Scary Godmother

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Jill Thompson signs Scary Godmother books

Scary Godmother is an American children's book and comic series by the writer Jill Thompson , and has been published by Sirius Entertainment since 1997.

Characters

main characters

  • Scary Godmother - A tall, slender, and good-looking fairy and witch with long curly hair, pale green skin, little bat wings on her back, and green leggings. She lives on the horror side , where the Halloween monsters live. She is friends with a little girl named Hannah Marie, who was frightened by her older cousin Jimmy when he locked the door handle of the haunted house of Scary Godmother and her "broom friends" behind her. She rides a broom and has a ghost cat named Boozle . Thompson has noted that the character bears a resemblance to its creator. In the television film she is voiced by Tabitha St.Germain .
  • Hannah Marie - Hannah is terrified of monsters until she realizes that monsters don't eat children. Hannah is cute, but her evil cousin Jimmy and his friends love to scare Hannah. However, they are sometimes frightened of themselves. Hannah is voiced by Britt McKillip .
  • Jimmy - Hannah's cousin who has little affection for Hannah. Since he no longer wants to tease her with "trick or treat", he plans instead with his friends to scare her. However, his plan collapses when Hannah befriends Scary Godmother and her broom friends. Together they give Jimmy and his friends a dose of their own medicine. A year later he is so scared of it that he tries to prevent Halloween. He destroyed all things Halloween like pumpkins , costumes and candy . However, he comes into contact with Halloween when he stumbles into a party that Scary Godmother and Hannah are celebrating with their friends. He usually wears a devil costume for Halloween. He was the antagonist of books 1 and 2, but by the end of book 2 and for the rest of the series he turned out to be good. He is voiced by Will Friedle .
  • Jimmy's friends - Jimmy's three companions who help him scare Hannah-Marie on her first Halloween. Unlike Jimmy, they are not bad children, just subject to his bad influence. You become part of Hannah's group and even help her save Halloween when Jimmy tries to ruin it.
    • Bert - A boy and the most resourceful of the three. Disguised as a baseball player , he wears the mask of an SUV around his body. He is spoken by Kevin Kleinbeirg .
    • Daryl - cute and naive. Disguised as a candy . He's got his eye on Katie. He is spoken by Anthony Asbury .
    • Katie - She's the nicest of the three. Has kept an eye on Daryl, which has been reciprocated by him since she told him she'd like to negotiate a chocolate kiss for him, even if it sometimes looks like she likes Jimmy. She is disguised as a black cat. She is spoken by Lacey Chabert .

monster

  • Mr. Skully Pettibone - Scary Godmother's broom friend. He's the skeleton that hides in closets to keep secrets and, as he says, just rattles around. When Halloween comes, there is nothing crazier than letting the bones roll loosely at a good party. His characterization in the books, and also to a greater extent in the animated specials, is to a large extent that of a stereotypical “best friend of the female lead”, like his suggestions that keep coming back. He is voiced by Scott McNeil .
  • Bug-A-Boo - Another Scary Godmother's broom friend. He is a large, round monster with lots of yellow eyes, fur, a pony , horns, and a large mouth with sharp teeth. He's the kind of monster who lurks in basements, under beds, in closets, and other deep, dark places and knows that children are afraid of them, even Jimmy and his friends. Fearful of him, Hannah first calls him the "monster in the basement", which, Jimmy had told her, eats children if they don't feed them sweets. When she does this, Bug-A-Boo tells her that it is his job to scare children, not to eat them. “If I would eat all the children, I would no longer have any work.” The two have been close friends ever since. It is voiced by Gary Chalk .
  • Harry - A chatty werewolf wearing a blue lambswool shirt . He comes from Ackerman Forest (a play on words with Forrest J. Ackerman ), which is somewhere on the Horror Side . With a self-centered and compassionate personality and an insatiable hunger for food, especially hard candy and candy, he is one of Scary Godmothers friends, but also a great nuisance to her and her friends. He is a huge fan of the TV show The Spectral Six . It is noteworthy, however, that Harry is a full-grown male werewolf nonetheless, with razor sharp claws and teeth, incredible strength, and wolf senses. It would be unwise to get between him and something he wants. It is voiced by Gary Chalk.
  • Count Maxwell - A tall, thin, and swift vampire dressed in black. The most famous vampire on the horror side , he is the "King of the Night". Usually rather old-fashioned, Maxwell feels uncomfortable being so out of time. Its visual design is reminiscent of that of Count Orlok in Murnau's Nosferatu played by Max Schreck . It is voiced by Scott McNeil.
  • Ruby - Max's beautiful wife, she too is a vampire and the "Queen of the Night". She is much more modern than her husband, which really upsets him. She has long, black hair and wears satin dresses . Her appearance is reminiscent of that of the hostess of the 1950s horror show Vampira . It is spoken with a Russian accent by Tabitha St. Germain.
  • Orson - the teenage son of Max and Ruby. Also a vampire like his parents. He is the "Prince of the Night". He wears modern gothic clothes, thin, round glasses and has dyed blue hair. He's got his eye on Hannah. He is spoken by Richie Warke .

