Greetings Mr. The Leech, if you would be so kind, could you gift upon us some fun facts about one of my favorite underappreciated Awful Hospital characters, Harold? His role and time onscreen may have been brief, but his inane ramblings entertained me like a little court jester jingling his silly hat
Sure! And I'll summarize him for people who don't even follow my comic, too.
When I first show Jay's room, I added a punching bag dummy he takes things out on and calls Harold, presumably naming it after someone he hates. This is a reference to an old folk horror story where two farmers take out all their aggression on their scarecrow, which was featured in "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," and as a kid it was actually one of the only stories in those books that spooked me.
Specifically it was how the story described Harold as occasionally "grunting" after a while, then one day just standing up, climbing onto the roof, and pacing around on it endlessly, just trotting around in circles. That actually creeped me out more than the ending, where one of the farmers is coming back home and sees the scarecrow laying a bloody skin out on the roof. I wasn't originally sure if I'd do anything with Jay's Harold, or if it would reference the old story any more than the name and basic idea. Eventually I decided to take it on its own route.
"Harold" turns out to be one of the Parliament of Flesh, the "crumbs" of the biomass that existed before all current things that exist, but he was ostracized by the others for turning against their goals and adoring the entity they hate the most, which he thinks of as his mother for other plot reasons and built a giant effigy of using nothing but slobs (transfigured corpses) and Jay's filthy disgusting old mattress (something probably riddled with all manner of pathogens).
So of course there's a pun here that he's Dizzy's "Herald," or appointed himself as such, though the actual being isn't the god-like figure he regarded her as, was barely aware he existed and doesn't take anything seriously. (*The name Dizzy can be found in the URL's of her art, and was a hint at what she is) Things that are not stated in the comic, so actual new Fun Facts for anyone who didn't already theorize on these: Harold would have come to Jay because Jay was one of the Parliament's experiments and attempts at a human agent/vessel, which they abandoned as they perfected what they're trying to do. Harold is a major reason why Jay failed their purposes, as he secretly conducted his own experimentation trying to make Jay's core into a conduit of Dizzy rather than of the Old Flesh.
Harold's sack body is actually an attempt to disguise himself as a human corpse, having seen that Jay "collects" them. It worked out anyway because Jay just assumed it was another nonsense object the degrading hospital room generated. I want to say he has a high pitched buzzing voice like Orko, but, I think I mentally assign an Orko-like voice to lots of characters without thinking and they can't ALL be Orko, so don't take that as hard canon.
