Author Archives: JD DeLuzio

Arrow: “Penance”; Legends of Tomorrow: “Shogun”

This week’s Arrow features a strong action plot, as the team try to rescue a reluctant Diggle. They undercut the story somewhat by having the Ragman needlessly continue on, when he could have easily rescued Wild Dog. It would have made more sense to have Rory stay away from the team just a bit longer, rather than artificially prevent his assistance when it is most needed.

In the flashback, Ollie takes the Bratva’s worst, final test.

On Legends of Tomorrow, the Waverider has a foxy stowaway, Nate proves his mettle, and the Legends are big in Japan.

Jack Chick dead at 92

The comic book world lost a figure of global influence this week. Jack Chick, the prolific creator of those rectangular extremist comics often found in public places, and the deranged conspiracy Crusader Comic Books, died October 23. Chick’s often surreal comic-book rants against everything from evolution to role-playing games created controversy even among evangelical Christians and became ironic must-reads among many hip consumers of comix culture. Over the years, Chick claimed the Catholic Church created Islam and assassinated JFK, warned against the corrupting influence of rock ‘n’ roll, Bewitched and Family Guy (well…), and established much of the groundwork for the 1980s/90s “Satanic Panic.”

Pity he couldn’t have held out a bit and died next Monday. Chick freakin’ hated Halloween.

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Supergirl: “Welcome to Earth” / The Flash: “The New Rogues”

Supergirl guards the endangered American President (Lynda Carter), Mon-El (Chris Wood) awakens, and Renee Montoya Maggie Smith (Floriana Lima) joins forces with Alex Danvers. We learn that this Earth is very familiar with aliens, M’gann M’orzz (Sharon Leal) reveals herself to fellow Martian J’onn J’onzz, and Snapper Carr (Ian Gomez) continues to have no appreciable connection to his comic-book namesake.

The Flash and Jesse Quick (Violett Beane) join forces with an old Rogue (Wentworth Miller) against a couple of new Rogues, Mirror Master (Gray Damon) and Top (Ashley Rickards). Meanwhile, the team interview for a new Harrison Wells and Caitlin Snow lives up to her name.

Discussion below:

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October Countdown Review: Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971)

The fear will fully energize the molecular structure of your blood!
–Count Dracula

You would have expected that Universal would have released a movie called Dracula vs Frankenstein, since they paired the famous monsters on more than one occasion. They didn’t. As though to establish some cosmic balance for the oversight, the early 1970s saw three films by this title. The definitive movie by this title is Al Adamson’s drive-in shlockfest, which manages to be the last horror film for aging veterans J. Carroll Naish and Lon Chaney, Jr., and features a cameo by Famous Monsters publisher Forrest J. Ackerman.

It’s a truly terrible movie, one tier above the Ed Wood oeuvre, and yet, peculiarly enjoyable. Certainly, it’s better than the others, which will also be reviewed today as part of our Halloween Countdown.

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October Review: Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971)

In this Spanish/German/Italian film, a detective’s investigation turns up a plot by aliens to revive and duplicate earth’s most famous monsters in order to conquer the planet. Originally released as Los Monstruos del Terror and under various titles in translation, it eventually came to be another Dracula vs Frankenstein, perhaps in order to cash in on the cult success of Adamson’s movie. Alas, the vampire in this film isn’t Count Dracula, and he doesn’t fight Frankenstein’s Monster, who does, however, duke it out with star werewolf, Waldemar Daninsky.

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October Discussion: Dracula vs Frankenstein (1969)

The third (as of this writing) Dracula vs Frankenstein fell to Spain, and cult/exploitation director Jesús Franco.
Shot around the same time as Adamson’s film, this one is also a loose sequel to Franco’s Dracula, Christopher Lee’s non-Hammer excursion as the vampire lord.

Although released before the others, it didn’t receive the title until later in its history.

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Flash: “Magenta” Arrow: “A Matter of Trust” Legends of Tomorrow: “The Justice Society of America”

The Flash teams up with Jesse Quick to take on a metal-warping metahuman with anger issues.

Two of Ollie’s new recruits act on their own and, in the process, knock a drug dealer into one of those vats of mutagenic goop lying around the DCU. The team must come together to take on the resulting new metahuman, as Ollie deals with his implausible second life as mayor and Diggle faces imprisonment.

The Legends encounter the Justice Society of America.

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Novel Review: Calvin

This noteworthy short novel has been written for the YA crowd, but its likely audience is some years older, familiar with the leading light of the second (and likely final) Golden Age of Comic Strips.
It concerns a schizophrenic Canadian teen named Calvin who heads out across the frozen Lake Erie accompanied by an imaginary talking tiger named Hobbes and a girl from his school named Susie, in a mad quest to find…

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