Judd Winick picks 5 movies to pair with ‘The Mighty’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Judd Winick is an author, cartoonist, comic book writer, and creator of the bestselling comic book series Hilo. His newest book Hilo Presents: The Mighty is out now wherever you get your books!
We asked Judd to pick a few movies that pair well with The Mighty.
I don’t wanna dive too far into hyperbole, but I simply have to say that this is one of the most difficult endeavors I’ve ever had to embark upon in my entire life. It would be challenging enough for someone to ask me what my favorite movies are, ‘cause we don’t have that kind of time. But for me to choose what movies should go alongside my new book The Mighty is quite the conundrum. It is a mountain to climb!
I’ve been writing and drawing my graphic novel series Hilo for over a decade—the eleventh book just came out this past year—and movies are kind of in the blood. They course through the veins of my stories. I’m inspired, I borrow, I steal. There’s buckets of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark tucked into Hilo, but you’d be surprised how much Jaws and the TV show The West Wing live in there as well. And now this new book (which is from the same world as Hilo, like how the Hulk and Spider-Man live in the same universe) has a new set of movies that just run through it.
The Mighty is about a 12-year-old girl named Miranda Luna who discovers one evening that she can turn into a 10-foot tall furry purple monster. So she does what any 12-year-old kid would do: she fights crime and doesn’t tell her parents. Like Hilo, it’s an all-ages action adventure that both kiddos and grown-ups will dig. On quick reflection, there’s about 350 movies that pair nicely with this book. But, for sanity as well as brevity, I am narrowing it down to just five all ages, tentpole, four-quadrant type motion pictures.
The Incredibles
This movie is exactly the kind of story I keep trying to tell, and it does the job in many ways. For starters, it’s this big action-adventure superhero story with crazy great set pieces and crazy great jokes. But at its heart, it’s a story about a family. It really threads that needle in such an artful way that I am constantly in awe of it. And visually—oh boy, gang. Prior to The Incredibles, the film studio Pixar kind of struggled with rendering people. They didn’t look great. But director Brad Bird and his crew split the atom on this by figuring out that the people needed to be stylized. Like Chuck Jones cartoons. I don’t draw realistically. I’m a cartoony cartoonist. My stuff looks like a comic strip. So this speaks to me. And this is very much in The Mighty. The way it looks. The way it feels. This is what I’m going for.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
This is a bananas awesome movie. Just off the charts. It’s got everything. Anthropomorphic animals. Light and dark humor. A wide arrange of emotions. Art direction. Killer soundtrack. Insanely great voice acting. It’s also wildly quotable. (“Redemption? Sure. But in the end, he’s just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind a Chinese restaurant.”) Here I am zeroing in on it to watch along with reading The Mighty because of the villains. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, the villains are dorks and weirdos, but still formidable and dangerous. That’s what I’m going for with The Mighty. The big bads in the book are fairly ridiculous in how they look, how they act, and how they carry themselves, but they’re still pretty lethal. You wouldn’t feel safe around them. Roald Dahl does a masterful for job of creating them, and Wes Anderson did a gonzo job bringing them to life on the screen. I’m looking to do the same thing.
Kiki’s Delivery Service
This was a hard one. I only picked one Hayao Miyazaki movie. I can pretty much list all of them. I feel a little bit dirty not including My Neighbor Totoro on this list. But this one speaks to me and this new book of mine in a big way. Kiki, the protagonist of the story, is beleaguered. She’s a young witch looking to strike out on our own for the first time. It’s a rite of passage. And things don’t go too well. It’s a bit melancholy. It’s a bit about finding oneself. And in The Mighty, the protagonist Miranda Luna is facing the same problem. She’s not quite sure who she’s supposed to be. Kiki’s Delivery Service manages to be very, very quiet and very very loud at the same time. Great action sequences, as well as real wonderful stillness. I tried to create stillness in my work, and I think I did it in this book in a way that people will dig. But again, I quite humbly put this movie alongside The Mighty, because I think our heroes are finding their path along the way to becoming heroic.
Song of the Sea
This movie is special. Very very special. It has a unique visual style that’s completely unseen in feature animation. And it’s got everything. It is beautiful, funny, and sad, and a really neat and unique story. You really don’t know what’s gonna happen next. I appreciate the unpredictability of it. The reason I put it alongside The Mighty is that it’s very much a story about a couple of kids going on an adventure on their own without their parents. I do this a lot in most of my work. All throughout the Hilo series and now with The Mighty, the kids are pretty much taking care of business on their own. Parents are involved! Parents are present! But the kids are getting it done. And the brother and sister in Song of the Sea are the ones that make the engine go. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen seals looks as cute as they are in this motion picture.
The Iron Giant
I put this film in here because it’s a perfect movie, and it informs just about everything I do. I’m surprised now and again that more people have not seen it. Have you not seen The Iron Giant? You should watch it. Like right now. I’ll wait. Go. … That was amazing, right? You’re both wrecked and elated at the same time. This film does everything that I try to do in the story. It’s drawn beautifully. It’s funny as all heck. Deeply visual in both the drama and comedy—and the emotion runs so deep. It is truly magnificent.
Bonus: Doctor Who
I know we’re only supposed to do movies to watch along with our books, but I’m going to cheat. I’m changing the rules. I’m pulling a Star Trek Kobayashi Maru (you know if you know). I’m going to suggest that y’all watch a lot or some of Doctor Who. I came on board with the reboot with the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and it was stunningly formative for me as a storyteller. The Doctor is a positive protagonist, at least in the incarnations that I deeply love. He/she is constantly excited by anything new. Even if it’s dangerous. If it’s inventive or clever, the Doctor just loves it. I instill this kind of positive protagonist excitement in Hilo, as a character and as a story. I’m trying to walk that path in The Mighty. I like heroes who aren’t all dark and gloomy. I wrote mainstream superhero comics for over a decade, and I did a lot of dark and gloomy heroes. And there’s a time and place for it. But that’s not my time or place right now. My characters might be challenged. They might get their heads kicked in. But I like to think they come back swinging and really see so much of these challenges as a mountain they wanna climb.