The Unimaginative Liddells: Princess Alyss’ Never-Before-Seen Letters – Part 2
Back in 2007, we collaborated with noted Alyssian historian Agnes MacKenzie to publish Princess Alyss of Wonderland, a stunning collection of letters, journal writings, and art from Her Royal Imaginer Princess Alyss Heart. These breathtaking documents chronicled the incredible childhood of Wonderland’s exiled heir apparent and future hero of The Looking Glass Wars.
In April, we released the first round of never-before-seen letters, journal entries, and art from Princess Alyss Heart’s exile on Earth. Part One spanned Alyss’ flight from Wonderland and how she survived her first days on the rough streets of London.
When we last left Princess Alyss she had just been arrested by the London bobbies and sent to the notorious Charing Cross Orphanage. In Part Two, Alyss recounts the horrors of this ignominious institute, her disappointment at being adopted by the unimaginative Liddells, and why she tried to break into Buckingham Palace.
(*As always, I am indebted to the tireless and exhaustive research of the eminent Wonderland historian Agnes MacKenzie. Her dedication has helped keep the true story of Queen Alyss alive!)
Agnes MacKenzie Worlds collide in this document dated May 24, 1859, when a man of science, Dr. Williford, the physician at London’s Charing Cross Foundling Hospital unknowingly examined a princess from another realm. Written in his precise script, the intake form lists Alyss’ height, weight, and hair color, and contains notes on her attitude and dress. Special attention was paid to the unusual fabric of her dress, “finer than any silk and yet so strong as to repel all stains and misc. damage with the exception of one vicious gash”. Alyss is described as having luminous coloring, a willful, imperious attitude, and an intense aversion to felines. When asked where her family is she insisted they are in a place called “Wonderland”. The doctor’s keen eye noted the unusual qualities of the child, but his mind could not open to the concept of ‘Wonderland’. Dr. Williford comments that if her oddness can be contained the wardens have high hopes for placing her in a family of good standing because “the child obviously has quite exceptional bloodlines”. Indeed.
October 2, 1861 When I was delivered to the orphanage I erupted into a terrible screaming temper tantrum. How dare they???? This place was certainly not meant for children, it must be a prison for something exceptionally evil and nasty. But I was wrong, children were everywhere and the only things evil and nasty living here were the ward mistresses with their stiff collars and drab skirts weighed down with bundles of heavy keys to lock the doors that kept us all from running away. I loathed it there so much that I looked forward to escaping into my dreams each night but even this became unbearable because my dreams soon had a very unwelcome visitor.
The Cat! Each night it would sneak into my sleep and invade my dreams with its growls and hisses and hot, stinky cat breath! It had the stinkiest breath I have ever smelled in a dream!
October 8, 1861 Dreams are only nightmares if you let them do what they wish. One night I decided that rather than being frightened of what was chasing me, I would imagine that I was running towards something beautiful. There were endless doors lining the halls and I imagined I would find my mother if I opened the very last door. But when the door opened, instead of seeing her I saw all her favorite flowers. And I could smell her favorite perfume. Eau de’Pink. It smells very PINK and I love it.
November 10, 1861 I was adopted by a very dull and unimaginative family named Liddell and brought to live in their home in Christ Church, Oxford. Living in a home was very different from living in a palace and I found it difficult to adjust as I believe ANY Princess would. Everything was so small and smelled rather of burned vegetables while my bedchamber was just ridiculous. The bed didn’t even float! How could I even begin to get a perfect night’s sleep???? The Liddells did not believe in Wonderland or that a real princess could come to their world and even though I repeatedly corrected them, they insisted on changing my name to Alice. HOW RUDE!!!!!
Agnes MacKenzie Uncertain of their adopted daughter’s bloodlines and wishing to make a suitable marriage (a prince perhaps???) Henry and Lorina Liddell chose to keep her origin top secret by destroying all records of the adoption, even going so far as to forge an ‘Alice Liddell’ birth certificate which modern genealogical forensics easily exposed to be false! The child was simply not born in this world.
November 11, 1861 In Wonderland I had always remembered my dreams. Why was I unable to remember my dreams now? Aha! I wasn’t sleeping in a dreamgown! When I inquired of Mrs. Liddell when I would be fitted for my dreamgown, she looked alarmed. I explained that in Wonderland there were special gowns in which you slept to capture your dreams. The dreams would be reflected on the gown so you wouldn’t forget anything important. I had closets full of dreamgowns in Wonderland but requested only ONE for here. I thought I was being quite modest but Mrs. Liddell opened her mouth very wide and shouted at me “You must STOP your incessant impossible imagining. You dream too much as it is ALICE!” Dream too much??? How sad to think that anyone could ever dream TOO MUCH. I spent the rest of the day locked in my dark little dungeon of a bedroom imagining and drawing dreamgowns….
From left to right: Proper sister Lorina – A grown-up lady in the body of a little girl; Cruel Governess Pricks – She actually prefers sour to sweet!; Mr. and Mrs. Liddell – Equally gloomy on all occasions; Me – If it weren’t for my hollizalea headdress and mini-rainbow I should fear becoming just like them!; Baby Edith – There may still be hope for her.
February 22, 1862 Yesterday Mr. and Mrs. Liddell brought Lorina and I to London to visit the exhibition at the Crystal Palace. The palace reminded me very much of Heart Palace and I felt all sorts of sad and glad memories about Wonderland. It also made me remember something VITAL! When I first arrived in London I shot out of that puddle into the center of a parade and saw a golden carriage. There was a woman in the carriage waving to the crowd. It was a Queen! Had mother traveled here to meet me? I had run after the carriage and chased it all the way to a palace but a row of soldiers blocked my entrance. I told them I was Princess Alyss Heart and ordered them to allow me to pass. At this, they began to laugh. Vowing to return to this palace called Buck-ing-ham I ran back in search of the puddle that had brought me here. I had forgotten all of this until the Liddells brought me on this visit to London. And suddenly I knew what had happened! Mother had followed me to London but had been kidnapped and imprisoned by Redd at the palace known as Buck-ing-ham!!!!! It all made perfect sense and it was up to me to rescue my mother.
February 23, 1862 Enough was enough! How could I pretend to live the childish life of Alice Liddell in her nursery eating porridge when I was certain that Redd had imprisoned my mother in the palace called Buck-ing-ham? This had to be the reason for everything horrible that had happened. Redd had wished to be queen but Wonderland already had a queen, my mother. Redd must have come to London through the Pool of Tears and become the queen known as Victoria! Being the Queen of London was not anywhere as grand as being the Queen of Wonderland and Redd was jealous of my mother so she kidnapped her and locked her in Buck-ing-ham Palace!!! I was positive that my mother was there now waiting for me to rescue her.
February 27, 1862 My preparations complete, I set forth on my mission to rescue my mother from Queen ‘Victoria’ (ha!). I noticed that whenever I thought of seeing my mother my imagination would suddenly become very strong. I would picture my mother and I in the garden at Heart Palace and I would suddenly be filled with all sorts of imaginings on how to get to London and how I would find a pair of jollyjelly wings and sail over the wall past those snickering guards. I had my train tickets, maps, and a packet of peppermints should I become weak from hunger and need energy. I was so excited I could have flown to London. I did consider collecting and pasting bird feathers to my arms and setting off from the roof of the Liddell’s house but I could not find enough feathers.
March 10, 1862 Disaster! Unable to locate a pair of jollyjelly wings I decided to dig my way in under the palace fence. The passage under the fence was a tight fit and horror of horrors I became stuck! I felt a tug on my feet and was soon face to face with the redcoated guards laughing harder than ever. I was imprisoned and given only a very small amount of tea and cake until Mr. Liddell could come and fetch me back to Oxford. Oh, the dreadfulness of my mood. And the worst was yet to come. Governess Pricks was waiting at the front door when we pulled up in the carriage. Her words felt like a storm of pinches as she scolded me for being a selfish, ridiculous child. But as she continued on and on with ever more insults I could only hear my own small voice repeating over and over “How shall I ever return home now?”
Agnes MacKenzie Not long after this ill-fated excursion to London, Alyss was to meet someone who would lift her spirits and give her hope (if only to later smash it to pieces!)
*Stay tuned for Part Three, in which Alyss meets the Oxford mathematician who would change her life forever – Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).
A Royal Affair: The Suit Families Who Rule Wonderland
In Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars trilogy, he reimagines the iconic characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Whimsical, silly, nonsense characters become fantastical warriors, fierce creatures, and politically savage families grasping for power. I’m just scratching the surface but here are my favorite examples: Hatter Madigan is Beddor’s reimagined Mad Hatter. Instead of a caffeine-addicted crazy person, he is a multiple-blade-wielding bodyguard for Princess Alyss. General Doppelgänger, who is based on Tweedledee and Tweedledum, is a fierce general who can split into two separate entities. And, of course, there is the Cat. Frank Beddor’s take on the Cheshire Cat, the Cat is Queen Red’s faithful assassin. Frank expanded and transformed the already rich world Carroll created into his own. This is most obvious when it comes to the different suit families.
The suit families in The Looking Glass Wars are the rulers of Wonderland. Every royal in Wonderland is allied with one of the four suits: Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs. With each suit family, there is a unique culture, skillset, and card soldier fighting force. Instead of simply stating each family’s culture and such, I think it would be fun to compare the suit families with other families from media and history.
Let’s start with the Hearts. The Hearts are the oldest suit family in Wonderland. They are the ruling house, where the matriarch rules as the Queen of Wonderland. Due to the family’s deep history, they value loyalty above all else. Another fictional family that shares a lot of similarities with the Hearts is the Stark family from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaptation, Game of Thrones. The Stark family, much like every family in Game of Thrones, is put through the wringer, especially after that whole “Red Wedding” debacle. No matter what happens to them though, they are always there for each other. This is just like the Heart family. In The Looking Glass Wars, there is a coup that can be compared to the Red Wedding. The family leader, Queen Genevieve, is killed, leaving Princess Alyss Heart on her own, forcing her on a long arduous, journey towards becoming a warrior princess, much like Arya Stark in Game of Thrones.
