Archie Horror: Post Seven: Vampironica

Earlier this year, after the successes of Afterlife with Archie, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Jughead: The Hunger, the good folks at Archie Horror introduced a new title to the imprint.

Vampironica

Created by Greg and Megan Smallwood, Vampironica follows Veronica Lodge in a Riverdale not quite like the one we know, as she is attacked by a client of her father's, and turned into a Vampire.

Part what what I've always found tricky about the rivals in Archie comics (both Veronica and Reggie) is how easy it is to simply write them off as necessary foils for good guys Archie Andrews and Better Cooper, but in turning Ronnie into a vampire herself, the character is actually able to shine in a way I have seldom seen her; as a no nonsense young woman intent on changing her world to one in which she sees value.

To be honest I wasn't really expecting much out of this title, but found it to be a fun read and one I'd happily recommend to others.

As the title is still fairly new (issue four comes out later this week), I don't want to go into too many details, but I have read that the creators cited by An American Werewolf in London and Fright Night as inspirations, so I think it's safe to say the title is a little closer to Shaun of the Dead than Dawn of the Dead on the Horror/Comedy meter.

Archie Horror Post 6: Jughead: The Hunger

Okay - so what if Jughead was a werewolf.

Hey, where are going? Hear me out!

You know how Jughead is always ravenously hungry? Well what if that was just a symptom of the fact that he's actually a werewolf?

That's pretty much the concept behind a one-shot Archie Horror title that came out last year (2017). Jughead: The Hunger, written by Frank Tieri with art by Michael Walsh, opens in a Riverdale hunted by a serial killer called "The Ripper".

This killer turns out to be our own Foreyth Pendleton "Jughead" Jones III and using some pretty clear influence from The Wolf Man, follows Jughead as he becomes aware of just what his monstrous side has been up to in the last few weeks.  In a fun twist, it also turns out that Betty Cooper comes from a long line of Werewolf hunters, and she's been waiting and watching in case Jughead were to change.

The initial story was well received and an ongoing series started soon after. As with Afterlife with Archie and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, it exists in it's own world (although Ms. Spellman has yet to appear), and, although extremely gruesome, tells a pretty interesting survivalist horror story of exactly what a young man tries to do once he discovers his own inner demon.

My only complaint of the series is the lack of a letters column, both for the interactions with the fans and as the creator comments have been a personal favourite part of the previous two titles.

In the end, a pretty fun read for werewolf fans, and one that begins to move beyond lycanthropy in issue nine...

Archie Horror Day 2: History Lessons

 So here I was all ready to go with a deep dig into the 2013 Afterlife with Archie comic and then I find out that actually, this is not the first time Archie comics has done horror, and that the series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is named after the imprints Chilling Adventures in Sorcery series which launched back in 1973 (a few years before I was born).

Luckily for me, however, the first seven issues have been released in a collection called Chilling Tales of Sorcery v.1, which means I didn't have to dig through old back issues in various comic book stores or break the bank using eBay or the like. Instead I got to immediately dig into a little bit of Archie history I wasn't aware of until yesterday.

So Chilling Tales of Sorcery actually starts out in the traditional Archie illustrated style, and for the first two issues is introduced by Sabrina the teenage witch, who, Cryptkeeper-style, sets up each of the stories and often gives a punch line ending as well. The stories themselves feel quite a bit like classic E.C. Comics tales, with monsters and ghouls featuring strongly as well a criminals, mad scientists, and a number of innocents who end up in their clutches.

As the comics were abiding by the Comic Code Authority, they tend to be a little more light-hearted overall, but a number of them end with gruesome fates awaiting the villains (and sometimes misunderstood heroes).

These comics (the collection I have contains the first seven) were a real treat for me and entirely unexpected! Although they don't cross over with Archie comics characters (except for Sabrina in the first two issues), they are well worth the read for anyone who likes a little bit of spooky fun in comic book form.

Archie Horror with Bookmonkey: Day One

Welcome to our 2018 look at the Horror Genre and this year we'll be digging in to the Archie Horror imprint of comic titles, including Afterlife with Archie, Chilling Tales of Sabrina, Jughead: The Hunger, and Vampironica.

