Author Archives: Ricardo Denis

Why you should be reading The Space Between

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The Space Between

Good science fiction makes readers want to visit the worlds they contain, to explore them first-hand as a kind of traveler. The best science fiction, though, makes readers want to be the protagonists in them. The Expanse comes to mind as a recent example, a story that considers class and intergalactic warfare from various points of view, each an entry point into a larger conflict that’s hard not to put ourselves into. Star Wars does it by leaning into the promise of adventure inherent in the Hero’s Journey, of becoming a Jedi. Corinna Bechko and Danny Luckert’s The Space Between inspires this by making its sci-fi feel urgently timely and consequential, presenting conflicts that can be overcome despite the odds. You should be reading this comic.

The Space Between sees what’s left of humanity living aboard a massive starbound ark called the Dodona, a place that’s deeply segregated between upper tier citizens and pilots and lower tier workers who are prohibited from traveling from their living spaces below up to the top floors of the vessel. In the series’ first issue, a pilot called Revla finds herself on the lower decks by accident following a controversial flight that’s put her career on the line. While in the lower levels she meets Les, a worker from lower caste who helps her navigate the area. Through him, Revla experiences just what the class divide truly means and what kind of injustices it actually furthers and so decides to rebel and fight the system that sustains this division. In an interesting twist, that fight is also the result of a blossoming romance between the two characters, representing a union that transcends class and expectations.

This alone is plot enough for a whole sci-fi series, but that’s only issue #1. Subsequent entries (the series is three issues in as of the time of this writing) sees a new generation of protagonists continue the plight through different mutations of the same problems. Some of these characters are related to those found in previous issues, but new characters are also introduced. In the process, The Space Between transforms into a political space epic with a unique take on romance and social responsibility that never neglects the elements that make for great science fiction.

The Space Between

Bechko and Luckert succeed, in an impressive manner, in never making new issues feel like retreads of previous ones. It isn’t a kind of sci-fi Groundhog Day with a new pair of characters each time taking on the exact same problems. It’s a natural continuation of struggles that keep the class perspective firmly in place to track the evolution of the situation aboard the Dodona. Progress is certainly logged, but so are the changes in strategy from those who seek to cosign on reverting back to the days of segregation.

Luckert adds subtle but important touches per issue to communicate the jump in time and the changes in living conditions brought upon the results of key struggles. It makes Bechko’s characters more believable in the process as part of a social and political ecosystem that’s consistently being put in contentious spots that threaten to undo progress.

The romance aspect of the story is especially refreshing. It’s obvious from the covers to the story’s focus on a pair of protagonists primed for love per issue that an emotional connection can be as strong a unifying force as a political philosophy. Love isn’t on display merely as an excuse to get two characters to meet within a story. Instead, the intention is to show how it can generate a level of empathy that espouses understanding. Bechko and Luckert leave nothing to chance. It’s all carefully orchestrated with a sense of purpose that imbues the story with consequence. It makes everything feel genuinely honest.

The Space Between

The Space Between is the type of science fiction that comes along to remind readers of the power and influence of the genre, of its potential to look beyond trends to find something that sparks different kinds of conversations. It certainly earns a spot among some of the best comics of 2023, if you ask me, and it is a must-read. It possesses an energy that can turn casual readers into lifelong fans of science fiction. It’s that good.

Movie Review: Godzilla Minus One turns the iconic kaiju into the God of Monsters

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Godzilla Minus One

From the very first trailer on, it was evident Godzilla Minus One was setting its sights on echoing the roaring debut of the nuclear monster back in 1954. Gojira, directed by Ishirō Honda, was a visceral kaiju allegory for the newly minted atom bomb world, a giant creature feature that turned the titular monster into a reminder of the position humanity put itself in by creating weapons of mass destruction. It looked at the state of things at a macro level, from a pretty frightening vantage point. Minus One goes for a more focused approach, putting soldiers and their PTSD at the forefront for a different look at the consequences of human-led devastation and the towering psychological obstacles it creates for those tasked with carrying out militaristic violence.

Godzilla Minus One, directed by Takashi Yamazaki, follows a soldier called Koichi (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) as he comes home from the war with not just the trauma of his failed mission as a kamikaze pilot but also as a survivor of a battle against a young Godzilla. During that encounter, his inability to act in a key moment of the fight led to the deaths of several soldiers, a decision that’ll haunt him for almost the entirety of the film.

Koichi returns to his hometown only to see it buried under rubble, the victim of allied bombing. As he tries to salvage whatever he can to make his home again, he meets a woman called Noriko (played by Minami Hamabe), a woman in a precarious position that’s trying to survive with a baby in hand. He takes both of them in and time passes. Just as things start getting rebuilt, Godzilla is awakened by atomic bomb tests and Japan is reminded once more that wars never truly end. They just assume a different form.

