EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY #326: A BAG OF HALLOWEEN TREATS

**Blake Petit** · #1 October 28th 2009, 08:19 PM

And again, my friends, the day is upon us. In just a few days, it’ll be time to put on our freakish costumes, go out into the night, and solicit our neighbors for treats under the threat of having terrible pranks played on them. Also, Saturday is Halloween. As this is my second-favorite holiday of the year (right after Christmas, natch), I always want to do whatever I can to get myself in the mood, and that includes checking out the annual crop of Halloween comics. I get as many of them as I can find, even books I don’t normally read, and I try to get the special ashcans several publishers release to hand out to trick-or-treaters for the sake of my ninth grade class. Of course, I read them all too. So this week’s EBI is going to be a look at all the Halloween comics I managed to get my hands on this year. I do not claim this is a comprehensive list, mind you, I’m sure there are several Halloween comics that were released that went under my radar. But out of the ones I read, here are my thoughts.

First up, I’m going to look at the three Halloween ashcans I got from my local comic shop. I was surprised there were only three – last year there were five, and I find myself wondering if Diamond didn’t short my LCS as usual. But here are the three I read:

First up, let’s look at Betty Cooper Confidential from Archie Comics. In this special, Dan Parent and Rich Koslowski give us a story about Betty’s infamous diary. Having finally filled the pages, Betty sets out to have her love-worn old book bound and mended, but a clumsy delivery boy sends the pages, and memories, all over Riverdale. The book is, in essence, a preview for the upcoming trade paperback Archie and Friends All-Stars: Betty’s Diary. That’s all well and good, but that does make it my least favorite book out of the three Halloween ashcans, simply because there’s no actual Halloween content in it. I don’t mind using the book for promotion, but at least put Moose in a Frankenstein mask or something.

The other two offerings are both from Dark Horse, and both are better. For the younger reader, we get Casper the Friendly Ghost and Little Lulu Halloween Special 2009. This book, too, is a promotion – in this case for the Harvey Comics Classics Casper the Friendly Ghost series and the collection of Little Lulu full-color graphic novels, but at least the stories are Halloween-oriented. Casper winds up at a Halloween party where he tries to pass himself off as a live boy dressed as a ghost, and Lulu tells pesky Alvin a story about a witch who takes a thrilling midnight ride. Both stories are cute, but the Casper tale suffers a bit from being in black and white. Normally, I approve of the inexpensive black and white reprints (like the Essential or Showcase comics), but this story is one of the few where the plot actually relies on color, so it’s weaker in black and white form.

For those trick-or-treaters who skew a bit older, Dark Horse offers the Star Wars Halloween Special 2009. Set in a pre-Episode Four time period, this story shows Han Solo and Chewbacca out of fuel and forced to land the Millennium Falcon on a strange planet. As they begin to explore this world, they realize they’ve landed on a world of walking dead, desperate to find their way home. It’s a pretty solid story, creepy enough for the holiday without feeling like it doesn’t fit in the Star Wars universe. Obviously, there isn’t a real Halloween to celebrate (and perish forbid we get another “Life Day” fiasco), but this comic keeps in tone with the season in its own right.

I only managed to find two comics that interrupted their regularly scheduled programming for Halloween content this year, both of them from DC. From the Johnny DC line, Superfriends #20 features the heroes of the Justice League called in to save a small town Halloween parade from an attack by the bizarre creature called the Shaggy Man. The story isn’t bad – Sholly Fisch’s script calls for the heroes to engage Shaggy Man several different ways in several locales. In the end, he turns out to be an extraordinarily different incarnation of the character than that we find in the regular Justice League titles. My only real beef with the book is in artist Dario Brizuela’s interpretation of Wonder Woman. While I know the characters are modeled after the action figure line, his Diana looks really bulky, far more than the character should be portrayed.

In Superman/Batman #65, the Scarecrow manages to pull off a Halloween miracle, capturing not only Superman and Batman, but their arch-enemies, Lex Luthor and the Joker. All four are exposed to a major dose of Fear Gas (although why, exactly, the gas works on Superman is not addressed) and we’re walked through a Halloween gallery of their worst nightmares. The nightmare interpretations are pretty good – Superman and Batman have obvious fears, but Luthor and the Joker takes some clever planning, and it works. The art, however, is somewhat weak. The book suffers from multiple artists, each illustrating a different character’s nightmare, and while most of the art styles are fine in and of themselves, they’re so drastically different from one another that the whole package becomes jarring and incongruous.

Finally, there were a whopping five Halloween specials that made it onto my radar this year, beginning with the fifteenth annual Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. I’ve been reading and enjoying this yearly special for a long time, and in the past it has offered a rare opportunity for comic superstars to dip their toes into the Simpsons pool. This year, though, Bongo Comics loaded down the special with independent comic creators that, to be frank, weren’t up to snuff. The stories were rarely funny, the artwork was really weak, and some pages actually looked like they’d been run off on a copy machine down at Kinko’s and scanned in for use in the comic. This is a rare disappointment from the Treehouse of Horror crew.

