Halloween 2020

This is the shirt I'm wearing to this year's Halloween Movie Bash at JB's place tonight. 

I bought it from an online outfit called Wicked Clothes, which I found, oddly enough, through a popup ad in my email. 

They even sent me a Halloween-themed face mask as a free gift. I'm wearing that to HMB tonight, too.

Whatever you do to celebrate this holiday, do it safely...but do it, even if it's watching horror movies by yourself in the dark. We have to get some fun out of life, even amid the pandemic. As I've long said: "Play Safe, but play."

Shocktober 10/30/20

The small but festive (and, most importantly, high-and-away-from-kitty-reach) Halloween display at La Casa de Mama. On the Left: A Halloween plaque I found at Village Discount Outlet. On the right: A Halloween card sent by JB.

Shocktober 10/29/20

Shocktober 10/28/20

If you've never heard of the Shaggs, don't worry--they're pretty obscure. I only found about them through "The Steve & Garry Show" back in the '80s, when radio personality Steve Dahl played their music with fair regularity, especially at this time of year.

Why? Well, first of all, they're pretty bloody awful.

No. Seriously. This is likely the worst album you've ever heard. The Wiggins sisters--Dot, Betty, Helen and Rachel--try to play instruments and sing, but are mostly successful at neither. Their father, Austin Wiggins, thought they had talent, though, and got them bookings in their native New Hampshire. He also got them into a recording studio to produce their first album, Philosophy of the World. It got little airplay at the time and faded into obscurity.

Why, you might ask, am I bringing up the Shaggs?

Because one of their songs is entitled "It's Halloween."

That was always one of my favorite songs to play around this time of year. I mean, who can resist lyrics like "It's Halloween, it's Halloween, it's time for scares, it's time for screams, it's Halloween, it's Halloween"?

Wait...where are you going? Come back here, you!

Anyway...this album got a lot of play on my CD player back in the day. And now? Thanks to eBay, I can play it again. It may not be good, but it's good for me--and that is good enough.

Shocktober 10/27/20

Happy Birthday, Godzilla! Not looking too bad for 66 years young.

Shocktober 10/26/20

The last time I mentioned Horror Hotel, I lamented that the converter box in Mom's living room no longer picked up Retro TV, also home of Drive-in Movie Maniacs, Offbeat Cinema and Halloween Harvey's Festival of Fear.

Since then? The converter box has been replaced, and now I get ALL of the aforementioned shows--very important at this festive time of year.

I also get Comet, a sci-fi channel that often runs horror movies as well.
Throw in Movies! and This, and I pretty much have all my October TV watching covered. If only I could get TCM over the airwaves, my Halloween horror fest would be complete.

Unfortunately, Mom no longer has cable, and I'm not making quite enough to swing it, so over-the-air viewing is what I have to work with.

And Lamia? She covers my Saturday nights with trivia, humor and beauty to spare. Nearly every Saturday night, you can find me on the living room couch (a.k.a. the bedroom), curled up and ready for my weekly dose of Horror Hotel.

Not this coming Saturday night, though. That has been reserved for the annual Halloween Movie Bash (a.k.a. HMB), this year held again at JB's place. Sadly, JB has no access to Retro TV and thus must settle for my descriptions of all the horror movie shows I get to see.

Then again, he has cable, and thus can watch TCM whenever he wants. So there's that.

Not that I'm jealous or anything like that. (Except I totally, totally am.)

Every Picture Tells a Story 10/25/20

 

Every Picture Tells a Story 10/24/20

 

Yet another party I was not invited to.

Shocktober 10/23/20

Retro TV is, especially at this time of year, a haven for horror movie fans. 

Not only do they run monster movies on Saturday nights--on either Offbeat Cinema or Horror Hotel (hosted by the lovely Lamia, Queen of the Night)--or Sunday nights on Halloween Harvey's Festival of Fear, but even on Friday nights, via the crazy crew at Drive-in Movie Maniacs. 

DIMM shows a lot of the same movies as the other aforementioned horror-movie shows--they're all dipping from the same public-domain pool--but they have a lot of fun with it, especially the host, Terrible Tim.

They're worth staying up late for on a frosty Friday October Night--or any Friday night, really.

Shocktober 10/22/20

I found this postcard for WGN's horror showcase, Creature Features, on Facebook recently. Wouldn't you have loved to have received this in the mail circa 1973? Wouldn't you love to receive it now? I know I would.

Shocktober 10/21/20

Yes, I know. You've become tired of my going on about Tomb of Dracula, Marvel's signature horror comic for the better part of a decade. 

But you know what? These stories still hold up 40 years later. 

Granted, things got crazier as the series went on--Drac even encounters the Silver Surfer in this volume--but Marv Wolfman's scripts and the Gene Colan/Tom Palmer art still deliver the mood and the food for thought. 

Shocktober 10/20/20

 

Shocktober 10/19/20

 What would Shocktober be without a pint of Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream from Target? A little less sweet, I'd say.

For Dinner Last Night

 Chorizo Tacos with Chihuahua cheese and avocado salsa.

For Breakfast This Morning 10/17/20

 Cheese omelette with turkey sausage and pumpernickel bread.

Shocktober 10/16/20

As previously noted, Tomb of Dracula was Marvel Comics' longest-running horror comic, clocking in at an impressive 70 issues. There were also a couple of black & white magazine versions as well: Dracula Lives and (again) Tomb of Dracula. 