Next up are the Spades. The Spade family today are known for their stealth and wild technology. Their cities are so technologically advanced they look similar to central Tokyo in our world. The Spades are essentially addicted to technology, so much so that mad scientists carry out forbidden experiments in dark towers and castles on the outskirts of Spade cities. The Spades have the bloodiest history of all the suits. Originally slaves, they managed to stage a successful rebellion against their rulers. Due to their past enslavement, the Spades are a tight-knit group who are wary of outsiders. The Spades have fought for their power and will do anything to keep it. A great comparison for the Spades is the Borgia family. The Borgias were a power-hungry Spanish noble house active in Italy during the Renaissance. The Borgia family murdered, bribed, and stole their way to the top of the Catholic Church then did some more murdering, bribing, and stealing to maintain control of the Vatican. In fact, we still are feeling these effects today. I want you to close your eyes. Now I want you to open your eyes because I realized you won’t be able to read this. But imagine Jesus in your mind’s eye. You see that blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy, right? Well, that’s Cesare Borgia, SON of POPE Alexander VI. That’s a golden calf if I’ve ever seen one. While some may refute this, many other smarter people don’t. This is the type of power the Borgias had and if I’m comparing them to the ruthless Spades…I’ll let you figure out the rest.
Alright, now we are onto the Clubs. The Clubs came from explorers and wandering outcasts, rebellious against authority and valuing freedom above all else. I’m stuck between two different options for comparisons. The first are the Orks from Warhammer 40,000. These are not your Tolkien-esque orcs of yesteryear. No, these Orks are extremely aggressive semi-psychic space fungi who are most happy bashing heads on the battlefield. Okay, extremely aggressive semi-psychic space fungi might not sound like the Clubs at first but allow me to persuade you. Like the Clubs, Orks are broken into different clans (tribes). They value absolute freedom (on the battlefield to kill whoever they want), are fantastic warriors, and are green which is the regimental color of the Club military. Right, so that’s option one for the comparison. My second comparison for the clubs is the United States. Actually, if you switch out Orks with the U.S., it has the same sentiment, so I’m going to say it’s both.
Finally, there are the Diamonds. The Diamonds are descendants of merchants and traders and have an insatiable lust for acquiring wealth. The Diamonds, much like their literal gemstone counterparts, enjoy flaunting their wealth. Their desire for financial gain makes them exceptionally cunning in their political schemes. A great comparison is House Harkonnen from Frank Herbert’s Dune. For those of you who only saw the movies that came out recently, Dave Bautista and Austin Butler were members of House Harkonnen. While Dave and Austin’s characters were extremely volatile, Baron Harkonnen, who was played by Stellan Skarsgård, embodies the Diamonds the most. He wanted acquisition at all costs, manipulated politics into his favor using “spice” and the money he made with it, and was extremely opulent. Those black goo baths had to be expensive, no one else partook in them.
While these comparisons are not exactly apples to apples, I wanted to show those who have not had the pleasure of reading The Looking Glass Wars what the different suit households of Wonderland were like in a very digestible form. Comparing one intellectual property to another can sometimes be a bit reductive. The suit families are more complex than the descriptions I used just as the other IPs are more complex. That being said, I’m remaining hopeful that one day in the future an underpaid writer will create a blog comparing their boss’s characters to other IPs and use something from The Looking Glass Wars TV show as an example.
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
All Things Alice: Interview with Jake Curtis
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have the hilarious and talented Jake Curtis join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor Welcome to All Things Alice Jake Curtis.I’m interested in your creative journey as a young writer and how one comes to their creative process and aspirations. Where did it all start in terms of writing? Were you someone who loved to write in school?
Jake Curtis I’ve pretty much always done some kind of performance thing. I come from a big family of writers and artists who are all too loud for their own good. So growing up, you had to learn to talk fast and talk loud.
FB Was that at the dinner table? Or was that all the time?
JC Twenty-four seven. We used to say that everyone was unconditionally loved, but not everyone was unconditionally liked.
I came to performing and writing from improv actually. I started doing a lot of improvised comedy when I was 12-13 and it was huge for me because I’m quite an anxious person in general. I’m an analytical person. So the chaos and acceptance that has to come with improv was pretty huge for me. There’s no second draft. There’s no planning.
FB There’s no getting out of it. I thought improv was the most terrifying concept I’d ever heard of. I’m not going to get up on stage and then somebody’s going to tell me some little story and I’m supposed to go from there. I admire the chutzpah at 12. But I suppose at 12 it’s like sink or swim. So much stuff is going on at that age.
JC I was a big lover of live comedy shows. England, especially then, had a really vibrant live comedy scene. Going up to the Edinburgh Fringe at young ages, you see all these shows, and at first, I became obsessed with the idea of an audience. I think that was always the bit that gripped me. It’s not so much the glitz and glamor of a million followers, but it was getting to watch these people who can walk into a room with 20 people and just connect with them and entertain them for an hour. I’ve always approached writing from an entertainer’s perspective. We’re all dancing monkeys making something fun. So I did improv for years and it excited me and I got to go around the world and do shows in Canada and the US.
FB So there was something more structured than you getting up there as a young person and doing something in front of the class. Were you part of a troupe?
JC I was part of a troupe called School of Comedy, which is an amazing company in the UK that gets professional sketch writers to come in, but then they have a troupe of kids to perform the sketches. We did shows up in Edinburgh for two years we would perform around the country at festivals and comedy gigs. That was an amazing experience because we were very much treated like we were a part of a professional show. Like we were an asset and a commodity and a member of the troupe. They were lovely and respectful. But also it was like, you have an expectation. There are people out there who have come to see a show and you are the people to deliver it.
FB How many shows would you do a day?
JC When we went up to Edinburgh, we would do a show every day for 30 days or for 21 days, which is the length of the Fringe. You’re on a full run there. Then, generally, you’d have a week with a couple of shows or a little run at some theater and then a couple of months without a show. But we were working and it gave you this idea of having to accept how the audience reacts. I think a lot of writing classes and creative media share the message of “Oh, you’ve got to tell the story that’s yours. You’ve got to find your soul or your calling.” That’s wonderful and people need to be told that, but I think it does sometimes remove the audience from the question. It tells you to find the thing you think is funny, but I love performing to live crowds because you’re reminded even if you think it’s funny, it doesn’t really matter that much if they don’t. We’d go into shows where we had sketches that had been written for us and that killed five shows in the last five shows. But you deliver it and the crowd doesn’t like it. You can either just say, “Well, this is my schedule and I’m gonna keep going,” or you can try and change it on the spot, try and work out what this crowd needs from you and the show.
FB Obviously, when it’s going well, it fuels you and you can charge ahead and you will take chances and it’s invigorating. When there’s a lull or you feel like the audience’s leaning back and they’re not engaged, for me, I had a sense of panic when I was doing some plays. I went, “Oh, it’s one of those.” I would get into my head on the negative side and trying to find a way out of that into the next moment and being present was difficult.
JC I’ve done shows that have bombed and kept bombing. Sometimes you’re in the mud and you’ve got to stay there. In those shows, I would just try and make as much eye contact with the people on stage as I could. You don’t have to look at the crowd, right? And I’d try and tell myself, “I’m here having a good time with my friend, not bombing and ruining these people’s night.” But generally, with the crowd, I always took that as a challenge and it’s a challenge you can win. Especially with comedy shows, people want to come out and have a good evening. Now working as a writer, all these decisions you make are fueled by “We think these markets might want a script that looks like this.” I hate all of that because it’s not real. You’re like, “Oh, maybe I can do it. I’m a technician.” But when you have a crowd, it’s you and them. It’s head-to-head. My panic mode was usually monologuing. If I’m getting stressed, I’m just gonna keep talking and I’m gonna keep going until I hit something. I’m gonna move faster. I’m gonna go through more ideas until you find a little inkling of a laugh and then just grip onto that for dear life.
FB Is that what you did with your family? Is that what the competition was, people gripping on for their lives to find a little kernel to be heard?
JC One hundred percent. You’re waiting at the dinner table like, “Come on. Someone mention dog. Someone mention dog.” Someone brings up the word dog and you’re like, “That’s interesting! Listen to what happened to me today. I went out and I met three dogs.” You’ve got to take your time when you have it.
FB Wow, that must have been hard to even get the food and drink down. That’s a diet in itself.
JC When someone else starts monologuing, you speed eat. I just loved the immediacy of improv and the presentness and the engagement. For me, the joy of making art is making it for a specific person or specific people.
FB You were making art in that moment. There wasn’t a committee telling you, “I think this joke will work or that joke will work”. The audience is telling you instantaneously, which you don’t get when you’re writing a script for television. That’s amazing because you’re basically writing on stage as you’re going.
JC It forces you to engage in the truthful fact that the majority of art is just people observing other people and enjoying it. There’s this top tier of if you can write a sentence so good it is etched into history. If you’re gonna write “to be or not to be,” go for it. But the majority of art isn’t the cleverest thing you’ve ever heard. It’s some people watching, reading, whatever, some other people and trying to enjoy it, trying to have a good time.
FB It’s the connection to the human experience which is why it’s interesting you’re describing your family because so many stories are about the dynamic of family and it’s very relatable. So when you tap into something like that you’re going to engage the audience in a meaningful way. Your family dynamic sounds really exciting and really competitive and that set you up with the mindset of “I’m being creative all the time, not just when I’m improvising. But my whole family is creative.” Did you have actors in the family? You said writers?
JC In the immediate family, we have a lot of writers. My sister’s a writer, my dad’s a writer, my little brother’s a writer. My mum was a TV presenter in the 80s, which was cool. She used to do little practice things like she’d be playing songs in the car and, in between them, she’d be like, “Okay, you could introduce this one.” I’d have to be like, “And this next song coming on is a smooth hit from Lionel Richie,” and try to time it to the intro to the song. It was all just fun. Then in the extended family, they’re also very loud. I have like 30 cousins on my mom’s side and we have actors, we have everything. It was just a general feeling of trying to have fun trying to push yourself. I thought if I was going to be able to make a career in the arts, it would be partly from muscle growth. How many reps can I do? How many different art forms? I spent so long doing comedy sketches, I don’t do those anymore, but the experience all of it filters into everything else I do.
FB Is comedy the genre you’ve started to really hone is comedy, whether it’s television or film?
JC Comedy is definitely where I lean. That was where all my experience came from in improv. I think these things are muscles, especially comedy. I think people often underestimate how much of a muscle comedy is because people are so naturally funny. But it is a very different thing, being funny to four friends than writing something that can slot into a specific scene in a specific script.
FB It’s completely different. When you’re with your friends and you’re saying it out loud, it can come or go. But when you write it down, people can judge the rhythm and the cadence of it. Somebody’s got to perform it to really nail that cadence. It’s a lot different putting it on.
JC I sometimes hear writers, who are great writers but haven’t done comedy, saying, I think I might, for my next script, just do a comedy.” That’s great and maybe it’ll be amazing but I think the reason I’m good at comedy is, I hope, twenty percent something natural in me but I did a hundred appalling improv shows before doing a hundred mediocre improv shows before doing fifty decent ones. I have so many scripts that are so bad and so unfunny, so many files on my phone, stand-up gigs, improv, and freestyling. This is the thing I’ve done the most and I’m still mediocre to okay.
