Just the Ticket

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Pagemaster. It's the week of Easter , and since I kind of got into Lovecraft last year (pseudo-academically, not necessarily as a fan, as you'll see if you check out my other reviews of his writings), I decided to make a theme week of it, starting with Lovecraft's original, serialized novella, Herbert West: Reanimator . First published episodically throughout the first half of 1922, H.P. Lovecraft's Herbert West: Reanimator was written as an intentional parody and homage of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , and I like it more than its long-winded inspiration. But, as it is a serial narrative, an irritating aspect of reading it, even in my modern, audiobook fashion of doing so (the Gates Of Imagination reading got hidden, so I had to start over with the audiobook I linked above, read by Mike Bennett , though as I write this, I've discovered a reading by West himself, Jeffrey Combs , that I'm kicking myself for not noticing...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Pagemaster. I'd like to start this off by giving credit to Gates Of Imagination , whose audiobook thumbnail I edited into the above banner image. It's hard to find a decent public domain reading of anything ( the LibriVox version varied in quality from insufferably dry first takes to diabetic over-acting, and I wasn't about to give my analytics support to "fully voice-acted" AI slop, so as flat as the narration could be here, I'm glad to have found this channel). Reader Arthur Lane at least tried with his dialogue delivery, and was a consistent, soothing auditory presence. In the case of some of the book's more absurd imagery, his level delivery even turned these moments into feats of deadpan comedy. As I've said before, I had previously only experienced J.M. Barrie 's Peter Pan  in movie form ( the 1953 animated movie ,  the Mary Martin stage film ,  Hook , and Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare ), through ...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Pagemaster. Just as I was with the first Jungle Book , I struggle with what to say and how to say it with regard to its sequel, The Second Jungle Book . But now there is the added caveat that much of what I could  think to say about it was already said in that review. I guess a good place to start is that, having read Kipling 's sequel, I saw very little (aside from Mowgli's jungle family urging him to rejoin "the Man-Pack," the increased focus on action, and Mowgli glimpsing a human girl near the end) that I could have recognized from the duology's adaptations. So...wrong sources there. And it's not particularly original of me, but let's go over the tales in order, because yes, The Second Jungle Book is also an anthology like the first, but with more of a focus on Mowgli. "How Fear Came" and "The Law Of the Jungle" Kipling's tales in the first Jungle Book were not ordered chronologically (wha...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Froggy Pagemaster. That byline works two ways, Ticketholders! First is that I had kind of a scare last Thursday night when Google Chrome didn't know how to access Blogger for four straight hours, and I strongly considered exporting my content to another platform (hopping, if you will). It's still in my thoughts to do so, but the instructions are several years old and no longer apply (which you can also take to mean that A.I. can now add an extra instance of being wrong to its learning database). There's even a help topic on Google where someone asked why the old instructions no longer work, and it was flagged as a duplicate question (even though it wasn't), locked out of receiving responses, and additional information on the subject links to a page that no longer exists, almost like Google doesn't want anyone to Frogger their way out of Blogger so that years of content can just go poof when they start to feel like it's the n...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Pagemaster It's really appropriate that this is the thirteenth issue of Cover Charge , because both times I read Alice In Wonderland  (a.k.a. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland , or Alice's Adventures Under Ground , as it was called in its original manuscript form), I felt as if I had been cursed to die of annoyance and boredom with my brain pouring out of my ears. Whether because it simply melted from prolonged exposure to such pointless idiocy, or it fled in terror, piece by piece, from Lewis Carroll 's most famous work occupying my short-term memory, I cannot begin to guess. My issues with the book begin with Alice herself. I suppose it's to be expected of children of a certain age, but Alice is Dunning-Kruger personified. She's lazy, impatient, inconsiderate, self-important, violent toward animals, and so stupid that she thinks her own stupidity is the result of her being changed with someone stupider than herself (which ...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Festive Omnibuster . Christmas Eve has found you, Ticketholders! If that sounded creepy, it's because of the miniseries I'm reviewing today, so don't be mad. Or do; we all go a little mad sometimes. Now where did I put my mistletoe, eggnog, and gingerbread tea...? It's kind of a crazy twist of fate that I chose to review At the Mountains Of Madness and In the Mouth Of Madness as part of my Omnibusted on Wonderland Ongoing Volume Two last week, because there's a reason this series is called Madness Of Wonderland , which I will get into as the review goes on. For now, though, let's talk Trade. Zenescope has gotten to the point where the ComiXology version and digital offerings through...other means are identical, so with the exception of Grimm Fairy Tales , Myths & Legends , and probably a few upcoming new and sequel series, I'll most likely not include a comparison section unless I notice something glitchy about...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Festive  Omnibuster . Much like with  Volume One , Volume Two of the  Wonderland  Ongoing series has no obvious discrepancies between the ComiXology version and the...version I downloaded  One Piece  at a time, so to speak. The reason for this is likely because the "patched" version is a peg-legged instance of the digital/ComiXology edition, rather than a meticulous scan of the physical trade. And seeing as how I  don't  have a physical copy  or  the time or money to acquire one, I cannot speak to any difference in effort between the physical and digital editions. One thing of note, however, is that, around the time of the original release of  Wonderland  #8 (the third part of this five-issue Volume),  Zenescope  began using Digital Edition covers for their...digital editions of individual comics (which were just randomly selected Common retail covers with a Digital Edition mark ...