Godzilla Minus One

From the very first Godzilla movie on, audiences have gotten uniquely different iterations of the classic kaiju. He’s gone from King of the Monsters to Japan’s protector to a parody of himself and back again. In Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higushi’s 2016 Shin Godzilla (widely considered as the best Godzilla movie after the 1954 original), for instance, he becomes a force of nature that exposes humanity’s inability to coordinate a unified response to solve a problem. The film mocks the government’s insistence on bureaucracy to problem-solve and how contradictory the efforts end up being. Godzilla represents the consequences of such dysfunction and how destructive it can be.

In Minus One, Godzilla is essentially turned into a god. He’s the ultimate expression of cataclysmic consequence. Director Yamazaki frames every scene he’s in with a sense of finality that absolutely terrifies. Godzilla’s arrival means humanity is about to get judged, harshly. It’s an impressive showcase of the giant monster that makes for one of the most tense-inducing portrayals of it in franchise history. It’s all reflected in his powers this time around. Without spoiling anything, just know you’re in for a few surprises that both make this version of the monster unique while updating certain aspects of it to make sure the metaphors on display hit harder.

The severity of Godzilla’s presence, what it implies, does an excellent job of imbuing the Japanese soldier experience with a sense of duty and hope that isn’t always given the attention it deserves in war movies. Koichi’s character, for instance, wears his PTSD on his sleeves, constantly reminding the audience his war is a constant and that it didn’t end with the armistice that brought the conflict itself to a close. Trauma does not sign off on this process and thus owes it no recognition. The film hits you over the head with this idea, but it’s in service of setting up a different outcome for the soldiers driving the story.

Godzilla Minus One

Koichi’s supporting cast does an incredible job of exploring the range of trauma and disillusionment that ailed soldiers in the postwar period. One character of note is Sosaku Tachibana, played by Munetaka Aoki, a soldier that also survived the first Godzilla attack along with Koichi. His trauma manifests as anger, making his own war one of disappointment in his brother in arms. The way the movie tackles the diversity of trauma, though, is by highlighting the things soldiers have in common rather than the things that separate them.

By turning trauma into a unifying force, Minus One opens the doors for hope and healing to come through as real and attainable things. War movies dealing with the similar themes rarely opt for hope. Minus One does and it makes for a welcome deviation from the norm. It actually makes the Godzilla scenes feel scarier as the possibility of surviving the giant monster raises the stakes considerably. The audience is encouraged to cheer for the story’s heroes more so than in other stories that deal in war.

Naoki Satô pulls all this together with one of the best Godzilla scores to date. It’s surprisingly restrained but possessed by an epic sense of dread and momentousness that captures the god-like terror of the iconic creature. There’s one particular sequence that feels ripped straight out of Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws that ramps up the horror of facing a giant monster at sea by relying on doom-charged sounds that slightly quicken whenever Godzilla gets closer to the boat he’s chasing. Not a single musical cue is wasted in this regard, giving individual action sequences their own identities. Even when the requisite theme music from the original Gojira (composed by Akira Ifukube) kicks in during one sequence, it doesn’t overshadow Satô’s score. In fact, I wanted to see how that particular sequence would’ve played out with Satô’s score accompanying it.

Godzilla Minus One

Godzilla Minus One is a triumph. It earns a spot among the greatest Godzilla movies ever made, right next to the original one and Shin Godzilla. It’s integration of multiple war metaphors along with tense kaiju action lets it stand on its own. What makes it soar, though, is how it manages to turn an already iconic monster into an even more impressive and colossal version of itself. The age of the King of Monsters is over. The age of the God of Monsters has begun.

Demián Rugna’s WHEN EVIL LURKS is a masterful exercise in cruelty

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When Evil Lurks

Horror loves grand metaphors about society, be it on the effect capitalism has on people (Dawn of the Dead) or the terrors racism can manifest in different scenarios (Tales from the Hood). Demián Rugna’s When Evil Lurks certainly has its metaphor in place – namely human behavior in times of crisis – but more than having an interest in calling out society, what it really wants is to express its highly justified anger at it. And this movie is angry.

When Evil Lurks (or Cuando Acecha la Maldad, in the original Spanish) imagines a world where demonic possession spreads like a virus. Essentially, humanity is in the throes of a possession pandemic, a very cruel one at that. Cities are hotspots, making smaller rural areas the ideal places for safety. That is, until panic inevitably sets in and people start giving in to it.

The movie follows Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jaime (Demián Solomón), two brothers who live in an isolated and very quiet part of the countryside. One night they hear gunshots, a sign that things in their corner of the world might not be so disconnected from the outside world. The next day they find a possessed (or embichado in Spanish) and realize the pandemic has reached their home. Panic rears its head almost immediately, and what follows is a blood-soaked journey that leads to death, doom, extreme violence.

What sets this particular pandemic horror story apart is how intently it focuses on human error and how it can lead to all the tragedy that ensues once a full-blown crisis is under way. Pedro and Jaime are scared and unbearably anxious for almost the entirety of the film, and it influences each decision made in their poor attempt to outrun the demonic pandemic.

When Evil Lurks

Pedro and Jaime’s actions put their group in immediate danger from the onset, an interesting comment on how people disregard logic and common sense when met with danger in its earliest stages. Echoes of the COVID-19 pandemic carry through here. The memory of people disregarding social guidelines and hoarding supplies due to fake fears of shortages is fresh enough that it’s hard not to connect the dots while watching the movie. But it goes beyond that. The mistakes Pedro and Jaime make are timeless, things people have been doing since time immemorial.

