The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1458: The Complete Alice in Wonderland #2 2009

Before I get going on today's comic, I wanted to say something. I've started writing again due to a few factors. I'm starting to realize how much I need structure in my life, and there's not a lot right now, so this feels like a good way. I've also glanced back at a few old posts, and I was actually saying some neat things (I think) about the comics I read, so I'd like to start doing that again. But mostly, it's because a little while back I received an email, quite out of the blue, from a former student. He'd kept up with the blog occasionally, and saw that I was having a difficult time lately, so he reached out to let me know the difference I'd made for him with regard to literature, and to let me know he was thinking of me. I have a lot of trouble holding onto the feeling of being valued. This helped.

On to today's comic.

What is it about this story that fascinates us so? I have so many different versions: books, comics, films, action figures. But there are also musicals, and songs, and, unsurprisingly, porn, and the story itself has become a metaphoric touchstone for all things weird and revelatory. Remember Neo's instructions to "Follow the White Rabbit?" The very idea of falling down a rabbit hole has become an idiom in Western culture. And we keep retelling it, keep finding new ways to tell this old story. It is an old story. We should never imagine that Alice was the first person to find themselves in a strange land after an encounter with a strange animal (or mushroom, perhaps?). But she is the first, I think, to really grapple with the idea in a modern, and by this I mean popular and intelligent, way. And I think this is why the story has such wonderful longevity and adaptivity.

As a parent, I was delighted when I took my son to see Monsters, Inc. While shiny and fast and colourful (which I also enjoyed), it was also savvy enough to know that it wasn't just kids that were going to be consuming this. The writers managed to add enough humour for the adults that the torture of taking a toddler to the movies was assuaged somewhat.

If you haven't done it, you don't know. You just don't know.

One way that I consider myths of all stripes is that they're stories meant to remind us of a time when the world seemed more magical. People could perform miracles, deities actually spoke to humans, and things tended to connect more symbolically. This sounds to me rather like the experience of childhood. Of wonder, perhaps. But rather than a dry bit of epic poetry about a trip to Hades, or of some poor waif being molested by Zeus dressed up as an animal, we're given a story for children that reminds adults of how disturbing and magical the world used to seem. Lewis Carroll does this effortlessly in Alice. He creates mystery for us. A hookah-smoking caterpillar? A Cheshire Cat that leaves behind its smile? What does it mean? It's too well-ordered, in its own chaotic way, to be meaningless? Is it just a dream story for children, or is it saying something more about who we are and how we think? People have been enthralled by this tale since it was published. My own impression is that it taps into something very deep in our imaginations, something that has forgotten the uncanniness of childhood. It is a time of guessed-at connections between events. Things seem to have influence upon one another, but you haven't quite figured out the system yet. Once you do, life loses its sheen of surreality, and settles into reality.

Well, that's what it does for me, anyway.

Onward...