A while ago I had the crazy idea to iRiff on the Goosebumps episode ‘The Haunted Mask,’ but I decided that before I do this I should test a few things out. I needed to test out whether or not my computer mic worked, if I was funny and if the editing would be easy to deal with. The result of all this is me riffing on assorted Goosebumps commercials that I ripped off of YouTube. Below is the video of me harmlessly poking fun at a TV serious that I would always love.
Yes, though it may seem like I hate Goosebumps, I don’t in actuality. They were pretty good for the time they were made but I liked to give them a hard time anyway. I know, the jokes on here may not be funny but I am not Kevin Murphy or Bill Corbett. So please enjoy this exorcise in comedy and in riffing.
A day or so ago I decided to take you back to the wondrous 90’s when Goosebumps, both the books and the TV show, were popular. As you can tell, both mediums heavily inspired me as a kid and sort of was the precursor to watching and reading more adult themed horror. However, as I stated before, the best thing about the Goosebumps books was the artwork by Tim Jacobus and that’s because I was once an artist back then. As a kid growing up on Goosebumps, I would constantly mock and copy the artwork on the cover and in a way Tim sort of molded me into sketch artist but I never really pursued that career. Well, the other day I contacted Tim and asked him to do an interview and to my surprise he responded, “sure!” My heart stopped.
Never in my life did I ever expect to email interview one of my childhood idols. The questions are a little more diverse and I didn’t want to ask him the ‘standard’ questions so if you want to know more about Tim… please read his bio here. Or purchase his book “It Came From New Jersey.”
Why did you take up the artist profession?
When I was in High School, I took a commercial art class at another school. It was the first time art was presented to me as a business rather than a hobby or as fine art. I knew this was for me.
Who was your influence when it came to art?
My art teacher who ran the commercial art class – his name was Frank Nuebaugher. He was a Korean War, Marine vet… not your typical “art guy”. He was tough and he worked us hard. I got a lot out of everything he taught. As a fan, I love Roger Dean. He’s a fantasy artist who did many album covers in the 70’s and 80’s. He was way ahead of his time.
What were goals that you wanted to accomplish in becoming an artist?
Not starve.
I know a lot of artists paint to express or discover themselves. While painting in your free time, what did you learn about yourself?
Being an illustrator is less about being inspired and more about getting the job done. You are given specific variables of subject matter, time restraints and budget. Then, you give it 100% and see what comes out the other side. I enjoy the process of painting - whether traditionally or digitally. I don’t paint much in my free time. I do most everything else - get outside, hang out with my son, Jack, multiple sports, almost anything other than painting. I will eventually paint for myself. Lately, I have thoughts to work large… 5’ x 10’! I’ve only done a couple of larger pieces in my life and I had a blast doing them.
Before you got big, you took a number of diverse labor jobs. What was the most physically demanding job that you took and did it influence your life?
I have had a few tough ones. I gained a great deal of respect for the folks who do it day in and day out. One of the worst I had, was in Alaska. My wife, Laura and I went to Kodiak, Alaska when we were still in art school. We worked in a herring canning plant. We worked on the herring roe line. For 14 hours a day, we took a stick and shoved it up a dead herrings ass, popped it’s belly open and removed the roe… Sounds like fun, huh?
What was your big break and how did it come about?
Getting my first paperback cover was my first break. It was for Daw publishing and the title was “The Fugitive in Transit”. Back in the day, if you walked around to enough publishers and knocked on enough doors, you could get a break.
How were you chosen for the Goosebumps books?
Luck. I had done some other covers for Scholastic books and the thought my style would fit. When Goosebumps was first presented, no one thought it would be a hit. Most expected it to die quickly.
Where you a fan of the horror genre and if so, did anything from the genre inspire your paintings?
I was more of a sci-fi / fantasy guy then a horror guy. Although, I did love Stephen King.
How did you and R.L. Stine collaborate on the illustrations?
R.L. was and is the most prolific writer ever. The amount of pages the guy can crank out is amazing. R.L. was writing the books at the same time I was doing the covers. He would give me just a short description of the story. Generally, one paragraph was enough to get me going. We just clicked.
Tell us a little about the Converse All-Star cameos you put in the illustrations.
The art directors liked the reoccurring theme in the illustrations and encouraged the use of the sneaks. Cons were what my friends and I wore back in school. They were the only decent sneaker you could buy. The Chuck Taylor high tops have remained popular forever. My mother complained about me wearing torn up sneakers. And she would ask what I would do when I had to “grow up” and get a job. I never had to grow up. I may have grown older but I still have my cons. The best part was when a new GBS cover came out. I would buy a copy and give it to her. If the cons were part of the cover, she would roll her eyes and say “ And there are your stinking sneakers”… Truly, the real reason the converse sneakers made so many appearances – It bugged my mom!
Between the first series of Goosebumps and the 2000 series, was there a difference in terms of your illustrations?
