Mad Magazine's School Shooting Cartoon is a Horrifying, Smart Gorey Update
Instead, the most affecting commentary on gun control you’ll see this month was just been published in Mad Magazine.
In the latest issue of Mad Magazine (which is out on newsstands and in Barnes and Noble bookstores right now), there’s a brilliantly sad pastiche of the classic Edward Gorey children’s alphabet book, The Ghastlycrumb Tinies, retitled now as The GhastltyGun Tinies. Written by Matt Cohen with art by Marc Palm, the piece reimagines Gorey’s playfully macabre kid’s book as something truly terrifying. One might wonder, how do you out-macabre Edward Gorey? The answer: just add realism.
In the original book, Gorey presents a horrific alphabet in which “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs” and “M is for Maud who was swept out to sea.” But, in The GhastlyGun Tinies, it’s much scarier. Initially, most of the kids are just described by some charming thing they’re interested in. “A is for Alice. A young science wiz.” Or “E is for Eve, who is idealistic.” But then the gut punches start happening. “G is for Greg who was caught unawares” and “J is for Julie who is too young to vote.”
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As you read through each entry, the point of the whole thing becomes clear: all these imagined children are dead. But, the brilliant inversion of the Gorey text is what makes this satire so chilling. In Gorey’s version, the kids have ghastly things happening to them. In the Mad Magazine ” spoof,” they’re just going about their business, doing ordinary, innocent things. Whereas Gorey flirted with allowing children to learn about death, this poignant update drives home the most heartbreaking truth of all: The victims of school shootings are gone and, in there place, there is nothing.
The final entry drives this point home most painfully: “Z is for Zoe, who won’t be the last.” It’s enough to make you burst out into tears, and it would be easy to look away from these panels if they weren’t so thoughtfully drawn, and poignantly written.
https://www.fatherly.com/news/mad-magazines-school-shooting-cartoon-edward-gorey/
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