What's So Important About Mr Punch?

I wrote a horror story on Mr Punch. Yes, that Mr Punch! From those Punch and Judy puppet shows by the seashore. The beach is the last place I would expect a horror involving puppets to be sold.

Barring whatever tongue twisters you can imagine, and any blue humour involved, I did not always associate Mr Punch with horror.

No, I actually found out about Mr Punch through Ezra Pound (a poet who I studied and mentioned in my last blog post). Punch magazine begot BLAST magazine in many ways, and that spirit of British humour, of stinging send-ups and ribaldry, echo throughout my own works of horror.

If you do not know Mr Punch, he is seen in puppet booths along the beach. The small puppet plays on the miniature stage are all the same sort of slapstick comedy. But with a new victim, and a screeching crowd of entertained, or frightened, children.

The general plotline goes like this: he beats everyone around him with a slapstick, including family, visitors, professionals, policemen, judges, executioners, the devil, and (in the British propaganda of World War II) enemies of the state like Adolf Hitler.

We can imagine Mr Punch's line: "This is for the Blitz, ya kraut!"

Comedy and horror go hand-in-hand, like violence and pain, or laughter and tears. I am not the first to make these connections. Terror and jokes? Both get you in the gut!

Even someone as (supposedly) sullen as H.P. Lovecraft was, his first published pieces were in a comedy zine. That was before Lovecraft ever wrote anything truly terrifying. But maybe, just maybe, Mr Punch is truly terrifying, too.

Mr Punch is an interesting figure of satire, and of shockingly horrible humour. As the great equaliser, that final equality we find only in death, I believe Mr Punch is able to lampoon and bring everyone down to the same, simple level: the level of worm-food.

Mr Punch is an enigma. He goes everywhere; he is everyone; his strings are a tangle; his nose is a thorn in the side of God!

I have already given my thoughts about his origin, his mutations, his pervasiveness. If you have not read my miniature essay on him, and my writing process for this particular story, check it out! You can find it on Ginger Nuts of Horror, here.

Please give it a read if you have not already; at least, so you can see what the other great contributors have to say about their stories. Pick up a copy of SPAWN 2: MORE WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES!

The award-winning editor, Deborah Sheldon, is a great figure in the still-growing Australasian horror community. She also is lovely to work with, and helped make that anthology what it is now.

But, to bring it back to Mr Punch, I will leave the reader with one question...

Punch Magazine

Who else could be known as a devil, a drunkard, an agent of chaos, an avenger, an angel, a madman, a saviour, and a martyr? What kind of character can be a killer of policemen and priests and wives and tyrants and executioners and demons alike?

In the immortal words of Mr Punch... That's the way to do it!