Yes, fans wrote R.L. and I often. The thing they began to ask for was scarier stories. Along with scarier stories comes an edgier cover. In the original series, we could not have red blood. We had monster blood, but that was green. Werewolf in the Living Room had skin and fur that looked awful, blood red and sore. The 2000 series was Goosebumps on steroids.
Your other work is also very surreal but is there a difference between that and the Goosebumps books in terms of detail, composition or style?
Goosebumps was unique. The colors were very bold. Even the shadow areas, which normally could be blacks and grays, were full of blues and purples. The big difference was the distorted perspective. Weird twist in floor tiles and ceiling panels. There wasn’t a straight line anywhere.
Is there a specific book that you look back on and say, "I could have done better?"
Time was my biggest enemy. “A Night in Terror Tower” was one that was pushed hard. Normally, I would have the luxury of 5 days to do a painting. Other times, I needed to work with what I had. Terror Tower was painted in one day and delivered the following morning - with no sleep. There are areas that I could have worked better. Although, for a one day painting it could have come out way worse!
What was your favorite book Goosebumps book that you read?
I liked “Stay Out of the Basement”. I had done many covers before I went back and read a completed Goosebumps. After reading it, I got it. I understood what was so great about the books. The structure, the pacing, the hooks were real genius.
What were your thoughts on the Goosebumps TV series?
I didn’t watch many episodes. I didn’t think they caught the real magic of the books. R.L. and Tim Burton had talked of working together. Now, THAT would have been something awesome.
How does it feel that at one point, you were sort of an icon when it came to young horror fans and young readers alike?
It was great. I had been painting for years. Very few people knew my work. I would talk about it when people seemed interested. It was very one sided. When Goosebumps was rockin’, I could talk to kids about my art and they were digging it as much as I was and they knew more about my art than I did! I still hear from some of the old fans. There is nothing cooler.
Aside from painting, is there any other ways that you relax?
I love sports. Youth football starts August 1st. I coach. It is something that I enjoy. And I get to do it with Jack. No one knows or cares about Goosebumps on the field. I’m just an old guy with a big mouth! I love that too.
Is there anything that you would like to say to those who fans of the books as well as your artwork?
Yes, Thank you. It was a really fun ride!
I would like to thank Tim for taking time to answer my questions and I would like to say thank you for everything and all the memories. You truly are an inspiration to me as well as others.
One of the biggest things that us horror fans remember from the 90s, especially those who grew up in the decade, was Eerie Indiana, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Goosebumps. Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of Eerie Indiana and though I enjoyed Are You Afraid of the Dark… it didn’t hit home for me like with Goosebumps. Goosebumps debuted in 1995 and it adapted R.L. Stine’s books into a 30 minute long TV show. Fans of the books were thrilled and it was one of the things that we looked forward to every Saturday and Sunday mornings on Fox Kids. The show took off until its airtime was run out on 1998. However, the memory of a great TV show for kids will always stick with us and it’s one of those cornerstones in many of our lives.
I’ve talked about the show many times before and how it has a lot of adult situations despite its aim towards children. No, I’m not talking about those situations but rather situations like seeing a man scientist slit his wrists open to poor out green blood or seeing your naked Aunt and Uncle drape werewolf skin over their bodies. It’s a point that I love bringing up because Are You Afraid of the Dark was geared towards an older crowd of kids but Goosebumps was on right after a whole bunch of little kid shows like Space Goofs, Toonsylvania and Animaniacs. As a kid, some of the frightening imagery from the show has stuck with me. I’ll never forget how creeped out I was when I saw that horrid monster eating insects from The Girl Who Cried Monster, or that frightening tractor scene in The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. Even to this day I can’t safely say that these episodes are kid friendly.
The one thing that I always loved about the Goosebumps series was the way they were filmed. Not necessarily the special effects or the editing but rather the lighting the cinematography of each episode. There were certain scenes that I remember that had weird filters and weird angles that enhanced each story. Close-ups were of people made them look more bloated and more surreal, swooping shots of the monsters eating bugs and sometimes the camera would get right into the way of the monster and made kids jump in fear. It was almost as if each episode was sort of experimental or directed by Terry Gilliam and David Lynch, they just has this campy dream-like presents about them.
If you want to know the magnitude of which Goosebumps had on me, my favorite color has been green since the mid 90s because in all of the Goosebumps episodes green was somehow incorporated. Whether the eerie light was green, or the bushes in the background were greener or the monster was green; green was the color of Goosebumps. Also, when I was 7-9 years old, I strategically place suits and clothes in a pile on the ground to make it look like whomever was wearing it just disappeared but left their clothes instead. I thought this was because I loved The Langoliers as a kid but it turned out that it was Goosebumps all along. I took the idea from Welcome to Dead House. The series had probably the biggest impact on me then any other TV show out there.
