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Comic Book Review: North 40 1 2 3
In the Mouth of Conover County

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North 40 Wildstorm

Zombos Says: Excellent

The residents of Conover County are in the grip of an eldritch, surreal, horror like the one John Trent faced in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. Changing everyone into demons, devils, or potential deliverers from the green sticky spawn of the stars, the-sleeper-awakened, Cthulhu, writer Aaron Williams and illustrator Fiona Staples leaven their apocalyptic despair with dry humor and back end o' the Bible bad monsters.

Now Entering Conover County, North 40, Issue 1 — The water here must make people retarded…

One very bored Goth girl, Dyan, and her eager to please, slow-to-glow, acolyte, Robert, wile away the time by reading from a restricted–but cool looking–book at the local library. Robert remarks "D&D geeks make things like this all the time out of old dictionaries and epoxy resin." Paging through it, they inadvertently read that spell; you know, the one that opens the gate-never-to-be-opened that lies between our backyard and theirs.

And theirs is some backyard.

North 40 Events happen quickly in the hayseed town of Lufton. People start changing in one of three ways: loathsomely, powerfully, or not at all. Sheriff Morgan falls into the not-at-all category, but he must deal with the people who fall into the other two. For them, the transformation can lead to bad personality traits becoming really bad for everyone else.

Helping the Sheriff is Luanne, who is powered up with a World of Warcraft kind of far sight, so she can tell him what's happening around town and direct him accordingly, and Wyatt, who can fly and becomes impervious to harm. Stirring up trouble is David–make that a giant-sized trouble–and his backroads kin, and the townsfolk who have metamorphosed into nasty hungry creatures or undead ones.

The witch, Marguritte DeVris, instructs her apprentice Amanda–a halfie–from the shadows. She empowers Amanda with a symbol of authority, a scythe, and the always-useful-in-chaos-magic sigils to battle the darkness.

Staples disarming artwork is both humorous and serious when needed–her character's faces are full of life–as Conover's predicament worsens, and Williams dialog and narrative are concisely measured for each character and situation, and especially for Sheriff Morgan, who remains unrattled by the chaos around him and surprisingly (suspiciously?) resourceful at handling its more challenging moments.

An' the Word Was Law, North 40, Issue 2 — Somethin' went wrong with the world in Conover County last night, and folks was just startin' to see how deep this well was…

In issue two, Amanda arrives in Conover County to join the fight for salvation, Wyatt tries to come to grips with his couch-potato dad who has turned into a potato on the couch, sprouts and all, and the local high school dance is still on in spite of the dangers. Teenagers. Sheriff Morgan also has his hands full with the redneck, misbehavin' Atterhulls and David, who can toss around big cars like Matchbox die-casts.

The opening gruesome splashpage sets the tone, and while I am not sure whether Staples and Williams did the panel layouts together or it is just Staples' arrangement, each page moves the story smoothly along with an economic, yet stylistically expressive, visual storytelling. The colorization for daylit scenes is comprised of rustic tones, reinforcing the small town countryfide quality of Lufton.

A Time to Mourn, an' a Time to Dance, North 40, Issue 3 — Conover County's past is steeped in hate n' blood. The lines was drawn over a hundred years ago, an' nobody's erased 'em since…

Night. A giant robot. Zombies crash the high school dance. The Atterhulls get help from Granny, who can now see with her new eyes (a very clever way to also give her far sight), and Dyan–filled with the spirit of vengeance–becomes a key player in the fight to save Lufton, but for the wrong side. Williams and Staples ante up with issue three; there is more dialog, more tension on every page as the situation worsens. Old rivalries heat up and Sheriff Morgan needs Wyatt to focus more on helping him rather than spraying his dad with a water bottle. Staples draws the variously afflicted teenagers–some are glowing ghosts, some are stalk-eyed, some are just plain undead, humorously terrifying.

North 40 flips the black flavors of American Gothic's relationships and characters, salt's them with the simplicity of The Walking Dead's direness, and then runs amok with monsters, mayhem, and a Stephen King's worth of darkness stretching across the landscape. And with all of this powered by Lovecraft's leviathan from the stars, the reading experience is exhilarating.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Temple of the Matmos

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Temple of the Matmos Blog Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Robyn (aka The Great Tyrant and Diabolik72) of the Temple of the Matmos reveals there is no hot babe minding the temple. Damn.

