016 “The Lighter Side of Tentacle Hentai”

 One of the last jam strips before I left Canada for good. It was done in a bar called “The Fox and Pheasant” near the University of Waterloo when A.J., Omar Doggan, and Bryan O’Malley decided to meet up out of the blue. They were truly great friends, although I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

One thing now that I look at it, if I we’re to do the strip again I would definitely remove the word “slut” from the second panel. There could have been far less loaded words that would get the same point across.

 It was about a week or so before I was leaving Canada for good, and AJ, bless the guy, wanted to meet one last time before I left. It was definately a tough time for me, but one Sunday we got together. I had this idea for a tentacle monster strip, and of course, AJ was perfect. He took my awful blue layouts and made them sing. This is a very popular strip considering to me, the punchline is rather obvious. But like I say, AJ’s art made it sing.

The title was influenced by Mad magazine’s “The Lighter Side Of…” strips. I always thought they would make great titles, but for some reason I never used it again. “The Lighter Side Of Getting Fucked Up the Ass” would make a great title. That almost writes itself. The subtitle was influenced by a Heartbreak Angels strip.

I always had a follow up to this strip, and a plan to make a serial out of it. The two would get married and have children, a normal girl and a tentacle monster. The implications of that were probably a little more than I wanted to deal with.

Ghastly said his strip was partly inspired by this one.

And oh yes… the character design for the tentacle monster was inspired by Jennifer Chan’s mascot “Bu” much to her horror. That’s why the monster goes “Bu!” in the first panel. Yes, in-jokes were pretty much the norm for the first year of the THIN H LINE.