REVIEW: Silhouettes from Popular Culture by Olly Moss

GNAT

I received this book a little while back so that we here at ZOMBIES&Toys could review it. After plowing through it once, identifying all of the pop culture references I knew on my own, I recruited “the man” to partake in the fun and fill me in on the ones which I had no clue about. I have to say that the third time through the book I was astounded by the intricate details in the artwork. I was amazed at how just a silhouette could bring back so many memories of my favorite things from my childhood and pseudo-adulthood.

I began to read about the artist, Olly Moss, and I found out that these silhouettes were cut out using LASERS! Yes, that is correct. As if a really amazing cut out of the Bride of Frankenstein could get any better! Then you learn it was cut by a laser… needless to say, Mind. Blown.
I had the extreme desire to say things like, “why can’t I have freaking sharks with freaking lasers on their heads?”

Alas, I digress, this book is great! Full of amazingly detailed “shadows” of all of your favorite characters from television shows (he did the entire cast of Saved by the Bell!) and movies—like StarWars and Beetlejuice—to videogames—including Super Mario and Final Fantasy.

I can NOT say enough about how amazing this book is and how at least one of the items will end up as permanent art on me at some point in the near future. So, get this book, like NOW. It is well worth a look and a chuckle while you say, “OMG that is so-and-so” then, after you look through, you can recruit and see who else high enough on the up and up in pop culture to know which Bond is which by the silhouette alone!
You can snag it over at Titan Books, or head to their store over on Amazon.com, or just about anywhere they sell really cool books. So, since you are obviously already on the internet, go and… you know… get this book!

Swirlies!

Todd Jepperson

For those of you who attended SDCC this year, you may have already heard that 2012 is the twenty year anniversary of Roman Dirge’s Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl. For those of you who haven’t, today is that day.

Lenore is the dark and hilarious comic book series from the twisted mind of Roman Dirge. Taking the name from the popular poem by Edgar Allen Poe, Dirge created a one of a kind universe called Nevermore where Lenore and her “friends” “play.” The comic is a series of original stories, re-vamped children’s songs and nursery rhymes, and deep pop-culture subversions only possible in the ghoulish world of Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl.

(click for bigger zombies)

If you haven’t had the unique privilege of experiencing Lenore, you’re definitely missing out. The misguided antics of this adorable little monster typically end up in the death and/or dismemberment of any of the cast who is unlucky enough to share a panel with her. It’s not like she tries to hurt them (except Gosh; but that dude is just creepy), she’s only ten years old. She just gets mixed up in all the same kinds of trouble your average ten year old would get into—if they were risen from the dead, accompanied by the Eternal Vampire Scourge in a rag-doll body, and hunted by scores of bounty hunters from “the stinky bowels of heck.” We’ve all been there, right?

This month, Dirge and Titan Books will continue the celebration with the release of the fourth hardback in their series of graphic novel collections of Lenore comics entitled: Swirlies. This all-new 120 page collection features the apparently very rare number thirteen comic as well as issues one through three of the new Volume II comics, including instant classics like “the Birfday Party” where Lenore stumbles upon a party invite and when she arrives, all of the birthday guests somehow end up dead. Also included: the tragedy that is the “Valentine’s Day Nard” and old favorites like the socially awkward, semi-autobiographical “Things Involving Me” comics about Dirge’s Life.

Pre-order your copy of Swirlies today from Amazon; or any of your favorite retailers, and then sit back and let Roman Dirge’s madness work on you. You absolutely cannot be disappointed. 

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