Mount Hood

Demonic possession terrifies in horror comic

By: Ben Bergerson

Pivoting from zombies to demons, “The Walking Dead” comic creator Robert Kirkman takes readers for a dark trip in his 2014-released comic series “Outcast.” He and artist Paul Azaceta conjure up striking frames of the traumatic life of the main character, Kyle Barnes.

Kyle has been plagued his whole life by people close to him and he doesn’t know why. His dark past has haunted him until he is approached by his childhood reverend who takes him to visit a boy who the reverend claims is possessed.

What starts as a simple favor turns into the beginning of a search for answers about the strange things that seem to follow Kyle around. Teaming up with the reverend and an ex-cop, Kyle sets out to finally unlock the truth about his past.

“Darkness Surrounds Him,” the first volume, is a perfect read for winter term; it’s scary and a page-turner. Kirkman makes exorcisms and supernatural encounters (which in other works tend to be overdone) incredibly understated. This adds to the mystery and suspense that drives the comic.

Fans of “The Walking Dead” won’t be disappointed with Kirkman’s intense writing. Azaceta takes the tortured words of Kyle Barnes and translates them into harrowing images, creepily staring out from the pages. The mix of deep blue and hot orange on the page evokes a melancholy set on edge.

“Outcast” is a powerful, chilling tale that will make you want to turn on all the lights and lock your doors. Its haunting images and tense dialogue will leave you wanting more.

The comic is published by Image Comics, who also publish “The Walking Dead” and, another personal favorite, “Saga.” You can subscribe to the “Outcast” series directly from imagecomics.com, or you can order by volume on amazon.com.

Grab your holy water before diving in; you’ll need it.

Writing Sins and Tragedies

By: Stephanie Blair 
Copy Editor

In 2006, Panic! At the Disco’s first album, “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out,” was released. Now, 10 years later and with only one original band member remaining, their fifth album has been released: “Death of a Bachelor” (DoaB).

As a long time fan, I immediately pre-ordered upon hearing the announcement of a new album. Their last release, “Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die,” was an integral part of my senior year of high school. To say that I had high expectations of DoaB would be an understatement.

I had doubts after hearing some early releases, such as “Victorious” and “Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time,” but as a late-90s/early-2000s kid, I always listen to an album all the way through in the order it was meant to be played in before I make any judgments.

Now that I’ve had a week to listen to it in and out of order at all different times of day, I can definitively say this:
I hate this album.

Unlike previous records, the songs do not ease into each other and share a voice that is easily identifiable as the album’s theme. In fact, most of the songs don’t sound like they should come from the same artist, let alone the same record.

There are some songs that sound like old Panic! – most notably, “Emperor’s New Clothes.” Others have a pleasing, brass-heavy sound that I had hoped would permeate the album (examples include “The Good, the Bad and the Dirty” and “Hallelujah”), but that isn’t the case.

Most disappointingly, as a long time alternative fan, the majority of the tracks, including “Crazy=Genius” and “Victorious,” have vacuous lyrics with a distinct lack of the wit expected with the Panic! name and a scattered, disjointed style.

So while there are tracks that I enjoy, overall I was disappointed. This is clearly Brendon Urie using the Panic! At the Disco hype to sell what is really his first solo album, now that all of the other founding members have left.

I wanted to like you, DoaB, I really did.

Music Festivals Invade the West Coast

By: Ashton Newton
Staff Writer

For me, the New Year means a lot; it means a new term, a chance for new accomplishments, and a lot of upcoming music festivals.

The most notable and recently announced festivals of 2016 are Coachella in Southern California and Sasquatch on the Columbia River Gorge.

Just 18 hours south of Monmouth, in the town of Indio, CA, hundreds of artists and thousands of fans will gather for one thing: music. 2016’s Coachella lineup includes bands like Guns & Roses, Ice Cube, Calvin Harris, M83, Of Monsters and Men, among others.

Coachella will run the festival twice, on April 15-17 and again on April 22-24, with identical lineups.

One of Coachella’s most notable aspects is the fashion scene. Year after year people come wearing flower crowns and outfits resembling what was commonly seen in the ‘70s.

A little closer to home, Sasquatch features four days of some of the most notable figures in alternative music, most notably The Cure. Sasquatch also features a lot of up and coming musicians, including Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, Houndmouth, and Saint Motel, as well as other popular artists including M83, Grimes, Kurt Vile, and Florence and the Machine.

