Comic Book Review: Lenore
A Cute Little Dead Girl

Zombos Says: Excellent

Work with me here.

Take a deep breadth. Close your eyes. I need you to imagine cracking open a New Yorker magazine from way way back and coming across a Charles Addams cartoon. Feel free to smirk, laugh, chuckle, or whatever the thought forces your lips into doing. Now it gets a bit harder. I need you to mime opening the Witch model kit from Aurora. I suppose one of those reissues will do, but those Aurora cardboard boxes had a unique smell that's hard to recapture. Then again, maybe it's just me and the way I remember it. You will need to uncap a Testor's tube of glue and take a whiff–but just a very very small one. I know it's just in your imagination, but let's not get carried away. Now envision all those creepy, Gahan Wilsonesque, plastic pieces painted in garish, shiny,colors–no matte finishing allowed. We want it bright and surreal and Def Leppard soft in tone. Exhale. Now open your eyes.

Welcome to the weird world of Lenore, the cute little dead girl.

In the Macabre Malevolence of Mortimer Fledge, Lenore's shocking rebirth into dead-dom is illustrated shockingly by Roman Dirge, for her move over to her new publisher, Titan Books. And this time her deathly pallor is given some color to liven things up. Just enough to keep the embalming fluid that sprays out of her autopsied body a nicely pale yellow, the Aliens' cargo loader–controlled by Ragamuffin (immortal vampire turned ragdoll. Really.)–a seedy mustard shade, and Mr. Fledge's Balloon Bug Hat quite festive.

Sadly, Mr. Fledge is not in a festive mood. He's been shocked into living for over a hundred years after cute little Lenore wakes up dead on his autopsy table; after he has removed her organs and weighed them; after he has sucked out her blood and replaced all of it with embalming fluid. But missing vitals and terminal pneumonia cannot keep ten-year old Lenore down for long. And boy is she miffed. So is Mr. Fledge. After all the years, after losing his business, his wife, and his life, he has finally tracked her down for his revenge to be consummated. Sort of.

But there is more. The Parasol Princess reminds us of how Roman Dirge can take a sad little story and make it happy, for about three seconds, before making it even sadder. A wondrous master with the one-page story, he also wedges in a Lenore-twisted Mary, Mary Quite Contrary nursery rhyme, and his Things Involving Me, which is like a Ripley's Believe It or Not but only more personally embarrassing and bizarre.

This issue of Roman Dirge's Lenore: The Cute Little Dead Girl, which should have been numbered issue fourteen, is actually numbered Volume 2, No. 1. I suppose Titan Books wanted to restart the numbering since they now own the publishing rights. They've also added color. Not that Dirge's panels really needed it; but with it, those panels, filled with his loony characters–and even Lenore–take on a new life. This issue has two different covers available. I rarely if ever purchase cover a, cover b editions, but this is Lenore we are talking about. I would do anything for her.