FB It’s the 10,000 hours. It’s the failing over and over. I don’t know if people realize what a gift that is, as the learning part of the process. When you talk about great comedians and you see their shows, if you see multiple shows, they are so specific night after night. They’re hitting every one of those beats. They’re so worked out. It’s kind of remarkable how specific they are from performance to performance.
JC That was a part of why I felt so lucky getting into comedy so early and the fact that my family did treat it as a serious pursuit. I was able to go through a lot of that education and a learning phase while I was at school. Because I think it can be really daunting if you go through life and you hit 24-25 and you go, “Oh, maybe I want to do comedy.” It’s a six-year path to being kind of fine.
FB Starting at 12 and starting to perform, it’s not dissimilar to sports. If you do it at a young age, it’s so inherent by the time you get to your late teens. It’s instinctual but you need all those reps. Starting that young, the filters are off and so you’re just doing it. It’s not as if you’re 24 and you want to do comedy for your career and you wonder how that’s gonna work out. I think that makes a big difference. With your family being so into all the arts, did you find that to be really nurturing or is there a competitiveness or an expectation you feel moving forward?
JC Not so much. There’s a competitiveness in my family anyway. I’m one of four kids and we all do very fairly similar things so there’s a bit of a jostling. But no, I think it was very much, “If this is a path you want to go down, go down it.” Me and my siblings do similar stuff but it’s different. My sister writes incredible feminist literature I couldn’t write and my little brother writes very dark, edgy films I also couldn’t write. It wasn’t as much of competitiveness but it was more of “This is a legitimate career and a path you can take. If you’re gonna go down it, take it seriously and put in work, put in the hours. We will drive you to the classes and pick you up but you’ve got to put your practice in and put your head down.” It wasn’t treated as a fanciful thing.
FB With a lot of creatives, the family or the parents treat it as a fanciful idea and not dependable.
JC I remember one time when I was 16 we had these national tests and I did really well on the physics one and I suddenly got this brain wave of, “Wait a second, could I be an engineer?” I was like, “Oh my god, this is a radical thought. A steady paying job, career development.”
FB Nothing like my family.
JC I’d become the black sheep.
FB You’re working for Intel.
JC It would be bizarre for them. It was always something I just appreciated and kept going and kept trying to see where I could go. I did a lot of improv. I got to do some shows I loved. I got to do two 50-hour-long shows in Canada with the group Die-Nasty, which was a great experience. It was really COVID that ended that portion of my life. I was already writing a lot by then but when COVID happened all improv obviously shut down. More than most industries improv took a really big hit. It turned out the improv theaters weren’t the people with big financial stores and genius financial skills. So improv took a really hard hit there. Then I just dove fully into writing. I’ve always enjoyed performing as an act for myself, but needing to get my face out there was never a priority. So I really tried to dedicate myself to screenwriting as a way of building a career I would enjoy.
FB Why did you move from the UK to the US? Was that for educational or opportunity reasons?
JC I was living in the UK until I was 19 and then I moved to Chicago to go to Northwestern University and study film there. I made the decision entirely based on improv. In the UK, I was doing what is known as Chicago-style improv, which is long form. Chicago is the mecca of that with Second City and the iO. So I Googled best colleges for improv and some dudes’ blogs came up and at number one he had Northwestern and the Titanic Players. I went great. I applied to two schools. I applied to Northwestern and then I applied to Yale because no one in England had heard of Northwestern. So I thought, “If I can get into Yale and reject them, then I’ll tell people I chose Northwest.” Then Yale rejected me so it wasn’t a great plan. But yeah, I went for the improv and it honestly was amazing. I was in this group, the Titanic Players, run by Mike Abdelsayed. It’s an amazing, incredible organization. I got to do so much improv at Northwestern. It wasn’t the worst decision.
FB Then you had the city so you could go to Second City and you could see some of the best improv in the country. You were getting your fix for sure.
JC A hundred percent. I go to do shows downtown and they brought in guest improvisers to teach workshops. It was an amazing experience.
FB Also, it’s a great city when you’re twenty-one years old.
JC I don’t regret the decision at all. I love Chicago so much. Oddly enough, of everywhere in America I’ve been it’s the place that most reminds me of London. So I felt quite at home there. Lovely people, lovely food, and some of the best improv in the world.
FB Who were some of the people that inspired you in terms of your comedy?
JC The first people were a lot of English comedians and stand-ups that I doubt people listening to this podcast have heard of but there are people like Daniel Kitson and Tim Key. These incredible people who would just do one-person shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Partly due to the financial situation, one person shows basically dominate and it’s amazing because it’s so personal. I love these very personal stand-up shows. Moving to Chicago, TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi are like the greatest duo in Chicago improv history. They’ve been doing the same show for 35 years. They are genuine masters and are so grounded and confident and know each other so well. But honestly, my biggest inspiration was watching American sitcoms. That was kind of why I wanted to come to America. I grew up watching The Office, Parks and Rec, and How I Met Your Mother. All these shows. For one, they’re so phenomenal and they also made America seem so cool. I was like, “This is great. I’m just gonna go to America and meet all these beautiful people and date them. It’ll be great and everyone’s funny and the sun’s always shining.”
FB Did you discover that?
JC I discovered it was exactly like that. I have not been sad a day since I arrived in America. No, it turns out they’re a little unrealistic at points.
FB So moving to LA, what was the transition here?
JC So COVID happened and I was in Chicago and I started writing more. I only had a year left on my visa and I didn’t know if I could stay in the country. So I thought, “If I have a year, I should go to LA, the ‘City of Dreams.’” So I moved to LA and I got a job working for a motivational speaker, which was a weird experience, especially during COVID.
FB Why was that weird?
JC There was a point where I was locked down in my house and seeing no one. Except once a week, I would drive to this guy’s house, set up a camera, and he would motivationally speak at me for one or two hours. All of his stuff is just down the lens of the camera so I was going from total solitude to this man rambling about the meaning of life, and passion and purpose. Then I was going back to my tiny, empty house, and editing more videos of him talking about the stuff. It was just a bit of a jarring experience, but a wonderful one.
FB Did any of it stick for you?
JC It definitely got in there. It’s definitely deep in my subconscious. I can still hear his voice if I close my eyes. But I was doing that for a year and then I was working on my writing, but I felt like I needed more training, especially because so much of my experience had been in performance and live comedy. So I ended up applying to grad schools to do a master’s in Screenwriting. I got into the American Film Institute, and ended up going there, and that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
FB How was Ed Decter? He introduced us and having him as a professor, what was the takeaway, the one thing you have been able to put into action?
JC Two things come to mind. Because I think the first, which was something I really loved from watching Ed, was where you can get to if you put all this time into screenwriting. I had so many examples of these great improvisers I’d seen who have this, it seems like a superhuman ability to improvise. You drop them in a scene and they know where to take it and where to go. It was seeing those people initially that made me want to do improv. I think it was amazing coming to AFI, all the professors who teach there have to also be working writers in LA. Ed Decter, who I was lucky to get in my second year, is a very prolific writer and has written so much stuff in so many genres. We were a class of six writing six very different scripts and watching him have immediate feedback for every single type of script, which ninety-nine percent of the time was immediately correct, was an amazing thing to see.
We talk about scripts so often like they’re hyper-personal, the story only you could tell, but if you get a really good screenwriter they know the direction a script should go from reading it. Getting to see that up close and getting to see someone be able to latch on to a story someone’s trying to tell, work out the key elements, work out what’s going to translate, work out what’s not translating, and immediately know a direction to go in. That got me excited and inspired because I think it can be depressing as a writer to think your only option for success is writing your soul’s calling. That’s wonderful. I hope to one day write a film that is me in a bottle but that’s a scary prospect. Going to AFI gave me much more of an approach to what a working writer looks like, of what a functional writer looks like, of someone who just gets the job done and who knows what a script needs.
FB Ed has written a lot of sitcoms. That’s where he started. So he has experience in sitcoms but the scripts he’s been writing lately have been adaptations of various kinds of mystery novels. He has a broad range of genres that he plays in. A couple of the latest crime dramas he’s written were really startling to me, because, we obviously did There’s Something About Mary together, but also he’s done so many sitcoms. So I can understand why you guys would have bonded. Also the experience of seeing him jump from genre to genre and script to script, I had a similar experience. We put a little mini-room together that he ran to break The Looking Glass Wars novels as a television show. Seeing him run the room was also another aspect of television production, writing, and development that I hadn’t seen before. That was unique for me because I hadn’t had that experience of taking my novel, breaking it up, and saying, “Okay, here’s where we have to get to for the middle of the season. Here’s where we’re trying to get to at the end of this season. Okay, now, let’s reverse engineer it and figure out the best opening.” It was pretty exciting.
It was not dissimilar to what you did with my world. I asked you to write a lore story and this idea came from you and a number of other young writers that I was introduced to from AFI, who play all these different kinds of games, Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. I looked at all the lore stories that go along with those games and I thought, “Well, I want that.” So you wrote this story, The Brother’s Wilde, which I’d like you to talk about. It’s a lore story, a prose short story. You did an outstanding job. Really brilliant, beautiful job. You used aspects of my universe and you made them feel fresh to me, which was like Santa Claus showing up.
JC It was a wonderful experience for me because I’ve played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons for a long time. I love that world and the high fantasy genre, but it never felt like something I was allowed to play in for actual creative work. That was my treat on the side at the end of a long week. So getting approached to write something in a world of high fantasy that already exists and writing backstories was such a treat for me. It felt like getting to my fun times for work. But it was also an odd process. I’ve never really written based on other people’s worlds before and other people’s work. So that was interesting and fun getting into that and trying to see how much I could stretch. The odd thing for me was when I got into it, I was very excited. I’d written out all these plot points and the beats and I was confident in the story. Then literally as I opened up the Word document, I remembered I hadn’t written prose in like seven years.
FB Be careful what you wish for.
JC I’d forgotten it was a completely different art form. I got ready to open up Final Draft and then I was like, “Oh God!” It took a little bit of adjusting. The part I forgot was you can’t refer to someone by the same name every time in prose. In the script, someone is their name and it does not change ever. But I was suddenly deep on synonym.com, “I can’t say ‘the great warrior’ again”. The mighty fighter, heroic hero, I was going deep into my vocabulary to try and switch something up. It was an exciting thing to get to work on. I think especially because Alice is a world that is so rich throughout culture. It’s kind of a bedrock piece of story. There are things I brought into the story that are pieces from Dungeons and Dragons. There’s a lot of Alice in Wonderland lore baked into Dungeons and Dragons like Vorpal swords and Jabberwock. It didn’t feel like building on something completely new. It felt like being given a chance to play in a world that is so familiar.
