Learning Day: More 20th Century Dolls, Vol. 1 (Patreon)

We need more dolls.

A theory.

Dolls aren’t innately evil. They just expire. Oranges start out healthy, but keeping them around breeds rare mold. Same for dolls and demons. Granted, it’s often your neighbors killed, with your hands, while the doll sits there. But no allegory’s perfect.

One day, we’ll learn how to keep dolls from directly channeling Satan’s will. Until then, we have the Malleus Maleficarum. Translated today as More Twentieth Century Dolls: Volume One A-H.

The front doesn’t tell the full story. You need the back too.

What a treat! Time to name our new friends:

The title’s wonderful hell news: a renewable resource. More implies prior material. Volume One implies later material. We’ve unearthed years of tears. These dolls already outlived their owners. Now they can outlive their civilization.

I’m giving the author an award out the gate. Johana is, aside from Mark Millar’s publishing wolf-instinct, the smartest writer I’ve covered. She’s all insane, zero stupid. Even Hillary Winston believed in Chad Kultgen. Johana’s just converting insanity into rent, and that’s the only real safety net around. And she owns a basement full of Kultgen-repellent. Kidding. These dolls fill every room of her house. You can’t wash your hands without an eyeful of voodoo damnation.

Take a bow, Big J. I hope you survived the dolls.

For example, Johana’s made a quality doll inventory system. Each label tells you what the fuck you’re looking at, the bastards who forged it, when light died, and signs to look for during the hunt. Take this adorable scamp, named Girl:

We could call her AMER-45, but that would sound creepy. And Girl’s closer to God than today’s other features. In fact, I picked her for being normal. You can still flee with half your soul.

Granted, we only see Girl naked. Johana’s working with submissions and unconcerned with flesh-lovers’ opinions. In her world, a photo of a nude, stained doll is a gift from a generous peer. Here’s Girl’s stat sheet:

That’s efficiency. If Van Helsing had that kind of data, Dracula would be a shorter book. I’m not blowing smoke: it helps when you’re sorting through 3000 dolls to write 4000 doll jokes. This is a fine real-life Monster Manual if you have the courage. It just needs a few details:

Perfect. The first of many precisely indexed dolls we’ll meet today. We have to keep going. It’s our responsibility. If we don’t find them, an unarmed innocent will. Dibs on the stake driver.

I’d like this to be a family article, with friendly dolls. Since everything’s labeled, we can work with names. How about Chuckles? I haven’t seen a haunted Chuckles since the clown purge.

Forget what I said earlier. We’ll need the Kirkhammer for Chuckles. We’re flipping through God’s first drafts. It’s all angels with tentacles and food bans.

I’ll find a different baby. Any baby. We’re genetically hardwired to like babies.

Right. I don’t know shit about genetics. Maybe we’d hate babies if Belial possessed them more often. Any biologists or exorcists reading can feel free to enlighten me later. Until then, Kirkhammer.

These tykes teach us a bit about Johana’s home. If you want to see a lovingly arranged Event Horizon sequel, stop by. Forget her customizing Boy with neglect–Johana keeps Baby First Tooth in a non-fireplace. The question isn’t if it should be killed, but if it can.

New plan: names are a trap, so we’ll focus on jobs. Like beat cops. Copaganda is eternal, and these are technically children’s toys. There should be a dream-friendly officer.

Kirkhammer it is. Other dolls wait for you to leave the room before their Pazuzu imitation. Cop-on-the-Beat clearly feels unprosecutable. Its brother Mechanical Man won’t be spared the hammer either:

Mechanical Man was the worst part of the 1910s.

So far, the Mattelnomicon’s produced the opposite of our prayers. We can use that. I want a tribute to human delirium. I hope I don’t find a cute teddy bear instead.

Nice! Glad I still had sanity to lose. What have we wrought?

The Billiken could carry its own article. In short, it’s a magick mascot that spread from a Missouri doodle to Japanese theme parks. Private luck gods had appeal with global warfare overhead. As usual, dolls filtered it to madness. The original looked less like a racist ManBearPig, and more like a biased onion:

The ManBearPig look stuck.

The song feels ahead of its time: 1909’s a ways off from adults belting “Robots in Disguise” in karaoke bars. But demonology’s older than manufacturing and man. If you whisper Killiblues’s song before a mirror three times, he was already behind you. Reading his name’s all it takes.

Of course, death by Killiblues isn’t for everyone. Have you considered Lucky Bill? Or Sassy Doll? It’s them or the trenches.

Somehow worse! We don’t have the incantation for Lucky Bill (who cost about $140 per curse, or $280 for twelve). Maybe someone hunted it down before this reached print. Maybe typing Lucky Bill was enough to summon it. Either way, Johana should be proud. She’s put in the work of four necromancers.

Five.

Souls need some recovery time between sets. So we’ll take a pit stop.

More Twentieth Century Dolls has four curse-free pages. Never give up on miracles.

You know those pre-content pages people with purpose skip? I thumbed around. Johana frontloads a few personal notes. For example: remember those cover revenants?

They’re Johana’s, like half the book. Priming you for a quote from her favorite dollmancer: Johana.

A six-lane highway to poverty, but endearing. It provokes a sensation Wikipedia calls “sympathy.” I thought those neurons were dead. If I collected severed hands or Otaku Boxes, I hope I’d match that tone.

She pushes it later, with The Litany Against Solvency. Johana explains why she avoided listing prices:

Interesting perspective on credit and souls. I hope it’s not rooted in tragedy. Then there’s the frontispiece:

For once, the dolls intentionally remind us of death. They belonged to Johana’s late sister-in-law. Immortalizing her most likely killers seems odd, but traditions vary. Think of it as a dollmancer’s viking funeral.

