Recommended Reading for 10/9: The Halloween Legion- The Great Goblin Invasion

Here's a funny little process story for this blog, because I know everyone loves blog process stories! I read and really enjoyed The Halloween Legion back in October of 2013, which if you go back and look, was the low ebb of my writing here, as I was in the process of moving. I really wanted to write this up as a Halloween season recommended reading, but I just didn't have the time. And last year, well, it slipped under the mental radar. But this week, I was looking over my shelves, trying to find something appropriately Halloween for today, and this bright yellow binding popped out at me, and I remembered how great this book was, and so... process story done, and recommendation begins here.

When talking about Coraline, Neil Gaiman has commented that kids can take the scary stuff better than adults can, and I think I may have made a comment similar somewhere on here at one point or another. Kids are mentally resilient, which is why kids horror like Goosebumps is a genre that is not going away. Today's recommended reading, The Halloween Legion, is another all ages monster comic, a hardcover graphic novel released by Dark Horse from writer Martin Powell (who wrote the classic Sherlock Holmes/Dracula comic Scarlet in Gaslight) and artists Diana Leto and Thomas Boatwright, with some legitimate scares and some heavier themes, where a team of monstrous heroes face down an invasion of goblins in flying saucers. And if that sentence doesn't at least pique your interest, I'm not doing my job right.

The opening page of the book gives a quick rundown of the team of monster heroes who defend the own of Woodland, a place where spooky stuff clearly happens regularly: The Devil, aka Molly Aldrich, who is a local girl who happens to be a fire elemental; The Skeleton, and immortal giant; The Witch Grimalkin, whose ugly exterior hides an internal beauty; Freddy, the ghost of a boy who now has amazing ghost powers; and Autumn, who is addressed as "THE black cat," with powers and who always knows what must be done. They're all very distinct character types, working together is a classic team dynamic: Molly is impetuous (hot-headed you might say), The Skeleton is somber, Grimalkin is motherly, Freddy is wide eyed innocent, and Autumn is, well, a cat. The fact that they click so well as a team immediately gets the readers to like them and let's their best traits shine through.

The story starts out with the team assembled and clearly having been working together for some time. Everyone has an established backstory that becomes apparent to the readers over the course of the beginning of the book. While a bit of internet research revealed that Powell has written a Halloween Legion novel that the comic serves as a sequel to, I never felt lost. Powell does a good job of establishing who everyone is and what their stories are without a ton of exposition, which is one of the signs of a strong writer.

The plot of the book sees a mysterious solar eclipse hit the town of Woodland, which it is quickly revealed is caused by goblins in flying saucers. Whether they're strictly alien, or some manner of supernatural and alien combined isn't made clear and doesn't really matter, as they begin to abduct townsfolk. The Halloween Legion springs into action, but he goblins not only have overwhelming numbers on their side, but science weapons that seem to counter many supernatural powers. The stakes are immediately established by having a little girl named Alexandria become the face of the people, as her mother is abducted and the Legion has to protect her. There's a reason why the waif in danger is a trope, as it gives immediate buy-in for a reader to hope she's protected, and to have her be a former classmate of ghost Freddy adds a layer to his character, letting him interact with someone his own age and learn a bit more about how he feels about being a ghost.

One of the major beats of the graphic novel involves the gremlins having technology that shuts down the Witch's powers, leaving her free of the curse that makes her appear as a witch and shows her true beautiful appearance, but leaves her unable to help in the battle. The only way to restore her power is for The Skeleton to transfer his life force to her, which might be the one death he will not return from. There's a lot of pathos in that situation, but I love the nobility of both characters, with the Witch willing to sacrifice her chance to not be a monster and The Skeleton willing to give his life with nary a second thought. We also get to go into The Skeleton's lab and meet his assistant, Huston the rag golem, who has a really great design.

The art in the book is stellar. Thomas Boatwright does the pencils, with design direction from Halloween Legion co-creator Diana Leto. The cover has a pull quote from Mike Mignola, and I can see an influence there, with some of the big, blocky characters and creepy atmosphere. But his humans have more realistic faces, which helps especially with Molly, who is a teenage girl, and needs that level of expression to show everything she's going through, especially as he reader's "in" to the world. I absolutely love the look of the goblins, and the scenes of them appearing en masse are absolutely creepy. Boatwright is listed as artist, so he colored his own work, and I was really impressed by the colors after the sun is blotted out and the alien crafts arrive. The weird, ugly green they shine from their ships is a perfect color choice, unnatural and otherworldly.

The book also has a fun little back-up story, "Once Upon a Halloween," which Powell says is a creepy experience he had on a Halloween as a kid that led to his creation of The Halloween Legion. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but it's a neat story with art by Diana Leto, and a nice cap to the book.

I can see a lot of set up for future adventures, including Freddy's growing powers and he townsfolk distrust of the Halloween Legion, not to mention Molly's high school adventures, but as far as I can tell, there haven't been any other adventures for the Halloween Legion. I'd love to see some more spooky, exciting, and fun adventures from this team in the future, as either comics or novels.

The Halloween Legion graphic novel is sill in print and available at comic book shops and bookstores everywhere.

All the News That Excited Me From San Diego Comic Con

So, like all comic fans, I spent this weekend waiting on bated breath for announcements from Geek Mardi Gras, better known as San Diego Comic Con. And, like most comic fans, I wasn't able to attend. So I relied on sources from around the internet to give me all sorts of cool announcements. And if you aren't one of those people who kept refreshing their browser all weekend, well, here are a handful of announcements that got me excited.

