The Stuff of Legends is a three volume
metaseries produced by Th3rd World Studios, and written by Mike Raicht and
Brian Smith, and illustrated by Charles Paul Wilson the 3rd. It takes place in Brooklyn
circa 1944, and centers around a group of toys that come to life to go on a
journey into "The Dark," a reality inside the boy's closet where the
infamous Boogey Man reigns supreme, in order to save the boy from the realm's
dark master. This isn’t Toy Story though, as it delves much deeper
into the psychology of a toy come to life as it blasts your brain with rich
imagery and creative story-telling.
The
illustrator for the book, Charles Paul Wilson attended the John Herron School
of Fine Art, and graduated from the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic
Art where he received the Norman Mauer Scholarship in his first year attending,
as well as an Eisner for his work with The
Stuff of Legends. The book is done completely in pencil on toned paper,
which creates a mainly black and white masterpiece of a quality I haven't seen
anywhere before. I'm not going to lie;
the art in this book blew my mind out of my brain hole.
The boy's closet
or "The Dark Realm" provides an interesting twist to theme of Toy Story or Toy Soldiers, because here the toys become real. Maxwell, the stuffed bear transforms into a
gigantic ferocious grizzly bear feared by all the toys, and the Jester morphs from
a jack-in-the-box to the Irish guy in Braveheart,
an axe-wielding wise-cracking Wolverine type who hungers for battle as he says
tough guy things that make all the girl toys swoon.
Full of
interesting character developments and portrayals that blend a strange
realistic twist to how toys would view themselves and their lives, the Stuff of Legend separates itself from
movies like Toy Story. For instance, when the cowardly piggy-bank,
Percy gets confronted by the Voldemort-esque Boogeyman, the evil dictator asks
him "And saddest of all, what will become of the trusted soul that has
protected his (the boy who owns Percy) coins?
For your loyalty in securing his future what does he do?" To which
Percy meekly responds, "He breaks me." Deep right? It makes sense that a piggy-bank
would have negative feelings about holding on to his kid's money up until the
day he breaks him for it, but I never would have thought it, and Pixar sure
didn't when they made Toy Story.
The Stuff of Legends is full of
interesting character dynamics as it tries to add real-life resentments and
relations to these toys as they take on a life of their own. The boy's dog, Scout, has joined them on this
journey, and in the real world he's gigantic compared to the toys but is
rendered to a be only a small dog in "The Dark Lands" where he is
mistreated and forced to wait outside of buildings as he's the brunt of the
toy's resentment towards his kind. You
see, in the real world dogs destroy toys, and they all hate them for it, regarding
them as filthy animals in "The Dark."
Interesting
short flashbacks of the boys playing with the toys, and the toys using these experiences
as character building memories adds familiar character arches in un-familiar
ways. It's an odd dynamic, but the toys
all regard the Coronel as being the courageous one, because the boy always used
him to play the hero against the Nazi's, while Percy lived in vivid fear
because of the boys always discussing how they were going to break him once
there was enough money inside to buy something they wanted.
The
"Dark Lands" are full of interesting, well thought out attractions,
like the town of Hopscotch,
where the entire city is constructed around a board game, in which all the
citizens have to roll dice in order to be able to move around.
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