Tyrra's Huskyshines: Disguise

And now for something kinda different: a new series of filler strips featuring everybody's favorite paranormalist talking dog, Tyrra the Hyper Husky, cooking up her usual monkeyshines (or in her case, "huskyshines") around Walpurgis. In this first installment, our canine heroine pays tribute to that classic trope, the "Conspicuous Trenchcoat".

• I got inspired to do this after watching the first "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie with my bro-in-law, and we started riffing on why not-so-ordinary characters in movies, TV shows, cartoons, and comics use this type of disguise. It then hit me that Tyrra could be such a character, as it could be the only way (in her head) that she could get away with being herself and not draw attention.
• Originally, Tyrra was supposed to be wearing sunglasses, but goggles turned out to be more fun to draw. The bizarre gradient coloring on them was something I played with.
• Fedoras have always been a challenge to draw. I started researching characters who wear that type of hat, like Indiana Jones and the Spirit, but then I looked at Agent P (Perry the Platypus) from "Phineas & Ferb" and noticed how slightly exaggerated the look of his fedora was, so Tyrra's ended up with a toony-but-still-stylish design.
• "Jekyll Park" is a playful nod to Hyde Park in London, England (Get it? Heh, heh...I'm such a dork.). 
• Damen und Herren, I present to you: Tyrra's catchphrase! It's from a 1939 "Merrie Melodies" cartoon by Tex Avery called, "Fresh Fish"; a two-headed fish voiced by Mel Blanc, in a running gag, keeps asking the narrator where it can find Robert L. Ripley of "Ripley's Believe It or Not!"-fame. It seemed like a funny line for the Husky to say as an icebreaker for people reeling in shock at the sight of a talking dog.
• Not sure why, but I thought the guy reading the newspaper came out kinda looking like Leonard MacLeish from the new "Pound Puppies" cartoon. Probably just a weird co-inky-dink, then again, I have started watching that show.
• Not only are we introduced to Tyrra's snazzy catchphrase, but also to "The Walpurgis Oracle", the city's newspaper. The photo of Quacklad on the front page was cropped from an old drawing I made for Halloween last year showing the Duck and Tyrra fighting a parody of the Great Pumpkin (the Scarecrow King) while a Linus-type kid, unaware of the battle, is patiently waiting for his beloved made-up holiday icon.
• For anybody  who can barely read the headline tag on the front page of the newspaper, it's "Half-man, half-duck creature lurks in city!" I look at Quacklad's existence as known only to those who have had a past acquaintance with him or seen in him in action with Tyrra, yet he's still considered an urban legend to the outside world. The other lines are "I've seen him!" and "more will-o'-the-wisp sightings!"
• I was a bit wary on using the photo of Bat-Boy of "Weekly World News"-fame, but seeing as how Bat Boy is in the public domain, what with him appearing in PRACTICALLY EVERY MEDIA outside of his usual printed sightings, it seem legit to pull off. Also, look at it as a playful tribute to both the horror comedy element of "Quacktown" and the 20th anniversary of the character's first appearance in 1992.
• Under the photo, we're introduced to Quacklad and Tyrra's unofficial phone number for their freelance paranormal investigation services, 555-GHUL (a nod to Daffy's number in "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters", 555-KWAK). Their business motto's a rephrasing of Van Helsing's last lines in the last chapter of Bram Stoker's "Dracula".
• Our good friends at Wikipedia define a "ghoul" as followed: "a type of jinn that feeds on human corpses, abducts young children to eat, lures unwary people into abandoned places, often classified as undead. The creatures usually dwells in graveyards and cemeteries." Gruesome, isn't it? Even weirder is this: "Ghoul is from the Arabic ghul, from ghala 'to seize'." The "GHUL" part of the number only came to be from me remembering the word's constant usage in all the "Scooby-Doo" incarnations in both normal and abbreviated pun-form.
• I'm happy with how the background's mid-afternoon sky turned out (nice blend of blue and pink, like cotton candy).

More huskyshines to come, folks!