Having been an Archie reader for most of my reading life (short stories AND sitting next to the grocery counter - how could I not read these little titles growing up?), and being a huge horror fan from my earliest days the mix of the two in 2013 was sure to peak my interest.

I'm going to spend the next month digging into the various series and ask myself whether they mix well, or work to simply alienate Archie and Horror fans from each other.

Come along with me!

Night Thirty-One

So here we are, the end of my trip through five games, two novels, a guidebook, any number of YouTube videos and a family-themed restaurant with some over-enthusiastic animatronics.

In the end, Five Nights at Freddy's works as a pretty fun introduction to horror video games and horror stories - although the game levels can certainly get frustrating, the tension you build in yourself while listening for movement in the restaurant beyond what you can see on the security cameras can be a lot of fun, and the jump-scares are pretty great too.

Although the deeper mythology of the games was a little trickier for me to get a handle on, I cannot deny the marketing, and as you can see in the picture above, you can get all sorts of things from Freddy Fazbears if you're interested.

A neat little horror franchise I was glad to experience.

That's all folks!

Night Twenty-Eight

So here we are at the final (latest) game, Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location and this game finally allows you to move around, more than just from side to side in the same room, and ends with some pretty terrifying concepts.

For me the problem was that each night sort of seemed like a great rough idea of a stage, but then clearly hadn't gone through any sort of revision...

Basically the game has you monitoring an animatronic factory, wherein new animatronics are created and maintained to be rented out for parties.  As with the original three games, you play night staff who must survive your shift by completing different tasks depending on the factory rooms you enter.

In the end, I found the game to be fun, but under-realized, I think if some more work and time had been put into it, it could have been pretty amazing, but as it stands the game is good for a few scares but is largely forgettable.

Night Twenty-Four

Trying desperately to make my way through Five Nights at Freddy's 4 I turned to the official guidebook to the series, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Freddy Files.  This book is a game by game guide to successfully passing each game, including maps, character descriptions and fan theories for each game and both novels.

In addition it explains the mini-games, a staple of the series from the second game forward, in which eight-bit style games are interspersed between each night and work to tell the various back stories of each game.

All in all, for a guidebook it was pretty fun, but I do wish there had been a chapter on Cawthon's original creation of the game, rather than simply focusing on in-game strategy and backstory, as behind-the-scenes info can be some of the most interesting.

Although 4 is almost certainly a wash for me, I've still got a few days to try and crack Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location before the month is over.

Night Twenty-Two

So after making my way through two novels and three games, I appear to have left the restaurant (or theme park) and found myself solidly back in a childhood bedroom, hearing things moving in my house and trying to make it through the night.

Five Nights at Freddy's 4 appears to have left the setting of all the previous games behind, there is no longer a fellow calling on the phone, nor are there security cameras.

Instead you play a child in their own bedroom, listening to noises in your house and either shining a flashlight or holding the door closed as something makes its way towards you.

First up, the graphics are really good - the animatronics look incredibly detailed and the ability to move (even just moving across your room) makes the game feel much more immersive.

The problem for me comes from the sound.  Now to be fair, I think if I had a limitless amount of time I could more easily figure out which sound means which creature is coming and more importantly which door to guard, but as I've only got nine days left this month, I'm afraid I'll have to live with the half week I spent trying to get through this game and then move onto the fifth and most current game Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location - which is where I'll be spending my virtual time next week.

A really neat game and one I'm sure to return to when I've got the time!

Night Nineteen

Having just finished the third game, I moved on to the second novel.  Cawthon and Breed-Wrisley's second novel, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Twisted Ones, follows Charlie a year after the events of The Silver Eyes.  Now a student in University, Charlie is finding she may have her own talent in robotics, following in her father's footsteps.

Having destroyed the original Freddy Fazbear's in the previous novel, all of the original animatronics are long gone, except now there appear to be three new giant-sized animatronics on the move, and this time not limited to one location.

