Halloween Masks

 Masks and costumes! They go hand in hand in hand with Halloween. Here's a group of masks, very Ben Cooper-like. I can't verify whether they are in fact Ben Cooper. Wouldn't surprise me.

And of course, there's a scary clown mask in there. Gotta have that, right?

Then there's a Rubie's "Corpse" mask from 1985. I talk a little bit about Rubie's in the book--they're a large company that ended up buying not only the Ben Cooper company but the Collegeville company who also made masks.

I owned a mask very much like this. I keep an eye out for the mask I actually had, but have never seen it since roughly 1983. Apparently it was pretty freaking rare...

James O'Barr Scary Scarecrow

Sometimes I stumble upon a picture that's very cool so I have to save it. In this case it's strange because I owned a comic book shop for 17 years. I'm well aware of who J. O'Barr is, and have even met him a few times at various conventions.

He's the creator of the Crow, and I've seen just about every well-known picture by him...but I'd never seen this one before.

Too cool not to share--the traditional pumpkin-headed scarecrow about to pounce on The Crow.

More Die-Cut Action

We used to hang a lot of Beistle and Luhrs die-cuts in the windows at Halloween, so I definitely have a soft spot for them.

Here are some other great examples--many of them you can find on eBay if you look long enough.

The rest of these are the cool honeycombed kind that would spread out and becoming 3D. Here's an owl, a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, and finally just a pumpkin.