The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse
Take the successful late ’80’s cartoon/live action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, replace “Cartoons” with “Fairy Tales”, and there you have it: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse. Quite an entertaining read, this. It takes everything you think you know about Little Boy Blue, for example, then eschews it with modern sensibilities. Thinking about it, how much can you know about a fictional Nursery Rhyme character in the first place? That’s why it’s so good, actually, as it takes these blank slates (who are, juxtapostionally also quite well-known), expands them into real people with real desires, with real emotions, with real personality, and embroils them in a good, old fashioned Detective mystery.
The Witches of Chiswick
Now, imagine The Terminator, but with the twist that the future can somehow change the past. At points, it seems Mr. Schwarzenegger actually makes an appearance as the “muscle-bound Germanic with huge firearms”. It’s an interesting idea, that history is not as we know it. That lights powered by electricity and craft capable of space travel existing in the Victorian age is (or was?) being kept hidden by a cabal of Witches (yes, of Chiswick), and is only discovered in the far future when someone stumbles upon a painting of said age where someone is depicted wearing a digital wrist-watch… It’s one of the better concepts I’ve ever encountered involving time-travel. Mr. Rankin weaves a complex tale, but it all (mostly) makes sense in the end.
And I can’t not mention Barry the Talking Time Travelling Sprout. There. Mentioned.
