Comic Book / Hellaween

A hell-raising Halloween is on the horizon.

Hellaween is a kid-friendly horror graphic novel created by Moss Lawton, aka dinolich.

The story centers on Gwen, a teenage witch-in-training who lives in the suburbs where she does her best to practice magic. A loner most of the year, it’s only during the Halloween season that she’s able to be with her two skater best friends – Miles, a vampire, and Sloane, a werewolf. This is due to Miles and Sloane hailing from a parallel world known as the "Hallowlands", a place where all kinds of monsters live and roam, but cannot cross over to the human world unless they have a “liminal space” they can come through (which manifest as the days to Halloween draw closer) or a witch opens a door to summon them through.

Gwen hasn’t quite mastered the latter option yet, and she’s beyond sick of being stuck living in the suburban human realm. Luckily, she feels that this year will be different and is determined to prove to Miles and Sloane that she’s been practicing her magic enough to be now worthy of coming with them to the Hallowlands, something that normally they don’t allow because it would be too risky having someone like Gwen there, as she would be a major monster target.

Undeterred, and after being gifted a grimoire that’s straight from the Hallowlands itself, Gwen is eager to show off her chops more than ever, confident she can take care of herself enough to earn her place in her friends’ world.

Out to intrude on the trio’s good time is 15-year old Hiro, a local human boy that considers himself a fledgling monster hunter with a vendetta, who gets whiff of Miles and Sloane being in town and plans to do something about it. Joining him on this wild ride (when she feels like it) is Beatrix “Bea” Kelly, a rat-loving, Halloween-hating girl who’s just about the only person that tolerates Hiro’s monster obsession, and even then, her patience is prone to being lost.

Gwen, Miles, and Sloane get fed up with Hiro getting in their way rather fast, and both parties are hell-bent on seeing their respective goals carried out, no matter what.

The book was released on August 8th, 2023. A second book, Hellaween: Spellbent, is slated for release August 20th, 2024.

---

Hellaween treats us to the following spooky tricks:

• Abandoned Playground: At night, an empty playground is the first place Miles and Sloane meet up with Gwen for Halloween this year.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Bea’s father, Hank, has set up their house as a haunt for Halloween, and he refers to it as “Hank’s Haunted Hellhouse.”
• All Part of the Show: Miles thinks the haunt they visit is cool but that it could be more interactive. Cue Hiro immediately leaping out and attacking him, causing Miles to claim it’s now too interactive. Unfortunately for Miles, Hiro is not part of the display, and means business.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The tall scarecrow that’s been stalking the main characters through the corn maze is terrifying… and then it’s suddenly eaten by the even-more-threatening gigantic pumpkin patch worm. Miles cheerfully comments that at least they have one less problem now.
• And the Adventure Continues: After the big climax of sending the pumpkin patch worm back to the Hallowlands, Gwen’s grimoire has been mostly destroyed from such a powerful ritual… until she notices that one spell has survived – one that allows a door to the Hallowlands to be opened, implying she’ll learn a way to have Miles and Sloane be able to visit a lot more frequently than just during the Halloween season.
• Banishing Ritual: With the help of her friends (and her enemies), Gwen performs the most powerful, draining spell she’s ever done in order to banish the giant pumpkin patch worm back to the Hallowlands.
• Bewitched Amphibians: Amusingly, after Gwen’s wand starts going haywire, a shot from it hits Hiro’s cellphone, causing said phone to be the thing that turns into a living frog.
• The Big Guy: Sloane is the tallest of the main cast and has no problem hoisting a big bag of treats or lifting and carrying both Hiro and Bea at once, being shown to be quite strong in wolf form AND human form.
• Bland-Name Product: The mall has some real store parody stand-ins, such as “Blair’s” for Claire’s retail shop and “Gloom Hole”, clearly meant to be Hot Topic based on the interior.
• Blatant Lies: Sloane and Miles ponder how a big pumpkin patch worm could have gotten to the human world without help and then realize it had to be Gwen’s doing. Gwen promptly tries to play innocent and act like she doesn’t know what they’re talking about, even claiming that maybe it was the work of a "Halloween miracle." No one falls for it in the slightest.
