2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 3: The monster cereals are always in season!

I've never had any Carmella Creeper. Is it good?

I never had any of General Mills' monster cereals as a child. My parents just wouldn't go for it. Frosted Flakes and Apple Jacks were okay, but Franken Berry and Frute Brute were out of the question. I remember seeing a box of Count Chocula at a friend's house once and being consumed with both fascination and jealousy. I finally got to have them as an adult. By then, according to those who know, the recipes had been changed (for health reasons) and the cereals weren't as good as they used to be. They tasted fine to me. Maybe it's a good thing I never had any of those cereals in their '70s and '80s heyday. I might still be chasing an impossible Boo Berry high from when I was seven.

Anyway, the comic above was written back in October but I'm just sharing it now. Maybe, in this context, it's Advent and not Halloween that arouses Carmella Creeper.

'Hi And Lois' turns into a drama so easily

Filmed in Depress-O-Vision.

  
Autumn is a time of death and decay, but that idea is rarely reflected in newspaper comics, with their gaudy colors and cheap punchlines. Fortunately, the darkness is lurking just below the surface and can easily be brought to the forefront. It takes very little to turn this Hi and Lois Sunday strip into a tense domestic drama similar to Robert Redford's Ordinary People. Just tweak the dialogue a hair, erase the phony smiles from the characters' faces, and desaturate the colors. Boom. Instant Oscar bait. I think the idea here is that Lois Flagston is trying to create the "perfect" jack-o'-lantern because she cannot attain perfection in her own life. And she makes her husband and children suffer because of this. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Sure, I've got Halloween content at my blog! How much do you need?

"They're like the Blue Angels of dance!"

October is here, and you know what that means. Yep, it's time to clean all of those dead woodchucks out of the crawlspace again and maybe mail a couple to old enemies from high school. But it's also the time of year when people's thoughts turn to ghosts, goblins, witches, and werewolves. Actually, if they're heterosexual men, their thoughts probably turn to women in scanty costumes which make them look like Chechnyan prostitutes, but that's another story. Wherever your thoughts may be turning, Halloween is just a couple of weeks away, and instead of actually getting off my lazy ass (or, to be more accurate, spending more time on my lazy ass) and producing new Halloween-appropriate content for this blog, I thought I'd point out that there is already a metric ton of Halloween content at Dead 2 Rights, more than you'd ever get through in a single lifetime. In the spirit of a greener Planet Earth and a brighter tomorrow, then, I'd like to do some recycling.

JOE'S KICK-ASS HALLOWEEN STUFF THAT HE'S ALREADY WRITTEN

This is delightful, right?

• Of course, the conversation begins with Joe's Halloween Dictionary, based on an assignment that I did in the third grade. I don't actually have a lot of souvenirs from that era of my life (the mid-1980s), but I did manage to hold onto this little hand-drawn booklet. And one year, I decided to scan each and every page of it for your amusement. Is it delightful? Judge for yourself. 

• Then there's my, uh, unique interpretation of the definitive movie of the season, John Carpenter's legendary Halloween from 1978. In the article, I posit that there may be more to Donald Pleasance's creepy "Loomis" character than meets the eye. And, hey, if you're into screwy fan theories about classic horror movies, I have more of that. Way more.

• And then there was the time that I yakked on and on about "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett. It was my blatant attempt at doing a BuzzFeed/Cracked-type listicle. It didn't do a thing, traffic-wise, but it's still a fun read. Theoretically.

• You can't have Halloween without zombies, and this used to be a zombie blog back in the olden, golden, molden days. In fact, I had an entire series of cartoons about one of the overexposed, undead buggers. If you just want to skip to the better Zomby panels, here is a good place to start. Speaking of classic monsters, a few years ago, I investigated why so many of the great ones seem to have such lousy websites.

• More recently, I visited two real-world costume shops and countless web sites in my search for celebrity Halloween masks. What I learned was disillusioning, but I reported my findings here nevertheless. And Google is still giving me lots of disturbing ads for disturbing Halloween masks, so I truly do suffer for my art.

