Cheesy Tomatoes: Journey to the Center of the Earth

Yesterday, I took my son to see Journey to the Center of the Earth, the new adaptation of Jules Verne’s nineteenth-century novel. Though I’ve heard of the book, I’ve never read it, and I’ve never seen any of the other numerous television and movie adaptations of it, either, so I walk in eagerly anticipa…“Dad, can people really travel to the center of the earth?”

“No, son,” I tell him, “I don’t believe so.”

“Then why do they do it here?” he says. I tell him to let’s just watch the movie and find out. We get our popcorn, drinks, and candy; sit through the trailers; and watch as Brendan Fraser, our hero, a professor this go ‘round, delivers a lecture to half of class of bored students.

“Dad,” my son says, “that’s what your students looked like this summer.”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son, okay?” Fraser’s not only a professor, but he’s also a plate tectonic researcher, and he’s been carrying on his late brother’s work for about ten years in a lab that Fraser discovers will soon be shut down and used for storage space. After Fraser gets this bit of bad news, he goes home to receive some more: his nephew—whom he hasn’t seen in—guess what—ten years is coming to spend ten days with him—and he’s coming right now! Oh noes! His house is a mess, clothes thrown on the floor, plates of food all over the place.

“Dad,” my son says, “that’s what our house looks like whenever you’re in charge of cleaning, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son, okay?” This time, he giggles.

As Fraser busies himself cleaning, his sister-in-law arrives at the door.

“Dad,” my son says, “who’s that?”

“That’s his sister-in-law, son.”

“Oh, then that’s why he’s worried. Mom always looks like that whenever her sister-in-law comes over, doesn’t she?”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son, okay?” Fraser walks outside to greet his nephew, who is still sitting in car, playing a video game, obviously oblivious to the world around him. Fraser asks him about the Gameboy he’s playing, and the nephew harrumphs, telling the old fart that it’s not a Gameboy—it’s a PSP.

“Dad,” my son says, “that’s a PSP.”

“Yeah!” I tell him. “They’re cool, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” he says. Alright, then. Good for me. You see, I just bought my son a PSP two days ago as a present for his upcoming eighth birthday, and he doesn’t know it yet. Hee-hee!

Along with the gift of the boy (for ten days), Fraser’s sister-in-law also gives Fraser a box of his late brother’s effects, which includes a copy of Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Fraser thumbs through it and discovers notes, charts, graphs, and turkghetti recipes that his brother wrote in the margins of the text.

“Dad,” my son says, “why did his brother write in that book?”

“Let’s just watch the movie and find out, son.”

“Dad—you’re not supposed to write in books.”

“But it was his book, so he could write in it if he wanted to.”

“I thought he just said it was his brother’s book.”

"Well, that’s what I meant. It was his brother’s book, but his brother could write in it if he wanted to, ‘cause his brother owned it, it was his brother’s property.”

“You’re not supposed to write in books, though.”

“Well, if it’s your own book, then it’s okay.”

“I think it’s against the law. It’s illegal, Dad.”

“It’s not illegal, son. It’s okay. When I was in college, I used to write in my books, too, to take notes, to put my thoughts down, my reactions, or just to write down things that the teacher said.” My son just eyed me for a few seconds, then…

“You're going to jail.”

“Son, I’m not going to jail for writing in textbooks—fifteen years ago—that I paid for myself.”

“You weren’t supposed to. Didn’t you know that? It’s ill-le-gal!”

“Who told you that?”

“Mom.”


“Let’s just watch the movie, son.”