As the novel just came out (it's release date was less than three months ago), I don't want to go too deep into the plot, but it was a pretty engrossing sequel and set itself up for a third entry.

Well worth the read.

Night Seventeen

So here we are at Five Nights at Freddy's 3, set thirty years after the first game and taking place at an amusement park called Fazbear's Fright.

As with the previous two games the main points are the same; you have to survive from midnight to six in the morning over the course of five nights to completed the game.  Much of the gameplay comes down to timing out when to check various cameras or take other actions to slow down the creatures (or creature in the third game) and the game is filled with eerie imagery ending with some pretty freaky jump scares if you fail on any given night.

The main villain of this game is Springtrap - a sort of rotted version of Bonnie from the first two games and although you hallucinate many other Freddy characters throughout the game, Springtrap is the only actual animatronic that can attack you.

Of the three games, this one took me by far the longest, taking me almost two weeks to complete, and although the villain was pretty terrifying and I enjoyed using one of the creepiest parts of the previous game as a weapon in this game, I did miss the valuable use of sound the previous games had to complete levels.  I was actually able to complete two nights in this game with the sound off, which would have been impossible in either of the original games.

A challenging game, but as it was so far removed from in time from the previous games, it sort of felt disconnected for me.

Night Fifteen

While I continue to work my way through Five Night's at Freddy's 3 (I just finished night 4 y'all!), I decided to read the first novel from the franchise, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes by series creator Scott Cawthon and novelist Kira Breed-Wrisley.

The novel follows a seventeen-year-old girl named Charlie, who returns to her hometown of Hurricane, UT, to attend a memorial for a friend who passed away during a horrific event as a child.

The novel follows Charlie and a number of her friends as they begin to deal with what occurred and find themselves revisiting the old Freddy Fazbear's pizza, which has been closed down for years since the event that cost their friend his life.

As a YA novel, the story moves along nicely, although it left me with more questions than answers - first of all, how this ties into the series, secondly, if reading the novel helps with the games or vice versa; I mean, both stories include the crazed animatronics, and there are elements from games 1 and 2 that appear in the novel, but the setting is different and although I really enjoyed the restaurant as described in the book (an abandoned, walled up establishment, waiting in the centre of a closed outlet mall), none of the games I've played to date have that as their setting, and I'm not sure any future ones will.

An interesting story, and yes, I'll be reading the sequel next week, but tangentially tied to the game series at best.

Night Ten

After successfully spending Five Nights at Freddy's, my reward was to immediately download the second game and begin.

On the surface, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 works very similar to the first game - you play a night security guard, watching cameras and switching on lights to ensure animatronic monsters don't make their way to you and kill you.

A couple key differences with the second game.

1) You have a flashlight, as well as the ability to shine a light while looking at security cameras
2) You have a Freddy Fazbear suit that you can put on quickly, often fooling the animatronics that get too close, and
3) There are now mini-games, which to be fair took a little work (and wikipedia help) to both figure out and understand how they connect to the backstory of the game.

The game also includes a music box which requires constant winding or a terrifying puppet creature comes after you with little chance to stop it.

At this point I realize that there are enough creatures in the game I should dedicate a post to them all...

Night Six

Okay, so here's how the basic gameplay of Five Nights at Freddy's works.

You check the hallways to either side of the security office, then you scan through the security cameras.  

The problem is the animatronics move when you're not looking.  Also, you can hear footsteps, rustling, and banging going on out in the restaurant proper.

So the gameplay (which lasts about eight minutes in the PC version and four minutes in the mobile versions), has you sitting and waiting in a room you can't leave, while giant animatronic creatures move slowly (and in one case very quickly) towards you.

Even though there is no overt violence in the game; as the monsters move to bite you and then the image immediately gets cut off to static, the jump scares are quite effective, and you're really playing against your own rising tension as the clock slowly moves from midnight to 6am.

As a guy who has played through horror video games ranging from the old Nintendo Friday the 13th and the Playstation Saw videogame, I have to say it took me a pretty long time to make my way through each of the nights - you need the sound to effectively play, but it does dramatically raise the tension levels.

