The Hidden Perils of Creepy Peepery
Ahhhh, Peeps®. Or should that be “AAAAH!! PEEEEEPS!!!!“?
Dunno about you, but Peeps® kinda creep me right the Hell out.
Though I tend to work under the assumption that this is a sentiment that isn’t shared among most folks, as the damn things are rather popular and ubiquitous, and appear to be viewed as being pretty innocuous*; even to the point of being “cute”.
But to my mind there’s just something inherently sinister about their beady black void-orb eyes and their mutated squishy little corpulently-deformed amputee bodies. Peeps® may be viewed by the majority as being a jolly little jingle, but to me they are more along the lines of what I imagine the muzak in the elevator down into Sheol would sound like.
Just another example of the schism of opinion between me and general popular consensus I guess. Trtpt.
Anyway, I banged the script for this comic out over the course of a couple of hours way back in 2011, and drew this page in July of this year. And I may as well point out that I’ve never eaten a Peep® in my life, nor had I drawn one prior to this, because I’d really rather go play about in the maw of Lamashtu than spend any more time around the damned things than is absolutely necessary.
With this comic being put up online finally, maybe people will understand a little better my reasoning behind that statement.
NEXT WEEK: the third Chelsea and Millie story will begin its online run, which will carry us through into a number of weeks into 2015.
I wrote the bulk of it (around the same time as I wrote this Peep® comic actually) over a 7-10 hour period of script-writing where ideas were flowing thick and fast and yet also enmeshing together very freely and easily, almost as if it were writing itself — and hot damn do I love it when that happens.
But more about that comic next week.
PEEP DREAMS†, EVERYBODY.
*Yeeeaaahh… nah. “Innocuous” like the hideous rictus grin of a ventriloquist’s dummy maybe…
Please don't
Hmm. Peeps, eh? As a wise friend of mine once said, “It takes more than Peeps to make a diorama….”
Related: y’know how sometimes life throws something up at you that is so absolutely absurd, so downright farcical, so full of gibbering ridiculousness that all you can do is laugh maniacally like a coalition of hyenas high on whippets?
This… THIS.
Ohhhh Hollywood, you’re so utterly antipathetic to any measure of innovation within the rigid constraints of your modus operandi lest it fail and ruin a bunch of careers and bankrupt a studio or three, yet when something “outside the box”* does manage to slip through, all of a sudden it’s a free-for-all to quickly churn out a bunch of the same? Why do you only spring into action to capitalise on all the worst bastions of cash-grabbing idiotic thinking disguised as bankable ideas? If this thing actually manages to get off the ground it will be an inalienable stain on the concept of entertainment (because there’s just no way such a thing could be anything other than a nader of taste), of that I am certain.
You need to stop and engage in a spot of introspection Hollywood. All that Peruvian dancing dust combined with the superabundance lazy hack dullards Tyler-Perrying it up in your town appears to be making the groupthink in your pitch meetings truly twisted.
I knew before I even read the article that this is all The LEGO Movie‘s fault.
Seriously, the notion that a PEEPS® movie is an actual thing that people are actually pursuing is the most hilarious thing I’ve encountered since I was first exposed to Die Antwoord [oh you betcha that link ain’t safe fo’ work, guys. Unless your job is particularly Rabelaisian in nature].
Mnnyeeeheeheehee!
*A seemingly poor use of locution on my part there — a movie based on a successful toy line is not innovative in the slightest — but a movie based on a toy-line yet is actually pretty good in spite of itself is a rare thing indeed, eh?
Aaaaaagh! My eyes! My mind! My mind’s eye! THAT’s something I can’t unimagine. :þ
I guess the aphorism has escalated: it takes more than a diorama and some Peeps to make a movie…
Never did trust those Peeps myself.
Though I do wonder what the chances of us getting excited email from an employee of the corporation behind Peeps candy is. Conversely, what the chances are of a ticked off employee of the Peeps corporation is.
I want to believe it’s Peep Corp. I refuse to look up the actual company name, I like mine better.
So I wonder if Chelsea said the word “registered” in in panel 3 or if she said “r in a circle” out loud ;P
Better then the candy corn people, who wash and re-served their product (at least according to Lewis Black)
There was a candy-corn scandal? If that’s true I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. Certain factions of the global candy industry make ol’ Willy “Captain of the Screaming Terror-Boat” Wonka appear saintlike in comparison.
I hadn’t heard of Lewis Black prior to now, but I’ll check his stuff out. Do you happen to have a link to anything directly relating to his bad candy-handling allegations?
I’ve never eaten candy corn either. I pretty much fail at being a candy consumer. Though part of it is me keeping an eye on my sugar intake as I have a family history of diabetes.
And what are the chances Peep Corp. will opt to send the PEEP POLICE after us for this obvious attempt on my part to start a smear campaign against their good PEEPIN’ name?
Probably slightly more of a chance now that you and I keep typing PEEP into this site.
In answer to your concluding question, welp, you asked for it ;)
Technically speaking, word-balloons and the text contained within them are a non-diegetic graphic representation of diagetic sound (which in this case is of course the sound of Chelsea’s voice), yeah? The registered trademark symbol exists here merely as an implication of corporate proprietary as a metaphor — the Corporation (i.e the McNugget-Makers and Peep Corp. Technically two unrelated corporations, yes, but for the purposes of my explanation this is irrelevant — they are an interchangeable metaphor for all forms of corporate malfeasance.) owns the Peeps’ design (its vessel in the material world) and its ingredients just as utterly as it owns the baby chickadee-souls trapped within it.
Although this particular entity has an Evil Overseer in the form of a Board of Directors instead of a pseudepigrapha-derived Satan, the vice-like grip it holds these wretched treat-shaped creatures in is one of both physical and metaphysical damnation all the same.
And thus the wee Peepsies® are utterly powerless to do anything other than accept their fate — that of being spread across the land as Demon Seeds, mere tools of a malignant will, and all they wanted to do was to grow up to be chickens as Nature intended, dammit.
No wonder they be peepin’ so mournfully in the night.
Guess it’s time to cue the sad, oh so very very saaad music.
But that’s humanity for ya, always dicking about with the natural order of things, often in order to grab a quick buck. And so we get this grim two-pronged mockery of the concept of “food” and “chickens”, which is ultimately of little good to anyone except those in control of the Almighty ®.
So in other words, yes, the registered trademark prolly should be audible along with the rest of Chelsea’s spiel — but it’s not coming from Chelsea. It exists only as sinister laughter at the very edge of human auditory perception.
Hence the “Creepy” part of this comic’s title.
And this my spooky chums is an example of why I have “Agent of Dark Nonsense” in my Twitter-bio.