If I had to pinpoint a moment where it ‘all started’ it would have to be Xmas 1984 (I think) when I was given Denis Gifford’s Pictorial History of Horror Movies as a gift from my Uncle Steve. Pouring over it for the next few days, I decided that I absolutely had to see every goddamn movie in there. I saw An American Werewolf in London around the same time and from there got into the Universal and Hammer movies. The next big leap was discovering Fangoria, when my father brought me a copy home from a shop he’d been signing at (he was and still is a comic artist) and through this I discovered Romero, Argento, Fulci and the likes. I’ve been pretty much obsessed ever since.

One of my heroes is the late Forry Ackerman, and like him I’m a firm believer that writing about horror and sci-fi should be fun as well as informative. I’ve also always liked the idea of having a fun ‘host’ for this kind of thing. I think this partly comes from growing up reading the British sci-fi comic 2000ad, which had (and still has, I believe) ‘The Mighty Tharg’, an alien from the planet Betelgeuse, as its ‘editor’. Of course, later I was introduced to the EC stuff with The Crypt Keeper and The Old Witch and the rest.

Much later, as an adult, when I edited and wrote for a short-lived photocopied horror movie fanzine, it was under the nom de plume of ‘Robyn Graves’. The Temple of the Matmos is just a fanzine without the hassle and expenditure of printing and distribution really. It started off as bit of random ‘stuff I like’ blog I was doing to keep me sane when I was working as a high school teacher – as soon as I quit and got a job I was happier with, I started doing it in earnest and it was clear to me that the Euro horror route was the way to go. I’ve no plans to stop anytime soon.

It’s quite liberating to write under the guise of ‘the Tyrant’, because I can be a bit haughty and imperious and nobody takes it too seriously, although I think there’s more than a few out there that don’t know the Barbarella character and click into my profile thinking I’m some hot babe! If it gets ‘em reading, then…

LOTT D Horror Post Round Up

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Metaluna mutant Beware! Once again, the archives have been unburied, and the hideous horrors unleashed! For your entertainment and edification pleasure, of course. Members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to find their past misdeeds…and reveal them to you, one favorite and notable post at a time!

Drunken Severed Head bids a fond farewell to the King of Pop in Goodby, Michael:

Like millions of others, I still have warm memories of seeing the video for the song “Thriller” for the first time. The song replaced “Monster Mash” for the post-Boomer generations as THE anthem of Halloween, my favorite holiday.

Classic Horror kicks off the action with Ten Sadistic Ways to Die in a Horror Movie:

They said, “Hey, guys, we have somebody getting yanked apart by two semi trucks in our movie. What about listing off some other brutal and/or sadistic deaths?” These aren’t necessarily the ten most brutal or sadistic deaths in a horror movie, just the ones we thought were notable.

Groovy Age of Horror switches on Channel Evil No. 1:

Oakley has a unique style that can be classy and articulate at times, creating a scene that is very film noir with a dose of abstract planes. At other times, the art gets the best of him, spiraling out of control and derails writer Alan Grant’s interesting story.

Dinner With Max Jenke shows us what’s strong enough for a Ninja, but made for a woman:

As a trilogy, the Ninja films were unrelated to each other – with the only constant being actor Sho Kosugi, who played a different role in each one. And while Enter the Ninja (1981) and Revenge of the Ninja (1983) were straight-forward action films with crime elements, Domination brought the series to a supernatural conclusion.

TheoFantastique ponders angels, aliens, and the supernatural other:

…This connection between the angelic and the alien in horror films is even more interesting when we consider the influence of Christian demonology in shaping the thinking and symbolism in these areas.

Vault of Horror lists their top ten favorites for 1950’s horror:

The 1950s was an amazing time for terror, filled with giant critters, 3-D nightmares, drive-in grotesqueries and the birth of sci-fi horror. There are so many to choose from, but if you held me down at gunpoint, these would probably be my ten favorite…

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Classic Horror

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Nate Yapp Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Nate Yapp of Classic Horror hits the wall, and climbs over it in classic style to continue his quest for horror.

Even without horror, I would still be a movie blogger of some kind. When I was seven, I read Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide from cover to cover, imagining each film in my head. Cinema is part of my basic identity. Horror came to give that identity a focus, not once but twice in my life.

