Get into the Halloween spirit with this sampler of Neil Gaiman goodies that I think will give you a nice launchpad into his fantastic work! The best part? It’ll only take a few hours!
Link time! You can find the Neil’s Works section of his website here and read the Colleen Doran interview I did here.
I also tackled five more films in It’s All Connected 2021 to keep that moving along. I finished my Jill Schoelen mini-marathon, indulged a bit on my favorite slasher franchise, watched another John Carpenter film and then got to one wacky killer animal flick!
I tried something different this week and put together a video based on The High Five Episode 32 – Spooky Brave And The Bold Team-Ups! It was a lot of fun…and a lot of work, but it looks nice! I have a few ideas for other episodes to do this with to expand on more visual topics.
On this week’s episode, I went through years’ worth of Bronze Age Brave And The Bold Batman team-ups to come up with a list of fun, Halloween-themed issues. If you’re looking to follow along, you can check them all out on the DC Universe app or the first two volumes of Batman In The Brave And The Bold The Bronze Age.
As always, you can email me at high5tj at gmail.com or follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
I’ve spilled a lot of digital ink this season talking about how much I love Kelley Jones’ work, especially on Batman (in posts here and here), but there’s another artist whose work is synonymous with horror in my mind: Mike Mignola. The genius behind Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. has done all sorts of work in the comics world and this post will give some love to a few of his other works that are lots of spooky fun! Here are some interesting comics you might want to check out if you don’t want to dive too deeply into those sprawling epics.
I’ve been having a great time watching connected films and a variety of horror books this season, but it’s very possible that re-visiting the Batman run by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones has been one of my favorite experiences so far. As I mentioned in the first part, these post-KnightFall books were bedrock-forming for my knowledge of not just the Dark Knight, but also the imagery of horror as put through Jones’ incredibly capable lens. As good as the Batman developments are in these issues as he regains his life after the Bane and Azrael incidents, it’s equally exciting to see these two creators work their magic on a variety of villains and co-stars.
Every Halloween (or Scare Season, if you will), I find myself taking on some kind of film-based project, but also trying to read through as many horror-themed books and comics as I can. Last year, I focused solely on Vertigo titles, but this year I’m mostly pulling books off my shelf or out of my To Read box. Of course, I’m always looking around to see if there are any books I just NEED to add to my library, though. While scoping out Amazon, I came across two volumes of Batman By Doug Moench and Kelley Jones. I was immediately interested and began comparing prices when I realized, “Hey, I have these issues in the garage!” As you can see from the above pic, that proved to be true and I saved myself some scratch and also had a far more immediate dive into some very important comics from my childhood!
Even though this week’s Trade Pile isn’t quite as robust as others, I still wanted to get a few thoughts down on three books that I read this week that I thought were pretty darn spiffy. One set an established character out on his own in a way that really worked for me while the other two featured brand new characters, one set in an equally new world an one rooted in a far more familiar one!
I call together this first meeting of The Midnight Comic Club in 2018 to order! This time around, I assembled a Frightful Five of gateway horror comics that are good for kids of various ages. As always, I recommend you read the books first before passing them to the young reader in your life, but I think there’s some solid options in here!
As we come together for the eighth meeting of the Midnight Comic Club, we celebrate the November 32, 1931 release of James Whale’s Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff by looking at how Marvel and DC have integrated the character into their universes!
Starting with Marvel, check out Menace #7, X-Men #40 and the fantastic Monster Of Frankenstein trade paperback if you’d like to learn more. Scroll on down for some images of those books as well as plenty of others mentioned in the episode. I also mentioned the Avengers: Legion Of The Unliving trade which you can check out here.
I should probably link to the episode, so here it is!
In this fourth meeting of The Midnight Comic Club, I talk with my buddy Alex Kropinak, one of the best toy animators in the business. He chose to read Batman: Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean. It’s an absolute, must-read classic for any comic AND horror fan.
Do yourself a favor and check out Alex’s fantastic animation work on YouTube and Vimeo and also give his blog a look. See the bottom of this very post for one of the Twisted ToyFare Theater strips he animated that I helped voice!
So, enjoy the episode and read on for a few more notes. In the following gallery you can see the covers to Arkham Asylum and The Cult, plus an image of the lettering by Gaspar Saladino and the big spread towards the beginning we both talk about.
The Arkham Asylum inspired story of is was called “Trial” from Season 2. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm came up with the story and Dini scripted.
Batman Gothic was drawn by Klaus Janson and originally appeared in Legends Of The Dark Knight #6-10.
I happened to talk with artists Brent Schoonover and Mark Laming at New York Comic Con after recording this episode and Laming told me that McKean’s artwork was actually mixed media and photographed!
We also talk about Batman: The Cult by Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson, which I haven’t read yet!
I’m helping! You can help by rating the show on iTunes and leaving comments or questions here!