Bonkers bonks you out!

• And what is Halloween without sweet, sweet candy? Pretty lousy, is what. Candy has been a long-time preoccupation of mine on this blog, so I have posts about Bonkers, Summit Bars, Fruit Stripe Gum, Twix, York Peppermint Pattie, and just plain old sugar. In case you're wondering: yes, I am somewhat overweight and have had lots of cavities. Does that information make you happier?

• Some of my favorite little Halloween items at Dead 2 Rights were things tagged onto posts of Zomby cartoons. Like this thing about a ridiculously joyless '70s Halloween safety film from Centron. Or the anti-Halloween rantings of Carol Kornacki.

• It seems almost redundant to point this out, but plenty of articles in the Ed Wood Wednesdays series are Halloween-friendly. Try this one or this one or even this one, which is about how my interest in Edward Davis Wood, Jr. can be traced to a Halloween movie marathon from 1992.

So as you can clearly see, I have hardly been negligent in my coverage of the Eve of All Hallows. There are plenty of articles here which could be described as spooktacular, frightmarish, or even pants-shittingly-scary. Just go searching through the archives. Who knows what will turn up? 'Til we meet again, happy haunting. Whoops, I mean happy hunting. I don't know why I said haunting the first time.

Celebrity Halloween Masks: A Primer

The Point Break gang in their presidential masks. Does this arouse you in any way?

Blame it on Point Break. Without that popular 1991 thriller and its quartet of bank robbers disguised as, respectively, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Lyndon Johnson, the phenomenon of presidential Halloween masks would not be as prominent as it is today, in my opinion. The fad didn't start with Point Break, obviously, but Katherine Bigelow's film kept it going far beyond all reason. As it is, the small-but-vital industry of latex masks designed to look like rubbery, hollow-eyed likenesses of famous people is still dominated to this very day by prominent politicians: presidents, ex-presidents, presidential candidates, and even a couple of powerful governors and congressmen. I wanted to do a little article about "celebrity Halloween masks," but I kept running into the same few faces over and over. It doesn't really matter which site you're exploring. When it comes to masks based on famous people, presidents and presidential wannabes rule all. Pretty much every Chief of State from Kennedy to Obama is represented in this form. The best you can hope for is a really off-the-wall, inaccurate likeness. Take this truly awful so-called "George Bush Sr." mask, which looks to me more like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The thing on the left is supposed to be George Bush, Sr. The thing on the right is Flea.

Aside from anomalies like that, what will you really find if you go shopping for celebrity Halloween masks in 2015? Exactly what you'd expect: a lot of Obamas, Hillarys, and Trumps, a handful of Chris Christies and Arnold Schwarzeneggers, plus some leftover Mitt Romneys, John McCains, Sarah Palins, and even a few stray Newt Gingrinches if you really go looking. Because of his marital proximity to presumptive Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton is back in a big way as a mask this year. Among the other ex-presidents, Richard Nixon is still the most popular, of course, but there are a surprising amount of Reagan masks, too. Dubya's still up there in popularity. Bush, Sr., JFK, and Carter are less common but not unheard of, while LBJ is relatively scarce. And as for Gerald Ford masks? Sorry, Ger, but those are strictly Ebay collectibles in 2015. There are plenty of Rob Ford masks, though, in honor of the buffoonish, crack-smoking ex-mayor of Toronto. In case you're planning to do a hyper-complete Point Break remake with a nine-man robbery team, here are all the presidents from Kennedy to Bush II as Halloween masks.

American History Latex: Nine ex-presidents as Halloween masks.