• Broken-Window Warning: After having enough of Hiro hounding them, the trio throws a wadded-up paper through Hiro’s closed window as he’s sleeping, a note challenging him to meet them at the graveyard if he wants his ass kicked.
• Buy or Get Lost: Miles and Sloane think they’re in heaven when Gwen shows them the Gloom Hole (Hot Topic) store at the mall, with Miles asking if he can get the hideous hodgepodge of various clothing and accessories he’s tried on and Sloane wanting a blue wolf backpack. Gwen checks her purse and sees that she definitely doesn’t have enough money to buy all of it. The cashier stares at them and says, “Are you going to, you know… buy anything?" Cut to the cashier booting the three of them out of the store. Gwen makes it up to her friends by using the last few bucks she has to take them to the arcade instead.
• Call a Human a "Meatbag": While on the run from Hiro and Bea, Miles, being a vampire, taunts the pair of humans by referring to them as “breathers.”
• Can Only Move the Eyes: During her rescue of a tied-up Miles, Gwen performs a quick spell on Hiro that freezes him in place, rendering only his eyes capable of movement, though he can also still speak. Hiro has to just watch as Gwen frees Miles and destroys his evidence that proves they’re really monsters.
• Captain Ersatz: “Dagger” and its sequel “Dagger 2” are films repeatedly mentioned, stated to be about “a half-vampire named Dagger who kills other vampires”, making them clear stand-ins for Blade.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Hazel, one of the jocks that the trio terrorizes, is shown to be a bit odd, forgetting to include herself when she counts each member of her group, says that she “kinda likes” the creepy, allegedly-haunted house she and her friends enter - to the point that she wouldn’t mind making out with someone in it, accidentally hits herself in the face with a frying pan (in her defense, she was aiming for Miles in bat form), and when the ghost of Ester Killinger tells the jocks to get out of the house, Kyle sheepishly promises they’ll never come back… to which Hazel immediately thoughtfully responds with, “Hmm, I might come back.”, much to Kyle’s exasperation.
  • Miles has his moments as well, one example being near the end when he, Gwen, and Sloane are being chased through the corn maze by Hiro and Bea, who are, for all intents and purposes, attempting to kill Miles and his friends, and yet Miles is the only one who finds their current predicament kinda enjoyable, citing that mazes are fun and it’s like “we got two little minotaurs chasing after us.” This is all also happening in broad daylight which isn’t good news for Miles, causing him to rely on running around with his umbrella for now, yet at one point he casually sticks one of his fingers outside the safety of the shade of the umbrella just to watch the finger briefly catch on fire and doesn’t even react to it, an action he does seemingly for no apparent reason.
• Continuity Nod: When Hiro sneaks into Ester’s house and finds a sleeping Miles, the “devil shark” stuffed toy that Miles had previously gotten from the mall’s arcade claw machine is visible on the floor of the closet where Miles is napping.
• Cool Old Lady: The ghost of the elderly Ester Killinger, whom emerges from a mirror to effortlessly scare a group of jocks that entered her home, doesn’t take anyone’s crap, puts the “dead” in Deadpan Snarker, and lets Miles and Sloane use her house as a place to stay while they’re in town (albeit begrudgingly, and provided that they keep other people from entering her home again).
• Cute Witch: Gwen is quite a far cry from the classic “old, ugly hag” style of witch. That being said, she may be cute, but she’s feisty and scrappy, so don’t piss her off.
• Defiant Captive: When Hiro has Miles captured and tied-up and is more than willing to burn Miles alive by slowly subjecting him to sunlight, Miles has no problem using the situation to deliver some smug, biting insults to Hiro, headbutts Hiro while still tied to the chair, then proceeds to insult him some more.
• Description Cut: Hiro is going over his plans in his bedroom and studying his notes on the trio. He feels bad that Bea doesn’t want anything to do with his investigating but says he knows that Bea is “worried about him.” Cue immediate cut to a panel showing Bea playing the drum game at the mall’s arcade with a completely blank expression on her face, not remotely caring or thinking about what Hiro is doing.
• Distressed Dude: While Gwen and Sloane are at the mall, Miles stays behind at Ester’s house to nap during the day. Hiro manages to get inside the house and encounters the sleeping Miles, knocking him out and taking him back to his garage. Miles wakes to find he’s tied to a chair with Hiro threatening to slowly open the garage door little by little to cause Miles to burn up from the sunlight leaking in. Thankfully, Gwen arrives and rescues Miles before the latter can catch on fire.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Sloane chastises Bea for picking up and firing Gwen’s obviously-glitching out wand, telling her (too late) not to touch it.
