Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

Surprise should not have been my first reaction to the news Who Framed Roger Rabbit sprung from the pages of a book. All of the Disney Princesses did, Merida excluded as she is technically the only Pixar Princess. Pinocchio, Alice, all the way up to The Rescuers and Oliver and Company stepped off the page. If you’ve taken the time to name one of your giftshops “Off the Page,” it’s kind of your thing.

Before I get too far into that…

Who Censored Roger Rabbit, written by Gary K. Wolf in 1981, is set in an alternative world where Toons and humans live begrudgingly side by side. Toon Town isn’t someplace people can visit on the outskirts of town. Everyone lives in Toon Town.

Toon Town is a place where comic strips still reign supreme. Instead of movie studios, we get cartoon syndicates, which lends a certain dark alley vibe to something usually associated with lightheartedness.

Our hero Eddie is still a rough, jaded drunk of an investigator, but he’s not carrying the same emotional trauma his counterpart does on screen. The story is told from his perspective, allowing us to get inside his head without a lot of personal reflection. He needs cash, so he puts aside his dislike for Toons and takes, what he thinks, is going to be a quick and easy job.

Nothing’s ever easy in the real world, why would Toon Town be any different?

His slam dunk case quickly goes sideways, pulling him into a much more complicated one that comes with a sidekick. Eddie may be down on his luck, but his moral compass doesn’t let him turn away from Roger. Valiant has forty-eight hours to answer the question, who censored Roger Rabbit?

Roger Rabbit’s origin being the same as the majority of Disney’s output is right on brand. Yet, like I was hinting at earlier, I was surprised. Maybe because a quasi book noire doesn’t seem like a source that would land on the desk of Disney’s content creators. But if they can turn a Dickens work into a playful romp, someone at the Studio was trolling outside their familiar inspiration.

Meeting a book after already having an attachment to the film can be awkward in my experience. Through the length of the movie, you’ve established relationships with the characters. If you really loved a movie, those relationships can become deep-seated. If you then crack the spine of the book they were born from, well, they might have the characters’ names, but often they aren’t exactly the same character you fell in love with.

That is what happened with me and Who Censored Roger Rabbit. Many of the characters from the movie appeared in the text. We get to see Roger, Jessica, Eddie, Baby Herman were all there. But don’t be expecting Judge Doom, R.K Maroon, Marvin Acme. Spoilers, they weren’t drawn into this investigation.

The novel is just less than three hundred pages, so it should have been a breeze for me. The first hundred pages or so stopped and started for me. Not because of any problem I was having with the language or storyline. My expectations were the problem. I was waiting for The Weasels to come wheeling around the corner in the Doom Patrol Car. Or for Eddie to head to the Ink and Paint Club.
But that wasn’t going to happen.

Disney adaptations have never been pure recitations of the original text. Cinderella’s stepsisters get to skip the foot mutilations. Snow White’s evil stepmother doesn’t dance with white-hot iron shoes on through the end credit scene. Disney made a movie about the manipulation Mary Poppins went through to become what it is in our minds today. And even that “biopic” had a while washed spin on events. Pick any Disney movie and out it up against its origin text, and you’ll find the two are related but hardly identical twins.

I gave up the comparison mindset through the second half of the book, which went much quicker than the first. It’s not every day you pick up a gumshoe novel where the victim is assisting in his own homicide investigation. So I should sit up and pay attention to what’s on the page.

Wolf throws cartoons into the usual murder mix. I’m going to say probably caught a lot of readers when the book was first released. But they weren’t distractions or simple comic relief. The pervasive prejudice against toons reenforces Valiant’s motivation to stay in the case. Roger wasn’t going to get a fair shake, and neither was Jessica.

I enjoyed Valiant’s investigation of Roger’s murder despite the story lacking the rosy upturn its celluloid counterpart has. Eddie Valiant may not be neat as a pin like Hercule Poirot or as stylish and daring as Phryne Fischer. What he lacks in panache, he makes up for in other ways. I feel that Valiant and Harry Dresden would have a lot to say over a couple of beers and a card game. I wish there had been more put down about Eddie’s investigations. No offense to Roger, but I wanted more from the down on his luck flat foot.

That said, Wolf did put out two more books after the film’s release. I hesitate to call my wish granted with that information. A quick search for the titles clued me into the subject of those sequels are closer to the film than to the original book. All the same, I won’t know until I read them. So, they are now on my ever-growing list of books to read. Good thing I have time on my hands…