I enjoyed this comic so much! It was exactly the antidote I needed after having filled a booooooooring form for some government thing. Thank you for the delightful weirdness!
Oh god, NMR keep your robe on!!! Did you ever read Ian McEwan's The Daydreamer? I'm getting Daydreamer vibes from this. I loved that book so much as a child. It's such a treat to see your comics in glorious full colour like this too - I KNOW WE'RE MATES NOW BUT I'M A FAN OK?
He WILL NOT ENROBE HIMSELF!!! I don't know The Daydreamer, but will look it up right now!! And thank you Katie - the feeling is mutual, and how extra nice to be mates now too!!🥰
I had seen that movie as a kid but didn't remember until I ran into it online a few months ago and watched it again and thought OH NO I have vague, traumatizing memories of this! Yet it is somehow even more traumatizing to revisit as an adult. The emotions in it are surprisingly raw, for instance in a scene during a soccer match (forgive me, I'm American) in which a bully pulls off the boy's wig, which is attached via long, viscous strings of glue, and it's both unbearably sad and disgustingly weird at the same time. (I also feel duty-bound to point out that it was made in Canada, which in some ways has the most terrifying culture of all.) Anyway, I like your version of the story much better than the movie, so thank you for sharing!
How funny that you saw it again recently!! That scene sounds truly unsettling, and you have described it very well!! Unbearably sad and disgustingly weird - that's so good. I think perhaps I'll swerve giving it a rewatch. Interesting what you say about Canada having the most terrifying culture of all - I'd be interested to know more of what you mean?
Haha - thank you! I've actually been thinking about this a lot, since I recently wrote a post about forgotten Halloween specials, and quite a few of them turned out to be Canadian!
So I see the U.S. and Canada as siblings - while the elder sibling draws all the attention and makes all the noise (and gets in most of the trouble), the younger gets away with a lot more in the shadows. Canadian pop culture shares many of the same touchstones as American pop culture, but, unburdened with the myth of exceptionalism, it plays out like a slightly skewed alternate reality - smaller, more intimate, and more free to accept its sinister side as a matter of fact. There seems to be a kind of skepticism of appearances - a willingness to embrace whatever's churning underneath the facade of "niceness" they're so famous for - and a parallel freedom to point out that there's nothing more weird than what seems normal.
A great illustration of this is the Hobtown Mystery graphic novels by Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes, which play on teen-detective tropes but slowly uncover a weird world that feels a lot more akin to British folk horror than anything we can conjure up in the States. They are really, really good! You can call the sensibility "Lynchian," but I think that David Lynch's movies (particularly Blue Velvet) come off as a bit of an Americanized riff on a deadpan mysteriousness that feels more at home in the vastness of Canada. In fact, I think Canadians can take weirdness and horror much further than we can - Lynch is lauded as the "weirdest" filmmaker, but I find David Cronenberg's films 100 times more disturbing. And The Peanut Butter Solution is basically, Cronenberg for kids.
I wonder if there's something about the fact that a vast number of Canadian artists are subsidized in part by the government, rather than scrabbling around the cultural margins like we do further south. Maybe that brings more of the weirdos to the surface and provides a little bit of courage and creative impunity that we Americans lack!
I am always filled with joy when I see a new email from you, and then wait until I can savour every word/sketch. Definitely better than all the udders!
Dude this film sounds wonderfully bonkers & I’m so sorry I’ve missed out by not viewing it at a tender age, where it could nicely fester in my self consciousness for ever more. Films that did make an impression on me at a tender age The Goonies (genius nuff said), The Amazing Mr Blunden (time travel to save orphan tots being murdered by their guardians, noice), Picnic On Hanging Rock , missing girls, lots of petticoats & Sarah falling through the conservatory roof to be found days later, because nobody cared (sad beyond words) and Death line, set on the London underground and involves cannibalism, gruesome!
Dude it would have been a good festerer for you! Agree loads with Goonies and Picnic, which I found SO eerie - but don't know the other two - would you recommend?
Great comic, Tor! I can confirm I have NEVER encountered The Peanut Butter Solution - I would certainly have remembered. It sounds absolutely nuts, and exactly the kind of thing I would have been entranced/disturbed by in the 80s. Perhaps it never made it out of the US...
Thanks Joe! Yes it was bonkers, and creepy - I got an email from someone who saw it as a child in Ireland, so I guess it did crawl over here. But doesn't seem to be one that many people remember!
This made me laugh so much. So weird, so funny
Haha yay!
I enjoyed this comic so much! It was exactly the antidote I needed after having filled a booooooooring form for some government thing. Thank you for the delightful weirdness!
