Hey you! Are you ready for an adventure? Do you dream of slaying dragons and finding a hoard of gold? Do you wish to exchange secrets with elves and dwarves while wandering the ever growing landscape of the world? Well you’re out of luck because that stuff doesn’t exist, but you know what does exist? Fantasy comics, and boy oh boy, do I got a great one for you! Scales and Scoundrels, the newest wandering adventurer title on the market, has all those things and more! Pub fights? Check! Apple thievery? Check! A handsome prince in need of rescuing?! You bet your +2 agility boots that’s a check! A true all-ages read, Scales and Scoundrels takes everything that makes the fantasy genre fun and gives it a cartoon-inspired pop that readers from kids to adults will absolutely get lost in. Toss in a strong lead and a deadly secret, and you got yourself a hit.
One of the fun things about the book is how it takes common tropes and flips them, starting with our tough-talking, gold-hoarding lead, Luvander. The comic opens up with her playing cards (or more precisely, an alternate version of Magic the Gathering) in a tavern with several burly men, when they immediately accuse her of cheating. Despite getting a massive beating, she gets back up and, with a touch of magic, burns the tavern to the ground. Suddenly, she’s on the run from the guards who are quick to accuse her of being an Urden, a half-dragon creature. Deciding that the town is simply not her style, she marches on into the wild unknown only to once again run into trouble; ROYAL trouble. But it’s not until she hears about a place of endless riches that things get really interesting!
This comic is absolutely awesome! Everything about it, from the characters to the world to the art, is exhilarating and fresh, like the first time you played Zelda or read The Hobbit. The main character is a nimble adventurer that can squirrel out of any situation and plays by her own rules; a classic outcast who takes no shit, whilst living in a world that is incredibly expansive, even from the smallest rooftops. She’s everything every kid dreams of being: the lead in their very own adventure. It may not be overly original or full of twists, but it knows itself and it knows its genre, which, every once in a while, is exactly what the comic doctor ordered. Sometimes you want a high adventure story about treasure and dragons without wondering when the ‘big twist’ or the ‘big reveal’ is coming (though there is definitely a twist coming if her fire-breathing has anything to say about it). It goes back to the roots of fantasy, where magic and mayhem is one blink away and all you need in life is meat on a stick and a hoard of gold. It’s a wonderful homage.
The art by GALAAD (which is a very odd pen name) is really what brings the whole comic together. He mixes cartoon aesthetic with big production colors and makes a work that not only jumps off the page but invites the reader to create their own narrative as Luvander wanders the landscape. He puts in a wonderful splash page of the village at sunrise in which Luvander surveys her surroundings, and allows the reader to fully grasp how beautiful and tempting her world is. He easily transitions in the next scene to a crowded market stall, like the beginning of a new chapter, and subdues the colors as Luvander starts her adventure. It’s so easy on the eyes that you almost don’t realize how involved you get until you reach the last page. Personally, I can’t wait until she starts exploring new areas and he starts doing larger scale pieces in a display of her growing knowledge.
Whether you’re a long time fantasy fan or just looking for your next hit of something fun, I highly suggest Scales and Scoundrels. On shelves now!
Since Warped Perspective recently celebrated all things folk horror, it’s only appropriate that their own comic reviewer checks out a new addition to the folk horror comic scene, Redlands. Comics and folk horror have gone hand in hand for decades, dating back to early horror anthologies that prominently featured witches, ghouls and the Devil, delivering them into the eager hands of children everywhere. Even now, popular titles such as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Wytches, Harrow County and others keep bringing back that old Puritan terror of evil lurking in the deep dark woods and Image Comics’ Redlands is no exception. A classic gothic tale of witches and madness, the series is as thoroughly creepy as it is original, though the first issue ends a little sooner than I prefer.
There is nothing more American folklore than the 2015 horror The Witch. Set in the New England of yesteryear, The Witch takes American witch legends and turns them into one of the most successful examples of folk horror in decades. The movie focuses on a Puritan family that is turned away from their village and live a secluded life on the edge of a forest. Unbeknownst to them, the forest is home to a witch and the family’s devout ways are perfect for her to corrupt and booooooy, does she ruin their day. Soon, the cow’s milk turns sour, the crops dry and fail, and the children beginning muttering to a large black goat named Black Phillip. But it’s not until the righteous father is forced to wander in the woods that things start to get really weird…
The Blair Witch Project is in the same vein as The Witch, but instead of a historical setting, it’s set in modern day (well 1994) New England. It plays with a lot of the same elements, including isolation in an unknown land and the witch messing with the three leads instead of outright killing them. For a quick recap, this found footage movie is about three college students who explore the legend of Blair Witch in Burkittsville, Maryland. After asking a few locals questions and dicking around with their gear, they soon hit the woods and end up getting lost, all the while being hunted by an invisible monster. Is it the famous Blair Witch, rumored to have cursed anyone who has stepped into the forest, or are they simply losing their minds?
Though originally written by Clive Barker, who is a native Brit, this movie is a solid work of Southern folklore. Candyman touches on American history, with an emphasis on early slavery and urban legends such as Bloody Mary and The Man with a Hook Hand, and mashes them into a hulking figure of revenge. This horror features a woman who is studying urban legends and stumbles on the legend of Candyman, a man with a severed hand who appears to those who say his name five times in front of a mirror before murdering them with his hook hand. While there isn’t a lot of backstory in the first movie, the sequel reveals him to be a slave who fell in love with a white woman and got punished for it by having his hand cut off and covered in honey for bees to attack.
If there’s one thing that’s a staple of folk horror the world over its cryptids and America is loaded with them. From Bigfoot in the northwest to the Chupacabra of the South to whatever the hell the Jersey Devil is (it’s Snookie right?), we’re up to our necks in weird monsters. The Mothman Prophecies picks a West Virginia oddity and thrusts Richard Gere into the role of a lifetime! In it, he plays a professor researching the legend of the Mothman, only to learn that those who have seen it have started to hear voices in their head, each connected to a particular tragedy. Though the Mothman monster doesn’t make nearly enough appearances, the movie is based on real events (or real enough) and it’s believed that the Mothman only shows up before a big tragedy.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is definitely the wild card in the bunch here, but stay with me. TCM is the kind of movie where it’s easy to get lost in the blood and guts and not realize that it’s heavily inspired by the darker side of American folklore: murder. Highwaymen, murderous families, cannibalism, and, of course, the serial killer all figure in the American consciousness. While murderers and cannibals are not a purely an American phenomenon, the US went on to create songs and make stories about them, sometimes even touting the persons as anti-heroes or murderous Robin Hood characters. Americans love crime to the point where criminals have become woven into the fabric of Americana.
Get Out, much like Candyman, is a layered horror that focuses on Southern folklore and racism, albeit much more modern racism than its predecessor. Yet, unlike Candyman, it goes even deeper into Southern mythology; it goes into voodoo. Okay, maybe not so much voodoo as hypnotism, but the movie clearly draws inspiration from the Afro-Cuban folklore brought over during the slavery years, which tells tales of possessed men via the undead. In Get Out, the black protagonist Chris Washington is invited to spend a weekend at his white girlfriend’s parents’ home, only to feel very out of place. But it’s not just the well-dressed black help that’s putting him on edge, but something much more sinister and the nagging suspicion that he might just be next in line.
The US has always been a heavily religious country. In fact, that’s why the original settlers left for the new world, so they could find a place where they could pray without the fear of prosecution which haunted them in Europe. Freedom of religion is even a staple of the US Constitution and that freedom has been utilised in a variety of ways for hundreds of years. From holy rollers to traveling bible salesmen, we sure do love our God, in whatever form he may take. Red State is what happens when we love our God too much and have to get the police involved. Harkening back to the real-life cult standoff in Waco, Texas, Red State pulls inspiration from centuries of preachers and the good word and exposes how evil some of it can be.
If you’re not sitting down, I need you to find a seat, and if you are sitting down, I need you to drink some tea so you can spit it out when you hear what I’m about to say. Matt Groening, famously known for Futurama and The Simpsons, has announced a new animated series to be released exclusively through Netflix. That’s right, a new cartoon from the man who brought us such famous memes as “shut-up and take my money” and “to shreds you say?” will be filling your rotating quote wheel with even more catchy one liners!
While I truly adored this work, I felt it fell short of having the same punch as Ito’s bigger titles such as Gyo or Uzumaki, or even his other shorter collections like the Tomie translations. Dissolving Classroom, however, does feature a lot of good, solid scares accompanied by his trademark detail work. The melting parts are very detailed and he doesn’t shy away from using smart shading and busy line-work to really make the gross parts pop. It’s very similar to the Garbage Pail Kids-style of art where it’s just the right amount of detail to make you puke in your mouth a little. Both Chizumi and Yuuma are creepy kids, especially Chizumi, who is frequently seen with heavy shadows under her eyes to up the creep ante. Ito definitely has his scares down to an art on this one and with his work on the two leads, he creates a very distinct couple of characters. Also, the Devil is in this and that’s just rad.
For those of us who were teens in the late 90s to early 2000s and loved Marilyn Manson and JNCO jeans more than life itself, the name Jhonen Vasquez is very familiar. If you didn’t go through puberty like a butterfly of bad fashion, Jhonen Vasquez was the creator of such underground comics as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Squee, and I Feel Sick. Along with Roman Dirge and Hot Topic, he was an influential part of the “Spooky Cute” movement and eventually went on to help establish the “lol, so random xD” online subculture that plagues the internet to this day. The latter movement can be partially (okay, mostly) attributed to the short lived animated show Invader Zim. Though the series was canceled after two seasons, its cult status launched the show into television infamy and inspired a comic series of the same name from Oni Press. The comic is generally handled by a revolving collection of writers, which makes issue #40 that much more special. This one is penned by Vasquez himself.
Wonder Woman is a lot of things to a lot of people. Superhero, feminist, Amazon, an icon, a killer, and the longest-running female hero to ever grace the pages of comic books. She was the reason a lot of girls started reading comics, and a lot of boys learned that girls can kick ass and take names. She is exactly what her name is, a wonder of a woman, a genre-breaking character that proved that you, yes YOU, can do anything! And yet, despite having been around for over 75 years, it wasn’t until 2017 that she finally got her own movie. Which I finally saw! And it was pretty damn good. 
What’s cute, cuddly, and strikes fear into the hearts of villains everywhere? If you answered Baby Batman, you’re pretty close. If you answered the Funko Toy version of Judge Dredd, that would be very specific, but you’d be correct! Out this week from IDW comics, the pint-sized, bubble-headed crime fighter stars in his own one-shot comic book for fans of most ages. A work that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s a fun and quick read between issues of IDW’s grittier Dredd work Judge Dredd: Blessed Earth, and waiting for the Dredd TV series to finally happen.