Tagged: review
Big Man Plans #1: A Little Ball of Serious Rage!
I just finished reading issue #1 of the new four issue limited series from Image called “Big Man Plans” and it’s quite a debut! This one is a full on mean and dirty little story about a little guy named ‘Big Man’ who’s lived his entire life being made fun of, beat up and bullied. When Big Man finally hits his breaking point he goes bat shit crazy bringing revenge to those who’ve wronged him. Kinda like a smaller version of Michael Douglas in Falling Down. We get an in depth look at just what has pushed Big Man over the edge and it really ain’t pretty. He’s like a dog that’s been teased it’s entire life, all he knows the world to be is a rotten place and now he pissed.

Big Man has had quite a life, spending time unofficially working for the United Stated Army in Vietnam as special type of solider who can fit in to places no other can and get the dirty work done in the dark. He’s been to prison, kicked the shit out white supremacists, punched out cocky kids and even had the time to be a bit of a ladies man. He’s quite a guy, an angry little bastard who’s got clearly quite a story ahead of him. Issue #1 is said to be the tamest of them all and if that’s true the next few issues are going to be quite wild ride.

Fellow Portlander Tim Wiesch and Eric “The Goon” Powell have done a great job building the intrigue here for this new character. Powell as usual shines as the artist on this title, bringing the grit and dirt in every panel. I’m curious to see where this little mystery is headed and hope that ‘Big Man’ at the end of issue number four can find a little happiness in his thus far miserable existence. Check this one out if you’re looking for something that’s bound to pull out some serious shocks! Get the full scoop with a great interview with the creators of the series right here
What if Monsters Really Do Exist?!! Adam Green’s Ready to Make You Believe!
What if monsters really did exist? What if they were all around us all of the time but we just couldn’t see them?! Well here’s a rad monster movie that answers those very questions called “Digging Up The Marrow”. This one’s brought to us by modern horror master Adam Green who’s already scared the shit out of us with his awesome old school throwback “Hatchet” films and the super ski lift suspense shocker “Frozen”!

This one is a mockumentary about Green and his film crew as they get contacted by a strange man who claims he can prove to them that monsters are indeed real. This one looks like my kind of movie, filled with a fun plot filled with twists and of course creepy ass looking monsters. At first glance this one reminds me a little bit of the Norwegian flick “Trollhunter” which I thoroughly enjoyed. So sign me up I can’t wait for Green to prove to me that things that go bump in the night are indeed a reality!! Look for this one on Feb. 20th 2015!!
And more about the movie from the director….
Salma Hayek vs. The Yakuza! Watch Your back ‘Kill Bill’!
Here’s a crazy ass looking flick I’m pretty pumped to check out from Joe Lynch (Knights of Badassdom) set to be released Feb. 27th! It looks to me like Salma Hayek could be the new Uma Thurman as this one looks like it’s gonna give Kill Bill a run for it’s money in total crazy over the top action!

“Everly” is a thriller centered on a woman who faces down a cast of colorful bloodthirsty assassins sent by her ex, a deadly mob boss, while holed up alone in her apartment building. Yep it’s Salma Hayek vs. The Yakuza and so far this one is looking like a Tarantino wet dream! Check this out if you haven’t already!
‘EXISTS’ is a Movie That Finally Makes Bigfoot Terrifying!!!
I love Bigfoot and the idea that somewhere out there in the woods there just might be an elusive creature roaming the woods that we truly don’t understand thrills me. Anytime I see a new Bigfoot story in the news I hope and pray that it’s one that finally proves to the world that this creature truly exists. Until that day comes that there’s definitive proof I’ll just have live this Sasquatch fantasy through grainy youtube vids and hearsay from “expert squatch hunters”. Now though at least we’ve gotten a great Bigfoot horror flick that finally makes Sasquatch scary thanks to Blair With Project director Eduardo Sanchez! His latest film ‘Exists’ which is out on several platforms like Googleplay, Itunes, VOD is one helluva nerve bending terror ride in the woods!

