Month: July 2018

My journey through 1927 grows ever closer to the year’s end as I reach the September 1927 issue of Amazing Stories. This is a pretty morbid instalment with man-eating plants, electric deathtraps, the first appearance of a Lovecraft classic and more…

The second post in my three-part series on the new Splatterpunk Awards is now live at Women Write About Comics! This time I’m delving into the collections of short stories and seeing what twisted delights I find…

Special thanks to my friend Bella Blitz, who moved heaven and earth to ensure that I was able to get my hands on a copy of Jack Ketchum’s Gorilla in My Room!

Well, DreamWorks has revealed some images from its upcoming reboot of She-Ra. Personally, I think She-Ra’s new look is rather sweet. Not everyone agrees, of course, and I’ve seen some pretty heated social media discourse. A lot of it is the same “they’ve ruined my childhood” theatrics that we see whenever a fondly-remembered franchise gets a new lick of paint, but I’ve noticed that a good chunk of it has a curious moralistic slant: the idea that the new She-Ra will somehow corrupt the minds of innocent kids.

Continue reading “She-Ra and the Seduction of the Innocent”

The bats have left the bell tower.

The victims have been bled.

Red velvet liens the black box.

Belladonna mag is dead.

Yes, Belladonna magazine sees the publication of its final issue this month. It had a pretty good run, lasting for twenty-two issues in all, and the farewell instalment is as inviting as ever. Slasher Honey Chass turns down Friend Request; Classics Honey Samantha examines Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, explores House of Wax and unmasks The Phantom of the Opera; Guest Honey Laurel speaks up for A Quiet Place; Monster Honey Sarah faces up to Mon Mon Mon Monsters and discusses romance in horror; Sara Frazetta discusses the work of her grandfather Frank in a comprehensive interview; Supernatural Honey Kim takes a tour of Demon House, tags #Screamers and looks at the allegedly true-life hauntings of the USS Turner Joy; and Head Honey LinnieSarah fidns feminist subtexts in the erotic thriller genre.

As for me, well, I’ve got one last round-up of comic reviews: Coyotes, Crosswind, Captain Kronos and (breaking that rather lovely alliteration) Spirits of Vengeance.

It’s a sad moment all round, but I feel proud to have been a part of Belladonna, and I hope that we all gave our readers a few fond memories to take home. You can find the final issue of Belladonna at the official website or at MagCloud.

 

I’ve been trying to stay out of the latest iteration of the Comicsgate malarkey. I watched a couple of the Diversity and Comics videos months back, was unimpressed, and moved on. (I suspect that, had industry pros done the same instead of rising to the bait, the whole thing might have died down by now.) But I’ve just seen something that’s prompted me to write about a few matters that have been on my mind for a while now.

Bounding into Comics, a pro-Comicsgate website founded by John F. Trent, recently ran a news article with the headline “DC Comics and Marvel Comics Colorist Calls Customers and Fans ‘Trash'”.

The colourist in question is Tamra Bonvillain. What, exactly, was it that she said? Well, here is her contentious tweet, as quoted in the article: “C0mics Gate is trash, and you’re trash if you support it in any way.”

Continue reading “Comicsgate, Clickbait and Makin’ People Irate”

Phew, I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d be making up for the paucity of writing last month. In my third post over two days, I’m looking at the life and work of Lotte Reiniger, director of the oldest surviving animated feature. See the latest article in my Women in British Animation series at Ms En Scene!

Hot on the tail of my first Hugo post, here’s the first of three Splatterpunk Awards posts I’ll be writing for Bookmarked. I took a dip into the world of extreme horror, and head on over to read my thoughts on the journey…

I’m doing a two-part series of Hugo Award reviews over at WWAC. The first part, covering short stories and novelettes, is up for your perusal should you choose to peruse.

When I was a nipper I played a Commodore 64 game called Vampire. The object was to explore a Gothic castle looking for various vampire-hunting tools before tracking down Dracula’s coffin and finally slaying the fiendish count, a confrontation represented in somewhat opaque terms by the hero floating around firing white beams at spiky balls and a big red heart against a plain black background. Pretty straightforward stuff. But there was one thing I could never figure out: exactly what the main character was supposed to be.

Continue reading “Fantomas Versus Dracula: Forgotten Crossovers of Gaming”