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Author: Sue Granquist

Goth Chick News: The FAN EXPO Chicago Was Epic

Goth Chick News: The FAN EXPO Chicago Was Epic

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For the past 13 years, Black Gate photog Chris Z and I have been regulars at the Wizard World Chicago Comic Con, one of the largest conventions we cover each year. However, in August 2021 Wizard World announced they would be selling the convention events business to FAN EXPO HQ, making them the largest comic convention organization across the globe according to Newsarama. Schedule conflicts conspired against us in 2022, but this year we were excited to learn FAN EXPO HQ was extending us press passes so we could finally check out what had changed since the event was sold.

Before I tell you about the awesomeness of this four-day convention, causing widespread FOMO, I’ll let you know that FAN EXPO will be coming to thirteen cities in the US and Canada over the next year, before making its way back to Chicago next August; meaning if you’re in the US there’s likely an upcoming event near you. You can find all those details here.

Now let’s wade in.

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Goth Chick News: Three Cheers for a New Dracula Comic

Goth Chick News: Three Cheers for a New Dracula Comic

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Universal Monsters: Dracula #1 (Image Comics, October 25, 2023).
Cover A: Martin Simmonds, Cover B: Joshua Middleton

I’ve written in the past about how my Goth Chick origins can be traced back to clandestine viewings of classic monster movies on the local cable access channel with my Dad. Though these events were infrequent, they made an indelible impression, forever making me equate Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney among others, with warm fuzzy feelings. But in between these midnight events, sitting at a distance from the television that would have sent my Mom into fits, I had to get my monster fix in other hideable ways.

And this meant comics.

Living in proximity to six boy cousins, all but one being older than me, I had a near limitless source of contraband, which at nine years old consisted primarily of Warren’s Creepy, Marvel’s Strange Tales, and DC’s House of Mystery. Easily hidden between mattress and box springs, and able to be read by flashlight in the closet, horror comics fed my obsession with monsters and the supernatural – even as they sometimes scared the snot out of me for nights on end.

To this day I’m a sucker for a good horror comic.

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Goth Chick News: I Believe The Exorcist: Believer Looks Pretty Good (Maybe)

Goth Chick News: I Believe The Exorcist: Believer Looks Pretty Good (Maybe)

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If you’ve hung around here for a while, then you know how I feel about tampering with classics. We’ve had some close calls in the past. For instance, around 2014 and then again in December of last year, there was a lot of buzz around remaking Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Frankly I’m still holding my breath hoping this one doesn’t actually happen, since as late as January of this year there was still Hollywood scuttle that Michael Bay would direct Scarlett Johansson in a reboot. 2016 saw remake rumors for, wait for it… Gone with the Wind, which were thankfully also gone just as quickly. I mean, some things just need to be left alone, I don’t care how desperate the entertainment industry is for material.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to classic horror. I cut my tiny goth girl fangs on Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney who starred in the most classic of classic monster movies. But revisiting Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man in contemporary times has usually been done in films I’ve looked forward to. I guess it is because the monsters themselves have been ingrained in our collective conscience for so long, that it seems okay to update their stories for new generations of audiences. Which is why I’m on the fence about the news I am about to share.

When The Exorcist first hit screens in December 1973, it was late and over budget. No one, not even the studio, expected it to be successful. Instead, it became the first official horror blockbuster, driven by not only its shock-value, but by the stories of audience members going screaming out of theaters, or being sick in the aisles. In fact, there is a fascinating short film available on YouTube which documents the audience reactions.

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Goth Chick News: del Toro Takes on the Monster Universe… Maybe

Goth Chick News: del Toro Takes on the Monster Universe… Maybe

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Forgive me if I’m a bit jaded when it comes to writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s announcements. Sometime back I stopped talking about the numerous horror-related projects he announced over the years including a scary adult-version of The Haunted Mansion, a sequel to Pan’s Labyrinth, and a film adaptation of Dan Simmons’ novel Drood. Why? Because almost as soon as the news hits, it is followed by a retraction. There is even a Wikipedia page dedicated to del Toro’s “unrealized projects,” (30 by the way) which is a nice way of listing out all the times he ghosted us.

But here I am again, about to give you details on an upcoming del Toro project I am too excited about to keep to myself. And the reason I’m going out on this limb one more time is that there are reasons to believe this one might happen.

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Goth Chick News: Fan-Girling Over the FAN EXPO

Goth Chick News: Fan-Girling Over the FAN EXPO

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Way back in 2010, Black Gate photog Chris Z suggested we check out the Wizard World Chicago Comic Con. This was by no means a new event in our fair city. In fact, the Chicago Comic Con was first held at the Playboy Towers Hotel (yes, that Playboy) in 1972. Wizard World, original publishers of the famous Wizard Magazine, purchased the event in 1996, giving it nationwide publicity and eventually expanded to host similar events in nearly twenty cities. By 2011 it was the largest convention of its kind in Chicago, and though it wasn’t strictly in the idiom of GCN, the show runners were gracious and granted us press passes that year. It turned out to be one of our favorite events and we have covered it every year since.

Like so many other businesses, the entertainment convention industry took a huge hit during the covid-19 pandemic. Even the biggest comic convention in the world, San Diego Comic-Con, which is run by a non-profit organization that also runs WonderCon, admitted the lack of live events during 2020 put a huge burden on the company’s finances. By 2021 Wizard World had cut back their conventions to six including Philadelphia, New Orleans, Portland, Cleveland, and St. Louis. Luckily Chicago remained as well since by now the people we met at this event were the sources of ongoing GCN content throughout the year. However, in August 2021 Wizard World announced they would be selling the convention events business to FAN EXPO.

