The Laundry Monster and Plop

The Laundry Monster is one of the villains in my first book, Glazed Man & Rat Girl. It’s a rather unusual villain in that it’s not actually a person. It’s made up of Johnny Crumb’s old stinky laundry. It comes to life when Johnny tosses his radioactive socks on top of the pile. The Laundry Monster has never gotten as much press as the main villain, RoboCreep, but truth be told, I’ve always enjoyed it’s scenes in the book more than RoboCreep’s. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just how my warped brain works. Or, maybe it’s because it reminds me of an old comic book series that inspired me to create such a character in the first place. Plop is the name. It was a short-lived monthly comic book collection from DC comics, of weird and slightly gross humor from the mid 1970’s.

I was going through my personal comic book collection the other day and I came across the specific issue of Plop that contained the short story It Came From Beneath The Sink that I’m pretty sure was the inspiration for my Laundry Monster storyline. I’ve included the first couple of story panels here for you to see how it all began. As a twelve-year old reading this stuff, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I guess it made an impact on me because as you can see, my Laundry Monster has an awful lot in common with this Garbage Monster.

The funny thing is, the rest of the story isn’t all that funny. I re-read it recently in preparation for this article. But, I guess it’s the concept that still cracks me up, just thinking about it. So, there you have it fans. For all of you who have wondered where I get all of my crazy ideas. Many of them come from off-the-wall comic books like Plop and another one that I will have to dig up some day and share with you called Not Brand Echh. I’ll save that one for a later post.