Bogleech Blog

New blog

2011-12-11T02:26:00.000-05:00

If you follow bogleech, you've more than likely already noticed I started using twitter for site updates and tumblr for random fun stuff some time ago, so I probably won't keep updating this thing anymore.

Here's the tumblr: http://bogleech.tumblr.com/

And here's the twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/bogleech

Video Reviews

2011-11-16T13:51:00.001-05:00

This can't end well.

http://bogleech.com/videos/goopers.htm

http://bogleech.com/videos/h2.htm

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Honorary Halloween Mascots!

2011-10-30T00:55:00.002-04:00

The last Halloween article!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Red and Black, and Slimy Green!

2011-10-29T07:01:00.000-04:00

My last top ten list for Halloween, the Nightmare Before Christmas monsters!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Castlevaaaaaniaaaa!

2011-10-28T21:31:00.001-04:00

Castlevania Bosses!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Dungeons and Dragons demons!

2011-10-28T05:38:00.002-04:00

A top ten list of D&Diablos

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Gegege no Kitaro openings!

2011-10-26T22:30:00.001-04:00

Here ya go.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Parasite Eve!

2011-10-25T20:57:00.002-04:00

Here!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: a Silent HIll top ten!

2011-10-25T06:29:00.002-04:00

Now it's silent hill! Yay!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: a Resident Evil top ten!

2011-10-24T02:42:00.000-04:00

CLICK HERE and comment please!

2011-10-22T19:47:00.000-04:00

Don't like Halloween? ~~Go screw yourse~~ enjoy these fun alternatives!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: more Halloween cards!

2011-10-22T01:04:00.002-04:00

Just a quick rundown of some mildly interesting ones.

Endangered Ugly Things on Bogleech!

2011-10-20T20:25:00.000-04:00

The creator of the great blog Endangered Ugly Things has written bogleech a guest post! Look for a brief post by me on EUT soon!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Junji Ito Monsters!

2011-10-20T04:16:00.002-04:00

A Top Ten!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Audrey II's!

2011-10-19T17:53:00.002-04:00

There are so many different ones!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: watch Lumpkin!!!

2011-10-17T16:27:00.001-04:00

Holy crap, he's on the internet!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Spooooky terrariums!

2011-10-16T04:38:00.000-04:00

Go make a horror terrarium. It will only take you a few minutes, but it will make your home 5,000 times Halloweenier.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: more Eye Poppers!

2011-10-15T03:24:00.000-04:00

The eye-popping continues.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Card Review IV

2011-10-13T23:32:00.000-04:00

There is honestly NO other way I can interpret this card. It is totally meant to be actually for-real post-mortem. Obviously.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: World Market uncoveries!

2011-10-12T23:38:00.000-04:00

A trip to a neat store with some silly things to yack about.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Robot Carnival's "Nightmare!"

2011-10-11T18:13:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite creepy shorts from those japaney cartoons!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Top Ten "Scary Stories" Images!

2011-10-10T22:17:00.000-04:00

Bogleech finally honors a beloved classic.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: cardboard cut-out monsters!

2011-10-09T01:26:00.000-04:00

Jack Skellington, Bat Skeleton, Purple Werewolf and Michael Jackson!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Deathbook!

2011-10-07T22:19:00.000-04:00

A bunch of Cracked authors got together, did a book about dying, and had me write some stuff for it! Now you can buy it for kindle!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Card Review III

2011-10-06T22:31:00.002-04:00

WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!?

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Face Like a Frog!

2011-10-05T23:31:00.000-04:00

Another one I've posted before, but now it's posted FOR HALLOWEEN. SO THERE.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Wal Mart!

2011-10-05T01:14:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Target, today is Wal-Mart! It's even less interesting!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Target Mascots

2011-10-03T20:37:00.000-04:00

Target has a new set of Halloween mascots every year, and this year's are both wonderful and disappointing.

Frog eating beetles!

2011-10-02T22:49:00.000-04:00

New biology article! A recent and outrageously weird discovery - the beetles who kill frogs!

Bogleech tumblr!

2011-10-02T14:29:00.002-04:00

After years of neglecting the thing, I'm finally using my tumblr, primarily to post images from my personal collections of weird crap that I wouldn't really put on bogleech itself because, well, there's just not enough for me to say about it...but everyone likes weird pictures!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: "worst" Halloween items!

2011-10-02T13:47:00.000-04:00

I tried to pitch this to Cracked, drawing from my years of blogging about Halloween merchandise. They didn't want it, so I'm giving it to you now, here. Sorry it's so moist.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: NEW COLORING BOOK!

2011-10-01T16:52:00.000-04:00

You can now buy a bigger, even creepier horror coloring book fully illustrated by me!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Scooby Doo Monsters!

2011-09-30T11:45:00.000-04:00

They may be double pretend, but some of them are still neat monsters. Maybe.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Card Review II

2011-09-29T08:36:00.002-04:00

Another greeting card review

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: The Tilberi!

2011-09-28T09:08:00.000-04:00

Today, some mythology!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Bagface Danglemonster

2011-09-27T09:45:00.000-04:00

What, you don't have one already?

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Swing, You Sinners!

2011-09-26T08:15:00.000-04:00

I've blogged this before, I'll blog it again. One of my all-time favorite classic cartoons.

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Toys R' Us Mascots

2011-09-25T06:42:00.000-04:00

Click Here

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Thirteen Spookiest Pokemon!

2011-09-24T06:19:00.002-04:00

HERE!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Card Review I

2011-09-23T10:52:00.000-04:00

What darkness lurks within the folded cardstock? FIND OUT HERE!

Bogleech.com's Halloween 2011: Zipalong Mummy

2011-09-22T03:30:00.000-04:00

Nearly two months later than usual, I finally get my act together! CLICK:

Halloween Youtube Playlist

2011-09-22T01:04:00.000-04:00

I'll be making every effort to update with something every day until Halloween, whatever that may be. For now, here's Bogleech's newly perfected youtube playlist, almost 200 videos!

Vermes lapidum

2011-09-18T05:33:00.000-04:00

Here is a rather interesting little article on an animal from ancient "bestiaries" that doesn't seem to have ever existed...or did it!?

A sad year for plastic bats

2011-09-13T20:10:00.000-04:00

If you ever enjoyed following my Halloween collecting blogs, you may have noticed that last year was a little lackluster, with less than half the usual finds and none of them quite as bizarre as such past discoveries as the creeping brain or magnificent maggot. This year, the state of Halloween merchandising is even poorer. We're in the middle of September, when I'd usually have well over a couple dozen wacky toys and decor to blog about, but I've literally seen nothing new this year across any of the usual outlets. Things may pick up in October, but it's likely I'll only have enough junk for a single blog post.

On the upside, the Mortasheen Role Playing Game is coming along smoothly, I'm working on an improved version of my horror coloring book from last year and I hope to have a couple other cool announcements soon as well.

Trash Pack II

2011-09-11T07:12:00.000-04:00

Continuing my opinions on one of the greatest toy series ever conceived, here's a packaging scan showing off most of the Trash Pack "Trashies:"

This is half of the largest category, the "Grubz" or rotten food monsters. My favorites here are Scum Gum and Garbage Egg. A lot of the others look a great deal alike, but "generic" for this series is still a slobbering buggy-eyed mutant.

