Pearce Family Halloween 2018

Visit the rest of the Pearce Family Holiday Drawings here, if that’s something you wanna do.

Pearce Family Holiday Drawings: Halloween 2016

Every year, I do a Halloween drawing of my family on social media. This year, I took a page from one of my favorite Stephen King books (‘Salem’s Lot is definitely in my Top Three). I was a little dubious about this being THE Halloween drawing, since it doesn’t directly connect to the season, but whatever!

You can see the rest of the holiday drawings over the year here.

Pearce Family Holiday Drawings: Halloween 2015

Every year, I draw our family in a Halloween themed drawing. This is 2015′s effort. I had already done Ellen and I as Frankenstein’s Monster and The Bride a few years’ back but I wanted another whack at it with the kids in tow.

Here are some past Halloween (and Christmas!) drawings of the Pearce family.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “All Treehouse of Horror” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

In the lead up to Halloween, I drew myself as characters from my favorite episodes of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror.

Chalkboard drawings: The “Halloween Countdown Begins” post

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

A belated beginning to the Halloween chalkboard countdown… I’ve been missing so many days due to professional developments and other nonsense! Next week’s not looking too promising either (students out Monday, I’m out of the classroom on Tuesday) but hopefully we can keep the monsters a’coming.

Thrift Store Halloweekends – Barney Gumble, The Simpsons Spooky Light-Ups (Burger King)

This week, we’re going to be looking at Barney Gumble from Burger King’s line of Simpsons Spooky Light-Ups from 2001. These toys were a premium given away with the purchase of a Burger King Kids Meal but I bought mine for $3 bucks at a garage sale.

The Simpsons and Halloween have been something of a package pair ever since the second season of the long-running animated sit-com. The Simpsons Halloween Specials (later renamed Treehouse of Horror) have, over the last 25 years, presented viewers with parodies and pastiches of classic and modern scary stories using the assorted citizens of Springfield. It’s something that gets forgotten in this day and age where adult-oriented cartoons are a dime a dozen… but the Simpsons take on Halloween was, in its’ beginnings, pretty damn subversive. These brutal “out of continuity” tales really messed with viewer’s expectations and I can remember some (Season 6’s Nightmare Cafeteria) genuinely putting some scares in me.

Thrift Store Halloweekends – Tales from the Cryptkeeper LCD Handheld Game (Micro Games)

In our first Hallo-weekend post, we’ll be looking at the Tales from the Cryptkeeper LCD handheld game, made by Micro Games in 1994. I paid a buck for this in our local thrift store.

It’s hard to believe in this era of smartphones and incredibly sophisticated consoles, but handheld video games were a big deal in the 1980’s! Before technology allowed video games the portability they began to enjoy in the mid Nineties, these simple toys utilized “liquid crystal displays” to give players a video game like experience. Designed something like a cartoon, the LCD screen featured a number of printed images that worked in tandem with one another to replicate movement based on user interface. In other words, it was as low-fi as a video game could get and still be considered a game.

Despite their limitations, handheld LCD games remained quite popular even after more sophisticated handheld consoles like Nintendo’s GameBoy and Sega’s Game Gear opened the market. LCD games were far cheaper than a GameBoy cartridge and like I said… most gamers were, if not contented by the limited game play, they were at least somewhat mollified. I also think one of the keys to the LCD handheld’s continued success after their day had come and gone was branding. Every TV show, movie, and video game worth a damn had a dedicated LCD game on the shelves. For some properties, this was a natural progression – as a kid, I owned a Tiger Electronics’ Batman game based on the ’89 movie I loved, as well as several others.

The game we’re going to be looking at today is an adaptation of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, an animated series based on the HBO original series Tales from the Crypt… which itself was an adaptation of the famous horror title published by EC Comics in the 1950’s.

Pearce Family Holiday Drawings: Halloween 2014

 

Longtime readers of my comic may remember that every Halloween I draw a seasonally themed cartoon of my family for posting on social media.

New readers… that sentence above is a true statement.

You can check out previous years’ Halloween (and Christmas!) doodles here.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “Halloween Countdown, Part V″ edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

The last week of Halloween themed drawings yielded a visit to Halloweentown courtesy of The Nightmare Before Chrsitmas. This was, by far, the most popular single week of drawings I’ve done all year. Kids were jumping all over me to know when I was going to be drawing Jack Skellington on the board. I couldn’t bear to give the “Chris treatment” (beard and weird nose) that I usually pull on these chalk scribbles.

The number of moans and groans I got over Friday’s comic were pretty hilarious but I thought it ended up working out quite well from a cohesive standpoint.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “Halloween Countdown, Part IV″ edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

We’re kind of running through a grab-bag of leftover monsters this week. Pennywise the Clown is an interesting one that kind of lives on through re-runs of the IT miniseries on the SyFy Channel… which is strange because, while it was pretty good for its’ time, the actual movie doesn’t hold up too well.

The Gillman from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and King Kong are two of my favorites but they’ve never screamed “Halloween” to me, Kong especially. Still, since they are technically in that genre, they make the cut.

I was just a little lazy on Friday.