A comic book reading buddy is letting me borrow her copy of the X-MEN: AGE OF APOCALYPSE mini-series from 1995-1996. Overall, it's got a nice epic feel... but suffers from the variety of writers and artists associated with the project. Since then, many of those artists have become Comic Book powerhouses but they hadn't quite grown into form when the miniseries originally came out. The artist of the moment in the mid-1990s was Joe Madureira. His work on X-MEN:AOA made him the "hottest" X-men artist since Jim Lee touched the book. Using a style that was heavily influenced by Japanese manga and the Capcom artists, he revolutionized the way mainstream comic artists approached character design and human anatomy. Mad's art isn't nearly as polished as I remembered; his designs are strong but you can see him cheating a lot in the way he creates environments and the inconsistent level of detail he uses from panel to panel. His style is cool, but it'd be even BETTER get some Capcom artists to do their take on Marvel superheroes... in a strike of good fortune, many fanboy dreams came true when Capcom licensed the Street Fighter and (later) Marvel characters in a series of 2D fighting games from 1996-2000. Madureira's work was good, but the Capcom games took things to a whole 'nother level! Just remember to ignore that awful music (yeah, I know... some of you guys actually dig the tunes!).

Some of my favorite character art from MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2 is below. More art can be found HERE.

In addition to the customary Halloween viewing of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (a classic!), the wife and I added Stephen King's CHILDREN OF THE CORN and George Romero's MONKEY SHINES to our Halloween Horror movie marathon. Carpenter, King, and Romero: a trio of horror masters! CHILDREN OF THE CORN is one of those films that you've heard about for what seems like forever. MONKEY SHINES has one of those iconic movie posters that scarred my 10-year-old brain. I figured it was time to finally experience them both.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN was "eh". The opening scene in the small town deli was gruesomely awesome (hint: plenty of blood splatter!). Sadly that was as good as it got. The main villain was creepy in that classic Stephen King man-child kind of way. I just wasn't too fond of the guy once he grew some super cheesy demon horns (the horror movie equivalent of man boobs!). The movie also gets minus points for making the dweebiest red headed kid (named Malachai, no less!) in the movie the cold blooded killer of the group. I understand they were pushing the whole farmer's motif but, come on! The main innocent female bystander was Linda Hamilton (aka Sarah Connor from the TERMINATOR film franchise) which was pretty cool. CHILDREN OF THE CORN came out about 6 months before the first TERMINATOR. Seeing it now, though, it's hard to get worried for the lady because she's Sarah Connor! There's no way a bunch of kids with farming shears can mess with the mother of John Connor! :-)

MONKEY SHINES was a solid film, but very different than I expected. I had an inaccurate but vivid memory of a scene where the monkey in the film is dancing around in a silly costume while his owner plays the accordion. In this memory, something triggers the monkey to go nutso, jump on a bunch of little children and bite their heads off. That "scene" was my impetus for renting the film... and I was shocked to discover that it was a complete fabrication of my 10-year-old imagination based on the creepy (but completely inaccurate) movie poster. Instead MONKEY SHINES is a well crafted film that explores the morality of animal testing for science and human benefit. Director and Screenplay writer George Romero takes his time introducing the viewer to the characters and their situation. About 65% of the film is set up... but by the time you get to the juicy horror/suspense bits you're so invested in the characters that you fully empathize with them. Ironically, I found myself empathizing most with the "evil" monkey, Ella. How could you not? She's freakin' adorable! So the scary bits weren't all too scary because I was too busy thinking about how cute Ella was as she killed people. Oh well.

Of the two, I'd recommend MONKEY SHINES. But they're both worth a watch for entirely different reasons. Trailers and posters can be seen below.

Monkey Shines Trailer

Children of the Corn