Ramblings of a Marketing Mind

  As we drift away from the Mexican Civic Celebrations and transition into the Spooky Season , I’d like to indulge myself by sharing a personal revelation that made me think about a character archetype that’s become sort of a staple in paranormal-themed stories. So, put on your black turtleneck sweater,  study your pentagrams and ancient runes,  grab your camera and tape recorder, light up a cigarette, and follow me down this paranormal mystery path. Back in the mid-80s, when I was a pimpled faced teenager dabbling in drawing comics, I penciled and inked a splash page for an idea I honestly thought was originally mine, based on characters that intrigued and had a strong appeal for me (sadly I threw the page away, otherwise I’d love sharing it here): it was a full frontal shot of a heroic looking man facing away from a bookcase, hair slicked backwards, wearing a turtle neck and a jacket, standing spread legged with arms ready for action, looking at a malevolent entity ou...

  Hi there, dear casual reader! Take my hand and follow me into the Wayback machine to take a quick trip back to a place we used to call a “video arcade”. If you’ve ever played videogames, chances are you are familiar with an old coin-op that became very popular in the early 80’s. So popular, in fact, that it spawned a pop culture craze named after it.  The game in question was Pac-Man , and one of the many reasons it became so popular was its devious simplicity: you used a joystick to control a yellow round creature gobbling up dots inside a maze. There were four different colored ghosts obsessed with stopping you, (Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde, in case you were curious about their names). At the four corners of the maze there were “power pellets”. When you "ate" one of these, the ghosts got scared and turned blue for a few seconds when you could chomp them up, leaving behind a pair of blinking eyes that would glide back to the chamber at the center of the maze to regenerat...