Four-Color Fairy Tales: Fairy Godbrothers.

Well folks, if you ever wanted to see a raunchy, violent, M-rated, “not safe for work” fairy tale comic, have I got the thing for you!

Fairy Godbrothers, Volume One: Tooken was brought to us by writer Ken Kristensen and artist M.K. Perker.  The book is published by Adaptive Comics.

The comic stars two brothers named Sean and Marcus.  They were seemingly normal kids who grew up with their German immigrant father who ran an ice cream shop.  One day while preparing ice cream treats for the boys and their friends, the father suffers a massive stroke and dies right in front of them.  Years later as adults, Sean and Marcus are still effected by their father’s death.  Sean has become an uptight businessman consumed by work as he tries to turn his father’s shop Magic Castle Ice Cream into a worldwide brand.  Marcus, on the other hand, spends his days and nights in a haze of alcohol, drugs and sex.  This is how it goes until the day of Sean’s big deal when an accident with their father’s antique (and apparently magic) clock sends them into a realm of (rather dirty and dismal) fairy tales.

This comic, man.  How to describe this comic?

It’s like someone attempting to create the fairy tale equivalent of the movie Deadpool. 

I mean, we’ve had fairy tale comics that were for “Mature Readers” before, like Fables.  But Fables was a rather mature approach to “Mature Readers”.  Fairy Godbrothers feels more like an immature approach to “Mature Readers”.

This comic doesn’t seem to shy away from any chance to show the fairy tale world as being dark, dirty and a bit depressing once you cut through the humor.  From three pigs who can’t afford to build houses out of bricks to a cracked-up Humpty Dumpty begging to be put out of his misery to an expectant Rapunzel who seems willing to knock boots with whoever climbs into her tower.

But you know, Sean and Marcus’s bickering as they journey through the fairy tale land to find the Fairy Godmother and be sent home does lend the story a fair bit of levity (hence why I compared it to Deadpool instead of something more serious).  Also, the character work for those two and how they deal with their estrangement and messed up emotions does have some potential.  There’s also an interesting bit about how the darkness of the real world and the darkness of the fairy tale world reflect each other (suggesting that this may also be a way for the creators to vent about the state of the world).

I’m going to say that this one definitely isn’t for everyone, but I’m pretty sure there’s an audience for it.  And there are some interesting bits beyond just the dark and raunchy bits.  If this is your kind of thing, check it out.  I’d also suggest keeping an eye open for volume two just to see if any of that potential pays off.

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Rumpelstiltskin (1987)

Okay, I’m going to admit, the loss of the poll widget has been a bit of a blow for the Cannon Movie Tales project.  Going forward, the polls will now have to be done via social media.  Look for the Fairy Tale Fandom page on Facebook or my personal account @FolkTaleGeek on Twitter.

Anyway, on to the next movie chosen by you, my amazing readers (all one of you who voted.  Come on folks, I know you’re out there).

That movie is 1987’s Rumpelstiltskin.  Here, have a trailer video:

Now, I’ve never been particularly fond of the story of “Rumpelstiltskin” and I’ve never been able to really put my finger on why but I think I’ve finally figured it out.  None of the characters are all that likable.  The title character is the villain.  The miller is a liar.  The king is greedy.  And while the Grimms don’t do too badly by way of the miller’s daughter, there are some variants that introduce her as either lazy or a glutton.  Even in the Grimms’ version, you have to question her sense of judgment.  Almost every character leads with their worst foot forward, and that’s saying something in a fairy tales where characters get very little characterization.

But let’s get back to the movie version.

All the Cannon Movie Tales have at least one big name marquee star in them to lead the production.  For Rumpelstiltskin, that star is the one and only Amy Irving.  Ah, yes, Amy Irving.  From such famous films as . . . um [checks IMDB] . . . Carrie and Yentl and Deconstructing Harry.

Okay, I’m going to admit something.  I’m not the biggest expert on Hollywood stars.  Also, this movie was from thirty years ago.  It’s possible she was a bigger star then.  According to what I’m reading online, she is still acting in movies and on stage though, which is pretty good for any actor.

One actor that I recognize a lot more readily is Billy Barty who plays Rumpelstiltskin himself.  Barty was one of those little person actors who absolutely had fantasy dwarf roles nailed down back in the ‘80s.  If you’re a fan of genre films from that decade, you’d probably recognize him the minute you saw him or heard his voice.  He was in Legend.  He was in Willow.  He was also in a whole bunch of other movies for Cannon Films/Golan-Globus like Snow White and Masters of the Universe.

The plot is fairly standard for a “Rumpelstiltskin” retelling, just stretched out with some songs and some elaboration on events.  There are some little changes toward the end, including ones that involve added characters like Rumpelstiltskin’s pet magpie and a little mute girl.

In this case, I’m not sure fidelity is really a strong point.  Remember how I said the characters don’t seem all that likable in the tale of “Rumpelstiltskin”.  Well, that’s the case for a lot of them here too.  The miller is still a liar.  The king is still greedy and so is his queen this time.  Rumpelstiltskin is still the villain and they elaborate that he wants a child to serve as a slave for him (though, at least he’s entertaining).  As for Katie, the miller’s daughter?  Well, they try but the character shoots herself in the foot pretty much from the beginning.  You see, Katie starts out by singing a song entitled “When I’m Queen of the Castle” that’s all about her wanting to live a life of ease.  It makes her seem kind of lazy and selfish.  It might have worked if they had established that her life was unusually hard, but it's the first we see of her.  Really, one of the saving graces of this film is they split the greedy king character from the fairy tale into two characters.  In the fairy tale, the king wants the miller’s daughter to spin straw into gold and when she does it three times, he marries her.  In the movie, there’s the greedy king who makes her spin the straw and his son the prince who she marries.  The prince isn’t a bad guy, even if he’s not particularly interesting.  For some reason, he spends a good chunk of the movie pretending to be a palace guard to befriend and woo Katie, which might have made for an interesting love story in more capable hands.  They don’t even do anything interesting with the king now that he’s been changed into a secondary villain.  There’s no depth or nuance to him.  He has a song entitled “I’m Greedy” that basically sums up his entire motivation but that’s it.

