One Shot One Panel: Boy Wonder KELLAN LUTZ

Twenty-five year old actor Kellan Lutz  may be a future Ryan Reynolds in the making. He's got the body for it, and he's definitely a fan boy, as this paparazzi snap from last Halloween clearly attests.  

Lutz is also building quite the resume: from a small role on the Heroes Season One episode "Five Years Gone" to his much larger one as Emmett Cullen in the movies of The Twilight Saga, his affinity for the comics genre is plain to see. 

But horror is what fans will see him in next:  Lutz will be trying desperately not to go to sleep when the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street opens this Friday.  After that, the recent Calvin Klein underwear model will get the chance to bare his chest across the Silver Screen, as he'll be portraying Poseidon in the currently-filming Clash of The Titans-inspired  Immortals.

HALLOWEEN '09: Late-Night Vampirella

I know I said I was signing off for the night, but I'd promised a friend of mine from Eugene that I'd have a little Vampirella on the blog before Halloween was over. I'm glad I took his advice, too: while comic book heroine TNA isn't an acronym that raises my mast much less one that floats my boat, I have to admit there's much more to the Vampirella story than I ever would've guessed. Right now, I'm stuck thinking about how much she and Bettie Page share in common. It's an intriguing, nebulous area worthy of more mental acuity than I'm capable of right now.

So Billy, my friend, here's Vampirella. Her Long Halloween debut on your favorite comicsblog is but the first of many, I assure you.

Amanda Conner contributes her artistic talents to the Vampirella Halloween Special 2006, from Harris Comics. Enjoy!

HALLOWEEN 09: Falling Back, Looking Ahead

Well, dabblers, we've been on the road to this Long Halloween (hint : remember to turn your clocks back one hour tonight at 2am) for a month now, and we hope you've enjoyed it as much as Raley, the Abbracadabbling Archivists, my Springfield home office support staff, and I all have. We had plenty of lofty ambitions to make our first Halloween here on the blog as magical as possible, and I think we did pretty well.

I know I speak for everyone here when I say we'd truly love -- and need -- to hear what our readers and visitors have to say about our efforts. Your feedback is invaluable, and the thoughts you share with us today will help us improve our daily blogs and the content we feature tomorrow. Let us know what you've got to say, as well as what you'd like to read, see, and experience when you visit abbracadabbling.

And dabblers, you know exactly how to reach us: just scroll down the blog to our Back Issues department and the rest is as easy as pumpkin pie.

October comes to an end tonight, but vestiges of this amazing Halloween Holiday will remain on the comicsblog for a good while to come. Along with those holdover treats, many of the amazing columns like Comic Meme, Industrial Vigilante, Vintage Comics Stuff, and Comics University that we gave you a taste of in October will be up to full speed next month, and they're all shaping up to be fantastic and informative reads.

Our special feature Building the Blackest Night is on track to finally make it's appearance in November, and the winner of our FlashCAPTION Contest will be also be revealed early in the month. We'll have found Wally West, but that doesn't mean our fun has to stop: November's contest kicks off November 11th with Thanksgiving-themed challenge that will put your taste buds and your intelligence to the test! And you'll have plenty of incentive to do just that, what with a Near Mint copy of Image Comics' CHEW #1 going to next month's winner!

Before we sign off for the night, we'd like to remind everyone to keep an eye out for our FlashCAPTION Contest repostings. We've been promising they'd find their way to the blog on Halloween Night...and if the clock we're looking at can be trusted, the night is still young.

Happy Halloween 2009, abbracadabblers! For Raley and the Gang, this is the Dabbler, signing off until next month. See ya!

Top 10 Reasons courtesy of ComicSpace

Abbracadabbling would like to add our voice to the Comics, Not Candy For Kids Movement.

Comics give paper cuts, but Candy has razor blades.

Must-Read Recommendation: DCU Halloween Special

Coming at you just past Midnight on October 31st! It's early, but it's going to be one hella long and scary Halloween, dabblers!

Your favorite blogger's going to be one Busy Boy this Halloween. Shoot, when am I not? Still, everybody does loves that costume so. I was a Busy Boy last year, and the year before that, and it never gets old. Always the life of the party, that's me.

Even the busiest boys manage a little downtime on Halloween. So if you've got an hour or two to murder today then do as Dabbler does: fill it with a comic book instead of candy.

It's healthy, and it's Abbracadabbling's Must-Read Recommendation: The DC Universe 2009 Halloween Special!

