Spookiest Night of the Year!

EXERPT FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. OPTILUIZ COOLENSTEIN...

Greetings, Dear Reader,

     Dr. Optiluiz here to wish you the happiest of Halloweens, everyone's favourite holiday! What, you prefer Christmas? HEATHEN! Oh, I'm just kidding, of course. I promised that the blog would be back soon, and here we are with an extra spooky post just in time for your spooky shenanigans, we hope you like it!
     Regarding the comic, I think most people overlook the fact that Pac-Man was the first-ever survival-horror game. What, you don't believe me? It's basically Slender with ghosts and drugs instead of pages. There's a video somewhere on youtube that explains this better than myself, but I'm too lazy to look for it.
     I've never mentioned it before on the blog, but I believe there's a curse that shows up on every October 31st and affects yours truly. The curse has been going on for about six years, and involves me making awesome plans for All Hallow's Eve. Plans that eventually self-combust and leave me with nothing to do on my favourite day of the year. That's why I like to consider the entirety of October as Halloween-Month, making sure that the curse doesn't suck out all the fun.
     As a part of my Spooky October, I've been watching some Halloween classics that I heartily recommend. Today, in fact, I saw the original Fright Night for the first time and the theme song has yet to leave my mind. I fear that it shall never be far from my thoughts. On the other hand, I live-tweeted Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday last night, which was a sack of shit that burned away a few years from my life. I hope your Halloween marathons are more successful, dear readers.
     Also, as you probably can already tell, I've been reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is honestly much better than all the adaptations. I'm also preparing a post defending found-footage films by comparison to epistolary novels, but that will have to wait.
     I believe that this is all for now, but we'll surely meet again soon. Be it during the full moon or the dark hours of the morning, our paths shall cross again. Do you hear that? The children of the night... What beautiful music they make!

As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy your Halloween!

- Doctor Optiluiz

PS: Why don't you enjoy this most entertaining music video?

   

Pets and Holy Cow, Batman, It's Almost Halloween!

Greetings, Epic Clubbers!

     Optiluiz here again after an astoundingly prolonged absence (I've said that so many times that it now sounds like a cliché). I know you're probably thinking "Why is the artwork different this time?" and "Snake, what took you so long?" but we'll get to those matters soon enough. For now, I hope you enjoyed the comic :D.
      Since I've last posted on our honorable blog, life has gotten pretty hectic. I'm actually juggling college with life as a freelance translator and a reviewer for Bloody Disgusting! It's worth it, however, because money is the source of all happiness and I'm finally doing something I'm proud of.
     All of this has caused the blog to fall behind in my priorities, however, and Max has also had a period of "I'm not willing to draw this horrible comic". I can't blame him, however, since I know I'm not the best humorist in the world. In any case, my lovely girlfriend, Ana, has stepped in to draw comics for us! We'll be featuring more of her work soon and I hope you like it.
     I've been trying hard to keep the spirit of Halloween alive this month, but life hasn't made it easy. I'm not giving up, however, and I imagine that this following week will be filled with slasher movies and themed snacks to keep me entertained. I've also been playing Until Dawn (amazing game!) and reading Salem's Lot.
     I think this is all for now, but I hope you've enjoyed this rather delayed post. We'll be posting again shortly, and I hope our readers will still be here when we return. I leave you now with a spooky music video, to set the mood.

Thank you all so much for reading,

-Optiluiz out...

PS: I've had a life-long dream of flooding my basement and turning it into a swamp for 20 crocodiles.

PPS: Max says it's a fetish, he's wrong.

Spiders and Hiatus

Greetings, dear readers!

