Ladies of Horror May-hem: Alice Johnson

~ LobaBlanca

alicejohnson

I was so excited about the thought of adding Alice Johnson to my list of horror heroines. See, most of the time, when people think horror heroine, especially in reference to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, they immediately (and rightly) think of Nancy Thompson. She was, after all, the first Elm Street kid to defeat Freddy Krueger.

(Sorry for that spoiler and for the few spoilers that I have to drop into this post…but I kind of have to reveal some stuff to reveal my reasoning…)

What a lot of people fail to remember is that, yes, Nancy defeated Freddy twice, but there’s only one bad-ass grrl who both defeated Krueger twice and lived to tell the tale.

Enter Alice Johnson.

We first meet Alice in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. She’s one of those “transformation girls,” quiet and shy and mousy and weak…but guess what? Let’s just say that she “masters” those issues like a baus. Honestly, it’s one of the best depictions of the transformation trope I can think of in slasher-level horror. Of course, I say that with the full confession that I have a huge soft spot in my horror heart for Freddy Krueger (the Robert Englund version…which, let’s face it, is the only version that matters at all in the history of ever).

Still, watching Alice Johnson metamorphose through this movie is a joy to behold, and nearly as much fun as watching Englund not just chew scenery but devour it, whole piece at a time as Krueger. When you’ve got someone like Englund playing your main villain, you need an actor who not only can convince viewers of her inherent weakness but also can be believable as a suitable counterpoint to Krueger when the time comes. Lisa Wilcox was quite a brilliant choice for these reasons. She pulls off timid, fearful Alice quite well. And bad-ass Alice? Oh, yeah. She could match the camp and slash of Freddy K.

When I saw that they’d brought Alice back for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, I was actually sad. I kind of figured, based on previous track records, that this meant that she wasn’t going to make it to the end. Again, I’m sorry for this spoiler, but this is ultimately one of the main reasons I chose Alice…she kicks Freddy’s ass one more time and lives to tell the tale.

For the final movie in the original series, the creators decided to go in a decidedly different direction from the previous movies, and then Wes Craven came back to reclaim Freddy with his New Nightmare (which ironically brought Heather Langenkamp back into the Krueger fold), so we never saw Alice again in the movies. I’m actually okay with that. I admit that I wanted to know what had happened to her after the fifth movie, but I also reminded myself that the third time could have been the charm…for Freddy.

No, I’d like to believe that Alice never encountered Freddy again and that she and her son found a nice little suburban neighborhood to live in. Somewhere green and quiet, where her biggest nightmare would be trying to pay bills or get her son to ball practice on time. I know, it doesn’t sound all that exciting…but she’d probably love every minute.

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Annie Wilkes

~ LobaBlanca

anniewilkes

Oh, Annie Wilkes, you crazy dirty birdie, you.

That’s right, denizens…my selections aren’t always going to be the heroines of the story. And that’s the only spoiler that I’m going to give you for Misery and its leading lady. Yes, this movie came out in 1990, but I know that some of you haven’t yet seen it. Or some of you haven’t seen it in a long time. I urge you to remedy this. This might very well be one of the best screen adaptations of a Stephen King horror novel yet filmed (I would even contend that it holds its own against non-horror adaptations like The Shawshank Redemption).

The plot revolves around writer Paul Sheldon, most famous for a series of novels featuring a character named Misery Chastain. When Sheldon crashes his car during a blizzard while driving through an isolated section of Colorado, he’s lucky to be rescued by Annie Wilkes, a local nurse who just happens to be his “number one fan.”

No three more frightening words exist in the English language, thanks in great deal to Kathy Bates. In fact, the role of Annie Wilkes not only instantly tagged Bates as a major-league Hollywood player, but also earned her a Best Actress Oscar, the first ever awarded to an actress for a role in a horror movie. Even King loved her performance

Ladies of Horror May-hem: India Stoker

~ lobablanca

indiastoker

I honestly couldn’t be happier with the first name I’ve drawn to kick off this month of May-hem. She’s new to the block here at the lair and she just so happens to be one of my favorite recent horror movie discoveries from one of my favorite recent horror director discoveries.

