Hey, everybody! It's time for Jamie's entry! I've known about Jamie's love of this monster for many years, and I am happy she finally gets to share this with you.
I should also add: Jamie actually provided her own captions for the pictures, so kudos to her
Favorite Monster: “Nessie”, The Lochness Monster
In no way is this picture fake
Although I do not believe in any mythical creature, I wish with all my heart that somehow Nessie could be real. I love that she is this huge sea (lake?) monster that so far no one has been able to decisively capture on film. That means she is stealthy. And smart. Or maybe she has a cloaking device, which would only make her even cooler. She also seems relatively harmless and I am a fan of friendly monsters.
Terrifyingly adorable?
Least Favorite Monster: Trashsquach
When I was around 7 years old, my mother thought she would play a funny funny trick on me and had my brother hide in a trash bag to scare me. When I went to take “the trash" out like she instructed, “the trash” moved and started following me down the hall. My 7 year old brain could not process this and to this day that moment is the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. In exchange for coming up with the name for this entry, I formally and publicly forgive Doug for his hand in this incident.
Trashquach could be the next SyFy original
Jamie, I wasn't sure if the picture you provided provided the real terror of Trashquach, so I fixed the picture for you.
Our own Horus Kemwer of of Against the Modern World sends in his picks for Favorite and Least Favorite Monster! My, but these entries are diverse, and I have to give Horus extra points for style.
Tetsuo, The Iron Man, at his angriest
My Favorite Monster: Tetsuo, The Iron Man
Tetsuo is star of two classic cyberpunk movies by visionary Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto, Tetso: The Iron Man (1989) and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) (all screencaps from the latter).
[Note: the name is a pun in Japanese as the prefix "Tetsu-" can mean "iron" and the ending "-o" can mean man, though these are not the characters with which the common name "Tetsuo" is usually written.]
Tetsuo is a mild mannered (nay, downright wimpy!) Japanese "salaryman" who is one day mysteriously harassed by strange techno-punks. He discovers that when angered, his arm turns into a gigantic gun which he then fires at his antagonists in blind rage.
In typically perverse Japanese fashion, Tetsuo is tricked into slaughtering is loved ones by this strange ability (in the first movie, his wife, in the second his son—essentially the second film is just a larger budget retelling of the story in the first rather than a sequel proper).
As tense situations (and correspondingly, Tetsuo's degree of anger and stress) increase, he discovers that more and more of his body is able to sprout guns.
Tetsuo's chest is now a barrage of firing cannons!
Although the source of Tetsuo's strange "ability" (curse?) is eventually revealed, I'll leave the curious reader to discover it via netflix . . . (hint: it's not pleasant)
The appeal of Tetsuo is the usual man down fights back taken to extremes. First, Tetsuo the salaryman is so pathetic and beset upon that he takes the beleaguered victim syndrome to a new level. When he turns badass, though, he turns so badass he can't even control himself.
Tetsuo's become a full on mecha for his final battle
Unfortunately, none of the screencaps really do Tetsuo justice. And this is another big part of what makes him so cool: Tetsuo really only exists in the mind of the viewer. Tsukamoto "creates" Tetsuo out of a barrage of crazy imagery, fast cutting, frenetic industrial music, and bizarre atmospherics. At no point do you really get a clear view of him, but in your mind you build up a whole construct of crazy machinery. Tetsuo isn't just a costume, he's a whole music video, limited only in its cyberpunk badassery by your own imagination!
Baixo Astral talks to his TV set
My Least Favorite Monster: Baixo Astral (aka "The Down Mood")
Baixo Astral is the villain from the Brazilian children's (?) movie Super Xuxa contra Baixo Astral (1988), which I've seen most convincingly translated ("Baixo Astral" sure does not mean "Satan" in Portuguese) as "Super Xuxa vs. the Down Mood." And "Down Mood" really seems to sort of fit the character of Baixo Astral, who is dedicated to bringing war, destruction, corruption, vandalism, and anything that's downbeat into the world.
SXCBA stars Xuxa Meneghel, the single hottest children's show host ever to talk the face of the earth (oft parodied by ignorant Americans, jealous that none of the children's shows they grew up with had hosts anywhere near as hot). Nevertheless, the movie is inventive, with crazy scenes and catchy music.
