Halloween Musings: All Good Things ...
I was scrolling through Reddit recently, and came across a post from a woman describing a kind of sadness she feels every year on Halloween. Because she loves Halloween, and after all the weeks of build-up and anticipation and Spooky Season revelry, the big day itself actually represents the end of her favorite time of year. When November 1st rolls around, all of a sudden, Halloween is over - and it's back to the rote, the mundane, the routine of everyday life.
I can relate. As someone who loves horror and all things spooky, the entire month of October feels like a magical time when everyone joins in on the celebration - a celebration that, at many times in my life, has felt like a somewhat solitary journey. By the time October 31st rolls around, you can almost feel something in the air start to change. Most people - us Spooky Season aficionados aside - are ready to move on. It's why I have a poster hanging in my office that says "Live Every Day Like It's Halloween." To remind me that just because others have moved on, the spooky spirit of fun and imagination and endless possibilities that Halloween embodies doesn't have to end come November 1st.
And yet ... this Halloween marks another kind of end. Last October, we released Issue #1 of HALLOWEEN TEAM, following months of planning, prep, and tons of hard work by our incredible artist, Matt Shults. We released the fourth and final issue this past summer - but all along, the plan was to build towards this October, this Halloween, as our crowning moment, our big finale. We released HALLOWEEN TEAM: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION at the beginning of October - a new digital volume that collects the entire Halloween Team miniseries into one definitive graphic novel edition. And all month, I've been doing everything I can to promote The Complete Collection's release: endless social posts across numerous platforms, countless emails to news publications, podcasts, publishers, and more. Since the beginning of this process, there's been a lot of rejection. We heard "no, thank you" (sometimes sans the "thank you") over and over again. But I kept pushing forward, doing everything I could to get the word out about Halloween Team. I was determined that, somehow, I'd manage to get our self-published indie comic book the attention it needed to be a breakout hit and a calling card for Matt Shults and I. Both of us would love to do more work in comics, and I felt like, with this book, we had a really cool, high-quality story that could get our names out there. So yes, there was a lot of rejection - but if working in the entertainment industry for years has taught me anything, it's that you've got to roll with the punches and just keep plugging away. And plug away I did - all the way through today. All the way through Halloween.
Tomorrow is November 1st. Tomorrow, a book called Halloween Team may not feel as relevant. And that is a little sad to think about. There is a part of me that wants to keep going full-steam in doing everything I can to get this book exposure. But I also know that I need a break - and I need to move on, to an extent, to other things. At the same time, HALLOWEEN TEAM is now a part of me. It's something I'll always feel a pull to come back to, to share, to show off, to revisit. There are so many more Halloween Team stories to tell, and I still want to find a way to make that happen. By this time next year, I hope that somehow, some way, there's new Halloween Team news to share. But today, try as I might to deny it, also marks the end of a chapter. Our initial push to launch Halloween Team is over. Another chapter now begins.
Tomorrow, many of us will feel that hint of sadness. Is it really a whole year until next Halloween? But we will find those moments each month, each week, each day to get excited about. And we'll always carry with us that bit of Halloween magic - even if it's February, or April, or July.
Halloween is forever - and so, I hope, is HALLOWEEN TEAM.
I can relate. As someone who loves horror and all things spooky, the entire month of October feels like a magical time when everyone joins in on the celebration - a celebration that, at many times in my life, has felt like a somewhat solitary journey. By the time October 31st rolls around, you can almost feel something in the air start to change. Most people - us Spooky Season aficionados aside - are ready to move on. It's why I have a poster hanging in my office that says "Live Every Day Like It's Halloween." To remind me that just because others have moved on, the spooky spirit of fun and imagination and endless possibilities that Halloween embodies doesn't have to end come November 1st.
And yet ... this Halloween marks another kind of end. Last October, we released Issue #1 of HALLOWEEN TEAM, following months of planning, prep, and tons of hard work by our incredible artist, Matt Shults. We released the fourth and final issue this past summer - but all along, the plan was to build towards this October, this Halloween, as our crowning moment, our big finale. We released HALLOWEEN TEAM: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION at the beginning of October - a new digital volume that collects the entire Halloween Team miniseries into one definitive graphic novel edition. And all month, I've been doing everything I can to promote The Complete Collection's release: endless social posts across numerous platforms, countless emails to news publications, podcasts, publishers, and more. Since the beginning of this process, there's been a lot of rejection. We heard "no, thank you" (sometimes sans the "thank you") over and over again. But I kept pushing forward, doing everything I could to get the word out about Halloween Team. I was determined that, somehow, I'd manage to get our self-published indie comic book the attention it needed to be a breakout hit and a calling card for Matt Shults and I. Both of us would love to do more work in comics, and I felt like, with this book, we had a really cool, high-quality story that could get our names out there. So yes, there was a lot of rejection - but if working in the entertainment industry for years has taught me anything, it's that you've got to roll with the punches and just keep plugging away. And plug away I did - all the way through today. All the way through Halloween.
Tomorrow is November 1st. Tomorrow, a book called Halloween Team may not feel as relevant. And that is a little sad to think about. There is a part of me that wants to keep going full-steam in doing everything I can to get this book exposure. But I also know that I need a break - and I need to move on, to an extent, to other things. At the same time, HALLOWEEN TEAM is now a part of me. It's something I'll always feel a pull to come back to, to share, to show off, to revisit. There are so many more Halloween Team stories to tell, and I still want to find a way to make that happen. By this time next year, I hope that somehow, some way, there's new Halloween Team news to share. But today, try as I might to deny it, also marks the end of a chapter. Our initial push to launch Halloween Team is over. Another chapter now begins.
Tomorrow, many of us will feel that hint of sadness. Is it really a whole year until next Halloween? But we will find those moments each month, each week, each day to get excited about. And we'll always carry with us that bit of Halloween magic - even if it's February, or April, or July.
Halloween is forever - and so, I hope, is HALLOWEEN TEAM.
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