For young horror fans there was always one book that would cease to entertain us and in turn, lead us to a whole new realm of horror. For some it scared us, for others it led them to modern horror books, and in other cases they were the closest things to pure horror we can get to. These were the Goosebumps books and they debuted in 1992 and stopped in 1997. Back then, they were the best things that ever happened to us and now we see them as a cornerstone in pop horror culture as well as pop culture of the 1990s. Personally, they were the mile marker in my life and they would eventually be the gateway to books written by Stephen King, Dean Kootnz or Michael Crichton.
The first Goosebumps book was entitled ‘Welcome to Dead House’ andsince then they caught on fast. Guiness Book of World Records says that Goosebumps was the largest selling children’s series in history. The books are precursors to other great horror novels and it was very evident that R.L. Stine (author of the series) borrowed from other great stories to create his. So in a way, we were introduced to vampires before we knew what a vampire was. The books were also very morbid for kids and at times they were also very violent. Titles such as ‘Don’t Go Into the Basement,’ ‘Werewolf Skin’ and ‘The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight’ are all great examples of books that ended up being extremely dark and rather frightening. Titles such as, ‘Vampire Breath’ and ‘The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb’ are examples of ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Mummy’… light. Several of the books had twist endings so it was sort of like reading The Twilight Zone for kids, which is something that would stick with me.
Soon after Goosebumps became a hit, Stine delivered is 2000 Series appropriately titled Goosebumps: Series 2000. These books were sort of like the big boy Goosebumps books since I remember them being slightly more terrifying then the original series. These stories included more original stories and had more frightening endings and at times I remember them being a little more descriptive on the books monster or ghost. I also remember them being a little more science fiction than most of the original series books. Titles such as ‘Brain Juice,’ ‘Invasion of the Body Squeezers,’ and ‘Creature Teacher’ was sort of tributes to the classic sci-fi era of the 1950s and 1960s and introduced us to those films. The 2000 Series also gave us sequels to the big hit books from the original Goosebumps such as ‘Return to HorrorLand’ and ‘Bride of the Living Deummy.’ Even the pictures on the front cover of the 2000 Series grew more detail and more frightening.
Shortly after the 2000 Series began to run it’s course, Stine gave us the last good series in the Goosebumps saga. These were called Give Yourself Goosebumps with the tagline “Reader beware… you choose the scare.” This was the cherry on the sundae that would eventually be devoured over time. Stine delivered us the same terrifying and original stories found in the 2000 series but added a twist; we as the reader got to choose which direction the story would go. At the end of each page or each scenario the book would ask us questions like, “should Mike go into the closet or should he walks away and confront the monster under the bed?” If you choose wrongfully you ended up dead or something worse. That’s the thing with these books, the endings didn’t always leave to death but rather something more morbid and Stine liked to jab at us with how disturbing his books could be. These books literally made us readers feel as though we were a part of the book and they really made us become more imaginative.
Perhaps the most memorable aspect of the entire Goosebumps run was the amazing artwork by Tim Jacobus. They were so incredibly detailed and they enhanced the imagery of the Goosebumps. Each painting had it’s own world that it belonged to and for us kids, they felt almost real because of the amount of detail that was in each one. What I noticed about each of the paintings was that they had a certain kind of mood lighting, Jacobus blended in colors like blue, orange and red to give the monsters a frightening tone. Also, for us hardcore Goosebumps fans, you’ll notice that in almost all of his paintings he incorporates Converse All-Star… a shoe that has really stuck with me throughout my childhood.
Looking back on them, the Goosebumps books were really horror food for us kids and they did at times scare us but also entertained us. If I read them now they wouldn’t do anything for me, of course, but they would trigger lots of memories of me hiding under my covers wanting to know what happens to the characters. They were a gateway into other horror fiction and non-fiction and they really impacted my life… more than I could ever say. It’s a shame that I had to sell all my books but someday I will get them back. Hell, I haven’t even mentioned the TV show.
Oh yes, this just happened. I just heard about this book from Stu, at Buy Zombie, sent me the trailer for it. I am so psyched for this book. When I first saw the trailer I thought it was a real movie and my first impression was: AWESOME!!!!
I for one, am sold on this book and I will definitely be buying this. This is my first real news story on this blog but the trailer made me so excited that I had to post this. Hopefully this book will also help redeem vampires. You can watch it below.
I am a very strange person who loves horror movies and moviemaking in general. I hope to one day become a filmmaker and write reviews. I am also working towards a PhD in film as well. I love discussing and talking about horror movies and, interestingly enough, I am a huge Jimmy Buffett fan.
"Rick is one of the most knowledgeable people I've run across when it comes to the ins and outs of film - he's literally a student of the game. He earned a huge thumbs-up from me for also sharing in the Stephen King love." - Dod March from WGON Helicopter
"Rick is simply awesome. His blog is a work of passion and his knowledge of movies in general is astounding. This is easily one of my favorite blogs that I subscribe to." - Mike from FearShop
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