Halloween Contest: What's Your Top 5 Scary Movies?

//FINAL POST BUMP (good luck, participants! have a great Halloween!)
/POST BUMP (post bummmmmppp!!!)
I decided to try a contest here as an experiment. If it goes well, I'll do more.

Here's the situation:
To enter the contest, give a list in this post's comment section of your Top Five Favorite Scary Movies (and why, if you're so inclined to share with the class).

On Saturday, October 31 @11:59 PM, the contest closes.
I put all the names of the participants in a hat, and randomly pick a winner.

One lucky winner will get:
1) "The Darkness: Accursed Vol. 1" trade paperback from Top Cow





















2) "The Beast From Chicago" trade paperback from NBM/Comics Lit Publishing, drawn & written by Rick Geary about America's First Serial Killer





















3) A brand-new copy of "The Grudge" on DVD





















4) A vintage copy of JLA: Scary Monsters #3, assistant-edited by yours truly! Watch Plastic Man fit his face over Wonder Woman's boobies in attempt to save her life! Watch Wonder Woman turn into a creature that wasn't really supposed to look like Witchblade but sort of looks like Witchblade anyway! Plus: Deadly Tentacles™!!!!!




















Good luck!

The Evolution of Comic Books On Teh Internets

October 29, 1969: Teh internets launched

October 30, 2007: Zuda.com launched*

October 30, 2009: Marvel for iPhone launched on Comixology

October 29, 2012: DC Entertainment "Neural Implant" launched

October 30, 2025: Marvelopolis's "Excelsior 2.0 Brain-Download" launched, option to virtually live in one of several fantasy settings: Asgard, Wakanda, Lemuria, Atlantis, Queens

October 26, 2050: Superman's robot doubles go crazy, enslave planet

October 27, 2099: Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane, an under-achieving but lovable rogue, gets shot in Transverse City and subsequently becomes the robot Ghost Rider. Kenshiro battles the Superman robots, liberates teh internets, and becomes the avatar of the new age. Kenshiro's nickname "Zero" was ironic, because at heart...he was really a hero.

October 29, 2031: That long-awaited pole shift happens.

October 24, 4025: The printing press invented. The first book to be mass-produced? The Holy Gylrsfarbx, of course. Then a reprint of Detective Comics #27.

October 23, 5026: The beginning of the Direct Market.

October 25, 5089: The Diuoyygfyuf ComicCon starts becoming too commerical.

October 26, 6002: The 26th reincarnation of Stan Lee develops a webcomic, tells 17th reincarnation of Elvira to "get out of paper comics."

October 30, 6005: More damn Superman robots.

October 22, 6025: Dogs and cats become people, use iPhones, enslave humanity, pee in corners of house.

October 28, 7025: Motion-comics become the dominant form of all entertainment everywhere, saves humanity, reduces dogs and cats back to their previous servile state, cleans pee out of carpets, defeats Superman robots.

October 29, 7056: Damn pole-shift.

October 30, 9009: Printing-press invented.

*Please note: between the 38 years that the Internet was invented and Zuda.com launched, there were also a number of comics of various sorts released online: funny comics, sad comics, happy comics, angry comics. But did they have a werewolf western? Nooooooo...

Hot "Dark Wolverine" Custom Action Figure

Some action figures look ugly. I mean, their faces: ugly ugly. One day I'll do a post on that, "Top Ten Ugliest Action Figure Faces," though I suspect Topless Robot has already done it.

But this custom Dark Wolverine figure, by "Cal's Customs," looks awesome and scrumptious.

Best of all, when you get sick of looking at Daken's mohawked-mug, you just pop the head off and...Ta-da!

Words I Don't Like

This is a list of words I don't like:

moist: makes me think of water-logged pound cake

yogurt: an ugly word for something that is awesome

multitask: "we just fired three other people in your department. we're going to need you to multitask for a while and do their jobs for free."

maybe: if somebody tells you "maybe," that usually means "probably not" but they don't have the heart to full-out turn you down

never: if somebody tells you "never," what they really mean is that if you send them a big chocolate cake, they will change their mind

anywho: the person who invented this word should be hurt

bran: I know we need bran to poop, but would have preferred "poo-poo grains" or something more fun

chillax: a great word to use when you want to make me even more angry

menses: it always reminds me of the actress Heather Menzies

uterus: a very awkward word that I feel distances women from the wonder of their own bodies. I prefer "baby cave."

content: I know I'm guilty of this too, but...when any sort of creatively-derived work is referred to as "content," I just feel it reduces the referred-to entity to packing peanuts or cans of peaches. It's like Michelangelo is working on the Sistine Chapel and his boss looks up and says: "hey, that's going to be great content! We could syndicate that on these new e-readers and run banner ads on them and shit."

