Today’s rhyme, Madam, I Come a Courting, was another one that kind of stumped me the only real detail that’s given (beyond a courtship going on) is the implication that since the woman wants a handsome man, the suitor isn’t one. In the end, because of the line about how long flowers last I decided to focus on the garden this was taking place in.
The rhyme seems to accuse the woman of being only interested in beauty… says the man who assumes love can be bought…
Of course I’m sure whoever wrote this would say “what has love got to do with marriage?”
I think today’s rhyme, “A Long Tail’d Pig” is more of an example of values dissonance than a when was this ever for kids rhyme. At first I assumed the latter because of… brutality of the life on the farm, butchering a pig. But then I tried to think of it from the perspective of a child from the 17th century the response to that statement would be “yeah, what’s your point?”
For today’s nursery rhyme, “Dance Thumbkin, Dance!” I’ve come to the conclusion that children sitting on their parent’s lap is something I have to add to the bin, containing cats and horses, of things I can’t draw without a reference.
Anyway with this one it was a choice between taking the rhyme completely literally and have a picture of five men dancing, which probably wouldn’t make much sense or the way I chose with a mother singing the song with her child while wiggling each finger, which is difficult to make clear in one panel… perhaps if I had done it more as a closeup.
Today’s Rhyme, “I Doubt, I doubt”, made no sense whatsoever when I read it the first time. I guess it had something to do with a guy going nuts when his wife was out and… when she got home she killed a dog, I guess?
As I’ve said in previous ones this will definitely be the last one like this and when I come across them the best I can do is do the most memorable image in the poem… Which in this case is a dog and a pig wearing a saddle and a bridle respectively.
I briefly thought of doing today’s rhyme, Henry was a Worthy King, literally until I got to the finally verse and it seemed clear it was a couple of kids playing at kings and queens in the garden.
On a side note I technically failed today’s challenge as the first number I pulled was for a poem about what colors Witches wear on Halloween and when you’re working with grey pencils that’s kind of tricky.
Because I definitely needed something funny to clear my pallets from existentialist crime films and I had just seen Captain America: Civil War(which I’m bound to comment on soon) I decided to do Superhero Comedy for this week’s theme.
The first film on my list, The Specials tells the adventures of the sixth or seventh greatest superhero team in the world… well not actually the adventures, it’s a slow week and nothing is actually happening beyond the newest member of the team starting her first day, a dinner in honor of the team’s new toy line and all other sorts of mundane things that normally happens during all of those boring hours while waiting for something to happen.
This is a wonderfully done slice of life ensemble piece done on a shoestring written by James Gunn who would move on to superhero films with larger budgets like Supers and Guardians of the Galaxy.
My Super Ex Girlfriend addresses the question what happens if you find yourself dating the world’s greatest superhero and more importantly what happens what does she do when you’re dumb enough to dump her.
I had really mixed feelings about this one. Sure it was funny but a lot of the message seemed mildly offensive to me with a lot of the plot involving pickup artists (sure a bar might be considered fair game but to do that #$@& on the subway?) then it briefly seemed to imply that all women were either militant or crazy (with the climactic battle being pretty much a superpowered catfight) and in the end it seemed to turn that into a message of empowerment and gender roles with the guys left holding the purses as the moment go save the world again.
Despite this the film had it’s moments having fun making fun of the genre with fairly good effects and solid performances from Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson and Eddie Izzard.
