Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark And Scar You For Life

Adult fears are very concrete: where our next paycheck is coming from, whether our relationships will hold up, how successful we’re going to be, and all of that troubling but not really frightening nonsense that runs through our minds every day. There are lots of scary movies and books, and it’s possible to be freaked out or disturbed, but adulthood leaves little time for pure, undiluted, leave-all-the-lights-on-and-pray-to-every-god-ever-dreamed-up-for-morning terror. That seems to belong to children alone, and though I guess I miss the imagination required for such fears, I’m alright with not keeping myself awake night after night imagining being brutally murdered in my bed.

For many children of my generation, there was no greater source of sleepless nights and absolute nausea-inducing horror than the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. These are three books, released during the 80s, that absolutely mortified every child who ever read them. I remember trembling under my covers as the stories ran through my brain, wondering why a kind and merciful God would have ever let such unmitigated evil out into the world at all, let alone on the innocent shelves of an elementary school library.

As anyone familiar with these books knows, it wasn’t the stories themselves that were the scary part. They were reasonably frightening, sure, very short and to the point, each of them written by Alvin Schwartz, a professional folklorist. I was a little frightened as a child that every single one had extensive footnotes—it made me feel like somewhere, somehow, these horrible events might have actually happened. But the stories were hardly enough to terrify even the most squeamish children. What got us was the illustrations.

They’ve lost some of their power over the years (meaning only that now, in my late twenties, I’m finally mature enough to look at them without shaking or throwing away the book in horror) but they’re still the stuff nightmares are made of. I chose the illustration from “The Girl Who Stood On A Grave” to be the title image for my Halloween themed posts this month, and that’s only scratching the surface of how bone-chilling some of the images are. It illustrates a fairly straightforward story, the old tale of a girl scaring herself to death by accidentally pinning her dress to a grave and imagining that a hand is holding her in place, but the image goes far beyond that simple tale. The meandering lines, the indistinct boundaries, the expression on the poor girl's face, even the hazy shapes in the background (what the hell is that, anyway, some kind of horse? I really don’t want to know) are designed with almost fiendish precision to be as frightening as possible.

The illustrator, Stephen Gammell, has illustrated dozens of children’s books, and is as far as I can tell not a hideous creature of unspeakable evil come from beyond the stars to warp the minds of children. But he sure draws like it. This is some of the scariest stuff I’ve ever seen. It’s an often repeated trope that things unseen are scarier than things seen, but Gammell discovered a way to work this concept into his illustrations. The focus of the picture is usually frightening enough, but the way Gammell blurs the edges helps us imagine even more horrific things lurking just beyond our vision. These are not realistic people, they are twisted, misshapen, with the thick pen lines looking almost like roots tethering them to the ground. That a person can imagine such things is at once beautiful and terrifying.

The books were checked out of the elementary school library every week by some children far braver than I. I considered myself sensible for having avoided them, though morbid curiosity occasionally led to me cracking one open, spying one of the terrifying images, and slamming the book back on the shelf before retreating from the library. Imagine my surprise, then, when one Christmas I tore open a package from my grandmother I assumed was some new Nintendo game and discovered a leering skull staring back at me. That’s right, my loving grandmother had voluntarily brought the nightmares into my own house.

I couldn’t help but read and look inside—I don’t think I slept for months, but I couldn’t resist the damn things. The illustrations were so frightening that it was like looking at something from another world, something so profane and forbidden that you had to look and look again just be sure you hadn’t imagined it all. Eventually I couldn’t handle it anymore, and, plucking up my courage, for I was sure the books carried with them an evil curse, I tossed them into the trash. Not even that fully calmed my fears, and I was sure for weeks afterward that I would open my closet and find the books staring back at me, returned from their grave to haunt me for the rest of my days. So far, they haven’t come back.

