To start, fat to the Japanese is like tall to the Lilliputians. If you have even an iota of fat on your body, then they will pinch it like so many fascinated crabs. The comic is true, by the way. This is a ritual embedded into Japanese culture: the giving of plastic foods as gifts. My cookies are gathering dust on the bookshelf as we speak.  I’m not fat.

I watched Hellboy 2 yesterday. While I don’t want to comment on the content of the movie as a whole, I would like to talk about the unholy transformation of sacred works. Mike Mignola’s comic book twists Nazis, demons, and Irish folklore into blocky Noir tales, beautiful, disturbing and lacking all the tongue and cheek silliness peppered throughout the movie. I know that Guillermo Del Toro is capable of summoning sublime angels and horrors, but only when he calls in his native tongue.

I’m not sure where my hope for The Hobbit now lies.

Take a work that was born of magic (not invented, merely scribbled on a piece of paper, no) invited from another realm to show itself to the simple minds of this earth. There are those who realize that people will pay to gaze upon these summoned creatures, so they lasso them out of the air; not with chains, but with contracts and lawyers, which are far more binding, and prepare them for the masses. They saw off horns, extract claws, bleach fiery skin white, and add color contacts to cover the void of the pupils . The creatures are at their mercy, wondering where their masters are, the ones who initially sang them into existence. Tolkien, Anderson, Grimm . . . they are cold in their graves.

If you are convinced that the old beasts aren’t as terrible as I say, I strongly encourage you to take a stroll through the yellowing fairy tale pages and watch as Pinocchio smashes Jiminy Cricket with a hammer in the first chapter (an act which makes his nose erect) or see the little mermaid stab herself in the heart when she does not win her true love in the end.

We can discuss the injustices being wrought on Watchmen, but I could write a veritable electronic tome on Mr. Alan Moore, so I’ll hold off. But let me assure you, that beast is being castrated as we speak (SPOILER: don’t click that last link if you don’t know what brilliance looms at the end of Watchmen).

So . . . now we wait with bated breath as they release the chains and let the clipped monstrosity free.  Will it be one that will strike the terror of childhood into our hearts, one of shadows and unknowns and unendurable emptiness?  Or will we scoff at the pathetic creature, laughing at its impotence as it shrivels and dies before us?

Let’s wait.

-C

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.