NO. JUST. NO.

I always like to give you good and bad examples during the season.  
This is just horrible.  Not the least of which, it is horrible for what you DON'T GET when you pay for it.
Click to enlarge for the full love.

Keep your pumpkins lit.

VALUE FOR YOUR BUCKS

This costume is not good by any means...

But at least you get a basically complete costume for your money.  A very common problem with costuming, and I believe I have mentioned this before, many times, is that the picture on the web page or in the catalog and what you get are two different things.  To be sure, the companies are honest about this.  They list what you get for your money in the item descriptions and even upsell you with suggestions to make it look like the picture.  On the other hand, much like food modeling, this is still modeling.  Professional makeup, lighting, and models are used to sell the product.
In the example above most of what you see is what you get.  You will need to do your own white facepaint and if you really MUST go all Johnny Depp with the wig and beard that's on you, but you don't need to do that.  This means that you get a decent outfit that works as pirate or colonial gentleman ghost.  70 bucks and for another 30 you can trick it out as you like.  It's not false advertising.

Unlike this crap.

With this weirdo Jacob Marley rip off you get only the hat, the jacket, and a scarf.  If you want the ridiculous facial hair and wig you have to provide that, and the jacket's attached waistcoat is too long and full.  It is crap and what you save compared to the above you will spend to finish the costume, and then some.  

Get a sheet.  Cut some eyeholes in it.  Viola.

Keep your pumpkins lit.

NYOPE

That is a Jawa.

Far be it from me that I should give Disney a dollar, but let's be honest here.
That's a Jawa.

Keep your pumpkins lit.

KINDA SCARY

Ghosts are meant to be scary, right?
Since they have no physical presence we assume they are just scaring people to death.  Not all ghost costumes are scary.  In fact, most are not.  
But sometimes...

I don't know about "skeletal" but it is pretty cool.  I can see the spook factor in it.  I'm certain that you can as well.  It looks either very happy to be making you crap your undies OR it is forlorn and full of sorrow.  Either way, here, have a full size Snickers bar and please leave now.

I'd pair this with a sheet, myself.  Maybe a sheet with a hood.  I suppose you could just put on a hoodie and call it a night, but as I always say, make an effort.

Keep your pumpkins lit, ghosts hate that.

CANDY BAG

I like Jack O Lanterns.
I mean, that's obvious, right?
How many articles have I done about pumpkin people?

I was at the grocer's and there was the aisle full of Halloween candy.  Halloween candy really comes in two types.  The first type is theme candy for the season.  Sometimes it is just flavor themed, like pumpkin spice caramels (foul and disgusting) and other times it is just regular in flavor but theme shaped, like gummie ghosts.  The other type is regular candy portioned out in smaller sizes for trick or treaters and either wrapped in an autumnal style, or normally wrapped but in a cool theme bag.

I'm a sucker for marketing, I'm afraid.

Witness the glory of the bag that I resisted purchasing, but had to capture for posterity.

I purposely posed the bag on the shelf for the picture...then I left it there in the wrong spot.  Serves them right for not putting price tags up.  

Oh my.  Look at that beautiful Jack-O!  I love the eyebrows and the subtle squint marks under the eyes that give him such a humorously dangerous expression.  The window portion of the bag makes it look like he's eating all the candy.  This is why we love the season, people.  It's also why we can't have it all year round.  Mustn't spoil it with overexposure.  Still, you can always come back here in the coldest days of winter or the hottest days of summer, or even in the polleniest sneezy days of wretched spring and feast your eyes upon the glory.

Keep your pumpkins lit.  And well fed, it would seem.

Roadkill: From the CP Cutting Room Floor

Not a CP Classic Rewind; more bonus content.  I originally wrote this piece for last year's zombie topic but in the end I had more content than I could use.  Besides, I'd done zombies to death by that point and the ISBA files needed to be updated.  I did major research for this piece (which means I reread the comics and did some internet searching) so it seems a shame not to share it, even if it is not part of this year's theme.