It’s a decision I’ve regretted ever since. First of all, what kind of lunatic throws away a book? They’re expensive. I could have sold the thing and put the money towards a copy of Shining Force II for Sega Genesis. More importantly, as I’ve matured I’ve been able to appreciate the artistic brilliance behind the illustrations, and the insight into a child’s mind Stephen Gammell must possess to strike just the right note again and again. Adults, with their worries, so quickly forget how easy it was to be afraid of the dark as a child, but looking at these pictures captures some of that fright. Kids can imagine quite a bit, and when one wakes you up in the middle of the night, there’s a good chance what they see in their mind’s eye is at least as frightening as any of Gammell’s illustrations. This is a child’s fear of night and the dark perfectly illustrated, something almost impossible to render visually rendered to perfection. I’ve already talked about “The Girl Who Stood On a Grave” but let’s take a quick look at a few more.

This first lovely lady was from a story called “The Haunted House” about a priest who finds a ghost. She’s become an iconic image for the series, and now graces the cover of the compilation of the three books. This is actually one of the more straightforward of Gammell’s illustrations, but note the use of the different shades of black in the eyes to hint there might be more back there, and the spindly, spider web strands of hair. It looks jagged and unpleasant to the touch, not like real hair at all. In college I stuck a picture of this beauty up beside the kitchen sink with a caption encouraging my roommates to do their dishes. I think it had the opposite effect. Great conversation starter at parties though.

This one is just beautiful. I love the overgrown gravestones in the background, covered with grass that could be hair, and the gnarled, twisting roots near the woman’s hand. The story that went with this, “Rings on her Fingers” was about a girl being buried alive, but this picture is far scarier than the story. Plus it gets bonus points since we can’t tell whether the girl is walking toward us or away. I vote for away, but I’d rather not think about where she might be pointing and why.

I believe this woman was supposed to be a real, living person. That’s right. In the world of Stephen Gammell, real people look like this. Good God, man. Why would you draw this? Why? This was from a story called “The Dream.” It ended with this woman coming up the stairs. That shouldn’t be terrifying in and of itself, but look at her!

Finally we come to “The Bride” and I’m out of things to say. This was the singular image that burned into my brain as a child and kept me afraid of the dark right through adolescence. This is just supposed to a be a picture of a human skeleton to accompany the old story where a bride locks herself in a trunk on her wedding day. But sweet Jesus! What human skeleton looks like this? Look at those teeth! She has fangs! The mature intellectual in me wants to comment on the way the spider web merges with the dress; we’re not sure where one ends and the other begins, which makes the corpse look that much more forlorn. And check out the bizarre way the feet jut out, and think about how uncomfortable such a pose would be. Then close the web browser and pray for morning, because I’ve done about as much after-dark reminiscing about these books as I care to do.


Many of the audio recordings of the books have found their way on to youtube, along with the accompanying images from the stories. One of my favorites, “The Window” involves vampires. As usual, the story is lackluster, but the image has so much unseen horror that it still makes me a little nervous. So if you need more Scary Stories, head on over to youtube. After spending a while writing about them, I’m ready to go to a bright room, watch some innocuous children’s programming, and forget about the spindly, root-encrusted figures that might be lurking in the darkness just outside the window.

Hogwarts Ranked Dead Last For the Sixth Year in a Row!

In honor of the release of the sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I just thought I'd call attention to this interesting article written by the Daily Prophet during Harry's tenure at Hogwarts in the late 90s. Enjoy!

Hogwarts Sets New Low in Academic Incompetence
by Crespin Alcuin, Staff Writer
From the Daily Prophet, February 17, 1997

Another edition of Belzar’s Annual Guide to Europe’s Wizarding Schools has come out this week, and it is no surprise to see our own Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has once again come up dead last in the rankings. Things have gotten so bad that this reporter decided to pay a visit to the famous wizarding school to inspect the situation first hand. It’s depressing to see that after six years of being at the bottom of the academic heap, Hogwarts continues to surpass itself in educational mediocrity.

Ask a student at Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, or any of the other fine magic schools how many times they’ve been subject to physical damage or life-threatening situations in their studies, and you’re liable to get a laugh in return. “It’s a school,” they would say, waiting for the journalist to ask a real, serious question.