DC Comics publishes a Halloween Special each year. For just six small dollars, you'll find more costumed fun than you can shake a batarang at, folks. At the very least, DC's holiday fare is way more fun than answering the doorbell.

And just like a jack o'lantern filled with treats, the DCU Specials always have something that appeals to everyone's tastes. This year's Annual features 13 different tales of horror. For folks who may not be as familiar with many of the newer DC heroes like Red Robin or the (barely) new Kid Flash, or who missed the New York Times article that told the world Bruce Wayne aka Batman is quite possibly dead, this year's collection is a fearsome way to get in touch with the current goings-on of the DCU. Because, frankly, you should know.

Here's how DC summed up this year's Halloween offerings:

Darkness falls across the land as the DC Universe faces its greatest horror in this Halloween special filled with all-new stories! Watch as Guy Gardner continues his quest to share Halloween with the cosmos and his fellow alien Green Lantern Corps members. In another tale, Red Robin finds the true, deadly meaning of the sinister holiday while overseas on his quest to find Bruce Wayne. Meanwhile, Bizarro receives neither trick nor treat in his own backwards celebration of the spookiest night of the year on his home world. Plus, 10 other ghoulish tales to fill you with fright this Halloween!

Want more? The always-fantastic peeps at ComiXology have a preview online which you can read right here.

The DC Universe 2009 Halloween Special went on sale last week, but we're betting most retailers stocked a few extra on their shelves for the last-minute Halloween crowd. (We know ours did!) If you're like Dabbler, the car can drive itself to the nearest LCS aka Local Comic Shop! But if not, don't trip. No matter where you are, finding the comics shop nearest you is simplicity itself: just click over to the Comic Shop Locator Service. One trip there, and you'll be in the dark no longer...unless you want to be.

HALLOWEEN 2009: The Walking Dead - 1953 Style

My favorite holiday of the entire year's just a mere 24 hours away, dabblers. We've been off the blog all week here in Springfield, and we know we're down to the wire. So expect to find as many Halloween Tricks or Treats as we can get posted right here before the Big Night descends upon us all.

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I get a kick out of the comics prose stories that used to appear in some of the Golden Age and Silver Age books, particularly from DC Comics as well as a few of the Charlton books. (Now that I think about it, I guess it's rather appropriate that Charlton sold their characters to DC after they closed their doors for good back in 1985. And just in time for the Crisis on Infinite Earths, too. But I digress...)

DC (and Charlton, to a lesser extent) used the one to three page prose stories as back-up features, primarily in their romance lines. Usually the tales were genre-based short stories, peppered with an odd assortment of educational material -- odd facts on subjects that probably seemed more than weird to the kids reading the books back in the day. Like how to fix a broken refrigerator, all about cold weather fronts, or the best days for sailing off the coast of Yucatan. Ok, kidding about that last one, but you never know - we could have missed it, too.

One of the old prose pieces our archivists here in Springfield offices found is spot-on for a creepy Halloween read. And after I spent a bit of blogspace bringing you the 411 on DC and Charlton, this baby was published by neither.

Let's put some hands together and thank Silver Age publisher Better Comics for their two-page prose addition to our abbracadabbling Halloween. From Issue #10 of Adventures into Darkness (1953), I hope you enjoy The Walking Dead....!

To get a closer look at The Walking Dead

find Page (1) here, and Page (2) here.

C O M I N G U P N E X T

More Halloween 2009!!!

Mickey Mouse is Dead...and Dressed as Jack Skellington

What would a Halloween early bird be called? A wren? A raven? A vulture, perhaps? Or maybe a bat out of hell?

Whatever it's called, abbracadabbling knows there's more than one of us who prefers to plan ahead. By the time October 25th rolls around, the most enthusiastic Halloween early birds are ready to pick out next year's pumpkin.

We believe good behavior (and some very nasty behavior, too) should be rewarded with a Halloween Head's Up.

The guys over on Superpunch probably do, too. We figure that's why they gave us a great sneak-peek at the latest vinyl teaser from Medicom Toys: Mickey Mouse Jack Skellington.

Medicom's newest undead vinyl mash-up embraces pop culture zombie love with style. And we think it's a gloves-up winner, dabblers. Mylie mascots, vinlyphiles, and everyone who died watching The Nightmare Before Christmas should definitely get a kick from this reanimated rodent.