The collection pictured above is the third in The Complete Collection, gathering together another 10 issues of Tomb, plus a few more issues of Dracula Lives. The color comics are the most cohesive, telling one continuing story with small stops in between. Dracula Lives was more of an anthology comic, with stories set at various times in Vlad's long, um, "career" and with art from various hands, though the color issues of Tomb all feature the moody, stylish art of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer.

Shocktober 10/15/20

 

And now? The Mego Nosferatu figure.

Shocktober 10/14/20

 

Shocktober 10/13/20

 

Shocktober 10/12/20

The saga of Dracula in the modern world (well, the 1970s modern world, anyway) continues in Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Volume 2. As I've said before, I loved this comic when I was a young'un, and having these issues back in a sturdy trade paperback is beyond cool. 

The cover art appears to be Gil Kane again, but most of the interior art is penciled by Gene Colan, a longtime Marvel Bullpen denizen best known for his work on Daredevil. The inking on Colan's pencils is all handled by Tom Palmer this time around, smoothing out the sometimes rough edges from the first volume.

So kick back, warm a cup of tea--Celestial Seasons Sleepytime for me, thanks--and enjoy the four-color craziness of Tomb of Dracula.

Shocktober 10/9/20

The saga of Jack Russell--poor young guy unfortunate enough to get bitten by a werewolf and to subsequently become one himself, sending him off on a series of adventures against all sorts of monsters, vigilantes and mutants--continues in this second volume of Werewolf by Night.

Doug Moench continued on as writer from volume one--and, unfortunately, so did the artwork team of Don Perlin and Vince Colletta. Perlin's pencils are fine enough--he goes from stiff caricature to dynamic poses in the space of a couple of panels--but Colletta's inks are offensively bad. It often looks like he erased all of the pencil work and just redrew it himself.

That doesn't make all of these stories bad, though. In fact, a lot of them are pretty good--especially when Werewolf by Night crosses over with Marvel's other veteran horror comic, Tomb of Dracula. (See cover above.)

Shocktober 10/7/20

Back in the mid-1970s, Marvel Comics has a very successful comic book called Tomb of Dracula. (I do believe I've mentioned it once or twice before.) 

At the height of this success, they launched a second Dracula title, this one a black & white magazine called Dracula Lives. It only ran 13 issues over a couple of years, and most of its stories were stand-alone tales from Dracula's past (with a few set in the present) drawn by a number of different hands, including Neal Adams and regular Tomb artist Gene Colan. 

One of the stories that ran in Dracula Lives was the very first Dracula story: An adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, with Roy Thomas writing the script and Dick Giordano providing the gray-tone artwork. It was a faithful adaptation, including characters and scenes often left out of film and TV versions.

Unfortunately, Marvel didn't stick with its black-and-white comics for very long, canceling Dracula Lives after only 13 issues. (The main comic ran 70 issues.) And when Dracula Lives was canceled, the adaptation of Stoker's novel was only about one third done.

But you can't keep a good vampire down--or even an exceptionally bad one--and Marvel's adaptation of Stoker's novel was revived in 2004: first as a four-issue miniseries (with Thomas and Giordano returning to finish what they'd started), then as a hardcover collection of that miniseries.

I recently reacquired that hardcover. Color me blood red...er, I mean happy.

Shocktober 10/6/20

 

This ghostly graffiti appeared around Western and Logan.

This Week's Travel Reading, Shocktober Edition

Having just read the Marvel comics adaptation of Bram Stoker's legendary vampire novel, Dracula, I was inspired to backtrack a bit and tackle the original text itself. 

I read it years ago, but having had several, um, things happen since then (like a pair of heart attacks and subsequent memory loss), I'd entirely forgotten everything except the basic story: 

Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to close a deal on some real estate back in England. Once at the castle of Count Dracula, Harker's life and sanity are imperiled by the Count, who makes his way to Great Britain and starts to drain some of its inhabitants, including Jonathan's fiancee, Mina, and Mina's best friend, Lucy.

Only Jonathan, American Quincy Morris, Doctor Seward and the newly arrived Doctor Van Helsing stand between Dracula and his ultimate goal: Turning Mina into one of the undead.

Will there be thrills? Excitement? Adventure? Necking? Only time and page-flipping on the train to and from the job will tell.

Shocktober 10/2/20

Did you know that, at one point, Godzilla was part of the Marvel Universe?

It's true: From 1977 to 1979, for 24 issues, "The Big G" occupied the same cultural space as Spider-Man, Captain America and the Fantastic Four--all of whom have cameos in this series, along with Jack Kirby's Devil Dinosaur and select agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., most notably "Dum-Dum" Dugan and Jimmy Woo. (Nick Fury pops up a few times as well.)

Doug Moench, better known for writing Werewolf by Night, wrote every issue, and Herb Trimpe, best known for his long run on Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, drew most of the issues, with Tom Sutton logging in for a chapter or two.

I was a big fan of the series when it first came out, and I had the Marvel Essentials volume pictured above--until I had to abandon La Casa del Terror (and nearly all of its contents) back in 2016.

But you know what? Ebay and Amazon Marketplace are wonderful places to visit. You can find damn near anything there.

Even a sorta/kinda treasured link to your past. Like this.

Shocktober 10/1/20

 

To quote a previously used poem:

The spider spins its web, you see,

to capture you, or maybe me,

and drink us down until we're done.

My friends: Shocktober has begun!

(And before anyone even asks: Yes, that is a real spider in one of our kitchen windows. It is big. And captures many, many flies.)