John Stanley's Summer Fun

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of John Stanley's Summer Fun (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011).



Drawn & Quarterly might want to be a little careful with these annual collections, lest they explode their carefully-constructed myth about the genius of John Stanley a little earlier than they'd planned. Don't get me wrong; the publisher's John Stanley Library remains a remarkable set of books and I'd like to own more, because when Stanley was on fire, which was most of the time, he was writing or illustrating better kids' comics than anybody else. Stanley's best work in the sixties seemed effortless, just a casual understanding of what made kids and teens tick, and scripts that just bounced with clever and silly gags that followed a logical progression.

There's a great story in this book, the third assembled for the annual Free Comic Book Day event, in which Judy Jr. schemes to steal a sandwich and manipulates her usual target to get it. Every panel just clicks with energy and a zippy irreverence. Even once the reader figures out where the story is going, watching it get there is a guaranteed joy. There are certainly other good stories in this collection as well. Even though you know going in that anything that Tubby tells you about a giant sea monster will either be a dream or a lie, watching the very construction of the story is great fun. Speaking as a sometimes wannabe writer, I'm just amazed at how easy Stanley makes this look.

Sadly, though, it's not all that good. Some of it reminds me, for the first time reading Stanley, of those horrible flat 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons. You remember all that crap like Huckleberry Hound and all those exactly-the-same cartoons that kept reusing all the same gags from each other? I couldn't stand those things when I was a kid, even though I watched them out of frustration with nothing else being on, and was reminded of them while reading a Choo-Choo Charlie installment about a physics-defying runaway ferris wheel. The absolute worst kind of kids' humor is the sort that relies on impossible things happening and everybody being stupid about them. Nancy and Rollo show up in a story in which Nancy lands on an "island" which is clearly a whale and I don't remember whether she and her summer camp buddies ever figured it out, because I got bored waiting for them.

A lot of this might seem like arbitrary decisions of taste, but I'm not so sure. Nobody's going to agree that Looney Toons were at their best in the 1960s when you had team-ups with Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales; everybody knows that Tom & Jerry were only any good when they were trying to kill each other. The long, crappy decline of Hanna-Barbera didn't merely come because they cut corners for TV animation, but because the scripts were terrible.

It's sad to learn that Stanley was just as capable of everybody else in the period of making eye-rollingly stupid kids' entertainment, but it's also sad to see that Drawn & Quarterly has already started unearthing and publishing some of it. About half this book is uncommonly clever, and about half is like the Gold Key comics that you quickly threw away as a child, wishing that your well-meaning aunt had bought you something with fights and monsters in it. As such, the book is a very poor choice to introduce anybody to Stanley. Recommended only for Stanley completists.

Melvin Monster Volume 2

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Melvin Monster Volume 2 (Drawn & Quarterly, 2010)



The second volume of Melvin Monster was actually released several months ago, but I waited until my son was in town to pick up a copy, knowing that he enjoys it more than anybody else. The dude is thirteen, clearly a couple of years (at least) outside the original target audience for these comics, but he still chuckles and guffaws all the way through them. Although I've never once heard him exclaim "BAW" or "YOW." Yet.

Melvin Monster was written and drawn by John Stanley and it's a silly and surreal title where a fun-loving and kindhearted green beastie tries to go to school and avoid being eaten by his pet crocodile. His father's incredibly bad-tempered and violent and nobody's seen his uncle's head in years and his witch friend can barely control her temperamental broom.

Like the first volume, this is a wonderfully-designed (it's Seth again, naturally) hardcover that reprints three issues from the 1960s series by John Stanley. The reproduction is nice - it's done on that slightly yellowed faux-aged paper - and it's essential reading for anybody with younguns in the house. I'd actually call this essential for anybody who might have visitors in the seven to ten bracket. Kids might very well really enjoy a trip to "Crazy Uncle So-and-So's house" if they could be assured of a bookshelf full of John Stanley. What the heck's keeping you? Hugely recommended.

YOW! A "John Stanley Library" Grab-Bag

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of YOW! A "John Stanley Library" Grab-Bag (Drawn & Quarterly, 2010)



I'll make a deal with you, Drawn & Quarterly. No matter how old and jaded I get with comics, even if I turn into a long-nailed cackling Hughes-ish weirdo buying nothing but 2000 AD, if you promise to publish a John Stanley sampler every year for Free Comic Book Day, then once a year, I will go to a comic store and pick it up. This year on FCBD, a road trip took precedence over all other things - especially since 2000 AD's publishers still won't participate in the darn event - but as soon as I heard there was a John Stanley book to be had, I found myself a comic shop in Birmingham just to get the goods.

John Stanley basically spent about a dozen years writing and occasionally drawing the most consistently entertaining kids' comics on the market, lunatic little tales of neighborhood adventures, bad dreams, oddball physics and children communicating with awesome sound effects. Last year, the publisher Drawn & Quarterly began an ambitious series of reprints, "The John Stanley Library," all designed by Seth and all featuring some thunderously fun funnybooks. They still resonate with children today; my kids are firm fans of Stanley's Melvin Monster and Thirteen "Going on Eighteen".

