Just the Ticket

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster Independence Day is on a Friday this year, and I've been devoting the majority of my review months to the films of Maniac Cop director William Lustig , so as you can probably figure out from the thumbnail, I'm reviewing the 1996 holiday slasher, Uncle Sam . It's not the first "killer dresses in holiday mascot costume and uses silly, thematically appropriate means to depopulate small-town America" movie (from the 70s to the early 90s, just about every holiday—especially Christmas and Halloween—got at least one), and with low-budget fare like Thankskilling and Bunnyman , revival-era mysteries like Valentine , and the fairly recent Grindhouse trailer adaptation, Thanksgiving , it certainly wasn't the last. But it was definitely one of them. Uncle Sam is at once an obscure relic of the 90s that somehow feels dated in its own decade, an after-school special PSA about domestic violence and war fanaticism, a Willi...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Summer Ticketmaster I've been a busy blogger, Ticketholders! Or that's what I would say if I hadn't discovered Balatro this past week. For those who don't yet know, Balatro is Poker if it was a Roguelike, with thousands of special Joker and playing card enhancements that come to you at random (which can make meeting the high-end achievement criteria incredibly frustrating), all without the financial stigma of predatory gacha mechanics. The only financial investment is the initial $9.99 purchase price (which I didn't have to pay thanks to Google Play's points and survey rewards systems). It's addictive and you can hit a difficulty wall pretty quickly, making it a satisfying, financially neutral (if you save up for it on Play like I did), but cursed experience. Speaking of curses, I am cursed with a lack of anything new to say about the Winter Witch after last week's issue and my review of the terrible, British, ...

Content Calendar Announcement, Week of June 29, 2025 by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. The increase in my work hours is no longer a projection, Ticketholders!  As of this week, I am back up to a financially functioning level, so I will be posting less content and consuming more in the weeks ahead. That means nothing but Retrospective / Omnibusted posts and TBT '25 pushes until I get caught back up on My Hero Academia . This content trend will also continue into July, but for a 4th of July review of a slasher classic and the possibility of a series review or two you should  Stay Tuned   for. No bullshit. You'll also be happy to know that Just the Ticket passed three hundred thousand all-time views this past weekend, and you can check out my New Piece Offerings post on the subject here . Even with the massive slowdown in traffic at the end of 2024 that has continued into this year, we managed to reach another hundred thousand in less than a year's time. M...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Summer Ticketmaster. You all know by now that I am a critical but stalwart Zenescope fan, meaning that I can appreciate their work for its big moments and ambition despite its many flaws and early missteps. But rarely has the company's output led me to consume external media that I hate, and my research for Wednesday's Retrospective on The Winter Witch has done just that. In the article I mentioned there , the author shares the history of the character Mother Holle, a.k.a Frau Perchta, a witch of winter and fate who rewards the beautiful, industrious, and kind with riches and sweets, and punishes those who are ugly, evil, and lazy by disembowelment and filling their stomach cavities with stones. Let's just say that despite its apparent lack of budget, I won't be giving 2022's The Winter Witch any riches or sweets today. Written and directed by Richard John Taylor (director of three of the many, many low-budget British film...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Summer Ticketmaster. Yeah, this isn't really the appropriate season to be reviewing a comic book titled The Winter Witch  (let alone a movie with that title , which I will be eviscerating on Friday), but it's also maybe the perfect season for it because we modern humans are such wimps about temperatures that summer heat makes us beg for winter and the winter chill makes us pray for an early thaw. So to any of my Ticketholders who are living with triple-digit heat right now, you're welcome for the next four weeks of making you think about winter; I hope the power of suggestion will help you cool off when air conditioning fails. As you can see from the above and right images, the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective is now officially into Volume Twelve, and I discovered something amiss with the ComiXology edition that I mentioned in my review of A Drink and A Tale from a few weeks ago. Said issue not being mentioned in the Table Of Conten...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. I don't know exactly which Tuesday I'm posting this on because at the time I am writing this, Just the Ticket is around two hundred views short of hitting 300K. But back when I did a TBT '25 push of Just the Ticket #66: State of the Grand Address , I promised to do an updated version to show you all where things are thirteen years later. First, let's look at every stat and review I mentioned in that original post and compare them to how far the blog has come since. In 2012, Just the Ticket had passed eight thousand all-time pageviews for its first ten months. As of now, well, you know what milestone we're at now because it's in the title. And that's a hundred thousand more views than I had around this time last year. My  Slither   review, then just past the 200 mark, now sits at over 2100 views. After a dirty joke about the disturbing love life of an egg, my A Little Bit Of Heaven  issue went on a little...