Yet in the six short years since it landed at the bottom of Belzar’s list, students at Hogwarts have been exposed to trolls, basilisks, hippogriffs, giant spiders, dementors, and a particularly nasty enchanted tree (which Headmaster Albus Dumbledore claims is necessary for “school security.”)

And that’s just for starters. At least one staff member has openly tried to kill students, one has been a werewolf, and plenty are woefully ignorant of even the most rudimentary magical spells. On top of all that, a popular student, Cedric Diggory, actually died during his final year at Hogwarts in a school-sanctioned sporting event. Has no one told Headmaster Dumbledore that this is not normal for a school with 11 to 18 year old children, even one that specializes in whimsical magic?

But the peril to which the school subjects her students is only a small part of the problem. More troublesome are the absolutely appalling academic standards set by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Though it is easy to place the blame for Hogwarts’ lax standards entirely on the headmaster’s shoulders, our readers must keep in mind that Dumbledore was headmaster for many years before the school took its tumble into the morass of educational malpractice.

Yet the old man’s educational philosophies can hardly help. Dumbledore is known to encourage students to skip class, often eager to impart some drummed up “life lesson” that “cannot be learned in an academic setting.” That’s all well and good, Mr. Dumbledore, but we do not pay costly Hogwarts tuition in order to simply watch our children wander off on some dangerous adventure, whatever they might “learn” from the experience.

If the dismal O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. scores didn’t speak for themselves, one need simply look at the quality of instruction offered at Hogwarts. Professor Sybill Trelawney, long discredited “psychic” is kept on staff, while groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid has been repeatedly charged with endangering the lives of children. Whenever these allegations are brought up to Headmaster Dumbledore, the old man simply smiles and winks, as if that makes everything better. “I would trust Hagrid with my life,” he says with an infuriatingly coy grin.

“Hogwarts is an excellent school,” says top student Hermione Granger. “Dumbledore is always there to talk to or to send me on a secret mission with Harry (Potter) and Ron (Weasley).” At the mention of Mr. Weasley, Ms. Granger’s face turned beet red, and it took her several moments to compose herself. When pressed about an incident in her 5th year, when students, so poorly educated by the school, actually turned to another student, the famous Harry Potter, to receive instruction, Ms. Granger grew standoffish.

“Dumbledore’s army was essential for fighting You-Know-Who. If we hadn’t done it, the Dark Lord may have succeeded in stealing the prophecy from the Ministry of Magic!” At examination of Ms. Granger’s attendance records during the period the so called “Dumbledore’s army” was active reveals that she has missed nearly half of her classes. “I’m doing important things!” She insisted. “Dumbledore doesn’t mind.”

When asked, Miss Granger failed to cast a single spell beyond the 3rd year level, identify the current Muggle prime minister of Britain, or locate France on a map. Increasingly flustered, Granger lashed out. “I’ve been very busy knitting socks for house eleves!” Miss Granger is expected to graduate Hogwarts at the top of her class next year.

“Oh yes,” said another student, who wished to remain anonymous, probably due to a noticeable and severe drug problem. “Hogwarts is very dangerous if you don’t know what to look out for. Very dangerous. I’ve never seen so many wrackspurts and nargles in one place. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the snorkacks come and sing and the wrackspurts scatter. If they’re already in your brain, though, there’s nothing you can do. Very sad.” Wrackspurts and nargles. So this is what upper level magical education has come to.

“It’s utterly dreadful,” says Professor Severus Snape, whose slimy appearance suggests the lack of hygiene typical among Hogwarts students and staff. (One of the few bathing facilities has been infested with a particularly unpleasant ghost for 50 years. Dumbledore, in his infinite wisdom, says it gives the place character. Meanwhile, lice and skin problems run rampant.)