Next thing I know, Fraser and Angsty Teenager are driving through a deserted, snowy road in Iceland. I have no idea why or how they got there. They meet some late professor’s daughter, living alone in the middle of nowhere. A fit, trim, and beautiful professor’s daughter—living alone—in the middle of nowhere—in Iceland. She agrees to take them to the mountains, a storm begins to brew, Fraser starts lifting a volcanic/seismic-measuring device out of the ground, and lightning strikes near the trio. “The lighting is attracted to the metal. Run!” Icelandic Princess and Angsty Teenager run and find safety in a nearby cavern, but Fraser heroically refuses to budge, because he—must—have—the—doo—hickey. Lighting strikes closer and closer to him, and he—finally—with—one—last—tug—pulls it free, and he takes off—and the lightning does, too. It follows him, striking to his left, to his right, to his rear, like Elmer Fudd shooting at Bugs Bunny. Fraser makes it to the cavern just in time…for the entrance to cave in. Oh noes! Stuck! In a cave! In the dark! Fortunately, Icelandic Princess read the screenplay, so she prepared herself for just such an event: signal flares. As the trio meander through the cave, Icelandic Princess tells her companions that this cavern was once the site of a mining operation that was shut down after a disaster that killed eighty-something people. Let’s see…our heroes are in a cave where there has been a (somewhat recent) mining explosion, so what should our scholarly spelunkers do now? What’s the wisest choice of action considering the circumstances? Oh, I know…let’s light a signal flare! Of course, there’s always the chance of…you guessed it…explosion! So, after the explosion, our heroes are in the dark again, until, that is, Icelandic Princess remembers…her glowsticks!

“Dad,” my son says, “I used to have one of those. That’s a glowstick.”

“I know, son. Let’s just watch the movie.”

“Can I have one for my birthday?”

“I don’t know, son, we’ll see. Let’s just….”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t, I just….”

“But you didn’t say, ‘yes,’ either. Why not?”

“Well, you see, the stuff inside….”

“Liquid. It’s not stuff; it’s liquid. I thought you were a teacher.”

“I know it’s liquid. And it’s the liquid that….”

“It glows in the dark, too. Not the tube. The liquid. What makes it glow?”

“It’s made with some kind of luminescent chemical. However, now…”

“If I gave it to Georgia [my two-year-old daughter], and she drank it, would she glow in the dark?”

“Nicholas! That’s just what I was talking about. It’s poisonous, son; it would kill her. You don’t need a glowstick.”

“But I wouldn’t drink it, duh. I ‘m not stupid, you know.”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son.” I am now distraught, worried about my son wanting to use by daughter as a science experiment. No telling what else he has in mind. No telling what else he’s already tried. Ooo…shudder. Don’t go there, Andy. Don’t even think about it.

Doesn’t work. I do think about it. Was he serious? Surely not. He loves his sister. Oh, but she does get on his nerves, though, multiple times a day. But I don’t think…no. No. Just look at him, his feet crossed in his lap, eating popcorn, smiling, bobbing his seat up and down, as sweet and innocent a seven-year-old as you’ll ever see. And then something loud happens on the screen, and Nicholas shouts, “Oh, cool! Blood!” Oh, deardeardeardeardear.

“Dad,” my son says, “look! It’s just like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!”

Sure enough, the three characters are traveling through the cave in mine carts going faster than they should. Suddenly, the track splits.

“Dad,” my son says, “that happened in Indiana Jones, too!”

One track is about to end, and Icelandic Princess is in the cart on the track, so she jumps into Fraser’s cart, just in time, too, for her cart is now splintered.

“Dad,” my son says, “that happened in Indiana Jones, too. Hey! That boy is like Short Round, and that woman is like the blonde woman, and, and….Hey! That man is a professor, like Indiana Jones was.”

“You’re right!”

“That’s cheating.”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son.”

Back on the screen, our intrepid trio soon pass a supergigantic dinosaur fossil, easily three times the size of the T-Rex fossil we’ve seen in a couple of museum exhibits. “Look, Nicholas! A dinosaur skeleton! I wonder what that means, huh?”

“Dad,” my son says, “don’t you know that dinosaurs are extinct?”

“Yeah, but that’s what makes this so creepy”

“Dad, humans didn’t exist when dinosaurs were alive.”

“I know that son, but….”

“They fight a dinosaur. I saw it on the previews. How can they fight a dinosaur? Dinosaurs are extinct!”

“But son, they’ve traveled down to earth’s core, where a land exists where, I guess, dinosaurs are not extinct.”

“How did they get down there? They couldn’t have fit through that cave. Ahh, this is confusing.” A few moments later, and that dinosaur my son saw on the preview is now chasing Fraser. “Dad,” my son says, “how can he keep outrunning that dinosaur? Why doesn’t the dinosaur step on him already?”

