Category Archives: Reviews

Simian Saturdays Takes an Audio Trip to Skull Island

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king-kong-audioOver at the StarWarp Concepts blog, you’ll find the latest installment of Simian Saturdays, a series of reviews I’ve been doing that examine the movies (and other media) that focused on King Kong, the giant monkey who’s captured generations of monster fans’ hearts. It’s part of SWC’s celebration of King Kong, the latest addition to its Illustrated Classics library that’s now on sale.

Today I give a listen to King Kong: The Original RKO-General Motion Picture Classic, an audio-drama adaptation of the original movie released in LP-album form in either the late 1960s or early 1970s. I remember seeing ads for it all the time in the back pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, but I never had a chance to listen to it until recently—and it’s actually a pretty good take on Kong’s story.

King-Kong-Final-FrontCvrKing Kong (the SWC Illustrated Classic) is an e-book-only release that reintroduces monster fans to the 1932 novelization of the original movie classic. Written by Delos W. Lovelace, based on the story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper and the screenplay by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose, it includes scenes that didn’t appear in the final cut of the film—including the notorious “spider pit” sequence in which Kong’s human pursuers are attacked by horrific arachnids and insects. The SWC version features six original black-and-white illustrations by comics artist Paul Tuma, whose pulp-influenced style has appeared in the pages of The Twilight Avenger, Flare, and Dan Turner: Hollywood Detective.

King Kong is on sale right now, so visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.

Gothic Librarians Love Zwieback, Too

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Pan0-finalcvrReview time! Over at the site The Gothic Library, gothic librarian (and site owner) Julia—who stopped by the StarWarp Concepts booth at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival—gives her thoughts on the free comic The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, and recommends it to her readers. You can check out her review by going here.

Unfamiliar with The Saga of Pandora Zwieback? Well, Pan is a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets an immortal, shape-shifting mopnster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. You’ll find Pan and Annie battling evil in the following titles:

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: The free, downloadable comic that Julia recommends serves as an introduction to Pan and Annie—with an 8-page story written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia—as well as Pan’s first novel, Blood Feud (via a pair of preview chapters).

blood_feudBlood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:

Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover!

pan_annualThe Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1: A spinoff from the novel series, this 56-page, full-color comic special finds the teenaged Goth adventuress battling vampires and a jealous, man-stealing siren. It features stories by me and Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up), art by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0), comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), and Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), and cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella).

Blood Feud, Blood Reign, and the Pan Annual are available in print and digital formats. Pandora Zwieback #0 is a digital exclusive. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information, as well as sample pages and chapters.

Taliesin Meets the Goth Loli Vampires for Blood Reign Review

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Blood-Reign-FinalCvrThe first review has come in for Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2—and naturally it’s a positive one! Over at the vampire-centric site Taliesin Meets the Vampires, reviewer and site owner Andrew Boylan—who also gave a glowing review to Blood Feud, the first novel in the series—shares his opinion of Pan’s latest adventure:

“If the first volume took some deliberate pacing steps to build Pandora’s character, this volume eschews that as it thunders along at breakneck speed, barely pausing for breath at any given time (and, I must say, the volume was devoured at speed as well). The book doesn’t suffer for this…I thoroughly enjoyed this volume.”

You can read the entire review here.

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with this project (and if you are, how did you wind up at this site? 😀 ), The Saga of Pandora Zwieback is my young adult, dark-urban-fantasy novel series, starring a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets a shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world.

Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents, and her friends, are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:

Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan faces even greater challenges as the clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover!

Visit each of the titles’ product pages for more information, including sales links and sample chapters.

Pirouette #1: A Review

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Pirouette01As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, in my post on the zombie apocalypse series Afterlife with Archie, I’ve become a comic book reviewer for the news site Comics for Sinners. And occasionally I come across a horror series that I think might interest you Panatics, so I decided to now and then reproduce my C4S reviews here at Zwieback Central. (And yes, it helps to update this blog.) So this time around I look at the first issue of Black Mask Studios’ Pirouette. Read on to find out more…

Confession time: I’ll admit I experienced some trepidation when I was asked to review this title from Black Mask Studios, but that was entirely due to confusing writer Mark L. Miller with Kick-Ass shock-and-awe hypemeister Mark Millar. Not being a fan of Millar’s work, I couldn’t imagine what Hollywood pitch this latest work would turn out to be. But then I took a second look, and realized a completely different writer was involved (an unfortunate circumstance that I’m sure Miller is sick of by now), so I started reading.

