-documentary about psychic research, then demonic possession: not a great one, nor well-reviewed, but it hit some marks for me. Oh, and I'd been wanting to see the Lair of the White Worm again, and Pluto delivered there, too! That's another that might not be for everyone, but it's striking, and hey, Peter Capaldi! 

Over on Shudder, I think most horror fans liked In a Violent Nature more than I did; but there's one kill in it that is spectacularly brutal. It felt ponderous to me, though; like a Friday the 13th with a swelled head about itself. Azrael was OK, didn't like MadS, you should have seen Audition already, didn't like Daddy's Head, I liked the WNUF Halloween Special better than the latest V/H/S but both have moments. Oddity is, well, odd, but likable. The Demon Disorder has John Noble, that's always worth a look. I didn't love All You Need is Death, but it was something new, and it set up a great joke on BlueSky's Simpsons Books. (They had a good one for Oddity as well!) Saw Eight Eyes and Hell Hole; okay. Humane wasn't bad...did I watch all of these this month? Well, maybe. #ChadGetsTheAxe feels like I've seen that same movie forty times on Shudder alone, but honestly watching influencers get hacked up is entertaining...(in horror movies, not really!) See also: Mean Spirited. Herd has zombies and rival militias; I'm not sure which annoyed me more. Backcountry suuuuuucked; bad choices, unlikable characters, you may have heard me cheering for a bear to eat a guy. Oh, but Dr. Caligari is a campy cult classic, that visually reminds me of Liquid Television, and I really liked Stopmotion because I thought it maybe had a good message: make a movie (or comic, or whatever!) you would want to see. And the Stone Tape, 70's BBC terror from Nigel Kneale. 

 Somehow, I watched a few more after typing all that! Eli Roth's the Green Inferno really, really liked Cannibal Holocaust, and I don't get the ending: the last survivor lies about the cannibal tribe, to implicate big-business encroaching on them, but why? Somebody's going to think "ooh, friendly natives!" later and they specifically weren't. I only caught part of Christina Ricci's the Gathering, but I saw enough that I would've been annoyed if I sat through the whole thing. I liked teen movie spoof/time-travel puzzler/slasher Detention much more: the horror aspect isn't as strong, but it's good fun, and seemingly had a massive budget for music licensing!  

Woof! I also watched some DVD's! I may or may not have finished the complete Night Gallery set by now. Hmm, maybe not, I was up to season two episode 9 now. I also watched my Hammer horror favorites, Quatermass and the Pit, Frankenstein Created Woman--I love the Peter Cushing Baron, an amoral steamroller for scientific advancement at any cost that usually ends each movie in a massive fiery explosion but is back at work the next installment--Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and the Shaw Brothers crossover Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, which is kung fu fun.

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"Sword."

I could look it up--fine, I will! I guess I got Ghost and Luis in 2019: they're in the background of the annual group shot, but I don't think they've appeared in any strips since? Well, better late, I suppose. This isn't the same Ghost that was in Thunderbolts with Sat and Moonstone, but they treat her about like she was. Also, for little apparent reason, I thought both the comic Ghost and the movie one had the same sibilant speech pattern as Cobra Commander. Didn't go with that; maybe Moonstone was seeing her for speech therapy as well. 

The D'spayres are quiet this time around--are they planning something, or did I forget to give them dialogue? One of them was going to mouth off to Kurt, but might've got interrupted. Side note: I checked, and I could get another one almost immediately if it came down to it, but I don't think I want to pay full-price for another...yet. Maybe if there's a skyrocketing demand for Rintrah legs. 

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Wrightson cover, should be a horror comic...

I felt a little bait-and-switched after opening up this one, but we'll see: from 1975, House of Mystery #236, cover by Bernie Wrightson.

OK, I'm pretty sure I could search just the blog and find a bunch of Steve Ditko horror stories; although I'm hard-pressed to remember if any were super-scary? Or were they usually morality plays of various degrees of hokeyness? Let's see how this one goes: "Death Played a Sideshow" Written by "Coram Nobis" (David Vern), pencils by Steve Ditko, inks by Mike Royer. Spiritualist/mentalist "the amazing Dr. Krupke" is a fake and a hack, snowing rubes with some ghost effects, and letting their imaginations fill in the rest. Today he's running a "purification rite" scam on an absolute chump, 'burning' money to prove his love. Krupke eventually declares him "pure," or at least broke, but that he shouldn't do anything for three days. Namely, because the carnival will be moving on before then...but, the chump gets word his love eloped with somebody else, and tries to get his money back. Krupke bashes him over the head with his mystic kettle-thing, killing him. He then dumps the body in the river, where he knows it will be found: when the cops question him, Krupke says he returned the guy's cash, but was worried he might still kill himself over losing his girl.

The chump's friends work with the cops, to try and trick Krupke into confessing with a black-light ghost. Sure enough, the ghost scares Krupke into running crying to the cops to confess; but the friends weren't as successful as they thought: their fake ghost hadn't been able to tunnel in and missed his cue, so who...? Yeah, whatever. Let's see how the second story goes, "Deep Sleep" Written by Jack Oleck, pencils by Paul Kirchner, inks by Neal Adams. John visits his college friend Alan Trent and his sister Elizabeth, both of whom are nervous wrecks, terrified of the "curse of the Trents." They allegedly had a family history of seemingly dying, and being buried alive...which seems like the sort of thing that would have come up in college after a night drinking, but again, whatever.

No one else seems to believe them, and they might have a point? How would you know someone had been buried alive, unless they had made it back? The Trents have taken precautions, though; with an elaborate bell system. Did I say elaborate? It's a string tied to the corpse's finger running from the family tomb back to the house. Elizabeth dies first, although Alan swears she isn't actually dead; and insists that one of them always stay awake in case she rings for help. After a week of that, John's ready to call it; and slips Alan sleeping pills so he can finally get a good night's rest. But the next morning, Alan is mortified, since he dreamed the bell had been ringing. They check, and find Elizabeth had been alive--last night, anyway--and had tried to signal. Feeling he owed Alan, John was now himself trapped, forced to stay in case Alan 'died.' Cain returns for a cheerful denouement, though: John had stayed...for fifty-five years, dying before Alan, who was still around and just insane.

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