Welcome back to News & Things! Here’s our last spooktacular link roundup before the witching hour! Read on, and we’ll see you in November!
Read of The Week
The New Yorker is “Watching Sondheim Watch Fun Home,” and analyzes the musical based on Alison Bechdel’s renowned graphic novel:
“Sondheim’s gut-wrenching ballads come to mind, from “Not a Day Goes By,” from “Merrily We Roll Along” (“I just go on thinking and sweating and cursing and crying”), to “Losing My Mind,” from “Follies” (“Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor, not going left, not going right”). One of the hardest emotions to dramatize must be paralysis: the feeling that one has wasted years of life and it’s simply too late to move forward. But Sondheim has always realized the devastating power of inertia, and “Fun Home” does, too.”
News
Steven Universe Comic Coming in 2014
Cartoon Network’s new animated series Steven Universe, about a young boy and three mystical warriors known as the Crystal Gems, will have its own ongoing comic series from Boom! Studios in 2014.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is Pretty Much Quicksilver
The Wrap is reporting that the Kick-Ass star has “closed” the deal to play Quicksilver in Avengers 2. However, Evan Peters will still be outrunning him to theaters as Quicksilver next spring’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. (“Outrunning,” get it, because Quicksilver…is fast…I’m sorry.)
J.H. Williams III on Sandman: Overture, Inspiration
Williams tells CBR about collaborating with Neil Gaiman, the influence of Edward Gorey, and wanting to draw “the weirder, the better!
Just in time for Halloween, Emily Carrol has put out a new, creepy webcomic. Don’t read it in the dark!
Commentary
Garfield Has a Traumatic, Horrifying Halloween
The AV Club’s roundtable discussion on Garfield’s Halloween Adventure animated special from 1985.
The Rise and Fall of the Midnight Ghost Show
Matt Novak on the ghost shows, spooky late-night theater performances of the 1930s and 1940s that thrived before the age of television.
Brad Leithauser makes the case for The Time Machine being the ultimate ghost story.
“Death Comes in Many Strange Packages”: Tales from the Hood as a Socially Conscious Horror Film
Marena looks at the mechanics of socially conscious horror, through this 1995 anthology, directed by Rusty Cundieff and produced by Spike Lee.
The Truly Scary Politics of Horror Movies
Anne Elizabeth Moore and Gabrielle Gamboa analyzed 74 horror movies for racial and gender bias, and turned their results into a comic.
And Finally…
Jillian Tamaki wishes you a sexy little Halloween (click link for full comic!):