1044 You’re Good.

At least one version of the site is being tampered with. If you’re reading it on the one in question you can probably tell. I don’t know if it will make the site function significanlty better, but whatever. The bar is pretty low. Feel free to voice your opinions at any point.

I redid about half of this page tonight real fast. I don’t know what my problem was the fisrt time I did it, but it was below even my typical standards. I was clearly not doing well that evening. Luckily I had a framework to start from so I was able to do the schedule page AND fix this one. I’m back on schedule more or less. Unfortunately I only got 2 days worth of guest comics, so I have to do something about that. Depending on how you look at it I’m actually 2 days ahead now, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. I think you guys will get a kick out of these guest pages.

This is kind of a strange topic shift, but I was looking at my wall and realized something. When my paternal grandmother died I inherited these two… ornaments I guess you’d call them. They’re kind of busts of two literary characters. Part of an incomplete set. They are Bill Sikes and Fagin the kidsman. They are kind of unsavory observers; Sikes a murderer and Fagin an abuser of children. In addition to this Fagin is probably the most racist thing I own. I’m not sure I won any other racist things in fact. I’m sure there must be other things that I am not offended by that would offend others, so I leave that judgement open. I digress… Fagin is a pretty brutal caricature of a Jew. He’s actually reffered to as nothing more than “the Jew” for a large portion of the book. This wasn’t unnoticed in its day either. Dickens responded to the allegations of anti semitism saying he had nothing but friendly feelings towards Jews, in general, and Fagin was simply a sadly accurate depiction of the criminal underworld at the time. He also stopped the printing of the collected book and altered how Fagin is identified in the unset pages.

I’ve never actually read Oliver Twist. I find Dickens’ voice intensly boring. My understanding of the character came mostly from the musical Oliver! Which actually makes him kind of a lovable rogue, rather than an almost complete bastard. I suppose it only makes sense that a musical adaptation is going to be less grim than its source material. Anyway, I always thought that Fagin and Dodger scampered off into the sunset in both versions of the work, but that is not the case. LITERARY SPOILERS! Dodger ends up getting sent to Australia (at least you can inffer as much) and Fagin gets hanged. Dark, huh? Although, on the whole, Australia doesn’t seem all that bad compared to hanging… Arguably. In addition to that Oliver’s half brother tries to destroy him, is given a second chance by Oliver, and end up coming to a sticky end in spite of this.

In any event these are strange faces to look out over a sea of robots and super heroes. If you want to see the ugly things you can search for their names and the word Bosson. Which was the manufacturer. Alternately you can click this last word. For wahtever reason my heads don’t look exactly like any of the images online. Fagin seems to have some paint application ommitted. Not worn away, just never applied. And Sikes looks way more angry than the others I’ve seen. Some of the ones online look almost jolly by comparison…

19 Comments

Yeah, I read Oliver Twist in 5th grade, then saw the musical during a school field trip in 6th. It always sort of bothered me that they had to lighten up the story like that… Tho I agree with you that Fagin becomes a much more likable character.
The Dodger was always my favorite from that story. I’ve based several RPG characters on him.

Things inherited from grandparents always tend to be weird.
My grandma had this piano for the longest time and, on top of it, was this creepy Jesus head candle. It was Jesus’s head and neck and the barest portion of his naked shoulders, craning up just a tad to look at the sky with this “Why, God? Why?” expression on his face and a very realistic looking crown of thorns sitting atop his head. The whole thing was this pooh brown color and about 8 inches tall so its head was about the same size as a 1 year old’s head.
No one would burn this thing so it sat there for something like 15 years and they my Grandma gave us the piano and sent the Jesus head along with it.
It creeped everyone out, my mother included, but everyone, again, refused to burn it because it was a Jesus head so it just sat on the piano being all creepy. A few years later, my parents took it to a White Elephant party and tried to trick some other sucker into taking this burdensome candle.
It got traded back to them and they ended up having to bring it home again.
The next year, they tried again and, though they did get it traded back to them once, they were able to foist it off on someone before the end of the party.
Sometimes I wonder about that candle and where it ended up; where it lives, what it sits on,if it’s creeping out a new family or if it’s finally found its place in the world…
Goodnight, creepy Jesus head candle. Wherever you are.

I dug around a little and it looks like Bossons made a complete set of Oliver Twist characters – consistent with you comment of them being part of an incomplete set. Had they not been part of a set I would have found it extremely disturbing to think of someone making images of just these two extremely reprobate figures. As it is, I think I’d probably want to get rid of them due to their unsavory nature when isolated from the rest of the set.

I’m wondering why they were the only ones you wound up with Crave. Did others get different pieces or did your grandmother never get around to collecting the whole set. There has to be a story there…

Where exactly you keep these creepy things is my concern. Hopefully in a locked drawer as opposed to hanging from the bedroom wall?

Actually, Transportation to Australia was arguably worse than hanging, because waiting for you in Australia was a whole lot of slave labor and the prospect of being worked to death. Back then, Oz was one of the most hellish, inhospitable places you could go to.

As soon as he said “Pie”…… I couldn’t help myself but recolor this

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=430015267030725&l=81f756df76

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