Happy Halloween 2025!

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It’s Halloween! And celebrations can be found everywhere, including in Pan’s home neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens, where I took this spookily decorated window in a local thrift shop. Gee, some of those items might look pretty good in the StarWarp Concepts home office…

It’s also this year’s celebration of Frankenstein Friday, which is observed on the last Friday in October—and fortuitously enough, that just happens to be today! As to the origins of this unusual holiday, according to the calendar site Checkiday:

“Frankenstein Friday was created by Ryan MacCloskey of Westfield, New Jersey, in 1997, to celebrate the birth of the Frankenstein monster, and its creator, Mary Shelley. He created it on a Friday because of the alliteration the name makes, and because it’s easier to be festive on a Friday.”

Works for me! After all, with writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein having had a limited theatrical run a couple of weeks ago (before it heads to Netflix on November 7), who’s to say it’s not a great time to celebrate Mary Shelley’s legendary novel—especially on Halloween! (I got to see the movie during its recent limited theatrical run—definitely watch it when it debuts on Netflix, it’s a fantastic adaptation!)

So while you’re devouring all those sweet treats tonight, spend some time with Frankenstein’s Monster—he’s certainly got enough movies and cartoon appearances to keep you occupied beyond the midnight hour!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

Horror Street: Pennywise’s New York Adventure

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Check it out—three Horror Street entries in the same month! Well, with Halloween just a week away, and things like the Spirit Halloween Subway in town for the Spooky Season, the timing seems perfect for my latest NYC discovery, even if it doesn’t involve street art.

This week, my wanderings took me north along Manhattan’s prestigious Park Avenue, home to the headquarters of megacorporations and the apartments/condos/town houses of the ultrarich. And it was while I was waiting for a red crosswalk signal to change on a corner in the East 60s that a flash of red caught the corner of my eye. I looked toward one of the pedestrian islands that run along the center of Park Avenue and saw…

Well, now. Looks like someone’s a long way from Derry, Maine…

In case you’re not in the know, Derry is the fictional stalking ground of Pennywise, the evil, murderous clown who inhabits the town’s sewer system in the pages of Stephen King’s classic novel It, and later portrayed by Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard on film and TV.

Has Pennywise grown tired of Derry? Has he set up house in Midtown Manhattan? Can he even afford the rents in New York—I mean, what does sewer space go for these days on Park Avenue?

Or maybe it’s just a very sly, very low-key way of promoting the clown’s upcoming TV series, It: Welcome to Derry, which premieres on HBO Max this Sunday?

Whatever the red balloon represents, it might be best to just avoid the area’s sewer gratings for a little while—unless, that is, you’re curious to discover if you can float down there…

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and Beetlejuice himself!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

DriveThru’s 2025 Halloween Sale Is On!

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It’s time to celebrate the Spooky Season—with e-books and digital comics! E-book distributors DriveThru Comics and DriveThru Fiction—along with sister site DriveThru RPG—have kicked off their annual Halloween sale, during which you can purchase thousands of horror-themed digital books and comics and roleplaying games at special prices! It runs until October 31—and yes, you’ll need to set up an account (it’s free) to take advantage of this promotion.

Included among the many participating publishers is StarWarp Concepts (of course), which means you can get select titles at lower prices, including the Illustrated Classic Carmilla, the dark-fantasy-noir story collection Chasing Danger: The Case Files of Theron Chase, the graphic novel Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings, and the full-color comic special The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1.

Again, the sale runs through Halloween, so head over to the StarWarp Concepts publisher pages at DriveThru Comics and DriveThru Fiction and start shopping!

NYC’s Trick or Streets Returns: A Safe Way to Celebrate Halloween

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If you live in a big city, you know how dangerous trick-or-treating can sometimes be, with dodging speeding cars and trucks while you’re trying to make the rounds of your favorite candy-giving haunts—even in the daytime!

In 2022, New York City took steps to try and make trick-or-treating a much safer event, by instituting “Trick or Streets,” an expansion of its “Open Streets” initiative that closes certain streets to vehicular traffic so that NYC residents can walk and bike on them without fear of injury. (It’s a popular program that started in May 2021 as a result of the pandemic lockdown, so that people could finally get out of their homes and apartments to enjoy fresh air.)

Continuing the tradition, tomorrow kicks off Year 4’s Trick or Streets 2025: a two-week festival during which a number of streets will be closed off in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, allowing you and yours to hit the pavement and celebrate the Spooky Season with “live music, fun activities, interactive performances, and more.” (Keep an eye on local weather forecasts, though, so you can dress accordingly.)

