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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Category Archives: Blog Post

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #108: A One-Shot Look

03 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #108 by Drew Barth

A One-Shot Look

I’ve written about my appreciation for shorter comics. I appreciate how a two page story by Junji Ito contain more horror than most full-length films. Another master of the short story art, Hirohiko Araki, had his series of shorts, Thus Spoke Kishibie Rohan, animated last year and they will be released on Netflix this month. But there’s a slight problem here: these short manga have never been released in English officially. So, what to do? Luckily, Araki’s output is massive and he does have one short story out to enjoy while waiting for the others to be released: Rohan at the Louvre.

Even with Araki’s penchant for the bizarre, Rohan at the Louvre is one of his oddest works. The manga artist, Kishibie Rohan, travels to the Louvre to view a painting mentioned by a woman while living with his grandmother as a teenager. The woman had found the painting when she was just a young girl, but remembers the horror of it clearly. Painted with the blackest ink from a 1000 year-old tree, the painter was executed for cutting down the tree and it is believed the rage of his undue death is still imbued within the painting. As such, the painting was obtained by the Louvre and has been sitting in an abandoned vault deep beneath the museum for decades. So of course when people look at it for the first time ghosts erupt from the vault that had been holding it and the museum workers that had been accompanying Rohan meet a variety of grim fates. It’s that Araki brand of fun, you know?

What makes Rohan at the Louvreeven more interesting is that it is the first in a series of manga and comics commissioned by the Louvre itself to showcase the museum. Creators like Enki Bilal, Jirō Taniguchi, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, and others crafted stories centered in and around the Louvre and its collection. But Araki’s story really elevated what you could do with a story about a museum. The ways in which he utilizes color to imply time and motion are almost unseen in many of his other works, but here he was able to experiment like he had in his Thus Spoke Kishibie Rohan shorts. Araki manages to create a museum story that barely spends any time in the museum proper and instead focuses on the passage of time through the museum’s catacombs and the character of Rohan.

While it will be fun to see some more of Araki’s work animated, it’s also nice to appreciate just how good he is at creating short bursts of manga. It’s works like Rohan at the Louvrethat only excite me for the potential release of of more short works in the future with the success of the animated adaptations. From there, I can only hope for more short works from Araki as his latest series, Jojolion, begins to wind down.

Get excited. Get Bizarre.


Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #23

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post

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The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #23

Transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

18 January 2021

The other night I watched a 1970s British horror film called Frightmare. It should have been called My Psycho Mama Was A Badly Dressed Tranny because Sheila Keith, the thespian playing the cannibal mom, resembled a man in an unflattering wig and an off-the-rack number from Kmart.

I feel the same about Joe Bidden.

I look at him and think something is wrong. What is it? So I thought I’d interview him to get to the bottom of this great and abiding mystery. But he’s playing hard to get. As luck would have it, US Vice President Carmilla Harrison-Ford was in Canberra, talking to Prime Dickhead, Scott Moronson, about nuking Communist China.

Here is the interview.

SS: Now, Carmilla—

KH: My names is Kamala actually.

SS: Kamala Actually. That’s a funny name for an Injan.

KH: The correct name is Kamala Harris. The first name is Kamala. Not Carmilla.

SS: Let’s get one thing straight.

KH: Yes?

SS: Are you a vampire?

KH: No.

SS: Then why is your name Carmilla, the lesbian bloodsucker?

KH: I told you, the name is Kamala, Kamala…

SS: There’s no need to shout. You’re obviously a feminazi who confuses aggression with assertiveness. You will have to take anger management classes before you become assistant POTASS, or whatever it’s called. Which brings me to the next question.

KH: Go ahead.

SS: Are you going to change the name of the White House?

KH: To what?

SS: The Black House.

KH: Why would I do that?

SS: Because black is the new black.

KH: We are not changing the name of The White House. That venerable building represents all Americans, irrespective of race, creed, sex or religion.

SS: Tell that to the Trump supporters who stormed congress. I understand you’re from Inja.

KH: I was born in Oakland, California.

SS: That, my dear, is nothing to boast about.

KH: I’m very proud of the community in which—

SS: Boring. Your maman is from Inja.

KH: My mother is Indian and my father Jamaican.

SS: No one is interested in your sob-story about uneducated peasants doing well in the new country. We’ve heard it before. Ad nauseam.