Sasquatch runs May 27-30 with a cost $350 for a 4-day pass, while a 3-day pass for Coachella will cost $400.

For both festivals, one of the most popular and memorable parts of the experience is the camping. The festivals are multiple days, and a lot of people take the opportunity to camp with their friends in designated campgrounds instead of staying at a hotel.

Sasquatch is also a good thing for Oregon music fans even if you can’t make it to the festival because Portland is bombarded with concerts before and after the festival while artists are in the area. If there were an artist you like playing at Sasquatch, it’d be smart to check up on their tour dates because there’s a good chance Portland will pop up.

Tickets for both festivals are on sale now and going fast, purchasable online at coachella.com and livenation.com.

Alan Rickman Dies at 69

Declan Hertel
Entertainment Editor

It has been a rough month.

First, Lemmy Kilmister, bandleader of Motӧrhead and an inspiration to me as a musician, passed away of an extremely aggressive cancer.

Then David Bowie, a massive creative inspiration in both music and acting died unexpectedly of a cancer kept secret.

And now, the latest in an awfully depressing parade, Alan Rickman, an actor I respected and loved immensely, has passed away after a battle with cancer.

I don’t know how to continue this article. What is there to say? All three of these men changed my life in some way. And now they’re gone.

I didn’t know any of them personally. None of them knew that Declan Hertel existed. But they still touched my life and made me want to be better at my chosen pursuits. And now they’re gone.

I’m trying really, really hard to not be depressed about it. I’m trying, guys. I want to remember them for all the good they did for the world, and for me. Bowie taught me it was okay to be an oddity and embrace what made you strange. Lemmy taught me that you should live large and as loud as possible. Alan Rickman taught me that persistence and a passionate love for what you do will see you through the low times.

But no matter how much they meant to me and countless others, they were still, tragically, mortal.

And honestly, that’s what makes them as great as they are. If they were somehow more, if they really were the superhumans we thought they were, then their accomplishments would diminish. The fact that they had the same limitations as the rest of us makes their triumphs greater, and truly worth remembering.

While the world has darkened for their passing, maybe their legacy will allow someone new to brighten it.

So long, gentlemen.

“The Hateful Eight” Review

By: Declan Hertel
Entertainment Editor

I love Westerns. I love the films of Quentin Tarantino. I love comic ultraviolence. I love snappy, stylized dialogue. I love single-setting stories. I love Tim Roth.

What I’m getting at is I knew I was going to love this movie before I set foot anywhere near the theatre. And boy howdy, did I.

Tarantino’s latest film brings us Minnie’s Haberdashery, a small cabin in the mountains of Wyoming, where two bounty hunters, a wanted woman, and the soon-to-be sheriff of Red Rock, WY, hole up with four other strange and seedy characters to wait out a blizzard. As everyone is locked inside, it becomes clear that not everyone is really a stranger to everyone else, and that some of them may be working toward some hidden agenda. Unraveling the mystery is the three hours’ traffic of the silver screen, and it is just freaking fantastic.

“The Hateful Eight” features a cast full of multiple-movie Tarantino collaborators, notably Samuel L. Jackson (“Pulp Fiction”) and “Reservoir Dogs” alums Michael Madsen and Tim Roth. I love when directors develop a cadre of actors: as they become more and more in tune with each other’s style and vision, it turns the process into one creative whole, rather than trying to herd a lot of disparate people toward a nebulous end. “The Hateful Eight” shines for this reason: the majority of the cast has worked with Tarantino before, several of them many times, and this camaraderie allows everyone to understand what they’re working toward and make it great.

I mentioned this in the opening, but it bears repeating: this film is really, really gory, even for a Tarantino film. If it’s likely to result in a shower of blood and viscera, someone probably does it to someone else during “The Hateful Eight.” Sure, ninety percent is played for laughs, but it’s seriously intense.

I’d also like to address one of the oddest criticisms of this movie that I have been seeing consistently: that it is boring. I have seen the word ‘boring’ used to describe this movie. This is completely unbelievable to me: if you found “The Hateful Eight” boring, I want to know what a tremendously exciting life you must lead to be bored by this film. This film is engaging, exciting, and excellent, and I think you ought to see it.