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while as Sanchez has proven he’s got the chops time and time again in the directors chair. Unfortunately the down side of this flick (at least for me) is that he decides to go the “found footage” route. Yeah he may be considered the king of this genre because of ‘Blair Witch’ but I’ve gotta be honest, I’m fucking bored to death of this medium of film making. When I accepted that fact and sucked it up I truly began to see how effective of a horror flick he has delivered! There’s been quite a few flicks that have tried this over the last few years, The Lost Coast Tapes, Willow Creek, Bigfoot Country, The Woodsman to name a few. If you’re gonna see just one, see it from the master because ‘Exists’ will make you squirm in your seat and piss your britches!

Exists suffers and excels at the same time with a very simple premise: a group of twenty somethings head out for a weekend in the woods at the family cabin (sound familiar?) and on the way in they hit something with their truck. The film starts out with a great sequence here as one of the guys just happens to be obsessed with filming a Youtube video that goes viral. So of course this guy’s always filming, you know like ALL the time. But because we get a simple premise we also get a nonstop balls out ongoing confrontation with motherfuckin’ Bigfoot! That’s the good and that’s really all this film is trying to give us. Really what we have here is the ‘Jaws’ of Bigfoot flicks and that’s perfectly fine with me.

If these creatures are truly territorial then I imagine this here is exactly what it’d be like to fight for your life against one in woods. The incredibly creepy sounds the monster makes also seem to be pretty in line with some of the audio recordings by Bigfoot researchers, making me think Sanchez did his homework before doing this flick. There are so many terrifying sequences here, like the bike chase and the cabin break in scene (to name a couple) that got my heart racing to levels they haven’t risen too this last year!

What’s really great is Sanchez unlike the rest of found footage Bigfoot flicks doesn’t hide the monster, in fact you get a good look at him several times especially in the last five minutes or so. Sasquatch looks great too as he hired Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop to design the look of the creature, I still though think Harry from Harry and the Hendersons is the best squatch put to the big screen (sorry Eduardo!). I think this one would’ve been ten times better had Sanchez skipped the “found footage” and just given us a straight up “movie”. But still definitley check this movie out it’s a ton of terrifying fun and will most likely please the hardcore Bigfoot fanatics as well!!
Tusk: One of the Worst Movies of 2014? For sure!!
I finally got around to checking out Kevin Smith’s horror podcast inspired movie “Tusk”. I have been looking forward to seeing it for a while now, but unfortunately this one doesn’t live up to the hype. Nope, what we have here is Kevin Smith’s “wacky” idea of a movie inspired by one of his “wacky” podcast episodes. I guess I really wonder why he’d waste the time to make such a shitty movie? Did the idea really sound that awesome on his podcast? I know it’s supposed to be like the Kevin Smith version of Human Centipede but this movie really didn’t need to be made. It was boring, it’s plot was generic, it’s characters were not likable in the least and it wasn’t funny or for that matter scary. Hell Johnny Depp couldn’t even save this one, in fact Depp’s character made the movie even worse!! Spoilers Ahead be WARNED!

So we have a hotshot podcaster played by Justin Long and his wisecracking nerd hipster buddy Haley Joel Osment who are supposed internet celebrities with their “clever” named website “The Not See Party”. Get it?!! Duh…They interview strange people and post viral videos that star these odd people basically making fools of themselves. So justin Long’s character goes on a trip to Canada and ends up randomly meeting an odd old man from a flyer he finds hanging on a wall in a dive bar. He goes to the creepy home of the man and listens to him blabber on about his unbelievable (stupid) stories at sea and his totally idiotic story of a walrus saving his life on a desert island. Then Justin Long realizes his tea has been drugged and passes out. This is where things are supposed to get “intense” when we realize the old man is obsessed with that walrus that saved his dumb life! Yep like Human Centipede he decides to transform Long into a big ol’ walrus. Shocking right? Hardly!

Johnny Depp wouldn’t attach his name to this movie even though he stars in it…hmm…I wonder why?!
On top of that we get some kinda lame side story with a “Kevin Smith-y” type love triangle going on that I honestly could’t care less about as all the characters in the movie are pretty uninteresting & annoying. Then we get an another pointless, irritating character showing up, Johnny Depp in heavy make up flashing some truly cringeworthy acting. The rest of the flick is just one big dumb pile of crap. We get an uneven story with bunch of idiotic scenes of Justin Long “arping” around in a big walrus suit, eating fish, and fighting his captor in a walrus battle. All of this shit is supposed to be clever and funny but it’s really just well…boring. I feel like I lost some brain cells watching this one and the surprise ending is just as dumb as you might expect. It tries hard to make some witty sense of this big stupid pile of horse shit of a film.

