As in: Hobarthy

This is October's Hobarthy project comic. I thought this would be a lot like The House of Mystery from the cover, but it ended up being a wannabe Hellblazer. More interestingly, it played to all the noir conventions with the utmost sincerity—aware that it's being cliche and sublimely content with being so.

I spent some time making a couple collage pages (to practice up for the year-end Hobarthy project) with panels, so instead of doing a mini-collage here, I'm going to put up a couple panels and make snarky comments (ala The Comics Curmudgeon).

I imagine the writers feeling edgy when they named the psychic detective's raven "Satan," but it inadvertently resulted in OMEN-inspired hilarity. I like the sub-text that Archie's sidekick is actually a minion of the evil lord.

This sequence is odd. The angry lady with the purse is mad because her husband (balding) philandered with some woman named Gwendolyn, a fact revealed by the stage psychic (Satan's minion). Then a man who's dating a woman named Gwen socks the philanderer, sure that his sweetheart has been unfaithful. The fight continues in the second panel; the angry wife watches, shouting with vengeance or indignity. Which is it? Is she commanding violence against her husband or is she offended by it?

Poor Archie. His minion (with her dark powers) could easily best the siminan attacker, but instead she plays Kane to his Grasshopper. "Leverage, Archie. Leverage." Then she dances.

The mysteries of profanity in comics. At the beginning of the comic, Archie, surprised by the stereotypical "dame with a case" in his office, falls off his chair and howls "SHI--". Presumably he was too startled to blurt the full epithet, because here it appears in all its glory.

Posted by briley at October 28, 2005 8:41 AM