To close out the day, here are 13 fun & frightening links — some comic related, some not — to enjoy …

• Splash Page has a preview of Dark Horse Comics’ upcoming Creepy archive.

• Great Caesar’s Post has been running horror posts for the past couple of weeks, including Iron Man pumpkins and Hellboy stories.

• The Beat has the complete “Teratoid Cystoma” from Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack Volume 1 as a Halloween treat.

• Bruce Springsteen has a free song about the Jersey Devil up on his site for Halloween.

• World record zombie walk.

• Check out one of the special features from the upcoming Hellboy II DVD release.

• Marvel.com talks to various creators about terrifying moments in comics.

• Character Design looks at various characters from Nightmare Before Christmas.

• Neil Gaiman shows the one-sheet poster for the upcoming adaptation of his book Coraline.

• They Crawl By Night!

• Freddy Krueger, registered offender.

• I’ve had this nightmare before.

• And finally, Halloween is a good time to check out Necessary Monsters if you haven’t yet.

Happy Halloween!

The Alternative Press Expo, or APE, kicks off at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Concourse in San Francisco. It runs until 7 p.m. Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

For more info on APE, check out the official website, as well as my two previous posts on publisher and creator plans here and here. And if you need directions, go here.

And now, more info from publishers and creators on what they’ll be doing and have on hand this weekend …

*****

Jon Adams posts some info on his plans, which includes a new Truth Serum collection:

We’ll be attending the Alternative Press Expo this weekend (Nov. 1st-2nd). Please stop by our table, where we’ll have a number of items offered in exchange for your money. (Anyone’s money, really.) Debuting at the show will be a limited edition collection of the weekly Truth Serum strip, produced exclusively for APE. It’s a full-color, 48-page book, wrapped with a bellyband.

Also at the show will be Bear Trap, a full-color, 24-page miniature comic. Best of all, it will only be one dollar. A dollar! That’s less than the cost of a bus ride. And most bus rides probably aren’t as much fun. Sometimes they are though. Like this one time on the 22 when there was a woman with feces all over her pants. That was a type of fun.

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Overall last night’s episode of The Office was kind of lame, but the opening sequence was great. The characters on the show dressed up for Halloween, with Creed, Kevin and Dwight all showing up as The Joker. If you’d like to see it for yourself, you can check it out for free over on NBC.com.

That’s Creed up top; check out Kevin and Dwight after the jump …

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Blog@Newsarama is proud to bring you the sequel to Matt Maxwell’s first graphic novel, Strangeways: Murder Moon, page-by-page for the next few months. Check out the third page to Strangeways: The Thirsty below:

Strangeways: The Thirsty will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday here on Blog@Newsarama.

This week Vulture has a 13-page excerpt of David Hines fine horror comic, Strange Embrace, now available from Image.

David Heatley took time to respond to the recent Comics Comics critical roundtable of his new book, My Brain Is Hanging Upside-Down:

I used to do this a lot, but I no longer spend time wishing works of art were something they’re not. I don’t wish Stan Brakhage made commercial Hollywood films. Or that Kanye West would do something more stripped down, personal and emotionally revealing. I try to accept art for what it is and decide if it has anything of value to offer me. If I take a stance against it, especially if it’s accompanied by a righteous feeling of being sure of my opinion, I’ve found that I’m using someone’s work to further my own unhappiness, discontent and irritability and ultimately it has nothing to do with the artist on whom I’ve fixed my angry gaze.

I admire Heatley for attempting to rebut some of the criticisms hurled at him in a polite, respectable manner, though I think he comes off as just a wee bit defensive and passive-aggressive, though perhaps that’s inevitable given that people are attacking his baby.

Anyway, Tom Spurgeon, Frank Santoro and Noah Berlatsky take him to task on a few points in the comments section before it all gets ugly and the thread gets shut down, so be sure and read those as well.

Do you remember (assuming you collected the blasted things) that every He-Man and the Masters of the Universe action figure came with a little comic book? Well, this site has them all uploaded for your reading pleasure, albeit with an annoying watermark.

Here’s a Halloween treat for fans of LEGO Batman: The Videogame, Ace of Cakes and Food Network Challenge: a behind-the-scenes video detailing the creation of that fantastic Gotham City cake we blogged about last week.

(Via The Feed)

Anime News Network reported yesterday that six josei (or young women’s) manga magazines were flagged by the local government of the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Okayama as “harmful” due to their sexual content:

According to the local laws, the prefecture’s youth welfare office is required to regularly identify and list harmful publications — specifically, titles that should not be accessible to minors, due to sexual content and other reasons. Of the nine magazines on the October 7 list, six were ladies’ comics, or manga aimed at usually older female readers. The office indicated that these magazines were readily available to minors in convenience stores and bookstores and not separated from comic magazines aimed at young girls.

The magazines are: Jōkyū Renai Mint, Renai Bijin if, Renai Tengoku (Paradise), Zettai Renai Sweet, Special Aya and Renai Taiken.

Eisner winner Chuck BB is working on a comic starring the rock band Hinder for Devil’s Due Publishing.

“The band’s ability to tell stories in their songs makes this a good marriage,” Stephen Christy of Devil’s Due Publishing told USA Today. “It doesn’t hurt that there’s always a ton of hot girls hanging around them.” No release date for the book was given.

Becky Cloonan announces that she’ll have a story up on the Dark Horse Presents MySpace site this November called “I See The Devil In My Sleep.” She says it’s an “eight page tale of lurid grimness, written and drawn by yours truly with colors by the gruesome Dave Stewart.” Can’t wait.