There's an entire small chicken foot sculpted onto the back of Foul Nugget, by the way.

Here's thr rest of the Grubz, Smelly Fish is a contender for my favorite of the whole line, though he looks best in blue. I like Stale Bread's burger patty mouth, and how Mouldy Milk is trying not to vomit, and even swollen from the processes of fermentation.

These are the "hard rubbish" gang, and yes, toilet paper with shit in its eye is the clear winner. While I want to appreciate every one of these little bastards, Puke Pod is by far the least inspired design in the series...it's in his name and he's one of the few figures that isn't puking. Rott Box doesn't seem that interesting either, but at least he is, in fact, rotting. I really like both types of footwear, and Scummy Screen is especially unique.

Every figure comes in at least two or three colors, but for some reason, the Snotten with green snot is the rarest.

The "Bin Critters" are overall the least interesting category to me, but I do love the filthiness of them. Trash rat, with his excessive slobber, is the better of the two rodents. I like the french fries stuck to garbage gull, almost everyone has an experience with seagulls and fast food.

I'd have expected a raccoon, skunk and opossum over the pig, mouse and squirrel however.

Of course all of the "Bin-sects" are great. I'm sure you know I've always wanted a cute little figure of a maggot, but the only maggot toys I've ever found are the realistic, sticky kind. Trash-a-pillar has a nice fatness and hilariously sickly expression as he horks up all over himself. Sour Snail is an obvious favorite of mine too, and the obligatory fly is cool enough.

"Blow fly" is a proper term for most common scavenging flies, but most people are probably going to wonder what kind of gag name it's supposed to be...and none of the answers are child-friendly.

The "Bin Monsters" are the most abstract group, encompassing a bunch of miscellany that just doesn't fit anywhere else. You've got a giant germ, a nondescript slime creature, a (were?)wolf, a frankenstein's monster someone apparently threw out, a murderous garden gnome (I didn't realize that's what it was until I saw it in person) named MANGLEZ, and the awesomely wormy compost monster. All of these guys are great, but you know I like the amorphous heaps the best.

Finally, you have the "Bin Fections," even though there's also a germ among the "monsters." I [i]love[/i] Chicky Pox's lopsided, imbecilic face. Flu Virus doesn't even try to look like anything in particular but a nasty, vicious little disease, which is excellent. Is the hand being eaten by Flesh Eating Disease from a tiny elf, or is Flesh Eating Disease bigger than a normal human??

Not pictured are the figures exclusive to the larger products; there's a rather crappy, flimsy plastic collector's case including the obligatory banana peel monster and a whole car crushed into a cube with a fender mouth. A giant metal trash can comes with a maggot-ridden human skull ([i]from a person's garbage?![/i]) and a sushi roll. Finally, a dump truck accessory comes with a tire and an oil can, presumably part of the garbage crew (RACIAL BETRAYERS)

TRASH PACK.

2011-09-08T18:45:00.000-04:00

I've always been disappointed by most of the toys available to today's kids...back in the 80's and early 90's we had Boglins, Madballs, Mad Scientist, Ghostbusters, Monster in My Pocket, Trash Bag Bunch, GERMS and loads of other freaky, imaginative monster toy lines, few of which were directly lifted from a cartoon show or film and many of which I've already written about extensively on Bogleech. Recently, however, a toy line has emerged that would have been right at home with all the gross and gooey plastic ghouls of the past. While I've never stopped collecting toys completely, I haven't been this delighted by a toy property in over a decade. I am referring, of course, to this:

An irreverent parody of the popular Squinkies, these squishy little guys cover almost every theme I love most. They've got maggots, microbes, monsters, slimes, anthropomorphic rotting pizza...every character is supposed to represent something you find in garbage, and you may already know of my weakness for garbage based monsters.

It's a shame that creative endeavors like these are often doomed to fail without a cartoon backing them up...these are actually by "Moose" toys, which comes up with something new on an almost yearly basis and only rarely manages to keep it afloat.

You know I'll probably do a full blown site article on these sooner or later, but for now:

Museum of Unnatural History

2011-09-06T21:12:00.003-04:00

The other thing to blab about from the Maryland Renaissance festival was a beautifully crafted museum of fabricated freaks, which was even more imaginative and interesting than any of the Ripley's museums I've been to. I only managed a couple of photos worth showing, but I'd rather not "spoil" the whole thing online anyway.

The water in the "cursing well" was dyed a nice blackish purple. The stone came out a lot grayer in the photograph...it was actually all tinted at least slightly green with algae.

Here's how most of the displays looked. Taking pictures with flash really only detracts from them, as you may notice. All of them were labeled, and often very cleverly, but I neglected to include them in all my shots or remember most of them, unfortunately. The spider was actually massive, the jar must have held around a gallon.

That's not supposed to be cute?!

Across from this was Medusa's Head, but it wasn't as impressive to me as a big old eyeball.

This delightful little monster was labeled "nightmare," and was impossible to take a non-flash picture of. Only a few inches tall, he was set far in the back of an exceptionally large display case with only the faintest light against his eyeballs. It was far more effective than it sounds...whoever put together these displays was brilliant.

While almost every other jar had fully sculpted, original creatures, flash revealed this jar to contain mostly a glove. A glove and...something else that looks clothing derived. What makes this one interesting enough to show? The label only red "two things CAN occupy the same space at the same time." Cryptic nonsense is a great way to make something unsettling.

Another good example!

This three-eyed tentacle creature, while simple, was one of my three favorite creatures. My other two favorites were right next to it, and happened to be the only animated "specimens." It seemed like this one should have been animated as well, being in the same type of tank, but maybe it was broken? I captured his pals on video:

These look like a bunch of bleached fabric plant parts clumped together, but putting clumps of bleached fabric plant parts in tanks of water and making them twitch has a remarkable impact on me. I want these so, so much. They actually repeated their movements on a loop, so there must have been some pretty clever mechanisms under there.

Tideland Salvage!

2011-09-05T01:52:00.002-04:00

I'm still in my home state of Maryland for one more day, but it was only a day ago I got to visit its widely renowned Renaissance Faire for the first time ever. I made a more general post to my Livejournal about it, but there are two specific attractions that I'd like to post for bogleech. The first is an art shop...and quite possibly one of the coolest on this Earth. The images are self-explanatory, but that won't stop me from explaining them.

Rats, bats, and lots and lots of vultures. Vultures with crab claws for heads. Hundreds of them looming from driftwood in a rickety, worn little wooden shanty. There is nothing else anybody should ever need to spend their money on but this.

Best of all...roaches!!! It's amazing how realistic they look with just one mollusk shell for a body. These were hair clips, and he took a dollar off if you were willing to wear them out, which I was going to do anyway.

I really wish I'd caught the artist's name...he deserves some recognition. I googled an assortment of keywords that should have brought him up if anyone else had bothered to talk about him, and I came up dry.

Mac to the Future

2011-08-20T16:23:00.000-04:00

A long time reader of Bogleech has just finished an original RPG you can download here, with a bright, fun, simple old-fashioned style. Better still, there's an enemy later in the game named after this website!