In honor of Halloween and the general topic of zombies, today we are looking at a Deadworld oneshot from 1993 entitled Roadkill, a Chronicle of the Deadworld.  Written by Del Stone and art by Dave Dorman, Roadkill is the story of an intelligent zombie biker named Hitch.  Published in comic book format, the oneshot is actually a prose text with several full pages of black and white illustrations by industry favorite Dave Dorman.  As such, it is not really a comic book, nor is it a graphic novel, but the pace, the story, and the style reads easily like a good comic should, making it more a short story than anything else.

Wrap Around Cover of Roadkill

I've discussed Deadworld before, in my ongoing quest to demonstrate that Walking Dead is not the greatest example of zombie media, indeed to underscore my belief that it is mediocre and derivative at best.  This stand alone tale does not require that the reader be intimately familiar with the story of Deadworld, but if you are, then you get more out of it.  The protagonist, Hitch, is an intelligent zombie, which is rare in the Deadworld setting.  There are a few, such as the villain King Zombie, but that is explained within the setting as those zombies are not the people that died, but rather host bodies for the spirits that the evil forces sent to Earth to open the invasion path.  Hitch, therefore, is unique in that he is intelligent and free-willed, while still being the person he was in life, only now he is a zombie.  This is expressed to the reader, but never explained.  We simply accept that Hitch is unique and move on.

Hitch, our protagonist

Along with being a thinking free-willed zombie, Hitch can mentally command other non-thinking zombies.  Again we are given no explanation for why this is, and that's fine because the reason is not important.  The story has Hitch in Amarillo, Texas, running away from the events in Michigan (which would be the main Deadworld story where King Zombie is trying to open a portal to bring in his masters) when he comes across a compound with a weapon that causes the dead to turn and eat each other, and also fries them up.  Your basic sci-fi raygun death beam weapon.  Hitch rescues a woman named Dakota and hatches a scheme to get access to the compound, called Spandau, where he intends to claim the weapon and its designer, a man known as the Little Hitler.  Said man was a scientist for NASA and now runs the compound under his own ideological fourth reich.  Hiding inside a tanker truck of pesticide, driven by Dakota, Hitch intends to capture his quarry with the aid of an army of zombies he's amassed outside with his powers.  Dakota betrays him to the humans and he winds up on a slab heading for a necropsy.

Hitch is in trouble, folks.

Always arrogant the Little Hitler decides to show Hitch his true power but things go south when Hitch's specially selected "skeleton crew" of zombies his put leather jackets, bandannas, and strapped with ordnance blow the fence.  In the ensuing chaos our hero breaks his leg, which will not heal.  He manufactures a splint out of a fresh femur he pulls from a soldier and goes on to fight the Little Hitler in his diesel powered mech walker.  You know, as I write this it sounds a bit ridiculous, but trust me it all works in the story.  It has verisimilitude.  Our story ends with Hitch's plans derailed by the death of the Little Hitler and the loss of the death ray, but he does make a deal with the surviving humans and leaves with a nuclear warhead and a plan to stop King Zombie.
Why?
Essentially Hitch does not wish to die again, and he sees the efforts of King Zombie as a threat to his new existence.  While this does not make him heroic, it does make him a reasonably sympathetic protagonist.  Being intelligent he has no craving for human flesh either, so that helps to make him more likable.

Hitch returns for one more tale.

Hitch returned in a short called December, published as a special insert for Hero magazine.  The story was only about 5 pages of text but the issue included an interview with Del Stone and Dave Dorman about their creation and their plans.  In December we find Hitch up in Michigan in the snow with his bomb, a pair of Sears Die-Hard batteries strapped to his back and wired to his muscles to prevent his becoming a zombie statue, as all the non-intelligent zombies have become.  He has a run in with some human survivors and kills them, then heads off to look for something called the Golem out in the desert somewhere.  It's not much of a story and really serves as a link to the next chapter of Hitch's overall story, which was to be entitled Heat.  
The interview revealed to the readers how Hitch was first created as a piece of art by Dorman for the last issue of Deadworld, and how he and Stone developed the character and story.  As stated by the creators, they wanted to minimize the amount of Deadworld links so the story of Hitch would not be intrinsically linked to the Deadworld story, allowing them creative freedom to tell stories of the character.  They also retained the rights to the character and stories themselves.
This might be why Heat did not get released, as such, but instead became a full novel entitled Dead Heat.

