Helloween!

The Bride of Frankenstein is one of the enduring archetypes of horror. Invented by James Whale in the immortal film The Bride of Frankenstein, and played with hissing horror by Elsa Lanchester, she symbolizes the essential isolation of the Modern Prometheus—even with a mate specially created for him, the Creature receives nothing but rejection. Write Jamie Rich and artist Megan Levens have reinvented the character in Madame Frankenstein, a seven-issue series from Image Comics. Six issues are out and the 7th drops on November 5th, with the trade due in February. Interior art is by Levens and letters by Crank. The covers, seen here, are by Joëlle Jones and Nick Filardi.

Comics biggest distributor Diamond has slowly been working to make Halloween a huge promotional day for comics shops, with special comics, contests and more. Let's face it, it doesn't take too much to get in the Halloween mood, and the promotion has been a big success. You can see a list of special Halloween comcis on the Halloween Comicfest website, such as this one spotlighting Boom! Studios spooky anthology with seasonal stories from Adventure Time, Fraggle Rock and more. This particular story features writing by Bryce Carlson and art by Frazer IRving in a VERY DIFFERENT Adventure Time story.

As you can imagine, we're not the only website counting down Halloween month. Chris Schweizer, comics educator and the man behind the delightful Crogan's Adventures series from Oni, is posting a mostly daily monster picture  and here's today's the Florida Swamp Ape. You can see the rest in the link like this Ghost Rider in the Sky:

 

I know we've been slacking a bit with 31 Days due to the horrors of New York Comic-Con, but it's full sped ahead to the pumpkins now. And here is the best thing you will hear today, tomorrow or possibly in a lifetime: Japanese Horror master Junji Ito Is doing a Pokemon collaboration. Yeah that's right. The creator of Uzumaki, Museum of Terror, the Long Hair in the Attic and much more, is doing POKEMON. The news was announced in Japan as a "Collaboration," you know, like Tokidoki doing Marvel, except terrifying and unspeakable. It's called “Kowapoke,” which means “Scarypoke” and a single phone wallpaper image has been released thus far. That's Banette, cute little Banette, admittedly not the nicest Pokemon, now all Kowapoke'd up. T-shirts are being given away in Japan now because life is unknowable and terrifying.

Costume SuperCenter is a  full service site for all your Halloween costume needs. They've set up at NYCC in booth  #1380 and to help let fans know they've graciously offered to give a $50...

About 20 years ago, Neil Gaiman was mostly known as The Sandman Guy. He was as beloved as ever but it was just before he became one of the work's bets known authors. ONE of his projects of the time was THE LAST TEMPTATIOn, based on a theme album by horror rock icon Alice Cooper. Illustrated by Michael Zulli, the themes of the album fit in well with Gaiman's work: a boy named Steven leaves from home only to meet up with the Showman and his Theatre of the Real. Buying a ticket to the show is buying a ticket to a nightmare. Beautifully drawn by Zulli, and published by Marvel's bizarre Music Line (there was also a Billy Ray Cyrus comic by Paul S. Newman, Dan Barry, and Gail Beckett) this oddity is being brought back by Dynamite in a limited edition Hardcover Remarked edition, signed by Gaiman and remarked by Zulli, with the art remastered and colored by David Curiel at InLight Studios. The book is available in an edition of only 200, with bonus material including all three scripts to the book, the original outline, and Neil Gaiman's original correspondence with Alice Cooper.

Kickstarter alert! Bobby Timony (The Night Owls, The Horror Lovers, Detectobot and Goblin Hood) is Kickstarting a deck of playing cards adorned with cute monster girl pin-ups. That says it all right? Timony's cartoon-esque art is just right to present...

It seems we're not the only ones obsessed with Halloween—Mike Mignola and Dark Hose have been running a 13 Days of Hellboy festival, celebrating all kinds of artwork and story reveals in the Hellboy. And we're officially crossing over with this exclusive reveal of Mignola's cover for the trade paperback Witchfinder: The Mysteries Of Unland. This is the latest book in a Hellboy spin-off series that centers on Sir Edward Grey, a Victorian detective of the occult who figures in the past of the Hellboy timeline.

Nothing says Halloween like Charlie Brown, Linus and the Great Pumpkin. Fantagraphics, which has been publishing all of Charles Schulz's Peanuts strips in chronological order, has also starting putting out charming gift books based on themes...

Want to read a 96 graphic novel about a young woman and a time travelling ghost for FREE? You can read about the making of the book at the Under the Apple Tree webpage and download it here. Cartoonist Sarah Winifred Searle created it as part of a Children’s Writer-in-Residence at the Boston Public Library. here's the logline:

Fall is in the air, bringing a crisp step and the crunch of leaves under foot, and the inevitable—perhaps inescapable—presence of Pumpkin Spice everything all around us! Yes, it's time for 31 Days of Halloween, The Beat's annual tribute to our MOST FAVORITEST TIME OF YEAR. And let's get things going with probably the most obvious link possible...but I have ever written about painter/cartoonist/musician Menton3 on The Beat before so here goes! Based in Chicago, Menton3—aka Menton J Matthews III—is a painter of atmospheric and disturbing images. While you can find a lot of his work at his website, he's probably best known these days as a partner in 44Flood, a publishing company that has teamed with IDW to put out art books and comics. Along with fellow artists Kasra Ghanbari, Ben Templesmith and Nick Idell, 44Flood has put out Tome, an artbook which was mostly Kickstarted, Templesmith's The Squidder, the comic Monocyte, which you see on this page, and Libretto, an anthology of eerieness centering on vampirism. A new volume of Tome is on its way or already here (I couldn't find a lot of solid news about the bunch.)

Of everything I looked ah while compiling my annual Halloween clow=out, nothing disturbed me as much as this. Did you own these cards and think, like I did, that they would explain all mysteries?...