It's the War Rocket Ajax Halloween Special, and to help us celebrate the spookiest of holidays, we've invited Hector Plasm writer Benito Cereno to our podcast! He tells us all about his Essential Halloween Horror movies and gives us news on upcoming Tick and Tales From the Bully Pulpit projects -- and you can listen to the entire spooooky show right here at ComcisAlliance!War Rocket Ajax v.2, #20: Live From the Black Lagoon with Benito Cereno

(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

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In this week's episode, Chris and Matt are definitely in the Halloween spirit! Chris is frighteningly excited about the launch of his new digital comic, Dracula The Unconquered (available right now for only $1!), and Matt has a scary encounter on the streets of Chicago. That wasn't the real MF Doom... or was it?!

When Benito joins us for the program, talk quickly turns to the Halloween tradition of horror movies. Benito tells us about his preferences for psychological horror, and also evil puppet torture movies:

I do like the Saw movies. The last one is supposed to be really bad, but I've seen the first four. I do like those, just because they're ridiculous, but kind of clever in how they're ridiculous. I don't know, it's difficult to explain, but yeah, a lot of those more modern ones that are based on just making people squirm because of gross body trauma stuff, that's not really something I'm going to seek out. If somebody came over and said "Hey, let's watch Hostel," I'd say okay, but I'm not going to go rent it myself.


We also hear everyone's Five Essential Halloween Horror Movie Classics, starting with Benito's:

Maybe my favorite that I like to watch the most is the original Wicker Man. I like that movie a lot. It's not really fair to call it a horror movie, it's more like a suspense / dark comedy / thriller / musical. It's all about building suspense and there's not really gore, but it's got dark humor and music and Christopher Lee in it, so that's a plus in your column, Chris. Most people know the remake, because it's terrible with Nicolas Cage and bees in his eyes or whatever, but the original is really good.

Another movie that I really like is called Häxan. It's a Swedish silent film from 1922 -- everyone, I know, has paused the show to rush out and see this 1922 black and white silent Swedish film. But yeah, it's called Häxan and it's basically kind of a documentary based on the Malleus Malifecarum, and so it's like this Swedish director read this book about hunting witches and was like "I'm going to make a movie about this." And it's allegedly a documentary, but it's a documentary with people dressed up in witch costumes flying around and having devil orgies, and it's really bizarre. Like, if you're familiar with what special efects from 1920s silent films look like, if you can imagine applying that to witches flying around and talking goats and that kind of stuff? That movie is full of it. There's a Criterion edition of it, it's really good.


Find out Benito's other three choices, plus five from Matt, and of course, Chris's picks:

These are probably going to be the ones that everybody likes. Like you said, it's the Essential Halloween movies. First: Bloodrayne. Two would be Alone in the Dark. Three, House of the Dead...


Also, Bill Goldberg is Evil Santa Claus and a few sentences about sasquatch that you will never, ever be able to un-hear.

Show Notes:

Benito Cereno is on Twitter and Tumblr, where you can read a free, otherwise uncollected Hector Plasm Halloween tale illustrated by Nate Bellegarde right now!

The Halloween episode of Xena, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," has its own Wikipedia page.

If you're up for spoiling the secrets of a video game from 2001, watch the Silent Hill 2 "Dog Ending" on YouTube.

The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for NES. And what the hey, the abysmal Castlevania II: Simon's Quest too. Watch out, craaaazy NSFW language.


Did you know Chris and Matt write comics? Read Dracula the Unconquered and Copernicus Jones right now. Or else!

Chris's Treat: Xena: Warrior Princess, Season 2, Episode 4: "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," in which Xena teams up with a severed head to stop Gabrielle from becoming a drunken vampire, featuring even more lesbian subtext than you might expect. It's a Halloween tradition on Netflix!

Matt's Rec: Silent Hill 2? But that game died... ten years ago tonight!

Comics Reviewed:


Wolverine and the X-Men #1: "We always talk about 'What's a comic that you could hand to a kid and say it's a good comic that I think you should read?' This is a comic I feel like a kid would read and like, because it is so much fun." "This could only be closer to my platonic ideal of an X-Men comic if it had Arcade in it."

Aquaman #2: "Imagine that you met somebody, right? And you heard that they were a musician, and you said 'Hey, I heard you play guitar. Is that right? You play guitar, and you're a guitarist?' and that person said 'No. What I do is I make the guitar sing!' and they pulled a guitar out and did a Joe Satriani riff on it. That's what Mera does."

Daredevil #5: "This book continues to be the Best Marvel Comic Ever." "I like to save Daredevil for the last comic I read for the week, just so I can come out of reading comics feeling great about them."

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