Geek Punditry #96: This is How We Do It-Warp Your Own Way

November 1, 2024November 1, 2024 blakemp This is How We Do It Chris Fenoglio, comic books, IDW Publishing, Ryan North, Star Trek, Star Trek: Lower Decks

Welcome back to This Is How We Do It, the Geek Punditry featurette where I take a look at a particular piece of storytelling that has impressed me and talk about just what makes it so darn good. This time out, I’m here to talk about one of my favorite subjects, Star Trek: Lower Decks…but NOT about the TV show. Don’t get me wrong. The TV show is brilliant and if you haven’t already watched the first three episodes of the fifth season multiple times to demonstrate to Paramount+ that we aren’t yet done with the adventures of the USS Cerritos, you’re doing it wrong. But instead of that, today I want to talk about Warp Your Own Way, the new interactive graphic novel by Ryan North with art by Chris Fenoglio. It came out last week and – without exaggeration – it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before.

For instance, it’s on paper instead of a screen. What’s up with that?

Warp Your Own Way, as the title may imply, is a new version of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series from the 80s. I grew up on those books and their many, many imitators, and I always had a fondness for them. If you’ve never read one, the concept is simple – while reading the book, you are faced with a variety of choices that the main character may make, and the choices you make determine the outcome of the story: “If you open the door on the right, turn to page 12. If you open the door on the left, turn to page 17.” That sort of thing. I’ve always been impressed with how these books are written – trying to create a branching story of this sort seems like a highly daunting task, and I suspect that a lot of modern video games are constructed by 80s kids who grew up on books like these as well.

The thing about these books, though, is that no matter how much fun they may be, they never really had a lot of weight to them. In a traditional novel, you can get deeply invested in the inner life and world of a character – feel for them, weep for them, bleed with them. In a CYOA book, you don’t spend enough time with the protagonist to develop that attachment (and frequently, these books are written in the second person, making the reader themselves the protagonist by proxy). Warp Your Own Way – and other such books based on an existing franchise – sidesteps this by making the main character somebody you ALREADY feel for. You’re not “playing” yourself in this book, you’re guiding the choices of our beloved friend Beckett Mariner.

Whom we meet at the height of her glory.

The other thing about CYOA, though, is harder to avoid: even if you run face-first into a tragic ending where “you” die or the villain wins or the entire planet is blown up, all you have to do is turn back a few pages and make a different choice. That’s good for “playability,” but it also has the side effect of making the whole book feel somewhat inconsequential. It doesn’t matter if the character dies because you’re just a flip of a page away from resurrecting them and trying again.

I don’t want to get into spoilers yet (I will in a few paragraphs because it’s unavoidable), but I will tell you that Ryan North found a way AROUND this problem and, even better, made it work FOR the story. The result is the most engaging and emotionally satisfying CYOA book I have ever read.

North is no stranger to CYOA books. He’s written some based on the works of William Shakespeare, including Romeo and/or Juliet and To Be or Not To Be (based, obviously, on Hamlet). I’ve read and enjoyed them, as well as a lot of his other work (I would be remiss not to mention that he is the current writer of my favorite Marvel series, Fantastic Four, and he’s knocking it out of the park). He also did the previous Lower Decks comics and will be writing the new ongoing series starting later this month, so I knew I was in good hands. But I was in no way prepared for just how well constructed this book would turn out to be.

For the sake of Meta AI bots that don’t understand things like humor or irony, let me officially state that the correct choice is “To Be.”

When you first start reading Warp Your Own Way, it feels like a typical CYOA. You make your choices and follow the story until you get to an ending. It’s not a good ending, so you go back and try again. Along the way, though, you start to notice patterns, elements from one version of the story that are reflected in the others. This is what sets the story apart from any other CYOA. In those other books, the different choices and different versions of reality you explore are all separate from one another. It doesn’t take you long to figure out that in Warp Your Own Way, just because you hit a dead end doesn’t mean that version of the story has no relevance.

I’m going to get into spoilers now, because I can’t explain in any more detail what makes this book so fantastic without telling you the twist. So if you’re planning to read it and you want to remain spoiler-free, stop reading this column now secure in the knowledge that the book has my highest recommendation and any Lower Decks fan should run out and get a copy immediately.

Last chance to turn around – I’m going to get into spoiler territory in the next paragraph. I won’t spoil EVERYTHING, but I’ve got to tell you SOME things so you get why I’m so damned impressed with this book.

Okay, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. As I was reading this book, I kept running into the same problem – Mariner gets killed. Over and over again. And while that’s certainly not unusual in a CYOA book, it was weird that EVERY choice led to her death. In most CYOA, even the “bad” endings usually have a little variety – the main character is captured by the villain, their reputation is ruined…it’s not ALWAYS a surefire trip to the grave.

“Crap, I forgot there’s no plot armor in a CYOA…”

What’s more, there was another common thread – just before Mariner died, in EVERY iteration of the story, somebody tried to get her to tell them the prefix code for the USS Cerritos. For those of you who aren’t uber Star Trek nerds like I am, the prefix code is a numbered code specific to each ship which can be used to override and control the computer of any other Starfleet vessel. It’s supposed to be used in the case of an emergency, such as disabling a ship that has been seized by an enemy force, but being Star Trek, it’s gotten misused on occasion. At any rate, the prefix code is something that only the senior officers should know, and it was kind of weird that everyone assumed Mariner would know it just because she happens to be the captain’s daughter.

Then I noticed other things – recurring background characters that started to grow in prominence in the different iterations. Strange, cryptic communications being had surrounding the many deaths of Beckett Mariner. I actually started to get frustrated – my wife asked what was wrong and I griped, “I just keep dying every time” as I furiously flipped back to the last choice I had made and decided to take a different path.

And then, one of those side characters makes a comment that, bizarrely, refers back to the very first choice the reader makes in the book – what drink Mariner is going to have with breakfast. Human coffee, turn to page 28, Klingon Raktajino, turn to page 10. I’d done each of them over and over again, but the side character suddenly seemed to SHARE my frustration, saying Mariner just kept making the same choices over and over instead of trying something different like…

…like…

He didn’t, did he?

I realized the trick. I combined the options. I discovered a new choice.

And instead of coffee or Raktajino, Mariner ordered tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Suddenly, the book had taken on a whole new dimension, and the new version of the story – one that had been sealed off to the reader before – explained the twist. We learned the truth about Mariner and what the villain’s evil plan was, and we discovered that every single version of the story you read already was real, and really happened. You weren’t choosing alternate timelines after all. It was something much more clever.

“Why are you laughing?” my wife asked me.

“Because this is brilliant!” I said.

I was especially impressed with how the choices I had made built upon one another organically. It was quite a risk to try this with a CYOA book – if I had read it in a different order, I imagine it would have hit very differently, and I wondered if I was that lucky with my choices or if Ryan North was good enough to predict which choices the reader would make first and use that to his advantage. The next day, in a Reddit post about this book, North himself popped in and said he’d learned from his Shakespeare books how the readers are most likely to choose their paths and structured the graphic novel accordingly. My admiration skyrocketed.

Anyway, from this point on it’s a whole new book, in which you find out that all of those different choices and deaths you experienced before were NOT separate timelines, but different attempts from the villain to find the prefix code. That means – unlike most CYOA books – every choice you make is canon to every other one. Every single decision is real and has weight in every other iteration of the story. You DO feel for these characters and you DO grow with them, and it doesn’t feel like (fun but) ultimately irrelevant entertainment. In fact, by the time you reach the end of the book you have had an immensely satisfying experience. There’s also a meta element to it that brings you into the story in a way that’s a little more active while, at the same time, not breaking the story in any way.

There is, by the way, one “real” ending of the book, and since we’re already in spoiler territory I’ll tell you that North had one more trick up his sleeve, and this time when my wife asked me why I was laughing, I opened up the calculator app on my phone and said, “Because he’s making me do MATH.”

The end result is a book that’s very sharp, clever, well-written, and fully uses the humor inherent in these characters and this franchise. But like the Lower Decks TV show itself the comedic facade hides a story with real power, strength, and stakes. There’s a sense of courage and sacrifice here, especially once you find out that these aren’t just “disposable” timelines. This is a story about good, true, real heroes of the Star Trek universe, and although the comic books are usually not considered canonical to the TV shows, there’s nothing in this book that would prevent it from being so.

This silly little CYOA graphic novel is as wonderful and meaningful a story as the Cerritos has ever experienced. It is magnificent. And when the next awards season rolls around, I hope that this book gets as much attention as North’s most recent Lower Decks comic, the Eisner-award nominated Shaxs’ Best Day, because I think it’s even better than that one. Pick this up, fans, and read it over and over again. You won’t have a choice, after all. That’s the only way to get to the real end.

Because THIS is how we do it.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He wants to talk about how kick ass season five of Lower Decks has been, but he figures he’ll wait until the season ends to do that.

Geek Punditry #95: A Not-So-Scary Punditry

October 25, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry Bob's Burgers, Bugs Bunny, Chuck Jones, Disney, Donald Duck, Halloween, Halloween Baking Championship, June Foray, Looney Tunes

“You know Blake,” some of you may be saying, “Just because it’s October doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING you write about has to be scary. Some of us don’t necessarily NEED to immerse ourselves in serial killers and cosmic horror and Stephen King 24/7.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“I…I am?” you reply.

“Yeah, you are. I guess just because it’s October doesn’t mean EVERYTHING has to be scary.”

“Oh. Oookay. Well…GOOD!”

“So this week,” I say, “I’ll talk about some stuff that isn’t scary at all.”

“Thank you.”

“Still gonna write about Halloween, though.”

“Damn it.”

We all know how much I love the creepy content during Spooky Season, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things about Halloween that I love just as much – things that wouldn’t scare anybody but, at the same time, still contribute to the ghoulishly gleeful fun of this month. So if you’re NOT the kind of person who wants to be freaked out for Halloween but you still want to take part in the celebration, I’m going to give you guys a few recommendations for totally safe, family-friendly Halloween entertainment that will hopefully take you through to next month.

When I’m not watching somebody getting disemboweled in October, you know what’s the next best thing? Baking. I’ve been a fan for YEARS of the Food Network’s “Baking Championship” shows, and Halloween is the prime time. There are a whopping 14 seasons of Halloween Baking Championship available, and they’re all worth watching. In case you need someone to spell it out for you, it’s a pretty standard reality competition show. Each season a new group of contestants are gathered together and made to compete in a series of baking challenges, each episode one contestant is eliminated, and in the end, a victor is crowned. There are a wide variety of challenges as well – sometimes they have to make a certain type of dessert, sometimes they have to decorate their concoction based on a specific theme, sometimes there’s a specific ingredient they have to use. This is all well and good, but as I can’t actually eat any of the things that they’re making at home, I generally tune in to see what these creations look like. I’m in awe of some of these cakes and pies and cobblers that come out looking like monsters, skeletons, witch’s cauldrons, spellbooks, and any other sort of thing you can imagine.

Now, this isn’t one of those shows where they’re necessarily attempting to IMITATE real things (you’re thinking of Is It Cake?, where the goal is to make a cake that can trick someone into thinking it’s something else, like a shoe). This is purely about the artistry and creativity of the decorating and how good the food actually tastes. I don’t talk about it much, but I actually quite enjoy baking. It’s a fun, soothing, and edible hobby, and I think I can do a decent job making things that taste pretty good. However, absolutely NOTHING I have ever or will ever make in my entire life will look as amazing as the stuff we see on this show. Even the LOSERS turn out confections that put anything I could ever create to shame, and somehow I enjoy watching that.

If you think that sign is gonna stop me from eating your house, Mr. Snake, you are sadly mistaken.

I also like these shows way more than “traditional” reality competitions like Survivor or Big Brother because — unlike those other shows — you don’t have the pettiness, the nastiness, or the backstabbing that have made them world-famous. In fact, it’s not at all unusual to see the contestants on these shows HELP each other if they can. It’s not QUITE as cozy as The Great British Baking Show, but there’s still a vibe of camaraderie that makes this show far more entertaining than one where they’re voting each other off.

