Saturday, February 13, 2010

The latest Aku's Fairy Tale 'Jack and his Shadow' appears in CNAP #46. This is an offshoot of the show where Aku narrates a tale with Jack as the bad guy. In this one drawn by Philip Moy the nefarious samurai is one of four princes. Two other princes have quite familiar names if you follow the fortunes of a certain Royal family. Striking a rather wretched figure Jack tells us early on, "No one likes me…life is so unfair…this morning an acorn fell on my head and it really hurt…" What's more it looks like Jack has no chance of winning the tournament to determine the next king; no chance that is until the intervention of his own shadow. As I describe this I can't get the image of Roger Moore out of my head. So there you have it another Aku's Fairy Tale. The best ones are where the bad guy (Jack) does a reverse-Scooby Doo and gets away with it despite those meddling kids. In this story Jack does have his comeuppance I am thoroughly ashamed to say. But there is a little twist and the story's good fun throughout and it's even got a bucking bronco! There are worse things out there - like Scotland throwing away a 10 point lead against Wales in the rugby…

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, another Fairy Tale! But no need to be ashamed--it makes perfect sense for Aku's stories to give that "impudent bad old samurai" the worst of it.
But Jack with stubble--now there's a difficult concept to grasp!

Jim Alexander said...

Yep got to agree Aku wouldn't be Aku if he didn't make the worst of it. Anyhoo it's the kids who get the upper hand in the end. Format seems to work okay I think - and there's still plenty of fairy tales out there to subvert...

Jim Alexander said...

This translates as something like: 'Hard to forget, I really look forward to a new article was published to help foot !'

Glad to have been of service. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Dang, my friendly neighborhood comics store didn't have this issue when I went by today. At least I was able to pick up #45 and #47.
Something strange about #47: I could tell that the SJ story, "Thumbling Jack," was written by you. (It's Aku telling a fairy tale to Mya and David, after all!) But there was absolutely no little-- what do you call those things that list the names of the writer, artist, etc? Credit boxes? Anyway, there wasn't one of those for the Jack tale anywhere. The title of the story, yes, but no credits. I checked the magazine cover to cover twice. The other two stories had credits, but not the Jack story. Should I write a letter of complaint to DC? :D
Another hilarious tale, by the way. The part where Jack is "warped, dazed and deranged" and rips out the last pages of school library books cracked me up! "How does it end!?"

Jim Alexander said...

Credit box is as good a description as I've heard. Ach it's a little disappointing but these things happen. Haven't read 'Thumbling Jack' yet. My books are heading to not-so-sunny Scotchland as I type. Many thanks for the kind comments though. Looking forward to seeing Jack in his matchstick cage at the end.