While I was still seven (or possibly eight), I wandered into the living room just as the infamous sewer grate scene from Stephen King's It began. I was terrified. I did not like it. My mother, who grew up watching a local late-night horror program, decided that the best way to handle my almost crippling fear was to show me her horror films — Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Pit & the Pendulum and the like. I was hooked. For whatever reason, these resonated with me. I would search bookstores and libraries for tomes on my favorite monsters.

At age eight, I was proud owner of William K. Everson's Classics of the Horror Film and Alan Frank's Horror Movies (although many of the full-color pictures in the latter volume disturbed me). I even bought a copy of Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen, because Count Orlok loomed on the cover. A friend's parents were kind enough to tape AMC's Monsterfest for me and I pored over all of those movies. I could not get enough.

Until I eventually did.

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Meet the Horror Bloggers: Dinner With Max Jenke

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dinner with max jenke Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Jeff Allard invites us to Dinner With Max Jenke and reminds us how easy it is to be a horror fan these days.

Writing about horror has been a constant in my life for, well, long enough to scare me. In the early ‘90s, inspired by the Lester Bangs of horror journalism, Chas. Balun (Horror Holocaust, The Gore Score, Deep Red magazine, GoreZone’s “Piece O’ Mind” column), I thought it’d be a great idea to start self-publishing my own fanzine and with some expert help from a friend who did layout and design work at the newspaper I wrote for at the time, the first issue of Gravedigger’s Union made it into the world back in 1993 – a year that now seems ancient to me.

Looking back on that issue, which included a tribute to Night of the Living Dead – then celebrating its mere 25th (!) anniversary – I have to marvel at one thing: how much free time I clearly had on my hands back then! But I’m very glad I had the time and money to devote to publishing Gravedigger’s Union as the four issues that eventually saw print over the next four years (the mag that started as an intended quarterly became an annual event!) before being forced by financial realities to throw in the towel (seeking out advertisers might’ve been a smart move but I opted not to) remain a nice little personal snapshot of a different age of fandom.

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Meet the Horror Bloggers: The Day After

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Zombeartep Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Chris Zenga of The Day After runs with the Undead. And loves it.

I was very lucky as a kid and was introduced to monsters at a very young age. I'm a child of the 80's and had plenty to inspire me. I had a love for all things Scooby-Doo, and My Pet Monster and to this day re-watch my Hilarious House of Frightenstien DVD's as often as I can; only now I include my two children.

I saw The Monster Squad multiple times in the theater and was convinced that the fastest way to take down the wolf man was to tag him in the nards!. My father and I sat down to watch The Exorcist on the Halloween after my 12th birthday and I knew I wanted that adrenaline rush that only comes from pure terror, all the time. Although raised in a catholic household my parents were quite liberal when it came to me being allowed to watch horror films; perhaps they thought God would cleanse my soul next Sunday at mass? Now that they know I'm an atheist they're rethinking how liberal they were all those years ago.

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LOTT D Horror Round Up

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Dummy Beware! Once again, the archives have been unburied, and the hideous horrors unleashed! For your entertainment and edification pleasure, of course. Members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to find their past misdeeds…and reveal them to you, one favorite and notable post at a time!

Classic Horror looks at a solid example of Italian Giallo, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage:

As a giallo, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an exemplary combination of all the things associated with this particular breed of Italian mystery-thriller. It features violence that is heavy on the crimson, stylized camera work, and sex and sexuality as major parts of the plot. One could argue that Bird is the film that defined these as characteristic of the subgenre, but in reality, it merely accentuates and clarifies an existing format.

TheoFantastique hits the road searching for post-millenial road horror:

The characteristics of this subgenre of film involve “the centralisation of a group of generally young protagonists; the journey of this group into an unknown and hostile location, and its resulting encounter with a murderous, perverse and often interrelated clan of killers, preceding vile and gory consequence.”

Dinner With Max Jenke pigs out on appreciation for Mother’s Day poster art:

As a kid, when I first saw this poster reproduced in a newspaper advertisement (which in smudgy black and white newsprint only made it look cooler), at the height of the slasher fad, I was in thrall with its ghastliness. Even with as many outstanding posters as the early ’80s boasted (hello, Happy Birthday to Me!), Mother’s Day knocked everything else on its ass.

