In this review of The Powerpuff Girls: Halloween Special #1, the girls go out trick or treating, but find themselves having to go to work instead.
The Powerpuff Girls: Halloween Special #1
Written by: Amanda Deibert
Art and Main Cover by: Cat Staggs
Variant Covers: Trish Forstner, Silvia De Ventura,
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: October 23, 2024
The Powerpuff Girls are out trick or treating, and as soon as page one we get a very rare appearance of the Boogie Man! The Boogie Man captures Ms. Bellum and the Powerpuff Girls fight him, and then – it turns out to be a comic book story Buttercup was writing. The story is for a Halloween story contest and Buttercup is determined to win the prize, even convincing the other Puffs that staying in a creepy – Bubbles says it’s haunted — hotel will help her get in the right mood to write.
Buttercup’s second attempt at a story, with Princess Moneybags appearing out of a television screen to fight them, is aborted when ink smears everything. Meanwhile, Bubbles is being possessed by the ghost. Or is there a ghost? Maybe it’s really a classic villain behind it all…
A third aborted story has Mojo Jojo trapping the girls and intends to make them fight each other, but Buttercup can’t figure out how he would do that so she scraps that story too. Just in time to go save Blossom and Bubbles – or does she?
Analysis
To be fair – I am not the right person to review this comic book. I hate the horror genre, and have never read or watched The Shining. This comic book, as far as I can tell, is full of allusions to the movie version, and possibly the book version, but I am sure I did not recognize half of them.
The Powerpuff Girls: Halloween Special #1 is done by none of the series regulars, but was written by Amanda Deibert (Darkwing Duck, DC Super Hero Girls) and illustrated by Cat Staggs (Wonder Woman ’77). Stylistically, it has nothing in common with the ongoing series, and barely looks or reads like a Powerpuff Girls story. The story is muddled and confusing – perhaps intentionally to make it seem spooky? The artwork is muddled and confusing, somehow made to look like it was done in crayon – with the very weird exception of Mojo Jojo, who is drawn to look like a real ape and not a cartoon ape.
Personally, I would have much more enjoyed a normal, slice of life-style Halloween special where the Professor just takes the girls trick or treating and they run into the various non-powered supporting cast that was introduced on the show and end with a big Halloween party at the Mayor’s house (the mayor wearing a pickle costume) – it wouldn’t even need to have a villain and a fight (though now that I’m writing this, I wonder what Mojo Jojo would go trick-or-treating as – maybe he’d wear a human mask?).
The one bright spot of The Powerpuff Girls: Halloween Special #1 was seeing the Boogie Man again, a bizarrely underutilized villain. It’s interesting how the Boogie Man’s one TV show episode seemed stylistically different, with its higher stakes and obvious Star Wars parody, and then turns up again here in a stylistically different parody issue. I wonder if there are some restriction rules on the Girls’ rogues gallery, that Boogie Man can’t be used in an in-canon story except in cameo…?
Final Thoughts
If you want to see a weird and dark take on the Powerpuff Girls, this issue is for you. If not, save your money for the fifth issue in the ongoing title!
