TV as an Escape, TV as a Personality
I SAW THE TV GLOW, KINGDOM OF THE APES, HELLSTORM: PRINCE OF LIES and more!
I was thirteen years old when BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER premiered on television. I had seen the movie starring Kristy Swanson and wouldn’t actively call myself a fan, but something about this new show, set to premiere on The WB, caught my attention. I tuned in for the premiere episode but had to set up a VCR to record episodes for the rest of the season because the show aired on the same night as my weekly Boy Scout meetings. Popular kid was I.
As most BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER fans acknowledge, the show's first season is pretty rough. The writers were still finding their grove, and the characters hadn’t yet gelled into the form that would eventually nestle into our hearts. That said, I was immediately smitten with the show - a clever mix of monster-of-the-week fun with smart pop culture-obsessed dialogue and soap opera theatrics. I watched my homemade VHS collection of BUFFY episodes all summer in anticipation of the second season - and then disaster struck: The WB would no longer broadcast on my family’s local cable plan. For the next four years, I was stuck reading episode recaps (both online and in the episode guidebooks that used to be published in pre-Wikipedia) to get my BUFFY fix. When that proved to not be enough for my growing addiction to the show, I arranged for out-of-town relatives to record episodes and ship them to me. I read media tie-in books and tracked down comics, and poured over every detail of this show that was once my personal obsession and prolonged mystery. In the show’s fifth season, the WB finally returned to the local airwaves in McAllen, finally allowing me to watch the show. Around that time, FX started airing daily reruns of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in order - allowing me to burn through a lot of blank VHS tapes to finally catch up on the show in full.
My fandom for BUFFY would wax and wane over the next decade. It survived losing the show again during the middle of the sixth season—when it moved to UPN, and my cable provider temporarily dropped that network. The first season of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER was one of the first big, expensive DVDs I ever bought. I still remember agonizing over the $37 retail price, which is ironic considering I now regularly drop $70 for collector’s edition UHD packages without blinking an eye. When ANGEL aired its last episode in 2004, I was struck with a feeling of profound grief - a loss for characters that were never real but who I knew I would no longer be able to spend time with.
I wonder if kids today feel the same level of connection to television shows that I did as a kid. When you binge a show, do you develop that level of long-exposure familiarity with characters you obtain watching a show across half a decade? Watching a show pre-internet was a weird mixed feeling of loneliness and connection. You sometimes felt like the only person in the world watching this show, which could leave you feeling like the characters were actually your friends.
For a long time, I didn’t know if others felt this same way or if I was just a particularly weird kid. Thanks to I SAW THE TV GLOW, I at least know one other person who seemingly had such complicated relationships with the television they watched - Jane Schoenbrun. The movie, expanding into new theaters this weekend, follows two teenagers as they become more and more obsessed with a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER-inspired low-budget supernatural television show.
The movie explores how television can simultaneously fill and widen the emotional holes in your heart, using the visual language of a show (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) that filled and widened my adolescent holes. Jane, a transgender filmmaker, uses television to tell a story about the trans experience - where a child unsure of their own identity can latch onto the identity of a television show to define their life. But what happens when the show ends? What do you do with your life when there are no more episodes waiting to be watched?
I SAW THE TV GLOW is a powerful, traumatic, and absolutely stunning piece of art, and I can’t recommend it enough. See it!
I finished revising the modern PLANET OF THE APES films last week and, with my partner, watched KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES on Saturday. I love every ounce of this furry little franchise. There’s something so grand about a story that carefully treads its way through the beginning of a new civilization and the end of another. I would read the hell out of a James Michener-inspired book set in the PLANET OF THE APES universe that followed generations of a human family from the initial outbreak of the Simian Flu through their devolution into uncivilized mutes.
I hope they keep making PLANET OF THE APES movies, but I do hope they shift away from focusing on the human vs ape war. We’ve seen this a lot over the last few films - give us something new! Give us new genres with an all-ape cast. I want to see a heist film or a pirate movie, or a rom-com, but starring hyper-intelligent apes. Heck, I’d love to see a movie where the eagles of KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES rise against their simian overlords.
