It's a parody, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

It's possible some of you saw the "TapedLive" image and didn't get the reference. (I got into one argument with a reader on Facebook about whether or not "TapedLive" was spelled correctly.) It's also likely some of you got the reference, but didn't know there was more to it than a parody of a 1987 punk album. So here's a primer: Evilive was an impossibly short (13 minutes!) live album released by the Misfits in 1987.  (The album was actually an expanded version of an EP released by the band five years earlier.) The second release featured cover art, most likely created by the band's frontman Glenn Danzig, that was a riff on the 1957 Roger Corman movie The Undead.

I love the Misfits. I love Dark Shadows. I ... um, respect Roger Corman. So this felt like a natural fit. You can see a reverse evolution of the concept below. If you like it, head on over to my Redbubble store and browse my other works. Warning: There be monsters on the other side! LINK.

Creative Vandalism: Suspiria ephemera

Joan Bennett made only two theatrical films in the 1970s. Both of them -- 1970s House of Dark Shadows and 1977's Suspiria -- were horror movies, a genre she had previously avoided like the plague. Both moves have been remade in recent years (Tim Burton's 2012 Dark Shadows and Luca Guadagnino's 2018 Suspiria) to delightfully devisive results. And both remakes improbably featured Chloë Grace Moretz, a bit of trivia that will likely give rise to a tumor if you dwell too long upon it.

Above is a screenshot of a Facebook comment about my Inappropriate Gold Key movie adaptions post from earlier in the week. I created cover art from some 1970s comicbook adaptions of movies you absolutely don't want your kids to see, which prompted the response about Harry Potter. It kind of blew my mind and inspired me to create a movie poster for Guadagnino's Suspiria that targeted the Hogwarts crowd.



For something that was rattled off in about half an hour, I was mostly happy with it. But it also made me realize something: I've created a LOT of Suspria-related weirdness over the years. Nobody's really taken much notice in them, but they make me happy. So here's a collection (and it's not even everything!) of the Suspria ephemera that's sprung from my diseased imagination.

Inappropriate Gold Key movie adaptions

First off, House of Dark Shadows is not a movie for kids. There were probably a lot of legal reasons Gold Key never folded a comic book adaption of the film into their ongoing Dark Shadows series, but face it ... that movie was one faked suicide away from getting slammed with an R rating.

But hey! I don't recognize the authority of the Motion Picture Association of America or the Comics Code, so I can do whatever I want. So I mocked up a cover of what Gold Key's adaption for House of Dark Shadows might have looked like. From there, the idea evolved into increasingly darker directions ... my instinct was to arrange these covers in order of inappropriateness, but that was more difficult than it looks. So here they are. Click on them to see larger images.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker gets down and dirty

It's been a few minutes since we last updated the website. Personal obligations have temporarily taken most of us away from Collinsport for a spell, but we'll be firing on all cylinders again soon. In the meantime, enjoy some creative vandalsim concerning Gold Key comics and the misadventures of an intrepid reporter whose name you probably know. No, they aren't real ... but they ought to be.