halloween

While there's nothing wrong with buying a store brand Harley Quinn costume or Captain America onesie, there's something extra special about going all out for Halloween, assembling a costume from scratch and giving it your all for the spookiest night of the year. Every year, Toronto's Silver Snail comic store hosts a huge and nerdy Halloween bash featuring some of the best costumes and cosplay you'll see all year, and professional cosplay photographer Paul Hillier is always on hand to capture some of the coolest and most unique Halloween costumes you're likely to see!

It's Halloween, and I'm celebrating with a special Cast Party featuring Marvel's spooky supergroup, the Legion of Monsters. While the original team was created in the '70s by Bill Mantlo, Frank Robbins, and Steve Gan, I'm mainly drawing inspiration from the more recent Franken-Castle story written by Rick Remender, with art by Tony Moore, Dan Brereton, and more.

Solomon Grundy can't tell you much about himself. The exact date of his birth is lost to time, and then there's the matter of whether he was born as Cyrus Gold in the 19th century, or if Grundy's birth came much later than that, when he rose up out of the swamp wearing Gold's corpse like a suit. But everyone knows that Solomon Grundy was born on a Monday. So this Monday, which is also Halloween, seems like the perfect time to pay tribute to the original zombie supervillain, who was originally created by writer Alfred Bester and artist Paul Reinman.

After a month of anticipation, "Treehouse of Horror" binges, and spooky Twitter names, Halloween is finally upon us. This special day means so much to so many people, and one of the greatest joys it gives us is licensed costumes based on comic book properties. Some of them are incredibly detailed and accurate to the source material, some of them are hilariously bad, and some, somehow, manage to be both. We've rounded up some of the best comics-themed Halloween costumes from this year to provide you with some last minute inspiration for the big night.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. Ah, the Halloween season. That wonderful time of the year where they let me talk about monsters around here and no one looks at me funny for having fifteen tabs about werewolves open on my laptop.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. Halloween is unquestionably the most wonderful time of the year, but how can we take our love for Halloween and our love for comics and combine them to enjoy at the same time? I'll tell you how. By making a list of the best monster team-ups in comics, that's how. Monsters have always been a great fit for comics and there's nothing like the old comic character crossover/team-up, so this is a real peanut butter and chocolate situation.

The ghosts and ghouls of Halloween have all scuttled back to their shadows now that the witchy festivites are almost a whole week behind us. Greasepaint-stained costumes have gone to the laundry basket; Twitter names and icons have reverted to normal; and we're officially drinking all that pumpkin spiced caffeinated milk froth strictly for Thanksgiving reasons now. Before we unwisely turn our back on vampires and Frankensteins for another year, we have one more tradition to observe; the annual Snailoween Party in Toronto. As we've done for the last few years, we sent our friend Paul Hillier, cosplay photographer extraordinaire, to capture the very best outfits at one of North America's nerdiest costume parties.

To celebrate both Halloween and the upcoming release of Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds put back on his superhero costume, and hit the streets on Halloween, meeting up with a bunch of trick-or-treaters dressed up as the X-Men. The Merc With the Mouth tried to recruit these pint-sized mutants to join his Halloween team, but it didn’t quite go according to plan.

Halloween is almost here. In fact, it basically couldn’t be any closer because it’s All Hallow’s Eve. Or Devil’s Night if you’re a Crow fan. As you’re planning your spooky activities, mapping out your candy begging routes, and putting the finishing touches on your costumes, we’ve got one last treat Halloween treat for you! This ghoulish gallery devoted to everyone’s favorite shambling, abomination to medicine and religion, Frankenstein! I don’t want to get too book report-y here, because you have access to Wikipedia for that, but Frankenstein’s grip on the public’s imagination, and more importantly how quickly and how long it’s held that grip, is something that cannot be undervalued or disregarded. Whatever reason has brought you here to look at these images, I’m going to assume at least part of it has to do with what place Frankenstein (or “Frankenstein’s Monster” if you’re one of those people) holds in your heart or your nightmares.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and while spooky scares and gigantic piles of candy are always fun, you should also take care to have a safe time if you're heading out trick-or-treating. I mean, you never know when your Halloween could be interrupted by, say, a humanoid pumpkin who will try to distract you with his clever raps and rhymes. That, at least, is the usual problem faced by the Power Rangers on Halloween, but it seems that they're also pretty worried about more common problems, like making sure you don't get lost and that your costume is visible even in the dark. To that end, the cast of Dino Charge are here with some safety tips on how you can have a safe and happy Halloween --- and how that also involves buying official Power Rangers merchandise.