This week’s comic commemorates the premiere of Sharknado 2: The Second One. Tara Reid, Sharknado star, once played “a young genius anthropologist with an incredible memory” in the film Alone in the Dark. Tara recently drew upon her vast experience playing a scientist in a craptastic movie to let everyone know that she thinks that the premise of Sharknado could totally happen in real life:

“You know, it actually can happen. I mean, the chances of it happening are very rare, but it can happen actually. Which is crazy. Not that it—the chances of it are, like, you know, it’s like probably ‘pigs could fly.’ Like, I don’t think pigs could fly, but actually sharks could be stuck in tornados. There could be a sharknado.”

Wait, could Tara Reid be right?

If fish and baby alligators have been pulled up into the air, could other sea animals? Well, maybe but don’t worry, Harold Brooks, a scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory told Mother Jones “if a twister were strong enough to scoop up a bunch of large sharks, the debris present in tornadoes—wood, metal—would essentially filet the animals.”

The animal killer subgenre

The Sharknado series comes in along line of films in the animal killer horror subgenre (there are at least 300 of them!) People are very freaked out that nature will provide some sort of cosmic payback. Some of these films are pretty damn good. Highlights include Cujo, Jaws (the first one not the rest of the shitty sequels) and The Birds.

Of course, there are plenty of plenty of bad films in the subgenre as well. Asha’s favorite baddies include Frogs and Ants.

Zombeavers

When we were creating this week’s comic we wanted to poke some fun at the horror genre and its love of sequels (why is going to the hood somehow scarier than going to space?) We wanted to also spoof the animal killer subgenre by using an animal that we thought had not been used yet only to find that that there is indeed a killer beaver movie coming soon called Zombeavers.

The other kind of beaver

There is nothing more frightening than a bloody beaver and having one’s once a month can be a bit of a burden. This week’s comic plays on the double meaning of beavers. We wondered how did beavers come to be associated with the almighty vag? According to this etymology site,

In colonial times it was thought that prostitutes spread venereal diseases through contact with their pubic area, so the women were made “bald” in that area for health reasons. However, their clients did not like that look and business began to suffer. Therefore, pubic wigs, called merkins, were manufactured for the prostitutes. These merkins were made out of beaver pelts. Hence the term beaver.