Ms. Chalice, a new playable character within the popular Cuphead video game, was supposed to make her first appearance in the game this year as part of the “The Delicious Last Course” DLC. While COVID-19 and other unexpected delays have kept that DLC from releasing yet, that’s not stopped the character from joining Cuphead and Mugman for adventures outside of the game. Now Dark Horse Comics has revealed, exclusively to The Beat, the cover for the next volume in their Cuphead graphic novel series, which will feature the trio in a series of new tales by writer Zack Keller and artist Shawn Dickinson.
Here’s how Dark Horse describes Cuphead Volume 2: Cartoon Chronicles & Calamities:
Our plucky heroes return in this brand-new collection of adventures starring Cuphead, Mugman, and now Ms. Chalice!
The trio can’t seem to catch a break as they find themselves in a plethora of peculiar positions and side stories in the all-cartoon magical wonderworld of the Inkwell Isles! This original graphic novel features fresh new tales, all authentically drawn to match the glorious, award-winning vintage animation style of Cuphead!
Don’t pass up this chance to see Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice in their second collection of adventures wonderfully realized by the returning team of writer Zack Keller and artist Shawn Dickinson!
Cuphead‘s distinctive artistic style has garnered the game praise and awards for art direction and design, but not without generating controversy as well. The visuals of the game are styled after early the early Max Fleischer cartoons of the ’20s and ’30s, which often featured racist stereotypes for Black characters in terms of both animation and characterization. Cuphead‘s use of that style and of themes common in the cartoons of the time without reckoning with the legacy of racism that underlies those cartoons has opened the game and its creators up to criticism from BIPOC gamers and industry-watchers. Given the relative all-ages nature of Dark Horse’s previous Cuphead graphic novel, it seems unlikely that criticism will be addressed here, directly or otherwise.
Check out the cover for the forthcoming Cuphead graphic novel below. Cuphead Volume 2: Cartoon Chronicles & Calamities is currently scheduled for release from Dark Horse Comics on March 2nd, 2021.
“The visuals of the game are styled after early the early Max Fleischer cartoons of the ’20s and ’30s, which often featured racist stereotypes for Black characters in terms of both animation and characterization.”
There were also stereotypes of Jews (although the Fleischers were themselves Jewish), and Irish, and Italians, and Germans, and have I left anyone out? Cartoons of that era, and not just the Fleischers, stereotyped everyone.
Disney has worked hard to bury the caricatures in its ‘toons of the ’20 and ’30s (and beyond), instead of owning up to them as Warner Bros. has.
It should be noted that the Fleischers gave showcases to Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the Mills Brothers. So there’s another side to this.
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