{"id":17658,"date":"2017-12-24T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-24T11:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=17658"},"modified":"2017-12-17T15:32:15","modified_gmt":"2017-12-17T15:32:15","slug":"father-kissmass-and-mother-claws-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2017\/12\/24\/father-kissmass-and-mother-claws-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Father Kissmass and Mother Claws"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Bel Mooney<\/strong> & Gerald Scarfe<\/strong> (Hamish Hamilton Ltd.)
\nISBN: 978-0-24111-700-2<\/p>\n

If you’ve finally grown up, Christmas is traditionally a time for tales of monsters and horrors so I’ve dredged up and re-exhumed this wonderful and superbly chilling graphic slice of satire from a time when horrific ghastly beasts stalked through Britain, sowing discomfort and dread where e’er they trod, without a clue what they were doing or a thought for the poor souls they stepped on and destroyed.<\/p>\n

In this cold, dark country, the brittle, demonic and so very cruel Mother Claws<\/strong> broods and frets. It’s time once again to put something in the stockings of the Nation’s inhabitants, but she Doesn’t Want To.<\/p>\n

She would rather cut things from their stockings – and so she does, with her corpulent, greedy Father Kissmass<\/strong> egging her on.<\/p>\n

So very carried away are they, that her herd of Tamedeer – sycophantic self-servers though they be, even Tebbie <\/em>and Hestle<\/em> – rebel.<\/p>\n

On Christmas Eve they ignore her whips and pull her sleigh to a hovel with a star above it. A homeless couple, with a special newborn baby, reach out to her needing just a little help\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Father Kissmass And Mother Claws<\/strong> was produced at the height of the Thatcher regime and uses dark, strident imagery from brilliant ethical Rottweiler Gerald Scarfe to concoct a savage sidebar to the nativity story for devastating satirical effect.<\/p>\n

This swingeing allegory of Thatcher’s Britain is infested with her cabinet’s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big Beasts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d tellingly depicted as cowed pack animals by Scarfe’s flick-knife art, whilst Bel Mooney’s prose is as comforting as a velveteen cosh. This is the best of what graphic satire can do. It’s just a pity today’s leaders don’t warrant the same loving attentions\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

No wait, look at the papers! It’s a Christmas miracle! They bloody do. Just squint a bit and tell yourself the names have been changed to protect the far-from-innocent\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nText \u00c2\u00a9 1985 Bel Mooney. Illustrations \u00c2\u00a9 1985 Gerald Scarfe. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bel Mooney & Gerald Scarfe (Hamish Hamilton Ltd.) ISBN: 978-0-24111-700-2 If you’ve finally grown up, Christmas is traditionally a time for tales of monsters and horrors so I’ve dredged up and re-exhumed this wonderful and superbly chilling graphic slice of satire from a time when horrific ghastly beasts stalked through Britain, sowing discomfort and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Father Kissmass and Mother Claws”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-british","category-satirepolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-4AO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}