Happy Halloween, everyone!
This year I found no way to directly tie the mandatory celebration directly into the plot, so I shifted it all into…the Twilight Zone!
Which is fitting, anyway, and conveniently allows the past, the present, and realities that never were to blend into each other. Very convenient when you’ve got stock material to use…although I didn’t even do that. While this strip is based on the very first BMC Halloween Special of 2005, it’s actually all new. When I decided on that, I thought that it might turn out difficult to draw the characters in this ‘old’ style, particularly the Professor – but when I got started, the old habits immediately kicked in. I guess it’s kinda riding a bicycle…
As for the shock effect, I felt I didn’t have to reach far – the way the characters look now should provide enough of a shock to the same characters in the past. Mopey especially, since she was kinda critical of the change to begin with. And since I aged the new characters down to fit the trick-and-treating shtick, Mopey will find even more to dislike in her newest iteration – not only is she non-gothic, at that age she’s borderline adorable. Seeing that in her future gives her more than enough reason to emit a blood-curdling scream, and what more could you ask for in a Halloween Special? And then…in reality, her nightmare isn’t even over yet…MUAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAAHH!
More on Mon…uh, Thursday.
On a sidenote, when I tried to link to that old Halloween strip, I noticed that, when restoring the archives, we hadn’t uploaded the three Specials for 2005 for some reason. Possibly because they were special, and not on the regular list. ^_^; That’s corrected now. There’s still something wonky about the chronology for the first chapter, but now all of the strips are there, and in the right order, at least.