"The Caterer"

http://www.thealienonline.net/features/lint_caterer_apr02.asp?tid=3&scid=26&iid=521

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560256842/qid=1140121736/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-5186016-8890306?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

"The Caterer was a strange one - he didn't have any special powers, he was this blond grinning college kid as far as I could make out. He sometimes pulled a gun. There just didn't seem to be [any rhyme or reason]... the character would fly into a rage about things. But it was strangely hypnotic, I must say. We had fan mail." One such missive, printed in the "Your Yell!" letters page of issue 4, reads: "Dear Caterer, I love your adventures and want to be like you. How can I be the Caterer? I said to my friends your words 'Don't trouble me' and they beat me up on Monday. But I think this is all part of becoming The Caterer." The sign-off at the end reveals the letter to have been from a wide-eyed Martin Amis. All the more disturbing is that he would have been 26 at the time.

[...]

Tracing The Caterer's motives is a parlour game for Lint fans. Anyone with a moustache enrages The Caterer, provoking him to "punch that demon from your face and save you from it", an enterprise which often leaves the victim's entire head a bloody mass. He is twice seen to be strangely disarmed by the sight of a spacehopper, standing motionless for fifteen panels (some readers regard the spacehopper as The Caterer's "kryptonite"). His general outlook is one of childish glee at some untold knowledge. "Age is not for acrobats," he smirks at a pompous tailor, before grabbing up a chair and smashing him to the floor. There is speculation that Hoston Pete, a strange piratical character who only visits Jack Marsden in his basement, is a representation of Lint himself. "There is a resemblance," says Sienkel enigmatically. Many readers believe that Hoston Pete is only visible to Marsden and is a schizophrenic "voice" which impels The Caterer to misdeeds. If he is Lint, then this is the author manifesting to direct his characters (shades of Morrison's Animal Man). However, in issue eight the spectral sidekick meets his end when our hero finally notices his moustache.

Several dissertations have been published deconstructing the long, complicated rant in issue 6 about how goats have the skeletal system of chickens (the most incisive being 'That's no scarecrow, it's a crucifix in a hat! True Phantoms in The Caterer' by Alaine Carraze). The tirade, conducted over five dense pages after Marsden interrupts a school swimming meet, has been interpreted as everything from a critique of Jimmy Carter's then-undisclosed connection to the Trilateral Commission, to a warning about genetic tampering, to homosexual panic (which would jibe with the moustache attacks). Certainly The Caterer's friends are bewildered (or understanding) enough to stand listening to this drivel. But when he tries to leave by riding on an unwilling dog, the cops arrive on the scene and Marsden goes into one of his frenzies. All credit is due to Pearl Comics for portraying the relatively static scene of the diatribe on the cover, rather than the explosive gun battle which follows.

The final (and perhaps least characteristic) issue has The Caterer leaving his small town setting, visiting a thinly-disguised version of Disneyland and simply going berserk. A certain amount of subtlety is lost in this issue and it is still disputed as to whether Pearl Comics was already crashing (and Lint was therefore going out in a blaze) or Lint had gone on some psychological bender which provoked the company's downfall. Sienkel claims that the title was going great guns until The Caterer's "Mouse World" adventure. "The Caterer just rolls up in that strange sedan he was always riding around in, and the minute he gets out he just starts shooting the hell out of everyone. There's hardly even any dialogue, I think at one point he says 'Don't come any closer' or something, but that's it. He's shooting a guy in a duck costume when he says it." This apocalyptic issue caused parents to complain and shocked newsvendors to cancel, but it was the threat of legal action from the Disney Company which troubled Pearl executives. It could not be denied that some of the spree victims resembled copyrighted Disney characters (in particular the mouse Satanic Radar Ears) and, with the middling-to-poor sales of other Pearl titles Fantastic Belt, Rocket Trouble and The Mauve Enforcer, Pearl filed for bankruptcy in May 1976.