Days after Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, another dark take on the iconic wooden puppet is on the horizon. Variety brings word that Hellboy creator Mike Mignola is teaming up with Lemony Snicket for a new edition of Pinocchio, which allows both of them to put their signature gothic stamp on Carlo Collodi’s original novel.
The upcoming edition will be published by Beehive Books, which approached Mignola about contributing to their series of illustrated literary staples. As it turns out, Pinocchio was key in shaping Mignola’s storytelling sensibilities. And while he was hesitant to accept the job because “it’s been so well-illustrated over the years,” he eventually jumped at the chance to examine the character’s humanity from his own perspective.
“He’s just basically stupid,” explained Mignola. “He means well, but he f***s up endlessly. And there’s a charm to that, that wanting to not be a f***-up. It’s that thing of having to make a million mistakes in order to go, ‘Oh, okay, now I get it. I burned my own feet off, the blue fairy died because I was an a**hole, and I’m starting to see a pattern to this. Maybe if I start not being that guy, I can sort things out.’”
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Snickett [the pen name of Daniel Handler] is best known as the author behind A Series of Unfortunate Events. He contributed more than 100 typewritten annotations for the book, all of which compliment Mignola’s “Gothic, almost Victorian-looking” artwork that includes the same “cobbled-together” architecture found in his Hellboy stories. The book also features Mignola’s new design for Pinocchio, which you can view in full below.
“My Pinocchio is a bit more primitive,” added Mignola. “He’s a bit more simple, [with] limited facial expression, and that was a challenge. Just to come up with something that would read with some character, but still have this, ‘Oh, he’s just a block of wood,’ kind of a feel. I didn’t want him too animated. I wanted this odd clunkiness of a primitively carved piece of wood, or simply carved piece of wood.”
Mignola’s Pinocchio is currently being crowdfunded via Kickstarter, and the project has already exceeded its goal of $50,000. Regarless, the campaign will remain open until Thursday, April 20 at 11:59pm ET.
Are you excited to read Mignola and Snickett’s edition of Pinocchio? Let us know in the comment section below!
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