Revenge of the H2 Ghost

2011-08-08T19:56:00.000-04:00

So Imaginext has been producing this really great line of aliens and spacemen suitable for the pre-K crowd, and I can't help noticing similarities between one of their latest offerings and something from my own childhood. Here's Imaginext's two-in-one alien:

Now, here's "H2 Ghost" from the Real Ghostbusters toy line:

I usually hate it when people draw similarities like these, but in this case, there are far too many details in common here for a coincidence. We've even got the same number eyeballs and jaws per monster!

Somebody or other at Imaginext may have grown up in the same era that I did, and fondly recall the wacky array of original monster toys that weren't ripped straight from the latest Hollywood brain fart. H2 Ghost was never prominently featured in the Ghostbusters cartoon - almost none of the toys were.

Otakon 2011

2011-08-01T19:18:00.001-04:00

Just spent the weekend visiting internet friends during Otakon 2011. As usual I didn't do a whole lot pertaining to the convention itself, but just walking around it is worth the registration with people who continuously generate comedy. Comedy you can only ever remember little snippets of and can never explain to anyone else without it sounding stupid. I was harrassed about cole slaw in a scary Cajun accent. I apparently spoke in my sleep and told everyone we "needed to be more future-ey." We wondered how a little girl would feel if her puppy surprise gave birth to a nondescript lump (or possibly a madball). We encountered a teenager who was very memorably not a turtle.

Here's dumb pictures!

Kneesocks (I think) from Panty & Stocking. There were probably ten sets of Scanty & Kneesocks running around, but I didn't see any other characters.

This is my friend Mike as his original invention Gyarados man (ORIGINAL CHARATER DO NOT STEAL!!!). He used his fancy art degree to build a professional quality costume, with a mask and props made from completely sanded down, rock hard paper mache. You would never guess they weren't plastic. My friend Caitlin is being Professor Juniper from the Black & White games. She punches me every year until I have bruises.

Gyarados man saved the city for real when he used his cape to put out a small fire. Some big fat ugly dick face with a gross butt (we didn't actually see who it was, I'm making an educated guess) left a cigarette in a flower bed full of wood chips in bone-dry 100 degree weather.

Gyarados man briefly teamed up with Axe cop! They got all the bad guys!

This same James showed up last year with a floating Koffing. It's since evolved into a Weezing!

Slave Leia from Star Wars, made of balloons!

James became Magikarp Lad for a while.

These entirely different Harleys bumped into one another by accident in front fo us. I apparently a missed a Harley Quinn tea party somewhere.

Here's this thing. What IS this thing?

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!

This nice girl was going to sell us her Magikarp for only $500, but she backed out when we were just going to eat it.

BEEMO LOOK OUT THERE IS A MAN IN YOU

This Dalek was awfully well made but I never saw a person inside. Maybe it was just real.

As expected, Minecraft characters were everywhere. Naturally easy costumes to plan, but I'm sure all the pixels can be tedious to get just right.

Best Ghostbusters group I've ever seen at Otakon, but about half of that is due to Janine.

The hotel we always stay at has a shark mascot you can meet during the complementary breakfast!

A piranha plant with a pipe even!

The Silent Hill cosplay always makes me feel a little less lame to be at something called "Otakon." Silent Hill ~~eats~~ rapes japanimation for breakfast.

Nurses always seem to have a lot of fun twitching around and stalking people.

These guys seemed like the best this year, though really, all the SH costumes would be hard to top.

Here is Mike dressed as a girl because he does that.

And then even CAIT dressed as a girl!!!

I drew a picture of Cait but she hit me in the face with it becuse were frenids.

SECRET: Slowking Hat Shellder is the most powerful pocket man!

Cardboard DBZ hair was being given away for free to promote something or other. On the last day, they formed into this guy.

This is our friend Ben's knee!!!

I drew a new picture of Cait with pen so she couldn't smudge it. She has dragon legs and there are some babies because she is a teacher.

I took three videos worth uploading, though two of the are from the Aquarium afterwards:

Our friend Amanda hadn't come to see us for three years but showed up as a surprise mid-way through the convention then we murdered her.

We murdered her two and a half extra times.

Since the dealer's room always has the latest wave of Pokemon merchandise, I was hopingIthere might be something of Trubbish or Garbodor, and there was! I had to scour every booth to find the two "finger puppet" figures, and I'm positive they were the only two there. That's $30 worth of garbage, I'll have you know.

After Baltimore's japan crap party ended we went to the aquarium like we usually do. Here's some videos!

Look at these jellyfish! Look how much they GO! They are all the colors! They never stop going!!

Cait and Susan show off their fancy educations as they describe for us some of the aquarium's exhibits.

Looney Toons - Area 52!

2011-07-18T21:15:00.000-04:00

The otherwise forgettable Looney Toons: Back in Action may have failed on its promise to breathe new life into its classic stars, but the "Area 52" scene makes it all worthwhile. There's little more to it than this clip, but Marvin the Martian unleashes a whole host of aliens from containment, each one lovingly lifted from a different science fiction film or television series. You've got Universal's Metaluna Mutant, a Triffid, the Daleks from Dr. Who, Ro-man the ROBOT MONSTER, and one of my beloved Fiends! for several of these weirdos, it marked their first cinematic appearance in decades.

Thank you, uploader, for cutting short the wabbit's cringefully unamusing one-liners.

Moving day

2011-07-02T07:45:00.001-04:00

For complicated money reasons, I have to leave the most comfortable and stable home I've ever had. It's actually the seventh time I've had to move in only six years, though I set up all my things and pack them again very smoothly each time. The difference is pretty jarring. This is how my bedroom looked for the past year:

Now here's the same corner as of today:

All my things will be sitting quietly in boxes for the foreseeable future...the longest they've ever gone without a new room to go in has been eighteen months, hopefully this time won't be a record breaker.

ILL BLEED (spoiler images)

2011-06-25T23:27:00.000-04:00

IllBleed was an absurdly wacky Dreamcast game set in a high-tech horror theme park where visitors can die of pure shock...and is everything really just a prop? You can enjoy a painstakingly thorough but consistently interesting playthrough on Super Great Friend, but here's a few highlights. Be warned, some of these come from the game's hidden "true ending," which is, quite frankly, the best ending to a horror game I've ever seen:

Looks fun, right? I enjoyed watching it all week while getting artwork done. I actually wish there was even more.

Blurp Balls and a sad story

2011-06-24T21:05:00.000-04:00

Story time! I had Croaky Bugchuck from this set and loved him, but one day we were snowed in, the toilet backed up and there was no plunger. My parents saw him and spent hours talking me into letting them use him as a makeshift plunger to unclog the toilet, promising to buy me a new one. It did work and it was desperately needed, but parents never seem to understand how toys are only temporarily produced and sold. I never saw another blurp ball again. I still have Croaky's fly, though, and treasure the dumb little thing as one of the neatest looking little bug toys in my collection.

Vegetables vs....fungi, I think.

2011-06-16T17:43:00.000-04:00

In this weird North Korean propaganda cartoon, an army of potatoes defend a community of corn people from what I believe represents an army of crop blight, whose evil leader has an absolutely darling design for a genocidal madman:

I actually have a black mold monster in my own fiction vaguely reminiscent of this guy, but it was pure accident.

