Hello, everybody! Frankie Franken reporting here with news on an awesome new cartoon coming out this fall on Cartoon Network--The Secret Saturdays!
The Secret Saturdays details the adventures of a cryptozoological team who travel the
world to protect ancient secrets and monsters (called "cryptids") from humans who would otherwise destroy or exploit them. Consisting of Doc, Drew and Zak Saturday, and accompanied by loyal cryptids Fiskerton and Komodo, the Saturdays team tries to stay one step ahead of madman cryptid hunter V.V. Argost in their exploits. The cartoon was created by Jay Stephens, who also is drawing and writing comic stories featuring the Saturdays that will appear in every other issue of DC Comics' Cartoon Network Action Pack until the show's premiere in the fall. The latest issue, #26, features the first of these stories, showcasing Stephens' excellent character designs and artwork.
We're excited about this cool new show, and we hope you will be too! Stay tuned here for more news on the upcoming Secret Saturdays!
I miss Cartoon Network.
You may think that's a silly thing to say as the channel still exists, but the Cartoon Network I was turned on to is not around anymore. That honor now goes to Boomerang, which is where most of the cartoons I grew up with now appear, and which is beginning to fall by the wayside too. There was not as much good stuff on there the last time I was at my parents' home, which is where I see Boomerang because the cable company in my hometown is run by Philistines, who see fit to have two feeds for BET and two religious networks featuring People With Big Hair and Joel Osteen, but cannot bring themselves to add BBC America and Boomerang to compensate.
But I digress. CN once had shows like Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, Megas XLR and so on; now they show anime almost exclusively as part of their adventure lineup (though they are doing Spider-Man and Transformers). Their "cartoons" consist of horribly drawn, eye-wateringly stylistic characters with no heart or soul that aren't funny. (Don't get me started on the rehash of George Of The Jungle. That rumbling you hear is Jay Ward doing doughnuts in his grave.) It almost makes me want to go to Youtube and watch old 1930's animation, which is so frenetic that it usually drives me nuts, just to see a character that someone has built out of an actual shape, as opposed to some effed-up-looking abstract idea thing.
Some hope may be at hand this fall, though, with the release of The Secret Saturdays. Created by Jay Stephens, this cool-looking cartoon depicts the adventures of a family of cryptozoologists who travel the globe on various missions tracking down ancient mysteries and fighting monsters. Unlike its predecessors such as Jonny Quest and Challengers Of the Unknown (which both cast a long shadow over this series), TSS takes more of a quasi-environmentalist stance, concerned with not only protecting the world from Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, but also protecting those very same Things from those who would exploit them for nefarious purposes. The Saturdays team consists of eminent scientist and adventurer/cryptozoologist Doc Saturday, his true-believer wife Drew (who serves as a Mulder figure to Doc's Scully-like "hard facts" stance) and their son Zak, who comes across as Jonny Quest with an X-Games attitude, throwing himself into missions with gusto. The mascot of the team is Fiskerton, a strange-looking but intelligent "gorilla-cat" creature who is comic relief and pet/protector/older brother to Zak.
The Secret Saturdays has so far gotten good word-of-mouth from those in the know, and was once the subject of a clumsy name change from Cartoon Network (who wanted the generic-sounding title The Secret Adventures Of Zak Saturday; fortunately, common sense and coolness prevailed). For my own part, I am looking forward to TSS. The characters are very likable and personable, the style is pleasingly retro (atomic science is always more fun than nuclear science), and we haven't had a good Jonny Quest-style adventure series on TV since, well, Jonny Quest. Plus there are monsters, and if you've seen my own stuff you know I likes me some monsters, so hopefully this will hang around for quite a while.
A preview of the treats this series has to offer may be seen not only at Cartoon Network's website but also in the DC comic Cartoon Network Action Pack. The latest issue, #26, features the Saturdays as its cover story, and according to Stephens' blog Monsterama, Saturdays tales will appear in every other issue until its premiere in the fall. Personally, my money's on this one as my new fave for this fall season. I have already caught a bit of The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack, and I just wanna say this... Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ with pliers, Cartoon Network needs help! Viva Saturdays!
