odds and ends: dinosaur dracula, comic pull list

One of my all-time favorite websites is X-Entertainment, a free-for-all tribute site to all the things that made my childhood rad. Updates to X-E have been sporadic in the past few years… but that promises to change with the advent of Dinosaur Dracula, X-E’s newly branded web address!

So far, Matt Caracappa has looked at Garfield and Friends fruit snacks, Fright Flicks trading cards, and my personal favorite, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cracker topper. X-Entertainment was surely an influence on my Thrift Store Finds posts, so I think anyone who likes those would truly love Matt’s writing. Check it out.

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We all know that I am something of a fan of the movies Alien and Aliens. I suppose you could say I had the misfortune of being born too late to see any of those movies in theaters- the only Aliens movies I’ve ever seen on the big screen have been muddled (Alien 3) botched (Alien: Resurrection) or just god awful (any of the Alien v. Predator movies, but I haven’t actually seen any of those).

Well, I’ve finally had the chance I’ve been waiting for last night; my most anticipated movie of the summer has to be Prometheus.

The “not a prequel” prequel to Alien, I was excited enough to see this flick that I broke free of my normal old man routines and went to a midnight showing. Even though director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Daniel Lindelof have been pretty straightforward, saying Prometheus is something new… I mean, c’mon. It’s an Alien movie.

…and I loved it. I loved it despite the cardboard cut-out characters. I loved it despite the gigantic plot holes. I loved Prometheus despite its’ structure, seemingly designed to infuriate the most nit-picky fans of this franchise. It’s a gorgeous movie worth seeing on the big screen.

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My current comic pull list is woefully small, and getting smaller by the month. Right now, these are the books I’m asking my fine comic retailer to put aside for me.

thrift store finds: a handful of modern era comic books

I don’t buy a lot of new comic books at thrift stores.

Please understand, “new” is a very flexible term when you’ve been reading comic books for twenty years. I define new as being anything published in the last ten years… but your mileage most certainly will vary on that definition. I don’t harbor many prejudices against the modern era of funnybooks; there have been some very awesome comics made in that time span. It’s just, as a personal preference, I don’t normally pick up stuff from that time period. They are books I had access to when first published. I passed on at the time, I don’t feel any particular need to pick them up now.

Recently, our local New2You Thrift Store received a huge collection of modern era comic books- most of ’em Marvel and DC. Somewhere mixed in between all the issues of Cable and Extreme Justice, I came across a couple of gems.

2010-2011 school year: day fifty five

I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but if some enterprising writer of Young Adult fiction can figure out a YA-friendly way to write a book squarely aimed at teens about the zombie apocalypse, they would make a million dollars. Teenage boys are fantastically interested in zombies- my classroom’s copies of World War Z by Max Brooks, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (not a zombie novel per se, but pretty well inspired the genre) and for those who get parental permission, Dead Sea by Brian Keene.

odds and ends

Happy Black Friday, if you care about that sort of thing! In general, I don’t. One of the luxuries of being poor is that you don’t have to worry about camping out at 3 AM to spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need. I will admit that in recent years, I have ventured out on the day after Thanksgiving, but entirely motivated by having small children who wake up at the crack of dawn regardless of what day of the month it is.

Befitting my financial stature, Elliot and I usually go and wait outside Half Price Books on Black Friday. We have a HPB within five minutes of our house so getting there is no hardship. Elliot’s an early riser, so there’s no problem there. Half Price Books Black Friday sale isn’t a crazy doorbuster (20% off and a $5 dollar gift card to the first 100 shoppers) but you can shop secure in the comfort that people who wake up early to go to a used bookstore aren’t usually the type of folks who will trample you to death over a DVD player or riot over a GPS.

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Ellen and I have been enjoying AMC’s The Walking Dead in the past few weeks. If you know my wife, you know how remarkable that statement is. I’m a fan of a good zombie apocalypse, but they are not Ellen’s cuppa. When we started dating, I made her watch Dawn of the Dead (the Romero version, duh!), and she submitted to it with style and aplomb, despite her tastes running more toward Merchant Ivory productions. The Walking Dead has been fun for the both of us.

