I Sure Do Dig Halowe'en

Well, tonight's the big, evil party. Hope you have a sugar-buzzed blast! I'm proud to say that both my kids chose to be vampires this year. No namby-pamby princesses or pirates for our house, no sir! Genuine undead only, if you please. My DRAWN! comrade and fellow weirdo Ward Jenkins seems to have had the right spirit from an early age. Chills the heart, it does. Ahhh. And I see young Ava is growing up nice and weirdly, too, just like my spawn. Know what else makes me happy? J. Deitrich and his Nouveau- Finko art. High octane heaven, man. Reminds me of ye old hotrods of yesteryear... One more all hallowed thought. I really think they made the movie about the wrong Ghost Rider. But that's maybe just me.

Monster Music

Dr. Mysterian not only offers to tell you the future, he also brings you a devilish collection of scarce and scary recordings.

The Golden Age Of Monsters

Fun reflection on the '60's monster craze."Monster Mania had such widespread cultural infiltration during that decade, even publications like Time and Life devoted articles to the phenomena. To many who experienced it first hand, it remains a defining moment of 1960s youth, along with the Beatles, the Batman television series and - much later in the decade - Woodstock, the Moonwalk , LSD and Free Love."

Mr. Addams

Here's a lovely review by cartoonist Edward Sorel of the new book Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life, by Linda H. Davis. My favorite bit? "As anyone might easily have deduced from the way Addams drew children, he loathed the idea of having any. Although genuinely in love with his first wife, Barbara, he refused to have a child. “I am my own child,” he explained." I'm also impressed in regards to his encounter with Veronica Lake. She was the cat's pyjamas.

Full of Seeds

If you're looking for loads of spooky scans from old children's magazines, graveyard photos, McDonalds Halloween ephemera, and a picture of an old theater showing the Vault of Horror (and, really, who isn't?) Plastic Pumpkins is your next stop.

Two Weeks To Go!

How Groovie, Goolies!

Oh my lord, they're back. The campy, cute, and creeptacular Groovie Goolies are available on DVD! For those of you unaware of this 1970 Filmation cartoon and it's charms, the Goolies were a large group of hip, singing monsters, featuring pop-culture echoes of classic Universal Studios creatures, including Frankie, Wolfie, Mummy, Drac, Dr. Jekyll-Hyde, Bella La Ghostly, the kids Batzo and Ratzo (my favorites!), Bonapart, Hagatha, Broomhilda, and Hauntleroy. They originally debuted as co-stars alongside recently discussed Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, and, yes, they put out a few pop songs.
BCI has this to say in their press release... "They were the grooviest, most eclectic array of animated monsters ever to hit the small screen in the early ‘70s. Now, thanks to BCI, the latest series from the Filmation catalog will be available on DVD on October 24th with the release of “Groovie Goolies- The Saturday Mourning Collection”, featuring sixteen digitally remastered episodes."
Now, 16 episodes ain't bad, but I'm still waiting for a decent print of the the truely bizarre cartoon mash-up that was Daffy Duck and Porky Pig meet the Groovie Goolies. So bad you know you desperately want to see it as much as I do!

Monster League Of Evil

Pop on over to Supermanica for Octobers' Monster of the Week from the four color pages of Superman. Last week's Monster was The Shark, and right now it's the delightful Monster League Of Evil! (thanks Bryan!)

Fearsome Foldies

Feel like making some seasonally spooky papercraft? The delightful Paper Forest has your links to the good stuff.

Mad House Mania

Before Gladir and Busino created the short-lived and well- loved Tales Calculated To Drive You BATS (of which I've posted often), they both toiled away on another obscure Archie comic book called Archie's Mad House. Though not nearly as monster-centric as BATS, this other Mad Magazine rip-off still had it's fair share of creepy cartoons. In fact, the comic eventually developed a 'monster section' (alongside a 'teen-age section' and a 'space section', being sure to cover all the hot fads) with a regular dose of wacky monster gags hosted by Hilda the Witch. I promise to post a heap of this campy madness at some later date. In October 1962, two of the sections collided in the creation of Sabrina, the Teen-Aged Witch, written by George Gladir and drawn by Dan DeCarlo. You've probably heard of her, even though it took Sabrina years to click with an audience. In an interview at The Comics Review, Gladir recalls those early days... "Around 1961 I came up with the idea of doing Tales Calculated to Drive you BATS'..or BATS for short. My partner in this endeavor was my old C&I classmate Orlando Busino. And while this book was destined to become a cult favorite it was relatively short lived, because the Comics Code Authority thought that our innocent spoofs on vampires and assorted monsters somehow violated the Comics Code. Shortly thereafter, I created "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" for Archie 's Mad House (#22 - Oct. '62), and was most fortunate to have the comics legend Dan DeCarlo draw it. I think we both envisioned it as a one-shot and were surprised when fans asked for more. We continued to do Sabrina stories off and on in Mad House until 1969 when we were flabbergasted to hear it was to become an animated feature. I might add, that Sabrina first made her appearance two years before Bewitched showed up on TV." Here are a couple of pages from that inauspicious beginning.

Holy October!

Time for Monsterama's yearly reminder about the history of the holiday season originally derived from the Celtic Samhain. But lets not short change the Christians... they brought a lot to the table in the creation of the festival now known as Halloween. In the 800's, as Christianity was spreading into Celtic lands, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day (a time to honor saints and martyrs) in an attempt to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the traditional pagan night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve. In A.D. 1000, the church made November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the Eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

What Are You Going As?

Time to start seriously thinking about your costumes, folks. The big holiday is right around the corner. Here are a few ideas.