Halifax author bringing nostalgia back by the costume

Halloween may have certainly evolved over the years but the classic old-school costumes of the 1970s and ‘80s remain an affectionate aspect in many people’s memories.

The cheap masks with the tiny breathing hole. The flimsy rubber band that quickly snapped and broke rendering the mask useless. And those generic, vinyl smocks — all of it warm recollections for a generation of trick-or-treaters.

That’s why Halifax-based author Jason Young is saluting those mass-produced costumes that were such a huge part of the late-October celebrations in his new book entitled An Old School Halloween.

“I love Halloween and I love the old costumes,” says the North End author about his second self-published book. “Everyone went out for Halloween as a kid and everybody can pick this book up and say I dressed up like that or I’ve seen that costume — it’s hitting all those nostalgia buttons.”

A collection of fun images and photographs, Young’s tribute includes a bit of the fascinating history behind the campy costume and its primary producer Ben Cooper — a now defunct New York-based company that manufactured most of those goofy getups until going bankrupt in the early 1990s.

“The thing that people love about them is the inaccuracies — like Aquaman had a mask (and) Superman had a mask at one point,” says Young about the two popular maskless comic-book characters.  He adds part of the fun is that the fashion was so unusually ambiguous compared to today’s hyper-realistic holiday apparel.

“It’s explained in the book why they went that route but it was all intentional,” adds the 46-year-old author. “It wasn’t just them being careless.”

The book is filled with all sorts of interesting trivia surrounding the history of Halloween costumes and includes a special section on Ben Cooper’s primary costume designer.

“Frank Romano is the guy who painted every single one of the smocks for 30 years, designed all the masks (and) he’s the focus of the story in my opinion,” adds Young, who tracked down the now-96-year-old New Yorker and interviewed him about designing each eccentric ensemble.

“You would think over 30 years a ton of people worked on them, but he was pretty much the guy who did them all and he’s the most modest man you’ll ever meet.”

Another fascinating tidbit raises suspicion as to who actually created one of Marvel’s most iconic superheroes.

“The coolest thing in the book that I’ve gotten feedback on is that nobody knew about the Spider-Man story,” says Young, who adds that Ben Cooper actually created an unmistakably similar costume called Spider-Man eight years prior to the Marvel character debuting in pulp fiction.

“At the time they created Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, who was co-creator of Spider-Man with Stan Lee, lived in New York and it would have been almost impossible for Steve Ditko not to have seen that costume in a store.”

On the heels of his successful self-published debut The Wonderful Artwork of Wax Wrappers — which captures images and photographs of obscure collector cards and their wrappers — Young tackled his sophomore book simply as a way to keep busy during the pandemic.

“I’m an accountant by trade but my go-to to relax is graphic design,” says Young who found himself house-bound once COVID-19 began shutting down the province in March of 2020. “I started this one with the intention of being a stupid little project and that’s it.”

Instead, Young has been surprised by the amount of interest he has attracted with An Old School Halloween, with copies being sold in the UK, Germany and the United States as well as locally at such bookstores as Dartmouth Book Exchange and Strange Adventures Comics & Curiosities.

“2020 and 2021 have both been rough. The intention of this book is to get away from all of that negativity,” says Young, adding An Old School Halloween has already sold 30 per cent of its first printing since arriving in early June, perhaps to readers eager for a bit of nostalgia. “Pick this up and just remember back when you were a little kid (and) spark those old, fun memories — that’s the intention of the book.”

For more information on An Old School Halloween, visit the book’s Facebook page.