GFT Retrospective #43: The Goose And the Golden Egg

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
From Giant to Gutless Goose & Back Again

Sorry to keep starting these posts with the same, old pity party where I tell you how I'm academically stressed, introspection-phobic, and a barely functioning, perpetually recovering self-destructive. The good news is that when I'm not trying to commit metaphorical cygnucide (that's killing a goose or swan, I think) or literally and metaphorically poisoning and drowning myself, I am good at what I do, and what I do is critical writing.
Which is how I am, at the time of this composition, finished with my revisions on the first task in Values-Based Leadership at WGU, leaving me with a PowerPoint presentation to build and (ugh!) record myself delivering. Oh, and waiting for evaluation results; that's sarcastic-fantastic, too.
The other good news is that, having run out of puns and (almost) run out of metaphors, I am also currently trying to run out of adverbs and gerunds. Is it good news, though? They are the golden geese of descriptive, action-based, in-the-now language, after all.

While you are pondering my introduction, remember to like, comment, subscribe, click some golden eggs into my ad revenue, and let's look at another self-destruction-based animal tale, but with more of a human focus and way too many character nicknames.

GFT #40: The Goose And the Golden Egg

Meet Jillian “Jillybeans” Howard and her father, Manus “Daddy” Howard. He’s rich beyond human understanding, and she’s…blonde of hair and mind, stereotypically objectifiable-looking, and spoiled beyond human tolerance. These past couple of issues, I have grown to miss the name-punnery that Zenescope has been known to get up to on a frequent basis. I don’t immediately see any name derivations that tie to the fairy tale, other than a possible reference to Howard the Duck or the fighting game character Geese Howard, but that might be a stretch, so let’s get back to how unlikable Jillian is. She’s so unlikable that the story opens with her potentially being abandoned at sea by an as-yet-unidentified woman (Belinda, most likely, although with the way Jillian treats her, I wouldn’t put it past Sela, either), Open Water-style. She spends her time—and money from her father’s “Mariken XPriss” card (because Zenescope couldn’t afford credit card royalties this early on)—buying expensive cars and alcohol so she can use the latter to crash the former through a school bus and land herself and her best friend in the hospital. Which means it’s time once again for Sela “Seely” “Selba” Mathers—what’s with all the characters’ nicknames?—retaining her vindictive, disappointed tone from last issue, to present us with a tale about an old couple who come into possession of the titular goose and eventually get so greedy for its titular eggs that they disembowel the goose in search of gold and ruin their lives forever. I guess it’s somewhere between “money is the root of all evil” and “money doesn’t buy happiness” where morals are concerned, but I was more interested in the apparent connection to Jack And the Beanstalk. Among the giant’s possessions are a singing harp and a goose that lays golden eggs. Perhaps (because animals are smarter than us) after being stolen from the giant by Jack, the goose fled before the giant’s fall and survived to later encounter the elderly couple in this tale. And of course, there is the shared moral warning against greed and instant gratification. But as Goose is one of Aesop’s fables and Beanstalk is a 1700’s English fairy tale (and neither one a true Grimm Fairy Tale), it’s more likely that the author of Jack And the Beanstalk included the allusion to the Goose fable based on their shared message than with any kind of Extended Fairy Tale Literary Universe plan in mind. By the way, if you’re reading this in an era where time travel and human immortality have been made possible, don’t give Kevin Feige access to a time machine. Anyway, Jillian is unfathomably unlikable and so stupidly stupid that the exponent on her stupidity should be a variable approaching infinity. For those among you that don’t understand math, that means she’s Donald Trump with boobs. 

*Pictures Donald Trump with boobs, getting himself drunk and groping himself, and throws up*

then *realizes he could have just written that as “Pictures Donald Trump and throws up” and had it sounding far less weird*

So basically, Jillian “Donald Trump With Boobs” Howard learns nothing, forcing Sela to go directly to the goose, Manus Howard himself. With her supply of credit card-shaped golden eggs cut off, Jillian ends up “stealing away” to Australia (spoilers! And the puns are back!), where she indeed meets an Open Water ending. The twist regarding who the focus character really was felt refreshing, and Belinda’s parting line of “you’re mine now” hinted at something that could have been potentially awesome, with Jillian (hateworthy though she was) serving as one of the Dark One’s financial consultants in Hell, or something. But all it ever amounts to in the series at large is a cool ending line for Belinda. Traditional Grimm Fairy Tales stuff for the most part. But Zenescope really killed that golden goose of a line, and Jillian as a character drug the issue, kicking and screaming, into the bloody depths of suck.

Stay Tuned for tomorrow's TBT 2023 push of an Oscar-nominated movie with film nods, trains, vintage animatronics, and Sacha Baron Cohen. Next week, Mercy Dante returns in my Retrospective review of an issue with awesome action and problematic themes. Until then, remember to like, comment, subscribe, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook for the latest news and updates on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.