Hollywood & Spine Archive: Halloweek, Part 5 - The Night 'Halloween: Illustrated' Came Home

And so ends Halloweek at Hollywood & Spine! I love interviewing people about novelizations, as time-consuming as it can be. If ever there are non-reprints of H&S here, my hope is it would focus on interviews. You've got more than enough of my yammering elsewhere! (originally printed 10/19/2023)

Halloween: Illustrated by Curtis Richards, with illustrations by Orlando Avocena (based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill) (Printed in Blood, 2023)

The pitch: A prose adaptation of John Carpenter's slasher classic has been one of the most coveted novelizations for decades. Now, 45 years later, it's finally back in print in a handsome new hardcover edition!

The lowdown: Richard Curtis (under the pseudonym Curtis Richards) adapted Halloween into a novelization after the low-budget flick became a runaway success. In the process, he created the kind of book that movie tie-in enthusiasts and collectors treasure: brimming with pulpy detail that didn't make the final cut. Most notably, Curtis implied that the masked murderer Michael Myers was possibly the reincarnation of a timeless Celtic evil, conjuring up some unintentional foreshadowing of directions the series would take in decades to come. (Curtis, now a literary agent for tie-in writers, was kind enough to talk to Hollywood & Spine about his work in 2021.)

Like many novelizations, Halloween never stayed in print for that long; unlike many of its contemporaries, demand only got bigger over time. When we published our feature on Curtis, the book commanded as much as $1000 on the secondary market. Was the hope of getting to read it as doomed as Laurie Strode's babysitting pals? Happily, like Myers himself has done onscreen over and over again, the book has come back to life courtesy of one very cool publisher.

Printed in Blood, a New York-based publisher, started out creating posters and art books inspired by a variety of sci-fi and horror classics, from Aliens, Ghostbusters and The Thing to I Spit on Your Grave (PiB published a "scriptbook" with participation from the film's writer/director) and a collection of studio-approved illustrations inspired by Halloween. On one of their most ambitious projects yet, they've secured the publishing rights to Curtis' book - now fully illustrated by artist Orlando "Mexifunk" Avocena and featuring a new introduction from the author.

A release like this is the sort of thing Hollywood & Spine fans heavy breathe over, and Printed in Blood's co-founder, Steven Hoveke, was kind enough to take time to share the surprisingly painless story of helping this novelization rise from the dead.

Death Has Come to Your Little Town

Like many kids of countless generations, Hoveke found himself entranced by the fanciful blockbusters of the '70s and '80s, using his passion for those movies as a springboard to read about them however he could. "Star Wars is a keystone movie for me," he said. "Like most people of my generation, it really turned me into a Starlog and Fangoria kid. I was very versed in the worlds of visual, makeup effects, all that kind of stuff."

Horror films, however, took time to grow into - and often with the help of novelizations if he wasn't able to catch gorier flicks in theaters. "Movie tie-ins and novelizations were a natural connection from just reading everything I could find," he explains. "Once I discovered the differences that were usually involved in the storytelling process of creating a novelization - although at the time, I certainly didn't understand it like I do now - it became even more interesting. You'd go, 'Wow, there's extra story, extra stuff that's not in the movie!"

Though he spent much of his time working in construction, Hoveke spent his free time at comic and pop-culture conventions, picking up freelance gigs and other work with companies like Marvel, Titan Books, Mezco and Gentle Giant. He co-founded Printed in Blood in 2012 to facilitate the creation of alternative movie posters, and four years later found himself publishing a collection of art inspired by another John Carpenter classic: his 1982 adaptation of The Thing. This helped establish a model for business that enabled Hoveke to make Printed in Blood his full-time occupation.

"The dream is to create something you love to do and do it full time," he says. "But for a long time it was kind of this thing we did on the side in addition to other things. Now it's become full time for myself."