Snape provided his attendance records for the Prophet, pointing out that during the last five years, when Snape taught potions, students Harry Potter and Ron Weasley were absent an astounding 109 times. “During his 4th year, he attended class three times,” Snape says through gritted teeth. “Yet every year Dumbledore comes downstairs: ‘Oh Severus, the boy’s been through a lot, give him a passing grade this year. You must remember he’s not his father. Don’t take it out on him.’ I don’t understand it. I try to teach a class, Potter shows up three bloody times, doesn’t turn in a single assignment, and I’m the bad guy? It just doesn’t make sense.”

No Professor. No it doesn’t. The Prophet tried to catch up with the wily Harry Potter to ask him how he felt about the quality of education at Hogwarts, but of course he couldn’t be found anywhere on the grounds. When asked about his absence, Professor Minerva McGonagall simply smiled. “Oh, that Potter. Always up to something.”

During the close of my illuminating day at Hogwarts, I did manage an interview with one Ronald Weasley, which might just say all that needs to be said about education at Hogwarts. “Oh blimey! Hogwarts is a mess, isn’t it? Weasley sputtered in a barely comprehensible midlands accent. “You see the way Hermione looks at me, don’t you? She’s gone completely mental. Then there’s all this business with You-Know-Who, can’t go blabbering on about that, you know, very secret Dumbledore/Harry stuff—gets a little tiring! And that Lavender bird! Bad enough to be dealing with one girl, but two? Bloody hell! I can’t very well snog them both, can I? I ‘spose I could, of course, but before long, you know how it goes, it would go around and get ‘round to the other one, then I’m worse off then I started! I never asked for this!”

“I never asked for this.” After six years at the absolute bottom of the magical academy barrel, I’m sure plenty of tuition-paying parents are saying the same thing.

The Best of Books, The Worst of Books

One of my goals for 2009 has been to ready more books. As a kid I was a voracious reader, often guzzling down a few books a week. That wasn’t so terribly long ago, but even in the 90s we didn’t have constant internet, Tivo, etc. to distract us at every turn. All the innovations, plus the added pressures that come with being an adult, make it more and more difficult to sit down and spend time with a good book. This is a shame, because unlike a lot of the stimuli we have available in the 21st century, reading is an entirely intellectual, interactive pastime. (Though they get a bad rap from many, video games may be the closet modern parallel. But that’s a topic for another day.) So far I’ve been doing pretty well with books this year, though I wish I had the time to read even more. One of my favorites so far is the poorly marketed and classified but ultimately enjoyable Drood by Dan Simmons.


Simmons has been a popular horror and science fiction writer for a long time, but I (along with many others) first became aware of his work with the phenomenal 2007 historical horror novel, The Terror. This book combined the real life story of the doomed Franklin Expedition which disappeared without a trace on a mission to explore the Arctic in the 1840s, with supernatural horror to fantastic effect. With their ships frozen in the ice, the crew’s struggle for survival gets increasingly desperate; all the while they are threatened by a terrible, polar-bear like monster that seeks to tear them limb from limb in the best horror tradition.

Simmon’s prose is so rich you can feel the sting of the -40 degree temperatures and see the blood of the monster’s victims as it streaks across the ice—all this set against a backdrop of beautiful and absolutely terrifying isolation at the top of the world. Even with the horrors of the climate and the monster to contend with, the real danger comes from within the crew itself, and as the struggle for survival becomes more and more desperate, the crew members begin to turn on one another. I’ve never read a book with a character more loathsome than Cornelius Hickey, who commits actions against his fellow men far more disgusting than anything perpetrated by the monster.

To watch this vile man ruin the crew’s hopes for survival time and time again is heartbreaking. In modern fiction it has become too much of a cliché that villains are the most sympathetic and wronged characters—in Cornelius Hickey, Simmons created a monster that was just that: a monster. All the worst instincts of humanity squished together in a horrible package. It is a testament to Simmon’s skill as a writer that this character was so utterly detestable, and The Terror is stuffed to the brim with similarly well drawn characters, moody descriptions, and a plot that makes it’s 700 plus pages fly by.

