It’s a Cauliflower Casserole of Love in Image's Haha #5

A cranky old clown makes a casserole and thinks about life and love and maybe a little kindness toward others in Haha #5, written by W. Maxwell Prince, drawn by Gabriel Hernandez Walta and lettered by Good Old Neon.

Will Nevin: Ari, what do you think about casseroles?

Ari Bard: A weekly staple for me growing up. The most common one I ate was typically made with hamburger helper/ground beef, peas/corn, rice and these little fried onion things. It wasn’t bad, but I always hated the leftovers. I’ve also had the occasional green bean casserole as well. They definitely aren’t a deep source of nostalgia or anything for me, but I guess you could say I’m familiar, and honestly? I love cauliflower. Ever since reading the issue I’ve thought about finding a substitute for sour cream and making one myself. What about you, Will?

WN: I was damn near raised on ‘em — Mom and Dad both worked full time, and while Pa had meals he would cook (steak, chicken salad and french toast were his specialties), Mom was responsible for most of the weeknight meals. And when there’s not a lot of time for meal prep and there aren’t many dining out options (We had … one(?) restaurant when I was growing up we’d go out to regularly during the week), a casserole is a great answer because — like Pound Foolish shows us here — it’s usually just dumping shit in a dish, stirring it up and baking it. The hardest part of one of my favorite casseroles growing up — the three-bean dish that featured kidney, lima and baked beans, ketchup (barbecue sauce if you were getting fancy!) and ground beef — was browning the meat.

What I’m saying, Ari, is that my gut enjoyed this issue … even as my brain said we dealt with similar themes back in #4.

AB: Honestly? Even if the issue did retread a lot of similar ground, I think I enjoyed this one more. Prince is great at giving us unsettling horror or somber reflection, but I think this issue, while still a bit sad, really captured a warmer side of melancholy that I appreciated quite a bit.

WN: I’ll give you that — this was warmer and entirely more grounded than the last issue.

Pennywise, Pound Foolish

WN: You know, I didn’t really think about it until I was writing the subhed there, but do you think this is a carryover from the last issue? Are we really rolling straight from It into wordplay?

AB: At first I wasn’t sure the issues were meant to be linked all that closely and thought it was just one hell of a transition. Then you think about it however, and you look at the idea of the Mid-Yard Misfit Club compared to the Losers Club from It, and you recognize the similar style of flashbacks to the traveling circus, then it becomes clear that they are likely linked after all. That Prince sure is a clever one.

WN: Only he would do an anthology series where all of the issues are both one-shots and intricately connected. A N Y W A Y, let’s talk about Pound Foolish. I loved her design here — primarily because she looks like a stalk of cauliflower — and I thought that was a weird but obviously on-point artistic choice.

AB: Give me those cauliflower florets! I liked her style a lot and the way she sticks out off the page. Walta does a killer job with this issue, setting up the old carnival in the faded, beige flashbacks while also creating a very fleshed out worn suburban neighborhood in the present. Honestly, it may have been the most immersive issue for me yet.

Onto her character though, we get a lot of characters in fiction and in the real world that can be summed up as aging folks afraid of change and a world that has left them behind. To be honest, as a person that is so frequently fighting for change for the better and seeing my friends do the same, often for better and more important reasons, it is hard for me to sympathize, even when I know I may very well be there someday. Every so often, however, I come across a character that makes me get it. Even though she comes off as a bit of an asshole, the flashbacks and the heartfelt gestures toward Billy make me get it. It doesn’t excuse some of her tantrums, but I can begin to feel the vulnerability that comes with being left behind.

WN: Memes are stupid shortcuts to communication, but they exist for a reason — primarily because they express a message all (most?) of us can understand. So when we see Principal Skinner ask himself if he’s out of touch before quickly settling on the children as the source of his problem, we understand that Skinner is the butt of the joke. But that doesn’t mean we can always figure out when *we’re* Skinner. And, you know, it doesn’t always have to be an age thing — there seem to be lots of whippersnappers with big thoughts about why your local adorable leather daddy should skip the Pride parade.

Now, let’s talk about Pound Foolish’s casserole: some goodly amount of cauliflower, a cup of sour cream, a half cup of crushed corn flakes, a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, a quarter cup of chopped green peppers, a quarter cup of sweet red peppers, a quarter cup of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (“the king of cheeses”), and salt and paprika to taste. I think it might be folly to throw cauliflower in with so many things that actually have taste, and I’m tempted to swap it out for broccoli and add some white rice, but I’d give it a shot. What about you?

AB: I think I’m definitely going to try it as well! I might want to look into finding a sour cream substitute, and I may swap the green peppers for onions, but I think I’ll try it out with cauliflower first before I throw everything to the wind and use broccoli. I happen to love cauliflower and cook with it quite a bit, especially when I don’t feel like doing a ton of meat prep.

WN: When it comes to onions, I’m like a dog with medicine — you’ve got to hide those things for me to eat them. Something about the texture that creeps me the hell out. And as far as subbing out the sour cream … maybe Greek yogurt? I could see that working.

AB: I think Greek yogurt sounds good! Shame that’s how you feel about onions, though.

The Section in Which Will Tries (and Fails) to Not Talk About Food

WN: So Prince has a point here about comfort foods — that they’re the things we fall back on because they make us feel almost as good as they taste. But I wonder: Is Haha #5 itself comfort food? I don’t think anything here really challenged a reader or defied expectations; Pound Foolish is not entirely a miserly old crank, much in the same way the kids aren’t exclusively rotten assholes. The characters meet, and detente is reached. We move on.

None of that is necessarily bad, and I suppose the flashbacks add some depth, but, again, this feels like ground we spent half of the last issue trodding. Yet I’m not ready to give it the thumbs down because Prince is my comfort food reading — he’s so good, and I’ve got so many memories of all the other things I’ve read and enjoyed.

So maybe this issue is a little undercooked. Or maybe too crispy on the edges. I’m still eating it with a smile, though.

AB: I definitely get what you mean. I do want to make the disclaimer that I haven’t been sure that I’ve absorbed everything I’m supposed to get out of the issue for this whole miniseries, but this definitely feels like the most straightforward story Prince has written. And it’s a good one! I appreciate comfort food as much as the next person, and this was a good, hearty meal.

I know Prince needs to constantly challenge himself in order to stay entertained when writing comics. He’s primarily done that through craft and playing with form in Ice Cream Man. I would argue King of Nowhere is a sort of adventure into absurdism. I think you could also say Haha is a challenge in that it is playing with narrative centered on a relatively niche concept while also tailoring oneself to a variety of artists. Through all of that, however, I think the argument can be made that Prince writes a lot of tonally similar stories, and that’s OK! It’s the unsettling type of horror or sadness that gets under your skin that keeps me coming back for Prince’s writing, but this is the first somewhat warmer story I’ve read of his in a long time, and perhaps it’s his way of branching out as far as tone. If that is the case, I think this was a good first step, and I’m still definitely along for the ride.

WN: I’d never turn down more Prince. Here’s to finishing up Haha with #6 and getting on with the next arc of Ice Cream Man.

Here’s the Punchline

“Folderol” is old timey, 1820s slang for “nonsense.”
Other possible substitutes for sour cream in your recipes: cottage cheese, crème fraîche, buttermilk, cashews, soy and coconut milk.
Another one of Will’s favorite casseroles growing up: Freda’s Five Can Casserole. Condensed cream of mushroom soup, chicken and rice soup, canned chicken, evaporated milk and a can of Chinese noodles. Dump it all together and bake it for an hour. One easy, fine meal. And that doesn’t seem to be “medium” difficulty, random cooking website Will found.