Happy Halloween!

A retro cartoon review and a very, very scary short story by yours truly

I love Halloween. That’s why today I’m sending along a short story I wrote entitled “Invasion of the Brain Snatchers” and a gallery of some of my favorite old Halloween themed cartoons.

First, the cartoons. A holiday like Halloween is a gift to editorial cartoonists. When drawing allegorical cartoons one doesn’t have to rack one’s brain to come up with a metaphor during Halloween. They’re everywhere. Haunted Houses. Monsters. Ghosts and vampires. Everyone can relate to goblins and trick or treaters as perfect metaphors for capturing the devilish personalities driving the news of the season.

And what follows Halloween? Our equally spine-tingling election day. In 2017 I drew one of my favorite Halloween cartoons. Eternally true.

In 2018 I used “The Great Pumpkin”, a classic pop culture Halloween trope to make a point about impatience.

This one was true in 2001 and today, regrettably, it is even more terrifying.

Witches and cauldrons were my favorite figures to draw. By 2014 our preoccupation with diet had grown to monstrous proportions.

And did I mention the birth of the 24-hour news cycle? I saw the horror in 2001, 22-years ago.

I saw the nightmare brewing in Arizona’s cauldron back in 2017. So did many of you.

And then along came a plague.

And then there’s the Halloween cartoons that feel timeless, like this one from 2014.

Or is it 2024? Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

In the comments below tell us how many of you will be going out tonight as “Speaker Mike Johnson” or “Justine Wadsack”?

INVASION OF THE BRAIN SNATCHERS

by David Fitzsimmons

I’d never heard of this fifties black and white “spine tingler” before. “Invasions of the Brain Snatchers”. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 95% so I gave it 5-minutes.

“An Arizona town that looked like any other desert town,” went the foreboding narration as eerie music warned us something terrifying among the tumbleweeds..

Perfect Halloween fare. I was hooked.

It was Monday morning when Doc’s first patient, Gus, sat down, frantic. He told Doc he’d seen “strange lights shooting across the sky the other night. They were carrying spores. Big seed pods! I seen ‘em!” Doc prescribed a sedative. He wrote the word “delusional” in his notes and called out, “Next patient.”

“Joey just sits there,” said a weeping Maria “ in front of cable news, pointing at the TV and howling. Nonstop. Joey, the Reagan Republican who voted for Goldwater, is gone!

I don’t know who that man in our living room is anymore! He changes channels with a pitchfork and rants about groomers and Marxists and masks and shots and cannibals and pedophiles and voter fraud.”

Over lunch, Doc’s nurse, Josie, was distressed. She told Doc her oldest friend was no longer her friend. “Acted like she was in a cult or something. Won’t talk to me. Like I’m the devil! Or worse.”

Doc’s next patient? Delirious. “When, Della— she’s vaccinated, you know— got mild Covid, three different neighbors knocked on our door and offered us—get this— Ivermectin! People we thought we knew. They said ’Let us send you the links.’ Said the truth would set us free. Scared the jalapeños out of us. And my brother is no longer the man I thought I knew. I can’t talk to him anymore! Calls me ‘part of the problem’.”

Was it mass hysteria? Had Arizona been invaded by creatures from another world?

Doc raced to the Burro Creek Senior Center to check on his dad.

The old man was trolling on his laptop. “Ya can’t trust the FBI, son…Stop the steal!…The Insurrection was led by patriots.” Doc realized he was too late.

”Once you understand you’ll be grateful, son. I’ve never been happier. Or angrier. Sooner or later you’ll leave the world of the Woke and you’ll go to sleep. Go home and sleep, son. You aren’t still afraid of monsters under your bed?” The old man’s eyes remained fixed on the ghostly glow from FOX News. Doc turned and ran from the old man’s haunted room.

At home Doc knelt on all fours beside his bed, lifted the covers and bent down to peer into the darkness to see a startling sight. “Oh my God,” Doc whispered. There, underneath his bed, was an exact duplicate of himself, a replicant, forming inside a giant orange pulsating seed pod. It was Doc’s replacement. It all became clear to Doc in an instant. The invaders were everywhere. In plain sight!

Party Chair Kelli Ward was one! Pinal County Sheriff Lamb was one. Rep. Paul “They won’t replace us” Gosar was one. What was going on out in the hill country? Congressman Andy Biggs was one. State Senator Wendy Rogers was one. Finchem. Justin Wadsack. Kari Lake. All orange pod people.

Doc shivered. They all must have been normal people at one time who simply fell asleep near one of these orange brain snatching pods from another world. Could they have come from Planet Mar-a-lago? What else could explain the mass cognitive dissonance? The rejection of reality? Their obedience to a distant overlord? Was it possible they were all from an alternate universe?

Doc, his heart racing, ran to his fiancee’s house to warn her. He ran up the steps and pounded on her door. “Becky! Are you asleep! Wake up! Becky! If you fall asleep you’ll be replaced! By one of the pod creatures! Becky!”

Becky opened her door, expressionless. “Hi, Doc. There’s nothing to fear, Doc.. Let me email you the Q-Anon links...”

She reached out to take his hand. Doc recoiled. “.. It’s easy, Doc.. Just fall asleep..Doc..You know what Arizona needs? Blake Masters representing us in Congress in 2024.”

Doc turned and ran down the steps and down the street. The madness was spreading!

Terrified, Doc ran and ran. He ran all night. By sunrise, disheveled and disoriented, Doc reached I-10 where he watched convoys of semi-trailers roar by, hauling their cargoes of orange pods and Ivermectin as portable morgues rolled north. A concerned Deputy pulled over and approached Doc. “You okay, sir?”

“No! I’m not okay. We’ve got to warn the people! They’re everywhere.”

“Calm down, sir. Who is?”

“Pod people! You think I’m crazy don’t you! That I’m psychotic! Call someone! Block the roads in and out of this state. Alert the FBI!”

“What?”

“Can’t you see? They’re here in Arizona! Among us! Stay awake! Can’t you see? You’ve got to stay awake! For the love of our democracy you’ve got to stay awake!”