Except when Baixo Astral and his dopey sidekicks are on screen.
The lamest sidekicks in any children's movie ever
Frankly, Baixo Astral himself wouldn't be that bad if his supposed evil hadn't been set up as being so intense. Frankly, he just can't live up to it. Add to that the fact that he has the lamest sidekicks in the entire universe and every moment with him just sucks.
Even the climax sucks. Baixo Astral tries to keep Xuxa's mood down by "shooting" her with his TV gun which shows sucky downbeat things like violence. The gun itself has actually a kinda cool cyberpunk design, but somehow, wielded by Baixo Astral, it just turns to suck.
TV guns could be cool, but not this one
But really, the worst thing about Baixo Astral is that whenever he's around, fun things like this aren't happening:
Final note: if you bear in mind that Brazil is a country that dealt with its homeless street urchin problem by simply shooting them, then the appeal of someone like Super Xuxa coming along and painting everything like a rainbow so everyone can just live happily together seems a lot more understandable . . .
If you haven't ever Googled 90's-era Latin-American children's TV host, Xuxa, I highly suggest you do so. I still remember stumbling across her while in college, and remember wishing I knew more Spanish.
This I find fascinating. I've never seen this movie, but people who have seen it love this thing. I honestly expected JimD to send in lots of stuff about Zombies, so this was a bit of a surprise!
Without further ado, here's JimD's entry:
I remember seeing this movie as a young child and being scared of the Bansee, the ominous figure in the film who arrives to creep out everyone. Much ado is made of the arrival of the Banshee, and I've never forgotten it. Decades passed, and when I learned the film had arrived on DVD, I had to rent it, and of course, it's all spectacularly silly to watch now. But back in the very early 1980s, not so much.
Shelley's Frankenstein hit me over the head like a ton of bricks when I read it as assigned reading in high school, and the character of Victor Frankenstein and his unbridled ambition, followed by his inability to take responsibility for what he'd created... pretty good stuff.
While there's no question the Monster is murderous, Shelley also infuses him with a craving for understanding and a humanity that Frankenstein himself may have set aside.
The movies, of course, turn the monster into an invulnerable, inarticulate beast, but the first three in particular explore much of the same themes, and are a lot of fun in their own right.
Is The Monster actually scary? Well... yeah. I mean, he's a hodgepodge of parts of various people sewn together and brought to life through artificial means. He also kills folks both accidentally and intentionally (and just to make a point - that's gangster). In the movies the Monster is more or less a superhuman, immortal walking weapon with quite a different personality. However, I think we can look at Victor/ Henry* Frankenstein as us, and he, of course, is far scarier than the Monster. After all, he dreamed the creature into being, and he failed to contain what he'd made.
but for my dollar, I'll take The Bride...
Baby, you can re-animate for me anytime
Of course, the portion of the novel featuring The Bride and the movie follow two entirely different trajectories. I think the pursuit of The Bride (or a mate or whatever) for The Monster is so terribly tragic and part of what makes the story so haunting, that longing for contact and love that humans can grasp, and the lengths the Monster will go to for fulfillment of that need can read as the horrible act of a murderer, but that's a pretty dim reading of the characters.
Of all the monsters, its the understanding forged between The Monster and his creator that's the most fascinating aspect to me (more so in the novel than in the movie, but the movie doesn't shy away from this, either). Having to face down the monster you've created and abandoned, who you've rejected and whose one dream you've torn apart? Well, that's a pretty tough conversation to have. In the sequel, Dr. Pretorious certainly adds a whole new aspect to the proceedings as Whale was making a movie completely separate from the novel.
Curiously, its Young Frankenstein that seems to be the one version of the story we can see that bridges the gap between the monster and its creator.
The original novel is the template for a thousand more stories, movies, comics, whatever... but in my book, the original is still the best in both novel and the first two movies, and its a template for a reason. The story says something very interesting about us as a creative species, and its a lesson you hear reflected and rebounded throughout science-fiction.
As per The Monster, he's the avatar of that creation, and one that is entwined hopelessly with its creator.