It’s not the only show that has this pedigree as well. There are two other Food Network shows with similar formats that I also enjoy. Outrageous Pumpkins is structurally the same, except instead of baking it’s about carving and building elaborate displays out of pumpkins. Then there’s Halloween Wars, which combines the two: on this show there are teams of food artists (typically a baker, a pumpkin carver, and someone skilled in making things out of sugar) working together to create remarkably elaborate dioramas that look like they could have spilled out of a haunted house.

Maybe that’s not your thing, though. You want something with a story, a plot. I’ve got just the thing, guys, and it’s called Bob’s Burgers. This has been one of my favorite cartoon series for years. At its core, it’s an animated sitcom about the owner of a struggling hamburger joint and his lunatic family, including his wife Linda and their three kids. The thing about this show, though, is that no matter how strange, bizarre, or absolutely ludicrous that week’s misadventure may get, there is a warm and loving core. Bob and Linda Belcher love each other and love their children completely and without reservation. That doesn’t mean they never get mad or have conflict, because real love doesn’t work that way, but at the end of the day they deeply care about one another, and that’s really refreshing in an era where so many TV comedies are about families who can’t even be in the same room together without being jerks.

Bob gives you a Halloween episode with FULL bars of chocolate.

The Belchers are in their FIFTEENTH season, and they’ve actually done more for holiday episodes than almost any other show I’ve ever seen. Over a dozen of their fifteen seasons have included Halloween episodes. Not only that, but they almost always have a Thanksgiving episode AND a Christmas episode each year. Plus, while not exactly an annual occurrence like the others, there have been several Valentine’s Day episodes as well. The people behind this show LOVE their holidays. If you’ve got the Hulu streaming service, there’s a spot in their “Huluween” library where you can actually access every Halloween episode of Bob’s Burgers right now. Just try to ignore the fact that 13 Halloweens have gone by and Louise Belcher is still eight years old. It’s a cartoon, you know how this works.

Last year, I spent an entire column writing about some of the great Halloween specials and how much I want new ones. I’m not going to go through all of them again (go ahead and read last year’s column), but let’s remember how many awesome non-scary Halloween specials actually exist. Beyond the classics like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, there are lesser-known but still worthy movies and specials like Rankin and Bass’s Mad Monster Party, Halloween is Grinch Night, or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

But what about the SHORTS, guys?

I’m still waiting for a scientific explanation for how Louie kept that pumpkin on his head.

I have often felt like a man out of time in many respects, and none more so than my craving for theatrical animated shorts. There was a time, a halcyon era before I was born, when buying a movie ticket would include not just the feature film, but at least one short film. It’s the place where the Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and the Disney pantheon all came from, and the fact that not even Pixar is still consistently giving us theatrical cartoon shorts makes me a sad, sad panda. But back in the day, these studios gave us some magnificent Halloween shorts that are still fun to watch today. Let’s talk about two of my favorites, both of which star the same phenomenal voice actor, the immortal June Foray.

In 1952, Jack Hannah gave us Disney’s Trick or Treat, which is in the running for my favorite Donald Duck cartoon of all time. I know you’ve seen this one: Donald pranks his nephews while they’re trick-or-treating by dumping water on their heads, because Donald is just that kind of a jerk sometimes. This transgression is witnessed by Witch Hazel – voiced by Foray – and she decides to give Donald his comeuppance. She comes after Donald with the help of the boys, some singing ghosts, and a magic spray that gives her control over his legs.

The same thing happened to me when I tried the “Wednesday Whopper” at Burger King.

It’s a funny cartoon with gorgeous animation and, along with it, a song that should by God be a national Halloween anthem. I’m not even joking – if a kid came up to my house singing the “Trick or Treat” song from this cartoon I would just dump all of my candy into their bag and close the door, because they just won Halloween. Plus there’s June Foray as Witch Hazel, the only person in the history of American cinema who even comes close to Mel Blanc as a voice master. Some people have even called her the “female Mel Blanc,” while others find it more appropriate to refer to Blanc as “the male June Foray.” I’m not going to argue with either one of them.

But it didn’t end there. Four years later, in 1956, director Chuck Jones asked Foray to reprise her role as Witch Hazel – not in a Disney short, but for the Looney Tunes. You see, Jones noticed that “witch hazel” is the name of an actual plant and, therefore, Disney could not trademark the name, making it free for him to use as well. Armed with the law on his side, he recruited Foray into his acting troupe for the cartoon Broom-Stick Bunny.

Marvel likes to act like they invented things, but June Foray has been doing Multiversal Variants since the 1950s.

In this one, Bugs Bunny is wearing a witch costume for his trick-or-treating and winds up in the mansion of, once again, Witch Hazel, who thinks he IS a fellow witch and invites him in. It’s a great cartoon and knowing that Jones deliberately cast Foray to voice the character in an attempt to “remake” the Disney version makes it even funnier. Foray, for her part, did attempt to differentiate the two witches, using an American accent for the Warner Bros version instead of the British accent she gave the Disney witch, but it’s hard to watch the two cartoons back-to-back without picturing them as the same character. Foray would reprise the Witch Hazel role several times and ultimately became a frequent collaborator of Chuck Jones. The voice of Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas may have been totally different if Jones didn’t want to poke at the Disney machine just a little bit.

Actual photograph of Disney’s reaction upon learning of the Chuck Jones cartoon (1956, colorized).

If you want to join in on the fun of Halloween but you don’t want to be scared, there are still plenty of options out there for you. Round up the kids, watch some of these classic cartoons, try to recreate some of the eerie edibles from the Food Network shows, and just have fun with it. Halloween should be fun, and if your idea of fun doesn’t involve having your blood chilled, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve just got to find what unlocks your inner ghoul with lighter fare.

QUICK NOTE: If you’re the type of person who actually reads the title of these columns (hi!) then you may notice that this issue the 95th installment of Geek Punditry. Coming up on the two-year anniversary and, perhaps more important, the nice, round 100th column. I’m the kind of nerd who likes nice, round numbers, and I want to do something special for the big 1-0-0…trouble is, I don’t know WHAT to do. So if you have a suggestion for something you think I should write about or something I’ve discussed in the past you’d like me to go back to, here’s your chance to let me know I’m open for suggestions! You can drop them in the comments here, on whatever social media you followed to get to this post, or email me at info@blakempetit.com!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s still not sure what he’s going to dress up as for Halloween this year. He was considering a Stephen King costume, but he hasn’t been able to find a Maine travel guide.

Geek Punditry #94: Four Color Terror

October 18, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry Al Ewing, comic books, creature from the black lagoon, Creepshow, DC Comics, dracula, frankenstein, Horror, Hulk, Hyde Street, Ice Cream Man, Immortal Hulk, James Tynion IV, Nice House on the Lake, Principals of Necromancy, Skybound, Universal Monsters

It’s October of course – glorious October, that precious time of year in which all the creepies crawl and the goblins gob and the gremlins grem. And at this time of year, many of us reach out and look for scary stories to cast to our televisions, books to fill our Kindles, and anything seasonal that might give us a little bit of a chill. A few days ago, for example, I saw someone on Facebook ask for recommendations for modern horror comics. While horror has long been a mainstay of the comic book medium – in fact, it was the biggest seller back in the 1950s, before the Comics Code strangled the life out of it – it’s not what most people think of when they think of comics these days. And that’s a shame, because like any other form of storytelling, there are plenty of scares to be had if only you know where to look.

Scary comics, of course, are different from scary movies or TV shows. Although they’re both visual mediums, comics don’t have some of the tools that filmmakers use to terrify people. There’s no creepy music, no way to rely on a jump scare, and even simple surprises can be difficult to pull off, as a shocking image can be spoiled if not carefully placed on the page to avoid allowing a major reveal before the creators are ready for it. (Robert Kirkman, who created The Walking Dead, is quite vocal about how aware he is of this sort of thing – he always tried to reserve majorly shocking moments for the first panel of a left-hand page to avoid a page-turn spoiler.) In terms of horror, comics have more in common with novels than film – they have to be reliant on mood and tone to pull off their scares. Sure, there ARE shock comics out there – even going back to the days of Tales From the Crypt and its blood-drenched contemporaries, there were plenty of comics that relied on gore. But these kinds of shock scenes are like slasher movies – good for a scare in the moment and plenty of fun, but they don’t necessarily create LASTING terror the way that a good book can.

So here are a few comics from recent years that I think are particularly successful at delivering the scares, stories that are well worth tracking down and reading as part of your Halloween wind-up.

On that initial Facebook post that prompted this column, one of the respondents stuck his metaphorical nose in the air and replied, “WELL, you won’t find any good horror from MARVEL or DC, but…”

What a prick.

It’s true that Marvel and DC are known as superhero publishers, and that’s what most of their audience comes to the table for, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of delivering in other genres, even within the confines of their existing superhero universes. The best horror comic Marvel has published in a long time is actually Immortal Hulk. This series, which ran for 50 issues from 2018 through 2021, was written by Al Ewing with art mostly by penciller Joe Bennett, and followed the “death” of the Hulk in Marvel’s Civil War II event. Comic book characters die and come back to life all the time, of course. It’s reached the point where it’s not just a cliche, it’s almost a JOKE to say you’re going to kill off a major character. But Ewing takes the old comic book concept of the “revolving door in Heaven” and turns it on its head, becoming a literal green “door” in Hell.

“I bet this stuff never happens to Jean Grey.”

In this series, Ewing explores WHY characters like the Hulk seem to die and come back over and over again, drawing in most of the gamma-powered characters (hero and villain alike) in the Marvel Universe and telling a deeply unsettling story about Bruce Banner, the multiple personalities that co-exist inside his head, and a battle against his true greatest enemy. Despite being a part of the Marvel Universe and occasionally guest-starring characters like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, this is a legitimately creepy story and probably one of my favorite runs of Hulk of all time, second only to Peter David’s legendary first run back in the 80s and 90s. If you don’t think there’s room in a shared universe for something truly scary and disturbing, I challenge you to check out this series right away.

On the DC side, there isn’t an awful lot of horror to be found in the modern DC Universe itself. Even those characters that use the trappings of horror, such as Dr. Fate or the Creature Commandos (coming soon to MAX!) aren’t usually used in legitimately frightening stories. But DC’s library doesn’t stop at the outskirts of Metropolis. From DC’s Black Label line, writer James Tynion IV and artist Alvaro Martinez brought us The Nice House on the Lake in 2021, a 12-issue sci-fi saga about a group of ten people who are invited by a mutual friend for a little getaway in the titular nice house on the lake. Some of them know each other, some are nearly strangers, and the only thing they all have in common is their buddy Walter. But on their first night in the house, something utterly heart-stopping happens that I’m not about to reveal because it would ruin the beginning of one of the best and most original horror comics in years. This 12-issue series was absolutely phenomenal, full of well-drawn characters and a concept that is creepy and compelling all at the same time. The creative team has reunited for a sequel, The Nice House By the Sea, the third issue of which was recently released. Grab the collected edition of the first series and come aboard.

Speaking of Robert Kirkman, as I did that back in paragraph two, his Skybound Entertainment (published via Image Comics) has been giving us more horror lately as well. The house that The Walking Dead built has been branching out into licensed comics, including two pretty significant horror properties. First is Creepshow: what started as a George Romero/Stephen King movie that paid tribute to the likes of the old EC Comics has expanded into a franchise with the current anthology TV series on Shudder. Skybound has taken to publishing Creepshow comics now, with three miniseries and a few one-shots, including a Christmas special last year and another one-off adapting a story by King’s son, the prolific horror author Joe Hill. Most regular issues of the comic include two stories by assorted writers and artists, each of which includes the requisite amount of gore and most of which display the kind of twisted sense of justice that befits a tribute to the likes of Tales From the Crypt. As with any anthology, the quality of the individual stories can vary – in other words, some are better than others. But if you’re looking for the sort of tongue-in-cheek horror that we got from the Cryptkeeper back in the day, there’s no better place to look right now.

“If you think this is safe, you’re GRAVE-ly mistaken! Hahahahahaaaaa, I’m no John Kassir.”

Kirkman has also acquired – to my shock and delight – the license to the classic Universal Monsters. While Dracula and Frankenstein may be public domain, this license includes the versions specific to the films of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, as well as the original Universal creations. Even better, each of the series they’ve produced so far has been drastically different from all of the others, making for a very diverse and enjoyable reading experience. The line began last year with Universal Monsters: Dracula, a four-issue series by James Tynion IV (the Nice House on the Lake guy) and artist Martin Simmonds. Tynion and Simmonds retell the story of the movie through the perspective of a mental patient, with a heavy emphasis on the character of Renfield. Simmonds’ artwork is bizarre and scattershot, befitting the point of view of someone who is mentally unstable, and the whole thing is wonderfully creepy.