KH: My parents are not uneducated. My mother is a biologist and my father is emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University.

SS: How sweet, aspirational BIPOC, which means you are pathologically driven to succeed.

KH: That’s an insulting acronym and—

SS: Can you make Palak Paneer?

KH: No.

SS: How about Lachcha Paratha?

KH: Is this a cooking show? I thought we were talking politics.

SS: No one is interested in politics any more, darling. Guilt-ridden white liberal progressives only care about color, gender and using the wrong toilets.

KH: If you say so.

SS: Now, let’s see, you are a failure as an Injan, but you make an attractive trans woman.

KH: I’m not trans.

SS: Then why do you look like a man in a bad wig?

KH: Why do you look like the mutant hillbilly from The Hills Have Eyes?

SS: Miaow! Here comes another hard-hitting question.

KH: Go ahead.

SS: Is it true Nancy Pelosi has Trump’s head mounted on the wall of her office?

KH: No, she doesn’t. She has his balls nailed to her desk.

SS: Ouch! Hard-hitting question number two coming up.

KH: I can’t wait.

SS: You and Joe Biden were Time magazine’s person of the year.

KH: That’s right.

SS: How can two people be person of the year? ‘Person’ is a singular noun.

KH: He’s the President, I’m the Vice President. We are a team. We work as one, like two-headed Janus.

SS: Two-headed anus! That’s disgusting.

KH: Janus, Janus. The Roman god.

SS: All right, don’t yell.

KH: You need a hearing aid, old man.

SS: Carmilla Harrison-Ford, lesbian vampire elect, love child of a grumpy old actor, I put it to you that you and Joe Biden are one and the same person.

KH: By the four arms of Vishnu, how did you find out?

SS: So it is true.

KH: [breaks down and cries] Yes, yes, it’s true. It’s all true. Joe Biden is me and I am Joe Biden. Oh, I’m ruined, ruined, I tell you!

SS: Cut the waterworks, lady. I know you’re tough as nails.

KH: [stops crying and lights a cigarillo and crosses legs suggestively] All right, who told your saggy lily white ass?

SS: No one told me. One look at Joe Biden and I knew he was a black woman in white face.

KH: Don’t tell anyone.

SS: Tell me why you deceived America, the entire world.

KH: What choice do I have? I’m black and a woman. No one is going to make me President of the United States. So I invented Joe Bidden, an innocuous old white man and voila! We’re in power. Why did you have to go and ruin it?

SS: Keep your tits on. I’m not going to reveal your dastardly secret.

KH: Thank you.

SS: But I want something in return.

KH: Here we go.

SS: I come to your secret love pad one night and—

KH: …do the beast with four backs.

SS: It’s the beast with two backs, numb skull. What kind of weird kinky shit are you into anyway? And no, I don’t want to have sexual congress with you. Trump supporters can fuck congress better than I can.

KH: Then what do you want?

SS: You will cook Palak Paneer and Lachcha Paratha—

KH: Is that all?

SS: I haven’t finished yet.

KH: Go on.

SS: You will cook Palak Paneer and Lachcha Paratha and rub it all over my naked body.

KH: Who’s kinky now?

SS: Give me a mango lassi enema and you have my eternal devotion.

KH: Ugh! You are a sicko.

SS: Now go out there and school ‘em, sister-girl!

KH: I told you, I’m not transgender.

SS: Everyone is trans nowadays. Blame gay fashion designers. They put something in clothes to make the wearer Victor/Victoria and bring on the end of civilization.

KH: That makes absolutely no sense.

SS: My truth is as vapid as yours, honey.

À bientôt, mes amies.


The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker and a Greek bear wrestler. He is currently stateless and lives on gin and cigarettes.

Dmetri Kakmi is the author of Mother Land (shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia), and the editor of When We Were Young. His latest book is The Door and Other Uncanny Tales. He does not endorse the Sozzled Scribbler’s views.

The Curator of Schlock #334: Suspira

11 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post

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The Curator of Schlock #334 by Jeff Shuster

Suspiria

The greatest horror movie of all time? I won’t argue. 

