Halloween in Cartoon World

Tags

costumes, halloween, metaverse, second life, virtual reality, virtual worlds

The term “metaverse” dates back to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash and has been widely used among online gamers and virtual-world nerds for decades. So, it annoys me that the jerk who created Facebook is trying to own the term now, and all this talk about getting corporations and businesses involved is tired old news to anyone who has used Second Life for any length of time.

We went through that years ago, and in the aftermath of all of it turning out to be over-hyped nonsense, a lot of awesome, creative people put their energy into doing something artistic and interesting with Second Life.

You might have heard a lot of negative stuff about Second Life. And you know what? It’s all true. I have seen it all firsthand. But despite the dweebs, dorks, perverts, and pinheads—all of whom I highly recommend you block and de-render—there are people making virtual reality fun and inspiring with immersive art exhibits and live music performances. People gather to read poems and stories, play games, and share new music they’ve discovered. They build fantastic environments and put on dazzling light shows.

They might get together to meditate, hold an AA meeting, ride a virtual roller coaster, or just go shopping for clothes. You would not believe how much time people spend shopping for clothes for their avatars! An entire virtual industry revolves around it. Playing dress-up with your digital dolly is more than a little addicting.

So, it should come as no surprise that Halloween is the season of costumes even in cartoon world. Today I’m sharing a few snapshots of the cool costumes and pretty pixels some people I know are sporting this October.

Suckerberg might still be trying to figure out legs, but in Second Life, we’ve had awesome legs for years. Even breast physics are old news to us. In video games, they date back to 1992—the same year as Snow Crash, coincidentally—and legend has it that some kid worked them out for Second Life eons ago as a project in college. So, work out your basic appendages, billionaires. We got bouncy boobs.

Shout out to comedian Ryan George for showing Second Life some love this month in his recent sketch about the so-called metaverse. Bagging on Mark Zuckerberg is TIGHT.

EC Comics & Ray Bradbury: The Coffin

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coffin, Death, EC Comics, EC Comics reprints, halloween, Haunt of Fear, horror, Ray Bradbury, wake for the living

‘Tis the season to be spooky, so let’s enjoy a horrifying tale.

Back in October 2012, I celebrated the monstrous month of morbidity by sharing with you all the scans I could find of Ray Bradbury stories that had been adapted by EC Comics. You can access them all by clicking this link to my tagged archives. Since then, some delightfully obsessed readers contacted me to fill in gaps in my research and share additional scans. And, oddly enough, several institutions of higher learning now include a few of my Bradbury blog posts in their literary curricula for students.

No, that isn’t the horrifying tale. Use your head!

The horrifying tale for today is called The Coffin. It appeared in Haunt of Fear #16 in 1952, written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Davis, and was reprinted in 1996 by Gemstone, who made so many great EC Comics available and affordable for a new generation. I believe this version also appeared in a rare collection called The Autumn People.

Bradbury’s original version appeared in his first published book Dark Carnival in 1947, and is sometimes called Wake for the Living. If you want a copy of that vintage tome, you will need around $1000. But The Coffin was reprinted in 1980 in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which you can currently get on Kindle for $12, and affordable print copies still exist. Finally, The Coffin was adapted for television as part of Ray Bradbury Theater in the mid-1980s.

So, without further ado, here is a gallery of this slice of spooky weirdness from EC Comics.

cat-o-lantern

Tags

cats, halloween, jackolantern, pumpkin

My cat-o-lantern is carved on a 6-inch tall pumpkin and is based on a clip-art image I pulled from the web. The small size made it tricky, since even my smallest kitchen knife was too big to cut the tiny shapes. I went with an X-acto knife for cutting and a miniature screwdriver for scraping.

feliz dia de los muertos

Tags

altar, art, burton barr library, Death, dia de los muertos, halloween

Every year, the Burton Barr Library, the main hub of the Phoenix Public Library system, dedicates its first-floor art gallery to a Dia De Los Muertos exhibit. The exhibit presents altars made by locals in remembrance of family, friends, and others who inspired and influenced the altars’ creators before dying. This year’s exhibit features not only tributes to artists like Jim Henson, Salvador Dali, Sylvia Plath, and Shel Silverstein, but also memorials to grandparents, cousins, and co-workers.

The brightly-colored altars contain images and objects of meaning to the departed, from books they loved to food they liked, from memorabilia of their favorite sports teams to images and quotes that meant something to them. Every altar has an artist’s statement about what the departed meant to them on a very personal level. These are intimate statements, and one cannot help but be moved by their candor and affection.

Traditional motifs of Dia De Los Muertos abound: multi-colored paper marigolds, candy skulls, and sculptures of people and animals painted black and then painted over with skeletons. The exhibit always contains a piece where people have written names and messages on bright paper butterflies and hung them on lines stretched below a colorful arch of paper marigolds. I imagine the butterflies are symbols of transformation, and also flight and rising above—a deep contrast to the familiar Halloween imagery of graveyards and haunted houses where spirits remain trapped.

Halloween holds little appeal for me. Halloween focuses on fright and creepiness. Halloween imagines the dead come back to haunt us. Halloween portrays the dead as tortured souls come back from the grave to share their torment with us. Perhaps that is one way people confront their fears of death.

But Dia De Los Muertos imagines the dead quite differently. Rather than the dark and gloomy colors of Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos revels in color and brightness. Dia De Los Muertos imagines the dead continuing to do the things they loved to do in life. The dead joyously ride bicycles, make art, love their pets, and play musical instruments. Los Muertos are quite happy, and the day celebrates the joy and love they felt in life—and that we felt for them.

So, I like to make an annual trip to Burton Barr to see this exhibit. I always find it profoundly moving in the way it celebrates those who have died. Though tinged with sadness, the altars focus on why we loved those we have lost, and what brought them joy while they were alive. This year, I took my camera phone to snap a few shots for this blog, but then had second thoughts.

Instead, I took one of many copies of the Lakota prayer, scanned below, from one of the altars. I did not know Carole, but she worked in the public library system here, and worked in libraries all her adult life. Her multi-level altar—created collaboratively by friends, family, and co-workers—includes a diorama of Carole in skeletal regalia seated in a comfortable chair, watching her favorite sports team on television, surrounded by shelves of books and the pets she loved in this life. Above this diorama is a poem composed for her. It tells of her life and her eventual death from cancer. It mourns her passing but celebrates her life. If, as the mythology of Dia De Los Muertos says, the dead do gain permission one day each year to visit their living loved ones, then I have no doubt Carole would be touched to find the exhibit made in her honor. I found the following verse much more meaningful than any spooky and scary Halloween imagery.