House of Mystery Halloween Annual #1

It’s a good old-fashioned Halloween jam book! With the framing story focusing on the main characters in the “House of Mystery” comic from Vertigo, we get introduced to a particularly nasty Halloween mask (That’s it pictured on the cover above). In fact, all of the stories here feature the mask. Oh, what are the other stories? We join Merv Pumpkinhead, the jack-o-lantern-faced handyman from Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” comics, as he helps lubricate the Dreaming’s nightmare monsters with some generously shared booze. We see John Constantine show up just a little too late to chase off a Babylonian shapeshifter. We get a short preview of Chris Roberson and Michael Allred’s upcoming “I, Zombie!” comic. And we follow Madame Xanadu as she helps someone escape the seductive grasp of the mask.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I didn’t see a single story in here I disliked, and it’s a nice little introduction to all of these Vertigo series, if you haven’t tried them out yet. And the little boost of the Halloween spirit doesn’t hurt either. Go pick it up.

North 40 #4

The high school prom has been invaded by zombies! Luckily, after the bizarre magical plague that’s struck rural Conover County, the victims here are actually a lot better prepared to defend themselves. Meanwhile, the local criminal redneck clan is hoping to ambush Sheriff Morgan — if the junkyard owner’s new giant magic-powered robot doesn’t kill all of them first. So the initial crises are over — but there’s more trouble climbing out of the craters around town…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’ve enjoyed this whole series, and though this is officially the last issue of the miniseries, I like how they’re setting us up for a new ongoing series. Ya hear, Wildstorm? This one needs a new ongoing series quick! Hop to it — we got too many dangling plotlines that I need to see wrapped up!

Beasts of Burden #2

The pets of Burden Hill has undergone some of their training to help defend the area from supernatural threats. They’ve managed to get rid of a few local monsters, but a lot of their time is taken up listening to the far-too-imaginative tales invented by other dogs. But they find something legitimate to investigate when a worried dog named Hazel asks them to find her two lost puppies. Their search turns up nothing until some garbage-scavenging raccoons suggest they check out a pond called the Devil’s Well out in the woods. They attempt a spirit summoning and are surprised when the ghosts of the puppies emerge from the pond, followed by the angry ghosts of dozens of other dogs and cats. The ghosts possess three of the dogs who had unwisely left the protection of the magic circle — and all three of them charge into a home and kill a human boy! Even without the murderous ghosts, all the Beasts of Burden are going to be in big trouble now…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Evan Dorkin’s writing is both funny and suspenseful, and Jill Thompson’s art is gorgeous and terrifying all at once. The whole story is extremely spooky, creepy, eerie, and even heartbreaking. The twist is unexpected and brutal. It’s a perfect Halloween ghost story, and you should go find it and read it — I think you’ll enjoy it.

And one final note — make sure you’re here bright and early tomorrow morning. Halloween’s coming, and I got a week’s worth of special treats to hand out.

Bahlactus has been running Friday Night Fights almost every week since March 2007, and he’s decreed that tonight’s gonna be the last one.

That’s some 19 months of face-rockin’, chin-checkin’, pain-bringin’, and head-bustin’. Over 70 weeks of kicks to the face, fists to the face, baseball bats to the face, and car batteries to the face. Bahlactus freestyles all the participants every week, and a while back, he was actually giving away comics to the folks who signed up. I enjoy the heck out of Friday Night Fights, and I hate to see it end, but Bahlactus is the man, and if he wants to call the series quits, I ain’t tough enough to stop him.

So we got multiple themes running tonight — we need some righteous violence first, our theme is still “Ladies Night,” so a woman’s gotta be involved in the righteous violence, and it’s Halloween, so we need to add some monsters into the equation. Let’s spin the Wheel of Hurtin’ and see what comes up.

From 1998’s Vampirella #3 — a comic with some serious pedigree, as it was written by none other than Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, with art provided by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. Let’s set our scene — Vampirella is looking to dust a bunch of vampires. Our favorite scantily-clad pseudo-vampiric vampire hunter has a bomb to take care of most of them, but for the leader, sometimes the old ways are best:

In other words, Vampi’s gonna drive a wooden stake through a vampire’s face.

Nice. A very happy, gory, vampire-free Halloween to us all.

But dangit, I can’t let the last Friday Night Fights go with just one fight. Lemme dredge up the fight I was originally going to use, if the last round hadn’t hit on Halloween. This is from 2004’s JLA #90 by Joe Kelly, ChrisCross, and Tom Nguyen, in which Wonder Woman, in an artificially-induced dream sequence, uses the back of the Joker’s head to refurbish a wall.

Wwwwwow. That’s why ChrisCross is one of my favorite artists.

And finally: Bahlactus, thank you. I, and probably everyone else who’s participated in and enjoyed Friday Night Fights, owe you a whole bunch of six-packs in gratitude for all this fun and mayhem. Thanks, thanks, a million, billion thanks.

Always bet on Bahlactus.

Okay, I could go on and on and on and on about how much I love Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday on the calendar — better’n Christmas, better’n my birthday, even better’n International Shoot a Nazi in the Face Day. I love costumes, I love scary movies, I love scary stories, I love scary stuff in general, and I have since I was a little kid. I’m still the family freak as far as Halloween goes — no one else in the family cares a thing for horror or monsters or Halloween.

But like I said, I could rattle on about this forever. So instead of reading me waxing rhapsodic about the Best Holiday of the Year, let’s just enjoy a dozen spooky comic covers, a’ight?

Everyone have a safe and scary Halloween out there!

