By D. Lynn Smith
You all know I’m a big fan of horror. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love a good horror story. Like many people my age, I used to run home from school to watch Dark Shadows every afternoon. During the same period of time, I discovered the late-night horror host Ghoulardi and saw horror movies that would never be considered anything other than B-movies, but were great fun to watch.
It was also during this time period that I saw the movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man, adapted by Richard Matheson from his own novel. The thing that really has stuck in my head after all of these years is the scene of a man, tiny enough to make a bed in a matchbox, using a needle to fight off a spider that towers over him. It’s the stuff that nightmares are made of. So imagine my delight when I go to my neighborhood comic bookstore, Alternate Realities Comics, this past week and find The Shrinking Man comic! Just looking at the title, with Richard Matheson’s name prominent at the top, took me back to my childhood.
At lunch that day I described the “spider” scene to my husband who has never seen the 1957 movie. He promptly googled the movie and found a picture of the very scene I was describing, delighting in my shudder when he showed it to me on his phone.
In case you don’t know who Richard Matheson is, he’s one of the most revered horror writers there’s ever been. He wrote I Am Legend, Hell House, Duel, Trilogy of Terror (who can forget Linda Black fighting the little devil doll) and Nightstalker. And then there’s the lesser known Dead of Night, with the segment called Bobby, which scared me even more than the Devil Doll ever did. Richard Matheson inspired more of my nightmares than any other horror writer and I love him for it! (For those of you who are not horror enthusiasts, Matheson also wrote the movie classic, Time After Time, staring Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve.)
What’s great about the comic is that Ted Adams, who did the adaptation, lifted some of Matheson’s dialogue right out of the novel. This is a man who loved Matheson’s work and who has created a comic faithful not only to Richard Matheson, but to my own memories. It’s now on my pull list.
Whereas The Shrinking Man took me back to the 60s, this graphic novel brought back memories of a decade later. In the 1970s, Lynda Carter starred as Wonder Woman on CBS. The graphic novel, Wonder Woman ’77 Special, celebrates the television series. The art is all based on the actors from that series and there are six vignettes that come straight from actual episodes.
Reading Wonder Woman ’77 Special transported me back to when I was just graduating high school and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Wonder Woman presented a strong, independent woman who was an undercover spy right alongside her male counterpart. She claimed her place in history as a modern heroine in a man’s world. (I was a big fan of The Bionic Woman, which was also airing at the time.)
The WW graphic novel took me back to a time when I was trying to figure out what it meant to be an adult woman and it reminded me how far I’ve come since then.
So this past week was about nostalgia for me, a time for thinking about where I’ve been and where I’m going, and a time for being very proud and happy I’m working in this field.