Week of 7/14/2025
This week, Bob investigates workplace politics on The Shapes, I bring you the latest of what I'm up to, and on Sammy the Critic, write an essay about the latest issue The Lost Dimension.
The Shapes
Bob’s 1st Day of Work 11-12
News
Events
Art Alley & Tampa Local Market
Catch me today at Reservoir Bar’s Artist Alley from 2-5 or 6-ish PM and Tampa Local Market from roughly 6-something to 9 PM! I’ll be selling my usual merch and used books I'm trying to get rid of before I move next month (don’t worry, it’s just a small move).
I’ll also be doing Tampa Local Market July 27 from 11 AM-3 PM if there’s too much to do today!
Inx #27
Some of my Shapes strips are running in the newest issue of the INX comix anthology, which you can download for free or find physical copies of in shops throughout Charlotte, NC.
Sammy the Critic
The Lost Creepypasta: A Wormhole to Nostalgia
Content Warning: Disturbing imagery throughout
Two years having passed since the last issue, the horror comic series The Lost Dimension by French cartoonist Nicolas Le Bault compensates for its long publication gap with a transcendent splash. For the uninitiated who haven’t read my review of the comic, The Lost Dimension follows a girl named Karine who lives with her widowed father in a rural area. The father emanates an aura that’s every bit as creepy as the cover would suggest. While bathing his daughter or pretending to be an elephant by putting a banana in his mouth isn’t inherently degenerate behavior, it’s pretty evident from his grotesque character design and the general uncanny tone that something is up. In the second issue, these passively disconcerting elements culminate when a connection is revealed between that and the disappearance of Karine’s estranged older sister Aurélia. Without spoiling too much, that issue concluded on a cliffhanger with Karine running away from her father after witnessing a rather lurid sight of body horror in the basement.
The Lost Dimension #3, rather than follow up on the cliffhanger, pivots to flashback mode to contextualize the circumstances leading up to Aurélia’s disappearance by really digging into her character. The narration, told from Karine’s point of view, states that the relationship between her father and Aurélia is deteriorating to the point that “he didn’t knock on the door to say goodnight,” implying some fear of her on his side. Still, we never know exactly why, adding yet another element of mystery to his character. Meanwhile, Aurélia is shown to be a depressed, “born in the wrong generation” teenage girl who confines herself to her room. She displays a concerning desensitization to graphic violence as she almost apathetically consumes and exposes her sister to a glut of internet brainrot and torture porn while finding comfort in 1980s to 2000s media. Most of this media is perfectly ordinary fare, like heavy metal music and 8-bit video games. However, there is one obsession that trumps the rest in morbid addiction, an obscure Super Nintendo game titled Pig Zone, the crux of the issue’s prominent thematic elements.
Loosely based on The Legend of Zelda series’ premise, the game follows a Link-like protagonist simply named Boy on a quest in search of a missing princess being held captive by Daddy. At this point, the juxtaposition becomes increasingly evident as Daddy bears a striking resemblance to Karine and Aurélia’s dad, both in appearance and demeanor. Daddy’s periodic taunts throughout the gameplay mirror the father’s eerie expressions. Unlike him, however, Daddy’s devious intentions as the final boss and soul-sucking apparition are outspoken. Even when Boy defeats him, Daddy’s presence is revealed to have a more cosmic reach on the level of a deity that possesses the protagonist with sadistic, demonic traits as he gleefully slaughters the villages he initially protects earlier in the game. From a foreshadowing standpoint, parallels can be drawn between that plot twist and how Aurélia’s dad’s deranged personality is a psychological menace whose effects are an omnipresent blight to her sanity, which she eventually could only truly escape from by completely abandoning her current life, including all of her possessions, lest they trigger an association with it.
You can buy The Lost Dimension #3 on the White Rabbit Prod website.