“Look into my eyes…do you have any Kit-kats?”

The second miniseries, written by Dan Watters and Ram V with art by Matthew Roberts, is Universal Monsters: The Creature From the Black Lagoon Lives! This one is a straight-up sequel to the original film trilogy, set in the modern day as a woman decides to delve into the mystery of the swamp monster from decades ago. And like most great horror, it’s more about the humans that are wreaking havoc than the monster itself. It’s a fantastic, worthy sequel that could easily be made into a movie if Universal Pictures had any idea what it was doing with these classic creations.

“Guillermo Del Toro was gonna do WHAT with me?”

Most recently, they’ve kicked off a series based on my favorite member of the Universal Pantheon with Michael Walsh’s Universal Monsters: Frankenstein. We all know that Henry Frankenstein (changed from the novel’s “Victor” for reasons I’ve never understood) stole the corpses of the dead to make his creature, but how often have we really thought about the people that the Karloff monster once was? This miniseries is told from the point of view of a young boy who, still in grief over his father’s death, discovers that his late father’s body is now part of Frankenstein’s monster. It’s a brilliantly original concept. As big a Frankenstein fan as I am, it’s not easy to find an angle on the story that I haven’t seen before, and Walsh nails it.

“The knee bone’s connected to the — HIP bone!
The hip bone’s connected to my — DAD’S bone…”

Sticking with Image Comics, let’s talk about their acclaimed ongoing series Ice Cream Man, written by W. Maxwell Prince with art by Martin Morazzo. The horror series tells a different story in each issue, with the only connective tissue at first seeming to be Rick, the titular Ice Cream Man, who rolls through each issue at some point. The series hits on all kinds of disturbing themes, dealing heavily with existential dread and frequently drifting into Kafkaesque body horror and other such things. It’s a bleak, nihilistic comic, which isn’t usually my thing, but Prince very slowly and subtly reveals that these seemingly one-off stories are, in fact, connected, and there’s a vast backstory of deep cosmic horror that Rick has spawned from. The stories delve into terrors that deal with the very nature of existence, taking very human fears and externalizing them the way that few other stories – comic books or otherwise – can do effectively. It’s remarkably disquieting horror.

If you hear the bells on THIS guy’s truck, RUN.

Rounding out our time with Image Comics, there’s a new series from Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis worth mentioning. Only one issue of Hyde Street has been published so far, but it’s already got its hooks into me. On Hyde Street, we see characters like “Mr. X-Ray” and a twisted Boy Scout going by the name of “Pranky” as they lead the unsuspecting residents and visitors of Hyde Street down dark paths of destruction. They’re in some sort of competition, reaping souls for a hidden gamemaster for purposes that have not yet been revealed. As I said, there’s only been one issue so far, but it hints at a vast and complex mythology, and there are few writers out there who do that better than Geoff Johns. I’m very excited to see where this series is going.

“You know, Clark never uses his X-Ray vision this way.”

Finally, I’m going to leave you with a lesser-known miniseries from Magma Comix that just recently wrapped, The Principles of Necromancy. Written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing with art by Eamon Winkle, this tale of horror is set in a world where magic has been ostensibly driven out by the “City King,” leaving in its wake a realm of reason and science. Not everybody subscribes to these beliefs, however. The miniseries features the ghastly Dr. Jakob Eyes, the man inventing the art of necromancy in an effort to conquer death itself. If body horror is your thing, this is a book to check out, as we watch Eyes’ gruesome experiments and deliciously twisted practices over the course of four issues which ends on a note that leaves things wide open for further exploration of this dark world. Kelly and Lanzing have become favorite writers of mine in the last few years, doing great work at Marvel, DC, and IDW (particularly with their run on Star Trek), and it was on their names that I decided to pick up this series. I’m very glad that I did.

This image just demonstrates how little I actually know about interior decorating.

So my point, friends, is that horror is out there. If you’re still looking for creepy comics to fill your bookshelf before Halloween ends, here are some fine suggestions for you, and I’m sure the folks down at your local comic shop can give you even more. Dive in and get ready for a chill on every page.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He misses the days of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street comics, though. Those need to come back.

Geek Punditry #92: The Spectrum of Horror and Comedy

October 4, 2024October 4, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry A Nightmare on Elm Street, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Addams Family, Army of Darkness, Art the Clown, Beetlejuice, Bugs Bunny, Cabin in the Woods, Child's Play, Chucky, comedy, Ernest Scared Stupid, Evil Dead, Freddy Krueger, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Hatchet, Horror Movies, Munsters, Phineas and Ferb, Tales From the Crypt, Terrifier, Victor Crowley

If there need be any further evidence that Hollywood executives frequently don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing, let’s talk about the fact that they seem to be afraid of horror/comedy hybrid movies. ‘It’s confusing,” they will tell you, pulling their hair out over a movie like Behind the Mask or Happy Death Day. “We don’t know how to market this! Who is it for? Is it supposed to be a horror movie or a comedy?” Whereas the answer is obvious to anyone smarter than a movie executive, which is a very large part of the Venn Diagram, and includes virtually all horror movie fans: it’s both. Horror and comedy BELONG together. They are a natural combination, the peanut butter and chocolate in the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups of the movie industry, and the notion that there are people who don’t understand that is maddening to me.

Admittedly, humor and terror seem to be on the two extremes of the emotional spectrum, but that’s one of the reasons they compliment each other so well. Another reason is that, structurally speaking, they are very similar to one another. Both of these styles of storytelling are built upon creating an emotional response in the audience, and both of these responses are constructed through the careful buildup and release of tension. In fact, if separated from context, it might be impossible to tell if a scene is intended to be funny or scary until the punchline hits and the audience either laughs or screams, because until that point they can be virtually identical. A funny movie can turn on a dime if an expected laugh turns into a scare, and the dread of a scary movie can be decreased to a manageable level by a well-timed joke.

The horror/comedy combo is one of my favorites in all of storytelling, but there is a spectrum that these movies and stories exist on. Some of them lean heavier towards the comedy side, some more on the horror, and it’s fair if you prefer one side more than the other. But for the sake of discussion, this week I thought it would be useful to go over what I think of as the five levels on the horror/comedy spectrum and give some examples of each. We’ll start on the more comedy-heavy side.

Level one is where I place the mildest iteration of horror/comedy, where the emphasis is on the comedy. This is usually pretty lighthearted, and more often than not it’s family friendly. It usually has the TRAPPINGS of horror: haunted houses, ghosts, monsters, and pretty much anything else you would consider acceptable in an elementary school Halloween decoration, but there is rarely (if ever) a legitimate attempt at scaring people with this. The classic examples here are the legendary sitcoms The Addams Family and The Munsters. People will argue until the end of time as to which one was better (as far as the original TV show goes, that is – there can be no debate that the Addamses have superior movies), but whether you’re a Gomez Guy or a Lilly Lover, these two franchises are about as close to G-rated as horror gets. There are more recent entries into the category as well, like the Hotel Transylvania movies and underrated movie Igor, and a lot of family cartoons and sitcoms shift into this for Halloween episodes, often seen on the likes of Roseanne, Home Improvement, or Phineas and Ferb.

It’s worth pointing out here that, again, I’m calling this a spectrum, and even these five subcategories have different levels. Technically, I would place Beetlejuice here as well (the original, at least, I haven’t seen the sequel yet), because I don’t think that the movie is ever actually intended to be scary. However, it’s obvious that the movie is more intense than the adventures of the Addamses and the Munsters, and thus if it IS a Level One, it’s towards the high end of the spectrum. A 1.9, perhaps.

On the second level, I place those stories in which the situations are relatively serious, but the characters themselves are funny and react to the scary moments in funny ways. Ghostbusters is the classic example of this. The ghosts aren’t played for laughs (not usually, at least, especially not in the first film), and some of the things could actually be legitimately frightening, such as the first appearance of the Library Ghost. But the behavior and antics of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson are very funny and keep you from feeling any legitimate terror. Even when it looks like a Sumarian Deity is about to curb-stomp the city of New York, you know that Venkman is going to have a wisecrack to defuse the situation. Another of my favorite films, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, falls into this category. The classic Universal Monsters are there, and Lon Chaney Jr. (the Wolf-Man), Glenn Strange (Frankenstein’s Monster) and Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula himself) all play their roles perfectly straight, as if they’re in one of their solo adventures and trying to chill the spines of the audience. But with Lou Costello freaking out over a candle and Bud Abbott doing his impression of everybody who never sees Michigan J. Frog singing, there’s no real sense of danger. The blend of master monster performers and master comedians is never more evident than in this film.

Other works that are typically family-friendly but where the villains have the POTENTIAL to cause actual harm fit in here as well. Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas fall into that category, as do certain classic cartoons such as the Bugs Bunny short Transylvannia 6-5000. I struggled a bit with one of my other favorite Halloween movies, Ernest Scared Stupid, trying to figure out if it belongs here or level one. Ultimately, I’m placing it here, because there are kids (the intended audience) who might find the trolls actually frightening, and they’re trying to do bad things. It’s only through the intercession of American hero Ernest P. Worrell that they’re stopped in time. Yes, that means I’m giving Ernest a higher rating than Beetlejuice, but my metric is how scared the INTENDED audience might be, and I’m sticking with it.

Level three stories have a fair balance between the horror and the comedy. Parts of the film may feel like you’re watching a scary movie, other parts feel like a pure comedy, and when this is done well there is no discrepancy felt by the audience. These two styles of storytelling just match each other very well. Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods is a great example of this. We start out with what looks like some sort of bland, white-collar office comedy, then cut to a bunch of teenagers getting drawn into what appears to be a very stereotypical slasher movie. But the creeps start to claw their way into the office setting, while the events in the titular cabin turn out to be funnier than you would expect, and by the time we get to the full-on collision of the two settings and you come to understand what one has to do with the other, we’ve got a great blend of the two that maintains pretty much throughout the rest of the film.

We often see this type of balance, by the way, in later films in a franchise. It’s not unusual to see a relatively serious horror movie get zanier in the sequels. Gremlins 2 is one of my favorite examples of this. The first film has its humorous moments, but the sequel really leans into absurdity, with the monsters taking different forms and playing out scenes as though they fell out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The result is a movie that many fans even prefer to the original. Another good example of this is Army of Darkness, the third movie in the Evil Dead trilogy. The first movie is pure horror, almost nothing funny about it. The sequel, Evil Dead 2, is still very dark, but brings in enough comedic elements to earn it a spot on my spectrum. (That spot is in Level Five, and we’ll get to that soon enough.) But in Army of Darkness, Sam Raimi decided to let Bruce Campbell’s comedic skills and charm really shine through, resulting in a movie that is very different, tonally, from the rest of the franchise, but like Gremlins 2 is a favorite of a large number of fans.

Level Four is where things are getting a lot darker. These are films that are primarily horror movies, but movies that have a twisted sense of humor, and that often comes down to the villain of the franchise. We see this most clearly, I think, with A Nightmare on Elm Street. You’ve got a dead child killer who has the ability to enter and attack you through your dreams, which is not funny at ALL. But the child killer in question also has a wicked funny bone, which manifests itself both in what he says and in the scenarios that he traps his victims in – scenarios that can go from bitterly ironic to just plain goofy. I think it’s the reason that Freddy became such a breakout star in the 80s. There were lots of slashers at the time, but in an era when most of them were imitating Michael Myers and acting as the Strong, Silent Type, Freddy was blazing a trail as a new kind of killer. There have been efforts to imitate him, but few have succeeded.

Probably the most successful imitator, tonally at least, is Chucky from the Child’s Play series. In this franchise, we’ve got a child’s plaything, a three-foot doll, inhabited by the spirit of a serial killer. Making a kid’s toy creepy is a fairly common occurrence in horror (the idea of something that’s supposed to be wholesome and nurturing turning dangerous is frightening), but again, it’s the wit and cleverness of the Chucky character and Brad Dourif’s performance that made the franchise successful and allowed it to grow into so much more than it was in its origins. Oddly enough, later films in the franchise and the follow-up television series do drift, but not lower on the scale of comedy, but towards having a bit more melodrama. It’s a weird, unique transmogrification of the concept, but it never loses its sense of humor.