It is the sad duty of The Morlock Heights Harbinger to report the death of Stan Winston. Winston, the Oscar-winning special-effects master who created the creatures in many of our favorite movies at the Monster Shop, has died at 62 following a long battle with multiple myeloma.
Notable among Winston's works are creatures and characters for The Terminator, Aliens and Jurassic Park series of films. Winston, who worked with such fantasy stalwarts as James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton, for whom he created makeups for Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns, leaves behind a legacy of over four decades' worth of special effects work. He won four Oscars under those directors for 
1986's Aliens, 1992's Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Batman Returns, and 1993's Jurassic Park. Most fondly remembered here at the Monster Shop are his splendid makeups for the genre favorite The Monster Squad and the title creature of Pumpkinhead, which is considered by us to be a masterwork. His last work was with director Jon Faverau for the recent hit movie Iron Man, based on the Marvel Comics character. Winston is survived by his wife Karen; a son, daughter, brother and four grandchildren.
In pace requiescat, Mr. Winston. Thank you for everything.
At long last, the original animated incarnation of Sabrina The Teenage Witch finally makes her very auspicious DVD debut. Genius Products, in tandem with its other Archies releases, brings you a 3-DVD set of the original Filmation animated series featuring all 31 episodes.
Sabrina made her first appearance in the Archie's Madhouse comic series and gained a fair amount of popularity, eventually spawning her own comic book. Filmation brought Sabrina to animation in the prime-time special Archie And His New Pals, and eventually spun off her own series after showcasing her as part of The Archie Comedy Hour. The resulting cartoons depict Sabrina as a resident of Riverdale and a student at Riverdale High, accompanied in her adventures by her boyfriend Harvey and her friends Spencer and Ophelia (who respectively serve Jughead and Betty functions to Harvey's Archie).
However, as our title says, Sabrina is a witch, and therefore must keep her magical abilities a secret from the Riverdale denizens. Though witches are expected to hex people, the good-natured Sabrina often uses her powers in attempts to help others or solve problems, usually with disastrous results. Most of the plots revolve around Sabrina's attempts to juggle her witchly studies and her teenage life, featuring her magical cat Salem and her two aunts, the cantankerous Hilda and the kindhearted Zelda. There is also Cousin Ambrose, a sophisticated, somewhat bon-vivant warlock who is more sympathetic to Sabrina's teenhood and occasionally aids her in her adventures, serving as a mixture of the Dr. Bombay and Uncle Arthur characters from Bewitched. The Archies crew makes regular appearances, with Reggie continuously (and unsuccessfully) trying to out Sabrina as a witch to the rest of the gang.
And of course, there are the Groovie Goolies. Yep, this set not only has all of the Sabrina episodes from her own series, but also the episodes in which everyone's favorite gang of maladroit monsters made their first appearances. Mixing the Goolies, the Archies and Sabrina together creates a special blend of comic chaos, and these episodes do not disappoint. As a special feature, the set includes the first episode of The Archie And Sabrina Surprise Package, in which Archie, Sabrina and the gang work together to solve a mystery at Riverdale. (Will this series be a future DVD release? Only time will tell.)
The set is colorfully packaged, though not in a clear slipcase like the other Archies releases, and the artwork is of the usual excellent standard. The episodes appear to be sourced from the best materials, showing clear pictures and few signs of aging. The DVD holder is a bit difficult to operate at first (the first two discs are overlapped, placing the click-tabs on the sides rather than in the middle), so examine carefully rather than tear into it.
Pick up this set if you're an Archies or Sabrina fan, and pair it with the Groovie Goolies set for the right mix of supernatural Saturday-Morning silliness. You'll see her tug her ear... and you'll see your blues disappear. Count on it.
The Morlock Heights Harbinger sadly reports the death of Maila "Vampira" Nurmi, who passed away in her sleep on Thursday, January 10, 2008. She was 86. A legend among horror fans, Nurmi first came to prominence as the character of "Vampira," the first television horror host.
