Netflix, Miller, Artur
Cursed is a multimedia venture in which decisions were made not only by the author of the book (Wheeler) and the illustrator (Miller), but also by the creative team of the series produced for the Netflix platform. Although the date of the paper release is a year earlier than the screen premiere, the entire team worked in parallel. Therefore, for example, decisions about which drawings to add color to (Tula Lotay did) were not in the hands of Miller – he said in an interview for the BUILD Series. I don’t know how many fictional decisions were made with the film medium in mind, and not with the text, to say it more bluntly – for reasons not necessarily creative, but rather financial. I don’t know yet how the show itself went – a bit superstitiously, I didn’t want watching it to affect the book’s review. I can say right away that I approached Cursed with high expectations, driven by a somewhat efficient marketing campaign. Perhaps completely unnecessarily …
Which is cool
Cursed is a reinterpretation of Arthurian myths. The main character holding Excalibur is a woman, actually a girl – Nimue. The idea for it arose under the influence of the image of a slender hand holding a sword emerging from the lake, known to us from numerous adaptations of these legends. How did the nymph (magician?) Get it? Why did he originally have to fall into other hands – Arthur? The game with gender roles is played by two guys, which may cause us to frown a little. The inspiration for Wheeler, apart from the Lady of the Lake, was his daughter, or rather the need to find a heroine for her, with whom she could identify, as he once did with the heroes of his childhood.
Nimue Wheelera comes from a village inhabited by people traditionally engaged in magic. It is headed by druids who can communicate with forces called, for the sake of simplicity, gods. Sometimes they go to a market in a nearby town, some of them sign up for ships. At other times, they have arguments with tree-dwelling creatures, like elves or green children. On solemn occasions they gather in sacred groves and caves. They cultivate and hunt the land on a daily basis. “A simple village, many,” you think in the early chapters. Over time, it turns out that not entirely, and by the way, someone in the country is waging a bloody, organized war against all manifestations of witchcraft – which, technically, is a sign of race, or even species. Yes, Nimue is not necessarilyhomo sapiens .
Wheeler, with the help of Miller, creates a world associated not only with King Arthur, but also with such productions as Carnival Row . The illustrations undoubtedly reflect the darkness and dynamics of the described story well, without being associated with medieval art or classic Tolkien’s fantasy. The deconstruction and humanization of the heroes, groups of kids who decide to defend their people with fire and sword, proceeds smoothly as the pages follow. The book was written with the teenage reader in mind, so while we have a romantic thread here, not much is going on in that regard. In turn, fights or pacifications of villages can be very brutal, perhaps because of the series, which is already aimed at a wider audience.
What is missing
This book, despite the confusion of the roles of the characters, is a very classic fantasy adventure. The simple skeleton of the plot has been decorated with the brutality of the knightly order, the multitude of magical races, emancipation and good illustrations, but with deeper reflection it does not bring anything new. Wheeler tries to show the doubts and mismatch of his teenage characters, but in my opinion, he does so very superficially. He takes the metaphors of King Arthur or Joan of Arc into his workshop, uses them to show some kind of young superheroes, but does not think, for example, about the impact of war, the loss of parents, the need to take great responsibility on children. The title of the book suggests that a lot of unpleasant things are associated with great power, but this thread gets a little lost between the spectacular fight scenes.
Finally, the question of the illustrations by Frank Miller. In themselves they are really great, very original and recognizable, full of dynamism and that characteristic, predatory sexyness. In short, they don’t fit the book very well. Even Nimue seems older to them. She probably knows much better what she can do and who she actually is. And this is probably the source of my high expectations – I was hoping for a novel for adults, entering a new interpretation of the legend. I got a fantasy on the verge of a youth novel, which would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that the authors had to soften the threads and restrain the imagination. The end result seems to me typical for Netflix: an intriguing beginning, strong world-creating, and finally blurring in the marketing vision of an ideal product for the masses.
