Over the Garden Wall

I like "children's books." When they're done well, there's a clarity to the stories that doesn't exist in books written for "grown ups." So The Little Prince, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, The Giving Tree, Madeline, Frog and Toad, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Rabbit, The Cat in the Hat, Harry the Dirty Dog . . . and right on up into Johnny Tremain, A Monster Calls, Harry Potter, Miss Peregrine, The Mysterious Benedict Society, A Series of Unfortunate Events . . . hells yeah. 

And some of my favorite comic books have been "for the kids": Batman, Superman, & Justice League Adventures, Mike Parobeck's Justice League of America . . . .  Those were the days, hey? And we've still got the the occasional thing like the Super Powers mini-series, and this Aw Yeah Revolution!  thing looks like it will be a hoot and a half. 

So when I saw a new "kid" comic book called Over the Garden Wall, I was kind of interested. Not $3.99 an issue interested, but interested enough to keep it in mind and keep an eye out for a sale.

But before that happened, I found out that before it was a comic book, it was a CARTOON NETWORK ten episode mini-series. And it just so happened that the LFPL had a copy of it. So I picked it up. And let it sit for a couple of weeks, just so that it could age properly. But when I put it in to watch the first episode, I didn't stop until the closing credits on the last one were rolling.

Oh, man. This show is so good. And so weird. It's even a little scary at times. Not your typical kids's fare in any way.

And get this: voice actors include Elijah Wood, Christopher Lloyd, Jack Hones, John Cleese, Shirley Jones, Chris Isaak, Tim Curry, and a whole bunch of other talented people. And from the world of the opera, there's Samuel Ramey (who sounds a LOT like James Earl Jones). 

Yowza.

And just to add a whole bowl full of cherries to the top of this sundae, on the extra features they included the Pilot Episode of the series, which was then entitled Tome of the Unknown, and it was just amazing. Even better (and weirder) than the actual series. 

And the good news is . . . CARTOON NETWORK itself put it up on The You Tub . . . and included an embed code, so this is totally on them:



Enjoy?