On those few occasions when we’re not talking about Muppets or Fraggles or Gordon’s mustache, chances are we’re taking a long, hard look at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. Usually that ends with a discussion about a flash-in-the-pan straight-to-DVD special that will be forgotten after your morning mimosa, but this time it surprised us with the cinematic epic that is Where the Wild Things Are.

In case you’ve been living under a pile of monsters lately, Where the Wild Things Are is Spike Jonze’s adaptation of the classic Maurice Sendak book. The story revolves around Max, the wolf costume-wearing, ADD-riddled child who runs away from home and into a fantastic world of his own imagination. In this new land, he meets a clan of beasts voiced by an unlikely cadre of celebrities: James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, and Lauren Ambrose. Naturally, Max becomes their king and has a whole lot of fun Wild Rumpusing and making us wish we were 12 again.

Jonze does a phenomenal job at putting the audience into such a strange world while still making it feel natural. The Wild Things are fully fleshed-out characters (which must’ve been difficult when your source material is a picture book) who would have been comfortable in any pre-teen’s imagination.

Of course, a big part of the success of the film’s realism is due to the Creature Shop. The creatures are essentially full-bodied puppets with CGI faces. But after maybe two seconds of trying to imagine people inside the costumes, you’ll forget about the science of filmmaking and fall backwards and upside-down into movie magic. The puppetry was flawless and natural, while the CGI was used lightly enough to be hardly noticeable. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, Spike Jonze actually held auditions for real Wild Things to cast in his movie, because those things look pretty dang life-like.

Of course, the real magic of the film is how it really makes you feel like a kid again. And I’m sure that the one thing that everyone reading a Muppet blog would agree on is that there’s nothing greater than a film that puts adults like us in that ageless mindset. It’s why the Muppets and Sesame Street have stayed so fresh and entertaining over the years, and it’s all thanks to the brilliant minds of Spike Jonze and the visionaries at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

This is far from the first time the world of Wild Things and the world of the Muppets have crossed paths. Maurice Sendak was on the National Board of Advisors for the Children's Television Workshop during Sesame Street’s early days. He also contributed several sketches for Sesame Street, and Where the Wild Things Are was read by Bob on the test pilot (though it’s sadly absent from the Old School DVD). The book also appears in Sarah’s bedroom in Labyrinth, and Sendak got a “Special Thanks” credit at the end of the film. And of course, there’s always Doglion.

But don’t take LeVar Burton’s word for it! Here are some reviews of the film from some of the toughest critics in the biz (“biz” is what we call “business” in the biz).

Beautiful. I want to go see it again as soon as possible.
-ToughPigs’ Own Anthony

I really felt like a kid.
-ToughPigs’ Own Scott

The movie was so, so good. Beautiful puppets, too. And everything.
-ToughPigs’ Own Marianne

I can't wait to see it again.
-ToughPigs’ Own Michal

The movie was amazing!
-ToughPigs’ Own Max

It brought back such rich childhood memories. Fantastic film. I couldn't believe how intensely emotional it was for a so-called kids flick. Just beautiful.
-ToughPigs' Own Daniel
Click here to let the Wild Rumpus start on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Creature Shop movies, review

This is the third in a three-part series of articles in which Tough Pigs contributors take a look at The Dark Crystal. The first installment can be found here and the second can be found here.


It’s true, folks. I was privy to the same viewing of The Dark Crystal as TP’s own Ryan and Michal. And boy, do I have a lot to say about my first time seeing The Dark Crystal in several years. Unfortunately, Ryan and Michal have done a pretty thorough job at giving us some good reviews in great detail. So I don’t have much more to say on the subject.

But have you ever known me to be at a loss for words?

Rather than rehash what’s said and done (more said than done), I will bring to you, our beloved ToughPig readers, a list of sounds heard in The Dark Crystal that drive me crazy.

The Narrator. Sure, Joseph O’Conor did a smashing job with his Shakespearean-trained voice, but when you’ve got an old British man talking to you for 5 minutes with nothing on the screen, it’s easy to fall asleep even before the plot even gets the chance to sedate you.

The Mystiks. The first time we see the Mystiks, they start their rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout.” And I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand a bad Beatles cover of an Isley Brothers cover of a Topnotes song. That, and it makes my eardrums vibrate and explode. So there’s that.