Born Maila Elizabeth Syrjaniemi, Nurmi's career as Vampira began when she attended a masquerade party dressed in a costume inspired by the cartoons of Charles Addams. TV producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr. hired her shortly after to host horror movies on Los Angeles' ABC television affiliate KABC-TV. Based on elements from Theda Bara, Gloria Swanson and The Dragon Lady from the comic strip Terry And The Pirates, Vampira's fame spread quickly, leading to the eventual creation of the now-classic Shock Theatre and an explosion of horror-movie hosts in the years that followed. Vampira went on to make guest appearances on a variety of TV shows of the Fifties, including The Red Skelton Show and Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town, and was nominated for an Emmy for "Most Outstanding Female Personality" in 1954. Though she appeared in several films, her most famous role was in Ed Wood's science-fiction-horror flop Plan Nine From Outer Space. She is also a direct inspiration for the character of Elvira, created by Cassandra Peterson--and also served as the main model for a certain vampire MonsterGrrl.
We express our sympathy and condolences to all her fans and friends. At the time of this writing, funeral details were still unknown. Vampira will be sorely missed by us here in the Monster Shop.
POST-MORTEM: Vampira: The Movie, a 2006 documentary about Maila Nurmi and the Vampira character, has its official website here.
Hey, y'all! My name is Petronella Nightshade, but everbody calls me Punkin, and I am speakin to you through this here computer blog. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The MonsterGrrls, what was written by Mr John Rose, who I have been thinkin must had some witchery way back in his family as he is such a creative sort of feller. (I have read his book and it is a right smart, with the occasional bit of kerfluffle here and there.)
Somethin I was noticin was that a while back, the movin picture folks was makin a whole bunch of scary movies about zombies, which shows that most folks are scairt of bein eaten by zombies. This is all twaddle, as anybody with any common sense can see that dead folks do not need to eat,* even if they are roamin around a bit. However, I am postin this first recipe so that some of these folks may regain their self-confidence and well-bein by gettin to eat zombies instead of zombies eatin them. This here's pretty simple and is most efficacious for those households with young ones as it will give them somethin to do, but mind them whilst they are about the stove as we don't want nobody gettin burnt. Also, it is right nice for Hallowe'en, which is fastly approachin.
What You Need:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
What You Got To Do:
Preheat your oven to 375 F. Cream butter and sugar together (this means beatin it with a hand mixer till it gets all fluffy). Add the egg and mix. Add your remainin ingredients and mix until smooth. Refrigerate your dough for 2 hours.
Roll out your dough about 1/8 in. thick on a lightly floured surface, and dip cutters into flour before each use. Use one of them gingerbread-man cutters, or make your own pattern, cut it out and trace around it on the dough with a knife. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned.
Place on a coolin rack for 5 minutes, remove from sheet and cool.
After the cookies has cooled, you decorate em to look like zombies. This decoratin recipe come to us from Mistress Keetha DePriest Reed, who has written a couple of cookbooks and I reckon is a right smart when it comes to bakin. You can divvy up the frostin and add a few drops of food colorin to each batch to get the different colors you need. Some folks reckon that since these is zombie cookies they ought to be decorated in black and gray and such, but I am of a mind that you should want to look at what you're eatin. Here's Mistress Keetha's recipe:
Royal Icing
All manners of cookies can be decorated with this icing, which can
be tinted virtually any color. It’s great for simply
outlining cookies and can also be used to create elaborate,
detailed images. Simply thin icing with water until it reaches
the consistency you like.
1 pound confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons meringue powder*
4-6 tablespoons warm water
2 teaspoons flavoring (such as vanilla, lemon, butter, or
almond)
*Meringue powder is available at cake decorating supply
shops as well as many craft stores and large discount stores.
Sift powdered sugar into large mixing bowl. Add meringue
powder and combine. With mixer running on medium, add
about 3 tablespoons warm water, 1 tablespoon at a time. Add
desired flavorings and additional water as needed.