Terminix Monsters

2011-06-08T02:36:00.000-04:00

While I can't say I condone the extermination industry, they always have some cool ad campaigns, and these may be some of the coolest! Bizarre, imaginative and disturbing monsters are used to exaggerate the dangers of various insect pests.

My favorite of the four, the (overhyped) disease carrying potential of cockroaches is symbolized by a multi-headed octopus slug! Its central body stays hidden in some jerk's cookie jar.

Here, a bunch of bat-winged, pug-faced blobs tear through a series of houses, apparently just like termites!

In a second termite analogy, a cool multi-jawed beast tears at some jerk's wood foundation!

Almost cooler than the slug-o-pus is this dangling, flabby booger-like monstrosity, analogous to an ant problem as it licks all the food in some poor jerk's pantry.

Dead Heat Zombie Meat

2011-06-01T14:43:00.000-04:00

I never saw the movie "Dead Heat," but the rest of it can't possibly be as good as this scene. What could? I love when reanimating the dead is taken to disturbing and clever extremes like this. Similar weirdness can be seen in Dead Alive and Return of the Living Dead.

Ambulatory body parts and coke zero

2011-05-28T17:11:00.000-04:00

For a while, Coke Zero was advertised in the UK by a talking eyeball, tongues, and even a brain! I love how the tongues have weird little elephant feet, while the eye has birdlike legs.

Vampire Hunter D - mutants

2011-05-20T10:40:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, there were only a few dubbed "Japanimation" films anyone had ever heard of. This included the original Vampire Hunter D, which used to play quite often on sci-fi channel and even once on Cartoon Network.

I love this sequence where D infiltrates the count's castle and is met with a huge horde of completely unearthly monsters. My favorites are the gelatinous, planktonic-looking things you can see floating around in a few scenes, and those wonderful lamprey-mouthed beasts. It's too bad they die so quickly.

The Things

2011-05-18T00:05:00.000-04:00

If you're familiar with and enjoy John Carpenters fantastic horror classic The Thing (an adaptation of the book Who Goes There?) then you're bound to appreciate The Things, a story told from the perspective of the alien life-force itself. Yes, it takes away the mystique of the monster with a complete explanation of its origins and motivations, but it's awesome. Disturbingly unanswered questions are my favorite part of any good horror story, yet the exposition offered by The Things is worth every word.

The Thing is actually getting the prequel treatment for a projected release later this year, and I've had high hopes for it ever since I heard that the effects remain primarily animatronic. The original film was terrifyingly convincing before the widespread use of CGI effects, and I'm glad they respect and appreciate that legacy. No matter how good computer effects get, there's always something just a little "off" about them. They become so good that we know they're just made of information instead of matter, and so we know in the back of our minds that they're less "real," never quite as atmospheric as good old latex and metal.

This sure turned into a heartfelt tangent, didn't it?

Rusty Robots

2011-05-13T22:38:00.003-04:00

A scene from some weird foreign children's film. These guys are exceptionally creepy and downright gross for robots, I freaking love them.

Pussycat

2011-05-12T12:37:00.000-04:00

From the creator of Bloody Date, a claymation short involving cartoon animals, bondage, implied sexual slavery and graphic murder. You're welcome.

Bloody Date

2011-05-09T06:48:00.000-04:00

One of several claymation horror shorts by the same artist, and amazingly atmospheric. The final scene adds a whole huge level of intrigue to the antagonists - and it's just a great monster design, too!

Danger Planet

2011-04-27T18:11:00.002-04:00

"Danger Planet" was another pilot for Cartoon Network that never made it, featuring a very likable mechanical duo and an awesome shapeshifting alien which, like most of us, craves the flesh of babies.

Uncle Grandpa!

2011-04-19T16:36:00.003-04:00

"Uncle Grandpa" was a charmingly idiotic series pilot created for cartoon network, featuring "everyone in the world's uncle and grandpa" battling an army of wonderfully wacky mutants. Now, the bad news is that Cartoon Network didn't pick up a series about Uncle Grandpa.

The good news? They picked up a series about the mutants! "Secret Mountain Fort Awesome" is set to premiere this year, and features a band of monsters who emerge from a portal and attempt to "fit into our world." The teaser artwork features one of the same mutants from the Uncle Grandpa short:

Necro's Fortress!

2011-04-13T21:30:00.000-04:00

Necro's Fortress (A.K.A. Neclos or Nekurosu's fortress) was a japanese game and toy line consisting of both tiny rubber figures and colorfully illustrated cards representing dozens of heroes, monsters and items. You can browse the entire line's worth of cards HERE.

My personal favorites:

I didn't think I'd ever love a giant foot monster this much. His vacant stare is surprisingly creepy, and look at the little octopus face on the wart!

Well, that's the coolest apple I've ever seen...though it should have had a worm in there somewhere, like for a tongue.

A nice, nasty blob critter with the always interesting stalked + unstalked eye combo...or maybe only the stalked set are actual eyes? I know "nume" means something like "slippery." The octopus insignia is on a couple of monsters, seemingly under the command of an octopus villain!

I'm still childish enough to laugh.

....Apply directly to the forehead?

Hell yes giant gastropods! No fantasy bestiary feels complete to me without one, and it's always fun to see what kind of weird monster face the artist gives them. These two are especially distinct those those coneheads and fangly lips.

The disturbing thing about "CLOWN" is the item he comes with:

Yeah, did I mention every one of these came with a specific item card? Some of them are relevant to the monster, some aren't. You'll have to check the rest out for yourself.

Every Japanese roleplaying world has its trademark slime enemy, and this is probably one of the coolest efforts I've seen. You can't go wrong with putting eyeballs in mouths.

There's something extremely appealing to me about this cactus monster, too. I like the single eye on its own branch.

Earl? What in God's name ARE you? Your eye sockets are positively outlandish, and is half of you a tree? For that matter, why do you come with...

...This?

It took me a moment to notice the other set of eyes...which set am I referring to? I'll never tell!

You don't see enough of these as monsters.

Oh, crap! This is obviously H.P. Lovecraft's Tsathoggua!

And this here may actually be the best Cthulhu design I've ever seen.

What the...why an Ultraman head?

Hey, neat! It's another of those Japanese Martians, and not just as a monster card...this is a playable hero!

Viy

2011-04-13T21:13:00.002-04:00

From the 1967 Russian horror film Vij or Viy, this climactic sequence features some of the coolest demons I've ever seen on film. The shambling, greyscale freaks, with their expressionless cartoon eyes, are far more disturbing than any bestial, flailing CG creation of today.

The Devil's Ball

2011-04-12T23:21:00.002-04:00

An extremely old stop-motion short full of inventive little demons...if you can make them out through the creepy, decomposing footage.

The Terror from Mars

2011-04-10T03:02:00.002-04:00

Adorable Halloween short in which an alien takes on the form of a hot space-lady and does some monster stuff:

Innocence

2011-04-10T02:57:00.002-04:00

A wicked-awesome stop motion short involving some scrap-metal bogeymen and good old fashioned child mutilation, arguably the funniest of mutilation's many flavors:

First Kiss

2011-04-10T02:55:00.000-04:00

I know this is old, but I should have posted it long ago. All on its own, I'm sure this clip far exceeds the entertainment value of its original context.

