Author Archives: Doc

EYG Comic Cavalcade #137

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February 1

Hey, it is time for the EYG Comic Cavalcade. Diamond still has not gotten things straightened out so it is a slighter week this week with no Marvel books. However, next week could be a massive week… that is if next week’s Diamond’s order can get there. I am not holding my breathe.

Today, before I went to see the movie Presence, I went to a comic shop in Davenport. I was curious and I googled to see what comic shops were in the Quad Cities. One seemed easy to get to so I picked it. The parking was horrendous, and the shop, to be honest, was like an armpit. It reminded me of Comic World when it used to be down on Central in Dubuque, only much smaller. There were boxes and piles of comics everywhere. It reminded me of Todd’s storage lot (hee hee hee).

I was hoping that there would be some smaller independent books that hadn’t been ordered at Comic World that I could pick up. There was not a ton of new issues, but there were some. For example, I picked up the Deadly Tales of the Gunslinger #2, which was a Spawn book that featured a beautiful Mark Spears cover. I had not intended on buying it, but since I saw it there for cover price, I picked it up. I also grabbed the Superman/Lex Luthor #1 book that I was not overly interested in and a foil covered Ultimate Spider-Man #13. I felt like I needed to buy something to make the trip worthwhile, and I think I picked up some fun books.

Books this week (minus Marvel):

Ice Cream Man #43. I do think my favorite horror series is Ice Cream Man and this issue has an awesome gimmick: One-Page Horror Stories. This was my favorite book of the week with very short stories by some of the greats including Grant Morrison, Patton Oswalt, Jeff Lemire, Zoe Thorogood, Geoff Johns, Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Good Old Neon, Deniz Camp, and Frank Barbiere. The art for the entire book was done by Martin Morazzo and Chris O’Halloran (except for three others: Good Old Neon, Zoe Thorogood, and Ashley Walker). The cover art was done by Ryan Quackenbush.

Silverhawks #1. Written by Ed Brisson and art by George Kambadais. I have cover A by Lucio Parrillo. There are only about 5 million covers for this book. That is hyperbole, but there are literally three pages at the back of the book showing all the variant covers for this book. I can’t imagine that there is any collector anywhere who can purchase all of these covers from Cover A to Cover ZZD (+ a bunch of retailer exclusives). Dynamite has been solid recently, and I enjoyed this book too, with a passing of the torch for a new era of Silverhawks.

Freddie the Fix #1. Written by Garth Ennis and art by Mike Perkins. Todd has been looking for this one for quite awhile for me, and he was finally able to get his hands on it. It has a cover quote from Stephen King saying, “It’s Crazy Good!” Part of the Ninth Circle imprint from Image, this was a fun story with a “fixer” in Hollywood trying to fix things for the monsters that worked in Hollyweird… and I mean monsters literally. Lots of fun.

Redcoat #9. Creators: Geoff Johns & Bryan Hitch. Variant cover B art was done by Mark Buckingham & John Kalisz. We get a brand new character to interact with Simon Pure. A flashback issue featuring Johnny Appleseed. This was another really good comic from this Ghost Machine imprint of Image.

Blood Train #1. Written by Adam Glass and art by Bernard Chang. Another one shot issue from Ninth Circle, Blood Train reminded me very much of the Korean movie Train from Busan. A train and a virus that can turn someone into a creature… always a great story.

Mark Spears Monsters #3. Written, drawn and cover art by Mark Spears (Gold, Silver and Bronze Medalist). This book became the first sweep winner of the Favorite Cover of the Week for Mark Spears, with the Jaws cover winning going away. It is a beautiful cover. I love this series too as the fun with monsters continues.

The Seasons #1. Written by Rick Remender and art and cover art by Paul Azaceta. I am not sure what I thought about this book. It was a very strange book involving characters named after the seasons. This kind of reminded me of the Disney short Paperman.

Sherlock Holmes: The Dark Detective #3. “Arena of Darkness” Written by Christopher Sequeira and art by Philip Cornell. Sherlock and Watson seemed to have solved the Chimera mystery in this issue… so much that I thought this was the final issue, though the cover says that there will be a fourth issue.

Sam and Twitch: Case Files #10. Written by Jordan Barel & Todd McFarlane and art by Thomas Nachlik. Cover art by Jim Muniz & Jonathan Glapion. The case of Twitch’s officer shooting is getting even stranger than it was before. This new storyline is very interesting.

