Halloween Horror Nights
not the official ones, the ones where i eat candy in my sweatpants on my couch
Back again! Skipped a week of posting I didn’t want to skip, thanks toooooooo *checks planner* a few meetings, onboarding a new project, and a big script I had to get in, followed by a busy local work weekend at Los Angeles Comic Con this past weekend.
I always have a great time at LACC. Typically, it’s my last show of the year - they used to hold it the first weekend of December - and Blake and I show up in our goth little Santa hats and sell everyone on the idea of Signed Comics as Holiday Gifts. But this year it was early, pre-New York Comic Con, and pre-Thought Bubble.
With that in mind, we still had a great time - meeting up with friends and fans new and old. It was also a great time to see Harley Quinn readers, since Sweeney Boo and I ended our run with issue #43 this past week.
The cool thing is, like I mentioned before, it doesn’t feel like the end. The same week our final issue dropped, the first volume of our three-volume collection dropped too - meaning we’re now out for a new audience to read. The way the book sits on the shelf forever for a lot of folks is in trade, so I stay really excited about the book coming out and finding new readers until all the trades are out.
One more L.A. Comic Con Shoutout - much love to librarian and comics fan extraordinaire Santana for saying she thinks my newsletters are funny. You can thank/blame her encouragement for me writing this week, hahahahaaa.
HARLEY QUINN Vol 2: EYE DON’T LIKE ME TPB - 11.19.24
CREEPSHOW 2024 HOLIDAY SPECIAL - 12.18.24
THOUGHT BUBBLE - 11.12.24-11.17.24
CATWOMAN: NINE LIVES TPB - 12.03.24
HARLEY QUINN Vol 3: CLOWN ABOUT TOWN - 03.25.25
I have a mild cold from the con, so instead of a big value-add writing essay (which I do owe you all) this week, we’re gonna do some good old fashioned scary movie recommendations based on everything I’ve watched so far in October.
Like everyone else you follow, I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies with it being Halloween*, so here’s what I thought of them:
THE SUBSTANCE: (★★) I wanted to love this movie, and in the beginning, I thought I might. The creature work and a lot of the design was fantastic. I appreciated Demi’s vulnerability in the performance a lot - she bares it all in more ways than one. But ultimately, it didn’t come together for me any more than a Tales from the Crypt episode, and those don’t clock in at two hours and twenty minutes. This is definitely a movie that could have been a 90 minute schlock horror, but insists on itself for almost double that, and doesn’t say anything special. Can anyone tell me what the benefit of taking The Substance is?
TALK TO ME: (★★★★★). This one (and one other on this list) left me with the best feeling possible - it made me want to write a movie. If this movie had been around when I was watching the original Scream, it would be up there on the same list. One of the most realistic depictions of teenagers being dumbasses that I’ve ever seen. Where my critique of The Substance relies largely on the fact that none of the character’s motivations make any sense, Talk to Me never suffers from that, instead making you sympathize more and more with some unlikeable characters the more you learn about them. Brilliant work - and what an iconic prop. Catch me papier-macheing a creepy hand prop as festive decor.
SAW(★★★.5): You’ve seen Saw, right? I found out someone I love hadn’t recently, and I remedied that right away. If you haven’t seen it - I love you too, please watch it. It gets a reputation as “torture porn” and while the later installments move in that direction, the first movie is really just a fairly tight thriller from back when James Wan made horror movies with real tension instead of ghostly jumpscares—(SORRY, sorry, fight me in the comments.) Wan’s debut feature remains a fascinating intro to an all-new killer with more than one truly gasp-worthy twists, and an ending that was an instant entry into the horror hall of fame. Be nice to Saw. It’s still really good and it’s not it’s fault the later ones sucked.
Update: Because I love you all so much (and I have a cold) I decided to rewatch Saw II and I think I’ve been a little unfair to it. I remembered it as a bad movie with a few good scares, but it’s actually a pretty good movie utterly ruined by the Beginning of Act 3 reveal, which is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen in a film. But then the ending is, like in the first Saw, a pretty great reveal. So, maybe watch that one too. It’s more linear than the first, which you might like. (★★.75?)
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (★★★★.5): I was super excited when this came out, and cooled my jets when I read some middling reviews, but after seeing it last night? I can’t believe I waited. While it commits at least one fairly brutal narrative sin (like abandoning its documentary premise about halfway through) the overall product is tense from start to finish. David Dastmalchian carries the whole thing on his lovely little shoulders with a performance that never veers into too-much-ville. It gets right up close to jumping that shark and then pulls back with a final twist that had me hollering. Think Ghostwatch meets Exorcist 2 with a heaping helping of retro Satanic flavor.
FRIGHT NIGHT (2011 remake) (★★★★): I felt a little insane for how much I loved this remake until
agreed with me. I’m a big fan of the original with Chris Sarandon as The Vampire Jerry, but I’m an even bigger fan of Colin Farrell. And Toni Collette. And Anton Yelchin. And David Tennant. This movie is crazy, with the kind of cast that feels created for you in a lab if you’re a certain kind of movie watcher. On top of that, it actually provides a few genuine scares and jaw-dropping horror moments that had me standing and applauding. Well done, Fright Night.Not in the mood for movies? Here’s a bunch of other stuff I’ve been digging: watching old seasons of Dragula for the first time, The Penguin (on MAX), Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow (a writing book recommended to me by
at Dragoncon), The Franchise (also on MAX), making coffee in my new Bialetti pot (recommended to me by Andy Belanger at Dragoncon), this YouTube channel of a woman who grooms enormous cats, ’s homemade ramen.What are you watching that’s been a good scare?
*Halloween is one month long, it starts October 1st, and ends November 1st. My birthday, October 24th, is generally observed as a special day toward the end of the month-long observance period. Like Lent, for goth lapsed Catholics.
Stay weird, talk soon 🎃
-TH 10.09.24 13:29
Thank you for talking to my daughter at LACC. She is about to turn 5 and it was her 4th LACC. She was so excited to tell my wife about talking to an actual comic writer. You were very kind.