In addition to rodent inspiration, "Bat Boy" shares with "The Mice" a quirky comic sense: sweet in its way but also fervid, wicked and arch.
It's a celebration that is hard-won, often vivid, sometimes moving, comic and sweet, but that has to be treated with at least a little unease when you consider how the narrative presents us with its villain, the outsider, who is identified by Susie's family by instinct after they simply perceive the man to be a little odd, and after odd, malevolent.
And at the shows of comics Jonny Sweet, Brian Gittins, Felicity Ward, Ginger and Black, or Adam Riches, they were variously electrocuted, sat on, or sheathed in a rubber goat mask and made to dance.
She read books; I watched TV and spent my pocket money on comics and sweets.
Even as the young Mr. Lough's voice changed and he went beyond music to adulthood and a career in advertising, bundles of comics and sweets would be sent to him, usually by elderly ladies.
Flame-haired Rita (or "mam" as I sometimes accidentally call her when she's on screen, as she's been in my life for so long) has decided to put her feet up after three decades of 6am starts selling newspapers, comics and sweets.
The evening's zany opening number, "It's De-Lovely," in which she blended echoes of Mabel Mercer, operetta and screwball humor into a sweet comic froth, set just the right tone.
Could it be that the comic strip — that sweet, sad little relic now crammed between the Daily Jumble and the Sudoku puzzle — once roused readers to anger, once dared to offend?
(Oddly, the only recent amnesia picture that appears fully to embrace this notion is Finnish: the sweet comic fable "Man Without a Past," which is sort of "Random Harvest" without tears).
Back in January, the illustrator captured that very first meeting in a sweet comic series.
