Halloween is almost here, and all GalleyCat readers should be planning their literary costume ideas. Below, we’ve collected five obsessive and brilliant costumes based on books or comic books.
What’s the best literary Halloween costume you’ve ever seen? Share all your ideas at the handy #literarycostumes hashtag created by Random House last year. They’ve already started a Pinterest page and a Facebook conversation dedicated to more costume ideas.
1. Make a wolf suit like Max from Where the Wild Things Are. For the child in your life, you can honor the legacy of the great Maurice Sendak with a homemade kid’s costume from Running With Scissors (photo embedded above).
“I used a pair of his winter pajamas as the pattern, and a hood from one of his jackets. I wanted the costume to look like the illustrations from the book, so I made it with white fleece. I debated about whether to make actual button holes to fasten the front of the costume, or to just sew a zipper with decorative buttons. I ended up adding the zipper, out of practicality–to make it a little warmer, and easier to get on and off. For the whiskers, I used black pipe cleaners.”
There was such a positive response that I’ve realized I’m going to be wearing this around for at least another six months to a year. One girl in particular stared openly with her mouth open for like 20 minutes before timidly asking for a photo 😀 Almost every other person or group of people flip out, and a good number of people asked for a photo. I now understand why people do cosplay and such … there’s such a huge positive reaction to it, its a horribly fun time; I had a great night!
3. Turn your least favorite book into The Necronomicon. Luckcat13 explained how he turned a Stephenie Meyer book into the cursed book that causes all sorts of problems in The Evil Dead series (photos below):
Spent $11 at the thrift store getting materials & found this Twilight book was the perfect size. Materials: leather bible cover, clay, poorly written novel, old leather purse, hot glue gun, paint … I sculpted the general shape of the face onto the leather book cover with clay. I took apart an old, beat up leather purse I got from the thrift store and glued it over the book cover, pinching it while the glue was still hot to make the wrinkles. Then, my husband distressed the book’s pages (careful to not read any of the nonsensical, rambling text or awkward dialogue), painted the shading and details on the face, and added blood flecks and a bookmark.
4. Dress like Death from Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman series. Comics Alliance has a great how-to post: “As the root of all fear, Death is essentially a perfect Halloween costume … given her chic and contemporary ensemble, inspires an easy-to-achieve costume fans can make from items they may already own.”
We’ve embedded untemperedschism‘s photo of Death alongside the Red Skull below…
5. If you really want to stand out among all the Spider Man and Superman costumes, dress yourself as a literal comic book drawing.
Still need more? We compiled a list of other literary Halloween costumes last year.
The New Yorker Page Views blog has a long, long list of literary costume suggestions drawn from bookstores around Manhattan.
On Flickr, you can explore the Literary Halloween Costumes group to find costumes ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to Alice in Wonderland.