Daily Monsterism #20 (I Think...)

Monster: Purple Tentacle
Movie: Day of the Tentacle

Okay, so, it's not a movie monster. It's a game. But a damned good one! I was revisiting my childhood earlier today and played some of this. It still stands, easily, as one of the best adventure games I've ever played, and one of the best games I've ever played, and Purple Tentacle will always be somewhere on my top ten list of villains.

Iron Man Will Rock Madcore

Ever since Marvel started touting Iron Man as being their Batman Begins, I've been pretty keen to see ANYTHiNG of this film. I have finally seen the trailer and it looks like it will rock. The suit design is absolutely spot on -- Adi Granov's work really has come to life in this. I'm also really looking forward to seeing what Granov and Fav's do with their Vegas-set Fin Fang Foom story, which was Fav's "if I had the money" Iron Man story. You think Granov's Iron Man is cool, wait until you see what he's done to Fin Fang Foom!

Daily Monsterism Triple Trouble

Okay, sorry if anyone's been following this and getting a kick out of it, the past few nights've been crazy. Caught up with some mates, worked, etc. Various things just got in the way. Anyway, here's a triple dose of monsterism.

Monster: Boar-wolf
Movie: The Caravan of Courage

For a television movie, The Caravan of Courage had some surprisingly good special effects. Granted, it was a post Return of the Jedi Lucasfilm effort, so I'm pretty sure it had a fairly good budget and crew of people working on it (although the giant spiders are pretty terrible), but the stop motion beast pictured above was fun to watch. They managed to integrate the stop motion beast into the live-action stuff pretty well, and the creature itself is just so outlandish and hideous. I love it and wish they'd make figures of these things (yeah... I collect Star Wars figures).

Monster: Sulley
Movie: Monsters Inc.

Having just seen Ratatouille, I've got Pixar on my mind. Ratatouille looked fantastic, but the story itself left a fair bit to be desired in my mind. Still, the awesome visuals wouldn't have been anywhere near as good had Pixar not made such incredible breakthroughs in hair animation with Sulley in Monsters Inc.

Monster: Dagon
Movie: Dagon

Sometimes, straight to DVD horror movies have the ability to blow you away with how good they are. Dagon is one of them. I have a feeling it got a really, really limited theatrical run, but either way, we only got it on DVD here. I'm a big Lovecraft fan. Love his books, and love the whole Cthulhu mythos thing, but Lovecraft on film has hardly ever worked. Dagon works. Really well. It gets excessively gory at times and the effects are pretty cheap, but the atmosphere it builds when the protagonist is scampering around the town is awesome. Anyway, I love the look of Lovecraftian monsters, so I thought it was pretty cool when Dagon eventually shows up, even though it's for a fraction of a second (and pretty bad CGI).

Completely aside, signed up for the gym today, feeling good!

Daily Monsterism #16

Monster: The Red Pyramid
Movie: Silent Hill

Unexpected moments of shocking horror.

Voodoo and Fan Art

After posting the image of TIKI, I got all inspired to touch up and post some other bits of work.
The picture below was inspired by the character of Baron Samedi, from Vodun folklore. Yes, he was also a James Bond villain, but the idea was to "modernise" the character, and this is what I came up with. Voodoo/Vodun is something that's fascinated me for years.
The next picture is simply a piece of fan-art. I came up with this LONG before I got the gig writing for Mirage. Hopefully someday I'll be able to pitch the story I came up with for it!

Tiki-rific

Daily Monsterism #15

Monster: The Mothman
Movie: The Mothman Prophecies

There's no denying how creepy this film is. The Mothman Prophecies sounds pretty ridiculous if you're not familiar with the subject matter, and even if you are, it's not exactly the world's best title for a film. Still, anyone who's seen Mark Pellington's horror mystery will be able to tell you how good this movie is. Richard Gere is fantastic, as is Alan Bates and Laura Linney, but the real stars of this film are the production crews. The cinematography and editing are both really tight, and the sound editor gives us one of the creepiest soundscapes and possibly one most chilling audio experiences of cinema. Anyway, you get fleeting (we're talking like 2 frame) glimpses of the titular cryptid, all of which are really effective (such as the BOO! moment shown above), and the Mothman is just something that I find endlessly fascinating.

