Dude...check out this shit!

ANI-MOVIES, *Houdini

This French-animated movie originally titled Little Houdini shows a revisionist origin to Harry Houdini as a he was just getting into learning magic as a child.

Houdini is brought in by none other than Nikola Tesla during his unknown magician period. Along with his niece and his clockwork oven robot, Tesla teaches Harry to take part in an upcoming premiere for young magicians at the grand opening of the Statue of Liberty. However, Tesla’s former student dupes Harry into helping him make off with Tesla’s notebook containing all his scientific secrets.

This was mostly put together as a pilot for a possible TV series, but still maintains a truly genre-breaking art style, with hints of anime influence here and there. The dub is passable, although it might be worth hearing it in the original French as well.

Star Wars Battlefront will only be cool when it has anime bunnygirls!

MISC. MANGA, *Saiko & Lavender

Saiko & Lavender was a mini-series was created by "Ameri-manga" veterans Diana Sprinkle and Michael Vega originally printed by Anti-Ballistic Pixelations, whose only other title was the exceptionally decent manga-styled comic Gremlin Trouble. This was later collected into a trade paperback by Radio Comix, followed by an original Halloween special.

Set in an anthropomorphic world where magic is a common everyday thing thanks to the Magi-Cal corporation selling special potions and other magical items, sort of like Materia from Final Fantasy. However, this doesn't stop small-time brick and mortar shops from selling homegrown spells, like the money-grubbing purple catgirl Lavender and her partner, the hyperactive super-speed bunnygirl Saiko who can move so fast it appears as if she's just replicating all over the place. The make a delivery to some needy clients who need a pocket monster to defeat a rival kaiju, but their trip gets held up with Saiko getting abducted by aliens and taken into space, despite being able to move so fast in between both there and space so she's simultaneously in two plotlines, but Saiko is also infatuated by their old car which is fueled by love potion. Are heroines then have to try and get their shop back from overzealous superheroine mousegirl Veronica working for Magi-Cal who confiscates their store in a snowglobe. After a visit from the devil(the same one featured in Monsters Of Rock)they manage to get their store back, take down Magi-Cal, and stop an infestation of obnoxious miniature elephants.

The mini-series had a one-shot titled Saiko & Lavender Spooktacular Special, which shows the girls getting their store ready for Halloween as it brings in a bunch of Harry Potter fanatics. We also get a cute flashback sequence with Saiko & Lavender as kids experiencing their first Halloween.

Even though the comic is well over a decade old, it's really worth looking into. It was available for free on Webcomics Nation, but the site has been taken down, so try to see if you can locate a copy of the graphic novel or the one-shot.

RAGING BITCH MODE!

Happy 60th Anniversary to the invention of Time Travel!

MISC. MANGA, *The Steam Man

Joe Lansdale and Mark Alan Miller wrote this weird west equivalent of War of the Worlds.

In 1895, an industrial town in the west created their own steam-powered giant called the Steam Man that was created to counter a colossal robot squid that keeps attacking. After the pilots realize the thing running the mechanical menace is something not of this world, the Steam Man’s crew sets out where this creature came from. Jump to 1899, and the story shows the team hunting who they believe is the source of this evil, a demonic vampire known as the Dark Rider, who had killed the Steam Man’s captain.

This has some dark overtones to it, but plays out well in the over the top spirit of a John Carpenter movie.