The performances do an excellent job of conveying this throughout. Interactions are intense and loud, led by frustration rather than careful thought. Ezequiel Rodríguez, especially, channels this with aplomb. His characterization of Pedro weaves good intentions with desperation to show a man that wants to help but does more damage in doing so. Here’s where cruelty sets in.

Rugna approaches death sequences with a visceral sense of violence that is unmatched when compared to what landed on cinemas this year. What makes them hit hard isn’t necessarily their explicitness, but rather how important he makes each character feel to the group that Pedro and Jaime eventually put together. One scene in particular, involving a dog and a small kid, ripped through the silence of the theater with a shock that threw any semblance of safety out the window. No one is safe, and no one dies easy. The violence the victims face help build the more sinister qualities of the pandemic while also reflecting how badly key characters screwed up so that this could happen.

Cruelty, here, is a storytelling tool that accentuates consequence. Shock value is there to weigh characters down with the guilt of having put people in the way of their terrible deaths. Tried to save your son without considering taking him out of his home was the wrong idea in the first place? Expect an embichado to eat his head while casually walking on the road. A tragedy, sure, but an avoidable one. Realizing that brings with it a special kind of pain.

When Evil Lurks

One other point of note is Rugna’s worldbuilding. Not unlike James Mangold’s 2017 Logan, there are no dedicated points of exposition to explain how the story got to this point in the pandemic. You get bits and pieces and are then expected to put them together. Preventing infection, for instance, is a process that’s mostly inferred. Fighting the possessed follows suit, but is given more depth with the introduction of certain tools that carry a lot of story. In a clever twist, though, these arcane-looking tools are there to inspire more questions. They are pieces of a puzzle with strange dimensions the audience is not made privy of. It helps keep the mystery of the pandemic open enough to not just be COVID-specific, but rather more universal regarding humanity’s woeful track record with crisis management.

When Evil Lurks is a dare for the horror genre. It pulls the camera away from the über-intimate focus of newer horror movies (that often overindulge the topic of trauma to get their point across) to get a very good look at panicked social behavior. It’s pandemic horror of the highest order, of the kind that points the finger at people and tells them they’re making it worse. We need more movies like this, hence the dare. Angry horror movies are like getting a bucket of cold water getting dunked on our heads followed by a bucket of hot blood. You’re not supposed to feel comforted. You’re supposed to feel guilty if you’re part of the problem. It’s confrontational horror at its finest, and it’s precisely what When Evil Lurks is.

Apple’s new The Enfield Poltergeist documentary dives into the real story of the infamous UK haunting

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As popular as paranormal shows and documentaries are, there’s really only a handful of them that mystify people enough to consider the possibility that ghosts are real. The United States, for instance, will forever have The Amityville Haunting, which produced an entire franchise of movies and books given how aggressively it took over the American psyche when it reached the zeitgeist. England has The Enfield Haunting. Or The Conjuring 2 haunting, as many might know it as.

Apple + dropped a trailer for their new docuseries focusing on the British haunting, titled The Enfield Poltergeist, a project that might garner a lot of attention for its connection with The Conjuring universe. It took place in 1977, when a working-class family in Enfield, London claimed their house was visited upon by angry ghosts that caused kids to levitate and be thrown around by unseen forces. All four episodes drop on Friday, October 17, 2023.

The case is not without its controversy. Much like Amityville, accusations of the haunting being staged for publicity, fame, or financial gain were quick to make the rounds. Skeptics point to the picture “evidence” of the poltergeist as being fabricated, and that it was quite obvious at that. Pictures of family members levitating, for instance, have been subjected to considerable scrutiny as they seem to show girls just launching themselves up into the air or jumping to give off the impression they were being thrown around by ghosts.

This isn’t the only documentary dropping this year tied to the James Wan-developed horror franchise. Netflix is releasing its own, titled The Devil on Trial, the first case in the US to attempt a “demonic possession” defense at a murder trial. It was the basis for the third Conjuring movie, what many consider to be the weakest entry of the three films. The Devil on Trial will also drop on October 17.

enfield

These two docs lay bare the fictionalized aspects behind the films, especially in the case of the Enfield haunting. The Conjuring 2 made it look like The Warrens, the paranormal investigators and exorcists driving the films, were mostly responsible for riding the house of its demonic afflictions despite investigator Maurice Grosse alleging they were only there briefly. Grosse was the original investigator behind the Enfield Haunting, staying on the case for the duration of it while also acting as witness to some of the more extreme phenomena (levitation, changes in voice).

In fact, Apple also revealed the series will draw heavily from Grosse’s research, especially from the recordings he made and the reports he wrote up. Events will be recreated and will aim for fidelity to the sources. All of this to say, this won’t be The Conjuring 2.

