{"id":6056,"date":"2020-08-08T13:47:36","date_gmt":"2020-08-08T20:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/?p=6056"},"modified":"2020-08-08T13:47:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-08T20:47:36","slug":"cynical-supersnoop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/2020\/08\/cynical-supersnoop\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynical Supersnoop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Working in the comics field and being a long-time reader of comic books, I&#8217;ve grown accustomed to the darker, cynical take on superheroes, depicting them with twisted motivations and deleterious effect. At times, it is quite well done (as in <em>Watchmen<\/em>); at other times, it&#8217;s a weak attempt deconstruction (like so many pseudo-<em>Watchmen.<\/em>) But at base, these are curious efforts, trying to show the dark underbelly of something that doesn&#8217;t actually exist. To some degree, the very form seems to be shaming you for enjoying a bit of fictional fantasy.<\/p>\n<p>And I didn&#8217;t expect it to come from Peanuts.<\/p>\n<p>In the Halloween tale\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hallmark.com\/gifts\/books\/kids-books\/peanuts-the-adventures-of-the-candy-crusader-pop-up-book-1KHW1011.html\"><strong>The Adventures of the Candy Crusader<\/strong><\/a>, just out from Hallmark, a pair of heroes (the Crusader and his sidekick, The Candy Corn Kid) go around &#8220;saving&#8221; candy&#8230; by which they mean stealing it from the trick-or-treaters who had properly earned their candy through the appropriate All Hallow&#8217;s Eve shakedown, for their own consumption!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6054\" src=\"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Peanuts-The-Adventures-of-the-Candy-Crusader-Book_1KHW1011_02.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The story, written by Bill Gray and well drawn by Rich LaPierre, is written with children&#8217;s book rhyming prose but drawn as a comic book, with multiple panels per page and the occasional word balloon. It ends as promised with a pop-up, but the announcement of the pop-up on the cover is a removable sticker, so if you&#8217;re giving it, there could be some actual surprise.<\/p>\n<p>Hallmark is also offering an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hallmark.com\/gifts\/stuffed-animals\/interactive-stuffed-animals\/peanuts-snoopy-the-candy-crusader-musical-stuffed-animal-with-motion-11.75-1HGN1923.html\">animated Candy Crusader figure<\/a>, which spins while &#8220;Flight of the Valkyries&#8221; plays (you may remember that tune as the love theme from <em>Apocalypse Now<\/em>.)<a href=\"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CanduCrusader.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6058\" src=\"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CanduCrusader-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CanduCrusader-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CanduCrusader-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CanduCrusader.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Oh, and also socks. In case your Halloween costume is &#8220;human wearing Candy Crusader socks&#8221; (or &#8220;ninja wearing Candy Crusader socks&#8221;; they very versatile!<a href=\"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CandyCrusaderSocks.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6059\" src=\"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CandyCrusaderSocks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"389\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CandyCrusaderSocks.jpg 500w, https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/CandyCrusaderSocks-300x233.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Working in the comics field and being a long-time reader of comic books, I&#8217;ve grown accustomed to the darker, cynical take on superheroes, depicting them with twisted motivations and deleterious effect. At times, it is quite well done (as in Watchmen); at other times, it&#8217;s a weak attempt deconstruction (like &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-releases","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}