Get Ultra With Me!
To understand where this year’s Halloween costume came from, you need to know that in the Spring I began a deep dive into the world of Ultraman. I’ve watched the original 1966 series a bunch of times, and I knew there was a lot more out there, but I had never touched any of it!
So I went a little crazy. Ultramantiga. Ultraseven. Ultraman Neos. Ultraman Taro. My brain was marinating it! There was a neverending parade of baffling monsters. Furry ones, scaly ones, insects and reptiles and robots. I loved them all.
So one day I’m watching an episode of Ultraman Max, which introduces the monster called Luganoger. He’s a big space jerk who destroys planets. Like many Ultraman monsters, the costume is insanely elaborate, and nothing like mine. You may rightly be wondering: what does this have to do with anything? Well, it’s this:
Luganoger has masks on his hands.
Masks. On his hands.
Up to then, I had a super vague notion of what Halloween would be. I’d made a sketch of a cyclops girl with pigtails and a crazy smile, but I didn’t know who she was or what she had going on. And then I watched Ultraman Max and I knew: I had to make masks for my hands.
I built the mask with receptive openings on the back of the head. I love a paper mâché mask, but I definitely didn’t want her pigtails to be solid forms.
The ‘hair’ would be made from cloth: each strand is two long streamers of various fabrics, stitched into a tube. My hope was that those strands could be bundled together and inserted into the openings at the back of the mask.
My monster girl would also need a dress, which I could see pretty clearly in my mind’s eye. A bit of research revealed that what I wanted was called a ‘pinafore’, and I actually already had the perfect fabric. I’d found a very large piece of red corduroy, printed all over with tiny golden stars, for one dollar at a local second hand store. Without knowing what I needed it for, I had wisely recognized that I did in fact need the corduroy, and purchased it weeks earlier.
I was also going to want giant feet, because I would have a giant head and hands. So I got to work on a pair of big soft mary janes that I could wear over my regular shoes. Because I would have masks for my hands, and costumes for my shoes!
I approached the hands like I would any other mask: constructing them freely with carboard and tape, and twisted pieces of newspaper. Two gigantic hands, each with a great big eyeball in the palm, which I would wear by simply reaching inside and grabbing onto a handle.
But Who Is She?
My monster girl was inspired by watching Ultraman, so I like to think of her in those terms. At this moment, I still haven’t figured out everything there is to know about this beastie, but imagine this: you all know what a ‘retail Karen’ is like. Well sometimes, they have kids.
So consider the entitled, disobedient daughter of a retail Karen, and then imagine that she has been transformed into a 40 meter tall monster who’s capable of fighting Ultraman!
Tegan
Today, I am calling her “Tegan”, as a portmanteau of the Japanese words for hand and eyeball. It will do, for now. I think she needs a separate kaiju name, and I’ve been playing with various arrangements to find one. Using Japanese words for little girl, and brat, and disobedient, and unsupervised. We’ll get there someday. It’s only October 15, 2023!