To outline cookies and pipe details, icing should be fairly stiff.
After outlining and piping, simply return any unused icing to
the bowl, mix, and add more water until icing is thin enough
to spread or pour easily.
To quickly fill in large portions of cookies that have been outlined,
fill a squeeze bottle (like ketchup and mustard are in at
hamburger joints) with icing and use it to fill in the areas. This
is a quick method, great especially if you are making a large
quantity of cookies. Be careful not to overfill the cookie, causing
the icing to run over the “dam” created when you outlined
the cookies.
Allow cookies to dry completely, several hours, before stacking.
Mistress Keetha also tole us about somethin called Candy Melts, which is from a company called Wilton that makes all kind of pans, tubes and equipment for decoratin cakes and such. They come in ever kind of color and taste like chocolate, and can be melted up real quick in a microwave oven or over low heat on a stove for decoratin with. These can be found at craft stores and that old Wal-Mart place.
So that's it. Next time I'll be back with some more recipes and maybe some other stuff. Hope y'all enjoy this recipe and have some fun with it, 'cause you can make any kind of cookies with it, for other holidays or just any time of the year. Y'all take care, and peace be to you.
Sincerely,
Punkin Nightshade
*They really don't. But we has noticed that zombies got a right smart taste for human fast food burgers, which I am thinkin says more about some humans than it does about zombies.
POST-MORTEM: If you got a recipe you want to share with everbody, send it through the e-mail to fangclub@netdoor.com, and be sure to give us your name, city and state. We will sure put it up as we go, but please allow us time to get everthing straight. --P.N.
One of my personal heroes died on September 6, 2007, the same day that one of my best friend's personal heroes died. Hers was Luciano Pavarotti; mine was Madeleine L'Engle, who wrote A Wrinkle In Time.
When I was a kid, there were reading lists of important books you were supposed to have read, that someone somewhere felt would enrich you in some way or another. I think the only book I ever read voluntarily from any of these lists was Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, which made me yearn for a lost age in some way that I couldn't define. Then I encountered Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which more or less handed Tom Sawyer its behind, and stands to this day as one of the two most important and inspirational books I ever read, where writing was concerned.
The second of these two was Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.
I first encountered Madeleine L'Engle through the library of the now-defunct Jefferson Davis Academy, one of several places in Meridian, MS where adults sent the children they wanted to keep out of public schools. There was a book there called Spooks Spooks Spooks, which was a children's compendium of poetry and short stories about ghosts, goblins, witches, and other mysterious things. Among the pieces in the book was the climax of A Wrinkle In Time, titled "The Black Thing," where Meg Murry returns to the planet of Camazotz to save her brother Charles Wallace from the grasp of IT, the disembodied brain that has taken over Camazotz, and the Black Thing, the red-eyed human-looking agent of IT. She realizes that the only way she can stop IT is to use what IT does not have, and
never will--her love for Charles Wallace.
People use phrases like "burned off the page" to describe how words affect them. That was not what happened to me the first time I read this story. Instead it was as if Madeleine L'Engle stretched her finger from Manhattan or Connecticut or wherever she may have been living at the time I read her words, tapped me on the forehead and spoke directly to me. It didn't have anything to do with the love she wrote about, or its importance or power; at the time I was in fifth grade and a perfect representation of callow youth. I didn't understand love by any means; I had the same vague, usually self-centered comprehension of it that every child of that age has.
But something about the way she explained it, described it, said it, spoke to my soul. It spoke to the part of me that very desperately wanted to see and believe that there were other worlds apart from this planet, and said, This is important. Keep this in your heart.
Later on, when I was (thankfully) old enough to fully appreciate it, I read all of A Wrinkle In Time. I have three copies of this book; an old paperback, an even older hardback and an almost brand-new omnibus of The Time Quartet, the series which this book begins. I would cheerfully hand over all seven of my Harry Potter books to be burned to ashes before I would part with any of them. It is, and has been, that important to me.