  Sloane: Don’t touch that! It’s broken, you ding-dong.
• Dope Slap: After Gwen goes home in high spirits, Sloane smacks Miles for talking about the Hallowlands around Gwen, the latter of whom really wants to go there but currently isn’t allowed as it would be too dangerous for her.
• Enemy Mine: With them all being hunted by a giant pumpkin patch worm in a corn maze that’s currently on fire, the trio and Hiro and Bea wisely put aside their hatred of each other for the time being so they can all participate in Gwen’s ritual to banish the worm back to the Hallowlands. After it’s all over and everyone is safe, Hiro makes it clear that they’re still enemies before he and Bea leave the scene, their rivalry with the trio still far from over.
• Everybody Hates Math: Once the trio has met up this year, Miles asks Gwen how life has been treating her since the last time they saw each other, awkwardly questioning her how math class is going. Gwen’s response?
  Gwen: BLECH. Don’t talk to me about math.
• Expy: The pumpkin patch worm brings to mind the Sand Worm from Beetlejuice as an influence. It looked even more like the Beetlejuice Sand Worm in an old storyboard sketch before the book was finished.
• Eyelid Pull Taunt: Bea is shown doing this to the trio at the end before she and Hiro run off, their temporary truce having expired.
• Flying Broomstick: Miles and Sloane bring one from the Hallowlands as a gift for Gwen, though it’s not capable of flight until Gwen herself bewitches it. What makes this a standout example is that Gwen stands on it while riding it, effectively treating it as her own personal skateboard and using it the way the others use their own boards! She’s also pleased at the prospect of never having to buy a car now.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Thanks to it being the Halloween season, Gwen, Sloane, and Miles can just be themselves in public without getting weird looks or raising too many alarms. Miles in particular is just assumed to be wearing blue full-body paint. On the other hand, it being close to Halloween does little to help Hiro’s claims that there’s real monsters running around.
• Foreshadowing:
  • One of the spells in her grimoire that Gwen wants to try is called a “fireblast”, which involves “channeling your energy into a point at the end of your wand to release fire”, but Sloane shoots down this idea and says “Let’s not set the town on fire just yet.” Near the end of the book, Hiro and Bea get a hold of Gwen’s malfunctioning wand and Bea unknowingly does what the spell said, causing the two of them to accidentally set the large corn maze on fire.
  • Sloane mentions that one of the creatures that lives in the Hallowlands is a “mutated jack-o-lantern kaiju.” Come the end of the book, that description doesn’t sound too far off from the very tall pumpkin-headed scarecrow that gets accidentally brought to life by Gwen’s glitching wand and starts stalking the cast through the corn maze. Upon seeing said scarecrow, Miles even comments, “Wow. Just like home.”
  • While the trio is visiting the haunt made by Bea’s family, Miles and Sloane start telling Gwen the history of witches in the Hallowlands, and one panel shows Gwen standing in front of a witch display with a column of flame centered right behind her. Later, when everyone is in the burning corn maze, there is a panel of Gwen with a massive wall of fire behind her.
• Frame-Up: When Hiro starts becoming too much of a nuisance, Sloane and Miles engage in some good ol’ Halloween Trickery, smashing pumpkins, spray-painting houses, and throwing toilet paper on everything, all while terrorizing Hiro all night. The next morning, the neighborhood wakes up and sees the damage done, along with Hiro standing in the middle of it of course. Hiro keeps insisting that it wasn’t him, it was monsters that did it, but his claims fall on deaf ears. He immediately correctly realizes that this was a set-up to get him banned from the Halloween festival.
• Friendlessness Insult: While being held captive by Hiro, Miles takes the opportunity to mock the former. Miles points out that at least HE has friends while Hiro must be a bad friend considering that his Only Friend was never even with him every time Miles has encountered Hiro. Insisting that Bea DOES care, Hiro tells him to shut up and prepares to resume his sunlight-torture before Gwen shows up.
