SNAPSHOT
“Snagglepuss in this story is having to live a double life as a gay playwright living in New York, and he’s closeted. But he has values and integrity as an artist, and he’s trying to stand up for people who otherwise would be shoved under the stairs in this time of great national paranoia in the Red Scare mentality. It’s very easy in a time of national catastrophe — of perceived national catastrophe — to throw people under the sink and forget about them, and Snagglepuss is unwilling to let them do that to people he knows and loves. He’s willing to stand up for people when the rest of the country is not.” (synopsis (c) writer Mark Russell, Heat Magazine)
In our thoroughly postmodern age, the willingness to reinterpret older, much-loved characters have reached fever pitch.
It doesn’t always work but when it does, it can be sublime, opening a whole new perspective on characters we’ve grown up, elasticising their personas so they fit quite snugly into our 21st century sensibilities.
DC Comics have been having a fine old time of it lately, re-imagining a slew of Hanna-Barbera characters such as The Flintstones – to enviable success; the literate, beautifully drawn rumination on modern materialistic lifestyles has garnered much acclaim – and Scooby Apocalypse, an altogether darker take on good old goofy Scooby Doo and the gang.
Now the writer who gave us the inestimable delights of the new grittier The Flintstones, and artist Mike Feenan, is back with another take on our modern world, this time courtesy of Snagglepuss, given a Tennessee Williams makeover circa 1953.
It opens up, notes Russell, a slew of narrative possibilities:
“The way I write him, he’s kind of an avant-garde figure for the times — people kind of expect him to say things that are edgy, and witty. In a way, he’s allowed to breach subjects and say things in 1953 in New York that other people simply could not.” (source: Comicbook.com)
Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 releases January 2018.