I have a love/hate relationship with Kevin Smith he has made a few ok films but for the most part I just don’t think he’s all that funny. This was most definitely his worst movie, which I’d call a gigantic waste of time for all those involved and all those who’ve watched. Please Mr. Smith don’t make anymore podcast inspired movies. I am now officially not excited to see Kevin Smith’s Krampus flick…
‘Realm of the Underworld’ Action Figures are here to Kick He-man’s Ass!!
I LOVED He-Man and The Masters of the universe action figures as a kid, I just could not get enough of them and all of the cool accessories! The cartoon was a ton of fun, I had almost all of the action figures, mainly the bad guys and back in the day there were even some cool knock offs, the poor man’s He-man figures you could snatch up at places like K-Mart. You remember the Remco “DC” line of figures? There guys were great and quite a bit less expensive than the Masters of the Universe, with cool figures like Warlord and Hercules…

Here’s all of the old 80’s Remco ones together..

They may have been He-man knock offs but they were pretty fucking awesome!
Well there’s a new toy line by Zoloworld called Realm of the Underworld and they totally look like lost action figures from the 80’s. Infact they really remind me of the Remco collection from the 1980’s. They share that same quality of the Knock off and He-man and the Masters of the Universe in the fact that they use basically the same body molds with a different paint job a different rubber head and maybe different costuming.
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I didn’t give a shit that they used the same body parts! They were awesome durable toys that could take a serious beating!

This new action figure line takes me back to those days at K-mart when I’d spend my time hanging out in the toy department as long as I could and sometime my mom would buy me a cool new action figure. Check these out they are pretty great!

Oh yeah and it looks like the Slime (as in the same Masters of the Universe Horde green slime- that was amazing!!) will be coming soon to Realm of the Underworld soon too-how rad is that?!!
totally gross and awesome!!!
Toe Tag Riot: Punk Rock Zombie Mayhem!
If you’re a fan of punk rock and old school 80’s style horror there’s a good chance you’ll get a kick out Black Mask’s “Toe Tag Riot” a new rowdy zombie comic book adventure! This one reads more like an installment of the “Return of the Living Dead” movie franchise than “The Walking Dead” and that’s a good thing because we really don’t need any more comic books hitting the shelves these days trying to capture what Robert Kirkman has so gloriously accomplished. Written By Matt Miner and illustrated by Sean Von Gorman we get bloody good tale of a touring punk rock band with a zombie curse mysteriously cast upon them. They fight with the urges to eat flesh as they spend only part of the time as undead (from what I can tell thus far it seems right before they hit the stage) and when they do turn into flesh eaters they spend much of their time ripping apart Nazi Skinheads, angry moms and pissed off bible thumpers!
This series so far really reminds me of something you might have found in a punk rock fanzine back in the 1990’s, full of crude humor & gore, while hitting on several political and social issues like racism, homophobia and nut job religious groups like the Westboro Baptist Church. It follows the bands exploits while giving us brief flashbacks of how the band came to be and just how they developed into zombies. If you’re looking for a serious zombie epic you’ll most likely be a bit disappointed here, but if you’re looking for a good tongue in cheek comedy you’ll probably dig Toe Tag Riot quite a bit.

The first read really reminded me of a canadian vampire flick called “Suck” which had a pretty similar premise but not hitting on issues Toe Tag Riot delves into. If you’re familiar with that movie, the band, like in Toe Tag Riot are struggling with their popularity & end up tragically becoming Vampires. They use their unique new attributes to their advantage to hit the big time. Still I found the first two issues to be a pretty sweet little ball of mayhem and I’m curious to see where the next couple take us.

