Scary Miss Mary

    (Mighty Fine, 2001)
™ and © Mighty Fine

Remember Little Lotta and Little Dot, the obsessive-compulsive girls of Harvey Comics? That’s pretty much the deal with Scary Miss Mary, except her fixation is on very sharp objects. And for a title that tries so hard to be (heh-heh) edgy, the results are pretty uninteresting.

The art can’t be faulted — Jill Friemark is a talented cartoonist — but this comic book is entirely too cute and innocent, if it’s intended for the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac crowd. She doesn’t cut herself or others (not that I’m advocating either); she just, likes, rather blandly, knives. Miss Mary isn’t so much a creation as a would-be star of merchandise geared toward the alternative set. There’s definitely a market for this sort of thing, if the Goth girls clutching lunch boxes covered in Hello Kitty stickers are any indication (it’s fitting that this issue comes with a page of Scary Miss Mary stickers), but she doesn’t make for an interesting comic-book character.

— S.A. Bennett
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