For more information on the city’s Halloween plans and a list of family-friendly events being held, head over to the Trick or Streets website.

Have a fun, and safe, October!

Horror Street: Riding the Spirit Terror Train

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Whaaat? Two Horror Street entries in the same week? Hey, why not? It’s Spooky Season, after all, and even though this one doesn’t involve street art, my most recent discovery is something all horror fans in New York City should check out, if only for the fun aspect of it.

While wandering around Manhattan this past weekend, my feet took me along West 14th Street where, on the corner of 6th Avenue, I spotted a Spirit Halloween popup store. What I didn’t realize at the time is that this location (for this year, anyway) serves as Spirit’s “flagship store” in NYC, and is home to their theme for 2025: the Madison Scare Park subway station—complete with haunted subway car!

I mean, how could I not take some pictures of such a great-looking display, with its unique passengers like the mutant rat and the electrified corpse?

So, if you’re in the New York City area, head on down to the Spirit Halloween store on the corner of 6th Avenue and West 14th Street, and take a terror ride at Madison Scare Park!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and Beetlejuice himself!

(Photos © Steven A. Roman)

Horror Street: It’s Showtime!

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

With the Spooky Season in full effect right now, and today being the Monday the 13th (yes, okay, I know it’s not Friday, but…close enough for horror, right?), who better to drop in on than that ghost with the most, the one and only Beetlejuice!

I stumbled across the cinematic supernatural superstar this past summer, while wandering the streets of East Williamsburgh, in Brooklyn—a very popular industrialized neighborhood rich in street art. (I’ll have other pieces to show from that area in future Horror Street entries.)

There’s a good chance you’ll still be able to find BJ haunting East Williamsburgh—as temporary as mural art tends to be, sometimes the really good ones can remain untouched and unchanged for years. So, go hunt down that pesky ol’ ghost; be sure to tell him Lydia Deetz sent you!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and the Demon Door!

(Photo © 2025 Steven A. Roman)

Conventioneering at Home: Not at NYCC 2025? Join the Party!

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As pop culture and comic fans know, today is the opening day for New York Comic Con 2025—which, if it runs true to form, will be an absolute madhouse this weekend!

Unfortunately, Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, won’t be part of the festivities (it’s really expensive to exhibit there). But that doesn’t mean you can’t experience a sort of scaled-down SWC version of the big show right here!

You want vendors? Though SWC’s webstore is currently down, you can order their ever-expanding roster of titles from such retail sites as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop. On the e-book and digital comic front, you can purchase books, comics, and graphic novels from their publisher pages at DriveThru Fiction, DriveThru Comics, and Smashwords.

Convention giveaways? Their Downloads page has a bunch of free stuff—Pandora Zwieback wallpapers for your smartphone and computer, book samples, and free digital comics:

Heroines & Heroes is a collection of comic stories and pinups all drawn by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!), dating back to my days in the early 1990s small-press movement—that age of dinosaurs in which creators like me used to make our comics by printing them out on photocopiers and then stapling them by hand. In H&H you’ll find mainstream heroes and small-press heroines, and even a couple of anthropomorphic bikers. Leading off is “V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N (in the Summertime),” a three-page Wonder Woman vs. Harley Quinn story that I wrote and drew in the late ’90s as a sample for a DC Comics editor who thought I’d be a good fit for their Batman: The Animated Series comic (long story short, it didn’t work out). The WW/Harley matchup is followed by an adventure of small-presser Jeff Wood’s rabbit-eared superspy, Snowbuni; three pages from the long-canceled indie comic Motorbike Puppies; and an adventure of the indie superheroine The Blonde Avenger.

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 is a full-color introduction to the young adult novel series of the same name, hosted by Pan herself. Pan is a 16-year-old New York City Goth who’s not only a horror fangirl but someone with the rare ability to see the for-real monsters that regular humans can’t (she calls it her “monstervision”), and with the help of a 400-year-old, shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, she’s learning how to protect her family, her friends, and the world from the supernatural dangers out there—and maybe even have some fun while doing it. This 16-page comic features a seven-page story written by me, with art and color by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1, Carmilla, A Princess of Mars), and includes two sample chapters from Blood Feud, the first Pan novel.

Artists Alley? The Gallery area—think of it as an online artists’ alley—features The 13 Days of Pan-demonium, containing original renderings by artists from indie and mainstream comics, including Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), Teri S. Wood (Wandering Star), Neil Vokes (Tom Holland’s Fright Night), and Louis Small Jr. (Supergirl)!