But take note, early birds: Mickey Mouse Jack Skellington won't be in stores until April 2010. Word on whether Mickey's a limited edition hasn't been said, and details are scarce. Keep checking the comicsblog for updates and pay Kid Robot a visit while you're at it.

The only thing we know for sure is that stashing your cash today ensures you'll be slipping yourself a Mickey tomorrow. It pays to be prudent, and I've already saved twelve cents.

How much have you got?

If 'Phantom Menace' Didn't Kill You, STAR WARS DEATH TROOPERS WILL

If you're on the hunt for the perfect book get your Halloween spirits up, recall the Probe droids and search no further, young Skywalker. Our Top Halloween Read is so horrifyingly enticing, we're sure to be confused with a Sith Lord.

I mean, let's face it -- nothing's more popular than Star Wars. Unless it's Zombies. (You're like: Well, duh!) And the only thing more popular than zombies is --- Star Wars' Zombies!!!

Toss Halloween into that pop culture cauldron and you've got Star Wars: Death Troopers. It doesn't take take a genius (hell, it doesn't even take a vegetable) to understand why Troopers is one of the most anticipated sci-fi / fantasy books of the year.

(Even still, you've got to wonder if good ol' George doesn't feel like he's suddenly 'jumped the shark'.)

Horror writer Joe Schrieber penned this latest addition to the immensely popular Star Wars line from Lucas Books and Del Rey. Death Troopers is the first horror book of the series, but judging by fans' reactions to the book since it hit bookstore shelves just one week ago, a Jawa Zombies vs the Ewok Undead is probably just around the corner.

I'm liking this book a lot, but I'll let you be the judge. Here's the official description for Death Troopers:

When the Imperial prison barge Purge–temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves–breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned.

But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back–bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine... And death is only the beginning.

The Purge’s half-dozen survivors–two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers, and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board–will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

If you feel the sudden urge to scroll down the blog and pick up your discounted copy of Star Wars: Death Troopers at the PM Comics Amazon Bookstore, that's just your good common sense kicking in.

That, or me using my trusty Jedi Mind Trick.

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More Death Troopers Linkage:

The official (and intentionally campy-bad) Death Troopers promo trailer from the publisher is on YouTube here. ["But why does it seem lifeless?" LOL! ]

Del Rey wants readers to create their own Death Troopers trailer and is holding a contest on the Official Star Wars book site here.

Purposeful Umbrellas

I've been preparing for the Big 3-1 in baby steps; today's was the purchase of a black compact "ghost" umbrella. Dabblers, I'm crossing two fingers that fall's fickle weather holds out for you, wherever you call home. Nothing's scarier on Halloween than an isolated shower.

We'd be lucky to score one like that in Oregon. Seriously. Something's up in Springfield -- literally up. No moon has been seen for a week, and the sky above this town is cloudy and pregnant. This is the weather. An atmosphere of collective uneasiness is crawling down the streets and the weather's to blame.

There's been storming for days now, but not the Storm people were expecting. Down at Wal-Mart or while waiting in the AM-PM line for gas and cheap cigarettes -- everywhere I've gone, Springtuckians (the word for the permanent residents here) have Storm on their lips, or at least on their minds. Even an almost-outsider like me can tell.

Probably why it rattles me a bit, too. The sky's noticeably dark lately, mornings to bedtime. "Full of gravestone heavies", to use the vernacular. Clouds are stuffed to bursting, except they don't, or won't. They prefer to threaten, water drops like warnings. When the rain's heavy, as it's been once or twice, it pelts the roof with a brief staccato, like mockingbirds when they attack. The downpours are swift and fierce orgasms, cut short with none of the release or unwind.

And everyone can sense the air of displeasure. The clouds meant to be furious, quick visitors instead hover like seeking grey markers; isolated showers carrying umbrellas, below a heavy and stagnant sea.

Am I in a (creative) mood tonight or what?!?

Halloween '09 continues for its SECOND SCARY WEEK beginning Monday, October 19th -- right here on abbracadabbling, everyone's favorite comicsblog!

HALLOWEEN 09: The Facehugger Wonder

Dabblers will be bursting with excitement when they find out what we've dug up. In fact, the adorably soft Alien Facehugger Plush might be our best find of the year. Just take a peek at our artist's rendition of how awesome you could look October 31st:

Fantastic, right? We knew you'd agree.

And who wouldn't? The plush Facehugger is a life-size replica of the same cute critter that did its darnedest to give Sigourney Weaver a big smooch in 1979's Alien. You'll find that your Facehugger is incredibly comfortable to wear, and his wire-like skeleton provides maximum poseability as you fit his long fingers about your face -- and even into your mouth!