The last couple seconds are a feat of unintentionally brilliant comedic timing.

Clione cat cartoon

2011-04-08T17:13:00.000-04:00

A commenter pointed me to this adorable little video clearly inspired by the Clionidae or "sea angels" I've written about before.

Parasite Eve monsters!

2011-04-05T19:41:00.000-04:00

A deviantart member has posted a journal with scans from the Parasite Eve artbook, loaded with awesome creature designs! I always loved the monsters from this one, but had never found detailed images of them until now. Check them all out here: http://kompepperochu.deviantart.com/journal/25673377/

A few of my favorites:

I love the utterly maniacal, impossibly wide smile of the mutant chameleon.

The Mixedman is a mighty disturbing tangle of anatomy, with an exceedingly bizarre attack method: small, fleshy spheres that bounce around wildly.

I remember the flyman having a pretty unique personality; instead of actually coming after you it would just sort of mope around miserably and leave hazardous puddles of vomit on the floor.

Yes, the crab's eyeballs can float out of its head and attack independently. This giant enemy crab was actually one of those mean optional side bosses.

The plants looked like a boring design until I saw them in action. With their tentacles retracted, they look comically like a big, bushy tribble slowly scooting along the ground, just waiting for you to get too close!

I like the disturbing Gigeresque face of the mutant cockroach, and the ootheca (egg case) would actually drop off and release a mini-cockroach during battle. You would expect this to be a common low-level enemy, but it was actually another special boss in a challenging side quest.

Last Remnant monsters

2011-04-05T18:53:00.000-04:00

A gorgeous "evil eye" from square's "The Last Remnant" RPG:

The "amoeba" is quite endearing as well:

...And what they call a Clione, which actually does look like a giant, flying, mutant sea angel:

Mortasheen

2011-03-19T22:37:00.000-04:00

Most my usual updates are going to be on hold for a while, as I finish up loads of artwork for the upcoming Mortasheen ebook, containing everything you'll need to play a tabletop roleplaying game in the Mortasheen world!

Awesome Vintage Cartoons: Broken Toys

2011-02-07T22:12:00.000-05:00

Broken toys performing surgery on a doll with no eyes sounds more like a morbid Heavy Metal video, but it's actually a sweet, touching animated short also featuring a lot of good old fashioned innocent racism:

Awesome Vintage Cartoons: King Neptune

2011-02-05T16:13:00.000-05:00

This Disney short has everything you could ever want in a cartoon. That is, it has a creepy looking topless mermaid saved from drunken rape-happy pirates by an army of fish and one especially violent octopus.

SPOILER: THOSE PIRATES ARE FUCKED.

WATCH:

Awesome Vintage Cartoons: Balloon Land!

2011-02-05T02:56:00.000-05:00

Over the coming weeks I'm going to be linking to some of my favorite theatrical cartoons - some of them fit the spooky tone of Bogleech, some of them are just plain adorable, and all of them are positively gorgeous works of art, with more heart and soul poured into every second than most modern television cartoons ever achieve in their entire run. First up? BALLOON LAND! A portion of this cartoon was once presented by none other than his Royal Majesty, The KING of Cartoons, on the venerable Pee Wee's Playhouse.

I'm the old pincushion man! Terror of Balloony land!

This is "A" material, right here. WATCH:

TRUBBISH in the Pokeymanz cartewn

2011-01-19T01:38:00.001-05:00

A whole episode of the Pokemon anime has recently centered around Yabukuron/Trubbish, the living garbage bag, and it's cuter than I ever even imagined:

The unnatural toxic monstrosity is found sad and all alone (NO!!!) by a bunch of preschool kids who try to keep it, but their bitch-ass teacher (nanny? What do you call someone who runs a preschool?) thinks it's too dirty and smelly and tries to send it away. As you can imagine, Ash shows up and helps to change her mind, especially when the filthy blob saves her life from some falling debris (which it was partly to blame for, but never mind that)

:O

D:

He even imitates Pikachu's pose in a (superior) attempt to be cute.

Yeah, you're days are numbered, children.

New Pokemon English Names

2011-01-13T20:17:00.000-05:00

There's a leak going around of all the "Black & White" pokemon names as they will supposedly appear in the English translation, and a lot of them are just delightful.

- Galvantula. Galvanized tarantula. How awesome is that?

- Eelektross. Kind of obvious, really...I might have gone with Lampire.

- ELGYEM and BEHEEYEM...in other words, LGM (little green man) and BEM (bug eyed monsters!)

- Krookodile. Absolutely adorable.

- AMOONGUS. It evolves from FOONGUS. Oh my god.

- Trubbish and Garbodor :D ....I will miss Dasutodasu, though, after figuring out that it's a distortion of "dust to dust."

More gaia stuff

2011-01-07T22:46:00.002-05:00

I've posted some of the cooler "Gaia online" items before, including Japanese Youkai and Deep-sea fish, but now they've got a new item that provides various Cryptozoological and UFO themes, check out their highly accurate Jersey Devil, Flatwoods Monster and Mothman:

"Home Grown" figurines

2010-12-31T16:58:00.000-05:00

It seems I have yet to get cute, goofy hybrid things out of my system, because I really feel like posting about these ceramic animal/vegetable monstrosities by Enesco. You may have seen them in Hallmark stores or other fancy gift shops, and they're pretty well done for what they are:

Zucchini Frog is a typical example of a "Home Grown" figurine and exactly what its name implies. The textures on these things are sometimes eerily realistic.

I like to think the flower attracts its insect prey.

Both of these are supposed to represent penguins, though the pears are a little more abstract. They just kind of look like googly-eyed alien sack monsters, until somebody explains them to you. I like that.

Pea caterpillars. Do they metamorphose into something? I don't think there are any moths or butterflies yet.

MUSHROOM SNAIL. How is that not the cutest thing you've ever seen?

Mushroom ray, at a distance, really just looks like a ray swimming over a coral reef, then you get up close and realize it's made all out of fungus and plants. Weird.

Grape Walrus needs no further elaboration.

Corn Armadillo: the only corn I could ever not find disgusting.

Like the penguins, it's hard to tell these bean sprouts are supposed to be snakes. They could also pass as tadpoles, worms or spermatozoa.

Cephalopods!!! The banana octopus is interesting in that, again, you kinda have to be told what it is. I'd have just thought hey, a banana peel with a face. Radish "cuttlefish" (looks more like a squid) is more distinctly squidlike, but in a subtle enough way that you might just think it's a little statue of a radish.

That's probably the best thing about some of these; they make absolutely no sense by themselves. If you collect and display them together they make a reasonable amount of sense, but if you own JUST a stingray made out of a mushroom, you're probably going to look a bit strange.

Giant space Varroa

2010-12-22T03:57:00.000-05:00

It always entertains me a little to see some obscure (to the average joe) biology in a relatively mainstream cartoon, and Futurama recently did a little short involving giant space bees (seen in an earlier episode) infested by giant space Varroa, a type of mite partly responsible for the dreaded "colony collapse syndrome" in real-world honeybees. They didn't call them by name in the show, but they portrayed them fairly well:

...They're missing one pair of legs, but we can let that slide.

