It's a definite truism - and a meme - that as you grow older people are less inclined to ask you your favourite dinosaur (it's a diplodocus, by the way) but I've realised the same is true for your favourite monster. Specifically the original Universal Monsters.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Not sure exactly why.
I'm pretty certain my friend, the author Charles R Rutledge would say Dracula, but I really had to put my thinking head on before it struck me which monster I'm most fascinated by.
The Mummy.
Although my favourite old Universal monster movie is, of course, the marvellous Bride of Frankenstein, the actual Bride is only really on-screen for around five minutes.
However, The Mummy is ubiquitous in films, comics, games etc.
I even did a whole series of Show Me The Mummy movie reviews... and am planning a second such collection of write-ups in due course.
The Mummy was also a key antagonist in both issues of my DIY comic, Monster Mag, that I created as a youngling. For instance, in the first issue it easily defeated the Hulk! You can find issue one here and issue two here.
From the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, pg 72
And I've always been a fan of mummies as monsters in the old school Dungeons & Dragons games of my youth (really must bring them back at some point!).
There were some grand pyramid-themed dungeons in old issues of the Judges Guild magazines around at the time.
After thanking her profusely, I excitedly told her I now had an excuse to pick up the Ardath Bey figure and the sarcophagus accessory pack!
There is a rule (well, more of a guideline) in this house that my action figures are "tolerated" as long as they are not kept in their boxes, but put out on display.
However, at the moment, I'm so in awe of my Mummy figure that I can't bring myself to open it quite yet.
In the week that marked the anniversary of his passing in 2013, what better time to celebrate the creations of the godfather of stop-motion: Ray Harryhausen.
“Our house, our neighbourhood, our whole street has moved."
The End of Oak Street only in theatres and IMAX August 14.
After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighbourhood to someplace unknown, the Platt family soon discovers that their very survival depends on them sticking together as they navigate their now unrecognizable surroundings.
Starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, The End of Oak Street also stars Maisy Stella and Christian Convery.
I'm not going to bury the lede here: this latest comic book adventure for The Rocketeer features a young Tintin and a surly Popeye. The former revelation sold me on the comic without knowing anything more, while the latter was just the cherry on the cake.
Set in 1938, The Rocketeer: The Island #1 sees Cliff Secord hired by a shady government operative to lead a hunt for the lost aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who may - or may not - have been spying on the pre-war Japanese military build-up.
Tintin & Snowy
Cliff, his buddy Goose and mechanic Peevy, end up on a boat heading towards the Caroline Islands in The Pacific, under the stewardship of Captain "Popeye" Segar, along with the team's researcher Justin 'Tintin' Martin, his pet dog Snowy, archaeologist Alexandra Payne, Cliff's estranged former girlfriend Betty and her new beau Marco.
I'll admit, at this stage, I'm not 100 per cent sure how Betty and Marco ended up on Popeye's ship as well, but I'm also not that bothered as the pulp adventure is already in full swing.
After the set-up and cast introductions, the balance of the comic is the nautical journey.
This eventually guides the ship into a tropical storm that takes out the communications and damages the attached seaplane meant to transport those in the party without ready access to a rocketpack.
Tintin has already confided in Secord a story he's heard of an "uncharted island untouched by time... filled with prehistoric wonders and beasts so bizarre they boggle the imagination." But Cliff isn't buying any of it.
As they approach the area where Earhart is thought to have vanished, Secord dons his iconic flying gear and jets off to scope out what's ahead.
Maybe Tintin's story wasn't that fanciful after all?
"I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam,"
Based on an unused story idea from The Rocketeer's late creator Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer: The Island just oozes pulp sensibilities from every page, with its comic character cameos and very strong suggestion that they're heading to The Skull Island, just ramping up the nostalgic excitement.
Kudos to writer John Layman for his intelligent handling of these characters that he clearly has a lot of affection for, while Jacob Edgars' delightful, cartoonish art style also accentuates the devil-may-care ambience that pervades this comic book.
I don't think we'll be getting anything particularly deep here, instead The Island miniseries looks like it's going to be old school fun, fun, fun for its entire three-issue run.
There's also a strong suggestion that King Kong himself will also appear!
It's almost as though this comic book was being written just for me.
Hi. This vid product examines two very early, transformative stories in the Judge Dredd canon. It’s time to travel to the future setting of Mega-City One and have some fun poking tyranny in its stupid eye.
The latest issue of the ever-brilliant Judge Dredd Megazine
This week issue 2470 of the weekly 2000AD sci-fi comic anthology comic, along withissue 489 of the Judge Dredd Megazine - the monthly Dredd-centric spin-off - popped through my letterbox just in time for 2000AD's 49th birthday celebrations today (February 19).
