Mayhem: Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar

M A Y H E M
This Character Connection post is part of Helluva Halloween Character Connection hosted by The Introverted Reader whereby one must...

The challenge:
Write a post (non-bloggers can use each week's comments) about any character from a horror/thriller type novel OR a villain from any type of book. I'm talking about the real baddies on that villain thing. I know horror/thriller is a gray area, so if you think it's appropriate for Halloween, I'll count it.

You too, can join this contest which ends Oct 30, 2010. Enter here for week 1.

Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar
My picks this week are a couple of thugs, Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar, from Neverwhere written by Neil Gaiman. These guys also fall in well with my mayhem theme today as they cause much pain. They carry out the orders from the head honcho and have no mercy. They are quite like zombies just following orders without a care of your comfort. Although with this pair it could be quite painful just to be in their presence and observing their mannerisms.

Mr. Croup: The talkative half of the pair of assassins, the Messrs. He is short, fat, and speaks in a pompous and verbose manner. Like his partner, Mr. Vandemar, he seems to be able to simply move from one place to another very quickly despite his ungainly appearance. He is the brains of the pair and seems be the one calling the shots, and he apparently has a taste (literally) for fine china. Much of the imagery used to describe him is that of a fox.

Mr. Vandemar: Dull-witted, tall, and gangly, Vandemar is Croup’s polar opposite. He does not speak much, and when he does, his statements are often laconic and blunt. He is quite brutish and seems to enjoy nothing more than killing and destroying things (even practising his golf swing with live toads). He also has a tendency to eat live animals. The descriptive imagery likens him to a hound or a wolf, and he even howls at one point when catching up with his mark.

These fellas can be found in here...

Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman

Based on a TV series that first aired on BBC Two in 1996 and later adapted to book form.

Description from the amazon:
Richard Mayhew is a plain man with a good heart -- and an ordinary life that is changed forever on a day he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk.

From that moment forward he is propelled into a world he never dreamed existed -- a dark subculture flourish in abandoned subway stations and sewer tunnels below the city -- a world far stranger and more dangerous than the only one he has ever known...

He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

Per Wikipedia, Neverwhere can also be found in these formats:

Comic book: written by Mike Carey with art by Glenn Fabry

DVD: TV series

Film: in-development

Stage: coming in Spring 2011 by The Northwest Academy in Portland, OR with High School actors

Previous stage productions:
2006 by Cardinal Rep in Savannah, GA
2008 by Actors Gymnasium in Evanstan, IL
2010 by Lifeline Theatre in Chicago, IL

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* image source for the thugs

* source for thug descriptions

* for Misty's event...

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