Once Upon A Time...

These fairy tale cartoons are juuuust right

Dear Reader,

I don’t know about you, but I like a world where arrogant gingerbread men run amuck, princesses kiss frogs and sleep on peas, and ogres make friends with donkeys while rocking out to Smash Mouth. All these and more live in the realm of fairy tales, which is one of the most creative and wonderful ways people try to make sense of this world. 

Fairy tales and cartoonists are a perfect fit, like Cinderella and her glass slipper, or beanstalks and guys named Jack. The elements that make up fairy tales (memorable characters, strong images, repetitive structures) are a ripe vocabulary for cartoonists to wax poetic about modern life, the struggle of good vs. evil, the power of love, finding your destiny…

What’s this? A mysterious visitor at my front door is offering me a free apple? Nice! No follow up questions needed. Well, while I go eat this and surely live happily ever after, here’s some thoughts on fairy tales from the Toonstack crew.

Kendra Allenby

Fairy tales are great for cartoons - they’re such a rich, widely shared world of meaning to play in. And you get less flack about them than cartoons about God (another rich, widely shared world of meaning which I love to play in, but those cartoons rarely sell, probably because of the aforementioned flack.) Greek Myths are in a similar category for me, but even though many Greek myths are weird as hell, there’s something that elevates them from just weird to fancy weird (probably our enduring love of Greek columns). Fairy tales are never fancy weird, and thus can be all sorts of shades of sinister and visceral and blood curdling and I love them for that.

Sofia Warren

I like him. I hope he comes to my window next, so I can try to impress him with my bangs.

Amy Kurzweil 

The replication crisis has curtailed many outlandish claims about the natural world from the Drs Grimm. Frogs can regrow their limbs, freeze solid then completely thaw, and kill 100,000 people with a gram of toxin from their skin (the poisonous ones), but everyone knows they hate kissing.

Mads Horwath 

Fairytales teach you if you never raise a fuss, never rock the boat, if you smile the world will smile back. To me, that was the least believable aspect of Disney rendition of fairy tales at least. A magic carriage, a fairy godmother, can remain make-believe because as you grow up, you know it’s not true. It is the attitude of how a woman should behave is the part where we need to collectively emphasize where to suspend disbelief. A fairytale should open up your imagination, not make you disappointed with the real world. 

This among many reasons, made me a not so nice person I feel. The disappointment in niceness made me root for the underdog of the story, but once they became the top elite, I want to root for the new underdog. It becomes a never ending cycle in which, I just want a Reign of Terror.

Hilary Campbell

Okay, people will tell me “West Side Story is not a fairytale” but a guy falling in love with a girl in an hour then professing it to her and dying for her sure sounds like something out of this world.

Johnny DiNapoli 

One thing about fairy tales is they sure know how to use food as a plot point. You got porridge, magic beans, magic apples, stone soup, trails of breadcrumbs, big ol’ candy houses, and, if you’re a big bad wolf, some delicious pigs.

P.S.- if you’re reading this and you’re a fairy tale fan/folkorist/Mother Goose herself, I’m always looking for fairy tale collection recommendations. Some of my favorites are Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino, Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales, and the Oddly Modern Fairy Tales series. If you have a favorite story or two, drop ‘em in the comments below, before this email turns back into a pumpkin.

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Toonstack News and Extras

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