Zombie’s Halloween II (2009)

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Michael myers Zombos Says: Very Good

I did not expect Rob Zombie to surprise me with Halloween II. Beyond his unavoidably repetitious metal-rockers, hippie-hillbillies, and tattoo-punkstering of Laurie Strode and Haddonfield Illinois’ social set, miring Halloween II in a seedy glaze of grunge, strip joints, and Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa posters, he surprised me.

Probably many horror fans are surprised, too, and will be dismayed or downright violently annoyed with this bold mashing of J-horror’s quintessential rage-filled imagery into Myers’ endless angst-driven slashing ouevre.

In this brilliantly audacious diversion from John Carpenter’s classic bogeyman, Michael Myers (the towering Tyler Mane) becomes a deadly juggernaut guided by a mysterious other embodied in the white gossamer spectre of his dead mother and her majestic white stallion. But to what purpose? Is she a vision of Shiva the Destroyer? Or is she a demonic chaos seeking succor? Or is she simply a confabulation in Myers’ tortured mind? Zombie builds mystery by confounding us with this and an unexpected folly a deux between Myers and his sister, which now takes the Halloween franchise into a strikingly new direction.

My surprise comes from how Zombie’s bizarre imagery grates against my expectations (and probably those of most of the audience): a mad-hatter’s kind of tea party in Hell; Myers’ adult skeleton–its skull wearing his scarecrow-like mask–eerily hanging in the background as young Michael and spectral mommy chat about the future of the Myers family; and then the final jarring image that completely displaces Halloween II from its slasher underpinning by invoking the psychologically terrifying hallmarks of Samara from The Ring and The Grudge’s unstoppable curse of violence. I am more than surprised: I did not think Rob Zombie capable of such creative impudence.

Halloween II 2009Teasing with a beginning that makes us believe he is comfortably rehashing the hospital mayhem from 1981’s Halloween II, Zombie instead drops us off in Haddonfield a year later. Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) now lives with long-haired–and burned-out–Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) and his short-haired, more healthy-eating, daughter Annie (Danielle Harris). Laurie suffers from horrific nightmares and attends therapy sessions. She is a wreck physically and mentally, and cannot get her life–after that night Michael came home–jump-started again. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) is doing smashingly well. He is promoting his succcessful book on Myers. Zombie alternates between showing Laurie’s ongoing struggle with her trauma and Loomis’ unsympathetic attitude to the fallout from Myers’ serial-killing as he tours the book-signing circuit. More and more, the limelight reveals Loomis’ callousness in contrast to Laurie’s growing despair when she cannot find forgetfulness in the shadows.

There is no suspense generated from this shifting focus between Laurie, Loomis, and Myers’ continuing killing spree, even after Zombie gives Myers a shiny new knife, one Jim Bowie would be proud of, and sends him off, guided by his visions, to bring Laurie home. I wondered how all this carnage leading up to another Halloween night with Michael Myers could leave no room for suspense. I will pin it on Zombie paying greater attention to his imagery, which is wonderfully macabre and wicked and filled with malevolent long-haired spectres (although in a Zombie movie just about everyone has long hair), to the detriment of his more perfunctory treatment of Myers. He is big, he is bad, he is unstoppable; yes, we get that. Having Myers kill and eat a dog, uncooked, also seems a gratuitous gorehound moment, which Zombie seems to relish. Missing from this Halloween movie is the signiture music, which only comes into play at the end for the revelation that, ironically, changes everything. Carpenter’s music would have been out of place here anyway. This is no longer Carpenter’s classic vision: it is Zombie’s.

There is a sad flashback involving young Michael at the sanitarium. Michael wants to know when he can go home, while we know he can never go home; making him a lost soul who will stay lost. The gift of a toy white horse figures prominently in adult Michael’s visions. But the ultimate meaning and significance of those visions will have to wait until Halloween III.

Which leads me to another surprise: I never thought I would be eager to see a new Rob Zombie movie. If he directs Halloween III, I will be. Hopefully he can put the suspense back into the next one.

Halloween Table Toppers:
Witch, Mummy, Vampire

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Halloween table toppers I found these irresistible table toppers at Dollar Tree for one dollar each (click the image to enlarge). A bargain indeed for these fairly large and stylish paper decorations that don't play it cuddly cute, yet don't overly traumatize with terror, either.

