GFT Retrospective #106: Halloween Special 2012 (Cover Charge #8)

Crossover by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster×Pagemaster

To be legal and clear for just a moment, I have based/taken many of my "most famous" bits of brand identity from across the entertainment spectrum. Before it was Just the Ticket, my "column" (as I called it in the defunct message board space that was Yahoo! Groups) was known as SWAT Ticket (l@er abbrevi@ed to SW@ Ticket), rhyming off of the old Leonard Maltin review show, Hot Ticket. My old sign-off combo was borrowed from Ryan Seacrest (I still use the "Out" line to end my posts to this day) and the Stephen King & Peter Straub sequel, Black House ("Chew it up, eat it up, or wash it down, it all comes out the same place!"). My byline a.k.a. for most of my non-anime posts is obviously borrowed from Ticketmaster. And for today's crossover (that I didn't know would be a crossover until I started reading the first story in the issue up for review), I'm adding an a.k.a. inspired by the 90s movie where Macaulay Culkin got isekai'd into a prolonged cartoon adventure with talking books. By the way, that's your reminder that it's still Anime August, Ticketholders!

I'm not worried about giving the big guys brand dilution because I'm in a tangential enough space and a small enough internet presence to not matter (even though I still want my money and analytics numbers to go up), so credit has been given where credit is due, and let's get on with the reviews!

GFT Halloween #4 (2012)

Collected in the elusive fourth and final Volume of Different Seasons (the only such Volume to not receive a digital edition on either ComiXology or through...other means), the 2012 Halloween Special is an anthology issue with four short stories and a wraparound, so one look at the amount of names in the image above should tell you how in-depth I'm going to be about the art and writing credits here. Just know that Pat Shand (the 2012 Swimsuit Edition) is one of the writers and count it as a point in favor.

The wraparound features three girls (gender-swapped Freddy, gender-swapped Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer—which she has to explain for our expense because otherwise, she could be anyone from Constantine to Sam Winchester for all we know—and generic mage/superheroine because I'm great at knowing comics), who skip out on a lame costume party to tell scary stories in a haunted cornfield because even though they're self-identified horror fans, they've never seen Children Of the Corn, Jeepers Creepers 2, Freddy VS Jason, Joy Ride, or the 90s Goosebumps episode, "The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight" (which, the latter is understandable because they seem to be Are You Afraid Of the Dark? fans).

First up is Rule 63 Spike Constantine Winchester (a.k.a. Vicky) with a story that is the whole reason for this post being a crossover: "Island Of the Dolls." In 1950, divorcee Don Julian takes up residence in a remote region of Mexico as an island hermit. When his isolationist negligence leads to the drowning death of a little girl who dropped her doll in a nearby stream, Don Julian begins compulsively decorating his island home with dolls to appease his own guilt and the cries of the spirit who haunts him. But many years later, it is still not enough, and the girl's ghost drowns him as revenge for her death, turning him into a doll. Why she didn't drown him sooner is unclear, but in the Zene-scope of this version, it's easy to assume that the girl was a Falseblood (likely part water nymph) who was tricked into a power bargain by Morrigan so she could take revenge, perhaps with Belinda involved because of her "turning boys into puppets" thing from The Pinocchio Collection and The Devil's Gambit.

However, this is based on an actual Mexican urban legend, and the Island Of the Dolls (Isla de las Muñecas) is a real, "dark tourism" location in Mexico.

And for the Cover Charge interlude, there is also J.C. Martin's novella, The Doll, which uses the Don Julian legend as a springboard for a Conjuring/American J-Ho movie-type, "mother and child bring back a cursed item from their trip to a foreign country and creepy stuff starts happening" story involving black magic and Santeria gods, and ends with the mother meeting a similar fate to Don Julian from the Zenescope version. It hits a lot of the same beats as those turn-of-the-milennium Westernized horror films, especially the "internet research makes everything fall into place moment" trope that horror movies are still using today (most recently, Blood & Honey II and Final Destination: Bloodlines), and the reveal of what's really going on is something you can see coming pretty early, but the story keeps its tense, eerie tone appreciably consistent and ratchets up the third act action all the way through its existentially terrifying, hope-shattering conclusion. Plus, Martin's visual language is so on point that I truly felt like I was watching a short horror movie in my head. That the Zenescope version immediately reminded me of this story (which I hadn't read for over ten years, back when I was in the Safeway employee book club) is a testament to how good and memorable it is despite being formulaic and of its time.

