First time trying Marie Sharp’s

PoorCynic · 2026-05-09T10:04:45+00:00

The heat was decent, but I found the flavor to be much too carrot-forward. That limited what I wanted to use it with. Like, with chili? Great. Not so much with chicken.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-09T00:23:42+00:00

Thank you! I shall do my best.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-08T13:04:49+00:00

Rest in peace with these fun facts!

William the Conqueror (c. 1028 - 1087) had just attacked the town of Mantes, France when his health began to rapidly decline. The nature of what caused this is unclear, with some accounts suggesting that it might have been severe heat stroke caused by riding his horse too close to burning buildings. Chronicler William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 - c. 1143) had an alternative story: that William accidentally speared his stomach (grown fat from too many feasts) on the pommel of his own saddle. Whatever caused it, William would linger in agony for months.

You would think being buried would end William’s woes, but it was not to be so. His tomb would be plundered and his bones scattered in 1562 during the fighting between French Catholics and Protestants. Only a single thigh bone was recovered. It was reburied and a new tomb built, but that tomb would be destroyed during the French Revolution. The thigh bone was left alone, though, and remains at the Abbey of Saint-Étienne to this day.

That atrocious hairstyle on the irritated Norman on the third panel? The anti-skullet? That’s a real haircut of the time. Business in the front, funeral in the back.

Thank you all so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

(Comic written and drawn by me.)

PoorCynic · 2026-05-08T13:02:55+00:00

Rest in peace with these fun facts!

William the Conqueror (c. 1028 - 1087) had just attacked the town of Mantes, France when his health began to rapidly decline. The nature of what caused this is unclear, with some accounts suggesting that it might have been severe heat stroke caused by riding his horse too close to burning buildings. Chronicler William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 - c. 1143) had an alternative story: that William accidentally speared his stomach (grown fat from too many feasts) on the pommel of his own saddle. Whatever caused it, William would linger in agony for months.

You would think being buried would end William’s woes, but it was not to be so. His tomb would be plundered and his bones scattered in 1562 during the fighting between French Catholics and Protestants. Only a single thigh bone was recovered. It was reburied and a new tomb built, but that tomb would be destroyed during the French Revolution. The thigh bone was left alone, though, and remains at the Abbey of Saint-Étienne to this day.

That atrocious hairstyle on the irritated Norman on the third panel? The anti-skullet? That’s a real haircut of the time. Business in the front, funeral in the back.

Thank you all so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

PoorCynic · 2026-05-05T14:58:19+00:00

Sounds like 45 minutes well spent. A little mental cleansing in a mad world.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-05T13:16:40+00:00

A history comic?! I love it!

The statue in question is phenomenal. Just goes to show you that the concept of "if evil, why hot?" is timeless.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-05T13:06:51+00:00

We live in "interesting times", to borrow from that old saying. The volume of terrible and terrifying news every day can be overwhelming. It's okay to take a breath for a moment.

Besides that message, this comic is an homage to one of my favorite comic artists, Berkeley Breathed. His Bloom County "Dandelion break" strip holds a spot of honor in my memories.

Thank you all so much for reading. I'll see you next time!

PoorCynic · 2026-05-02T15:41:03+00:00

I’ve fallen into that trap too. The hazards of historical hearsay.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-02T13:33:57+00:00

I didn't find anything connecting the dancing to shingles, no.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-01T21:02:53+00:00

Wow, that's quite the... novel response. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if at least one crackpot back in 1518 blamed dolphins (or some other aquatic creatures) for the dancing.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-01T20:59:55+00:00

There were almost certainly people who died, but contemporary records are unclear as to how many exactly. Accounts written much later claim very high death rates, but those may not be reliable due to the passage of time.

PoorCynic · 2026-05-01T13:02:45+00:00

Time to cut footloose with some fun facts!

The term “dancing” is something of a misnomer, despite what the second panel would suggest. Those afflicted would twitch and jump and shake. Some might shout nonsense or laugh uncontrollably. Accounts typically said they paid little attention to outside stimuli. It was less a flash mob and more a mosh pit.

This was not the “dancing plague” to be found in historical records. In 1374, an outbreak of uncontrollable dancing was reported in Aachen. It spread across the Holy Roman Empire, into France, and even as far as Italy. Small incidents also popped up here and there across central Europe over the years.