A fun read which would go down nice with a few stiff drinks, the only part of it I wasn’t particularly keen on was the odd inclusion of the main dude from ‘Fall Out Boy’ into the story-not exactly screaming punk rock to me at least, I’m actually kinda hoping that guy gets eaten by the band (nothing personal, I just think that’d be kinda cool)….. either way Check it out! A cool zombie comic that’s quite a bit different from the herd!
New Comic Book Pick of the Week: Rumble #1!
Hey not everyone can afford to pick up a heavy load of comic books every week, that clearly will set you back some serious cash especially during the spendy holiday season! So I’m reporting to you a good solid pick this week and that particular book is Image’s “Rumble” #1! John Arcudi, James Harren & Dave Stewart’s brand new series hit shelves yesterday and it’s a helluva good first issue! You can pretty much expect that you’re going to get something pretty unique when Arcudi’s name is attached to the project and this here is no exception to that rule.

There’s something sinister in the air here, and most of it takes place late night at a lonely dive bar. This is where bartender Bobby and his sole customer a old regular named Rufus are quietly shooting the shit about relationships. As the night comes to an end Rufus hits the streets only to be attacked by a giant scarecrow like creature wielding a gigantic sword. Rufus heads back into the bar, missing an arm and we are treated to an truly awesome bar room brawl.

This is all put to life by the brilliant art of Dave Stewart and the story doesn’t simply end there. Add some skeptical cops to the mix along with more creatures into the equation and I was already more than ready to dive into the second issue. Without spoiling any of the rest I’m just going to say if you’re a fan of swords, mystery, monsters and not the usual cast of pretty people we often see in comics then you’ll eat this first issue up. Arcudi really has a unique way with character development too, he gives them real life personalities which make it incredibly easy to get hooked into whatever story he’s got to tell.

This story could really go anywhere from this point and that’s what’s so damn good about it. I recommend checking this out as it’s off to a great first issue and definitely worth the $3.50!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Matt Murdock’s Crappy Christmas!!
I love digging up cool comic books that took place around Christmas time and Daredevil #229 fits that bill quite perfectly! This is an especially rad cover of a time when Matt Murdock went homeless on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen due to the Kingpin ruining his entire life. This has got to be one of the lowest points in the characters history as Murdock is down on his luck in this grim story arc written by Frank Miller before he turned into a crazy douche bag. This issue also has one of the most brutal fights between Murdock and the Kingpin as they go head to head in Fisk’s office. It’s bloody and Matt gets his ass kicked big time…damn I’m feeling as I type this the urge to read these issues again immediately! The cover is brilliantly drawn back in 1986 by one of my fav artists David Mazzucchelli and clearly shows how crappy Christmas was that particular year for Daredevil….

Comic Pick of the Week: Hellboy & The B.P.R.D. #1!
I have been looking forward to Hellboy and The BPRD #1 for quite some time now and this first issue was a real treat for any fan. I’ve missed Hellboy (and Abe Sapien for that matter) in the pages of BPRD now for quite sometime and this series is giving us a first look at his first adventure ever with the team!
Mignola and John Arcudi (one of my favorite writers) team up again this time with Alex Maleev making this an epic event. I’ve been in love with Maleev’s brilliant artwork since his legendary long run on Daredevil he did years ago with Brian Michael Bendis. He’s easily one of my favorite modern comic book artists and his work on this book thus far doesn’t disappoint. This is also the perfect time for anyone who was thinking about getting into the Hellboy universe to get on board, as the universe is at this point pretty vast. This shows us what the red devil was like on his first paranormal outing with a team.
The story is a simple premise thus far. Professor Trevor Bruttenholm assembles a team of human BPRD agents to take a younger Hellboy on a mission to the jungles of Brazil to investigate a series of over thirty murders. They head out to a small village where the townsfolk claim a strange creature has been blamed. The team, a bit reluctant about bringing Hellboy along find refuge there near a huge ominous castle.
This is a great set up issue, with awesome artwork, creepy locales and a cool mystery brewing. This is the kind of book I love. The series is planned to cover each year, in 2015 covering 1953 and so on. I can’t wait to see who we meet along the way as the BPRD fills it’s ranks with likely more odd characters, so buy this book and maybe we’ll get that third Hellboy flick we have been waiting for!




