Universal Monsters Monday

I gave it some thought and realized that there are blogs that are labelled Friday Night Fights, Haikuesday, and even Half-Naked Thursday, so I can now claim Monday and thus be able to do multiple posts that run through the entire set.

First though, comments. True, Capcom, the IBM asshats belong right up there with AIG and the rest. There are just too many to count. Re: the cemetery, the actual count now is 100,000 graves and a fake shrine to Emmett till; his actual casket had possums living in it. Hemlockman, the article ran on CNN back in May and there are several YouTubes online. Never heard of a NJ guy getting knifed, but I suspect Google might know. Mark Millar writes KICK-ASS, which is a ripoff of his own comic WANTED (changed very much for the film), and the list leads back to AVENGERS stories he wrote in the late 90s. He and Jeph Loeb seem to have three ideas between them and they use them again and again, only for different comic companies. Enjoy the book, certainly, but I'd start reading another Scottish writer, Grant Morrison, if I were you. Millar gets old real fast. Anyhow.

I've kept the cards out and hopefully will describe them accordingly. There are 108 in the complete set, I have maybe 90. I'm skipping Dracula for my favorite monster and the guy I see in the mirror every morning when I say "It's showtime!" The first card is the set-up, though it behooves me why THIS ISLAND EARTH and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN are included. The line-up aside from those two, Wolfman, The Monster, His Mate, Dracula, Invisible Man, The Mummy, and Gill-Man. Art by Hugh Fleming.Each set starts off with the main man, and each set is illustrated by two artists, in this case Mike Mignola, who is well-known for creating HELLBOY, an Mark Chiarello, now Art Director at DC, but, to me, one of the finest artists around. I'm sure you can see the difference. The back of each card gives you a virtual bathtub full of trivia, important facts, and even more art. Look close and see the illustration that shows Bela Lugosi as the Monster, before he was sent off to being a vampire and a morphine addict for the next twenty-five years. (Sometimes, it is hard to believe that FRANKENSTEIN was made almost EIGHTY years ago.) There's Boris Karloff getting his hair done and looking a bit like Ted Danson. There are 26 cards to each monster, and a few of the backs have illustrations by Basil Gogos, the cover artist on FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. So there you go, come back next Monday for Dracula...