At best, it elicits a sigh of disgust. At worst, it mocks The Little Prince, the wartime masterpiece by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This runaway world best seller may be understood on several levels. It captivates as a children's tale. It symbolically tells the story of creation. At its peak, it is the autobiography of a sensitive and lost soul dedicating his work to a dear friend in need of consolation. The friend is cold and hungry in Nazi-occupied France, while the author is safe in New York. . . . Writing like that deserves better treatment than an ill-considered distortion.Meanwhile, webcomic readers who commented were almost entirely interested in identifying the interplanetary objects in the background. Okay, I know that Marciuliano (bio here) invited us to do so, but that still seems to say something about different community priorities.
Musings about some of my favorite fantasy literature for young readers, comics old and new, the peculiar publishing industry, the future of books, kids today, and the writing process.
30 August 2008
She's a Galaxy Girl
Francesco Marciuliano of Sally Forth and Medium Large got to do a guest comic in Bizarro this month, and this is what he came up with. In response, an Ontario reader complained:
I think that this comic wouldn't have had quite as harsh of a feel if it had included the satirical title of "Machiavelli's Little Prince", which I'm sure *had* to have been in the artist's head, and would've made it more evident as a parody.
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