the cut-and-paste trailer reveals a few things...

i noticed that in some clips of the family at the breakfast table they are eating on mismatched crockery and there is tarnished silver on the sideboards. in others highly polished silver and matching china.

so i'm wondering if barnabas provides collinwood with the "fix up" he gave the old house on the OS. is that what the party is being thrown for?

he announces that he wants to restore the family business to it's "former glory". is that stash of family jewels hiding somewhere?

one gets alot of interesting reactions, and blank stares, when one announces "oh, but this witch runs a fish cannery".

sequels might prove difficult given what we've heard and seen hinted at in the trailer...

[spoiler]mainly it looks like collinwood burns to the ground. as well as the family business. i'd also guess that several important characters die as well. [/spoiler]

so if there is some sort of prequel/sequel perhaps something set in a different time period or focusing on a different set of characters.

not that i actually care about these enough to try and square them with series continuity but...

[spoiler]after 1897 wasn't quentin no longer in the werewolf state?[/spoiler]

with all the recent hoo-ha over the movie these little rags have fallen off the radar to some extent...

against my better judgement i picked up issue 4 today. these started out with a modicum of promise but have gotten stupider and stupider and stupider by the issue. this one's really hit the nadir.

i won't even attempt to get into the "plot" if that is what one can actually call the action that takes place between these pages. to call this adolescent would be too complimentary. a 10 year old would find them ridiculous.

what i'd like to ask the illustrator is why julia and carolyn and roger and quentin are all wearing the same green pantsuit?

really just pretty worthless junk.

interesting observation...

as i said earlier i can't muster a grand sense of "betrayal" but a considerable amount of double-talk has been employed by those involved for months. "duped" might be an apt term for it.

that said we have been hearing the word "funny" tossed around since day one. countless times in fact and many of us chose to mishear it or "reinterpret" it to our own liking. it's still happening.

we'll see.

a couple notes on today...

when i arrived at work this morning people who had seen the trailer over the weekend approached me with what almost amounted to as condolences. as if someone had died. they seemed nonplussed when i replied that i really wasn't upset about it.

the 'chevy' joke fell flat all around.

and another observation i hadn't though of was someone said it reminded them of 'the witches of eastwick'. i haven't seen that in many years. does that like a valid comparison to anyone?

considering the blistering reactions nearly everything depp and burton have done in association with this project have gotten since the get go i'm sure they'd like to distance themselves as much as possible from the concept beyond promoting the film at hand. and i'm sure even that will be an unpleasant experience.