The novel reworks the elements of Roadkill and December into a larger narrative that tells the full tale of Hitch's unlife and adventures, removing the explicitly Deadworld references.  

For stories with zombie protagonists you could do worse.  Much worse.  You could read Marvel Zombies, for example.  <SHUDDER>  For stories about intelligent zombie bikers that carry a meat hook and fight a would-be Hitler with a mech and a death ray before killing Santa Clause and running off with a nuke to fight a monster that creates super zombies...I'm pretty sure you cannot do better.

Once again, when I look at it written down like that it looks insane.  Maybe it is insane, but it's insane in all the best ways.  Any zombie media is a bit insane.  Superheroes are a bit insane.  Sci-fi, action films, all of that stuff is wacky, is it not?  We create little imaginary worlds in fiction and as long as we are internally consistent we buy into it.  Hitch was a mechanic, just a regular Joe, then he had a motorcycle accident and awoke as a zombie during a zombie apocalypse and to his surprise had intelligence and will, but no purpose.  It's an existential zombie story about finding a purpose!  It's the quest for human meaning with a crazy wannabe Hitler and death rays and mechs and...
Look, it's a million billion times better than Walking Dead.  It's Z Nation levels of crazy.  It's the Zombie Biker Hero story you never knew you wanted!  When you consider the shite that is produced in the zombie media, how can a Hitler in a mech not be warranted?

Keep your pumpkins lit.

KIDS GET THE BEST COSTUMES

I get it.  I do.  Halloween is a kid holiday.  I'm not saying it is not also an adult holiday, but honestly it's a time where kids get to fully indulge in fantasy without any adults telling them that it is unhealthy and they need to focus on reality.
But darn it all, it's not fair that they get the best costumes!
Kids costumes really come in two basic varieties, only for kids and smaller versions of adult costumes.  In cases where the costume is a smaller version of an adult costume it can sometimes look awfully surreal due to the proportions.  Tiny zombies that have the same basic proportions as adult size zombies can be a bit silly.
On the other hand take a gander at these samples I've pulled up for ghosts.

This ghost costume, described as a phantom, is very good.  Basic black hands and face and shoes can be hidden in the dark for that ethereal floating look.  The light up eyes are a special treat.

The white color and gauzy strips are really the only thing that keeps this from looking like a Jawa (and yes, this same costume is sold in brown and giving a ridiculous name like desert alien phantom).  He's kind of like a Scooby Doo villain come to life.  That's a good thing, by the way.

The Phantom really deserves a close-up, because you must inspect the glory of the mask.  So simple and yet so effective.  In fact, except for the height, you wouldn't know it was a child.  Glowing eyes and a faceless black area.  Chilling and wonderful.  I'd give this kid two, maybe three extra pieces of candy.

YES!  Sheet Ghost!  Here's a commercial variation on the classic sheet ghost, complete with wavering ghostly mouth outline.  Just eyes or eyes with mouth, both are good.  It's so classic and cute and it conjures up just the right spirit for Halloween puns.

The above is a kid version of an adult costume of the same name.  It might require a bit of explanation.  Look closely and see the molded skull face under the hood.  That's good as it gives our ghost a frightening face but not immediately obvious at a distance.  It would seem like a Grim Reaper but that it is all white until you get to the bottom.  The black is meant to be not there, so you pair this with black shoes and what you see, in the dark (and conceptually) is the ghost "floating" in the air.  That's pretty clever.  Our next offering is in a similar style.

The inset picture is meant to demonstrate how this costume looks in the dark with the right lighting.  The child seems to be a full size ghost (hence the oversize head), not just a ghost of a hot dog or something.  The costume really comes to life in the dark with some black-light.  Which means that it might not be your best choice for trick or treat, now that I think about it.  Again, it's kind of cute.  Not sheet ghost cute, although this is admittedly based on the idea that the sheet ghost conveys, but fun.

I am jealous of both the quality and the price that allows kids to get away with paying less for a better costume while an adult pays 40 bucks for a tiny hat and plastic ax with a Walking Dead Official Merch sticker on it.  Ectoplasm all over that.

Keep your pumpkins black-lit.