Turkey Day One-Shot

I closed my 2022 Thanksgiving comic book readings with this 2021 horror one-shot from Source Point Press.

A small town in Illinois is about to host its annual community theater Thanksgiving pageant. This year's organizer promises a huge surprise is in the works. Meanwhile, an alien invasion force has landed in a nearby field chock full of turkeys. Taking over the brains of the delicious fowl, the alien army waddles over to the theater house in order to make their first kill, though the theater goers think this is all staged as part of the big surprise. Truly, this will be a Thanksgiving Day to remember when everyone realizes that these guys aren't here to just 'talk turkey'.

I bought this book right after Thanksgiving last year. So I've been waiting just about a full year to enjoy this sci-fi black comedy. This book was grim, gory, irreverent, and fun as hell! I loved just about every moment of it; though the story did take a turn I wasn't expecting at all. And I thought that homage final page, which was just darn near perfect. 

I did briefly think that this book made a slightly wrong turn adding in a certain former POTUS in a cameo towards the end. Just seeing his face made me feel for a brief moment of 'here we go again' with some sort of political statement. But the use of this character for 1 panel was actually pretty funny and it added to the dark humor tone of the story. 

I'm going to let you dear readers in on a little secret: I am terrified of turkeys. They're mean. They're evil. They'd kill you if they had the chance. But over the past year, I've made friends with a turkey at a local farm. Though she has a different name, I've started to call this bird 'Swanson' after the turkey TV dinner. Over this time, I've come to realize, 'Swanson' is a salt & pepper hued turkey. All the turkeys in this comic and countless viewed videos of poultry on human violence have been perpetrated by brown feathered turkeys. Thus, I change my stance that only those brown feathered foul are direct ancestors of velociraptors! 

Being a comedy, did this book do anything to make me less afraid of turkeys? No, not really. In fact, when the alien leader plucks out a turkey's eye in order to take over its brain, I wasn't mortified like in previous books where other adorable animals are hurt or killed. If anything, I think the use of turkeys are things of holiday horror are a thing of brilliance and I would strongly recommend to SyFy channel getting the rights to this comic and turning it into next year's Thanksgiving movie ASAP! It's campy like Sharknado and bloody like The Evil Dead. I'm sure doing so would make this the next Turkey Day classic for generations of families to come!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Scooby-Doo #114 (Family Comic Friday)

Depending on how you consider when the week begins, we're just 2-3 short days away from the Thanksgiving holiday week beginning and just a touch bit further away from the official start of the 2022 Holiday Season! I couldn't be more excited. Time away from work, a chance to put my knowledge of exterior lighting to the test and of course a chance to read holiday comics. 

I really wanted to get started early. So I went to MyComicShop.com, the web page of Lone Star Comics. Lone Star does this really cool thing where the post theme lists of comic titles in order to help just about every collector out there. 2 weeks ago, they had a list of available Thanksgiving books and I snatched up several that I felt were affordable within my price range. I bought some old titles, new stuff and some adult stuff. Above all, I bought some Scooby-Doo stuff! 

This issue contains 3 stories. Unfortunately, only the cover and the first story are set during Turkey Day. In the opening mystery, the Mystery Inc. crew are on their way to Daphne's aunts house for their annual Thanksgiving feast. Almost there, the meddling kids spot a man running in terror. Then a few brief moments later, they witness Daphne's uncle being attacked- BY A GIANT TURKEY!

Folks, this is my worst nightmare. I am scared to death of turkeys. Those suckers are mean. I've personally seen them chase down a child and viewed videos where these big birds will go after law enforcement agents and mail carriers. If ever there was an argument that birds come from dinosaurs, the turkey is the de facto winner of said disagreement. 

The second story takes place on the Moon! Yes- the detectives are summoned to a space station on the moon where a werewolf is attacking crew members! Episode 3 takes place at a Chinese restaurant. The owners recently bought some ancient armor that might be cursed because the ghost of a Chinese warrior is not only scaring off customers, it might have also kidnapped the niece of the owner as well!

When it comes to this issue, I've actually been waiting almost a full year to read this one. The copy I bought last year was missing a couple of pages due to a publishing error. My replacement didn't arrive until after Thanksgiving. Thus, I held on to it as at the time, I only had 1 other Thanksgiving book in the wings for this current reading season. But boy- was I disappointed with this read! Despite the fact that this book is over 20 years old, don't read any further if you don't want any spoilers.

With the Turkey story, we're to believe that the guy running in fear is the one behind the mask of the giant fowl. Not the mysterious research corporation that wants to buy Daphne's family plot. But there's no way that guy could have run away, put on the costume and then beat up the uncle! Not in that amount of time! There had to be a second culprit. 

With the Moon story, I knew who the villain was as soon as I met them. Same goes with the bad guy behind the kidnapping and haunting at the restaurant. The problem with both these stories is that there seems to be a substantial amount of missing evidence in these stories. Velma knows what's happening. But for some reason the viewer is not made privy to what clues are being uncovered by her.

Here's what I think the problem is with this entire book: it's only 32 pages long and that's just not enough room to squeeze in 3 coherent and plausible mysteries. The editors at DC should have reduced it to only 2 stories and added 3-4 more pages with more apparent clues and less speculation. Sure, I bet the powers that be thought that a kid's attention can't be held for more than 8-10 pages per story. But kids are smarter than you think and they know when something has been dumbed down to them. AND THEY HATE THAT!

And the Moon? Really? Weird things happen on a space station and the Mystery Inc. folks are who NASA calls? Not buying it!

The artwork was good and there were some really smart moments. For example, one of the lunar werewolf victims mentioned that the attack happened during a full moon to which Velma states that on the moon, it's always full. That little statement just blew my mind! However, those kind of moments were few and far between.

Parents, the holiday season is upon us. There's going to be a few kid approved Christmas reads coming. I know Archie has one or two planned. I seem to recall that American Mythology has a Zorro Feliz Navidad special in the works. However, from what little I have seen, it appears that 'horror holidays' are the main theme of publishers this year. So, feel free to explore the internet for some Christmas Comic Book reads. At last count, I've documented nearly 1000 holiday themed comics and a huge majority are appropriate for the whole family. As the great reading advocate LeVar Burton once said- 'if your kid loves comic books, then dammit, buy them comic books!' And if the young reader in your life loves the holidays, then gosh darn it, buy them holiday themed comics! 

Just be sure to save a few for me...

Rating: 4 out of 10 stars.

Happy Thanksgiving, 2015!!!