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Have you watched Adventure Time? Maybe you have seen the comic or the graphic novel or some of the merchandise. It's a phenomenon, not least because of the age range it seems to appeal to. It is a show on the Cartoon Network, which the network claims tops its ratings and is watched by 2 million 2–11 year old boys – but I know many older kids, including students, who watch it avidly too.
When I first saw it I must admit I was surprised that something as violent, surreal and bizarre – and sometimes with such horrific and sexual content – was being aired for young children. It has a PG rating but that does nothing to keep it from young children's impressionable brains.
Here's a list of extreme stuff you can find in it. It includes: "Lots of references to sex, ejaculation, viagra, sex-positions, sexual remarks and humor." And here's a spoof web page parodying the reaction of the Christian right.
Disney it is not.
I think it's brilliant (but then I have a degree in Dada and Surrealism), and its freshness is perhaps partly because it's not written in the conventional sense (by a writer or writer team) but produced by artists using storyboards that are then developed by a team, even going so far as deliberately to employ surrealist techniques such as the Exquisite Corpse game in order to come up with ideas. It's also hand-drawn, each 11 minute episode taking 8–9 months to make.
Now: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" This was the line that introduced the American radio show The Shadow in the 1930s (it later became a film, comic book series, etc etc). One answer is (besides the eponymous detective) – that children do. Children are far more preoccupied with questions about what adults call the dark side of human nature than many adults give them credit for. The best children's writers know this.
Adventure Time is therefore in the same ballpark as Where the Wild Things Are...
... and the darkest of nursery rhymes and fairy stories....
... the kind that were explored by Angela Carter in her novels about growing up such as the Magic Toyshop and the Company of Wolves...
...stories where grandmothers turning to carnivorous beasts, the bedroom is populated by monsters, and the house next door contains versions of your own parents but with buttons for eyes (thanks, Neil)...
But it's also in the same ballpark as beautiful wonder-filled Hayao Miyazaki films such as My Neighbour Totoro.
There is a genuine sense of beauty, spirituality and awe in many of Adventure Time's episodes or scenes, that is also shared by children who are viewing the world for the first time. It's as if the creators have been able to access their own infantile selves to identify with the way that children see the world.
The Jungian theory of the human shadow, itself part-derived from myths and old stories, is that babies and young children have what Bly calls a 360° personality. But much of this compass of human potential is socialised out of their behaviour during their upbringing. By the time they are around 20 years old just a slice remains. This is the socialised personality that becomes fixed as an adult.
The remaining portion is buried – the shadow – but it emerges in odd ways: our obsessions, the imaginary traits we project onto situations and other people, particularly our partners, the things we are frightened of, particularly in ourselves.
Bly says that after the age of 40 or so – the age of the midlife crisis – adults often start to unpack their shadow. Their reaction to this process determines the rest of the course of their lives.
The shadow is not bad, nor evil. Those are labels that adults put onto things. The shadow contains just what was suppressed, punished or ignored during the socialisation or upbringing process, and depends on the values held by the parents and the culture they belong too.
And this, I think, is why Adventure Time appeals to young adults as well as children. Young adults are struggling with those aspects of themselves which adults want to repress. In young adults there is a sense of nostalgia for their childhood self, that remains as a fading echo before the responsibilities of adulthood unkindly snuff it out altogether and they forget forever what being a child is like. They know this is going to happen, they regret it and they try to cling on to its last vestiges as long as possible.
The shadow is important, vital, necessary, and it is dangerous to repress it or ignore it. The makers of Adventure Time, and the Cartoon Network that commissions it, cannot be unaware of this. It is a liminal gate to the subconscious, the place where creativity thrives.
If I seem to be making rather grand claims for what is after all a children's cartoon I make no apologies. We all, as writers, are gatekeepers to this realm, aren't we? And each of us, in our own unique way, delves beyond the gate to do our work.
0 Comments on The shadow knows – it's Adventure Time! – by David Thorpe as of 8/4/2014 1:12:00 AM
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@Synsidar: Dynamite did a fine job w/ The Lone Ranger, and I’m speaking as someone who’s followed the character for more than 40 years. I don’t know the sales figures for Dynamite’s run, but the stories were solid and well told.
I understand comics shop owners want to make money. But I miss the days before comics were required to sell like X number of copies to even warrant space on the new releases stand.
Kind of like what happened with movies and books. Seen most of the major movie releases these days? I can barely sit through them for their lack of story and characterization. Read a best-selling book lately? Now they’re ghost-written for authors (I’m looking at you, James Patterson)coasting on their early work, and talented mid-list authors are out of luck.
Making money is nice, and necessary. But when it becomes the be all, end all, folks deserve whatever they get. And that’s mostly crap.
Oh, and if everyone’s tired of old characters being revamped and brought back, get Marvel to cut it’s X-men and Spider-Man books, and Dc it’s Batman, to two titles a month. That’ll open the way for new stuff far more than pissing on Dynamite for bringing back a classic character.
Synsidar: “Best-selling novelists in the action, romance, and other genres might have their faults, but at least they provide readers with complete stories.”
I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t THE SHADOW provide a complete story? I’m not certain I understand what you’re referring to.
That touches on my comment on Trexler’s latest post here. Normally, characters aren’t copyrightable separately from the stories they’re in, because they don’t exist separately from the stories. Comics characters do exist separately from their stories, to some extent, though. Fans might have warm feelings about them and be willing to pay to see them in new stories, but putting them in new stories that are genuinely good is harder than starting out with a blank slate. Readers might have preconceptions about what a good story starring _____ is, the character concept might have problems, all the good stories about _____ might have been done already. In any case, most readers will be primarily interested in seeing ____ again, not in experiencing the writer’s and artists’ skills and craftsmanship.
