I love Will Vinton's "A Claymation Comedy Of Horrors", my favorite scene being that when Wilshire meets up with his undead granny, who is little more than a mere skeleton at the time. Every time I watch that scene, I always wonder to myself: "What was Granny like when she was alive? Come to think of it, what was Wilshire like when he was a kid, before he became the greedy, gruff, rude, hustling inventor/con artist pig we all know and love to hate?

Ironically, I tend to picture him as having been a kind of a nerdy, somewhat socially awkward little boy known mostly then as simply "Willie", who was born the runt of a littler of 3 bigger and stronger (albeit less intelligent) brothers. The kind of kid who had a tendency to bungle most everything he put his hands to and frequently found himself crammed in his locker/his head flushed in a toilet/hanging from the school flagpole by his tighty-whities. Despite this, he still did his best to smile and carry on with a surprisingly good sense of humor and was even at times, a little mischievous. Something of a class clown, even. Not only that, but the brains and inventive skills that he, unlike his brothers, had been blessed with would give him an edge in working with the inventions and machinery that he had begun to display an interest in (and later, money), his only hope for a bright new future. (Or so he thought, anyway..)
Most of all, all he really ever wanted was to make friend or two..


As for his Granny? I imagine Wilshire's parents were the kind that preferred to spend as little time around him as possible, so he spent much of his time at his Granny's house under her watch. For the most part, they usually got along okay. But, even in life, Granny was always something of ticking time bomb; Sweet and good-natured one minute, then turning on you the next (as evidenced by her selling out her own grandson in the Halloween special). Maybe she was an alcoholic or something? Or maybe she had some kind of dementia or other? Or both? Who knows?



Characters are © Will Vinton.