It has always been strange to me that Thanksgiving has no holiday character that brings gifts or goodies. With Christmas, you’ve got Santa Claus, a fat jolly guy who has a penchant for breaking into people’s homes and leaving presents. On Valentine’s Day, you have Cupid, a half-naked baby thing who shoots arrows at the hearts of men and women to make them fall in love. Easter has the Easter Bunny, who somehow lays eggs and leaves baskets full of candy and fake plastic grass for children. Halloween has an assortment of ghosts, goblins, vampires, witches and many other scary creatures to represent it, not to mention the Great Pumpkin character from the Peanuts comic strip. So, a few years ago, while I was attending SCAD, I ended up changing this. I was given a project in one of my sequential art classes that required me to create a hybrid character. The character had to be part human and part something else. It could have human legs and an animal body. One of the most clichéd examples that came to mind is the mermaid character, which is a hybrid of a human woman and a fish. I remember drawing a mermaid as one of my possibilities, but I didn’t stick to it. I wanted to do something original and outlandish. It was then that I started thinking about how creepy turkeys are. I remember being afraid of them when I was young. My great aunt and uncle had a whole yard full of turkeys, which freaked me out. I then thought about the lack of a holiday character on Thanksgiving who gave things to people. Aside from the Pilgrims, Indians, and the turkey itself, there really was nothing that gave presents or brought good cheer to the holiday. So after lots of drawing, I came up with a character that had the body of a turkey and the arms, hands, feet, and legs of a man! The Turkey Man was born, and a legend was soon to follow. The basic story of the Turkey Man is that he comes to the home of one good little child every Thanksgiving, and lays a magical egg full of goodies (Hey I know it’s a male turkey, but the Easter Bunny is supposedly male, and he lays eggs!). That story sounds pleasant on paper, but evidently when the Turkey Man lays the egg, he screeches in pain and drops it, accompanied by feces and other bodily matter onto the chosen child’s bed! Hmm, maybe I haven’t brought more cheer to the holiday after all, but at least Thanksgiving now has a holiday character that does more than sitting around being thankful or getting eaten!
The Turkey Man is (C) Copyright 2010 Joshua Dyson
BETRAM BUNNY MEETS THE TURKEY MAN: https://pittreport.blogspot.com/2016/11/shit-pitt-betram-meets-turkey-man.html