And as for Spooks Spooks Spooks... well, I eventually left Jefferson Davis Academy, but I returned at one point, for two reasons. The first was that I had decided to watch my old class graduate, and I now shamelessly admit that this was my cover story. The real reason I was there was that I hoped to steal the copy of Spooks Spooks Spooks from the JDA library to have for myself. I did not succeed. But later on I found it in a library sale for all of $2.00, and snapped it up.
I suppose you know which part I read first.
In pace requiescat, Mrs. L'Engle. And thanks for everything.
We were saddened to hear of the recent death of Madeleine L'Engle, who served as a great inspiration to us. The author of The Time Quartet, which included A Wrinkle In Time, A Wind In The Door, Many Waters, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, L'Engle's work was, in addition to being some of the best science fiction ever written, an eloquent and heart-felt statement on the power of love.
Born in Manhattan on November 29, 1918, L'Engle was considered a 'stupid' student by an elementary school teacher, and retreated into writing due to feeling like an outcast among her peers. She would eventually graduate with honors in English from Smith College.
In 1959, she had the idea for A Wrinkle In Time. When the novel was completed in 1960, it was rejected by 26 publishers. Finally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1962, it went on to be regarded as a masterwork, winning the 1963 John Newbery Award and gaining sales of eight million copies. It is now in its 69th printing.
We bid a fond farewell to a wonderful and inspiring writer, who wrote one of the most important books ever read by those here at the Monster Shop, which colored everything that was to come from us. Though we never met her personally, her words made her feel to us like a friend.
Click our title link above for the New York Times' article on L'Engle, and click here for more thoughts on Madeleine L'Engle at Notes From The Monster Shop.
Good evening, darlings, and thank you for reading. An auspicious DVD debut has come our way: after twenty years of fond remembrances, traded tapes and DVD-R copies by a fanatically devoted cult following, one of the Eighties' most overlooked genre films has been resurrected at last. The Monster Squad, which was notable at its release for being the only horror-themed film to feature classic legendary monsters instead of masked serial killers, receives a brand-spanking new release in a special 2-DVD set loaded with goodies.
The Monster Squad tells the story of Sean (Andre Gower) who leads a pack of rabid preteen monster-fan misfits in serious discussions of "who is the coolest monster" (well, I would say it's vampires, but I'm prejudiced) and contemplating the real identity of the neighborhood's Scary German Guy (Leonardo Cimino). In the course of the film, Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr) awakes from an eternal sleep (yeah, right) and calls together a gruesome gang of the world's greatest monsters: the Wolfman (Carl Thibault), the Black
Lagoon's Gillman (Tom Woodruff), the Mummy (Michael Reid MacKay) and the Frankenstein Monster (Tom Noonan) to search for the only thing that can stop Dracula: an amulet crafted of pure good. When Sean acquires the diary of Abraham Van Helsing (which his mother secures for his monster collection at a garage sale; isn't that always the way) and learns of the evil scheme, the gang snaps into action as the Monster Squad, enlisting the help of the Scary German Guy (who turns out to be not so scary after all, and has pie--a true mark of the forces of good) and receiving the unexpected assistance of the conflicted Frankenstein Monster, who gains the friendship of Sean's little sister and becomes an ad-hoc member of the Squad. The movie quickly escalates into a race to find the amulet and stop Dracula's plan for world takeover.
Upon its release in 1987, The Monster Squad gained little fanfare and was considered a failure because of its preference for old-school monsters over maniacs with knives (doesn't that sound familiar). The movie had a brief appearance on VHS before disappearing, but rabid monster fans everywhere traded illegal tapes and later DVD-R copies of the film on eBay for years, whipping the demand for a legitimate DVD release into high dudgeon. This release, from a remastered print, is pristine, flawless, and brings forth the true glories of this movie: a raucous Goonies-esque teen comedy mixed with an uninhibited love letter to the classic monsters of old. It's rather a crime that Universal Studios refused to let director Fred Dekker use the original makeups of the monsters for this film, but the Squad makeups, created by Stan Winston (who I've heard is a master effects artist), give this movie a look and charm all its own.
