"What lurks inside this reanimated Ragamuffin is what lurks inside the one true heart of all of us - six tenths good intentions driven on by three tenths impish malevolence roughly speckled over by one tenth sheepish faux naivete."
— Nivek Ogre, introducing volume 2.
A series of comic books by Roman Dirge that revolve around Villain Protagonist Lenore, who is a fictional character inspired by the poem Lenore, by Edgar Allan Poe.
The comic tells the dark, humorous adventures of the title character, a strange girl named Lenore, and her variety of friends. Common themes are the reinvention of children's songs, games, and nursery rhymes to something more macabre, and subverting all sorts of pop culture icons and cultural figures into topics of dark comedy.
Lenore's actions often result in the death or injury of those around her, and in various forms of chaos, yet she is not a malicious character, and often thinks she is doing good. Lenore is not the sole focus of the comic, with many stories featuring one-time characters (One of these characters, Samurai Sloth, is set to star in his own series). Also featured are humorous, semi autobiographical accounts of events that happened to creator Roman Dirge, titled Things Involving Me.
Lenore was also featured in a set of 26 short flash movies for Sony's Screen Blast website.
But since Sony has copyrighted most of the episodes but a couple survived, the entire playlist of all the episodes by a spanish Lenore channel can be found here.
This comic features examples of:
- Ax-Crazy: Lenore gets murderous ever so often. She wants to kill Mr. Gosh for stalking her.
- Badass Decay: In-universe example. Ragamuffin often complains about this and remembers how awesome and amazing he was when he was a vampire.
- Body Horror: It's shown that the spell that caused Ragamuffin to turn into a doll made needles and threads burst out of his stomach and start ripping apart his skin, only to sew it back together again as cloth.
- Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': Lenore cuts a woman's nose off in the middle of the street and no one sees her. Lenore kills Mr. Gosh and no one wonders what happened to the guy. Lenore kills an entire group of kids at a birthday party and she hasn't been discovered by anyone. Except the birthday girl, who tries to give a call to the police, but she's killed by accident in the very last moment. Although she doesn't do these things on purpose (
or perhaps she does), Lenore is an authentic Karma Houdini .
- Character Development: Lenore. In the first issues she doesn't really seem to know that she is doing evil things, but later she is quite aware of it and she actually likes it. This is heavily implied in issue #13 where she declares that her dream is to have her own personal army of small Indian boys and to take over the world, while she's smiling mischievously.
- Chronic Pet Killer: Whenever Lenore gets hold of any kind of animal, it doesn't end well.
- The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right: Many instances in which Lenore is indeed right, no matter how absurd they can be.
- Comedic Lolicon: Mr. Gosh. It's definitely Played for Laughs, but letting the joke aside, the guy is obviously obsessed with a ten year old girl.Ragamuffin: Look, man, I don't know what your problem is, but your reign of harassment ends now or I'll cut you, bitch.
She's a ten year old girl anyway. You even realize how creepy you are?
Mr. Gosh: Yeah, but she's been 10 for a loooooong time now, man. - Covert Pervert: Although he's from Hell, you still wouldn't expect a 'thing' like Pooty to be this.Ragamuffin: Pooty, I...I never liked you, but what you did was so noble. Stay with us, buddy, stay with us.
Pooty: It...it hurts so bad. Also, you're touching my left nipple which feels disturbingly nice.
- Crossover: Lenore visited The Haunted Mansion in an issue of Slave Labor Graphics's anthology series based on the attraction, though licensing issues
kept it out of reprints.
- Doppelgänger: Ouchie Boo Boo, Lenore's copy, a demon dressed as a nurse, that kills with syringes.
- Downer Ending: The animated series ends at the finale of the second volume. Lenore is taken by Death to Underworld.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Ragamuffin, after he encountered Lenore. He would kill anything, except her.
- Entendre Failure: When the gnomes told Lenore they have had the chance to multiply in numbers since they have been waiting for her for a long time. And well, they needed to get busy somehow. Lenore doesn't get that.
- Hell: The place where Lenore runs from... or a dimension that looks exactly like it. In either case it smells like fritos.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Lenore and Ragamuffin. Their biological age difference is about 20 years (Lenore being 10-years-old and Ragamuffin 30-years-old) and their real age difference is 300 years (Lenore has been 10 for 100 years and Ragamuffin has been 20-30 for 400 years).
- Loophole Abuse: Done twice in one strip. Lenore, in her Little Bunny Foo Foo costume, is "hopping through the forest, picking up little field mice and bopping them on the head." A Good Fairy appears and tells her not to bop any more field mice("Knock that shit off!"), and Lenore does so. Instead, she decides to bop an armadillo on the head. The Good Fairy immediately comes back to scold her, but Lenore points out she's not bopping field mice this time. The Good Fairy then explicitly orders Lenore not to bop any more mammals at all...so Lenore bops the Fairy instead.
- Mature Work, Child Protagonists: The protagonist Lenore is an undead ten-year-old girl (technically over 100), with creepy childlike innocence towards blood, horror and death. It's a horror series with adult jokes about sex and a high level of violence, so not aimed at ten-year-olds.
- Nightmare Sequence: Pumpkin head. He absolutely adores children...with butter.
- Not Quite Dead: Lenore. After she is sent to Hell, Ragamuffin unburies her and discovers she has ran away from there and that she's still living.
- Obviously Evil: The Toofhairy note .Ragamuffin: Look at it! It's pure evil! It's even got slimy, mouthy things!
- One-Man Army: Ragamuffin massacres tenths if not hundreds of dead Nazi soldiers, that carry ultimate weapons.
- Only Sane Man: Ragamuffin is the only one who thinks clearly and logically when it's necessary, despite his diabolic nature.
- Our Vampires Are Different: They eat people instead of drinking their blood.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Lenore and Ragamuffin. Except someone wouldn't normally expect them to be together like that, because she's a child (or not) and he's a rag doll for the most part of the comics. Unfortunately, there is always the fandom and its alternate versions of the story.
- The Power of Blood: When Lenore pricks her finger and spills a drop of blood on a doll. It turns out to be a vampire that was cursed to be an inanimate plaything, and her blood broke the curse. Unfortunately, he realizes he's still in a doll's body because the curse didn't break properly due to the fact that she is dead.Ragamuffin: Something's wrong. Your blood should have turned me to my own self. Unless something is wrong with your blood?
Lenore: I've been embalmed!
Ragamuffin: <Face Palm> - Rapid-Fire Descriptors: This Flowery Insult has tons of adjectives in a row. "Stupid little puffy rat-midget cotton-tushed cootie infested freak of nature poo poo headed monstrosity of the seventh layer of heck pee pee breathed dookie eating pig loving crab like bow legged creepy ass bulbous headed smaller than a bread box hollow brained gopher licking intestine shaped bacon wrapped no soap using squid slurping botulism growing crotch scratching one balled accidentally birthed filth spreading juice producing greasy palmed fart leaking ball of crap shaped like a man."
- Rejection Affection: Mr. Gosh's persistent crush on Lenore.
- Shout-Out: Lenore was inspired by the poem Lenore by Edgar Allan Poe.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Mr. Gosh is Lenoresexual.
- Surreal Humor: Not through and through, but when the main character is a 10-years-old Undead Child Enfant Terrible who spends most of her time in Cloud Cuckoo Land, this trope does get invoked from time to time.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Zombie versions of dead Nazi soldiers ascend from Hell after Lenore accidentally releases them.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: In the first episode, Lenore kills all the hamsters from a Pet Shop. When the guy who sells at the shop sees the massacre, he throws up.
