User:Mikeross22/Sandbox/Shamrock Squid

Shamrock Squid is an "open source" comic book character who first appeared in the pages of Daniel Clowes' Eightball, and became a recurring character in other comics published by Fantagraphics. The character is actually an octopus (similar to the Hanna-Barbera character Squiddly Diddly), having eight tentacles, rather than the ten a squid has. A pastiche of the stock Irish character found in a lot of early comic strips, Shamrock Squid is of Irish ethnicity, green (when drawn in color), and smokes a pipe.

While Shamrock Squid was originally featured in Eightball in a one-page "gag" with another new character, Grip Glutz, he made cameo appearances in other alternative comics such as Doug Allen & Gary Leib's Idiotland and Peter Bagge's Hate. The most extensive (and apparently) final appearance of Shamrock Squid was chronicled by Bagge and Adrian Tomine in a seven-page piece in Hate #28 entitled "Shamrock Squid: Autobiographical Cartoonist." The story lampoons autobiographical alternative comics, teenage angst, and fandom; in the story, Shamrock Squid is much less overtly stereotypically Irish than in his earlier appearances.

List of appearances

 * Eightball #10 (Feb. 1993) — "Grip Glutz and Shamrock Squid," by Dan Clowes
 * Idiotland #6 (Aug. 1994) — page of "Shamrock Squid" strips by Doug Allen and Gary Leib
 * Hate #27 (May 1997) — "Up the Irish," by Peter Bagge and Eric Reynolds
 * Hate #28 (Jan. 1998) — "Shamrock Squid: Autobiographical Cartoonist," by Peter Bagge and Adrian Tomine