You Might Not Be Afraid of the Dark

I saw the long-awaited (I attended a teaser panel on it at Comic-Con in 2010) remake of Don’t be Afraid of the Dark this weekend. It was directed by Troy Nixey (the artist on Dark Horse’s Jenny Finn) but bears the obvious stamp of script-writer and producer Guillermo del Toro.

In brief, both versions involve a couple moving into an old house where a basement fireplace ash-pit door is opened and tiny, malevolent creatures are released (these are, as Roger points out, the obvious inspiration for Fiend Folio’s meenlocks). The creatures set their sights on the one who freed them--a young housewife in the original, a little girl in the remake--and cajole then terrorize before making their move.

The remake has better special effects and more atmosphere, but doesn’t have the same sort of unsettling, ruthless economy of the original. Of course, I saw the original when I was much younger, so it might not evoke the same dread in someone seeing it as an adult for the first time. The remake seems like Nixey and del Toro set out to make a film that could scar the psyches of a new generation of kids, but the MPAA stymied that a bit with an R-rating.

Many of the changes are del Toro’s usual preoccupations. The creatures of the film are explicitly fairies and they have a taste for teeth (recalling the “tooth fairies” of Hellboy II). The grounds of the Blackwood Manor recall Pan’s Labyrinth. These additions at once lessen the horror but add some depth by explicitly connecting it to the traditions of horror fiction and authors like Machen (who gets namechecked in the film).

If you like the work of del Toro or have fond memories of the original TV movie you probably should check this one out.  It just probably won't deliver the chills you remember back in the '70s.

Random Magical Junk

Never let it be said that hobogoblins are welchers.  Here's something magical from the bindle of the croaker (medicine man) hisself:

1. A wooden toy gun. When aimed at a target, and the bearer says “bang,” it fires. The invisible projectile does 1d3 points of damage and has range like a small sling.

2. A souvenir doll of a grinning man. Anyone who sleeps within 20 feet of the uncovered doll must make a saving throw or awaken feebleminded.
3. An expensive wristwatch that appears stopped--yet somehow never manages to have the right time.

4. A set of 2d6 erotic picture postcards. Most are mundane, but one of them can fascinate the viewer.
5. An old kerosene lantern that, when lit, casts darkness.
6. A wrinkled First Class Boarding Pass for the RMS Titan. If a person holding the pass concetrates hard on the image of someone they wish to kill, the pass will grow cold and damp in his or her hands, and the intended victim responds as if they are drowning in cold water.
7. A cast iron skillet +1 against husbands (+2 if they are cheating husbands).
8. A necrophiliac Tijuana Bible.  It draws all undead from a 10 mile radius to it.  Unintelligent undead are unable to resist its call; intelligent ones are not forced to respond, but may come out of curiousity or desire.  Undead tied to a specific place are tormented by the comics' seductive pull.
9. A half-smoked cigar. If lit, it is particularly noxious. Everyone but the smoker within 20 feet must save or become nauseated.

10. A wooden case containg a flea circus staffed by atomies, who can either be a help or a nuisance to the owner depending on how they’re treated.
11. An ever-full can of baked beans.  It refills in 1d4 hours after being emptied.
12. A roll of electrical insulating tape that gives anything it's wrapped around electricity resistance (absorbs the first 10 points of electrical damage per attack).

Warlord Wednesday: Through the Glass

Let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"Through the Glass"

Warlord (vol. 1) #65 (January 1983)

Written by Mike Grell (Sharon Grell); Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Mike deCarlo

Synopsis: Morgan approaches Castle Deimos in the realm of twilight known as the Terminator. Painful memories come up unbidden as he sees it once again.

Faithful Faaldren leads him to his daughter, Jennifer, the sorceress supreme:

Morgan tells her about Rostov and Shakira, lost in the Age of Wizard Kings. Jennifer unveils a magic mirror to help them scry his friends’ whereabouts. Soon, he sees an image of the two with a centaur....

In the Age of Wizard Kings, Shadowstorm (the centaur) thinks he has a solution to Rostov’s and Shakira’s predicament: They need to find a good wizard. Unfortunately, those are hard to come by as the Evil One keeps killing them. They’ll have to settle for the 10th or 11th (whichever) in line for the title of sorcerer supreme—Mungo Ironhand.

A bit later, in Mungo’s tower, the wizard has just returned to tell Mariah and Machiste that he’s now 9th in line for sorcerer supreme! If the Evil One keeps killing at this rate, he just might make it to the top. Mariah and Machiste suggest the wizards band together to defeat the Evil One before he masters the full power of the Necronomicon.

