Dr. K's Waiting Room

Quick Facts:
One of the most influential horror films ever made, John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) inspired a handful of comic book continuations and spin-offs over the years. Published by Chaos! Comics, these three issues bridged the gap between Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995) and Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998) and provided additional insight into Michael Myers/The Shape and expanding the series mythology in interesting ways.

The Review:
Like Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Chaos! Comics’ Halloween continuation begins (and focuses on) a grown-up Thomas “Tommy” Doyle. Tommy contacts Michael Cyphers at Smith’s Grove Sanatorium in hopes of getting Doctor Samuel Loomis’s notes on Michael Myers to use in a book about the famed serial killer. Cyphers is so distracted by the grisly photos of Michael’s murders that he doesn’t notice the masked killer looming and gets impaled through the neck with a kitchen knife. Michael’s then briefly transfixed by a photo of his older sister, Judith, whom he killed on Halloween night in 1963. Lurking in the shadows, reliving that fateful night, Michael goes unseen by Tommy when he comes by for Dr. Loomis’s notes, and by the security guard who ushers Tommy out. When Tommy returns to Haddonfield to read the documents, the story flashes back to when the stoic, remorseless seven-year-old Michael first came to the sanatorium and was placed under the doctor’s care. Immediately troubled by the boy’s disturbing nature, Dr. Loomis recommends that Michael be moved to a private room rather than be amongst the other violent juvenile inmates, only to be categorically shot down even after Dr. Loomis is backed up by his colleague, Doctor Jennifer Hill. Michael immediately catches the ire of Tony O’Malley, a violent teenage psychopath who becomes fixated on making the “dummy” talk…or cry…and pays for it by taking a crayon to the eye (though God-fearing self-harmer Roger takes the credit). During therapy, the mute Myers disturbs and delights the naïve Dr. Loomis by drawing his crimes, giving Dr. Loomis pause to think the boy wasn’t insane. Dr. Loomis makes Michael his top priority (alongside romancing Dr. Hill, of course) and notes that the other boys seem placated by fear after O’Malley’s “accident”.

No other incidents followed until a year later, on Michael’s eighth birthday (the day after the one-year anniversary of Judith’s murder), when Michael punished gluttonous Wade/Donut for ruining his birthday cake by causing him second-degree shower burns that lead to his death. Over the next few years, Michael was so docile and placid that many forgot why he was even there. By age fourteen, Michael was the “model inmate” but his fellow inmates either died horribly or went hopelessly insane for seemingly no reason. Dr. Loomis is incensed when his superior, Doctor Carpenter, insists on throwing a Halloween party, convinced that it’s too great a risk despite how placid Michael appears. Dr. Loomis gets distracted by his wedding plans with Dr. Hill, expressing regret for not trying harder to stop the party, which sees Nancy drowned during a convenient power cut while bobbing for apples. Although Michael was nowhere near when it happened, she had taunted him right before it and Dr. Loomis is so convinced that Michael is behind it (or “the Devil”) that he nearly lays hands on the boy. Dr. Hill stops him, insisting that he’s better off distancing himself from Michael and starting a private practice, only for Jennifer to get tossed from the hospital roof one night. Heartbroken, Dr. Loomis dedicated his life to proving that Michael was evil incarnate and doing everything in his power to keep the boy from being transferred to an open facility to avoid giving him the chance to escape. Though disturbed by Dr. Loomis’s writing, Tommy pushes on and is thus caught completely off-guard when Michael breaks into his house brandishing a kitchen knife. Amazed and horrified to see Myers still alive, Tommy unloads with a pistol, getting a bitch slap for his efforts, and then ignites a bottle of Jack Daniels in Michael’s masked face. Tommy follows up by smashing a chair across Michael’s back and the Shape, his face aflame, tumbles from Tommy’s first-floor window, disappearing soon after and leaving Tommy vowing to destroy him once and for all.

