CSBG Archive
365 Reasons to Love Comics #106
Maybe Brian’s late (too much Playstation, that’s what it is!), but the 365 Reasonsmobile keeps on keepin’ on! Surely you can enjoy this delightful, competently-written and always-on-time daily title!
Yeah, it’s “Ape”-ril, but today is all monkey business with comics’ sexiest monkey who throws a monkey wrench into the semi-apocalypse, monkey monkey. Monkey. Everybody loves monkeys.
4/16/07
106. Ampersand
Now, I’m not the world’s biggest Brian K. Vaughan fan, and I can’t say Y: The Last Man really interested me much, but if there’s one thing that title has going for it, it’s Ampersand, the little Capuchin monkey and pet/partner of Yorick, the “Y” in “Y: The Last Man.”
Ampersand was an experimental monkey accidentally sent to Yorick. Soon after, the malepocalypse strikes, killing every dude on the planet. Yorick and Ampersand are the only male mammals left alive. How did they survive the plague? Well, it’s incredibly spoilery and the HTML won’t let me hide it, from what I can tell. Those of you who haven’t read it can surely find it online, and those of you that know it understand why our last man and last monkey are protected.
Ampersand is a rebellious little monkey. He’s apparently untrainable, so he wears diapers, though that doesn’t stop his poop flinging, from what I gather. He and Yorick are pals, but antagonistic toward one another occasionally.
The Y cover artists must love to draw Ampersand, because he appears on so many damn good covers. I’m going to share the best and most prominent Ampersand covers with you now. Click to embiggen!
All the lady Capuchins must love Ampersand. Of course, he is the last male monkey around, so I suppose he gets all the ladies by default. Monkeykind’s downfall is Ampersand’s romantic salvation!
Ampersand: Greatest fictional character named after a grammatical symbol? Is he the only one? (Well, there’s Asterix for those of you who want to squabble about spelling, I suppose.)
15 Comments
Iain
April 16, 2007 at 5:06 pm
I just want to point out that if Comrade Dmitri-9 doesn’t appear this month I will organise a CSBG boycott.
“Atomic death ensues!”
Dan K
April 16, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Alright! I’d forgotten about Ampersand. My second favorite comics character named after a typographical symbol.
Rebis
April 16, 2007 at 5:48 pm
“Ampersand: Greatest fictional character named after a grammatical symbol?”
Well, I loves me some Ampersand, but let us not forget the brilliant (if underexposed) Grant Morrison creation: Agent ! (from the Brotherhood of Dada).
Dan K
April 16, 2007 at 6:03 pm
“Well, I loves me some Ampersand, but let us not forget the brilliant (if underexposed) Grant Morrison creation: Agent ! (from the Brotherhood of Dada).”
For me its
1. Asterix
2. Ampersand
3. Agent !
Foldedsoup
April 16, 2007 at 6:40 pm
All I’m saying is “Super Apes.” Those Commie bastards better show up this month.
And Ampersand should start a band. All the Mysterions are dead, right?
Jonathan Hamilton
April 17, 2007 at 7:37 am
Strictly speaking, the symbol is called the asterisk, not the asteriks (as would rhyme approximately with Asterix).
J to the A.A.P.
April 17, 2007 at 8:10 am
Indeed, he shot JFK fer crissakes!
Dan K
April 17, 2007 at 8:47 am
“Strictly speaking, the symbol is called the asterisk, not the asteriks (as would rhyme approximately with Asterix).”
He’s still named after the asterisk, just as Obelix is named after the obelisk.
km
April 17, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Speaking of everybody’s favourite Gauls…and going right off-topic for a moment…a World Comics theme week (month?) would be deeply, deeply cool.
DanCJ
April 18, 2007 at 12:53 am
I’ve never been quite sure if it’s deliberate or a happy coincidence that the two main characters in Asterix have names that work in English as well as French
The Cosh
April 18, 2007 at 1:35 am
Cacofonix. Getafix. Vitalstatistix. Mykingdomforanos.
The coincidences mount up.
J To The AAP
April 18, 2007 at 2:52 am
The Cosh, that aren’t their French names, most villager’s names differ in each language except for Asterix and Obelix themselves.
DanCJ.
April 18, 2007 at 5:17 am
That’s right. The only one I can think ofhand is Getafix who’s called Panoramix in France – which does work in English but they changed it anyway
Dan K
April 18, 2007 at 11:30 am
Interestingly in French Obelix’s dog, Dogmatix, is called Idefix, a pun on the French for ‘fixed idea.’ So the English keeps the original meaning and also adds an extra pun.
DanCJ
April 19, 2007 at 3:46 am
That looks like damning evidence that Asterix is really English and they just pretend it’s French for street credibility!!!