Western Wednesday: Bigfoot Exists

Western Wednesday is a weekly tribute to six-guns, steampunk, and sasquatch.



Eduardo Sánchez, director of The Blair Witch Project, is making a trilogy of Bigfoot films starting with one called Exists. According to Variety, Sanchez will start filming in October and the movie's about "a group of twentysomethings who take a trip to a cabin deep in the wooded wilderness and are methodically hunted by a Bigfoot-like beast."

Sánchez compares the movie to The Legend of Boggy Creek (which isn't as bad a thing as you might think, if only Exists can be half as weird and insane as that movie) and says that his goal is to "make Bigfoot scary" again. Weta Workshop is pitching in on the creature's design and Bigfoot will be played by Brian Steele, who's played lots of similar creatures before, from Kothoga in The Relic to the minotaur in Your Highness. He even has experience with this particular character, having played Harry in the Harry and the Hendersons TV show.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about any of this. I love Weta, but they're not designing the entire monster, just collaborating on it. And I'm glad they have someone who knows what he's doing to play Bigfoot, but that only gets them so far. The story's going to have to be good, but the logline for it sounds totally cliché.

The reason I started Western Wednesdays was because I'm excited about my Western Bigfoot murder mystery in the upcoming Mondo Sasquatch anthology. Ironically, when the editors of the anthology put out their call for stories, their one criterion for submission was that stories not be "typical Bigfoot-scares-teen-campers tale(s)." There's a reason for that: they've been done to death and no one wants to see another one. I'm withholding judgment until I learn more about Exists, but even though I'd love to see a good Bigfoot movie, I'm not convinced that this is going to be the one.

Western Wednesday

In honor of this summer's Mondo Sasquatch anthology and my Western Bigfoot Steampunk story therein, the middle day of the week will henceforth be known as Western Wednesday on this blog and will celebrate all things Western, Bigfoot, and Steampunk.



By Alex Schomburg. [Golden Age Comic Book Stories]



By Craig Wilson.



[Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool]



[From the Files of the Canadian Cave of Cool]



[Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool]

Kill All Monsters and Other Updates

It probably isn't smart of me, but I try not to post about it every Friday when new Kill All Monsters! pages go up. For one thing, I know that a lot of folks read it in chunks instead of every Friday, but I also figure that this way it makes a bigger impact when I do say you should go over and catch up. And folks, you should go over and catch up. If the image above isn't enough to do it, I'll add that page 71 features my favorite panel yet for reasons you'll find very obvious when you see it.

Mondo Sasquatch

In other news, the Mondo Sasquatch anthology will be delayed from next month to later this summer in order to make sure that it's not rushed and that the finished product will look as cool as everyone wants it to.

Robot 6



Something else I haven't regularly been mentioning here is my Robot 6 posting. Part of that is because I figure that those of you who are interested in that are probably reading Robot 6 anyway. But also, I've been doing more daily posts over there lately and it would be annoying for me to say something here every time I did something over there.

Still, I would like to direct your attention to a couple of reviews I wrote for some really excellent books: Incredible Change-Bots 2 (although I actually review both volumes in the article) and Pepper Penwell and the Land Creature of Monster Lake. I feel like Change-Bots needs less promotion, because a lot of people already know about it, but Pepper Penwell is just as good and it would be a shame if people overlooked it. Especially people who like junior detective mysteries and laughter.

Jessica Hickman's new book



Cownt Tales artist Jessica Hickman has illustrated a children's book that's coming out this Halloween. Written by Tom Waltz, Little Jackie Lantern tells the story of a young boy who's too frightened to enjoy everyone's favorite spooky holiday. I haven't read it yet, but I can't imagine a project more suited for Jess' interest in things cute and scary.

SpringCon

The SpringCon guest list has been posted (for a while now, actually) and I'm on it. Looking forward to seeing all of you who live in the Twin Cities. Jason and I are working on a second printing of the Kill All Monsters, Chapter One ashcan, so hopefully that'll be ready in time.

A review I didn't write, but am nevertheless responsible for



I meant to say something at the beginning of the month, but my contribution to the White Elephant Blogathon was Cutthroat Island. For which I owe an apology to Non-Union Mexican Equivalent. I'm sorry you had to watch it, but glad you were able to nail so firmly why that movie didn't work.

Michael goes Mondo (Sasquatch)

Casey Criswell (Cinema Fromage) has announced a Bigfoot anthology that he's co-editing with Louis Fowler (Damaged 2.0) and Rod Lott (Bookgasm, Flick Attack). As the title Mondo Sasquatch suggests, it's a collection of sasquatchian short fiction, which would make it worth picking up even if it didn't have an awesome cover by Jim Rugg (Afrodisiac) and I didn't have a story in it.

But it does and I do. So even better!

When Fowler opened the door for submissions, here's how he described what they were looking for:

Anyone can do a typical Bigfoot-scares-teen-campers tale…we want something different. Stories can put the creature in any time or any place or any situation, as long as it is entertaining! Think your story is too “B-movie”? Chances are we’ll like it even better. Think your “take” is too insane? We want to read it!

So, yeah. Should be a lot of fun.

I certainly had fun with mine. It's called "Bigfoot and the Bone Face Murders" and it's a Western steampunk murder mystery with Bigfoot as the detective. The first sentence goes, "Bigfoot came to Wolf’s Creek looking for the man who killed his bear."

The book's scheduled for a May release and I'll definitely keep you updated as new details are revealed. For now, check out Cinema Fromage for the full list of authors and story titles.



Speaking of hairy creatures, new Kill All Monsters! pages are up and the Kill Team runs into a monster considerably smaller than the kind they usually fight. Too bad they aren't in their robot suits at the time.