Author Archives: JD DeLuzio

Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? Review: “The Scooby of a Thousand Faces!”

“I‘d like to go to Themyscira.”
–Velma Dinkley

Lex and I will be alternating reviews to the forthcoming CWTVDCU version of Crisis on Infinite Earths, starting tomorrow with a joint overview of the series, followed by Lex’s take on the official start with Supergirl. Despite a plethora of guest-stars that will bring Smallville, Superman Returns, the 1990s Flash and, just possibly, the 1960s Batman (we don’t yet know which character Burt Ward will actually be playing) into continuity with the various CW series, the Crisis will leave many worlds untouched. The chaotic DC movies seem disconnected from this event, as do prestige shows like Titans and Doom Patrol.

Also missing? The latest incarnation of Scooby-Doo, who has belonged to DC for some decades now. In 2019, the pooch and his Mystery-solving friends appear in Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, a series that revisits the premise of the first Scooby spin-off, The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972-1974), in which, each week, Mystery, Inc. stumbled onto a mystery and a famous guest-star.

In this episode, it happens to be a certain DC Amazon.

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The ChiZine Controversy: An Overview

ChiZine Publications made a name for themselves for quality horror, dark fantasy, and SF. They earned that, through the books they produced, which include works by Nancy Baker, Ellen Datlow, Nick Cutter/Craig Davison, Ed Kurtz, Livia Llewellyn, David Nickle, Douglas Smith, Paul G. Tremblay, George A. Romero (R.I.P.), and many others. They threw great parties at SF Cons. Aspiring authors aspired to join their roster.

Things slowly turned dark, culminating last month in a story of scandals and allegations that has not yet ended.

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E.T. Phone Bank… Again

The original film never received a sequel but, thirty-seven years later, E.T. and Elliot are reuniting in a heart-warming effort to sell you stuff over the Holiday Season:

But it’s an impressive effort, regardless.

Happy (American) Thanksgiving!

Novel Review: The Saturday Night Ghost Club

What follow is an account, as I choose to remember it, of my twelfth year on this planet…

Brain matter will squeeze through a keyhole.

We’re a bit behind for a review of this 2018 novel, a sort-of literary/YA Stranger Things set in Niagara Falls, Canada, but it has experienced a surge of popularity this autumn, and so, before we get too far into winter, let’s return to the 1980s and the summer-to-Halloween run of the Saturday Night Ghost Club.

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October Countdown: The Cat and the Canary (1927)

Come, Cicily, let us go to our room, and pile the furniture in front of the door.
–from The Cat and the Canary: A Melodrama in Three Acts.

John Willard’s 1922 horror/melodrama/dark comedy has been adapted to film multiple times. The two 1930 versions, The Cat Creeps! and La Voluntad del muerto (A Spanish-language version filmed at night on the same sets, in the manner of the contemporaneous Dracula movies) have both been lost1, the 1960 TV version (an episode of the short-lived anthology series, The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries) is little-seen now, and I can find even less on the 1961 Swedish adaptation, Katten och kanariefågeln.

Our Halloween Day reviews (based on those votes cast) will address the three most famous adaptations, starting with the hugely influential 1927 version. Along with Lon Chaney’s famous films, this movie led to Universal’s domination of the horror genre during Hollywood’s Golden Age, and, incidentally, shaped comic-book history.

Happy Halloween!

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October Countdown: The Cat and the Canary (1978)

–An asylum for the criminally insane. We’re just up the road.
–Oh. Well, that’s convenient.

Our third adaptation of The Cat and the Canary brings us to England in the 1930s. While it pushes some implications of the source material a little further than past versions, it aims squarely at being a dark comedy, with the emphasis on laughs. There’s not much else you can do with conventions and tropes the source mocked back in the 1920s.

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Graphic Novel Review: Pumpkinheads

“…friends don’t let friends lead small lives.”

Somewhere in the American heartland stands the Pumpkin Patch or, more specifically, DeKnock’s World Famous Pumpkin Patch & Autumn Jamboree, a fall tradition consisting of a corn maze, haunted house, mini-train, petting zoo, and other attractions, and a lot of home-made snack food. And every year, rural high schoolers Josiah and Deja work the Succotash Hut, while Josiah moons over the hot girl who works at the Fudge Shoppe. They’re seniors now, and on their final night, Deja convinces Josie to finally talk to the Fudge Girl, while they take the chance to enjoy the Patch’s homespun attractions for once. In this YA graphic novel by Rainbow Rowell (author of YA novels and Marvel’s Runaways) and Faith Erin Hicks (Eisner-winning graphic novelist), that decision will lead them into a series of goofball misadventures and, of course, a life-changing realization.

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Novel Review: The Water Dancer

We returned to Lockless with a horse, for that is what he traded Rose for. He had taken my mother from me. But it was not enough. He took my memory of her too, for when we left, my father in more rage than I had ever seen in him, he took the shell necklace from me. And I ran from him. And the next morning I ran down to the stables, where I saw the same horse my mother had been traded for, and there by the trough of water, I felt my first inclination of what I give to you now—- Conduction (397).

Ta-Nehisi Coates gained fame as a journalist and author of non-fiction books– and then as a writer for Marvel’s Black Panther. His first novel, published early this autumn, blends fantasy/magic realism with American history, and it found its way into Oprah’s influential Book Club.

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