"The Beagle Boys' Very Merry Christmas"
Hello, all. Just a quick hit here. I didn't think I was going to be doing anything else for Christmas, but then, idly flipping through some Christmas comix, I encountered this one. I'd read it once before, but I didn't even remember that until my reread. All I recall is that I found it weird and pointless, which is a bit odd, because this came out in 2018, and I would have thought that by that time, I'd have long since come to appreciate the weird and pointless.
Anyway, the main point is, this is one of those nutsoid Brazilian stories, which is always something to celebrate. Or so I believe. And we can see from inducks that we're fortunate to have gotten this; it's not been widely reprinted. I may have covered a Brazilian Christmas story a few years back, but this one is...different. A bit. I realize that this opening doesn't look that special...
...but you get an inkling quickly enough.
So yup, we're doing Alice in Wonderland Here. And Through the Looking Glass, natch. What a festive...thing! Am I about to cavil about something? I feel like I am. And that thing is, "we're all mad here" is such an iconic phrase, it feels quite jarring and wrong to switch it to 'crazy,' which isn't anything. Imagine if Hamlet intoned "to be or not to be--that is the query." Not quite the same, is it?
Anyway, the main goal here seems to be to cram in as many Alice characters as possible, and it doesn't do a bad job at it, at that. I'm certainly not an expert on these books (though I've read them both), but the only omission that I found really noticeable was the Lion and Unicorn. Um, spoiler, I guess?
I appreciate that the story even tries to work in some of Carroll's linguistic stuff--that it's not JUST about some zany dudes, even though it mainly is. But while I have no idea how this worked in Portuguese, in English it kind of...doesn't. "Will you not have some tea?" sounds archaic and stilted, sure, but it's easily parsable at least for a native speaker, and not meaningfully different than "Won't you have some tea?"--which, let's be honest, is still a little old-fashioned-sounding. Yes, you can make it sound weirder by emphasizing the "not," as this does, but then comparing it to the "won't" version just seems meaningless.
I mean, there's not a lot to say about the story, because it's not much of one. Just all these people or creatures dashing about. It's pretty fun, though--it gives it an anarchic spirit that's at least somewhat in tune with the source material.
Did you forget that this was a Christmas story? Well guess what! The Beagles don't get beheaded because of the spirit of Christmas! How's THAT for festive and magical?
Cheshire Cat. Not much else to say, but I DID cut these panels, so enjoy them.
I mean, this is okay, innit? Snowing diamonds! That's sparkly and fun.
And--heck yes--we've got THESE two! Join the party, boys!
I love it. I suppose the allusion to "You Are Old Father William" was added in translation, but that's fine--it just makes me wish there was something about "How Doth the Little Crocodile," which is one of my favorite things in the book. Just the idea that she was required to memorize (presumably) this didactic bit of doggerel, but she only remembers it as a nonsense pastiche. Take that, Victorian education!
Speaking of groovy poems! Love that these guys are here, though predictably, the story really undersells the idea that all the oysters are going to be messily devoured. Well, maybe not "messily," but either way...
"What exactly is this all building to?" you might wonder. That answer is, it's not really "building" at all, but this is more or less the end of it, at least.
Back at the prison--this is fun! Ya got Pete and the Blot and...those are Beagle Brats, are they? I feel like there might be some sort of issue with sticking children in the general population? Maybe? Ah well.
...and no, I checked, and those are NOT Beagle Brats; they're the assistants of a Brazilian villain named Sr. X--the guy sitting to their right. Neither they nor he have ever appeared in an English-language context other than here. So that's a thing. I don't KNOW if we're missing out on anything by not getting more stories featuring them, but I'd love to find out!
And uh...this? Is this festive? Festively weird, I'll say. Or weirdly festive! Anyway, it is what it is! Merry Christmas!
Labels: Ivan Saidenberg, Robero O. Fukue
posted by GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. at
3:45 PM
8 Comments:
For me, as a die-hard fan of Alice (the OG books), the biggest omission in the Disney movie is the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, who were going to be in the movie but were cut. Oddly enough, they were used by Disney in an Alice Jell-O commercial of all places.
If we’re going by characters from both books, then probably the most iconic omission is the Jabberwocky (who Disney was also planning to include). And, as I mentioned in comments for your “Donald in Mathmagic Land” review, the appearance of the Red Queen and her land is interesting, as that character almost feels like an unused concept for Disney’s Alice…
As for this story - when I read it for the first time a while ago, my first instinct was: “Oooookay, clearly, CLEARLY, this was NOT originally a Christmas story, but some fun Beagle Boys/Wonderland crossover they wanted to include, then changed some lines to tie it to Christmas and justify it in this book…” But then I got to the last page and - huh! Never mind.
Beagles in Wonderland is already such a good premise that adding a Christmas theme feels almost like a “hat on a hat” sort of thing - but then again, it fits the zaniness.
Oh, I was just reminded Mock Turtle makes a cameo in this... and Humpty Dumpty... who are both not in the movie. Wacky.
“Ya might have noticed this ain't Earth, guv’nor”, says a Tweedle in one of the screenshots — well, *isn't* it? I suppose it isn't *on* Earth, but it sure seems to be within the Earth's crust.
@Achille Talon
Ah! Or is it? Funny enough, at the time Lewis Carroll wrote the Alice books, the theory of higher dimensions was already a thing. Given that Carroll was a mathematician and logician, and therefore familiar with the popular science of his time, one can speculate that the rabbit hole and the looking glass were meant to represent an early, intuitive interpretation of a wormhole or, more broadly, what a journey into a different dimension might look like, a portal to another reality where different laws of logic (and proportion) and physics apply. This would also explain why scale, causality, and basic reasoning constantly break down in Wonderland, much like they would under a different set of axioms. Since Carroll never explicitly uses the word “magic” (as far I recall), one could make the bold claim that Alice is as much science fiction as it is fantasy.
And before you call coco-bananas on me, I’ve read a book by theoretical physics Michio Kaku where he draws the exact same parallel.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!
This was a fun story. Yes, it does seem pointless at times, but so do Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I made the mistake of reading Alice while I was away from home for an extended period of time, and already feeling out of sorts, Lewis Carrol’s book made me feel even lonelier, with all of it’s disorienting twists and turns.
This story is notable also as having been a part of the last Christmas Parade issue under David Gerstein’s editorial team at IDW. The next year’s issue, produced completely under Disney’s guidance, was far weaker, even with the unique “Choose Your Own Adventure” formatted Mickey Mouse story. Even Gerstein’s team probably couldn’t have saved the dismal Uncle Scrooge story in that book.
I see you covered that Uncle Scrooge story already. Oops, my mistake. It was one I really wanted to like, but it just felt pointless.
@Pan: It's a cromulent theory of what's going on in the original books, notwithstanding the dream aspect of it all which this story is necessarily ignoring, but surely the source plot device that the Beagle Boys find their way to Wonderland simply digging in the wrong direction suggests that this story itself is written under the assumption that it's literally underground in some sense.
Hmmm... This reminds me the Gorgs from the Fraggle Rock. Yeah, there is this land of gigants underground... yet it somehow has it's own sky and the sun. Hmm...
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