Another quick post. (I'm working on something else, and, as ever, my mind is popping all over the place.)
I was a keen reader of the UK comic Eagle in the nineties. The most famous serial in Eagle was "Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future". But by the time I came to it, the comic had absorbed any number of other comics, as was the custom in the British comic industry. (When one comic went out of business, its more successful serials migrated to another comic.) So Eagle was a curious mixture of science-fiction, horror, war, and humour.
One less-celebrated serial in Eagle was "Toys of Doom", about a rather unlikeable boy who had an army of mechanical toys who followed his commands. He operated them by remote control. He'd inherited them from a relative, I think. The story itself was a spin-off from a previous serial, as I've learned recently (but didn't know at the time).
I remember I loved "Toys of Doom". I appreciated that its central character was a not particularly sympathetic kid, which is how I felt myself to be at the time (and I was largely right). But I also liked it because it had a premise so full of potential. I can't remember any plot details, but I remember turning to it with pleasure and anticipation every week.
Here's the thing: it's a great premise for a story. And yet, I can't remember ever encountering a similar story, despite the number of other plot-lines that are regurgitated!
I recently finished Kim (Rupert Kipling), loose cannon youths have certainly been around for a while. But when I looked up movie versions (I tend to like looking at stills just to see if my imaging of places and characters made sense) the most famous production was an old one, the poster being a bare chested Erroll Flynn and Eastern styled diva, neither of which could possibly have represented one of the characters of higher importance. I don't recall elephants being prominent in the book either.
ReplyDeleteOh, there are certainly loose cannon youths, as you put it, but it's the detail of the toy army at his bidding that surprises me as a plot element that's unused. Although I've since read that it's been used a lot in British comics!
DeleteThat's an interesting habit, looking up still to match with your own perceptions. Some people do the opposite, avoid film version to keep their own imagined versions of the characters. I've never read Kim myself.