Just look at those faces! The witch actually leers like a creepy wicked witch should for Halloween. And both the mummy and the vampire look like they want to scare the hell out of you with their ominously gaping mouths filled with sharp teeth.

While perusing the slim offerings on the shelves (this year it looks like every store is cutting back on inventory), a little girl in the next isle over–I'd say no older than five–told her mommy to hurry up because she wanted "to see Halloween."

She ran over to the display of decorations, taking in everything with glee. She seemed most fascinated by the life-size, plastic, dismembered feet dangling in pairs from the hooks. I was going to mention they were fake, since her mother seemed not to think it important enough to tell her,  but decided not to after I saw she was not frightened at all. Just mesmerized.

I am sure most of you will recall that feeling. Why spoil it?

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Evil On Two Legs

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Corey Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Corey at Evil On Two Legstalks about what makes his blog unique and fun to read as well as write.

 

I’ve always loved horror. My earliest memory is of the first day of pre-school and finding the 2-XL robot hidden behind the nap mats and Legos. One of the multiple choice 8-track quiz tapes dealt with vampires, werewolves and other classic monsters. I don’t believe I ever put in the tapes on sports or history, but I must have played the monster one a 1000 times.

As soon as I could read I was lost in the public library searching out books on UFOs, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and horror story collections like “The Headless Roommate and Other Tales” and “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” Early exposure to the films Halloween, An American Werewolf in London and The Prowler set me up for what’s become a life-long love of the horror film genre. My happiest memories of childhood involve roaming the endless horror aisles of oversized VHS boxes at Encore Video (a local mom & pop video store), looking for something that sounded scary but whose name and cover would be acceptable to my parents… and dreaming of the day when I could have my own video card and would finally be able to rent some of the titles that featured really graphic cover art and enticing names like Faces of Death, I Spit On Your Grave and Slumber Party Massacre.

masked corey There are thousands of sites and blogs where you can find film reviews, so when I started my own site I decided I wanted it to try to do something a little different. When I was a kid we’d argue for hours about who would win in a fight between Jason and Freddy or we’d try to rationalize exactly how Michael is walking around killing people in part 4 after clearly having his eyes shot out in part 2. Those are the kinds of things I wanted to write about. Our site also features less original things like lists of the week’s horror DVD releases and the occasional, highly biased review of the latest slasher remake; but I’m most proud of our site when it features articles that do things like analyze the fashion sense of the teens in the first Friday the 13th or pit Eli from Let the Right One In against Edward from Twilight to decide who would be crowned vampire of the year.

I created a horror blog because I needed a place to vent my love of the genre, to exercise my creativity, and as a fun project to work on with my best friends turned co-writers (Jon & Cara). My site has grown to mean far more to me than that, though, because of the people I have met thanks to it. Through email, Twitter, comments, and in person at conventions, I’ve come to meet some of the nicest people in the horror community and, through their encouragement and advice, to come to feel a part of it myself. I know that my co-writers feel the same.

I think we’ll be writing about horror for a long time to come.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Slasher Speak

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Vince liaguno Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, author, and League of Tana Tea Drinker's member, Vince Liaguno of Slasher Speak gives us good reason why the standards of normalcy are overrated.

Let’s get one thing out the way: I love slasher films and am unapologetic about it. There is no hanging my head or lowering my voice when someone asks me what the last film I saw was and the answer includes the words bloody or massacre and is either preceded or followed by the name of a holiday or power tool. Buckets of blood, guts, and gore…mass murder, misogyny, and madness – it’s all good.

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Meet the Horror Bloggers: Paradise of Horror

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Paradise of horror Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Richard Peter from Paradise of Horror invites us to become castaways on his ideal isle where horror fans can get their geek on.

 

I have always been a huge fan of horror ever since me and my grandmother would watch Tales from the Crypt back when she got HBO for free. It was always my favorite show, but my parents would make me watch Goosebumps since it was a bit more toned down. Though, Goosebumps wasn’t scaring me the way I wanted it to, so I picked up two movies that would forever haunt me, and provided me a gateway into horror: The Thing and The Blob (1988).

With those movies burned into my skull and frightening me to no end, I had to turn it down and switch from Goosebumps to the sci-fi/horror show The X-Files. After that show I finally started watching good horror movies and it’s been history ever since.

I turned into a regular horror movie guru and now I want to be a filmmaker and movie editor.

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