“;Simpsons”; fans can always count on the Fox network, year in and year out, to run the series' popular “;Treehouse of Horror”; episode AFTER Halloween.

And it's no different this time around, although tonight's offering—its 19th and airing at 8 p.m. on KHON—is at least nearer the festive day than previously, when “;Treehouse of Horror”; would sometimes air two weeks after the Boo! season was long gone.

The highlight of tonight's episode is a loving parody of the “;Peanuts”; TV specials, specifically “;It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”; Bart's friend Milhouse plays the Linus role of the True Believer—but, of course, the Great Pumpkin ends up being far from the benign Santa Claus-type figure Milhouse wants to believe in.

Had he still have been alive, “;Peanuts”; creator Charles Schulz might get a kick out of the Simpsons spoof makeover. And it's in that spirit of pop culture tomfoolery that the regular comic book version of the long-running animated series has featured its own anticipated Halloween special issue.

  This year's edition is No. 14 of “;The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror”; and is a showcase featuring special contributions from top-notch talent.

Writer Steve Niles parodies his own vampiric sensation “;30 Days of Night”; with “;30 Days of D'oh.”; A black, toxic cloud, created by a meltdown at the Springfield nuclear power plant (thanks, safety inspector Homer!) turns some of the citizenry into evil, zombie vampires. And it takes a surprisingly emboldened Chief Wiggum to come to the rescue.

A manga-inspired “;Murder He Wrote,”; by Ian Boothby and Nina Matsumoto, has Bart finding a black notebook, once owned by a now-dead Krusty the Klown, that kills anyone unfortunate enough to have their name scribbled on its pages. Because of the Simpsons' familiar character template most illustrators work with, there's usually not much of a radical reconceptualization of how the loving if dysfunctional family is rendered in the comic books. But not this time, as Matsumoto makes the Simpsons pretty human-looking—in manga terms, anyway.

But my personal favorite from the comic book is a couple of inspired Japanese monster movie parodies done by the great Gilbert Hernandez of “;Love and Rockets”; fame. His take on two of the cheesiest monster movies ever made—“;Frankenstein Conquers the World”; and its sequel, “;War of the Gargantuas”;—is true to the spirit of the movies, and therefore hilarious.

And if you want to see more, there's a new paperback collection of earlier stories out called ”;The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror: Dead Man's Jest”; (Harper, $15.95). The bulk of the stories came from issues 10 and 11 of 2004 and '05. One featured guest contributions from such rock music icons as Rob Zombie, Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper and—gasp!—Pat Boone. Cooper and Boone are the better of the group—Alice's “;The Legend of Batterface”; converts Homer's undying love for doughnuts into a (insert hype copy) cautionary tale of unmitigated terror!!, and “;Scareway to Heaven”; stars the clean-cut Boone as a motorcycle-riding warrior for Christ battling the Demons from Hell, unleashed by Bart from a Ouija board.

The other main stories are better appreciated by comic geeks like myself. Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson parody their horror character Swamp Thing with “;Squish Thing,”; where Homer—made into a monster due to an explosive mixture of Duff beer and lime—fights for the affections of Marge with his rival, Moe the bartender. And Mr. Burns makes for an obvious Count Dracula in a well-done and fun offering by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, the co-creators of Marvel Comics' action-horror series “;The Tomb of Dracula,”; here called “;The Sub-Basement of Dracula.”;

A real delight are the EC Comics parodies, “;Two Tickets to HECK!”; with art by two of its legendary artists, John Severin and Al Williamson. It's a great tribute to the pioneering publisher that put out memorable, pre-Comics Code stories of horror, science fiction and World War II up to the mid-1950s. And they're all sent up here with love, Simpsons style.