Hello Darkness #7. The other regular horror anthology series. Hello Darkness has been consistently good with some of the short stories inside being actually outstanding. My favorite in this issue was titled “Evermore,” written by David hazan and illustrated by Stefano Nesi.

Other books this week: FML #3, Book of Cutter #1, Knights vs. Samurai #5, Black Cloak #11, and Blood Squad Seven #6.

Presence

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Presence is a small movie that may be advertised as a horror movie, but that would not be accurate. This is much more of a psychological drama than anything else. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Presence takes a different look at the haunted house sub-genre than what we have seen before.

A family moved into a new home after a tragic event struck. Chris (Chris Sullivan) and Rebekah (Lucy Liu) was a troubled couple with two kids, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). Chloe’s best friend had recently died, but the parents seemed to be more focused on moving so Tyler can get into the proper high school for the swim team.

Chloe immediately started getting a feeling, sensing that there was something in the house… a presence.

There were some interesting characters involved here. Rebekah seemed much more connected to Tyler and less connected with Chloe. Chris appeared to be a really wonderful father, being very supportive of Chloe and calling Tyler out on his garbage. There were more issues with the family than there was with this “ghost.”

What I enjoyed the most in this movie was how it was shot. There were a bunch of single-shot scenes that were shot as if it were the POV of the spirit. I really enjoyed that gimmick. It was something that I had not seen before and I thought it was a creative use of the camera.

It was also a major surprise at the end that made something earlier in the film make sense. No spoilers on it, but there was something that happened about midway through the film that made no sense. However, it did make sense by the ending of the film which I appreciated.

Overall this was a decent film. It was not what I expected, but the story was good. The acting was fine. I loved the way it was shot. It may not have been the best movie of the year, and it is absolutely not a horror movie, but it was a good time.

3.6 stars

Girl in the Picture (2022)

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January 31

January 31st is here and the 2025 Genre-ary comes to a close with a Netflix documentary called Girl in the Picture, which was based on the books A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon by Matt Birkbeck.

According to IMDB, “A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.“

This was an excellent documentary covering the tragic story of a young girl named Sharon Marshall. Or at least, it was a young girl who was known as Sharon Johnson. She had been abducted as a child and then raised as the daughter of Franklin Delano Floyd, a kidnapper, murderer and sexual abuser.

Sharon suffered years of abuse at the hands of her “father.” He would use her to make money by making her strip and offering her for sex to other men.

The story also included a boy named Michael, who had been kidnapped by Floyd as well. The boy disappeared and the question about what had happened to Michael was part of the film.

One of the best things about this doc is that all of the mysteries surrounding these people are solved. A lot of times these docs do not have a sense of closure because mysteries are left unsolved. Here though, thankfully, everything is revealed.

It is such an emotional story of pain and loss, but it also gives a great story about how people can help by doing whatever you can.

Girl in the Picture is available on Netflix.

And with this, the 2025 Genre-ary comes to a close.

Invasion on Chestnut Ridge (2017)

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January 30

Today, the penultimate day of the 2025 Genre-ary, I watched a documentary from the series Small Town Monsters. I have seen other episodes from Small Town Monsters before and they are usually a fairly well done look at these unexplained phenomenon. Invasion on Chestnut Ridge is yet another solid doc dealing with the paranormal.

Chestnut Ridge is an area of Pennsylvania where there have been numerous unexplained reports of everything from bigfoot to UFO sighting to giant birds with massive wingspans.

According to the doc, it seemed as if there were a rush of reports during 1973/74 with all kinds of weird things going on. The doc had witnesses giving their stories, including things like UFO sightings and bigfoot encounters, all of which are sufficiently unnerving. One wonders what these people actually saw. Many of them seemed to be reasonable and decent people (Admittedly, there was the one guy with a 2nd Amendment shirt on where the number two was a snake).

I have always been more willing to believe in many things. I do think there is (or was) something called a bigfoot. I am not opposed to people from outer space (though I am not sure if they are able to travel here), but above all else, I enjoy the stories. Small Town Monsters does an excellent job of presenting these “out there” accounts in a enjoyable way.

There was one funny moment. They were interviewing a witness who had seen a thunderhawk and they were blurring out the wording on his shirt. However, the man bent down to describe how the bird had been sitting, and the blur did not go with him. We saw that it was a Steelers shirt. I laughed out loud at that. I wonder why they couldn’t get the blur to follow him down. I know that was a minor thing in the doc, but I thought it was funny.