That'll stick with you for a while, won't it? Yep, it's difficult to get those images out of your mind. Once seen, they cannot be unseen. You'd think that presidential Halloween masks were scary enough on their own, but there is a weird sub-trend happening in this sector of the industry: rendering the politicians as literal monsters from horror movies and TV shows, often zombies, but occasionally vampires and Frankenstein monsters, too. In case you've decided never to sleep again, here's a selection of those types of masks. In this grouping, you'll see zombie Bill Clinton, two different zombie Hillarys, a couple of zombie Obamas, vampire Obama, zombie Dubya, and my personal favorite, Reaganstein. All are available to those with valid credit cards. As Peter Sellers put it in Dr. Strangelove, "It requires only the will to do so."

These monster masks are most definitely NOT a graveyard smash.

Okay, then. There's that. But what about non-political celebrity masks? Do they exist? Eh, sort of. Back in 2010, as you no doubt remember, there was a very messy, widely-publicized power struggle going on in late night television, and this led to a mini-boom in the Halloween mask industry. Of course, the mask makers didn't have the right to use the names of the actual combatants, so a clever manufacturer called Faces by Rubies came up with generic aliases. Jay Leno was "Motor Mouth," David Letterman was "Talk Show Host," and poor Conan O'Brien was "Ex-Talk Show Host." This kind of sly gamesmanship is common in the Halloween costume industry, i.e. "We're not gonna use the real name, but you and I both know who this is supposed to be." The masks themselves were appropriately hideous and bore only a passing resemblance to the real-life comedians on whom they were modeled:

Let this image stay with you throughout the years, my darlings.

Conan O'Brien, in particular, took issue with the appearance of his wizened-looking mask. In a YouTube video uploaded shortly before the debut of his TBS talk show, the ex-Tonight/Late Night host complained: "I look like a burn victim. This is just horrible. This is the face of a 95-year-old man. This is a John McCain mask that they repurposed and slapped some Howdy Doody hair on." O'Brien revisited the mask in his own likeness in 2012, when as part of a Conan segment, he visited a costume shop and found the forlorn "Ex-Talk Show Host" mask among the store's wares. As a clerk giggled and cringed nearby, O'Brien read the description on the package: "Life-like replica of a 66-year-old man-child. Watch him desperately try to win your approval." O'Brien described this text as "very accurate" and then donned the mask himself to deliver a delusional monologue: "I'm still on the air! Why are you all laughing at me? I used to be on network!" This, in turn, led to a bizarre sequence in which the female clerk donned a Conan mask as well and the two Conans pretended to make out as "romantic" music played on the soundtrack.

Apparently, nothing in popular culture has captured the imagination of the Halloween mask industry since the Great Talk Show Wars of 2010. Well, that's not quite true. Charlie Sheen's druggy, hooker-y shenanigans in 2011 inspired a number of masks as well. But that was pretty much it. Frankly, I'm disappointed. There are at least two stores in my neighborhood with a wide variety of Halloween costumes for sale, and I visited both of them hoping to see a fresh selection of celebrity masks. You know what I found? A few politicians and pretty much nothing else. No doubt about it, the industry is in a slump. I was, however, encouraged to see that my local Party City still had a wonderfully creepy mask based on Jim Parsons' popular Sheldon Cooper character from The Big Bang Theory. Spend a good, long time staring at that eerie rubber face. Doesn't that look less like a lovable sitcom nerd and more like someone who would break into your house at night and slit your throat as you slept? Bazinga indeed.

This is supposed to be Jim Parsons, not Sam Donaldson.

P.S. I dug around a little online and found a second Sheldon Cooper mask for sale. This, I'm sure you will agree, is no improvement.

The last thing you see before you die.

A graveyard smash: 10 things you may not know about "Monster Mash"

"Mash, good!": Bobby Pickett's song has been released many, many times over the last 50+ years.

An original pressing of the song.

Though there have been a few usurpers and pretenders to the throne over the years, including tracks by Alice Cooper and Danny Elfman among others, "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett still stands as the official anthem of Halloween. Released in May 1962, the song hit #1 in October of that year and has been a staple of the season ever since.

