Showing posts with label Dark Horse Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark Horse Comics. Show all posts

Friday, September 15, 2023

Ritual Howls - Dark Ceiling in Tennessee

 
How did I miss the fact that Ritual Howls released a new record back in May??? I'm not sure, but in a way, this is like finding a $100 bill in my pocket. Every track on this is awesome! Released by the always wonderful Felte Records back on May 12, you can order Virtue Falters from the group's Bandcamp HERE


Watch:


Martin Scorsese, one of the last true auteurs from an age that is coming to an end, is known for high-end films. Killers of the Flower Moon looks to be no exception.


Despite the fact that this is an Apple Production, I'm going to assume Scorsese's name will be enough to put this film in theatres. One of the reasons I never bothered with The Irishman is it went straight to netflix and only played very limited engagements in the cinema. Let that be another reminder that netflix considers 'content' all the same; Scorsese's film was even keel with Marie Condo in their book. 



Read:

I was overjoyed to score a four-issue set of Mark Verheiden's Aliens: Earth War at Rick's Comic City on Wednesday. Despite my love for Predator: Concrete Jungle and the original Aliens Vs. Predator comics Dark Horse published in the late 80s, I never really read their straight-up Aliens titles. Time for that to change.

What has me very excited about this book is the fact that Sam "The Maxx" Keith is the artist! I'm only one issue in, but so far, this direct sequel to James Cameron's Aliens is fantastic - far better than Alien 3, at any rate. Newt's here, Hicks is set up to come aboard, and Ripley is being dragged back out onto LV-426 again. Yeah, the repetition of the setup has since gotten old, but being that this was published in 1990, I'm very much okay with it here. 


Playlist:

Agnes Obel - Aventine
Various - Rocktober Blood OST
Ritual Howls - Virtue Falters
Ritual Howls - Into the Water
The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
C.O.F.F.I.N - Australia Stops (pre-release singles)
IDLES - Joy as an Act of Rebellion
Lord Huron - Long Lost
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
La Hell Gang - Thru Me Again
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Baroness - Stone (pre-release singles)




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.  Just a reminder that Grimm's new Tarot Deck, The Hand of Doom Tarot, is both gorgeous and live on Kickstarter right now. Here's the LINK.



• Four of Cups
• King of Cups
• Page of Wands

All right, at a glance, cups by looking at the suits, I think I can read this as an overabundance of emotion that needs to be shaped by a clear-headed application of Will. Let's go deeper, though...

Fours indicate stability, but also, that stability can be a bad thing if it's status quo. 

King of Cups is a card I often read as a harbinger of Emotional Conflict. My grimoire entry for King of Cups has this in it, "emotional depths honed by intellect," and that definitely informs my initial read above.

Page of Wands - or Princess of Wands in Thoth - represents the physical aspects of Will, or the Earthly aspects of Fire. In other words, BAGGAGE. The Thoth card features a woman with a massive tiger wrapped around her - weighing her down. I'm always tempted to read that Thoth version as a fierceness that gets in the way - "Misguided Fire," I sometimes call it. This is the wrong approach - when you just keep at something without stopping to apply the other Aspects. Will without Intellect, Emotion and Resources can be destructive. 

End result: Pick your battles and keep your head about you; something will pop up that seems like the right solution, but it may only be the easy one. Very difficult not to apply this (as usual) to my writing. I've just reached a point where I'm entering the final scene of the book, so this is a reminder not to let the finish line confuse the path, which still must be laid a stone at a time, as opposed to rushed for lust of result.

Friday, January 14, 2022

RIP Ronnie Spector

 

Seriously one of the most iconic voices of all time. So iconic, she makes me love an Eddie Money song.




Watch:

The sting of the anniversary of David Bowie's death and now Ronnie Spector's passing was traversed by some really good news (thankfully, that's too many bummers to deal with in one week) - Ti West is returning with a new movie!!!

 

I am SO happy about this. West has directed a number of TV episodes (his two on Amazon's Them were incredible), but hasn't done a film since 2016's In A Valley of Violence (which is on Netflix and SO worth your time). West is easily one of the best directors working today, in my opinion, and I'm hoping having A24 distribute this new flick will A) put it in theatres for longer than a weekend, and B) herald his return to filmmaking.


