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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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Goth Chick News: One from the Vaults, The Egyptologist Remains One of My Favs

Goth Chick News: One from the Vaults, The Egyptologist Remains One of My Favs

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The Egyptologist (Random House paperback edition, May 2005). Right: Canadian edition

You might assume that with stacks of books waiting patiently in every corner of GCN’s Black Gate offices, I shouldn’t have time to read something twice. And that assumption would be a correct one if I could consistently maintain a reasonable amount of self-discipline. However, I am a firm believer in the benefits of comfort food, no matter how nutritionally deficient it is, and that goes double for the mental comfort food that is a remarkable story. So yes, when I’m having a lousy week, I grab a cinnamon PopTart and one of my favorite stories off the bookshelf. The beauty of the re-read is that you can generally plow through the entire tale in roughly the same amount of time it takes to eat an entire box of PopTarts.

With that background in mind, I want to tell you about The Egyptologist. A quick peruse through the Black Gate archives confirmed my suspicion that I never wrote about this book when I first read it, probably because back then, we were still in print, and I wrote only one article per issue. First published in hardcover in 2004, I purchased The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, to take with me on one of my dream trips; a three-week tour through Egypt in the company of Medu Hassan, a researcher from the Cairo Museum. This pre-dates e-books being a thing, as the Sony Libre wouldn’t hit the market until later that year. So back then, traveling with reading material meant packing books and this particular hardcover was a last-minute addition, added to my bag primarily due to the title and my destination, and not because I knew what I was getting into.

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Goth Chick News: This Is Seriously Incredible (and Kind of Disturbing)

Goth Chick News: This Is Seriously Incredible (and Kind of Disturbing)

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@danruse

I am very much a newbie to the world of artificial intelligence (AI), but I’m finding it infinitely fascinating. Like most people, I started with ChatGPT and then started playing around with Bard and other competitors. The possibilities are mind-bending and frightening in nearly equal measure, but I have started incorporating it into my work life, albeit slowly. I even tried asking ChatGPT to write a GCN article, but thankfully you’d notice the difference between it and me, or at least until AI gets a better sense of humor.

The latest thing I’ve been digging into is AI interpreting images. For instance, there is an AI tool called Midjourney which creates images from text prompts. For a basic plan of $96 per year, you purchase time on Midjourney’s powerful Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to interpret and process your text prompts. In response to your prompts (i.e. “New York in the summer”), Midjourney creates four graphic interpretations of what it thinks you asked it for. You can then zero in on the image closest to your liking, and perfect/enhance it further.

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Goth Chick News: Good and Bad News About World War Z

Goth Chick News: Good and Bad News About World War Z

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World War Z by Max Brooks (Three Rivers Press, October 16, 2007)

It’s a bit difficult to get my brain around, but it’s been ten years since the release of the movie version of World War Z. The film is based on the novel by Max Brooks, whom I had the pleasure of meeting back in 2015. In the midst of having a full-on fangirl moment I accomplished two things; first, Brooks signed my copy of WWZ, and second, I managed to irk him a bit by asking about a sequel. At the time I wasn’t sure why Brooks didn’t seem keen to talk about it. However, a few months later Paramount pictures announced they had green-lighted a second film, with Brooks signed on as a writer. It then seemed logical that, having just penned the agreement for a film, Brooks could not discuss it and therefore shut down my line of questioning.

And here we are in 2023. The good news is that WWZ fans are getting a special treat from Scream Factory, while the bad news is that a movie sequel seems all but finally and totally dead.

Let’s start with the good news.

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Goth Chick News Reviews: Hanging with Vampires: A Totally Factual Field Guide to the Supernatural by Insha Fitzpatrick

Goth Chick News Reviews: Hanging with Vampires: A Totally Factual Field Guide to the Supernatural by Insha Fitzpatrick

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As you likely already know, I’m a superfan of Quirk Books. If you put this publisher’s name in the Black Gate search bar, you’re going to come up with a whole list of articles about previous works they’re responsible for; all of which live up to their name. One of their newest tomes fits perfectly into my recent run on vampire news, so please indulge me while I cover a couple of different topics along this this line.

