Welcome Foolish Reader

 

Well, your ol' pal Wimbledon Green has done it again!  After nearly 20 years, I have finally completed my collection of all seven issues of the SLG Haunted Mansion series, at last scoring the elusive issue #4.

Now that I have it in my hot little hands, I can see why this issue was so hard to find at a reasonable price: every story is drawn by a good artist!

You've got Lenore's Roman Dirge, Serenity Rose creator Aaron Alexovitch, the spooktackular Drew Rausch-  this is a murderer's row of goth comics...literally.

Well, now that my collection is complete I can finally relax and rest in peace. Muah ha ha ha ha

Twisted, Sister

 

Disney's Twisted Wonderland manga by Yana Toboso, Wakana Hazuki, and Sumire Kowano is the perfect successor to Kingdom Hearts.

Perfect in that it is: 1. Japanese, 2. Based on a video game, and 3. Doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

I'm gonna be honest, I skimmed through this one.  The beginning starts off like a sports manga about kendo,  which I was enjoying, but after a couple of pages the main character is whisked away to Hogwarts Night Raven College  where he has to compete with classmates? And one of the classmates is into Queen of Hearts cosplay?  And he has to dorm in the Haunted Mansion?

Like I said, I skimmed it. 

Anyway, if you like the cellphone game and/or Goth Disney, you'll probably like this book. Volume 2 comes out tomorrow, I believe.

The Wonderful World of Promotional Giveaways

 

Maybe the Baby Boomers have a point when they say things were better back in the day. Specifically, in 1970 a kid could accompany their parents to their local Gulf station and receive one of these, The Wonderful World of Disney Magazine.

This magazine's got everything.  Haunted houses from around the world,

Behind the scenes of the Haunted Mansion,

A rare U.S. appearance of Fethry Duck, as drawn by Tony Strobhl,

How to draw Chip and Dale,

The Junior Woodchucks,

And great vintage gasoline ads.

Oil crisis, shmoil crisis, let's make gas stations great again, America!

Welcome to Wonderland....Alice.

The great SLG/ Disney experiment of 2005 must be fondly remembered by other people besides me, because when I tried to fill in some gaps in my collection recently I was gobsmacked by the Ebay starting bids.

These comics were available at every Hot Topic in every mall in America, get outta here with your "Reserve Not Met"!

Anyway, one Slave Labor book that is still readily available for a reasonable price is the Tommy Kovac/ Sonny Liew "Wonderland": 

Debuting at least a year before the great Skottie Young "OZ" series from Marvel, this six-issue miniseries was essentially a goth sequel to the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.  Think the Tim Burton movie, only with less Johnny Depp and more Jabberwocky Death.

The main character is the Mary Ann the white rabbit was looking for at the beginning of the movie, a maid who works in the royal palace. Mary Ann is shocked at the destruction left in the wake of the events of the Disney cartoon.

The "Alice Monster" destroyed basically everything in Wonderland, like a Godzilla in tights, and now the assorted weirdos need to help Mary Ann pick up the pieces so they can get back to their royal business.

The plot is "ehhhh, who cares."  It's a series of vignettes and a chance to revisit your favorite characters, but there's not much in the way of dramatic momentum.

The star attraction here is the art of Sonny Liew, the genius artist behind The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye and The Shadow Hero.

This particular book is somewhat an outlier for Liew; it's definitely in that early aughts Gerard Way-James Jean- Kingdom Hearts-Korn album cover Emo wheelhouse, if that's your thing (that's totally my thing).

Check out these zombie treacle ladies, spooky!

On-panel murder in an officially licensed Disney comic!  I miss you, SLG.