I think I mentioned my entry into a sort of a hyper-state/hyper realism, through watching first, the movie Nacho Libre, and then every episode of Ugly Betty. One prepared me for the other, I think. Having reached that state, I became obsessed with Mexican wrestlers masks and costumes, and hyper-coloured soap operas - so much so that a recent advert for The Bold and the Beautiful, complete with mullets, over here, got me all a quiver. Well, I think it maybe goes back further than I thought, to the intro to Ghost World the movie - you know, the Bollywood dance scene at the beginning.
Anyway, my Mexican wrestling obsession got all tangled up with the Mexican Day of the Dead (see my comic below, which also features a wrestling mask) and the colours and the noise and all that sheer spectacle, salted with a little highly decorative iconic catholic ritual, and the macabre, has lead to something forming in my head, but not so clearly that I can get it down on paper. It's more a mood, maybe. At any rate, it may be too late, because I discovered, thanks to my daily visit to Dirk Deppey's Journalista, the work of Croatian born, Canadian illustrator, Drazen Kozjan, who in addition to being involved in the animation of Rupert the Bear, and illustrating a number children's books including Diary of A Fairy Godmother and The Biggest Girl In the World, that he has actually made just the sort of thing I was trying to imagine with The Happy Undertaker, and I think he's done it better than I could have.
After checking out Drazen's site, you have to look in on his blog for more of this, The Happy Undertaker. As you can see, it combines all the elements I'm thinking about, and in that whimsical, childsnatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang/Joann Sfar's Little Vampire sort of way. In other words it looks just brilliant:
Many thanks to Dirk at Journalista for pointing me to The Happy Undertaker, so good I'm sending you there twice.
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