A mother and her two sons move to a small coast town in California. The town is plagued by bikers and some mysterious deaths. The younger boy makes friends with two other boys who claim to be vampire hunters while the older boy is drawn into the gang of bikers by a beautiful girl. The older boy starts sleeping days and staying out all night while the younger boy starts getting into trouble because of his friends' obsession.

1987 film by Joel Schumacher, Richard Donner

"In every generation there is a chosen one... she alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer." Buffy Summers knows this tale by heart, and no matter how hard she tries to be just a "normal girl", she can not escape from her destiny... Thankfully, she is not alone in her quest to save the world, as she has the help of her friends, the hilarious (and surprisingly quite effective) evil-fighting team called "The Scooby Gang". Together, Buffy & co. will slay their demons, survive one apocalypse after another, attend high school and college... and above all, understand that growing up can truly be Hell sometimes... literally.

1997 American supernatural drama TV series

The body of a young girl (Laura Palmer) is washed up on a beach near the small Washington state town of Twin Peaks. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate her strange demise only to uncover a web of mystery that ultimately leads him deep into the heart of the surrounding woodland and his very own soul.

American drama television series from 1990–1991

In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men — and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive. The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction.

After his death sometime in his 43rd year, suburbanite Lester Burnham tells of the last few weeks of his life, during which he had no idea of his imminent passing. He is a husband to real estate agent Carolyn Burnham and father to high school student Jane Burnham. Although Lester and Carolyn once loved each other, they now merely tolerate each other. Typical wallflower Jane also hates both her parents; the three suffer individually in silence in their home life. Jane tries to steer clear of both her parents. Carolyn, relatively new to the real estate business, wants to create the persona of success to further her career, aspiring to the professional life of Buddy Kane, the king of the real estate business in their neighborhood. Lester merely walks mindlessly through life, including at his job in advertising. His company is downsizing, and he, like all the other employees, has to justify his position to the newly hired efficiency expert to keep his job. Things change for Lester when he falls in love at first sight with Jane's more experienced classmate, Angela Hayes. Both Janie and Angela can see Lester's sexual infatuation with Angela, who courts such attention from any man as a sign that she is model material, she having once appeared in Seventeen and is a career to which she aspires. Lester's infatuation with Angela gives him a reenergized view on life, where he openly doesn't care anymore what anyone thinks about what he does, anyone except Angela. This infatuation coincides with the Fittses moving in next door: homophobic disciplinarian US Marine Colonel Frank Fitts who rules the house with a military fist (that fist being both figurative and literal), his semi-comatose wife Barbara Fitts, and their bright and quietly subversive 18-year-old son Ricky Fitts, who openly abides by his father's rules while behind the scenes lives by his own quite different perspective. Much like Lester's infatuation, Ricky immediately becomes infatuated with Jane; he considers girls like Angela as ordinary. The entry of Angela and the Fittses into the Burnhams' lives ultimately leads to each of the players confronting what is truly in his or her heart.

Jacob Singer is trying to make sense of his fractured life and memories. Plagued by hallucinations, flashbacks, and conspiracies, he struggles down a path to enlightenment from these manic strains. With nothing but support from friends and loved ones will he be able to push through the haze of his PTSD.

Following a truck hijack in New York, five criminals are arrested and brought together for questioning. As none of them are guilty, they plan a revenge operation against the police. The operation goes well, but then the influence of a legendary mastermind criminal called Keyser Söze is felt. It becomes clear that each one of them has wronged Söze at some point and must pay back now. The payback job leaves 27 men dead in a boat explosion, but the real question arises now: Who actually is Keyser Söze?

Parody of television soap-operas--the show's humor relies on exaggerating soap-operas' characteristic plot implausibility and melodrama to ridiculous extremes, then adds a fair bit of the truly bizarre, including some remarkable characters.

The story of superhero The Tick, based on the popular comic book.

Enn is a sixteen-year-old boy who just doesn't understand girls, while his friend Vic seems to have them all figured out. Both teenagers are in for the shock of their young lives, however, when they crash a local party only to discover that the girls there are far, far more than they appear! From the Locus Award-winning short story by Neil Gaiman--one of the most celebrated authors of our time-- and adapted in vibrant ink-and-watercolor illustrations by the Daytripper duo of Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, this original hardcover graphic novel is absolutely not to be missed!

The New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman's transcendent series THE SANDMAN is often labeled as not only the definitive Vertigo title, but also as one of the finest achievements in graphic storytelling. Gaiman created an unforgettable tale of the forces that exist beyond life and death by weaving ancient mythology, folklore and fairy tales with his own distinct narrative vision. THE SANDMAN #1 is featured here as a part of the DC ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIAL GRAPHIC NOVELS AND CHRONOLOGY 2014 catalog. Inside is an expansive look at our rich backlist collection created by the best writers and illustrators in the industry. This catalog can be used as an important resource for new fans seeking a starting point, as well as look back at our impressive backlist for the most fervent DCE enthusiasts.

Moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language. With a timeless charm it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.

The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, has a masquerade ball within seven rooms of his abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms.  The story follows many traditions of Gothic fiction and is often analyzed as an allegory about the inevitability of death, though some critics advise against an allegorical reading. Many different interpretations have been presented, as well as attempts to identify the true nature of the titular disease.