I’m going to be honest here, this movie is missable.  While the other Cannon Movie Tales I’ve looked at were flawed but had some little things to make them interesting, this one really doesn’t.  It’s slow.  It’s relatively dull.  The characters aren’t very likable.  You won’t be missing much if you don’t watch this one.  Unless you’re the world’s biggest Billy Barty fan or something.

Anyway, that’s it for this movie.  Remember to vote for the next Cannon Movie Tale you want me to tackle on the Fairy Tale Fandom Facebook page or on my home Twitter account @FolkTaleGeek.

Until next time.

Folk Tale Secret Stash: The Master-Thief.

Though I am partial to the classics, I do try to read an assortment of different things.  I mean, a mind can’t survive on just folk tales and children’s books.  Just recently I indulged in some classic crime fiction.  The adventures of Maurice LeBlanc’s gentleman thief character Arsene Lupin.  Lupin’s an amazingly crafty criminal with his own code of honor and a heart that he hides behind a veneer of whimsy and arrogance.  He’s hardly the only character of this type, though.  Italian comics have Diabolik.  More contemporary English literature has Simon Templar, also known as The Saint.  And those of us who grew up reading American superhero comics in the ‘90s can’t forget about Remy LeBeau, the X-Man known as Gambit.

Monsieur Arsens Lupin

What I’d nearly forgotten is that the Brothers Grimm also contributed a crafty purloiner of possessions to the greater culture.  If you take a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and you turn towards the back end of the book, you might come across a tale simply titled “The Master-Thief"

(there’s apparently a Norwegian version of this tale too, which I am discovering right now).

The story opens with a man and his wife at a ramshackle house.  Suddenly a carriage drawn by four black horses comes up and a richly dressed man descends from it.  Taking the man for a nobleman, they ask what they can do for him.  He says he would just like to taste a peasant dish and asks for a potato dish the way country-folk make.  The peasant woman goes to make the potatoes and the nobleman goes into the back with the man where he has been planting trees.  They start talking about family and the peasant man says that he used to have a son who was clever but a ne’er do well who was full of bad tricks.  The son apparently went off into the world years ago.  His father would hardly recognize him today except for maybe a birthmark on his shoulder in the shape of a bean.  They then talk about gardening and the “nobleman” asks why he doesn’t tie up an old, twisted tree in the garden.  The man responds that trees have to be trained when they are young to grow up “straight and narrow”.

You know what, let’s cut to the chase.  It turns out the nobleman actually is the man’s son, birthmark and everything.  The son is now, as he puts it, a “master-thief”.  To him, there are neither locks nor bolts, anything he desires is his.  He also makes a point of noting that he doesn’t steal from the poor.  He only takes some of the “superfluity of the rich”.  He also doesn’t steal anything that he could take too easily.  He only goes after that which he must acquire with “trouble, cunning and dexterity”.

So, it turns out this master-thief’s godfather is the Count of all the surrounding area, and he has a rather dim view of thieves.  His father even warns him that if the Count finds out, the thief would find himself swinging from a halter.

The thief doesn’t seem to think much of this warning, so he goes to the Count and tells him about his vocation himself.  The Count decides to deal with his godson with some leniency.  Instead of sending him straight to the gallows, he sets three challenges for him and if he fails any of the three he’ll hang.

Those challenges are:

1) To steal the Count’s personal riding horse right out of the stables.

2) To steal the bed sheet out from under the Count and his wife, as well as his wife’s wedding ring.

3) To steal the parson and the clerk out of the church.

I’m not going to spoil how he pulls off these daring heists, because that’s the fun part.  I will say that they involve disguises, cunning, mistruths and misdirection.  And surprisingly no killing.  That’s not often the case in stories like this.

But I think all this begs the question: Why do we like rogues?  (Pretty sure I covered this in my Robin Hood post, but stick with me anyway because I’m on a roll).

Rogues and thieves appear in folklore from all over the place.  I know of examples from Europe and Asia, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few in Africa and Latin America too.  Jack is a bit of a rogue in his most famous outing, considering he steals from a giant.  Then there are the legendary figures like Robin Hood and Ishikawa Goemon.  Heck, the American West is infamous for making legendary heroes out of real life criminals like Billy the Kid.  It especially feels strange when rogues are in fairy tales.  Of course, that’s because we’ve had a couple centuries of people trying to turn them into moralistic stories for children.  “The Master-Thief” is more folk tale than fairy tale because there’s no magic in it, but it would still receive the same attention by proximity.

I think, on some level, there’s a part of everyone that wants to buck the rules of society.  This could especially be true for times and situations where those rules seem to hold people back or keep them down.  Those situations where the rich seem to get richer beyond all need and the poor get poorer .  Lately, there seems to be a lot of that going around.  It’s especially appealing when the rogue in question doesn’t seem all that bad to begin with.  When the rogue breaks one big societal rule but follows his own rules that are understandable and sympathetic like “no stealing from the poor” or “no killing people”.  Or if the end result is some degree of wealth redistribution like it is with Robin Hood.  Folk tale characters aren’t known for their depth, but just this much nuance can elevate a character enough to significantly make them more interesting.

Well, whatever it is, I like “The Master-Thief” and I’m glad to add him to the secret stash.