Freddy Kruger
I redo my Freddy from time to time – Latex doesn’t last that long. one of my favorite elements to this version was the chest of souls exposed!
Free Comic Book Day 2019
Depending on where you live, what shops you have nearby, everyone does something diffrent for Free Comic Book Day. Some shops just hand you a few extra books with your purchase. Others, like the late and lamented York comics, leverage it as a charity event – giving away the gold books but throwing in extra silver books for a canned food donation. And here in Cleveland, at Carol and Johns, they throw a party.
The party is actually on Friday night, the day before FCBD, leading up to the midnight 
release of the books. The shop is open late with sales and deals. At 10:00pm the annex opens with a pop up bar serving complementary soda and comic themed beer. People who tip get an extra free comic. Down on the other side of the strip, another room opens, housing a comic themed (this year the theme was X-Men) art show (it’s also where you go to get your free comics at midnight), where artists in attendance do free sketches and sell their wares. In recent years, other businesses in the same strip complex have gotten in on the act, with the local toy collectors club setting up in the Working Class Brewery, and the ice cream shop offering up an Infinity Gauntlet themed dish.
The lineup starts well before ten though. When I arrived around five, the line had already started. As the night went on, Two podcasts set up shop along the line. An artist set up his easel at the corner. People mingled and played board games in line. Costumes 
began to pop up and take photos. A large Millennium Falcon interior was available for pictures, as well as the wanted poster from the X-Men story “Days of Future Past”. Stormtroopers and Jedi marched in the streets. It’s the party we wait all year for.
There’s always prep for FCBD. I decided this was the year I finally execute the idea I’d been playing with for a couple years. I wanted to do Freddy Kruger as a Yellow Lantern (Sinestro Corps). I’d worn out my old Freddy makeup a few years ago, but that’s fine. The point is to do a makeup (Build it from scratch) that takes several hours while I wait in line, and Sinestro Corps is cool because there are 
glowing lights on the costume – and this is DEFINITELY the event you want to have a glowing costume at. The night atmosphere really brings it out. In anticipation, I had fashioned a new glove with clear yellow blades that lit up, and pulled out the old Sinestro suit from the closet. In addition, my buddy Ryan had put a call out, informing me that he had taken a bungee cord to the eye and was stuck wearing an eyepatch for the next week or so which pretty much ruined his costume plans. “Can you help me pull together a Nick Fury?”. I pulled my leather trench coat, my Winter Soldier Cap shirt and stuck a shield sticker over the buckle of my utility belt, then told Ryan to wear navy pants and we’d dress him on site.
I’d packed the Batmobile accessories as well. It wasn’t a sure thing – the day had been rainy but I figured that if the rain let up and I could find a visible parking space near the line that It would be fun to build up the Batmobile. When I arrived I scored a spot just 
one store away from the end of the line, by the grocery store. It was good enough and I built up the car, then set up my nest in line. After I’d been working on makeup for an hour and a half I’d only gotten the basic structure of the chin done. It was around this time that the car in the space directly in front of my nest in line pulled out. I grabbed my friend Marcus and begged him to hold the parking spot for thirty seconds. I sprinted over to my car, yellow latex chin dangling from my face as he stood in the empty space, arms spread. The Batmobile raced over and took up a place right up front, directly across from my nest. Four hours into the night I’d gotten my Freddy makeup mostly done while chatting with friends from Pop and Panels and the Scoobies. One of the guys from The Panel Scanners Podcast had been eyeing my progress from a distance and now came up to me and asked if I could head over to thier booth so they could interview me. I promised I’d walk down as soon as I suited up and started grabbing costume pieces from my car to pull over my latex and greaspaint stained clothes. I hit the button on my belt to make sure the lights worked.
They didn’t. Crap.
I turned over the battery pack to make sure the AAs were in tight and spotted the problem. The wire that feeds into the socket connector where the battery pack connects in had pulled out. I whipped out my swiss army knife (I always keep it in my car) and my 
buddy Rocky held the belt still, looking on in disbelief as I rewired the belt, bypassing the juncture and splicing the wires directly into the battery pack, then insulating the wires with duck tape.
As we were watching my belt finally light up, Mayday swung by and asked if I had any tape. His belt was giving him problems too. We emptied the roll of duck tape and got him fixed up. I could see it was a bad night for belts when Vito stopped me later on to ask if I could help him fix his Batman belt…..
