By Shaenon K. Garrity
Andrew Farago, my husband and the person who runs comics with me (my official title is Mayor of Comics; his is Assistant Copy Boy), is such a devoted comics fan that his favorite short story is a comic. I can't make the same claim. If pressed, I'd probably go with some boring English major choice like James Joyce's "The Dead," a nice Christmas story, or possibly that Stephen King story that ends with the guy going
ladyfingers they taste just like ladyfingers. (Incidentally, "ladyfingers they taste just like ladyfingers" is one of the great lines from literature that is always funny, along with "Stay gold, Ponyboy," and "Wormtail, kill the spare.")
Anyway, Andrew's favorite story is a Christmas story, too. It's one of Gahan Wilson's
Nuts comics, the series he drew for the late, great
National Lampoon magazine. A collection of
Lampoon comics is one of the things I always want for Christmas but never receive, along with the complete Crockett Johnson's
Barnaby and a Muppet based on me. Since the "National Lampoon" brand is currently owned by a company that exists only to license the name to shitty movies, a Fantagraphics-style comics retrospective seems unlikely to happen, but is it to much to ask for a
Trots and Bonnie book, at least?
Trots and Bonnie may well be the comic I love the most but have read the least, since the strips are so damn hard to find. There was a
Nuts book once, so you can track that down. But I'm still waiting for
Trots and Bonnie, and there's never gonna be a Muppet under my Christmas tree.
Christmas morning is all about disappointment, and that's the moral of Andrew's favorite short story. "Remember how Christmas was so tricky," begins the
Nuts comic, "because it could be great, or just a letdown, or a complete disaster, and you never knew which it was until it was entirely over?" Like all
Nuts strips, this five-pager follows the Kid, the nameless stand-in for all of Wilson's childhood memories, iconic in his oversized deerstalker and baggy coat.
Miraculously, this year the Kid gets what he wanted for Christmas: a toy circus with tiny lion, elephant, animal tamer, and clown. Before he can enjoy it, though, he's bundled off to see the extended family. For the bulk of the story he and the other kids are mired in empty holiday chatter, just like in Joyce's story, which frankly takes a lot longer than five pages to get to the point.
The point. That wrenching final page. Reluctantly, the Kid goes upstairs to see what his hateful cousin Claude got for Christmas, and among the extravagant gifts is...
a better circus. A much better circus. With clowns and acrobats and two elephants and a tiger and a tightrope and a bareback rider and everything, everything. "Oh, that's nothing," says Claude, "just a circus. Wait'll you see..."
The expression on the Kid's face is exquisite in its agony. His soul has approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. And then the moment passes, and the Kid goes home, aching, and he puts his circus away forever. And Christmas is ruined.
Andrew and I had dinner with Gahan Wilson a couple of years ago. On the urging of the director of the Cartoon Art Museum, we took him to a trendy downtown
bistro and bar. As we sat in the noisy, crowded sports-bar area, waiting for a waitress to notice us, some meatheads from a local radio station started raffling T-shirts to a crowd of fratboys who materialized out of nowhere (you never see people like that in San Francisco until somebody offers a free T-shirt). The expression on Wilson's face was not unlike that on the Kid's at the end of that story. We high-tailed it to the first diner we could find, where he had the fish and chips.
When Andrew mentioned how much he loved the circus story, Wilson not only knew exactly which story he was talking about, but described in detail the real glorious toy circus and miserable Christmas on which the story was based. As he described his circus, and the other boy's circus, and how quickly his desire turned to dust in his mouth, it was clear that this was a wound that had never healed. I wish I could say some of us recover from our petty childhood disappointments, but I just had an incident with an American Girl doll I'd prefer not to go into.
Drizzle is general all over San Francisco, and I have many wonderful presents from friends and family to open, none of which will be a complete
Trots and Bonnie. Or a happy childhood. But merry Christmas to all of us anyway, the living and the dead.
Images found at
www.gahanwilson.com. ©Gahan Wilson
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2008
