Pacific Comics have already been part of our Tentacle Tuesday line-up (see here), but I’d like to finish what I started. Our intrepid team (read: me and husband) has gone through a bunch of PC comics to save you the trouble of looking for tentacles where there’s none to be found (sniff, sniff). The result? (Only) two covers, and a horrifying (in its implications) inside story.

Have you ever seen a Rhunk? That’s the friendly (*too* friendly, as we’ll see later) creature with a snout and a full set of tentacles you see below.

“Pride of the Fleet” (written by Bruce Jones, pencilled by Frank Brunner and inked by Mike Mignola), published in this issue, is a chilling story, but not because of the alien creature that threatens the swordmistress and her highly impractical costume. Have I already mentioned that Bruce Jones can get seriously nasty?

“Methodically, as if confident of the helplessness of its prey, it advanced on her, muscles riding in sensuous rhythm along its shoulders, tentacles twitching in anticipation. Sheffield felt her blood turn to ice…”

This is the story of a highly intelligent but “funny-looking” man who wanted Dejah Thoris (our heroine) so badly that he transformed himself into a rhunk (and tricked her into doing the same) just so he could rape her. To which I’ll add that she trusted and admired him, and considered him a (platonic) friend. Talk about a horror story about one of those prototypical “nice” guys. Ouch.

I really hope she’ll have the satisfaction of dismembering him at some point, but it seems unlikely. You can read the story here.

I realize that it’s anticlimactic – some straightforward spiky plant tentacles after the previous mindfuckery – but to get PC over with, one more cover:

Finita la commedia…

~ ds