Harper's Island: Week 11 non-Recap

There is no reason to continue recapping Harper's island, so I'm not going to.

In the two months since Harper's island began I have been generous to a fault with it. Cutting it every kind of slack imaginable based entirely on my love of mysteries and my naïve faith that the show would in fact be a mystery. I looked for clues I tracked alibis, all based on the assumption that the show's plot would in some way be solvable.

Last week's reveal that John Wakefield, the character that everyone thought was the killer, was, in fact, the killer has made all of that work utterly useless. It doesn't matter who was where when because any murderer a character couldn't have committed could have been committed by the show's "Jason" John Wakefield. And what a fake Jason he is, running around harpooning people, getting into knife fights, emotionally torturing his victims... oh, John Wakefield, if this were a better show I could really appreciate you as a villain.

Dusk: The Vampire Comic. Review.

Regular viewers of theavod will already know the long, strange history of this review. And by that I mean that an ambitious promoter by the name of David Doub sent his comic to me in the hope that I'd review it here at the castle.

And now I am.

Avod Saturday: Episode 27!

It occurs to me that I haven't been posting very many announcements about theavod here at Castle Vardulon. I have no excuse for this. Sorry if you've been looking forward for the new episode but assumed there wasn't one because I hadn't mentioned it. As always, back episodes can be found over at the avod's blog or the archive.org search link over there to the right.

As for this week's episode, it's a glorious return to form as the Divemistress and myself discuss Harper's Island, They Live, and the just-released (but yet unplayed) Ghostbusters videogame. Then it's on to the meat of this bonus-length episode, as we go in-depth discussing David Doub's independant vampire comic Dusk!

If you can't wait to listen to it just right-click here and save to your computer. Or head over to the avod's blog and stream it live!

Harper's Island Recap: Week 10

So, what, Wakefield’s the killer?

All of my careful painstaking note-making will have to be thrown away because Wakefield is the killer? Last week when Maggie was finally eliminated as a suspect I was left baffled, since no character could have committed all of the murders, but at the same time I didn’t really think they’d bring in Wakefield as the killer.

The producers of this show know that’s not a mystery, right?

Harper's Island Recap: Week 9

The thing I love most about Harper’s Island’s move into the siege portion of the stalk/siege slasher film structure is that much less happens in each episode, and it’s therefore far easier to synopsize! So let’s do that!

The episode begins with Black Frat and the remaining Wellingtons hanging around, wondering when Henry will be back with Douchey Frat, Cal & Chloe, and Beth, who still resists any attempts to give her a personality. There’s a knock on the door right away – it’s Douchey Frat and Beth! They headed back right away while Henry and Jimmy carried JD’s corpse to the doctor’s office, and Cal went to treat the Sheriff’s wounds along with Abby and Chloe.

Adventures in Fake Journalism: Harper's Island 108

Bit of a departure this time around, as I'm not looking at a fake news article, but rather a character's fake journal. From Harper's Island, Episode 8, here's John Wakefield's prison diary.

I've left all the punctuation and spelling as is. Words that were unclear to me, forcing me to guess are marked with a (~), while words I full-on couldn't read are replaced with a (?).

Also, in the original broadcast the sheriff flips through the journal backwards, looking at visible page 3&4, then flipping to 1&2. I'm displaying them here in the order they appear in the journal, rather than the order shown in the episode.

Oh, Webcomics-

I assume everyone’s familiar with Garfield Minus Garfield by now. The basic idea is that Garfield is removed entirely from Garfield, leaving many, many panels of Jon speaking to no one and staring. I find it unbelievably hilarious.

That’s not why it’s my favorite webcomic, though – and I didn’t realize until today just why I’m so fond of the concept. I love it because I don’t have to actually go to the website to get the effect.

Harper's Island Recap: Week 8

As the episode opens everyone is preparing to get the hell off of the island as quickly as possible. Which I really appreciate. There’s just no reason to stick around in this situation. Which means the killer needs to manufacture one. Hence the luring away of Madison at the end of the last episode. While everyone scuttles about loading their luggage onto the courtesy carts Shae scurries everywhere, desperately searching for her daughter.

In a panic, she asks other people to help her look. Despite the brutal murders, Henry is able to convince everyone else to come along with him to scour the island, assuring them that the boat will wait until the arrive at the dock. There’s a nod in here to Fat Frat’s disappearance, when Douchey and Black Frat discuss where he could have gotten to, without ever addressing the bigger question: Why did you leave him alone in the first place?

The Fourth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics (and the fifth, sort of)

Yeah, I’m not going to try to contextualize this one. How could I do that without ruining the effect? What I will do is offer the next panel, which demonstrates that while Captain Marvel’s plan didn’t exactly work out, he’s not at all unhappy with the results.

Oh, Captain Marvel. Your mind is never given pause by horrifying shifts in the nature of reality, is it?

Crminal Minds Fact-Check: Episodes 101-102

Somehow, while reviewing Criminal Minds, I’ve neglected to cover one really important facet – the true cases that these episodes are based on. While not all of them qualify, I’m sure that there are enough true crime serial killer stories out there that the writers couldn’t help themselves from basing a few episodes on actual crimes. This affords me the opportunity to compare how the actual serial killers were caught, in comparison to the manner in the episodes.

The first real case we’ll look at is the ‘Footpath Killer’ from Episodes 101 and 102. A stuttering gas station attendant in the foothills of Virginia, he’s captured when Mandy Patinkin, who predicted that the killer would have a stutter, randomly happens across his place of employment.

Harper's Island Recap: Week 7

Another week goes by and Harper’s Island staggers along, slowly gaining strength as it starts to get to a point. The stupidest storyline in the show reaches an unbelievably stupid (kind of) resolution, and then we’re left with another cliffhanger.

We begin as the sheriff arrives at the lodge looking for JD. A group in the lobby mentions how annoying it is that the boat isn’t arriving until that afternoon. Hearing that the rooms are going to be searched makes Fat Frat nervous, and he heads up to his room to hide the money somewhere better than under his bed. Fat Frat’s idea? Move it from the duffel bag it was in into a knapsack! Um… why didn’t you do this a while ago? Anyhow, he’s distracted by a knock on the door – it’s Beth wants to talk more, but he’s busy dropping the duffel bag out of the window! Fat Frat is annoyed at missing his chance to talk to a pretty girl, and heads down to the front yard to grab the bag. After a pointless scare involving an extra with a chainsaw (really? You can’t make the pruning wait until after the guests whose friend has been brutally murdered have left that afternoon?) he retrieves the bag and heads back up into his room.

The Canadian Conspiracy!

That's right, folks, the amazing CBC mockumentary about the Canadian plan to infiltrate the American entertainment industry. Thanks to the magic of Youtube, it is now available for all to watch in its entirety.

So watch it.

Part 1

It must be great to be a mainstream comic villain.

People talk about the world of Grand Theft Auto having no consequences for violent mayhem. It seems like they're unfamiliar with the world of Gotham City.

Here are a series of images from Batman: Battle for the Cowl #1. In case you're unfamiliar with the storyline, it concerns the long process of deciding who's going to take over for Batman during his long exile in the distant past (or possibly the Australian outback - it's unlcear). Now, a normal person upon hearing that Batman's "dead" would naturally just assume that Dick Grayson would take over being Batman. DC, on the other hand, took four months and fifteen issues, for a combined cover price of 45 dollars American, to get to that point.