AKRON COMICON 2016

The Akron Comicon is my last convention appearance of the year. It happens Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and 8, at the University of Akron’s Quaker Square. The Saturday hours are 10 am to 6 pm and the Sunday hours are 10 am to 5 pm.

The convention has a fantastic guest roster for this year’s show. Here’s a partial list:

Airship 27 — Featuring Rob Davis and Ron Fortier!
Darryl Banks
Mike W. Barr
Tom Batiuk (Sunday only)
John Beatty
Allen Bellman
Craig Boldman
George Broderick Jr.
Daniel Gorman
Paul Gulacy
Mike Gustovich
Bob Ingersoll
Arvell Jones
Dirk Manning
Brad Ricca (Saturday only)
Tom Scioli
Ted Sikora
Chris Sprouse
Paul Storrie
Marc Sumerak
Thom Zahler
Mike Zeck

There will be panels and presentations on creating your own comic book, Superman, Jack Kirby, Marvel’s original Secret Wars, cosplay, Master of King Fu, the pulps and more. Plus a costume contest that gets better every year.

The sold-out exhibitor room will feature dozens of comics creators, comic-book sellers and other vendors. Yours truly will be set up at Table C8. I’ll be selling a variety of items from my online Vast Accumulation of Stuff sales and some Isabella-written comic books and books.

I’ll be happy to answer your questions about my career and work, as well as sign Isabella-written stuff. However, understand that, due to the ongoing negotiations between myself and DC Comics, there are questions I can’t answer at this time. There are also comic books and other items that I don’t sign, although those mostly consist of Black Lightning or other comics not written by me, comics history books containing knowingly erroneous information on me and my work, and Black Lightning action figures and merchandise for which I have not yet been compensated. I fully expect to be able to lift some of these restrictions in the near future.  

As usual, there is no charge for my signature, though I would hope you would make a donation to The Hero Initiative. Hero is far and away my favorite of the comics charities because its mission is to help comics professionals in need.

For more information on the Akron Comicon, please visit the show’s website. It has everything you need to know.

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Looking ahead, I hope to finalize my 2016 convention and appearance schedule by the end of November. If you’d like me to appear at your event, contact me via e-mail.  

That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2015 Tony Isabella

SILENT VENOM

Right off the bat, Silent Venom (2009) gets a point for not being titled Snakes on a Sub. Of course, it loses a point for the final scene of the movie. In between, this Fred Olen Ray film was solid B-movie fun. I’d only seen a few minutes of it previously, so most of it was new to me.

Luke Perry stars as Lt. Commander James O'Neill, who’s in a bit of hot water for refusing to endanger his crew by ignoring an order to go beyond a new sub’s limits. He has turned in his retirement, but, to earn a honorable discharge and preserve his benefits, must take one more demeaning job: deliver a sub-turned-museum-turned-sub to a foreign buyer. His crew are mostly untested recruits. The mission turns real serious quickly.

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Perry is ordered to divert the submarine to pick up a scientist, her assistant and their classified work. The scientist is studying the effects of Chinese nuclear tests on the deadly snakes who live there. The island is in the path of planned Chinese navy maneuvers and our government doesn’t want the Chinese to get that research. Perry’s sub has three days to get to the island before the Chinese fleet and get out with the scientists.

Before the sub arrives, we see a snake big enough to swallow a man in two gulps. Which it does. If you’ve seen any of the giant snake movies on the Sci-Fi Channel, you’ve seen this CGI snake. It may be one of my favorite CGI actors. The rest of the snakes aren’t near as big, but still pretty damn scary. Especially slithering around a submarine. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Doc Andrea [Krista Allen] tells her assistant Jake [Louis Mandylor] to pack just two of the snakes, one male and one female. Except for the two biggest and most aggressive snakes, which he is ordered to kill, he’s supposed to release the rest into the wild. But Jake is one greedy son of a bitch and he sneaks all of the snakes onto the sub.
 