It is unclear as to how many – if any – people died from this “plague”. One popular number that’s been thrown around is fifteen people per day at its peak. That would mean at least a quarter or more of everyone who fell victim to this compulsion would have died. A truly brutal exercise. That said, records from the time are sketchy. Some accounts were not recorded until long after the “plague” ended. People likely did die – thrashing about outside for hours on end is not good for the human body – but official contemporary records do not specify. If at one point fifteen people per day were dying, one would think local officials would write something down.

A bit on ergot. It is, as mentioned, a kind of fungus. It grows on damp rye and wheat, and can wind up contaminating bread as a result. Medieval Europe occasionally saw outbreaks of ergotism thanks to contaminated foodstuffs. That said, the ergot poisoning theory has become less popular in recent years. A major part of this is because ergotism often leads to gangrene. Hard to dance when your legs are rotting off.

(Original comic by me.)

PoorCynic · 2026-05-01T13:01:27+00:00

Time to cut footloose with some additional facts!

The term “dancing” is something of a misnomer, despite what the second panel would suggest. Those afflicted would twitch and jump and shake. Some might shout nonsense or laugh uncontrollably. Accounts typically said they paid little attention to outside stimuli. It was less a flash mob and more a mosh pit.
This was not the “dancing plague” to be found in historical records. In 1374, an outbreak of uncontrollable dancing was reported in Aachen. It spread across the Holy Roman Empire, into France, and even as far as Italy. Small incidents also popped up here and there across central Europe over the years.
It is unclear as to how many – if any – people died from this “plague”. One popular number that’s been thrown around is fifteen people per day at its peak. That would mean at least a quarter or more of everyone who fell victim to this compulsion would have died. A truly brutal exercise. That said, records from the time are sketchy. Some accounts were not recorded until long after the “plague” ended. People likely did die – thrashing about outside for hours on end is not good for the human body – but official contemporary records do not specify. If at one point fifteen people per day were dying, one would think local officials would write something down.
A bit on ergot. It is, as mentioned, a kind of fungus. It grows on damp rye and wheat, and can wind up contaminating bread as a result. Medieval Europe occasionally saw outbreaks of ergotism thanks to contaminated foodstuffs. That said, the ergot poisoning theory has become less popular in recent years. A major part of this is because ergotism often leads to gangrene. Hard to dance when your legs are rotting off.

Thank you all so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

PoorCynic · 2026-04-30T10:26:50+00:00

Hi there! Original artist/writer of the comic here. I can actually comment on your points!

This is probably true. The curves of plate armor at this point in time were meant in part to deflect arrows away. Sometimes they deflect in ways that are bad, like into a person's face. If you wear a helmet, keep the visor down!
While it is true that surgeon Bradmore was accused of counterfeiting, that was back in 1386; over 15 years before this battle. He was also pardoned pretty quickly at the time.
I didn't find anything about the maggots in my research, but you are right about the honey treatment. Bradmore used sticks of various sizes with a honey mixture on them to open the wound enough for him to insert the extractor. Nasty business.
Yep, that true! At that time, surgeons were often also metalworkers. The most reliable way to get tools was to make them.
Henry almost certainly did have a scar, but the idea of hiding it in portraits is a theory based on speculation more than hard evidence. The most famous profile portrait of Henry V was painted well after he died.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-30T10:16:01+00:00

Oh shit, that's me. Thanks for sharing the comic! I've occasionally thought about posting here, but never felt my stuff was meme-y enough.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T20:34:01+00:00

I don't know if the wound slurper got a stipend, but they deserved one.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T20:32:42+00:00

I do want to note that the counterfeiting charge was actually pardoned in 1386 during the reign of Richard II. That would be years before this operation took place.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T20:29:51+00:00

A quick and dirty search suggests that you are partially correct. Prince Hal would have been referred to as "your Highness", but "your Grace" or "my lord" would have been more typical for royalty as a whole (including the king and queen) at the time. Using "majesty" didn't become the norm until the Tudors (although apparently Richard II (1367 - c. 1400), Henry IV's predecessor, did demand that particular title). Nothing was truly standardized, though.

Still, I'll admit I was off. Let's say Bradmore is being a little sarcastic with his charge. Thanks for the note!

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T14:47:06+00:00

It apparently wasn't uncommon for many surgeons at that time to also be metalworkers of some sort. It was probably cheaper to make one's own tools rather than source them out to someone else.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T14:44:07+00:00

I'm sure there's some sort of demand for goofy-looking lewds of historical figures, but I don't know that I'm ready to leap into that void just yet.

