I only got up nerve to buy one copy of Viz when I was working in London in 1989, but the Pathetic Sharks live in my memory as a powerful metaphor than can be applied in many situations in life.
Here is how they are described in the Wikipedia article:
Each of the Pathetic Sharks is extremely vain and childish, each one jockeying for superiority over the others based on some trivial ability or petty accomplishment which the other three denigrate, while challenging each other's political correctness and other credentials.
...
In each of their strips, the Pathetic Sharks show up to interrupt some form of social activity among humans, causing the people to flee in terror ... until the pathetic bitchery and whining among the Sharks prompts one person to announce "These sharks are crap!" or something similar. The Pathetic Sharks never accomplish anything.
The sharks swim into my consciousness with the federal election. I might compare the Liberal party to the sharks, but that would be unkind. Really, it is the Liberal Party, the New Democrats and the Greens who are the sharks! (I'm not sure about the B.Q. -- it may further their strategic goals to make the opposition pathetic.) I'm thinking this because Harper has left enough blood in the water over the past year, but so far, "these sharks are crap!"
