The Wrong Barbershop

This is Osmond Fuzzbottom, who is a sort of like a hobbit, but more like an anthropomorphic bear-sort-of-thing. This is the unfortunate story of his Uncle Prinkel. I wrote it after having seen Tim Burton's film adaption of Sweeney Todd in 2007, and after I watched a local production of the play last week, I decided to dig out my old drawing and finish it up.

Osmond is a character I made up for this particular gag. He's sort of a cross between Winnie-the-Pooh with his young human boy companion, Peter Rabbit whose father was caught by Mr. McGregor and baked into a pie by his wife, and Mole from Wind in the Willows, with maybe a bit of hobbit thrown in as well. The homicidal barber in the last panel is, of course, Sweeney Todd, villain of Victorian-era penny dreadfuls and vengeful protagonist of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, whose victims' bodies provided the filling for Mrs. Lovett's famous meat pies.

Why did an anthropomorphic bear-thing with a fur coat go to get a shave? Um, let's say that maybe he went in to get his mustache trimmed, but Sweeney just slit his throat with the straight razor, 'cause that's how Sweeney rolls? Yeah, that works.