It's too bad that Futurama's long-awaited return feels so underwhelming compared to its original run, but this isn't a cartoon criticism blog...it's a...something else...kind of...something blog.

Cutants!

2010-12-21T00:23:00.000-05:00

If for whatever reason you've been down one of those spooky pink aisles at any toy department, you may have spotted Polly Pocket's "cutants." Polly Pocket is a toy line marketed exclusively to little girls, but her freaky new pals have an appeal that easily transcends such primitive distinctions...I'd have freaking loved these damn things when I was a weird little boy, and I love some of them even as a weird little man. You look at these and tell me with a straight face they aren't awesome:

You are looking at a shovel-clawed hermit crab with a bucket for a shell and a second crab that is also an entire sandcastle. This is the GOD DAMN cutest thing I've ever heard of in my life. Why aren't these also Pokemon?

A hat that is also a venomous, stinging fish. Hatray would be right at home with all those Dungeons and Dragons monsters that disguise themselves as clothing.

Isn't fishbowl fish just fascinatingly baffling? Why would you need the fishbowl at all when it's also the fish itself? Does Polly Pocket put normal fish in there? ...Maybe that's how it eats. Maybe it digests them. Oh my god.

Those conjoined headphone snails are as impractical as they are adorable. They would probably smear mucus all in your hair and ears, but would you really care? You have headphones that are also two snails. You're probably completely insane anyway.

Here we have "Snailana Split" and "Icecreamapillar," two squirmy invertebrates somehow composed of frozen desserts. I wonder if they have to be kept cold to avoid melting to death. I also wonder if they're actually edible in Polly's world.

The octopus submarine is a pretty awesome concept, I really should have thought of that myself.

The whale/wave is kind of strange, since it really just comes off as an ordinary whale in a wave, but anchor squid might be even cooler than submarine octopus...and it's cute that they packaged these obvious natural enemies together.

There are dozens more of these things, but I can't even find pictures of a quarter of them. I really hope they sell well, because there's so much more they can keep doing with these...like, say, branching out into a counterpart line for boys? It happens all the time, and even happened once before with Polly Pocket; her success with girls resulted in the amazing "Mighty Max" horror toys back in the 90's. Today, cell phone puppies...tomorrow, chainsaw cockroaches?

All Tomorrows

2010-12-05T22:04:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure how this slipped my notice until only now, but I've just been introduced to Nemo Ramjet's All Tomorrows and read the majority of it in its online form. It chronicles the entire future of the human race with absolutely beautiful illustrations, and can be read in its entirety HERE. Rather than spoil any of it, let me just show you a few of our descendants:

"Tendril" in a Simpsons comic

2010-11-16T16:22:00.000-05:00

I just uncovered an old "Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror #8" comic I originally bought for the way cool art in one of its three segments, a horror-themed alphabet illustrated by a Hilary Barta. Flipping through it again, something obscure just caught my eye:

For the letter P, we get a Portal full of pretty awesome Lovecraftian entities, but one of them is very oddly familiar.

This is "Tendril," one of the massive monster figures from the "Inhumanoids" line and one of my favorite monster toys. Our artist changed his mouth and modified his tentacles, but otherwise, there he is hanging out in a Simpsons comic for some reason.

While I wouldn't have the patience to scan and post the whole horror Alphabet, there are a couple others I'd like to share from this:

I support the Bleeding Heart. I agree with its politics and I agree with disembodied pulsating organs.

You know I love garbage creatures, though I think this guy is obviously more fecal than anything else. The eyeless pits are a cool touch.

Really, why can't the Treehouse of Horror episodes be as cool as this? They've gotten lamer and more rushed every year, when they used to be hilarious and creatively morbid.

My Halloween

2010-11-11T03:09:00.000-05:00

October 29:

Bethany and I drove from Melbourne Florida to Orlando to see Universal's Halloween Horror Nights for the first time. Between getting there at 10:00 pm and waiting in long, convoluted lines, we were only able to catch four of the eight haunted houses set up this year, but I'm sure we chose some of the most creative. The first was set up like an insane asylum trashed by escaped patients, not all that exciting, but the second was a tour through what was supposed to be Hades, including armored knights coming to life, a minotaur in a labyrinth and a fantastic-looking Medusa. Next was a burnt, haunted orphanage, undoubtedly the creepiest, full of broken toys and children (actual children, who were no doubt having the time of their lives) in eerie outfits such as dolls, clowns, and partially melted animal masks. The fourth and last one we visited was small and simple, but possibly my favorite; caverns lined with human bones and inhabited primarily by plague doctors who popped out from the shadows to cough, retch, and gesture menacingly. This one was supposed to be a network of catacombs where plague survivors had flourished since the black death, which was pretty original.

None of the haunted houses allowed pictures or videos, but the main park was loaded with spooky sights and I recorded what was easily the oddest (i.e. coolest) thing there:

October 30:

Here in quaintly crummy Melbourne Florida, there's really only one major public event for Halloween: the outdoor costume party sponsored by Meg O' Malley's pub. This means a huge number of sweaty, drunken jerkholes in mostly store-bought, unflattering costumes, but with a grand prize of $1000 for the costume contest, we all knew our friend Dylan would win with his homemade nine-foot costume, Mr. Chiggers:

Dylan as Mr. Chiggers was a tremendous hit, the crowd was screaming for him to win before they even began judging and he was mobbed non-stop for photos. Second prize went to an adorably spot-on Adams Family group, and third place went to an admittedly amazing Master Chief from Halo. I just walked around in my costume of a thousand arthropods in people clothes while Bethany looked really adorable as her original spooky clown, Boogle. Our other friends didn't really dress up, but gave Dylan their literal support - his stilts were tricky, and he could barely see. He also nearly fainted from dehydration! This is how you know it's a truly spirited costume.

October 31:

Our friends Kristy and Katie held a party at Kristy's house that they both put a huge amount of work into, decorating the whole place and preparing two tables worth of spooky food, including a surprise surinam frog cake for my birthday! Most of us repeated the costumes from the night before, while Kristy was an alien and Katie was a lumberjack. If you knew them personally, you would be either intrigued or disturbed by these choices.

They also had a couple of contests, including a Spider Hunt which Bethany won by finding one of the fake spiders as well as an actual jumping spider, winning this awesomely gruesome trophy Katie made out of a barbie head!

I wound up winning the costume contest, and got this entirely different, also awesome trophy designed by Kristy. I have to say this is much more memorable and interesting to me than winning money at the other contest would have been, even if there's not as much I can "do" with a googly-eyed mutant barbie.

November 02:

Halloween almost felt over too soon, but For the Day of the Dead, Bethany worked over nine hours straight mixing up green slime (water, glue and borax powder) for everyone to play in and making a bunch of great food, including white chocolate eyeball pretzels, last minute ginger chicken, pumpkin spice tea and delicious pot pies using small pumpkins as pie shells! It was fun watching everyone splosh around, fight and blow bubbles in artificial mucus, after which we watched a few episodes of Aaahh!! Real Monsters with the few who could stay later.

