GFT Retrospective #37: The Pinocchio Collection

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster

It's been a long time since I last did an entry in the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective, and continuing in the tradition of doing things in 2023 that I should have done in 2022 (or 2021, for that matter), today's return to the Retrospective covers a property that received three cinematic interpretations last year (which I have not seen, nor do I plan to see): a live-action/CGI remake by Disney, a dark, Guillermo del Toro version..., and a "True Story" from Russia that was dubbed over by Pauly Shore (A Goofy Movie) and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite, gosh!), and looks like a third-party, direct-to-video children's movie from twenty years ago. Of course, I'm talking about Pinocchio.

To avoid getting too repetitive before I even start the review, let's skip any further introductions by getting Omnibusted with some repetitive introduction:

GFT Annual #1 (2007): Pinocchio Prologue

Somewhere, at some time, Belinda plants a tree. Sometime after that, Adam and Eve investigate the tree, which ends badly for Adam. Sometime after that, a lumberjack fells the tree and delivers its wood to Gepetto. That’s basically it for the Pinocchio story. No timeline, no real plot or character development to speak of. Just more of Belinda being evil and a half-hearted take on the Garden of Eden story as a setup for future issues.

Back in the classroom, Belinda’s storytelling has reduced most of the children to tears, except for a boy named Timothy, who is apparently a sociopath. After Belinda leaves, Sela walks in to find a room full of tiny tantrum-throwers, and she seems to know for sure that Belinda is behind it.

That fifth story from the 2007 Annual was also included in the graphic novel/trade edition of The Pinocchio Collection as an associated prologue, though, as you're about to see (and as was revealed in Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 4), the focus going forward will be a different Pinocchio. Now, to kick off Trade Volume #6:

GFT #31 & 32: The Pinocchio Collection

It seems Belinda is still interested in homicidal children. Meet Jacob Freemont, a boy who kills every woman his father shows an interest in. Teachers, a therapist, his own mother; it doesn’t seem to matter as long as his father becomes romantically involved with them. Makes me wonder why the kid killed the class hamster….

His father, Mark, finds that Jacob has borrowed “Lynn’s” (Belinda’s) book of fairy tales and begins reading Pinocchio (which is an Italian children’s morality novel by Carlo Collodi, and not one of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales).

David Seidman is brilliant. You probably don’t know who that is, but he wrote and did the fairy tale art for this pair of issues, and it is some of the coolest work I have ever seen. His style is dark, edgy, and a perfect mix of surreal and hyper-real, like it’s part photography, part painted ceramic, part something an art layman like myself can’t put a label on. Check out some of it here.

As related in the above Annual story (when Belinda first began trying to groom Timmy for evil), Gepetto came into possession of some wood cut from the evil tree Belinda planted in the Garden of Eden (a tree which also killed Adam). I guess the writers at Zenescope skipped the part where Goku blows it up with a Spirit Bomb when they were roughing out their adaptation.

Basic plot math leads to Gepetto using the evil wood to carve Pinocchio, and the story moves on according to the Disney version, with dark shades of the original folded in for good measure.

Pinocchio is brought to life when a shapely shadow (ten to one odds that it’s Belinda) unleashes a cricket in Gepetto’s workshop. Rather than being a voice of conscience, the cricket is a creature who lived on the evil tree, and serves as a guide on Pinocchio’s path back to his true nature. Or his roots. Both puns are equally bad.

Mistreated by Professor Fire-eater and deceived by Mr. Fox and Mr. Cat, Pinocchio takes his revenge but winds up being thrown over a cliff into the ocean, with Gepetto leaping in after him.

After some shallow exposition with Jacob and his parents, the tale resumes with Gepetto and Pinocchio getting swallowed by the whale. Gepetto sacrifices himself so that Pinocchio can escape, but is also rescued by the Blue Fairy. Pinocchio learns the history of the evil tree he came from and burns the circus to the ground, only to be discovered by Gepetto. I’d like to say this story has a happy ending, but Pinocchio’s nose is sharp and he lies a lot, so. There. Isn’t. One. Big surprise (it was the first time I read this, anyway), the Blue Fairy was the curvy shadow at the beginning, which basically identifies her as the fairy tale representation of Belinda (or an avatar, or Belinda herself, or something like that, because that’s how the book works, sort of).

Because I seem to keep repeating myself (much as I try not to), the definition of time in these issues is almost non-existent. The aforementioned exposition in the framing story is only identified after the fact with a text box that simply says “The Present…” to break out of the flashback we didn’t even know we were in to begin with. And after Jacob’s father finishes reading Pinocchio, the frame devolves into a confusing jumble of past and present events that don’t amount to much sense but that Jacob killed his mother, left his father to team up with Belinda, and is slowly transforming into Pinocchio for no definable reason. Jacob is a decent replacement for Timmy as the stereotypical, creepy child sociopath, and works well at demonstrating what Timmy would have become without Sela to lead him out of the darkness (plus the Pinocchio art was amazing). Also, the ironic symbolism that Pinocchio desired to be a real boy and Jacob is a real boy transforming into Pinocchio (so he can be Belinda’s puppet) is an interesting direction. But as a villain, he is mediocre (dare I say, a wooden characterization?) and will continue to be in the future.

Zenescope - Omnibusted will continue once I have posted all of the issue reviews in Volume Six. Stay Tuned as tomorrow, I'll be posting throwback links on Facebook, Tumblr, and Reddit for my review of Scream 4, and on Friday, I'll be doing a Just the Ticket/New Coming Distractions double-feature on Scream 5  and the trailer for Scream 6. Be sure to like, comment, subscribe, follow, click ads, and all that other good stuff that lets me know someone is reading the hard work that I do between the hard work that I'm paying for and the hard work that I get paid for. Thanks, Ticketholders!

Omnibuster,

Strung up and Screaming,

out.