product: see "content"

intellectual property: see "content" and "product," with the added insinuation that you are going to be screwed in some way.

metrosexual: created and nurtured by a slick band of marketers to convince dudes that paying attention to one's bodily hygiene and personal appearance isn't "gay"

tween: created and nurtured by a slick band of marketers to sell bellybutton rings to eleven-year-olds.

lol: outside of an actual chat room or cat photo, I don't want to see this word

fanboy: I always pictured that this word was invented by some comic book collector who thought he was better and more mature than all the other comic book collectors. A line of demarcation, if you will. "No, he's a fanboy; I'm a sequential art collector." Of course, this guy isn't a "sequential art collector," he's just a pompous dipshit who God forbid might actually have access to a blog.

cunt: I prefer "coont," which I think sounds a little more playful and vaguely British

Orwellian: too often used by people who are for anybody's right to free speech but yours

McCarthyite: see "Orwellian"

tampon: for some reason I immediately think of a large Styrofoam floatation device whenever I hear this word. "We're sinking fast...break out the tampons and hold on for your dear lives!"

vegan: immediately makes me think of the word "Vulcan," and the fact that Vulcans think they're superior to rest of the Federation. If you don't know it by now, I use a lot of word-association to remember things. I also think of Pulp Fiction hitman Vincent Vega when I see the word "vegan". And Suzanne Vega. And Sega.

bullet-point: annoying when used in a non-ammo context

inner-child: my inner-child is very skillful at chewing up Ritz crackers, spitting them up onto a fresh Ritz cracker, putting another fresh Ritz cracker on top of it, and calling it a "Ritz Cracker Sandwich." Getting in touch with her has almost as many pitfalls as benefits.

What words do YOU not like?

"Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken"

Seriously, this is the actual name of an actual Ken doll offered by Mattel right now: Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken.

From the product description:

"Cool sophistication in breezy Palm Beach! Sporting a dashing jacquard-patterned jacket with a light pink polo shirt and crisp white pants, Ken doll is ready for Palm Beach social season, sunning by the pool and a stroll with his little companion."

For some reason Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken immediately reminded me of this guy:






Via Topless Robot, "Mattel Has Lost Their Minds, via Geek Girl Diva, "Sugar Daddy Ken?! Barbie You Saucy Minx!"

New A-Team Movie Photo

What do you think? "Yay" or "meh"? (click for larger)

It's kind of cool, but Liam Neeson looks sort of Photoshopped. I can tell by the number of pixels and from seeing a lot of Photoshops in my time.

I go though these jags where I see a lot of action-adventure movies and many are not chosen out of any sort of discriminating taste. "A-Team The Movie" may fall under this category. Still, if this does well we might soon see "Riptide" as a major motion-picture, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

Sexy Halloween Costumes For Your Pets

A common dilemma pet owners have during the Halloween season is: "how do I find slutty costumes for my dog?"

Look no further. Whether your pooch is set to play the sexy schoolgirl or an imperious dominatrix, Leg Avenue has the hot Halloween costumes for your pet. Inappropriately sexy outfits need not be the sole domain of the Cyrus family spawn any longer!

Misses the old days when Halloween was an innocent time for canines:

American Vampire Re-Visions The Wild West and The Jazz Age

An exciting new series from Vertigo Comics hits stands in March: American Vampire.

American Vampire combines a supernaturally-themed western with a supernaturally-themed jazz-age motif.

I said, American Vampire combines a supernaturally-themed western...





















...with a supernaturally-themed jazz-age motif.


















Now, if you can't wait until March to read this fascinating and unique take on the horror genre, be sure to check out High Moon and The Night Owls on Zuda. They're free!

The Church of Fictionology

From The Onion:

"Fictionology's central belief, that any imaginary construct can be incorporated into the church's ever-growing set of official doctrines, continues to gain popularity. Believers in Santa Claus, his elves, or the Tooth Fairy are permitted—even encouraged—to view them as deities. Even corporate mascots like the Kool-Aid Man are valid objects of Fictionological worship.

"My personal savior is Batman," said Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Greg Jurgenson. "My wife chooses to follow the teachings of the Gilmore Girls. Of course, we are still beginners. Some advanced-level Fictionologists have total knowledge of every lifetime they have ever lived for the last 80 trillion years."

"Sure, it's total bullshit," Jurgenson added. "But that's Fictionology. Praise Batman!""

See also: Imaginationland, Church of the Jedi, Bob

Microsoft Just Realizes Now That Family Guy Is Tasteless

Wasn't anybody at Microsoft "hep" to the notion that Family Guy features tasteless jokes about tampons, incest, the Holocaust, etc., BEFORE the company decided to become the cartoon's sponsor?

