The original plan was to draw a rabbit on it and carve the lantern so you could see the rabbit. There were a couple reasons for this, one was that everyone carves faces or ghosts or (if you’re really good) a witch on their Jack-o-lantern. So I was going to draw a rabbit.
The other part of the plan was to take a photo of the Jack-O-Lantern (with the rabbit on it) and put it on the Shore Leave web site for Halloween. (The convention is named for the Star Trek episode titled “Shore Leave.” The episode includes a brief appearance by the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, so the convention adopted the rabbit as a mascot.)
Carving a drawing of a rabbit onto a pumpkin was definitely ambitious, but I thought it was doable. I’ve been drawing rabbits and putting them on the convention web site for the past several years. This was just a new medium is all.

Reading Bunny	Ze Artisté
Costumer Bunny	Security Bunny

It was easy enough to draw a rabbit on the pumpkin. It was an unfamiliar medium, but aside from a little extra waviness in the whiskers, it was pretty straight forward. That’s when I realized how much detail is involved in those rabbits. The teeth, the whiskers, the noses, ears, and so on. I’ve been getting better at carving pumpkins, but that amount of detail was going to take most of the night. (Note to self: It might be a good idea to start carving the jack-o-lantern a little earlier than 10:45pm on the night before Halloween.)
So, it was clearly time for Plan B:

Yes. That’s right. I carved a jack-o-lantern with a jack-o-lantern on it. I call it the “Meta-Lantern.”
Those with a sharp eye may have noticed something amiss though. There’s a figure lurking in the shadows off to the meta-lantern’s left. What the heck could that be? Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Could that be…? Let’s turn up the lights and see if that’s who I think it is….

Oh no! It’s a Captain Jack O-Lantern!!!