“I don’t know, son, I don’t know. Let’s just watch the movie.”

“If it was you, the dinosaur would have eaten you already—and spit you out, ‘cause you taste like poop!”

“Let’s just watch the movie, son.”

“Is it almost over?”
“I think so. I think they’re about to escape.”

“How?”

“I think they’re going to let the steam push them up through a tunnel back to the surface.”

“Steam?”

“Air created by water condensation.”
“I know what steam is, Dad. I’m not stupid.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“They’re going to ride on air? All the way back to the surface?”

“I think so. Let’s just watch and find out.”

“How can you ride on air? It’s not a solid. It’s a gas. You can’t ride on gas.”

“If there was enough of it….”

“You’ve got enough of it.” He snickered.

“Nicholas!” He giggled some more and quieted down. Our heroes did indeed right a pocket of steam up through the mountain, and they landed on the earth’s surface, sliding down a mountain—in Italy. As they were sliding (on a dinosaur’s jawbone) down the relatively smooth, rockless surface of the mountain, they sliced through a vineyard, smashed grapes (the size of cocoanuts) hitting all three characters in the face.

“Dad,” my son says, “what’s that? What’re those?”
“Those are grapes, son. They’re sliding through a vineyard.”
“What’s a vineyard?”

“A place that grows grapes. Most vineyards are used to make wine.”

“Then why don’t they call it a grapeyerd?”

“Well, grapes grow on vines, son.”

“Other things grow on vines, too, don’t they?”

“Nicholas…the movie’s almost over, okay?” The three heroes return to America, and Frazier gives No-Longer-Angsty Teenager some of his father’s other books that were in his effects. No-Longer-Angsty Teenager pulls out a book with Atlantis in the title, asking Fraser if they can go there. Fraser tells him they’ll do so over the Christmas holidays (or something to that effect. The movie then ends, and I asked my son if he knows what Atlantis is.

“Yeah. It’s not real.”

“But do you know what it is?”

“The sunken city from a long time ago. It’s not real.”

“Well, it could be.”

“Dad….”

“Isn’t Spongebob from Atlantis?”

“No. He’s from Bikini Bottom. Everybody knows that.”

Oh. We get home, and my wife asks Nicholas if he enjoyed the movie. He did, and I ask him to tell her about what he saw the boy playing with. He tells her. “Oh, my,” she says, “isn’t that what you were wanting for your birthday?” Before he can answer, I tell her to look at the birthday list he made right before he went to the movie. First item listed: a blue Nintendo DS. “You’ve got a Nintendo DS on here. Is that what you want?”

"It was," I interjected, "until he saw the boy use the PSP in the movie."

"I don't know," my son replied, "I think a want a Nintendo DS. It's blue! And Grace has one, but it's pink, but mine would be blue!"

Oy.

He runs off into another part of house, and I hear him shout his sister’s name, then I hear her crying. Oh my…anything…let it be anything but a glowstick.

Cheesy Tomatoes: The Attack of the Psychic Killer Coreys, pt. 3

The next night came, and still no word from our fugitive friends; however, the show I anxiously awaited started: The Two Coreys. This reality show, now in its second season on the A&E network, stars Coreys Haim and Feldman, once the idols of millions of teens and pre-teens, and who together shared the silver screen in '80s movies The Lost Boys, License to Drive, and Dream a Little Dream; and separately starred in Silver Bullet, Lucas, Watchers (Haim); and The Goonies, Stand by Me, and The 'burbs (Feldman). The titular stars had a falling out at the end of the first season, when Corey called Corey's wife a very naughty name, and Corey thus grew miffed and told Corey not to come back till he, Corey, could be a bit more polite.



As the second season began, Corey's manager told Corey that he had to film some re-shoots for the upcoming, straight-to-DVD sequel of The Lost Boys, and that he had to film those re-shoots with Corey. Corey wasn't pleased. Corey never wanted to see Corey again; he had moved on with his life, and Corey would only cause further strife. Furthermore, Corey's manager wanted Corey to meet with Corey, so that they could straighten things out before they both arrived on the set together where tension might rise and cause undue harm to Corey's reputation. Corey agreed, and the manager then went to talk to Corey, and he agreed, too, and then...the two met as the show cut for commercial.

