"The Karkus" from "The Mind Robber"

[Chaos Descending]

In "The Mind Robber", supposedly The Karkus is a superhero from a 21st century comic strip which is brought to life in the Land of Fiction.

Any idea where the name "The Karkus" came from? What is it supposed to mean? Is it just made up? Every time I hear the name, all I can think of is "the Carcass", which is not a good image.

 

[Qonundrum]

Hopefully there's an interview with writer Peter Ling that explains the etymology behind "The Karkus". Was the name chosen at random? Was he thinking "Language changes all the time, Zoe comes from roughly somewhere between 31~131years in the future*, so let's use a word for a completely different purpose, change a few letters around as consonantal shift, based on what might be popular at the time?" Amusingly, if that's the case, he's not wrong but merely a couple decades early as the mid-1980s comic "Garbage Pail Kids" had characters given "not a good image" names as part of its shtick. Then again, the Garbage Pail Kids were created as a parody to counter Cabbage Patch Kids so, taking this all even more out there, what might the Karkus be in response to (or was it a creation that someone else would then create a response to that)?

* I don't recall "The Wheel in Space" telling the year in which they were in

 

[Chaos Descending]

I just read on the Tardis Wiki that the Karkus was meant to be a parody of Batman, specifically the 1966 TV series version.