Relieved to find Dr. Loomis’s notes undamaged from the fight, Tommy reloads and heads to the old Myers house, where Richie Castle (one of the boys who bullied Tommy as a kid) is currently sitting outside and thinking about his run-in with Michael, an encounter that has haunted him for twenty-four years. Bitter, the inebriated Richie decides to “burn down the past” only to be accidentally gunned down by Sheriff Leigh Brackett, who’s also skulking around the house looking for revenge and closure after Myers murdered his daughter, Annie, in 1978. After stealing a car from his other childhood bullies, Tommy spots Brackett and follows him to a pumpkin field outside town, where he buries Richie and tells Tommy of Haddonfield’s sordid past. It turns out the town’s name is derived from “Hayden” (or “cursed”) and that fanatical druids (the Cult of Thorn), led by Murphey Myers, fled there to escape the New England witch hunts. Murphey carried the “curse of Samhain”, which led to the women of his bloodline to be “touched” by visions and some telepathic ability and the men to carry the “seed of Samhain’s evil”. Unlike most of the townsfolk, who were descended from those druids, Brackett’s family moved to Haddonfield in 1901, but he still knows (thanks to Dr. Loomis’s private diaries) that the druids regularly sacrificed people to their dark Gods. Although the Myers family knew peace for three generations, that changed when Audrey Myers gave birth to Michael at 23:57, Halloween night, 1957. Fated to be the “vessel to carry the ultimate evil”, Michael jerked to life at 12:06 after being stillborn, apparently possessed by a dark entity. Although Michael was a normal little boy for most of his life, his evil unleashed itself when he was compelled to murder Judith, Brackett’s ex (who was a bit of a slapper, it turns out).

While Michael murders Richie’s friends after they trespass in his home, Tommy and Brackett are jumped by the Cult of Thorn (led by Mrs. Blankenship) and tied up in the church basement. While Mrs. Blankenship debates what to do with the two with the local priest, Michael freely walks the night-time streets amidst the trick-or-treaters, murdering some random girl while being drawn to the church, where he butchers the priest just as he’s freeing Tommy and Brackett. Tommy stuns Michael with another chair shot and Brackett gathers his courage to toss a lantern at the Shape’s head, being stabbed in the heart for his trouble. However, Tommy fights Michael with a fire extinguisher and knocks him into an electrical box, electrocuting Myers and causing the church to dramatically explode. Discovered by the Cult of Thorn, Tommy is framed from Brackett’s murder and tossed into Smith’s Grove Sanatorium. Two years later, in 2001, Tommy (still haunted by Halloween 1978) is scheduled for execution by Doctor Terence Wynn (somehow still alive after Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers). Determined to finish Michael, Tommy fights off Dr. Wynn and his bulbous henchman and briefly encounters Myers (despite him having been beheaded a couple of years prior) while escaping the hospital. Meanwhile, Lindsey Wallace, Tommy’s childhood friend who was also there on Halloween 1978, returns to Haddonfield as a reporter to expose Michael’s evil and search for Laurie Strode, who vanished after Halloween H20. Naturally, Lindsey is suspicious when Tommy approaches her as he’s been accused of all sorts of awful stuff, but he protests his innocence and uses Dr. Loomis’s diary as proof that Michael has inexplicably survived. The diary details an incident in 1970, where Dr. Loomis met with the aged Hattie Bartok and learned of Michael’s chilling birth, which saw his stillborn body possessed by an evil spirt and that Michael had another sister: Laurie Strode.

Startled by a noise, Lindsey and Tommy head upstairs to find a severed head hacked up like a jack-o’-lantern and three desiccated corpses arranged on a bed before their tombstones. Michael then gets the drop on Tommy and stabs him in the shoulder. Lindsey flees in terror, injuring her leg after a tumble down the stairs but disarming Michael by trapping his wrist in a door. Fleeing into the deserted streets, Lindsey barely avoids being run down and finds herself running right to the deserted Myers house. Against her better judgement, Lindsey enters and heads to Judith’s old room, where she lures Michael in by posing as his sister. Although he briefly hesitates, Michael reacts violently when Lindsey tries to take his knife, smashing her through the dress mirror and leading Lindsey to stab him in the eye with a shard of glass. This allows Tommy to shoot Michael, unmasking him to find their attacker is Laurie! Overcome with a mindless, murderous rage, her one good eye as black as Michael’s, Laurie lunges at Tommy and the two take a spill to the outside with a fall that apparently breaks Tommy’s neck, judging by the art. Four weeks later, the injured Laurie is in a padded cell in Smith’s Grove Sanatorium under the care of Doctor Block. Lindsey visits and learns that Laurie has regressed into a docile state, apparently having undergone a “textbook case” of “psychotic personality transference”. After beheading Michael, Laurie took his head as a “trophy” but, as she couldn’t survive without Michael, she effectively “became him” to give her life purpose. Dr. Bloch believes the Myers family is “cursed” by mental illness caused by generations of alcohol and incest, believing Dr. Loomis became so obsessed by Michael’s evil that it skewed his perception. Unconvinced, Lindsey gazes upon the stoic, apathetic Laurie and ponders just how deep the madness runs in the Myers bloodline and its ties to whatever ancient evil tainted the family all those years ago.

