Tales of Mother F. Goose

Tales of Mother F. Goose

Aftershock Comics 2021

Written by Frank Tieri

Illustrated by Joe Eisma

Coloured by Matt Herms

Lettered by Carlos M. Mangual

The Three Little Pigs are gluttonous casino owners. Little Miss Muffet is a hard-nosed cop with arachnophobia. The Three Blind Mice are ocularly impaired assassins. Puss in Boots is a feline-faced scumbag.

This is a really cute book. I like the idea that the Mother Goose characters are so effectively turned into the nom de plume of men connected with the mob. I found myself engrossed in the story right from the start and the huge twist ending really took me by complete surprise. So all in all this is precisely what an oversized, see magazine style, book should be like. This is the perfect vehicle for a story like this and the level & quality of Joe’s work really gets to shine here. As far as things go this is a perfect introduction to this world and it opens up all kinds of avenues and realms that could be explored time and time again making for a series of stand alone books or limited series that showcase these characters. Personally I’d love to see this happen because it isn’t something we’ve seen done before and let’s face it, originality wins the day here and creates something that we’ll surely be talking about for some time to come.

I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information are spectacularly well rendered. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a magnificent job in establishing their personalities. The pacing is exceptional and as it takes us through the pages introducing the characters, the story and the world they live in we are caught up in this more fully than any crime drama television program ever could get us.

I’m very much enjoying the way that this is being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow. I am also liking how we see the layers opening up new avenues to be explored and whether they are or not how they all add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward are impeccably handled.

What I find incredibly impressive about the interiors here is the fact that while they are based on Mother Goose characters it is how Joe interprets this into the characters that makes them so awesome. A perfect example of this is Little Miss Muffet, who goes by Muffet and has this spiderweb complete with a spider on her elbow. The little touches and details that we see which makes the character recognisable are phenomenally well rendered. How we see backgrounds enhance and expand the moments as well as how they work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is marvellous. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show an excellent eye for how colour works. My only critique is that the mice shouldn’t have been wearing their knickers after they were interrogated, with what we see they should’ve been removed.

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I really like how we see this issue unfold and how Jack (Horner) goes about telling us about three suspects in a crime and their connection to the man he believes is responsible for the death of the man they’ve found. This world manages to come to life with such aplomb. The writing is spectacular and the characterisation is phenomenal while the interiors are perfectly bespoke for the story. This is something that you should have in your reading pile no questions asked.