The doc also detailed the Kecksburg UFO crash in 1965. Something crashed in the woods near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania and witnesses went to see. It was a metallic object shaped like a walnut and that the military showed up and removed it. Of course, specifics are shaky and, like all UFO sightings, it is hard to determine what it was that these people saw.

Admittedly, the doc does not provide any concrete evidence of any of the stories they tell about, outside of the eye witness accounts from many year prior. I still found these stories intriguing and entertaining at least. Are any of them real? Who knows. It is one of those unsolved mysteries.

EYG Favorite Comic Cover of the Week

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January 30

Todd! It was White Savior!

I was talking with Todd at Comic World tonight and I was joking about the old issue #3 curse. It seemed as if the independent series for a short while always missed #3 for me, and I tried to remember that book that Drew had taken home that was supposed to be mine. I couldn’t for the life of me think of the name of it. I kept thinking The Last… something. I knew it was a four issue series from Dark Horse, but I couldn’t place the title. Finally, on the way back home, the word WHITE popped in my head and then it was just a matter of moments before I got to White Savior. Strangely enough, it still did not feel right, but I checked the internet and it sure was. That was a real relief getting that off my mind.

This week’s medalists are a FIRST!

Bronze Medalist

Mark Spears Monsters #3

Variant Cover E

Cover Art by Mark Spears.

What a cool cover with all of the monsters around the witch, who looks spectacular. This was in honor of a Marvel series of covers from a few years ago and it is awesome. Godzilla is up there too. Mark Spears is on fire.

Silver Medalist

Mark Spears Monsters #3

Cover A

Cover art by Mark Spears

Frankenstein’s Monster is adorning this cover looking as if he in the electric chair. Will that get rid of Frankie? I don’t know but this cover A is another amazing piece of artwork from Mark Spears. I wonder what is next….?

Gold Medalist

Mark Spears Monsters #3

Variant Cover G Metal Cover

Cover Art by Mark Spears

Absolutely stunning. Despite dropping a pretty penny for this rare cover, I think it is worth it. I love Jaws and this cover captures the terror of the man-eater perfectly. Mark Spears makes history for our site. This is the first time that the same artist has all three medals in one week. It is also the first time that three covers of the same issue placed in the top three. We had Spider-Gwen place in two medal position once last year, but this is the first time for all three places. It is not quite February yet and I do not think anyone will be catching Mark Spears for the Cover Artist of the Year from EYG.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man S1 E1, E2

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Spoilers

“Amazing Fantasy”

“The Parker Luck”

There is no fictional character that means more to me than Peter Parker. I have spent my entire life loving Spider-Man. He has been an inspiration to me and my own core beliefs come from him. Every time I see a new Spider-Man project, I am both excited and a little nervous.

Nervous because there is always a chance that the project will be bad. I have gone through that a few times. And to be honest, seeing the initial images from Disney +’s new Spider-Man series, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, I was a little more nervous than usual.

However, after seeing the first two episodes of season one, my fears were alleviated. I loved these episodes. Even though the show did take some leeway with some things, YFNSM seemed to get the flavor, the tone of Spider-Man right.

One of the original issues I was afraid of was the animation style, but as the episode continued, it did not bother me at all. In fact, i think it worked very well with the character of Spider-Man.

I thought the show was funny and gave us a real good look at this Peter Parker, which is MCU-adjacent. While there are definitely connections to the MCU (Hey there, Left Hand Free), the differences are here too. It sure appears that Norman Osborn is going to be the Tony Stark figure in Peter’s life as the scene in Peter’s apartment with Aunt May was basically reenacted with Norman in Tony Stark’s place.

I love the balls this series is showing. I could tell immediately that there would be plenty of hatred on the internet because of certain “woke” items. I hate that term, by the way. When I first saw Harry in the first episode, I knew there would be some hate-spewers coming for this show. The gender swapping of Curt Connors will surely get some ignorant comments too. Fine. None of that bothered me.

Even the spider bite did not upset me. It certainly was different than any other version of Spider-Man, but that is not a bad thing. The spider was not from Oscorp in the original comics, yet the we’ve seen that happen in other Spider-Man versions.