Pirouette-Sample1I’m glad I took that second look.

Pirouette is the eponymous star of the comic, an extremely sad, 16-year-old clown who dreams of running away from the circus because of the abuse—both physical and psychological—that she suffers at the hands of her fellow carnies, as well as her parents; to say she’s the resident punching bag would be an understatement. And yet there’s a spark of hope in Pirouette that a better life exists for her, somewhere beyond her nightmarish existence. And if what one of the other clowns has told her is true, there may be a chance for that spark to blossom into a flame…

The first impression one gets from Miller’s tale is that he’s wearing his Ray Bradbury influence on his sleeve—Samwell’s Circus of Curios and Wonders seems straight out of Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show in Bradbury’s classic novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes. And that’s not a bad thing—given the extremes of hyperkinetic art layouts and ultraslow, “write for the trade” padded scripting that dominate comics these days, Miller has found an easy balance between the two, with a story that moves at its own pace without being derivative of Bradbury’s work.

Although billed as a horror miniseries, there’s nothing supernatural in evidence in this first issue; the horror solely comes from watching Pirouette’s mistreatment from a cast of characters you’d like to see run over by the train that transports the circus through its 1930s’ Midwest America setting. From all I know there may be no supernatural elements to the story, and that would be fine—Pirouette works just as well as a character-driven tale.

Pirouette-Sample2

The art by Miller’s creative partner, Carlos Granda, is breathtaking. There’s a hint of Angel Medina (Spawn), a hint of Bernie Wrightson (Swamp Thing), and a touch of old-school EC comics to his style, and it all combines for top-notch storytelling pages that range from wide-screen double-splashes to intimate close-ups.

Bottom line? With its winning combination of Bradbury-esque influences and incredible art, Pirouette is a miniseries definitely worth a look for horror fans and comic fans.

Pirouette #1
Written by Mark L. Miller
Art and cover by Carlos Granda
Publisher: Black Mask Studios
32 pages • full color
$3.99 U.S.
On sale now

Afterlife With Archie #6: A Review

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afterlife06Just in time for Halloween, here’s something different for this site: Me recommending a project I had nothing to do with. Okay, maybe not all that different—after all, I’ve posted summer reading lists in which I recommend other authors’ works. If anything, it’s different in that it involves a comic book series, the latest issue of which I reviewed for the news site Comics for Sinners. It’s the most unexpected—and most popular—Archie Andrews comic ever: the zombie apocalypse series Afterlife with Archie. And I think it’s something you Panatics might be interested in…

It started as a joke: a Halloween drawing by artist Francesco Francavilla (The Black Beetle), of a comic-book cover for a nonexistent horror series called Afterlife with Archie (a parody of the long-running Life with Archie); in it, America’s favorite teenager was being stalked in a cemetery by his best friend, Jughead—who’d become a zombie. The image went viral and comic fans laughed about it…but at Archie Comics, someone took a look at it and thought, Archie and his pals in a zombie apocalypse—what a great idea!

And thus was born Afterlife with Archie, the series, with Francavilla as artist, joined by writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Stephen King’s The Stand). Together, they’ve made AwA one of the most talked-about series currently being published, and one of the company’s top titles, by treating it as a straight-up horror series not intended for younger readers used to Archie’s more comedic antics. The setup is: Jughead’s dog, Hot Dog, is hit and killed by a car; Jughead brings him to Sabrina the Teenaged Witch and begs her to revive him; Sabrina uses The Necronomicon to do so (well, there’s a bad idea). In a Stephen King’s Pet Sematary–style twist, Hot Dog comes back as a very bad dog—a zombie dog, in fact, that puts the bite on Jughead…who then quickly spreads the infection to the rest of Riverdale. And suddenly Archie Andrews knows what it’s like to be Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead…

With the first story arc completed in AwA #5, Afterlife with Archie #6 shows us what’s become of Sabrina after her two witchy aunts punished her for accidentally unleashing hell on Earth—the last we’d seen of her was in the first issue, when they’d banished her to the “Nether-Realm.” Now we find out things haven’t improved much for her…

“Witch in the Dream House” uses the trope of the lead character who insists that their “hallucinations” and imagined life are reality while everyone tries to convince the character they’re insane. For Sabrina, it’s her certainty that she’s a witch, surrounded by monster in group therapy at a mental institution—run by two doctors named Lovecraft and Machen. If you recognize the names H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen, two of the horror genre’s greatest writers, you can see where this is going, can’t you?

