The Ghastlygun Tinies: MAD's Edward Gorey satire that takes aim at school shootings

Must be a Sunday morning, the gun signal doesn’t appear to have gone up yet. I’m sure it won’t be long.

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They can try, but the spirit of Saint Barbara is strong…

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Well, not funny “ha ha” more funny “uh oh”

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Indeed, the publisher might encourage them to exactly that. Imagine the free publicity!

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The issue came out more than two weeks ago.

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Even though I saw a blurb about MAD rebooting publication a while ago, it didn’t really register… but now I think I can find a few extra bucks to buy the current issue.

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Ditto, first I have heard of the reboot. Was a huge fan in HS and college, will be eager to see how the reboot stacks up. This item certainly seems promising.

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It’s really not obvious what the topic is that we should be talking about, but the only thing here that interests me, is this bifurcation between the furious and those in denial.

It’s a curious turn of phrase, since those who want to make federal gun laws more restrictive, outnumber those who don’t 3 to 1.

And yet we are constantly being sold the idea that only a tiny razors edge, barely significant majority of 51% to 49% is what keeps us and our allies from getting what we want.

That’s true of the right as well. Last cycle it was Obama, this cycle its Trump. A few cycles ago, we were told that it was a few hundred voters in Dade county that would decide Gore vs Bush.

This concept was taken only slightly further in 2008’s Swing Vote. In a statistical universe of 300 million citizens, a few hundred votes versus just one vote, is barely even a rounding error.

But if you want to keep a populace fighting each other in a constantly simmering civil cold war that never boils over into actual power-building, it’s an elegant strategy.

Donna Barr, talking about her series, Stinz has said that the fascism of WW2 was basically a prototype. Prototypes are always kind of ugly, with lots of wires showing that wont make it into the final release. What the US is up to is a far more refined, much more socially acceptable version of fascism. (And she was saying this back in the 90s)

Because if parents are afraid to send our kids to school for fear of our fellow (2nd amendment protected) citizens, that means the state does not need to terrify us with goose-stepping stormtroopers in government issued livery.

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You’ve repeatedly and insultingly personalized your remarks here to me in this thread and others today, so it’s tempting to write you off as a crank. In any event, you’re certainly someone who is profoundly wrong about settled copyright law and also wrong about how wrong you are.

Pastiche is too blunt a concept to be understood in US copyright – a pastiche can be infringing, or not infringing. But a parody is a derivative work. Courts have ruled that pastiches containing far less of the source material that this one require explicit licenses, see e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blurred_Lines#Marvin_Gaye_lawsuit_and_authorship_questions (this is merely the latest and most egregious example – you could also read the court argument in Acuff Rose, with special attention to the judge’s reasoning about the parody/satire split).

So yeah, you’re wrong. The idea that satire is automatically fair use would be wonderful, but it’s just totally wrong. Like, so, totally, absolutely wrong. Like 2+2=5 wrong.

On another note, I would prefer to discuss this without gratuitous personal insults. If you can’t rise to that standard, then this will be my last message to you. If you continue to act like an ax-grinding internet yahoo arguing in bad faith, that’s how I’ll treat you.

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Ultimately it is only a legal problem if the author objects to the use. Edward Gorey was a very very interesting man. Everything I know about him suggests that he would not have objected. However, he is dead – so the question becomes, who controls his estate (as he had no children) and what are their views?

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It often comes down to a question of acknowledgment. In this case, it’s made clear in the intro to the piece that it is not Gorey’s work but is inspired by The Gashleycrumb Tinies in both style and tone while showing no primary intent to ride on Gorey’s fur coat tails for commercial benefit.

It’s a lot more difficult to pull this off in musical compositions, especially when the song containing the pastiche of a major hit is itself a major hit.

Sometimes the acknowledgment is clever. August Derleth and later authors spent years publishing stories about a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (an extremely close one) named “Solar Pons” without a legal peep from the notoriously litigious Conan Doyle estate. In part this was because Derleth mentioned Sherlock Holmes existing in-universe as a respected member of Pons’s profession.

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I can’t speak to their views, but a charitable trust controls the copyrights:

http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/edward-gorey-licensing-information

My sense is that they’d welcome the pastiche, as it acknowledges and draws attention to Gorey’s artistic legacy, but if lawyers are involved who knows?

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I can’t take credit for this, but elsewhere someone pointed out that Greg has a picture of Xena in his locker.

Capture3

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There are so many Gorey-level touches in the comic it’s obvious that the artist worships him. Note the posters in Connor’s English class. Or the metal detector behind Brian or the shadow in the hall that Dana is about to enter.

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That would be the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust.

Gorey willed his work to the Trust, which supports the Edward Gorey House museum, preserves his life work, and arranges travelling exhibitions. They also support a wide variety of animal-welfare organizations in honor of Gorey’s lifelong love of animals (including bats and insects).

Just in case you were curious.

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Two things:
I believe Mr. Gorey would soundly approve of this.
I can’t stop crying.

Okay, make that three things:
I will buy my first Mad Magazine since the late 60s tomorrow.

Four. I’ll stop at four:
My fingers were usually ink-stained in high school due to time spent copying Mr. Gorey’s drawings,
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(this being a much later version; my original inked one read Sue because my name IS NOT Susan, damn it…I digress)
and I painted the following on my bedroom wall - from corner to corner. Mother not well pleased.
c73fb526e73693c747af1a5d2f398298

Oh, hell, make it five. I’ll never forget the shitstorm that ensued after being tasked to take down some wall paper in my childhood home. When faced with blank walls, out came the black paint. The hall became a Gorey wonderland with the pièce de résistance being a life-sized Dracula at its dead end.
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I’m starting to feel better now thinking about the horror on mother’s face and, snicker, how many coats of white to cover it all up, with a day or two to dry in between.

ETA now that I think of it, the Dracula was still visible before new wall paper was applied. I wonder what the new owners thought during the remodel!

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Exactly. Gorey’s approach is brilliant: First three panels – so innocent and cute – then the nasty punchline of sad reality.

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You just reminded me that he did the sets for the Broadway production of Dracula. Look at them:

There’s merch, too:

ETA: also this:

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Gorey’s “tool” here is parody.
His “nail” is satire.

JMHO

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He was a detective ?

Who solved crimes ?

I’m reminded of the Star Trek situation, where having failed to get the rights owners to hire him on, Seth McFarland just went and made his own damn TV show.

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