plogg: cats

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Animation

Originally, the young girl featured in this 40-page comic was to be May the Hyperborean, whose only previous appearance was in 1990, in a piece of pulse-pounding prose titled "The Story of May", slightly revised in 1999 as "Nightmare in Metal". May's dog, Digger, was perched on top of the armchair. I'd hardly begun when, for some reason, I changed the character from May to that of "Betty Copper", simply by adding proper clothing over May's jungle girl-type bikini, and the whole story became a dream-like allusion to characters from Archie comics.

Betty Copper is, of course, Betty Cooper. Both girls being blonde, I didn't have to change a single hair on May's head. The gorilla is Big Moose, whose last name is Mason, hence the jar he was looking for. Gilda Golde is none other than Veronica Lodge, Betty's wealthy best friend (and worst rival). Gilda's subservient robot is Archie Andrews. Dolton is the boy genius, Dilton Doiley. Jawbone is seen stuffing his face with a sandwich, a favourite pastime for his counterpart, Jughead Jones. Jawbone makes a passing reference to "Dismantle", who sabotaged the robot, just as Reggie Mantle always does his best to upset Archie's plans, or otherwise ruin his day.

When the forty pages are in a file on a computer and clicked through, they seem to move like an animated cartoon. The story ends where it began, with Betty being bored. The only difference between the first and last page is the bottle of pop: Betty sips it throughout the story, leaving it empty on the last page.

May the Hyperborean did finally make her comic book debut in PLOGG #1 (August 1994).

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Wednesday, January 20, 2021

The Pied-Pirate of Hallowe'en

"The Pied-Pirate of Hallowe'en", featuring May the Hyperborean, first appeared in PLOGG #6 (March 2015), though it was written and drawn in 2014. May and her dog, Digger, wander into a small town, where she joins the Roughing It Girls, a Girl Guide-type organisation, and makes an enemy of a pirate named Cap'n Sane, who, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, leads the town's cat population away for some mysterious purpose. May and her newfound friends stumble upon Cap'n Sane's hideout, a haunted house, while trick-or-treating on Halloween night. The plot also involves pirate skeletons and two deadly suits of armour.

Most of the comics shown on "Toughie" Binder's stand are titles popular in the 1940s, with the exception of BUSTER BEAR, which didn't debut until 1953, and "Whacko Comics", which simply didn't exist. While reading a comic up in a tree (page 6), May mentions a little girl who likes dots; she's referring to Little Dot, of course, who debuted in the first issue of Harvey's LITTLE MAX COMICS in 1949. Again, while up in a tree reading a comic (page 13), May mentions a "mean old guy"; that's Doctor Sivana, archenemy of Captain Marvel, "The Big Red Cheese".

At the end of the story, "Toughie" Binder is wondering where his comic stand disappeared to. The answer is hinted at in the first and second panels of the same page.