For horror fans, there are Easter eggs galore, with shout-outs to the authors’ works, most notably Lovecraft’s C’thulu Mythos—two of Sabrina’s fellow patients are Erich Zann (“The Music of Erich Zann”) and Richard Pickman (“Pickman’s Model”)—as well as Robert W. Chambers’s fabled city of Carcosa (most notably referenced in the first season of HBO’s acclaimed series True Detective) and the cult classic film The Wicker Man (the original with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee, not the crappy remake with Nicholas Cage). And as for the ending…well, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.

As a bonus, instead of AwA’s usual backup stories—reprinted from Archie’s Red Circle–imprint series Chilling Tales of Sorcery, with stories and art by some of comics’ legendary creators—this issue features a sneak peek of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1, Aguirre-Sacasa’s not-quite-an-AwA-spinoff-series that’s currently on sale. Set in the 1960s, with art by Robert Hack, it seems to take its cues from Rosemary’s Baby and other occult thrillers of the sixties and early seventies. Definitely another series to check out.

Bottom line? If you’re already reading Afterlife with Archie, or are a fan of the works of Lovecraft, Machen, and Chambers, then definitely pick up this issue. If you’re a horror fan in general, you need to be reading this series. AwA is one of the smartest, creepiest comics out there right now, with a minimal amount of gore shown during its most violent scenes, but a lot of oppressive mood. Archie + zombies + the C’thulu Mythos = a can’t-miss series.

Afterlife with Archie #6

“Witch in the Dream House”

Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Art by Francesco Francavilla

Publisher: Archie Comics

32 pages • full-color

$2.99 U.S.

On sale now

Critics Love Our First Pandora Zwieback Annual

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pan_annual_lgForget all about that gun-totin’ “Trinity of Sin” gal from our Distinguished Competition—The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1 is the only comic starring a Pandora-named character that you need to be reading!

Don’t believe me? Then take the word of Aida Jacobs, the Girly Geek of the comic news Web site Word of the Nerd, in her review of our first full-length Pan comic:

“Steven A. Roman demonstrates yet again his ability to write in the voice of a teenage girl without resorting to the petty whining and needless angst that seem to plague a lot of the female teenage characters in books today… With The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1, entertainment is guaranteed.”

Read the entire review here.

And over at the site Comics For Sinners, reviewer Richard Boom had this to say about the annual’s lead tale, “Song of the Siren”:

“Creator/writer Steven A. Roman mixes young adult fantasy with some themes like ‘young love’ but also with equal parts of ‘female empowerment’ and lets Pandora be a real and true voice…. The art by Portuguese artist Eliseu Gouveia is just stellar and makes for a perfect match for the story!”

Read the entire review here.

YA Wants More Zwieback

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The popularity of our favorite Goth adventuress continues to grow! Add yet another positive review of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 to the list, this time from Heather M. Riley and her review blog, Want My YA:

“From the first page I was hard pressed to put Blood Feud down…. My only complaint is that I don’t have book 2 in front of me so I can find out what happens next. I need to know!”

Read the entire review by going here.

Wonder Goth Powers… Activate!

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Why, lookee here—it’s the latest positive review of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, this time courtesy of the online fantasy-themed magazine Black Gate and its resident Goth Chick, Sue Granquist:

“Now you may assume that it was simply the cover art and the promise of a story with a Goth chick heroine that ultimately got me, but you’d be wrong. Actually, it was the first chapter that got me; and then the next, and then the next…”

So, it’s true, then: Zwieback is highly addictive…  😉

Read the entire review by clicking on the logo above.

A Monstrous Appetite for Zwieback

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And so we close out January 2012 with another enthusiastic recommendation of Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, courtesy of reviewer Sheila Shedd and the site Monster Librarian:

“Blood Feud is a roller coaster read; the action never lets up…. Highly recommended for ages 15 and up for complexity of plot and violence.”

Read the entire review by clicking on the logo above. And hey, all you librarians out there, how about adding Blood Feud to your YA sections and introducing your readers to a certain Goth adventuress? You never know—they might really enjoy meeting Pan!

Fascinated With a Fictional Goth Adventuress

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D’oh! Here’s a review I missed—another positive one, of course!—from back in November (sorry, Carly!), courtesy of the blog Fiction Fascination:

“Pan is such a strong in-depth character, which I instantly liked and related to…. All in all a 5-star read.”

Read the entire review by clicking on the logo above.