The Dying Emperor. SkekSo, the Skeksis Emperor, begins the movie by dying a horrible, painful death. In doing so, he screams a lot. And by a lot, I mean a helluva lot. Why couldn’t he have died quietly like his Mystik counterpart? Maybe so we could hear Jerry Nelson’s Scred voice just one last time. In abundance.

The Garthim. Here is my impression of a Garthim. CLICKITY CLICKITY CLICKITY CLICKITY CLICK. Now pretend I’m repeating that for an hour.

Augrah. Remember that ancient great-great-aunt you had to visit every year? And remember how her scratchy voice scared the bejeezus out of you? And then you had to give her a kiss right near that hairy mole on her face? Well guess what. She’s been reborn as Augrah. Merry Christmas.

Fizzgig. He’s a little ball of fur and teeth that likes to scream at the top of his lungs. Once I get past the fact that he’s too small to have full-sized lungs, all I wanted to do was punt the critter across Thra. Maybe it would have been a more enjoyable sound if we could hear it fading into the distance.

Skeksis eating. I’m sorry, nobody needs to hear the sounds of large, wrinkled monsters chowing down on dinner without using utensils. Thankfully, we weren’t subjected to the deleted scene after the meal featuring the Skeksis in the bathroom.

Jen’s Flute. It’s actually quite lovely. But I just wanted him to break into "Stairway to Heaven." Is that too much to ask?

Those two fancy-dressed Skesis. Near the end of the movie, after they see Jen and Kira, they scream “GELFLINGS! GELFLINGS!” And it’s loud. And high-pitched. And completely unnecessary. And it makes me want to die a death more crumbly than the Emperor.

Honorable mentions: The Emperor turning to dust, Augrah’s face, the nekkid Chamberlain. These sights are so hideously ugly, they seems to speak louder than the above sounds. Yipes.

You may have noticed that I neglected to mention the Chamberlain’s incessant whimpering. Well, other than the fact that I would only be pointing out the obvious, maybe I like the Chamberlain’s voice. And maybe I dream at night about him saying “Yes! Please! Hmmmm! Please!” Right, and maybe I like having night terrors at the mere thought of the Chamberlain calling my cell phone.

Thanks for tuning in to our three-part series on The Dark Crystal. We hope you had as much fun reading it as we did breaking it down into little pieces and crushing them with a meat tenderizer. And then we set it on fire. Goodnight everybody!

Click here to plug your ears and discuss this article on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Creature Shop movies, review

This is the second in a three-part series of articles in which Tough Pigs contributors take a look at The Dark Crystal. The first installment can be found here.

Why, hello out there in TP-Land. My name is Michal. And I'm a Bad Muppet Fan.

Let me put that a little more elegantly. Until a few years ago, I had always considered myself to be a lover of Muppets - which, when I was little, meant watching the same eight episodes and two movies and listening to the same three records over and over and over again. Oh, and being able to answer the "I used to love those two old guys in the balcony! What were their names again?" question. In blissful ignorance of any realms beyond this basic Muppet diet, I quietly went about my childhood.

Then in 2002, I fell in with the ultra-informed, hyper-detail-oriented, fabulously geeky online Muppet fan community, and discovered that I had much to learn. "You haven't seen Emmet Otter?" "You haven't seen Christmas Eve on Sesame Street?" "You've never heard of Esskay Meats?"

No, no, and no. In a way, it made discovering some of these productions as an adult uniquely satisfying. Wrapping myself in a blanket two summers ago and cheering as I watched David Bowie dancing with goblins for the first time might not have given me the same fuzzy feeling, had this scene sent me running to hide under the covers in 1986.

So when Ryan suggested that we Brooklyn-dwelling Tough Pigs hold a viewing of The Dark Crystal and subsequently each write a review for the website - myself as a first-time viewer, and Ryan and Joe having not watched the flick in years - I agreed. Perhaps my innocence would serve as an advantage, inoculating me against the debilitating boredom I'd heard had turned off so many young Muppet fans during their first DC viewing.

And so we begin. I had hoped to witness The Dark Crystal’s famed intricate designs and stunning visuals within the first few minutes of the film, but judging by the barren landscape echoing every so often with dull thunder, it was not to be.