The commercial showcased A&E's new program, Psychic Kids. In the clips shown, these children not only saw dead people, but their visions seemed to so deeply disturb them that they were shaking, screaming, and crying. Cool, huh? I tell/read my son ghost stories from time to time,
we've visited haunted cites, we've gone ghost hunting (even spotting Bigfoot before, right in my brother's front yard), and a couple of times he's woken up from a nightmare, convinced something was out to get him. I cannot believe that I never thought to feed his fears, to perpetuate his panic, to enable his alarm and apprehension, to get out the video camera, run up to his room, get in his face, and ask him where he thought he heard the noise or saw the shadow, to film his fright instead of comforting him. Stoo-pid! Instead, I just tried to calm his nerves, convince him that the shadows were just that, that the figure was just a shirt on a bedpost. I never thought to make him go back up to his room the next night (and the next, and the next), with all the lights out, waiting for an apparition, waiting for him to scream. Doggone. If I would have thought of this years ago...well, years ago, when my son was much more likely to be scared of the Boogey Man than he is now, reality ghost programming didn't haunt the cable and satellite networks like they do now, so my son might not ever have been a star; instead, he would have just grown up insecure, paranoid, numerous neuroses prohibiting any sort of long-term productive lifestyle. Oh, well. At least I can watch Psychic Kids now and see what might have been. Sigh.

Speaking of what might have been and neurotic children, The Two Coreys returned from commercial break. Corey, wearing his sunglasses at night--along with a hoodie--walked into a diner and met Corey, who was sitting and waiting for him. After a quick buddy hug, the two almost immediately fell into destructive discourse as Corey accused Corey of being controlling, his autocratic nature hampering Corey's career; and Corey accused Corey of being irresonsible, selfish, and delusional. The two Coreys then proceeded to face off in an actor's duel, both taking turns improvising variations on Aaron Sorkin's dialogue from A Few Good Men, specifically Jack Nicholson's famous line, "You can't handle the truth." Corey went first, speaking in a low, gravelly voice, sotto voce, leaning forward across the table, but never exploding (like Jack did in the movie), never raising his volume. Corey, however, took a different approach, using several master thespian techniques: stuttering at key moments, twitching, affecting nervous tics, sliding back and forth in his seat, looking around the restaurant, raising and lowering his voice for effect.



After both had a go at it, the duel seemed destined to end in a draw, but Corey wasn't through, though, as he took the game to a higher dialectical level, questioning Corey's loyalty and honor over him, Corey, being molested as a child...accusing Corey of knowing but never intervening (This, friends, is serious business, and should not be discussed or dismissed lightly, as child molestation is not a subject that should be exploited, and that is why Corey first admitted this publicly not on just any reality show, but his reality show). Corey--obviously nonplussed, taken aback, vexed even--dropped character, and--therefore--lost the duel. Oh, he tried to return to the actor's duel by mentioning that he was molested, too, and he was molested first, and that Corey knew about it first, but by then, the game was over. Corey lost, and decided to leave, but Corey--Method Actor that he is--stayed in character, shouting at Corey, shaking, twitching. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe I've ever seen a more convincing performance of a delusional, paranoid, selfish, destructive, and neurotic individual than I did this night. Oh, the tragic, tragic humanity and truth on display. I think, though, I know what might have inspired Corey's improvisation, the research that must have been necessary for such a close replication of reality: Psychic Kids.

If Corey is not nominated--yea, does not win--an Emmy for his acting in this episode, then...well, I just don't know what I'll do. You really have to see it to believe it. You never would have thought Corey would have ended up acting just like what we thought the other Corey would have grown to be. It's almost easy to get them confused. I'm anxious for next week, and you should be too.

