If we’ve learned anything from watching the Evil Dead movies, it should be that one must always pronounce the words right when reading ancient texts. This isn’t an easy task, of course, especially with “deadite” languages like Latin and Aramaic, and it’s even more challenging when dealing with a purely magical one, like the Black Speech of Sauron.
Invocations, therefore, are best left to experts like the ones depicted in this comic. This is the third time the Cult of Crepuscular Creeps have appeared in Grinsane, and they only getting more “effective” with their sinister Black Arts.
At this point you may be wondering… Lucy, really, how did it ever go so wrong? When did charming Lucy ever become demonic hellspawn? What’s next, Hellhound Snoopy ?(hrm, need to add that to the cartoon idea folder…)
Think back to those endless pranks and tricks on Charlie Brown – yanking that football away, week after week, followed by that demented smile. Truly, Lucy’s earthly presence has always been a mere avatar of something more sinister, something sorcerously evil lurking in the fiery depths below…
Thank you for reading Grinsane! Check back next week for more horror comedy comics and cartoons.
I just learned about “manspreading” a couple weeks ago, and knew I had to draw an emergency cartoon on this important subject. I found out about it while reading one of my favorite comics, Bizarro, which did a cartoon on “mansplaining” and, since people no longer know what war is, were tearing one another to pieces in the comments section of the cartoon as if the fate of the free world were at stake.
In the process of mansplaining, femsplaining, and Mickey Spillaining the meaning of meaning of mansplaining to one another, the topic of manspreading came up. In case you don’t know, manspreading refers to dudes who spread their legs too wide in public places, taking up too much space. On the subway, it means riding the train like a horse into battle instead of being nice and sharing with other people.
Manspreading, a truly barbaric practice
So yeah, manspreading is really a thing, so much so that the City of New York has signs on the subway telling people not to do it (as well as condemning other acts of space hogging rudeness, like primping ones hair and swinging on the safety pole like a stripper).
Obviously people are pretty upset by this kind of thing, or the New York Transit Authority wouldn’t take precious dollars away from their graffiti removal fund to make signs telling dudes to keep their balls properly tucked. And some women are extra pissed because manspreading represents yet another way in which men attempt to dominate the world by swinging their equipment around. Meanwhile, the ice caps are melting while people fight about this stuff. Welcome to America, 2018.
Personally, I’m not too worried about manspreading. I live in one of the most unpopulated states in the country for exactly this reason. I don’t want to be near your aerating balls, and I don’t want to get a ticket if mine need to breath. Frankly, the fact that New York City has a sweaty nard problem makes me even more glad I live on the edge of a barren desert that has more coyotes and jackrabbits than people.
So allow me to manposit for a moment: if a guy can’t even cool his nuts without generating signage, and a woman can’t get a seat without being ball blocked, are we maybe living a little bit too close together? I was just in New York City, and that place is way too crowded. I mean, we’re talking Koyaanisqatsi numbers of people stumbling over one another, breathing one another’s farts like air, and being squeezed like Tetris blocks into ever shrinking spaces. I went to a restaurant and was literally sat at a table with complete strangers. This is one of those things New Yorkers probably chuckle about and consider charming but, sorry, no thanks, I came for the food not the extra company.
Thankfully, everyone at the table kept their nuts properly pinched between their knees. If they didn’t, my fork was going into action.
By the way, elephantitis of the nuts is a real thing. Do not Google it. Do not. I’m not kidding. You’ve been warned.
Jason Voorhees and Smokey the Bear have a bit of a good bear, bad cop thing going on in the public forest where Camp Crystal Lake is located. Smokey explains the rules, Jason enforces them. The result: no fires, no litterbugs, and definitely no premarital sex without dire consequences since 1980.
Still, the tourists keep coming, spilling out of their minivans like minnows from a bucket, photographing the squirrels, disturbing the tranquility of horror’s Walden Pond with their jetskis and drone cameras. Nowadays you can even take a tour of the old camp to see where all the machetebusiness took place (soon to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, no doubt, which will bring even more people).