The narrator, by way of introduction, chats about death for awhile. His monotonous drone, as the scene switches over from the bland desert to the castle interior where a gaggle of wrinkly, uninviting Skeksis shoot lasers at each other with their eyes (which was pretty much all I could gather from the opening scenes until I re-watched the beginning) goes something like this:

"Long ago, there was some sort of land before time. Then somebody shattered a mirror, and two species emerged. Note this bunch’s harsh, twisted bodies, and their harsh, twisted souls, and also their gruesome, off-putting facial features. Their species is dying; their emperor lies dying; their land lies dying. Oh, and there are only ten of this other species, which is also dying. Their dying emperor is dying. Would you like to hear any more about death? Because I could go on for hours."

Thanks, narrator. You’ve adequately prepared me not to root for anyone in this movie, with the possible exception of Fizzgig and Podlings. Maybe Kira, depending on the day. But as long as folks over two feet tall are the ones kicking the bucket, I'm not really sure where the intrigue comes in. In his definitive work The Dark Crystal vs. Entertainment, Danny already covered the lack of dialogue in the first five minutes, but neglected to enumerate the dry mentions of death (seven).

The movie tries its best to pique my interest – to throw in little tidbits that would engage someone with a longer attention span than mine. We’ve got the Mystics lifting their weary heads to numbly chant for their savior, which leads those of us watching at home to break into “Twist and Shout.” To restore our interest, the scenes cut back to the Mystics every so often, doddering along towards the castle. At about a dozen yards an hour, no wonder they’re dying out. They can barely be bothered to turn their heads when one of them up and vanishes. Ho-hum, they seem to say, as they glance over and bumble on.

We see much more of the clannish Skeksis, shouting and whimpering and shouting that they hate each other’s whimpers, at times almost suggesting comic relief, but never quite getting there – what with their blind adherence to archaic rules and bellowing hearty slogans like “Death to Gelflings!” and “TRIAL BY STONE!” They also harbor at least a couple of mysteries, namely: how do such spindly creatures carry around so much paraphernalia? Does the “TRIAL BY STONE!” scene make anyone else think of The Emperor’s New Clothes? Why do we have to watch their emperor disintegrate, when the Mystic emperor had the decency to just dematerialize? Will I ever get the Chamberlain’s voice out of my head? Please, yes, pleeeease?

About a half an hour in, I’m relieved to see a swamp, an environment that I know the makers of this movie can capably handle. They follow through, too, throwing in lots of the unexpected tidbits that make The Dark Crystal so famously visually captivating and sending me into Johnny Hart mode: trees got legs! Cave got jaws! Rocks and reeds… er, sentient!

In fact, until we come back around to discussing the Prophecy and the Great Conjunction and Journeys and other things that ought to begin with Capital Letters, I find a number of elements to enjoy. We’ve got a peaceful boat shot, seen over bulrushes and set to lulling music. Even the Skeksis interjecting with their messy feast (dessert got legs!) makes them appear deliciously villainous as they gobble down roast Nebrie.

Then there’s the happenin’ Podling party, featuring drinkers and dancers and banjo players and a hyperactive little red-haired Podling girl interrupting conversations. The scene also features Jen attempting to speak Podling, which could have made for a cute little comedic moment to exploit. But nothing comes of it, and soon we’re back to Capital Letter Events.

Let’s discuss the hero, (as briefly as possible) before we wrap up. What do we know about Jen, other than the anomaly of his bizarre nomenclature? Actually, no. Let's address this whole gender business right now. As Danny has previously mentioned, the gender politics here are more than a little skewed.

Kira and Aughra are the enigmatic, almost-otherworldly-in-their-
affinity-with-nature, vaguely sympathetic horned/winged beings. The note I scribbled about Aughra as soon as she appeared, for all her oddly placed vocal emphases, was "At least she's got personality." (The one I scribbled when Kira glided off the cliff was "Girl got wings!")

Jen is a wimpy male specimen with a girl's name, raised by the leader of the Mystics and yet completely unaware of all things mystical (particularly the prophecy which everyone seems to agree pertains to him), except for that one time when he remembers something about having a bath.