The submarine has another problem. The Chinese Navy has started its maneuvers two days early. Perry and his largely untested crew must move deep under the Chinese fleet, a job complicated when a curious sailor opens one of the snake boxes.

Outside of the curious sailor, Perry and his crew are good men who mostly control their panic. They are very believable, as is Allen’s courageous scientist. The only weak performance in the film comes from Mandylor, who plays to every craven, greedy shifty stereotype imaginable.

Besides Mandylor, my only real problem with Silent Venom is that it runs about ten minutes too long. After the snakes are exterminated and the sub is safe, Perry goes into his room and is almost bitten by one last snake. He kills it and tosses it into the hall, which gets a smile from his second-in-command. That should have been the last scene in the movie.

Instead, we get Perry and his second visiting Allen in the hospital where she is recovering from a snake bite...and then we get Perry saying his goodbye to his former commander...and then we get Perry boarding a helicopter and a last scene almost identical to the last scene of Snakes on a Plane. That’s right. We see a container like the one the curious sailor opened on the sub being loaded on to the chopper. Sigh.

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Silent Venom is an entertaining B movie. Good acting, scary snakes, solid story. I don’t think I’d watch it a second time, but I’m glad I got to see the entire film this time around.

I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2015 Tony Isabella

TONY'S TIPS #131

This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...Why Batgirl doesn't work for me and other stuff that will probably get some folks upset with me.

PUMPKINHEAD

Another mini-blog...

My library has been remarkably efficient in getting me horror and monster movies, so I’ve been watching a lot of horror and monster movies. Many of these movies were requested on a whim, some because  I had never seen them, some because I had seen them but wanted to see them again.

Pumpkinhead (1988) was one I’d never seen. Here’s the quick summary of the film from the Internet Movie Database:

A man conjures up a gigantic vengeance demon called Pumpkinhead to destroy the teenagers who accidentally killed his son.

Lance Henriksen is the grief-mad father. The movie was directed by Stan Winston, known for his amazing special effects work on scores of movies. The film was based on a poem by Ed Justin and this seems to be his only movie credit. The story is credited to Mark Patrick Carducci, Winston and Richard Weinman. The screenplay is credited to Carducci and Gary Gerani.

Ed Harley [Henriksen] is a widower, raising his son in the kind of backwater country that usually involves cannibals and  chainsaws. As a child, he witnessed Pumpkinhead slaughter someone who had done wrong, moments after his dad had turned away that doomed someone. Harley dotes on his bespectacled son. He’s honestly thrilled when the lad gives him a homemade necklace with a small Pumpkinhead figure. Even though Harley knows Pumpkinhead is real.

Harley and son have a store in the nowhere that is this neck of the woods. It’s clear they are barely getting by. On that fateful day, their customers include a group of young people. Two of the young men are dirt-bikers. One is a totally shitbag.

Harley has to leave the store. He tells his son and his son’s dog to stay inside the store. The dog, hearing the dirt-bikes, charges from the store. The son follows him and is struck by the shitbag’s bike. It was an accident, but what follows isn’t.

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The shitbag bullies everyone except his brother into leaving, then prevents the others from calling for help from the cabin where they are saying. Harley returns in time to hear his son’s last word and last breath. His face is a mask of grief and hatred.

Harley goes to an old witch. She makes him dig up the rotted corpse of Pumpkinhead. She restores the monster to life using bloods from Harley and her son. This links Harley to the monster. He can feel Pumpkinhead slaughter the teens one by one.

Harley comes to his senses, but nothing can stop Pumpkinhead. The link between monster and man grows stronger with each kill. Indeed, Harley starts to resemble Pumpkinhead and vice versa. Realizing his death is the only thing that can stop the monster, Harley tries to shoot himself. It’s not enough and it takes the sole survivor, an innocent young woman, to finish the job.