Daily Monsterism #14

Monster: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
Movie: Scrooged

I'll fill this in in the morning. Been playing D&D with my mates, 3:00 AM right now and hella tired.

Tales Sales

The sales estimates for comics in July have been posted, and what was neat was seeing my Turtles issue there. From the outset, it might not seem that impressive, but when you consider the low print run and the fact that it's an independent publication it's pretty damn good. Tales #36 is ranking in at #267, with a sales estimate of 3,375 units being sold, which, again, is pretty damn good because the average print run is 3,300!

In other news I'm moving forward with my creator owned project I'm hoping to pitch to Dark Horse when it's all under way. I'm after opinions here people, which sounds better: Tiki, Defender of the Islands or Tiki, Warrior of Stone? It's a big silly adventure about a living statue that takes on a group of evil gods to save a mythical cluster of islands.

I'm also going to be writing a couple of articles for the next issue of Cereal:Geek! It's a wicked mag for those who love their cartoons from the 80's. Check it out here: www.cerealgeek.com. It's a really well-made mag, really high production values and excellent content (which is only going to get better!). I'm going to be writing an article on the evolution of Transformers G1 (the original toon), a Top 10 of 80's Toon Villains, "Why I Dislike..." on whichever show I choose to hate on (Captain Planet... heart will not save you from my childhood wrath!) and an article on pushing the boundaries of believability. Should be sweet!

Something else that's kinda cool, I've begun work on my next TMNT comic for the UK. Looks like there's a competition going on where the kids get to come up with a villain for it. At the moment it's just a generic Villain X that will be adjusted to suit the character the kids come up with, but as it stands Villain X is a crazy Triple Threat fan and helps him bust out to get his revenge against the Turtles, only Raph and Mike have been accidentally fused together! Two heads are definitely better than one, but are they better than three?

Daily Monsterism #13

Monster: The Lying Figure
Movie: Silent Hill

For me, this was the best horror film of 2006. Granted we didn't really get a lot to choose from, but as far as movies with monsters and true elements of horror went, this was definitely the best. As a fan of the Silent Hill games, I was relieved to see that what made the games terrifying had been translated faithfully to the big screen and worked just as well in the cinema as it did in the game (most of it at least). One scene I nearly blew my lid at was the one above. The creature you see here appears in Silent Hill 2 (game) and is a representation of the protagonist's own suffering. Essentially, it looks like a person bound in a straight jacket of flesh. No arms, no neck or head, just one big fleshy mass serving as a torso. While it isn't as contextually significant here in the film, the translation of the creature visually is absolutely perfect, and looks as disturbing on film as it did the first time I had to beat the shit out of it with a fence post.

Daily Monsterism #12

Monster: The Bum Dog
Movie: The Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Few films are as chillingly effective as the 70's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This movie creeped me out when I first saw it many, many years ago and continues to do so to this day. This one moment in particular is so bizarre it's genuinely disturbing. For those who don't know, the "bodysnatchers" take you in your sleep and duplicate you. So what happens when a bodysnatcher duplicates a homeless man sleeping with his dog..?

Daily Monsterism #11

Monster: The Cab Driver
Movie: Ghostbusters

For those who don't know me, Ghostbusters is easily one of my favourite movies, and the moment above has always been one of my favourite movie moments. When Walter Peck forces the guys to open the containment unit, New York is beset by every ghost, ghoul and demon they'd caught until then, and in a brief, ghoul-filled montage, we are shown this ghastly looking character. It's probably the most horrifying thing in the whole film visually speaking, but for some reason this guy never bugged me. What did will be featured in another dosage of Daily Monsterism soon!