As some astute devotees of the forum discussion following Ryan’s Dark Crystal post may already have noted, I postulate that Jen is, in fact, a Disney Princess. No one denies that Gelflings are soft-spoken and pretty – but not so pretty as to be sexually threatening, which would damage their marketability – and surrounded by fantastical beasts and scenery. Much of the adventure simply happens to Jen without any interference from him as he meanders about the set, waiting for inspiration to come to his rescue. Although his character has no distinguishing characteristics beyond general mousiness, someone sees fit to hand him an enchanted crystal shard and make us watch a movie about it. And at the end of the movie, Jen waves the shard around and hey presto! All the UrSkeks have changed into white gowns.

Every time my media-saturated brain has witnessed another bumbling antihero made great by circumstances forcing him to rise to the occasion, I've had a character to watch. Jen is pleasant enough to look at; the engineering behind his design makes the casual viewer scratch a head or two. But he doesn't grow from a coward or a pickpocket into a bold or cunning hero. He starts out wide-eyed, and he remains wide-eyed until the end of the movie. For a split second he sounds brave as he and Kira progress towards the castle, but only because Kira utters an uncharacteristic line about being inexplicably afraid. Even his mistake of bailing from Aughra’s lair without rescuing her doesn’t teach him any lessons; Aughra lives anyway, and so does Jen’s naïveté.

So, to sum up:

Visuals: mostly intriguing, except when the species is too hideous to be redeemed even by novel design.

Plot: I think it had something to do with draining the viewer’s living essence, à la Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus.

The two females: mostly acceptable to watch.

Males (everyone else): either a wussy flautist, or a grotesque, Skeletor-like mass with a potentially unbearably grating voice, or a ponderous, plodding brontosaur.

This Bad Muppet Fan awards The Dark Crystal a rating of half an UrSkek (but I won’t tell you which half, or out of how many.) If the sequel features more Podling parties or Fizzgig tantrums, though, I’m in.

Agree? Disagree? Nebrie undercooked? Click here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum.

Labels: Creature Shop movies, review

This is the first in a three-part series of articles in which Tough Pigs contributors take a look at The Dark Crystal.

I first saw The Dark Crystal during what must have been its first network TV broadcast. I was already a Jim Henson fan, so I was inclined to be enchanted by whatever he had up his crazy creative sleeve. I was also a lot more easily impressed in those days. For example, my favorite show on TV at the time was a Scrubbing Bubbles commercial. Now here was this movie The Dark Crystal: it had cool-looking puppets, it was created by Jim Henson, and it included a character who could remove her eyeball. With this formidable combination, I assumed for years that it must be a great film.

On joining the online Henson fan community, however, I was surprised to discover that there were those who weren't crazy about it. Reading the criticisms of the movie (such as the ones in this classic article by Tough Pigs founder Danny Horn), I had to concede that it was deeply flawed, so I changed my official position. The Dark Crystal was, in fact, stinky.

It's now been years since I last saw the film, so I wanted to give it another look and make a definitive decision, as a mature, discriminating viewer, albeit one who owns some Bert underwear. So I sat down to screen the movie with fellow Muppet fan Michal (who had never seen it) and fellow Muppet fan Joe (who also hadn't seen it in years). We poured ourselves a nice, cold glass of Podling essence, and stuck the thing in the VCR.

The question at hand: Is The Dark Crystal a masterpiece or a crapsterpiece? To ensure I was viewing the movie in the right state of mind, I invited my seven-year-old self to watch it with us, so I could get his less jaded take on things.

The film's opening moments do not bode well. It begins with a static shot of the Skeksis' ugly castle, as a narrator drones on drearily to fill us in on what’s been happening for the last thousand years. It was an "age of wonder," he tells us, but all we see is a model of a decrepit old castle in serious need of an extreme makeover. This is followed by more narration over a shot of the Skeksis all standing around staring at the titular crystal. At this point, Seven-Year-Old Ryan is already getting restless. "How long is this movie?" he asks, adding, "Can we watch Thundercats after this?"

The Skeksis, by the way, are U-G-L-Y. Seriously, they ain't got no alibi -- they're ugly. But they're supposed to be horrible villains, so it works for them. On the other end of the spectrum, we have those long-haired elderly gentlemen, the Mystics, whom we first see as they raise their voices in a ceremonial chorus of nine-part harmony. For some reason, Seven-Year-Old Ryan thinks this is absolutely hilarious. He laughs uproariously, then tries to imitate their call, although he doesn't quite hit the same low notes, and ended up sounding more eunuch than Mystic.

