Strip 35: Working as Intended

I was a weird kid. Let’s get that out of the way first. While I didn’t go for purely dark subject matter, I was always fascinated by stories that seemed wholesome on the surface, but contained grim, complex subject matter. I grew up on the Transformers animated movie, wherein most of the TV show’s beloved cast murder each other in the first 20 minutes. Then there was the Felix the Cat movie from 1989. Let’s just say I was very disappointed when I sought out the original Felix the Cat and found that it didn’t contain interdimensional robot armies, blood swamps, or monster circuses. I’m drawn to contrasts and contradictions, and these stories represented the pinnacle of that in my malleable young brain.

All this is to say that the origin for Dy-Gar as a character probably stems from the messed up childrens’ programming of the 80s and 90s. He’s cute and cartoonish, yes, and the extent of his bloodthirsty ego is comically ridiculous, but as the invasion of the organics have confirmed, he is an actual vicious killer. A vicious killer who now has a gun.

- J.S. Conner

July 4th 2021