In 1998, Roman Dirge released some comic strips about a little girl murdering almost anyone she met. Babies? Animals? They'll die horribly. The little girl is called Lenore and she's actually undead, having died of pneumonia 100 years ago. This is theoretically gross (e.g. the slip-and-slide), but the strip takes such innocent joy in grotesque, disturbing and horrific things that it's actually quite funny.

Lenore has a thirteen-issue comic book series from Slave Labor Graphics (aka. Volume I in 1998-2007), a series of 26 animated shorts (2002) and a second comics series from Titan Books (Volume II from 2009 onwards, still running today). I'm reviewing the original Slave Labor Graphics comics, which are interesting because they show the series's massive evolution. To quote Roman Dirge himself... "Noogies, the first trade paperback, has a special place in my dark heart because it was the beginning of the adventure. Most of the tales within were reprints of the original Lenore comics from 1992. They're funny and short, BUT I really couldn't draw that well back then and I also didn't have any direction as to where it was all headed. I was all pimples and just out of high school."

He's right. The first few issues don't worry about plotting or storylines. They're lots of throwaways, often just one-pagers. The macabre sense of humour is fully formed and ready to inflict massive casualties, but the book has no plan and isn't going anywhere. Even Lenore herself isn't the character she'd later become. She doesn't talk much. She's not right in the head. She leaves death wherever she goes, but I don't think she understands the difference between good and evil. She's just a little agent of chaos, doing murderous things because it's funny.

Later issues, though, make her chattier. She doesn't often shut up, whereas it was unusual for the original Lenore to speak. Her mental processes have always been strange, but she's been slowly returning to semi-sentience and can probably now be called a villain protagonist. These days, she seems aware that she's doing evil things and quite likes it. She's also acquired a supporting cast of friends, who all started out as random victims in earlier one-off stories but happened to be scary, freaky and/or disturbing enough for a return visit. In other words, they're often as dangerous and wrong in the head as her. (Choosing to associate with Lenore can't indicate sanity, after all.) These friends include:

1. RAGAMUFFIN = a vampire serial killer trapped inside a stuffed toy, to his disgust.

2. MR GOSH = a corpse with a bag over his head who wants to marry Lenore and isn't dissuaded by, for instance, being run over 164 times in the head with a lawnmower. (Lenore doesn't like Mr Gosh and does things like that whenever she sees him.) The creepy thing is that Lenore's a ten-year-old, even if Mr Gosh points out that she's been ten for a looooooooooong time. He's otherwise a nice guy.

3. POOFY APPLEWATER = a demon from hell with a bucket head. Once, he made rabid love to a goat while wearing a sundress and hat because Lenore incorrectly told him it was necessary. "OK, I... I did it. It was unspeakably awful and I'll forever carry the mental scars, but..."

There are also occasional pages called "Things Involving Me", describing funny weird things that happened to the author. These are a laugh too.

To be honest, I almost prefer the early volumes. I like their rapid-fire density and their greater unpredictability. They also have a higher body count, unless we individually count the demon army soldiers slaughtered by Ragamuffin in issue 12. This is a less unconventional comic strip when its stories have a plot, but Lenore's still a lovable bundle of inappropriateness who'll kill all the children at a birthday party in issue 13. The art's crude and weird. I might yet go looking for the Titan Comics issues (which include something called Lenore: The Time War).