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Goth Chick News: Does This Make the Xenomorph Queen a Disney Princess…?

Goth Chick News: Does This Make the Xenomorph Queen a Disney Princess…?

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I’m not sure what to think about this, so I’m asking all of you.

To begin, let’s base this discussion on two facts. First, with the 2019 acquisition of Fox, Disney became the owners of the long-running Alien sci-fi franchise. Second, in 2012 Ridley Scott, who created the original masterpiece that was Alien (1979), decided to leap back in after five other directors had a go at some portion of the story. This effectively scuttled the planned Alien movie we all deserved, which would have been a sequel to Aliens directed by Neill Blomkamp and would have ignored the movies which followed Aliens. This story would have reunited Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Hicks (Michael Biehn), and probably would have been awesome.

Instead, what we got was Sigourney Weaver permanently bowing out from the franchise, and two prequels from Scott, which were anything but awesome. Though nostalgia and eternal optimism caused die-hard fans to make Prometheus (2012) a technical box office hit ($130M budget against a $403M take), we’d learned our lesson by the time Alien: Covenant came around in 2017. It was considered a disappointment by Hollywood standards, bringing in less than half the ticket sales as its predecessor. Personally, I wished Scott would have kept his hands to himself.

Now, with this in mind, we have the news I’m about to share.

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Goth Chick News: How Many Horror Films Has Harrison Ford Been In? Two

Goth Chick News: How Many Horror Films Has Harrison Ford Been In? Two

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What Lies Beneath (DreamWorks Pictures, 2000)

This is the week when you can’t spit a piece of gum without hitting some reference to the fifth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which lands in theaters on Friday. Though due to quite a lot of early buzz my hopes are less than high, I will of course be in the theater on the 30th having purchased my tickets a month ago. Nostalgia alone will make Indy 5 a huge hit, even if it really is a master class in CGI and not much else (pardon my potentially unfounded snark).

But it did get me to wondering about Harrison Ford and horror.

I have vague memories of one horror movie in particular, starring Ford, called What Lies Beneath (2000) which costarred Michelle Pfeiffer and was directed by Robert Zemeckis. Ford plays an adulterous husband who murders his lover, placing her body in her car and sinking it into the nearby lake. However, the unquiet ghost comes back both for revenge and to save Ford’s wife (Pfeiffer) from being the next victim.

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Goth Chick News: As I Continue My Trip Down the Gaming Memory Lane, A Look Back at Phantasmagoria

Goth Chick News: As I Continue My Trip Down the Gaming Memory Lane, A Look Back at Phantasmagoria

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Phantasmagoria (Sierra On-Line, August 24, 1995)

I had quite a lot of email regarding my article on a reboot of the insanely popular PC game from 1994, The 7th Guest. And since you lot are generally pretty subdued, I decided to jump on the enthusiasm and keep the goodness going by revisiting another more controversial game from around that same time period, which I referenced in the write up on The 7th Guest. And if you’re keeping track, this isn’t the first time I have publicly declared Phantasmagoria, the 1995 horror-themed video game by Sierra On-Line as one of my all-time-favorites to this day. I first wrote about it back in 2016 when there was chatter that a movie was in the works, based on the game. But more on that in a minute.

Why you ask, would Phantasmagoria rank so high in my esteem, when the quality of today’s gaming experiences are movie-like. Compared to, for instance, games like Uncharted and Dying Light, Phantasmagoria’s live-actor-against-computer generated-background appears fairly cheesy. And you would be absolutely right. But gather round the soft glow of the monitor and heed this historic tale.

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Goth Chick News: Yes, I Realize Its Only June, But It’s the Midwest Haunters Convention

Goth Chick News: Yes, I Realize Its Only June, But It’s the Midwest Haunters Convention

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The fabulousness that is the Halloween season does not simply appear on October 1st. Much like Christmas décor in September, the haunt season needs a good long runway, with the primary difference being that we aficionados don’t normally start blasting Monster Mash while temperatures are still in the 80’s. No, our lot is slightly more subtle. When we start getting all spooky in the summertime, we do it in private at events like the Midwest Haunters Convention.

The MHC is the largest Halloween show of its kind in the US, dedicated to all Halloween lovers; actors, enthusiasts, home/pro haunters, makeup artists and special effects creators. MHC is part of the TransWorld family of events and organizers of the largest professional haunt show in the country, the Halloween and Attractions Show which takes place in the early part of each year in St. Louis. However, unlike the earlier show, MHC is open to the public, and Black Gate photog Chris Z and I were once again lucky enough to score an invitation to this year’s event at the Rosemont Convention Center outside of Chicago.

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Goth Chick News: The 7th Guest Finds New Life Thanks to VR

Goth Chick News: The 7th Guest Finds New Life Thanks to VR

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Monty Python’s Complete Waste of Time (7th Level, October 1994) and The 7th Guest (Trilobyte/Virgin, April 1993)

I remember it like it was yesterday. The year was 1994 and all I wanted was a computer with a compact disc read-only memory. You see, having a CD-ROM-capable PC, which had only become available the year before, opened an entirely new world of entertainment. However, a machine with those advanced capabilities, including 24-bit VGA graphics, would set you back around $2,300 (or roughly double that in today’s dollars). I literally used to haunt my local CompUSA store where they had floor models of these technological marvels I could actually play with.

Oh, the longing…

And then miracle of miracles, I received a $1000 refund on my taxes and promptly financed the rest at some ridiculous interest rate, loading my very own Packard Bell Pentium Multimedia PC into the trunk, along with monitor and printer. But as euphoric as this was, the real scores were riding shotgun in the front seat, CD-ROMs of Monty Python’s Complete Waste of Time, and The 7th Guest.

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