Something at the Window Is Scratching

Gr 7 Up—First published in the United States and Canada in comic book format (Slave Labor Graphics, 1998), this collection of darkly humorous poetry is written in a carelessly rhymed style and accompanies the bizarre—often grotesque—art that has made Dirge's "Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl" series (Slave Labor Graphics) a cult favorite. The tone is macabre, and the use of purposely unsynchronized words is jarring. Here, a reindeer and a bumblebee consummate their love with a kiss that accidentally causes the bee to sting, ripping out the insides and killing the allergic reindeer. A bear discovers bedbugs that eat him when he falls asleep. Eddie Poe, who greatly resembles the famous poet, loves pumpkins so much that he turns into one while visiting the pumpkin patch, and someone "who loved pumpkins/in a different way/…made him into a yummy pie." Dirge's artwork features a Frankenstein-like chef cooking up a "critter pie," a dough-headed vampire who "liked to take pictures/of all his victims/as they died," and a girl who walks into the sea and just floats away.