P is for Pumpkin (Day 16)

I like to carve a pumpkin.

And just like that, we're on the back half of the countdown. Ain't that something? Truth be told, I was not all that into pumpkin carving as a kid. When you're that age, you can't really do the cutting by yourself, so your "job" mostly consists of scraping pumpkin guts out of your would-be jack-o-lantern. I've had better times than that. But, still, this is a nicely creepy, sorta John Carpenter-ish image, isn't it? Aw, what the heck do you know?

J is for Jack-O-Lantern (Day 10)

The jack-o-lantern was very big.

If you're wondering why I would spend the month of October meticulously scanning and then commenting upon a school project I did as a small child, well, this is it. I did it for pages like this one, in which a giant jack-o-lantern terrorizes a group of trick-or-treaters, including a witch, a ghost, and (my favorite) a pitchfork-wielding devil. It's such a "kid" idea, the kind I'd never come up with now that I'm grown. Incidentally, Austin, TX comic book artist Brad Neely has a good slang term for carved pumpkins. He calls them "Jackie-O's." Wish I'd thought of that.