Book Club: I Luv Halloween

I debated long and hard over this final entry for Horrorfest. Originally I had intended to cover a particular film for the finale to our first annual Horrorfest, but then literally every other place wrote about it or talked about it and I felt like I might want to give something else this finishing spot. After all, I can cover that movie next year. But, what do I talk about? I could do the obvious choice and cover John Carpenter's classic film...or the terrible remake of it. I could wax poetic about Halloween III: Season of the Witch and my eternal love for Tom Atkins. But no, I wandered my room and found the answer before me in the form of three little books that were collected into one book. Yes, nothing sums up Halloween quite like I Luv Halloween.

Unless you're observing the Skeleton War and the atrocities therein.

I Luv Halloween is from the madman team of Keith Giffen and Benjamin Roman and it focuses on a group of friends partaking in their favourite candy littered holiday. It sounds innocent enough on the outset, but it's actually rather the opposite. Our lead character, Finch, lives with his sister, Moochie, in a house without parents. Why? Well, because they seem to be dead and I wouldn't be shocked if Moochie had a big hand in that outcome. They join the rest of the characters, whom all have their own little eccentricities about them. Devil Lad only every shows up once a year to hang out with them, Pig Pig is basically the group's whipping boy as he is more slow-witted (but still not at all innocent), Mister Kitty is pervert of the group whose lust results in one of the funniest moments ever in the first book, and then there's Mister Kitty's younger brother, Spike, who doesn't say much.

Here's a nice visual diagram of them.

This may still seem rather innocent to you, as it just seems like they're a group of kids...except for the fact that Finch and his sister likely killed their parents and Devil Lad may be a bit more than he seems to be.  Yeah, keep those things in mind, because nothing happening in this series can be described as innocent. The group puts razorblades in apples, buries bodies in the woods, ignores zombies as they kill everyone, and often tend to ruin the lives of whomever they come upon.

Yes, that is a dog with a dented head.

Along the way a teenage girl, some bullies, aliens, a local paranoid shut-in, and a new kid all find this out the hard way. The only true constant from story to story though are the kids themselves, as no matter what horror might befall them one year, everything is going differently a year later and this results in one book happening during a zombie apocalypse and another during an alien invasion. Are there any chestbursters?

Does a little girl dressed as the tooth fairy count?

Every time Devil Lad walks away unscathed and the cycle repeats again, making me think these people all exist in some sort of purgatory. Who knows? All I know is that the books are hilarious and clever. Giffen's writing is spot-on and Roman's offbeat style stands out, immediately grabbing your attention, begging you to crack open the book. Daring you to read the homicidal hijinks within.

How can you possibly resist it?

Sadly, the company that published these books, Tokyopop, has since closed their doors and the planned fourth book never got published. It was going involve Halloween invading Christmas, which is very appropriate given that Christmas stuff keeps trying invade Halloween at the bloody stores. If you can get yourself a copy of these under-appreciated books, do so at your earliest convenience. They're darkly comedic fun with plenty of gore and twisted situations for any discerning horror fan.

Moochie keeps us well supplied in the gore department.

In closing, I would like to thank you all for hanging out with me throughout this month. I still have plenty of things left to write about, but for now I am going to take a break and enjoy the rest of the night. In the meantime, have a slice of cake. Happy Halloween, bleeders.

I was gonna write "bleeders" on there too but I got tired of fighting with the tube of icing.