Sunday, August 21, 2016

Darkness at the heart of 'Marvin'

My slight rewrite of today's Marvin.

Tom Armstrong's Marvin strikes me as one of the unhappiest domestic comedies in the world of syndicated cartoons. Sure, people point to Funky Winkerbean as a cesspool of ceaseless misery, which it is, and The Lockhorns do not disguise their hatred for one another. But the ostensibly cheerful Marvin, about a baby who never ages and the parents who are stuck caring for him for all eternity, seems profoundly darker than either of those other examples. So I decided to take this Sunday Marvin and give it just a slight rewrite.

Here's another recent Marvin rewrite of mine. This is a little more upbeat, because I've given the parents a way out of their personal purgatory.

Shouldn't there be a horror film called Gore-phanage by now?