Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

         Who Says Smoking People is Bad for You?

By

Valerie Douglas

          The opening credits roll and the bright lights surrounding the lot of us tightly huddled on the couch instantly dim.  Through the television screen and speaker cloth seeps an ethereal mist, saturating my skin as it transports me into a dimension that forgoes all continuity of history and normal possibility.  The story unfolds and propels me into a reality beyond my wildest dreams, and yet I am completely comfortable and familiar with it.  I easily dismiss the absurdity of the characters as the plot thickens.  Did President Lincoln really just inform his super secret agent robot, Screw-on Head, of the nefarious plans of the villainous Emperor Zombie via the flapping mouth on a painting?

            For the next 22 minutes, the real world melts into less than background.  The dishes have stopped calling my name, the basket of laundry has ceased its howling cries of "Fold me!! I'm getting all wrinkly!!"  The imaginative genius of Mike Mignola's cinematic installment of The Adventures of Amazing Screw-on Head blissfully distracts me.  The entire scenario is such utter nonsense that when I'm finally released from its orgasmic clutches, I'm shocked and amazed at the wide-eyed, naive child in me begging for more.  

            Mignola's comics have a distinct style, one that translates well to the moving picture.  His herky-jerky lines and heavy shadows reveal a deeper emotion, at times darkly secret and lovably evil.  From the outset, the cartoon's appearance sets it apart from other distinct styles: the drab blockiness of the JLA and other darling DC titles; the hastily slopped together animation of this new breed of cartoons our children are forced to endure; most especially this virus of computer animation infecting the dearly beloved entertainment of Jim Henson's Muppets.  It is also genuinely refreshing to see an original idea bogarted and yet still remain true to the heart and soul of the original work. See, Hollywood? It CAN be done!! ::cough cough:: superhero movies ::cough cough::

            For a lover of words such as me, the banter between the characters is a tongue twisting exchange of thrusts and parries, rarely punctuated by the obvious joke.  This is due not only to the developer and writer of this vocabularic masterpiece, but also to the polished delivery of Paul Giamatti (Screw-on Head) and David Hyde Pierce (Zombie).  Their elaborately woven back-story is revealed in impeccable simplicity with the simultaneous ejaculation of the issues at hand.  As Mr. Lincoln puts it succinctly, the whole situation consists of Mr. Head's personal involvement in the "undead perversions of the only woman [he] ever loved and [his] most trusted man servant who vowed to do away with all subsequent man servants in the cruelest means imaginable."

            Truly good entertainment sucks me deep into its essence, twisting, reshaping, and bending my sense of reality, sliding me seamlessly into the confines of its framework.  My feet fall into step, side-by-side with the characters.  My chest heaves and sighs, my pulse races in tandem with their emotion, my mind reeling from echoes of irksome dilemmas and wrapping itself around pesky plot twists.  My skin tingles, anxiously awaiting what comes next and when the screen goes dark and the sound goes empty, every muscle aches and burns with the insatiable urge for just one moment more.

            Mike Mignola has nigh perfected the art of drawing audiences into this state of pleasantly distracted bliss.  He claims to have done everything he wanted to do with Screw-On Head, Emperor Zombie, and Patience the vampire mistress in this single, too-short animation.  Do I look like the kind of girl who will settle for a one-night stand from the best visual stimulation I have been exposed to in quite some time?  No, no, no!  I want a season or three, a picket fence of merchandise, a marathon on a Friday night.  I need a cartoon I can settle down and grow old with.  Amazing Screw-On Head is just that kinda cartoon...