DC Infinite Halloween Special #1

History

Published on October 31, 2007 (with a cover date of December 2007), the one-shot was edited by Eddie Berganza and Adam Schlagman under executive editor Dan DiDio, who himself contributed a story. The issue was assembled as a showcase anthology, drawing on an unusually wide bench of talent that mixed veteran DC architects — Paul Dini, Mark Waid, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, Peter J. Tomasi, Steve Niles, Steven T. Seagle — with television-world celebrity contributors including David Arquette (Scream), Cliff Dorfman (Entourage), and Peter Johnson (Supernatural), a then-fashionable crossover strategy DC was experimenting with. The cover was provided by Gene Ha, while interior art came from a roster that included Dustin Nguyen, Kelley Jones, Dean Ormston, Ryan Sook, Ian Churchill, John Paul Leon, Sebastian Fiumara, and Tony S. Daniel, among others.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published October 31, 2007; cover-dated December 2007; one-shot format published by DC Comics.
• Contains 13 short horror-superhero stories framed by Arkham Asylum inmates — led by the Joker with Deadman secretly inhabiting his body — telling each other scary tales to pass time during a Halloween breakout attempt.
• Marks the return of Resurrection Man to DCU stories after his 1990s series ended; the story, written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (the character's original co-creators), features him battling Killer Croc and ends with a wink at his immortal nature.
• Includes 'Red Rain: Blood Lust,' a story set on Earth-43 — the post-Infinite Crisis Multiverse's vampire Batman reality — drawn by Kelley Jones, who defined the visual look of the Red Rain saga; an editor's note cross-references the concurrent Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Red Rain #1.
• Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen contributed 'Kcirt Ro Taert,' a Zatanna story later collected in Batman: Private Casebook and reprinted in the Swamp Thing Halloween Horror Giant #1 (2018) and the Zatanna by Paul Dini (2017) collection.
• Celebrity contributors included actor David Arquette (Scream franchise) and TV writer Cliff Dorfman (Entourage), part of a mid-2000s DC initiative to bring entertainment-industry names into comics.
• The framing sequence features a notable moment in which the Joker reveals he can perceive Deadman — who had been possessing him to stall the escape — a character beat that plays off both figures' unique metaphysical statuses.
• Multiple individual stories were subsequently reprinted across different collections: 'Red Rain: Blood Lust' in Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer; 'Kcirt Ro Taert,' 'Strange Cargo,' and 'The Pumpkin Sinister' in Swamp Thing Halloween Horror Giant #1 (2018); and a Brazilian edition collected the full issue as Crise Infinita Especial: Dia das Bruxas (Panini Brasil, 2008).

Full credits