With novelists, the readers are paying to experience what the author does, whatever that is. She’s not limited by the strengths and weaknesses of the character she’s been assigned to handle. Whether she’s praised or criticized, the comments are directed at her work.
SRS
“If sales (since June 2010) of fewer than 10,000 copies per month is “popular,” comics are definitely in trouble.”
Wow, did you misread those sales figures. Yeah, fewer than 10,000 copies a month isn’t exactly a lot, but Dynamite is a small company that works with a small amount of resources. And yet over 6 years into its run (!), Dynamite is able to sell more copies of Red Sonja than DC with Doc Savage or Dark Horse can with the similarly long-in-the-tooth Gold Key characters.
“At least part of the trouble associated with reviving old characters is that the publishers of series sell the characters more than they sell the stories.”
Dynamite doesn’t. Every time Dynamite has a new launch, they have a massive interview at Newsarama and a cover feature on Comic Shop News, and every one of those interviews stresses:
1. Who the character is and why you should care even if you’ve never heard of them before.
2. What their particular take is story-wise and why it’s cool.
3. That the stories will be accessible whether you’re a fan or not.
I’m not much of a Dynamite reader (the only title of theirs I’ve ever bought regularly is Red Sonja, and I’m not even getting that at the moment) but even just from observing them, it’s so obvious that so many of the comments ragging on them in this thread are totally ill-informed.
I dunno, I’m definitely not old enough to remember the original pulp novels/radio show and yet I’m fairly interested in the character. Then again, if it weren’t for hours of clicking around TV Tropes (and spotting some reprints in the store I work at) I probably never would have heard of him.
Are there any big blogs/communities/podcasts/whathaveyous for pulp novel or radio serial fans? If Dynamite isn’t already aiming promotions towards them, it might be a smart move.
Now this is something I can be excited about. And since DC is screwing up its comics, I should have plenty of money to afford this new title.
Fox reported paid one million dollars for the film rights, so somebody thinks the Shadow still has some legs. (Perhaps Dynamite knows something we don’t about the rumored Sam Raimi film.)
http://collider.com/fox-picks-up-sam-raimi-the-shadow-david-slade-to-possibly-direct/18206/
Personally, I’m looking forward to this title (except for the endless variant covers and spin-off series Dynamite is addicted to).
LL
Rich, I chose Red Sonja as an example because it’s a property that’s currently being published, and has a natural marketing tie-in to a major upcoming movie.
DIGRESSION: If I had based it on sales, well, I sell exactly one copy of Queen Sonja when it comes out, and that’s it. It’s a sub-only title, because I haven’t had a single rack sale of any of her titles for 4 years.
Removing something from the rack is not necessarily an easy decision. I LOVE Peter David’s work on Fallen Angel, but except for the mini that guest-starred Illyria from Angel, I haven’t been able to sell copies of the comic off the rack, EVER. I still carry, and occasionally sell, copies of the TPs, and suggest it to people, but I had to cut it from the new comics rack. It’s not about MAKING money on it, it’s about NOT LOSING money on it. I just this afternoon put 20 Fallen Angel comics from my back issue bins into my 3/$1 bins. I spent $2+ each on those, and that money is GONE. END DIGRESSION
We NEED publishers to realize that they need to CREATE an audience for their comic, and it can’t be from among the same ever-shrinking crowd. We need new blood reading these things.
I posed a similar question to the folks at Valiant (on Twitter) about who their intended market was, and they responded directly to me with (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “I hate to give the cliche answer, but we are making these comics for people who like good comics.”
Wrong. Answer.
People who like good comics are ALREADY READING good comics. That makes Valiant’s answer akin to getting someone to drink Coke instead of Pepsi, when what both need are more drinkers.
I have no attachment to (or bias against) the Shadow, I just don’t see how this series (or line) is going to anything but cost me money.
I have no idea where Brian Jacoby’s Secret headquarters is in Tallahassee, Florida but it clearly rests atop a mountain “smart” with a very rich vein of valuable “honest”.
I love THE SHADOW with the passion of any comicsfan my age (near 50) who first encountered through Steranko’s History of Comics like it was the primogenitor of superheroes, the true source of where cool came from. But that affection I and others like me may hold for the character is hardly a bankable asset for an industry that, unquestionably, has to look towards bringing in a new audience.
Those covers shown above are wonderful; clearly made by artists who fully understand the character and couldn’t wait for the opportunity to play in THE SHADOW’s sandbox. But seriously, who other than Shadow fans and guys like me are ever going to see them and say, “hey, I should try this”?
The creators named for their involvement on the project seem to all just be cover artists. Of those Ryan Sook and Jae Lee are the only two of interest. The others will just do their usual thing for Dynamic with no heart or soul.
I disagree with some here that The Shadow can’t reach a new audience, but I think we all agree it won’t be with DF.
“Personally, I’m looking forward to this title (except for the endless variant covers and spin-off series Dynamite is addicted to).”
Yeah, like the guy at my LCS said, too bad Dynamite doesn’t publish as many actual issues as they publish covers.
“But seriously, who other than Shadow fans and guys like me are ever going to see them and say, “hey, I should try this”?”
Well, if the artwork is good and the stories look interesting …everybody …
And if someone was putting out comics from his garage, he’d be thrilled with 1,000 copies sold. Fewer than 10,000 copies per issue is terrible for a commercial publisher, regardless of its size.
Red Sonja is a genre fiction, sword-and-sorcery character. That limits the audience to readers who like the sword and sorcery genre and people who have very eclectic tastes.
SRS
Alex Ross is sort of hit-or-miss with me but those are definitely HIT. I am excited for this.