Comic Review: Beasts of Burden

    Hellboy and Scooby-Doo mixed with Lassie?  OK.  A bunch of neighborhood dogs (and one stray cat) become a supernatural investigation and combative force.  This collection of short stories has a dash of the old Tales from the Crypt type anthology comics.

    Eight stories of varying lengths introduce us to the various dogs and their stray cat friend, as well as a building sense of something very, very big coming.  The stories are a mixed bag.  The art is excellent thoughout, but a couple of the stories (The Unfamiliar and Grave Happenings) aren’t all that good.  In fact, by Grave Happenings, I couldn’t help but wonder, was all this build-up ever going to built to something?  I love the things hinted at, the greater world of dogs fighting evil, weird forces building, etc.  But it’s not the kind of thing that can just build and build without coming to some kind of a head.

    The best stories are Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, A Dog and His Boy, and Lost.  But each story builds the mythology.  I know there have been some more stories published since these were collected.  Here’s hoping they too will be put into one volume.  Here’s hoping that like Hellboy, it eventually rises above aimless build-up stories and moves the concept forward.  Whatever the case, fans of horror comics and old style anthologies should check this one out.  A Dog and His Boy, man.  That one is rough.

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites
Author: Evan Dorkin
Artist: Jill Thompson
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59582-513-1

-Matthew J. Constantine

"Do You Follow?" Awesome Sauce Trailer for Wrong

Oh man.  I was looking forward to Wrong, but now, I think I'm seriously jonesing for this surrealist dognapping comedy starring an acid faced William Fichtner and a mentally devastated Jack Plotnick.  I thought Matt was crazy for picking this as his Most Anticipated Film of 2013, but he might be on to something.  The real question becomes, do I wait to see this on the big screen or do I go right for the On Demand on February 1st.  Decisions, decisions.



--Brad

Poster: Frankenweenie

Tim Burton's remakes himself this October with the black & white stop motion, Frankenweenie.  There was once a time where I hailed Tim Burton as one of my favorite directors (Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood), but pretty much from the second half of Sleepy Hollow through the Planet of the Apes Remake and onto Alice in Wonderland--I've loathed his work.  But the idea of a Black & White Stop Motion corpse dog adventure?  That's definitely appealing.  I can't say I have high hopes for the project but I'll definitely check it out.  Below is the first part of the original short film as well as his Vincent Price narrated stop motion short, Vincent.

--Brad