The Enfield Haunting does have an interesting cultural record, having been used as the basis and inspiration for other movies and TV series. One notable project that used it as its foundation was the 1992 BBC television movie Ghostwatch, a pseudo-reality horror documentary that aired on Halloween of the same year. It took the form of a live special report on a haunting at a house on the fictional Foxhill Drive area in Northolt, Greater London. The found footage genre owes it a lot, preceding The Blair Witch Project by seven years.

The Enfield Poltergeist is a fascinating case that should yield a compelling watch once it premieres. Myths can certainly be shattered here, especially if the hoax allegations are treated seriously enough (some of which are referenced in both The Conjuring 2 and Ghostwatch). Real or not, there’s potential for deep fear to set in the series. Ultimately, audiences will have enough to be afraid of. Even if the haunting is entirely human.

Should we be excited for The Exorcist: Believer?

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The Exorcist: Believer

William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is considered by many as the scariest and most accomplished horror film in history. It essentially perfected the possession story while setting the blueprint for future forays into the subgenre.

Building a franchise around such a landmark film, though, proved remarkably difficult. Expectations shot up astronomically given the towering presence of the original. Other than the uneven but compelling Exorcist III (released in 1990 and directed by William Peter Blatty, the writer of the 1971 The Exorcist novel the first movie adapted), and the amazing but short-lived The Exorcist 2016 TV series developed by Jeremy Slater, every other attempt at expanding upon the signature horror of Friedkin’s classic has failed spectacularly.

The question now is, will David Gordon Greens’ new Exorcist movie, subtitled Believer, become a possession that’ll reignite audience fears of demonic activity, or will it be another botched exorcism that’ll fade into obscurity along with Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and the the prequel movie Exorcist: The Beginning (2004). Another version of the prequel exists called Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist which was released in 2005 after The Beginning failed to ignite the box office or win over critics. Yes, Warner Brothers released two versions of the same movie, complete with two mostly different casts and two different directors (Renny Harlin worked on Beginning and Paul Schrader on Dominion).

Believer is the first of a planned trilogy that seems to be taking more than a page from Gordon Green’s treatment of the Halloween franchise. The first trailer for the movie established a considerable alteration to the formula concocted before it by showcasing two possessed girls instead of one. This doubling down on the source of horror is an idea that also made its way into the latest Halloween trilogy, to an extent. In the third installment, Halloween Ends, a new character opens the door to the possibility other people can “become” Michael Meyers, thus changing the fabric of the original concept.

The first Believer trailer goes on to show the parents of the possessed girls in a desperate race to try and figure out what’s wrong with their kids. This lands them on the path of someone who’s been through this experience before and who’ll end up helping the parents navigate the possession: Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn), the original survivor parent.

The Chris MacNeil character seems to be cut from the same cloth Laurie Strode was in Gordon Green’s Halloween, Strode being that franchise’s original final girl. She’s a survivor that looks like she’s either been waiting for or has been preemptively preparing for another bout with the same demon that possessed her daughter Regan. Trauma cloaks this character to justify a continuation of the story that ties in to the very first film. From there, we’ll have to see how much is sticks to the Halloween reboot formula and how much it deviates from it.

A few things worry me about this new chapter in the Exorcist franchise, apart from potentially being too similar to the latest Halloween trilogy in structure. First, we’ve gotten a lot of exorcism and demonic possession movies since the first Exorcist. Clichés, genre trappings, and expectations have had ample time to settle in and make themselves known. The first trailer, for instance, shows the possessed girls talking in that overdone multi-voice distortion effect that sounds more like an anonymous caller asking for ransom money than it does a demon.

One of the things that made the first movie’s possession so gut wrenchingly terrifying and memorable was the fact the demon had its own voice, which was masterfully crafted and performed by actress Mercedes McCambridge speaking over Linda Blair’s lines. It created a horror icon and it made things intimate and infinitely more disturbing.

Thus far, the two possessed girls from the Believer trailers come off as more generic, the standard demon kids that spout the usual unholy jargon in the exact voices you’ve come to expect. Fans have gotten a good helping of this already this year alone with The Pope’s Exorcist, though that movie did largely stick to one voice actor for the main demon. In this case it was Ralph Ineson (The VVytch) who took on demon duties. Before The Pope’s Exorcist, though, we had an exorcism episode in FX’s American Horror Story: Asylum, a found footage take on it in The Last Exorcism, an Anthony Hopkins-led movie called The Rite, and the Scott Derickson film The Exorcism of Emily Rose (the better of the bunch).

When Friedkin’s Exorcist came out, no one had seen anything like it. That’s not the case anymore.

My second worry concerns the decision to turn the story into a trilogy. In a sense, The Exorcist already tried this, though not intentionally nor with an eye to create a larger narrative that extended to several movies to get the complete story. Regardless, the result was just not good.

John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic is considered one of the worst horror sequels in existence, to the point that Friedkin himself once said to have felt disgusted after watching it (a sentiment shared by Blatty, who called it a humiliating experience). It’s a direct sequel, catching up with Regan a few years after her exorcism to find the demon might not have been cast out entirely (diminishing Father Karras’ sacrifice at the end of the first movie).