FB As a Brit too, Alice in Wonderland is probably the most famous piece of literature that you would have grown up with, right? So I can understand that and also the idea that Alice is everywhere. Of course, it makes sense it’s in Dungeons and Dragons. You took what was familiar from Alice’s Adventures, Lewis Carroll’s work, you took elements from my world, but then you brought this brother story together. Tell us a little bit about that part of the story, because you did often reference your younger brother.
JC I have two younger brothers who got amalgamated in the story. I always try to start from a place of relationship because I think that gives you the most fuel for a story and is the part you can’t retroactively put in. If you tell me this story needs a bigger fight scene, I can go do that at the end. But if a story isn’t built around a relationship, it’s tough to slot it in. So I wanted to build The Brother’s Wilde around a relationship. I was looking at the House of Cards, which was where we wanted to focus the story, and I thought brotherhood made sense. It’s this military organization and the brotherly bond felt like it made sense. I have two brothers who I fight with a lot. So that made that track.
But then I was interested in this idea of the houses and I loved the thoughts of the personality types associated with the houses. Me and my brothers are very different and if we’re gonna have two brothers in the story, let’s put them in two different houses. Let’s have them hate each other for the very reasons that make them unique. If we’re trying to expand the House of Cards we’ve got to bake it into the DNA of the House of Cards. So I wanted to build around there. Then I came up with these characters who are half brothers from a philandering father, who they both hate and there’s no love between them. At that point, it started to feel real to me and it started to feel fun. It felt like playing because you built this world and we have this amazing world of the House of Cards which has these rituals and dynamics built in. It was such a gift to build these two brothers who hate each other and try to give them a situation to learn why they need each other.
FB You were tasked with an origin story, an early origin story of the House of Cards. They send card soldiers on missions and when they send people on missions, they decide what kind of hand they’re going to deal. So you came up with the idea of “A Hand in History.” The Brothers Wilde is the beginning of the card soldiers going on these various missions when they’re tasked with saving the queendom or battling a competitive state.
JC I loved the idea of basing it around hands that are chosen and selected because that plays into the joy of Dungeons and Dragons and these old fantasy novels. It’s the idea of “The Party,” the troop. Every story is based around who was selected to go on this journey. That’s what’s so beautiful in a lot of these adventure stories, including Alice in Wonderland, it’s not the adventure that’s enticing, but it’s the uniqueness of who’s gonna solve the adventure.
FB The skill set they have and seeing how they’re challenged when they use their skill set with these various obstacles. That’s the Dirty Dozen idea.
JC I think that’s where a lot of modern fantasy and films go wrong. They put a lot of their energy into these big set pieces, these big boss fights with CGI characters. They put a lot of time into the obstacles when actually the thing we care about is the people solving them. In The Lord of the Rings, you care about Frodo, you don’t care that there are nine Nazgul. That’s what makes Alice in Wonderland so beautiful, and your novels, they revolve around the people going through them instead of the giant nature of the battle.
FB It’s fantasy but you need to be with the characters and with Alice, it’s so identifiable. It’s a “Who am I?” journey, and she finds agency in who she is and pushes back against the illogical world that she finds herself in. But it’s also very amusing. When were you introduced to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
JC I couldn’t say an individual date because, especially in England, it was just a part of culture growing up. My earliest memories were of my mum and my dad reading me the book. I must have been 10 or 11. The 1951 film was something I watched a lot. I love animation. I write a lot of animated stuff. The specificity of the visuals and the tone baked into that film was a real inspiration for me growing up.
FB Why do you think it’s lasted so long? You said it was in culture and this is generations after it was first introduced. Every generation re-interprets Alice. How do you view Alice in Wonderland?
JC I think the reason it has lasted is there are so many ways you can connect with it. It is such a beautiful human idea, the girl who falls through the looking glass and gets swept away on an adventure. The part I really gripped on to from a young age was the world-building. It was the idea of this world that works, that makes sense. It doesn’t feel like someone who’s picked, “Oh, this would be a fun scene. This is a fun character. That would look good.”
It lives and breathes like a world. Something that really drew me to it is I think a lot of world-building goes dark, “It’s a grungy forest with scary people in it.” Then obviously some other world-building goes saccharine and we’re in heaven. I love the feeling in Alice that there’s a danger to the world but there’s a wonder to it as well. There’s a whimsy and a seriousness. The world feels like it shifts based on the situation, like ours does. There’s no one thing to it. I just love learning more about the world, learning about the characters who inhabit it, the places to go, and being able to build this kind of escape.
FB I love the whimsy and the silliness of it and it reminded me of another book, The Phantom Tollbooth, which was one of my favorites growing up because of the silliness and the use of language. I really identified with that aspect of Alice. Many people think of it more as more a nightmare because of getting big and small and being stuck in a place where there’s no logic.
JC The lack of logic, I love. I know quite a lot of people who I would identify as crazy people. They would as well. We have a lot of fun mental health issues in our family. I always grew up with this acceptance that nothing’s gone wrong. There are crazy people who exist in the world and that’s fine. I think Alice, in a youthful way, takes that on the story. It accepts there are people who are going to make some weird decisions and that’s okay.
FB It really does capture that. In terms of pop culture, you mentioned Dungeons and Dragons and the references in video games, I’ve noticed there’s a huge through line of Alice. In almost every game I’ve ever seen, there’s some Alice component. Do you have a favorite Alice in pop culture item that you like?
JC I enjoy Dungeons and Dragons. I love the video game Borderlands, which has a lot of Alice imagery. I think my favorite is probably the Batman: Arkham Asylum graphic novel, which I just love. It’s this beautifully illustrated graphic novel about Batman going into Arkham Asylum and gradually losing his sanity. It’s very inspired by Alice in Wonderland. A lot of the villains in Batman already are. There’s very much these threads of madness and the Mad Hatter.
Even the Penguin, there’s all this imagery that lines up. So you have this beautiful graphic novel of him just going progressively mad, surrounded by Alice in Wonderland motifs and imagery. That’s what feels so special about Alice in Wonderland, it can be drawn for inspiration for something light for a younger audience but it could also be drawn for a very dark and disturbing graphic novel. And it works the same. It’s just beautiful. I think that’s what happens when you’re able to create something that taps so deep into a human level. It means you can use it in so many different ways.
FB A lot of stories now are based on IP because people like stories that are familiar and told in an unfamiliar way. On the business side, there’s a recognizable aspect for the marketing. I know this is not lost on you because you’re working on an animated series that’s based on Edgar Allan Poe, but your spin on it is a little different. Can you talk about that?
JC I’ve been working for a couple of years on a series called A Raven in the Woods. It’s a reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe. I loved Poe as a child. I loved the language, the poetry, the darkness, and, similar to Alice, the acceptance of madness. That’s where they meet in the middle. Poe, like Lewis Carroll, doesn’t treat his mad characters as nothing. They’re just his characters. They’re not irrational. They are just who they are and they are to be dealt with.
So I loved Poe and felt there was something so visual in his language that would pair well with animation. He writes in this incredibly emotive, twisted world that I thought could be best represented by animation. There are a lot of great live-action adaptations but they’re all dark and gloomy rooms, which is technically accurate. But when you’re reading Poe’s work, it doesn’t feel like a dark gloomy room, it feels like a twisting shadow and peering lights. I thought it worked well with animation but I didn’t want to do a direct translation. Similar to how you engage with the Alice world, I wanted to bring the feeling and the parts of Poe that I love into a new story that worked as a standalone piece of animation for kids. It shows a young Edgar Poe trying to get his brother Allan through the woods before Allan is turned into a raven. Allan’s cursed and as they move through the woods, a lot of the people in the woods have gone mad. There’s a curse on the woods and there’s a big, mysterious overlord. A lot of the “mad” people speak in rhyme and speak in poetry.
It’s this adventure through the woods and the logic in my head was that this was the real-life adventure that inspired the later Edgar Allan Poe to write his stories. He actually wasn’t very creative at all; he was just mining from two weeks he had as a kid. It’s got a lot of the characters and the elements and the moments of his work, but it’s its own story about a kid trying to deal with a lot of the themes that come up in Poe. Themes of fear, how to overcome that, and how to deal with yourself and the world when everything feels mad.
FB Not dissimilar at all to Alice. I think that’s really relatable and answers the question we often get from executives “Why now?” Given how chaotic the world feels, it’s great to deal with stories that are realistic to the anxiety that kids feel, whether it’s the various wars they’re reading about or the climate and the fact that there’s nothing they feel like they can do about it. I’ve noticed that with my kids. So stories that are thematically similar to what you’re talking about answer that question of why it’s important.
JC Thank you. I think we need this stuff. We live in a chaotic time and our art needs to reflect that. Thankfully, we’re not the first people to have lived in a chaotic time so there are lovely things from the past.
FB We’re also trying to get grounded in what’s real. One of the things about Alice in Wonderland, if you look back on it, the question is “Is this a dream? Is this real?” Trying to parse out reality versus fantasy, facts versus fiction, which we’re dealing with a lot of late. That sounds like a really exciting project.
JC I’m working with a producer, Rick Mischel, who’s wonderful, and we’ve teamed up with TeamTO which is a great French animation house.
FB They’re terrific. I love their animation.
JC They’ve been amazing so far. Wonderfully French, which has been a great treat. On one of the first calls, the head of finance was just sitting 10 feet away from the camera stroking a cat. I was like, that’s the kind of stuff we need. We’re working with them and a director called Christian De Vita, who’s an incredible director. He’s done a lot of Wes Anderson and Tim Burton stuff. We’re working on putting together a packet for it and then going out and trying to sell it. It’s been a great, great process and hopefully, it will lead somewhere.
FB Fingers crossed. We’ll want to check back in with you and certainly have you on the show when you need to promote it because it’s coming out.
I’m curious about the romantic comedy genre. I would imagine that you know something about that and that it’s been lacking. It’s one of the staples and one of my favorite movie genres. Why do you think we’ve lost that?
JC It’s a really tough question. My dad has made a lot of romantic comedies. That’s his bag. It’s tough. I feel like there’s very little to be learned from him because the truth about him is that he is literally the sappiest romantic person in the world. It is one hundred percent genuine. That’s how he talks, thinks, and breathes. But I think it’s a really tough thing. One thing, it’s a genre that needs to keep changing. Action is action, and you need to develop it, but honestly, action holds up. But both romance and comedy are things that develop as humans develop. If you are romantic in the way people were romantic in the 1950s, you’ll probably get arrested. If you tell jokes that were funny in the 50s, you are not getting laughs, I promise. I think these are things that need to keep being pushed and reinvented because, with both romance and comedy, it’s the feeling of something new. The feeling of being in love is, “I’ve never felt like this about a person before.”