Drood is not that good.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved the book. But after an achievement like The Terror, it’s only natural that the follow up is somewhat disappointing. Most of the problem is in the way the book is marketed. On the cover we see a shadowy figure against the familiar backdrop of Victorian London, and from the description inside the jacket Drood seems to be another historical horror tale in the exact same vein as The Terror. It is even placed in the horror section of the bookstore, so the reader can be forgiven for coming to the book with a certain set of expectations. There are horror elements, for sure, and some of them are quite terrifying, but this book is far more history than horror. Instead it takes a cue from Simmon’s portrayal of Hickey and makes its monster not some external nightmare creature, but that most ugly and disgusting of human emotions: Jealousy.

I will go ahead and damage my English major credibility by admitting right of the bat that before I read Drood, I knew very little about the novel’s two main characters, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Of course I knew who Dickens was and had read a few of his books, heard the stories of the people waiting at the docks for the latest installment of his tales, and had used the adjective ‘Dickensian’ in multiple situations over the years. But I knew almost nothing about the man. As for Wilkie Collins, the book’s narrator and central protagonist? Sadly, this was the first I’d heard of him.

Like I said, I went into this book expecting a tale of Victorian horror; something along the lines of Dracula or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with perhaps a bit of A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist thrown in for good measure. I’ve always been a fan of the time period, and when I was in high school I even attempted a god-awful Victorian novel of my own, something about the true story of Jack the Ripper. (I think my brilliant original take on the idea was that Jack was actually the sympathetic hero of the story, and the world simply didn’t understand, i.e., the Anakin Skywalker explanation of evil).

In any event, the first few chapters of the book definitely met my expectations, both for a horror novel and for a successor to The Terror. Dickens explains to Collins in vivid detail the events of the Staplehurst rail crash of 1865—a horrific disaster in which Dickens’ train jumped the track and hurled into a ravine, killing many. Dickens and the book’s title character, the mysterious, corpse-like Drood, flit among the dead and dying, doing their best to help (?) the survivors. It is a scene of wrecked fuselage, shattered bodies, severed limbs, and the desperate moans of the wounded. Hovering above it all is the mysterious figure of Drood, who we later learn was traveling by coffin. Is he a man? A zombie? A vampire? These are the questions the first section of the book lays out for us.

And then they’re not answered. Or they are answered, but after the first hundred pages or so they hardly form the focus of the book. It becomes much more historical and biographical, and, some have argued, less interesting. But I disagree. If you can divorce yourself from expectations, what you will find in Drood is a story of two men, both of them writers, and their competition with one another. Wilkie Collins is Dickens’ friend, but, more importantly, he is jealous of the older, more famous writer, who he calls the Inimitable with no small amount of sarcasm.

This jealousy, combined with Collins’ growing addiction to opium, forms the basis for increasingly twisted ideas, visions, and actions. We never quite know which of Collins’ hallucinations are real and which are false. They all share one thing in common, though: The signs of a jealous, sometimes petty man who would believe in anything except his own inferiority. Whether this is a massive character assassination on the real life Wilkie Collins I will never know, but for me our narrator’s cruel cynicism and selfishness came off poorly against Dickens almost childlike joy at everyday life.

This is a book for writers. It gives physical manifestation to the all too common reality of professional jealousy, and both main characters have an intimate understanding of the writer’s life. In one of my favorite passages, Collins writes:

When the last autumn of Dickens’ life was over, he continued to work through this final winter into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?

Would we trade all of those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?

There is no one who has lived the life of the writer who has not had these thoughts from time to time—some more than others, of course, but thoughtful passages like this keep the often reprehensible Wilkie from coming off as completely despicable. Writing can be a lonely profession, and often one that brings with it no clear signs of reward, at least not immediately. What I love about this passage and this book is that you can tell it was written by someone who takes writing seriously, who knows all to well the pain and setbacks and frustrations that come with failure, but also, in the person of Dickens, the beautiful joys that come with effort. Unlike Dickens and Collins, most writers are both Dickens and Collins—at one moment frustrated by loneliness or lack of recognition, and at others overcome by the overwhelming joy that comes with being creative, with creating characters and stories, with the simple use of words and language.

