A Steampunk Carol
by Luca Frigerio
art by Lorenzo Pigliamosche
2023
A Steampunk Carol is a fantasy comic based somewhat on The Nutcracker. Despite the title, there's only one thing that seems at all steampunk about it, which is the costuming of the leader of the toy soldiers, who replaces the Nutcracker, and who has a few brass robotic or cybernetic looking details. I didn't particularly like it. The ending is either weirdly incomplete, or else it signals that Last Ember Press intends this to be the first volume of an ongoing series, so that loose ends here will be resolved later.
I love The Nutcracker as a ballet, though I've never read ETA Hoffman's original short story. I have read Natalie Andrewson's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which I gather is a pretty faithful adaptation. And a couple years ago, I read a history of The Nutcracker ballet in America, and its contemporary role as like, the one ballet that everyone who dances has been in, that every audience member has seen.
You wouldn't think it'd be too hard to use The Nutcracker as the basis for a fantasy story! You've got toy soldiers come to life, wearing fancy red uniforms, fighting mice armed with sabres and cannons. You've got fairies from all over holding court, sleigh rides, great feasts, dancing food. You've got a teenage girl at her coming-of-age moment, right at the cusp of childhood innocence and an awakening interest in the larger world, allowing you to play up whichever side of that suits your story better. You've got ambiguity, if you want it, about whether this is a real trip to fairyland or just a dream.
And yet I've been disappointed by both A Steampunk Carol nor the film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. I think part of it is that both insist that the girl at the center of things is mourning her dead mother, and when she arrives in fairyland, she discovers that her mother went there before her, that everyone knows her, that her mom was a beloved hero who had countless adventures there previously, and that she, the protagonist of the story, seems inadequate by comparison.
It's mystifying to me that both these recent adaptations have settled on this same basic plot, because the girl's mother is still alive in Hoffman's original, and also because, while I think The Nutcracker is a bit flexible in terms of the kind of fantasy story you could use it to tell, it seems like a spectacularly bad vehicle for talking about grief and mourning. And just generally, I don't understand why both adaptations looked at the hero of a story and decided that what she really needed was a case of Imposter Syndrome and to be overshadowed by a parental legacy she can never live up to.
I love The Nutcracker as a ballet, though I've never read ETA Hoffman's original short story. I have read Natalie Andrewson's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which I gather is a pretty faithful adaptation. And a couple years ago, I read a history of The Nutcracker ballet in America, and its contemporary role as like, the one ballet that everyone who dances has been in, that every audience member has seen.
You wouldn't think it'd be too hard to use The Nutcracker as the basis for a fantasy story! You've got toy soldiers come to life, wearing fancy red uniforms, fighting mice armed with sabres and cannons. You've got fairies from all over holding court, sleigh rides, great feasts, dancing food. You've got a teenage girl at her coming-of-age moment, right at the cusp of childhood innocence and an awakening interest in the larger world, allowing you to play up whichever side of that suits your story better. You've got ambiguity, if you want it, about whether this is a real trip to fairyland or just a dream.
And yet I've been disappointed by both A Steampunk Carol nor the film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. I think part of it is that both insist that the girl at the center of things is mourning her dead mother, and when she arrives in fairyland, she discovers that her mother went there before her, that everyone knows her, that her mom was a beloved hero who had countless adventures there previously, and that she, the protagonist of the story, seems inadequate by comparison.
It's mystifying to me that both these recent adaptations have settled on this same basic plot, because the girl's mother is still alive in Hoffman's original, and also because, while I think The Nutcracker is a bit flexible in terms of the kind of fantasy story you could use it to tell, it seems like a spectacularly bad vehicle for talking about grief and mourning. And just generally, I don't understand why both adaptations looked at the hero of a story and decided that what she really needed was a case of Imposter Syndrome and to be overshadowed by a parental legacy she can never live up to.
A Steampunk Carol only tells the first half of this story. The girl, her dad, and infant brother are visited by some of the dad's old sailor friends, who give her the toy soldiers that start the thing off. The war between the toys and the mice is explicitly because the mom died - she was a magical healer, you see, but because she died, she couldn't heal the Rat King's sick son. The whole comic is taken up with warfare, culminating in a duel between the Rat King and the Nutcracker, and all the girl can really do is apologize for not being her mom, which the sick Rat Prince accepts, and convinces his dad to stop warring. There is no after-the-war story, no fairies, no food, no dancing. The girl then returns to reality to learn that her dad's friends have taken her little brother to raise for him, since he, as a single father, can apparently only manage one child.
I'd love to see a fantasy story based on The Nutcracker that leans into the beautiful visuals, and that also lets the girl at the center be the hero of her own story, and to accomplish something more than convincing herself that her dead mother wouldn't be disappointed in her! Sadly, this isn't that story.
I'd love to see a fantasy story based on The Nutcracker that leans into the beautiful visuals, and that also lets the girl at the center be the hero of her own story, and to accomplish something more than convincing herself that her dead mother wouldn't be disappointed in her! Sadly, this isn't that story.
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