After ‘The Muppets’ Sift Through Jim Henson’s TALE OF SAND

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, a number of iFanboy staffers found their Rainbow Connection in theaters around the country. That sounds lurid, but I’m talking about Disney’s The Muppets, a stirring love letter to Muppet maniacs young and old. Except Frank Oz. But what’re ya gonna do? Though the heart-felt fervor hasn’t exactly lain dormant for many of us, it’s the kind of revival the threadbare franchise needed to captivate new audiences. As for us children of the 70s and 80s, we maybe kinda wept. It’s bright and funny. It’s both respectfully pure and subversive. It’s perhaps everything it needed to be, and it performed admirably in the afterbirth of that razzin-frazzin Twilight movie. So what’s next? And we’re not talking about a third Muppet Show variety hour on ABC. Although…

No, the question today is where Henson-heads ought to turn after second and third screenings, seated on whimsy cushions. To the desert of course.

From Tale of Sand, art by Ramon Perez

Coming right up is Archaia’s long-anticipated comic adaptation of Tale of Sand. Artist Ramon Perez breathes new life into a previously unproduced screenplay by Henson and Jerry Juhl. On the surface it seems far-removed from the Vaudeville homage or Fraudian fantasy of other Henson projects like the Muppets or Dark Crystal, but you’ll recognize some trappings in this existential journey through a desaturated desert. Desolation is soon populated with that signature wizardry and imagination. A quieter Oz with a sophisticated, no less magic allure. And it’s pretty.

While we wait on the final edition, have a gander at this free preview on Graphicly: