The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (1968)

So, I know I usually review comic books but I love films -- particularly cult films with strong female characters, old school special effects, action and some degree of wonder.

I spend a lot of time watching movies (as much as I do reading comic books) and I this one I actually let sit for awhile before I tackled it. I blame a really bad review I read for making me bump this one back on my queue and I wish I hadn't; The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch is awesome!
The female lead is capable and brave, her tormentors are terrifying and despite the liberal use of plastic tarantulas, it still manages to be chilling.

Spoilers follow!

                 The Snake Girl and the Silver Haired Witch

Noted for his work on the Gamera series, director Noriaki Yusaka's remake of a manga by acclaimed horror mangaka Kazuo Umezz is a psychological thriller with fantastic elements -- the driving force of the movie is the plucky, fearless middle schooler Sayuri and her tortured psyche.

In other writers reviews of this film, I see them urging parents not to show this to children. I don't agree, this was the kind of film I would have loved as a 10 year old girl! The villains (Her creepy older sister, the villainous masked witch and her enabling mother) are all scary in different ways -- and all would have been relatable to me as a pre-teen.

I really can't get over what a fantastic little girl character Sayuri is. She gets properly scared, but when faced with real danger she refuses to back down. All of the abuse handed down by the films villains doesn't break her resolve to discover the truth and make sure everyone else knows whats going on. When confronted by a horde of tarantulas, she problem solves. When the witch locks her up, she scales down the side of the house and finds help. When a gigantic snake tries to eat her after an evil witch throws daggers at her, she takes that snake out.

There are a lot of other reasons to watch this -- stellar performances from the cast, beautiful direction interlaced with (very) trippy dream sequences and the brutal, bloody climax -- but none eclipse the heroine.

All New X-Men 01 (2016) Dennis Hopeless & Mark Bagley

Good evening guys! It's almost midnight where I live and I just finished reading All New X-Men 01 (the new #1? I'm not totally sure what warranted the need for a new #1 but okay?)

There are spoilers for the issue inside, but I try to keep them minor. 

love all of this

All New X-Men 01 is shaping up to be an old school road trip story  that's lacking Jean Grey (She's on Storms Extraordinary team if you miss her) but giving us an equally awesome team in Scott, Bobbie, Hank, Warren, Wolverine (Laura Kinney), Kid Apocalypse and Oya (Idie Okonkwo or The Girl Who Wouldn't Burn)

The X-men were the first major Marvel canon I followed. It started with X-men Evolution re-runs on CN (writing fanfiction and shipping muties) and quickly progressed to TPB's and back issues during the Chuck Austen era (Pretty dismal, though it led to much better things and I'm glad to say I was around for some really excellent runs on the various x-books)

This book is very cool! It feels like old school comic hijinks are brewing, and the action is already bananas,

(I also love the focus on Scott Summers because he's always been one of my favorite comic book characters, and I particularly like the additional internal struggle while Young Scott deals with the actions of Old Scott)

It reminds me of the road tripping that Claremonts team did back in the 70's (which I read in those big, cheap and beautiful Essential X-Men TPB's)

This is a really poor place to jump on, though, if you're not familiar with the All New X-Men and this being a #1 should maybe have done more to catch up with the characters and their story lines. If I had picked this up as a 13 year old newbie, I would be a little confused. I miss those old school editorial notes! Or the way characters would randomly provide huge chunks of background information.

Anyway: You should read this, Hank's tour bus is sick but know a little bit about the above mentioned cast before you start this book!

Hanks bus is so cool.

Kill Your Boyfriend (1995) Grant Morrison, Philip Bond & D'Isreali

"People said we were evil, but they missed the point, It was just high spirits!"

Kill Your Boyfriend is an odd book. It's gleefully alternative, it's never reasonable, and it comes off as fetishistic at first blush -- "Oh, a cute school girl and an older man going on a sexy crime spree together!" It reads like the synopsis of a one handed read, to be honest.

It's not, though. It's a weird, joyful ode to young love and anarchy couched in an era that has firmly passed but reigns as the fashionable nostalgic throw back. 

     It begins with our lead character, a middle school girl who just wants to get laid and who seems to have decided life is pointless horseshit. When she runs out on night as her parents argue over her, (It seems Dad is a creep who's obsessed with what she has on under her uniform and is trying to blame her for his lusty attentions) she winds up running into the arms of the town bad boy who gets her drinking and convinces her it's time to kill her inattentive, abstinent boyfriend right away.  

   

They do the deed, fall madly in love and start their crime spree -- they put on costumes, do every kind of drug they can and start fucking, killing and hitchhiking their way to help a motley group of equally hedonistic art students blow up a government monuments as an artistic statement. One thing leads to another, though, and their crimes catch up with them, resulting in a conclusion that with the exception of one kind of honed in little plot twist is definitely worth not spoiling.

This is one of my favorite one shots of all time, and is Grant Morrison in excellent form. It's a grindhouse movie in comic format and maintains an excellent pace that doesn't leave anything behind but moves so fast you can't help but feel it. If you see this one, definitely grab it! 

Scarlet Witch #1 2016

Scarlet Witch #1 (2016)

Beautiful art, but I still maintain that font is distressingly tacky

In Scarlet Witch #1 (Story by James Robinson and pencils by Vanesa Del Rey), Wanda is trying to leave the past behind her and be her own hero -- a hero whose goal is to save magic as we know it and to do it solo.


The book begins with Scarlet Witch startling awake after a dream and examining her reflection. In the panel before, the iconic press photo from when she and her brother joined Cap's newly formed Avengers team (issue #16, year). "A little more grey, a few more wrinkles" she muses, before she puts on the coffee and exchanges some witty banter with her roommate, the ghost of Agatha Harkness. A few pages of exposition about her motives (To right magical wrongs without the support of her team) walks us downtown to a crime scene and a violent exorcism that reveals some of what we can expect Ms. Maximoff to be fighting against in her first story arc.

Agatha looks amazing on the dark backdrops

So, I know reviews of this book have been mostly positive and I would love to like this book but so far I'm not impressed. Vanesa Del Ray's art is lovely sometimes but it suffers for a lot of the book -- it's can look a little muddled, it's so stylized it seems to take away from the story, and her faces get a bit wonky in many panels. However, her fight scene was gorgeous (though, again, a bit hard to follow). The colorist, Jordie Bellaire, should get special props for the work he did making the art in this issue pop. Someone decided on a odd, thick seventies style font for her title and it feels goofy and out of place.

Story wise, Scarlet Witch is interesting -- the origin of the hex is neat and the twists are, too -- but the book moves into adventure too quickly. I wish the author had taken the time to introduce me to who Wanda has become. I want to see her moving into her slick upper east side townhouse, I want to see her pouring over her bank statement with Agatha Harknesses's ghost, I want to see exactly how she happened into having a ghost roomie to begin with. Robinson makes it very clear that his Wanda is doing it for herself, but how can I care If I'm not sure exactly who she is?

I'll definitely give Scarlet Witch it's first story arch to find its feet before I make a firm decision either way, and I really hope it doesn't disappoint. I'm not optimistic, but I would love to be surprised!