SPECTATORS - Part 25
Plus, BKV's spoiler-free review of NOPE!
What a wild weekend.
Brian here, very grateful to everyone who checked out Paper Girls on Prime Video this weekend. How wonderful are those actors? And how cool was my childhood hero “Weird Al” Yankovic about his unintentional double homicide across two of my adaptations?
Okay, enough laurel-resting, time to get back to making new stuff (or at least sitting back and watching Niko Henrichon make some of my favorite pages ever).
When last we left Spectators, the living and ghostly witnesses to a brutal underground tournament were all dispersing, but our 21st Century spectre Val isn’t done watching one particular story unfold in New York City’s distant future…
Can you find Val in that surreal Where’s Waldo double-page spread above?
As always, I encourage you to enjoy Niko’s hard work on the biggest and brightest screen you’ve got. And if you’re just joining our serialized graphic novel, be sure to check out all 24 previous installments (still 100% free to read) over in the Exploding Giraffe Archives.
Next Monday: our story enters the wilds of Brooklyn.
On behalf of the entire cast and crew of Paper Girls, (including co-creator Cliff Chiang and slightly less-handsome fellow Executive Producer Brad Pitt), I wanted to thank everyone for the very kind words about our first season.
I wish I had enough of these prize-packed Cleveland Preserver totes to send all of you, but alas, this is all I’ve got at the moment:
And our randomly selected commenter from last week’s private forum is…
…Samiha Elvira Shamseddine!
Congrats, Samiha, who wrote about a favorite moment from our first season:
“When [SPOILER] was revealed as Grand Father and how spot-on of an actor he is for that role. 🤌🏼.”
I redacted the actor’s identity since I was stunned that Prime Video was able to keep it secret long enough for many of you to be surprised by the incredible first appearance of this amazing performer (and hardcore fan of the Paper Girls comic).
Anyway, thanks again for watching, Samiha, and our intern/mascot Genesis the Giraffe will be reaching out for your mailing address soon.
If you fellow members of The Tower didn’t win this week, don’t despair, I’ll try to get my hands on some more cool Paper Girls swag soon.
Now that I’m back from the Paper Girls press junket, it’s an envelope-stuffing week here at Exploding Giraffe H.Q., so we’ll be sending out a lot of your signed comics and a few more Founder rewards.
And if you recent winners of these Saga Starter Packs and/or some junk from the Almighty Prize Drawer haven’t gotten your goodies (?) yet, they should be hitting your mailboxes any second now…
My wife took this awesome shot of our billboard sandwiched between the Hollywood sign and a massive poster for Jordan Peele’s Nope, which my son and I went to see while the rest of you were bingeing Paper Girls.
No spoilers since this is truly the kind of movie you should go in blind for (these days, I even try to avoid trailers for stuff I really want to see), but I will share that I absolutely loved it.
The brutal and haunting Us remains my favorite of Peele’s first three directorial outings, but Nope edges past the brilliant Get Out for the silver in this intimidatingly impressive trilogy of terror.
Clearly influenced by both Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Nope could have been just a crowd-pleasing pastiche of those Spielberg classics, but just as Quint’s monologue helps elevate Jaws from a great movie to an important one, the Gordy sequence of Nope (you’ll know it when you see it) reveals that Peele has something original, personal and shockingly insightful to say about how/why we watch movies, and at what cost to those who make them.
If you’ve been reading Spectators, you know that some of those subjects absolutely ring my bell, but unlike our perverted graphic novel, I got to enjoy this story with my 12 year old, and we’ve spent the last few days discussing and debating various details. When’s the last time you saw a movie that didn’t dissolve from your consciousness as you were headed to the parking lot?
So yeah, if you haven’t caught it yet, I highly recommend you check out Nope before it starts streaming. Going by the reaction of our packed audience at the Drafthouse, it’s the kind of experience movie theaters were made for.
Which reminds me, I wanted to ask you, other than Nope, what are some recent HORROR films/shows/books/games/comics/whatever that you loved?
Our Monday chats are always open to everyone, so even if you’re a fraidy cat who doesn’t like horror, please pop in and introduce yourself, especially if you’re a new subscriber to Exploding Giraffe.
This Friday, Niko will be gracing your inboxes with his best “Artopsy” yet, but for now, have a lovely rest of your week.
Your pal,
BKV
Enjoying “Something is Killing The Children”
Some good recent horror stuff:
Something is Killing the Children
House of Slaughter (SiKtC spinoff)
Nice House on the Lake
(Basically anything James Tynion IV writes)
The Fear Street Trilogy (Netflix)
Midnight Mass (Netflix)
There's more but I will have to get back to you lol