The choice of Nico as Peter’s friend is intriguing. I have always enjoyed this character in the different comics. The football player is not Flash Thompson, but Lonnie Lincoln, who, by the way, we know from the comics as Tombstone. Amadeus Cho, a Shuri-like Wakandan also show up. The side cast is very eclectic. Great Dr. Strange cameo too.

Spider-Man has had some awesome animated series in the past with the 1990s Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man, but it also had some shows that felt way too childish. I was concerned this would fall into that category like Ultimate Spider-Man. After the first two episodes, I feel as if those fears have been put to rest. It may not be in the same range as those first two I mentioned, but I think this has some real room to grow.

Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

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January 29

With just three days remaining on the Genre-ary for 2025, I watched an Oscar-nominated doc called Catching the Friedmans, another tough watch because it centered around a teacher and his son who had been accused of sodomy and sexual abuse of kids.

Director Andrew Jarecki, who was the director behind the amazing docu-series, The Jinx, was the driving force behind this documentary.

According to IMDB, the “Documentary on the Friedmans, a seemingly typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family whose world is instantly transformed when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes.”

There are plenty of scenes in this movie that came from home video recordings taped by the Friedman family themselves. Most of these scenes were really tough to watch considering the way some of this was portrayed. It painted a horrible picture of most of these people. There was a dramatic scene taped at Jesse Friedman’s trial of a parent chasing after him screaming that he had raped his son. Unbelievable.

Elaine Friedman seemed to be a spiteful woman, but it is hard to imagine the situation she found herself in daily. Her husband was a pedophile. Her sons hated her. A lot of the recordings by her kids had her screaming like a banshee. She did not come off looking well. Then, the final scene of the doc seemed to go against everything that the doc had shown us up until that point.

The doc sheds plenty of question on the case overall, especially when it came to Jesse. Arnold, the father who was an admitted pedophile, said that he had committed sexual abuse on two kids, but not the countless number at school.

I’m not sure how I felt about this doc because the voice seemed to be all over the place. I’m not sure what the doc was telling me about this story and it felt as if details changed throughout. I do not have a better understanding of what the truth was in this case or to what level these people were guilty or innocent. Maybe that is the idea with the doc… that truth may be elusive and that you may never know for sure what is happening in the heart of a family.

There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane (2011)

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January 28

Today’ documentary for the Genre-ary was a doc from HBO MAX called There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane.

According to IMDB, this documentary looked at… “The accident made national headlines: a suburban mother drove the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in New York and crashed head-on into an SUV, killing herself and seven others. In the aftermath, Diane Schuler was portrayed as a reckless drunk and a mother who cracked. But was she the monster the public made her out to be…or the perfect wife and mother that many say she was? Investigating the case six months after the accident, this documentary searches for answers to a mysterious and senseless tragedy.”

This was an interesting documentary. The story of Diane Schuler was an odd one. It looked as if she had just been drunk and high and wound up in a tragic accident that killed eight people. Moat of the doc featured Diane’s husband, family and friends and their POV of the situation. They were all certain that there was no way that Diane could be a drunk who drove her car into another vehicle. They were all very determined that this was not possible.

The problem was that all of the evidence of the case pointed to Diane Schuler was drunk and high at the time of the accident. The family of Diane did not provide any possible evidence outside of their denials.

Through the entire documentary, it felt as if some piece of information was missing. The motivation of Diane is questionable. I do not understand why she may have been drinking vodka and smoking marijuana. There was a point of contention about a possible tooth that abscessed, but that did not feel like the overall answer.

There is also another weird event involving an investigator hired by the family who had Diane’s specimens retested, but never got back in touch with the family. This was a truly bizarre aspect of the story. Near the end, Diane’s sister spoke with the investigator who said that he had sent the results and that they were the same as the original one. This was strange.

Some of the images of the accident was just tough to watch. There was a warning at the beginning of the film, but they still caught me off guard.

There seems to be something missing in this story, and sadly, we will never know what it was. Such a tragedy that cost the lives of several humans, including four children.

Last Breath (2019)

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January 27

As we enter the final five days of January, we are coming down to the last documentaries in the Genre-ary. The doc I selected for tonight was a harrowing tale of survival under the most unlikely of circumstances. I watched the doc called Last Breath on Netflix.

This doc was released in 2019, and there is actually a big budget movie set to release at the end of February starring Woody Harrelson about this very story.