development

Thomson describes her work and the characters this way: “Scary Godmother is like your fairytale godmother, but for Halloween. There's really nothing terrifying about Scary Godmother. It's funny and macabre, reminiscent of childhood mixed in with a little social components. "

She explains that "comics are now so separate" and "that she wanted to create something that both young and adult readers like". She decided to create something related to Halloween after looking for a Halloween-based book for her niece and not finding anything she liked.

The books are a mixture of picture books in a comic format. Thompson did the drawings to accompany the text as well as the covers of the books for Scary Godmother, and she said planning and keeping to the time constraints can be challenging.

comics

  • Scary Godmother (1997) book
    • German title: Scary Godmother / 1. Süsses oder Saures (2002) book
  • Revenge of Jimmy (1998) book
    • German title: Scary Godmother / 2. Jimmy's Rache (2002) book
  • My Bloody Valentine (1998) Comic (single edition)
  • Halloween Spooktakular (1998) Comic (Single Edition )
  • The Mystery Date (1999) book
  • Boo Floo (2000) book
  • Scary Godmother Activity Book (2000) Comic (Single Edition)
  • Wild About Harry (2001) Comic Miniseries (3 issues)
  • Ghoul's Out for Summer (2003) Comic Miniseries (6 issues)
  • Spooktacular Stories (2004)

Prices

  • The first book Scary Godmother was nominated for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for “Favorite Original Graphic Novel” in 1998.
  • 1998 - nominated for the "Lulu of the Year"
  • 1999 - Winning the "Lulu of the Year"
  • 2001 - "Eisner Award" in the Best Painter / Multimedia category

Film adaptations

Two films were produced based on the series. The First Scary Godmother: Halloween Spooktacular premiered on TV in Europe , Latin America , Australia and Canada in 2003. It later also appeared in the United States , broadcast on Cartoon Network in 2004. The film was the first for Mainframe Entertainment was using its new animation software. Jill Thompson co-wrote the script and was a creative influence on the project. When shown the first character studies for the film, based on the watercolor drawings in her book, she requested that the characters be entirely computer-designed.

In an interview, Thompson explained why she wanted it this way:

I'm doing 2D. Nobody else should be doing 2D, just me.

“I paint them in 2D. Nobody but me should paint them in 2D. "

- Jill Thompson

However, the mostly static backgrounds used in the film are more reminiscent of traditional CEL animation or the illustrations in Thompson's books. Therefore, the 3D characters often appear as if they were jumping out of the background . The visual impression of the film was described more like Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas than a computer-animated film like Finding Nemo . A review of the film in the School Library Journal, however, describes the film as " Toy Story meets Tim Burton" reminiscent of Thompson's watercolor illustrations.

The second film, Scary Godmother: The Revenge of Jimmy, based on the second book, premiered in 2005.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Mike Jozic: Interviews Archive: Scary Jill Thompson? . Comics bulletin. Archived from the original on May 23, 2011. Retrieved November 21, 2008.
  2. ^ A b Roger Ash: Jill Thompson interview . Westfield Comics. 2001. Retrieved November 22, 2008.
  3. ↑ a b Christopher Butcher: ProFile Interview - Jill Thompson. . PopImage. February 2000. Retrieved November 22, 2008.
  4. ↑ Emmert Lynn: Jill Thompson. Interviewed by Lynn Emmert. Excerpted from The Comics Journal # 244 . Fantagraphics Books . Archived from the original on May 13, 2008. Retrieved March 11, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b c Karen Moltenbray, Witch's Brew: Mainframe Entertainment mixes up a wide range of graphic styles to create a unique look for Scary Godmother, Computer Graphics World, October 2003, Volume 26, Number 10
  6. ↑ Angela J. Reynolds Multimedia Review: Video . In: School Library Journal . 50, No. 9, ISSN  0362-8930 , p. 70.

Web links