Cheesy Tomatoes: The Attack of the Psychic Killer Coreys, pt. 2

After we left the Grindhouse, we went to pick up our two-year-old daughter Georgia from day care and then went home. Whilst Penny and Georgia played "Let's take all the books off the shelves and color in the most expensive ones while throwing saliva-sticky half-eaten cheeze slices on the hard-wood floors," and Nicholas ate Cheetos, I searched through the inner workings of my sanctum sanctorum for some fine film options for our Cheesy Movie Night. I unearthed the following:

• Anaconda
• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
• Blackenstein
• Cat Women of the Moon
• Flash Gordon
• Foxy Brown
• Gasss ("that's a movie about you, Dad!" said my son)
• Kung Fu Hustle
• Lake Placid
• The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
• Sextette
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• The Warriors
• Xanadu

I brought them all upstairs, and having decided to let our guests pick the movie, I placed them atop the entertainment center and waited for Mark and Sherry to show.

And waited.

And waited.

'Round midnight, Penny woke, and she asked me what I was doing, just leaning on the entertainment center. I told her I was waiting for Mark and Sherry to come. "Like that?" she said. I told her that I thought my pose reflected a cool, casual, and gracious attitude, yet with just the right amount flair and je ne sais quoi expected of master party host (back during my early college years, we called this pose the Buffalo Stance). Penny's brow furrowed, and she grumbled, "They're not supposed to come until tomorrow, you idiot. Go to bed."

Well, the next day, early evening, I happened to look out the window, and I saw a very strange couple walking up the street. The man wore a black sweatshirt with its hoodie around his face, sporting Wayfarers to further obscure his identity. The woman, too, wore Wayfarers, and over her shorts she wore a skirt that looked as if it were made of mosquito netting. Under the skirt, her legs were splotched with large patches of speckled hair. Nicholas came to the window and asked me if those were Skrulls. I took a closer look; "No, son," I told him, "those aren't Skrulls; that's just Mark and Sherry."

Mark told us that they disguised themselves because they were on the lam, and they were walking because they had to ditch the parents' ride in some nondescript alley behind the old Piggly Wiggly. Nicholas asked Sherry if she forgot to shave her legs that morning, and she told him no, that the hair was part of the disguise, and that her friend back in PA gave her that idea when her friend, trying to wax her legs, let the glue stay on too long, and when she tried to remove it, not all of the glue would come off, resulting in the most of the epoxy remaining on her skin, which meant that when her cat rubbed against her, the cat's hair stuck to her legs--for two weeks.

After a fine meal of turkhetti (spaghetti with turkey instead of beef), I adopted the Buffalo Stance near the entertainment center, and offered our guests their choice of cheese, succinctly detailing a synopsis of each movie. When I finished my summaries half an hour later, Mark and Sherry decided upon The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, a movie all of us had heard of, yet none of us had seen. By the time the movie was over, we all wished that was still the case.

A little later, Mark and Sherry left under the cover of night, telling us not to try to contact them, that they didn't want us involved any further than we already were. After tearful goodbyes, my family went to bed, but I had grown too distraught to sleep. I sunk down to my sanctum sanctorum, corrected every invalid opinion on the internet forums I normally visit, but...I was too troubled to turn in. I went back to the house, turned on the television, and scrolled till I could find something passionate, something angsty, something through which I could vicariously vent my anger at a world in which my friends had to go on the run because of the price of coffee in Campo Grande...and I found it; however, I only caught the tail-end of it, the preview of what was happening on the next episode. I scrolled through the listings, and I discovered that the next episode would be the next night. I sighed. Tomorrow night. I was defeated. I was tired. I was ready for bed. As I am now. No more posting tonight.

Tomorrow: Part Three.

Cheesy Tomatoes: The Attack of the Psychic Killer Coreys, pt. 1

This past week, my friend Mark (the smartest guy I know) and his wife Sherry traveled down from Philadelphia, PA to visit family and friends. Nicholas, Penny, and I met Wednesday for lunch at the new Old Mexico and then finished our dining with coffee and frappes at the Grindhouse. During the course of our conversation at the two businesses, Mark and Sherry told us of a theme party they recently held: Cheesy Movie Night. They invited friends over, and they all ate chips and cheese dip while marveling at the many stentorian declarations of the late, great, Charleton Heston in the sci-fi classic, Soylent Green. I told Mark and Sherry that I liked their idea so much, that I was going to swipe it; in fact, I was going to hold my own Cheesy Movie Night the very next night--and they were invited to come. They thought my idea was great and wished that they had come up with it.