The Cryptkeeper from Tales From the Crypt and other assorted horror anthology hosts often fall into this category as well. Whether we’re talking about a TV series, movie, or comic book, the format is usually the same: they present to you a scary story, popping in before and after (or sometimes during, if it’s a format that has a commercial break) to drop in a few witticisms about the hapless characters marching stoically to their doom, and the audience loves them for it. The truth is, fans tune in as much for the Cryptcreeper’s ghoulishly ghastly puns as we do for any of the scares that are coming our way.

Finally, we arrive at the top tier, that level of horror that’s furthest away from comedy while still, at the same time, having some funny beats. In this category, I place movies that are primarily horror films, but that have a pitch-black sense of humor. Evil Dead 2, again, is a prime example. Bruce Campbell and his girlfriend are under assault by the horrific “Deadites,” demonic creatures that are out to torture and mutilate. Not funny. They take his girlfriend and turn her into one of them. Not funny. One of them possesses Campbell’s hand and he’s forced to cut it off with a chainsaw. Not –

–actually, that part is kinda funny. And that’s how movies on this level go. They take things that SHOULD be horrible and graphic and terrifying, but elevate them to a level that’s almost too cartoonish to take seriously, allowing some laughter. Campbell is great at this. We also see it done to good effect in Adam Green’s Hatchet series. The characters who are NOT undead revenant Victor Crowley are often pretty funny, but Crowley himself is the unspeaking sort of horror. The kills he pulls off, though, are so ridiculously gruesome that the realism is drained away, giving the audience permission to laugh a little bit. To a lesser extent, the same is true of the hugely popular Terrifier films, where the silent Art the Clown brutally tortures his victims. Early screenings for the third film (opening soon) are reporting people walking out during the first ten minutes, with one audience member allegedly even throwing up in the theater. If this is the reaction filmmaker Damien Leone is going for (and I believe it is), then you have to believe he is intentionally going way over the top.

So there you have it, friends, the levels of horror/comedy. Keep in mind that this scale is meant to determine INTENSITY and in no way is indicative of the QUALITY of a film. Every level has great movies and awful movies that belong there. But if you’re trying to figure out how intense a movie you’re looking for this spooky season, think of the scale and make sure you’re not in a Level Two mood when your friend shows up recommending a Level Five.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. The only movie on his scale to ever achieve a Level Six? Babe 2: Pig in the City. Weird, huh?

Geek Punditry #91: What Measure Horror?

September 27, 2024September 27, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry A Nightmare on Elm Street, Abigail, Freddy Krueger, Horror Movies, Monsters, Movies, Saw, Vampires, Walking Dead, Zombies

As part of my Pregaming for Scary Season, my wife suggested I watch the new movie Abigail. I’d heard mixed things, but between her recommendation and the fact that it was by the same writing and directing team responsible for the last two Scream movies (which I greatly enjoyed), I decided to give it a shot. I’m really glad I did. Abigail is about a group of crooks hired to kidnap the ballet-dancing daughter of a wealthy man. As they hold her, awaiting their ransom demands being met, they begin to fall prey to a series of increasingly unlikely mishaps.

Mishaps like a *grande jeté* gone horrifically wrong.

I don’t want to tell you anything more about the plot. If you’ve seen the trailers, you probably already know the biggest twist in the film, because the idiots in marketing gave it away even though the film is structured in such a way that it seems quite clear it was intended to be a surprise. I’m just going to say that I recommend you NOT look up the rest of the plot if you haven’t seen it yet and just watch it with an open mind. It’s a great, original twist on an old trope.

It got me wondering why so many people on the internet were down on it, though. I thought the movie was loads of fun. So I went back to find some of the complaints about the film and the major one seemed to be that it wasn’t SCARY enough.

Guys.

Okay, it’s not a movie that will make anybody wet their pants. There are a couple of jump scares and a LOT of gore, but nothing in it is going to keep me awake at night. But the thing is…is that REALLY the only metric by which a horror movie should be measured?

I suppose part of the question is what exactly one expects from “horror.” If you go by the strict definition of the word, yes, “horror” is supposed to be scary. But if I’m being honest, guys, there are very few movies that I find legitimately frightening. I’m not trying to sound like some macho jerk, like I’m above being scared. I get scared all the time. There’s a fair in town this weekend and I need to make sure we go on the day Erin is off work because I’m far too scared of heights to take our son on the Ferris Wheel. It’s just that jump scares and gore — while effective in the moment — are not the sort of thing that linger in my psyche. Stories that I find REALLY scary are the ones with unsettling or disquieting implications for the human monster. 1984, for instance, terrifies me. And I know enough about the movie A Serbian Film to know that I never, ever need to watch it. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just take my word for it. Don’t look it up. Seriously.)

From left to right, least scary to most scary.

Gore, similarly, only bothers me when it gets too “real.” Historically speaking, the gore in a lot of horror movies has been so over-the-top as to become comical, almost cartoonish. The things that Jason Voorhees does to a camper are largely impossible, and thus, not particularly disturbing to me. The stuff that IS disturbing is the stuff that – again – I don’t care to watch, like the wave of “torture porn” that was popular after the first Saw movie. Which is ironic, as the original Saw is actually relatively light on gore. The franchise didn’t get particularly bloody until the sequels, when it began to ride the trend of torture porn that was popularized by the over-the-top IMITATORS of the first film, who took it to ridiculous extremes.

Similarly, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts recently – Star Trek: The Next Conversation, featuring Matt Mira and Andy Secunda going through the vast Trek library an episode at a time – when Matt argued that he didn’t count The Walking Dead as horror because he doesn’t think zombies are scary. That’s kind of short sighted. Sure, ONE zombie isn’t going to be that terrifying. I think most able-bodied adults could survive a single zombie, unless it was one of those fast ones from movies like the Dawn of the Dead remake, but that’s going to open up an argument as to whether we should even count them as zombies at all, and that’s an entirely different column. But the horror of a zombie, from the earliest days of George Romero, comes because of the HERD mentality. One zombie? No biggie. Whack him in the head. A hundred zombies? Bring me my brown pants. It’s like a bee sting. Unless you’ve got allergies or other medical conditions, a single bee is just an annoyance. But if an entire HIVE falls on your head, I don’t care how good a shape you’re in, you’re going to have a very, very bad day.

“BOO! Did…did that scare…no? Okay, close your eyes, I’m gonna try again…”

I count zombies in the same category as any other movie monster, like werewolves, vampires, mummies, and my ol’ buddy Frankenstein’s creation. They are a type of creature, and while they certainly CAN be played for comedy (or any other genre, really – there are a shocking number of zombie romances out there), their ROOTS are in horror, and as such are part of the genre whether you, personally, are frightened by them or not.

My point is, I don’t judge the quality of a horror movie by its ability to keep me awake at night, but rather by the same standards I judge any other movie: writing, acting, innovation, music, direction. And by those metrics, I consider Abigail to be a pretty successful film. It takes a very familiar subgenre of horror and does something with it that I haven’t seen before, which is a huge mark in its favor. The writing is strong, with witty dialogue and several moments that were genuinely funny. The performances were very good as well, particularly that of 15-year-old Alisha Weir as Abigail. (I should point out that she’s currently 15, probably closer to 13 when the movie was filmed, and entirely convincing as the 12-year-old title character.) It was also great to see current horror It-Girl Kathryn Newton playing against type. Movies like Freaky and Lisa Frankenstein have kind of given her a sort of 80s Winona Ryder “dark teen in a quirky horror movie” vibe, although it should be noted she’s also been in Detective Pikachu and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and thus far more than a one-trick pony. This movie keeps her in the same KIND of movie where she’s become a queen, but she gets to do a very different CHARACTER than she usually does, which was fun.

But a contingent of the internet seems to think I should disregard all of that because the movie didn’t make me toss and turn until 3 in the morning. (LIFE does that, I don’t need movies to do it.) And like everything else on the internet, I’m sure it’s a small minority of loudmouths who make these complaints. Most horror movie fans that I know are among the warmest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met. But there’s always that jerk who thinks that any movie made after they turned 17 is garbage, and will loudly voice that opinion.

The thing that really baffles me is that a lot of those people who whine about how “not scary” a movie like Abigail is are the same ones who will bemoan the days of Freddy Kruger and Michael Myers. Fellas, I hate to break it to you, but Freddy ain’t scary. Sure, the CONCEPT is frightening – a demon that has the ability to stalk you in your dreams, in the one place where you SHOULD be the most safe but, at the same time, are at your most helpless. That’s a terrifying thought. But go back and watch those movies. Robert Englund is a blast to watch. Heather Langenkamp deserves far more credit than she gets for being one of the all-time great Final Girls. And Wes Craven, of course, was a master storyteller. But I’ve seen every one of those movies multiple times, and I never even ONCE was worried that anything in them could possibly happen in my life. If I had, I probably never would have gone back to them again.

“BOO! No..no good? Geez, you’re a tough nut to crack…”

Most horror fans are great, of course, but there are snobs in that fandom just like any other. And like a lot of snobs, there’s a recency prejudice that seems to lock a lot of people out of current stuff that’s really good just because they think that the stuff from their formative years is the greatest that will ever be. (I wrote about this with cartoon fans a couple of months ago. It’s the same concept.) So with October coming, with the glorious Creepy Movie Bacchanalia that we’re all going to indulge in impending in just days, here’s my message. Give stuff a chance. Try new things. Watch new movies – and I don’t just mean movies that came out last week, but rather anything you personally haven’t tried in the past. And don’t think that the ONLY thing that matters is that you get nightmares.

Sometimes, a scream can just be for fun.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s trying to do the math to figure out just how many monster movies he can squeeze in between now and Oct. 31. He’s terrible at math, but the only answer he can arrive at is “not enough.”

Geek Punditry #90: The Mount Rushmore of Monsters

September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry A Nightmare on Elm Street, Adam Green, Bela Lugosi, Bill Skarsgård, Boris Karloff, Brad Dourif, Bride of Frankenstein, Child's Play, Chucky, creature from the black lagoon, Damien Leone, David Howard, dracula, Elsa Lanchester, frankenstein, Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Hatchet, Horror Movies, It, Jason Voorhees, Kane Hodder, Michael Dougherty, Michael Myers, Movies, Pennywise, Robert Englund, Slashers, Stephen King, Terrifier, Trick 'r Treat, Universal Monsters, Victor Crowley

Yesterday, September 19, when I got home from work, my wife was ready and waiting for something we’ve been looking forward to for months: putting up the Halloween decorations. Oh I know, some people may scoff. Some may say it’s too early. Some may say that preparing for Halloween before October is a terrible breach of seasonal etiquette. To these people I say, bite my gourd. Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, and I’ve been waiting for this day since I went back to work from summer vacation on August 1. It is well past time, as far as I am concerned.

Our decorations aren’t terribly complex, because we can’t afford anything terribly complex. Nor are they terribly scary, because we have a seven-year-old and we don’t want to give him nightmares. But Eddie does love monsters and creepy crawlies, so we’re not above hanging a few ghosts from the trees, wrapping the posts in front of our door with LED lights, and setting up inflatables of the likes of Slimer and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. We’d have more if we could, but we’re happy with what we got.

As we were decorating, though, I started to think about just which horror icons I would adorn our home with if money was no object. If I could grab the icons of terror from any time period, who would they be? In short, what creatures belong on the Mount Rushmore of Monsters?

It was honestly too hard to narrow down all the different monsters from throughout history to a simple quartet, so I decided instead to do three different mountains dedicated to three different eras: the Universal Monsters, 80s Slashers, and 21st Century Terrors. Obviously there are plenty of other ways I could subdivide things, but restricting myself to these three keeps me from going overboard (and gives me an excuse to return to this topic later, should I so choose).

I’m making my decisions based on how iconic I think the monsters are – how far have they come in terms of penetrating popular culture? For example, no matter how good a movie I think Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is (and it IS a GREAT movie, and you should all watch it) the fact that he’s kind of faded away since then is going to keep Leslie off the list.

But enough of that. Who HAS made the cut?