*that's what he's called in the movies
2) American Remake Godzilla - Least Favorite
I like a good Godzilla movie from Toho studios. Man in Suit is where its at, if you ask me. And I love how Toho always makes sure there's some reason Godzilla is rampaging across Japan, be it an anti-nukes warning, people not loving one another enough, or as a reminder to recycle. Whatever. Godzilla is sort of a nation's conscience and psychic backlash stemming from guilt writ large and with atomic breath.
With total sincerity, I contend that this is a metaphor. Also, its @#$%ing awesome.
In the summer of 1998, Roland Emmerich (I assume, I can't remember) got his hands on a high-grade CGI crew (well, 1998 good) and went about making an American version of Godzilla. I went opening day, popcorn and Diet Coke in hand, and was naively quite excited to see what a couple hundred million thrown at a Godzilla movie would get me. The answer: an absolutely horrendous movie featuring a CGI Godzilla that made me long for the days of Man in Suit. And it featured a complete waste of Vicki Lewis.
This version of Godzilla is so reviled by true-blue Godzilla fans that the creature and the movie is referred to online as "GINO" or "Godzilla in Name Only", which I fully support.
While Godzilla in this movie was also created by nuclear tests, Americans get off guilt free as the tests were French atom bomb tests. And, of course, we were just hapless victims in our version of the story, which...
Anyway, there's my social commentary quota for the month.
Yes, the monster looks a little like a squatting mime playing dinosaur
The monster-as-emblem-of-psychic-punishment-for-national-shame angle is completely missing from this Godzilla, but... that's of course not quite enough.
The creature just looks stupid and does stupid things. Its a 30-story monster that sneaks around between sky scrapers, runs so quickly in the middle of Manhattan that it ditches military helicopters, and slithers through the New York subway line. It has a bizarre and almost lithe body for something of its scale, including oddly human limbs. Its just really perplexing to see on something of that scale that's just so off that your brain knows it and sort of sends you signals about how this just doesn't look right at all.
Godzilla has really been hitting the gym
American Godzilla is supposed to be a mutant iguana, I think, so the filmmakers decided that while a 30 story iguana with shoulders* isn't a stretch, apparently giving us some nuclear-fueled fire breath is just getting silly (although they do give it a sort of "air blast" thing, which... @#$% you, American Godzilla. Your dumb fake fire breath via exploding gas line isn't going to cut it here!).
I recently watched this movie in its entirety, by the way, convinced it couldn't be as awful as I'd remembered (I took Jason to see the movie because he wouldn't believe it was as bad as I'd said). It may have been worse. Just.... truly... an horrendous movie in so many ways, from scripting to acting to derivative creatures and scenarios to the worst love interest in a movie I can remember... and it will make you very glad we escaped 90's big-budget movie-making alive and intact.
What's stunning is that so many people had to have worked on that GD iguana, and apparently nobody pointed out that this thing just made no sense, and wouldn't it just be better to redesign based upon the Japanese version rather than start from scratch? And didn't anybody talk to a biologist or even a high school anatomy student while figuring out what a 30-story animal would look like if they were going to walk away from Gozilla classic?
Anyhow, this movie has largely been forgotten, and gladly so. I wouldn't mind another American remake or Japanese/ American remake where it seemed like everyone wasn't so busy patting themselves on the back and second guessing 50 years of awesome movies that they wound up with a boorish movie with a crummy looking monster. Sure, go CGI and do some mild redesign, just so long as Man in Suit never goes away...
*btw: an anatomical difference between lizards and dinosaurs? Lizards have splayed legs vs. how dinosaurs have hips that place the legs under them. Think how monitor lizards get around versus how triceratops stands. See, you learn important stuff here all the time.
Tomorrow sees the release of Superman: Earth One from DC Comics.
The book reimagines Superman as if he is starting his career in 2010/2011 as a 20-something (and without any of the baggage of 10 years of Smallville). The book is written by J. Michael Staczynski and drawn by Shane Davis. As an attempt to reach the library, bookstore, Amazon and general audience that isn't too keen on dropping $4 for a floppy comic (or finding a comic shop), DC is launching the Earth One line as a series of original graphic novels.