First, in a previous blood-sucking discussion, I was getting excited about Nicolas Cage’s recent outing as Dracula, in the comedy/horror movie Renfield. Cage was pitching it as one of his dream roles, and the premise of a modern-day Renfield, tortured by an awful boss and in therapy over it, seemed like a perfect match up of talent with story. Yes, Cage is weird and over the top, but a vampire film with a sense of humor put me in the mind of What We Do in the Shadows, so I was looking forward to seeing it.

So, how was it?

Meh.

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Goth Chick News: An Upcoming MCU Movie I’m Excited About

Goth Chick News: An Upcoming MCU Movie I’m Excited About

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It alarms quite a few people when I say I’m hit and miss on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As far as the hardcore fans I’m acquainted with, it seems I must be either in or out, and my spotty fandom is definitely not something they approve of.

For example, in a convo with the guy that cleans my office aquarium, I discovered he was super excited when I said one of my favorite films was Iron Man, but was super put out when I had no plans to see Doctor Strange. I also loved Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire, but have been only so-so on the Spider-Man’s since. Yes, I’m missing out on all the cool, interconnectivity of the stories, and no, I’d agree I can’t say I’m a true MCU fan. I just like what I like in the standalone films and frankly do not have the attention-span to take my viewership much further.

At this point I’m lucky my fish aren’t dead.

When it came to comics, it’s no surprise I was more of a DC fan, from Wonder Woman, to House of Secrets and The Unexpected. It’s probably also no surprise that if there was an MC character I consistently enjoyed, it was Blade.

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Goth Chick News: A24 Films Is Scaring the Snot Out of Me Again

Goth Chick News: A24 Films Is Scaring the Snot Out of Me Again

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Long ago A24 Films become my personal favorite independent film production company. Founded in 2012, they didn’t hit my radar until I discovered their 2015 horror hit The Witch, followed by Hereditary in 2018, then Midsommer in 2019. What I would call A24’s next-gen type scares ruled the company’s top box office earners until 2022 when Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Whale became this year’s Oscars darlings.

Just in case you’re wondering how A24 can crank out box office biggies like EEAaO, here’s the downlow. It’s less about the money than it is about the general principals guiding the company. A lot of what makes a production an “indie” movie is the director’s complete control over the creation and art of the final piece. Independent movie companies like A24 tend to work more on the funding, budget, and distribution of the movie, leaving the directors to be “independent” of studio content control.

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Goth Chick News: Can Someone Please Help Me Understand Anime?

Goth Chick News: Can Someone Please Help Me Understand Anime?

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Last Friday, Goth Chick photog Chris Z and I once again had the pleasure of a press invitation to the annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (or C2E2 for you cool kids). If you haven’t heard of this event, C2E2 is a Chicago fan convention dedicated to comics, pop culture, graphic novels ,video games, toys, movies, and television.

The inaugural C2E2 was held in 2010 at the McCormick Place in Chicago and hosted roughly twenty-eight thousand people over three days. Thirteen years later and according to our inside sources, all three individual days were sold out, as well as the three-day passes. Though C2E2 show runners have been tight-lipped these last few years as to attendance numbers, estimations I’ve been able to gather put the total in the 110K neighborhood for 2023, making C2E2 in the top five largest comic conventions in the US.

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Goth Chick News: Nicolas Cage as Dracula? Yes, Please

Goth Chick News: Nicolas Cage as Dracula? Yes, Please

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I recently enjoyed one of my periodic, cathartic rants about the state of vampires on film in the past couple of decades. Having had it with the very liberal license the entertainment industry has taken with my favorite classic monster, I was happy to share that Hollywood was finally going to give us a seriously violent throw-back version in the form of The Last Voyage of the Demeter. However, though I took exception to vampires being depicted as angsty, flannel-wearing mopes who despised their own blood-sucking nature, I never mentioned believing that vampires should not have a sense of humor.

I mean, if you had to hang around watching humans for roughly 590 years, you’d have to be able to laugh at stuff, right?

If you think about it, Dracula must appreciate the irony of his situation. Certainly director Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War, The LEGO Batman Movie) screenwriter Ryan Ridley (Ghosted, Rick & Morty), and comic book writer Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead, Invincible) gave it a lot of thought, which is why you should mark your calendars for April 14th.

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