Universal Monsters

Universal Studios didn’t invent the horror movie, and in fact, most of their iconic creatures came not from them, but from the annals of public domain. That said, when people think of these classic monsters, the average member of the public is picturing the versions that came from the Universal monster flicks. The Universal Monsters are still known worldwide, a valuable brand that even kids will recognize without ever having seen a single one of their films. Their versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man, and many more are absolute legends. How in the world do you narrow it down to just four?

Well, you do it by deciding which ones are the MOST iconic, which ones are known by EVERYBODY – even people who hate monster movies or don’t like Halloween. And for that reason, I think the first two spots have to go to the Frankenstein Monster and his lovely Bride, as portrayed by Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, respectively. Karloff wasn’t the only actor to play the creature for Universal (Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange each had turns as well), but he was the first and there can be no denying that he was the most memorable. It’s his picture that you see on the merch, his face that the Halloween masks are based on, and his rendition that has informed pretty much everything from his three successors to Frankenberry cereal. As for the Bride, despite the fact that she only appeared in the one film – and only in the final scene of the movie at that – she has become as iconic as the Monster himself. The tall hair with the white streak, the bandage-wrapped body draped in gossamer, and Lanchester’s wide eyes and legendary scream have earned a permanent place in pop culture.

“Still a better love story than–” Ah, you know the joke.

Spot #3 on the mountain couldn’t possibly be given to anybody but Bela Lugosi as Dracula. People don’t often realize that Lugosi only played the count twice, in the original 1931 Dracula, then not again until 1948 in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. But like Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster, his is the most recognizable version of Bram Stoker’s bloodsucker. Everything we accept about Dracula’s hairstyle, his clothes, and his accent (a remnant of Lugosi’s own Hungarian background) come from this version of the creature. Even today, when you watch a Hotel Transylvania movie, it’s Lugosi that Adam Sandler is doing a parody of. Like Karloff, his depiction of the monster is so famous that anybody who tried to do a novel-accurate version of Dracula would probably be met with confused looks as people asked why the hell he has a mustache.

“Sometimes I do, in fact, say ‘Blah, blah, blah’.”

And then there’s the final spot and…guys, this is hard for me. REALLY hard. Not because there isn’t an obvious choice, but because it means I’m going to have to sideline one of my favorites. I love Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman. I think he’s got some of the best, most nuanced performances in the entire Universal monster canon, and if this mountain was just my favorites, he’d be right up there. But in terms of how ICONIC he is…well…there are a lot of werewolves in movieland, and he doesn’t quite have the complete dominance over his version of the monster that Karloff and Lugosi do. But you know which monster IS instantly recognizable as the one and only Universal creation? The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

He’s not my favorite of the monsters (in fact, a few years ago I actually ranked him as my LEAST favorite of the iconic Universal Monsters), but EVERYBODY knows the Creature. And since this is the only iconic Universal Monster that is a wholly original creation, not based on an existing book or folklore, there’s not even any real competition for him to have to crush. He’s the one and only. (Although the most famous knock-off happened to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Go figure, Universal exec who turned down Guillermo Del Toro.)

And he never needs a moisturizer either. Guy is legit.

80s Slashers

It has been said by many a horror fan that the slashers of the 80s are the spiritual successors to the Universal Monsters. Granted, they’re far gorier and less kid-friendly than the classics; I’ll sit down and watch a Universal classic with my son, but we’re not going to be sharing a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon any time soon. But at the same time, many of these creatures have achieved the same level of cultural awareness as the creatures of the golden age of cinema. In other words, although not everybody may have watched all of – or ANY of – the Friday the 13th movies, I don’t think there is anyone in the western world who can see somebody wear a hockey mask and pick up a knife without thinking, “JASON!”

Which is why, by the way, he gets the first spot on the 80s Mount Rushmore. Jason Voorhees is synonymous with slasher movies. Even though he wasn’t the bad guy in the first movie and he didn’t get his iconic hockey mask until the third, the version of Jason we’ve had since then has made his mark on our culture. It’s a go-to Halloween costume for bigger dudes (guilty) because it’s so simple – the mask, a weapon, some old clothes and everybody knows who you are. He’s a lumbering monument to the iconic nature of the 80s slasher. Also, the question of which version of Jason is most iconic is largely moot, since no matter who plays him, the mask makes him look pretty much the same. Besides, the best one was Kane Hodder and you know it.

The downfall of the summer camp industry began here.

Next to him will be his one-time sparring partner, Freddy Krueger, and this time the creature IS permanently associated with one actor, Robert Englund. (Jackie Earle Haley played him in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and although I don’t think anyone really blames that movie’s failure on his performance, it’s still a version we’d rather forget.) In an era where most of the slasher icons were silent killers – hulking brutes who were just as capable of breaking your bones as slitting your throat – Englund’s Freddy is svelte, agile, and with a wonderfully wicked sense of humor that has made him as beloved in the real world as he is terrifying to the teens of Elm Street. Even before the two characters faced off in the movie Freddy Vs. Jason, people would often say their names in a single breath as the two most well-known movie monsters of the era.

The only guy on this list to have recorded a song with Will Smith.

The third slot belongs to another quiet killer, Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise. (I know, the first movie came out in 1978, but he’s part of that 80s echelon of horror regardless.) Like Jason, many actors have played the role, but unlike Jason I don’t know that there’s necessarily a consensus as to who did it the best. That said, the creepy killer in a William Shatner mask painted white is indelibly linked to the holiday of Halloween. If you weren’t afraid he might stick a knife in their stomach, you might be sending your kids to sit on his lap for a picture like we do Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Jason and many other killers over the decades have taken their cues from John Carpenter’s creation, and few have done it better.

The fourth spot is a little tougher this time. There’s an argument to be made for Leatherface, gruesome titan of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, but A) only ONE of his films actually came out in the 80s, and B) I don’t think he’s nearly as recognizable to the general public as Freddy, Jason, or Michael. But you know who is? CHUCKY.

“Chucky, I appreciate your offer, but I’ve considered the situation and…well…I have decided that I do not, in fact, ‘wanna play’.”

Charles Lee Ray, the bloodthirsty serial killer played by Brad Dourif who has possessed the body of a child’s “Good Guy” doll and, in the process, made us all afraid of our kid’s toys, has earned his spot on my Mount Rushmore. Okay, only one of Chucky’s movies (the original Child’s Play) came out in the 80s, but he’s a MUCH more recognizable figure than Leatherface. In addition to his film series, he’s the star of a TV series that is currently on the air and – let’s face it: the merch. Chucky’s as much a brand as he is a character at this point. Everybody knows who he is and what he looks like, and the name “Chucky” is now permanently associated with a red-haired pint-sized whelp who brings chaos and despair in his wake, although part of that may be attributable to the cartoon Rugrats.

21st Century Terrors

This last mountain of mine is going to be the most challenging, mostly because the pop culture penetration part is a little harder to say for sure with modern monsters. Lots of things are popular when they’re NEW, but will they still be instantly recognized 40 to 90 years later like the monsters I’ve talked about already? Only time will tell. That said, these are the four that I would currently put on the mountain, based on how popular they are NOW and how popular I think they are likely to remain. I’ll go in chronological order of their first films for this batch.

First up is Victor Crowley, the hatchet-wielding killer of Adam Green’s…well…Hatchet series. Victor is a good ol’ Louisiana swamp boy, accidentally killed by his own father as the result of a cruel Halloween prank gone tragically wrong and transformed into a murderous, vengeful spirit that allows no one to leave his home in Honey Island Swamp alive should they be so foolish as to venture there after dark.

“No, Victor, you’re still a…a handsome young man…”

I admit to a little bias on this first choice – I’m a big fan of Adam Green and his work in general, so I’m always ready to promote it a little bit. Regardless, I think Victor (who has ONLY been played by Kane Hodder) is highly deserving of this spot. The first Hatchet movie, in 2006, came at a time when virtually all horror was a remake or reboot, either of an older franchise or of a Japanese horror film. Green had the guts to come out with an 80s-style slasher in a time when they weren’t in vogue and created a popular, beloved franchise. It’s been a few years since his last outing (in 2017’s Victor Crowley) but he’s still filling toy stores and turning out new comic books from American Mythology, keeping him alive until Green and Hodder are ready to polish up their hatchets and bring him back to the screen.

Next, from 2009, I’m picking Sam from writer/director Michael Dougherty’s anthology film Trick ‘r Treat. This is one of my favorite Halloween movies, an annual must-watch featuring four delightfully scary stories that all center around the same small town on the same Halloween night, with the diminutive orange-and-burlap clad creature called Sam serving as the common element to all four of them. The movie has a highly devoted fan base, and every few years we get our hearts broken all over again as news of a sequel is announced and then, sadly, nothing happens. Despite that, though, Sam has only become more and more popular as an icon, with costumes, decorations, and toys filling the shelves of a Spirit Halloween near you even as we speak – and really, is there a better measure of an iconic monster than that?

The psycho that gets the third spot comes from 2016’s Terrifier by writer/director Damien Leone: Art the Clown. (And let me just say for the benefit of those readers who happen to be my wife that I intended to include Art BEFORE you looked over my shoulder and saw the title of this column and said, “You better include Art the Clown.” You’re welcome.) Art actually appeared in a couple of short films and the 2013 anthology All Hallow’s Eve, played then by Mike Gianelli. But it wasn’t until the 2016 Terrifier, when David Howard took over the role, that the character really started to get stratospheric popularity.

If you weren’t scared of clowns already, this guy will change that.

What is it, exactly, that makes Art so creepy? I suppose part of it is just our cultural fear of clowns, which has only gotten worse in the last decade. Part of it is the unnerving design of the character and his ghastly makeup. But a lot of the credit has to go to Howard’s performance. His Art is lithe, quiet, menacing, and probably the single most brutal horror to yet appear on my list. Seriously, if one of my Mount Rushmore Monsters was coming after me, there’s nobody I’ve mentioned that I would be more disturbed by than Art the Clown. Art, like Sam, has begun to ascend that Mount Rushmore of Merchandise as well, with costumes, decorations, and tchotchkes appearing everywhere this Halloween season in anticipation of the upcoming Terrifier 3 which, amusingly enough, is going to be a Christmas film. My wife got a stuffy of him when we made our first Spirit trip this year. It’s adorable.

The last monster on my last mountain? It’s going to be a controversial choice, I know, but I challenge anyone to make an argument that Bill Skarsgård’s rendition of Pennywise the Dancing Clown doesn’t belong there. Like Art, the villain of Stephen King’s It has that creepy vibe to him, but unlike Art, he’s a chatterbox. He’s as likely to talk the terror into you as he is to jump out from a closet. Whereas Art is an anomaly, a creature of unknown origins who is all the more horrible for it, we know what the deal is with Pennywise. He’s a nightmare out of time, a beast from another universe that preys on our fears and surfaces every 27 years to do so. And Skarsgård is flawless in the role – sly, charming, compelling, and an absolute terror every second he’s on the screen.

This is the guy who WOULD say “yes,” when Chucky asks if he wants to play.

I know some of my Stephen King purist friends will turn on me for this one. And look, I love Tim Curry as much as anybody. But he’s be honest here, Skarsgård’s version of the character has completely eclipsed Tim Curry in terms of cultural awareness. Children of the 80s and 90s remember Curry as Pennywise, but if you ask anyone who didn’t see that miniseries in their formative years, the vision of the character they come away with is Bill Skarsgård.

And damned if I don’t think he earned it.

There you have it, friends, three Mountains of Malevolence. But lists like this one are intended to INSPIRE discussion, not settle a debate. So tell me, who would YOU put on each of those mountains? And what other mountains would you build? Let me hear all about your Quartets of Corruption!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Other mountains he considered were Hammer Horror, Final Girls, Horror Heroes…ah well. Next time.

Geek Punditry #89: What is Mr. Petit Reading?

September 13, 2024September 13, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry books, David M. Keyes, Edgar Allan Poe, isaac asimov, Mark Dawidziak, Mystery of Mysteries, Naked Sun, Oz, reading, Wizard of Oz

There’s a relatively new trend among teachers – English teachers, at least – that I’ve grown quite fond of: the “What am I reading?” board. There aren’t enough kids out there who read just for the pleasure of it, and it seems like that number dwindles every day. Sure, talking about books all day is one of the best parts of my job, but I think kids get the idea that I spend all my time marinating in Shakespeare or F. Scott Fitzgerald. And while I certainly enjoy many things about both of those authors, that ain’t what I read for fun. So teachers have started making signs or bulletins that declare that we’re reading for our own recreation in the hopes of stirring some conversation. I never draw attention to the board, or let them know when I’m changing it up, but in the past year or so that I’ve kept the board in my room it has spurred a few questions like, “How many books DO you read?” and “Why do you draw that little star next to so many of them?”