About that time, sirens blared and lights flashed as the cops pulled up to the curb. Greg, the Grindhouse’s owner, burst through the door, shouting, “Stop, thief!” I turned back to look at Mark and Sherry, but they were already hightailing it out of sight in Mark's parents' car. Taken aback, it took me a minute or so to ask Greg what had happened. The cops were returning their guns to their holsters as Greg said, "They filled up and took off without paying, third time this week." Still redfaced, he huffed and continued. "It's a conspiracy. You see, the price of coffee has risen astronomically, the price more than doubling what it was only a year ago. And people can't afford to pay that much for coffee, so what do they do? They order a cup, they sit down, drink, talk for a bit, and wait to sneak out whenever anyone new comes in the door. Three times this week, man, and eight in the past two months. I'm going to have to start getting their money before I make their coffee. It's that godforsaken Jose Duval, that's who it is."

"Who?" I asked.

"See? That's just what I'm talking about. Starbucks--see, they're behind this too--wanted all of us to think that it was Juan Valdez did all this, he and his National Federation of Coffee Growers in Columbia. That they held, in secret, this huge crop of coffee plants that they were hording from the rest of the world, in a greenhouse the size of this town, just biding their time till the ozone layer was depleted and all of South America's coffee plants would just shrivel up and die. Then, the Columbians would have the world's market on coffee, and could demand whatever they wanted. You follow?"

"Sure," I said, but the cops just nodded, walked back to their patrol cars, and left.

Greg continued. "Well, you see, that just wasn't the real truth. Sure, Valdez had his coffee, and he didn't treat his workers the way we treat ours over here, but there was no evidence of a secret stash anywhere, that's just what they wanted you to think."

"Who?" I asked. "The government?"

"The goverenment?" Greg replied with a laugh. "Worse. Starbucks. Though the government knew what Starbucks was doing, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, you see, Starbucks was losing profits hand-over-fist, every day, to the influx of coffee from Columbia, so they set up Juan Valdez as a fall guy, since everyone has heard of Valdez, and has seen evidence of how he treats his people. It's all over YouTube."

"Okay," I said," that makes sense, but what about that other guy?"

"Jose Duval." Greg said. "Another Spanish guy, been sabotaging coffee fields for years, but see, his father Robert was close friends with Alfred Peet, and you know who he is right?"

"Uh, no." I responded.

"Peet," Greg said, "is the man who first sold Starbucks coffee beans, supplied 'em for years. And you know where Peet got his beans and plants? That's right, he got 'em from Duval, the father, and the business has just trickled down and over from there. Once the hou-ha started over the inspection of Valdez's alledged secret coffee fields, Duval--the son, Jose--realized he had to get out of Dodge, so he took off for Brazil, and what he's doing there now is exactly what everyone accused Valdez of doing in Columbia. But Duval--with Starbucks' cooperation--now has it made, because Columbia's economy is shot and won't recover for years, so that means that the world's largest coffee exporter--ninety percent of the world's coffee--comes from where? Brazil.

"You know what else? You've seen all the press about all the immigrants lately from Mexico?"

"Yeah," I told him.

"Well," he said, "Those immigrants aren't coming from Mexico; they're coming all the way from Brazil, all because of the way Jose Duval runs things down there. He's not the president of Brazil, I know, but he might as well be. Those poor souls are running out of their country with nothing but the shirts on their backs, coming here, looking for work, and not having a very good time of it, because, of course, they only speak Spanish."

"Wait," I tell him, "didn't you just say that these immigrants are coming from Brazil?"

"That's right," he said.

"But you said they only speak Spanish. People from Brazil don't speak Spanish; they speak Portugese," I said.

Greg replied, "You see? That right there tells you Duval's not to be trusted, he won't even let his people speak their own language, making them speak in Portugese, knowing they've known nothing but Brazil their whole life. When did his workers ever go to Portugal? That--that just--that just about tears it. I'm not going to stand for it anymore. Tell you what I’m going to start doing. I’m going to start making my own coffee—organic. We’re going green. That’s right. Forget about Green Tea; it’s all about Green Coffee, now. In fact, I think I’ll change our name. The Grindhouse is dead. Long live the Greenhouse! Moonbeam [Greg's wife], where’s the paint? I'm changing this sign!"