I can't recall if I purchased the first issue of the Megazine when it was launched in 1990 (I suspect not), but I certainly remember picking up the very first issue (prog) of 2000AD, back in 1977, when I was 10.
One of my few remaining vivid memories from that age is of sitting in the back of my parents' car, eagerly reading this comic that was unlike anything I had seen before.
I suspect mum and dad were taking me somewhere "fun", but I was more interested in my copy of 2000AD.
Early issues often came packaged with gifts, such as "biotronic" stickers with the second issue, so you could emulate John Probe (the star of the comic's Six Million Dollar Man clone M.A.C.H. 1)with the illusion of robotic parts peeking through your skin!
It's weird now to think that the big selling point of 2000AD initially was its Dan Dare strip (which, despite some striking visuals, ran for less than two years), and Judge Dredd - now a pop culture icon - didn't even appear until prog two.
2000AD was gritty and darker than my usual fare at the time, and thus felt more 'grown up'.
There are stories from those early days that have firmly cemented themselves into my psyche: such as Flesh (about time-travelling cowboys harvesting dinosaur meat), Shako (soldiers versus a man-eating polar bear in the Artic), and some of the more twisted of Tharg's Future Shocks (self-contained Twilight Zone-like stories with an inevitably bonkers surprise ending).
I read the title weekly for a long time, but, as is my wont, eventually found something else to hold my attention (probably American comics, roleplaying games... and girls).
Judge Dredd's debut in prog #2
I can't pinpoint exactly when I stopped reading 2000AD regularly.
However, I do remember devouring several of the early, important, Judge Dredd story arcs, such as The Judge Child, Judge Death Lives, and the Apocalypse War, which would have taken me to at least prog 270.
Sláine, Pat Mills' mythical Celtic berserker,first appeared in prog 330, and I know I followed his early adventures in the magazine, as I immediately grokked the fact that the ideas presented there could be ported over into a redefining of the "berserker/barbarian" character class in Dungeons & Dragons.
So that's six or seven years of loyal reading.
There was one aspect of the magazine that I never really bought into: the fact that it was supposedly edited by an alien called Tharg (a pseudonym adopted by all the actual editors), who arrived on Earth with his arsenal of "cool" alien slang.
He was an extraterrestrial Stan Lee, but gregarious Stan was always 'The Man', whereas, for me, Tharg was a pale imitation.
I've mellowed rather now and the cringe I felt as a teenager about this whole idea now simply makes me smirk a bit.
In subsequent decades, it was primarily Sláine and Judge Dredd that brought me back into the 2000AD fold, picking up either single issues from newsagents or graphic novel collections of stories from bookshops (or later, Amazon).
Although, for many years, there wasn't the same frisson of excitement picking up and reading the odd prog here and there compared to when I was 10.
It felt as though so much geeky media - and society in general - had shifted in that similar ("don't talk down to young readers") direction, even though 2000ADwas the trailblazer.
However, in the last year I have resumed my subscription to 2000AD, paired with my longer-running one to the Megazine, as I'm now finding the various stories - on the whole - in the anthology title are gelling more with my tastes.
I also love the fact that 2000AD's still going strong, and that new readers are discovering the joys of its gritty, British adventures every week.
Can't wait to see what the publishers, Rebellion, have lined up for 2000AD's 50th anniversary next year.
Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.
In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.
This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.
Sonia Viviani
To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.
The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).
It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).
This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.
Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.
Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.
Milly Carlucci
After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.
On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).
The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.
Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.
Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!
Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.
Straw Hats! Grab your crew! One Piece: Into The Grand Line sets sail on March 10!
Netflix’s epic high-seas pirate adventure, One Piece, returns for season two — unleashing fiercer adversaries and the most perilous quests yet. Luffy and the Straw Hats set sail for the extraordinary Grand Line - a legendary stretch of sea where danger and wonder await at every turn.
As they journey through this unpredictable realm in search of the world’s greatest treasure, they’ll encounter bizarre islands and a host of formidable new enemies.
Welcome to The Dinosaurs – an epic journey into a lost world.
From executive producer Steven Spielberg, Amblin Entertainment, and the award‑winning team behind Our Planet, this groundbreaking documentary series follows the rise and fall of the dinosaurs across hundreds of millions of years.
My pop culture Odyssey: a slice of super-powered geek life with heavy emphasis on pulp adventure, superheroes, comic books, westerns, horror, sci-fi, giant monsters, zombies etc
.jpg)
.jpeg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