I’m a fan of the comic on which the show is based and have been reading it since 2003, I think. I have a copy of the first trade in my classroom’s lending library (on the restricted shelf, naturally) and it’s easily one of the most popular graphic novel collections I own. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: If someone can figure out how to write a YOUNG ADULT zombie book, they’d be millionaires. Kids love the inherent creepiness of the genre. I think the bloody trappings may preclude acceptance as a part of the YA ouevere, but I swear man… if you can run with it, it’s money on the table.

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Believe it or not, I may get to go to the movies this weekend! When you have two young children in your care, organizing a trip to the movies is something akin to planning a military operation… but it seems as if we have a babysitter lined up and the wife and I (and some other friends) will be going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 sometime this weekend.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the HP movie series in the past few weeks. I’m a fan of the books and the movies and I’m looking forward to seeing the series out in grand style. For Potter-philes more hardcore than myself, they must be looking at these two movies as one of the last great gasps of Harry Potter fandom, in a global sense. No more waiting in lines at midnight to get some sort of Harry Potter fix, the story’s been told in print and on film.

Of course, there will be more Harry Potter. At some point, Hollywood is going to realize that there’s still gold in them thar hills and go about “remaking” and “reimagining” Hogwarts for new generations, no matter your opinion of how good these flicks are. I also have every faith that author J.K. Rowling will at some point return to her best-loved creations; she’s alluded to it enough times with reporters (and Oprah, a few months ago). For the time being however, Deathly Hallows closes the door on the whole world and I’m excited to get to see it on the big screen.

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For those of you who have been waiting, I’m going to post Part Four of my “It Gets Better” comic on Monday. Being a holiday weekend, I thought it was better to post the comic on a day when people are near their computers than over the weekend when most are either (a) passed out from overeating, (b)watching football, or (c) shopping. It’s coming though.

odds and ends

By a wide margin, the best comic I’ve read this year is Smile by Rania Telgemeier. I just love the book to death and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I’ve previously enjoyed Telgemeier’s adaptations of The Babysitters Club for Scholastic, but Smile just stands heads and shoulders above those books. Detailing the author’s teenage years through her struggles with braces, Smile takes that device and runs with it. Each chapter brought a new crimp in Telgemeier’s unfortunate and uncomfortable problems with her teeth and how those literal aches were criss-crossed with the growing pains any young adult feels while making their way through middle and high school.

The cartooning in this book is tight and expressive. Telgemeier does an amazing job of evoking a time and a place while still managing to stay firmly rooted in today, a trick that must have been harder to pull off than she makes it seem here.

I also want to say how UNBELIEVABLY amazing the color in Smile is. Colorist Stephanie Yue knocks it out of the park and this is one of those comics that really underscores how important color can be to a book. The colors are bright but saturated in a way that makes the pages pop from start to finish. As much as I love Telgemeier’s cartooning, Yue OWNS this book and I don’t think I would have enjoyed it half as much as I did without her contribution.

A must read, a must buy, and if you’re looking for a great book to reach out to young readers, look no further.

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Speaking of comics, I’m going to a comic book convention this weekend! The Cincinnati Comics Expo is, from what I gather, the first comic convention that the Queen City has seen in awhile. All sorts of guests are going to be at this convention including Michael Uslan (producer of the 1989 Batman movie), Tony Moore (original penciller on the Image Comics series The Walking Dead), a bunch of Golden and Sliver Age superhero artists, and a whole list of other people whose names I don’t recognize but will chalk that up to being behind the times on comic book stuff.

Ellen and I went to the Mid Ohio Comic Con last year and had a fun time, so I’m hoping for more of the same (on a smaller scale). I don’t plan on doing much shopping but hopefully I’ll be able to find some cool/weird comics for cheap. I have the weirdest/stupidest collecting goals right now, including trying to get all of the first 25 issues of Marvel Comics’ ALF comic book, which was a favorite of mine when I was a young ‘un.