     Optiluiz here once more after a prolonged absence, ready to explain. The ECB isn't quite dead, though you'll have to deal with some less than stellar artwork for a while, made by yours truly (common, it's not that bad). In any case, I hope you've enjoyed the comic, and let's get down to business.
     For the past few months, Max and I have refrained from posting for a variety of personal reasons. We figured we just needed a break, and since those were some hard times, we went ahead and just stopped working for a while. The blog was never abandoned, though, it was just given a much-needed rest. Alas, such things are not without cost, and I'm sorry to announce that Max won't be returning to draw for us, at least not for a while. He might still show up every once in a while, however.
     Since our last post here, I've travelled a bit, began reading The Dark Tower, resolved some personal issues and even got another short story published. I've also seen a shitload of movies, which is always good. I'm a bit disappointed that I still haven't got around to fixing up my review-blog, but I'll get to that soon enough.
      I guess that what matters now, is that the blog is back, and though I can't promise a weekly posting schedule, I'll try my best. Writing, drawing, scanning and editing on my own is a laborious process, and one I'm not sure is worth doing considering the small amount of people that will end up seeing the work. I'm not ready to give up, however, so here we are.
     On a final note, the published story I mentioned above can be found HERE. It's called In Vivo, and concerns UFOs and the like, I hope you enjoy the read. My first published story is also available now on Bete Noire HERE, and if you'd like to support me you could buy a copy of the magazine, that would be great! I guess this is it for now, so I'll leave you with some random video like I always do. Thanks for reading, hope you have a great week!

     Chainsaw cheers,

     -Optiluiz out...

PS: During this hiatus I became a really big fan of AVGN, especially his movie-related stuff!

PPS: It feels good to be back.

Superheroes

Greetings, readers!

     Optiluiz here once more with a much belated post! I'm so sorry that we took so long, but as I've said many times before, life does get in the way of blogging. However, I'm proud to say that the ECB is back on track, and with some great news!
     Since my last post, I've decided that becoming a translator is the best option at the moment in my life, watched the best action movie of the last ten years (Mad Max: Fury Road), and have finally made a new blog! Some of you may have noticed that our old reviews are gone from the ECB, but that's because they've been moved to Optiluiz Reviews the World! I'm still transferring all the old posts there, but once that's done I hope you enjoy the new content.
     Regarding the comic, I've always been fascinated by Superheroes and vigilantes, and have even made up some of my own. However, in real life this kind of thing isn't as fun as it seems to be. I guess this is the time to tell a heavily-abridged version of a real story that happened to me and Max.
     In 2010, there was a series of thefts happening around my neighborhood (not that it's gotten any better), and I was furious. After three attempts, some guys had finally stolen my cellphone, so I called Max and decided to meet him to plan something. As you probably know if you've followed the blog for a while, I wasn't exactly the most mentally balanced person in the world during my teenage years, and that's why Max and I decided that the best course of action would be to arm ourselves with kitchen appliances, stuff them in a backpack and ride my bike around the block until we found the bastard.
     We had light bulbs, kitchen knives, scissors and a wrench, thinking that we could face anyone we found out there. Luckily (or not), it didn't take us long to find the thief, who was calmly riding his bike as well. Max was sitting on the bike behind me, carrying the backpack with weapons, and we decided to confront our foe. As we approached, the thief noticed something was wrong, and tried to engage in small-talk, obviously reaching for something in his pocket. I was scared as hell, but ready to do what had to be done. Then, I looked behind me to get the weapons with Max, but he was already gone, having sprinted in the other direction with my backpack. I looked back at the robber, smiled, and pedalled as fast as I could, following Max.
     We regrouped at a local pet shop and laughed nervously at what had transpired, commenting on how stupid our idea was.We eventually headed our separate ways, and to this day I wonder what could have happened if Max hadn't ran with our defenses. I can't blame him, though, I'm not sure that I wouldn't have done the same thing. Maybe it's best not to know.
     I don't think we learned much that day, but it's one of those funny teenage stories that you look back on and say "What the hell was I thinking?" I know it's not the best story we've shared on the blog, but I've been promising a well-written account of that adventure for a while now. I hope you enjoyed it.
     I think that's all for today, as I still have to update the Brazilian blog and do the usual marketing. However, I'll leave you with some Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes from Mad Max: Fury Road. Thank you for visiting!

Chainsaw cheers,

-Optiluiz out...

PS: You owe it to yourself to watch Mad Max in theaters, like right now. A review of it will be coming shortly.

PPS: I also managed to watch the original Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) in theaters as well!

PPPS: Did you guys notice that Max has a new awesome pen?