Holiday Pandemonium (comic story)

Holiday Pandemonium was an early Jenny Everywhere comic story, being the seventh in the original line-up of the 13 first Barbelith Jenny stories. It was written by Alex Hernandez and drawn by Andres Allocco.

Although not containing any on-panel nudity, the story contained heavy use of adult themes, thus also holding the dubious distinction of being one of the earliest (if not the earliest) NSFW Jenny Everywhere stories, not counting casual instances of strong language in earlier stories.

On holiday in Greece, Jenny Everywhere takes a fancy to Drew. With her pride piqued by his non-responsiveness to her flirtatious innuendos, Jenny jumps at the chance for a second try when she happens to meet the god Pan by some old ruins. With Pan's magic, she agrees to be transformed into a form Drew is sure to find attractive. To Jenny's mild dismay, this turns out to be a muscular young man, as Drew is in fact gay. Despite her initial misgivings Jenny (or, rather, “Jerry”) soon gets into the idea and meets up with Drew in the middle of the night while he's attempting to take moonlit pictures of the ruins.

However, Drew proves as impervious to Jerry's advances as he was to Jenny's; it turns out he is a romantic type who is put off by the idea of a one-night stand with no feelings attached, and, either way, finds Jerry's self-absorbed confidence off-putting. With Drew spelling out that “he does not care what Jerry looks like”, Pan's spell breaks and Jerry turns back into Jenny, causing Drew to faint in shock. Although initially angry at the fiasco, Jenny eventually thinks of a worthy answer to the apologetic Pan's offer to do “anything” to make up for his miscalculation — Pan himself is, after all, a man, and not one known for his objection to one-night stands.

Worldbuilding

Jenny

This story features a skinny Jenny Everywhere with the usual Asian features and short-cropped hair.

Universes

This story takes place all in one universe, which is rather mundane but where Greco-Roman deities such as Pan once truly existed.

Other

Pan does not believe in the existence of the Devil, referring to it as “Judeo-Christian stuff”. He is also dismissive of Wiccans.

Continuity

Pan displays instant knowledge of Jenny Everywhere's nature as an inter-dimensional traveller. This was also the case of Shiva in COMIC: Soulless Mate.
Jenny is initially put out at having turned into a woman but then slides happily into the part. COMIC: The Death of Jenny Everywhere would later show that although most incarnations of Jenny are female, there are such things as male incarnations of the Shifter, who are all part of the gestalt consciousness, showing that the Jenny gestalt's consciousness cannot be strictly binary.

Behind the scenes

Homages

Paul Hoppe, creator of many works featuring Jenny Everywhere and Jenny Nowhere, created a colour portrait of this story's incarnation of Jenny in 2012.

Read online

Holiday Pandemonium was once available on the original Jenny Everywhere website. As it is no longer online, we reproduce the eight pages of Holiday Pandemonium here.