According to The Hollywood Reporter's "Live Feed" blog, Microsoft has suddenly pulled out of being the exclusive sponsor for the upcoming Family Guy "Variety Special." This partnership would have included highly integrating Microsoft product in with the cartoon, as you can see from this promo:


The reason Microsoft has given for the about-face?

"We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of 'Family Guy,' but after reviewing an early version of the variety show it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand."

Well, duh!

On the other hand, isn't Microsoft trying to seem more hip n' edgy through their recent marketing campaigns? What screams hip n' edgy more than the "I'm A Prom Night Dumpster Baby" song and Peter doing the farty-footy pajamas shtick?

New Chris Farley Direct TV Ad

Is this new Direct TV ad starring Chris Farley and David Spade tasteless – or awesome?



I'm torn on it. It's kind of nice seeing Farley and Spade together again, even if it's just shilling some damn product. And when lifelike 3-D animation is totally perfected you're probably going to see whole movies starring dead people. So this is tame in comparison.

(my favorite YouTube comment for this commercial is: "can't wait til they make an awesome Kung Fu movie with Bruce Lee when the technology gets better." Or you could just watch "Game of Death," which has an actual picture of Lee's head taped on some nameless actor's body.)

Question: What TV Show Is Way Past Due For Cancellation?

I'm putting to you the following question:

What TV show currently on the air is way past its expiration date and is starting to really stink?
This is not merely a show that is bad: but a show that used to be good that's either stayed around too long and became bad, or showed early brilliance and has made a swift inexplicable decline.

Note: the Simpsons graphic above was not meant to imply that I think it is one of those "way past due" shows. Though this season is really hit or miss for me, and the Seth Rogen superhero episode was kind of painful.

Webcomic iPhone App "Strips" Stripped

I found myself on an email thread earlier today regarding the Strips app for the iPhone. Apparently, the app-maker had a stellar list of strips lined up for this webcomic-reading app (including Cyanide and Happiness, PVP, Garfield Minus Garfield, Penny Arcade, xkcd, and others): but most didn't know it. That's because the Strips app had an "opt-out" policy rather than an "opt-in" one. If you didn't want to be on Strips, you had to contact the app-maker and let him know. Rather than, say, the app-maker contacting you to see if this is something you'd be interested in.

Strips also wasn't just a webcomics reader for the iPhone, but somewhat of a "publisher's network" to share ad revenue. AdMob would provide the ads, the webcomics would be mirrored on Amazon's S3, and there would even be integrated metrics tracking. I'm not sure if the app actually collected money from the webcomics it "syndicated" without permission. But the concern was definitely out there in the webcomics community that it might be.

Finally, when you visited the site, it had a big page with logos of all those webcomics (since taken down). At first glance, it looked very impressive, and appeared to the outsider that they were "on board" with Strips. But, as I mentioned before – they weren't "on board." But their logos were almost acting like "advertising" or some sort of endorsement for an app they were not participating with.

Since I received that initial email earlier today, this story has blown up, with much Twittering by various webcomics creators about and with Strips.

Scott Kurtz twittered,

And he's charging for it. AND he's using my comic name and logo to market it. See the problem?

Strips has now indicated on Twitter that they have pulled the app, and has issued an apology on their site:

"This summer, I decided to try my hand at making an iPhone application that would make it easier to read comics on the iPhone. I started by building an application and, over the proceeding weeks, sent out emails to a number of publishers asking them if they would like to be a part of the app. I hoped that this would be above-and-beyond the existing iPhone apps that display comics without any ads or even a hint at working with the artists. In theory I believed this was an honorable approach, but I became too eager with the product and released it anyway, hoping that I could provide each artist with useful analytics in the meantime.

As the weeks went on, I finished the app and submitted it to the app store. At that point, I had only received word from a couple web comics including Dinosaur Comics and Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Both asked to not be a part of the app, and so I immediately made sure that they weren't listed. The problem with this approach is that it's opt-out, when it should have been opt-in from the start.

A result of this is the recent understandable backlash from a number of artists concerning their content being available on Strips. I want to iterate as much as possible that I am more than willing to work with artists to help them publish their content on the iPhone, but that I have gone about it absolutely the wrong way thus far."

At least Strips moved quickly regarding this incident, and truly does seem sorry for what has happened. But I think some webcomic creators are shaken/pissed off by the idea that their work and trademarks could just be "grabbed" like that. And, as the world of iPhone apps and webcomics for mobile gets more defined – and, in some cases, monetised – this will most likely not be the last "growing pain" regarding this aspect of the industry.

At this point, the best course of action for Strips to take would seem to be to concentrate on working with smaller webcomic producers who are actively seeking to publish and monetise on the Web, rebuild trust, and start anew. Or approach a smaller print or web publisher about doing a partnership.

