The Weirding Willows volume 1: What the Wild Things Are

By Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri & various (Atomeka/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-78276-035-1

Phillip Jose Farmer’s Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are probably the earliest modern examples of our current fascination with concatenating assorted literary icons and fictive childhood companions into heroic associations and fantasy brotherhoods, but as fantasy consumers we’ve always wanted our idols to clash or team up.

So many comics from Scarlet in Gaslight (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula) to Planetary (pulp vigilantes and other companies’ superheroes cheekily retooled) to the magnificent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (everybody you’ve ever heard of and some you haven’t) and an uncountable number of TV shows, books and movies have mined this boundless seam of entertainment gold.

The Weirding Willows by Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri and an army of colourists continues that topical trend; recombining the innocent headliners of many a beloved British children’s book into a slick, harsh, creepily adult reconfigurationâ€¦

One cautionary note: as with every entry into this amalgamating sub-genre, if you are a literary purist you are going to hate this – or indeed any – contemporarily-toned, edgily in-your-face interpretation. Nothing I can say will change your mind, so don’t bother.

There are plenty of other graphic novels and albums around that will better suit your temperament. Please try one of thoseâ€¦

The series launched in the latest iteration of anthology title A1 and this collection of first story-arc What the Wild Things Are also includes a whole new chapter exclusive to this lush and beguiling hardback compilation.

Rural, bucolic Willow Weir is a quintessentially English hamlet with a big secret. The riverside association of houses and farms intersects a number of portals to numerous other Realms and Dimensions, and things strange and uncanny are often seen – if not discussed. The human folk who abide there are not so simple and frequently as odd as the creatures that roam the wild woods and harmless-seeming riverbanksâ€¦

Following author Elliott’s Introduction a handy map offers the geographical lowdown on the green and pleasantly deceptive land before the tale unfolds with ‘A Wicked Witch This Way Comes’ wherein we meet worldly wise teen totty Alice Moreau, a girl greatly at odds with her father’s scientific preoccupations.

Dad and daughter reside in the house abandoned by Professor Donald H. Lambert when he rode his time machine into the future, and the abrasive single parent soon filled the vacant dwelling with an assortment of animals for his experiments.

This particular morning he is dickering with Dr. Henry Jekyll who has provided formal introduction for a green-bedecked dowager temptress named Margareete Marche; a traveller from a distant land who wishes to commission the radical surgeon to construct for her an army of winged monkeysâ€¦

Insolent Alice isn’t impressed: she’s far more concerned that sheep are going missing from nasty Farmer McGregor‘s spread. Naturally darling Daddy is the prime suspect. There’s no love lost between father and daughter, ever since she followed a rabbit through a portal to Wonderland and told her father all about it. He didn’t believe a word and has mocked her ever sinceâ€¦

The unpleasant confrontation with McGregor is cut short when a trio of talking rabbits summon her away to deal with another crisis. She doesn’t get far, though, as Montgomery Doolittle arrives with a barge full of fresh beasts for the operating tableâ€¦

The cargo has also drawn a new player to the dell of domesticity. This black-maned wild child is desperate to rescue his beloved companions Baloo and Bagheera from the clutches of the obnoxious white man who can talk to animalsâ€¦

‘If You Go Down to the Woods Todayâ€¦’ sees Alice finally follow her bunny buddies as enraged Mowgli tries – and fails – to free his wild brothers: becoming instead more prospective raw material for Doctor Moreau. As Alice slips away no one pays any attention to a bizarrely grinning cat named Cheshire, and her own attentions are soon fully occupied by the rampages of an extremely angry example of the surgical efforts of an earlier modern Prometheusâ€¦

‘The Prisoner of Doctor Moreau’ finds Mowgli imprisoned with an exotic young woman named Kamaria, as across the river Alice brokers a peace between the rabbit race and Frankenstein’s Monster. As usual he has been gravely misunderstood: his frantic acts were merely the result of extreme concern for a lost companion.

Rosalind had gone missing and he has tracked her through a portal from Pellucidar – the world at the Earth’s Core – and is quite concerned. So is everybody else when they learn that Rosalind is a dinosaurâ€¦

‘What Lies Beneath Badger’s House’ introduces badger Victor Stoker, toad Dudley Cook, mole Morris Moore & ratty Terry James as well as a sinister hidden city deep down under Badger’s house, whilst in Moreau’s cellar laboratory the Cheshire Cat gives Mowgli some dangerous advice.

Meanwhile, the multi-species search party have found Rosalind on McGregor’s Farm, ferociously guarding a clutch of recently laid eggsâ€¦

That discovery only leads to tragedy as the obnoxious smallholder shoots Rosalind and claims the eggs for himself in ‘Here There Be Dragons!’ Thankfully Alice quickly deals with the farmer before monstrous Damon can get his second-hand hands on himâ€¦

Things take an even stranger turn when Victor, Morris, Dudley and Terry turn up. The Badger seems to know an awful lot about the experiments of the long-dead Dr. Frankensteinâ€¦

Night comes on and, in Moreau’s cellar as the full moon shines down on Kamaria, she begins to change and howlâ€¦

At a loss, Alice brings the whole menagerie back to her place in ‘What the Wild Things Are!’, much to the angry astonishment of her father, and at least has the satisfaction of proving that her â€œchildish ramblingsâ€ were all true, all alongâ€¦

However, when the rampant Kamaria werewolf tumultuously breaks out, strange alliances are quickly formed before the whole lethally helter-skelter hurly-burly is unconventionally settled in the low-key conclusion ‘Worlds Within Worlds’.

In the aftermath Alice at last finds time to renew an old acquaintanceship with a four-armed green man from another worldâ€¦

Each chapter is concluded with an excerpt from The Weirding Willows Field Guide, detailing pertinent facts and shameful secrets about Alice, Philippe Moreau, Monty Doolittle, Damon Frankenstein, Victor Stoker, Dudley Cook, Morris Moore & Terry James, Margareete Marche, Dr. Henry Jekyll & Edward Hyde, Mowgli, The Worriers Three (talking rabbits Benjamin Buckle, Peter Pipp & Hoetoe Darwin), Professor Donald H. Lambert and enigmatic, formidable bunny-with-a-secret Norman Pipp, and the tome terminates with the author’s afterword ‘Inspirations’ and some informative creator ‘Biographies’.

Magnificently, mesmerisingly illustrated, this is a visual feast no fan of fantastic fantasy mash-ups will want to missâ€¦

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