By: Jason Vaughn
Hello once again to all of you comic book connoisseurs out there in cyberspace. It’s about that time for another random genre selection as we reach our hand into the musty cob-web covered Meltdown Genius Pull box. Here’s an excerpt from the previous mix for anyone who might have missed it (and exactly why did you miss the last one, hmm?) and may not be sure how this works.
“Every iTunes library now contains a playlist called “Genius Mixes.” It’s a rather intuitive program that cycles through your library and pulls together multiple mixes from the different genre types in your music collection. So this got me to thinking? What if you could do the same thing to your comic collection and pull list? Just *click* and you have a selection of crime dramas, *click* a mix of superhero stories, *click* and there’s a handful of your favorite horror books to lull you into a blubbering nightmare-filled sleep before bed. So until the major publishers catch on and start doing something similar on their own websites, every so often I’ll be highlighting a random genre pull of current upcoming books and compare them to some back issue favorites. (By the way, I take full credit for the idea, guys! You can send the royalty checks to Jason Vaughn courtesy of… oh, who am I kidding.) This way, you don’t have to go digging around in that closet where you hide all of your comics from your girlfriend. And guys, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Continue reading »
It’s Good to be The King
by Stacey Levin
In Marvel’s “N,” which is based on SK’s short story and written by the talented film and television writer Marc Guggenheim, The King tells a chilling tale about living in a personal
hell of paranoia and obsession when his lead character descends into the dark world of mental illness. A lead character with a mental illness is not new territory for S.K. Some of his most famous creations were really just batsh*t crazy folks. (Hello, Annie Wilkes! How ya doin’, Jack Torrance?) But what’s different about Dr. John Bousaint in “N” is that he starts out sane. Actually, he’s a psychiatrist who is literally driven crazy by the mysterious circumstances that surround the death of one his patients known only as Patient N. Patient N committed suicide – pushed to the ultimate limit by hanging out at an odd geological formation of rocks in a barren field. Wait, what? The rocks made him kill himself? No, that can’t be and it sounds illogical. Well, that’s what the good Doc thought, too, until he went to investigate the place and soon found himself catching the same kind of madness that Patient N suffered from. So you’d think people would stay away from the weird rocks, right? Not in a horror comic, peeps. That’s just the beginning. From there, The King’s story and Guggenheim’s expert scripting literally describe every pain staking moment of what it must be like to slowly go insane… to know it’s happening to you, but be helpless to stop it. I can’t think of too many things more frightening than that. Artfully drawn by the accomplished artist Alex Maleev, the imagery in “N” makes you feel as if you too might be catch the insanity if you read too much. Effing brilliant.
With Vertigo’s “American Vampire,” The King takes on the overused area of vampiressszzzzzzz. Continue reading »