Titans Terrors and Toys

Being a lifetime horror and sci-fi geek, I've lost count of how many times I've seen tie-in merchandise items that are made in the image of characters from popular comic books, movies, TV shows and video games. Yet every now and then, a piece of licensed merchandise becomes more recognizable and enduring than the media property from which it originated. Case in point: the Syngenor mask, a monster mask that has made regular appearances in Halloween costume catalogs since the 1980s and can still be found in some costume shops. When I was younger, I had seen this mask appear a number of times in catalogs and in geek-centric magazines such as Fangoria and Starlog , so I assumed for years that it was just one of the generic monster masks that mask companies produce that had no connection to anything other than Halloween and other costuming events. Little did I know that the Syngenor was in fact a movie monster ... just not a very popular one. Read on for details about this pop

With the upcoming animated film Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders scheduled for release later this month, I thought that I would prepare myself by reading Batman '66 , the most recent incarnation of the Adam West and Burt Ward TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968. For those of you who don't know, Batman '66 told all new stories that were set in the Batman universe as it was depicted in the '60s live action Batman TV show, and its publication as a regular comic book series ran from 2013 to 2015. I borrowed a few trade paperbacks from a buddy of mine to see how well this comic book captures the campy humor and outlandish plots from the original TV show, and I'm happy to say that the talent behind the comic book do justice to the source material. Read on ...