Ladies and gentlemen, boils and ghouls, welcome to my very favorite day of the year. The best holiday on the calendar. The one day a year when we celebrate our fears and our taboos.

Sure, I know a lot of y’all prefer other holidays, like Christmas or Easter or Arbor Day. I like them just fine. But Halloween is the one day (and night!) I look forward to all year long. On November 1, I start jonesing for Halloween. That’s just the way I roll. Halloween is the most wonderful day of the year, and that’s all there is to it.

And I know some of y’all don’t want your kids celebrating it because you think it’s Satanic. First of all, seriously, I’m rolling my eyes at you. Yeah, it had its origins centuries ago in various pagan traditions, but it was enthusiastically adopted by the church as a way to encourage those same pagans to join up. And yeah, Halloween has long, long ago lost pretty much every connection it had to any church holidays. In other words, at this point, it’s a fully secular holiday. Just like the Fourth of July, Valentine’s Day, April Fool’s Day, or New Year’s Day. If you hate Halloween because it’s secular, then I don’t wanna hear about you shooting off fireworks or taking Labor Day off. If you hate Halloween because it’s got pagan origins, I don’t wanna hear about you setting up a Christmas tree or hiding Easter eggs, which also came from pagan traditions.

But still, even though I’m rolling my eyes at you, go ahead and don’t celebrate it if you don’t want to. It ain’t my job to make anyone celebrate any holidays at all, so whatever gives you joy, go for it. I wish you’d let your kids have their fun, but they ain’t my kids to raise, are they? Although I’d also like to point out that your grandparents and great-grandparents and great-greats celebrated the heck out of Halloween in their day, and I’ll betcha a shiny nickel that they could out-holy you any day of the week. Still, like I said, as it harms none, do what thou wilt, baby. Let the rest of us enjoy Halloween, and we’ll let you observe it any way you want.

In the end, I can’t see anything wrong with one day for trick-or-treating, one day for horror movie marathons on TV, one day for jack o’lanterns and construction-paper bats, one day for mist-shrouded cemeteries, one day for vampires in shadowy crypts, one day for the shambling undead, for howling at the moon, for buzzing chainsaws, for haunted houses, for headless horsemen, for black birds, for cobwebs, creaking doors, tentacled horrors, evil dolls, open graves, lurking figures in the dark, rotting skulls, chuckles from empty attics, and someone calling you from inside your house. I see nothing wrong with one day to celebrate fear, our oldest and most primal emotion.

Have a Happy Halloween. Eat some Halloween candy, watch an old horror movie, read some old ghost stories, celebrate the fun and mystery of the day with your friends and family. But go outside sometime tonight, look up at that night sky, breathe in that night air, and give yourself just a moment to wonder what’s hiding out there, just on the other side of those shadows. Happy Halloween, and pleasant dreams.

DC has released their solicitations for the comics they’ll be shipping in October. Lots of stuff about Countdown, the Crime Syndicate, the New Gods, the Sinestro Corps, the Justice League, the Justice Society, and much more.

But for me, there were only two comics listed that really set my geeky heart a-thumpin’.

During the early ’80s, I, along with a lot of other people, re-discovered comics, thanks to Chris Claremont’s work on Marvel’s X-Men, and Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s work on DC’s Teen Titans. But not me. I got back into comics because of “Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew.” And it’s not like I was the only fan of funny-animal superheroics — the Zoo Crew has acquired a dedicated cult following over the years, despite more than a decade of open contempt from DC’s bigwigs.

But we wore them down.

CAPTAIN CARROT AND THE FINAL ARK #1

Written by Bill Morrison

Art by Scott Shaw! & Al Gordon

Cover by Shaw! & Morrison

The Zoo Crew is back in a 3-issue COUNTDOWN tie-in miniseries! Captain Carrot reunites the team to face a threat that begins at the “Sandy Eggo Comic-Con” and quickly menaces the entire world ! The gang’s all here: Fastback, Pig-Iron, Yankee Poodle, American Eagle, Alley-Kat-Abra, and the Captain himself, taking on the Salamandroid!

On sale October 10 – 1 of 3 – 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

I have no earthly idea how this is supposed to tie into “Countdown.” But hey, the Zoo Crew’s back! Everyone do the happy dance!

For the second one, you have to go back further — as far back as I seem to be able to remember, I’ve loved monster movies (even when I wasn’t allowed to watch them as a child), monster makeup, scary stories, and Halloween. It’s now just about the only holiday I really celebrate, and by the time October gets here, y’all should expect to see me running around town in a vampire cape, biting random people on the leg, and making werewolf noises.

And DC knows what I like to read in October.

DC INFINITE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL #1

Written and illustrated by various

Cover by Gene Ha

Don’t miss this collection of 13 stories of tricks and treats by some of comics’ top creators, including writers Steve Niles, Mark Waid, Steve Seagal, Dan DiDio, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Peter Johnson (TV’s Supernatural), David Arquette (Scream), Cliff Dorfman (Entourage) and many more with art by Ian Churchill, Dean Ormston, Dustin Nguyen , Bernard Chang and others! The inmates of Arkham horrify each other with terrifying tales involving Superman and zombies, Batman and vampires, Robin and werewolves, Aquaman and witches, Flash and the dead, and more! Plus, the return of Resurrection Man!

On sale October 31 – 80 pg, FC, $5.99 US

It’s an Eighty Page Giant — with monsters! HUZZAH!

That is, by the way, an entirely awesome cover, but everything Gene Ha draws is golden.