NCBD:

Not New Comic Book Day, exactly, but here's what I've picked up over the last few weeks via eBay and back issue bins:

I'd read the first issue of Hunger back when it first came out, then never continued. I've always wanted to go back and read the entire thing, though, because I'm something of a Galactus fan, even though I haven't really read many stories with him. Maybe that's the Unicron fanboy in me, I don't know. There's a lot about the Fantastic Four's history and rogues gallery that I retain something of an armchair interest in, but never really do anything about. I'm glad I bought this, even if just for the image of Galactus tearing through a hole in the fabric of the 616 Universe and entering the Ultimate Universe


Next up, I started reading The Low Low Woods when it first dropped back in early 2020, but never acquired all the issues. I finally solved that. Here's the bad ass cover I just scored for the fifth issue:


I'd put a poster of that on my wall. It's gorgeous. The book itself has an amazing premise - girls go missing in a small rural town where coal fires have burned for decades, then return missing time. The execution leaves a little bit to be desired, but overall I dig it. And for whatever reason, I wanted the issues of this one instead of the collected edition.


And I finally replaced the original Dark Horse Aliens Vs Predator that went missing at some point over the last few years. No idea where these went, and even though my Horror Vision cohost gifted me a beautiful hardback collection of this one, I had to put my hands back on the original floppies I bought as they came out monthly (or maybe bi-monthly) back in 1990.




Playlist:

John Coltrane - Blue Train
The Outfield - Play Deep
Alio Die and Lorenzo Montaná - The Threshold of Beauty
Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Un Hiver En Plein Été
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - In Summer EP
Crumb - Ice Melt
Zombi - Liquid Crystal
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry
Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon
The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes




Card:


Definite stagnation in creative areas at the moment, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel...

Monday, March 9, 2020

Chelsea Wolfe - Highway



Always a good day when there's a new Chelsea Wolfe video. One of my favorite artists insofar as how she puts imagery to her music; there's always a visual representation of the hollow loneliness that permeates her songs. Not sad loneliness, but the kind you feel when you're out in the desert, dwarfed by the environment around you, and isolated from other humans.

**

Kindle had a Dark Horse comics sale yesterday (it may still be in effect), and for $6.99 I picked up the Alien/Predator/Prometheus Fire and Stone collection. I've heard great stuff about this series, so I'm psyched to jump in, as while I enjoyed by recent viewing of Alien: Covenant for what it is, I would have definitely preferred if they didn't kill all the Engineers off between movies. I've said it many times now, as much as I love Aliens, the films are frustrating for sure, and nothing is more frustrating then their propensity in killing the most interesting characters OFF SCREEN.


Also in that sale, I scored the first Masters of the Universe Mini Comics collection for $5.00. This is pure nostalgia, pleasure reading. These comics are literally primordial Shawn, as I had MotU figures from the time of their initial release, and the accompanying mini comics were among the first comics I ever read, and thus are at least partially responsible for my continued love of the medium.


Also, my Uncanny X-Men re-read continues at a steady pace; I'm now up to Inferno, but I'm going to back track first and re-read the 1984 Magik mini-series first, as events in that series set-up the story that eventually culimates during Inferno. Also, and I'm putting this in print finally, my all-time favorite X-villains are by far Mr. Sinister, S'ym, and N'astirh.


Unbeatable when drawn by my X-Men dream-team of Silvestri and Green.

**

Playlist:

Orville Peck - Pony
The Jesus Lizard - Lash EP
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian Towers
... And You Will Know Us By the Trail of the Dead - X: The Godless Void and Other Stories
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
Belong - October Language
Testament - The Gathering
Allagaeon - Apoptopsis
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Somnium Nox - Apocrypha EP
The Soft Moon - Deeper
U2 - War

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Drinking w/ Comics #23



In which Mike Wellman and I talk about Chip Zdarky's new book Kaptara, the fact that Archie Comics has pretty much said, "Fuck it" and done another insane crossover book called... wait for it... Archie vs. Predator (AvP for the ironic class), Becky Cloonan, Andy Belanger and Leigh Loughridge's BRILLIANTLY creepy Southern Cross, Optic Nerve #14 and the Dark Horse, 1989 Predator mini series that definitley should have been used as the template for the 1990 Predator 2 which, let's face it, was terrible except for the Alien skull Danny "I can't act" Glover finds in the Predator's ship at the end.

All that and we drink Uinta Brewery's gorgeous Sum'r Ale, Ol' Burro's Favorable Stout and a few Fat Tires for good measure!