Another favorite moment is earlier in the book, when Collins takes an unfinished draft of his upcoming novel, which he plans to call “The Serpent’s Eye (Or, possibly The Eye of the Serpent).” Dickens loves the novel, he says, but then lays into poor Wilkie with a list of possible corrections and changes. This moment is very real and well done, and anyone who’s ever tried to do anything creative has been there. Listening to someone else easily rattle of possible changes and alterations to something you’ve been working on for months is difficult in any situation, but oftentimes, as is the case with Dickens, those suggestions are right on the money. It’s a wonderful little moment, us alone together with these two great writers, watching them work, watching as Wilkie’s resentment of Dickens builds and builds despite the obvious wisdom in his suggestions. In the end, Wilkie takes the advice, and the result is a better, more popular novel.

Eventually, and by slow degrees, Wilkie’s jealousy descends into madness. As I’ve said, we are never sure which of his delusions are real. I would have liked some more explanations and follow up to certain things, certainly (Just what was in the servant’s stairs at Wilkie’s house? Some type of Lovecraftian horror? Or another delusion?). But in the end, that’s not what the book is about. Drood has far more in common with the movie Amadeus than with a horror novel. There were many moments in the book, such as the revision scene above, when I was reminded of the final moments of Amadeus: Mozart on his deathbed, composing another masterwork with baffling ease, while Salieri can only look on in awe and wonder. If you go into this book expecting The Terror II you’re bound to be disappointed. If you go in expecting Amadeus with writers instead of musicians—well, that’s exactly what it is.

Writing, like music, like all art, is mostly subjective. You can learn various rules, sure, but what makes people fall in love with a movie or a poem or a story or a painting? That is unknowable. Sometimes it can seem unfair. In the final pages of the novel comes what I consider the book’s most powerful scene. After Dickens has died, Wilkie rummages through some of Dickens old books, trying to prove to himself Dickens’ inferiority. He finds problems with characterization, plot, and more, but finally, in a passage in Bleak House, he comes face to face with the Charles Dickens the world saw and loved:

Dickens had gone on by having the fog in the harbor lift over Esther’s shoulder by writing, “these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed…,” and I knew in that instant…merely passing over these few words in these short sentences, that I would never—not ever, should I live to be a hundred years of age and retain my faculties until the last moment of that life and career—that I would never be able to think and write like that.

The book was the style and the style was the man. And the man was—had been—Charles Dickens.

Simmons is a master at portraying the ugly side of human nature, and this ability is on full display in Drood. There is perhaps no human emotion worse than jealousy and the book is an excellent look at the hideous manifestations of that at once understandable and reprehensible feeling. In many friendships and professional relationships there's a very fine line between love and hate, and this is a book that explores that line wonderfully. Don’t go in expecting a horror story, and you just might find a lot to like.

Watching Watchmen

Watchmen is a decent movie. It has an intriguing world, a great concept, interesting characters, and a good story. I saw it, and were I not impoverished would certainly see it again. I loved the Rorschach character, loved the opening credits, I even liked the sometimes out of place soundtrack (good music is good music). But my geek credentials are pretty thin in the comic book realm, and I have never read the graphic novel. Had I read it, I may have learned how the movie fails in every possible respect, as is apparently the case. What was for me an enjoyable movie about superheroes and the issues that would drive them in a gritty, real world setting, is actually an abomination of the greatest literary work since, well, ever, I guess.

A lot of this fan complaining is legitimate: There’s not a lot of emotion in the movie, the story seems rushed and some of the bigger moments don't land like they should, and it’s clear that the characters would all resonate much more in the denser setting of a graphic novel. What leads to such zealous fan reaction, though, is not the quality of the movie itself, but the level of deification that certain comic book writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller have undergone in Hollywood in recent years. It has become a bit ridiculous. When Shakespeare is redone in the form of She’s the Man, nobody bats an eyebrow, but when one frame of one shot of one scene in Sin City diverges from the comic, a cinematic holocaust has been committed.

