Nish’s Notepad: Harry Potty and the Deathly Boring

Before starting the review, I’m a big fan of Harry Potter. I’ve grown up with it. So choosing between this and the other parodies was quite easy. Published by Papercutz Graphic Novels, Harry Potty is the first of the four available parodies, in a series called as Papercutz Slices.

Story: Stefan Petrucha
Art: Rick Parker

Harry Potty. The boy who flushed? Along with his friends, Don Measly and Whiny Stranger, this guy is set to fight against Valuemart (aka He-Whose-Prices-Can’t-Be-Beat)and his army of followers, the Odor Eaters by destroying the Horbucks!

The book is (over)filled with bad puns and silly humor. The story takes off with the killing of Headmaster Dumb-as-a-door by Professor Barista Frappe and then Whiny recapping the first 6 movies (full of puns such as Pain in my Ass-kaban or The Half-Drunk Wimp) for Don and Harry beautifully in 21 pages. And as soon as the recap end, Bellybutton Smellstrange, one of the odor eaters captures them where Harry summons his mouse-elf, Robby. Now here comes the best part when the masked odor eater Elmo (Yeah, the sesame street one who now serves the Dark Lord) comes to beat up Robby but the fight is finally ended by Yoda, who blows up Robby and Elmo (and teaches them proper sentence formation).

There are also a ton of other references too, like The Lord of the Rings, Little Orphan Annie, Charlotte's Web etc. apart from the above. And Harry's scar isn't stable, it keeps changing constantly to depict what's on Harry's mind. Overall, even if kids won't understand some of the adult references and jokes, it is meant for them only. There's an overdose of puns in this graphic novel (like Professor Squirrel, who has nuts all around him). The concept is confusing, and the end is err weird.

Coming to the art, Rick Parker has done it in the old complementary parody style. If you were a fan of the parodies that came in the old Mad magazines, then this is a nice book to look out for. The cover art is equally brilliant. The team of Stefan Petrucha and Rick Parker (who first worked together in Papercutz's Tales of the Crypt for a parody of another book I love- Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid worked out pretty well with a nice chemistry between them.

Summing it up, this book is a fun to read. A perfect toilet-read, of course. So if you have spare 225 bucks to spend and love toilet humor, this is a worth try. The end is quite surprising, and surprisingly good. It's a graphic novel full of its high and low points.

ART: 4/5
STORY: 2.5/5
QUALITY: 4.5/5
OVERALL: 3.7/5