FB What about the formula of the meet-cute and the tension of “clearly they’re not getting along”?
JC We got used to the formulas. I think you can get used to the formula for an action film and it doesn’t lessen it. But to me, When Harry Met Sally, feels radical. It’s weird. It cuts away to things, it’s skipping time. I think romantic comedies have to feel unique because it should feel like meeting a person who’s shifting your life. When we get used to the tropes, they can still be good if you want to make The Notebook. That’s proper romance. But I think with a romantic comedy, it has to feel fun and it has to feel fresh. That takes reinvention.
I think we’re in a weird spot at the moment where no one’s quite cracked it in a while. We’re all just really familiar with the tropes. Everyone watched these films, everyone started acting like the people in these films. There are all these people pretending to be leading men from romantic comedies in the 90s, and 2000s. They’re all on dating apps and it’s horrible. When you go on a dating app you see 200 people’s perceptions of who they are as a romantic lead. You watch everyone label themselves as the Hugh Grant type. Or, “I’m just a witty guy,” or “I’m the Billy Crystal, he doesn’t care.” These things are so played out. You’ve got to find a way of making something feel weird and fresh and new. But that’s really tough when we work in an industry that doesn’t like taking chances on fresh and new stuff. Also, let’s be real, romantic comedies live and die on the stars, on the chemistry. It’s tough to get a weird, new, fresh take that two stars are willing to sign on for and they happen to have chemistry. I think it’s a really tall order.
FB I agree with that. With all the dating apps, trying to find a way to make that at all romantic seems to be an impossibility. But also, somebody will do it and it’ll break out and maybe there’ll be a fresh take on it. But to your point, we have all sorts of other genres that people are spending more time on. I just miss the chemistry between two stars. The Notebook is something my daughter has gone back to and it works because both male leads are equally appealing. So she really has a dilemma that you can buy into. But that was based on a novel that was highly successful.
So the kinds of movies your dad wrote, were his own ideas, right? They weren’t based on anything, your dad had a romantic idea. For example, your dad wrote Notting Hill, which was one of my favorites. There’s an ongoing joke with my stepkids because whenever they say, “What should we watch?” I’m like, “Well, what about Notting Hill?” I’ve been saying it over and over and over so many times that they’re dead. They look at me like, that is the dumbest joke ever. But it’s a good movie. The chemistry between the two leads is so amazing.
JC I remember once asking my dad, “Did you know when you were writing these films that ended up being big hits, that they were going to be hits?” He said, “Absolutely not at all. I really didn’t feel it. I just wrote and tried to stay passionate about it.” Then he paused and went, “Actually not Notting Hill. I was sitting at home and I thought, ‘What if a movie star fell in love with a random guy?’ And I went, Oh, that’s a hit.’”
FB Also, you have Julia Roberts at the height of her stardom with that smile that would just crush anybody. Then you have Hugh Grant, who’s a very contained performer and when those two come into contact, it’s gold. It’s wonderful.
JC I think one thing that’s worth looking at is that romantic comedy is being explored in other mediums successfully like the Amazon show The Summer I Turned Pretty. It’s a smash hit for a younger audience and that’s a rom-com, essentially. Even looking at someone like Taylor Swift, her songs are romantic, amusing, and comedic at points and that has gripped people. Obviously, people want these kinds of things. I think it’ll just take someone breaking a new way of doing it in movies.
FB Certainly in television. My daughter keeps telling me “Dad, it’s one girl, two guys. That’s what you need to do. Just focus on teenagers. Two guys, one girl. That’s the formula.” She’s watched all those shows you’ve talked about.
You have a funny story about your grandmother knowing the Liddells, Alice Liddell, which you have to share with us. That’s the first time I’ve come into contact with somebody whose family member knew the literal muse forall things Alice, for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,for my books, for your writing The Brothers Wilde.
JC It’s a bizarre and wonderful story. My grandmother, my mum’s mum, Lady Jill Freud, is an amazing woman. She’s 96 or 97 right now but World War II broke out when she was little, six or seven. She was living in London at that time with her family and they knew London was going to be bombed ruthlessly. So the British government enacted this thing they called “the evacuation,” which was an insane thing to happen. It could never happen nowadays. They literally took every child in London, took them to a train station, put a number around their neck, and put them on a train somewhere. They literally just shipped them off. When they arrived at these stations, people from the local towns came to the station and just went “Yeah, I can take two,” or “I run a farm, I can take two young boys to work there.” These kids just got rehoused for what was, at that point, an indefinite period of time.
So my granny was sent to Oxford and taken in by this family, the Butlers. Mrs. Butler was 100 and wasn’t allowed to know there was a war on because they were worried it would scare her. But the house was run by these three Butler sisters. Two of them were university professors and they were three unmarried older women. They had been three of the kids that Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson, had taken down the Isis River in Oxford when they were younger. He’d done these long boat journeys down the Isis and he would read them stories every night. He would come up with stories and a lot of his early things were first tested out on these little girls. So my grandmother lived with the Butlers and they had these toys from their time with Lewis Carroll he had actually made by hand. He was a great craftsman and he had made these toys.
So every Sunday afternoon, my granny would be allowed to go into the drawing room and play with these Lewis Carroll’s toys. It was this incredible time in Oxford where all these great writers and poets and people who were allowed to not fight in the war for academic reasons would write. So she lived with the Butlers and she met Alice Liddell. Alice was close with them and would come over and she was this sort of enigmatic figure known and revered around Oxford. She had tea with J.R.R. Tolkien. By her memory, he was a friendly guy.
So it was just this amazing time she was around Oxford and absorbing it. But also it was a time of war and chaos and people dying. When she talks about it it’s this very mixed feeling of this beautiful time but so underpinned with fear.
FB Was she there for the entire war?
JC She was there for the entire war pretty much I believe. She was there for five years of the war. By the time the war ended, she was 16-17 and had been at C.S. Lewis’ house for a bit and she stayed on to manage his estate for another year or two, I believe. Then at the end of that, she was accepted into RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, but couldn’t afford to go and C.S. Lewis paid for her entire education. He covered it and she went on to become an early movie actress.
FB What an amazing story and an amazing life.
JC At that time in Oxford, there were so many incredible people, incredible minds all talking to each other. These were discrete authors. They all knew each other and they had writing groups.
FB Could you imagine those writing groups? Wow, that would have been intimidating.
JC “Yeah, I don’t know if this White Rabbit character is really working for me.”
FB “I don’t think a closet is where you want the kids to go through. No one is gonna buy that.” The video you sent me of your grandmother, what’s that from?
JC She’s an incredible woman with incredible stories. A few years ago, I sat her down and we talked through her life and everything she’d done. It was a really wonderful experience. It was something I wanted to do, obviously to have the footage, but also it is such a privilege to get to talk to someone who’s lived through wars and everything. I mean, ninety-seven is a lot of years.
FB You’re very fortunate in terms of being surrounded by so many creative minds and creative family members and having a template on which you can base your creative aspirations. It’s been really delightful to listen to you articulate what you’ve experienced so far, in your life and I really, I really appreciated you working on this project. I didn’t know you very well and you delivered. I think our listeners are really going to enjoy hearing this.
JC They’re good, fun people. There’s a quote from a Madness song written on our wall at home that says, “There’s always something happening and it’s usually quite loud.” That summed up our family well.
FB That’s great. I hope you’ll come back when your show is produced.
JC Thank you so much for having me. This was such an absolute treat for the day and just fun to get into all this and chat about comedy and things
Lost in London: Never-Before-Seen Letters From Alyss’ Adventures on Earth
Back in 2007, we collaborated with noted Alyssian historian Agnes MacKenzie to publish Princess Alyss of Wonderland, a stunning collection of letters, journal writings, and art from Her Royal Imaginer Princess Alyss Heart. These breathtaking documents chronicled the incredible childhood of Wonderland’s exiled heir apparent and future hero of The Looking Glass Wars.
Recently, we were astonished to discover a new treasure trove of letters, journal entries, and art from Princess Alyss’ first few years on Earth. This is Alyss’ amazing story in her own words – her harrowing escape through the Pool of Tears, the deep sadness she felt when her imagination began to fade, what it was like to be a princess when everybody thinks you’re just a little girl, her fury at Lewis Carroll for butchering her story, and how she reclaimed her imagination and kept her hope of returning to Wonderland.
These historic artifacts will be presented in installments over the coming weeks and months. Part One encompasses Alyss’ flight from Wonderland and how she survived her first days on the streets of London.
(*As always, I am indebted to the tireless and exhaustive research of the eminent Wonderland historian Agnes MacKenzie. Her dedication has helped keep the true story of Queen Alyss alive!)
HALT!!!!
If you have found my journal and intend to read further, BE WARNED that these pages are meant only for those who wish to know the truth. All others are hereby ordered to immediately stop snooping.
HRI (Her Royal Imaginer) Princess Alyss Heart
My squigberry cake and the Birthday Fairies who appear with every royal cake to sing “Deliriously Happy Birthday to You.” I wish I had been able to slice that cake open and discover what surprise the Royal Bakers baked inside (I had hinted at a singing tiara).
August 5, 1861
I am in this world but not of it. My home is in Wonderland and my name is Princess Alyss Heart. Someday I will return to Wonderland to become Queen. This is the story of how I began to find my way back.
Where to begin? Certainly not at the beginning when all was well, but further into my life, to the afternoon when I discovered the golden kitten in the garden. My best friend Dodge and I had just returned from exploring Wondertropolis, a forbidden excursion outside the gates of the palace when we came across the most peculiar kitten. It was wearing a card that read “Happy Birthday, Alyss.” Since it was my birthday and everyone in the Queendom was giving me gifts, it only made sense that this kitten was for me. Unlike most kittens, who only hiss and purr, this kitten smiled. And that is where all the trouble began.
August 6, 1861
It was I who brought the peculiar kitten inside the palace gate. ME!
And then it ran away and hid somewhere in the palace. I tried to tell Mother and Hatter at my birthday tea about the kitten who smiled, but a horrible LOUD, RUDE crashing sound interrupted, and my Aunt Redd, decks of her card soldiers, and a monstrous CAT exploded into the dining room. The kitten had become The Cat! What happened next was very very fast and seems most shocking and unreal.
Mother and I escaped and I thought that we would stay together, but she sent me away with Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan to be kept safe until I was old enough to return to Wonderland as Queen. I begged to stay with her, but she was very firm. I had to leave Wonderland and everyone I ever loved. And I had to leave immediately.
The kitten who smiled turned into a Cat who moved like a soldier and had claws as long as knives.
