Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl Vol. 5, “Purple Nurples”

I will freely admit that before reading the most recent collection of Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl comics, ‘Purple Nurples,‘ I really only knew about Lenore from my teenage goth phase spent lurking around Hot Topic. I’m happy to say that Lenore has lasted a lot longer than my goth phase and holds waaaaaay more actual entertainment value.

‘Purple Nurples’ is the fifth volume of Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl, which started in 1998 (released by Slave Labor Graphics) and took a break in 2007, before restarting in 2009, released by Titan Magazines.  The hardcover collections of Lenore are really gorgeous graphic novels. The paper quality is glossy and thick, the binding isn’t cheap or loose, and the printing is top notch, with crisp colors.  They’re great for any collectors and the additional artwork and pinups just look excellent in such high quality.

‘Purple Nurples’ collects Lenore (‘volume II,’ after the relaunch from Titan) issues #4 – 7. These issues contain a short storyline about the extremely creepy Creepig – summoned by excessive pork (such as eating a bacon wrapped hotdog after midnight). ‘Purple Nurples’ also has some stand alone miscellaneous wacky adventures, which definitely very wacky are also deliciously morbid – like the tale of Lenore’s two companions, Ragamuffin and Pooty, hunting a murdered clown through the ever-increasingly large spooky house they live in. This, by the way, was my favorite story, as it contained two different plot threads, a distinct amount of what the hell, hero?, and just enough meta humor.

While I’m pretty new to Lenore, this collection did a really good job at getting me interested in the cute little dead girl. It was a great example of the vague mythos creator Roman Dirge has set up, including some small details about Lenore’s death and background about her oddly benevolent, serial killer neighbor Taxidermy. ‘Purple Nurples’ is a good microcosm of the morbid, dark humor Lenore is famous for. My only real problem with this volume is that Dirge’s dialog sometimes really relies too heavily on unoriginal gags. A good (bad?) example is the one instance of the use of meme ‘ERMAHGERD!‘ which had me wincing. In a collection of uniquely dark and funny storytelling, including some great dialog, sight-gags and characters, these lines really stuck out to me. It wasn’t enough to made me put the book down, but it’s definitely a touch cringe-inducing at times.

Beyond these few problems, this comic is a great one for anybody who loves Jhonen Vasquez (who, unsurprisingly, has contributed to Lenore previously) or light-hearted yet SUPER morbid humor. I imagine anybody who already reads and loves Lenore would really enjoy this volume. It also really grabbed me, a first time reader, hard enough that I’ll be going back and checking out other collections for certain.