Hulu's The Paloni Show! Halloween Special debuted on Monday, October 15, 2022, giving fans of indie comics something to scream about, Meg's Coven Megahex has received the comic adaptation it deserves. My lovely sh*t kittens, Simon Hanselmann's art is finally the star of the silver screen, and Mogg is voiced by none other than Macaulay Culkin himself.
Macaulay Culkin has returned to the screen to star in Megahex, “Devil’s Night,” a new animated short included in The Paloni Show! Halloween Special, is an hour-long standalone special that is available for streaming right now on Hulu. Culkin voices Mogg the cat, the stoner boyfriend to Megg the witch, played by social media star Emma Chamberlain. Rounding out the main cast of the short is Jon Glaser as the volatile Werewolf Jones and Dave Foley as Owl (who passes as the voice of reason among the group).
This is just the more recent role for Culkin, who rose to cultural prominence as a child actor in the 1990s thanks to his role in the Home Alone movies, plus movies like Richie Rich, My Girl, and Getting Even with Dad. In 2013, Culkin formed the band the Pizza Underground, for which he served as vocalist; however, the band subsequently split. More recently, in 2021, Culkin enjoyed a resurgence in popularity thanks to a starring role in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the anthology show’s tenth season.
Culkin’s perceived status as a star whose glory days may have passed with his youth add a delicious meta layer to the casting, considering an unfavorable read on the comic incarnation of Mogg is as a cat who may have peaked during his high school football career — and that's just the kind of humor that the World of Warcraft-loving actor seems to go for.
The Comics of Simon Hanselmann
“Devil’s Night” was created and directed by Simon Hanselmann based on his comics. The strips that form the prime continuity for Hanselmann’s work are collected in 2014’s Megahex, 2016’s Megg & Mogg in Amsterdam (And Other Stories), 2017’s One More Year, 2019’s Bad Gateway, 2020’s Stems and Seeds, and the upcoming November 2022 release Below Ambition.
In addition to these books in the prime continuity, the 2021’s Eisner Award-winning Crisis Zone sends the familiar characters on an odyssey that should never have been undertaken by anyone, as they face the myriad challenges of the first nine months of the COVID-19 era. All of Hanselmann’s oeuvre is available to order online through the Fantagraphics website.
This isn’t the first time that Hanselmann attempted to bring Megahex to the screen, only the first successful attempt. In late October 2020, during a tour of his Animal Crossing island Hanselmann told Avery Kaplan at Comics Beat that viewers would only see the characters on screen if he retained sufficient creative control, revealing he had recently turned down a “pretty-far-into-development” screen adaptation.
“It was basically a sure thing,” said Hanselmann. “There was a script. I just wasn’t feeling it. I got spooked and shut it down. I wasn’t happy with the scripts. They wouldn’t let me write it.” It's time to start campaigning for animated Werewolf Jones 2023, written by Hanselmann (and not that other guy).