The Exorcist III, while boasting some great scares and an underlying sense of unease that carries throughout, didn’t exactly stick the landing. It could’ve bene great, but its ending (of which there are different versions of) felt like it belonged to another movie. Its successes, though, are owed to the new mysteries it creates regarding good and evil and spirituality. It’s not a retread of the first movie. Rather, it’s an expansion that explores similar themes through different avenues and perspectives using the more fleshed out characters from Blatty’s novels.

Having this new set of movies already conceptualized as a trilogy might alleviate these problems, but Gordon Green’s previoustrilogy work with Halloween saw a good idea stretched to its limits in all the wrong ways. Michael Meyers became a blunt metaphor for Trump era divisions, characters were killed for shock value rather than carefully plotted story arcs, and the violence authored by The Shape became gratuitous to the point of losing touch with the narrative.

Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends betrayed the storytelling highs of the first one, killing the momentum early into part 2 and never really catching up again. Believer’s chances of hitting the targets it has in its sights become stronger if each movie justifies its existence without coming across as a cash grab that’s only just tangentially connected to push out another horror trilogy. To score a win, it needs avoid the things that ultimately held Halloween back.

So, should we be excited for Exorcist: Believer? Based on the trailers alone, no. There’s always a chance the odds get flipped and we get a great new take on the material. But whatever expectations we might have now should be taken with caution. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see a good trilogy come of this, especially since the triple-feature approach hasn’t gotten the chance it deserves in horror. Unfortunately, the journey to Believer carries a lot of baggage that can weigh it down considerably. More excitement could’ve been afforded to it had it not been an Exorcist movie but a whole new venture into possession horror, one that stands on its own demonic legs. Then again, anything has the capacity to surprise. Breaking the cycle and giving audiences something worth screaming at, or potentially fainting from, will be welcomed with open arms. The road to that, I fear, is looking quite bumpy.

The Exorcist: Believer opens October 6th, 2023 nationwide.

DEATH MASK is a delightfully gory start to Storm King’s Dark & Twisted series

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Vigilantes are strange creatures. They walk a path paved by violence that shares more with horror than we like to think it does. Put under a harsh light, they can be viewed as a special kind of serial killer. The thing with their own brand of killing, though, is that theirs is guided by a moral compass that keeps them from being categorically identified as evil. Vigilantes, as is often the case, are wronged people that decide to take justice into their own hands once they’ve seen the legal system fail miserably at catching those responsible of extreme wrongdoing.

This is what Amanda Deibert and Cat Staggs have decided to put the spotlight on for their graphic novel Death Mask, a vigilante story with an unrelenting view on justice and whether something else should take up the mantle when the law falls short. The book is the first in Storm King Comics’ new line “Dark & Twisted,” a series of comics that will be focusing on human horror. No ghosts or ancient gods here. Only the most dangerous monster known to humanity: Us.

Death Mask follows Detective Maza, a hard woman that still believes in playing things by the book despite the dire conditions of the system she’s a part of as a series of murders seem to initially point towards a new serial killer. Problem is, the victim pool is all deserving of the very gory ends they meet. They are part of a cartel with a vicious history of violence, and their deaths are actually welcomed by some in the police. But not for Maza. Therein lies the debate at the heart of the story: does every victim deserve to be served justice equally, or is there room for prejudice depending on the victim’s rap sheet?

Deibert’s writing navigates these complex waters well. A lot of character work is afforded to the story’s players to really fish out the tensions between the killer’s methods and the investigators’ view on how energy should be expended on solving the killing of criminals. Maza, for instance, deals with troubles at home as her wife struggles with the all-consuming nature of her partner’s work. It places her professional convictions as a legitimate stressor on her home life.

What’s interesting is that Deibert manages to portray Maza’s stubborn fealty to the letter of the law as a potential character flaw that’s bled over to her marriage. It’s a clever bit of characterization that makes Maza stand out as not just another detective character in a vigilante story, and it keeps the story feeling fresh throughout. The same goes for the killer, but going more into that would spoil the amazing work the creative team put behind the story.

Staggs approaches these themes with a rawness that frames the vigilante’s violence squarely in horror territory. Every single killing is gory, gruesome, and unsettling. The very first one involves a decapitation via golf club. Golf clubs aren’t sharp metal objects. They’re blunt instruments. You do the math.

While there’s a fair bit of fun had with the violence, it does point to the severity behind the vengeance the vigilante seeks. In a way, it builds up the character in surprising ways that makes the reveal of their identity hit with a well-earned sense of shock. It speaks volumes to the quality of the storytelling on display.

Nothing comes across as gratuitous. It’s all trained on adding layers to the question of vigilantism and to the characters entrenched in this very bloody situation. In fact, Staggs invites an interrogation of the violence to consider whether it fits the crimes the vigilante has deemed them worthy of. It’s why its explicitness works. Readers are supposed to engage with it.

Janice Chiang does an excellent job with the lettering, expertly weaving conversations, screams, and sound effects in between all the character work that graces most every panel. Characters are allowed breathing room with text placement that admirably affects the pace of the story. The SFX, in particular, accentuates the gorier elements without turning them into caricature, giving the art an extra push in its capacity for horror.

