A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay I apologise for posting so late and not on the weekend as usual. I’ve been overdue for a new prescription of lenses and so have been working slower due to eye strain. That should all change after I go to my optometrist appointment and purchase my new glasses in August.  Last week I was at Big Brother Comics in Sacramento looking for a current issue of "The Rocketeer", a comic series that debuted in the 1980s and paid homage to super hero comics of the 1930s. I would soon find out from the employees that they sold out of the most recent series back in the spring and there would be no plans to print anymore. Which is damned sad because you get very few super hero comics like that anymore. However, I was looking through several other comics hoping to find something likened to "The Rocketeer" and when I say “likened”, I'm talking about any comic book that takes after any time period between the late 1930s and early '80s. After those years, comics...

Ever since "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" released last weekend, there’s been a lot of media hype about it being Marvel's “first horror movie”. Well, to those people who have been saying that, I have news: it's not Marvel's first horror movie, 2007’s "Ghost Rider" is. It's not even Marvel's second horror movie if you count the 2011 “Ghost Rider” sequel and 2020’s “The New Mutants”. There’s actually been some debate whether the sequel to 2011’s “Doctor Strange” is horror to begin with.  Do I consider “Doctor Strange 2” a horror film? Well, if it isn’t, it at least comes pretty close to being one. Doctor Strange is a character who already had roots in the horror genre. However, director Sam Raimi adds to the movie’s dark elements with his style of directing, a style that has been influenced by many of H.P. Lovecraft's story concepts. It’s a style that he used in his Lovecraftian horror movies that he was already well known for su...

Credit: Pixabay.com This Saturday I have to find a way to squeese in my writing projects so I can celebrate Free Comic Book Day. So if you’re shocked to see this post out earlier than usual, that’s why. Taking Time Out for Free Comic Book Day Credit: Pixabay.com Is an author being undisciplined by taking out valuable writing time to hit the comic book shops to celebrate a relatively new holiday like Free Comic Book Day (which debuted in 2002)? Not if comics influenced his/her writing. After all, comic books are a form of literature and while they are not a substitute for prose, they are still a form of story-telling paired with art making it one of the most distinctive forms of pop art of the 20 th century and beyond. This is a fact that is being accepted more each year since many of the most renowned science fiction and fantasy authors have written comic books along side their prose fiction. Some of these authors are ones such as Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood...

A page from America's Best Comics, issue 26, 1948 Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Saturday I was at one of the fast food joints in town doing research on my smart horn (phone) for a topic to write this blog entry on when I discovered that Sacramento Wizard Con’s tickets for this coming Saturday were almost sold out. I jumped into my car and rushed home (within the speed limit) to register. (I don’t do monetary exchanges on my horn in public.) I had thought I would get in for free for the whole weekend with a press pass. But, after receiving a reply to my email request for one, I was told that the news media outlet I write for ( Examiner .com) was not one of Wizard Con’s preferred outlets and they had to give preference because of the growing attendance of the con. Wizard Con is a touring comic book and pop culture convention and so it makes appearances at various cities throughout the nation. This year Sacramento happens to be one of those cities. Besides comics, the ...

 Warning:  This post may contain content or links to content considered to be obscene/objectionable by some viewers. I know I said I would try to have a review of Sleepy Hollow for you last time, but I haven't gotten a chance to write it. I wanted to watch the second episode first and, like the first one, I taped it but haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet. I'd like to talk about where the series seems to be going and in order to do that I feel that it's best to watch at least one episode beyond that of the debut. So I'll have a review of it here next week. The good news is that for those of you who are like me and prefer the full reading experience by turning real pages in a bound book, the print version of Fool's Illusion is now available at Amazon . In fact, I updated my promotional bookmarks for its print release today and will have several of them at tomorrow's Super Sac-Con . So if you're in the area you might want to consider drop...

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons  There's a lot of hype right now about AMC's "The Walking Dead". As much as I like zombies, I saw my very first episode only today, believe it or not, which was the first episode of the new season. You can watch it right now here but I suggest you do it now since it's only streaming on AMC's website for a limited time and that could be until midnight tonight for all we know. So if you do, come back here after it's done and let me know what you think in the comments box. As for myself, it really didn't impress me. Now I won't get cocky about it thinking I know the whole series because I've only seen one episode. When I saw it I didn't see much difference in "Night of the Living Dead", the mother of all zombie movies as we know them today. Nor did it seem much different than any of the "Living Dead" knock offs. Okay, it's post-apocalyptic, which almost all of today's zombie...

Well, here's that "Special Edition" post I said I would have for you last time: my review of  The Dark Knight Rises. See, I always keep my word. It may be delayed a little bit, but I keep it.  Photo Credit: IMDB.com/Warner Bros.  Finally we’ve come to an end of another Batman saga of movies. Supposedly. The movie does play in such a way that sets up the possibility of a fourth film. But even if no fourth film comes along, The Dark Knight Rises still does a great job of concluding director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.   Dark Knight Rises carries on well its consistent realism of the previous two movies. Two elements it does this best with is the plot and characterization. Bruce Wayne has been hiding out since his friend’s, District Attorney Harvey Dent’s, death eight years ago which is the time lapse in setting since the events of the previous film.   Feeling guilty about Dent’s death, Wayne has abandoned both his role as socialite and...

     (Photo removed for copyright reasons.) Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons This hasn’t been the best Cinco de Mayo or Free Comic Book Day for me.   I was supposed to attend a mini comic con at Empire Comics Vault in Sacramento but had to cancel all because a stupid glitch in the ATM at the bank in Woodland of No Return held me back.   So I drove over to the comic book store in Davis, Bizarro World, which is a lot closer to where I live. But I wasn’t able to get there until late in the afternoon so when I asked the owner, a really nice guy, if he had any free comics left he said he didn’t. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. It was a good thing because it drew a lot of people to read comic books who don’t often read them.   It was a bad thing in that some people didn’t get free comic books and yours truly was one of them. Actually, I didn’t even care that much. If I cared that much about the free comics I wouldn’t have planned to take ...

I hope you all got a chance to read my interview with Jeani Rector at Examiner .com.  It's a two part article where she talks about her career as both horror writer and editor of the online literary publication, The Horror Zine.  If you haven't had a chance to read it, please do so.  She's a really interesting woman with a lot of great insight and tips on writing horror and other areas of the dark fiction genre. In that interview, Jeani advises aspiring writers to stay away from the zombie and vampire trends Perhaps they are just a little over used in horror. However, they've always played a big role in dark fiction especially in film but vampires have played more of a role in literature than zombies.  But zombies are appearing more in today's literature.  As far as vampires go, the peak in their popularity is due to the Twilight books and films (the books being much too over rated since they are said to be poorly written) having been so successful in sal...

Paramount Pictures Sorry for not posting in such a long while, everyone. I've probably said this before but will say it again, I've had several writing projects going on and so haven't had time to post here more frequently. But in those times of waiting please feel free to look at my other stuff at Examiner.com , in which my most recent article was posted there only a few days ago. But here's film review I wrote especially for all of you who like visiting this site particularly. Directors Kenneth Branagh and Joss Whedon's Thor is Marvel Comics’ first big screen movie adaptation of a comic book based on a super hero of ancient myth. Yet while the movie sticks to the root elements of the Norse mythic origins, it also portrays the title character (played by Chris Hemsworth) through the science fiction genre of story telling like most super hero comic books have done. So as with the comic book series it is adapted from, Thor uses the elements of both fantasy and scien...