Over the Garden Wall (G)



The best way to describe Over the Garden Wall - and I have a feeling a lot of people have described it like this - is a Studio Ghibli movie pushed through the filter of CalArts. It follows two brothers lost in a magic forest, trying to find their way home while running into whimsical characters and scenarios with the only thing really connecting them being the occasional whispering of "the Beast." It's a charming little tale, even if it can leave you wondering "okay, the animal school and the ferry of frog people were cute and all, but what did they have to do with the woodcutter and the Beast, again?"

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Batman: Gothic (Written by Grant Morrison, Illustrated by Klaus Janson)



With Arkham Asylum, Grant Morrison dipped into the dream side of the Batman mythos, pitting him against his own psyche while his rogues gallery stood at the sidelines chucking tomatoes at him. Batman: Gothic takes the middle ground and puts the World's Greatest Detective up against dark magics, forcing him to use his brains and rationality to solve a mystery involving the devil himself. It's a decent enough little story, even if the Batcopter and a death trap straight out of the Adam West series showing up in a story about the Black Plague and Satanic monks gives me whiplash.

Speaking of whiplash, sometimes Janson's artwork is great, other times it's beyond wonky. Like, what is Alfred's face doing here?

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Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book IV (Matt Dinniman, Kindle eBook)



This book completely loses its shit in the second half.

Carl and Donut have made it to the fifth floor of the dungeon, and the gimmick is everybody being divided into biomes, each with four castles that all need to be conquered before anybody in that biome can advance to the next floor. And just when you think a lust goddess who's trapped in the severed head of a sex doll joining the gang is the weirdest thing to happen, Carl assembles the titular Gate of the Feral Gods and, well, let's just say things go to the dogs.

Yeah, if you haven't guessed by now, as much as I'm loving this series they're not the easiest books to write reviews about, in part because of how much of them is based on punchy humor, but also because of all the plot threads that spread across the books. This book wrapped up a plot from the first but started another (maybe two if Samantha is her own story), one of which is going to be huge.

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Home on the Range (PG)



You know what, maybe it's just because I was in such a bad mood I wanted anything mindless and colorful to veg out in front of, but I didn't find anything all that offensive about this movie. Oh, there's nothing great about it, either, just some generic kid's adventure with a few pretty desert backgrounds, and it would have been more shocking if the obviously shifty character wasn't a villain. But it didn't enrage me like it does the rest of the Internet.

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Rise of the Guardians (PG)



It's a better film adaptation of Hogfather than the actual film adaptation of Hogfather, I'll tell you that much.

Okay, obviously I don't know for 100% fact that this was inspired by Hogfather, but come on, it's a story about the power of belief involving Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, where the big bad is trying to weaken icons of myth by sabotaging children's faith in them, how can you not draw parallels?

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