Kickstarting Zombies

Zombie Playground: "In Zombie Playground you take on the role of a kid during a zombie apocalypse as seen through his or her imagination. Your school is overrun by the undead, and it's up to you and your friends to do whatever it takes to survive!"

Official Site
Kickstarter Page

Check out the video:

Zombie Squash: "It's a world where vegetation has gone wild from evil experiments gone wrong; this is the work of Dr. Beau E. Vil voiced by the "Godfather of All Zombies" George A. Romero. Zombie Squash is a tower defense style game where the Player is a rabbit named Jack Stompingtail who fires carrots, zucchini and other garden ammo at Dr. Beau E. Vil’s horde of gorde onslaught.  The player has to try and stop the Zombie Squash from taking over the world."

Official Site
Kickstarter Page

Check out the video:

Japanese Sci-Fi A to Z

Thanks to Christopher Elam over at the OWARI blog, I have a lot more Japanese science fiction movies to track down now. Inspired by my posting of the Giant Monsters vs. Alien Invaders article, he has followed suit with Star Warp's "Japanese Sci-Fi A to Z."

Now I know where the kaiju Manda, a giant dragon-like serpent, originated: 1963's Atragon. Previously I'd only seen him in stock footage from various Godzilla movies and assumed he was just a space filler on Monster Island.

I also know more about the Japanese character Starman, along with a variety of Japanese movies that Tom Rogers apparently hated on principle. Chris has some interesting theories about the freelance writer's career and writing style, but I also can't help but wonder if "Tom Rogers" wasn't just a pseudonym employed by the editors of science fiction and fantasy magazines whenever they needed to give credit to a questionable article. Will the real Tom Rogers please stand up?

John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders

One of the best novels I've read in the past decade is 2007's John Dies at the End by Cracked's David Wong, and now there's a movie coming out by the awesome Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep, Beastmaster, Phantasm) starring the equally awesome Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, and Doug Jones (among others).

There is also a much-anticipated sequel due out later this year, This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don't Touch It.

I have literally stood in the library and read the prologue of John Dies at the End aloud to my coworkers:

Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.
 
Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him. 

He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs, you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. 

On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand new handle for your ax. 

The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the next spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade. 

Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand new head for your ax. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. 

You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that slayed me!” 

Is he right?

While you ponder that existential question, possibly even while filled with existential dread, let me point out today's new and exciting development: Author David Wong has announced an Alternate Reality Game, with lots of not-available-anywhere-else prizes: The New Alternate Reality Game, and also FREE SHIT

Remember, if you win something, YOU OWE ME. Unless you read about it somewhere else first, of course.

Dr. Strange vs. '80s Horror

Back in 2001 and 2002, Marvel Comics was publishing Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, written by Ultimate Spider-Man scribe Brian Bendis. Every issue they would introduce another Ultimate version of a classic Marvel character to the ultimatized universe by having him team-up (hence the title) with Ultimate Spider-Man. The series ran for 16 issues (plus a Special) before the whole thing collapsed into an apocryphal black hole of non-continuity as Marvel declared the stories to be non-canon (some more so than others).

But none of this stopped me from writing a fictitious news article for my website based on issues 13 and 14, in which Bendis introduced Ultimate Dr. Strange. This version of Dr. Strange was a young man discovering that he had inherited sorcerous powers from his absentee father, the original Dr. Strange, who had mysteriously gone missing years prior.

My "news story" was about the new Dr. Strange discovering important clues about his father's fate, but being completely oblivious to their true meaning. As usual, my sense of humor was way too obscure for my own good...

NEWSWIRE ARCHIVES

Old Photo May Be Key to Solving Mystery


Current Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange caught a lucky break this week in his quest to discover the fate of his missing father, Dr. Stephen Strange, when a search through some old financial records showed that he once owned a timeshare on a cabin in the mountains of Morristown, Tennessee. Unsuccessful in their efforts to locate the timeshare partner -- an archaeologist named Professor Knowby -- Stephen and Dr. Strange's faithful servant Wong decided to journey to Tennessee and investigate the cabin for themselves.

What they found may be the last place Dr. Strange visited before disappearing without a trace two decades ago. From all indications, he was enjoying a vacation the last time he visited the cabin. The clothes he packed were suitable for hiking in the woods, and the few other items he left behind show that he was trying to relax and unwind:

Dr. Strange brought with him some light reading material (the Necronomicon, or Book of the Dead); a handheld puzzle box, similar to the Rubik's Cubes that were all the rage back then; and judging by all the empty containers, the good doctor's diet was less than ideal, as he seemed to be eating nothing but dessert.

While none of these items seemed out of the ordinary, Stephen did manage to find something he considers to be an important clue.

In the Necronomicon there was an old Polaroid photo of Dr. Strange, apparently being used as a bookmark. At the bottom of the photo, the white border was covered with arcane glyphs, obviously drawn with enchanted ink (since none of them were smeared).

 

 Stephen and Wong hope that by translating the glyphs, they will finally be able to determine what happened to Earth's previous Sorcerer Supreme all those years ago.

In the meantime, the artifacts of Dr. Strange's final days have been secured in the Sanctum Sanctorum in case it becomes necessary to examine them for forensics evidence.

Stephen's mother Clea, who never told her son that his father had been a master of the mystic arts because she did not want him traveling that path, was visibly disturbed by these revelations.

"He never told me about the cabin," she said in a recent interview on 60 Minutes II. "I have to wonder if he was using it to have an affair. Is that what happened to him? Did he run off with some slut like Scarlet Witch? Is that why he disappeared as soon as he found out I was pregnant?" Clea then broke into tears.

In her defense, the Scarlet Witch claims to have never heard of Dr. Strange, and points out that she was maybe three years old at the time of his disappearance. She is also threatening legal action if Clea does not cease referring to her in the tabloids as the Harlot Witch.