You know that thing, where you find this great webcomic and spend half an hour clicking through it backwards, seeing whether it only had a few good strips, or whether its actually solid throughout, and then you figure "what the hell, I'm not doing anything tonight" and so you click the 'archive' button, and go back to the first comic, and it's from 2002, and it's just bad--flat art, dumb jokes, no sense of pacing? That's the experience of reading Scott Pilgrim.The jokes lack subtlety and insight, the characters are consistently annoying, the art's rudimentary, everyone looks the same (except for their hair, which the author constantly changes, anyways). I've heard some people blame manga/anime inspiration for the similarity of O'Malley's characters, but there are plenty of manga artists who have mastered the art of caricature, and use it to great effect. Also like a web comic archive, it gradually gets better--but not quickly enough.It's reminiscent of Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, a movie I tired of about halfway through. Both of them are trying to be cutesy, quirky, ironic, and referential, but it's all very familiar stuff. I never felt there was a quick, complex mind at the helm--and with modern, referential humor, it's all about the delivery and the originality.Then again, by this point, quirky internet humor has entered the mainstream and lost much of its punch, like Jerry Seinfeld talking about airline food: now everyone’s doing it. It's like your friend who thinks saying 'remember that episode of Family Guy?' is the same as telling a good joke. Both Nick and Nora's and Scott Pilgrim were by-the-book quirky. None of it is going to strike you as interesting or witty if you’re the least bit familiar with internet subcultures and humor already.Both also had somewhat unsettling homophobic overtones, playing off all the gay characters and same-sex romance for jokes--and cute lesbians for titillation. It's nice to have more openly gay characters in YA media, but not as thin, walking punchlines. It was worse in 'Infinite Playlist', but there was still a persistent undercurrent of homosocial discomfort.The book was also very reminiscent of the splendid anime FLCL, from the mysterious, begoggled, badass delivery girl arriving to complicate the (sex) life of our oblivious jerk protagonist to the naive, sweet waif caught up in it all--the seemingly normal world invaded by magic, twisting our expectations of reality. Yet unlike FLCL, this was not a rollicking, take-no-prisoners, psychedelic reimagining of the genre, it was just a dull story about annoying people occasionally perked up by in-joke fight scenes. The musical obsession was another shared thread, right down to the same characteristic Rickenbacker.It's very soap opera: who is dating who, who used to date who, which would be more intriguing if I were interested in the characters. Instead, they’re the sort of dull, naive, self-absorbed people that I spent high school and college avoiding, right down to the fratboy favorite lipstick lesbian poster on the wall and an undying reverence for whatever bands Pitchfork told you to listen to this week. They value music solely because of their emotional reactions to it, but they act as if this somehow makes them special, as if their emotional connection to a particular song were somehow more valid than the average jugglette's.Then there's the obsession with the rarity of music: collecting unknown bands and staking claim, which is a symptom of the fact that most trendy people don't recognize the difference between a cause and its effect. It's true that a knowledgeable musicologist or musical historian will be familiar with a number of 'undiscovered' bands, but deliberately seeking out unknowns will not make you more musically sophisticated--most unknown bands are unknown for good reason.Scott himself is a mess, and yet without being either sympathetic or complex. He's definitely got that Holden Caulfield 'woe-is-me, it's not my fault I'm an asshole' vibe. As it goes on, it resembles a harem anime more and more, where all women fight over Scott all the time, despite the fact that he's a self-absorbed loser.Now, some authors, like Nabokov or Anna Kavan, have succeeded in presenting these awful, unpleasant characters in a way that reveals their natures, the psychology which drives them to be so self-centered and thoughtless--helping us to understand these characters, and even sympathize with them, while still disliking them. It’s difficult to do, but certainly possible. Unfortunately, there's very little introspection in Scott Pigrim, the story touches superficially on a lot of parts of childhood, especially trends, but almost never turns a critical eye on them. Everything is taken for granted, not only by the characters, but seemingly by the author. Other characters do sometimes get angry at Scott, or criticize his behavior, but this isn't the same as a commentary on the sort of person he is--we don't see him change, or suffer more than temporary drawbacks.There's something funny about a story centered on character interaction that eschews psychological progressions or conflict resolution in favor of videogame powerups and ninja battles. But then, how many self-absorbed videogame-loving assholes wish that sex and relationships were acquired and maintained by minigames and xp grinding?Each issue is incrementally better than the last: the story becomes more streamlined, and O'Malley takes more artistic chances, usually to the general benefit of the comic, eventually hiring on other artists who really improve the style--though in all the reviews, no one ever mentions Kantz and Ancheta. Then again, it's not like they get billing on the cover, which is a pretty disingenuous move by O'Malley: he brings in some talented artists to improve his book and he gets all the credit.Between the ever-growing cast of indistinguishable characters and the author's love of flashbacks, the storytelling leaves a lot to be desired, particularly in terms of clarity. We certainly didn't need over a thousand pages of to get here, there were maybe three volumes worth of story--with some stronger structure and development to drive toward the conclusion, it could have been solid. If I'd read a thousand pages of Hellboy or Blueberry, I could have tackled ten or fifteen complete story arcs spanning decades and continents.Sure, we get a lot of foreshadowing, but that isn't the same as actually exploring how events came about or what they meant. It’s just characters constantly referencing their background, then getting interrupted before they can explain it. It’s such a patently artificial way to maintain tension.All in all, Scott Pilgrim feels very much like a mid-level webcomic. It centers on the author's life and experiences, harping on in-jokes and hobbies, but lacks the character, narrative structure, wit, or art that sets good webcomics apart. It does improve, by the last volume, into something more enjoyable to read, but it’s not enough to make up for all the time spent getting to that point.\
  My Suggested Reading In Comics\


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