Click here for Part 1: The Chaos! Comics Run
With Halloween growing nearer and nearer, our series of articles tackling the various Halloween spinoff comics continues! In our first article, we took a look at the three Chaos! Comics one-shots which told a complete tale and acted as a sequel to the first seven films, all while trying to reconcile their dodgy continuity. With today’s article, we’ll be diving headfirst into three comics which received atypical distribution, and are each tied to a major Halloween fan event which celebrated the first film’s silver anniversary.
The first comic we’ll dissect is 2003’s Halloween Returns to Haddonfield. Billed as a “Souvenir Magazine” for the “Halloween Returns To Haddonfield 25th Anniversary Convention”, this comic-sized con program featured within its pages a full convention guest list, interviews, a tribute to Donald Pleasence, a map of Haddonfield, photo montages and exclusive pics, and even a soundtrack CD featuring new, Halloween-inspired music by author/screenwriter/composer Stephen Romano and Christian Lee Dukes. But surely its most interesting feature for fans is the comic book story which opens the program.
Titled Retribution and Descent and written by Romano (with art by Derek Rook), the comic story concerns State District Attorney Dan Atkins, who visits an ailing, elderly Sam Loomis in a rest home in the final moments of October 30th, 2003. Atkins has arrived to badger a confession from Loomis, who he hopes will admit to glorifying Michael’s reign of terror in order to sell his true crime book (Demystifying the Devil) and the film rights to his story. Loomis counters by reading a passage from his book to the skeptical Atkins, who insists that the imprisoned Michael is no longer a threat at the Ridgemont Federal Mental Institution. By the time midnight rolls around, Atkins is called to the institution, where he discovers a mass of dead security guards arranged in a horrific, bloody tableau, with a trail of blood leading from it to Michael’s cell. Atkins follows it, finding the unmasked killer sitting quietly, his hands soaked in blood from the carnage he’d wrought in the early minutes of his favorite holiday.
The tale is bookended by a crazy, ranting woman we’re meant to believe is Linda Van Der Klok’s mother, who is at the story’s end guided away down a Haddonfield sidewalk by Reverend Jackson P. Sayer. Sayer, a fascinating character with much too little screen time in Halloween 4, makes a welcome appearance here, exuding the same sort of batshit charisma he exhibited in his sole film outing. He even ends the story by belting out his signature tune: “And we’ll all gather at the river! / The beautiful, beautiful river!…
Also produced for the 25th Anniversary Convention was the one-shot Halloween: One Good Scare. Penned by Stefan Hutchinson and drawn by Peter Fielding, this comic was meant initially for the anniversary convention, though it was later made available online at the official HalloweenMovies website. In any case, it’s another solid example that this type of unnerving tale can be told within the Halloween world without being beholden to the convoluted mythology that had been set up by this point.
Following the events of Halloween: Resurrection, One Good Scare concerns one Doctor Loomis – the son of Sam Loomis – as he attempts to help his newest patient: Lindsey Wallace. Lindsey believes that Michael has been stalking her ever since Laurie’s death at his hands, and eventually finds herself in Loomis’ care at Smith’s Grove. The story is told in a chronologically-fractured fashion, leaping back and forth through time to tell the stories of both Loomis and his father, as well as Lindsey’s recent run-in with Michael that’s left her so very broken and afraid. Though Loomis is skeptical, he eventually finds himself face to face with The Shape, as he and Lindsey attempt to escape Michael’s wrath. Ultimately, Michael is victorious, capturing Lindsey in front of Loomis’ eyes and dragging her away – only to display her corpse in a horrific manner: leaving her tied to a stake in a pumpkin patch, with a dozen knives left driven into her dead body.
It’s yet another creepy one-off tale, boasting solid writing and some appropriately grim, rough-hewn artwork. Following its harrowing finale, the comic promised that the story would continue on in the summer of 2004, though a direct follow-up to this storyline would never materialize. Nevertheless, even for its scant availability, it’s well worth seeking out this essential addition to the Myers canon.
The third comic we’ll feature today also has ties to the 25th Anniversary convention. Titled Halloween: Autopsis, this mini-comic was included as a booklet found within the Halloween: 25 Years Of Terror documentary DVD set (which covered the events of that convention). Penned by a returning Hutchinson, with art by Marcus Smith, this comic tells a yet another haunting, standalone tale of a doomed hero running afoul of Michael Myers.
The story focuses on Carter, a death-obsessed freelance photographer in search of taking that one great photo. Carter, a film buff who’d witnessed his projectionist father’s death when he was a child, pursues that most elusive of pictures – the one that captures true reality. When Carter is given a bizarre assignment, to follow a retired doctor named Sam Loomis, he finds himself in the path of The Shape – a more-than-unfortunate turn of events which culminates in one of the more disturbing and macabre murders in the Halloween franchise. Carter’s tale is interwoven with a medical examiner’s autopsy of a corpse rumored to be one of Myers’ victims, a subplot which eventually dovetails with the main story being told.
Even for its tiny digest size, this comic does a wonderful job in telling a one-shot story set within the world of Halloween. Though we do revisit some past characters (Loomis, Leigh Brackett, Nurse Chambers), and while the comic ultimately tees up the opening of Halloween: H20, it’s mostly concerned with telling an engaging story that isn’t overly reliant on the series’ complex mythology. Michael is the boogeyman here, plain and simple, and he’s all the scarier for it. It’s an approach which would later serve Hutchinson well with his next Halloween outing…
Tomorrow, we’ll take one last look at Michael Myers’ comic book adventures, as we shine a light on the marvelous (and sadly short-lived) run distributed by Devil’s Due Publishing.