Recommended: Jeff Lemire's "Sweet Tooth"

Whenever I write that a comic is more than a comic, but "literature," I worry that such an assessment also insinuates in effect that most comics are not literature. That assigning the word "literature" to a comic is some sort of aberration – or, worst yet, mere patronizing praise. And that's not what I mean to say. I mean to say that I put various comics in various categories, the way I put various books in various categories. There are some books that I enjoy as tight legal thrillers or exaggerated action-adventure potboilers; I don't consider them "literature," but instead more like straight entertainment. A best-selling author like Stephen King can fall either way depending on the book. Ditto for Grant Morrison. But to me, there's a difference, a (highly subjective) line of demarcation.

I consider Jeff Lemire's comic "Sweet Tooth" to be literature.

In his guest-editorial for Vertigo, Lemire describes "Sweet Tooth" as a "post-apocalyptic, neo-western, action-adventure, science fiction, road-movie hybrid." Forget all that & back up. "Sweet Tooth" is an affecting tale of isolation and forbidden knowledge. The first issue finds a strange young man expressing the desire to learn more about the world and who he is. His father has isolated him in a cabin surrounded by snow and emptiness, and seeks to keep his son from attaining this self-knowledge: hoping to keep him safe in ignorance. But like every good hero's journey, this situation cannot stand.

Why does this boy look the way he does? What is the "accident" his father refers to? And what's with all the shooty-guns and violence?


I read this comic after finishing a book with a similar desolate, snowy tone, Russell Banks' "Affliction." Both works successfully utilize the vast, empty landscapes of the American north to convey the utter alienation, and paradoxical yearning for self-awareness, of the main characters.

Books like "Sweet Tooth" and "Air" are what Vertigo Comics should be producing, in my opinion. I like Vertigo's "action" stuff, and of course "Fables" is the big cash cow at the moment, but I fear that quirkier comics like Lemire's work gets potentially lost in the shuffle and the flash. Then there is the question of, once I've spent the introductory price of $1 for "Sweet Tooth" #1, buying the other single issues or waiting for the trade or hardcover. My temptation, honestly, is to wait for the collected edition. But then does my waiting contribute to hurting the longevity of this title? Or has Vertigo/DC figured this reluctance to purchase monthly issues as part of the equation?

Answering my own question: in this economy, I would think the monthly issue sales are crucial & necessary for supporting a new title.

Batman & Robin Pole-Dancers At The Big Apple Comic Con, 2009

I just found this gem at The Beat:


It's not really the pole-dancing that bothers me, it's the fact that they are on a wheeled cart.

They are on a wheeled pole-dancer cart.

On the other hand, this might be a great selling-point to get DC Comics more involved with their convention next year. Imagine if you had a pole-dancer representing every female in the DC Universe, several on each wheeled cart. Of course, special care would have to be taken to prevent pole-dancing cart traffic jams and collisions. But you roll the training of the cart drivers into the sponsorship fee. The pole-dancers, of course, have to provide their own costumes – the costumes are not included in the fee. I mean, that is just the code of comic con pole-dancers. B.Y.O.T.A.C. – Bring Your Own Thong And Cape.

What's Up With Smallville?

Smallville: All-Justin, All The Time

Did anybody see last week's episode? A second emo Oliver Queen story in a row! I couldn't believe they had the stones to do that. It was near-unwatchable. And the last 15 minutes of the episode was like one scene of two people talking "blah blah blah" after another. Seriously, it was Oliver talking to Lois, then Oliver talking to Clark, then Clark talking to Chloe. And not even talking about interesting, dramatic stuff. But just using that time to regurgitate exposition and go over the same emo talking points over and over and over again.

Justin Hartley is hot, but I just don't find his Oliver Queen a compelling enough character to go through two concurrent episodes of his "personal hell." I don't find this new General Zod compelling either, nor the entire Kryptonian storyline. I don't want to watch an entire episode of Tess Mercer getting progressively more facial bruises.

To me, the "rock" of that show is simply Clark Kent himself. He is the only person I still find interesting in that show, who I feel is believably growing and evolving as a character. But I think the key to shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is that there is a strong supporting cast to back the main character up. The main character shouldn't have the burden of being the "rock." You know, maybe Willow or Xander was the "rock" on BTVS. But who is the "rock" of Smallville? Chloe? Good God. Talk about a character whose only perceived value at this point is being prophesied to die.

But this is all about a series which is probably on its last season anyhow. I just want the "permission" to stop watching it. I always feel this "duty" to watch it because it is a superhero TV show, but really I could be catching up on the episodes of "Community" I missed on Hulu or something.

A superhero TV show should never be boring.