In response to this, a director like Zack Snyder (sorry bro) decides to stick as closely to the comic as possible. I will say again that I’ve not read Watchmen, but I have read and seen 300, and generally Snyder sticks to doing a shot for shot recreation of the comic. From all I’ve read, the same phenomenon is present in Watchmen, and the film certainly looks like it went to great lengths to recreate exact frames from the book. It’s like when you hear a cover of a song that’s just, well, the song again, but robbed of the creative spark that made the original something special.

It’s an endless cycle. Joe Moviegoer (in this case, me) likes the movie, but goes home without being hugely impacted by it. But Joe Moviegoer’s roommate, Jerry Fanboy (or Matilda Fangirl, as the case may be) sees the movie, finds it to be an aseptic approximation of what they love, and cover the internet with complaints. Hollywood, looking for a reason why the movie doesn’t do as well as say, The Dark Knight, sees the fanboy complaints, and in turn makes a movie that is more slavishly faithful to the original. And it goes back to Joe Moviegoer, and back down the line forever.

Watchmen, Sin City, 300—these are all great stories. Hell, if the Watchmen novel is 1/100th as good as I’ve been told, it would still earn a place among my favorite books. But a good movie can take that great source material and make a great, separate work of art from it. Look at The Godfather, for the love of Christmas! Satisfying a rabid fanbase like Watchmen’s will never be possible, so directors shouldn’t let that scare them into making inferior products. With all the mindless faithfulness to the Watchmen novel, fans are still furious that the production created a new climax, eschewing some sort of Lovecraftian monster in the finale. (Okay, honestly? That sounds fantastic.) You just can’t please everybody, no matter what you do.

Watchmen does a lot right. But you can tell just by watching that, not unlike the first Harry Potter movies, it shoots itself in the foot by being too faithful to the letter of the source material and rather ignorant to the spirit. In the hands of a director that wasn’t afraid to make the sacred cow of the novel their own (I would have loved a David Fincher take, for example), this had all the makings of a masterpiece. As it is, the movie fails in greatness, and fails in satisfying the passionate fanbase.

Hollywood has never been known for taking works of literature seriously. And, in this new trend of slavishly adapting the source material, they miss the point once again. Like I said, I enjoyed this movie for 99% of the time I was in the theater. I was blissfully unaware of the crimes that were being perpetrated to the holy tome, and so I had a good ride. If you like superheroes and enjoy the movie for what it is, you’ll have a good time at Watchmen, though you might leave feeling a bit like just drove past the Pyramids doing 90 and didn’t get out to take a picture.

Watchmen is a good movie on its own merits, but as an adaptation it comes up short. Unfortunately, this as is as much the fault of fanboy internet culture as anything else. These movies are monitored by fans during their entire production, and at the end of the day Zack Snyder did the best he could under those conditions. It’s not what it could have been, but given the circumstances, it’s a pretty decent movie, squid or no squid. It’s no Watchmen Babies, but I’ll take it.

Alternative Valentine's Day Dates

It’s time for another Valentine’s Day. Since I no longer have to write valentines for every kid in the class (Note: If you underline your name when you sign one for a girl, it means you like her!), I thought I would mark the occasion by paying tribute to some women I would love to take out for Valentine’s Day. I’ve spent a lot of time with each of these ladies, and they’re all dear to me in their own way.

5. Harley Quinn

When Harley Quinn first appeared on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, I was confused. I’d read plenty of Batman comics, and I couldn’t think of any instance where the Joker had a giggling female sidekick. There was Jerry Hall in the Tim Burton movie, of course, but this couldn’t be the same character. So I had no idea where Harley came from. By February of 1993, it didn’t matter. Harley had become as much a part of the Joker’s character for millions of kids as the maniacal laughter and green hair.

Poor Harley, forever trapped in a sole-dependent relationship she’s convinced is tragically co-dependent. To watch the Joker twist this naïve psychologist around his fingers in the 1999 episode "Mad Love" is one of the defining moments of the series. Harley is loyal to the end--if only she’d been corrupted, by say, an environmentalist, she might be out saving the whales with the same gusto she devotes to pillage and murder. She may be a high maintenance date, but if you win her over she’s yours forever. And ever.