One point of note here. Death Mask uses horror in subtle and nuanced ways and it’s important not to take that for granted. Vigilante stories deal in the cruelty humanity is capable of, especially when it comes to violent crime. Deibert and Staggs are well aware of this, especially as it pertains to the need not to shy away from darkness to get at deeper meanings and explorations. The gore is reminiscent of slasher horror in parts, and it will satisfy readers that enjoy splatter, but the creative team here has managed to indulge that style while making sure it fulfills other narrative purposes. It achieves in doing what horror does best: confronting people with necessary darkness.

Death Mask is a great addition to the vigilante tradition. Deibert and Staggs have come up with a story that puts morality and justice under the unforgiving gaze of consequence to cast doubt on whether there is a right or a wrong way of making bad people pay for their bad behavior. It’s smart, urgent, and confrontational, and it uses the language of horror well to make its ideas land with brutal force. Death Mask has set the tone for future “Dark & Twisted” stories at Storm King. You can’t ask for a better start.

Story: Amanda Deibert Art: Cat Staggs Letters: Janice Chiang
Release date: September 19, 2023
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10 Recommendation: Buy, and never underestimate the power of a golf club.

Storm King Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Pre-order: Amazon

BLENDJET’s TMNT portable blender will have you breaking out smoothies like a ninja

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BLENDJET’s TMNT portable blender

Licensed products hold a curious place in nerdom, specifically because they act as flags that signal our love of something. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is perhaps one of the most treasured licenses for this. Their toys, movies, and countless other products have become a staple of childhood memories. One way or another, you’ll grow up with something bearing the TMNT name.

Blendjet is the latest company to further that mission with their new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Blendjet 2 portable blender. It’s a light, easy to carry, and USB-rechargeable blender that lets you make smoothies on the go. It’s a powerful machine (retailing as of the time of this writing at $49.99) that can crush ice, mix it in with fruit and liquids, and produce a drink in some 20 seconds, give or take. One charge should yield 15+ blends.

The blender functions as advertised. I’ve squeezed some 16-19 blends per charge and have tested all manner of frozen fruits to see how it holds up. Cleanup consists of adding water and soap and then pushing the button to let it, essentially, clean itself. Sometimes you still have to carefully clean the blades yourself to remove any leftover pieces of fruit, but for the most part it really does do the job on its own.

BLENDJET’s TMNT portable blender

Of course, what TMNT fans will be eager to know is if it looks cool enough to add to the collection. I’m happy to say it does, and it’s mostly owed to the careful approach to design. The blender comes in two styles: “Colorful Ninjas” and “Shredder’s Mind.” For what I consider to be obvious reasons, I went with Shredder’s Mind.

There really wasn’t much competition considering the machine’s sharp and powerful blades can easily remind users of the equally sharp and dangerously pointy baddie that’s been after the Turtles since the beginning. In essence, this portable blender is like having a small Shredder in your backpack ready to rip and tear through fruit for your smoothie drinking delight.

As stated earlier, it’s the care that went into designing the package that really stands out. The blender features a wraparound illustration of the Turtles with April O’Neil, Splinter, and Shredder hovering behind everyone set to a soft purple background that brings back memories of the 1980’s animated TMNT cartoon. It keeps things from feeling exclusively tied to the release of the Mutant Mayhem animation currently in theaters, feeding the nostalgia factor driving the product’s appeal.

BLENDJET’s TMNT portable blender

The circular lid is especially attractive. On its very top is an illustration of a classic pepperoni pizza pie, crisp enough to make it feel like a collectible all of its own. The lid itself is purple as well, keeping with the Shredder theme. It’s a nice detail that accentuates the TMNT spirit of the design. Blendjet truly put together a blender that wouldn’t look out of place in either the Turtles’ or Shredder’s costumes. It’s battle ready.

Fans of TMNT have good reason to get one of these if only for the sake of adding it to their collection. Knowing it’s also a beautifully put together machine that can blend a mean smoothie, though, is truly what makes it special. It captures the child-like excitement associated with the license and it looks sleek. It’s a great addition to any kitchen, but it begs to be taken out into the streets for a blend while on the move, or while jumping over rooftops. I hope the line expands to include styles specific to characters like April O’Neil and Casey Jones, but the two we have available are more than enough to warrant attention. Shredder himself would be proud.

Disclaimer: Graphic Policy was sent the product for FREE for review

Junji Ito’s SOICHI is a terrifying celebration of that weird cousin we all have

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Soichi

For all the terror that Junji Ito conjures throughout his stories (even the cat one), there’s a fair amount of dark comedy to go around with it. When Ito wants to be funny, he’s funny. But it’s never without a healthy dose of weird to go along with it. Oddly enough, it’s a style that lends itself perfectly to stories about families. I mean, what is a family if not a dark comedy with a strange cast of characters that features at least one person that freaks everyone out.

This is what Ito’s Soichi is all about, a humorous look at a family that harbors enough horror to give you nightmares all while giving the weird cousin character his long overdue time in the spotlight.