This comic arrives in hardcover (which I think is an iffy call) and is priced at about $20 USD.
Apparently there's been some confusion and some odd press from major/ non-comics-related press being written that suggests that Superman is not wearing a cape and tights, but a hoodie or something. Apparently, these writers literally never opened the book or looked beyond the cover.
This is not the costume
This is 20+ Clark Kent becoming Superman in America. I know its very confusing that he's not a middle-aged guy in a suit (which, really, who wears suits anymore? Let alone 24 year olds.), but that's his street clothes, not his Superman costume.
And, press: all kinds of people wear hoodies. Who does not? Twilight vampires. I don't even know where that's coming from. Having seen those movies, nobody wears a hoodie despite the fact they live in a rainforest in Washington and probably should if they want to keep their hair nicely gelled. But... is everything featuring a 20-something with a sci-fi or fantasy bent to it going to have to be compared (unfavorably) to the Twilight franchise?
This, by the way, is the Supersuit:
You do not @#$% with the Super
So, there's your wild reimagining of the costume.
DC isn't stupid. Nobody likes it when you mess with the costume and basic look of Superman. Oh, sure, everyone will say they want to update it, but at this point the costume is an icon. Anything you do to "fix" it will be a modernization that reflects current fashion or design, and that's not really what makes the Supersuit.
I'm picking up my copy of the comic tomorrow at Austin Books. Hopefully a review is forthcoming.
Fantomenos writes in about his favorite, The King of the Monsters
My favorite monster? Easy. Godzilla. No hesitation. I remember watching him electrocute the smog-monsters babies on our tiny B&W TV. I remember the cartoon (with Godzuki...), and I remember the Marvel comic. Godzilla has been a constant in my life.
oh, jeez. The Champions. Well, Godzilla doesn't need my good luck wishes.
But, my clearest Godzilla memory is from the Christmas of 1979, at age 5. We lived in Sitka Alaska, which means that our X-mas wish lists were made with catalogs, well in advance. This year, the Sears catalog featured a line of plastic Shogun Warriors, maybe 2 feet tall with missiles and shooting hands etc. For some reason, Godzilla was one of the members of the line. Wheels on his feet, a lever in the back that would extend a small flame-painted tongue, and his right fist shot when you pressed the button in the crook of his elbow. Remember, safety regs weren't what they are now, so this was a hard piece of plastic that shot out pretty fast.
If only King Ghidorah would reach out the same way...
This item immediately shot to the top of my X-mas list, in the "get me this and I won't ask for anything else" slot. But, $5.00 was way to much for my parents to spend on a "hunk of plastic". My B-day follows X-mas by about a month, and again no Godzilla. But, I had received enough money (Grandparents and such) to send away for it myself. So I did.
Oh, Hanna Barbera. The theme song to this show was awesome.
And it was magnificent. Pride of place in the toy chest. Totemic. I had also received this book:
kids, this was what passed for blogging in the 1970's
very '70's. Write your own book about yourself. Here's where the compulsive geekiness first rears it head. I put it together that if I can write a book about me, and Godzilla is the most important thing about me, it stands to reason that I should write "My Book About Godzilla". Which I immediately set about doing. Measuring his height, the length of the flame tongue, and most crucially, how far his fist could shoot, checking the distance of shot after shot. I remember it being around 5 feet, but that could be Proustian reverie.
So there it is, my first attempt at creative writing, being a completely uncreative compendium of facts about my favorite toy. Where'd Godzilla and his hagiography end up? No idea, we were a military family, and my parents were ruthlessly unsentimental about things. The late 70s were a weird time.
A League afterword: I had this same Godzilla toy, and it was exactly as awesome as Fantomenos describes. I once convinced this little German kid who moved in down the street that the thing was alive and would attack him because that little German kid was annoying. Anyway, his mom came down and yelled at me in German. It was traumatic, but certainly not the last time I would be yelled at by someone in a language other than English.
Godzilla is currently in the attic of my folks' garage, and I have plans to retrieve it over the holidays. However, Jason and I both believe that the missile fist may be missing. I will send photos when Godzilla resurfaces.
