| Desmond Fishman | |
|---|---|
| |
| First Seen | Scary Go Round, 2006-10-20 |
| Appeared In | Scary Go Round, some other miscellaneous strips
|
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | Britain |
| Occupation | None |
| Species | Human-Mermaid hybrid |
| Friends | Shelley Winters, Ryan Beckwith, Shauna Wickle, Charlotte Grote, Claire Little
|
Desmond Fishman (sometimes spelled Fish-Man [1], and often called Des by his friends [2]) is a mer-man (strictly speaking a human-mermaid hybrid [3]), assistant smoothie technician [4], the 19th Lord of Sunderland [5], and a semi-major character of Scary Go Round.
His first appearance in the comic was when an amnesiac Ryan Beckwith met him as another amnesia patient at the nunnery of the Little Sisters of Belial.[6] When Ryan eventually reunited with his friends Shelley Winters and Amy Chilton, Desmond got under their care along with him.[7] They succeeded in restoring Ryan's memory, but Desmond's origin remained a mystery for a long time.
Desmond saw himself as just a perfectly normal bloke, though. He insisted that his green scales were because of a skin condition [8], and even refused to acknowledge his ability to breathe underwater, even in the face of direct evidence. (And while talking underwater!)[9] Other aquatic traits he possessed were his webbed hands and feet, his ability to talk with fish [10], and the ability to squirt ink.[11] Desmond was illiterate [12], but thanks to Shelley's efforts [13], he eventually learned to read and write at least well enough to operate a smart-phone [14] and create a Facebook profile.[15] One day he "remembered" that he was actually from Atlantis [16], but that turned out to be a false lead. (Though it has to be said that the diving suits of the Atlanteans looked quite similar to Des [17], which might mean that they actually had contact to mer-men like him at some point in the past.)
Desmond ran away from home twice, the first time after mistakenly thinking that Shelley and Amy wanted him gone (actually they were thinking about making Ryan follow house rules better), the second time when Amy and Ryan became a couple and their romantic activities started to gross him out. Both times, Desmond met Shauna Wickle and Charlotte Grote in the process. The first time, Shauna's brother Darren brought him home feeling sorry for roughening him up on the street with a gang of friends, which lead to Desmond staying with the Wickle family under the nickname "Froggy". Shauna's and Darren's mother Ella Wickle's passing off Desmond as her deformed son on trashy television and tabloid newspapers lead to Shelley and Amy learning about Desmond's wherabouts and, ultimately, his return home to them. The second time Desmond ran away and met the Mystery Girls, Charlotte and Shauna managed to solve Desmond's mystery and locate the man who fathered him with a mermaid, the navy admiral Lord Sunderland [18] (who may be either identical to, or perhaps more likely a descendant of the designer of the Mountbatten Gravel Pit Estate [19]). When Lord Sunderland died, Desmond inherited all his wealth [20] (though how good he was in keeping it is an entirely other matter[21]), and lived together with his butler Fotheringay at his father's estate, now called Fishman Acres.[22] (Though the estate was afterwards also still referred to by the name of Sunderland Hall.)
While he continues to live this way, at one point he dreamed the house floated into space and left to live on the streets for a while until he was found by Claire Little. Claire gave him a meal at Kale & Hearty, which he didn't appreciate much, and attempted to set him up with a job at her Uncle Don's toilet factory, Little & Co., which he also didn't appreciate. He appeared about to kill Claire for it before taken back by his butler. Subsequently, Claire met with the butler to plot an apparently successful attempt to improve Desmond's behavior, by making him wear tighter, more uncomfortable pants when he was acting badly.
Another dream Desmond had was involving Krampus, who came at Christmas Eve for punishing Desmond for his many misdeeds.[23] Even though this punishment (being eaten alive!) was only confined to this dream, this had indeed a positive effect on Desmond - at least to a certain degree: After waking up, on Christmas Day, Desmond gave an obsolete coin to a "boy" for buying a turkey, and tried to shoot some crows in order to cook them as Christmas dinner for Fotheringay.[24]
Somebody has tweeted a Desmond Fishman fan club membership card.
According to a tweet by John Allison, Fishman has passed his cycling proficiency test.Also, in some possibly non-canonical cartoons, he has parlayed his mad karaoke skills into a multi-album singing career, and was also in an '80s boy band. The cover of Giant Days #19 features Susan in a "Des + the Fishmen" shirt, hinting at some more musical activity by our favorite green guy.
In the wake of Brexit and other political developments, he ran for office in the UK, with Claire and Charlotte running his campaign for fun and to teach Des the concept of democracy, but they expressed some concern about it when he started to show a chance of actually winning. He ended up losing by a few hundred votes.