(An aside: my werewolf grrl-friend and colleague Harriet Von Lupin has verified the Wolfman makeup as being startlingly close to the real thing. But we confess to being quite puzzled by what is considered the movie's most famous line, "Wolfman's got nards!" When we heard this line as we watched the film, Harriet looked at us with some confusion and responded, "Well, yeah. All boy werewolves do.")
DVD features include audio commentary with director Dekker, Gower and other Squad members Ryan Lambert and Ashley Bank, and another commentary with Dekker and his director of photography Bradford May, for those who are interested in such things. There is also a five-part retrospective, Monster Squad Forever, featuring new interviews with Dekker and several other stars of the movie, including Duncan Regehr and Tom Noonan (who played Drac and Frank), and A Conversation With Frankenstein, an interview with Noonan about his character. There are also deleted scenes, still gallery, trailer, TV spot and most of the usual paraphernalia--widescreen mastering, Dolby sound and such.
BETHANY'S RATING:
A splendid film, created with love and passion for its subject matter. Serve without reservation to older children, but perhaps allow younger children to watch only as a special Halloween treat (there are some language issues). Do allow yourself and other adult friends to enjoy this fine movie as well.
POST-MORTEM: We've learned that Duncan Regehr, in addition to being a fine actor, is also an accomplished artist. View his work online at www.duncanregehr.com.
In the event that anyone who owns the rights and such may be reading, there is a long-lost Saturday morning show, also called Monster Squad, that our Mad Doctor John often venerates. If anyone could see their way clear to creating a DVD release of this series, it would be much appreciated here at the Monster Shop, as we're all rather tired of him nattering on about it. --B.R.
The MonsterGrrls would like to give a special shout-out to mystery/romance novelist Carolyn Haines! Our Mad Doctor joined the Greenwood Writers' Guild Chapter and met with Mrs. Haines at a booksigning at Turnrow Books in Greenwood, MS recently.
Carolyn Haines hails originally from Lucedale, MS. The daughter of two journalists, she grew up reading and writing. She began her career writing for Harlequin Intrigue under the pen name Caroline Burnes, but now publishes her highly acclaimed Bones series under her own name. Bones details the adventures of Sarah Booth, a Southern belle and private investigator who is assisted by Jitty, the antebellum-era ghost who haunts Sarah's ancestral home of Dahlia
House. The latest in the series is Ham Bones, in which Sarah herself is under investigation for the murder of Renata Troviola, a diva actress who is now the main squeeze of Sarah's former lover Graf Mileau. Quite soapy stuff!
In addition to the Bones series, Carolyn has also published several acclaimed novels such as Penumbra and Fever Moon. Penumbra details the story of Jade Bramlett, the biracial sister of Marlena, the white daughter of a prominent society matron in Drexell, MS. When Marlena is raped and beaten and her six-year-old daughter abducted, Jade must cope with the town's racial discord as she tries to find the kidnappers. Fever Moon is a supernatural suspense thriller, in which Deputy Raymond Thibodeaux must discover the truth behind the murder of wealthy Henri Bastion and his alleged murderer Adele Hebert, who claims to be possessed by the spirit of a werewolf.
We proudly welcome Mrs. Haines into honorary Fang Club Membership! All of her novels are available at www.amazon.com. Click our headline link to visit her official website!
Hello, everybody! Gosh, all sorts of things are happening!
Yesterday (July 25, 2007), the MonsterGrrls joined the literary scene as part of Mississippi Arts Hour, a program broadcast live each Thursday from Jackson's WLEZ 103.7 FM on Mississippi Public Radio. MonsterGrrls creator/author John Rose joined Mississippi Writers' Guild president Richelle Putnam and other MWG members on the program, which focuses on artists and creative folks in Mississippi. The program was hosted by Diane Williams of the Mississippi Arts Commission, and Thursday's show was an exclusive for the MWG.