Meet India Stoker, star of Korean director Chan-wook Park’s English-language debut Stoker. Now, mind you, I’m not going to give reviews of the movies from which these characters derive, nor am I going to reveal any spoilers in what I write about them. I’ve chosen these characters for reasons that I believe make them worth discovering on your own, denizens. It’s up to you to find out if you agree with my choices.

That being said, I will let you know that this film definitely falls into the “coming of age” category. Every genre has them. Horror just makes them more enjoyable (putting the “fun” in “dysfunctional” never felt so right…if by “right,” you mean traumatizing and wrong). The movie starts out with a life-altering event for India that introduces an even more powerful altering agent into her rather staid, controlled world. However, there’s a reason why those in India’s life maintained such standards of control and ritual over her up to this point. Now that those standards have vanished…well, India’s got a whole world of opportunity ahead of her that she never considered before.

To his credit, Park directed a brilliant first entry into English-language horror. Best known among genre fans for his “Vengeance” trilogy, he once again shows his affinity for exploring humanity’s bleakness in visually stunning ways. Here, he shows us a steadily, carefully paced story wrapped in the finery of beautifully crafted shots.

He also did quite well by casting Mia Wasikowska as India. Probably most familiar to American audiences as Alice from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, she possesses features of porcelain delicacy, a gaze of ethereal inscrutability, and the ability to slip in and out of indifference as easily as one slips into a pair of shoes (and, mind you, shoes play quite a role in this movie).

India is a complexity that urges understanding, but be careful of the reward for your curiosity.

Unleashing the May-hem…

~ lobablanca

So here’s the deal: Last month, I came across this list of “50 Most Bad-Ass Female Horror Leads.” You all know me. I love horror. I also love bad-ass women.

That being said, I have to say that this list sorely misses the mark in many ways. First, the originators of the list need a lesson in the difference between horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Second, they need to make a good list rather than a list littered with characters added just to rile people rather than provide a satisfying user experience. This is the only reason I can come up with as to why Buffy is listed as third on this list. Also, they need to learn a little respect. Some of the characters they placed high on the list wouldn’t have existed without some of the characters they ranked embarrassingly low (or not at all).

That all being said, I decided that I would come up with my own list. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a true list wouldn’t really be fair. Sometimes, a character is really awesome because of what she’s doing throughout the movie. Sometimes, she’s awesome simply because she’s the lead and holding her own for the most part. One character is a hell raiser and one is a ground breaker. One might not have existed without the other, even though the latter might be stronger than the former. Basically, it’s apples and blood oranges.

But never fear, denizens! I have come up with a solution. I have created a list (I love lists) of all the female characters I think deserve the title of “Horror Bad Ass.” That means that the women on my list come from actual horror movies (sorry, Selene, Alice, and Buffy). They come from modern movies and classics. They come from American movies and foreign films. I even collected recommendations, just to make sure that I wasn’t missing any main characters. My only rules for considering these characters is that I have to have seen the movie from which they came and they have to have played a central proactive role in said movie.

Next step? I cut up the list, folded each name, and put all the slips of paper into a box. Now, every day throughout the month of May, I’m going to shake up these names and draw a random one to feature here. See? Random chance will be my ranking tool. Also, there are more than 31 names in this box, so that means that not every character I’ve chosen will make the cut. But the bottom line is that every character I put up here throughout May is going to be a character I think deserves to be included in my “Ladies of Horror May-hem” series.

Yes, this is how my brain works. Welcome to the horror show, denizens…

Flashback Friday: Double Trouble

~ lobablanca

Okay, this is going to be a really weird entry, but I learned a bunch of stuff yesterday that I wanted to share…it kind of relates to the show listed in this post’s title…kind of not. Just follow along. It’s all cool, in a nerdy pop culture way.

So, does anyone remember a show from the mid-80s called Double Trouble? It was an 80s-era update of The Patty Duke Show that was barely on for a minute, but this time, they sprang for actual twins:

dt-twins

Meet Jean and Liz Sagal. Or Liz and Jean Sagal. Meet the Sagal twins. You might have seen them in other 80s-era shows and movies, either together or on their own. You might have missed the fact that they were twins and thought that this was one busy actress. Between the two of them, they covered the gamut of big 80s viewing, including Cagney & Lacey, Trapper John, M.D., Highway to Heaven, 21 Jump Street, Quantum Leap, Simon & Simon…I’m not saying which one, but one of them even appeared in that classically awful Lucasian misstep Howard the Duck, as Ronnette, the dummer for Beverly Switzler’s band Cherry Bomb:

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/e0oeY1KMY9U

Sweet traumatizing prophets, WTAF were these actors thinking? Look at the names in this clip: Tim Robbins, Lea Thompson, Holly Robinson…wow. That’s some big pull for such a little duck.