Shortly after, we're introduced to Jen, the Last Surviving Gelfling and our hero, who is about to embark on a very important journey to heal the crystal. Jen is just a little fellow, the kind of protagonist one expects to watch going through a character arc from weakling to warrior, learning all about courage and his own purpose along the way. But guess what? None of that happens.

Actually, there’s really just one problem with Jen: He’s boring, and he never does anything, and I don’t care about him. Okay, that’s more than one thing, but throughout the movie, Jen just kind of sits there and let things happen around him. He's the most passive central character this side of Where's Waldo. We never really get to know him, except for some inner monologues, in which we hear Jen thinking, "What am I doing here? Where am I supposed to go? Should I have packed a toothbrush?" Take the scene in which Aughra’s observatory (which, by the way, is a really awesome set) is attacked by Garthim, a roving gang of big mean beetles. Jen does not fight them off or attempt to protect Aughra, he just escapes… by falling out a window. As much as I like defenestration, it did not serve to make me like the guy.

I should note, however, that Seven-Year-Old Ryan doesn't seem to mind. He likes Jen well enough, although I don't think he'd ever dress as him for Halloween. And Seven-Year-Old Ryan remarks that "Jen" is a girl's name, so he probably got made fun of as a kid. I don't point out to him that there were no other Gelflings around to bully Jen because they had all been slaughtered by monsters.

Then there's a scene set in a marshy forest, a forest full of fanciful flora, fantastic fauna, and imagination. Dang, I wish "imagination" started with an "f"... I had some really great alliteration going there. Anyway, I think this is my favorite sequence of the film, even though it has little to do with the story. It's a plethora of dreamed-up critters that exist simply to show off what the brand spanking new Creature Shop could do, and I love it. Seven-Year-Old Ryan digs it too. He especially likes "the part where the big monster guy eats the little guy."

The forest is also where Jen and we encounter the film's female lead. As a character, she doesn't fare much better than Jen. Kira, the other Last Surviving Gelfling, is more of a device than a character, what with her wings and her Dr. Doolittle-style animal chat skills, and her ability to hotwire a Landstrider. Seven-Year-Old Ryan, by the way, loves the Landstriders, and expresses a wish that they were real animals so he could see them at the zoo.

We watch as Kira takes Jen to a high-energy celebration at the village of her adoptive family, the Podlings. Ain’t no party like a Podling party, ‘cause a Podling party don’t stop! That is, until the Garthim destroy the village and enslave everyone. (Which really puts a damper on the whole party... no one's in the mood for Pin the Tail on the Nebri anymore) Seven-Year-Old Ryan finds the Podlings funny, and asks me to make sure everyone knows he wasn't scared during the Garthim attack.

Then a bunch of other stuff happens... I don't remember the sequence of events exactly, but it probably involves the Chamberlain Skeksis squealing and some characters talking about the Prophecy over and over again. There really oughtta be a Dark Crystal drinking game, and I'd be surprised if there's not one out there somewhere.

I should mention Aughra, the sassy old broad who gives Jen the shard he needs to heal the crystal. She has more personality in her free-range eyeball than Jen and Kira have in their entire elfin bodies, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of her.

And I have nothing bad to say about Kira’s pet fuzzball Fizzgig, who is clearly the R2-D2 of The Dark Crystal -- he’s a loyal companion to the main characters, the audience can’t understand what he says, and he jumps in at an important juncture to save the day. Fizzgig, a living Koosh ball, is also the most Muppetlike of the film’s characters, which is perhaps not unrelated to his being the most lovable. Seven-Year-Old Ryan is fascinated by Aughra, and likes Fizzgig, who reminds him of his friend Chad's dog, whose name is Crackers.

Meanwhile, some other boring stuff happens, and then Jen and Kira heal the crystal, la de da de da. The End, and everyone's happy. But here’s a question: At the end of the movie, when the Skeksis and Mytics are amalgamated to become the UrSkeks, the UrSkek spokesman reveals that they were the ones who broke the crystal in the first place. Why? What did they think was going to happen? Were they trying to make some money by selling crystal paperweights or earrings, or shard toothpicks? I realize that all we need to know at the start of the film is that the crystal done got broke, but on this viewing I kept wondering who thought slicing the crystal would be a good idea. And although it's great that the crystal is healed, what happens if someone accidentally chips or scrapes it? I suppose everyone's SOL for another 1000 years.

