Heavens to Murgatroyd! Snagglepuss is finally coming out of the closet.
When DC Comics announced last year that it was reviving a number of Hanna-Barbera cartoon icons for its latest series of comics, we learned the big, pink lion would be among them. And now, we have more information on what shape Snagglepuss’ return will take.
In an interview with HiLoBrow, writer Mark Russell — who transformed The Flinstones into a stunning post-modern tale that has been lauded as one of the best comics of 2016 — revealed that Snagglepuss has abandoned his dreams of being a stage actor.
“It’s Snagglepuss sort of reinvented as a gay Southern Gothic playwright,” Russell said.
He adds that the reinvention “was not much of a stretch at all,” with Snagglepuss becoming a “tragic Tennessee Williams figure.” And he won’t be alone. “Huckleberry Hound is sort of a William Faulkner guy, they’re in New York in the 1950s, Marlon Brando shows up, Dorothy Parker, these socialites of New York from that era come and go,” Russell said.
His interpretation of Snagglepuss is directly related to the character’s more than slight suggestion at being gay — or at least on the queer spectrum.
“It’s never discussed and it’s obviously ignored in the cartoons ’cuz they were made at a time when you couldn’t even acknowledge the existence of such a thing, but it’s still so obvious,” Russell said. “So it’s natural to present it in a context where everybody knows, but it’s still closeted. And dealing with the cultural scene of the 1950s, especially on Broadway, where everybody’s gay, or is working with someone who’s gay, but nobody can talk about it — and what it’s like to have to try to create culture out of silence.”
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Russell is no stranger to such subjects: His version of The Flinstonesdealt with the controversy around same-sex marriage and the legitimacy of same-sex couples in moving, humorous fashion.
The full Snagglepuss series starts in “September or October,” but look out for a sampler in the March issue of Suicide Squad/Banana Splits Annual. It will apparently feature “nagglepuss being dragged in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities,” according to Russell.
If you want a sneak peek of what to expect when Snagglepuss is reborn in print, DC have released a page from the upcoming comic:
At around 2 a.m. on March 9, a security camera outside of Precinct, a gay bar in downtown Los Angeles, caught two men dressed in black and carrying cocktail glasses walking around the corner from the bar's main entrance. They entered an exterior hallway leading to the bar's employee entrance.
The men set their glasses on a nearby railing, unzipped their pants, and appeared to urinate in a corner between the door and the entranceway.
In the video, two other men are seen passing by the entranceway but not entering it, just moments as the taller of the two men appears to zip up his fly and looks around furtively. The video cuts out shortly after that.
A Pennsylvania school board canceled an appearance by Maulik Pancholy at a local middle school's anti-bullying assembly due to concerns over his "lifestyle."
The Cumberland Valley School District school board voted unanimously to cancel the gay actor's scheduled May 22 appearance at Mountain View Middle School in Mechanicsburg, a town of 9,000 people in the state's center, just 10 miles outside Harrisburg.
Pancholy, who played Jonathan on the hit TV show 30 Rock, Sanjay in Weeds, and voiced the character of Baljeet for Disney's Phineas & Ferb, is also an author of novels for young adults, including The Best at It, the story of a gay Indian-American boy and his experience dealing with bullying in a small Midwestern town, and Nikhil Out Loud, about a group of eighth-grade theater kids rising up against homophobia in their community.
A Milwaukee school principal has been sued in federal court by a gay couple who allege he bullied, harassed, threatened, and assaulted their son for having two same-sex parents, violating the child's civil rights in the process.
The parents, referred to as M.P. and T.L. in the lawsuit, claim that Kasongo Kalumbula allegedly mistreated their son because of his family's makeup.
The lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, asks for a jury trial and seeks an undetermined amount in damages.
It alleges that Kalumbula, who served as the assistant principal, and later, acting principal, of the Milwaukee French Immersion School from September 2018 to October 2021, physically and verbally abused the child -- who was in first grade when the harassment started -- and routinely singled him out for discipline.
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