A dark noir rendering of the classic Italian children's novel, this tripped-out reimagining of Pinocchio comes from the fevered mind and hand of Winshluss. Pen name for Vincent Parannaud, Winshluss is the award-winning French artist and filmmaker perhaps best known for the animated feature, Persepolis, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Cannes' Palm d'Or, among others.
It's hard to express just how beautiful Pinocchio is. And how dark. Using pen and ink, watercolor and paint, and brilliantly style-checking Georges Méliès, Windsor McCay, Walt Kelly, Walt Disney, Zap! and decades of underground comic artists, Winshluss uses the basic tropes of Pinocchio (artificial boy, characters inside a whale, and Jiminy, here a cockroach) to frame and interweave several dark, often disturbing, tales. As the moods and motives of the narrative shift, so do the styles and colors of the art. Throughout, everything feels overcast, bone-damp, sooty, and rusted shut. This is a world overwhelmed with desperation and decay, death and naked human immorality.
In this telling of the tale, Pinocchio is not a puppet who becomes a boy, but a toy soldier built by Geppetto for servitude. And war. He and the book (with some exception) are speechless, and like a hapless Mr. Bill or Chauncey Gardner in Being There, Pinocchio becomes a sort of dumb foil for the dramas and characters interwoven throughout the book, at once comical and tragic. And unlike the original novel by Carlo Collodi, the main characters basically never interact, although Jiminy Cockroach lives inside of Pinocchio's hollow head and their interweaving stories impact each other (e.g. when Pinocchio gets "fired" from an assembly-line job for not producing enough toys and thrown into a furnace, Jiminy feels the heat). Perverse takes on Snow White, the Seven Dwarves, Bambi, and other Disney staples also make appearances.
I have reviewed several very post-modern comics on Wink, like Big Questions and Beautiful Darkness, that employ similar thematic and artist strategies (dark noir, referencing/coopting different artists, stories, and styles, exploring social issues through surreal, often wordless storytelling). But Winshluss' Pinocchio feels the most cinematic and affecting of them all. And have I mentioned how ridiculously beautiful this book is? One reviewer likened the "performance" of it to high opera. I can't think of a better allusion. Or bigger artistic compliment.
A very dark, sumptuous, tripped-out take on the classic tale of Pinocchio
Pinocchio
by Winshluss
Last Gasp
2011, 192 pages, 10 x 12 x 1.2 inches
$31 Buy a copy on Amazon
