halloween in the comics: dracula

Vampires in general, and Dracula in particular, have long been viewed as synonymous with Halloween. But does anyone know how Dracula himself actually feels about Halloween night? Does he embrace the celebration with warmth and good humour?

Apparently not.




Happy Halloween children.


The Grand Comic Book Database

halloween in the comics: duckburg

We return to our celebration of Halloween in the comics with a visit to Duckburg.

You've got to admire Donald Duck.

He never loses his enthusiasm for Halloween. Regardless of the frequently nasty tricks perpetrated by those irritating nephews.

He is truly the unsung Halloween hero of Duckburg.

The Grand Comic Book Database

just this once

My fellow blogger, Diane from Good Mourning, Glory!, tagged me recently. I usually don't complete these Q&A's. But it's a quiet day and I'm patiently waiting for the sun to burn off the fog. So why not? And I like you, Diane. I wouldn't do this for just anyone. So here goes . . .


What is your current obsession?

Gardening. As it is at this time each year. Moving plants, trying to grow new plants, bidding farewell to plants that didn't survive the winter, checking obsessively on the progress of existing plants . . .


What is your weirdest obsession?

I don't think it's weird, but maybe some people do. . . As a child I loved series books: Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames. I had quite an impressive collection. Then, as a broke and stupid university student, I sold them all at a flea market. I'm now obsessed with re-building my collection, even the books I didn't have, and I can't pass a used bookstore or yard sale without checking for potential new additions.


What are you wearing today?

Jeans, T-shirt and sweatshirt. Just like most days.


Why is today special?

Because I've tried a recipe I found for toffee and it turned out beautifully and I've already eaten half of it.


What would you like to learn to do?

Stop procrastinating.

What is the last thing you bought?

Coffee at the Second Cup. Butter pecan.


What are you listening to right now?

The sound of my cat snoring.


What's your favorite weather?

The crisp but still mild weather of October. Bright sunshine, blue sky, crunchy leaves underfoot.


What's your most challenging goal right now?

Finding someone willing to hire me.


What do you think about the person who tagged you?

I think she's very honest and open. You can read her blog and feel like you know her.


What's your favorite guilty pleasure?

Deep-fried pub food: potato skins, onion straws, zucchini sticks, jalapeno poppers . . . *insert Homer Simpson drool here*


Favorite vacation spot?

I would love to visit London again. London, England; not London, Ontario. (Not that there's anything wrong with London, Ontario.)


What would you like to have in your hands right now?

A vanilla milkshake from Chickenburger.


What would you like to get rid of?

My current state of uncertainty.


If you could go anywhere in the in the world for the next hour, where would you go?

Hmmmm. Short notice. I'd go downtown, get a latte and read the newspapers.


Which language would you like to learn?

Klingon.


What super power would you like to possess?

Time travel. But I wouldn't corrupt the timeline. And I would respect the Prime Directive.


What's your favorite thing about the city you live in?

Where to begin . . . the waterfront in summer, the ice cream mixed with handmade candy from Sugah!, the great pubs, the used bookstores, the donairs, the residential architecture in the south end, the smell of salt air, Bud the Spud's fries, the abundance of historical ghost stories, the fog rolling in along the harbour . . .


What's your favorite piece of clothing in your own closet?

My oversized shirt. It can be worn with anything.


What's your dream job?

Cartoonist. Sadly I have the drawing skills of a pre-schooler.


If you had $150 now what would you do with it?

Complete my collection of original Nancy Drew books.


Do you admire anyone's style?

Yes.


Describe your personal style?

Extreme casual.


Who's fashion show would you want tickets to?

None. I have absolutely no interest in fashion. But I'd trade them for tickets to a sci-fi convention.


Who's closet would you want to raid?

No one's. See above response.


If you could choose one person who has passed to have lunch with, who would it be and why?

I have to choose two. Both my grandfathers, who died before I was born. They both immigrated to Canada in their youth and I would love a first-hand account of their experiences.


Finally, what does this post have to do with Halloween?

Nothing. But because I try to give all my posts a connection, however tenuous, to Halloween or just general spookiness, I'm including this photo. Spooky indeed!

halloween in the comics: superheroes

Evil super-villains never take a holiday. Which means superheroes must be particularly vigilant. Especially at Halloween.

But once the villains have been defeated, there are opportunities for some good old-fashioned Halloween fun. Like that being enjoyed by the Bizarro Supermen.

I've never quite understood the appeal of the Bizarro world. Someone somewhere was scraping the bottom of the story idea barrel.

The Grand Comic Book Database

halloween in the comics

Another Free Comic Book Day is almost upon us. And since I love Golden and Silver Age comics almost as much as I love Halloween, it seems appropriate to mark the occasion with a gallery of Golden Age and Silver Age Halloween-themed comic book covers. And maybe just one or two from the Bronze Age.

In fact, an occasion like this deserves more than just one post. Why not a whole week of celebration?