I once explained my position on The Dark Crystal by saying it would best be viewed with the dialogue removed, and after a careful re-viewing I stand by that. The musical score is great, the visuals are striking, the technical aspects are amazing, and I really have to hand it to Jim Henson, character designer Brian Froud, and their whole crew for making some seriously ugly puppets. When you create all your actors from scratch, it would be easy to make them all cute and licensable, but these creatures really look like… creatures.

Ultimately, though, that doesn’t make up for the shallow story and uninteresting characters. Seven-Year-Old Ryan, on the other hand, said the movie was really cool, although when I asked him whether he thought it was better than Labyrinth, he said no. When I asked him if it was better than the Jim Henson Company's fantasy fim Mirrormask, he reminded me that he's from 1988 and Mirrormask hasn't been made yet.

As for me, I'd have to rate the movie about a half-star higher today than I would have a week ago, but it’s still not A Good Movie. Have you ever read an old fairy tale from, like, 15^th century Europe? They’re full of magic and fantastic creatures and epic journeys, but the storytelling is simplistic, and by the end of the proceedings nobody has changed or learned anything. The Dark Crystal is like that. It’s a beautiful, ornate, hand-carved frame, but the painting inside is just a bunch of stick figures.

Say, that was a pretty good metaphor. I wonder if I just came up with that, or ripped it off from somewhere else?

In the end, Seven-Year-Old Ryan and Contemporary Ryan agree whole-heartedly on one thing: Aughra’s detachable eye is rad.

Click here to discuss this article on the Tough Pigs forum! And come back Wednesday to read another Tough Pigs contributor's take on The Dark Crystal!

Labels: Creature Shop movies, review

It's the eternal question that separates all Henson fans. Do you prefer the intricate art and stylings of the Dark Crystal or the fun adventurous characters of Labyrinth? Would you rather see the Trial by Stone or a Firey rip off his own head? Are you all about the Crystal Shard or the Crystal Balls?

There's only one way to solve this matter. Head on over to the ToughPigs forum and cast your vote!

Click here to vote for Gelflings or Goblins on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: Creature Shop movies, poll, reader participation

Back when you were a little kid (or before you were born, depending), The Jim Henson Company made a not-poorly-recieved film called Labyrinth. It starred Jennifer Connelly as intrepid-esque teen Sarah, a mincing David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King, and a ton of Creature Shop Muppets designed by Brian Froud. It had some goofy costumes and effects (as well as some pretty decent effects, let's be fair) and a good amount of genuine British humor, supplied, as you'd expect, by hardworking British people. I liked it then, and it's okay now.

A few years ago Tokyopop, an American comic book company that usually specializes in translating and reprinting Japanese comics acquired the Labyrinth license, and set about making a graphic novel (more specifically, a Japanese manga) that would serve as a direct sequel to the original movie.

And I guess that was their first mistake.

When you pick up the book, you initially notice the very pretty painted cover by Kouyu Shurei. Tokyopop really wants you to notice that, in particular - along with the writer and artist credits on the cover, the cover artist's name is there as well. Odd, that. But it is a Japanese name, and I guess it's meant to distract you from what's inside - no Japanese creators. See, the big deal about this being a Labyrinth manga instead of comic book is that manga is known among its fans as having very well-done, detailed artwork and interesting, character-driven plots by Japanese writers and artists. The Labyrinth manga, however, was written by Jake T. Forbes and drawn by Chris Lie. Now, I don't know from foreigners, but that don't sound too Japanese to me.

So really quick, let's take a short detour and check out the creator bios in the back of the book for a second, okay? Now, it says here that Mr. Forbes has been an "English-language localizer for an unhealthy amount of manga". Huh. When you use a word like 'unhealthy' in your own biography, what kind of expectations are you laying out for us, your audience? Well, whatever, I read an unhealthy amount of manga, so I should be cool with it. It also says he's presently a "Quest Writer for massively multiplayer online games". Oh. I see. So that's what we're dealing with here. All right. Well.

Let's open the book anyway, shall we?