Now, in true Tarantino style, I’d like to go on a tangent: please, for the love of art, take every review you read with a grain of salt, especially negative reviews. People have vastly different tastes in art, and any review is just that one person’s opinion. Don’t take anyone’s word as gospel. I loved this movie. You may not. I have hated movies you may love. The point is that this is all just my opinion and my interpretation. And because you and I, dear reader, are not the same person, we will likely differ somewhat in our opinions. That’s part of what makes art beautiful: it may not speak to everyone, but for those it does speak to, there’s nothing better.

The Death of David Bowie

By: Declan Hertel
Entertainment Editor

There is no one else in the world I could think of who could be so deeply abnormal as to turn their own death into a piece of art. But David Bowie certainly was and it puts an impossibly perfect cap onto an excellent and diverse career.

I listened to the first half of “★” (pronounced “Blackstar”) when it came out, and was very impressed by it. The spacey, dark electronic sounds of the title track were a surprise to me, but much like the other weird parts of Bowie’s repertoire, it scratched an itch I didn’t know I had before I heard it.

The third track, “Lazarus,” stood out as another gem, not least because of the music video that accompanied it. The song’s first lyrics are “Look up here, I’m in heaven / I’ve got stars that can’t be seen / I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen / Everybody knows me now.”

In retrospect, it should have been painfully obvious. But there are some people who are so iconic, so ubiquitous, so seemingly immortal that we all begin to believe that they’re immortal.
Upon hearing the news of his death, I immediately set to listening to “★” again. It was as obvious as it should have been at first: David Bowie had, absolutely and intentionally, given us a parting gift: one last hurrah. And it was glorious in the purest form of the word.

Bowie created a piece of performance art out of his death, one that I will be forever thankful I was able to experience. He released an album, gave us two days to process it, and then died, revealing its true genius and meaning. While I think the album is great purely on musical merit, it had a higher, ethereal level of greatness that only became clear after he passed, and will never be experienced again in the same way. It’s a work of art that existed to those who heard the album before he died, and only to them. It lasted for a short time and now is just a memory. I’m still kind of reeling from the whole thing.

David Bowie, you were a great artist who inspired many, including myself, and told us all that it’s totally cool to be an oddity, because he knew what it was like to be one. I’ll leave you with my favorite of his lyrics:

“These children that you spit on / As they try to change their world / Are immune to your consultations / They’re quite aware what they’re going through.”
Goodbye, David Bowie. The stars look very different today.

Box Office Force: “Star Wars” Soars

By: Ashton Newton
Staff Writer

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (TFA) opened on Dec. 18 with the biggest worldwide opening weekend of all time at $529 million. Since then, TFA has become the top-grossing movie in America, surpassing James Cameron’s “Avatar.” The film has broken numerous other box office records, including the top grossing IMAX opening of all time.

Reviews for the movie have been mostly positive; TFA is currently sitting pretty on a 93 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviews say that the movie is great for veteran fans and newcomers alike. In a review for Empire magazine, Helen O’Hara said, “It packs a planet-sized punch, launching a new generation of characters who – by the end – take a place next to Han, Leia, and the rest. Star Wars is back, and this is just the beginning.”

Fans don’t have to wait long for a new Star Wars film; Gareth Edwards’ “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” comes out this December, starring Felicity Jones (“The Theory of Everything”) and Mads Mikkelsen (“Hannibal”). “Rogue One” takes place between episodes III and IV. After “Rogue One” in December, fans will have a six-month wait until episode VIII in May 2017 and Episode IX in 2019.

Anthology films much like “Rogue One” will also be coming out. In 2018, a Han Solo movie directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord (“The Lego Movie,” “22 Jump Street”) will be coming out, as well as a Boba Fett movie in 2020.

Rumors have resurfaced recently that Ewan McGregor has been in talks for three upcoming movies with Disney. Fans have been asking for a Kenobi movie for a long time, focusing on Obi-Wan’s life during the 18 years between episodes III and IV. Ewan McGregor also had one line hidden in “The Force Awakens,” reciting Alec Guinness’ famous “These are your first steps” so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him reprise the role as a ghost in future Star Wars films.

New Star Wars material is available right now, too, if you can’t wait until December. Disney has released a number of new canon books including Check Wendig’s “Aftermath” and Claudia Gray’s “Lost Stars.” There are also a number of comics out and more are being rapidly released. There is also Disney’s “Star Wars: Rebels,” which will be returning to finish out season two later this year.

“The Force Awakens” is out now, and there are plenty more Star Wars adventures to be had in the coming months.

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