Merry Little Batman By Mike Roth.

Fun Fact:

Did you know that if you grew up in Ireland, you were at risk of being kidnapped by faeries?

In Irish legend, a parent's greatest fear was that their child would get abducted and replaced with a look-alike called a "changeling" (also known as an "auf", "oaf" or "swapling") and there were a few ways for them to tell when this happened. Because in the beginning, the changeling looked very similar to their child, but over time, they would develop undeniable physical differences. Sometimes that meant looking sickly and not growing to a normal size, their teeth could turn long and pointy, and occasionally they'd grow a beard at a remarkably young age. According to folklorists, oftentimes when a parent realized their child had been swapped, they would kill the imposter, leading to awkward conversations with significant others on the occasions that they suspected wrong.

But what happened to the kids who were spirited away? It depends on the legend, but sometimes they were delivered to the devil himself, forced to become servants to the faeries, they could be eaten by faeries or even lovingly raised by them.

Keep an eye on your baby...if that really is your baby...

Fun Fact:

Bad news everyone. If you've seen a ghost recently, then there's a chance you have black mold poisoning. At least that's the theory that scientists at Clarkson University started studying in 2015.

Their hypothesis was that experiencing paranormal phenomenon at older homes could actually result from the presence of black mold, which is known to cause hallucinations, delusions, anxiety, depression and the feeling of impending doom. Rye ergot fungus is one culprit they're paying special attention to, because it can have a psychedelic effect when ingested and some even think that ergot growing on crops may have been what created the delusions and mass hysteria during the Salem Witch Trials.

Is black mold poisoning better or worse than being haunted?

Fun Fact:

As much as I admire the legends of merfolk and swan maidens, we ought to give some spotlight to the selkies.

Selkie folk, also known as "seal folk", come from Norse and Celtic folklore. They're what's known as "therianthropes", meaning they can transform from human to animal at will. In the case of the selkie, this is done by shedding their seal skin. When in their human form, selkies are super attractive. Both males and females have humans chasing after them, if they're lucky enough to see them naked on the beach.

The stories about male selkies are pretty hilarious and usually entail them being the object of desire for bored housewives (they were essentially medieval pool boys), but the female selkies always had it rougher. Men would steal their seal skin so they couldn't change back to their natural form, then coerce them into marriage. And what's really tragic is that even if the selkie does marry the thief, falls in love with him and has his children, the moment that she rediscovers her hidden selkie skin, she abandons her family and makes her escape back to the ocean, because that is where she's truly meant to be.

On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia—Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette—told police they were chased by a large white creature whose eyes "glowed red". They described it as a flying man with 10-foot wings and said it followed their car while they were driving in an area of town known as the "the TNT area", the site of a former World War II munitions plant. This creature came to be known as "Mothman" and has since been blamed for everything from causing TV static to killing pets to even a bridge collapse. Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand claims the creature was something real and frightening, but explainable, that got woven into local legends. Others have claimed the creature was a UFO, some a large owl and others say it's a large American Crane.

What do you think the Mothman is?

Favorite non-DC/Marvel, comic book adaptations:

The Mask

The Crow

The Rocketeer (released internationally as The Adventures of the Rocketeer)

Ghost World

A History of Violence

The Lone Wolf and Cub films

Ichi the Killer (殺し屋１)

The Amazing Screw-On Head

The Rabbi's Cat (Le chat du rabbin)

Danger: Diabolik

Urusei Yatsura: Only You/Beautiful Dreamer

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Snowpiercer

Persepolis

Blue is the Warmest Color

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

The Death of Stalin

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Akira (アキラ)

Gantz (2010)

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Road to Perdition

American Splendor

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Oldboy (올드보이)

Mythic stories fall into several categories. There are sagas, epics, and fantasy stories called "märchen." These stories depend on something difficult for us to conceive these days: Simplicity or the "Logic of the Fairy Tale." In other words: things are just what they are, because that’s just the way they are.

These stories frequently examine or teach a moral lesson, exalting it or exposing a particular flaw. If the story is a parable or doctrinal, one of its goals is to delineate the characters as "types" in order to illustrate this basic lesson, characters which make the story whole and who are also contained by it. The lives of these "types" can and must have links with the past and the future but their role ends with the story.

In a magic story, the flow is more important than the logic. Man invented monsters to explain the entire universe (Norse and Greek mythology, for example). Once man began to live in an organized way, with a "social contract," an abyss was opened up between his instincts and his thoughts, and monsters started to REPRESENT another universe altogether: man's inner universe. The pagan prefigures the social and offers us a glimpse of the deepest reaches of man's soul, articulating a primordial, savage universe, populated by elves, fauns, ogres, faeries, trolls, and demons.

By what mythology do we live by? I believe that Christianity, Shintoism, Taoism, Alchemy, Homeopathy, and Jung are the 6 pillars.

A scene from Studio Ghibli's most timeless, underrated masterpiece....

It's worth mentioning that Miyazaki has a personal affinity with pigs. He often draws himself as a pig and even created a whole film starring a man turned pig, "Porco Rosso" (I love it. The end.).

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander.

The Chronicles of Prydain is a masterful book series full of magic and chills (The Horned King and Annuvin).

Give it a try!

Lluvia en los Ojos (Rain in the Eyes).