And now I feel the need to self-abuse myself by revisiting this abomination from my youth.

Anyway, back on point. Since their debut, the Sagal twins have made their way from in front of the camera to behind the camera. One directs and one edits. However…their older sister Katey continues to wow the crowds with her ability to switch gears through all kinds of characters. That’s right, their sister is Peg Bundy:

pegbundy

Or the Cyclopean Leela for those of us who never really enjoyed Married With Children:

katey-sagal-leela

Truth be told, Katey Sagal has played a very impressive array of characters throughout her career, including a recurring character on the current series Sons of Anarchy. She does terrible characters really well, but she seems to comes across as quite a lovely person in real life [insert Jon Lovitz “Acting!” meme here].

I’m always fascinated by people who are nice in reality but excel at playing creeps on-screen. Like Louise Fletcher. If you don’t fear her as Kai Winn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, then you will surely want to run away from her Nurse Ratched or risk being lobotomized for being too slow. And yet, have you ever seen her acceptance speech when she won for Nurse Ratched?

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/pGl5U7nNlkY

That ending. That. Ending. Even Nurse Ratched has a heart.

Well then. Talk about wandering off-topic. Anyway, the point of all this is that I always find it interesting when I learn about family connections throughout Hollywood.

This connection goes even deeper, in fact. The family patriarch, Boris Sagal, became a director and writer after he came to this country from Ukraine. He directed quite a few things throughout his career, including several episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, an episode of Mrs. Columbo (which starred pre-spaceflight Kate Mulgrew), and Omega Man, the Charlton Heston ruination translation of Richard Matheson’s novella I Am Legend.

[Loba Tangent: Still waiting for Hollywood to get that story right in a movie.]

Sadly, Sagal died while filming the miniseries World War III. He had just finished shooting aerial shots and when he climbed out of the helicopter (which had landed in the parking lot of the hotel used for exterior shots in The Shining, of all movies), he turned the wrong way and walked right into the tail rotor. I don’t think you really want any additional details there.

And there you have it. This is all what I learned yesterday. Oh, and as for the show in the title? I can’t remember anything about it. How’s that for burying the lede?

Flashback Friday: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

~ LobaBlanca

I suppose this is both for the character and the same-titled movie. But let’s face it: The movie wouldn’t have existed without the character first. And oh, what a character she is.

You all know that I love horror movies. And anyone who loves the horror genre knows that sometimes really bad horror equals a really great movie-watching experience, especially when said horror is brought to you with respectful acknowledgement of said shlockiness. By a Goth Valley Girl with really large…assets.

Enter Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

elvira

To be honest, I’m slightly too young to be able to claim that I first knew Elvira as the host of Movie Macabre. I must confess that I first knew her as the provocative spokesghoul of…Coors Light:

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/K1zcV_Za2t0

All right, all right. Cut me some slack. I didn’t know anything about beer back then. Besides, they brought me the Mistress.

Of course, the feminist side of me wants to rage against the first-blush image of Elvira and her scantily clad form and what might be the most amazing push-up bra in the history of everything. However, my more learned feminist side informs me that a woman can dress however she chooses to without fear of retribution or repercussions, and if this is how Elvira wishes to dress, then so be it. Then, of course, the engineering side of me wants to know things like how on earth does she stay inside that low-cut dress? I mean, everything has its limits, and I would think that she would have maxed out that dress a while ago.

Look even more deeply and you’ll find the woman behind Elvira and an amazing story. Cassandra Peterson, she who is the Mistress, was born in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1951. When she was three years old, she knocked a pot of boiling water onto herself, burning off most of her hair and ending up needing skin grafts over 35 percent of her body. It was so bad, she said that doctors had to graft skin from her mother to cover her burns.

Peterson would later state that her scarred appearance was what led to her love of horror. She’s said in interviews that she felt “comforted” by the monster movies of her youth because other kids often made her feel like one of the monsters from those movies. Then came puberty and a sudden expansion of her…personality that she admits led her to be what she has deemed cruel and taunting to the boys. In fact, she has stated that she channels some of that uninhibited teenaged lustful indulgence into Elvira’s personality.

