Comics Corner - Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (2018 - Present)

Comics Corner - Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (2018 - Present)

Elvira was my first crush.  As a wee fella, I stayed up late one Friday night, and then BOOM!--there she was.  Wow.  I've got goosebumps just thinking about it.  In truth, as a lifelong horror fanatic, my fondness for dearest Elvira and my love for things that go bump in the night represent a legitimate "chicken or the egg" scenario.  In other words, I'm not sure which one came first.

Anyway, the Mistress of the Dark is still my biggest celebrity crush (and my only celebrity crush, truth be told*), and I may just have her to thank for all the joy the horror genre has brought me over the years.  I also dig comics in a big way, so when I heard that Dynamite was set to launch this Elvira: Mistress of the Dark series last year, I made sure to put it on my pull list at Fanboy Comics.  To be quite frank, I didn't know if it would prove to be a solid book (I'm a reader first and a collector second), but I was willing to give it a shot, and I knew it would make for a quality keepsake if nothing else.  Hey, nostalgia sells.

As it turns out, writer David Avallone and artist Dave Acosta have taken this loaded property and ran wild with it.  I am grateful for their efforts; the art is inviting, as it should be, the writing is clever, and the series exists largely as a love letter for both those who treasure horror at large and those who are as charmed by the title character as yours truly.  That bawdy Elvira schtick works as well in this format as it does on the screen, and the tongue-in-cheek approach to the macabre and our lovely heroine's unique assets come through loud and clear.

And the puns!  Oh, the puns!  Puns for days, peeps.  Throw in some classic horror characters and their creators, a diabolical pace, a demented and appropriately snarky sense of humor, and you wind up with a genuine crowd-pleaser that delivers big laughs and big thrills in every issue.  I'm sure the naysayers were expecting nothing more than a big bust, but I am greatly pleased to take this opportunity to rate Dynamite's vivacious Elvira: Mistress of the Dark as an absolute blast.

Final Grade: A

*I'm not counting my man-crush on Michael Fassbender.

Short Attention Span Review: Slow West (2015)

Some of the best movies ever made are westerns, yet that's a genre that doesn't yield many motion pictures in this day and age.  Given the short supply, the odds of landing upon a quality western has greatly decreased, but then along comes a movie like Slow West.  While both the pace and the brooding nature of this movie are staples of the genre, the humor and the keen wit that permeate the piece make it unconventional enough to emerge as a distinct creation.  It doesn't really feel like modern fare and yet it is a far cry from the type of picture that Clint Eastwood or John Wayne would have starred in despite some potent similarities.  Director John Maclean takes his time with the tale and it's hard to believe that the sometimes leisurely and wildly unpredictable journey that we're treated to is confined to a mere 84 minutes.  At the forefront of the picture are Kodi Smit-McPhee as Jay Cavendish, a curious lad who is traversing foreign soil in search of his beloved, and Michael Fassbender as the wily bounty hunter who decides to chaperone this lost cause of a human being.  The film belongs to these two actors and they both offer up stirring performances.  Even as a series of flashbacks clearly display Jay's affection for Rose Ross (Caren Pistorious), those same glimpses of his former life lead us to believe that his heart is leading him astray.  Fassbender's Silas Selleck has his reasons for leading the lovestruck young man across the country, and it becomes obvious that what he decides to do when Jay and Rose are reunited will define him as a man.  Jay and Silas cover a lot of dangerous ground and meet some interesting people, all while a band of outlaws that Silas once rode with lurk in the background.  In the bloody finale, Maclean manages to deliver several surprises, a couple of delightful sight gags, a bit of meditation on the meaning of life, and a worthy conclusion to an intriguing western that I greatly enjoyed.

Final Grade: B+

Fassbender oozes cool as a gritty survivor type who could easily be confused
with Eastwood's "Man with No Name" if he wasn't so talkative.
Well, it would also help if he could hold his liquor.  That too.