Shrinking again and superheroes

Eta Beta eega at supereva.it
Sun Feb 29 13:10:53 CET 2004


LARS

>> Also, in France there's a comic series devoted to "Les Petits Hommes",
>> a bunch of people whose diminutive size is permanent (freely chosen, I
>> seem to understand), rather than temporary.
>
>Thanks, E. B. I've only ever seen a few pages of this series, and for
>years I've tried to figure out exactly what was the conceptual
>difference between Les Petits Hommes and the Smurfs.

Absolutely nothing to do with each other, apart from size, which is
just about the same :-)

>The idea of people
>who have freely chosen to be gnome-sized sounds intriguing.
>Does it take place in a contemporary setting?

Indeed, in fact the Petits Hommes possess a superior technology
which allows them to modify their size at will, and a lot of other
gadgets, flying machines, submarines, obviously all miniaturized.

I'm afraid I've only read myself 2 of their early stories, as "Die
Minimenschen", i.e. in german edition (Carlsen), a language I don't
exactly master so I can't give you a lot more details... and I miss
their first, "origin" adventure, but what I do understand is that
they have been reduced to one tenth of their original size by a
meteorite fall (kryptonite ? :-) and that, although they later found
a way to "expand" again (possibly *that* is temporary ?), they
preferred to remain small and founded their own Mini Town, well
hidden from the world of "the Bigs".


>> I'm not exactly fond of Disney super-heroes, either... I find those,
>> especially the italian Paperinik (moreso in the recent, "modern"
>> incarnation) but also most of Super Goof quite repetitive and
>> unoriginal...
>
>But just because a lot of Paperinik or Super Goof stories may (in your
>opinion) be dull, doesn't mean the characters themselves are bad, does
>it?

Not necessarily, no, my feeling is just that they have exhausted
the original, nice, parodistical purpose to become parodies of
themselves... but parodies that take themselves far too seriously,
in the case of PKNA, who's lost both the "real" Donald and the "real"
Paperinik, so to speak, and still in my opinion, and a very
humble one at that...


Oh, and an additional note...

I must admit for me, too, the one moment in the history of comics
where I find it really difficult to practice what has been appropriately
called "suspension of disbelief" is when Superman brushes his curl
off, dons spectacles and "becomes" meek Clark Kent...

That's plain TOO MUCH...

Nothing wrong with talking ducks and mice, miniaturized men, elves
and marsupilamis, of course... those are REASONABLE ;-)


Cheers!

Eta Beta



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