• From Bad to Worse: Gwen’s wand starts glitching out after she tries using magic that’s too powerful for her in an attempt to prove herself to her friends, she’s currently on the run from a pair of humans who want to harm her and her friends, the busted wand shoots a stray spell that accidentally brings a tall scarecrow to life that starts stalking them all in the corn maze they’re lost in, and a dangerous pumpkin patch worm gets accidentally summoned to the human realm because of the powerful spell Gwen had previously tried to do. Oh, and to round it off, Hiro and Bea end up setting the corn maze ablaze.
  Gwen: NO, I’M NOT OKAY! My magic feels like it’s gone haywire, the scarecrow is alive, they took my broom, my wand is super broken, and Sloane for sure hates me now!
• Gag Echo: Gwen hears a ding on her phone and freaks out because she’s been out too late and is past her curfew. On the next page, Hiro (who had followed the trio) looks at his phone and freaks out because he realizes he’s past his own curfew.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: With everything piling up and going wrong one after the other, Gwen starts having a mental breakdown, believing that she’s ruined her friends’ trust and that they must hate her now. Miles slaps her before giving her a much-needed pep talk and firmly but gently reassures her that nobody hates her and that they’ll figure out how to fix everything together.
• Glamour: For a short time, Gwen tries out a glamour spell on Miles so he’ll look human and have an easier time blending in, which removes his blue skin, pointy ears, fangs, and cat-like eyes. The spell is evidently easily-broken, as, later, when Gwen simply pats Miles on the face a few times (while she’s simultaneously bragging about how flawless her work is), he reverts back to looking like a vampire from it. Miles doesn’t mind, though, as he considers his original vampire self to be much more handsome.
• A Glass in the Hand: After Sloane and Bea finish playing the drum game at the mall’s arcade, Miles starts going crazy in frustration at the claw machine refusing to cooperate and give him his prize. Realizing he’s starting to cause a commotion, Sloane, still grasping the drumsticks from the game, gets infuriated at Miles enough that the drumsticks end up snapping in Sloane’s hand.
• The Glomp: After not seeing Gwen for a whole year, Miles excitedly tackles Gwen to the ground and hugs her as soon as he and Sloane meet up with her.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: At the mall’s arcade, Sloane joins Bea as player two of the drum game “Rhythm Hell.” Together, they play the game flawlessly and there’s some unspoken respect between them for their skills, with Bea even commenting, “Not bad…”, probably the closest thing to a compliment you’ll ever worm out of her. Though this peaceful interaction is more of a retroactive example since Bea doesn’t know that Sloane is a werewolf at this point nor have they decided that they’re enemies yet.
• Good-Times Montage: Gwen takes Miles and Sloane to a mall for the first time, and an entire wordless page is dedicated to showing them having fun doing a variety of activities, like Gwen and Sloane sitting in vibrating massage chairs while Miles tries on sunglasses, the trio reading books and manga in the bookstore, Sloane getting sprayed with perfume by an annoying seller, and the trio going to the food court.
• Halloween Town: The place where Sloane and Miles come from, known as the Hallowlands, appears to be an entire parallel world version of this. According to them, just some of the monsters (referred to as “hallows” in their native world) that live there include werewolves, vampires, ghosts, “tooth fairies”, “giant jack-o-lantern kaiju”, “skele-bats”, the large Sand Worm species called "pumpkin patch worms" along with other kinds of them, and “clown demons.” There apparently used to be witches too, but nobody has seen any there in a long time. The Hallowlands are stated to be very dangerous, especially if a human were to go there, though the lands apparently still have “normal” things like shopping districts, even if they aren’t quite like what we have in the human world.
• Happy Rain: Once the main threat of the story, the pumpkin patch worm, has been banished back to the Hallowlands and everyone is safe, the trio celebrates their victory as it starts to rain, conveniently helping to put out the fire that was tearing up the corn maze.
• Haunted House: The old, dark, creepy house that Ester Killinger resided in… and still does, as a ghost. A group of jocks enter it for the thrill of seeing if the rumors of it really being haunted are true and they’re quick to be unnerved and scared off by the antics of the trio and especially Ester herself. Afterwards, Ester allows Miles and Sloane to stay in the house during the time they’re visiting Gwen, provided that they keep any more people from entering in the future.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Miles always dresses in a yellow Hawaiian shirt with pink flowers, and it’s tacky enough for Hiro to make note of it and refer to Miles as “an unusually pointy blue boy in an ugly Hawaiian shirt.”
