It's Saturday... This Must Be Creepsville

FInally Back on Wednesday, This Week's Monster Patrol... and Introducing Punk and Willy!

Sorry for the last two weeks without a Monster Patrol update. I'm back and hope to continue to do so for as long as I can.

Meanwhile, I decided to release a strip which might seem a bit out of the ordinary compared to my other comics. Punk and Willy is a strip I've wanted to do for years (just ask my daughter Molly, if you see her). I'm having a great time doing it.

This strip will appear irregularly on this Blog, on Saturdays or Wednesdays... or maybe any other day of the week. I will post them as I get them done or upon getting a few done. I think this intro strip gives a hint of the kind of heartwarming family entertainment only someone who isn't above using dirty jokes and exhibiting infantile behavior could do.


As for this one strip, this is probably the only time I'll take a shot at them in a Newspaper Syndicate setting. I just wanted to do this joke to start the strip going. 

That's it for today. I'm glad I'm back here with strips. There's much more to come...

This Week's Creepsville Alongside Monster Patrol

Sorry for the tardiness of Monster Patrol this week, again. My plans to post new pages will continue to be Wednesdays, but this week had a number of health related obstacles that I had to deal with.

Since I'm talking about that, I thought I should also give you a heads up on what's going on here at The Laughing Reindeer.

I am still working on the Creepsville Collected book, but other factors have come into play that may delay that project a little longer than I anticipated. At this time, I plan on continuing to post pages from the original Creepsville series from this issue #1 through #4. #5 (the Halloween issue) has been posted before. The never published before issues must wait until the book. That doesn't mean I won't be creating new Creepsville material. After #4 (or maybe even before that point in time), I will be bringing back the online Creepsville comic strip, which carries on the tradition of having fun with those goofy old monster movies I love but is also in full color.

When this Monster Patrol story finishes up, I will be bringing back Agents of Peril, which will stay up until that first years-in-the-making story finally gets finished.

In addition, that teaser I posted of the mysterious "Fear Them" Punk and Willy paves the way for an ongoing irregular comic strip that I have always wanted to do. There will also be another strip, which I'll let you know about in the near future.

That's enough to keep me busy and off the streets at night for awhile.

It's the New Monster Patrol Page... Um, a Couple of Days Late, Along With Creepsville

It happens... I just got overwhelmed by a number of personal things this week resulting in Monster Patrol posting on Saturday with Creepsville rather than in its usual Wednesday slot. Sorry, gang.

TRIVIAL TRIVIA

Last Saturday I said I would focus on one of my personal scary faves from when I was a kid: The Crawling Hand. I sometimes wonder if this little flick would be totally forgotten if not for Mystery Science Theater 3000's having had fun with it.

The reason I'm focusing on this film is due to the crawling alien hand in the Saucer Men story.

The Crawling Hand does have a decent cast in it, beginning with Peter Breck, who starred in the western TV series, The Big Valley. Side by side with Breck in this flick was actor Kent Taylor who was in quite a few low budget genre movies including such z-grade pictures as Brides of Blood, the first of the Philippines/Eddie Romero "Blood" trilogy, and Brain of Blood helmed by Al Adamson.

Two more very familiar faces are in the film in small parts. Allison Hayes, the 50-Foot Woman herself is wasted in a small part as a secretary of sorts to Breck and Taylor's characters. As usual, she looks great here, but I personally feel that I must add that she's at her most gorgeous in Roger Corman's The Undead. She wears a tight outfit that reveals how big she was... as to what is big, I leave that to you to find out for yourself.

A welcome appearance in the film has Alan Hale Jr, the Skipper on Gilligan's Island, playing a Sheriff trying to figure out if he should arrest Rod Lauren or not.

The biggest star in regards to this film was not even in it. Legend has it that Burt Reynolds almost got the role taken by Rod Lauren. The real star of the film is Lauren, whose best movie is probably Terrified, a film about a crazed masked killer in an old ghost town.

The film's story has Breck and Taylor playing two scientists at a NASA-like facility who have a mission go awry in space. Their astronaut has gone astro-nutty, begging the ground crew to destroy his craft before it gets into Earth's atmosphere. The data they are getting from the ship suggests the madman couldn't even be alive. They do push the red button, but they are troubled by all this and go off to where any debris that could get to Earth would most likely fall.

Lauren's character is that of a troubled young man who finds one of the dead astronaut's hands on a beach. Whatever space disease affected the rocket pilot starts happening to Rod. Adding to this is that the hand is still alive. It crawls around, kills the young man's landlady and almost does him in, too.

Having said all that, I have to admit that the effects for the hand are minimal In close ups where you couldn't see a living arm, it's a real hand. In other parts of the film, its a mannequin pulled by wires.

Though it probably won't scare any of you reading this, The Crawling Hand did scare me a lot when I saw it for the first time, which would have been when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I recall that I was afraid that the hand would hide under my bed. Strangely, it never did.

A Healthy Morning Start With This Week's Creepsville... and What Is That Image About?

Just like last Wednesday, no Trivial Trivia this week, because I'm a bit under the weather. Having said that, I'll take a quick look at early 60s horror gem (or junk) The Crawling Hand next week. Meanwhile, what the heck is that thing down below? Oh, I know... but you probably guessed that. See you next time, while I call animal control.

This Week's Thunderous shocking Bigfoot action In Monster Patrol! Whew!

 

Sorry, no Trivial Trivia his week. Have a great week and a wonderful weekend to follow!