I got a lot of nice presents from lots of different people, on and offline, but the most personal and special was this painting by Bethany of one of my top favorite monsters and best imaginary friends. If you don't know who he is, just read my site more; I don't want to make it too easy for you.

This was the most I've ever gotten to do for the Halloween season - and I didn't even remember to carve pumpkins!

31 favorite monsters: The Bat Rat Spider

2010-11-07T01:34:00.000-04:00

It's running later than I intended, but there are still three entries to go!

In The Angry Red Planet, the first manned mission to mars is menaced with a multitude of martian monstrosities, but it's the Bat Rat Spider Crab that the film is most remembered for, and deservedly so. The gangly, snarling chimera of crawlies blends the nightmarish and the whimsical in a way that our modern cinematic aliens have sorely forgotten; today's sleek, predatory CG creations may be technical marvels, but compare them to the following sequence and tell me which is really more disturbing:

While easily the most iconic, the Bat Rat Spider is not the largest or most dangerous creature to threaten our crew, as their entire ship is later engulfed by what is described as a titanic amoeba. The poster art shows us a fascinating dumpling-like creature with dozens of little tentacles, while the film version has bulging eyeballs that constantly spin around and a messier, pukier appearance. Both are pretty awesome, and a piece of it even breaks off to parasitize a crewmember!

31 favorite monsters: the purple fly

2010-11-03T23:54:00.002-04:00

I watched a lot of the Smurfs when I was little, but I never remember seeing the one with the smurf-sized zombie apocalypse. As an easily frightened child I may have just blocked it out, because it's honestly pretty damn horrifying by kid standards. The purple fly is seen only briefly at the start of the episode, but bites Lazy Smurf on the tail and begins a surprisingly disturbing epidemic; Lazy turns purple, starts hopping everywhere, can only shout "g'nap!" and takes every possible opportunity to bite his fellow smurfs, transmitting the mysterious infection. Everything goes back to normal in the end, of course, but not until they've made sure that every little kid in the audience is having nightmares tonight.

Interestingly, this episode was adapted from one of the original 1960's Smurf comics, but formerly involved a plague of mindless black Smurfs. You can guess why they decided to go with purple - the same reason they went with purple for the formerly black-faced Pokemon, Jynx. So remember: all purple cartoon characters are just veiled jabs at black people.

Watch the full Purple Smurfs cartoon here.

COLORING BOOK.

2010-10-30T17:21:00.002-04:00

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/bogleechcoms-old-fashioned-nightmare-fuel-coloring-book-for-children-you-dont-love/13391122

You can now buy my horror-themed coloring book for 2.22 as a pdf download or 6.66 for the real paper version! I'll finish my 31 favorite monster blog shortly after Halloween, and add what very little I found this year to my Halloween collecting page.

31 favorite monsters: Thought Eater

2010-10-26T23:53:00.001-04:00

The original Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual was practically my monster-design bible as a child, opening me up to just how surreal and preposterous a monster could be. A prime example would be the original Thought Eater here, an invisible creature that exists on the ethereal plane and parasitically drains mental energy. It's a terrifying concept, made highly original and fun by the fact that it actually resembled a small, hairless, emaciated platypus. The contrast between ridiculous, pitiful appearance and disturbing, dangerous feeding habits was a big inspiration to my developing imagination, and I still think this original illustration is a positively flawless design...I love the gaping, toothed beak and moronic stare. Does this remind us of anything else? Some other psychic duck-billed monster, maybe?

Sadly, Dungeons and Dragons has succumbed over the years to that widespread mental disease where anything really whimsical and bizarre is slowly retooled according to what the average person is expected to find "cool." The second time the Thought Eater was published in official game materials, it was given this slightly less amusing skeletal design. At least it's still a platypus though, right? SIGH...

Meet the most recent incarnation of the Thought Eater, completely robbed of everything that made the concept creative and cool. Where do people get the idea that every monster needs a fearsome, deadly appearance to be taken seriously? Where is the imagination and fun? They had pure gold and they neutered it. They had an ugly flying invisible platypus that ate thoughts and they replaced it with a spooky griffin. Wizards of the Coast, you have dumb taste and your game is dumb now forever. Dumb and ruined. RUINED FOREVER.

31 favorite monsters: Wol Cabasshite

2010-10-26T23:29:00.000-04:00

I've talked about two of my favorite Star Wars aliens here, and how the denizens of Jabba's palace had a place in my childhood far bigger than the rest of the Star Wars universe. Of course, there are plenty more of them that I find fascinating, and another one topping the list is also one of the most obscure.

This curled, slug-like creature appears only in the background of Jabba's throne room, a small hand puppet on the wall of the set. Of course, Star Wars fandom leaves no stone unnamed, and this odd little prop has been given an absurdly detailed background by the "expanded universe" (the sum of all comics, novels, games, toys and everything else created outside the official films).

Perhaps even more absurdly, Cabasshite or "Ghoel" has gotten an action figure made of him twice - a little rubber one with a suction cup from the main Star Wars toy line and a larger, highly detailed figure with a powerful magnet and a bendable tongue. Naturally, I own them both.

31 favorite monsters: Raremon

2010-10-26T23:16:00.001-04:00

While this is one of the creatures I've written about before, I can't resist repeating some of my favorites here. I do love my rotting, shambling heap-like monsters, and Raremon has possibly my favorite design of any rotting, shambling heap. Its comically vacant stare, lidless eyeballs and protruding teeth all contribute to a special horrendousness duplicated matched by very few other monsters, let alone other Digimon.

The original Digimon virtual pets each had many possible forms for your little critter to take, including a misfit "failure" or "garbage" form when you failed to clean up your monster's virtual feces. Raremon was the failure of Digimon version V, and originally depicted by a sprite with uncanny resemblance to Hedorah. In fact, when Raremon first appeared in the Digimon anime, it emerged from a harbor and attacked a nightclub in direct homage to a scene from Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. According to the official lore, Raremon is a botched attempt by an organic Digimon to evolve into a machine Digimon, and its malfunctioning cybernetics are all that hold its mindless, rotting body together. Best of all, it attacks by throwing up!

The only downside to Raremon is that, like so many other Digimon, it doesn't evolve from or evolve into anything quite like it, but its family tree is far from bleak; it can evolve from the vaguely Rat-Fink like Chuumon according to the card game, and in one of the video games, it can evolve into the cool-looking Datamon, a computer virus Digimon. Datamon, in turn has been known to evolve into my second favorite Digimon, Parasimon, which is a parasitic eyeball bug tentacle monster. That's is most of my favorite things right there.

Sadly, I've seen a plastic figure of Raremon only once in my life, and its head was broken off. This sighting was made back when Digimon first came out in the 90's, too, so a simple little plastic heap-monster has eluded me for at least thirteen years. Doesn't anybody out there have one hanging around? I could draw you a piture for it!

