Cover Story - Top 15 Werewolf By Night Covers

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Earlier in the week I mused on the way vampires didn’t truly survive their popular peak during the transition years from the 2000s to the 2010s.  I considered making a similar opening but about werewolves but when you get down to it, I can’t say werewolves were ever as popular as vampires.  The biggest standard bearer for the werewolf genre in the modern era is probably Teen Wolf and good though that show is I had to check to make sure it was still ongoing.  My point is that it didn’t come with the same impactful popularity as Twilight/True Blood/Vampire Diaries. 

No, the true last hurrah for the werewolf was the ‘70s, when films like American Werewolf in London were redefining the subgenre.  In that spirit and because I want to double cash-in on Underworld: Blood Wars, I’m taking a look at Marvel’s big hit werewolf book of the era- Werewolf By Night.  This was seriously one of Marvel’s most successful horror comics alongside Tomb of Dracula, running about half the decade and spawning characters that persist to this day like Moon Knight.  It’s a fun dive into the weird blend of comic book spookiness, early horror-xploitation aesthetics, and superhero storytelling that we’re going to honor here today. 

Filmland - Nightbreed

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This weekend marks the premiere of Tim Burton’s latest film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  I’ve heard the movie is decent but haven’t seen it for myself, though the premise is pretty intriguing.  The set-up is essentially X-Men but clothed in Tim Burton’s horror obsessions rather than the colorful palette of mid-‘70s superhero aesthetics.  

Basically it’s a movie where a bunch of horror infused super children are brought together to defend their existence from a bigoted outer world.  That’s an interesting and worthwhile idea, a fact I mainly know because it’s already been turned into a great horror/dark fantasy flick: Clive Barker’s Nightbreed.

Cover Story - Top 12 Tomb of Dracula Covers

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It is currently the dregs of August, and there’s really nothing going on in pop culture.  The dizzying high of summer blockbuster season has given away to the drippy sludge that is the late August offerings while the fall awards season has yet to begin.  If there is one small bit of comfort in the pre-labor day dark, it’s that we’re entering the season of fall TV premieres, which is perfect for someone like me that clings to media topicality as a guiding light in these troubled and rudderless times.  

This week will be bringing us the premiere of the latest season of The Strain, FX’s prestige vampire apocalypse show from the mind of Guillermo Del Toro (he wrote the books it’s based on.)  Even though I don’t like The Strain all that much it is pretty much the only name in vampire fiction these days, thank Twilight, which means I get to talk about the biggest name in comic book vampires- Count Dracula.  I’ll get more into this as we go along but for a time in the ‘70s Count Dracula was one of Marvel comics biggest success stories and today- we honor that legacy. 

Comics Rainbow - Marvel's Legion of Monsters

Edited by Robert Beach

Well, it’s October: the Goosebumps movie is about to come out; Halloween is just around the corner, and I have a crippling addiction to ‘70s comic books. Let’s talk about Marvel's Legion of Monsters. As I’ve mentioned before, the ‘70s was a time of serious upheaval and horizontal expansion at both DC and Marvel. The young readers the companies had attracted over the Silver Age were growing up to be young adults with disposable income and a continued interest in comic books, a relative first for the medium. 

This ended up fueling a rush to diverse the story market with stuff beyond the straightforward superhero fair of the previous decade.  Marvel had always prided itself on creating stories and content that was beyond the boundaries of the superhero genre. Many of their core characters like the Fantastic Four or Thor sprung out of weird science and epic fantasy respectively. 

When it came time to diversify, they were ahead of the game on DC and came out of the gates strong with a whole slew of new, horror-based comics. This was right around the time the Comics Code, a self-imposed industry code of censorship, was losing its teeth, so the horror genre was finally getting its fangs back after being neutered for well over a decade. 

Marvel cranked out all sundry manner of demons, vampires, zombies, mummies and anything else they could come up with and, occasionally, they all teamed up to become the Legion of Monsters. Since then, the title has been resurrected multiple times for new monsters of the Marvel universe. So this is your full spectrum look at the Legion of Monsters in all their shades, shames, and successes. 

Static Thoughts - American Horror Story: Hotel Premiere

So, American Horror Story started its fifth season this past week.  The new series, subtitled ‘Hotel,’ is a major change up for the show as it’s the first season that won’t feature the return of series regular Jessica Lange.  Since the show started in 2011 they’ve kept a very tight knit core group of actors from season to season in what’s been called a modern update of the classical concept of an actor’s company.  They’ve added to the group certainly, like Kathy Bates who joined the show in its 3^rd season Coven, but by enlarge the core group from season 1 hasn’t changed up to this season.  In an attempt to fill the hole Lange left in the production American Horror Story has brought in Lady Gaga to basically serve as their overacting and deadly series matriarch. 

Personally I’ve always had a complicated relationship with American Horror Story that I’ll get more into later in this review but Gaga’s involvement was entirely what brought me back for the fifth season.  I’ve always maintained that Lady Gaga has a unique and commanding screen presence and her history of elaborate and evocative music videos is right in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse.  If anyone could propel American Horror Story into the realms of compelling quality it would be her…it’s just too bad she didn’t do that.

The Strain S2E1 "BK, NY" Review

If you like this review feel free to 'like' Lido Shuffle on Facebook here or follow me on Twitter here.

The Strain returned to televisions this past week and I was there to review it for All-Comic.  It's a mixed 90 minute premiere with a great opening sequence directed by Guillermo Del Toro himself.  Read the whole thing here:

http://all-comic.com/2015/strain-s2x01-bk-ny/

Gods & Monsters - Batman #1 Review

Check out my review of DC's Digital comic tie-in to the upcoming animated movie Justice League: Gods and Monsters, directed by Bruce Timm, the man behind Batman the animated series, the DC animated universe, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/02/gods-monsters-batman-1-review-comics/