• Here There Were Dragons: Miles and Sloane explain that there used to be witches in the Hallowlands, but now magic is very rare and no one has seen a witch in a long time. They thought they’d gone extinct until they met Gwen, who’s still the only witch they’ve ever known.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Gwen and Sloane (loudly, in a movie theater) discuss how Hiro keeps trying to threaten them, and this pisses Gwen off enough for her to declare, “If anyone is killing my friends, it’s gonna be me.”
• It's Personal: According to Hiro, four years prior to the plot of the story, he and his father were driving in the rain and were almost run off the road when two people darted in front of their car and disappeared into the woods. Hiro states he is “almost positive” it was Miles and Sloane who did it, but it’s never confirmed either way if this is true or not since Miles and Sloane never confirm nor deny it. Whether it was other people in costumes, or if it WAS Miles and Sloane but it was a misunderstanding and they weren’t actually trying to cause a crash, or if a then-11-year old Hiro was just seeing things in the rain (apparently he did witness some kind of weird flash in the crash at least), or any other possibility, is unclear. One thing that is for certain is that Hiro is out to get even with the monsters he believes caused him and his dad to almost die.
• The Krampus: When Gwen questions if Dracula is a real guy and Miles confirms that he is, Gwen then for some reason also wonders if Santa is real too, to which Sloane says no, but states that Krampus IS very much real and not a guy you’d want to mess with. Miles then reaffirms that Santa and the Easter Bunny are nothing but works of human fiction.
• Lost in the Maize: The climax takes place in a large corn maze that the main cast end up being lost in, and it’s only made worse when a scarecrow is brought to life and chases them and an incredibly dangerous pumpkin patch worm appears… and then the corn maze gets set on fire, to boot.
• Lovable Jock: A group of four jocks (Kyle, Dom, Whitney, and Hazel) appears and are given a surprisingly very likable portrayal. The only people they’re ever shown teasing are each other, and even then it’s done in a playful manner. When they go off to check out an allegedly-haunted house just for the thrill of it, they’re all quick to show genuine concern for each other when things start getting spooky real quick, and don’t hesitate to help a friend if any of them ends up in peril. As soon as Ester Killinger’s ghost appears and tells them to Get Out!, they immediately promise to leave and never come back. Well, except Hazel. She might come back.
• Monster Mash: For starters, the main characters are a trio consisting of a witch, a vampire, and a werewolf. Other creatures that physically appear include the ghost of an old woman named Ester Killinger, a menacing scarecrow gets brought to life, a giant Sand Worm creature known as a “pumpkin patch worm” shows up at the worst time, and the very last page teases a mysterious pumpkin-headed character wearing a black cloak and wielding a Sinister Scythe.
• Mundane Object Amazement: Gwen takes Sloane and Miles to a mall for the first time and the latter two are absolutely in awe of it, not used to anything like it back home in the Hallowlands. They have the same reaction to the mall’s Hot Topic-esque store and arcade.
• Neck Lift: In the corn maze, Sloane does this to Hiro right after shifting to wolf form under the full moon.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: There is mention of a man named “Jak Zagans” who is the host of a ghost-hunting show called “Ghost Scramblers”, obviously a parody of Zak Bagans and his show Ghost Adventures. Hiro watches Ghost Scramblers religiously enough to have a poster of it in his room.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Hiro apparently has had many moments of mistaking something mundane for being paranormal in the past, but one that’s briefly mentioned off-hand was when he somehow thought a guy at a dog park was a Frankenstein's Monster, simply because “the dog park guy was the tallest man [he’d] ever seen in [his] life.”
  • Gwen has, for whatever reason, gone through about five homemade wands before. At most, she mentions the last one she had before the start of the story snapped in her backpack, causing all her books to shoot across the classroom in public.
  • Hiro states that he can’t “come home with a frog instead of a phone again”, keyword being “again.”