Agnes MacKenzie
One of our more recent, and more thrilling, discoveries is the bundle of undeliverable letters addressed to Heart Palace in Wonderland and collected by postmistress Annabelle Smith-White of Christchurch, England. The letters were forwarded to the Lewis Carroll estate, but for an unexplained reason they were returned to Miss Smith-White’s district stamped ‘UNACCEPTABLE’. Descendants of the postmistress donated the bundle to this venture with the hope that their great-great aunt’s postal diligence would finally be recognized.
August 10, 1861
When mother ordered Hatter to take me and leave Wonderland, we fled through a looking glass that took us to the Whispering Woods.
Once in the woods Hatter held me tight and ran faster than a spirit-dane. At last, we came to the cliff above the Pool of Tears and looked down into the black water. I had heard that no one ever comes back from the Pool of Tears, but Hatter assured me I would because I would one day return to be Queen. And then we jumped, but not soon enough, as The Cat’s long claws raked out across my birthday gown and tore away a piece. He nearly got me! But before I could scream we hit the water …
(continued)
… I know Hatter held me as tight as he could but a tremendous force tore us apart. Poor Hatter! He had promised my mother to keep me safe and Hatters always keep their promises, especially royal bodyguards. I tried to smile to let him know I would be okay, but the water smooshed my face in all different directions and I shot down very, very fast and then I shot up even faster and found myself in this world called London. Alone.
I vow to discover the secret of puddle travel! There simply must be a way of knowing which puddle is THE PUDDLE!
August 20, 1861
My arrival in this world called London was sudden and frightening. I shot up and out of the puddle and found myself standing in the middle of a crowded avenue. Everything was spinning and I was cold and lost and AFRAID. Where was my mother? And where was my royal bodyguard? There was no one to help me in this gray, frightening place. All I could think was that I must return home NOW! In desperation, I began to jump in puddle after puddle searching for the way home until I could jump no more. Then I saw a boy watching me and he was smiling and I knew I wasn’t alone anymore. I was about to meet the most honorable Quigley.
I didn’t know anyone could look so hungry!
Agnes MacKenzie
From Alyss’ description, it appears she first arrived in London on Whitehorse Street near the intersection of Piccadilly and Half-Moon. I have proposed that a plaque be mounted here to honor the struggles of this honored visitor from another realm.
As thoughtful readers of Dickens will recall, orphans, urchins, and estranged children were an all too common sight on the sooty streets of nineteenth-century London. It seems from Alyss’ journal that she was accepted into a den of street urchins by the boy named Quigley.While Quigley was an open-hearted generous sort, the others were less magnanimous and insisted Princess Alyss pull her own weight in foraging for food and rags. Alyss’ solution was, of course, to use her imagination.
They believed I was a real princess!
September 15, 1861
Quigley, in his patched clothes and cracked boots, brought me to an alley where he and a group of other very ragged, thin children lived. Everyone was curious as to who I was and where I had come from so I told them about Wonderland and what it was like to be Princess Alyss Heart. Quigley and the others loved my stories but unfortunately, they couldn’t eat them. What could I do to help? As I was thinking very hard I noticed a sad little flower in a cracked pot lying in the alley. To amuse myself I began to imagine the flower humming and soon it was singing in a beautiful high pitched voice. Quigley and the others were amazed. And then I knew.
We became street performers. I would imagine the flower singing and Quigley would gather the coins tossed by those who stopped to listen. Our first show was a hit. The next show was even bigger. Each day we made enough coins to feed everyone very very well.
(continued)
And then something extraordinarily horrible happened. My imagination began to weaken. Each day the flower’s voice grew fainter and fainter until it stopped singing and once again there was no food. I could not explain to myself let alone the others how I had failed. My imagination had always been with me. To have it fade was like losing my last connection to Wonderland. To eat, we all had to go back to stealing food from the markets. One day we were caught by a pack of London bobbies. The other kids escaped but I was nabbed and taken to the most frightening place I had ever seen, the Charing Cross Orphanage. I never saw Quigley again, though I still look for him.
*Stay tuned for Part Two, in which Alyss braves the brutal Charing Cross orphanage.
Surprising Similarities Between Batman and Hatter Madigan
In the vast realm of fictional characters, two iconic figures stand out for their enigmatic personas and unparalleled skills – Hatter Madigan from The Looking Glass Wars universe and Batman from DC Comics. Both characters share a commitment to justice, distinct styles, and formidable arsenals. In this article, we dive down the rabbit hole into the intricacies of Hatter Madigan’s capabilities, weapons, and magical elements, and then we’ll draw comparisons between the intrepid Milliner and the legendary Dark Knight.
Hatter Madigan’s Mystical Arsenal: Hatter Madigan, an intimidating figure with a tall and athletic build, dons a captivating ensemble complete with a sentient top hat, versatile trench coat, unique vest, high-tech armor, military-inspired boots, lethal wrist blades, and the complex backpack, known as “The Bug.” Each element of his arsenal is imbued with caterpillar thread, Wonderland magic, and advanced technology, creating a tapestry of unique capabilities.
Top Hat: Hatter’s iconic top hat serves as more than a mere accessory; it is a semi-sentient sidekick made from Wonderland’s mysterious caterpillar silk. The hat boasts a mesmerizing red bejeweled eye on its “stovepipe,” signifying its sentient nature. It scans terrain, assesses danger, and can even track enemies, analyzing heat signatures, vulnerabilities, and voice recognition to provide Hatter with an overwhelming strategic advantage. With a flick of Hatter’s wrist, the hat flattens into a series of spinning S-shaped blades and is thrown to slice through attacking enemies.
One of the most unique aspects is the hat’s kinship to its owner. It communicates telepathically with Hatter, establishing a deep bond that goes beyond mere attire. The hat also offers a metal shield, precision aiming, and catching capabilities, showcasing its multifaceted utility in combat scenarios.
But it doesn’t end there. The hat can alter its size, strength, and color, seamlessly adapting to various situations. It is attuned to nature and the laws of the universe, which allows it to maneuver independently when separated from its owner. Further, its reality alteration capabilities, including the projection of illusions to confuse enemies, demonstrate the depth of Wonderland magic woven into its fabric.
Trench Coat: Hatter’s trench coat, seemingly crafted from a Kevlar-like material, resembles Deckard’s jacket from Blade Runner and is both flexible and durable. It incorporates caterpillar silk, adding magical properties and it’s equipped with slits so blades from Hatter’s backpack can subtly emerge.Vest and Armor:
Vest and Armor: Hatter’s vest, worn over his armor, features double-breasted Victorian detailing and piping with angled heart emblems. The shiny metal armor inspired by Thor’s armor adds to Hatter’s formidable appearance.
Boots and Wrist Blades Hatter’s boots seamlessly blend military and equestrian design, showcasing Victorian and magical stitching details. The wrist blades, a departure from typical assassin tools, serve as a warrior’s weapon for parrying and slashing. They can even be used as projectiles over a considerable distance, adding a ranged element to Hatter’s offensive capabilities.
“The Bug”: The Bug is by far the most complicated part of Hatter’s arsenal. Its extensions, linked together by gears, form arms with various attachments, each reaching a good 4 feet in length. Bringing to mind the machinery of Spider-Man foe Doctor Octopus, the Bug’s arms can retract, bend forward, equip different ends, and unfold with eight points of movement, allowing for versatile combat maneuvers and providing a unique advantage in battle.
It communicates with Hatter and operates symbiotically through imagination, adding an element of wonder to its functionality. The Bug’s arms are complemented by the Arsenal Cube, strapped to Hatter’s back by Jabberwocky hide ‘bladeoliers.’ This cube is a marvel of Wonderland physics, expanding to reveal an infinite interior filled with blades and weapons, following the principles of sacred geometry.
Hatter Madigan and Batman: Now that we’ve unraveled the complex components of Hatter Madigan’s arsenal, let’s turn our attention to the Dark Knight of Gotham City. Batman is renowned for his unparalleled detective skills, martial arts prowess, and an arsenal of gadgets.
Detective Skills and Intellect Both Hatter and Batman share a keen intellect and exceptional detective skills. Batman, known as the “World’s Greatest Detective,” relies on his deductive reasoning to solve crimes and unravel mysteries in Gotham City. Hatter’s telepathic connection with his sentient top hat enhances his situational awareness, allowing him to gather information and make informed decisions.
Combat Skills: In terms of combat, both characters excel in hand-to-hand combat and strategic planning. Batman’s mastery of various martial arts styles is legendary, allowing him to take on multiple opponents effortlessly. Hatter, with his unique arsenal, exhibits a more theatrical and mystical combat style. The retractable spinning blades, precision aiming, and catching capabilities of the hat, combined with the versatile arms of The Bug, provide Hatter with a dynamic and visually striking approach to combat.
Gadgets and Technology: While Batman relies heavily on cutting-edge technology and an array of gadgets, Hatter’s arsenal is fueled by Wonderland magic. The hat’s scanning capabilities and reality alteration and the Arsenal Cube’s transcendent properties showcase a magical aspect absent in Batman’s more grounded and technology-driven toolkit.
Stealth and Camouflage: Both characters are adept at stealth, but Hatter’s top hat takes it a step further with its natural camouflage capabilities. The hat seamlessly blends into its surroundings, allowing Hatter to navigate discreetly, a feature not present in Batman’s typical attire.
Mobility and Transportation: Batman’s iconic Batmobile and Batcycle are extensions of his mastery of technology and symbols of his ubiquitous presence in Gotham. Hatter, on the other hand, relies on the unique abilities of his sentient hat and The Bug’s arms. The hat can expand into a parachute to help slow one of Hatter’s many falls, while The Bug’s arms can bend and extend, providing Hatter with a distinct advantage in navigating diverse terrains.
Motivation and Symbolism: Both characters share a commitment to justice, driven by personal tragedies. Batman’s origin story is rooted in the murder of his parents, inspiring him to become a symbol of hope and justice in Gotham. Hatter’s journey in Wonderland is equally poignant, as he strives to protect Princess Alyss Heart and reclaim Wonderland from the clutches of the Red Queen after she overthrew and murdered Queen Genevieve, whom Hatter was sworn to protect.
Style and Aesthetics: In terms of style, Batman is often characterized by his brooding demeanor, dark and stealthy costume, and gritty aesthetic. Hatter, on the other hand, embraces a more whimsical and fantastical style, with an almost theatrical flair.
To read any of the Hatter M graphic novels go to our store or Amazon.
What Does Skiing Have to Do With “There’s Something About Mary”?