Fast forward to post high school when Peterson went to Las Vegas to become a dancer and ended up being told by the King himself, Elvis, to get out of Vegas before it consumed her. So, she packed up and headed to Italy, where she met Federico Fellini and ended up in his movie Roma.

Back to the States and she found herself in LA LA Land and part of the improvisational group The Groundlings. This troupe has provided many a stand-up and star to comedy clubs and shows like Saturday Night Live and MadTV. It was also where Peterson both began to hone her Elvira persona and where she would meet and become friends with Paul Reubens. She even appeared in a brief non-Elvira cameo in a little movie called Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Tequila, anyone?

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/UVKsd8z6scw

And then, of course, came Peterson’s big break when she saw that a local affiliate was looking for a new host to help them bring back their weekend horror show, originally called Fright Night but rechristened Movie Macabre. With her sharp comedic timing, her sarcastic Valley Girl comments, delicious double entendres, unforgettable visual aesthetic, and anachronistically upbeat personality, Peterson’s Elvira was destined to become one of the most popular horror personalities of the 80s. Hell, of every decade since she started, really.

Of course, the zenith of her popularity was around the time that NBC Pictures greenlit her very own titular (heh) film in 1988. Co-written by Peterson, the film is one of the purest forms of 80s horror comedy shlock imaginable…which means it’s kind of perfect if you think about it. Elvira made her claim to fame by providing snarky yet loving commentary to really awful horror movies. She was MST3K before MST3K. For horror. What better venue for the Queen of Cheesy Horror than her very own cheesy horror?

Seriously, it’s really cheesy. And stars Edie McClurg as one of the antagonists. And W. Morgan Sheppard as one of the other antagonists. And the nerdy wheelchair-bound kid from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors. (Spoiler: He doesn’t really need a wheelchair.) Plus a bunch of other instantly recognizable character actors populating a town in Massachusetts called “Falwell,” and a poodle with a punk-rock buzz. Oh, and tassles. Spinning tassles. I kid you not, denizens. There’s really nothing else I can think of to say about this movie after that.

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MfVl56ZQBWA

Do I recommend this movie? Oh good grief, yes. Rent it, buy some really good beers (Sorry, Coors, that doesn’t mean you), invite over some friends, and just have a great time laughing at one of the most ultimate midnight B-movies ever made. You’ve heard me say it before, but it bears repeating: When horror is good, it’s great…but when it’s bad, it can be spectacular. Elvira is spectacular.

BookBin2014: Locke & Key: Clockworks

~ lobablanca

Layout 1

Remember back when I reviewed volumes 2-4 of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key graphic novel series and stated that I loved those volumes so much that I had already added myself to the library wait list for the fifth volume, Clockworks?

Finally.

That’s right, it took almost 8 months to finally receive the fifth volume…and it subsequently took me less than a day to consume it and still be left starving for more.

I’m not going to go into details other than to say that this volume finally provides the full back story for how Rendell Locke and his friends ended up unleashing the demon that has been plaguing his children. More captivating Hill storytelling set off by beautiful Rodriguez artwork. I cannot reiterate enough that if you love well-crafted horror and stunning illustrations, then these books are a must-read for you.

I’m also going to skip the “Final Verdict” section, because I’m getting these novels. No ifs, ands, or buts. IDW has released the final volume already, so technically, I can go ahead and start stacking up now. I’m torn, though. Do I wait to see if they release a packaged set of all six books? Maybe a special edition set with bonus materials? Or do I just start buying the separate books now?

Decisions, decisions. Mayhaps it’s time to e-mail IDW directly to find out if they have anything planned. To the lair inbox, stat!

Flashback Friday: Tommy Boy

~ LobaBlanca

I’ve already written about a movie based on a Saturday Night Live skit of shwingalicious proportions. To be honest, it’s one of the only SNL-based movies that I can tolerate, let alone love.

[Loba Tangent: Dear Mr. Michaels, Creating a character that is funny for five minutes does not automatically translate to said character being funny for 90 whole minutes. Tangentially, having a cast member who can be funny for five minutes does not a movie star make. I won’t name names, but I suspect you already know about whom I speak.]

