David Black discusses the Oz Femme Fatales of Horror Month trading cards
One of the highlights of OFFoHM has been the digital trading cards that feature some of our talented ladies. As a kid, I loved collecting the Scanlens bubble gum cards that you got from the local milkbar. There were Kung Fu cards, Battle Star Galactica Cards and even KISS cards. I never quite managed to get a full set of anything, but for a few months, the latest cards would be my obsession.
When we started OFFoHM, I was looking for promotional outlets to help get our Aussie women of horror promoted to the world. Destiny and I already knew that we could do an article every single day in February on our blog, but I felt that we needed to do more. Something unique and imaginative was needed. For a few years, I had been messaging various trading card producers to see if I could get them to cover the actors in my own films, but had no success. Suddenly, I got an answer from one of the leading digital trading card companies and all systems were go!
I asked Previn Wong, the owner/ creator of Terror Cards why he decided to go with us.
“Traditionally up until last year, February was known as Women in Horror Month. Terror Cards showcases horror films and personalities through digital trading cards. The opportunity to showcase the women of Oz Femme Fatale made perfect sense and offered our community exposure to horror internationally. “
It seems that great minds think alike because my reason for approaching Terror Cards was to expose our people to the horror community internationally. Australia is a bubbling cauldron of great talent. A few break out onto the world wide stage, but so many come and go and are never remembered.
Some years ago, when I was active with my band, Darkness Visible, I was lucky enough to chat to Mick Mercer, whose books on Gothic Rock helped launch the second wave of Goth. He included my band in 3 of his books and it was a buzz to see the books on the shelves at books shops across Melbourne. The interest spurred on from his work saw the launch of many compilation CD’s and a corresponding spurt of growth at gothic clubs around the world.
I asked Mick if he could do the same for the Australian Dark Wave bands. His answer to me was that there was nothing stopping me from doing it myself. I can now see the wisdom of his words. Big movements start with every day people becoming interested in something happening and writing about it.
The Hippy scene burst onto the world with the efforts of the newly found underground press at that time. Punk Rock exploded via the efforts of the journalists in the English Rock Press. We have something amazing going on too and one of the things holding us back down under is a lack of media coverage.
It’s not that we don’t have the blogs, podcasts and various outlets. It’s more a case that we have a cultural cringe that shies away from the great things that we have here. Add to that the Aussie tendency to jump onto bandwagons, rather than creating them ourselves. It often takes people from overseas to look at us and be amazed to start the ball rolling.
I am grateful to Previn Wong for being one of those people who looked at what we have to offer and decided to go ahead. We are almost at the end of OFFoHM and watching the cards come out as the month has rolled along has been amazing!
This year has been great … next year will be spectacular!!!
You can find out more about Terror Cards here - https://terrorcards.com/
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