Almost 30 years ago I was on a chairlift with Dylan Sellers, then an executive at Fox, ascending the slopes overlooking the Sundance Film Festival. I started telling Dylan about a screenplay written by my friends, John Strauss and Ed Decter. It was a comedy about a man who hires a private investigator to find his high school dream girl and it was absolutely hysterical. When we got off the lift Dylan said, “Let’s make this movie.” That movie was There’s Something About Mary.
Rereading Christine Dietzel’s piece in Teton Gravity brought back all those wonderful memories of how my skiing career opened a door to the entertainment industry. My success in the skiing world led to work as a stunt skier in films such as “Hotdog! The Movie” and the black comedy “Better Off Dead” starring John Cusack. This led to acting roles and forming relationships with a variety of talented filmmakers. The origins of There’s Something About Mary took place on the slopes (and chairlifts) of Sundance. The thriller I produced, Wicked, garnered rave reviews after its Sundance screening and helped launch the career of our star Julia Stiles.
Christine’s captivating writing made this an enjoyable rabbit hole to revisit. Read the full piece below or click here for the original version.
BATTLE OF THE IPS: ALICE IN WONDERLAND VS. DUNE
Welcome back to the Alice-dome! The blog post where I throw a helpless IP into the fighting pit to see if it has what it takes to stand up against the bone-crushing giant that is our beloved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So far, there have been no survivors. That is to say that Alice always wins. Perhaps this is due to its enduring qualities, perhaps the reason it always wins is because it truly is the best, or perhaps it is undefeated because the ref of this competition (Me) is paid to write these blogs about Alice in Wonderland on an Alice in Wonderland website. We’ve had our top scientists trying to figure out why it always wins, but we will never truly know. Anyway, today’s contender is Dune, the science fiction classic authored by Frank Herbert. That’s right, it’s Jabberwock vs Sandworm, tea vs the Spice, Timothee Chalamet vs… I don’t know, Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter? The categories that will be used to find the victor will range from worldwide cultural impact to whatever else I feel could be interesting. So, sit back, relax, and watch the fight.
Worldwide Cultural Impact:
In this first round of our showdown, we’ll examine the global impact of these two extraordinary franchises. Both have earned their places in the hearts of audiences worldwide, but they do so in distinct ways.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: When Lewis Carroll introduced the whimsical and surreal world of Wonderland in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it was unlike anything people had ever read before. It’s so influential that it is referenced in and/or inspires everything from film to fashion and even our everyday language.
Dune: Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction saga, Dune, has left an indelible mark on the genre. Its intricate world-building, political intrigue and exploration of complex themes resonate with audiences globally, solidifying Dune’s place in the science fiction canon.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Dune’s influence on the science fiction genre and its intricate world-building makes it a strong contender but there is no beating Lewis Carrol’s masterpiece here. Dune might have influenced science fiction but Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has influenced everything else.
Critical Appeal:
In this category, let’s delve into the critical responses to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Dune.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece is celebrated for its imaginative storytelling, surrealism, and exploration of the absurdities of Victorian society. Its unique blend of whimsy and philosophical depth has earned it a timeless status in the literary canon.
Dune: Frank Herbert’s Dune has received critical acclaim for its depth, complexity, and impact on the science fiction genre. The intricate narrative, complex characters, and Herbert’s exploration of sociopolitical themes have garnered praise from literary critics.
Verdict: Tie – With the invention of Yelp, everybody can truly be a critic. Unfortunately, I don’t read Yelp reviews. Both books were critical successes. A tie might be boring but this one is based on people’s opinions so it’s not that easy to score.
Influences on Language:
Now, let’s talk about language. Both franchises have left linguistic marks with unique phrases and terminology.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll’s work brought terms and phrases like “wonderland” and “down the rabbit hole” into common usage. The term “wonderland” simply did not exist before Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Dune: “Fear is the mind-killer” and “Spice must flow” are phrases from Dune that have become part of the cultural lexicon. Herbert’s creation of a rich vocabulary, including terms like “sandworms” and “mentats,” has contributed to the language of science fiction.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – In terms of linguistic impact, it’s a no-brainer that Alice is the winner here. Listen, I’ve literally written a blog about how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is such a massive influence on our everyday verbal lexicon that we don’t even know we are referencing Alice anymore. The terms that were created in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland have transcended references and just are a part of our language.
Controversy:
It’s worth noting that both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Dune have faced controversies related to their content and themes.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Over time, some critics and readers have engaged in discussions about the surreal and whimsical nature of Wonderland, questioning its appropriateness for certain audiences. The abstract and sometimes nonsensical elements have sparked debates regarding the interpretation and potential impact on readers.
Dune: Frank Herbert’s Dune has faced criticism and controversy for its portrayal of complex political and social themes. Some critics argue that the narrative’s depth and intricacies can be challenging for certain readers, while others praise its intellectual complexity.
Verdict: Tie – Unfortunately, we have another tie here, as I find both criticisms to be incredibly weak and if I’m being blunt, pretty stupid. In Alice’s case, the “dangers of nonsense” argument is really grasping at straws. Who doesn’t like a bit of nonsense in their lives? As for Dune, being complex isn’t a negative, just get better at reading. I say this in general too, I had read somewhere that the average reading level of adults is that of a ninth grader… That’s the reading level of a fourteen-year-old! Statistically, you, reader, have not gotten better at reading since you were fourteen. Lucky for you my writing level is that of a ninth-grader so it evens out.
Books Published:
Now, let’s turn to book sales and the impact of the printed word.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll’s literary masterpiece has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 100 languages. With over 300 editions in print, Alice’s adventures continue to find new readers across the globe.
Dune: The Dune series, initially written by Frank Herbert and later expanded by other authors, has sold millions of copies worldwide. The franchise includes multiple novels exploring the expansive universe Herbert created.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – One hundred million is a bigger number than the vague “millions” that I could find online relating to Dune. I know you read and I write like a ninth grader but this math is elementary.
Box Office Success:
Next, we compare the box office success of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Dune.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Various film adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland have had success at the box office, particularly Disney’s adaptations.
Dune: The 2021 adaptation of Dune achieved both critical acclaim and box-office success, reigniting interest in the franchise.
Verdict: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Okay, this is tricky, since there are multiple Dune movies and, if I counted correctly, a little over a billion Alice in Wonderland film adaptations. So, what I did was compare the most recent live-action Alice film to the most recent Dune film. If we are looking at success purely from the financial angle, Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland grossed over $1 billion at the box office whereas Denis Villeneuve’s Dune made only $402 million. BUT, I do want to mention that the Dune remake was much more successful critically, averaging a strong 83% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to Alice’s 53%. Also, if we were to compare the older versions of each franchise, the 1951 Disney Alice in Wonderland grossed $96 million adjusted for inflation compared to the 1984 Dune’s $30.9 million.
Things That I Like and Dislike
And now for the least biased section of the blog, things that I think are cool from each IP and things that I don’t like.
Things I like:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Jabberwock’s, The Looking Glass Wars trilogy (Frank didn’t tell me to say this), flamingo croquet, those hammer birds from the cartoon, and of course, playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon over a muted Alice in Wonderland and freaking out at how perfectly it syncs up.
Dune: Sandworms, those dragonfly helicopter planes, the Pain Box, saying “spice mélange” in a funny accent, Zendaya.
Things I dislike:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: The little box that Frank keeps me in when I’m not writing for him.
Dune: Timothée Chalamet.
Verdict: I was too lazy to count the points – I was told this section wouldn’t count in the final tally anyway but I wanted to place it here. In my heart, I want to give it to Alice since, to my knowledge, Timmy C has never been in any of the film adaptations. Look, it’s not because I think he’s a bad actor or anything, I just enjoy disliking things NYU students like. That being said, the box Frank keeps me in is quite small and dark so I guess it’s a tie.
The Battle of the Franks
This is a last-minute addition that I realized is worth pointing out. Frank Beddor, my warden and/or boss and author of The Looking Glass Wars (which is the TRUE story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) has the same first name as Dune author Frank Herbert. I think it would be only fitting for us to throw them into the fighting pit as a sort of an undercard match before the conclusion of the main event.
Pre-Fight Weigh-Ins:
Well, this is awkward. It turns out that unfortunately Frank Beddor and Frank Herbert will not be able to fight physically because Frank Herbert has been dead for the past thirty-eight years… So, I guess instead we will compare them as authors. What’s worse is that I had bet my life savings on Herbert getting a knockout in the third round and my bookie is refusing to give me my money back. Well, let’s just get on with comparing them.
Round 1:
Number of Books written in the series
Frank Herbert: Six books in total for the whole story of Dune.
Frank Beddor: Three if I count the novels for the main series of The Looking Glass Wars. There is of course; The Looking Glass Wars, then Seeing Redd, and finally ArchEnemy.
Round 1 Scores: Frank Herbert: 1, Frank Beddor: 0
Round 2:
Games inspired by their books
Frank Herbert: Besides the many actual Dune games that have been released, Frank Herbert’s book has been a massive influence on an uncountable number of games not directly related to the Dune universe.
Frank Beddor: Being trapped in a box and forced to write for Frank, sometimes I hear things. Little nibbles of knowledge. While I cannot officially say anything for fear of my water bowl not being filled, there may or may not be some kind of game based on The Looking Glass Wars Wonderverse. Perhaps there might be some cool lore expanding on the more intricate details of the aforementioned Wonderverse. If there were to be such lore, maybe, just maybe, there might be a short story or two written by yours truly. This is all purely hypothetical though.
Round 2 Scores: Frank Herbert: 2, Frank Beddor: 0
Round 3:
Film and Television Adaptations
Frank Herbert: Two official film adaptations with part two of the most recent adaptation on the way.
Frank Beddor: Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars trilogy has not been adapted to the screen yet. That being said, it should. I’ve written many a blog talking specifically about how it should be. Not only would it be a good show, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that if the stars align properly, perhaps, just maybe, with the right amount of begging, he would maybe consider staffing me for the show.
Round 3 Scores: Frank Herbert 3, Frank Beddor: 0
With a landslide victory of 3-0, Frank Herbert is the top Frank! Now I’ll be honest, I’m hoping I can sneak this past Frank Beddor. No one tell him he lost in this section. If I stop making blog posts, don’t assume that I’m on some kind of break or found another job, it means Frank Beddor found out about this section and I am missing. This stays between us. Okay? Now, let’s quickly get back to the main event before he finds out.
Conclusion
Alright, now that the dust has settled in the fighting pit, let’s see who has won. With six points to Dune’s four, our winner, and continual reigning champion, is none other than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And the crowd goes wild! Nobody could have seen this coming, not even me. When it comes to IPs, Alice is the reigning champion. I hope you all enjoyed this installment of the Alice V.S. series. Let me know what you think. But please know, all those who are Tim Chalet fans, aka NYU students, will be ignored.