Yes, this little rascal is the perfect costume call for horror buffs, sci-fi freaks, film majors, and all those not lucky enough to have a real date Halloween night. Maybe that's being redundant. But unlike the last person you dated, Facehugger is always happy to see you. You can be sure he'll jump to plant one on your kisser the moment you walk into the room.

Raley's boyfriend bought her a Facehugger, and she hasn't taken it off since UPS came yesterday afternoon. My guess is he's trying to keep all the other guys' lips off Raley's cute little face. I have to give the dude props, too. It's a smart move, dabblers, and great advice if your Halloween partner-in-crime happens to be really cute -- or exceptionally nasty. Wherever you two go, nobody will see their face. They'll all be looking at Facehugger.

Abbracadabbling shopped around, and we found Alien Facehugger Plush on sale at several online and retail vendors, including Amazon.com. While most places are asking $32.00 or more for the lil' extraterrestrial scamp, the nerds over at Think Geek had the best deal. They'll let you adopt your very own for under $29 bucks here.

We all know money can't buy love. But this Halloween, it sure can buy the next best thing.

HALLOWEEN 09: My Little Pony Mod-Party Pointers

Halloween '09 continues on the comicsblog today in pop-culture collision bang. While guys my age spent their 1980's pitting Hasbro GI JOE's against Transformers, Generation X girls kept busy brushing out My Little Ponies in numbers that made Hasbro's 1983 horsey line outsell Mattel's Barbie.

Hasbro's done amazingly well surfing the 80's resurgence wave with so many of their products -- they relaunched My Little Pony in 2003 -- that it's only a matter of time before a live-action Pony finds the trail to the mall movieplex.

If Hasbro and Hollywood do pony-up cash for a feature flick, it's looking like they'll sell tickets to a GenX crowd without GenY kids in tow. Creating custom-painted or "modded" My Little Ponies has become a huge horsey fad lately, and it's as big in Britain as it is in the United States. Who knew, right?

Well, now you do, dabblers. And if you're a teacher or a parent with a Halloween party to plan for the grade school set, we think a My Little Pony Painting Party would really do the trick. While our suggestion probably wouldn't fly if the kids have car keys, younger girls as well as boys should get a kick "dressing up" their Pony in superhero or Han Solo duds or as one their favorite Twilight and New Moon crushes. Plus, we can't think of a party idea that's this much fun that also gives your kids' artistic muscles an unexpected work out.

Halloween Pony-favors shouldn't make you say "neigh", either. Though single My Little Pony dolls are generally priced between $6.50 and $7.00, large retailers like Wal-Mart and Target often carry these dolls for less, and I came across several of last year's Ponies with a three-buck price tag at a local discount store when I was preparing to write this blog. Toys-R-Us probably has the best deal going right now: they're currently running a "Buy 2, Get 3rd Free" on many of their toys, including My Little Pony. And don't forget to check for coupons on-line -- we found a $5.00 off $20 purchase coupon for Toys R Us at Coupons.com here.

Other than the toys, easy-to-get art supplies are all that remains. School art departments should be fully-stocked with everything needed to paint or dress-up a pony, but if not, the dollar store and fabric outlets are great places to start. We recommend acrylic paints for this job -- they dry fast, stay on, and will trick-out every kid's Pony in a glossy, good way. Online art suppliers like Blick have fantastic variety of paints, brushes, paper, and pointers for budding Picasso's are everywhere on the 'net, too. We located great painting advice for beginners here and found some short and handy how-to's on You Tube here.

As you'll see, My Little Pony mods are quite the rage. Comic book illustrator Junko Mizuno (Marvel Comics' Strange Tales) was hired by Hasbro to complete a custom mod, and independent artists like the British deviant-artist Eponyart and Mari Kasurinen are just a few of the expanding Pony-modding community. Here's a few of our favorites:

(L) Rogue from X-Men by Mari Kasurinen & (R) Galactus by Jodi K. Moisan

Acid-mpitting monster from the 1979 movie, Alien

Batman and Robin by Mari Kasurinen

(L) Superman by Mari Kasurinen & (R) The Tick by Ponies of Dooom

Twilight-inspired Ponies from Eponyart

Imperial Stormtrooper (or Ponytrooper??) by Mari Kasurinen

Pussy Galore from Kill Bill and Mattel's He-Man

Receive the Pony-treatment