I made one request of Jervis. While I am busy scribbling away on the My-Dinner-With-Andre-but-with-vampires script, I thought a nice, cool glass of egg nog might hit the spot. I asked that the next time Jervis stop by the grocers that he pickle me up some. What does he buy me? Horizon Organic Low Fat Egg Nog. Are you kidding me? I can’t get the real stuff. I’m going to figure out a way to deal with Wally, Celestial, and Jervis. I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

Speaking of hell, this week’s movie is 1977’s Suspiria from director Dario Argento. Jessica Harper plays Suzy Bannion, an American ballet student who travels to Freiburg, Germany to attend a famous dance academy. Unfortunately, there are sinister happenings going on at this dance school and by sinister happenings, I mean witchcraft. Nasty, nasty witchcraft.

Suspiria is the ultimate horror movie about witchcraft.

I believe it was the last movie in Europe shot with a technicolor camera. Accompanying the gorgeous visuals is a jolting score by the Italian prog-rock band Goblin.

So I’m struggling a bit to give my thoughts on Suspiria in that it’s as close to a perfect horror movie as I’ve ever seen. More often than not, horror seems to be about regular people running into evil. Sometimes that evil comes from the natural world, but sometimes it’s preternatural. And sometimes that regular person is destroyed by that evil. When you go into a horror movie, you don’t know if the main character is going to survive.

Take Suzy Bannion for example, an ordinary American woman visiting Germany. She comes European ancestry, might even be part German, but that country is as foreign to her as any other. When she arrives at the school, she notices another student running from the academy into the stormy night. Said student is murdered in a painful and terrifying fashion by some kind of spell. These spells attack other faculty and students at the school, anyone who gets too close to figuring out secret of the academy, that members are involved in the occult.

I remember when I first watched Suspiria, I kept trying to figure out who the witch was. Was it Madame Blanc, the aging headmistress of the academy as played by Joan Bennett? How about Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), an angry woman with a thick German accent that would probably feel right at home in the Third Reich? We’ve got Pavlos, a creepy Romanian dude with false teeth, and Albert who resembles Little Lord Fauntleroy. Which one of them is the witch? They all are.

The above mentioned belong to a coven running the academy. At the head of this coven is Helena Markos, a witch know as the “Black Queen,” thought to have died in a fire many years earlier. The coven kills anyone that gets wise to them. And they have set their sites on Suzy Bannon which they refer to as a “bitch of an American girl.” Well the coven shouldn’t underestimate the American girl. Sometimes it’s the American girl that will succeed where others failed. Sometimes it’s the American girl that will whoop your ass.

In Memoriam

Daria Nicolodi

June 19, 1950 to November 26, 2020

There would be no Suspiria without Daria Nicolodi. She cowrote the screenplay, inspired by tales she’d heard about a ballet academy run by practitioners of the occult, Daria Nicolodi starred in several Italian movies, but she was a writer as well as a performer. I’ve covered movies of her on the blog before and will cover more. May she rest in peace.


Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443 and episode 444) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Episode 449: A Very German Christmas Discussion (with Vanessa Blakeslee)!

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Christmas, Christmas literature, Episode, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Episode 449 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

In this week’s episode, I talk with Vanessa Blakeslee about the excellent new anthology, A Very German Christmas, from New Vessel Press.

TEXT DISCUSSED

NOTESScribophile

  • TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
  • Register with Miami Book Fair Online in order to stream its free events, including a debut poet panel moderated by yours truly.

  • Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Episode 449 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #97: Do You Have a Moment to Talk About Robots?

18 Wednesday Nov 2020

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #97 by Drew Barth

Do You Have a Moment to Talk About Robots?

From Gundam to Pacific Rim to Big O, I’m likely to be all in if there’s a robot bigger than most buildings stomping around somewhere. The newest series from Vault Comics, Alex Paknadel and John Lê’s Giga, gives me robots as big as buildings because they have become actual buildings. From cathedrals to apartments, the giant robots of old have opened themselves up to become the habitats for the people left behind after their war had devastated the planet.

Giga, however, isn’t the story of the giant robots and their fights—it’s the story of the people left behind inside the giant robots and their fights. As a result of the battles the Giga had commenced years prior, they have been deified. These giant robots have been opened up, studied, and turned into grand cathedrals to their power as well as buildings for everyday use. Baba Yaga is somewhere furious her house only has chicken legs instead of pneumatic skyscrapers. And it’s in these grand cathedrals and buildings that we meet our main character, Evan Calhoun. Evan is a person who uses a wheelchair and used to be a part of these cathedrals until being cast out for unknown reasons. When his story begins, he’s struggling. Barely able to scrape together enough scrap for rations, him and his robot, Laurel, enter a Giga beyond their city limits and directly into peril.

