This Trouble Goes To Eleven – Review Of Doctor Who 7.1 “Asylum Of The Daleks”

(Ed. Note – This review will be spoily woily, which is like timey wimey or explodey wodey or whatever, but with more spoilers. Starting pretty much immediately. You’ve been warned.)

Last night was the premiere of Doctor Who season 7. Last night was also the night I discovered that Layer Cake Wines makes an excellent, if powerful, Grenache that will knock you on your ass and make it very difficult to post a review in real time, let alone live tweet it. This is probably just as well, given the number of folks I saw in my Twitter stream threatening to do awful things to those who might post any hint of spoilers that might ruin their own personal viewing experience when they get around to finally watching it themselves, in their own good time. For example:

.@davemaulding @sizzlerkistler Yeah, I haven’t watched it yet. I’ll be blocking and cursing anyone who spoils it for me.

— Janna O’Shea (@dreamyeyed) September 2, 2012

But, it’s a whole new day and I’m sober. Therefore, I feel I should dispense with the niceties and warn everyone up front that last night we learned that The Doctor regenerates and comes back as Raptor Jesus. Also, the Ponds discover they can assemble themselves into Voltron. Oh, and The Doctor’s new companion is a Dalek.

One of these things may or may not be true.

Read the rest of my actual review, after the jump!

Tales From The Crypt Door: Locke & Key: Grindhouse One-Shot Review

I’m gonna have to start out this review by admitting that I haven never read Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key series, which is a point of shame for a serious comics fan… particularly one who’s read and enjoyed Hill’s novels Horns and Heart Shaped Box… and before you start: yes, I can read books without pictures, smartass. I simply generally choose not to, which means that Hill’s novels must be pretty fucking good for me to break that habit. Either that, or I didn’t feel comfortable waiting for job interviews with a big Howard Chaykin trade paperback. But I’m getting off point here.

The point is that I knew nothing about Locke & Key other than its good reputation when I picked up the Locke & Key: Grindhouse one shot. I imagined that there were probably locks and keys involved, but whether they were of the door or the canal transit and-Florida-homosexual-mecca varieties, I had no fucking idea. And for all I know, the original story arcs are about either, both or all of those things. But this story is a period piece about criminals on the lam with nothing to lose, which is an effective and engaging throwback to EC Comics horror and crime stories from the 50s. And it’s really pretty damn cool.