I finished reading the eleven-issue run of HELLSTORM: PRINCE OF LIES from the early ‘90s - the issues right before Warren Ellis would hop on the title in what would be one of his earliest big American comic book gigs. This series, by Rafael Nieves, Len Kaminski, Michael Bair, Peter Gross and others, is obviously an attempt to ape the Vertigo style and apply it to a ‘70s Marvel superhero, but I like the Vertigo style and Marvel heroes so *shrug*. I really, really enjoyed the film - especially once Len Kaminski took over as writer. He wears his influences (Alan Moore’s run on SWAMP THING and Neil Gaiman’s THE SANDMAN) on his sleeves - with one extended storyline following Hellstorm investigating a faith-healer who, instead of awakening coma patients, is accidentally pulling souls from hell into the comatose bodies. Kaminski does not shy away from dark ideas - including a repentant Nazi guard from World War II finding refuge - much to his horror - in the body of an elderly concentration camp survivor or a woman who was in hell seemingly only because she was a lesbian having to deal with the fact that her damnation happened only because she believed she should be damned due to her sexual preference. The story ends in the ultimate wallop when Hellstorm marches these souls up to heaven - unwilling to send them to hell but unable to leave them on earth - only to learn that heaven is a spinning chasm of divine worship that strips souls of their personalities and individual lives.
The artwork is this perfect mix of ‘90s dumbness (one issue features the introduction of a new superhero named Soulfire who is basically a cross between Ghost Rider, Hulk and Shazam) and ‘90s smarts (there’s a great ghost story in issue six in which a dead child enacts revenge on the man who abused her when she was alive). The series is collected in a trade paperback called HELLSTORM: PRINCE OF LIES and you should track it down!
Speaking of comics, I really enjoyed Brian Doherty’s DIRTY PICTURES, an exhaustive and humanistic look at the first few generations of cartoonists who started the underground comix movement. The book tracks the beginnings of the cultural movement as a group of white men (and they were mostly white men at first) took their love of ‘40s and ‘50s funny books and used the aesthetic to explore sexually explicit gag humor. As comix grew in popularity, the creators would diversify, with women, LGBTQ, and minorities began putting out their own books. From drug humor to MAUS, Doherty’s book tracks the unlikely journey of a generation of comix artists and the book is as inspirational as it is detrimental to the size of my “to read” list.
Quick break to show off this absolutely bugnuts cover of William Goldman’s THE PRINCESS BRIDE I found at Half Price Books this past weekend. I would have bought it, but the store was asking for $200 for the paperback and that’s too expensive to buy things for the lolz.
I really dug HOUSE OF BLOOD by Zach Chapman and a murders’ row of fantastic artists. This collection of the first four issues of Chapman’s horror anthology is the perfect blend of bite-size horrors, told with wonderful imagination (some of the concepts in the book are ones I’ve never seen before in horror comics) and stunning visuals. A lot of horror anthologies can be a little predictable because of the fact that most horror comics writers are inspired by the same EC Comics (and for good reason!) - so it’s a genuine surprise to read a horror anthology that zigs where you expect it to zag. Zach’s book is a great read - and a good introduction for young horror hounds looking to dip their toes into the world of horror comics.
I’m hosting two events this week at the Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra. Up first is a 4K screening of BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA on Wednesday, May 15. This Sam Peckinpah-directed sleaze fest sees Warren Oates hired by a pair of money-hungry criminals looking to collect on a bounty. Full of gruesome tequila-soaked violence across the Mexican frontier, this movie is just an incredible theatrical experience. Buy tickets here!
On Friday, I’ll be screening BAXTER, a French adaptation of the Ken Greenhall novel HELLHOUND about a white bull terrier who plots to kill his owners so that he can be adopted by somebody more worthy of his company. The dog narrates the film with such sardonic malice the film frequently feels like a cross between A DOG’S PURPOSE and DEXTER. I love this movie so much. Buy tickets here!
I’ll be tabling at Comicpalooza next weekend, selling copies of WHERE WOLF. I’ll have both the regular and various paperbacks available as well as a few copies of the hardcover. In addition, I’m participating in a couple of panels - one about horror and one about comedy in literature. I’ll be in booth 2740 - come and say hello!
Don’t forget, you can request a copy of WHERE WOLF from your local library or buy a personal copy directly from the publisher, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Ghoulish Books in San Antonio, or Whose Books in Dallas. If you've read WHERE WOLF, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon, Goodreads, The StoryGraph, or wherever you discover new books.