Vault Comics excels at first issues. Giga continues that trend. A first issue is one of the hardest things to write in comics—the balance of world-building, introducing characters and tone, and establishing a story in roughly twenty something pages is a feat. Paknadel and Lê manage this balancing act due in part to their method of storytelling in this issue. We learn a small amount of Evan’s past and his connection to the religion around the Giga, but an explosion occurs and we hard cut to thirteen years later where he’s struggling to survive. We’re given our world in just a couple pages—from the attitude of the world to the Giga to the general struggle of living in a world that exists in the shadow of giant robots.

Giga satiates my need for giant robot stories by giving me a giant robot story I’ve never seen before: one where the giant robots haven’t even moved. I’ve seen robots fight, I’ve seen them brood, I’ve seen them choke slam the living embodiment of entropy, but I’ve never seen one stop and become a part of the setting. What Gigadoes so well throughout its first issue is it makes you think of these behemoth machines as immovable—they’re just as much a part of the background as a skyscraper in Metropolis—and focus in on the people who have to live around them. It feels like the kind of thing Paknadel and Lê can set up just long enough before one of the Giga begins to move.

Get excited. Get huge.


Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Curator of Schlock #330: Autopsy

14 Friday Aug 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #330 by Jeff Shuster

Autopsy

Mimsy Farmer twice in one year? How did that happen?

Jervis showed up to the mansion with three hippie hitchhikers he picked up on his way back from “taking care of his sick mother.” The new house guests are named Indigo, Saffron, and Celestial. I haven’t had a chance to bring up the coffin I saw in the basement because the beardy boy named Saffron won’t knock it off with the tambourine playing! Celestial seems cool enough. She keeps asking me what my sign is, but Indigo, the intellectual, keeps wanting to talk about late stage capitalism. Saffron reeks of patchouli oil. I’m not liking this one bit.

victorian-home-1606836

Tonight’s giallo feature is 1975’s Autopsy from director Armando Crispino. The movie begins with scenes of different people committing suicide. One is an old guy tying a plastic bag around his head before throwing himself into a river. Another has a driver lighting a match and setting himself and the car on fire. The third suicide is a father machine gunning himself to death and murdering his two young daughters. Okay. So this is a little dark.

autopsy1

Next we get to see a bustling Italian mortuary filled with doctors and corpses. Not my idea of a dream job. We’re introduced to Dr. Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer), a brilliant young woman who also has waking nightmares. She sees the corpses of the mortuary get up and walk around. Some of the corpses even make love to each. I’m not sure what Sigmund Freud’s diagnosis would be be, but I think she’s whacko. Oh, did I mention Simona has visions of screaming corpses every time she tries getting intimate with her boyfriend, Edgar (Ray Lovelock)?

autopsy2

Anyway, we learn that Betty is only half American. The other half is Italian. Her mother was American. Her father is Italian. Her mother is dead. Her father is planning to remarry. Did you get all that? He’s planning to marry again. I think it’s to a young, vivacious red head named Betty Lenox (Gaby Wagner) whose body ends up being found a couple of days later. Betty supposedly shot a bullet through her head and it knocked one of her eyes out, but one of the lecherous coroners was able to pop it back in.

autopsy3

Betty’s brother, Paul Lenox (Barry Primus), shows up to identify the body, but he refuses to accept that she committed suicide. You see, Betty had confessed her sins to her priest before she died and was happy to move on with her life. Oh, and the priest is the aforementioned brother, Father Paul Lenox, who used to be a race car driver before he caused a major accident at Le Mans that killed six people. Father Lenox is also prone to fits of rage. I seem to remember a scene of him shaking poor Simona demanding that she “respect him.”

Autopsy4

You know, it wouldn’t be the first time a priest turned out to be the murderer in one of these movies, but that would be too easy. Father Lenox has his problems, but that doesn’t make him a murder. Unless you count those six people he killed a Le Mans. But that was before he became a priest. There’s more weirdness that awaits, but you kind of need to see it for yourself. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Autopsy was scored by the late, great Ennio Morricone. Also, you get to see Mimsy Farmer in the buff, but you didn’t hear that from me.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #328: Fantasy Island

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #328 by Jeff Shuster

Fantasy Island

Bad, Blumhouse! Bad!

