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Normally, this is the part of the webcomic where I, the adapter, tell you how wonderful the original book is and how delighted I am to be creating this version. However, unless you have been living under two rocks (the first being the moon that we all live under, the second being a metaphor for inexcusable ignorance) you already know how great Winnie-the-Pooh is. I think we can skip that part. There are, nevertheless, three things you need to know. 

 

First off, this story is not being abridged. It is a  WORD-FOR-WORD adaptation,  meaning nothing from the original is missing. If you are like me, I assume that you have at some point in your life made your way to a theatre to watch a film adaptation of a book you have loved or sat down with a comic book adaptation of a favorite novel, only to find that they have left out scenes, added new ones, and scrapped your favorite bit of dialogue. You may have even pointed this out to your friend, who, of course, said, “Well, they can’t just copy the original book word for word.” And perhaps, like me, you sat there with your brows furrowed and thought, “I bet you COULD copy the original book word for word, and I bet people would enjoy it.” Well. I hereby grant you permission to go find that friend, send them a link to this page, and say, “I told you so.” And if your friend points out that I have left out several quotation marks and added dashes here and there, tell them it was necessary to make it a comic. It is still a word-for-word adaptation, so there. 

 

Second, you ought to know that Winnie-the-Pooh does not live in the Hundred-Acre-Wood. I know. I was as shocked as you are now when I first found out. Owl lives in the Hundred-Acre-Wood, which is a part of the much larger Forest where all the characters live. True, if you look at the map it says Hundred-Acre-Wood right in the middle, but this is actually referring to the clump of trees in the middle of the map, not the whole map itself. You must be careful with this knowledge. For example, if you have just finished telling your friend “I told you so” regarding book adaptations, perhaps break the news about the Hundred-Acre-Woods at a later time. I find it best to leave space between instances in which I win arguments. 

 

Third: the mystery of TAM HTA𐐒. Now, I hope you have seen Ernest Shepard’s original drawings, because they are really quite delightful. If you haven’t, however, I am proud to say that  every single one of Shepard’s drawings will be incorporated into the comic by way of tracing  (I hope you will still consider me a real artist). That is, all except one. For some reason, before the stories get going in earnest, there’s a small doodle of Pooh staring at a bath mat with the words “BATH MAT” printed on it backwards. I can’t make heads or tails of this drawing. Presumably this is the same bath mat that appears next to the bathtub in a later illustration, only the B is where the last T should be, the two A’s have swapped places (although I suppose we can’t know for sure) and the rest of the letters have similarly rearranged themselves and turned around. Has the mat been flipped over to dry and the words are still visible on the back? Is this a through-the-looking-glass type situation, in which signs are reversed and Pooh can walk and talk outside of the Forest? Was Shepard dyslexic? Was this a publisher’s decision to flip the image without consulting the artist? Or is the whole point that the drawing doesn’t make sense, and that’s why Pooh is scratching his head as well?

 

In any case, I have left the drawing here so that this book does indeed contain all the original illustrations. If you ever manage to make sense of it, feel free to seek me out and let me know. I look forward to our future correspondence.

 

Yours,

Kip M. Henderson

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