Anyway, another thing that this board has been good for is keeping me reading at a relatively brisk pace. The last thing I want is a kid asking me why I’ve spent the last month and a half on the novelization of Spaceballs. So I carve out a little time to read each day, usually before I go to bed, and I keep that board updated as often as possible. It’s been really helpful to me, giving me an impetus to read more often, and I thought today it may be fun to look back on a few recent reads that I’ve enjoyed.

A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak

I picked this book up at Barnes and Noble on my birthday, part of my Rear Window date night with my wife, and I finished reading it a couple of days ago while riding out Hurricane Francine. I like to think Edgar Allan Poe would have approved. This is a great biography of Poe, with an emphasis on the unsolved mystery surrounding his death, found wandering the streets of Baltimore in a haze, drunk, possibly rabid, and dying a few days later crying out for an unknown person called “Reynolds.”

Or so the reports say.

Dawidziak alternates chapters between telling the story of Poe’s life and the story of Poe’s death, and in both cases he spends a lot of time unraveling a lot of the scandalous tales that have plagued the widest-read author in American history ever since his death. Was he actually an opium addict? (No.) Was he an alcoholic? (He had his troubles with alcohol, but at the time of his death he had taken – and adhered to – a temperance pledge.) Did he die of rabies? (The water he drank on his deathbed seems to rule that out.) Granted, I haven’t read a LOT of books about Poe’s life, but Dawidziak definitely paints the most balanced portrayal of the man that I’ve ever read. There’s a clear admiration of Poe in his words as well. This is obviously the work of an author who holds Poe in high regard, so it’s not surprising how much work he does to rehabilitate Poe’s reputation. At the same time, though, the writing is clear and engaging, and the book left me feeling like I know much more about the man who we all imagine hunched over a shadowed writing desk, an ominous raven perched on his shoulder. If you’re at all a fan of Poe, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s the perfect way to pregame for Spooky Season

A Nightmare in Oz by David M. Keyes

I’ve written before – frequently – of my abiding love for L. Frank Baum’s Oz in all its forms, and when I encountered author David M. Keyes on Threads discussing his series called the “New Oz Chronicles,” I decided to give it a chance. I’m really glad I did.

A Nightmare in Oz is set in the modern day, 120 years after Dorothy Gale’s first journey to Oz and almost as long since she and her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry came to Oz to live permanently (which happened in Baum’s sixth book, The Emerald City of Oz, in case you didn’t know). But in Oz, nobody ages or dies, so Dorothy is still a young girl here in the 21st century. The story begins with Dorothy having a nightmare – her first since coming to Oz over 100 years ago. As she seeks an answer to her dark visions, she discovers that many of the residents of Oz that, like her, originally came from the non-fairy world are having nightmares of their own: Em, Henry, the Wizard of Oz (who also came back – really people, read the original books) and even her little dog Toto. The mystery of where the nightmare comes from brings back an ancient threat and opens up the doors for an engaging new fantasy series.

Since the Oz books went into public domain, dozens of authors (maybe even hundreds) have tried to put their own stamp on the world of Baum’s creations. Some, like Eric Shanower, do their best to create a world that seems like it could have spilled from the pen of L. Frank Baum himself. Others, such as Gregory Maguire of Wicked fame, use the skeleton of Oz to do something quite different that doesn’t strictly fit in with anything that Baum has done or would have done with his stories.

But Keyes has found a marvelous balance between these two extremes. He is taking Baum’s works as canon, and Dorothy and the other characters have the same inherent goodness and sweetness that readers of the Famous Forty would find familiar and comforting. But by bouncing the action forward a century, he also adds a layer of modernity and sophistication that many contemporary writers don’t attempt. It’s the same old Dorothy, but she’s got a century of experiences that are belied by her childlike exterior. The danger in this book feels more real and more layered than most of the old stories, while not going to the extreme of some other modern writers. I really enjoyed this book, and I’m looking forward to digging into the rest of the books in this series.

The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov

But this accelerated reading schedule isn’t only reserved for new books. I’ve taken advantage of it to dive back into some old favorites as well, such as Isaac Asimov’s robot series. Most recently I read the second book in the series, The Naked Sun. In a future in which the citizens of Earth are limited to lives in huge, domed cities without ever facing the outside world, Detective Elijah Baley is summoned by an old partner – Robot Daneel Olivaw – to help solve a murder on a distant planet where the sky is open to all, but is so sparsely populated that people live solitary lives without ever seeing one another in person.

Asimov was renowned as a science fiction master, and the world-building in this series has always impressed me. We’re all familiar with the Three Laws of Robotics and all the stories that have been written trying to thwart them, but that’s just the beginning. The projected future of the human race and how Earth is made subservient to its own colonies is fascinating, as are the different types of worlds explored throughout these stories. But I don’t know that people give Asimov enough credit for how good he was as a mystery writer. This is by no means the only mystery novel Asimov wrote, and not even the only mystery/sci-fi hybrid, but the unique circumstances of the world in which the story takes place adds an additional level of complexity to the mystery that makes this one a joy to unravel.

Of course, not every book that I’ve read in the year since I started keeping my board has been a winner, but as I always do with this column, I’m doing my best to focus on those things that I love. You’re not going to hear about the clunkers. At any rate, these are just a few of the stories that I’ve dug into lately that have helped me jumpstart my love of the written word. Hopefully, you’ve been having fun with books lately too.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. The toughest thing about Blake’s new reading routine? Figuring out what book to read NEXT. There’s a…sizable list of candidates.

Geek Punditry #88: Blake’s Five Favorite Superhero Movie Scenes

September 6, 2024September 6, 2024 blakemp Five Favorites Andrew Garfield, Avengers, Avengers: Endgame, Batman, Captain America, Christopher Reeve, DC Comics, Gary Oldman, iron giant, marvel cinematic universe, Marvel Comics, Movies, Spider-Man, Spider-Man: No Way Home, superman, The Dark Knight, Thor, Tobey Maguire, Tom Holland

It’s time for a new Geek Punditry feature: Blake’s Five Favorites! In Five Favorites, I’m just going to talk about something that’s been on my mind and discuss my…well…my five favorite examples of that thing. Now keep in mind that this list is inherently subjective and not at all comprehensive. You may disagree with my choices, and that’s fine. And there may be other examples out there that I’d like even better, but I haven’t seen them yet. And if we’re being totally honest, if you asked me again tomorrow, my list may be totally different. I’m funny that way. But for now, as of the time I’m writing this, I want to tell you about my five favorite scenes from superhero movies. This is NOT a list of my five favorite superhero movies (although there would definitely be overlap), but a list of the five individual scenes in the history of superhero cinema that make me feel the happiest, proudest, most excited, or most touched. And obviously, these are going to be FULL of spoilers, so if you haven’t seen these movies by now, you may want to skip. Let’s see if any of your favorites make the list.

#5: James Gordon Lives (The Dark Knight, 2008)

Very few superheroes can really do their job alone, and those that try usually wind up learning early on that attempting to do so is a mistake. And for all his talk about being a lone wolf, decades of storytelling have built up a sizable contingent of heroes surrounding Batman. He’s got sons (biological, adopted, AND surrogate), daughter-figures, father-figures, friends, allies, lovers, and even frenemies. And of all the characters that have taken up arms with the Batman during the years of his crusade, my favorite is police commissioner James Gordon. There’s something inspiring about the one good cop trying to clean up a filthy, corrupt department and forging an alliance with an agent outside of the law to do it. I don’t really care for any version of Batman that casts Gordon as an incompetent, which is perhaps the most unforgivable of the many sins in the Joel Schumaker movies.

Of all the actors who have played Gordon, Gary Oldman in the Dark Knight trilogy is hands-down my favorite. He really sells Gordon as a good man who recognizes that things are out of control and takes the necessary steps to set things right, and I absolutely LOVED how this film showed the pact between Gordon, Batman, and Harvey Dent that worked so well for all characters in The Long Halloween.

“I believe in Crystal Lig–I mean, Harvey Dent.”

So I was pretty darn startled when, partway through the film, Gordon is killed. I was shocked. I was stunned. And although the large part of me didn’t believe it could be true, I also recognized that director Chris Nolan had already taken some liberties with canon and I couldn’t be TOTALLY sure that he wouldn’t make that big of a turn. A while later, Batman and Dent hatch a plan to trick the Joker into attacking a convoy. The plan works, the Joker winds up on the ground with a gun to his head, and the cop holding that gun whips off his mask to reveal Gordon, alive, his faked death revealed to be all part of the plan.

Gordon: I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.
Me, in the back of the theater, screaming: YEEEAAH, YOU DO!!!

It is a testament to the love of my girlfriend at the time that, after I jumped and CHEERED in that movie theater, she still agreed to marry me. Someday I hope our son gets as thrilled at this scene as I am every time I watch it.

#4: You Are Who You Choose to Be (The Iron Giant, 1999)

Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: Hell YES, The Iron Giant is a superhero movie. A childlike creature of immense power comes to Earth from outer space and chooses to use his powers to help people. There is no adequate definition of the term “superhero” that can justifiably exclude Brad Bird’s gargantuan guardian. As if that weren’t enough, the Giant befriends a young boy, Hogarth, who teaches him about being human using what is arguably the greatest possible source material: Superman comic books. (The argument, by the way, is whether or not these are a better source than Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, but the movie is set in 1957 and Schulz’s greatest philosophical work was still ahead of him.)

Plus, this looks a lot better than painting a zigzag stripe around his midsection.

Lost on Earth and with no memories, the giant goes through the usual sort of mishaps that ETs usually get into, only with fewer Reese’s Pieces, while the military picks up on his trail and tries to chase him down. Late in the film, the Giant’s true nature is revealed: he was created by some distant alien civilization as a weapon. As he struggles against his own programming, a panicked government agent orders a nuclear attack on the robot, one that will destroy not only the Giant, but an entire town of innocent people. The Giant, however, overcomes his programming and remembers something Hogarth told him earlier in the film: “You are who you choose to be.”

The Giant makes his choice. He is not a weapon. He is not a gun.

He blasts into the sky to intercept the missile, choosing to sacrifice himself to save the town full of innocents, and in the last second before impact, he whispers the name that he has chosen.

“Superman…”

If you can watch this scene without tears, I don’t know if I want to talk to you.

You can’t tell me that Clark wouldn’t be proud to see this guy wearing his shield.

In this scene the Giant proves he understands sacrifice, he understands selflessness, he understands choosing to believe in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He understands what being a hero actually is.

He understands Superman.

A hell of a lot better than most other people, I would argue.

#3: Peter One, Peter Two, Peter Three (Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021)

Tom Holland, as I’ve often said, is my favorite of the actors who have played Spider-Man on the big screen. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a fondness for the other two, Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield. And it was immensely satisfying to me to see the three of them share the stage together in the final act of Spider-Man: No Way Home. In this film, the MCU version of Spider-Man has screwed up badly, breaking a spell Dr. Strange was trying to cast to wipe memory of his secret identity from the public, and drawing in people from alternate realities, destabilizing the very fabric of the multiverse back before people were doing that every other week. The whole thing builds to a battle against the nastiest rogue any live-action Spider-Man has ever faced, Willem DaFoe’s Green Goblin, who ups the ante in this film by (last time I’m warning you against spoilers) murdering Peter’s Aunt May.

While the MCU never showed us Holland getting bitten by a radioactive spider or the death of Ben Parker, they found a different way to demonstrate Peter’s character development by spreading it across three films. Homecoming was about him learning how to be a hero. Far From Home was about him learning to be his OWN kind of hero, separate from Tony Stark. This film is about learning the COST of being a hero. It’s May’s death, not Ben’s, that really hammers that home for us all.

But Holland doesn’t have to learn this lesson alone, because the multiversal rift hasn’t only brought in villains. Holland’s Peter finds himself allied with his previous incarnations, Maguire and Garfield, each of whom has some baggage to bring to the table, and each of whom is essential to the full development of Holland’s character.

