Daniel Stalter's Blog, page 19
June 26, 2019
WELCOME TO CAMP NIGHTMARE
Spoiler-Free Review
Welcome to Camp Nightmare wastes no time getting to the good stuff, and maintains good suspense all the way to the final scene. The most unsettling part of the book was the indifference that the camp councilors seem to show towards kids actually dying, suffering various injuries, and disappearing. It creates an isolation effect for the main character, Billy, as his friends are taken out around him. Even though I remembered the...
June 7, 2019
MY BROTHER’S HUSBAND
My Brother’s Husband is an all-ages manga series by Gengoroh Tagame. It was recently collected into two volumes by Pantheon Books, the first of which won the 2018 Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia. It tells a powerful and heartwarming story of grief, family, homophobia, and forgiveness.
Read my full review on Geeks OUT.
May 27, 2019
THE GIRL WHO CRIED MONSTER
Spoiler-Free Review
The eighth Goosebumps book is about a monster librarian who likes to remove his human face and eat flies after the library closes. It’s told through the point of view of a child who’s obsessed with monsters and seems dead set on snitching. From the beginning, I really liked Mr. Mortman. I thought of him as a sweaty, book-loving, fly-eating monster. This book thankfully didn’t waste a lot of time with fake scares, but it did get...
May 14, 2019
THE NEW GIRL
Spoiler-Free Review
This book ended up being quite different than I expected. The ghostly cover and the creepy prologue had me hoping for something supernatural, but that’s not how things panned out. The plot was largely driven by the stupidity of the main character, Cory, as he became hopelessly infatuated with the mysterious Anna. I’m always a little bummed out when the seemingly supernatural elements turn out to just be “crazy” people. Ultimately the book su...
May 6, 2019
NYC QUEER COMIC FAIR 2019
April 27th & 28th, 2019
Bureau of General Services, Queer Division
208 W 13th St #210, New York, NY 10011
Overview
The NYC Queer Comic Fair is a small convention put on by the Bureau of General Services Queer Divison, Carmine Street Comics, and Wabisabizinez. This is their third year running, but the first one I was able to make it to. As a creator, I have grown to love small conventions with low table prices. When they cater to niche markets and communities that I’m a pa...
May 1, 2019
FREE COMIC BOOK DAY GIVEAWAY
In honor of Free Comic Book Day, we are having giving away some books from our stock. All you have to do is fill out the form and select which books you’re interested in. The winners will then be randomly selected, and we will ship them their books free of charge.
The Rules:
We have 5 different tiers that you select. You may enter all 5, but you can only win one. The winners will be selected from the top tier down, so don’t worry about checking the box for single issues when you really w...
April 10, 2019
IMPOSTOR SYNDROME
I held a personal grudge against the A train for a long time. I used to rely on it daily to commute to commute from Bushwick to Washington Heights. Maybe it seems irrational to hate a piece of infrastructure to the point of personifying it and giving it motives, but hear me out. You see, the A train has no true schedule, and it certainly doesn’t give a shit about yours, mine, or anyone else’s. Every morning I would get to the 14th street platform and wait for anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes. De...
March 25, 2019
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY
Spoiler-Free Review
Night of the Living Dummy is one of the best-remembered and most iconic books of the Goosebumps series. It does not live up to its hype. The twin protagonists of the story are straight-up awful. It might have been a spot-on characterization of preadolescent twin sibling rivalry, but it sure made them impossible to empathize with. There is an inherent creepiness to ventriloquist dummies, but the book did little to build on that premise. M...
February 12, 2019
LET’S GET INVISIBLE
Fits of Nostalgia: Goosebumps #6 Spoiler-Free Review My favorite Goosebumps books were the ones with really unsettling endings. Those were the ones that kept me thinking long after the book was finished. I don’t remember ever reading this one as a kid, but the ending easily ranks among the creepiest. It was a bit slow to build to its climax, especially considering the age of the intended audience. I wish more time had been spent on the events in the last third of the book; the first two thir...
February 6, 2019
THE DREAMER’S PARASITE
Since launching Dream Crasher in 2015, I have tabled at 16 different conventions. I’ve repeated my pitch for the series more times than I can count. My favorite part of delivering the pitch has been watching how people respond to one particular phrase. I can tell almost immediately whether or not someone is interested—or decidedly not interested—based on their reaction to “interdimensional parasites that feed on children’s dreams.” That’s either very much your thing, or it definitely isn’t. T...