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer in 2007 for the Tony Award-winning Rabbit Hole, is in final negotiations to work on the script for Spider-Man 4.

Hopefully this will be good news for fans who weren’t impressed with the third movie of the franchise; The Hollywood Reporter says, “The choice of scribe also signals that that filmmakers are intent to focus on character, something that critics said got lost in the third installment.”

Lindsay-Abaire is currently working on the movie adaptation of Rabbit Hole, which will star Nicole Kidman.

Someone dust off Robbie the Robot — The Hollywood Reporter reports that Thor and upcoming Brave & the Bold writer J. Michael Straczynski is working on the screenplay for a remake of Forbidden Planet for Warner Bros. Joel Silver is producing.

Per the trade:

Warners picked up the project on the down-low earlier this year. As late as last year, it was set up at DreamWorks with David Twohy attached to direct. Prior to that, New Line had it. James Cameron, Nelson Gidding and Stirling Silliphant have been associated with the remake over the years.

Released in 1956, “Planet” told the tale of an expedition sent from Earth to check on a colony of scientists on a far-off planet. They find two members, a man who has found alien technology that doubled his intellect, Dr. Morbius, and his daughter, both of whom have managed to survive an unseen monster roaming the planet.

Straczynski, who created Babylon 5, also wrote Changeling, which is in theaters now.

• Splash Page has a full eight-page story from BOOM!’s Zombie Tales book, written by Oscar nominated screenplay writer Kim Krizan with art by Jon Reed.

• Quote the Man: Nevermore.

• Seven plain old creepy movies.

• Letterer Todd Klein shares a creepy poem.

• Artist Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese get into the spirit of the season. Kind of.

• Comics creator J. Bone shows how he crafted his Fly costume.

• P. Craig Russell and Tim Bradstreet are working on a comic adaptation of Clive Barker’s Age of Desire. Here’s a preview.

• And finally, via Jeff Smith, Graham Annable’s Joy to the Weird:

This week examines the reach of the Troika’s plans with a look at DC antiquity; and introduces a couple of new mysteries about the altered timeline. Let’s get on with it, shall we…?

SPOILERS FOLLOW

* * *

FIRST STORY

“A Hope For Tomorrow” (pages 2-10) was plotted by Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza, scripted by Nicieza, pencilled by Scott McDaniel, inked by Andy Owens, colored by Allen Passalaqua, lettered by Pat Brosseau; Rachel Gluckstern, associate editor; Mike Carlin, editor.

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Seventy years ago tonight, Orson Welles’ now-legendary adaptation of The War of the Worlds was aired over the CBS radio network, triggering a panic nationwide as countless listeners believe the report of a Martian invasion to be real.

That’s the story, in any case. The reality, one media historian claims, was far less dramatic.

“Nobody died of fright or was killed in the panic, nor could any suicides be traced to the broadcast,” Michael J. Socolow writes in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Hospital emergency-room visits did not spike, nor, surprisingly, did calls to the police outside of a select few jurisdictions. The streets were never flooded with a terrified citizenry. Ben Gross, the radio columnist of the New York Daily News, later remembered a ‘lack of turmoil in front of CBS’ that contrasted notably with the crowded, chaotic scene inside the building. Telephone lines in New York City and a few other cities were jammed, as the primitive infrastructure of the era couldn’t handle the load, but it appears that almost all the panic that evening was as ephemeral as the nationwide broadcast itself, and not nearly as widespread. That iconic image of the farmer with a gun, ready to shoot the aliens? It was staged for Life magazine.”

It’s an interesting article that examines how the legend took root and grew, thanks largely to the showmanship of Welles and the news media’s craving for a good story.

This being the 70th anniversary of the broadcast, it seems like a perfect time to read Ian Edginton and D’Israeli’s adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel on the Dark Horse website.

Somewhere, that Dark Knight-inspired Joker jack-o’-lantern is sending trick-or-treaters screaming into the night. With wet pants.

(Via Slashfilm)

You can’t make stuff like this up. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t have the same delightfully bizarre quality.

Anyway, The Australian is reporting that a Japanese man is currently engaging in a nationwide campaign to make it legal for humans to marry cartoon characters. No, seriously! He’s got a petition and everything! And the amazing thing is, people are actually signing it! Presumably without irony!

Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters.

Within a week he has gathered more than 1,000 signatures through.

“I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote.

“However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorize marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

The story notes that marriage is on the decline in Japan and many there find it difficult to find romantic partners, which may help explain the situation a bit, though it doesn’t make it any less goofy.

Of course, there’s every chance Takashita is pulling everyone’s leg, in which case I hope he doesn’t end up running into any of his more devout petition-signers.

Welcome to the second in a periodic series of posts on my list of “canonical” superhero stories. (The original post, which includes a link to Tucker Stone’s call for such a canon, is here.) Last time I talked largely about “Beware My Power,” the introduction of Green Lantern John Stewart from writer Denny O’Neil and penciller Neal Adams. This week brings another O’Neil/Adams tale, “Night of the Reaper!” from December 1971’s Batman #237.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea — my standards certainly don’t begin and end with O’Neil and Adams. In fact, timing has placed “Reaper” at this particular point on the schedule. Not only does it take place at Halloween, but it strikes me as a fine way to remember the late Tom Fagan of Rutland, Vermont. As the man behind Rutland’s Halloween parade, Mr. Fagan helped inspire this story, as well as a few others.

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