And there sits Jason, alone, watching the whole spectacle from a hole in the woods somewhere, like an endangered species, his only friends the birds and legions of horror fans who continue to worship him from a safe distance.
I always felt like there was an environmental subtext to the earlier Friday the 13th movies (Jason in Space, not so much). Friday the 13th Part II brought it out the best during the campfire scene where the lead counselor talks about Jason surviving out in the woods and forest belonging to Jason, but none of the films have explored it the way they could should. Perhaps someday some strange thinking horror screenwriter will write something on spec to pitch to the producers or better yet be recruited by the producers to map this terrain properly!
Happy Friday the 13th, horror fans. This is the second one this year and I thought another comic about hockey boy was in order. Make sure to check in next week since Grinsane is leaving the woods and going to New York City! (not physically, but I’ve got a cartoon inspired by the dire transit situation there).
No one wants to be buried alive, but if you are… try to have a pack of smokes and a good book with you. It’s all about attitude, you know. To paraphrase Conan the Barbarian: “The grave is a great place to catch up on reading.”
The inspiration for this cartoon came directly from one of EC’s creepier covers — Tales from the Crypt Number 28, to be exact.
The cutaway section of earth in the original is pretty brilliant. Or should I say, dark. You get the idea. It was something horribly cool I wanted to play around with in a cartoon of my own.
I’m not sure how the man in the original got into his predicament, but mine is open to interpretation. There are many questions that need to be answered here:
Why was the guy in the pink shirt buried alive? Why are those gravediggers so cheerfully sadistic? Is that cute little rat in the bottom right corner going to rescue him?
My wife thinks the guy is a vampire: wrong! However, he does enjoy the books of Edgar Allen Poe, that much is clear. Maybe there is a clue there? Perhaps this is some type of horror vacation where you are temporarily buried in order to read Poe in the cemetery where Poe is buried. That would be novel.
See you next Friday (Friday the 13th!) for another chapter of Grinsane. Hockey Boy is already lined up for free knife sharpening.
Ten years ago it seemed like a fella couldn’t go on a hunting or fishing trip without coming home buttsore from an alien abduction. Today, we hear very little of such events. A few possible theories:
• SOCIAL CHANGE AMONGST THE ALIENS. Just as we have animal rights activists fighting against animal experimentation, aliens may have similar elements in their society seeking to end experimentation on lower life forms. In other words, it’s no longer alien PC to probe us.
• THEY FIGURED US OUT ALREADY. How many rednecks does one really need to finger to discover what humans are made of “on the inside”? After probing half the male population of Wyoming, they have their data on us and moved on to the next phase, like planning their forthcoming invasion of Earth and preparing the human slaughter chamber / meat processing facility on the dark side of the moon.
• ALIEN ABDUCTIONS ARE JUST TOO COMMONPLACE. Kind of like complaining about Comcast customer service, or freeway traffic, or the satanic influence of Dungeons and Dragons. Blah blah blah, who cares? Alien abductions are still happening around us every day, but people just don’t talk about them anymore, because no one is interested in hearing about them because they star you instead of Jennifer Lawrence. If you haven’t been abducted yet, take a number and get in line. Even the aliens own propaganda network, the Discovery Channel, has backed away from alien stories to present new informational atrocities.
• GROWING ACCEPTANCE OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN SOCIETY. This is the most likely possibility in my opinion. Consider the structure of the average male “weekend with the buddies” camping trip: Men deep in the woods without women; lots of alcohol loosening up scruples (and belt buckles); playing with guns and rods; bears. You might as well throw a pink umbrella in that cocktail. Nowadays men are more likely to accept a g(r)ay moment in their lives, but 10 years ago it was psychologically easier to attribute the hazy masked rituals of the church man camp to aliens.
Thank you for visiting Grinsane! I hope you enjoyed this special science fiction horror cartoon installment. Stay tuned next week for… um… I don’t yet, but I’ll think of something (send topics).
