Geek Syndicate
The Abominable Charles
Christopher
Bigfoot has found a home in the
realm of web comics as well. In Karl
Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles
Christopher (2007), Charles is a young
sasquatch who must save the forest and its animal inhabitants from a
great evil. Save for one masked human, all the other characters are animals - quite talkative animals at that.
Charles, on the other hand, is always
silent and straddles the line between
animal and man, which is exactly why
he is the only one who can save the
forest. This is the only portrayal we’ve
looked at in which the Bigfoot isn’t
vocal and human, save for an abundance of hair. Charles Christopher
doesn’t speak and honestly, isn’t the
brightest. But even as he’s more like
an animal than most of the other portrayals, he still comes off as highly human simply because of how child-like
he is, even sucking on a pacifier in the
first few pages.
Bigfoot has been a part of pop culture for over half a century, and his
role in comics has really boomed in
the last decade. The prolific
rise of social media and the
internet and news’ fascination with odd and hilarious
news stories, like the Bigfoot
hoaxes involving Tom Biscardi in 2005 and 2008, has
put Bigfoot and the often
ridiculous ways people attempt to prove his existence,
in people’s mind once again.
People are fascinated by the
strange and weird, and even
more so by something that
many see as so close to being
discovered, despite decades
of no real evidence.
It could be that some of
these Bigfoot stories were
born of this media attention,
prompting the writers to
delve into tales that examine
the mysterious cryptid and
what living on the peripheral
of society might be like. The
stories explore the role that
an undiscovered, human-like
primate would play in the
world, straddling the line of
man and beast. It seems like
writers are able to use the
character and archetype to
explore humanity and what
exactly it means from the
perspective of something
that will never be human
while also exploring a sense
of belonging through the
eyes of a character that never
truly feels he belongs. It’s interesting to see various writers lend a voice to a creature
that humans have told stories
of for hundreds of years, further continuing the tradition
and expanding even further
upon the mythos that already
surrounds Bigfoot. Bigfoot
doesn’t really “belong” anywhere in these stories and
that resonates with so many
readers as they constantly
struggle to find their place in
the world and make sense of
it all.
Leo Johnson
41