Okay, so the book begins with a recap of the original Labyrinth via the dialog of the play Sarah is rehearsing for at the beginning of that movie: "...In a kingdom far away, there lived a beautiful princess... through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered..." You should probably just go ahead and re-watch the first movie anyway, as it's kind of vague, here.

Our story proper opens with Toby, the baby half-brother Sarah spent all of Labyrinth trying to rescue. He's all growed up, a high school student, and he looks like a girl.



I should explain that the artist is clearly going for a shoujo look for the visuals, and what shoujo means to you, essentially, is "pretty, pretty lady". Every character, male, female, hermaphrodite (yep, we got those here in Japanese-type comics) looks like either a pretty 15-year-old girl or a pretty 25-year-old lady. That's it, save for the goblins. You say you want luxurious eyelashes? Brother, you came to the right place. I'm not really criticizing that aspect as much as I'm just making fun for the sake of it - the intended audience is pre-teen fantasy fans, and it's an appropriate look. But more on the art later.

When we enter, we're just in time to see Toby demolishing the school play he's performing in. Flubbing his lines, setting the stage on fire, endangering lives. This quickly becomes a theme - Toby's a loser. He's no good at his schoolwork (he's also not very bright, as it turns out), he's kind of lazy and a procrastinator, as shown by his failing a test because he stayed up all night playing (surprise) massively multiplayer online games. I have no solid proof, but I'd imagine Toby regularly has at least a slight case of teenage B.O. You kind of start to wonder why Jareth even wanted to keep the kid in the first place.



One of the big missteps in the transition from the movie to the manga is the characterization of Irene, Sara's stepmother and Toby's natural mom. In the movie, a key point was that Sarah's mother was harried and trying to be as good a parent as possible, but that Sarah was an ungrateful brat. They completely switched the character around for the manga - I guess years of having to put up with Sarah's elaborate doll collections has made Irene bitter. She's a total bitch in the book, and Toby's dad is nowhere to be seen. The irony of the character's perceived Cinderella situation has been turned into fact, making the story even more two-dimensional. Not only do his parents not go to watch to the play he destroys, but when Toby comes home, a note on the fridge says, and I quote:

"Toby - your father and I will be out until late this evening. Don't go mucking about in the fridge for something to eat. It's hard enough planning meals without you eating whatever you feel like. There should be some leftover soup in the freezer. If you really must eat, eat that. - Irene"

Damn. If you really must eat, I suppose, but I don't like it. So this soup in the freezer, would it be next to the Ziplock bag you keep your heart in, Mom? Also, "signed Irene"? Recall that in the movie this woman is Sarah's stepmother; but she's Toby's biological parent. Not to drag out the freezer metaphor, but cold. Mom and Dad are out for a night on the town, probably enjoying a nice swordfish steak, possibly with asparagus in some kind of cream sauce and fingerling potatoes, and her darling, cherished natural son gets frozen soup and resentment. Nice. And while we're examining this note, "mucking about"? I'm sorry, but in the film Irene is not British, or even Australian, as far as I'm aware. I'm not sure what kind of weird personality she's trying to affect here, but in the manga, she's a frightening woman. I might have been too harsh on Toby earlier - clearly he has a lot in his daily life he needs to escape from, and his Kingdom of Goblins MMORPG must be like sweet heroin.



Fortunately for Toby, he does have an ally - Sarah, who's now an adult with an unflattering hairstyle and goofy hornrimmed glasses. But she knows what a pain in the ass Irene can be, and offers soothing words, support, sisterly affection, even cooks the poor sap a real dinner. And Toby shows his gratitude by exclaiming, when Sarah heads home for the night, "Thank God. I thought she'd never leave!" so he can cloister himself in his room and play his cherished computer games until the crack of dawn. I love Toby. Don't you?



The next day, Toby gets caught not cheating on the aforementioned math test (it's complicated, and further proof of Toby's ineptitude) by his handlebar-moustachioed, be-Afro'd math teacher. He's like a black Gene Shalit, this guy, and completely baffling character-design-wise. So Toby is sent to see the principal, where he meets Jareth, who's disguised as a 'guidance counselor'. Albeit a guidance counselor with really long nails and more eye makeup than you'd usually see on a male member of a high school's faculty.