Then there is Tommy Boy, SNL alum Chris Farley’s first starring foray into movies.

tommyboy

I’m sure it was a scary prospect, moving from the safety of Rockefeller Plaza to Hollywood, so Farley took along his woobie…er, friend and fellow cast mate, David Spade.

[Loba Tangent 2: This was Spade and Farley’s first movie together, but they appeared in a lot of SNL skits with each other and they went on to make another movie, which was a blatant attempt to capitalize off the popularity of this one. Riding the coattails, so to speak. Kind of like how Spade rode Farley’s coattails, even after Farley died. Oh, you thought I had forgotten that awful DirecTV commercial you did, Davey? Not cool, man. Not cool.]

Enough tangents. I love Tommy Boy. It’s not Shakespeare. It’s not deep. It’s not Oscar-worthy. It belittles stupid people and fat people and skinny people and balding people and short people and Midwesterners and city slickers and deer and bees and cows and cops and working-class people and white-collar people, and I think it implies a little bit of non-incestuous incest for a couple of characters.

But…it’s funny. It’s damned funny. Whatever his hangups, proclivities, problems, or demons, Chris Farley was an incredibly funny guy. He channeled Belushi’s energy in so many ways during his SNL days, to both great and awful ends. He was the eponymous bull in SNL’s china shop, body-slamming and careening his way through some of the most hilarious skits to come from that show’s time period…hell, to come from the entirety of the show’s run.

And he brought that same untamed energy to Tommy Boy, this paint-by-numbers buddy movie about a bumbling oaf and a snippy little pencil pusher, one who is clueless about everything and the other who is bitter to his core about said cluelessness.

This time? Hilarity absolutely ensues.

This could have been a nothing movie like so many other cinematic flops from SNL cast mates (even though Tommy Boy wasn’t an actual SNL character, the truth is that most every character Farley ever played was actually just Farley being Farley…and that was perfectly fine). And, to be fair, the “holy shnikey” shtick threatens to wear thin (but only threatens; it somehow holds in there until the end). There was something about Farley in this movie…something that he was never able to recapture, not even by pairing up with Spade for the lesser Black Sheep, which was really just a different iteration on this movie.

Tommy Boy came out in 1995, and sadly, it was Farley’s highest career point. He remained on SNL a bit long and did a few more movies that never came close to the popularity of this film. And then his demons finally found him and he overdosed on December 18, 1997. He was only 33 years old. I remember that it was close to Christmas when he died because my mom told me while we were out Christmas shopping. I even remember where we were: standing in the classical music section of the Waves Music, looking for something for my dad. Crazy, right? Most people remember where they were when Elvis died or JFK or John Lennon. I’ll always remember where I was when I learned that Chris Farley died.

Talk about a downer. Just call me Debbie. Oh, but please don’t try to make a whole movie based on Debbie Downer. Here, let’s forget I even mentioned the name. Let’s watch the trailer for Tommy Boy instead. And after we’re finished, we can go cow tipping. I heard that Sandusky has their own league (I should know; I used to have the T-shirt)…

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6nQ4K2bvVxY

BookBin2014: Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

~ lobablanca

pkdstories

Okay, let’s just get the puerile moment out of the way now. Loba loves Dick.

Go on. Giggle. I’ll wait.

…

All right, wrap it up! Honestly.

As I was saying, I do lurves me some Philip K. Dick. I also recently immersed myself in the joys of putting holds on books from other local libraries. I went a little crazy with that one, actually. But that’s a different story. So, thanks to book hold miracles, I was able finally to read Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. I must have picked up this collection 20 times if I picked it up once at the Borders that used to be near my work. Sadly, though, I didn’t get a chance to get over for the store closing sales, so I never acquired this for my collection.

