Fifty. We've finally made it to fifty Goosebumps books. It's been a unique ride so far to say the very least. And we still have twelve to go after this. The last milestone (of sorts) book gave us a muddied comic book adventure, will book fifty deliver something better? Let's see with Calling All Creeps! AKA Tommy Tutone.
COVER STORY
This cover isn't so much super creepy (wasn't one that got me), but is one that does an excellent job of selling this book. I like the overall look of the creeps, being these humanoid reptilian creatures with their purple scales and mid-90s clothing. I also love the glow of the phone booth which gives off an even more alien vibe. Not too much to say on this one, but it's another fine work from Tim Jacobus.
STORY
Our protagonist is Ricky Beamer, who we meet as he's sneaking out of the house. We also learn through seeing his parents watching the weather channel that this is set in Nova Scotia. Holy crap, a Goosebumps book set in Canada! Ricky's sneaking out to head to his middle school for some much needed revenge. You see, Ricky seems to be the most hated kid in Harding Middle School, often called Ricky the Rat, Sicky Ricky, among other nicknames. He sees Tasha McClain still at school, working on the school newspaper. When she leaves, this gives him the chance to write "Calling All Creeps. Calling All Creeps. If you’re a real Creep, call Tasha at 555-
6709 after midnight" on one of the paper pages. So our protagonist is a kid whose trying to get people to prank call a girl. You know, it's been a while since we got a generally bad protagonist.
His reasoning comes down to a few days prior, when Ricky was showing a new student named Iris Candler around the school. Ricky ends up running afoul of four kids in particular that love to antagonize him. Jared, David, Brenda and Wart, short for Richard Wartman. Well, better nickname than Hat or Foz. They trip Ricky which sends him face first into his cafeteria food, causing everyone, even Iris, to laugh at him. Okay, so maybe Ricky isn't as much of a slimeball in general as he is a kid whose easily victimized for being an easy target. Later that day, at the school newspaper room, Ricky runs afoul of the bullies again who try to take his Pepsi. In the struggle, the can goes flying and hits Tasha's keyboard. When Ricky tries to clean it, he pretty much blue screens the computer. We're getting into Gary Lutz level klutz here. Angered by Ricky, she kicks him off the school newspaper, hence his revenge directed at her, despite the issue really being more with the bullies.
Despite Ricky's problems, he does seem to make a friend in Iris, but this isn't helped when the bullies again grab Ricky and force him into singing the Star Spangled Banner in front of her. Ricky runs home embarrassed. He later gets a call from Tasha mentioning that she needs help with the paper. To get some photos of the five dollar car wash that the school is holding. Yes, five whole dollars. They'd better be damn good car washers for that price. Anyway, this leads to where you'd think as the bullies once again go after Ricky, causing him to ruin the camera in the process. So, that takes us up to where we are now, with Ricky editing the paper to send creeps to call Tasha. However, he gets an abrupt call from Iris in the middle of the night, trying to warn him about something, only to be angrily yelled at by her father to the point that I'm more genuinely concerned about her situation than Ricky's.
After that call, he gets one from someone else, claiming to be a creep, who is ready to meet, and ready to plant. Ricky hangs up, but the phone keeps ringing until 2AM, angering his folks. Ricky heads to school and sees that Tasha edited Ricky's attempted prank, adding his name and number instead of hers. Ricky gets laughed at by everyone some more. He goes to his locker to see "When will the creeps meet" painted inside. And he gets more phone calls in the night. The next day, Ricky heads to school, but gets grabbed by the bullies. They reveal to Ricky that they're the creeps, the ones who have been calling him at night. They start calling him commander, saying that if they knew he was their commander, they wouldn't have teased him so much. They need his help to plant identity seeds, which are close to dying, on the students in this school. They intend on destroying the human race. BOOM! SECRET ALIENS, BITCHES!
They transform into their true forms, which are purple humanoid reptilian creatures. Kind of remind me of Al Negator from Bucky O'Hare. We get a creepy (pun intended) scene where Wart grabs a squirrel and eats it whole. Ricky needs to escape, but needs to find a way to tell everyone about the creeps. He tells them that they'll exact their plan with the seeds tomorrow as he heads home. He tells his parents, but they don't believe them. In fact, they mock him for it. Goosebumps parents! The next day Ricky tries to tell Mrs. Crawford, who supervises the school paper, but she thinks he must be delirious. The creeps catch up to Ricky and hand him the bag of seeds. He spills the bag on purpose, but they carry a spare. They make him put that bag of seeds into the school macaroni, but that doesn't work because nobody eats the macaroni. But they still have more spare seeds.
Brenda, the female creep, has an idea. The school bake sale is coming up, and they can make cookies with the seeds inside them. Ricky tells them to just bury the seeds, but this angers the creeps. They confront him, telling him to change into his creep form. But he's saved by Iris, who pretends to be a creep. Turns out she's known about this for a while. She saw the initial confrontation with the creeps and Ricky, but never had a chance to tell him until now. Unfortunately, this means the two are stuck baking the seed cookies.
TWIST ENDING
CONCLUSION
This book only feels like something that could exist in a world where school shootings weren't a sickening norm. Only instead of a bullied kid resorting to bringing a gun to school and murdering people, this book gives us a bullied kid who manages to get his own army of space lizards. So, by that logic, this book is super tame in that comparison. But it still can't be overstated. Calling All Creeps! is a pretty decent book. Not much in the scares department outside of the squirrel scene and the dark implications of the ending. As for Ricky, while he's definitely a bit whiny and annoying in spots, he does feel like he's given the short end of the stick here. Outside of the attempt to prank Tasha, everything that gets heaped on him in this book wasn't by his own doing. Even when he's trying to save his school, everybody continues to mock him and throw stuff at him.
For as bad as Gary from Why I'm Afraid of Bees had it, somehow Ricky's gotten it even worse to the point that you can't help but see his turn at the end as positive. I mean, look at my earlier comments about if this was in a more common school shooting world. Although the solution of poisoning the school with mind (and body) altering drugs is no better either. In the end, it's an ending worth thinking about, more for what it implies rather than being a book about alien lizard cookies. In the end, I enjoyed it. It's a fitting end for what was a solid few books. The forties started with some of the worst, but ended with a majority of decent editions. And Calling All Creeps! is no exception, earning itself a A- rating.
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