This section’s cute, like a chibi tarantula. One day, I’d like my hard drive of horrors to inspire another madman. Maybe even a relative. My nephews contribute to society, and they should know there’s another way. For a second, I can almost, almost imagine filling my home with dead-eyed golems. Then there’s a reader photo from Transylvania, Kansas.

Children dressed like their doll dressed like a child. In semiotics, they call this a “headache.” We’ve found the intersection of Weekend at Bernie’s and Frankenstein.

Nice try. The inquisition remains firm. Time for more dolls.

I apologize: we’ve gone 1000 words without brand crossover. Here are some phantoms with a more familiar flavor. More Twentieth Century Dolls records synergy’s infant steps, which help brands run today. And never stop running, however loudly and often you ask.

Not all dolls confine the souls of killers. Some hold your favorite icons hostage. In theory, this is Nancy:

Not quite. I know a mimic when I see one.

Kirkhammer. Next.

Close enough. Maybe we should stick to the basics. How about Supes? If any soul can survive dollification, it’s Clark’s. Besides, studio flunkies skim everything Superman touches. Depending on SEO, we might get Lucky Bill into a James Gunn flick.

Just a head! Who knew Luthor collected dolls? Seems like the type to prefer people. I think there were a few thousand more Superman dolls by 1974, but Johana lists two. And keeps the head.

In dollhood, a quality head is better than a failed whole. The Loa found Jiminy’s claims of moral superiority arrogant:

Honestly? Still a great toy. Jiminy goes through a lot in Pinocchio, his eyes should reflect that. A little wear would give his client character too.

Too much character. This Pinnochio never made it past Monstro or rehab. I’ve seen neglect, but Pinnochio looks like a Boeing informant. A fan of a film about a doll’s humanity did this. Pinnochio’s murders were self-defense.

Fortunately, some people know how to care for their doll gloves.

Or doll masks. Even unbranded ones. Though the following boudoir doll mask channels heavy [Current Intact Popstar] energy, so I say it counts. It’s fun. You don’t fear it.

As you can see, vintage murderers had more glamor. Hannibal represents a return to form. This doll mask tells you your butcher had taste.

Johana finds dolls from everything. Even Frank King (Gasoline Alley’s author/prisoner) b-sides like Rachel. Also, who’s Rachel?

Got it. Table that theme, I have more sweet tangents. For now: thank you for these branded homunculi, Lord Mickey. Including your true face.

You guys look dolled out, time to mix it up. Branding’s just one side of American history. There’s also business.

What are doll people like? The Litany Against Solvency says broke. The Vatican says excommunicated. Police reports say at large. I could do this forever.

For fairness, here’s Johana’s POV: From “The People Called Doll Collectors.”

It was for fairness! Not extra comedy. I’m a good person, like all clowns. Think of all the nice clowns in movies. This snippet sounds like Ice-T explaining dolls to SVU viewers, but it’s really uplifting.

This next quote’s for comedy.

Nuance betrays Johana, like many writers before her. Murdoch had the right idea about balance. Sure, painting full pictures makes you feel smarter. But you lose people. Hell, half of you tapped when I said her sister’s dead. I am, neurologically, a bit like Johana.

As for the nature of dollmen, history offers another one more answer: pure nationalists. At least on the American side. If you’ve been to a pro-wrestling show, you know all it takes to get a U-S-A chant going is nothing. But I’m jumping ahead. More Twentieth Century Dolls buries a trade war behind the doll stats.

German toymaking thrived before WW1. As in One, where guilt’s diffused all around (pretending everything’s fine counts, as any couple’s counselor will tell you). Toys helped separate young empires with growing consumption habits from money. Here’s Johana’s version, with less jokes and more clarity:

Then relations soured for some reason. I’m not sure what went down. But American dollsmiths jumped on the opening:

Hun Toys is wonderful, wields all the charm Freedom Fries lacked, and is the exact reason I avoid prefaces and appendixes. You never leave. Everything, even doll horror, melts into Neal Stephenson premises. I love Neal, but I need to sleep someday. This might be my longest and latest work.

Now we’ve got stakes, with similar drama around every other war you’re thinking of. Dollphilia kind of, almost, maybe matters. Let’s look at more dolls.

New sub-mission: defeat Kraut dolls. And every other rival addicted to plastic. We’ll need an edge to save Star-Spangled sweatshops. Something uniquely American.

I meant baseball. But Rachel has a few friends.

Okay, a lot of friends.

The Germans parry.

But it lacks that chattel authenticity. Rachel has even more friends. Full catalogs of friends.

Today extracts a heavy toll.

And we got scooped by Canada anyway? Grim.

I wonder: did companies imagine more black children holding these, or citizens? The world’s built around the latter, but it’s tougher than it sounds. Think about it: I’d totally buy Negro Child around Christmas and laugh until the first punch lands. And the loincloth won’t thrive among subtler, trend-savvy racists. What do we sell Princeton parents?

Is that a Negro Baby? It looks like a Real American Baby left in ink. I prefer the caricatures. For some kids, dolls are their first exposure to not-them. You don’t want adults that panic when someone whistles.

The devil couldn’t do better.

Oh, nevermind. The devil has a minstrel form. While Mammon counts coins all day, Satan’s an immortal polymath. You can really see how he got his old job.

Today’s lesson: always suffer a wytch to live. Otherwise, you may never know where their spawn’s hiding. It’s a major timesaver. Besides, my cursed armory isn’t too different from this Encyclopedia of Plastic Slashers. Under God’s law, I should have been killed years ago. Yet here I am, defacing the public consciousness with dolls.

I need all of these books.

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