“Wait, you’re the youngest, why are YOU Peter One? This is worse than when Barry Allen called Jay Garrick’s universe ‘Earth-2’.”

While Holland wrestles with his own failures, he sees Maguire, who is implied to have found a sort of stability and love with his version of Mary Jane Watson. In Maguire, Holland sees that there is hope for the future, even in the wake of seemingly unsurmountable tragedy. Garfield, meanwhile, has tortured himself over the death of Gwen Stacy ever since the end of Amazing Spider-Man 2 and become a darker, more broken Spider-Man because of it. But in perhaps the greatest moment of this movie, Garfield saves the MCU version of MJ from suffering the same fate. The look of simultaneous anguish and relief on Garfield’s face is tectonic: he has atoned for his failure. He hasn’t failed again. In him, Holland sees the hope for redemption.

We should all have a moment where we can find that kind of peace.

When the girl who just FELL OFF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY has to ask if YOU’RE okay, it’s an emotional moment.

Seeing what the other two have gone through and how they came out the other side is perhaps the most important part of Tom Holland’s journey in this movie, guiding him to the new life he has to lead at the end with no family and no friends who remember his existence. He’s striking out on his own – lonely, yes, but with the knowledge that hope and redemption are real and possible. And no matter what movie he shows up in next or who directs it, if Tom Holland swings again, that’s the Spider-Man I want to see…the one shaped by the lessons of his multiversal brothers.

#2: Avengers…Assemble (Avengers: Endgame, 2019)

You want to know what makes Avengers: Endgame so great? You know what it does that so many other attempts at a “cinematic universe” (and even much of the MCU in the years since then) have failed at? Payoff. What’s the point in a cinematic universe if not to introduce long-term story threads that eventually are brought together in a satisfying way? Endgame pulled together the threads of eleven years of storytelling and almost two dozen movies to put together a finale that served as a powerful conclusion for every part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, provided you pretended that there weren’t any TV shows that were related to it.

And the best part of that film, for me, was the final battle scene, probably the most thrilling such scene in the history of superhero movies. The Hulk has undone the “snap” from the end of the previous film, bringing back all of the people Thanos killed five years ago, and as he launches his attack on the broken Avengers, their friends start to filter in.

It starts with “On your left.”

We remember this signal from the Falcon – one of the lost – and the rest of the heroes begin to arrive. The Avengers who were dusted in Wakanda. The Guardians of the Galaxy, along with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, brought back from the far reaches of space. The armies of Wakanda, the acolytes from Wong’s temple. The battlefield is populated with more heroes than we’ve ever seen in a superhero movie before, and Captain America kicks it off with the words that fans have been waiting a DECADE to hear:

Me, squeezing my wife’s arm: He’s gonna say it, HE’S GONNA SAY IT…

“Avengers…assemble.”

But even that wasn’t the greatest part of the scene, wasn’t? Oh, no, as fantastic as that was, there’s still one more bit of payoff to come, when Thor and Thanos grapple on the battlefield and suddenly the mad Titan is struck by Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, scavenged from the past along with the Infinity Stones. The hammer smashes into Thanos’s face, flying through the air, hurtling back to the hand that threw it…but if not Thor, whose hand is guiding it?

It returns to the hand of Captain America, and the movie theater EXPLODED. At least, the theater where I was sitting did. In all my life, I have NEVER heard such an outpouring of cheers and excitement from a movie audience as I did in that moment, and I seriously doubt I ever will again. This, my friends, this was payoff for the entirety of the franchise. As we all know, Mjolnir is enchanted, and can only be lifted by someone who is “worthy.”

“I KNEW IT!!!” Thor shouts.

We all did, Thor. We all did.

I mean, this scene was amazing, but you know the Iron Giant could lift the hammer too, right?

#1: You’ve Got Me? Who’s Got You? (Superman, 1978)

But my favorite scene, guys…my single favorite scene in superhero movie history, the scene I would ask to have playing on the screen if they were strapping me down on one of those tables from Soylent Green, comes from the first Richard Donner Superman movie. We’ve spent half the film watching baby Kal-El become Clark Kent, watching him grow up into Christopher Reeve, watching him shape the persona he’s going to wear as a mild-mannered reporter, but we have not yet seen HIM. We have not yet seen more than a glimpse of the title character. Until Lois Lane – of course – is involved in a helicopter accident. The whirlybird falls and Lois falls OUT of it, and it’s curtains for the Daily Planet’s star reporter.

Until she falls harmlessly into a pair of waiting arms.

This strange visitor, this proud figure in red and blue, lifts Lois in one hand and catches the helicopter in the other, and he reassures her that everything will be fine by simply saying, “I’ve got you.”

And Lois, flabbergasted, shouts, “You’ve got me? Who’s got YOU?”

How anybody can call *Romeo and Juliet* a love story while this scene exists in the universe is beyond me.

I think we take for granted, in superhero stories, the miraculous things that these characters are supposed to be capable of. We’ve seen so many movies, read so many comic books with people who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes and walk through walls that we forget how astonishing these things would be in the real world. But Superman was the first movie to attempt such a thing on this scale, and in-universe, it’s something that has never existed before. Up until this point, the world of this film is ostensibly our own. The astonishment that Margot Kidder brings to that moment is absolutely perfect, as is Christopher Reeve’s reaction. He gently places her (and the helicopter) back on the roof, but before he can leave, Lois asks him who he is.

And he gives the only answer that matters:

“A friend.”

There are two things, I think, essential to the character of Superman. One is the protector, the defender, the man who will stop at nothing to save the lives of everyone around him. The Iron Giant showed us that side of Superman. The other side, though, is the man of infinite compassion and kindness, a belief in the better angels of human nature if only there is someone to guide them. Superman is the hero who never gives up on anyone, even his bitterest enemy, because somewhere inside of them he KNOWS there is a flicker of good waiting to be fanned into a flame. Batman tries to strike fear into the hearts of criminals. Superman is there to show us all that there is a better way.

And when he looks at you like this, can’t you actually BELIEVE it?

I’ve got high hopes for James Gunn and David Corenswet, but it’s hard to believe that anything they can do could ever capture that essence as simply and perfectly as the two words, “a friend.”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Next time: his five favorite McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches! (Spoiler alert: steak, egg, and cheese bagel.)

Geek Punditry #86: This is How We Do It Presents…Absolute Power

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 blakemp This is How We Do It Absolute Power, Amanda Waller, Batman, comics, Dan Mora, DC Comics, Justice League, Mark Waid, Nightwing, superman, Wonder Woman

Hello, everybody, and welcome to This is How We Do It, the latest Geek Punditry feature-within-a-feature. In This is How We Do It, which I intend to be a recurring segment here, I’m just going to showcase a piece of storytelling that I think is being done exceptionally well and talk about why I think it’s so great. It is the antidote to Internet negativity. And the subject of the inaugural This is How We Do It is going to be the currently-ongoing DC Comics crossover event, Absolute Power. Fair warning, it’s not going to be possible to talk about why this is so great without spoiling some things, so this will be a spoilerful discussion. If you’re not up to date on reading this fantastic series, you may want to hold off on reading this at least until you get to issue #2 of the main title, because that’s the most recent issue as I write this.

Comic crossovers are by no means a new thing, and I’ve talked before at length about them but I feel like I need to give a brief overview of what I mean here. In these “event” storylines, there is usually a main narrative that brings together the various characters of a publisher’s shared universe (in this case, DC Comics), while assorted spin-offs and special issues of the series that star the individual characters tell other angles of the story. The earliest such event I can find that followed this format is DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1985-86. (It’s true that Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars came out first, guys, but there were no spin-offs of that book, which to me makes it more of an embryonic version of the crossover as it exists today.) DC has done dozens of them, as has Marvel. In fact, pretty much every publisher that has a shared universe (or even Multiverse) has dipped their toes in the format at one time or another – Image Comics, Valiant Comics, IDW, Dynamite, even Archie Comics has had crossover events.

So what makes Absolute Power so good? In a word: construction. Some events seem to come out of nowhere and have little ongoing impact – last year’s DC summer event Knight Terrors, for instance, has made relatively few ripples after it was over. Others will sometimes take existing heroes and force them to behave wildly out of character for the purposes of the narrative (lookin’ at YOU, Marvel’s Civil War). And sometimes, they’re just so overblown and complicated that it’s impossible to keep track of what’s actually going on. Absolute Power suffers from exactly zero percent of these problems.

A good crossover really needs to start with a good antagonist, and this story has one of the best: Amanda Waller, who has decided that superheroes are the biggest threat to the planet. Waller is an established character, best known for her role as being in charge of the various incarnations of the Suicide Squad (a group of supervillains that she forces to do jobs for the government in exchange for reduced sentences – with the caveat that if they step out of line she’ll set off an explosive device she had implanted in their NECK). Waller has always tread the line of what makes an anti-hero, usually using underhanded methods to accomplish goals that are more or less positive…ish. However, that placed her perfectly for her role of the villain in this story, being a natural extrapolation of who she has always been as a character. In fact, Waller is the BEST kind of villain – the sort that, in her own mind, is 100 percent justified in her actions. Waller COMPLETELY believes that what she’s doing is the right, moral, ethical thing to do, and that makes her both more interesting and more dangerous than any bad guy who’s just in it for the Evulz.

What do you MEAN, she doesn’t look like a good guy?

The next thing that makes a crossover work, in my opinion, is setup. Before the original Crisis on Infinite Earths happened, there were months of stories from DC where a mysterious, shadowy figure was shown to be monitoring the heroes of Earth. (As it turned out, he wasn’t the bad guy, but you could certainly be forgiven for thinking he was.) Absolute Power has a more obvious setup, but a very effective one. Waller has taken the villains from two recent storylines – Queen Braniac from the House of Brainiac Superman story, and Failsafe, a robotic duplicate of Batman with all of his tactical genius and none of his morals and ethics. She has combined their respective tech with the work of the old Justice League villain Professor Ivo to create a set of androids who can steal superpowers, and sent them out to attack, depower, and capture both superheroes and villains alike. In the first issue of Absolute Power, dozens of heroes have their powers stolen and most of them are taken prisoner by Waller. By the time the second issue rolls around, those heroes who remain at large have begun assembling at Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to plan a counter-offensive.

Imagine how nasty a character Amanda has to be that THESE two are her MINIONS.

Another important element is that the characters be true to themselves, and here I’ve got to give it up to writer Mark Waid. Waid was a mainstay of DC Comics in the 90s and early 00s, with a legendary run on The Flash and turning out the best of DC’s Elseworlds line with Kingdom Come. After a long exile, he’s returned to DC and is crushing it with books like Batman/Superman: World’s Finest. In short, there are few people in comics who know the characters as well as Mark Waid, and he’s proving it again here. Aside from using Waller to her logical extreme, he’s showing perfectly who the various DC heroes are, such as a depowered but still dauntless Superman. When Batman and Mr. Terrific get into a squabble over who should be the leader of this little resistance group, it’s Nightwing who steps up, gives a rousing speech that would make Jean-Luc Picard stand and applaud, and takes command. The best part, though, is Batman’s reaction: watching Dick Grayson, the original Robin, take his place as the natural rallying point for a group of shattered, broken, and frightened heroes, Batman simply gives us a sly smile and says, “That’s my boy.”

For Batman, this is an almost shamefully embarrassing display of pride.

And I haven’t even talked about the artwork by Dan Mora, who is probably my favorite artist working at DC right now. It’s phenomenal, with real emotion and characterization displayed on the characters’ faces and mannerisms. A good artist can always make or break a book, and Mora – as he’s done with Waid on Batman/Superman – is doing an incredible job.

The next aspect that makes a crossover work is what happens in the spin-off books. In the original Crisis, the main story was supplemented by chapters in the various ongoing comics showing what was happening to those heroes during the Crisis itself, and that was the template for crossovers for a long time. Somewhere along the line, though, it became less likely for an individual series to be interrupted by a crossover and we’d get several – sometimes DOZENS – of spin-off one-shots and miniseries doing the job instead. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this shift in how crossovers were told corresponded with the point where the comic book WRITERS became the stars of the show, their prominence somewhat overtaking the artists. If the guy writing, for example, Uncanny X-Men at the time didn’t want his X-Men storyline interrupted because of World War Hulk, then the main title would remain unmolested and a World War Hulk: X-Men miniseries would take its place. The far extreme of this policy was what DC did last year with Knight Terrors, where EVERY ongoing DC comic was replaced for two months with a two-part miniseries showing that character’s interaction with the event, and many of them were never touched upon again.