  • At the food court, Miles reveals a cool cup he got that allows him to drink blood on the go. Gwen asks, “Blood from where?” Miles simply tells her not to worry about it.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Sloane thanks Gwen for not doing anything irrational or dumb with her magic without her friends around, this of course being after Gwen secretly tried doing a powerful spell while alone and ended up busting her wand. Cue her doing a Spit Take at Sloane’s words and nervously reaffirming that oh yes, she totally hasn’t done anything of the sort.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The jocks when Ester Killinger’s ghost emerges from the mirror to terrify them and the door out of the attic won’t open.
  • Miles gets an excellent one when Hiro leaps out to attack him and his heart starts sizzling once Hiro is in the process of driving his wooden katana into Miles’ chest.
  • Miles again when Hiro startles him from his sleep, kidnaps him, and starts threatening to burn him up by slowly opening the garage door to let in sunlight.
  • Gwen, Bea, and Miles upon seeing that the tall scarecrow is now alive and walking around.
  • Everyone’s very understandable reaction to the mega dangerous pumpkin patch worm about to devour them.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts can, as Miles puts it, “come in human and hallow (monster) flavor” and are very common in both the Hallowlands and the human realm as it’s far easier for them to pass between both worlds than it is for humans and other monsters. They are capable of possessing people, are weak to iron, and can be trapped inside mirrors, though they can still travel around to pop up in other mirrors in the general area (such as any of them inside a house) instead of only being bounded to the particular mirror they were sealed in.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Miles is a vampire that has the usual pointy ears and fangs, can walk on walls and crawl on ceilings, turn into a bat, levitate even when not in bat form, gets badly burnt up from being exposed to sunlight unless he has protection like an umbrella, getting staked in the heart would kill him, and can only drink blood as drinking or eating anything else greatly upsets his stomach. Interestingly, he actually does show up in photographs and can be filmed with a phone. His reflection also appears in a store window (though in the window case he was currently under Gwen’s glamour spell to look human).
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Sloane is a werewolf that has super strength and is usually stuck in human form most of the time until the year creeps closer to Halloween and/or there’s a full moon, though this limitation appears to only be in effect as long as Sloane is hanging out in Gwen’s world. Silver or other possible weaknesses aren’t brought up either.
• Portmantitle: “Hella” + “Halloween”
• Precision F-Strike: Being a book aimed at kids of the 9-14 range, the characters don’t say anything stronger than “damn”, “hell”, “crap”, and “piss.” Except for one moment at the end during the grand climax, where Gwen is forced to give everything she’s got to banish a dangerous pumpkin patch worm back to the Hallowlands. Her ending the spell by screaming, “I draw on the power of five witchblood and stitch to send you back home alive… BEGONE, YOU BITCH!!” certainly comes across as this trope.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Sloane is the only character that never wears shoes, whether it’s in wolf form (where not wearing shoes is more understandable) but also always lacks them in human form as well.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Gwen does this when her already-broken wand starts glitching out even more and goes flying out of her grasp as if it has a mind of its own.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Miles’ bat form completely subverts the Bat Out of Hell trope, being nothing short of adorable. Hiro’s cellphone-turned-frog absolutely counts as well.
• Running Gag: Hiro having bad luck with keeping his phones from busting. The first time, he drops his phone after being startled by Gwen flying above on her broom. His second phone breaks after Gwen drops it on the ground to destroy the evidence he took of her and her friends. His third phone gets turned into a frog. These apparently aren’t the only times he’s broken phones in the past either. His mom is gonna kill him!
• Sarcastic Devotee: Bea is often unimpressed, annoyed, and embarrassed by Hiro’s obsession with the supernatural, has no problem making jabs and remarks about his hobbies or pointing out whenever he seems to be taking things too far, and initially brushes him off every time he tries to drag her into his hijinks. Ultimately, she willingly joins him by his side to help him take on the trio once she learns Hiro was right about them all along, though she never loses her grumpy disposition and fondness for making quips at everyone and everything.
• Save the Jerk: Despite their justified dislike of the human pair that’s repeatedly hounded them, the trio decides it’s not worth it to leave Hiro and Bea behind to die in a burning corn maze occupied by a living scarecrow and pumpkin patch worm. Sloane, now in wolf form, picks the two of them up and runs away with them to (short-term) safety. Hiro and Bea end up assisting in Gwen’s banishing ritual and once everything has returned to normal, they flee the scene, but not before Hiro makes it clear it was only a temporary truce.
  Miles: Speaking of things we hate, what’s with the deadweight?