Soichi is composed of 10 short stories featuring the titular character, a kid with a strange and macabre sense of humor that likes to torture his own family along with any visiting cousins that dare spend their vacations where he lives. To an extent, the book chronicles the strange life of Soichi, going from birthdays to elaborate myths concerning his grandmother and then to incidents concerning the creation of life-sized puppets that come alive to create havoc and spread discontent.

Explaining Soichi’s character can be quite tricky. It’s easy to label the kid as nothing more than a proverbial black sheep, the kind every family seems to have at least one of. He’s antisocial, scurries around the attic with the intention of loosening dirt so it falls on people eating below, claims to be able to tap into supernatural elements to torment those he sees fit, and he shoots nails from his mouth.

In the book’s first story, titled “A Happy Summer Vacation,” Soichi’s second cousins (Yusuke and Michina) come for a visit all the way from Tokyo, hoping to spend time with distant relatives they’ve never really had the chance to bond with. They find this part of the family to be the very picture of happiness and cordiality. But then they quickly find out that their son, Soichi, is the exact opposite of this. This kid trades all the brightness his parents and siblings exude and trades it in for doom and gloom. To Soichi’s chagrin, everyone loves the very pleasant Yusuke and Michina. He finds them annoying. So, he responds in kind by creating voodoo dolls in their likeness to visit as much misfortune upon them as possible.

Soichi

While reading this first story, I half-expected the family to be revealed as Satanists that openly worshipped the Dark Lord before every meal. But they weren’t. They were the perfect relatives, the kind everyone wants. It made no sense that this family was responsible for creating such a dark cloud of a human being without an equal within the unit. Therein lies the genius behind these stories.

Because Soichi’s family doesn’t share in his darkness, Soichi becomes relatable. He might be annoying and aggressively unlikeable, but he’s also part of a family that represents everything he’s not. He’s the grungy teen, the headbanger, the metalhead, and the horror hound that every family has at least one of. This is apparent in the way Ito illustrates him.

Soichi is extremely thin, almost to the point of looking sickly. He almost always in a slouch and he has black bags under his eyes to denote a lack of sleep, as if he was destined from the start to be a creature of the night. It’s important that he doesn’t look entirely unwell, though. He’s not neglected by his family or abused. He’s just not like them, making it hard to justify spending quality time with them. He likes to dress in black and he sticks to corners and shadows. Sharing in family events is an obligation to be skirted for him.

While his pranks and snarky remarks go too far (remember the voodoo dolls?), I couldn’t help but feel sad he doesn’t have another likeminded sibling or aunt or cousin to share his darkness with (an idea that comes up in a later story concerning a possible twin brother that no one else can see other than his equally ghoulish grandmother).

soichi

Anyone who’s ever tried to convey the excitement of watching George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or how listening to Black Sabbath can be life-changing to family members whose automatic response is a disgusted scoff or a throwaway comment on why they’ll never get why people watch horror movies will feel a connection with Soichi.

Ito amplifies this by not turning his family into a scarier and more twisted version of The Addams Family. Soichi doesn’t have a sister like Wednesday or a brother like Pugsly. Hell, he doesn’t even have a Cousin It. He has a painfully normal family that is nothing like him. In truth, Soichi just needs someone who prefers to view life for the terror it is. Views contrary to that are simply alien to him, much like his family.

Soichi will mean different things to different readers, but something that’s indisputable about the character is how much of an outsider he is. He doesn’t care that no one likes him, or that his cousins would rather keep their interactions with him to a minimum. His world is his own, though. He apologizes for none of it. His plans might backfire each time, but he’s true to himself. And then there’s the creeping idea that Ito masterfully sneaks in to make readers consider a very basic fact: every family has their own Soichi, and it might be you. If that’s the case, just be you. But maybe try not to go overboard with the voodoo dolls and the nails.

The Enfield Gang Massacre #1 promises a whole new chapter in the world of Ambrose County

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The Enfield Gang Massacre #1

Westerns are bursting at the seams with infamous towns and counties whose histories are written in blood. The city of Tombstone in Arizona, the town of Deadwood in South Dakota, these are places that birthed stories and legends about how wild the West really was, and how violent the men in them were. Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips already had their very own dark Western town in their Neo-Western comic That Texas Blood, a place called Ambrose County. Now, fans of Texas Blood get a kind of origin story for it in a new spin-off series called The Enfield Gang Massacre, a story that goes back to the time of cowboys to unearth the violent happenings that gave birth to the land future criminals will take up residence in.

The story centers on the pursuit of Montgomery Enfield, an outlaw with a gang of his own, that’s believed to have authored the grisly murder of a bank worker back in 1875. The people of Ambrose County, a small Texas town at this point in time, demand justice at any cost. A mob of angry people have decided this man’s particular killing demands justice be repaid in kind, a comment on how thin the lines is between legal consequences and revenge. Just how fair the whole ordeal will turn out to be remains to be seen, but things are pointing to a very messy end, something that’s given credence by the comic’s title itself.

