The Last Review

There was something strange about the animated films of the 1980's - Walt Disney's efforts notwithstanding. The kids movies of the 80's shared common themes and even designs, all melting into some sort of grey Rankin/Bass/Bakshi soup that featured chunks of environmentalism/primitivism, fluorescent pink sparkles, blond-haired princesses, and irritating Casio keyboard-infused soundtracks. These films culminated in the 1990's with the release of Felix the Cat: The Movie, which put the much-overdo final nail in the coffin; but they began, arguably, with 1982's hugely successful The Last Unicorn.

I had an ex who loved this movie. She fucking loved unicorns to the point where I tried to find her some kind of effigy of a unicorn at my local malls for her birthday and discovered, in line with true monoceruses, that representations of them are entirely mythical. Searching on eBay near the end of our relationship, I found an old beat-up, original theatrical poster for this flick, and, having since become an "ex," had no idea what to do with it up to this point -- there it sat, always mocking me, letting me know that my room was now dressed like a little girl. "How would this look during a home invasion?" I thought. Truly, that was the most rational query that could enter my brain while staring at a poster of a doe-eyed Kardunn.

As an aside, I wonder how many synonyms for "unicorn" I'll have to look up to actually finish this post and keep it from getting repetitive.

As I sat in my room and contemplated this poster's fate, I took a quick look around the internet to see if anyone was in the market for faded-out childhood memories. What I found was so weird, so interesting, and, inexplicably, so entrancing that I could hardly wait to tell the blogosphere about what I had discovered:


IDW, a company that ostensibly employs an entire team whose sole task is to seek out any and all available licenses, had done it: they'd adapted The Last Unicorn into a graphic novel. And, coincidence of all coincidences, they'd done it at almost precisely the moment in which I actually remembered that such a work existed!

After hunkering down to watch the film, I went straight to my local comic book shoppe and picked myself up a copy, as should you all. My goal here is not to compare the two adaptations, but simply to - well, see which one I like best. I'm not a complicated guy.

The first thing I can tell you is that this adaptation blows the film out of the water right from page one. In the movie, we get a serene, idyllic foresty scene featuring two characters who'll never show up again. The book starts thusly:
fucking a. That is haunting. It's centered in a splash page that is nothing but the most peaceful, wondrous forest you'd ever see, but a prominent red flower in the foreground, and the tiny caption in the center, imparts the extreme loneliness that the last of her kind must feel.

The unicorn doesn't have a name in the book ( she does take on the moniker of Amalthea later in the tale, but that's another story...), but while I was writing a review for the film, I referred to her as "Mia," after the voice actress, Mia Farrow. I think I'll continue that tradition here, if only because it's easier to type "Mia" than it is to type "Amalthea" or "the unicorn."



After an introduction to unicorns offered by two hunters -- which is surprisingly moving in prose, compared to the flat, uninteresting delivery that the film gives us -- Mia appears, contemplating what one of the hunters had said: that she was the last of her kind, the final unicorn. Even more interesting is her internal dialog: she talks about not leaving, even to look for others; that she knows how to live where she is, and that she'd never want anything else. Is it rationalization? Does she maybe feel guilty that she's gotten complacent? It's revealed that she's never even spoken, not even to herself, in over 100 years. And then she must come face to face with the spectre of change: the knowledge that she can't stay in her own little forest forever.

When she heads out into the world, she's jarred by the sudden -- to her, at least -- change in man. It's not that no one can remember unicorns, but rather, that hey can't even see her as a unicorn. She encounters a butterfly who speaks in snippets of songs and poems, a medieval pop culture junkie who tells her what happened to the rest of the unicorns: they were all chased away by the Red Bull, who, presumably, merely wanted to give them wings.

Frustrated and longing for home, the unicorn lays down to sleep -- and his approached by three silhouetted beings. This signals the end of the first issue, which, lacking much of the action that one would normally expect from a first issue, is clearly designed with the trade in mind. This is unfortunate, as the art is wonderful -- if a little bombastic -- and the writing is golden, but there's not much here to convince someone who was wary of the book to continue on to #2.

Will I be going forward on this title? Probably, but only because I dig the writing. Unlike the aforementioned ex, I'm not a huge fan of unicorns. I don't hate them, certainly, but I suppose that I'm indifferent to their mythology. Maybe I'll become a fan after this series. ;) Here's to IDW makin' a believer outta me.

NEXT ISSUE: A woman with a head made out of a tree runs a travelling circus with a second-rate warlock.