Few characters in the Golden Age of Comics embraced Halloween with the exuberance of Bugs Bunny.

And who could ask for a more accommodating trick-or-treater? No more candy? No problem. Just drop a carrot in the treat bag. The Halloween poster boy for dentists everywhere.

The Grand Comic Book Database

Halloween in Duckburg

The great Carl Barks, the artist and writer responsible for giving us Scrooge McDuck and many of the other inhabitants of the sleepy town of Duckburg, was asked in the 1950's to create a comic book version of Disney's animated short film, Trick or Treat. Unable to stretch the plot of the cartoon to fill a comic book, he added a few classic Halloween characters to expand the story. The result, also entitled Trick or Treat, was later immortalized by Carl Barks in this beautiful lithograph: Halloween in Duckburg.

I wonder if it's too early to start my Christmas wish list.

happy birthday

William Shakespeare's birthday is traditionally celebrated today, April 23rd. In honour of the occasion, a short poem:

from MacBeth

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

Enter the three Witches.

1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin'd.
3 WITCH. Harpier cries:—'tis time! 'tis time!

1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches' mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg'd i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add there to a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our caldron.

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH. Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

fatal facts

Torn from the pages of my MSN home page . . .

20 Things You Didn't Know About Death

1. The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

2. There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including "to be in Abraham's bosom," "just add maggots" and "sleep with the Tribbles" (a "Star Trek" favorite).

3. No American has died of old age since 1951.

4. That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.

5. The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the Greek word "agon," meaning "contest."

6. Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

7. So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid -- formaldehyde, methanol and ethanol -- into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide into the air.

8. Alternatively, a Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this "ecological burial" will decompose in six to 12 months.

9. Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.

10. The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

11. Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

12. If this doesn't work, we're trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called "famadihana." The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

13. Sometimes, under the right conditions of temperature and humidity, fatty tissue of a buried body will turn to a soap-like substance called adipocere, or grave wax. Adipocere formation relies on a cold, damp environment and an absence of oxygen; once begun, this saponification can continue for centuries.

14. Well, yeah, there's a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.

15. For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

16. In 1907, a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It's not.

17. Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in "hospitals for the dead" while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.

18. Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

19. More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.

20. It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.

halloween 1973

After my introduction to the wonderful nostalgic world of old time radio, I'll admit I became addicted. I spent countless hours searching for sites offering free downloads. Then I discovered the Internet Archive and my addiction intensified. Thousands of episodes still in existence and now in the public domain were available for free download. I became an old time radio junkie. And eventually had to purchase an external hard drive due to a lack of storage space on my desktop. I almost never listened to music on my MP3 player anymore. It was all Dimension X. The Shadow. Casey Crime Photographer. Inner Sanctum. Lights Out.

But as usually happens when I find a new all-consuming hobby, the novelty wore off. I hadn't added to my collection in several months. That needed to change. I realized that I missed it. So I returned to the Internet Archive to check out new additions and see if I had missed anything interesting in my previous searches. I had.

Someone had kindly uploaded a recording from Halloween night, 1973. True, 1973 is not exactly old time radio but much of the program's content is. A collection of spooky old radio programs and documentaries, all performed (and sometimes written) by station staff and compiled for broadcast on WBCW Buffalo on October 31st, 1973. The collection includes music and Halloween-themed commercials from the era. Probably the biggest treat for a child of the 70's.

I wish more radio stations would do this today.

(If the playback is messed up like it is on my computer, you can find the whole program here.)

gold

I was downtown yesterday evening browsing at HMV when I saw it. 365 Days of the Golden Age of DC Comics. A random yet representative collection of panels, cover art, and advertisements from the early years of DC comics, accompanied by an interesting (at least to a golden age fanatic like me) piece of classic comic book history. I've coveted this book for a while now but have been reluctant to hand over the cover price. But now, here it was. For the incredible low, low price of ten dollars. Ten dollars! My heart skipped a beat. I felt giddy with joy. This has made my whole weekend.

Significant days throughout the year are acknowledged with relevant entries. Like October 31st.

But surprisingly, Halloween's entry isn't the creepiest. That honour would have to go to October 28th.

Or perhaps February 5th.

Golden age goodness.

favourite ghost stories: duc d'anville

One of my favourite local ghost stories has a couple of different versions. This ghost reportedly haunts at least two different locations. A little more restless perhaps than the average wandering spirit.

In 1749, when Edward Cornwallis sailed into Halifax harbour to start building a city, he was met by an impressive welcoming committee. Along the shores of the harbour and scattered within the woods, were skeletons, still dressed in the tattered, decaying uniforms of a French naval fleet. All that remained of the ill-fated expedition of Duc D'Anville three years earlier.

