Hulk: Broken Worlds #2 Pre-order

For those who are interested, Hulk: Broken Worlds #2 with my "Days of Future Past" Hulk story will it comic stores next week-- and you can pre-order at TFAW, here.

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula

I'm working on two projects in the Sword of Dracula universe-- one a novel, one the graphic novel "The Dracula War"-- and I'm always thinking of ways to expand the universe.

By gum, if I ever do a sweeping enough story, I'll figure out a way to bring in Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. See the trailer below.

100 Greatest Movie Villains at Only Good Movies

Only Good Movies Blog has an excellent roster of the 100 Greatest Movie Villains-- complete with links to more information on each. What's great about this list is that it provides a short blurb on each, perfect for the movie fanatic looking for a new fix-- whether it's in Thrillers, Horror or James Bond movies. You've got to love a list that includes both Jack Palance in Shane and Ivan Drago from Rocky IV.

Let The Right One In

I watched Let The Right One In finally. If you're reading this blog you've probably already seen it, so I'll skip right to a few thoughts about the film and skip the usual synopsis. You'd think I would have gotten to it sooner, and yet somehow here I was, half a year after the movie's release, and still all I knew was that this was a Swedish film that everyone couldn't stop talking about.
Nor should they-- here is a riveting vampire movie that both adheres to well-worn tropes of the genre and slyly subverts them.

Like many vampires, Eli has a helper/companion, Hakan. The image of the vampire helper goes clear back past Renfield-- Polidori's Ruthven, for instance, had a tag-along-- but in modern folklore, movie folklore, the image is always the same: like David Bowie in The Hunger, the companion is a slave to the vampire, sometimes a lover, always an accomplice. In Let the Right One In, the helper is an older man who serves Eli in near-silence, moving from one poorly executed murder to the next, seemingly crushed under the weight of his servitude. And like Bowie in The Hunger, his time has run out-- leading us to suspect that Oskar is as much a replacement for Hakan as a friend. Oh, sure, Eli likes Oskar, but she also needs him.

Eli is, after all, a real vampire. Not a reformed, vegetarian, watch-my-skin-shimmer-while-I-save-you-from-bullies vampire, but a real, I-get-hungry-and-kill-random-people vampire. While saving Oskar from bullies. Oskar is in her thrall, but it wouldn't be much different if Oskar had instead accepted the kindness of Henry the Serial Killer.

Eli has no sense of guilt. She's a vampire and a fairly matter-of-fact one, another race entirely. She does not feel cold because she has "forgotten how;" she's not a human anymore and eating humans is the messy business of life for her. She's melancholic, but one gets the sense in this movie that everyone's melancholic in Sweden.

Oskar is a fantastic character, a yearning, painfully meek 12-year-old who desperately needs the friendship that the vampire offers. My favorite image of Oskar is towards the end, after Eli kills an interloper in her apartment. He goes back to his room and immediately runs his hands over his toy cars, as if they are talismans of innocence-- and I suppose they are.

The filmmakers have indicated that Oskar's father is a drunk, and the weird scene where Oskar's dad's pal comes in is about how Dad can't stop drinking even during a visit from his son. I wish that explanation sat right, but that's not the kind of discomfort the scene projects. Regardless, Dad has an alternate lifestyle of some kind that has driven mom away, and Oskar's pain at this estrangement is palpable-- watch as he sniffs his father's sweater openly, wanting to drink in his father's presence.

In the end we are left with the start of Oskar and Eli's grand adventure. If Oskar is wondering how this will turn out, the answer is it will probably be pretty great, but sooner or later he needs to watch The Hunger.

One last thing: the bullies deserved it.

100 Vampire Movies Treatment

This has been a great month for pitches over here at Sword of Dracula HQ South. For one thing, I've been zipping back and forth doing numerous versions of a treatment for a new series of books in the SOD universe, but can't discuss specifics yet. And just this week I did a new treatment called "100 Vampire Movies," which would be a vampire movie essay book, styled after Danny Peary's Cult Movies. All told it's a really exciting time-- meanwhile, Greg keeps turning in art on the Dracula War graphic novel, so I expect we'll hit our Summer deadline just fine.

More updates soon!

Interview at Adrenaline Vault up

Hey all-- if you want to hear my latest interview, you can download it over at Adrenaline Vault! The interview starts about 14 minutes in.

We talk about online gaming, gaming demographics, as well as comics. Enjoy!

Whisperer in Darkness- Lovecraft

As explained at their site, The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society is the primary organization devoted to Cthulhu Lives, the Cthulhu-mythos role-playing game. The following is quite wonderful teaser trailer for a Cthulhu-based movie, The Whisperer in Darkness, and it's perfect, right down to the classic, Universal-style shadowed logo.

The HPLHS makes films, and radio dramas, and more-- so we have every reason to believe this impressive little project could be real. For my part, I hope so.

Adrenaline Vault Podcast

Just a note-- any minute now I'm doing an interview with Adrenaline Vault, a podcast about games. Will update when the interview goes up!