He then flirts with Toby a bit (so I guess, at least, that part's true to life) and tells him about the goblin Honor Guard that he (Jareth) has set up to monitor Toby, and that eveything good that's ever happened to him (Toby) is thanks to him (Jareth) including recieving stolen property and implied physical harm to others. Then (God, it just goes on, doesn't it?) Jareth calls Toby an ungrateful little snot and jumps out a third-story window, which is pretty much what you're hoping would happen by this point anyway. But the scene does serve as a decent explanation as to why Toby hasn't been eaten by a bear or hit by a semi due to his own incompetence yet. I mean, I'd been wondering about it.



The little bitch (Toby!) goes home where he flails his uncoordinated, gangly teenage limbs around his bedroom, unplugging his computer and erasing the first homework assignment he's ever actually worked on in his life. Luckily, he had enough foresight to print out his efforts before he went spastic, but (and don't you hate when this happens) a goblin steals his homework, leads him through a Fraggle hole in his closet and into the world of the Labyrinth in a sequence that's totally not at all like anything from either Alice in Wonderland or The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Or a fucking retelling of the original movie. Jesus. And that - mercifully - is the end of Chapter One. Oh, wait - Chapter One... of the six chapters in this book. You know what? I'm done.

So let's see, what've we got so far? A cast of mostly unlikeable characters, and a hero I personally wouldn't root for if I were a trained French pig and he were a gourmet truffle. I have to admit, this is basically where I stopped reading the book. I skimmed through the rest, enough to know what was happening. But by this point I'd been beaten up (emotionally and possibly physically) by the thing, and I was only about sixty pages in.

Let's touch briefly on the artwork, seeing as it's half of the experience. The artist, as I mentioned, is doing this story in 'the manga style'. Except, um, he can't. By which I mean he isn't really very good. I'm sorry, but there it is, and it's especially apparent when he tries to adapt Brian Froud's original character designs. The biggest problem is it's just sort of bland - it has the most generic 'manga look' to it - things are drawn fairly competently, but not interestingly, and that includes the Goblin City and Labyrinth scenes. If the original movie had anything, it had amazing sets - dingy and worn but fantastic and surreal. The manga somehow manages to make the art inspired by those sets look, well, boring, if you can imagine. Everything is really hollow and lifeless at best, unpleasant at worst.

Plus the art looks just plain rushed, which it probably was. In defense of the artist, working by yourself on a graphic novel is a pretty big strain, especially when you have to do several hundred pages of artwork over the course of months, not years. But still, when you see his portrayal of The Worm (of "'Allo!" fame) - a likeable bit of Froud character design, and something people point to when they remember the film - you will wonder why, suddenly, a horrible zombie creature has taken that character's place in the manga.



Just so you know I can put my money where my mouth is, I spent five minutes sketching, using the same photo it looks like Chris Lie used to base his drawing of the Worm on, and came up with this:



Not to toot my own artistic horn (well, maybe just a little), but tell me that isn't a Worm you'd want to follow inside and have a cuppa tea with the Missus.

It's all a shame, too, because this would have been a great opportunity to really go nuts with the Labyrinth mythos. Watching the movie, you get the idea that there's a whole lot of stuff just behind the scenes they presented - there's a lot that could be told about how things work, the history; the cockeyed, funny fantasy-logic that makes the thing tick. You get some of that in the Froud art books that accompany the original movie, but this is also supposed to be a new story. And since it's a comic book (and you don't have to wory about an effects budget), you could do so much more than serve up a warmed-over Cinderella plot with lazy-yet-rushed art.

It seems like Tokyopop got the Labyrinth license and wanted to rush something out as quickly and cheaply as possible before it got stale - how much could it cost, really, to hire a Quest Writer for a MMORPG? I'm imagining the story that could have been told if a team of really talented Japanese creators had been hired to do the book - there's a specific flavor a lot of genuine fantasy and shoujo manga has that just isn't captured here. And the artwork - well, it's too bad that the cover has to act like a rabbit snare to get people to buy the book.

So in conclusion: Whiny, abused kids, mincing, fey rock gods and undead worms. I guess that about covers it! My suggestion is to read Return to Labyrinth if you have too much joy in your life, and need to be reminded of the darkness that lurks around the corner, unsuspected, waiting. Alternatively, if you don't hate yourself, just watch the original movie. Or any other movie. Or do anything else. Don't - don't read this comic book.

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Labels: comics/magazines, Creature Shop movies