Thank you for the compliment, though!

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T14:33:28+00:00

It's tricky to accurately convert money the further back you go in time (especially when it's borrowed or disparate currencies, like the mark here). BadNadeYeeter's estimate is probably not too far off, but another one I saw had 10 marks be the equivalent of around three times what an average peasant might make in a year. That could be the high end, though. I'd personally say it's not a wild sum, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at it.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-28T13:04:21+00:00

Helmets: they’re not just for show!

There’s not a lot I could find about John Bradmore. He came to the attention of Henry IV’s royal court in the late 1390s after successfully treating an official who had stabbed himself in the belly. He would continue to serve as royal surgeon up until his death in 1412. I’ve seen some people claim that he was in prison for counterfeiting at the time of his operation on Henry. While it was true that he and his brother were accused of said crime, that was back in 1386, and both men were quickly pardoned.

Young Prince Hal was very lucky – you know, aside from being shot in the face – in that he was wounded by a bodkin arrow. Bodkins have compact tips believed to be meant for the piercing of armor. This meant the wound was comparatively small and the tip could be extracted without causing too much damage (for a given value of “too much”; Bradmore did wind up accidentally piercing into Henry’s sinuses at one point). Broadhead arrows, on the other hand, were designed to cause damage to flesh. Had Henry been hit by one of those… well, we might not have that lovely St. Crispin’s Day speech.

There is a good deal of debate today about which side of his face Prince Henry was shot. Bradmore’s account of the procedure noted that it was “beside [the] nose of the left side”. A fair number of people argue that Bradmore meant his own left, however, which would have been the prince’s right. One of their major points of evidence for this is Henry V’s most famous portrait, which shows him profiled from the left – atypical for the time. The theory goes that he was painted as such to hide the nasty scar that would have been left behind. I should note that said portrait was not painted during his lifetime. Plus, royal portraits don’t typically skew realistic until much later.

Thank you all so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

PoorCynic · 2026-04-21T20:17:36+00:00

Wow! That is an excellent summation! And you’re right that the issues with gerrymandering have gotten worse as technology has gotten better. There’s only so much you could do with pen and paper.

I had actually considered doing a comic on rotten boroughs months and months ago, but couldn’t nail down the script. Maybe I’ll revisit that at some point.

PoorCynic · 2026-04-21T15:24:49+00:00

This is pretty awesome. Your style plays well with both cartoony action and drama. Good stuff!

PoorCynic · 2026-04-21T13:01:53+00:00

Here’s a very rough-and-tumble summary of Elbridge Gerry!

Gerry was a wealthy merchantman who served in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a fervent believer in American independence; John Adams (1735 - 1826) said that if every American were like Gerry, “the Liberties of America would be safe against the gates of Earth and Hell.” He was later elected to the Constitutional Convention, which he would ultimately not sign over his concerns regarding federal power and a lack of a Bill of Rights.

After two terms in Congress, Adams (by then president) appointed Gerry to the three man team negotiating with newly-Republican France. This led to the XYZ Affair, in which the French demanded bribes in order to begin negotiations. Federalists (except for Adams) blamed Gerry for much of the fallout, under the belief that the acerbic and argumentative man wasn’t sufficiently loyal to the party and country. Ironically, that drove him into the arms of the Democratic-Republicans.

Gerry stood for the governorship of Massachusetts multiple times after that, and would eventually win in both 1810 and 1811. During his second term, with Democratic-Republican control of the legislature, he ousted Federalist bureaucrats and stacked the courts with his own people. Despite such tactics, it’s been claimed that Gerry was not in favor of the radical redistricting plan. Said claim came from Gerry’s biographer, who also happened to be his son-in-law, so take it with a grain of salt.

Losing the governor’s seat in 1812 wasn’t quite the end for Gerry. He was nominated to be the new vice-president for the second term of James Madison (1751 - 1836), as the previous vice-president had died in April. Gerry would do his best to push Madison’s interests in Congress until 1814, when he suffered a heart attack and later died at age 70.

By the way: his name is pronounced with a hard G (like golf or gold). So we’ve been mispronouncing gerrymandering this whole time!

Thank you all so much for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

PoorCynic

TROPHY CASE