Jervis is a liar! I pick the lock on the basement door (as I am a master of unlocking) and slowly creep down there during the wee hours of the night while Jervis is fast asleep. What do I find in the basement? Ain’t no canned peaches down there. Instead, I find a red velvet lined oak coffin filled with something like ashes. Hanging from the ceiling is a meat hook. I don’t what this is all about. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.

Tonight’s movie is 2020’s Fantasy Island from director Jeff Wadlow. This is a Blumhouse production, a studio known for cranking out budget horror movies that make big bucks. Fantasy Island reportedly cost about 7 million to make, but drew in over 47 million during its box office run. Not a bad take. Still, Fantasy Island was critically panned upon release. Perhaps, this was due to the fact that they took a kitschy 70s television series and turned it into a horror movie!

Fantasy1

I have to admit that I was never a big Fantasy Island fan. I was way too young when it was on, but would catch snippets of it on occasion, fascinated by the debonaire Ricardo Montalbán, who’d I’d only known as the terrifying villain from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Fantasy Island wasn’t for me. Too romantic and sentimental for a boy wanting to see starships shooting at each other. But now that I’m a bit more seasoned and while Fantasy Island still isn’t for me, I don’t begrudge its fans or their enjoyment of the show. Is there a Fantasy Island equivalent to Trekkies? I don’t know. If there is, they must be flipping their shit right about now.

Fantasy4

So the premise of the movie is that guests arrive at Fantasy Island after filling out a questionnaire detailing their deepest desire. The owner of the island, Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña), will make the fantasies of each guest come true. For Gwen Olsen (Maggie Q), it means saying yes to a marriage proposal she regrets turning down. For step brothers Brax Weaver (Jimmy O. Yang) and J. D. Weaver (Ryan Hansen), it’s a wild party filled with sex, drugs, and dubstep. For Patrick Sullivan (Austin Sowell), it’s getting the chance to be a soldier and prove to himself that he’s not a coward. And for Melanie Cole (Lucy Hale), it’s getting revenge of her middle school bully, a woman named Sloane Madison (Portia Doubleday).

Fantasy3

Melanie’s fantasy is the most interesting. She goes down the hotel elevator to a hidden basement room. Behind a one-way mirror is none other than Sloane, strapped to a chair. Sloane can’t see Melanie, but Melanie can see Sloane. At Melanie’s disposal is a console with all sorts of buttons and switches. Melanie delights in electrocuting Sloane and pouring toilet water over Sloane’s head. Another button posts a video to social media of Sloane cheating on her husband. It’s all in good fun. After all, that isn’t really Sloane behind the mirror. It’s all holograms and other visual trickery. That’s what Melanie thinks until she realizes from one of the videos shows Sloane being on Fantasy Island and that is indeed her in that torture chamber.

I don’t know who this movie is for. So far it’s playing out like a light version of a Saw movie. The other fantasies progress. Gwen now has a husband and four-year-old daughter and Patrick gets to meet his long deceased father. But little do they know that they are actually a part of someone else’s dark fantasy. There’s a twist. One of the guests is not what they seem. Blah. Blah. Blah. I’m only glad Ricardo Montalbán didn’t live to see this. I wonder if if there will be a Fantasy Island II.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #79: Take It To the Banks

15 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Tags

The Banks, TKO comics

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #79 by Drew Barth

Take it to the Banks

I’ve mentioned them briefly before, but TKO is doing something different with monthly comics. Instead of waiting for trade paperbacks while a monthly series comes out, they opt to publish the entire story at once either in a collected edition or as a box set of six issues. As readers, we can binge our way through a series right as it begins, no waiting required. And if we’re going to talk about binging an entire series, we have to talk about a new crime family story courtesy of Roxanne Gay, Ming Doyle, and Jordie Bellaire: The Banks.

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The Banks centers around three generations of the Banks family—Clara, Cora, and Celia—and their family’s legacy as the best thieves in Chicago. Celia, the youngest of the Banks, rejects her mother’s and grandmother’s professions, opting instead to work in the financial sector. But even here she is surrounded with thievery of a different kind and this brings her into contact with the man who killed her grandfather. And this could just be a heist story with a touch of revenge, but Gay, Doyle, and Bellaire are the kinds of storytellers that push a medium. These women know the best stories come from the best characters and the Banks as a family feel superbly realistic in their desires, their disappointments, their quirks, and their squabbles. A heist story is good, but a heist story with characters we can connect with on a personal level is even better.