YOW! is a perfect little sampler of these great comics. It includes short stories featuring Melvin, Tubby, Judy Jr., Nancy and Choo-Choo Charlie. I'd never heard of this last character before, but he's a trip, a locomotive-obsessed oddball who gets on the bad side of a crocodile in the story here. I can't imagine anybody not liking this stuff. Admittedly, the Tubby story is awfully dated - you know as soon as the story gets that surreal, it's going to eventually end with Tubby falling out of bed - but the playful malevolence on display as the whole planet starts chasing Tubby down to shave his mustache really is funny as heck.

Unfortunately, YOW! was only available for one day as a freebie and will probably not be reprinted. It's possible that some shops still have some copies left over. If you've got kids in your house or if you personally were ever a kid yourself, ring every comic shop within driving distance and see if they've got one that they'll hold for you. Then ask to see their stock of John Stanley Library editions; if the shop's worth a hoot, they've got several just waiting to go home with you. Highly recommended.

Thirteen "Going on Eighteen"

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Thirteen "Going on Eighteen" (Drawn & Quarterly, 2010)



Thirteen "Going on Eighteen" was a teen girls' comedy series written, and mostly illustrated, by John Stanley. It was originally published in quarterly issues by Dell between 1962-1967 and the first nine have been repackaged, with truly satisfying design work by Stanley-phile and Bookshelf fave Seth, by Drawn & Quarterly in a really nice, heavy chunk of a hardcover.

Honestly, the ongoing budget crisis - well, I suppose it isn't really a crisis, I just don't have as much disposable income as I once did - meant that I intended to leave this one on the shelves for now, but I showed a copy to my daughter to see whether she'd like it. Just as her brother fell for Stanley's Melvin Monster, my daughter, at age eleven the perfect audience for this comic, insisted that I take it home. If I didn't, she probably would have thrown back her head and hollered "BAW!" at me.

I remain a little frustrated with D&Q's choices about how they're managing their reprints. Melvin Monster's nine terrific issues are being spread across three hardcovers, and here's a nice big book with the first nine issues of Thirteen. On the one hand, I wish D&Q had simply packaged all of Melvin Monster in a book this size, but on the other, I can see that in the case of Thirteen, they would have been shooting themselves in the foot by only reprinting the first three, which really aren't very good. These stories were drawn by Dell regular Tony Tallarico, and they're just plain dull. Stanley's scripts weren't very engaging, either. He took over art duties with the third issue, but it's not until the fourth that I started laughing. I didn't stop until the end, either.

Val and Judy's world of chocolate shoppes and moptops is pretty far removed from ours, but teenage girls still act like drama queens as often as possible, and their shenanigans, usually involving Val's insensitive older sister or her next-door neighbor, are usually quite funny. The very best comics, however, are the little shorts about Judy Jr., suggesting that Stanley was still more supremely confident depicting the world of little kids than teens. Judy Jr. is just hilarious, a clueless bully who strongarms her hapless friend into whatever she wants, punishing him on one occasion by throwing him out of his own house so that she can continue playing with his toys.

Since the first third of the book is really uneven, I can't give this the loudest of recommendations, but if you've got tweenage girls in your household, you'd be well advised to pick up a copy. Should the publisher bring out a second volume, however, that will be essential. When y'all bringing out Kookie, guys?

Melvin Monster / Nancy # 1

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Melvin Monster / Nancy # 1 (Drawn & Quarterly, 2009).



Over at my Reprint This! blog, I've mentioned the forthcoming John Stanley Library from Drawn & Quarterly. To promote the books, the publisher released a neat 32-page flip book on Free Comic Book Day earlier this month. It gives you 16 pages of Melvin Monster and 16 pages of the comic book version of Ernie Bushmiller's strip Nancy and it is all kinds of fun.

I really don't remember ever seeing Melvin before. My son got hold of this comic before me and reported that Melvin was really funny and asked if I was going to be getting any more of it. Melvin apparently was released quarterly for only nine issues in the late sixties by Dell, and was clearly inspired by the Addams Family, the Munsters, the Groovy Ghoulies and their lovable type. Melvin really wants to be a good kid, which doesn't set well with his father ("Baddy"), or monster schoolteachers who don't want to be bothered teaching anybody anything. It's great stuff, with at least two wonderful gags on every page. I can't wait for the full edition, which should be out in a few weeks.

Nancy can't help but pale by comparison. It's still very entertaining stuff, and this sampler introduces the bizarre little girl Oona Goosepimple, who lives in a haunted house, but just not as grin-inducing as Melvin Monster. We'll have to see how the summer finances go before I can commit to the Nancy book, put it that way. The sampler also confirms that a collection of Stanley's Thirteen (Going on Eighteen) is due in the autumn. The books are all designed by Seth, and look wonderful. I'm looking forward to more, and recommend you check into getting a copy of this freebie comic for yourself to see what you think!