31 favorite monsters: the Bugboy

2010-10-23T12:47:00.002-04:00

I used to be called "bug boy" all the time in grade school, so I can relate to Hideshi Hino's creation of the same name. Despised even by his parents, the sad and misunderstood Sanpei prefers the company of insects over humans, but when he gets stung by a bizarre and unidentified caterpillar, he undergoes a long and agonizing transformation:

After months of rotting in his own skin and praying for death, Sanpei hardens into a humanoid chrysalis and emerges as a happy, healthy, bug-eyed maggot creature, flees his family and moves to the city sewers, where he eventually discovers that he has a lethal sting and goes mad with newfound power:

Sadly, Sanpei's fulfilling new life as a feared monster takes a turn for the worst by the end of the Manga, but that's to be expected from a Hino story; the man's entire career is built on grotesque manga with grotesque endings, and it's his child characters who suffer the worst - an artist after my own heart.

31 favorite monsters: Gudis

2010-10-23T12:26:00.001-04:00

I was going to write at some point about the monster Majaba and its significance to my childhood, but as you can see I've already blathered about that extensively, so let's talk about another monster I love from Ultraman Great - GUDIS!

GUDIS was the very first monster appearing in the series, and easily pummeled by our giant, silver superhero - or so it seemed. Before it could be killed, Gudis transformed itself into a sentient virus, basically its true form, and spread throughout the planet Earth, infecting random lifeforms and transforming them into the giant monsters Ultraman would face for the entire first half of the series.

Gudis would eventually piece itself into a new monster form, equally bizarre in appearance, and successfully absorb Ultraman into itself. The two proceeded to debate about ethics and the environment before Ultraman exploded from the monster's body, finally destroying it. Both forms have a lovably alien appearance, though I have to say I prefer the exposed brain and bug-teeth of the first one.

My figure of Majaba came from the short run of "Ultraman Great" toys released in America, which incorrectly described all the series monsters as Gudis creations. I now know that Majaba and many of the others appeared after the defeat of Gudis, though either way, why didn't he get a figure in the same line? If he had, I daresay I may have chosen him first over the Majaba figure, and perhaps developed just as much attachment. Gudis is my gross little monster pal that could have been...

31 favorite monsters: the Helmeted Bird Demon

2010-10-23T12:07:00.000-04:00

Heironymus Bosch was a 14th century surrealist most famous for his hauntingly bizarre depictions of hell, particularly in his triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. With the human mind's natural fascination for darkness and horror, the hell panel has become more iconic and well known than the two paintings it was attached to, and was even used as a hellscape in The Simpsons. Of all the outlandish critters frolicking in his grisly netherworld, however, my favorite Bosch creation is this little guy from the bottom corner:

There's something about the combination of undersized bird's head, pudgy human legs and sinister-looking helmet that comes out much more disturbing than any of these traits rightfully should be, and the fact that this otherwise whimsical little critter wears a severed human foot just for the hell of it is especially unnerving. Our more popular image of a "demon" as some bull-horned, hooved ogre or clawed succubus may look a lot more "dangerous," but Bosch's creations look like a sickly infant's delirious nightmares. Their absurdity contributes to a sense of wrongness that just screams evil in a way that snarling imps and red skinned satyrs can never achieve.

...And I don't even want to know what's going on with the slutty pig-nun and the paperwork.

31 favorite monsters: Rat Fink

2010-10-22T12:46:00.002-04:00

In the 1960's, cartoonist and hot rod hobbyist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth was designing some of the rudest, crudest monsters America had ever seen, popularizing the "ugly-cute" trend later seen in the Ugly Stickers of the same era, the MADBALLS of the 80's and more. While considered innocent fun today, these hideous ghouls were considered pretty subversive in their day, mocking the status quo and promoting the kind of wild, carefree fun that most of the country shied away from. While Roth personally designed dozens and dozens of the slobbering, bug-eyed freaks, it's Rat Fink who remains popular by name; a character Roth designed just to stick it to his hated Mickey Mouse.

Rat Fink is largely considered an icon of "Kustom Kulture," the Hot Rod & Motorcycle customizing hobby that Roth is considered partially responsible for. I may not know much about this stuff, but I can certainly appreciate what Rat Fink stands for as well as his adorably grotesque design.

31 favorite monsters: the Great Round Jelly Thing

2010-10-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

Slow down there, BUSTER. If you've never read Harlan Ellison's famously sadistic short story "I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream" and would like to read a famously sadistic short story without having the sadistic surprise spoiled for you, click here to read it online, it's public domain!

For the rest of you who don't care about spoilers or already know the twist, let's all show some appreciation for the great round jelly thing, A.K.A. the final form of Ted. I Have no Mouth tells the story of a bizarre and hellish post-apocalyptic world ruled by AM, a computer so powerful that it has a god-like control over reality within its domain. Unfortunately, that domain is limited to the planet Earth, and to AM, it's a prison so maddeningly tiny that it hates mankind for creating it at all. And how much does it hate mankind?

When our story begins, there are only five human beings left on the planet Earth, selected by AM for no explained reason as playthings to act out his frustration. The computer uses all of its impossible power to keep these five random people alive for all eternity, just to torture them in every conceivable way; revolting foods, obnoxious sounds, ravenous monsters, bouts of insanity, whatever the machine can come up with. To make a short story shorter, our protagonists suffer over nine hundred years of this technological hell before finally figuring out how to kill themselves without AM's interference, though it leaves one of them alive - our narrator, Ted - to suffer the computer's wrath. To make sure his last human toy can't ever escape, AM transforms Ted into a helpless form that can't even harm itself.

Poor Ted. This particular image actually comes from the ending of the PC game, and could actually be any of the five characters depending on how you played. Since Harlan Ellison worked on the game directly, it's safe to say this is the jelly thing's "official" design, and don't you just want to flop all over it like a beanbag chair? You wouldn't want to be Ted, no, but for a mockery of humanity that only exists to suffer, isn't it just SO huggable?

31 favorite monsters: Delia's Art

2010-10-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

So I initially set out to count down my top favorite monsters like Penanggalan is doing, but if I stuck with that idea, I'd spend the rest of the month repeating monsters I've already written about on my main site. To keep things fresh and interesting, I'll be blogging more about monsters that are favorites of mine, rather than the favorites, and just devote the final three entries to my all-time definite top three.

With that in mind, here's what may be the very weirdest entry of the month; something that may very well not count as a monster at all, but if I don't blog about it here, I may never find the right context to do so. Yes, it's Delia's Artwork from the movie Beetlejuice:

Shame on you if you've never seen this movie, but either way I'll cut to the chase: Delia Deetz is an unpopular yet insufferably smarmy artist with highly eccentric tastes, including some incredibly weird (awesome) abstract sculptures. Towards the end of the film, two of her sculptures are animated by the ghostly powers of Beetlejuice himself. It's only a few seconds worth of stop-motion animation, and I suppose they're only "monsters" if you consider a possessed object a monster for however long it's possessed, but that's good enough for me.

The bulbous, brain-like sculpture can't seem to lift its cubical base, dragging itself with its tentacular appendages. In motion, it seems like an intentional homage to the crawling brains from Fiend Without a Face, one of the monsters that would have been on my top list.

The other sculpture, my favorite of the two, just flips itself around to become a crazy block-headed crawling worm.

As minor as their roles were, I loved these things the moment I saw them, and always thought it would be awesome if you could buy little bendy toys or plushes of them. Why the hell not? Am I the only one who finds them so fascinating? You can see their 15 (more or less) seconds of fame in this clip, though it does contain spoilers if you've never experienced the film (again, shame on you)