#121 The Mad Harlequin

February 14,2006 I had fun drawing the first panel there. I have had a image of a old book I head read when I was in elementary school. I was in the library looking at books and way in the back corner was this small book. The art inside was the type of art you see on old tarot cards, with the images seemingly watercolored. The image shown in the book Jalissa is reading was inspired by that book. The book was about how a child should have manners and be polite. I recall one being for kids that suck their thumbs. The warning was, if a child sucks their thumbs, the local tailor would come and snip off their thumbs and put it in the bag he was carrying. The illustrations for it freaked me out. It showed a boy of the old days, with a bowl haircut, and the sailor suit and frills, with the knickers that only went down to his knees. His mother scolded him and he went behind the house to suck his thumb. The next image was a freakishly evil drawn man (for some reason in the old days, they drew people freakishly demented looking, and I had hoped to be able to capture that in the first panel), with huge scissor and the boy stands afraid. The last panel showed the boy standing with his arms out, blood dripping from where his thumbs had been. That had stuck in my mind since I was 6. It was scary, but yet I kept going back looking through the book. I wish I had that book now. I have always liked fairy tales, they were far more exciting than they are now. I remember when I read Little Red Riding Hood, they carved the wolf open with a knife. And a few years later I picked up a book to read to my little sisters, and they had started censoring fairy tales. I often try to find the origional fairy tales the way Grimm themselves told it. One of my favorite books is The Big Book of Grimm from Paradox Press. But kids are so desensitized these days, I wonder if fairy tales told the old way would do anything to keep them on the right path.