When franchises go too far.

I read the discussion about the latest Mummy movie where most critics agreed that it was time to retire that franchise, that the ideas were gone and they were just milking a dead goat.

But another franchise comes to mind in the book publishing world: Gallop!

Now, Gallop! is a pretty cool idea; it uses "scanimation" to animate still images by having stripes pass over an image thereby revealing one part or another and creating the illusion of movement. It's a simple, but extremely cool effect.

And based on the popularity of that first book, the scanimation people are releasing a second book, Swing!

And again, this is fine. But I just read that a third book is already in the works with the unpleasant title of, Poop!

Now, I don't know when an author or publisher should just call it quits, but I think a book called Poop! might be that point. I could imagine books with animals doing many other things before I would imagine them pooping. You have Gallop!, Swing!, maybe Hop! or Leap!, or, well, that's basically it, isn't it? What else do animals do? Sleep! Yeah, that'll stretch the use of scanimation to the cutting edge as animals lie completely still.

So maybe Poop! isn't so bad after all.

Here is some of the prose we can expect:

"Can you make a turd like a bird?"
"Flap-flap-crap!"

And here is the proposed cover art (note that the process for the new title has been renamed "Scatimation"):






























[yes, I made this up. this is a parody. there is no Poop! written by Rufus Butler Seder or published by Workman Publishing. tell them not to sue me.]