The song's origins lie in an impression of British horror actor Boris Karloff which Pickett, a Korean War vet born in 1938, used to do in talent shows in his hometown of Somerville, Massachusetts, in the late 1950s after he'd gotten out of the Signal Core. "Every time I'd do it, I'd win," Pickett remembered. Later, Pickett moved to Hollywood with three of his Somerville buddies and formed a doo-wop group called the Cordials. Part of the group's act was a cover of "Little Darlin'," and Pickett liked to perform the spoken-word monologue in the middle of the song ("My darling, I need you...") in his Karloff voice. His bandmate, Leonard "Lenny" Capizzi, suggested that the voice would be perfect for a novelty record, and together the two wrote "Monster Mash." The rest? Well, you know.

Though he lived in the song's shadow for the rest of his life, Pickett didn't mind a bit. "Let's just say," he told the Washington Post in 2004, "that it has paid the rent for 43 years." In interviews, Pickett frequently compared himself to Guy Lombardo, the bandleader forever associated with "Auld Lang Syne" and New Year's Eve. Pickett happily performed the song at small venues until he died in 2007. So now, let us venture into the lab once again and learn a few things about this crucial piece of Americana.

Loomis, not Michael, is the real bogeyman: An alternate reading of John Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978)

October 31, 1978 is the Halloween that Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald  Pleasence) has been anticipating for 15 years.

"Your compassion is overwhelming, doctor."

-Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), sarcastically addressing Dr. Loomis

"The concept is valid no matter where it originates!"

-A line from John Carpenter's debut film, Dark Star (1974)

The first film in the franchise.

For a moment, I want you to cast your mind back to 1978, when John Carpenter's immensely influential (and still enormously entertaining) slasher film, Halloween, made its debut on American movie screens. At that time, there was no such thing as "the Halloween franchise." The film's ten sequels (1981-2022) had not been made yet, to say nothing of the 2007 remake, which inspired its own 2009 sequel. For those of you keeping score, there are now thirteen Halloween movies all together. 

But back in '78, there was just one movie. Based on the comments made by the film's co-creators, director/writer John Carpenter and producer/co-writer Debra Hill, Halloween was not meant to be the first chapter in an ongoing saga. It was a contractual obligation, not a creative drive, that led to Halloween II (1982) and all that followed.

Naturally, the subsequent films explored and expanded the mythology of the original film's three central characters, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Michael Myers aka The Shape (Nick Castle, among others), and Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Thirty-five years ago, however, there was no mythology to explore. The only information we had about these characters—and the only information the creators ever intended us to have about them—came from this one movie. 

I say all of this because I want to present an alternate interpretation of Halloween that willfully ignores everything revealed about Laurie, Michael, and Loomis in the subsequent films and treats the 1978 original as an isolated, standalone story. Still with me? Good. Let us continue.

Hollywood's Greatest Monsters... And Their Crummy Personal Websites : An Expose!

Wolfie, Frankie and Drac: Internet failures all.

Remember that Internet gold rush of the 1990s, when everybody was scrambling to buy up any potentially lucrative URLs just as quickly as possible? Yeah, well, that's over. Know how I know? Because horror's three greatest names -- Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man -- have utterly failed to become desirable Internet addresses. Go ahead and add a .com to any of their hallowed names, and you know what you get? A whole lotta nothing, that's what!

Read on... if you dare!

The site: Dracula.com

Might as well be Dracula smiling and wearing a backpack.

Yes, dear readers, that uninspiring screenshot shows you what you get when you type dracula.com into your browser's address bar. It's one of those lousy generic placeholder pages. Apparently, the domain name is for sale. At least there are links to "Real Vampire Photos" and "Dracula Games," but there's also a shameful link to "Bratz Girls Games." How embarrassing, Dracula, for a nobleman such as yourself to be dragged down to the level of the slutty-looking proletariat!

The site: Frankenstein.com

Boris Karloff inadvertently shills for a "web production" company.