Much more entertaining was the Perhapanauts Halloween Spooktacular, which I selected as my pick of the week not long ago. Without going into detail again as to why I loved this comic, let me just say that every issue of the Perhapanauts is a cause for celebration. Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau have created one of the best, most enjoyable supernatural action comics in a very long time, with characters full of emotion, depth, humor, and potential. This special adds the talents of Fred Hembeck and Rich Woodall to the mix, and that only makes it better.

One of the best Vertigo series brings us a creative little grab bag with House of Mystery Halloween Annual #1. If you haven’t read House of Mystery, the series follows a group of characters trapped in the titular house, with several stories-within-a-story being told by visitors and detainees alike. In this issue, Fig tries on a mask for a Halloween party, only to find herself reliving several adventures of other characters, all involving the same mask. The clever bit here is that each story she sees is a tie-in to another Vertigo comic, and while the stories stand alone, they do make you want to go out and seek more. Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham return to Merv Pumpkinhead of Sandman and The Dreaming for a tale of the gourd-headed janitor running the Halloween nightmares on year. Peter Milligan and Giuseppe Camuncoli take us to a Hellblazer story in which John Constantine inadvertently makes a young man seek suicide, only to find a fate worse than death waiting for him. Chris Roberson and Michael Allred bring us a preview of their upcoming title I, Zombie, in which a lovely female zombie and her monster friends seek out a little Halloween fun. Finally Matt Wagner and Amy Reeder Hadley tell us a tale of Madame Xanadu, in which a young woman is overwhelmed by the mask. Using the novel to let us sample various other Vertigo titles works wonderfully, and really makes this book work for many readers beyond just fans of House of Mystery. I sincerely hope this does, in fact, become an annual tradition as promised.

Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales is a home for gory, racy retellings of classic fairy and folk tales, so the Grimm Fairy Tales Halloween Special seems like a good creative choice. Raven Gregory writes a new version of the classic tale of terror, “The Monkey’s Paw.” In this version, after the destruction of the family that used it in the classic version, a young man stumbles upon the cursed object and attempts to use it to win over a girl who is in love with someone else. Of course, there are haunting consequences for everyone involved. It’s a good story, and remarkably, it seems to set things up for the upcoming Grimm Fairy Tales Giant-Size Holiday Edition, which promises a twisted take on The Nutcracker.

And finally, this year brings us another DC Universe Halloween Special, featuring a lucky 13 tales of All Hallow’s Eve in the DCU. Jake Black and the excellent artist Ibraim Roberson (who worked on the recent Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks graphic novel) show us ho Halloween is done on Bizarro World, while Adam Schlagman and Mark Bagley show us Guy Gardner’s attempt to throw a Halloween party on Oa. Kelley Jones illustrates an awesome Outsiders tale that seems to return I, Vampire to the DC Universe, and Kid Flash gets to find out what scares the Mirror Master. The boys of the Batman family all get a spotlight, as the Tiny Titans team of Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani illustrate a story of one of Bruce Wayne’s Halloween parties gone wrong, Damian Wayne seeks a kidnapper without Dick Grayson’s approval, and Red Robin finds the Day of the Dead forcing him to brood over the missing Bruce. Wonder Woman hangs with the girls from the Teen Titans, Lois and Clark have a little Halloween fun in the Daily Planet office, and Billy Tucci writes and illustrates a story that – at first – looks like just another stale Superman/Flash race, but ends with a wonderful twist that makes it perhaps my favorite story in the book.

I’m sure I missed a few, friends, but I hope you enjoyed this stroll through the comics of Halloween. And if I may be allowed a moment of indulgence, there’s still a way to get new Halloween stories before the big day. Tomorrow, Oct. 29, I’m asking you all to pop over to my own website, Evertime Realms, where you’ll find the first episode of an all-new podcast. Blake M. Petit’s Evercast is going to be a weekly show where I’ll present short stories, full-length novels, radio sitcoms and other stories on a regular basis. I’m inviting you all to go over and check it out, and I’m asking you pretty please to help me spread the word. Have a great Halloween, guys!

Favorite of the Week: October 21, 2009

Finishing off the inaugural storyline with flair, Chew #5 by John Layman and Ron Guillory scored my favorite trophy last week. Tony Chu has tracked down the fugitive who kidnapped his brother and is accused of murdering someone else, but his cibiopathic powers (which allow him to see the past of whatever organism he is consuming) lead him to a totally unexpected villain. The status quo has changed dramatically, and the true shape of this series stands revealed now. And it’s one of the best books Image has published in years. It’s well worth the reading.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the novel-in-progress Lost in Silver at Evertime Realms. He’s also the co-host, with whoever the hell is available that week, of the 2 in 1 Showcase Podcasts. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms. Read past columns at the Everything But Imaginary Archive Page.