Duc d'Anville, a French aristocrat, was described as a man "worthy to be loved and born to command." He was acting upon the French king's orders to retake Louisbourg, expel the British from Nova Scotia, devour Boston in flames, ravage New England, and destroy the British West Indies. It didn’t quite work out that way. While it is likely that d'Anville had polished manners which served him well at court, it appears that he never received proper naval training. That proved to be a problem.

Nonetheless, d'Anville led a fleet of 70 ships and 13,000 men across the Atlantic. The fleet spent three months at sea. Far longer than planned. Three months of bad luck. Never could they steer a straight course; the winds dictated which way they would go. Weeks passed. Storms battered them. More weeks passed. The men became sick with scurvy and typhus. The drinking water was putrid, the biscuits were buggy, and the contents of the barrels gray and smelly. Men began to die and their bodies were stitched into canvas, together with a cannon ball, and slipped into the ocean. The corpse inside, some would say, was in a better state than those who watched the daily ceremony.

Most of them died. Many just after having arrived at Halifax. Some were buried; others simply left where they had fallen. D'Anville himself died within six days of arrival. Some said of disease. Some said of grief. Some said of poison.



There followed a sad scene which played out on a little grassy island in the harbour: George's Island. A small group of remaining French naval officers were rowed out by an exhausted and sick crew of French seamen, with the remains of their leader, to the shore of this little bleak island in the middle of a huge bleak wilderness. And there he was laid to rest.


But this was not the last to be seen of Duc d’Anville. Because on certain nights there can be seen on the shores of George’s Island, a man in the uniform of an 18th century French admiral, pacing forlornly back and forth. Waiting perhaps for the remains of his fleet to come and return him to France. And he apparently doesn’t remain on the island. For this same uniformed admiral has been known to walk along the shores of Bedford Basin near the place where the broken remains of his fleet had lain anchored. Where he likely spent his last days. And those who have seen him are certain that if the air is still, they can hear the sound of oars moving through the water. But no boat can be seen. The admiral’s few remaining men are coming to claim him.

the accidental checkers

I had some leftover clay from my bird skeleton project and thought I'd use it up by making some new ornaments for my Halloween tree. There was an old candy mould in the cupboard. This would be a quick and easy project.

Unfortunately, a little too quick. When I checked to see how the drying was progressing, I noticed something. I had forgotten to poke holes in them. A potential problem when hanging them on the tree. But what to do?

I stared at the tiny ghosts and pumpkins. And thought. And stared. And thought.

And then, rising out of the ashes of my carelessness, the Halloween checkers were born. A happy accident. Now to sharpen my checkers strategy.

Happy Easter

Apparently anything can serve as a symbol of Easter if it's surrounded by enough white lilies.

Easter-ween eggs

Colouring eggs the day before Easter has been a tradition in my family for as long as I can remember. One that I looked forward to as much as the chocolate bunnies, marshmallow eggs, and cheap plastic springtime toys that the Easter Bunny faithfully delivered early the following morning.

Over the years, however, I've never deviated in my colour choices from soft pastels and bright spring hues. Pink. Yellow. Mauve. Robin's Egg Blue. It didn't seem fair to distract and confuse the Easter Bunny on eve of such an important journey. Also, it just didn't occur to me.

But clearly, others do not share this concern. Because they have taken the traditional art of egg decoration and given it a decidedly Halloween-ish twist. No soft pastels here.

I hope the Easter Bunny is okay with this.

the dark side of Easter: human-chicken hybrids

Few images are more disturbing than chickens with human hands.



Unless it's a chicken with human hands smoking a pipe.



Or a chicken with human hands serving up eggs to those chicks fortunate enough to have hatched first and wise enough not to ask too many questions.

Or perhaps a cross-dressing rooster with human hands and anger-management problems.

I appreciate your terror, little rabbit. I'd run too.

Source

the dark side of Easter: sinister chickens

Amongst the hordes of soft fuzzy yellow chicks so prevalent at this time of year, there lurk a few . . . darker souls.


The overwhelming number of young chickens appearing prior to Easter inevitably results in a mob mentality. Other species are often the easiest targets.





And I shudder when I think of the fate that may have befallen the elderly owner of this hat and cane.



But these chickens are never more sinister than when confronting one of their own. In seemingly unprovoked attacks.



Broken eggs and interrogation. Easter joy indeed.

Source

the dark side of Easter: a visit with the Easter Bunny

Unlike Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny didn't make pre-holiday visits when I was a child. Or if he did, I never had the opportunity to sit and chat with him. And I'm thankful for that. It might have scarred me for life. Because these are creatures that have undoubtedly spawned untold childhood trauma.


Sure, some appear innocent enough.



While others can't disguise their malevolence.

Some travel alone.

While others are accompanied by equally disturbing "friends".



And despite attempts to project a friendly image through the media.



They can't completely mask the evil within . . .



. . . which has been observed to manifest itself in threats of physical aggression.



Even pets are not safe. It's okay little fella. Keep telling yourself: "He's a vegetarian. He's a vegetarian."



the horror continues . . .