I was fortunate enough to recently receive a review copy of an independently produced comic which will be released next year by Arcana, sent to me by one of he writers of the comic, Ryan Colucci.
Harbor Moon is a graphic novel in the truest sense of the term. Colucci and company did not originally release the comic as a series of issues, and its great to read a comic that flows based upon the needs of the story rather than upon the artificial stopping points necessitated by a 22 page release format. Instead, the story unspools much more with the feel of a film script, and given the fact that Colucci actually works in film, it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to guess that this is a project he was happy to see materialize either as a comic or a movie.
Likely the first thing to grab someone browsing the shelves and looking at this comic will be the art. Three artists are listed: Pawel Sambor, Artist; Karol Wisniewski, Art Director; and Nikodem Cabala, Supporting Artist. I have no idea who did what work of the three as those are unusual job titles in comics, but this is also an unusual and striking book. Its a pretty wild mash of traditional illustrative comic book with what appears to be water color enhanced with some CG. I have to guess that page layout was done digitally, which works perfectly well.
The style has definite, vague echoes of McKean, or late-80's Sienkiewicz and John J. Muth, or even Sam Keith's more expressionistic work in The Maxx, without ever feeling particularly derivative. It just has that same ability to capture a mood with washes and tones and experimental use of color and line, which does what comics can do best, and that's use the art to enhance and relay the narrative rather than just illustrate a script.
I invite you to jump over to the Harbor Moon gallery page to take a look at what these guys did.
As with the artists, there are three writers listed on the comic, and its hard to know who contributed what. Ryan Colucci, Dikran Ornekian and Brain Anderson all receive writing or story credit.
If you're looking for these things or tend to notice them, there's definitely a sense of the cinematic to the writing, and I can't exactly put my finger on whether its dialog or a very filmic pacing to the events that made me think "movie", but its not distracting. Instead, the flow of the story does seem to work in a sort of slow-boil mystery as circumstances reveal themselves and the facts of what's happening in the strange, small town of Harbor Moon, Maine reveal themselves.
Harbor Moon isn't exactly a horror story, although there's certainly elements of more than one horror sub-genre to be found within the comic. Is it a potboiler as Tim uncovers the mystery of the identity of his absentee father and why everyone in this small town denies knowing him? Is it a supernatural mystery?
The characters of Harbor Moon are well defined, if not grippingly original. It fits the subgenres put together here, and I think the conclusion is more than satisfying. While scripting occasionally feels like it could be a bit punchier, where things could have swung into melodrama or the plot could have bogged down and become frustrating as the answers are slow to reveal themselves (while other mysteries bubble up), I think there's a lot to like here, and I suspect Colucci and crew have ideas for sequels to this comic that would do wonders for exploring the premise they've established.
I was impressed with the ability of the writers to create different paces and tone within the story, really bringing the reader in to Tim's perspective and the seeming chaos which erupts, then pulling back in the investigative and character building moments (with the artists following suit).
Spoilers ahoy
Okay, so... This is a comic in which we find out there are populations of werewolves out there. And not necessarily the cuddly werewolves of the vampire books that shall go unnamed. Its a genre I like to see explored, especially in comics where your budget isn't a limitation, nor is CG modeling, and the artist's imagination can really cut loose. And I think we see that here.
Unfortunately, I think the reveal isn't a huge surprise if you're up on basic horror genre tropes. But the execution of how the werewolves in handled is unusual in appearance and solid in narrative and story, as is the other challenge to the lead characters. But it does raise the question of why the story is slow to reveal the werewolves if the writers didn't do more to obfuscate clues and, I have to say, mention the werewolves in their press materials.
Likely one of the biggest challenges Colucci will face as this book hits the shelves is that there are echoes of Clive Barker's Nightbreed, especially as we hit the third act. How many people remember that movie or book is an unknown variable, and I certainly don't believe that Colucci's story is a rip-off but I think horror-genre fans could make the comparison and neither material would suffer for it.
Spoilers end
Harbor Moon is a fun read, and I sincerely hope that this book gets noticed upon its release. I placed the artwork as the first item to discuss as there's no question that very little else that appears on the shelf has a look as potent as what the team here has assembled. While the visuals are a huge draw, the story and characters are well defined and interesting enough that its a great new entry for the horror and mystery genres in comics, and the kind of storytelling that comics can do remarkably well when a team like the creative team here puts their minds and backs to it.