The Evil is Gone

Knowing how...er...bloodthirsty horror movie fans are for great products that enrich the fan experience, Hoveke soon realized the value of turning Printed in Blood's attention to slasher classics. "There's a few cornerstone franchises that have stood the test of time," he explained. "You've got Freddy [from A Nightmare on Elm Street], Leatherface [from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre], Jason [from Friday The 13th], and Michael Myers. Those four have managed to embed themselves so deeply into pop culture, and our culture in general, that I think at this point it would be hard to call any of them 'dead' or unviable. All four have grown into something that is sort of evergreen."

In 2021, as Universal and Blumhouse were in the middle of their planned trilogy of Halloween sequels, continuing from Carpenter's original and bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back to the role of Laurie Strode, Printed in Blood released a Halloween art book, featuring over 200 pieces of art from nearly as many artists, plus a foreword from David Gordon Green (who co-wrote and directed the new trilogy).

Like more than one pop-culture mega-franchise The Terminator is another example - the Halloween rights are a bit of an interesting hot potato. The rights to the first film lie solely with an independent company called Compass International Pictures, and provided not only the appropriate permissions for the art book, but for the new printing of the novelization as well.

"We already had the relationship and licensing agreement with Compass International in place to do the art book, so it was a no-brainer," Hoveke said of the new book. "This was proposed very early on, but it got back-burnered until we actually got wind of the H45 convention [which took place this October]. We were trying to think of what else we could do, as far as new publications, to help expand the publishing side for Compass and Halloween in general."

For as long as the book was out of print, securing the deal took shockingly little time - only a few months, in Hoveke's estimation. "Honestly, it was really just a case of getting all parties [Compass, Curtis and Avocena] talking," he added. "It was something everyone wanted to happen, which is always helpful...It always helps in a project like this when everyone involved wants it to happen and is very excited about it. [When that's the case,] it's surprising how quickly things can happen."

It Was the Boogeyman

Hoveke still treasures the copy of the Halloween trade paperback he got for a mere dollar at a garage sale, but knew the book Printed in Blood would release could offer more for fans.

"We like doing art books, and haven't done any mass-market paperbacks to date," he said of making Halloween an illustrated affair. "And to be honest, there was less interest from the licensor's side to do a straight reprint of the paperback. It's about making something different, something new that fans haven't seen before. This was with a licensing side of Compass that predated the guys who are there now, who I feel have a much better grasp of what they're handling, when it comes to new products and protecting the brand, and getting new things out to the fans."

That meant a new batch of illustrations from Arocena, a Clio-winning vector artist whose work has been seen on posters, magazine covers and Blu-ray steelbooks, and a new introduction from Curtis himself, who had fun revisiting his work once more for the release. "I'm really thrilled," author Curtis said in an e-mail. "The illustrations are stunning. Hoveke is a very smart man."

For Hoveke, the admiration is mutual. "Richard was great!" he said enthusiastically. "He was excited about getting this back out into the world again. He wrote a brand new introduction, talking about his experience when he originally wrote it. It was fun to have him step back into the experience." (As to whether or not Curtis predicted the Cult of Thorn: "It's hard to say!" he laughed. "It's a chicken and egg thing, right?")

The Last Word

With Halloween: Illustrated, Printed in Blood has opened up a potential new lane of book experiences for genre superfans - but Hoveke says it's a lane they're easing into.

"There's a lot of options," he said. "Not every one is going to lend itself to the model of what we are doing. But I currently have a stack of about 50 or 60 novelizations on my desk that we are looking to at least track down and make sure we're covering all our bases as far as who still owns the rights to them.

"The short answer is, yes, we would love to do more," he added. "'Will we do more' will depend upon if we can find more artists who we feel can pull of what Orlando is doing for us with this illustrated version. Someone who can generate, potentially, 100 new pieces of art in a timeframe that can work for us."

In the meantime, though, Printed in Blood has created a product that'll make any Michael Myers fan sit up straight from a prone position. You can order Halloween: Illustrated here.