What you get here is something called Castle Pink Frankenstein, apparently a "web production company." (That exists? That's a thing?) Their awkwardly-worded sales spiel reads like this:

"CPF Web Production has worked with individual artists, small business, non-profits and politicians. Our main goal is to empower it’s clients with a web presence that works for them and to make it easy and affordable to keep the site updated. We deal with customized and integrated Word Press blogs, databases, social networking integration, Content Management Systems, iWeb customization (manage your own site once we build it for you!), eCommerce and of course standard plain old web pages."

The site: Wolfman.com

Note the lack of wolves, were or otherwise.

"This website reflects my Love of Macaws, Wolves, and Dogs." The fact that wolves get second billing in that sentence is a clear, early indication that this site maybe isn't going to be a tribute to Universal's Wolf Man, as played by Lon Chaney, Jr. (In case you're wondering, adding "the" to the name doesn't help. Thewolfman.com is just another domain-for-sale placeholder page, lamer even than Dracula's.) Wolfman.com turns out to be the personal page of someone named Jim Morris. The site's contents seem to consist of pictures of Morris' pets and brief articles about those same pets. So he's a "wolf man" in the sense that he's a man who likes wolves. Just like how so-called "cat people" are not really human-feline hybrids.

So these sites fail to make the grade, horror wise. What if you're opposed to monsters and want to call in the professionals? Your first move might be to type ghostbusters.com into your browser. So what do you get when you do that?

Well, this...

The site: Ghostbusters.com

Still at it after more than a quarter-century. Nice to know.

It's a very fancy, rather thoughtful promotional site for the Ghostbusters franchise. Once you get past the loading screen (above), you're taken to a city street with lots of clickable buildings. Yes, the theme song starts playing after a while. And, yes, the Ecto-1 zooms by occasionally. Slimer and Marshmallow Man put in their expected appearances. Apparently, the first film had a theatrical re-release in October 2011. Did you know about that? I didn't. Anyway, the site's most interesting detail might be something written in small type at the bottom of the screen...

So You Think You Can Ghostbust?

Can you read it? It says "Employment Opportunities." An employment opportunity? With the freakin' Ghostbusters? Ye gods! But hold on, Tex. You might think you're going to be the next Winston Zeddemore, but the link just takes you to the Sony Pictures Entertainment Career Connection, where you'll find such unappetizing employment opportunities as "Client Production Services Manager." So, no, you won't be bustin' any ghosts

Le sigh.

Lest we forget: A Halloween Tribute To Sweet Lady Sugar

"I got hooked on the white stuff in the '70s" - DISCO STU

Witches, vampires, ghosts... sure, these things are fine. But let's not forget what Halloween is truly all about. I'm referring of course to sugar! It's a holiday devoted to consuming as much candy as is humanly possible.

And what better way to pay tribute to Sweet Lady Sugar than with a bunch of versions of that all-time classic song, "Sugar Sugar"? Written in 1969 by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, the song has gone on to become one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization, as evidenced by the truly astonishing variety of remakes there have been over the years.

Journey back with me, won't you? BONUS: How often has this song been recorded in the key of D?

(today's zomby) AND IF YOU LIKE HALLOWEEN, YOU WILL HATE THIS WOMAN!

Where exactly is Zomby now?

Only two more days until that holiday of holidays, Halloween! And you know what that means! Yes, it's time for vehemently anti-Halloween invective!

Above: Carol Kornacki is not, in fact, having a stroke.

Some people seem to have beamed in our world directly from the realm of sketch comedy, and such a person is televangelist and author Carol Kornacki. In her voice, her mannerisms, and her message, she seems for all the world like some ridiculously over-the-top comedic caricature from late night television. But she's quite real, I assure you. Apart from her books and her appearances on religious TV shows like Benny Hinn and The 700 Club, Ms. Kornacki likes to spread her particular and peculiar version of God's message through YouTube videos. Her self-related backstory is astonishing, as she describes a childhood of eating out of garbage cans and washing blood off the walls of the family homestead.

In other words, Carol Kornacki is too good to be true. God bless this woman. Go visit her website, carolkornacki.org right now!