In addition to John and Richelle, also appearing were Vice President Ralph Gordon, Executive Director Anne McKee, Treasurer/Parliamentarian Dan McKee, and John Floyd, a mystery writer who has recently won the 2007 Derringer Award. Mr. Floyd will also be a speaker for the Guild's 2007 PLANS Conference, which will be held in August in Meridian, MS. Other members present were chapter heads Lydia Dell (Jackson) and Barry McMullan (Meridian), and members Judy Tucker, Peggy Campbell and Jerusha Bosarge.
John promoted the Greenwood chapter and books written by members of his chapter in Greenwood, MS, and read a short excerpt from The MonsterGrrls. Other books promoted were Keetha DePriest Reed's Culinary Kudzu series and Opal Turner Brown's Against The Darkness Of The Night.
Reed's Culinary Kudzu and More Culinary Kudzu are unique among other cookbooks: they also feature
memories and stories of growing up in a Southern household. Reed herself has great credentials for being a Southern-food doyenne: a bachelor's degree in hospitality management from the University Of Southern Mississippi, award-winning public relations work, food writing, recipe development and catering. In addition to being the MWG Greenwood chapter founder and head of Pecan Street Press (her publishing company), Keetha is a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. She blogs at the official WriteKudzu blog and is currently collaborating on a novel.
Opal Turner Brown's Against The Darkness Of The Night is a historical fiction novel which came out of stories told to her by her relatives around the fireplace. This engaging novel tells the story of Lydia Walker, who deals on a personal level with the upheaval of the Civil War when William, her husband, goes to fight. The novel details the struggles of Lydia's attempts to run the family farm on her own in her husband's absence. Opal has worked as a teacher and a volunteer within the National Park System, and is a very prolific writer with several other projects nearing completion. Against The Darkness Of The Night is available at iUniverse.
Clearly, our friend and official chronicler John is in fantastic company within the Mississippi Writers' Guild! Keep checking the Harbinger, our official MonsterGrrls website, and the other cool places listed here for all your literary needs!
Sincerely yours,
Frankie Franken
POST-MORTEM: WLEZ 103.7 FM's full schedule and roster of shows is available at www.wlezfm.com.
Richelle Putnam and the Mississippi Writers' Guild can be contacted through their website at www.mississippiwritersguild.com for information on their work and the upcoming PLANS conference. Any Greenwood, MS area authors who are interested in local membership should contact Keetha DePriest Reed through the Pecan Street Press at www.pecanst.com.
(This post begins an irregular series in which John talks about his characters and the influences of their creation. We begin with the MonsterGrrls' leader: our charming Creature, Frankie Franken.)
Frankie Franken: Nancy Drew Meets Frankenstein's Daughter
The main reason I have so violently pursued this project known as The MonsterGrrls is very simple: Upon their creation, the Grrls arrived cut from whole cloth. That has never happened with anything else I've ever come up with, and that alone seemed reason enough to pursue it.
So what to say about my Creature-Grrl, Frankie Franken? She is, quite obviously, the Child Of Frankenstein, a hybrid of both Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester as they appeared in the films Frankenstein and The Bride Of Frankenstein. Both of Jack Pierce's makeups were referenced for her creation: I felt she should have the green skin, the neck bolts, the stitches, the head-clamps, and of course, that beautiful, funky, Nefertiti-inspired hair, with a couple extra white streaks added and morphed into lightning bolts. (After all, there's never been any doubt in my mind that that hairdo is extremely conductive.)
Some updated elements were added too, such as a Ramones-style leather jacket, black jeans and the clunky boots, which were back in style again when the Grrls first saw the dark of night in 2001. Her T-shirt began as a striped T-shirt before I gave her a Shazam-style T-shirt, red with a yellow lightning bolt, perfect for a Creature born of lightning.
