Credibly creepy source material? Check.
Good acting? Check.
Clowns? Double check.
“One of the best horror movies of all time.” Umm…probably not.
Then again that was a quote from author Joe Hill who, if you weren’t aware, is Stephen King’s son.
There are enough pop culture fanatics and spandex in the city of Chicago to necessitate multiple comic book conventions along with all the celebrity guests, panels and mountains of merchandise that comes with them. While C2E2 dominates the spring season, the end of the summer is the domain of Wizard World Comic Con, where a dizzying array of cosplayers mingle with thousands of guests at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL.
Founded in 1972 as Nostalgia ’72 by local comic dealer / school teach Nancy Warner and housed in a local Chicago hotel banquet room, this year’s con boasted an estimated 110K attendees over the four-day event at the end of August. Wizard World Chicago is now the third largest such event in overall attendance in the US, behind only the New York Comic Con, and Comic-Con International in San Diego.
Originally showcasing comic books and related popular arts, the convention has expanded over the years to include a larger range of pop culture elements, such as professional wrestling, science fiction/fantasy, film/television, horror, animation, anime, manga, toys, collectible card games, video games, webcomics, and fantasy novels.
As you likely know, the staff at Black Gate has the distinct honor and pleasure to witness the passion that goes into the creative process. We get early looks at everything from books to movies, and comics to gaming. Each and every effort is the result of someone making the decision to put their imagination and creativity on display for the world to enjoy or possibly to pick apart – but in the mind of the creator, the risk is worth the reward.
Back in 2000 when I began contributing to the print version of Black Gate, I submitted a rather scathing review of a new author’s work. True, it was my opinion and to this day I stand by my comments, but I never stopped feeling bad about delivering this critical feedback in a public forum. That new author made a leap of faith sending his work to Black Gate and I feel my review disrespected the creative process.
Since that point, if I truly am not a fan of something that is sent to me, I simply do not tell you about it. And if pressed by the creator, I will share my thoughts with them privately, but never here.
So what’s the point of telling you this?
It’s a typical GCN setup of course and a way to tell you that if I write about a topic, it’s because I truly believe it’s something you need to experience for yourself. And in a rare case, that your need is more important than say, Tom Cruise’ ego or the collective commercial power of the Twilight franchise.
So with this in mind, I invite you back to last week when I reintroduced you to the wonderful, twisted world of Charles M. Kline in the form of his latest book, The 12 Frights of Christmas. At that time, I also said we’d talk about Mr. Kline again this week in the context of his short film, Frankenfriend.
Every time I look through my archives, I realize you and I have been together quite a long time. So first off – thanks.
Thanks to you, I get to meet the coolest of the cool kids who contact Goth Chick News dying (sometimes literally) to get me to broker an introduction between them and the legendary readership of Black Gate.
It was at just such a time, back in December, 2014, that I had the pleasure of bringing you the twisted art and mind of Charles M. Kline. Back then Mr. Kline established the promotional high-water mark for his latest book – he sent me a coffin.
Delivered in a lovely gift bag there was a little tag which read, “A tisket, a tasket, a story in a casket,” causing the hands it passed through to be too creeped out to open it. So by the time it reached me, the curiosity alone almost did me in.
It is a fact that Black Gate photog Chris Z and I spend just about every free moment of every September, getting pre-opening night looks at all the haunted attractions within a 50-mile radius of Chicago. It is also a fact that doing so makes the two of us the absolute worst people to ever take with you to a haunted attraction in the month of October.
Why?
Because by then our cynicism and snark have reached their annual pinnacle, fueled by countless hours of walking through dimly lit corridors while the great, the good and the truly awful professional haunters (there’s very little in between) take their best shot in exchange for a bit of free press. In other words, we’re the perfect people to utterly torpedo your willing suspension of disbelief.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that we, or more specifically I, long for a bit edgier October experience. It was way back in 2012 that I first discovered Blackout, which at the time was only in NYC but has since created a traveling version that came through Chicago. Either way, Chris Z adamantly declined to join me, saying he could think of far better ways to spend $135 then attending an event requiring him to sign a 30-page injury waiver.
I have somewhat of a love / hate relationship with conspiracy theories. Love them for the creative ways some people manage to find patterns in chaos, and hate them because those same people hear hoof beats outside a window and immediately think it’s a zebra – no matter what.
Occam’s Razor… that’s all I’m saying.
But I must admit, I love this latest theory which has been burning up the Internet since late last week; that the Illuminati, or maybe Satan’s minions are working against humanity, or at least laundering money, through Outback Steakhouse.
It started with one observant Twitter user who, for whatever reason, mapped the Outback Steakhouses first in his vicinity, then in other major cities and noticed a somewhat disturbing pattern in the restaurants’ locations.
Sometimes, horror-related or not, a story is just too good not to share.
With the Chicago Comic Con still a few weeks off, the GCN staff has been glued to our screens watching all the going’s on at the mother-of-all cons, the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC for you cool kids) which wrapped up last Sunday.
Like any comic con, when you get this many people with this much…uh…passion together in one place, there are bound to be shenanigans. However the big surprise this year didn’t come to us courtesy of an over-enthusiastic cosplayer after too many adult beverages mixed with Red Bull, but instead from what has become a consistent player on the stage of WTF…the airline industry.
After gaining infamy from their “aggressive” removal of a passenger from a flight earlier this year, United Airlines prevented passengers leaving the SDCC via San Diego International, from carrying comic books in their checked baggage.
No, I’m not kidding.
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Seeing that it now has a sequel, I finally got around to reading M.R. Carey’s first novel, The Girl With All the Gifts (2015).
I’m not sure what I was expecting. As the book has been out for over two years, I don’t think it is giving away too much to tell you the story takes place in a future dystopia, made such by a literal zombie apocalypse. And with all of us having lived through seven years of The Walking Dead, Brad Pitt in World War Z and slightly lighter takes such as Zombieland and Warm Bodies just to name a few, one might conclude that zombies, as a monster fad, might be played out both on screen and in print.
So if I was expecting anything at all, it wasn’t much. In fact, my local bookseller placed it in the YA section which meant I might either love it like A Series of Unfortunate Events or hate it with a burning passion, like Twilight.
Turns out, I definitely didn’t hate it.
Some years ago while wandering around London in the evening, I had the very lucky pleasure of coming upon the grand opening of a new attraction called Alien War. Being an avid fan of the Alien franchise and having no idea what I was walking into, I allowed the realistically dressed interstellar marines manning the sidewalk outside, to convince me to check it out.
What I experienced for the next 20+ minutes would almost certainly require me to sign some sort of liability waver if it existed today; but it was such an unbelievable adrenaline rush that I queued up to do it twice more that night.
As I have nothing to compare it to in recent memory, I was happy to find several YouTube clips. Including the one below, which gives you an idea of what I’m talking about.
Admittedly, I’m a sucker for old-fashioned, biblical-inspired horror. There’s something about texts that old that seems to add a layer of plausibility to a story. Once, following a very odd conversation with a minister’s wife attending my college, I spent one whole summer researching obscure ancient religious texts in which you can find the inspiration for most of your nightmares.
Okay, so I didn’t get out much in those days.
But what remains is an attraction to stories like Constantine, The Seventh Sign and The Rite for their otherworldly creepiness, so when I got word of a fairly new release by Christopher Golden called Ararat, I dashed right out to get my hands on a copy.