* * *

Notes: See? In a cabin in the woods, Dr. Strange was reading aloud from the Necronomicon, fiddling with a Hellraiser puzzle box, and eating the Stuff. But none of those things could possibly have anything to do with his disappearance, right? Surely it's the Polaroid that's the important clue! Ah, I do love explaining 10-year-old jokes. But hey, I watched The Stuff on Netflix tonight, and it brought back semi-fond memories of this mashup, so I decided to unearth it from deep in my hard drive and share.

Enormous

 

ENORMOUS: A 64-page one-shot comic about giant monsters from Image/Shadowline coming out in July 2012. Written by Tim Daniel, drawn by Mehdi Cheggour. Check out the 5-page prelude and an interview with the writer at USA Today. I think it goes without saying I'll be adding this to my collection.

New York Stomped Again

Last month I posted an article I wrote about the financial cost of Godzilla's attack on New York City, and whether or not the extensive property damage would be covered by insurance.

"I could have wrecked even more if my atomic breath had been working that day."

Since then, the Kinetic Analysis Corporation (KAC) has published its damage assessment of the recent Chitauri Invasion of NYC that was repelled by the Avengers. And what did the researchers base their estimate on? Previous damage done by Godzilla:

Using computer models created by KAC R&D for estimating nuclear weapons effects, as well as techniques developed for use in predicting damage in Japan from attacks by ゴジラ(Godzilla), モスラ (Mothra), and particularlyメカゴジラ (Mechagodzilla), the damages and losses resulting from this weekend’s invasion by the Chitauri have been estimated.

"Ballpark? 160 billion."

You can read the 2-page report in PDF form here, and a news article explaining how and why the research was done here.

Zombie Entertainment

Fight zombies with cheerleader Juliet Starling in Lollipop Chainsaw:


"Pert. Wholesome. Way lethal."


Or check out the Canadian horror-comedy A Little Bit Zombie:



How will it compare to Zombie Honeymoon?

 Or the Spanish language (with English subtitles) Zombie Dawn:

It even comes with a free comic book at some screenings:

Or if you want to get more physical, Comic-Con will have a Walking Dead Zombie Obstacle Course from July 12 to 14 at Petco Park in San Diego.


That's room for a lot of zombies.

For some reason this reminds me of all the sports action figures we used to sell when I worked at Paper Heroes, and how I thought they would make great "victims" in a zombie apocalypse diorama.

New Cthulhu Games

Looney Labs will be releasing Cthulhu Fluxx this summer!

I'm a big fan of Looney Labs, having spent many hours playing Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx with friends and family. If you aren't familiar with these games, here's the official description:

The card game with ever changing rules! It starts out simple, with just the Basic Rule card: Draw one card and play one card during each player's turn. But New Rule cards quickly make things chaotic.

Even the object of the game will often change as you play, as players swap out one Goal card for another. Can you get the Rocket to the Moon before someone changes the goal to Death by Chocolate?

And then the Zombie edition changes it up a bit:

Welcome to the dark side of Fluxx, the card game of ever-changing rules! Zombie Fluxx takes the award-winning card game Fluxx and cranks up the fun with a Zombie uprising. The Zombies arrive in the form of a new type of card, called the Creeper, which hangs around in front of you, preventing you from winning.

The good news is, the Keepers include a Shotgun and a Chainsaw and various other things you can use as weapons against the Zombies. Plus you've got Sandwiches and Coffee and a couple of Friends to help you win. The bad news is, if your Friends become Zombies, you'll have to destroy them!

You can see a Creeper card from the Cthulhu edition above, based on Him Who Is Not To Be Named. Something tells me the Shotgun and Chainsaw from the Zombie edition won't be nearly as effective against the Old Ones.

Also, someone is beginning a Kickstarter campaign to develop a Cthulhu/Monopoly mash-up boardgame in which you destroy the neighborhood instead of building it up. You can read more about The Doom That Came To Atlantic City here. Sounds like fun for Lovecraft fans and Monopoly haters alike.

Zombies and Saturday Morning TV

Stumbled upon another Myron Fass publication in my collection... the Winter 1978 issue of Star Battles:

Superman: "Why are you shooting me in the back? Look! Up in the sky! Cylons! Shoot THEM!"

So naturally, that means more articles by (drum roll, please...) Tom Rogers!

In The Living Dead Return: George Romero Strikes Again, he covers Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies, Martin, and the then-upcoming Dawn of the Dead. I particularly like how, after denigrating the quality of Night of the Living Dead (by my count) four times in four paragraphs, he writes, "This is really a fine horror film, and this synopsis does not do it justice." Indeed!

In Saturday Morning Live Action, he covers a number of programs I remember fondly from my '70s childhood, though for some reason he decides to do so in alphabetical order, resulting in the discussion of some spin-offs before the original shows that spawned them.

This article is a good example of just how weird the '70s were, sometimes to the point of disbelief. Back in the '90s, before the advent of YouTube, it literally took me YEARS to convince one of my roommates that I hadn't made up The Lost Saucer, starring Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi as spacefaring androids with a pet Dorse. I don't think even the IMDb listing was enough to overcome his level of denial. Of course, when dealing with television of this calibre, that's a useful defense mechanism to have -- the same sort that allows Lovecraft characters to investigate Cthulhu while retaining their last vestige of sanity.

Monster Squad, Bigfoot and Wildboy, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Isis and Shazam! -- I'm beginning to get a clearer image of what went wrong with my formative years.

Choose the form of the Destructor!

Apparently the Destructor...

...is now available in decaffeinated form:

Also, it seems the same company is also responsible for this snack combo:

Mmm... I love washing down real people with fake blood. Refreshing!