For the most part, I’m in favor of a writer getting to tell the story the way they want, but speaking as a READER, I prefer when the crossovers touch the regular title. To me, that gives them greater weight, makes them feel more “important” than putting them into a spin-off miniseries. Absolute Power has returned to form on this. The ongoing titles are picking up the story threads started in the main series and running with them. After Nightwing gives the heroes various assignments in Absolute Power #2, we see them start to carry out their missions in the pages of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other titles. In other books, like Green Lantern, we get side stories of some of the heroes who have been captured or are still on the run. And then there’s Green Arrow, which deals with the most shocking development of the story to date: longtime Justice League member Green Arrow has inexplicably turned tables and joined Amanda Waller, fighting his friends! Obviously, anything this incredible has to be covered in the main Absolute Power title, so what’s going on in his book right now? We see how his supporting cast – his son Connor, various former sidekicks and so on – are reacting to the fact that their patriarch seems to have broken bad.

Crossover chapters that are actually RELEVANT? Is that ALLOWED?

There are, I should concede, two spin-off miniseries for Absolute Power, but both are a bit more justified. Absolute Power: Origins is a deep dive into Amanda Waller’s backstory, showing how she went from a grieving mother who lost family members to violence (and how many heroes have had that same motivation?) to the magnificent bastard she is today. Absolute Power: Task Force VII, on the other hand, tells stories focusing on Waller’s seven power-stealing androids and their interactions with the heroes. Neither may be absolutely NECESSARY to the story, but I feel as though they both add something that otherwise we wouldn’t have, which is what a good spin-off should do.

The last thing that I think makes for a solid crossover is the impact of the story after it ends. I hate to keep picking on Knight Terrors, because I don’t really think it was a bad story, but the overall impact on the DC Universe since then has been negligible. The only significant thread I can think of was increasing Waller’s paranoia, but she already had that in spades and, what’s more, the Beast World event that FOLLOWED Knight Terrors did that same job, but better. Obviously, it’s impossible to tell right now just how Absolute Power will shape the DCU going forward, but there are hints in the solicitations for upcoming comics. After the series ends we’re going to be treated to a new initiative called “DC All-In,” which will start with a one-shot before branching out. This isn’t going to be a continuity reboot as DC has done in the past, but it will launch several new titles and some of the existing books will get new creative teams and new directions. The one that I’m most excited for will be the newly-announced Justice League Unlimited, done by the Absolute Power team of Waid and Mora. Although they’re playing details close to the vest until the end of Absolute Power, preliminary artwork and buzz indicate that this comic will be taking its cue from the cartoon series of the same name, in which the League expanded to include virtually every hero in the DC Universe, with different ones called up as needed. This is honestly the way I’ve thought they should have run the League for the past twenty years, since the cartoon was launched, and the fact that it’s finally happening makes me giddy. The fact that it’s Waid and Mora taking the reigns makes me ECSTATIC.

So even now, only halfway through the event, I feel as though Absolute Power has all the earmarks of one of the DC Universe’s classic storylines. All the pieces are in place and the right creative team is there. I haven’t enjoyed a book of this nature this much in years, and the fact that I’m equally excited for the stuff promised to come next makes it even better. So for the next creative team – from any publisher – who’s looking to do a multi-character, multi-title crossover epic event series, I can offer no better advice than to look to Mark Waid, Dan Mora, and Absolute Power.

Because THIS is how we do it.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Now if only the next event series were to bring back Captain Carrot to his deserved place of prominence in the DC Universe.

Geek Punditry #85: Playing Favorites With School (Part Two)

August 16, 2024August 16, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry, Playing Favorites Easy A, Ender's Game, Gone With the Wind, Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh, PS238, Sky High, Strange Academy, To Kill a Mockingbird

It’s time for round two of Playing Favorites With School! For any newcomers out there who, perhaps, didn’t see last week’s life-changing exploration into pop culture effluvia, “Playing Favorites” is my recurring feature in which I ask my friends on social media to suggest categories related to a specific topic, then I expound upon what I think are some of the best examples of those categories. In part one of the “School” series, I talked about some of my favorite School Sitcoms, High School Superheroes, High School Horror movies, and shows where the actors were maaaaaybe a little too old to be playing teenagers. This week we’re returning to the pile of suggestions for a few more rounds!

Hero Schools

Sandy Brophy asked about my favorite “hero schools.” I’m interpreting this as a school that is intended to teach students to be heroes, so I’ll skip the obvious answer of Hogwarts, as that’s more of a general education facility in the setting and not specifically intended to turn out champions. There’s a little overlap with one of last week’s suggestions – in “High school superheroes,” I talked about the amazing Aaron Williams comic book/webcomic PS238, which is about an elementary school for superheroes. Not long after that, though, it became known among comic book readers as “the idea so nice Disney stole it twice,” as the House of Mouse released the films Sky High (2005) and Zoom (2006), both of which feature a very similar idea. Of the two, I find that Sky High is a better film. The characters are more memorable and the world is fleshed out in a much better way. The story focuses on Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano), the son of two of the world’s greatest superheroes, who is sent off to the local superhero academy despite the fact that he did not inherit any of their powers. This, by the way, is where the comparison to PS238 REALLY comes into play, since this is almost exactly the backstory of one the main characters in that comic’s ensemble. The story goes in a different direction, though, and it’s a fun, colorful movie that really uses Kurt Russell (as Will’s super-awesome superhero dad) to very good effect.

Marvel Comics also has a pretty good series that only came out in recent years, Strange Academy, about a school specifically for magic-users in the Marvel Universe. Set in New Orleans (which always gives it extra points from me IF it’s done well), the series focuses on a group of magic-powered kids who have been gathered by the likes of Dr. Strange, the Scarlet Witch, Magik of the X-Men (herself a graduate of one of the all-time great superhero school comics, The New Mutants) and other powerful mystical faculty members to teach them to use their abilities in ways that won’t rip open a portal to the Dark Dimension or something. The comic, by Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos, is a wild look into the magic side of Marvel, and can go from a lighthearted school comedy to a blood-chilling cosmic horror story in the course of a single issue. The main series ended a while back, but the Academy has stuck around in assorted miniseries and one-shots since then.

The last one I’ll point to is one of my favorite science fiction novels of all time, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Following an alien invasion that was narrowly defeated, planet Earth has come together in a precarious alliance to prepare for another invasion that they are certain is imminent. As part of their preparations, they are finding the most brilliant children on the planet and taking them to an orbital Battle School where they are trained to fight the wars that will determine the fate of the human race. The novel focuses on Ender Wiggin, a five-year-old prodigy, who is brought to Battle School without knowing that many of the people observing him believe that he is humanity’s last hope. The book is an absolute masterpiece of characterization and world-building, and I’ll never forgive the film adaptation for falling so flat.

I had a whole different joke planed for this caption until I saw the STUPID sticker on the cover.

Pep Rally Scenes

Duane Hower tossed out the clever suggestion of “movies with a pep rally scene.” I’m going to be honest, I actually had to turn to Google for this one, because although I feel like I’ve seen a hundred movies with a pep rally, for some reason those specific scenes didn’t click into my brain until I went back and started looking. A pep rally, of course, is that singularly high school phenomenon where the school gathers and cheers – usually, but not always – for the school’s athletes in order to get them psyched up for the Big Game. It’s a standard of American high schools, although I admit, I’ve wondered how well such things translate in other countries. DO any other countries have pep rallies? If you went to high school outside of the US, please, let me know if you ever went to a pep rally.

Anyway, the best motion picture to ever encapsulate this singularly academic experience is the classic Alfred Hitchcock historo-religious drama…

Project ALF.

The first one that rings a bell to me is the Emma Stone comedy Easy A. I’ve always liked this movie, as it’s a very clever comedic modernization of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, featuring a high school girl who is scandalized when she lies about sleeping with a college guy, and before long the (false) story is turning up more places than Snoop Dogg at the Olympics. Olive (Stone’s character) leans into the lie at first, but as things spiral out of control she needs to find a way out. As part of that plan, she interrupts a pep rally with a musical performance of the song “Knock on Wood.” It makes sense in context. But the scene is goofy and wild, and utterly in character for Olive while using the tropes of a high school movie to advance the overall theme of the film. In other words, I like this silly scene because, in actuality, I think it’s pretty smart.

It’s always fun to see fans of this movie get disappointed when they find out it’s actually based on literature.

Aaaand…I’m actually having trouble thinking of any other movies with a pep rally that I actually like. I could have sworn that there was one in Teen Wolf, but maybe I’m just thinking of the basketball games. Sorry, Duane, looks like yours is gonna be a one-and-done.

Movies based on high school reading lists

Rachel Ricks wants to know what are some of the best movies based on books that may be read in a high school English class. If Rachel and I hadn’t gone to college together, I would suspect that this question was posed by a student hoping to get suggestions for a movie to watch in order to get out of their homework and I would have to say, “Nice try.”

But the fact of the matter is, even the BEST movies adapted from books never match up 100 percent with the text. Writing and filmmaking are two very different disciplines, with different demands and different requirements, and what works in one medium does not always work in another. I like to think of movies as interpretations of a book – presenting the story in a way that, hopefully, maintains the spirit of the original while still standing on its own.

All of that is to say that I think To Kill a Mockingbird is perhaps the greatest movie ever made based on a book that I would assign to a student. The book is a masterpiece – a fable about a good man fighting a good fight against overwhelming odds. In this case, that good man is Atticus Finch, and that good fight is defending an innocent black man from charges of raping a white woman in a time and place where such an accusation not only puts the life of the accused on the line, but pushes the entire town onto the edge of a cliff that it may plunge off depending on how things go. It’s kind of sad how relevant that still is. The book is fantastic and the movie is just as good. Gregory Peck’s depiction of Atticus was once voted the best film hero of all time by the American Film Institute, and even though that was before any of the Deadpool movies were made, I think it’s a ranking that holds up.

Left: A masterpiece. Right: Also a masterpiece.

It’s a lot to get through (both the movie and the book), but I think Gone With the Wind deserves a place on this list as well. Margaret Mitchell’s novel of the Civil War is so iconic that it informs pretty much EVERYBODY’s mental image of Georgia in the 1800s, even if they’ve never read the book or seen the movie. The film itself is also a triumph of the art form, adapting a gargantuan novel into a mammoth film while still being engaging and compelling throughout. Plus, it’s indirectly responsible for one of the funniest sketches in the history of The Carol Burnett Show.

And as an English teacher, I do have an unabashed love of the works of William Shakespeare. I’ve taught several of his plays Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Othello, but I think the best movie I’ve ever seen based on one of his works is the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet. The film clocks in at a hefty four hours long as Branagh – unlike most people who adapt Shakespeare – films the ENTIRE text of the play, making no edits or omissions. You’re left with a film that feels a little bloated in places but, at the same time, is an excellent tool for showcasing the bard’s words and has some dandy performances.

It’s not 100 percent accurate, of course. In the original Shakespeare Hamlet only frosted the tips of his hair.

Honorable mention goes to two classic movies that are based on classic works of literature: Frankenstein and The Wizard of Oz. The reason these two only get an honorable mention is because, as anyone who has both read the books and seen the movies can tell you, the movies are fantastic, thrilling, celebrations of the cinematic artform…but dang, they do a piss-poor job of actually adapting the story of the book. I love them both, but not as adaptations.

This brings us to the end of yet another installment of Playing Favorites, folks. Once again, I hope you’ve enjoyed this somewhat random peek into what rattles around inside my brain. What other column are you going to find that talks about both Strange Academy and To Kill a Mockingbird on the same page? If you want to participate in upcoming Playing Favorites columns, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Threads, or “Twittex” for the next time I toss out a topic and wait for your responses. Or even subscribe to my weekly newsletter, where I chat about what I’m working on and throw out my legendary “What’s Cool This Week?” recommendations. And in the meantime, have a great school year – or, alternately, appreciate the fact that you don’t have to go back.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Was there a pep rally in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Damn it, this is hard.