The Enfield Gang Massacre #1

Condon brings the same attention to detail to character development and world building that’s present in That Texas Blood. Both the people of Ambrose and the members of the Enfield Gang feel storied, complete with their own stubborn prejudices and ideals. It’d be easy to equate the world and character work done here with that seen in the crime films of the Coen Brothers, and while there’s certainly some of it here, Condon’s approach is specific enough to warrant its own space in the genre.

The same carries over to Phillips’s art, another showcase of nuanced character design and geographic cohesiveness. Phillips’s attention to character is as focused as that afforded to Ambrose County. Personalities and attitudes jump out of every person displayed on a panel, while the location’s essence is felt throughout. Phillips harnesses the violence Condon extracts from his dialogues and makes sure everything follows suit.

The Enfield Gang Massacre #1

The coloring, done by Phillips along with Pip Martin on assists, makes sure there’s an aesthetic link to Texas Blood. There’s an interest in capturing an overarching feel to the story that places Enfield Gang in the continuum of Texas Blood‘s history. Every single element is tuned to that particular frequency, and it allows for a personal type of worldbuilding that favors the minutia of shared experiences rather than large scale events to hold everything together.

Special mention has to be given to the faux newspaper article exploring the titular massacre found in the last pages of the book. It takes the form of a special investigative report on the myths behind the massacre and how important it is to remember that facts are always pulling in one direction while local legends push with equal strength in the other. It puts the story’s essence on a slab for readers to dissect, inviting discussions on the nature of verifiable truth vs. agreed upon truths. I look forward to more of them.

The Enfield Massacre #1 promises a whole new chapter in the world of Ambrose County, giving it a longer narrative reach while opening numerous doors for more stories spread throughout the location’s history. Condon and Phillips are producing career-defining work here, and we’re lucky to be witnessing it one comic at a time.


Story: Chris Condon, Art: Jacob Phillips Color Assists: Pip Martin
Art: 10 Story: 10 Overall: 10 Recommendation: Read and make sure you’re also following That Texas Blood.

Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Purchase: Zeus Comics – Kindle

Godzilla returns in Gojira Minus One and he looks postwar angry

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GODZILLA MINUS ONE

Godzilla has been on a rampage as of late, from Gareth Edwards‘s 2014 reboot to 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong. In between those films we got the best Godzilla of the current era with Shin Gojira (2016), directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, a movie that paved the way for other Shin entries such as Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider (though supposedly not to be taken as part of a shared universe).

This year, Godzilla rises again with the recently announced Gojira Minus One, a return to the giant monster of the 1954 original that decimates cities with colossal anger while carrying the metaphor of nuclear threat in every roar.

Toho International released a teaser trailer of the new production that confirms as much. From what brief look shows, the story goes back to a post-World War II Japan that’s struggling with the destruction wrought by the allies during the last year of the conflict. Godzilla’s arrival plunges the country into the minus, a cruel position in which devastation takes another pass over an already devastated land.

The bits of Godzilla we get in the final seconds of the teaser show a creature consumed by ruthless aggression, as if intent on passing judgment on the country and how it managed to sink to the place it found itself in after it unconditionally surrendered to the allies.

It’ll be interesting to see what director Takashi Yamazaki (Lupin III: The First) has in store for Godzilla in terms of metaphors. The original movie turned the iconic kaiju into a representation of atomic trauma, spawning from the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to end the war. The aftermath of the two infamous attacks brought about a period of absolute confusion, especially as the effects of radiation started becoming physically noticeable in those close to the affected areas. Godzilla is an expression of that, a monster that communicates fear a newly minted nuclear world.

With war still a global concern, both in the effects of current conflicts (Ukraine) and the possibility of future world wars, Godzilla is a potent enough symbol to carry messages on its spiky and hulking body. In fact, Godzilla has proven quite adept in embodying different metaphors at different points in time.

The aforementioned Shin Godzilla does an exceptional job at poking fun at the ridiculousness and total dysfunction of bureaucracies in the face of national crises. Anno and Higuchi turn Godzilla into a natural disaster that could have been more quickly and effectively solved had the government not been tangled up by committees with overlapping powers that clash against one another rather than facilitate solutions.

Edwards’s 2014 take turned the kaiju into a warning against the continued use of nuclear power in the present, using imagery and discourse surrounding the radioactive disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant as a result of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The crisis resulted in critical disruptions to the plant’s operations and led to explosions and radiation leaks that led to the evacuation of some 110,000 residents from the areas surrounding Fukushima.

Edwards’s Godzilla spoke to the severity of that kind of catastrophe, and it made sure the message landed with a force, though the movie didn’t exactly live up to expectations given certain creative decisions that didn’t give the titular kaiju more of a chance to shine. If the teaser is any indication, Minus One won’t be having that problem.

Gojira Minus One, the 30th entry in Toho’s giant monster franchise, has a November 3rd, 2023 release date on its sights for Japanese audiences and a December 1st, 2023 date for American audiences. If you want to give the entire franchise a look, Pluto TV is currently streaming a 24/7 Godzilla channel dedicated to the creature’s many encounters with Japan and the other monsters his presence has attracted throughout his storied career. It’s a good time to be a Godzilla fan, and the new film looks to be terrifyingly special.

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