11. Meek And Gilda "The Otterman Cometh Back" (Un-Iverse #22)
Rating: PG. (Adult themes, scatological humor, and some violence).
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Author's Note For Meek And Gilda #11 "The Otterman Cometh Back" (Un-Iverse #22)
Do you know what I love most about Otterman's arc in this issue? He's the villain! No redemption arc, no misguided conflict with the heroes, he's just a crook who stole the Moona Painting to gain power. Otterman was designed to be a straight-up villain in my earliest Gilda And Meek comics and the redemption arc was very much something developed along the way, and leaned more heavily into for this final iteration. But I like that I was able to use Otterman as originally intended for this one and only story.
This story has gone through a few iterations since I was a teenager and Meek's "Tibetan Method" was always gonna be in it (I was nuts for Twin Peaks as a kid). It never really quite gelled or worked back in the day, but I think it finally does here. Ottermammoth is also from that story, as is the Moona Painting. Fun Fact: In the end of that version of the story, the Moona head came to life and became a minor group sidekick on the level of Fuzzy and Scuzzy. If you think that's a terrible idea, and that there is no way in hell that could possibly work, now you have some idea why I quit the saga for nearly 20 years.
The Humans story is sort of brimming with Twin Peaks references. This will not be an outlier going forward.
With a few years hindsight, I honestly think this specific Unkie Matty story is the very worst story in this version of The Un-Iverse. And Unkie Matty wound up the worst portion of the canon. But what's interesting about the story, and why I'm glad I did it despite it being so badly written, is this is the ONLY story in this version of The Un-Iverse that was devised in gradeschool. I never put it to paper but a similar idea of trope busting was used in my head with the Gilda And Meek characters. And I could never figure out how to work it without making Meek seem like the asshole of the year. And worse, if he wasn't, he'd lose the game and be UNABLE to subvert the "Girls always win" trope. It was a balancing act and something I tried very hard to make fit. And the solution was to make the protagonist an unlikable character like Unkie Matty so that when the trope is subverted you already think he sucks. The story title "This Is Why We Don't Do This" is a tribute to the fact that I finally figured out an (admittedly shaky) way to finally tell it. Even though it sucks, it felt like a victory for that reason.
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