This isn't a comics game-changer, but it will be interesting to see who discovers the book as it seems the appeal would extend to the general public pretty handily.
It's our own RHPT (aka: The Amazing Rando!). I don't know what else I can add here:
I don't know if this is a favorite or least favorite, but the one monster(s) of which I am deathly afraid are zombies. I know zombies are, along with vampires, the pop-culture 'it monster' of the moment and maybe that's the only reason I am writing about it. Who knows? But with the profiliation of zombie movies, comics, games, tv shows, etc. It's something that has made me think: 'What would I do if a zombie apocaypse broke out?' Now, if I were a single man with no family, this wouldn't really bother me so much. I would use a zombie apocalypse as a reason for some guilt free violence, get some free and cool loot (all the iPads I can haul, baby!). Ultimately, I would die or get turned, but you know it was fun for a while. (I would probably travel to Austin to see how the Steans made out).
well, at least this means people really took a strong liking to you, in a way
However, I have a wife and a small child (soon to be 2 small childs), and I can't just go with the flow of the apocalypse. Granted, would I want my children living in a world full of zombies? probably not. but then that would just leave me with the unpleasant choice of killing my family to avoid their suffering, and who wants to think about that?
This right here is our first entry into the Signal Watch Halloween Monster Madness. It's not too late to send in your own favorites! For more information, click here!
But let's start with the guy who sent in the first bunch of crazy creatures, my own brother, Jason. Now, Jason sent in a list with these really detailed descriptions and pictures, and then wrote back a few days later, apparently having reconsidered. Here's what we've got.
1) Audrey 2, Little Shop of Horrors
Jason sometimes sings to the shrubs in his backyard hoping they'll sing back
Audrey 2 not only feasts humans and their blood, but also has one of the most soulful, groovy singing voices in this half of the Milky Way. Audrey 2 is a plant who's fun enough to make it worthwhile to sacrifice a few humans for high protein fertilizer. And haven't most of us had at least one or two moments when it might not have seemed like such a bad idea to feed our dentist to a singing plant?
2) Junior Gorg, Fraggle Rock
The missing Steans Brother
Son of Ma and Pa Gorg, the self proclaimed king and queen of the universe, Junior Gorg spends much of his time doing chores, hanging out with his friend, Geraldine (who happens to be a large raddish), and trying to capture Fraggles who sneak into his family's raddish garden. Junior Gorg keeps things simple, but he generally seems pretty happy, and he seems pretty content with his lot in life- hanging out and waiting to ascend to his role as the future king of the universe.
3) Medusa, Clash of the Titans (1981)
When I saw the first Clash of the Titans movie as a kid, there were a number of scenes that were pretty frightening (and cool- the Stygian witches, fights with Calibos, the giant scorpions, the Kraken, etc.). The scenes where Perseus fought Medusa were the most frightening to me, though. I remember thinking that Medusa's lair was really scary (all of her stone victims scattered around like statues), and I couldn't imagine how anyone could fight a monster that they couldn't even look at. The solution, of course, found in watching Medusa's reflection in a shield and then chopping off her head, struck me as so brilliant that I'm still impressed by it almost thirty years later. Anyway, in a movie full of scary monsters, to me Medusa was the scariest. Although the movie seems a bit silly and cheesy nowadays, as a kid it really got my heart thumping, and it taught me an important lesson- the qualities of your monsters can help to determine the quality of your heroes.
4) Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Jason and is crew roll to prom
Gotta stick with this one. Killer shadow puppets, deadly cream pies, cotton candy nets, big top spaceships, and deadly balloon animals. What's not to like? Plus, this is the perfect movie for the tried and true plotline where the square adults just won't believe anything that the kids tell them- no matter how hard the kids try to warn them. This movie is just a whole lot of fun- AND there's still something that's still genuinely creepy about those clowns (klowns).
There's my new, revised list. Throw out the old one. I'm not sure what I was thinking.
5. Slippery Pete
My least favorite monster is my housemate, Slippery Pete. He wants to kill me.
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