So the StarWarp Concepts crew might not be hanging out at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center over in Manhattan, but at least you can have a con-like experience from the comfort of your home!

Getting in the Halloween Mood

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Halloween is only three weeks (and a few days) away, so it’s the perfect time to get in the spooky mood—unless you’re already in it, of course! If you’re not, though, here’s some ways to spark your inner ghoul:

Horror movies! AMC Fearfest, Turner Classic Movies, the SyFy Channel, Movies! TV Network, Freeform, and Svengoolie (on MeTV) are just some of the cable stations chock full of Halloweeny programming during October, and streaming sites like HBO Max, Tubi, and Pluto are constantly adding horror movies to their lineups. There’s a lot to see before All Hallows’ Eve, so as the old saying goes, check your local listings for more information.

Then there’s Countdown to Halloween, an annual collection of blogs (mostly horror-themed) that commit to posting daily entries every day of the month, on a wide range of topics from comic books to toys, classic horror movies to music, and even wanderings through local cemeteries.

There are also the ghoulish deejays spinning tunes over at Halloween Radio and its five channels (Main, Soundtracks, Atmosphere, Oldies, and Kids), which stream year-round—perfect for when you’re looking for background music to play while you’re decorating your home or apartment, carving pumpkins, or working on your costume.

Are you a comic book fan? Then stop by your local comic shop to check out the latest spooktacular offerings this month, including Archie Comics’ Archie’s Halloween Spectacular, DC’s Zatanic Panic and Harley Quinn x Elvira #1, and Boom! Studios’ Hello Halloween.

But the true meaning of horror can be found this coming weekend on the Hallmark Channel, which is set to debut Haul Out the Halloween, an actual Halloween-themed romance movie, on Saturday night! First it was Hallmark’s annual “Countdown to Christmas” marathons during October, where it’s round-the-clock holly-and-ivy-draped programming in an attempt to distract everyone from the ghoulies and ghosties we enjoy, and now they’re horning in on All Hallows’ Eve itself—does their evil know no bounds?!

(Actually, it’s pretty well known that horror and Hallmark have a weird relationship. For all the counter-Halloween programming they do, Hallmark does have a following for their Christmas movies among horror fans, and then there’s the fact that not only have a number of horror writers and directors contributed to the yuletide filmfests (Fred Olen Ray, David DeCoteau, Michael Varrati), but even horror icons like Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead), Natasha Henstridge (Species), and Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy) have starred in them!)

Whatever it is you do to get ready for Halloween, have a fun time doing it!

(Collier’s cover image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Banned Books Week 2025 Starts Tomorrow

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Got a favorite book? Well, odds are good there’s someone out there in the United States who’d liked to see it censored, or removed entirely from bookstores and library shelves.

According to a recent American Library Association report, “The 2024 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts are now originating from organized movements. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries.”

That’s where Banned Books Week comes in. Launched in 1982, it’s an annual celebration of literacy in which the spotlight is shone on the problem of censorship in U.S. libraries and bookstores, which is becoming worse every year. The organization PEN America, for instance, has recorded “more than 10,000 book bans affecting more than 4,000 unique titles” in the 2023–2024 school year, with the majority occurring in Florida and Iowa.

(By the way, horror fans, PEN America recently announced that none other than Stephen King is the most banned author in U.S. schools, according to their “Banned in the US” list of books for 2025 that are being blocked in school libraries.)

This year’s BBW theme is “Censorship is So 1984.” To quote the ALA press release:

“Current efforts to ban books and information held in schools, libraries, archives, and bookstores are a truth close to fiction—namely, the depiction of extreme censorship by an oppressive regime in George Orwell’s cautionary and prescient tale 1984. The Banned Books Week 2025 theme reminds us that the right to read belongs to all of us, that censorship has no place in contemporary society, and that we must defend our rights.”

Banned Books Week 2025 runs October 5–11, so visit the BBW website for more information, including a list of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2024 that they’re celebrating this year.

Spooky Season Is Here!

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Fall has officially arrived, and with it comes…well, yes, the annual onslaught of pumpkin-spice whatevers that flood grocery stores and coffee houses, and sure, Christmas decorations have already taken over the majority of shelves at retail stores, but October 1st is still the start of the holiday season celebrated by horror fans and monster kids around the world: Halloween!

So, carve those pumpkins, hoist that 20-foot-tall skeleton decoration high, create a marathon of your favorite horror movies, and ignore the Hallmark Christmas programming! There’s plenty of creepy, eerie fun to be had this month—so get out there and enjoy it!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)