  Sloane: It just seemed easier to grab them and sort through it later. Living scarecrow, you know? Oh, and the maze is on fire, thanks to these clowns.
• Sequel Hook: Despite Gwen’s grimoire being destroyed in the climax, there IS one surviving spell page from it… one that would allow a door to the Hallowlands to be opened! Oh, and a mysterious Pumpkin Person shows up at the very end to survey the damage and clean up the mess in the corn maze…
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Subverted with Sloane, whose clothes perfectly remain exactly the same in wolf form as they were in human form, though the fact that Sloane doesn’t really change size or height much probably helps. Miles’ baseball cap shrinks with him when he turns into a bat, with this being the only thing he still wears as a bat, otherwise his clothes also remain unaffected every time he switches back and forth.
• Shout-Out:
  • Gwen has a subtle Invader Zim poster in her bedroom, and Hiro has a "Robot Bee" sticker on his phone, also from Zim.
  • There is a subtle Paranoia Agent poster in Hiro’s bedroom. Hiro is even kind of mimicking Lil Slugger’s pose on the poster in the panel that it’s shown!
  • Several manga are visible in the bookstore at the mall, including Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto, and Mob Psycho 100.
  • The Not-Hot Topic store at the mall, “Gloom Hole”, has slightly-edited band logos on the wall, including ones for The Misfits, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, The Rolling Stones (Band), and “AB/CD.”
  • Gwen has a Pikachu card in her purse.
  • Sloane mentions being fond of the “puppet Dracula”, referring to The Count.
  • Bea’s family has set up a “Camp Idontwannadie” display at their haunt, which is clearly a Friday the 13th reference but with a Hockey Mask and Chainsaw killer instead.
  • There’s also a display that looks an awful lot like Audrey II.
  • The trio comes to nickname Hiro “Helsing Jr.”, and “the Helsings” when referring to Hiro and Bea as a pair.
  • Gwen describes the pumpkin patch worm as a “big viney graboid thing.”
• Spell Book: When Miles and Sloane cross over to the human world, Miles gifts Gwen with her first ever grimoire that he found in the Hallowlands just before they left. It contains a large variety of spells, some that work well enough, and some that end in disaster. The grimoire gets mostly destroyed at the end as the result of the climactic Banishing Ritual, but as it turns out there is ONE spell that survived and Gwen can’t wait to try it out…
• Stating the Simple Solution: When everyone is trapped and running around lost in the corn maze, Bea (for the second time) flatly suggests they just cut through the corn instead of wasting precious time trying to find the correct path. The others think about it for a second before agreeing that they should just do that.
• Summoning Ritual: In an attempt to prove to her friends that she’s capable of joining them in the Hallowlands, Gwen, while alone, tries out a very powerful and dangerous summoning spell to bring a creature from the Hallowlands into the human world (this was supposed to be just a warm-up test and, if it was successful, Gwen would then plan to use the spell to summon Miles and Sloane into her world without needing a liminal space to do so). She tries the test to summon a creature, but it fails and all it results in is her breaking her wand for attempting such a powerful spell. And then it later turns out the summoning spell DID work… by bringing a giant pumpkin patch worm into the mortal realm at the worst possible time.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Sloane, the werewolf, has these. In human form, the gold eyes are more faded, but still look off, leading to two separate occasions where someone points them out to Sloane and assumes they’re meant to be contacts. Sloane immediately responds by declaring, “Yes, contacts and definitely NOT my real eyes.”
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Hiro goes door-to-door to ask people in the neighborhood if they’ve seen anything strange (paranormal) happening around town lately. The scene consists of panels of people he’s questioning either being completely unhelpful or just slamming the door in his face.
• Uncatty Resemblance: Bea owns and cares for a bunch of rats, and her hair buns happen to double as resembling rat ears.
• Unsound Effect: When Hiro encounters the trio in the corn maze, Miles is startled enough to change into bat form and fly off, the transformation accompanied by the word “*BAT*” as a “sound effect.”