One of Ms. Kornacki's specialties is speaking out against the evils of Halloween. I thought that today, as we're all preparing for the Big Day, I'd ask you to spend a few minutes -- or hours, whatever -- listening to Carol's many, many arguments against the seemingly "innocent" holiday. Who knows? You might even change your mind. She's very entertaining either way. If she'd been called by the Law instead of the Lord, she might very well have been another Judge Judy.






And there's so much more where this came from! Check out "The DARK TRUTH about Halloween," part one and part two!

(today's zomby) AND SUGGESTIONS ON MAKING YOUR HALLOWEEN LESS FUN!

October 31 is coming up soon, and you know what THAT means! Yes, it's time to drain every last bit of fun out of Halloween! Here, let the folks at Centron help:



Depressed yet? Either way, here's part 2:



"Yes, the safest way to celebrate Halloween is.... not to celebrate it at all! So when All Hallows Eve rolls around this year, why not play it safe? Stay home and work on your penmanship or write that book report you've been putting off! Remember to sit up straight now! Here, let me throw your costume away for you!

"There we go! That's better! Dry those eyes now! Nobody likes a crybaby! Remember, when you celebrate Halloween the Centron way, you may feel dead on the inside, but you'll be alive on the outside!"

P.S. - John Carpenter's Halloween came out a year after the Centron film.

Notice any similarities at all?

Z is for Zany (Day 26)

This guy is zany.

I bet that's not what you thought Z was going to stand for. By the end of this book, I was really getting creative with the adjectives -- first "wacky," then "yucky," and now "zany." But hold on a second! What is this creature, this "guy" if you will, supposed to be? It looks like he started out as Frankenstein's Monster, but then somehow mutated into something else midway through. I only drew one neck bolt before deciding, "Screw it! Frankie's already been on the cover and two other pages of this book! Time to try something else!" So I colored his skin gray instead of green, mussed up his hair, and added some bloodstains to his outfit. You know what? I'm gonna call this guy a Living Impaired individual. With a single neck bolt.

And that, dearest readers, takes us to the merciful conclusion of My Halloween Dictionary. I will leave you with the book's back cover -- another charming flourish by the young author, who could've just as easily left it blank. I like how the smudged ink accidentally suggests the motion of the broom-riding witch across the night sky.

The back cover

Y is for Yucky (Day 24)

Monsters are yucky.

Okay, okay... so I misspelled "are." I was obviously in a state of artistic frenzy, judging by the bravura depiction of the horror world's own Rat Pack here. We have Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and... uh, The Ghost. Notice the bulbous nose and simpleton expression I've given to both Drac and his ghostly comrade. Frankie appears pretty blissed-out as well. Only the Mummy remains enigmatic, a mystery behind his shapeless blob of bandages. Keep in mind, this was all before The Monster Squad. For all I know, they ripped me off. It can happen! Did you see Big Fat Liar with Frankie Muniz and Paul Giamatti? No? Well, you should. It's actually kind of funny. Better than you'd think.

X is for X-ray (Day 24)

Look at the monster's x-ray.

The letter X affords one very few choices in a project like this. I suppose "x-ray" was about all I could come up with. What else was there? Perhaps "The xylophone is memorably used to evoke the sound of rattling bones in Camille Saint-Saëns' eerie Danse Macabre." But that would have been a little beyond me at that age, so I went with the tried-and-true "x-ray." As this drawing shows, my knowledge of x-ray technology derives almost entirely from cartoons.

W is for Witch (Day 23)

See the wacky witch

An end is in sight, kiddies. And glory of glories, I start this one with "See" instead of "Look at." The witch design here does not seem terribly menacing. I must have been influenced by Broom Hilda or Witch Hazel from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. Serious students of the Halloween Dictionary will note that this depiction of a witch does not match the ones we've seen previously in this project like here or here. Before I leave, I must complement the younger version of myself on having great taste in adjectives.

V is for Vampires (Day 22)

I hate vampires.