Meet the Author
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
The Women of Hatter Madigan
Put to rest any delusions or disinformation you may have of the tea-guzzling madman of Alice in Wonderland and prepare to expand your consciousness with the story of the real Mad Hatter and his relentless search for Alyss, the lost Princess of Wonderland. In The Looking Glass Wars, Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan was ordered by Queen Genevieve to take Princess Alyss and leave Wonderland after a bloody palace coup staged by the murderous Redd. But while escaping through the Pool of Tears (the portal from Wonderland to our world), crushing centrifugal force pulled them apart. Hatter finds himself in Paris in 1859, shockingly separated from the child he had been sworn to protect. Crisscrossing the globe for 13 years in search of the princess, Hatter was aided by some of our world’s smartest and bravest women. These characters form the “syndicate” of women around the globe who have met this mysterious, gallant, stoic, otherworldly, and relentless bodyguard. Each vowed to assist him in finding Alyss and serving Light Imagination.
Hatter M – Book 1 – Far from Wonder
Magda Pushikin – An ambitious reporter covering Budapest. Location: Moscow
A glamorous and pushy Russian newswoman determined to track Hatter Madigan and uncover his mission. During her sleuthing, she and Hatter end up joining forces to rescue a group of schoolgirls including Girl 42 – a seemingly deranged and uncontrollable child with an uncanny ability to channel other people’s thoughts, Wonderland, and blue butterflies.
All are imprisoned in a sketchy orphanage run by proponents of Dark Imagination.
Magda forms an unbreakable bond with Hatter and promises to help him with his search for Alyss in any way she can.
Hatter M – Book 2 – Mad with Wonder
Sister Sally – Bible Belt healer in America’s South Location: New Orleans
Hatter learns of this glowing girl and her mission for mankind and believes she may be the lost Alyss. He tracks her down only to see her snatched by a local slave trader/soul stealer (Van de Skulle) with ties to Redd’s Wonderland. Hatter rescues Sister Sally and a strong alliance is formed. She owes Hatter her ‘soul’ and is determined to be a faithful friend for as long as he needs her. Sister Sally’s healing abilities are epic and she has a direct line to God. You know you’ve got a good friend when they’re a friend of Jesus! Amen.
Hatter M – Book 3 – The Nature of Wonder
Philomena Ark – Civil War Intelligence Agent Location: Washington D.C.
Philomena, the fierce, pigtailed, inventor of the ray rifle works in the X-Files-styled Illuminated Forces (I.F.), an investigative branch of intelligence dealing with paranormal events. When vials of Dark Imagination are inhaled by the Confederate army in the final days of the Civil War, the Illuminated Forces are ordered by President Lincoln to find the antidote – Light Imagination. At the same time, Hatter Madigan arrives in Washington D.C. in hopes of discovering the answers to secrets that will lead him to Alyss. Philomena is a hyper-intelligent blend of paranormal investigative genius, romantic teenager, and inventive lab rat. If you need it, Philo can build it. Hatter will rely on her futuristic skill set and loyalty as he navigates the globe.
Realm – Shaman of the White Flower Tribe Location: Secret caves within the Grand Canyon
Hatter discovers Realm and her people after the Illuminated Forces airship piloted by Philomena Ark is blown out of the sky by a hail of burning arrows launched by the White Flower tribe.
Near death, Hatter’s life is saved by Realm in a sweat lodge ceremony that reveals her distant ties to Wonderland’s Queens. Realm and Hatter are drawn together by their exceptional qualities of duty and service to others. Attacked by the United States army, Realm and her tribe are forced into hiding in the Grand Canyon. Hatter assists the tribe in escaping and Realm is forever grateful. Her mystic abilities to astral project, shapeshift and distill the rare substance known as Light Imagination from the scent of her tribe’s namesake White Flower render her a formidable ally.
Hatter M – Book 4 – Zen of Wonder
Nekko – Twelve-year-old Zen Master. Location: Mountain Top Monastery in Japan.
Hatter meets Nekko on the rooftops of San Francisco after she steals his hat and leads him on a chase to her secret dojo. Nekko recognized Hatter as a searcher in need of guidance and, despite his objections, volunteered her services in his quest for enlightenment. When Hatter meets Nekko, she is in her ‘traveling clothes’ of gangly teenage J-pop Zen adventuress. It is written that when you are ready a teacher will appear, but if that teacher is a 12-year-old girl and you are a high-ranking Bladesman you may discover that all you can do is laugh. Hatter and Nekko’s adventure around the ring of fire begins when they track a stolen samurai sword with a Wonderland connection to San Francisco’s 19th-century hip-hop crime madam Missy Tong and her eager protégé, the outspoken Lil’ Dick. In return for her assistance, Hatter acts as Nekko’s bodyguard during her return to a mountain-top Zen monastery in Japan. After Hatter leaves, Nekko shifts back to her essential ‘in-house’ self, the Happy Cat Buddha. Nekko will be available with wisdom and wit, whenever Hatter’s plans become too serious and he needs enlightenment.
Hatter M – Book 5 – Love of Wonder
Agent Jet Seer – DNA Runner for 21st Century Bio Corp Location: Undisclosed
Jet Seer is an agent from a future that needed saving. As a badass time, traveler, she tracked the glow of Imagination throughout history in search of enlightened ones, men, and women whose incredible minds could inspire her timeline – a time where automation, algorithms, and virtual reality have reduced man to a listless and sedentary existence. From Aristotle to Zappa and everyone in between, nothing could stop the incomparable Jet on her quest.
A mix of Egyptian genetics and Lawrence of Arabia style, Jet is discovered by Hatter and Dalton (Hatter’s long-lost brother) in the desert outside Constantinople singlehandedly attacking a slave caravan in search of a mysterious girl. She is a time-traveling DNA runner hired by a mysterious Bio Corp. Hatter realizes they are both seeking Alyss of Wonderland but for very different reasons. The powers in the future have discovered the source of all Imagination, what amounts to the God molecule that once existed in Alyss Heart of Wonderland, known to be lost in our world for 13 years. Enabled by time travel tech, they have sent this time-traveling bounty hunter back to collect it. Agent Seer is committed to her mission until she meets Hatter and realizes there is a higher calling than DNA harvesting. In the service of Light Imagination, she assists Hatter in locating Alyss. They plan to return to Wonderland together but Jet is arrested by time-traveling agents who arrive to escort her back to the 21st century in virtual handcuffs. But Jet Seer is not deterred. She promises Hatter she will be looking out for him from the 21st century and will do everything in her power to help him. Returned to the 21st century, Agent Seer escapes the agents and starts her own time-traveling agency to serve Light Imagination.
One of my readers was very, very upset with me. I was on a tour of British schools promoting The Looking Glass Warsand, though it had been a great success overall, at that moment I was in the crosshairs of a very cross young man who believed I made a grave mistake. Why had I neglected to tell the story of Hatter Madigan’s 13 years searching for Princess Alyss? It was a damn good question, one I didn’t have a ready answer to. But on the plane back to the States, I thought, “Maybe I could do a comic book about those 13 years.” That’s how the Hatter M graphic novel series came into being.
School visits are one of the more rewarding aspects of promoting and talking about my stories. You’re going right to the source. You have to go out to the audience to understand what your world is and how it’s affecting them. Having the feedback from kids in terms of what they like, what they feel is working, and what sparks their imagination is really important.
I met Kira Assad (the writer of the article below) when I spoke at an event hosted by Professor James Blasingame at Arizona State University during the promotional tour for Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the H.A.T.B.O.X. Kira told me an amazing story about how The Looking Glass Wars inspired her to study English in college and to write fiction herself. It’s so gratifying and humbling to know that my work has been a looking-glass through which young people fall in love with reading and storytelling. As evidenced by the stern English lad who inspired six graphic novels, sometimes your readers can provide the biggest sparks of imagination.
Remembering John Watkiss – A Creative Force in Wonderland and Beyond
January 21, 7 years ago the world lost an artistic genius, John Watkiss. John was not only a remarkable artist but also a cherished collaborator who helped bring the world of “The Looking Glass Wars” to life. As I reflect on the journey, we embarked upon together over two decades ago, I am reminded of his immense talent, his boundless creativity, and the lasting impact he had on the entertainment industry.
John’s prowess extended into the realm of comics, where he left an indelible mark on iconic characters and series. His collaboration with me on “The Looking Glass Wars” was just one facet of his creative output. His work graced the covers and interiors of comics published by both DC and Marvel. His visual storytelling brought to life the adventures of Batman, Conan, Deadman, and Sandman, among others. His panels were a masterclass in composition, perspective, and emotion, immersing readers in rich and dynamic visual narratives.
One of my personal favorite paintings of John’s can be seen in Volume 11 of the book “Sparrow,” a testament to his ability to evoke emotion and depth through his art. His mastery of anatomy and his ability to capture the essence of characters in their most defining moments made his comic work truly stand out. He understood the nuances of facial expressions and body language, making each character’s journey even more engaging and relatable.
Our collaboration on “The Looking Glass Wars” was a testament to John’s unique talents. His visualizations of Wonderland, its inhabitants, and its machinery were nothing short of magical. With every stroke of his pen, he transported readers to a realm where imagination knew no bounds. His attention to detail and his knack for infusing each image with emotion and depth were unparalleled. Together, we crafted a world that was both captivating and visually stunning, including some concept art for the musical.
John’s influence extended far beyond our collaboration and the world of comics. He left an indelible mark on the world of cinema, working with luminaries such as Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott. His contributions to projects like “Treasure Planet,” “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” showcased his versatility and his ability to seamlessly blend realism with the fantastical. His work enhanced the storytelling of these films, making them all the more immersive and memorable.
DreamWorks, Disney, and countless other studios were fortunate to have John’s artistic prowess grace their projects. His involvement in films like “Tarzan”, Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Homes”, “The Prince of Egypt”, and “Mulan” demonstrated his knack for infusing animated worlds with depth and authenticity. John’s mastery of anatomy, lighting, and composition made every frame he touched a work of art, leaving an everlasting impact on the animation industry.
John’s artistic contributions were not limited to the silver screen or the pages of comics. He was a renowned educator, sharing his knowledge and passion for anatomy with countless aspiring artists. His influence continues to ripple through the generations of creators he inspired and guided.
As we remember John Watkiss, let us cherish the legacy he leaves behind. His imagination knew no bounds, and his dedication to his craft was unwavering. He brought wonder and awe to everything he touched, leaving an undeniable mark on the worlds of literature, film, comics, and art.
Rest in peace, dear John. Your spirit will forever live on in the beauty you created and the lives you touched.