Pumpkinhead bursts into flames and vanishes. The last scene of the movie shows the witch burying the charred remains of Harley, still wearing that homemade necklace. It’s a terrific ending.

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Pumpkinhead has achieved cult status and I can see why. It’s a neat little shocker with a performance by Henriksen that lifts it above most “B” movies. The actor was so committed to his performance that he supplied most of his character’s props and such. His Ed Harley is a good man whose grief leads him to do a terrible thing.

Pumpkinhead has spawned three sequels and Wikipedia says there are plans to reboot the series. I’ve requested the first sequel from my library and will watch/review it when it arrives.

Dark Horse launched a four-issue mini-series sequel to the movie, but canceled the title after only two issues. If the publisher ever wants to give Pumpkinhead another chance, I would certainly relish the challenge of trying to bring the eerie qualities of the series to the comic-book format.

Pumpkinhead gets my recommendation. It’s such a great movie that, if there weren’t two other library patrons waiting for it, I would watch it a second time.

I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2015 Tony Isabella

FIRE SERPENT

Another mini-blog...

Fire Serpent [Lions Gate; 2007] was a made-for-TV movie that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel before it changed its name to Syfy. I’d seen it when it originally aired, but, since I was able to get the DVD via my local library, I decided to watch it again.

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A solar flare sends a snake-like creature made of fire to Earth in 1975. After killing a female firefighter in the woods, it goes into hiding for thirty-odd years until the woman’s firefighter fiancé [Diego Klattenhoff] can age into weathered monster-hunter Randolph Mantooth, who played a firefighter on the 1970s show Emergency and whose character Dutch Fallon comments during the film that he used to be a firefighter in Los Angeles county.

Correction: the blazing snake doesn’t go completely into hiding as it makes enough appearance to alert the government to its existence and for Dutch and lunatic government agent Cooke [Robert Beltran] to capture it for all of about a minute. The experience turns Cooke into a religious fanatic who believes the creature is actually one of God’s angels, sent to purge the world of sin.

In 2007, we met fireman Jake Relm [Nicholas Brandon], his pal Dave Massaro [Steve Boyle], National Fire Agency investigator Christina Andrews [Sandrine Holt] obnoxious TV reporter Heather Allman [Lisa Langlois] and TV cameraperson Billie [Patrice Goodman]. Brandon is best known for playing Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He does a good job in this movie, which made me wish he had done more films like it. He had the potential to become a solid B-movie battler of monsters and maniacs. 

When the blazing snake, which can change its size from a wee little glow to a full-size Ghidorah head, makes its reappearance, it kills Dave by grabbing him and pulling him into a food-truck fire. Jake sees this, but doesn’t realize what he’s dealing with. Dutch tracks him down to tell him what’s what, but Jake ain’t listening.

Christina investigates. Cooke uses his top-secret credentials and  obstructs the investigation, since he plans to help the fire-snake consume a strategic fuel reserve and take out a state or three in the process. The fire-snake possesses some people, but they tend to burn out internally and literally. A character gets cut in half by a flame-blast. Cutting people in half was a popular CGI effect in Sci-Fi Channel movies and never looked remotely real. Jake gets a graphic example that the fire-snake is real and that he can’t trust Cooke. Dutch and Jake and Christine team up to destroy the blazing snake-monster and stop Cooke.

The fire serpent is destroyed, thanks to Jake’s courage and fire-fighting knowledge, aided and assisted by Christine’s mutant power of changing one gun into an entirely different gun as she shoots at an open fuel spigot. Jake and Christina hug, despite the fact that the fire-resistant suit he was wearing had been surrounded by fire just a couple minutes prior to the embrace. Before anyone realizes Christina is going to need to go to the burn unit, the movie cuts to the sun and another solar flare and another...do I really have to finish this sentence?

One more note. This movie happened on George W. Bush’s watch. It’s yet another example of him not keeping us safe, what with it being a NSA official who collaborates with a deadly enemy from beyond our borders. 