Twenty years before Twilight, folks. I was ridiculously ahead of the Twilight backlash. Backlashes, of course, are the lifeblood of the Internet. We're all player haters at heart. I think a lot of the anti-Twilight sentiment is directly attributable to the fact that Stephanie Meyer is pulling in mad cash for her little vampire stories, and we all wish we'd thought of it instead of her. I've never read any of the books or seen any of the movies, so my familiarity with the franchise extends only to the way it has been discussed online. (Well, a little on TV.) I don't really even know if Kristen Stewart really is as hopeless an actress as everyone says. I do know I've seen many publicity photos of her looking hilariously blank -- conveying "nothingness" so perfectly that it almost seems intentional. Who knows? Maybe Kristen Stewart is actually a brilliant con artist having a good laugh at our expense.

U is for Ugly (Day 21)

He is very ugly.

And you are very judgmental and shallow, sir. Aren't we being a bit prejudiced here? Well, he has dental problems clearly. And male-pattern baldness (the Daddy Warbucks/Kojak pattern, that is). Some surgical scars still clearly visible. And only three fingers per hand... with the nails on the wrong side... and in the wrong place. No neck. Little puppet arms. Flourescent skin. Prominent warts. Animal-like ears that stick out too far... and don't line up with each other. But do all these details really add up to ugly? Have you gotten to know this indvidual as a person? Did that even occur to you? Sometimes, the people who are "ugly" on the outside are beautiful on the inside and vice versa. I learned that from a little movie called Shallow Hal. Thank you, Gwyneth Paltrow in a fatsuit, for showing us the way. Again.

T is for Troll (Day 20)

Look at the ugly troll.

I would promise you that we're past the "Look at" sentences, but there's at least one more to go. And we're back to having one small character drawn in the middle of the page with the rest left blank. What can I say? To this day, I am not good at drawing backgrounds or props. But what of our troll friend here? This was before the Troll movies by a couple of years and well before the rise of the Internet troll, so the trolls I was referencing were the ones from fairy tales, specifically that Norwegian golden-oldie, "Three Billy Goats Gruff." Note that the troll here has terrible posture and must scuttle around like a crab. That's because he has to live under a fairly low bridge. Note, too, the troll's homeless-guy beard and tattered one-piece outfit. The latter might well be described as a gunny sack onesie.

S is for Spider (Day 19)

Look at the huge spider!

My teacher might have been impressed with the sentences the Halloween Dictionary, but I have some reservations. Nine of them -- about a third of the entries -- start with the words "Look at..." The legend at the bottom of this page is supposed to be "Look at the huge spider." But I think this is one of the better pictures in the book, if only because I decided to compose for the entire frame this time rather than making the rather over-generous use of negative space we've seen in previous entries. To this day, I still draw cartoony pictures on just about every piece of scrap paper that comes into my possession, and my drawing style is still astonishingly like what you see above. Those big googly eyes? Still a personal trademark.

R is for Rabbit (Day 18)

Look at the magic rabbit.

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the pill that Mother gives you makes you hallucinate a glowing, Harvey-esque "magic ra[b]bit" who can conjure stars, planets, and comets with a mere wave of his forepaws. Misspelling aside, this is one of my favorite pages of My Halloween Dictionary. I'm not of a temperament to get a tattoo, but if I were... well, this is what I'd have permanently inked on some out-of-the-way, not-visible-during-a-job-interview section of my anatomy.

Q is for Queer (Day 17)

Look at the queer monster.

Who knows what goes through kids' minds? I sure as hell don't. If I did, I'd write a book on the subject, promote it on the daytime talk shows, and make a fortune from frustrated mothers across the country. I can tell you, though, that the word "queer" merely meant "unusual" to me as a kid, so no subtext can or should be implied. As for this creature's passing resemblance to Lord Vishnu, I can tell you with some surety that Hinduism was well beyond my ken at that age. Perhaps I'd seen a picture of the deity, and it had made an impression upon me. Draw your own conclusions. And your own pictures for that matter.