According to IMDB, “A deep sea diver is stranded on the seabed with 5 minutes of oxygen and no hope of rescue. With access to amazing archive this is the story of one man’s impossible fight for survival.“

Diver Chris Lemons had his umbilical cable severed during a saturation dive and he was stranded around 100 meters beneath the sea. Somehow, Chris was able to survive for around 30 minutes on the five minutes of oxygen that he had.

The doc is an absolutely stunning accomplishment as it uses real footage from the moment, collected from body cameras and actual radio audio to tell this story. It spoke with the other crew members who were desperate to find Chris before it was too late, but who were fearful that it was already past time.

It was amazing to see these images of Chris atop the structure in the unlikely position among the blackness of the sea. It was powerful watching them pull Chris into the vessel and giving him two deep breaths. They did not believe that they were going to be able to save Chris, and yet they never gave up in their attempt.

This documentary has made me more interested in the movie coming in February, where I had limited interest before.

Football

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Football

Coach screamed “go go  subs” . It was at the NFL Chiefs camp I was drafted and the 5 pick in the draft. I ran in and I was a QB, “Down set hiiik” I snapped the ball one of the D line break thru i scrambled to the right side of the field them i let it go it went flying

 Zip 

I flew past everybody straight to Jim Hardy (one of our WRs). But at the last second, an interception that was my first day at the training camp, my first snap. I screamed in rage.

That night when I was about to leave the camp when the coach called me over I knew I was done for. He said “follow me we need to talk…” 

When I arrived at the office he “said take  a seat”. 

“Ok I know you are trying your best but we might have to cut you if you don’t lock in.”

 I sat there for a minute or two before I broke the silence. 

“ I really am trying to do my best but I…”

 ” DON’T CARE” said the coach “ YOU WILL GET CUT, FIGURE IT OUT.” he told me. I went into my car and drove out.

When I was driving home I was muttering to myself the whole time about how stuipd that

  dream of mine was. To be in the NFL. I saw a gas station and decided to stop and get a snack and some gas. When I went in, I heard a lot of screams. I walked in and I said “What’s wrong?” That’s when I saw him, a short guy, 5 foot 6, mask, with a glock. I started panicking. 

He said, “Go to the ground with your hands behind your back.” 

 I went to the ground. 

He said, “Give me your money.” 

I said “no,”

 He pointed the gun at me as I rolled out of the way. He fired again and missed his shot. I jumped up on him and he fell to the ground. I grabbed his gun and threw it to the side. Just as the cops came in and arrested the guy, they said thank you but next time not do that again. 

I got into my car and drove home. I wasn’t really thinking about the chance of being cut off the Chiefs roster. I was just thinking about how I almost died. I was so busy thinking about that that I zoned out and wasn’t paying attention to the road. “BOOM” everything went black.

I woke up in the hospital and I screamed, “What is going on?” 

The nurse came over and said, “You were hit by a deer while on the road.”

 “Ok, I need to go to football practice. How long has it been?” 

“About that… you might want to talk to your coach.”

 I thought to myself, “Oh no, I got cut, didn’t I? Then the coach walked in with a worried look. 

He said, “Tim we got a problem” 

“What” I said.

 “Well it’s been 5 months.” 

“ FIVE MONTHS!” I screamed. I looked outside and I saw it was fall outside. 

“And even worse” said the coach.

 “What could be possibly worse?”

 “Jones has been injured”

 “ Oh crap”

 “Yep,” said the coach, “we need you to play and you’ve been in a coma for 5 months.”

The next day I went to practice and everybody was depressed. I knew what they were thinking, “We are cooked.” 

When the coach said “starters,” he didn’t sound happy. I went out very nervously. I snapped the ball. I was very rusty and I almost dropped it. I scrambled down to the 10 yard line for a first down. This was my chance to prove myself. Down, set, “hike” . I snapped the ball and I saw an opening. I let it fly, straight dot to his chest  

“ Touchdown,” said the coach, smiling. 

My other teammates were shocked alright Everybody said the coach practice is over we all went home the next day was the first game.

I woke up early in the morning and drove to  practice. We warmed up and drove to the Bronco stadium. We didn’t win since 2025 with Patrick Mahomes now in 2100 we had not been in a Super Bowl since then so when we arrived we warmed up then the announcer said let the game begin and I went on the field and said “hiiik”