Ghastly's Ghastly Comic is a webcomic

Webcomic

Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....

 by Chris Cracknell, A.K.A. "Ghastly" or "Uncle Ghastly", dealing with anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 fetish

Sexual fetishism

Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...

 and paraphilia

Paraphilia

Paraphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her...

s. One of the most notable themes is tentacle rape

Tentacle rape

is found in some horror or hentai titles, with tentacled creatures having sexual intercourse with female characters. The genre is popular enough in Japan that its occasionally even the subject of parody. In recent years, Japanese and Asian films of this genre have become more common in the United...

, as the subtitle of the comic is "Tentacle Monsters and the Women Who Love Them".

In July, 2006, the author suddenly announced that the comic was indefinitely suspended, later clarifying that this was due to a serious illness. The comic is currently on an artist-imposed hiatus.

Synopsis

The plot begins with two tentacle monsters (their origins are not specified), Glemph and Nort, who hang around in a Canadian bar, "The Spanked Monkey". As it progresses they meet several people who have trouble fitting into normal society because of their deviant behaviour or sexual preferences, for example Freddy who is a transgender version of James from Pokémon

Pokémon

is a media franchise published and owned by the video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games developed by Game Freak, Pokémon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video...

 and Sue who is trapped in a chibi

Chibi

is a Japanese slang word meaning "short person" or "small child". The word has gained currency amongst fans of manga and anime. Its meaning is of someone or some animal that is small. It can be translated as "little", but is not used the same way as chiisana [小さな] but rather cute...

 form. The comic features a variety of cultural phenomena: Chick Tracts, Cthulhu

Cthulhu

Cthulhu is a fictional character that first appeared in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. The character was created by writer H. P...

 and of course, tentacle rape

Tentacle rape

is found in some horror or hentai titles, with tentacled creatures having sexual intercourse with female characters. The genre is popular enough in Japan that its occasionally even the subject of parody. In recent years, Japanese and Asian films of this genre have become more common in the United...

.

Career

Chris Cracknell (born September 13, 1965) is a musician and webcartoonist, best known for this comic. He is also the leader of the band Science Ninja Big Ten, AKA Big Fake Heart Attack. Since 2009, he has been pursuing a career as a stage actor. He has since appeared in four plays, The Suicide, Tafford Tanzi, Fair LIberty's Call, and Vieux Carre. He is a resident of Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton, Ontario

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

Google Seppuku

Google Seppuku is a game and internet meme

Internet meme

The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...

 that first made its appearance on Ghastly's Ghastly Comic. The game consists of going onto the Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 search engine, and using a special language tool to type random Japanese characters into the image search box, and searching. The number of points you get is dependent on how many different images you view before you see an image so disturbing, you wish you never played the game. The actual name of the game comes from the Japanese word seppuku

Seppuku

is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies , or as a form of capital punishment...

 describing the act of disemboweling oneself as part of ritual suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

.

External links

• Ghastly's Ghastly Comic
• Ghastly's Live journal
• http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20050417.html -The original comic where Google Seppuku first appeared. (Contains profanity)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_0ILxeXs8E - See Uncle Ghastly introduce himself
• http://www.livejournal.com/community/googleseppuku/ -A LiveJournal
  LiveJournal
  LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....
  
   community
  Community
  The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
  
  dedicated to the game and its results.
• Ghastly's YouTube profile
• Operation BSU