Frankie possesses her own kind of beauty, and her personality is very Grrl-next-door: sweet, intrepid, outgoing, and most importantly, intelligent. I had seen enough of dumb Frankensteins: though Boris Karloff's characterization of the Creature is both terrifying and sad, it has been the template for any number of goofball characterizations, and nearly all of them fall far from Mary Shelley's original Creature, which was cunning, well-spoken, thoughtful and quite self-aware. I wanted to go back to this, and as a result, Dr. Franken, who is Frankie's creator and "father", ensured that Frankie would be intelligent by teaching her once she got off the slab. I felt that Victor Frankenstein's big mistake was that he gave up on his Creature almost from the moment it woke up. I've never been sure what he expected: a home-grown, homemade homunculus cannot be expected to turn out like Brad Pitt mixed with Albert Einstein no matter how good you are. The Creature needed training, direction and acceptance. Most of all, it needed love.
And that's one of the real horrors these days when you think about it: that a lot of teenagers don't get the care and direction and love that they need. If you're going to be a parent, your child needs these things. If the child doesn't get them, it will become quite literally a monster, pure and simple.
So Frankie got trained in etiquette, poise, grammar, speech, vocabulary, and tap dancing (heh-heh, thank you, Mel Brooks; Young Frankenstein is still one of the best Frankenstein movies ever made). And there was, inevitably, a Nancy Drew influence; both of them have the same taste for adventure, and despite Frankie's enormous talents in Mad Science, I think she has a secret desire to be a detective. She's read all of her universe's equivalent of Nancy Drew, and her adventures at Clearwater High, (both present and forthcoming) will give her plenty of opportunity to sharpen her skills. Of the Grrls, she's probably my personal favorite, and she serves as a continuing inspiration and drive to keep working and keep punching with the Grrls, because she's one of the reasons that I've just got to see what happens next.
Next: Bethany Ruthven
Good evening, darlings, and thank you for reading. As you all probably know (mostly because the bloody media won't let us alone about anything anymore), the seventh and final book in J. K. Rowling's much-admired Harry Potter series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, has just been released. Having finished it, I was initially loath to do a review of it because, quite frankly, none of us here at MonsterGrrls Central have any intention of giving away the answer to the big question: Does Harry Potter die?
Nevertheless, we must respond, so here is the MonsterGrrls' official answer, which I have been duly authorized to give: Buy the bloody thing and read it yourself if you want to find out, you grubby little git. What kind of monsters do you think we are?
Now, I'm sure that some of you are wondering how I'm going to be able to review this book without giving away the proper answer to the does-Harry-die question. Well, here's how it goes:
People die. Other people become seriously injured. Some other people prove themselves to be right sodding bastards. Still other people confirm deep suspicions about themselves and their character that you have probably had all along. There's a quest (duh). There's quite a bit of violence, fighting and magic-using, which goes without saying (also duh). Two major characters do die, after all, in quite spectacular ways. (No, I'm not going to tell you who. See above.) Tons of secrets are finally revealed
.
And in the end (and I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying this), that which has been given the least amount of analysis and scrutiny throughout the whole of this series, that which has had almost no press or media attention at all, is that which ultimately saves the day.
Now read the bleeding thing yourself and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Sincerely yours,
Bethany Ruthven
BETHANY'S RATING:
Full marks. Completely sodding brilliant. But then, it's J. K. Rowling, so what else could it be?
POST-MORTEM: In the event that you are now searching around for something else to take up your time, an excellent fantasy called The MonsterGrrls is available for purchase at http://www.monstergrrls.com, or go directly to http://www.cafepress.com/themonstershop. It's quite good and more spiritually satisfying than being on Myspace, so come round and have a look. --B. R.
world to protect ancient secrets and monsters (called "cryptids") from humans who would otherwise destroy or exploit them. Consisting of Doc, Drew and Zak Saturday, and accompanied by loyal cryptids Fiskerton and Komodo, the Saturdays team tries to stay one step ahead of madman cryptid hunter V.V. Argost in their exploits. The cartoon was created by Jay Stephens, who also is drawing and writing comic stories featuring the Saturdays that will appear in every other issue of DC Comics' Cartoon Network Action Pack until the show's premiere in the fall. The latest issue, #26, features the first of these stories, showcasing Stephens' excellent character designs and artwork.
