Today’s Penny Arcade is about World of Warcraft, Gabe’s Worgen character and the artificial nature of game quests. It’s also about the opposite of a glass of warm milk.

Fresh from Shock Till You Drop, here’s a first look at the werewolf from the upcoming horror movie “13 Hrs”. Yikes!

There are two more, both showing some of the body, so go check them out if you’re curious.

13 Hrs premieres Saturday, August 28th at the London FrightFest in Leicester Square, London. I can’t go, being on a totally different continent, but if you’re lucky enough to see it… I hate you. Tell me what it was like.

Oh good, CSI creator/writer Anthony Zuiker just told Deadline that they’re planning an episode for the original, Vegas-based show “about a vampire and werewolf convention”. You can tell he’s on a real creative roll because in the same paragraph he mentions Justin Bieber and a shark in a swimming pool. This is going to be fucking great. I’ll have to make room for that on my DVR, along with all those episodes of “The Gates” and “Vampire Diaries” I’m watching while I BeDazzle another “Team Jacob” t-shirt to sell on Etsy. Seriously, get Rob Zombie to direct that CSI episode or don’t even bother squeezing Laurence into that suit.

Won’t someone please bring werewolves to North American prime time TV in a way that celebrates and enjoys the horror roots of the monster? The closest thing to a horror werewolf we’ve got on TV right now is a show about a serial killer / lab geek in the Miami Metro Police Department. I love you, Dex, but I’d love you even more if you were all about fur and claws instead of rubber aprons and bone saws.

I’m cranky. I’m going to have some tea and listen to some old Mighty Boosh radio shows.

Here are some more werewolf pictures I’ve seen over the past few weeks and liked enough to want to save somewhere. More than a few of these came from the excellent Red Project and #Werewolf-Horror.

Fuzzy Camera / fuzzycamera.tumblr.com

Standard disclaimer: if I’ve posted something of yours here and you’d rather I didn’t, please let me know. Also, some of these are available on shirts or as prints. Support awesome artists and buy some of their work!

As reported first in the LA Times (and then quickly picked up by a dozen other movie news sites), the Weinstein Co. division of Dimension Films is moving ahead with a remake of “An American Werewolf in London”. The script will be written by Fernley Phillips, whose only other writing credit seems to be “The Number 23” (yes, the movie where a “dark” Jim Carrey plays a saxophone). When AWIL’s original writer and director John Landis sold the rights to the remake last year, I was cautiously neutral. 13 months can change a lot in a man, and my current feelings on the matter are much more focused:

Dimension? Fernley Phillips? Do not fuck this up. Give Rick Baker a blank cheque and convince Edgar Wright to direct and you might have a shot. Otherwise, put the whole thing back on the shelf and back away slowly.

Image credit: Alex Proimos

Normally I’m not inclined to pay much attention to fantasy novels with the word “wolf” in the title. If there are werewolves in the story (and there aren’t always), they tend to be framed in the context of mystical spirit warriors, in touch with nature but aloof from humankind. I don’t know about you, but that angle bores the hell out of me. Put a picture of a giant wolf on the cover, give his eye a mysterious gleam, surround him with verdant hills or snow-covered trees and maybe have a woman standing beside him with her hand on his back, and I will skip right on by to see if Terry Pratchett’s done anything new lately.

All of this is to say that I’m not real big on (were)wolf fantasy books. Then a week or two ago, PenningtonBeast sent me a link to “The Wolf Age“, a fantasy novel by James Enge due out October 5th. Two things struck me right away. First, I judged the book by its cover (hi-res version!) and detected potential for awesomeness. That mean-looking guy has a torch and the requisite glowing sword, but he’s also got problems. That’s a lot of werewolves, and they’re not happy. Second, the story sounds really interesting. The synopsis is loaded with things I normally avoid, like fantasy names and keywords like “immortal”, “gods” and “northlands”, but dang if it doesn’t sound like a story I want to know the end of:

Wuruyaaria: city of werewolves, whose raiders range over the dying northlands, capturing human beings for slaves or meat. Wuruyaaria: where a lone immortal maker wages a secret war against the Strange Gods of the Coranians. Wuruyaaria: a democracy where some are more equal than others, and a faction of outcast werewolves is determined to change the balance of power in a long, bloody election year.

Where can I get a travel brochure for Wuruyaaria? How can I get registered as a voter? Short of that, I guess we’ll have to wait until the book comes out on October 5th. I get the sense that this book is related to two others that Enge has written, Blood of Ambrose and This Crooked Way. Those got some solid reviews, so I’ll be checking those out before October comes around. And if illustrator Dominic Harmon and designer Jacqueline Cooke ever offer a poster of that cover…

It’s basically a “Twilight” spoof by the same people who did “Scary Movie” and its sequels, “Disaster Movie”, “Date Movie”, “Meet the Spartans”, etc. I will still be seeing it because I identify strongly with its message.

Hat tip: Graham T

Dread Central has the exclusive first word and concept art for a film that sounds like just the thing to take Mom to see on her birthday: “Strippers vs. Werewolves”. Producer Jonathan Sothcott has this to say:

Werewolves are the hardest monsters to get right on film – and I don’t just mean the special effects. Straight werewolf movies often come across as outrageous comedies – Howling 2, Silver Bullet, etc., and werewolf comedies don’t tend to be cinematic gold (though I have a soft spot for the delirious Haunted Honeymoon), but I’m enough of a genre buff to know that this one’s very special indeed and is going to be brilliant fun – think Shaun of the Dead meets Bitchslap in the style of The Howling, and you’re getting the idea.

I’m getting a few ideas, and they all start with me holding my poor head in my hands and end with me yelling a lot. The whole “vs.” thing only works if there’s a natural tension between the combatants or if it’s a particularly clever pairing. This doesn’t strike me as clever, and I don’t think strippers and lycanthropes are enemies (in as much as either entity can get along with others). I just can’t imagine this is going to work out well, especially given the “concept art”, which looks like the result of a quick search on Renderotica.com and five minutes in Photoshop. I love being wrong about these things, though!

Hat tip: ArcLight

Imagine a beautifully frosted, perfectly decorated cake. Lovely to look at, but under all that carefully-sculpted sugar lay three slabs of Betty Crocker Cherry Chip that should have been mixed better and baked half an hour longer. That, in a nutshell, is Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies: Compendium Monstrum by Suzanne Schwalb and Margaret Rubiano: it looks delicious, but the insides are a little lumpy and uneven.

I pulled this book out to read while at a beach party (yeah, I’m boring) and I had to pass it around to four or five people before cracking the cover myself. Everyone who saw it was immediately intrigued and wanted to see it for themselves: a tiny matte black book with an ornate gold and red design on the cover and a bright red ribbon for marking your place. The pages are yellowed and printed to look textured without looking cheesy, and the interior page layouts are moody yet crisp. And the maps! Each of the major sections begins with a fold-out map marking locations of interest. The overall design work is excellent. All credit to Rubiano, who laid the pages out– the book looks good.
Read more…

I’ve been super busy today, but I wanted to share this delightful chart with you. Have you ever wondered if you could gauge the general trustworthiness of a person, based on the beard they’re sporting? Graphic designer Matt McInerney says you can, and he has a chart to prove it. He claims there’s no scientific basis to his observations, but other than grossly exaggerating the threat of werewolves, I think he seems to be spot-on. The Philosopher? Good. The Neckbeard? Watch yourself.

Click for the full thing at a (much) larger resolution.