Forgotten Characters - Hagar's Secondary Characters

In the mid-90s, there were all kinds of wild experimentations done in Newspaper comics, the old guard throwing out all kinds of new tactics to deal with the sudden innovation and popularity of competitive strips and trying to figure out what would stick.  Most of them flailed about and didn't accomplish much, but it was still interesting to see them try.

One of these instances of creativity was the introduction to some minor characters to the cast of Hagar, starting with a Troll.






Apart from a trite Beauty & the Beast message, there wasn't anything that particularly stood out about Tyrone, and he only made one stock appearance later.

It was only then that I realized that what struck me as him looking so familiar was that his face was a random Don Martin character.

Another sporadic attempt was to give Lucky Eddie an inconspicuous pet.







All this is mere conjecture to set up what proved to be the most popular and long-lasting minor character thus far - a silent fire-breathing baby dragon.






At the end of this arc, where the baby dragon eventually wound up being Dr. Zook's pet, there was the appearance of another minor character who sporadically showed up - Gork.

But apart from having a Thor-like physique and being a potential suitor for Honi after her tryst with Tyrone the Troll, he was virtually indistinguishable from anybody else, and was quickly forgotten.

Speaking of Tyrone, if you look at his last appearance above, you'll see the baby dragon next to Dr. Zook.

Also, the gender of the baby dragon changed sporadically.  Some days, she would be a male, others a female.  Eventually, for the sake of variety, it was settled to be a girl, and all instances of mistaken gender identity were quickly forgotten.












As you can see, for most of the dailies, the baby dragon is a "he", but for the Sunday comic, "he" suddenly becomes a "she".  It was as if Chris Brown couldn't be bothered to remember the difference.





The majority of these strips were found in the later months of 1993, but the baby dragon started showing up less and less, only showing up one last time for a Sunday comic extravaganza to make up for all the other times she didn't appear.

Appealing to the Gods

In the world of Broom Hilda, Magic is an accepted commodity with the existence of a 1500 year-old witch.  So the presence of talking figures in the clouds isn't exactly a common factor you'd expect to come across.

And yet, the faceless Powers that Be made infrequent reoccurring appearances with the regular cast of Broom Hilda.  Broomie wisely opted out after hearing her complaints voiced out beforehand.  Gaylord in contrast seeks more conventional knowledge.  Going to the fount of impeccable logic only to be met with a resounding answer of equal profoundity.

In contrast, the last member of the group, Irwin simply goes for the simplest method possible that even the Gods couldn't see coming.

Forgotten Characters: Broomie's Girls

While doing research on the subject of my last post, I accidentally came upon some unintended interesting comics - well, interesting only to me, I guess.

Broom Hilda spends so much time with her mainly male friends and is generally so man-crazy that her range of acquaintance outside her limited field of interest would be rather narrow.  However, for a week, we got introduced to a trio of witches just as wretched as her.

You'd think that having some female friends who she'd be open to sharing her personal thoughts and secrets to someone who'd understand what it'd be like living hundreds of years without finding potential suiters, and not feel pressured to keep up the facade of her masculine attitude (which is her default setting).

Of course, this is still a broad comic written by a man, so any instances of feminine vulnerability is going to be misplaced.

Sadly, their presence is in the vein of a Sexy Lamp Test.  If you can replace a woman with a lamp, and the movie still works without their input, then it has failed in making female representation.  Only, in this instance, that sex appeal falls by the wayside for making ugly jokes.

Fun fact - this storyline actually started on Tuesday, and concluded on Monday, Halloween Night.

As we can see, these women appeared once in a rather forgettable holiday celebration, and then were never seen again.  So why did I bother posting this week of inconsequential events?  Simply because there were two Sunday comic that showed their reappearance, with a fourth member joining their ranks.  For years, I wondered who these complete strangers were, having had no context for their appearance.

You'd think the tall one was left out because she wouldn't have been able to fit in the smaller comic.  But if you look above, you'll see she was there.  The newest addition is actually the jowly man-faced one.  After that, the very next comic reduces their number to just three again, but eliminates the tall one completely.