After about a week and a half I completed the first game, survived the week, collected my paycheck and immediately downloaded the sequel, Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Night Three

In Scott Cawthon's Five Nights at Freddy's you play an unnamed night security guard at Freddy Fazzbear's Pizza, a theme restaurant that includes a number of animatronic creatures which seem to get up to no good between the hours of midnight and six am.  Your goal is simple - survive five nights.

The game begins inside an office, with little light, a running fan, and a door on either side of you.  You can scan left and right, and before you begin clicking randomly on buttons a phone rings and the following message plays:

Hello, hello? Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night. Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I'm finishing up my last week now, as a matter of fact. So, I know it can be a bit overwhelming, but I'm here to tell you there's nothing to worry about. Uh, you'll do fine. So, let's just focus on getting you through your first week. Okay?

And so begins the first of your five nights.  Unlike the majority of horror-themed games out there, you are incredibly limited in what you can do - basically your options are

1) Turn on the light to your left

2) Turn on the light to your right

3) Lock the door to your left

4) Lock the door to your right

3) Look through the security cameras

There are only two problems - first, every time you operate the lights or lock a door, your power goes down and eventually you run out, and second, the animatronics appear to be slowly but surly moving towards you...

Night One

When I was a kid there were a number of places that topped my list of perfect birthday party venue.

3) My backyard - nearby, lots of food, no chance of getting lost.

2) The Movie Theatre - going down with a few friends to see whatever the latest action/horror/comedy popular culture had to offer. A little pricier than home, but tasty snacks and a shared experience nonetheless.

1) Bullwinkles. For those not familiar with the chain, it was pretty similar to Chuck E. Cheese, wherein there was pizza, ball pits, birthday rooms and lots and lots of games. Also giant animatronic animals that would sing songs and perform.

So every summer as I start to gear up for my October Theme-month, I begin looking around the horror genre for either an old favourite to revisit or a new topic to take a deep dive into. This summer, while spending a day hanging out with my youngest daughter at West Edmonton Mall, she suggested I look into doing Five Nights At Freddy's, a horror video game series.

Having never heard of it, I asked her what it was about and she immediately took me into the nearest Hot Topic to show me the section devoted to the game.

Doing a little research on my own, I found the game, which takes place at a Bullwinkles-styled establishment, actually has four sequels, two novels and a potential upcoming movie.

So yeah - let's do it! This year I'll be spend October with Five Night's At Freddy's.

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Fourteen - Ash vs Evil Dead

Happy Halloween Everyone!

So a month later and I finally get to blog about Ash vs Evil Dead, or at least the first season.

The series picks up thirty years after the original trilogy (The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992), with Ash (Bruce Campbell), still working as a stock boy and using made up stories of how he lost his hand to pick up women.  Unfortunately for Ash, the Necronomicon (the book of the dead) is not yet done with him, and the series begins with him realizing evil is once again released on Earth.

As the series (produced by Campbell, original director Sam Raimi, and original producer Robert Tapert) is ten episodes long, it introduces two companions for Ash, Pablo and Kelly, two other employees at Valu-Mart who get swept up in his fight against the deadites (corpses that have been reanimated by the evil released from the book).

As with Evil Dead II, the series is a horror-comedy, putting the characters against all sorts of horrible "out of the frying pan into the fire" scenarios and allowing Ash to come across as just a terrible human being, who has (deep within) the potential to be a great hero.

Separate from the plot, each episode feature hard rock from the 1970s and 1990s (and largely from the Detroit music scene of the time), which is a great throwback to the music of Ash's younger days.

The series is a must for fans of the franchise, but also works as a great leaping on point, assuming you don't mind horror mixed with comedy.

I loved it, and will be waiting for the second season as soon as it's available.

So in the end, I spent the month going through a lot of things I had been meaning to get around to (in some cases for years) and although I didn't keep everything, I'm happier for have experienced it all, and may give this concept another try from the various Science Fiction or Fantasy titles I've got scattered around my house in the future.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Thirteen - Jericho

Sitting on my video game shelf for the last few year's has been Clive Barker's Jericho, a Playstation 3 title that was written and co-designed by Clive Barker.  It follows a team of military witches who are called upon by the military to stop supernatural threats.