Final Thoughts: 
The Halloween franchise has always been a mess. While I can just about give Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981) a pass as it desperately tried to end the story, it destroyed the mystique surrounding Michael Myers by making Laurie his sister. Ironically, I don’t mind this twist (mainly because it was a cohesive glue through four of the original sequels), but every sequel since has tried to explain more about Michael’s past and his motivations. This culminated in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, which delivered on the “Samhain” tease from Halloween II by tying Michael to the ancient Cult of Thorn and making his actions explicitly supernatural. This was messy no matter which version of the film you watch and thankfully never revisited, and it was the popular canon before Halloween H20 ignored all the sequels but Halloween 2. Chaos! Comics made a valiant attempt to recanonise those sequels, however, starting soon after the end of whatever version of Halloween 6 you prefer and seemingly leading into (or providing an alternative version of) Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002). Although Michael is said to be explicitly supernatural here, he is inarguably dead in “The Devil’s Eyes” and Lindsey ponders if his madness or curse has spread to Laurie, an interesting development that echoes when the franchise teased replacing Michael with his niece, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988). Considering I was all for that idea, I wouldn’t have minded if these comics had been tweaked slightly to all take place after Halloween H20 and had the “Michael” stalking Tommy always be Laurie. We still could’ve had the flashbacks to Michael’s past and such and this would’ve tied closer to the themes of the nature of evil and the cursed Myers bloodline.

Tommy was oddly characterised here. He doesn’t seem to fit with either version of Halloween 6 and the art constantly depicts him in different ways, with him starting off as a fairly unassuming guy, appearing much older in “The Blackest Eyes” and looking completely different in “The Devil’s Eyes”. I think it might’ve been better to follow Lindsey as she works to discover Michael’s background for a story. She could’ve liaised with Tommy after he was committed following Halloween 6 and he still could’ve escaped in “The Blackest Eyes” for the final showdown with “Michael”. I quite liked seeing Michael’s childhood in Smith’s Grove Sanatorium and the twist that Dr. Loomis’s vendetta against him was made personal when Myers murdered his fiancée (as odd and ill-fitting it was to see Dr. Loomis in love). It was interesting seeing the supernatural creep into Michael’s time in the hospital, how his actions were framed as accidents and fuelling the scepticism regarding Dr. Loomis’s wild claims about the otherwise docile patient. I was also glad to see Sheriff Brackett return, but he’s basically here to dump exposition that could’ve easily been related in Dr. Loomis’s otherwise pointless meeting with Hattie Bartok. It might’ve been cool for Tommy and Brackett to team up, dealing with Richie and the others as they try to intercept Michael at his house and the Cult of Thorn try to regain control of him. It was weird featuring Dr. Wynn, especially considering the ends of Halloween 6 and that there’s no explanation of what happened to Dr. Loomis. Michael is basically the saving grace of these issues, appearing as a silent, unstoppable wraith who mercilessly stabs and manhandles anyone in his way. There’s a fair bit of gore here (I especially liked the depiction of Michael and his flaming head in “The Blackest Eyes”) and a decent attempt to make sense of Halloween’s messy lore. This story isn’t perfect and it’s definitely better than either Halloween 6 and Halloween: Resurrection, but I couldn’t help but think something was lacking. The focus on exposition and backstory bogged it down and robbed us of either more Myers action or placing Laurie as his successor, meaning it’s an interesting curio in the wider Halloween mythos that doesn’t quite live up to its full potential.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

Have you ever read Chaos! Comics’ Halloween? Did you appreciate the attempt to make sense of the nonsense Halloween lore? Do you think it would’ve been better if Laurie had been the killer in this story? Were you a fan of the Cult of Thorn or do you prefer Michael’s backstory to be more mysterious? Do you agree that Lindsey should’ve been the main character here? Would you like to see this era of Halloween make a comeback? What horror-themed comics are you reading this Halloween? Whatever your thoughts on Halloween, comment below, check out my other horror content, and donate to my Ko-Fi if you want me to review more Halloween comics.