Tag: Young Adult

Looking at Lockwood and Co from a Realistic Paranormal Investigator’s Perspective

What we see from Lockwood and Co is in how often they fail to understand the needs of a ghost who was once human.

Lockwood and CoNow playing on Netflix

Lockwood and Co has a ghastly problem. They can’t put a stop to the numerous hauntings around London alone. That is, nobody wants to help this supernatural problem-solving agency since they are like the black sheep of the industry. They are not ghostbusters, and nor are they an offshoot organisation similar to the Society for Psychical Research.

In this world wonderfully conceived of by Jonathan Stroud, these ghosts have an agenda. They want to harm the living but I’m wondering if they’re united or just separately acting out. The five books Netflix plans to adapt will show what the plan is. I haven’t read them, but after watching the first season, I feel the need to.

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Don’t You Forget About Me in Fearbook Club

Marco Matrone’s art gives Fearbook Club a feel of an Archie comic. School’s out for some, but for others, they’re trapped. He portrays these ghosts The Sixth Sense-style.

NOV211082 - FEARBOOK CLUB OGN - Previews WorldAftershock Comics
Available to order on Amazon USA

Fortunately, nobodyis serving detention in Richard A. Hamilton’s graphic novel Fearbook Club. Whit Garcia is the new kid in middle school. He doesn’t gave friends. His concerned principal offershim a place at Yearbook club sincehe loves takingphotos. This lad has a talent for gettingsnaps of ghostly figures too, something he tries to rationalise as dirt or anomalies of light.

It’s a detail I appreciate is in how careful Whit is with his “paranormal investigation.”  He goes digging and discovers this school’s history says it all. For decades, youths have been disappearing. The reason they’re hiding is that they’ve been chased there, bullied by their peers (from various eras), and all of that has created a Freddy Krueger-like character who dampens their spirits. It doesn’t allow them to leave, and it’s the type of traditional horror trope which makes those tales truly terrifying!

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Saving the Child in Nie Jun’s Seekers of the Aweto

Jun’s skillful technique with the pen, brush and watercolours makes the pages leap out like a DreamWorks film.

Amazon.com: The Hunt Is On: Book 1 (Seekers of the Aweto) (9781728420219): Jun, Nie, Jun, Nie: BooksBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Lerner Books
Available to Purchase on Amazon USA 

“The Hunt is On” for Nie Jun’s Seekers of the Aweto. This herb heals any ailment a human has. Rumours say it also grants immortality, but only one out of many has that celestial ability. This plant grows on the heads of a chadolo, multi-coloured earth elementals and to remove it can incurs the wrath of Buddha. Locals believe they contain the soul of the soil that makes up the land, and they will do everything they can to save them.

Xinyue is a seeker of this plant since it’s his family’s business, but he’s something of a bard. He can play the drums and insects will swarm to him to do his bidding. They help him find an Aweto, but when he sees its alive and as cute  as The Child in The Mandalorian, he can’t kill it, and nor can he see it get harmed. The adventure he has with it is as wild as the said Star Wars television show and the Asian flavour lays in how exotic this locale is.

When considering this young lad makes a promise to protect it, to dishonour this land deity can mean bad things for his afterlife. His elder brother Qiliu doesn’t care; The family trade is to locate and sell it to the highest bidder. Volume one sets up the conflict still to come–it’s him and the plant, or him and his brother. The matriarch believes he’ll do what’s right, and it’s no surprise she passes on in this tale. Nobody can dictate what he can do.

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The “SCOOP” Isn’t Just With UFOs When Sophie Cooper is Involved…

The Everglades holds more than one mystery, and the mutants she meets may well be alien. They know things Fox Mulder from the X-Files would salivate over and the cliffhanger left me wanting the next release now instead of waiting a year. Two books remain, and this author confirmed he has ideas on how to continue this series.

Scoop, Vol. 1

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Insight Editions

Book One Available NowSCOOP
Book Two Available Feb 23, 2021 (Available to preorder on Amazon USA)

Sophie Cooper is the next Nancy Drew! Or should that be Lois Lane? Whichever comparison is best, her adventures in SCOOP puts her into dangers that no average television reporter or news journalist would dare face! She hasn’t even earned her wings yet; as an intern, nobody considered that sending her to the archive room to do mundane tasks would lead her to encounters with the paranormal.

This graphic novel series by Richard A. Hamilton also includes aliens and other weirdness. There’s no definitive genre it fits under, as this writer is best known for his fantasy works for DreamWorks/Dark Horse Comics. He authored many supporting novellas for the How to Train Your Dragon and Trollhunters world. I was hooked years ago, as his prose is easy to follow.

This talent also loves his UFO lore, and it shows in this original work. He takes readers to the Florida Everglades and delves into the mysteries hidden there. She is a lot more motivated than anyone else at WMIA 7, a Miami television news station. She will pursue leads to which others won’t, and a lot of the cases she’s on points to a firm connected to all the strangeness going on in Miami.

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On Aliens, UFOs & Proximity with Eric Demusey

Eric Demusey is a Los Angeles based filmmaker making his directorial debut with a young adult sci-fi drama Proximity.

SCOOPArrives on VOD
May 15, 2020

DVD Release
July 7, 2020

Eric Demusey is a Los Angeles based filmmaker making his directorial debut with a young adult sci-fi drama Proximity. As part of the creative team who made the fantastic intro title sequences you see on Stranger Things, Game of Thrones and Tron Legacy, his experience showed he was ready for the next step. Plus, his passion is not limited to special effects work which gave him his start. Nearly everyone working in this industry has a story to tell.

Eric Demusey

Instead of focusing on getting people to believe in UFOs, this movie explores the lasting effects of those who have been abducted and experimented upon for unknown reasons–hence the title. In this tale set in today’s trying times, this creator does not rewrite Fire in the Sky.

I was reminded of this story because of the introduction–where loggers in Alaska are whisked away by a UFO and the trauma we witness is far worse. Fast forward a few years later and change the setting from the boonies to a metropolis, Issac (Ryan Masson) gets his moment with an alien encounter, and tries to figure out what this all means. What he deals with has less to do with horror and more with trauma management.

When considering this movie was made on a budget, Demusey has to be creative in how to make those special effects shots work without overspending. For fans of FX films and UFOs, this movie has a lot of detail to love, and I spoke to him courtesy of Shout! Factory.

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