Before Mungo can make more excuses an alert sounds: They have visitors. Peering into a crystal ball, they don’t recognize Shakira, Rostov, os Shadowstorm. They prepare an ambush. In the melee that follows, Mariah finally recognizes Rostov, but before she can tell Machiste, he appears likely to bash Rostov’s head in with his mace hand.

Morgan (watching all this in the glass) tells Jennifer to bring them back to the present—now! Jennifer replies enigmatically that she can’t--suggesting his friends may play a role in the defeat of the Evil One. Morgan and Jennifer will have to go to them:

Things to Notice:

• This issue's cover more resembles events from last issue (and last issue's more closely matches this one!).
• While her hair has been white since issue #50, we were never really given an explanation of how Jennifer's hair got that way from its original blonde.  Perhaps the shock of her encounter with Deimos?
• Mungo Ironhand seems a rather poorly regarded wizard.

Where It Comes From:
The title references the use of the magic mirror to watch most of the action of the story.  It may have been suggested by the title of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll.

Pulp Planet Maps

Tired of NASA harshing your pulp buzz with "real" images of the solar system?  Well, Edmond "World-Wrecker" Hamilton has got what you need.  Here are some maps of some familiar worlds from his Captain Future series as presented in An Atlas of Fantasy. 

Leave your so-called "reality-based" planetary science at home, and make sure your rocket has the approriate sheen:

The Diamond Planet Heist!

Astronomers have discovered a planet 4000 light-years away orbiting a neutron star every two hours that appears to be composed of diamond.  Read the details here.

Could you ask for a better science ficiton/space opera adventure locale?  It could be a ritzy casino world full of sauve spies like something out of a Bond film or novel.  Or you could do a swinging sci-fi heist film, like a space opera Ocean's 11.  Maybe it's a glitzy disco world like something you might have seen on the 80s Buck Rogers if it had had a bigger budget?

Of course, one could go against all those diamond associations.  Doctor Who has a "crystalline world" in the episode "Midnight" and that's a horror story.

'Twas Beauty that Killed the Efreet

Well, that and magical lightning bolts.  And airplanes.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from a Weird Adventures take on the cover illo of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide--which includes adding liberal amounts of King Kong.  This was realized by the very talented Adam Moore, and you can see a color version on his deviantart site.  Check it out.

On the subject of Weird Adventures, I'm trying to get over this last writing hill (the neighborhoods of middle and upper Empire Island)--which means I may not be around as much posting or commenting the next week or so; we'll see.

In the mean time, stroll over to Gorgonmilk and add your own creative items to the inventory of "Stuff You Might Find in a Goblin Market." 

While I'm plugging, let me suggest you take a drink from the seemingly bottomless and most definitely spiked punch bowl of weird science fantasy that is the Swords & Stitchery blog.  Needles' preoccupations with fungus, parasites, genre b-movies, and general weirdness may strain his sanity, but it's all for your benefit.  Check it out.

The Stalker

If you should find yourself in the City on a lonely railway platform in the wee hours or taking a night train across the dark countryside, you may happen to get the sensation you’re being watched. That may mean you have reason to be afraid.

Travelers in similar situations have looked to see the vague shape of what might be a fellow traveler clinging to the shadows of the platform, or have seen a gaunt figure receding in the distance as the train passes, its eyes glowing like signal lights.

The rail stalker appears to select his prey at random, but once he has done so he always lets the hapless traveler glimpse him at least once. The next time the victim sees the creature’s pale, naked, and emaciated form may be when he strikes.

The creature (it is unclear if there is more than one) attacks by opening his mouth absurdly wide in a caricature of a scream and emitting a sound or vibration. Things directly in its path may be damage as if thousands of years of erosion took place in a single moment, concentrated in a narrow area. Those nearby but not directly in the path describe a sudden wave of fear and a mind numbing hum. The stalker prefers to kill by embracing his victim and deilvering a kiss—a kiss that sends his deadly vibration through the victim’s body, turning bone to powder and liquifying organs.

Some thaumaturgists believe the sound made by the rail stalker is a sound from the end of the material universe, the wail of of inevitable armageddon that the rail stalker somehow carries in his withered frame. And aches to share with others.

[The rail stalker is, of course, a modern/near-modern horror riff on Fiend Folio’s Dune Stalker and resembles that creature in game particulars.  'Cause a naked, clawed dude trying to kiss you in a subway station is scarier than one in a desert, maybe.]