Classics Illustrated #59. "Wuthering Heights" By Emily Brontë.

"Chained" ("Conan the Usurper") by Frank Frazetta.

"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." - Horace Walpole, The Letters of Horace Walpole

Aside from Paul Chadwick's Concrete, I strongly feel that this comic series is ripe for adaptation.

I just started re-reading my favorite and, in my opinion, the BEST graphic novel of all time, Jeff Smith's "Bone".

Anybody remember it? If you do and you have read it, you may be wondering why they never did anything with that series (like, it just stopped at comics and two video games). Well, they've tried three separate times to make it into a TV show or a movie.

First, Nickelodeon wanted to make a huge movie out of Bone...and then it got dropped.

And then Warner Bros. wanted to make a trilogy of movies. They wrote up all the scripts...and then it got dropped.

And then Netflix wanted to make a TV series out of Bone...and then it got canceled in 2022.

The first two story arcs (out of nine) were adapted into an adventure game series by Telltale Games in 2005 and 2006. As of now, it's the closest we will ever get to an animated Bone TV series or movie. When is Bone gonna get its justice? Somebody come save Bone...

The works of Jeff Smith are very near and dear to my heart. When it comes to fantasy comics, this guy is one of my personal favorite writers/artists, and the world he created and the stories he crafted are, without a doubt, one of my all-time favorites.

Mythic stories fall into several categories. There are sagas, epics, and fantasy stories called "märchen." These stories depend on something difficult for us to conceive these days: Simplicity or the "Logic of the Fairy Tale." In other words: things are just what they are, because that’s just the way they are.

These stories frequently examine or teach a moral lesson, exalting it or exposing a particular flaw. If the story is a parable or doctrinal, one of its goals is to delineate the characters as "types" in order to illustrate this basic lesson, characters which make the story whole and who are also contained by it. The lives of these "types" can and must have links with the past and the future but their role ends with the story.

In a magic story, the flow is more important than the logic. Man invented monsters to explain the entire universe (Norse and Greek mythology, for example). Once man began to live in an organized way, with a "social contract," an abyss was opened up between his instincts and his thoughts, and monsters started to REPRESENT another universe altogether: man's inner universe. The pagan prefigures the social and offers us a glimpse of the deepest reaches of man's soul, articulating a primordial, savage universe, populated by elves, fauns, ogres, faeries, trolls, and demons.

Allison Schulnik's great claymation short, “Eager”.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

An unrelentingly dark and emotional book. Very interesting and frightening read.

It says something when the best-selling horror author ever feels a book is too unnerving.

"The soil of a man's heart is stonier; a man grows what he can and tends it."

- Stephen King

As much as I'm mixed on Mutant Mayhem, I still give it my most favorable, most sincere wish for success.

May three of the most successful movies in 2023 be animated movies. May artistry be celebrated. May the ratings go higher than PG and beyond if the storytellers need it to be.

The Man Who Laughs (1928) by Paul Leni.

One of the most iconic and influential silent films of all time (along with Metropolis, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).

A magnificent film and one of my favorites.

Highly recommend checking it out.

And, yes, Conrad Veidt's interpretation (and Jack Pierce's make-up) inspired The Joker.

Frank Frazetta's "Self Portrait".