• Unwanted Assistance: While on the run from Hiro, the trio enters a party in a garage, intending to lose Hiro in there and simply escape out the window. Sloane orders Gwen to go out the window, but Gwen insists on staying behind to “hold Hiro off.” Sloane tells her how unnecessary that is since Hiro doesn’t know where they are at the moment and it would be much easier to just sneak out the window right then and there. Gwen doesn’t listen, resulting in a series of using magic in front of a bunch of witnesses, getting into an intense fight with Hiro, and making a huge mess in Bea’s garage. They get away, but Sloane exasperatedly points out that leaving would have been MUCH easier without Gwen’s “help.”
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Gwen, Miles, and Sloane are, more or less, typical goofy teenagers who happen to be literal monsters that just want to have fun and others to mind their own business. They are, at worst, mischievous and think pranking/scaring people is fun, but don’t ever harm or kill anyone, though if you go out of your way to constantly provoke them first, they are fully capable of retaliating if they want. Regardless, Hiro, obsessed with the supernatural and being an in-training monster hunter, has set his sights on “ridding” the town of the trio, partly as Revenge because Miles and Sloane may or may not have caused his dad to nearly crash his car in the past, Hiro assuming it had to be intentional and so the monsters are a danger.
• Vengeful Vending Machine: Miles is excited to get a stuffed shark out of a claw machine at the mall’s arcade, but it gives him a hard time and refuses to work properly. He angrily crawls on top of the machine and starts causing a scene, drawing the attention of the mall security guard. Miles reaches his arm into the machine and gleefully manages to get the shark out before they have to run away from the security guard.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Applies to Hiro and Bea, and especially the trio, who tend to insult and rib each other, particularly when they have different views on a matter at hand and argue about it, leading even Ester to wonder if they’re actually friends upon observing them conversing. However, it’s made very clear at many points that the trio are True Companions who care for one another and always have each other’s backs.
  Ester Killinger: [after Sloane has just threatened to rip Miles’ throat out] Are you sure you’re friends?
  Miles: [with casual certainty] Yeah, best friends. Why?
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Bea’s father, Hank, is a friendly man who’s very eccentric about Halloween, going all-out for the holiday every year. Bea herself has more of a sour and disinterested personality, and straight-up hates Halloween, unlike her dad and siblings.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • After Hiro’s cellphone gets turned into a frog, he keeps the frog in his hoodie and it’s still with him all the way up to the climax. During and after the big Banishing Ritual, his frog has disappeared and he and Bea flee the area.
  • In a bit of Black Comedy, after the pumpkin patch worm has successfully been sent back to the Hallowlands and everyone is safe, Miles observes the corn maze from afar and indirectly points out the possibility that there were other random civilians doing the corn maze while it was on fire and currently occupied by a murderous scarecrow and massive worm prowling around in there.
    Miles: Do you think there were other people in there?
• What's a Henway?: This exchange when Miles is encouraging Gwen to go fly around the sky on her new broomstick to try it out, though it wasn’t actually intended as a joke:
  Miles: Don’t just stand there. Go up, dog!
  Gwen: What’s “up dog”? [realizes what he meant] OH! Stupid.
• Wimp Fight: When Hiro and Bea meet up with the trio at the cemetery to fight, said “fight” goes… poorly, and clearly isn’t solving anything. Sloane stares at the rather pathetic display and lampshades what a dumb idea it was before pulling Hiro and Bea away from Gwen and Miles, blankly stating, “That’s enough of this.” and trying to just ask the humans what they want.
• Wooden Katanas Are Even Better: Hiro carries two wooden katanas with him (for practice, he says he’s saving up for a real one), which he can use in place of wooden stakes to take out vampires. Bea, on the other hand, uses a metal baseball bat.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Due to having an obsession with the supernatural, watching ghost-hunting shows, and, frankly, being wrong every other time he claims that something is paranormal, Hiro is written off as being a basket case when he tries to tell people about the REAL witch and vampire in town. Naturally, he’s actually correct this time but no one has any reason to believe him.
• Your Vampires Suck: Miles is disgusted by a giant, stereotypical blow-up vampire decoration in Bea’s front yard, calling it offensive, and he and Sloane have a good laugh over how humans apparently think they look like. Bea’s little brother, Lucas, runs up to Miles in a bat costume making “bleh bleh bleh” noises, causing Miles to scold him and tell him his portrayal of vampires is insulting and way off the mark. Miles does applaud Dracula for being accurate while stating that all the movie versions of it are not. Everyone seems to at least have fondness for the “puppet Dracula”.

---