Week of 10/14/2024 Sunday-Edition

On this week's Sunday edition of the Sam's Studios newsletter, I review Naughty Bits #27 which goes all the way back to medieval times, and I talk about my second day at SDCC!

Naughty Bits #27 Review

Tarry not brethren, for another issue of Naughty Bits has graced ye presence to soil ye sanctity with prurient, deviant thoughts of the Middle Ages in “Burn Bitch Burn” as we follow M̶i̶d̶g̶e̶ Mygge in the village of Smrdl in 1347 who’s the healer and still the cantankerous Bitchy Bitch we know and love in the present. This being a period of more ubiquitous superstition, Mygge’s demeanor and general vulgarity bear more severe consequences than a few gossipy comments as the villagers mob against her due to suspicions she’s a witch. Well, the suspicions were always there, but a medieval version of Marcie is the real whistleblower after catching sight of Mygge using a cucumber to masturbate in the barn. Once that ball gets rolling, the other villagers begin spying on Mygge misinterpreting fairly innocuous actions and things like her running after her black goat, owning a black cat, and an inadvertently inverted crucifix as sacrilegious rituals.

I found this story middle of the road. I do appreciate that Roberta Gregory took some risks by putting her iconic character in a completely different era, which I think proves how malleable Midge is. She’s the star of the show as usual who carries the humor throughout mostly owing to her antics at the barn. Otherwise, though, the plot beats and potshots feel generally more predictable than I would come to expect from a Bitchy Bitch comic. The village residents are extremely one-dimensional peasant caricatures who are just as backward as one would imagine. In the regular Bitchy Bitch stories, the supporting cast has caricaturish attributes, but I think it works better there for these reasons:

1. There’s a deliberate intent behind it, often to comment and satirize a subject matter such as homophobia, organized religion, work culture, etc.

2. We’re viewing the flat characterizations from Midge’s filtered lenses, so when we do get a story revolving around another character, Gregory fleshes them out more, giving them a layer of depth. This can be seen in, for instance, the Naughty Bits #24 story “Marcie’s Super Sunday” which delves into the inner workings of Marcie’s religious zealotry.

“Burn Bitch Burn” lacks a particular target to comment on beyond essentially saying “Ha, ha, ha, look at these medieval dumbasses!” granted it is funny when the people are taking Mygge’s actions and words out of context coming to the wildest conclusions (hence part of why I say middle of the road and not “bad”). The only reasonable person here is Simon who tries coming to Mygge’s defense and giving her advice. While overall, the comic was just okay, that twist ending absolutely slapped and was one of the funniest I’ve read in the series!¹

Plus, the LETTERS PAGE and excerpts from other comics follow afterward!!

SDCC Day 2 Overview

In most of these convention write-ups, I always report median days as the most momentous ones simply due to how the crowds reach peak attendance numbers. For me, however, it varies and this was one of those times where my first day on Thursday felt more eventful because of how much stuff I was trying to squeeze in which seems to be a common thread during my first time at cons in general.