Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism

Father Gaetano’s Puppet Catechism

By Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden

3 ½ Covers out of Five

Mignola and Golden continue their collaboration with this novella.  The tale takes place in a post WWII orphanage in Italy.  Father Gaetano is the newly arrived pastor who is to help the nuns of the convent teach the children the gospel.  He struggles in this task until one of the orphans, Sebastiano, helps him discover the former caretaker’s puppets.  They repurpose the puppets to create visual lessons.  Unfortunately the puppets take to their roles a little too well.

Being a novella, the story is more focused than the authors previous efforts and the story greatly benefits from this.  Keeping it to a single, small location cultivates a claustrophobic atmosphere and the religious imagery is closer to its original intention than you might think.  And the characters are more fleshed out then the authors other books.

There is still the initial problem of too many points of view, but this quickly settles down. But there is also the problem that the threat is just puppets.  I know some people are creeped out by them, and Mignola and Golden have used puppets before in Baltimore, but it’s never been an issue for me.  The writers do everything they can to build it up and they do create q very dramatic ending, but the source of the horror doesn’t meet the expectation.