-Ok, I'm going to get one of the biggest reveals out of the way first. The first official image of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman from Superman v. Batman: Dawn of Justice. At first blush, I wasn't sure if I was impressed. The muted color palette isn't something I'm a big fan of, and is something that I wasn't in love with when it came to Superman's costume in Man of Steel. But since the whole image seems muted and sepia toned, I moved past that and looked at the costume and the image itself, and she looks wonderful (pun intended). She's regal and tough, but not masculine, which is exactly how I picture Wonder Woman. I can't say anything beyond that about the movie, but at this point, my excitement is increasing for DC's big universe builder.

- And while on the subject of DC on film, the announcement that Ra's al Ghul will be the big bad for season three of Arrow is big news for me. Ra's is a villain with a lot of possibility for interpretation, and the producers of Arrow have said they don't want to compete with the vision from Batman Begins, so they're going at him from another angle. Arrow has been consistently enjoyable since the beginning of the series, and has been slowly building a mythology, with the League of Assassins a large part of that. That slow build will hopefully pay off with Ra's making an appearance. Oh, and Brandon Routh appearing as Ray Palmer, better known as the Atom, is exciting too. From appearances in other genre shows like Chuck, it's clear Routh is a stronger actor than Superman Returns showed, and I think he'll be a great addition to the world of Arrow.

- Marvel has been making a lot of announcements the past few weeks that, in a bygone era, would have been Comic Con announcements, things like the new female Thor and Falcon becoming Captain America. And while the announcement of a new series that brings the characters from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. into the Marvel Universe isn't on par, PR-wise, with that one, the series being written by modern comics legend Mark Waid, whose Daredevil is still in my top three current Marvel titles, and drawn by a big name artist doing series of done-in-one-issue storieis pretty darn exciting. I think I've made it clear in the past how much I like one off stories, both as a fan and as someone who likes being able to hand any issue of a series to a customer and say, "Here, try this," so if this has the same feel as Warren Ellis's similarly formatted short run on Secret Avengers, than I'm in for it.

- Now, onto another Marvel announcement that I've been mulling over since it came out. As a Star Wars fan, I've been waiting to see what Marvel is going to do now that they have the comics license. And with the announcement of three Star Wars series, it's pretty sweet; Jason Aaron and John Cassaday on Star Wars (set in between episodes 4 & 5), a Darth Vader series from Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca, and a Princess Leia mini-series from Mark Waid and Terry Dodson. While I'm a little disappointed and not surprised that all these books are clustered around the classic trilogy (disappointed because there's a ton of other times to play with that won't impinge on the new trilogy, not surprised because this is the most profitable era for Star Wars publishing), I can't argue with the creators. I've already talked about Mark Waid, and Jason Aaron is a writer I've written about plenty. It's the Vader series that has me most curious. Larroca drew some great space stories during his tenure on the X-Men books, and drew plenty of high tech and armor during his time on Invincible Iron Man, so I think he's a good fit. But it's Kieron Gillen that has me very excited. A writer who does great character work as well as high concept sci-fi (see his short lived S.W.O.R.D. series), he was one of Marvels' stable of writers I thought would best fit Star Wars, so I'm pleased to see that he's getting a spot right out of the gate.

- On a note that is tangentially comic related, the Star Wars book panel announced a novel based on an unproduced Star Wars: The Clone Wars script featuring two characters who had a very heavy presence in Star Wars comics. Asajj Ventress was created for the initial Clone Wars short cartoons and was defined during Dark Horse's Clone Wars comics. Quinaln Vos was created by John Ostrander for his run on the prequel set comics, and is my favorite EU comics character (and second favorite EU character of all, right behind Grand Admiral Thrawn). These are two characters of mixed morality who are haunted by their past. They're an interesting pairing that has minimal interactions in their past (and none in the new official canon). I'm happy that these two great characters aren't being forgotten with the focus on the new future.


- DC didn't make many announcements this year, instead focusing on creators expounding on the upcoming work we've already heard about. There was one really cool bit of art shown, the map of the Multiverse devised by Grant Morrison for his Multiversity series (track it down somewhere where you can get better resolution than I can provide). And after I recently talked about Batman '66, I would have had to mention the digital publication of an adaptation of a lost episode, even if it wasn't written by legend in the annals of the bookstore, the comic shop, the Hollywood studio, and the courtroom, Harlan Ellison, and feature the first '66 appearance of my second favorite (pun not intended this time, but willingly accepted) Bat villain, Two-Face.

-Finally,  Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics announced twelve new series each, and there are some from both companies that I'm looking forward to, but two really jumped out at me. As a big fan of the B.P.R.D. and the whole Hellboy universe, it's cool to see the creators that Mike Mignola has brought to work on those books do other work, and two of these series feature that talent. John Arcudi, regular co-writer on B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth, and James Harren, who has worked on his share of arcs on that title, give us Rumble from Image, featuring a scarecrow barbarian. And Tyler Crook, previous regular artist on B.P.R.D. and who drew the excellent Bad Blood mini-series from Dark Horse earlier this year, returns to that publisher, this time teaming with Sixth Gun and Helheim writer Cullen Bunn for Harrow County, a spooky tale of a girl with strange powers in a haunted wood and a town that seems to want her dead. I like Bunn's superhero work for Marvel, but when he's doing his creator owned horror books he dazzles, and Crook is the perfect artist for something like this.

And as one final, non-Comic Con related note, friend of the blog Michael Calia, one of the guys at the Shut Up Kids podcast (celebrating fifty episodes this week), who writes for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a piece for their Speakeasy blog about what to do if you're a first time shopper in a comic shop, and yours truly is quoted, so go check that out too!