Inside the shop, Winston discovered he had a suspicious visitor. The cat eyed the strange dog in the spider-man costume warily. FCBD is always a little rough on the comic shop’s 
feline mascot. The crowds inside were packed shoulder to shoulder, debating the virtues of the Wolverine Canadian Ale vs the Cyclops Weak Summer Pilsner. I was certain that Endgame was all anyone would be talking about. Much to my surprise, it wasn’t. The conversations around me were constantly “What do you think of the new Child’s Play movie coming out?” or speculation on the new Sonic the Hedghog film.
Back at the nest, Jen and her kids descended on us and my friend Vanessa pulled up a chair after her place in line had gotten ursurped by a bunch of guys noisily playing marvel monopoly practically on top of her seat (We’re happy to take in refugees). Rocky and Mayday grabbed thier hammer and lightsaber respectively asking if the trolls needed eviction. She shook her head laughing.
Every single year I’m amazed at how fast six or seven hours in line pass. But then, it’s not really a queue – it really wouldn’t be worth this kind of wait, just for ten free comics (eleven if you could the graphic novel they throw in for the first 200). No, this is a party that lasts all night. I’d be back in the morning for another run through. The day event is a little more subdued and I usually hit Comics are Go as well, but the evening party is the one we always spend the most time at. It’s one of the benefits of having one of the best comic shops in the country local, and no one else does FCBD like this.
Freddy Kruger
My personal definitive way of drawing iconic characters
It’s Halloween time, and I can’t think of a monster I’ve drawn more often than Freddy.
There were a couple of promotional shots of Freddy in a trenchcoat here and there and I’e always preferred that look. Why it only ever made it’s way into New Nightmare and none of the other movies, I’ll never know.
Those arn’t just random ridges on his face by the way, watch and you’ll see I always follow the lines and contours of his face. It’s a pattern I fell into a long time ago, and just makes the most sense to me when drawing Kruger!
Finally, you’ll notice one addition to the glove. I must have been seeing things, but I could swear when I was younger I saw a little hooked blade on his thumb on the boxes for NOES 2. I know it’s not there, but I’ve always kept it anyhow, for the sake of novelty, it seems like it’d be a good tool to add to the glove.
Nightmare on Elm Street
I went into this with a positive attitude. Robert Englund put it in perspective for me when he told me “I come from the stage, and every new production is a remake of something that’s gone before”. Yeah this makes sense.
Also, let me be clear, I don’t hate Jackie Earl Haily in the role. I think he’s a brilliant actor and really came to love him during his brief stint on TV’s Human Target. I knew I’d have a hard time accepting anyone in this role other than Robert and Jackie was a good a choice as any, better than most.
So why did this film turn out so terrible?
As much as I like Haily, I do have to say, I just can’t get behind that makeup job. I do understand what they were going for, a more realistic burn victem and it might have worked if this were an original concept, but this is a remake and you have to convince me. Freddy’s face has far more character than this, I’m sorry.
It’s really the least of my worries here though. It’s the rest of the cast we really need to worry about.
Perhaps it’s unintentional, perhaps it was written into the script, but honestly, I don’t LIKE any of these kids. I can’t build any sympathy up for them. I don’t know if the producers were thinking they were just trying to appeal to the goth/emo crowd, but whatever they were trying to do, they failed. The thing is, it’s a stark contrast to Nancy from the original film, who was a very ordinary person that had to reach down and find her inner strength, ultimately becoming a much stronger heroine. The Nancy of this film is depressed, lifeless, and never inspiring. We get an angry beatdown towards the end, but that’s not strength, it’s just rage. Nothing inspiring to see here folks.
And then there’s the CG…
I think Freddy vs. Jason made great use of the CG with the blood drops and the Freddy shadow. Here’s they especially like to use it during homages – the most egregious offender is when Freddy comes out of Nancy’s wall. in the original a pane of spandex looked eerie, it filled us with dark wonder. here, CG Freddy looks like a balloon animal. Not threatening at all.
We g
et mildly better homage to the stairs scene and an almost shot by shot remake of the bathtub scene, but it’s all just so uninspired. Maybe if I cared about these people but I just don’t and that makes the clever stuff – the misdirection (did Freddy do it or not?), the micro nap theory, the scheme (trap Nancy in dreams) and the great moments like in and out of dreams in the pharmacy, it’s all irrelevant if I just don’t care about these people.
So definitely, if I were to do this again, I’d make my heroes stronger, and probably lose the homages altogether, remembering that it’s not the scenes that make the original great, it’s the concept, the story and the people.
Argo City Comics 