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The ways Ming Doyle is able to convey complex montages and play with how weird time can be in comics is just another aspect of how goddamn good The Banks is as a comic. A two page spread can encompass Clara Banks and her husband’s entire courtship and marriage before we’re brought back to the present. What Doyle does so well here is showing the past only when we need it and not a moment more. At times, we’re provided the same kind of information and backstory as Celia—we’re in the dark as much as the main character. And, in a family who has been known to hide pieces of the past from one another, this method of storytelling only works to further bolster this idea of only getting a portion of the story at a time. This allows for the story of the Banks family to unfold with a slow determination that builds upon the foundation of the past without ever being trampled by details.

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Works like The Banks, Far Sector, and The Low, Low Woods are easily some of the strongest comics to come out in the past couple years and they’re also all comics written by some of the best authors alive right now. It’s a trend in comics that should continue. There are voices in monthly comics—or in the case of TKO, seasonal comics—that have long been underrepresented. Women, especially women of color, aren’t as large of a portion of this comic writing world as they should be, but hopefully with such prominent authors working in the medium, we can start to see a shift toward having those voices being represented even more.

Get excited. Get more.


drew-barth-mbfi

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

 

The Curator of Schlock #326: Underwater

10 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Tags

Jeff Shuster, Kristen Stewart, The Curator of Schlock, TJ Miller, Underwater, William Eubank

The Curator of Schlock #326 by Jeff Shuster

Underwater

It’s like The Little Mermaid only totally different. 

I like to think I’m not a difficult house guest, but Grantchester is back on Masterpiece Mystery and I will not miss a single episode for anything! Unfortunately, we had quite a storm this past Sunday and I had to send my manservant Jervis out into the thick of it. I asked him to keep the satellite dish steady so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting those nasty digitized bits while I find out if the dashing Will Davenport can repair his strained relationship with his mother. Jervis got a bit drenched and seemed to be working through a fever while cooking my eggs the next morning. He made them over easy instead of sunny side up, but I didn’t say anything because I’m a good guest.

underwater1

Tonight’s movie is 2020’s Underwater from director William Eubank. We get flashes of news headlines in the beginning stating something about a drilling station deep at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Kristen Stewart plays Norah Price, a plucky and nihilistic engineer/computer wiz. You remember Kristen Stewart. She played Bella Swan in those Twilight movies. I’m a bit of a Twihard myself. Team Jacob for the win! Am I right? So Norah is busy brushing her teeth when the underwater bunker begins to shake and the computer is rambling about structural integrity or something to that effect. She runs into another employee of the drilling company, a young man named Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie) before the two of them decide to seal their part of the station off before their section gets flooded..They watch in horror as other crew members run for their lives only to get obliterated because they couldn’t reach safety in time.

underwater2

The two of them run into other survivors as they climb through the rubble of the station. These include Paul (T.J, Miller), a funny crew member that won’t be the first to die, Lucien (Vincent Cassel), the French captain of the station, Liam (John Gallagher Jr.), a manly engineer, and Emily (Jessica Henwick), the station’s biologist that loves corgis.

underwater3

They need to get out of the collapsing part of the station and don’t ask me to repeat all of the scientific doublespeak spewing from their mouths. The gist is they have to put on these heavy and dangerous high-tech scuba suits that allow them to walk on the surface of the ocean.

UNDERWATER

A crack forms in Rodrigo’s helmet once underwater and he can’t handle the pressure. I’m not talking about psychological pressure, but the physical pressure of having no protection from the water at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The rest of the crew move on and gradually learn the cause of the station collapsing. There be monsters swimming around under the sea, squid-like creatures that most likely came through the surface when the drilling crew drilled vin the wrong spot. It’s basically Alien underwater, but it’s better than Deep Star Six. There are worse ways to spend 95 minutes.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Episode 424: Ronan Ryan!

13 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Episode, Irish Literature, James Joyce

≈ 1 Comment

Episode 424 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

RRAuthorPhoto

Photo by David Whitaker.

In this week’s show, I talk to novelist Ronan Ryan about the dramatic uses of gallows humor, how loss teaches us about our priorities, how elusive reality is, and how to match style to story.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

IMG_0688
lolita-2

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Consider donating to City Lights Books to sustain it and/or buying a book online from Powells.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 424 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

 

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