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Fire Serpent was directed by John Terlesky and written by Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens. There’s a “created by William Shatner” credit, but I have no idea what that means.

Fire Serpent isn’t a great movie, but I’ve now watched it twice and enjoyed it both times. The basic story is a good one, even though the presumably low budget keeps the film from being all it could have been. Brandon and Mantooth are very good in it. Beltran chews scenery. The other actors are adequate. The CGI effects are nothing to write home about, but do their job well enough.

I like Fire Serpent. I don’t love it, but I like it. 

I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2015 Tony Isabella

ALL ACCESS CLEVELAND

Another mini-blog...

All Access Cleveland: The Rock and Roll Photography of Janet Macoska [Cleveland Landmarks Press; $25.95] is an amazing visual record of my friend Janet’s career as one of the great rock photographer of all time. Here’s what Amazon says about the book:

If rock and roll has been the soundtrack of your life, Janet Macoska has likely provided the accompanying visuals. Her celebrated body of work can be seen in the Smithsonian, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Grammy Museum, and in Hard Rock properties around the world. David Bowie, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, DEVO, Hall and Oates, Heart, The Kinks, John Waite, Michael Stanley, and Alice Cooper are just some of the musicians who have used her photos on their records. This long-awaited compendium of native Clevelander Janet Macoska s 40+ years shooting rock and roll subjects presents many never-before-seen images from Janet s archives combining iconic imagery with entertaining, behind-the-scenes stories of her life as one of the world s preeminent rock photographers.

 

I like rock-and-roll, but it has never been a passion for me. What I love about this book is that its powerful images and commentaries allow me to understand why Macoska and so many others are so very passionate about the music. You’re never too old to learn something new, which is why I recommend this stunning photographic history to you. It would also make a great gift to the rock-and-rool fans in your life.

ISBN 978-0-936760-38-4

I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2015 Tony Isabella

EMMA

Another mini-blog...

Kaoru Mori’s Emma is one of my favorite manga series. Here’s what Amazon has to say about it:

Calling upon his former governess, William Jones, gentleman, is startled when his knock is answered by an uncommonly beautiful servant, the soft-spoken Emma. Throughout his visit, William's eyes drift to the maid whenever she enters the room, and he contrives to meet Emma socially as she goes about her errands. But London society is a web of strict codes and divisions. For the son of a wealthy merchant, seeking out a working-class girl is simply not done! William's father plans for his son to marry into the peerage and elevate the Jones family to greater heights, but although William says and does what is expected of him, he longs only for Emma's company...

I first discovered Emma in the pages of Viz’s Shojo Beat magazine, which ran from July 2005 to July 2009. Shojo manga in general is aimed at a teenage female readership. The magazine was aimed at the same audience. Among the things that attracted me to the magazine was its physical format (a big thick magazine) and the contents (a combination of comics and articles, even if the articles were also aimed at teenage females). What attracted me to Emma and the other comics were their great characters and realistic situations. Human comedy and drama go a long way with me.

Emma is a gem of a character. While her manner might be off putting to readers who live in a world where women are a powerful force and becoming ever more so, it was consistant with the Victorian England  in which the tale is set. Emma handles adversity with quiet courage  and dignity. William surrenders to adversity, even when his heart would lead him elsewhere. They are both likeable characters.

I never caught up with my reading of Shojo Beat and stopped trying when the magazine was cancelled. But when Yen Press began printing the series in handsomely-crafted hardcovers or nearly 400 pages per volume, I got into the series again. It’s as delightful as ever and I now have a new appreciation for Mori’s fascination with the era and her exuberant depictions of same.

Yen Press has released two volumes of Emma to date with a third one scheduled for December.

Emma, Vol. 1:

ISBN 978-0-316-30223-4

Emma, Vol. 2:

ISBN 978-0-316-30444-3

Emma, Vol. 3:

ISBN 978-0-316-30445-0

I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2015 Tony Isabella