At that, Nicholas pulled on my shirt, asking to go, and so we did.

Tomorrow, part two of our story, where we see:

• Mark and Sherry on the lam
• The tomatoes attack
• The Coreys vent their angst
• The children that see dead people

The Deliberate Strangeness of It All: Chilling Adventures in Sorcery #3

A few years ago, I was browsing the internet for some Archie comics for my wife. My search led tangentially to Archie's Mad House comics. When I was young, I always grew excited whenever Mad House Comics would occasionally appear; I liked Archie, but Mad House Comics featured strange creatures and shenanigans. Those comics showcased a world in which I felt at home. Sure, the Mad House Comics artists drew in the Archie Comics Group (ACG) house style, and the stories always followed the same humorous bent as the Archie comics, but I took what I could get, even though what I got was a bit sillier than what I wanted.

Well, I discovered in my search that Archie Comics Group had indeed published just the type of comics I was wanting...they just published them before I was old enough to read. In the late summer/early fall of 1972 (I would have been about one-and-a-half years old), ACG published two issues of Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina...

...and then stopped production of that comic, until a year later, when ACG changed the title, adopting a more serious tone by dropping "as Told by Sabrina" and featuring much more sinister cover art and more realistic (less Archie-like) interior art, all by editor/writer/artist





artist Gray Morrow, who not only created the artwork (cover and interior) for this entire issue, but also edited the entire run, created each cover, and provided story and art for at least a story a piece in each of the nine issues this revamp ran.

Morrow's cover for this first issue* of Chilling Adventures in Sorcery departs dynamically from the prior issues: the images ( a ghost, a demon, a witch, a ghoul, Frankenstein's monster, a spider, a snake, a skull, and even Death itself) are much scarier, made all the more frightening by Morrow's famed detailed anatomical linework. The colors and text features denote a more serious approach to horror, as does the masthead change from Archie Series to Red Circle Comics Group. One wonders if these were all Morrow's ideas, if perhaps he agreed to write/draw/edit for ACG if the company allowed him to create his own line. Any ideas, anyone?

The issue itself contains four separate stories, all variations on the fate/revenge/ironic twist story format made famous by EC Comics (Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, etc...) and perpetuated by nearly every horror comics anthology series since. What elevates the stories in this comic from the pedestrian is Morrow's sense of style and design. Morrow was renowned among comic book artists for his "realistic" line work, and that's present here, of course, but Morrow also excels in his color work and his panel structure. He used a multi-colore, muted pallete for most of his panels, but to emphasize certain emotions, or to highlight the climax of a story, he would shade a panel entirely in hues of red, or of green, or orange, all to heighten the horror. Morrow would also use his paneling to heighten his stories. A page of a typical six-paneled structure will often be followed by a page of three vertical panels, or page with no true panel borders. Morrow didn't seem, though, to haphazardly vary his panels; he used his panels as a storytelling device much as a poet uses beats and breaks in verse and stanza to convey meaning. All this may seem commonplace today, but for the early '70s, and for the company paying Morrow, this type of panel variation proved to be innovative.

Unfortunately, the Chilling Adventures in Sorcery comic would be short-lived. After only two more issues, the series changed its title (again) to Red Circle Sorcery, and it would run only six issues, commencing at #11 in late '75/early '74. The series continued to feature work from outstanding artists such as Pay Boyette, Howard Chaykin, Alex Toth, and Morrow himself. As for Morrow, after this series concluded, he contributed to occasional comics from both DC and Marvel as well as helping illustrate the occasional comic strip. In '83, he began illustrating the Tarzan comic strip, and he continued doing so until 2001. Gray Morrow died that year from (purportedly) a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was sixty-six.


*Notes - Most likely, ACG continued the numbering--rather than start a new issue at #1--because renumbering would have cost them more money (go ask the USPS).

Something to Believe In

Rikki Rockett has been exonerated! Life goes on for the Poison drummer, and he can continue having nothing but a good time, with hopes of Poison recording again once Bret Michaels completes his Rock My World tour .