Raymond Briggs' When The Wind Blows: classic or dud or nightmares for the rest of my life

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Did any unlucky kid, like myself, go into bookstore looking for the new comic book by the Fungus the Bogeyman guy, then come home with this instead? And then subject themselves to the same horrors all over again with the movie? And then have it instill them with a Lifetime Of Paranoia And Fear?

This can be the Barefoot Gen thread, if anyone's read that too.

― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 12:37 (twenty-two years ago)

(i interviewed RB when the — boring — cartoon of this book came out: he is sad to say a rawther dull gent)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 12:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Entirely classic, though yes, it disturbed me greatly at the time. I think I appreciated it as a tragicomedy more than as an apocalyptic vision - maybe I could never really get to grips with the conecpt of mutually assured destruction. Too much of a pragmatist.

― Mark C (Mark C), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm glad I never read this - or saw the film - because it would have terrified me. I saw Threads about 10 years ago, and still have nightmares about it occasionally.

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 13:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Grebt and horrid in equal measure. We were made to watch the animated version at school, as if it were some instructive cautionary tale. 'But miss, HOW do we prevent nuclear holocaust? I've been really good this year. We can't? Oh. Right.'

For movingness, Ethel and Ernest is better.

Raymond Briggs lives in a barn just up the road from me, if TV and my memory are to be believed.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 13:08 (twenty-two years ago)

We had to read this at school and then write our own account of "What I did in the nuclear holocaust by Anna Fielding aged 10 and 3/4" or similar. That will really give you nightmares. I still go into a self-imposed news blackout if anything nuclear comes up. I can't face reading about it, still.

― Anna (Anna), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 13:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought it was a bit dull really. I like Barefoot Gen far more.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

(i was inspired to see if this, eh, thread existed by the brief discussion about the film "threads" here.)

the ? boring ? cartoon of this book

i got the (long-overdue) DVD for christmas and almost started crying straight away. i've still not got round to watching it yet: i need to steel my nerves. i've seen it twice in my life so far, and i think it's exquisite: the narrative, the relationship, the way the animation of the nuclear strike mirrors the sequence with the dandelion clock, the ending ("no more ? no more") ... it destroys me.

For movingness, Ethel and Ernest is better.

i think there are a couple of frames in "ethel and ernest" that are heart-stoppingly poignant, but given that the characters in "when the wind ..." were (IIRC) effectively based on briggs's parents anyway, i find it packs more of an emotional punch.

Barefoot Gen

i hadn't heard of this before. i've just googled and it sounds very interesting. do tell me more about it, somebody ...

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Wednesday, 18 January 2006 14:13 (twenty years ago)

"it is the single bleakest thing i have ever seen.
absolutely fucking astonishing".

yes. totally. me too. i don't think i ever recovered after it.

and here's the original
'threads' thread

"THREADS" : tonight on tv for the first time in eighteen years.

'THREADS' thread:

― piscesboy, Wednesday, 18 January 2006 14:26 (twenty years ago)

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