My Favorite Golems.

Last week I blogged about my favorite monsters for the Halloween season. At the conclusion, I said that “creations” were my favorite monsters: golems, constructs, animations, automatons, and so on. With Halloween drawing ever closer(!) I thought I’d expand upon last week’s entry and talk about which specific creations were my favorites.

Quick aside: the title of today’s blog was originally “My Favorite Creations” but it sounded like I was patting myself on the back for creating… something. I dunno.

I’ll start with the classic creation, Frankenstein’s monster. I confess I’ve never read Mary Shelley’s novel, so I’m going with the Boris Karloff bolts-in-the-neck movie version. This old-school misunderstood monster planted the seed for my love of creations. An innocent soul with an outwardly frightening appearance, twisted into a monstrosity by the untrusting world around it.

Along those lines, but on a much lighter note, is Young Frankenstein’s monster. Abby Normal’s brain. Dinner with the hermit. Puttin’ on the Ritz. An enormous “schvanschtucker.” If this creature doesn’t make you laugh, we probably can’t be friends.

Franken-Berry. He counts. Shut up.

The Iron Giant. It may not be a spooky Halloween movie, but the titular character is one of the best creations/robots/automatons in film. Confronting a world that fears him with the compassionate soul who comes to love him, this is a fantastic story and one of the finest misunderstood monsters in recent memory. I would also argue he’s one of the best characters to *sniff* play the role of *sob* Superman.

The Terminator. T2 may be the more popular and quotable movie, but I prefer the original film. The Terminator as an unstoppable, unwavering, inevitable machine of death is a terrifying concept. Misunderstood creations aren’t the only ones that appeal to me. Uncaring killer robots are scary, and I enjoy a good scare in October. And when I was a kid, the image of the Terminator’s metallic skeleton rising from a fiery wreckage to continue its pursuit scared the hell out of me.

I’m going to pat myself on the back here and mention a golem of my own. I’m proud of what I did with Quilt, the stitched-from-the-dead creation from my original webcomic, Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire. Quilt was my love letter to golems, only without the misunderstood aspect to his monstrous appearance. He became one of the comic’s most popular cast members, and while he may not stand with the others on this list in pop culture relevance or popularity, I’m happy with my creation’s small contribution to the archetype.