Does anyone else worry?

[aberrantangels]

Getting kicked in the teeth! The *healthy* way to start your day!
— Wanderer, on learning that the justifiably infamous P. Jurado, the Dark Jackass of Lemons, had made a comeback

I'll be out of touch soon, I suspect — family Christmas away from these computers and all — but I want to leave thessalian with the best Christmas present I can give her for free:

the news that I'm beginning to worry about hardartist. (To which the said sweet bird's reaction is probably "What took you so long?")

They killed off the only likeable character!
Joel and the 'bots, after watching The Girl in Lovers Lane

There is a story told about Charles Addams. Supposedly, he submitted a cartoon to The New Yorker (either once a year or just once) in which a man in a maternity ward says, to the delivery nurse with an armful of joy-bundle, "Don't bother to wrap it; I'll eat it here." On counterfactually seeing which, the magazine's editors allegedly knew it was time to enroll Chas. in the nearest convenient laughing academy.

I started to get the same feeling about Hard when, just because he couldn't figure out what to do with her, he killed off one of the sanest characters in all of SL. (Once upon a time, Mark was probably the strip's token sane person, but having to share living space with Mike has put creases in his brain that he'll probably never be able to unfold.)

The strip after that, he had Chie Sakamachi (the queen of buck cake) get blood all over her face.

The strip after that, he replied to the thoughts of those who'd been thinking Shiunji Watanabe the wacky necrophile was going to cross over into another plotline — by giving us a plot twist that made me, at least, wish he had.

It's all been downhill from there.

I once expressed a desire to create a game which could hurt gamers, and now I've done so...
— J. Parish, writing as Hideo KOJIMA

In retrospect, I noticed the warning signs. I may be pushing it, but I think Young Artists in Love was his earliest cry for help. The first sign of his hostility to his audience was probably the text at the beginning of Too Much of a Good Thing V (the strip before the death of Natsuki): For those of you who tried to get me to censor myself, this one's for you.

The sentiments Marcus expresses in the comments to this post are more or less the reverse of my own feelings on the matter. In the light of Natsuki's death, I had to re-evaluate Buck Cake Nights. In fact, I think the last strip I didn't worry about was this one.

I think paulsoth said it best:

Unless I'm mistaken, severe genital mutlation [sic] is the only disgusting thing you've yet to cover.

Now, some of you may be asking yourselves at this point: how can someone who has flemco on his friendslist, who regularly reads the strip that put kobold on the map, and who has spoken approvingly of ghastlycomic, complain about Hard?

Easily. All three cartoonists have moral centers that are seriously off-kilter by societal standards, but I still get the sense that they retain some awareness of
a) where civil society's moral center is and
b) what a moral center is in the first place.

I get less and less sense of either of those from Hard. I don't seriously think he's going to end up as a headline in WaiWai ("The Canadian creepo's captive cutie" or some such), but if it happens, I'll certainly be able to nod sagely and claim to have sounded a word of warning.

He's now preparing to wrap up the Suicide Girl storyline. I've imagined how that would end for a while (insofaras as anyone but Jörg Buttgereit can imagine such a thing), but I'm sure the reality will be much more...more.

I'll stay around at least until then. Hard is being kind enough to document his deteriorating mental state for future generations, after all.