Thanks Katerina! And boooooo to government snore forms!!
Soooo love your total madness, meant to to be working this morning, no go, just sat reading comics, very sophisticated comics. Loads of love jlr
Haha thanks Jenny, that's so nice to hear! Lots of love! xxx
Oh god, NMR keep your robe on!!! Did you ever read Ian McEwan's The Daydreamer? I'm getting Daydreamer vibes from this. I loved that book so much as a child. It's such a treat to see your comics in glorious full colour like this too - I KNOW WE'RE MATES NOW BUT I'M A FAN OK?
He WILL NOT ENROBE HIMSELF!!! I don't know The Daydreamer, but will look it up right now!! And thank you Katie - the feeling is mutual, and how extra nice to be mates now too!!🥰
The *flow* of that green hair!
Silky!😆
I had seen that movie as a kid but didn't remember until I ran into it online a few months ago and watched it again and thought OH NO I have vague, traumatizing memories of this! Yet it is somehow even more traumatizing to revisit as an adult. The emotions in it are surprisingly raw, for instance in a scene during a soccer match (forgive me, I'm American) in which a bully pulls off the boy's wig, which is attached via long, viscous strings of glue, and it's both unbearably sad and disgustingly weird at the same time. (I also feel duty-bound to point out that it was made in Canada, which in some ways has the most terrifying culture of all.) Anyway, I like your version of the story much better than the movie, so thank you for sharing!
How funny that you saw it again recently!! That scene sounds truly unsettling, and you have described it very well!! Unbearably sad and disgustingly weird - that's so good. I think perhaps I'll swerve giving it a rewatch. Interesting what you say about Canada having the most terrifying culture of all - I'd be interested to know more of what you mean?
Haha - thank you! I've actually been thinking about this a lot, since I recently wrote a post about forgotten Halloween specials, and quite a few of them turned out to be Canadian!
So I see the U.S. and Canada as siblings - while the elder sibling draws all the attention and makes all the noise (and gets in most of the trouble), the younger gets away with a lot more in the shadows. Canadian pop culture shares many of the same touchstones as American pop culture, but, unburdened with the myth of exceptionalism, it plays out like a slightly skewed alternate reality - smaller, more intimate, and more free to accept its sinister side as a matter of fact. There seems to be a kind of skepticism of appearances - a willingness to embrace whatever's churning underneath the facade of "niceness" they're so famous for - and a parallel freedom to point out that there's nothing more weird than what seems normal.
A great illustration of this is the Hobtown Mystery graphic novels by Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes, which play on teen-detective tropes but slowly uncover a weird world that feels a lot more akin to British folk horror than anything we can conjure up in the States. They are really, really good! You can call the sensibility "Lynchian," but I think that David Lynch's movies (particularly Blue Velvet) come off as a bit of an Americanized riff on a deadpan mysteriousness that feels more at home in the vastness of Canada. In fact, I think Canadians can take weirdness and horror much further than we can - Lynch is lauded as the "weirdest" filmmaker, but I find David Cronenberg's films 100 times more disturbing. And The Peanut Butter Solution is basically, Cronenberg for kids.
I wonder if there's something about the fact that a vast number of Canadian artists are subsidized in part by the government, rather than scrabbling around the cultural margins like we do further south. Maybe that brings more of the weirdos to the surface and provides a little bit of courage and creative impunity that we Americans lack!
I am always filled with joy when I see a new email from you, and then wait until I can savour every word/sketch. Definitely better than all the udders!
Thank you Helen, that's so lovely to hear!!
Dude this film sounds wonderfully bonkers & I’m so sorry I’ve missed out by not viewing it at a tender age, where it could nicely fester in my self consciousness for ever more. Films that did make an impression on me at a tender age The Goonies (genius nuff said), The Amazing Mr Blunden (time travel to save orphan tots being murdered by their guardians, noice), Picnic On Hanging Rock , missing girls, lots of petticoats & Sarah falling through the conservatory roof to be found days later, because nobody cared (sad beyond words) and Death line, set on the London underground and involves cannibalism, gruesome!
Dude it would have been a good festerer for you! Agree loads with Goonies and Picnic, which I found SO eerie - but don't know the other two - would you recommend?
Great comic, Tor! I can confirm I have NEVER encountered The Peanut Butter Solution - I would certainly have remembered. It sounds absolutely nuts, and exactly the kind of thing I would have been entranced/disturbed by in the 80s. Perhaps it never made it out of the US...
Thanks Joe! Yes it was bonkers, and creepy - I got an email from someone who saw it as a child in Ireland, so I guess it did crawl over here. But doesn't seem to be one that many people remember!