Basil: The Great Mouse Detective:
Before Disney made a movie about Basil of Baker Street, Eve Titus, the author of the Anatole seires of mouse books for children wrote five books about the adventures of the "Great Mouse Detective." These books were wonderful creations, but have been given little in the way of respect or literary analysis. In an attempt to correct this situation I have gone through the trouble of extensively annotating the books. Eve Titus was a musician, a Sherlockian scholar, and punster. She filled her books with references to famous musicians, literary figures, and puns about mice and cheese. She named characters after people she knew or respected, often using the names of fellow Sherlockian scholars as names in her books. Where ever possible I have made note of these inspirations.
I have "borrowed" (stolen) information from a variety of websites, especially wikipedia, and as this is only a first draft of a potentially bigger project I haven't yet edited or rewritten the information. Mistakes are entirely my own. I also made extensive use of The Baker Street Journal and the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie Klinger.
These annotations cannot be used to and are not meant to replace the value of searching out and reading these books. They are charming, delightful, exciting reads.
Click on the image below to be brought to the annotations to the book of your choice.
The Rescuers Revisited
I originally wrote this article for forcesofgood.com in August 2004. Since then I've received some interesting feedback on the article, so I'm making it available here. The article concerns the series of books by Margery Sharpe called The Rescuers, (upon which Disney based two movies, The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under.
In a sense this is the first of my literary-archeological and cryptozoological articles on the race of intelligent mice that live among us. Access the article here.
Animation Projects
A few years ago I was working on some animation projects, the best three of which can be seen here:
As a side note: Peeny-Boy can be seen in the Ignatz nominated self-published comic MERDE by Chris Reilly, Dave Ray, Ben Towle and Steve Ahlquist. The complete Peeny-Boy comics will be reprinted on this site sometime in the future.
Peeny-Boy
The Peeny-Boy comics, as they appeared in Merde, can be seen here:
Ben and Me: Annotated
In continuing the great tradition of Mouse cryptozoology, I've annotated Robert Lawson's epic presentation of a legitimate archeological find in Philadelphia, called Ben and Me.
Goggles and Gloves
Raymond Pepperstick has inherited a set of Goggles and Gloves that allows him to see the world as it really is, filled with demons, angels, and other-worldly creatures. In this exciting preview by writer/co-creator Steve Ahlquist and artist Ben Towle, Raymond goes fishing to save a food pantry. Check it out:
Batrachomyomachia
One of the great unknown works of of the ancient Greeks is The Batrachomyomachia, "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice." In doing research on Mouse History and Mouse Literature I rediscovered this ancient work, and have here collected a smattering of english translations and adaptations, along with some notes that allow me to put this all into some sort of context. Check out:
A Casual Cartoon Review
The year is 1989, and a young crazy person has watched Don Knotts in The Incredible Mr. Limpet one too many times. In a fever dream he types up a quick essay about the really obvious Freudian sub-text of the movie. When he is done, he has written something that can't be published anywhere. No problem, this was the halcyon days of Factsheet Five, the heyday of the 'zine publishing renaissance. The young crazy person types up a few reviews and publishes the results himself. Not seen for years, I present to you:
The Adventures of UH-OH!
Trapped in the Tetra-Tetra-Flexagrammatical Universe
Way back in about 1985 I became slightly obsessed with Flexagons after reading Martin Gardner's The Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Games and The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Games. I became convinced that a comic could be produced utilizing the unique features and panel rearrangements made possible by the flexagon's format. To that end, I wrote and designed The Adventures of UH-OH! Trapped in the Tetra-Tetra-Flexagrammatical Universe, using a character invented by my brother Mark Ahlquist (creator/writer of Danger Man and the inventer of the game Strange Synergy) and forced him to then draw it better than I could. We made a bunch of them, sold very few of them (we had no idea how to market a min-comic like this) and basically did nothing with it since then. So, here it is, with a downloadable PDF, instructions on how to build it, and for the lazy, the final book laid out in sequence, the panel rearrangements made obvious for all.
Girl World
Coming soon from Alias Comics is GIRL WORLD, by Steve Ahlquist, Chris Reilly and Jorge Santillan. Girl World is perhaps best described as Planet of the Apes with girls instead of monkeys. But why hear about it when you can preview it right here?
High School Caligula
Three years ago Chris Reilly came up with a title: High School Caligula. A few months later Chris and I had a script. A few months after that we had a movie crew, and we were making the movie. We cast gorgeous girls and mean looking delinquents. We were on our way. Then the director- stopped. He disappeared. The project died. As did our hearts. A Hollywood producer said to me that he had never laughed so hard at a script before, but that he didn't think he could get ten million dollars to make the film. So maybe this is the script that's never to be. The art is by our costume designer, Julie Heneghan. Click image for larger size.
Adam Miner Investigates
Adam Miner Investigates was the made for cable access TV show that I produced with Adam Miner in from 2003-2005. The show featured Adam, playing himself, investigating supernatural phenomena. Check it out here.