Unfortunately for me, being a fan of the writer didn't help as the game mixes two of my least favourite types of video games; first-person shooters (I tend to get a little nauseous after playing for more than a few minutes), and progressive game style (wherein you follow a simple track and don't really have the chance to explore the world).

I did my best for the first half of the month to play about half an hour a day, and I did get through the first third of the game, but eventually the first-person play style just got me woozy (and not in a good way).

Oh well, not everything I checked out this month would end up as my cup of tea, and by finishing as much of the game as I could, I cleared the last little bit of the pile to reveal...

ASH VS EVIL DEAD (and yes,  I knew it was there all along, but I'm excited!)

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Twelve - Army of Darkness vs Hack/Slash

Down to my last three items this month and I'm finally getting to the nitty gritty, edging closer to that TV series I've been looking forward to for over a year now.

Today it's Tim Seeley's Army of Darkness vs Hack/Slash, and it's pretty darn good.  The story picks up a few months after the end of Hack/Slash the story begins with Cassie living a relatively stable life, when in walks Ashly J. Williams, hero of the Evil Dead franchise and everything goes to hell.

As crossovers are a key part of the horror genre, going as far back as Frankenstein meets the Wolfman (and if you want to get all literate, Enkidu and Grendel), so mixing these two destroyers of evil is a lot of fun.  Both characters normally work as lone wolves, so to see them together is a kind of fun game of one-upmanship which is both charming and fun.

Yes the story can get quite graphic and gruesome, but it keeps the flavour of both series, and works well as a kind of capstone to Hack/Slash.

A lot of fun!

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Eleven - Mimic (Director's Cut)

Although it's not my favourite of his films, the first horror film by Guillermo del Toro I ever saw was the 1997 film Mimic. The film focuses on two scientists who introduce a genetically modified cockroach to New York City to cure an epidemic causing deaths among children. Three years later, the introduction of these cockroaches end up having a terrifying effect.

At the time my wife and I saw the original film, our complaints were "It was too dark", but the imagery really stuck with me, so year's later, when I heard a director's cut was coming out, I was pretty interested in seeing the differences.

For starters, the movie is much brighter than I recall it, with vivid blues and oranges visible throughout the film. Considering the film is largely a B-Movie monster movie, I would still consider it a worthwhile experience for horror movie fans. It's definitely flawed in a number of spots, but the commentary track and other assorted features give an excellent discussion on how mixing an independent director together with a studio can go wrong (especially early in the director's career).

The film does have a lot of neat visuals going for it, and as a big del Toro fan myself, I consider it a well worth addition to my collection, but if you're interested in monster movies, there are other pictures I'd recommend seeing instead.

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Ten - Fatale

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip's Fatale is pretty much a comic that fits very nicely in the space between Horror and Crime(specifically Cosmic Horror and Film Noir), and unlike the rest of the titles in The Hoard, this one I've actually read before.

But back when I read it (for a book club), the series hadn't finished yet, so although I knew how the story ended, I was unaware of how it finished.

The series focuses on a woman named Josephine, or "Jo" and as with the portrayal of the traditional femme fatale archetype, Jo has the ability to ensnare men with her charms.  Unlike the traditional character however, Jo's abilities are extreme, largely uncontrollable, and come from a very dark origin.

As with many film noire stories, Fatale is largely told from the point of view of the men in Jo's life, which allow the reader to slowly, but surely put together a picture of this woman for themselves.

The pairing of crime fiction with Lovecraftian horror is pretty ingenious, as it allows the reader to see a world running parallel to our own, and one that is frankly terrifying.

I first read Brubaker during his run on Gotham Central, a police procedural comic which takes place in Batman's Gotham City, but focusing on the day-to-day operations of a police department.

Fatale is a really great read, and one I've been happy to have in my collection for a few years now.  As I've now finished the series, I've got to say it's definitely earned it's place and won't be leaving anytime soon.