There’s a lot of story in The Damned by William Ollie. It starts with Scott, who has just been fired from his job for an essentially trivial reason and is driving home to his wife. Unfortunately, on the way home, he causes an accident that ends with him becoming the victim of a road rage shooting…
I’m horribly late on this, because I just watched it last night (power outage and all).
I found the second episode of True Blood more enjoyable. The awkward pacing was smoothed out and there didn’t seem to be that press to establish every single character ever mentioned in the books.
In this episode Bill rescues Sookie from where the last episode left her, being pummeled by the Rattrays for rescuing Bill (in the first episode they tried to drain him as “vjuice” goes for some big bucks on the black market). After sharing blood to heal her they have a moment where Sookie outright says she likes Bill so much because she can’t read his mind.
This has become an interesting point of discussion because I have never liked Bill and seeing the books represented in live living color makes me wonder if that’s the only reason Sookie likes Bill. It’s apt, because having never had a real romantic relationship before, despite her age, Sookie is set up to go through that first “But I love him” romance that most people get over in high school.
It become obvious from this episode that while the books are written in first person from Sookie’s point of view Alan Ball intends to make each charcter just as strong as the lead. I have to admit I loved the bit of eyecandy flashed in the very er, enthusiastic sex scene between Jason and Dawn. And I found Jason’s reaction to seeing the video of himself and Maudette (who was killed last episode, off screen) very compelling.
The other major player, Tara also seems to have smoothed out. She still doesn’t quite fit in the story, but with much of the sassiness Sookie displayed in this episode, and the flash backs of her childhood memories, it’s obvious why the pair are friends.
This episode leaves off on a similar tension filled semi-cliffhanger as the first. In this one Sookie goes to Bill’s place only to be threatened by a number of vampires there, including the vampire from Maudette’s sex tape.
While so far it’s been the world set up that vampires are victims of horrible, and violent prejudices this episode exposes that the vampires really do deserve the caution humans are giving them. While this is, in a way, a love story, this is the exact sort of love story that I adore, one that’s surrounded by a dark, exciting world.
Review by Michael Lush
In his study of the American male Guy Garcia exposes the ugly truth that all men want to hide but desperately need shown, our weakness in today’s age of networking and social strong arming. The author adequately displays how the feminist movement empowered women but in essence castrated an entire nation of men.
We live in an age where all the strengths that helped us make it out of the caves has made us all but useless in the world we created. Guy Garcia points to a lot of statistics making the work informative but a little dry, then blind sides you with two chapters about Mattel’s Ken and Superman, referring to them as both real men and symbols of what we are and what we used to be, respectively a useless metrosexual and an idealized figure of manhood. The fact that he spoke of both characters as if they were true flesh and blood men seemed a little silly and out of place in this particular work.
In the end we see that our Pop Icons are mirrors of what we think a “Man” should be but can never live up to ourselves. In short the implication is that instead of living up to our traditional ideas of manhood we should just redefine what it is to be a man.
Seems a bit lazy to me, but hell what ever makes you sleep better at night.
The good news is that this graphic novel offers exactly what I loved about the movie. HellBoy is a devil summoned by a mysterious Nazi who wants to unleash cthulhu-like elder gods upon the world. He’s got an anger problem, he’s a smart ass, and he calls himself the World’s Best Paranormal Investigator. The art is dark, yet HellBoy’s attitude adds some levity to the atmosphere.
The bad news is that there isn’t much in this first volume that you don’t know from watching the first movie. Having started with the movie that’s to be expected, but it did make the short promo strips included at the back of the volume the most interesting bits. Because I really enjoyed those, I believe if this had been my first HellBoy experience I’d have been won over. (In other words, if I wasn’t already a fan, I would be after reading Seed of Destruction.)
Not only is HellBoy a paranormal tale, and intriguingly so, but it is also carried by an anti-hero of sorts (as the impression readers are given is that HellBoy isn’t supposed to be the hero, he’s supposed to end the world) and one of my favorite character types, the intelligent, more-human-than-humans monstrous creature(Abe). It’s a combination that, when it works, will always get my interest and likely my dollar.
Aptly named, Sloppy Seconds is a collection of stories, brutal and stomach turning, first birthed by intimidating, infamous gross out man Wrath James White primarily for the WHC Gross Out contest. Having read Jeff Strand’s contributions in Gleefully Macabre Tales and White’s collaboration with Maurice Broaddus, Orgy of Souls, I thought I knew what I was getting into.
First up is the story that started it all, “Morbid Obesity”. Calling it the tale of a cannibalistic, necrophiliac fat- fetishist sums it up nicely.
Promising sinister things, next is “Panty Pudding”. Ageism doesn’t seem to exist in this tale of man’s obsession with an ancient crack whore’s underwear, and the bits that hide within them.
My favorite story, “Alive” is (hilariously, offensively) wrong from the first line–“Johnny was a cannibal with an insatiable appetite for human flesh… and he just happened to work at an abortion clinic.” Absolutely not a story for the easily offended (but then, neither is any book that’s a collection of stories from a gross out contest) if it helps Johnny does get what’s coming to him.
“Felching the Worm” could be an episode of Jackass gone terribly wrong. A man’s love for his dog goes farther than even other horror writers would dare it to go. I have to admit, I had to read this one fast to make it through.
Next up, “Gigolo Crackwhore” a one night stand of a story about a male crackwhore in a leper colony.
Finally comes “Hurting Him”, a brutal, violent tale that pushes the limits of scientific possibility and will make most horror writers feel normal. A revenge tale to top all others “Hurting Him” is a disturbing ode to human rage.
Despite what one might think of these tales, even if this is the only exposure they’ll ever have, White’s gore and nausea-inducing prose is window dressing, the flash that garners the attention. There’s more to all these stories than festering sores and bodily fluids. Some are over the top, sick humor. And some are startling looks at the nature of humanity’s attraction to that which means only destruction. Most of all, these stories aren’t just gross, they’re good, perfectly paced tales with melodious word choices, fierce and tight pacing despite the path they take far past “extreme”.