The Cultural Gutter

taking the dumb out of fandom

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Nancy A. Collins’ Swamp Thing

Author Nancy A. Collins talks about writing Swamp Thing at Hasslein Blog.  The Den of Geek writes a paean to Nancy Collins’ al-too-brief run. “As the run progressed, it became evermore enchanting, tense, witty and imaginative (not to mention the fact that it produced the first ever comic to be released under DC’s mature Vertigo [...]

The Creature in the Black Bog

In honor of Steve Ditko’s birthday, The Belated Nerd has posted Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s “The Creature in the Black Bog” from Tales of Suspense #23

Summer Fun Time Reading ’11

It’s summer time and instead of beer bottles exploding out of coolers in a shower of refreshing ice, bikini-clad hotties and fireworks as we know it should be, everything is wilting and perhaps even melting. As far as I can tell there are only two possible explanations—Hot Lava Monsters have readjusted the earth’s thermostat to [...]

Universal’s Years of Terror and Longing!

Beware the stalking half-human half beast!  Cursed with the thirst for human blood, unconscionable hubris,  and demanding a mate, the Monster Legacy site comes to life and walks among us! (as part of promotion for The Wolf Man remake). Thrills! Shock! Suspense!

The Love Song of the Black Lagoon

Lagoon 2 80.jpg

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By gillmen wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. –sorta T.S. Eliot Do you hear that? Off in the distance? A song too beautiful to be real but somehow… familiar? The song twines over the water, through the cattails [...]

“It’s a new world, Arcane.”

Andrew O’Hehir tricks us all by writing about Alan Moore and Swamp Thing instead of movies at Salon: “[T]wo things are clear: Moore knows what comics readers want and intends to give it to them, and whether or not they want something more complicated, more tragic and more adult (I know it’s a loaded word), [...]

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

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    The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking.”

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    The Atlantic profiles Spectral Motion, creators of monsters, “effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.”

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    A novelist takes revenge on writers he doesn’t like via wikipedia. Slate has the story. “Qworty’s edits undermine our trust in this great project. Qworty’s edits prove that Wikipedia’s content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted.”

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    Diane Dooley writes about Mars’ need for women and ways to subvert it.

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    “[T]he mainstreaming of Jane Eyre as a vanilla romance, or even as an exploration of a woman’s pure, uncompromising, and uncomplicated (and religious! and feminist!) integrity, says all kinds of things about our inability to speak honestly about violence and sex.” More on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, consent, sex and submission, here. (via K.A. Laity)

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