Getting back to the Grimm Fairy Tales 2012 Halloween Special, it's now Rule 63 Freddy (a.k.a. Anne)'s turn to terrify with "Are You There?"

Naru (not that one) just moved from Japan, and she's in Professor Mathers' Urban Legends class (so nice to see Sela in her classic role even though she's currently on her way to prison in the main series, and I don't mean that to sound like I'm criticizing a continuity error; it genuinely is a nice, comfortable callback in a time when Sela is at her relative worst), where a boy bullies her for being a Sailor Moon fan with decent art skills (so he's automatically a piece of shit and I'm disappointed he didn't get GFT'd for it later), and had she kept quiet and done her reading homework on the toilet like a normal social outcast instead of trying to make some girl friends by sharing the Japanese urban legend of Hanako-san with them, she might have learned Sela's lesson and survived to see them (or the bully) get slaughtered by Bloody Mary instead of Naru herself getting dragged headfirst into a blood-filled toilet by the aforementioned porcelain-bound presence. Oops! (The first "p" is both silent and invisible). The legend goes that if you call out to Hanako-san in a bathroom, she answers with All-Might's catchphrase and appears to drag you to your unsanitary doom.

There is also an apparently somewhat popular anime called Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun (the suffix meaning the anime/manga version is a boy) that is now in its second season, but I haven't seen any of it yet. From what I've heard, I should probably fix that.

Next comes generic superheroine girl (who doesn't get a name until after she tells her story for some reason, and it's Erin) with "The Clown." It starts out seeming like a "whatever you do, don't go in there" kind of story, with Shawna (a twin-tailed babysitter and semi-pro HBO/Showtime influencer who speaks almost exclusively in pop culture references) watching the Zimmerman children for the night. But then they're all eaten (and the children's souls are taken to an evil torture dimension or Wonderland or something) by a shapeshifting leprechaun-looking creature disguised as a clown that would give It and the Poltergeist nightmares. That's it. This story is the least interesting and has the most confusing ending. It's apparently a Zenescope-ized take on the Clown Statue urban legend, which is a variation on the legend that inspired Black Christmas and When A Stranger Calls ("the calls are coming from inside the house!"), which reminds me of better things that I could be reading or watching because I don't think I've ever seen either of those, and I should probably fix that, too.

Now that we know Erin's name and we've been sufficiently disappointed by her story, the wraparound concludes with the origin of Jack the Lantern.

In 1786, a serial killer named Jack (who has a bad case of Resting Joker Venom Face and the same first name as a Ripper, a Giant Killer, and a Freak, and from what I could find, he's made up for this issue, unlike the other urban legends herein) made a deal with the Dark One for immortality. But because Malec is petty about being outwitted by mere Lowborn scum (remember that he's such a strategic mastermind that even his failures are intentional), he turns Jack into a pumpkin-headed scarecrow and curses him to only be able to kill once a year on Halloween. Back in the present day, it seems Jack has been using Anne to bring him victims, and she runs off screaming, leaving her friends to die as the issue ends. Anne sucks; happy Halloween in August.

I like how this issue introduces readers to international urban legends, its anthology movie format, the artwork, and for the most part, its writing. Even in the cases where the stories' endings don't make much sense or are predictably dark (so, like, everything in here), the dialogue is punchy and goes by quick, and a lot gets communicated about the characters in that short span. Unfortunately, that doesn't entirely extend to the three storytellers, who are just there to be slasher victims, and one of whom doesn't even get named until moments before her death.

I would like to be known by name to many people long before my death, so please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because I don't practice Santeria, I ain't got no crystal ball, but I had thousands of dollars and I spent it all, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster×Pagemaster,

My Soul Will Have To Wait.