4. Carmilla

Before Dracula, there was Carmilla, the original creepy Goth vampire hottie. She was the central villain in the 1872 short story of the same name, and she makes a great companion for Valentine’s Day. Okay, so she’s into girls. And she can apparently take the form of a cat, an old woman, a young woman, a middle aged woman, and some kind of blood sucking bird thing. But she doesn’t do that all of the time. In fact much of the time she can be downright polite. She’s lived a long time, so you know she’s well read and brings a lot of life experience to the table. You could do a lot worse.

Besides, since she only feeds on women, doesn’t that mean she’s safer to date than some kind of indiscriminate vampire like Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn? Case closed.

3. Samus Aran
In February 2003 I finally got the chance to play the original Metroid Prime, and I’m happy to say that on that Valentine’s Day Ms. Aran (she is a Ms., right?) was my date for nine consecutive hours of outer space adventure. She’s seen half the galaxy, fought thousands of monsters, saved countless star systems, and flies an awesome spaceship that hooks right into her impressive power suit. Plus she’s even got a maternal side, as evidenced when she protects a young Metroid hatchling from destruction and it adopts her as its mommy. Not even Leia Organa Solo boasts a resume like that.

All of Samus’ adventures are great, but the best of the bunch has got to be Super Metroid for the SNES. It’s one of the longest, most in depth, and impressive games made during that era, and a great way to spend some alone time with the lovely Samus. When a woman is flexible enough to roll into a sphere the size of a beach ball, you know there’s no position that’s off limits (not even that one you’ve always wanted to try but have been afraid to ask about.) She can twist herself into a ball, for God’s sake. There is nothing she can’t do.

2. That Elf on the Cover of the Original Everquest
It was tough to decide between this lovely lady and the night elf on the original World of Warcraft cover (look at those eyes!). If not for Everquest, though, Warcraft would still be a real-time strategy series, and millions of nerds would have been forced to turn elsewhere for entertainment. This magical elf was a trailblazer in the world of MMORPGs. Sex had been used to sell games before, sure, but never was there a product more deliciously tailored towards teenage boys. Earlier games in the genre had been hazier. The cover of Ultima Online, for example, had a wonderful painting of a massive medieval battle with dragons, wizards, knights, and princesses. And that’s enticing, sure.

But Everquest was different. Right there on the box was a promise: Spend hours upon hours leveling up in this game, and maybe, somehow, you might encounter a woman who looked like the elf in some capacity, either in real life or in the game. You weren’t a loser, because there was a beautiful woman right there on the box!

Though she would appear on the cover of almost every EQ expansion, we know so little about this woman. Beyond A) She’s a high-elf, and B)She’s hot, this woman’s life is a blank canvass, waiting for you to pay Sony $19.95 a month of your parent’s money to apply the paint.

1. Emily Bronte
Now here is a woman who could use a Valentine’s Day date. If Carmilla is the original Goth, then Emily gave birth to Emo. It doesn’t take many pages of Wuthering Heights to get the impression that its author had been burned in the past. For Emily there was no “happily ever after,” no all conquering love. Romance was a painful pulling apart of yourself that left you broken, scared, and alone in the desolate British countryside. She’s not quite as famous as big sister Charlotte or as beloved as fellow Brit Jane Austen, and that's just the way she likes it. I imagine she prefers to spend her time home alone writing poetry while blasting Nine Inch Nails on her headphones to the stuffy London scene.

Sure, she would reject the idea of a date at first. She’d be one of those people who would go on and on about how Valentine’s Day is an evil creation of the greeting card companies and that men shouldn’t wait for a special day to show women they love them. But once she was out of the house, she would have fun. There is a fine distinction between passion and pain, and no one could walk that line like Ms. Bronte.

Just be sure to call her the day after. Otherwise she’ll probably start to cut herself.