Tag Archives: tv shows

Horror Street: Courage the Cowardly Dog

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

What we have here is a bit of graffiti-mural nostalgia: a tribute to a popular cartoon character named Courage the Cowardly Dog.

In case you didn’t know, Courage the Cowardly Dog was an animated series that launched in 1999 on the Cartoon Network and ran for four seasons (52 episodes) and a special. Starring an easily frightened beagle ironically named Courage, the series involved him protecting his owners, an elderly farm couple named Eustace and Muriel Bagge, from all sorts of supernatural and sci-fi threats that showed up in the nearby town of Nowhere. Apparently, his last appearance was in a 2021 straight-to-DVD crossover movie, Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog.

I don’t remember exactly when I took this picture, but it was probably in the early 2000s, at the height of the series’ popularity, as I was wandering through the Long Island City area of Queens. I do remember the mural took up a good share of the warehouse wall on which it was painted, that I shot this with one of those single-use disposable cameras you could buy at a pharmacy, and that I was aware of the series, but had never watched it.

If you’re a fan of Courage, it’s a pretty good likeness, don’t you think?

Interested in checking out Courage’s animated adventures (like I am)? Then head over to Tubi, where the series currently streams. (Unfortunately, the Scooby-Doo crossover is unavailable.) With Halloween fast approaching, it’ll help you get into the Spooky Season mindset.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries, including: Day of the Dead 2025, the Brooklyn Vampire, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, a Beetlejuice sighting, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the Spooky Forest, and a ride on the Spirit Halloween Terror Train!

Monster Hunters: They’re Not Just On TV!

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Fall is always a busy time of year for monster hunters, demon fighters, and occult adventurers on television, what with Halloween on the way. You’ve got tonight’s third-season start of Sleepy Hollow, followed by the eleventh-season opener of Supernatural on October 7, and the fifth-season premiere of Grimm on October 30. Well, if monster-fighting heroes are your thing, then perhaps you might be interested in meeting a teenaged Goth adventuress who specializes in dealing with the creatures of the night…

blood_feudThe Saga of Pandora Zwieback is a young adult, dark urban fantasy series that I write. It chronicles the adventures of sixteen-year-old Pandora Zwieback, a Gothy horror fangirl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets Annie 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 battling evil in the following titles:

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A free, downloadable comic that 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). You can access it by clicking on the “Download Free Comic” link you see in the sidebar to the right.

Blood 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 was enthusiastically greeted by critics and dark-fantasy fans alike.

“Blood Feud is far and away one of the best young adult supernatural fantasy novels released in the last few years. Pan is exactly the kind of teen heroine that readers should be standing up and cheering for.”—Melissa Voelker, HorrorNews.net

Blood-Reign-FinalCvrBlood 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!

“If Blood Feud, 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)… I thoroughly enjoyed this volume.”—Andrew Boylan, Taliesin Meets the Vampires

pan_annual_coverThe Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1: A spinoff from the novel series, this 56-page, full-color comic special—with cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella)—finds the teenaged Goth adventuress battling vampires and a jealous, man-stealing siren. It features three original stories of what I’ve termed the “Paniverse”—tales that take place within the fictional universe of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback.

  • “Song of the Siren,” written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0) involves Pan and her boyfriend, Javi, attending one of his family’s picnics in Central Park, and running into an ex-girlfriend of Javi’s. An awkward situation, to be sure, made even worse by the realization that with her monstervision, Pan can see the girl is really a siren: a creature from Greek mythology that can hypnotize men with its voice!
  • “After Hours” is by writer Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up) and comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), and involves a working-class demon dropping by his favorite bar.
  • “Shopping Maul” is a short story written by me, with title-page art by Elizabeth Watasin (writer/artist of Charm School). Pan, Javi, and their friends stop by a Queens mall to do a bit of window-shopping—only to find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between Gothic Lolita vampires and Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Annie!

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 at Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, for ordering information, as well as sample pages and chapters.