First, here are the stories included:

  • “Beyond Lies the Wub”
  • “Roog”
  • “Paycheck”
  • “Second Variety”
  • “Imposter”
  • “The King of the Elves”
  • “Adjustment Team”
  • “Foster, You’re Dead”
  • “Upon the Dull Earth”
  • “Autofac”
  • “The Minority Report”
  • “The Days of Perky Pat”
  • “Precious Artifact”
  • “A Game of Unchance”
  • “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”
  • “Faith of Our Fathers”
  • “The Electric Ant”
  • “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts”
  • “The Exit Door Leads In”
  • “Rautavaara’s Case”
  • “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”

Quite a nice selection, indeed, including the short stories that inspired movies Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, Impostor, The Adjustment Bureau, and Screamers. I’ve not seen all of these movies, but of the ones that I have seen, I enjoyed finally seeing them in their original (always different, sometimes better) forms. I enjoyed the entire collection, but I think the caveat is that “enjoy” means something entirely different when applied to the writings of this particular author. Dick’s stories epitomize dystopic futurism. Whether bleak and chaotic or sterile and despondent, his future rarely conjures the warm fuzzies. His characters are beleaguered and all-too-often seconds away from incarceration for events either beyond their knowledge or beyond their control. Sometimes, they face alien enemies. Sometimes, their enemies come from within their own ranks. Sometimes, they come from within their own minds.

Hardly does sunshine fall upon Dick’s worlds. They are battle-damaged, time-ravaged, alien landscapes (sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally). Same with his characters. “Happy ending” sometimes computes to a character ending his own existence rather than someone else doing it for him. Dick is dark.

So why do I love him so much? I like dark. I like dystopic. I think imperfection adds complexity and chaos instigates intrigue. I don’t inherently trust people who think that everything is perfect and wonderful. Those are the people who are one day going to have a massive mental fissure and start chucking kittens into rush-hour traffic. Dick’s stories are reminders to dark-souled individuals like me that life is bleak and unforgiving and we must go about to spark our own light where we can. Also, we should expect the neighbor’s dog to be in cahoots with aliens and the grocery checker to be an android. Or alien. Or alien android.

However, Dick is a bit much to take in one consolidated collection like this one. My enjoyment definitely waned toward the end. After a while, you do kind of want a bit of the warm fuzzies. It’s kind of like how I’ve been on a horror movie kick lately, but every now and then I’ll take a break for something like WALL-E or The Blob (okay, so that last one is a horror movie, too, but it still counts as a break, dammit). Still, I’m glad that I was able to track down and finally read this collection. I actually found a nice selection of some of Dick’s novels at a used bookstore. Reading this reminded me of their presence in my library and that I really need a little more Dick in my life.

Go on, giggle away. That was a freebie.

Final Verdict: If you are looking for an entry point into the world of Philip K. Dick, then I would probably recommend you start with one of his full novels or a smaller collection of short stories. I think this one might overload the novice if they read it all at once. However, I definitely see the value of having a book like this in a sci-fi collection. It would make an excellent rainy-day diversion.

BookBin2014: The Complete Peanuts 1975-1976

~ LobaBlanca

peanuts7576

This is going to be a very quick review, denizens. Apparently, that’s all I have time for these days. Really, though, there’s not a whole lot to say about this read. While wandering through parts of the library I’d never been in before (read: the kids’ section), I stumbled across a small collection of some of the books from the Complete Peanuts comic collection that has been slowly hitting the shelves.

I really want all these books, and I don’t know why I haven’t been buying them as they come out. I even went so far as to add them to my wish list, to remind me to buy them. And yet, I have not. I love the Peanuts. I used to save all the Sunday comics when I was a kid. By then, of course, the strip had lost most of its bite, which made them perfect for young readers but, I realize now, must have been quite disappointing for readers who loved the edginess of the early strips.

Apparently, the edge was dulling even in the mid-1970s. Lots of focus on Snoopy, including what I guess was Spike’s first big foray into the comic strips. I remember Spike was a strip stalwart in the 80s, so I found it interesting to see his official big-scale arrival. I also got a little bit of a kick seeing the comic strip that originally ran the day I was born. Because, really, who doesn’t love a shot of narcissism with their Peanuts?

This wasn’t a bad collection to thumb through on a snowy Sunday, but it did rekindle one of my primary concerns with this collection, and what I think is ultimately causing my hesitation: At what point do I stop buying the books? We all know that I have a slight bit of OCD. It was difficult enough for me to stop buying X-Files seasons (hell, I’m still vacillating on that decision!). Can I handle not having the entire collection? What if I miss something really good because I drew the line too soon? Should I draw the line? Or do I just buy them all and deal with the fact that later books won’t be nearly as good as the earlier stuff?

This. This is what I deal with all the time, denizens. Be thankful I filter. Most of the time.

Final Verdict: I really do need to start collecting these books. When does that tax return come in?