Monday: Bad for Health, Good for Education

(Before I get started, big points to anyone who picked up on the movie reference contained in today’s post headline. If you know the movie lemme know and I shall send you my love. Or perhaps a graphic novel or a DVD. Who knows!)

So the weekend’s over, school’s back in session (and by school, I mean work). This weekend I read two books that I particularly dug (aside from all of the other books and graphic novels I read on a constant basis – cheers to A.D.D.): Vinyl Underground #1 (Vertigo) and Game Keeper #5 (Virgin). I highly dug both of these books for very different reasons: Vinyl Underground is best described as an underground, occult detective agency based out of London, and being that I’m a huge Anglophile the book hit all the right notes for me. Very different from Hellblazer (a natural comparison, what with all the British occult business going on), in that this book takes itself much less seriously than the aforementioned Swamp Thing spin-off. The second book, Game Keeper, wraps up what looks like the first story arc in director Guy Ritchie’s inaugural comics outing (and in five issues, no less). I must say I enjoyed this story; seeing the titular character pitch a bodyguard off of a skyscraper was worth the price of admission alone.

We’ve also put together a nice slice of The Nightmare Factory review quotes below – do check this book out if you have yet to do so! Here’s what the critics are saying about The Nightmare Factory:

Boston Globe
September 17, 2007
"In a fall season typified by much more categorizable frights, Nightmare Factory provides a bitterly entertaining treat for those attuned to its storyteller's grim sentiments."

EW.com
September 26, 2007
"Makes for deliciously bleak reading as its damned protagonists find themselves ensnared in metaphysical traps they often barely comprehend."

Wizard Magazine
November 2007
"These twisted tales based on Thomas Ligotti's stories come alive in the hands of Ben Templesmith and Michael Gaydos, and others. Retaining unique styles, Ligotti's brand of psychological terror still permeates, oozing into your nightmares."

Later